Sitting of 30 April 1946

Preamble
The House—after the Adjournment on 18th April, 1946, for the Easter Recess —met at Half past Two o'Clock.
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
DEATH OF A MEMBER
Mr. Speaker Mr. Speaker: I regret to have to inform the House of the death of Arthur Jenkins, esquire, Member for the County of Monmouth, Pontypool Division, and I desire on behalf of the House to express our sense of the loss we have sustained and our sympathy with the relatives of the honourable Member.
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  BUCKS WATER BOARD BILL [Lords]
  Bill read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.—(King's consent signified.)
ORDERS OF THE DAY

  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.47 P.m.
  The Minister of Health (Mr. Aneurin Bevan): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
  In the last two years there has been such a clamour from sectional interests in the field of national health that we are in danger of forgetting why these proposals are brought forward at all. It is, therefore, very welcome to me—and I am quite certain to hon. Members in all parts of the House—that consideration should now be given, not to this or that sectional interest, but to the requirements of the British people as a whole. The scheme which anyone must draw up dealing with national health must necessarily be conditioned and limited by the evils it is intended to remove. Many of those who have drawn up paper plans for the health services appear to have followed the dictates of abstract principles, and not the concrete requirements of the actual situation as it exists. They drew up all sorts of tidy schemes on paper, which would be quite inoperable in practice.
  The first reason why a health scheme of this sort is necessary at all is because it has been the firm conclusion of all parties that money ought not to be permitted to stand in the way of obtaining an efficient health service. Although it is true that the national health insurance system provides a general practitioner service and caters for something like 21 million of the population, the rest of the population have to pay whenever they desire the services of a doctor. It is cardinal to a proper health organisation that a person ought not to be financially deterred from seeking medical assistance at the earliest possible stage. It is one of the evils of having to buy medical advice that, in addition to the natural anxiety that may arise because people do not like to hear unpleasant things about themselves, and therefore tend to postpone consultation as long as possible, there is the financial anxiety caused by having to pay doctors' bills. Therefore, the first evil that we must deal with is that which exists as a consequence of the fact that the whole
  44
  thing is the wrong way round. A person ought to be able to receive medical and hospital help without being involved in financial anxiety.
  In the second place, the national health insurance scheme does not provide for the self-employed, nor, of course, for the families of dependants. It depends on insurance qualification, and no matter how ill you are, if you cease to be insured you cease to have free doctoring. Furthermore, it gives no backing to the doctor in the form of specialist services. The doctor has to provide himself, he has to use his own discretion and his own personal connections, in order to obtain hospital treatment for his patients and in order to get them specialists, and in very many cases, of course— in an overwhelming number of cases—the services of a specialist are not available to poor people.
  Not only is this the case, but our hospital organisation has grown up with no plan, with no system; it is unevenly distributed over the country and indeed it is one of the tragedies of the situation, that very often the best hospital facilities are available where they are least needed. In the older industrial districts of Great Britain hospital facilities are inadequate. Many of the hospitals are too small—very much too small. About 70 per cent. have less than 100 beds, and over 30 per cent. have less than 30. No one can possibly pretend that hospitals so small can provide general hospital treatment. There is a tendency in some quarters to defend the very small hospital on the ground of its localism and intimacy, and for other rather imponderable reasons of that sort, but everybody knows today that if a hospital is to be efficient it must provide a number of specialised services. Although I am not myself a devotee of bigness for bigness sake, I would rather be kept alive in the efficient if cold altruism of a large hospital than expire in a gush of warm sympathy in a small one.
  In addition to these defects, the health of the people of Britain is not properly looked after in one or two other respects. The condition of the teeth of the people of Britain is a national reproach. As a consequence of dental treatment having to be bought, it has not been demanded on a scale to stimulate the creation of sufficient dentists, and in consequence there is a woeful shortage of dentists

  45
  the present time. Furthermore, about 25 per cent. of the people of Great Britain can obtain their spectacles and get their eyes tested and seen to by means of the assistance given by the approved societies, but the general mass of the people have not such facilities. Another of the evils from which this country suffers is the fact that sufficient attention has not been given to deafness, and hardly any attention has been given so far to the provision of cheap hearing aids and their proper maintenance. I hope to be able to make very shortly a welcome announcement on this question.
  One added disability from which our health system suffers is the isolation of mental health from the rest of the health services. Although the present Bill does not rewrite the Lunacy Acts—we shall have to come to that later on—nevertheless, it does, for the first time, bring mental health into the general system of health services. It ought to be possible, and this should be one of the objectives of any civilised health service, for a person who feels mental distress, or who fears that he is liable to become unbalanced in any way to go to a general hospital to get advice and assistance, so that the condition may not develop into a more serious stage. All these disabilities our health system suffers from at the present time, and one of the first merits of this Bill is that it provides a universal health service without any insurance qualifications of any sort. It is available to the whole population, and not only is it available to the whole population freely, but it is intended, through the health service, to generalise the best health advice and treatment. It is intended that there shall be no limitation on the kind of assistance given—the general practitioner service, the specialist, the hospitals, eye treatment, spectacles, dental treatment, hearing facilities, all these are to be made available free.
  There will be some limitations for a while, because we are short of many things. We have not enough dentists and it will therefore be necessary for us, in the meantime, to give priority treatment to certain classes—expectant and nursing mothers, children, school children in particular and later on we hope adolescents. Finally we trust that we shall be able to build up a dental service for the whole population. We are short of nurses and
  46
  we are short, of course, of hospital accommodation, and so it will be some time before the Bill can fructify fully in effective universal service. Nevertheless, it is the object of the Bill, and of the scheme, to provide this as soon as possible, and to provide it universally.
  Specialists will be available not only at institutions but for domiciliary visits when needed. Hon. Members in all parts of the House know from their own experience that very many people have suffered unnecessarily because the family has not had the financial resources to call in skilled people. The specialist services, therefore, will not only be available at the hospitals, but will be at the back of the general practitioner should he need them. The practical difficulties of carrying out all these principles and services are very great. When I approached this problem, I made up my mind that I was not going to permit any sectional or vested interests to stand in the way of providing this very valuable service for the British people.
  There are, of course, three main instruments through which it is intended that the Health Bill should be worked. There are the hospitals; there are the general practitioners; and there are the health centres. The hospitals are in many ways the vertebrae of the health system, and I first examined what to do with the hospitals. The voluntary hospitals of Great Britain have done invaluable work. When hospitals could not be provided by any other means, they came along. The voluntary hospital system of this country has a long history of devotion and sacrifice behind it, and it would be a most frivolously minded man who would denigrate in any way the immense services the voluntary hospitals have rendered to this country. But they have been established often by the caprice of private charity. They bear no relationship to each other. Two hospitals close together often try to provide the same specialist services unnecessarily, while other areas have not that kind of specialist service at all. They are, as I said earlier, badly distributed throughout the country. It is unfortunate that often endowments are left to finance hospitals in those parts of the country where the well-to-do live while, in very many other of our industrial and rural districts there is inadequate hospital accommodation. These voluntary hospitals are, very many of them, far too small and, therefore, to

  47
  leave them as independent units is quite impracticable.
  Furthermore—I want to be quite frank with the House—I believe it is repugnant to a civilised community for hospitals to have to rely upon private charity. I believe we ought to have left hospital flag days behind. I have always felt a shudder of repulsion when I have seen nurses and sisters who ought to be at their work, and students who ought to be at their work, going about the streets collecting money for the hospitals. I do not believe there is an hon. Member of this House who approves that system. It is repugnant, and we must leave it behind —entirely. But the implications of doing this are very considerable.
  I have been forming some estimates of what might happen to voluntary hospital finance when the all-in insurance contributions tall to be paid by the people of Great Britain, when the Bill is passed and becomes an Act, and they are entitled to free hospital services. The estimates I have go to show that between 80 per cent. and 90 per cent. of the revenues of the voluntary hospitals in these circumstances will be provided by public funds, by national or rate funds. [An HON. MEMBER: "By workers' contributions."] And, of course, as the hon. Member reminds me, in very many parts of the country it is a travesty to call them voluntary hospitals. In the mining districts, in the textile districts, in the districts where there are heavy industries it is the industrial population who pay the weekly contributions for the maintenance of the hospitals. When I was a miner I used to find that situation, when I was on the hospital committee. We had an annual meeting and a cordial vote of thanks was moved and passed with great enthusiasm to the managing director of the colliery company for his generosity towards the hospital; and when I looked at the balance sheet, I saw that 97½ per cent. of the revenues were provided by the miners' own contributions; but nobody passed a vote of thanks to the miners.
  Major Guy Lloyd (Renfrew, Eastern): What was the right hon. Gentleman doing?
  Mr. Bevan: I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that I was no more silent then than I am now. But, of course, it
  48
  is a misuse of language to call these "voluntary hospitals." They are not maintained by legally enforced contributions; but, mainly, the workers pay for them because they know they will need the hospitals, and they are afraid of what they would have to pay if they did not provide them. So it is, I say, an impossible situation for the State to find something like 90 per cent. of the revenues of these hospitals and still to call them "voluntary." So I decided, for this and other reasons, that the voluntary hospitals most be taken over.
  I knew very well when I decided this that it would give rise to very considerable resentment in many quarters, but, quite frankly, I am not concerned about the voluntary hospitals' authorities: I am concerned with the people whom the hospitals are supposed to serve. Every investigation which has been made into this problem has established that the proper hospital unit has to comprise about 1,000 beds—not in the same building but, nevertheless, the general and specialist hospital services can be provided only in a group of that size. This means that a number of hospitals have to be pooled, linked together, in order to provide a unit of that sort. This cannot be done effectively if each hospital is a separate, autonomous body. It is proposed that each of these groups should have a large general hospital, providing general hospital facilities and services, and that there should be a group round it of small feeder hospitals. Many of the cottage hospitals strive to give services that they are not able to give. It very often happens that a cottage hospital harbours ambitions to the hurt of the patients, because they strive to reach a status that they never can reach. In these circumstances, the welfare of the patients is sacrificed to the vaulting ambitions of those in charge of the hospital. If, therefore, these voluntary hospitals are to be grouped in this way, it is necessary that they should submit themselves to proper organisation, and that submission, in our experience, is impracticable if the hospitals, all of them, remain under separate management.
  Now, this decision to take over the voluntary hospitals meant, that I then had to decide to whom to give them. Who was to be the receiver? So I turned to an examination of the local government hospital system. Many of the local authori

  49
  in Great Britain have never been able to exercise their hospital powers. They are too poor. They are too small. Furthermore, the local authorities of Great Britain inherited their hospitals from the Poor Law, and some of them are monstrous buildings, a cross between a workhouse and a barracks—[An HON. MEMBER: "And a prison."]—or a prison. The local authorities are helpless in these matters. They have not been able to afford much money. Some local authorities are first-class. Some of the best hospitals in this country are local government hospitals. But, when I considered what to do with the voluntary hospitals when they had been taken over, and who was to receive them I had to reject the local government unit, because the local authority area is no more an effective gathering ground for the patients of the hospitals than the voluntary hospitals themselves. My hon. Friend said that some of them are too small, and some of them too large. London is an example of being too small and too large at the same time.
  It is quite impossible, therefore, to hand over the voluntary hospitals to the local authorities. Furthermore—and this is an argument of the utmost importance—if it be our contract with the British people, if it be our intention that we should universalise the best, that we shall promise every citizen in this country the same standard of service, how can that be articulated through a rate-borne institution which means that the poor authority will not be able to carry out the same thing at all? It means that once more we shall be faced with all kinds of anomalies, just in those areas where hospital facilities are most needed, and in those very conditions where the mass of the poor people will be unable to find the finance to supply the hospitals. Therefore, for reasons which must be obvious —because the local authorities are too small, because their financial capacities are unevenly distributed —I decided that local authorities could not be effective hospital administration units. There are, of course, a large number of hospitals in addition to the general hospitals which the local authorities possess. Tuberculosis sanatoria, isolation hospitals, infirmaries of various kinds, rehabilitation, and all kinds of other hospitals are all necessary in a general hospital service. So I decided that the only thing
  50
  to do was to create an entirely new hospital service, to take over the voluntary hospitals, and to take over the local government hospitals and to organise them as a single hospital service. If we are to carry out our obligation and to provide the people of Great Britain, no matter where they may be, with the same level of service, then the nation itself will have to carry the expenditure, and cannot put it upon the shoulders of any other authority.
  A number of investigations have been made into this subject from time to time, and the conclusion has always been reached that the effective hospital unit should be associated with the medical school. If you grouped the hospitals in about 16 to 20 regions around the medical schools, you would then have within those regions the wide range of disease and disability which would provide the basis for your specialised hospital service. Furthermore, by grouping hospitals around the medical schools, we should be providing what is very badly wanted, and that is a means by which the general practitioners are kept in more intimate association with new medical thought and training. One of the disabilities, one of the shortcomings of our existing medical service, is the intellectual isolation of the general practitioners in many parts of the country. The general practitioner, quite often, practises in loneliness and does not come into sufficiently intimate association with his fellow craftsmen and has not the stimulus of that association, and in consequence of that the general practitioners have not got access to new medical knowledge in a proper fashion. By this association of the general practitioner with the medical schools through the regional hospital organisation, it will be possible to refresh and replenish the fund of knowledge at the disposal of the general practitioner.
  This has always been advised as the best solution of the difficulty. It has this great advantage to which I call the close attention of hon. Members. It means that the bodies carrying out the hospital services of the country are, at the same time, the planners of the hospital service. One of the defects of the other scheme is that the planning authority and executive authority are different. The result is that you get paper planning or bad execution. By making the regional board and regional organisation responsible both for the planning and the administration of the plans, we get a better result, and we

  51
  get from time to time, adaptation of the plans by the persons accumulating the experience in the course of their administration. The other solutions to this problem which I have looked at all mean that you have an advisory body of planners in the background who are not able themselves to accumulate the experience necessary to make good planners. The regional hospital organisation is the authority with which the specialised services are to be associated, because, as I have explained, this specialised service can be made available for an area of that size, and cannot be made available over a small area.
  When we come to an examination of this in Committee, I daresay there will be different points of view about the constitution of the regional boards. It is not intended that the regional boards should be conferences of persons representing different interests and different organisations. If we do that, the regional boards will not be able to achieve reasonable and efficient homogeneity. It is intended that they should be drawn from members of the profession, from the health authorities in the area, from the medical schools and from those who have long experience in voluntary hospital administration. While leaving ourselves open to take the best sort of individuals on these hospital boards which we can find, we hope before very long to build up a high tradition of hospital administration in the boards themselves. Any system which made the boards conferences, any proposal which made the members delegates, would at once throw the hospital administration into chaos. Although I am perfectly prepared and shall be happy to cooperate with hon. Members in all parts of the House in discussing how the boards should he constituted, I hope I shall not be pressed to make these regional boards merely representative of different interests and different areas. The general hospital administration, therefore, centres in that way.
  When we come to the general practitioners we are, of course, in an entirely different field. The proposal which I have made is that the general practitioner shall not be in direct contract with the Ministry of Health, but in contract with new bodies. There exists in the medical
  52
  profession a great resistance to coming under the authority of local government —a great resistance, with which I, to some extent, sympathise. There is a feeling in the medical profession that the general practitioner would be liable to come too much under the medical officer of health, who is the administrative doctor. This proposal does not put the doctor under the local authority; it puts the doctor in contract with an entirely new body—the local executive council, coterminous with the local health area, county or county borough. On that executive council, the dentists, doctors and chemists will have half the representation. In fact, the whole scheme provides a greater degree of professional representation for the medical profession than any other scheme I have seen.
  I have been criticised in some quarters for doing that. I will give the answer now: I have never believed that the demands of a democracy are necessarily satisfied merely by the opportunity of putting a cross against someone's name every four or five years. I believe that democracy exists in the active participation in administration and policy. Therefore, I believe that it is a wise thing to give the doctors full participation in the administration of their own profession. They must, of course, necessarily be subordinated to lay control—we do not want the opposite danger of syndicalism. Therefore, the communal interests must always be safeguarded in this administration. The doctors will be in contract with an executive body of this sort. One of the advantages of that proposal is that the doctors do not become—as some of them have so wildly stated—civil servants. Indeed, one of the advantages of the scheme is that it does not create an additional civil servant.
  It imposes no constitutional disability upon any person whatsoever. Indeed, by taking the hospitals from the local authorities and putting them under the regional boards, large numbers of people will be enfranchised who are now disfranchised from participation in local government. So far from this being a huge bureaucracy with all the doctors little civil servants—the slaves of the Minister of Health, as I have seen it described—instead of that, the doctors are under contract with bodies which are not under the local authority, and which are,

  53
  at the same time, ever open to their own influence and control.
  One of the chief problems that I was up against in considering this scheme was the distribution of the general practitioner service throughout the country. The distribution, at the moment, is most uneven. In South Shields before the war there were 4,100 persons per doctor; in Bath 1,590; in Dartford nearly 3,000 and in Bromley 1,620; in Swindon 3,100; in Hastings under 1,200. That distribution of general practitioners throughout the country is most hurtful to the health of our people. It is entirely unfair, and, therefore, if the health services are to be carried out, there must be brought about a re-distribution of the general practitioners throughout the country.
  Captain Crowder (Finchley): Does that mean the number on the panel or the population?
  Mr. Bevan: The population. Indeed, I could amplify those figures a good deal, but I do not want to weary the House, as I have a great deal to say. It was, therefore, decided that there must be redistribution. One of the first consequences of that decision was the abolition of the sale and purchase of practices. If we are to get the doctors where we need them, we cannot possibly allow a new doctor to go in because he has bought somebody's practice. Proper distribution kills by itself the sale and purchase of practices. I know that there is some opposition to this, and I will deal with that opposition. I have always regarded the sale and purchase of medical practices as an evil in itself. It is tantamount to the sale and purchase of patients. Indeed, every argument advanced about the value of the practice is itself an argument against freedom of choice, because the assumption underlying the high value of a practice is that the patient passes from the old doctor to the new. If they did not pass there would be no value in it. I would like, therefore, to point out to the medical profession that every time they argue for high compensation for the loss of the value of their practices, it is an argument against the free choice which they claim. However, the decision to bring about the proper distribution of general practitioners throughout the country meant that the value of the practices was destroyed. We had, therefore, to consider compensation.
  54
  I have never admitted the legal claim, but I admit at once that very great hardship would be inflicted upon doctors if there were no compensation. Many of these doctors look forward to the value of their practices for their retirement. Many of them have had to borrow money to buy practices and, therefore, it would, I think, be inhuman, and certainly most unjust, if no compensation were paid for the value of the practices destroyed. The sum of £66,000,000 is very large. In fact, I think that every one will admit that the doctors are being treated very generously. However, it is not all loss, because if we had, in providing superannuation, given credit for back service, as we should have had to do, it would have cost £35 million. Furthermore, the compensation will fall to be paid to the dependants when the doctor dies, or when he retires, and so it is spread over a considerable number of years. This global sum has been arrived at by the actuaries, and over the figure, I am afraid, we have not had very much control, because the actuaries have agreed it. But the profession itself will be asked to advise as to its distribution among the claimants, because we are interested in the global sum, and the profession, of course, is interested in the equitable distribution of the fund to the claimants.
  The doctors claim that the proposals of the Bill amount to direction—not all the doctors say this but some of them do. There is no direction involved at all. When the Measure starts to operate, the doctors in a particular area will be able to enter the public service in that area. A doctor newly coming along would apply to the local executive council for permission to practise in a particular area. His application would then be re-referred to the Medical Practices Committee. The Medical Practices Committee, which is mainly a professional body, would have before it the question of whether there were sufficient general practitioners in that area. If there were enough, the committee would refuse to permit the appointment. No one can really argue that that is direction, because no profession should be allowed to enter the public service in a place where it is not needed. By that method of negative control over a number of years, we hope to bring about over the country a positive redistribution of the general practitioner service. It will not affect

  55
  the existing situation, because doctors will be able to practise under the new service in the areas to which they belong, but a new doctor, as he comes on. will have to find his practice in a place inadequately served.
  I cannot, at the moment, explain to the House what are going to be the rates of remuneration of doctors. The Spens Committee report is not fully available. I hope it will be out next week. I had hoped that it would be ready for this Debate, because this is an extremely important part of the subject, but I have not been able to get the full report. Therefore, it is not possible to deal with remuneration. However, it is possible to deal with some of the principles underlying the remuneration of general practitioners. Some of my hon. Friends on this side of the House are in favour of a full salaried service. I am not. I do not believe that the medical profession is ripe for it, and I cannot dispense with the principle that the payment of a doctor must in some degree be a reward for zeal, and there must be some degree of punishment for lack of it. Therefore, it is proposed that capitation should remain the main source from which a doctor will obtain his remuneration. But it is proposed that there shall be a basic salary and that for a number of very cogent reasons. One is that a young doctor entering practice for the first time needs to be kept alive while he is building up his lists. The present system by which a young man gets a load of debt around his neck in order to practise is an altogether evil one. The basic salary will take care of that.
  Furthermore, the basic salary has the additional advantage of being something to which I can attach an increased amount to get doctors to go into unattractive areas. It may also—and here our position is not quite so definite—be the means of attaching additional remuneration for special courses and special acquirements. The basic salary, however, must not be too large otherwise it is a disguised form of capitation. Therefore, the main source at the moment through which a general practitioner will obtain his remuneration will be capitation. I have also made—and I quite frankly admit it to the House —a further concession which I know will be repugnant in some quarters. The doctor, the general practitioner and the
  56
  specialist, will be able to obtain fees, but not from anyone who is on any of their own lists, nor will a doctor be able to obtain fees from persons on the lists of his partner, nor from those he has worked with in group practice, but I think it is impracticable to prevent him having any fees at all. To do so would be to create a black market. There ought to be nothing to prevent anyone having advice from another doctor other than his own. Hon. Members know what happens in this field sometimes. An individual hears that a particular doctor in some place is good at this, that or the other thing, and wants to go along for a consultation. He gets a consultation and pays a fee for it. If the other doctor is better than his own all he will need to do is to transfer to him and he gets him free. It would be unreasonable to keep the patient paying fees to a doctor whose services can be got free. So the amount of fee payment on the part of the general population will be quite small. Indeed, I confess at once if the amount of fee paying is great, the system will break down, because the whole purpose of this scheme is to provide free treatment with no fee paying at all. The same principle applies to the hospitals.
  Mr. Sydney Silverman (Nelson and Colne): Before we leave that point, I should like to ask whether we are to gather from the right hon. Gentleman that a doctor will be entitled to receive a fee for consultation from a patient who is on some other doctor's list?
  Mr. Bevan: Yes.
  Mr. Silverman: I always understood it was improper for a doctor to see a patient who was being treated by another doctor.
  Mr. Bevan: He would not be treated by another doctor, but would be on the panel of the other doctor. We are hoping when our scheme gets going properly that everybody will be on somebody's panel, and unless an individual on someone else's panel is able to pay a fee no one will be able to pay a fee.
  Mr. Logan: If a patient can get specialist advice under the scheme what necessity will there be for him to pay for a consultant?
  Mr. Bevan: I hope there will be very little necessity. Nevertheless, this is a field in which idiosyncrasies are prevalent. If an individual wishes to consult,

  57
  there is no reason why he should be stopped. As I have said, the fact that a person can transfer from one doctor to another ought to keep fee paying within reasonable proportions.
  The same principle applies to the hospitals. Specialists in hospitals will be allowed to have fee-paying patients. I know this is criticised and I sympathise with some of the reasons for the criticism, but we are driven inevitably to this fact, that unless we permit some fee-paying patients in the public hospitals, there will be a rash of nursing homes all over the country. If people wish to pay for additional amenities, or something to which they attach value, like privacy in a single ward, we ought to aim at providing such facilities for everyone who wants them. But while we have inadequate hospital facilities, and while rebuilding is postponed it inevitably happens that some people will want to buy something more than the general health service is providing. If we do not permit fees in hospitals, we will lose many specialists from the public hospitals for they will go to nursing homes. I believe that nursing homes ought to be discouraged. They cannot provide general hospital facilities, and we want to keep our specialists attached to our hospitals and not send them into nursing homes. Behind this there is a principle of some importance. If the State owned a theatre it would not charge the same prices for the different seats. [Interruption.] It is not entirely analogous, but it is an illustration. For example, in the dental service the same principle will prevail. The State will provide a certain standard of dentistry free, but if a person wants to have his teeth filled with gold, the State will not provide that.
  The third instrument to which the health services are to be articulated is the health centre, to which we attach very great importance indeed. It has been described in some places as an experimental idea, but we want it to be more than that, because to the extent that general practitioners can operate through health centres in their own practice, to that extent will be raised the general standard of the medical profession as a whole. Furthermore, the general practitioner cannot afford the apparatus necessary for a proper diagnosis in his own surgery. This will be available at the health centre.
  58
  The health centre may well be the maternity and child welfare clinic of the local authority also. The provision of the health centre is, therefore, imposed as a duty on the local authority. There has been criticism that this creates a trichotomy in the services. It is not a trichotomy at all. If you have complete unification it would bring you back to paper planning. You cannot get all services through the regional authority, because there are many immediate and personal services which the local authority can carry out better than anybody else. So, it is proposed to leave those personal services to the local authority, and some will be carried out at the health centre. The centres will vary; there will be large centres at which there will be dental clinics, maternity and child welfare services, and general practitioners' consultative facilities, and there will also be smaller centres—surgeries where practitioners can see their patients.
  Mr. Sidney Marshall: Will the executive councils have anything to do with the public health centres, or will the latter be managed entirely by the public health authorities?
  Mr. Bevan: By the health authorities. The health centre itself will be provided by the local health authority, and facilities will be made available there to the general practitioner. The small ones are necessary, because some centres may be a considerable distance from peoples homes. So it will be necessary to have simpler ones, nearer their homes, fixed in a constellation with the larger ones.
  Mr. Marshall: Will the executive councils have anything to do with it? That is the question I asked.
  Mr. Bevan: The representatives on the local executives will be able to coordinate what is happening at the health centres. As I say, we regard these health centres as extremely valuable, and their creation will be encouraged in every possible way. Doctors will be encouraged to practise there, where they will have great facilities. It will, of course, be some time before these centres can be established everywhere, because of the absence of these facilities.
  There you have the three main instruments through which it is proposed that the health services of the future

  59
  should be articulated. There has been some criticism. Some have said that the preventive services should be under the same authority as the curative services. I wonder whether Members who advance that criticism really envisage the situation which will arise. What are the preventive services? Housing, water, sewerage, river pollution prevention, food inspection —are all these to be under a regional board? If so, a regional board of that sort would want the Albert Hall in which to meet. This, again, is paper planning. It is unification for unification's sake. There must be a frontier at which the local joins the national health service. You can fix it here or there, but it must be fixed somewhere. It is said that there is some contradiction in the health scheme because some services are left to the local authority and the rest to the national scheme. Well, day is joined to night by twilight, but nobody has suggested that it is a contradiction in nature. The argument that this is a contradiction in health services is purely pedantic, and has no relation to the facts.
  It is also suggested that because maternity and child welfare services come under the local authority, and gynæcological services come under the regional board, that will make for confusion. Why should it? Continuity between one and the other is maintained by the user. The hospital is there to be used. If there are difficulties in connection with birth, the gynæcologist at the hospital centre can look after them. All that happens is that the midwife will be in charge—the mother will be examined properly, as she ought to be examined—then, if difficulties are anticipated, she can have her child in hospital, where she can be properly looked after by the gynæcologist. When she recovers, and is a perfectly normal person, she can go to the maternity and child welfare centre for post-natal treatment. There is no confusion there. The confusion is in the minds of those who are criticising the proposal on the ground that there is a trichotomy in the services, between the local authority, the regional board and the health centre.
  I apologise for detaining the House so long, but there are other matters to which I must make some reference. The two Amendments on the Order Paper rather astonish me. The hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones) informs me,
  60
  in his Amendment, that I have not sufficiently consulted the medical profession——
  Sir Henry Morris-Jones: That is not the wording on the Order Paper. I said there were no consultations.
  Mr. Bevan: I intend to read the Amendment to show how extravagant the hon. Member has been. He says that he and his friends are
  "unable to agree to a measure containing such far-reaching proposals involving the entire population without any consultations having taken place between the Minister and the organisations and bodies representing those who will be responsible for carrying out its provisions."
  I have had prepared a list of conferences I have attended. I have met the medical profession, the dental profession, the pharmacists, nurses and midwives, voluntary hospitals, local authorities, eye services, medical aid services, herbalists, insurance committees, and various other organisations. I have had 20 conferences. The consultations have been very wide. In addition, my officials have had 13 conferences, so that altogether there have been 33 conferences with the different branches of the profession about the proposals. Can anybody argue that that is not adequate consultation? Of course, the real criticism is that I have not conducted negotiations. I am astonished that such a charge should lie in the mouth of any Member of the House. If there is one thing that will spell the death of the House of Commons it is for a Minister to negotiate Bills before they are presented to the House. I had no negotiations, because once you negotiate with outside bodies two things happen. They are made aware of the nature of the proposals before the House of Commons itself; and furthermore, the Minister puts himself into an impossible position, because, if he has agreed things with somebody outside he is bound to resist Amendments from Members in the House. Otherwise he does not play fair with them. I protested against this myself when I was a Private Member. I protested bitterly, and I am not prepared, strange though it may seem, to do something as a Minister which as a Private Member I thought was wrong. So there has not been negotiation, and there will not be negotiation, in this matter. The House of Commons is supreme, and the House of Commons Must assert its

  61
  supremacy, and not allow itself to be dictated to by anybody, no matter how powerful and how strong he may be.
  Sir H. Morris-Jones: Would the right hon. Gentleman apply that doctrine to the Miners' Federation?
  Mr. Bevan: Certainly. That is exactly what I did. The hon. Member was a Member of the House at the time, and he should remember it These consultations have taken place over a very wide field, and, as a matter of fact, have produced quite a considerable amount of agreement. The opposition to the Bill is not as strong as it was thought it would be. On the contrary, there is very considerable support for this Measure among the doctors themselves. I myself have been rather aggrieved by some of the statements which have been made. They have misrepresented the proposals to a very large extent, but as these proposals become known to the medical profession, they will appreciate them, because nothing should please a good doctor more than to realise that, in future, neither he nor his patient will have any financial anxiety arising out of illness.
  The leaders of the Opposition have on the Order Paper an Amendment which expresses indignation at the extent to which we are interfering with charitable foundations. The Amendment states that the Bill
  "gravely menaces all charitable foundations by diverting to purposes other than those intended by the donors the trust funds of the voluntary hospitals."
  I must say that when I read that Amendment I was amused. I have been looking up some precedents. I would like to say, in passing, that a great many of these endowments and foundations have been diversions from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The main contributor was the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I seem to remember that, in 1941, hon. Members opposite were very much vexed by what might happen to the public schools, and they came to the House and asked for the permission of the House to lay sacrilegious hands upon educational endowments centuries old. I remember protesting against it at the time—not, however, on the grounds of sacrilege. These endowments had been left to the public schools, many of them for the maintenance of the buildings, but hon. Members opposite, being concerned lest
  62
  the war might affect their favourite schools, came to the House and allowed the diversion of money from that purpose to the payment of the salaries of the teachers and the masters. There have been other interferences with endowments. Wales has been one of the criminals. Disestablishment interfered with an enormous number of endowments. Scotland also is involved. Scotland has been behaving in a most sacrilegious manner; a whole lot of endowments have been waived by Scottish Acts. I could read out a large number of them, but I shall not do so.
  Do hon. Members opposite suggest that the intelligent planning of the modern world must be prevented by the endowments of the dead? Are we to consider the dead more than the living? Are the patients of our hospitals to be sacrificed to a consideration of that sort?
  Major Lloyd: Henry VIII did it.
  Mr. Bevan: He was a good king, too; he had many good points. We are not, in fact, diverting these endowments from charitable purposes. It would have been perfectly proper for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have taken over these funds, because they were willed for hospital purposes, and he could use them for hospital purposes; be we are doing no such thing. The teaching hospitals will be left with all their liquid endowments and more power. We are not interfering with the teaching hospitals' endowments. Academic medical education will be more free in the future than it has been in the past. Furthermore, something like £32 million belonging to the voluntary hospitals as a whole is not going to be taken from them. On the contrary, we are going to use it, and a very valuable thing it will be; we are going to use it as a shock absorber between the Treasury, the central Government, and the hospital administration. They will be given it as free money which they can spend over and above the funds provided by the State.
  I welcome the opportunity of doing that, because I appreciate, as much as hon. Members in any part of the House, the absolute necessity for having an elastic, resilient service, subject to local influence as well as to central influence; and that can be accomplished by leaving this money in their hands. I shall be

  63
  prepared to consider, when the Bill comes to be examined in more detail, whether any other relaxations are possible, but certainly, by leaving this money in the hands of the regional board, by allowing the regional board an annual budget and giving them freedom of movement inside that budget, by giving power to the regional board to distribute this money to the local management committees of the hospitals, by various devices of that sort, the hospitals will be responsive to local pressure and subject to local influence as well as to central direction.
  I think that on those grounds the proposals can be defended. They cover a very wide field indeed, to a great deal of which I have not been able to make reference; but I should have thought it ought to have been a pride to hon. Members in all parts of the House that Great Britain is able to embark upon an ambitious scheme of this proportion. When it is carried out, it will place this country in the forefront of all countries of the world in medical services. I myself, if I may say a personal word, take very great pride and great pleasure in being able to introduce a Bill of this comprehensiveness and value. I believe it will lift the shadow from millions of homes. It will keep very many people alive who might otherwise be dead. It will relieve suffering. It will produce higher standards for the medical profession. It will be a great contribution towards the wellbeing of the common people of Great Britain. For that reason, and for the other reasons I have mentioned, I hope hon. Members will give the Bill a Second Reading.
  5.0 p.m.
  Mr. Richard Law: The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health has received an ovation from the Benches behind him for a speech as eloquent, as unconvincing, and as disingenuous as any I have ever heard from him. The right hon. Gentleman had a great opportunity with this Bill. He had the chance of bringing to the House of Commons proposals which would have been warmly welcomed by every party in the House and by every section of opinion, lay or medical, outside. Instead, he has preferred to bring to the House these proposals which are in fact feared and distrusted by the great majority of se who will be called upon to make effective. The right hon. Gentle-
  64
  man might have done so much without doing this. He might have done so much more if he had been content to do a little less.
  It is surely a most extraordinary thing that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health, who has absolutely no administrative experience of a great Government Department, and who has no great knowledge, either practical or theoretical, of the very important subject matter with which this Bill is dealing, should have set his own intuition and judgment against all those best informed in the medical profession and in the hospital services outside the House. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman has done just that. The British Hospital Association and the British Medical Association are opposed to this Bill. [Laughter.] I do not know why hon. Members laugh at the mention of the British Medical Association. The British Dental Association is also opposed to this Bill, and the three Royal Colleges have criticised it with varying emphasis.
  Mr. Bevan: Have the Royal Colleges placed anything on record against the Bill?
  Mr. Law: The three Royal Colleges have criticised the Bill with varying emphasis—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—and for various reasons. I think I am right in saying that the Royal College of Surgeons passed a resolution condemning aspects of the Minister's proposals in the most categorical terms. The Royal College of Obstetricians did the same. They said, if my memory serves me, that the Minister's proposals were likely to lead to a great increase in maternal mortality. [Interruption.] That was, I think, the purpose of a document which I have certainly seen and which emanated from the Royal College of Obstetricians. And even——
  Dr. Morgan rose——
  Mr. Law: —the powerful advocacy of its President, Lord Moran, was unable to influence the Royal College of Physicians to give support to the Minister's proposals for taking over the voluntary hospitals.
  Mr. Bevan: I must ask the right hon. Gentleman to amplify his statement, which otherwise might cause a great deal of alarm. Does he say that the Royal College of Obstetricians have placed on

  65
  record a declaration that the consequence of the Bill will be to raise the maternal mortality rate? Will he quote the resolution?
  Mr. Law: Unfortunately, I have not the document and therefore I am unable to quote from it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] If I have misquoted it I will certainly withdraw, but my impression is——
  Mr. John Paton rose——
  Mr. Logan: On a point of Order. Is it not the custom of this House to withdraw a quotation if it cannot be substantiated?
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner): That applies only to official documents.
  Dr. Morganv: I have a copy of the document sent out by the Royal College of Obstetricians. May I present it to the right hon. Gentleman and ask him to quote the relevant passage?
  Dr. Haden Guest: I have been recently in personal contact with the Royal College of Obstetricians and the statement of the right hon. Gentleman is absolutely untrue.
  Mr. Law: I must thank the hon. Gentleman for passing me the document because I can now give the quotation. I said—and I am in the recollection of the House —that this document stated that the proposals of the Minister with regard to certain aspects of the Bill increased the chances of maternal mortality. If I gave the House the impression that that was said, in those exact words, I was wrong and of course I withdraw. This is in fact what the Royal College of Obstetricians said in this document:
  "The Royal College has considered these questions"—
  that is, the question of duality of administration which, I think, the Minister touched on—
  "in its recent report on a national maternity service. In that report the Royal College gave evidence for its conviction that the care of the pregnant woman, whether at home, in the clinic, or in hospital, is a responsibility which cannot be discharged with the maximum safety to the two lives at stake if it is shared between different administrative bodies "
  That is what the—[Interruption]. We can pursue this argument for ever, but the plain fact is, as the Minister knows, that the Royal College of Obstetricians have very serious misgivings about the
  66
  proposals in this Bill. I therefore hold that I am fully entitled to claim that the expert opinion of the Royal College is opposed to the Minister's intuitions and judgment on this matter. When the Minister interrupted me a few moments ago—I do not complain since perhaps I gave him cause—I was going on to speak of the Royal College of Physicians and to explain to the House that in spite of his own advocacy and in spite of his great authority, the President was quite unable to bring the Royal College to endorse his view that the Minister, in taking the hospitals into his own control and ownership, was doing a good thing.
  The plain fact is that everybody of informed and expert opinion outside this House is against the Minister on one part of the Bill or another. The Minister rides off by talking of sectional and vested interests. I have known the Minister fairly well in this House. I think he has the sort of mind which, when anybody disagrees with him or holds a different view, makes him fasten immediately upon phrases like "sectional interests" or "vested interests." It is a monstrous perversion of the ordinary usage of words to describe great, responsible, professional bodies such as I have been mentioning as vested or sectional interests. I would like first to make clear, as far as I can, the position of those who sit on these benches with regard to the principle of a comprehensive, national health service available to all.
  Dr. Morgan: I would like to have my document back.
  Mr. Deputy-Speaker: The hon. Member is not entitled to speak unless the right hon. Member who is addressing the House gives way.
  Dr. Morgan: Surely I am entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman to have the courtesy to return my document.
  Mr. Law: Certainly. I regret to say that I have marked it. I am sorry. I was saying, and I hope I shall now have the chance to finish my sentence, that I am anxious to make clear our position on these Benches in regard to the principle of a national, comprehensive, 100 per cent. health service. Of course we accept that principle today, as we accepted it in 1944, when the Coalition White Paper was published. I assure the Minister that on this side of the House we are just as anxious

  67
  as he is, or any of his hon. or right hon. Friends by his side or behind him are, to give the people of this country the fullest possible benefits which can come from the acceptance of the principle of a comprehensive service. I hope the Minister will understand that. We accept the principle, and we accept the consequences that flow from it. We understand, for example, that once we are committed, as we are gladly committed, to the principle of a 100 per cent. service, we require an enormous expansion and development in the health services as a whole. We understand, once we accept the principle, that we are committed to a far greater degree of coordination, or planning as it is usually called, than we have ever known before. Incidentally, I must say how very much surprised I was at something which the Minister said, and which indicated how much he has learnt in his period of office as Minister of Health. Running through his speech was the idea that he did not like what he called "tidy paper plans." That is a very great advance for the Minister, because it is not long ago that I heard him saying in this House that he could not use the private builder method because the private builder did not fit into a tidy paper plan. The right hon. Gentleman said that the private builder was a non-plannable body and did not fit in.
  I was saying that we accept the consequences that flow from the principle, and if my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North Croydon (Mr. Willink) had still been Minister of Health, had the General Election result gone another way, I do not doubt that he would have introduced, before this, a Bill which would have differed from this Bill only in that my right hon. and learned Friend would not have attempted to control, own and direct the hospital service of this country or to interfere with that age-old relationship which exists, always has existed, and in our view ought to continue to exist, between a doctor and his patient. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman is not entitled to say—he has not said it, but he might— that we will the end without the means. We will both the end and the means. We will this end, a comprehensive and efficient health service. We are willing to support any practicable means that will give us that end.
  68
  But we differ from the right hon. Gentleman on this issue. We believe that the right hon. Gentleman could have reached his end, and a better end, by other means, and by better means. We believe that he could have established a health service, equally comprehensive, better coordinated and far more efficient, if he had not been determined to sweep away the voluntary hospitals; if he had not been determined to weaken the whole structure of English local government by removing from the field of local government one of the most important and vital responsibilities of local authorities; and if he had not sought to impose upon the medical profession a form of discipline which, in our view and in theirs, is totally unsuited to the practice of medicine, an art, a vocation, however you like to call it, which depends above all else upon individual responsibility, individual devotion and individual sympathy.
  Mr. Bevan: Where is the discipline?
  Mr. Law: I will come to that point. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Bill covered a tremendous field, but he did not cover the whole field himself, and I certainly will not attempt to traverse the whole field. Before the Debate ends, very important questions have to be answered on the administrative structure which runs through the Bill, and particularly whether it is desirable to divide the health service into three watertight compartments by vertical lines: the hospital and consulting services in one division, the general practitioner services in another, and the local authority services in a third. There is the question of the dental service, to which the Minister referred. I would like to say in passing that no Bill of this kind can cure the appalling dental conditions to which the Minister referred. They can be cured only by education and nutrition, among other things.
  There is the question of opticians. There is the further question of the employees of hospital contributory schemes and why they are being left out of the operation of Clause 64, which compensates those who have been concerned with voluntary hospitals. That seems to me to be a most grievous injustice, and I hope we shall be able to persuade the Minister to change his mind on that. These and other matters will be developed, I have no doubt, either now or at a later

  69
  stage, by others of my hon. and right hon. Friends on this side of the House. I propose to confine myself in the main to the two fundamental issues of principle which seem to me to divide us from the Minister, the question of the hospitals services in Part II of the Bill, and the question of the general practitioner services in Part IV.
  Why is the Minister determined to take over the ownership of the hospitals? It seems to me that the burden of proof must be upon him. It is for him to show why it is necessary for the State and for the Minister to take over the hospitals. It is not for us to show that it is not necessary. I say that because, as I understand the policy of the present Government, that is, as far as it is possible to understand it, nationalisation as a principle and for its own sake is not a part of that policy. We have been repeatedly told, for example, by the Lord President of the Council, that the Government would not take over an industry unless it could be shown demonstrably that the change would be for the benefit both of the industry and of the community. I am quite certain that the Lord President would not apply any more sordid standard than that in the case of the health services and medicine.
  It is, indeed, only a little more than 12 months ago that the Lord President of the Council, speaking in this House, explained why it would be wrong for the State, for the Government and for the Minister of Health, to take over the hospital services in this country. What he said was so interesting that I would like to repeat an extract from it. He was speaking on a Motion on local government, and referring to a speech by the hon. Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer), the Lord President said:
  "My hon. Friend the Member for South Tottenham‥‥was absolutely right."
  Why was he absolutely right? This is what the Lord President of the Council said:
  "He said that as a local government man he did not mind what we did with electricity, gas, water and drainage. What he wants to keep in his hands as a local government man are the human services like health, education and housing. I think he is right."
  The Lord President then went on:
  "When you come to economic undertakings, you have to find what is the best administrative and managerial set-up for effi-
  70
  cient running of the industry, but when you come to human services, efficiency has to be balanced with humanity."
  At a later stage in that same speech the Lord President of the Council said that in his view there were certain matters—things that he called "engineers' questions rather than human questions"—which could be dealt with on a national rather than a local basis. Having said that, he went on to except the hospital services from those engineers' questions. He said:
  "The other service is hospitals. There the view of the Minister of Health and the Government was that it would not be right to take the hospitals over into a national concern. I think that is quite right, but it is the case that hospital administration is beyond the administrative ability of a large number of county boroughs. It is even beyond a large number of county councils. Therefore the Minister was driven and I was dragged with him, to swallow the joint board doctrine‥‥"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th February, 1946; Vol. 408, c. 506 and 512.]
  The Lord President of the Council has been dragged a good deal further by the Minister of Health. When the Lord President was speaking in the House he was only reaffirming something to which he was committed by the Coalition White Paper. Not only was the Lord President committed, but the present Prime Minister and the present Foreign Secretary were committed. Therefore, I say we are entitled to know what has happened in the last 12 months that has made what was then wrong right today. We are entitled to know what the arguments are that have convinced the Lord President of the Council, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary that they made a mistake when the Coalition White Paper was issued.
  The Minister has not really given any solid justification for the case for taking over the hospitals. He has told us that the present hospital services are inadequate. He has told us that the present hospitals are badly distributed. He has said that some of the buildings, in particular of municipal hospitals, are monstrous buildings. I would not deny, and I do not think anyone would deny, that the present hospital service is inadequate from the point of view of a comprehensive service, that it is badly distributed from the point of view of a comprehensive service, and that some of its buildings and equipment are completely out of date and out of tune with the necessities

  71
  of what we are all seeking to do in establishing this health service. But surely the main reason for the inadequacy of the hospital service, the weaknesses in the distribution of hospitals, the out-of-dateness and old-fashionedness of the equipment and buildings, is simply that the finance has not been available. Once we accept the principle of the comprehensive service, once the community accepts the principle that it is going to pay for that service, that difficulty disappears. I cannot see why the mere fact that the service was inadequate in the past, when there were no funds to support it, would make it inadequate today I do not see that that is any argument at all for the Minister taking the service over.
  Dr. Haden Guest: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that the views he has expressed are modified by the very comprehensive reports of the hospital services which have been made either by the Minister of Health or the Nuffield Provincial Trust all over the country, showing the inadequacy in very great detail?
  Mr. Law: I do not think that affects my argument at all because I am not defending the adequacy of the existing system, in terms of a comprehensive service. I am not doing that, but the hon. Member has reminded me of something else, and that is that in these hospital surveys, which do, as he says, reveal great deficiencies in one of our services, a very striking thing is how at least one of the surveys says that the cooperation, and the anxiety for cooperation, between the local authority hospitals and voluntary hospitals was very great indeed. As that is one of the arguments which is used for taking over the hospitals—that it would be impossible to make local authorities and voluntary hospitals agree on any other basis than the State taking them over—it is very useful for hon. Members to bear in mind that in one of the surveys an exactly contrary implication is given, and it is stated that the two parties are doing their best to get along together.
  Mr. Medland: Which survey is that?
  Mr. Law: That is the survey of the West Midland area, published, I think, at the end of last year or the beginning of this.
  I want to say one more thing on the Minister's arguments about taking over
  72
  the hospitals. He said that if the State was paying 90 per cent. of the cost of the hospitals, as it would be according to his calculations when these proposals came into force, it was impossible to maintain them as voluntary hospitals. I cannot see the force of that argument, especially in the light of something the Minister himself said later in his speech because, surely, if the community demands certain services and is prepared to pay for them, there would be nothing inherently improper in the community paying to the existing hospitals a fee to cover the relevant services. It would then be open for the existing hospitals, under the existing control, to improve upon the standard laid down by the State. I think the Minister himself said that was a desirable thing; he said that if he were building a State theatre, he would not have all the seats of the same quality and at the same price; the State should lay down the standard and everybody should be encouraged to improve upon that standard. I think the Minister was speaking of the general practitioner services and the dental services, but the same argument is equally applicable to the hospital services.
  If anyone were suggesting that either the voluntary hospitals or the municipal hospitals should stay outside a national scheme, I could understand the Minister's attitude on this, but nobody is suggesting that they should stay outside; everybody admits that they have to be brought into a comprehensive scheme. If anybody were suggesting that the present hospital service system was adequate, I could understand the Minister's attitude, but nobody is suggesting that either. All I am trying, and all I would like, to suggest to the Minister is that a hospital is essentially a living thing, with a life and a purpose and an identity of its own, and that it is not just part of an administrative machine. I would suggest to the Minister that if the region is the right area—and I dare say that it is desirable that the hospital services should be centred on a university—then let him make the regional board not a controlling and an administrative board, not a directing board, but a planning board. Let the board create the plan, if necessary under the final authority of the Minister. Let the board create the plan and let the hospitals, whether existing or to be created, whether voluntary or municipal, carry out the plan. The Minister, by his

  73
  financial sanction, would have ample powers to see that the plan was in fact carried out. It might not be so tidy on paper, but the Minister would not object to that—apparently, he would rather like it—and I believe it would prove in the long run to be a far more effective method of coordinating and developing the hospital organisation than the one the Minister has chosen.
  The Minister said a lot about how repugnant it was to a civilised society that the hospitals should be dependent in any way upon charity. I just do not agree with him. I do not believe that the developments of modern science—the invention of the atom bomb or anything else —have altered the ordinary Christian virtues that we have always accepted. Indeed, I think the kind of society that the Minister pictures, in which it is repugnant to society for anybody to give of his charity to hospitals and, I suppose to anything else——
  Mr. Bevan indicated dissent.
  Mr. Law: I am glad of that.
  Mr. Bevan: I hope the right hon. Gentleman is not going to misrepresent me continually, if I may say so. What I said was that the hospitals ought not to be dependent upon charity. I said it was repugnant, certainly.
  Mr. Messer: It is being dependent that is repugnant.
  Mr. Law: I accept the Minister's version of what he said and I would not deny it for a moment. But if that is all he means, I do not see why he does not let the voluntary hospitals continue as individual institutions with their own identity, so that people can continue to give to them. Of course he says that there is power in the Bill for the individual to give to the regional board, but that power really does not mean anything because it is inconceivable to me that anybody will give anything in trust to the Minister from now on when they know what he does with existing trusts.
  Mr. Medland: They give money to the Chancellor of the Exchequer sometimes
  Mr. Law: For these purposes the Minister—and I am not wishing to be offensive —has shown himself to be entirely untrustworthy, in the literal sense of the word, and it is really absurd to suppose
  74
  that the people will give of their charity to the Minister, or to the regional board under the Minister, as they have been giving in the past. Indeed, it is quite clear from the Bill that this is not expected, because it will be seen from paragraph 4 of the Financial Memorandum that the whole financial background of the Bill is on the assumption that these payments from individuals will stop——
  Dr. Morgan: Look at pages 16 and 17 of the White Paper.
  Mr. Law: Yes, of the White Paper, but we are discussing the Bill. It seems to me that the kind of society which the Minister is apparently envisaging—he did not say it was, but it seemed to me to be the background of his remarks—is a society in which everybody pays to the State what he must, and takes from the State what he can. That is not the kind of society which will be very attractive to the people of this country. I think the Minister misunderstands altogether the nature of this problem as far as charity is concerned. I think he regards is as a few rich people trying to do down the Chancellor of the Exchequer, trying to buy their way through the "eye of the needle" by charitable bequests. It is nothing of that kind at all. The workers, the poor people of this country, have an enormous affection for their own hospitals and they are very proud and glad to be able to contribute.
  Mr. Medland: Quite right.
  Mr. Law: I believe that to be true, and that is something which the Minister is destroying under this Bill.
  Mr. Medland: They will still be able to do it.
  Mr. Law: The Minister told us that he will give the fullest possible power and discretion to the regional boards. He still has not told us how they are to be manned. I have no doubt that his intentions at the present time are quite harmless, but what we are concerned with now is not what is in the White Paper or what the Minister said in his speech; we are concerned with what is in the Bill, and the plain fact of the matter is that the Bill on almost every page, as soon as it gives power to a board or committee—whether composed of professional representatives or of elected local authority representatives, or whoever it may be—

  75
  takes it back again at once. That begins on page 1 of the Bill and goes on right through to the end. At the foot of page 1 in Clause 1 we see that the Minister is establishing a Central Health Services Council to advise him, and in the Schedule we see that that Council is on the whole extremely well composed; the Royal Colleges are represented ex officio and so on. Then, in the very next sentence, we learn that the Minister may, after consultation with the Central Council, by Order vary the constitution of that Council.
  That runs through the whole of the Bill, from beginning to end. Whatever the power the Minister gives, he holds in reserve authority to withdraw it and concentrate the whole service on himself. When we look at what is in the Bill from that point of view, and when we consider what we know of the policy of the party opposite with regard to these matters, it is hardly surprising that most people feel extremely nervous of the tendencies which are implicit in the Bill. It will hardly be surprising if few people are soothed and assuaged by the comforting words the Minister has spoken. The Minister may pass, or the Minister may change his mind, but this Bill will still be there. I would not build too much hope on the attitude of the Minister as he expressed it in his speech.
  I can understand the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman in regard to voluntary hospitals better than I can understand his attitude in regard to municipal hospitals, because municipal hospitals are free from any of this taint of private benevolence, or charity. I cannot see why the Minister condemns the just with the unjust. Still less can I understand how he has been able to persuade his colleague, the Lord President of the Council, who has always come before us as a great champion of local government, to accept it, or how he has been able to persuade another colleague, the Home Secretary, who has had great experience of local government. Is it the case that these two right hon. Gentlemen believe that local authorities are unable to live up to their responsibilities, that they are unable to bear the heavy responsibility —among the most important of their responsibilities—of hospital provision? Those two right hon. Gentlemen may
  76
  believe that, but we on these Benches do not.
  Mr. Messer: The right hon. Gentleman is aware that after the 1929 Act, county councils and county borough councils were entitled to hospitalise their services. Does he know that 68 out of the total number have not yet done so, and are still living under the Poor Law?
  Mr. Law: What the hon. Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer) says is perfectly true; a large proportion of local authorities have not hospitalised their services as they might have done under the Act of 1929. But the local authorities had a very short period, only eight Years until the outbreak of war, and it was a period of very great difficulty. Although the standard of local authority hospitals is not in general as high as the standard of voluntary hospitals in this country, I can see no reason why, with time and with the kind of assistance which will be given by the financial implications of a comprehensive health service, the standard of the voluntary hospitals should not be equalled very quickly.
  I have spent rather more time than I had intended to spend on the question of the hospital services, but I must say a word about that other important part of the Bill, Part IV, the general practitioner service. Here, again, there is a broad measure of agreement between us. We are agreed on this side of the House that there is a shortage of doctors and that doctors have to be fairly distributed. But there are two principles to which we attach enormous importance. The first is the principle that the doctor's only loyalty and only responsibility should be to his patients. The second principle is that as far as his judgment is concerned, the doctor should be responsible to nobody else but himself, and certainly he should not be responsible to the State. Running through Part IV of the Bill there is a wholesale denial of both these principles. The Minister would not admit that, but I say there is a wholesale denial of both those principles. There is the assertion that the doctor is responsible not so much to his patient but to the Minister, through some Government body or another. I think I am right in saying that every body or committee set up under this Bill has to act within regulations, not specified, which will be laid down by the Minister.
  Mr. Bevan: I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman; he is very courteous in giving way so frequently. But it is very important that statements he makes should not go out without being put right when they misrepresent the situation so fundamentally. There is nothing at all in the Bill, no power whatever, which confers on the Minister the right to make a regulation which interferes between the doctor and his patient.
  Mr. Law: I find that very difficult to understand, because under Clause 33 the doctor makes his contract with the Executive Council, and
  "it shall be the duty of every Executive Council, in accordance with regulations "—
  presumably those regulations emanate from the Minister—
  Mr. Bevan: The existing position is not being changed at all. At the present time there are insurance committees responsible for administering the general practitioner service under the National Health Insurance Act. Where there are complaints against a doctor, as indeed there may be, that committee is responsible for investigating them. All that happens in this Bill is that I have put in an additional protection for the doctor—more than he has got under the existing law. So far from the relationship between doctor and patient being weakened, this Bill actually puts the doctor in a stronger position.
  Mr. Law: I do not see how the Minister can say, or how I can know, that the existing position has not been changed, because the position as it will be under this Bill will be governed by regulations, the existence of which I do not know and the nature of which neither I nor anyone else, except perhaps the Minister, can guess. I do not see how the Minister can expect me to accept that the position will be exactly as it is today.
  Dr. Morgan: What is it today? May I ask a question?
  Mr. Law: I have been a very long time, I am afraid, and I want to get on, in order to give other hon. Members a chance. It is not so much the existence of the local executive committee; it is the fact that the doctor is to receive part of his salary as a fixed payment from the State. The Minister said it was not from the State, it was only from the executive committee. That is merely a play upon
  78
  words. The fact is that the doctor is to be paid, in part, by the State. He is to work in premises which are owned, staffed and managed if not technically by the State, by the State as represented by the local authority; and his field of work is to be defined for him by the State. I say that those three things add up to the beginnings of a wholetime State medical service. It is incomplete at the moment, it is still only embryonic, but it is the first step, and the step that counts, towards a fulltime medical service.
  I do not think it is possible to be surprised that so many doctors feel it is in fact that first step, in particular when one considers once again what is the declared policy of the party opposite. Here is an interesting statement from the Socialist Medical Association:
  "The proposals in regard to the payment of doctors fall short of the policy we have advocated, and which the Labour Party has, in the past, accepted. We still insist that the best service, the perfect doctor-patient relationship, and the highest form of team work will be possible only when the service becomes one employing whole-time salaried officers, and we shall watch the basic salary system very closely indeed."
  [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] That is the statement, and the House has heard the reception which it has got from hon. Members opposite. [An HON. MEMBER: "Do you agree with it?"] I certainly do not agree with it. It is hardly surprising if, in spite of the soft and soothing words which the Minister has used this afternoon, the medical profession still believes that it is being driven along towards a full-time salaried State service, a form of service which is absolutely incompatible with the two principles I enunciated a few moments ago. Will the doctor be a better doctor because he is paid a salary? I say he will be a worse doctor, because all his prospects of material advancement will depend, not on the service that he can render to his patients, but on the impression which he is able to make on his administrative superiors.
  Mrs. Jean Mann: Is it not the case that his medical superiors will be his own colleagues on the medical practices committee?
  Mr. Law: I do not think that affects my argument at all. It is not a question of who the administrators are, but of whether the practice of medicine as a science and

  79
  an art will be made subservient to administrative considerations. I say that that is what happens when the doctor is paid a salary and that that does not make a doctor a better doctor It makes him a worse doctor. From the point of view of the patient, who is the one who matters, it is far better that the material prospects of the doctor should depend upon the impression the doctor makes on the patient, and not on the impression he makes on his administrative superiors.
  When these provisions become effective, if they become effective, the doctor will be under great temptation to make himself known to these people and these bodies, to seek their favour, to cultivate them. He will be under great pressure to limit the issue of certificates to his patients.
  Mr. Kirkwood: Is that the experience of the Foreign Office?
  Mr. Walkden: The right hon. Member is arguing the case that it would make the doctor limit the issue of certificates. Is he not conversant with the practice which was much evident right through the war, of the maldistribution of certificates, or a too generous distribution of certificates to people who should never have had them at all?
  Dr. Morgan: That is not true.
  Mr. Law: The hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Walkden) has underlined the point I was trying to make, that the doctor will be under pressure to limit the issue of certificates. The plain fact is that the payment of doctors by salary means that the doctor will depend less and less upon the confidence he has earned with his patients and more and more on the impression he makes upon governmental bodies of one kind and another.
  I wish to refer to the sale of practices. The Minister said it was the sale and purchase of patients. He knows perfectly well that that is humbug. He knows perfectly well that when a doctor buys a practice, he is not buying patients. When a doctor sells a practice he is not selling patients, he is not selling bodies, he is selling the goodwill he has earned with his patients. If he has been a diligent doctor, if he has been devoted, forgetful of himself, if he has worked his hardest in the interests of his patients, the value of that goodwill will be high. If he has
  80
  been a bad doctor, the value of that goodwill will be low. Conversely, when a doctor is buying a practice he is not buying patients, he is only buying an opportunity to serve his patients. If he does not make use of that opportunity he loses his practice. What the Minister is doing by forbidding the buying and selling of practices is to remove one more material inducement which a doctor has to give the best service he can to his patients.
  Mrs. Florence Paton: Does he serve for the love of it?
  Mr. Law: That interruption is typical of the outlook of many hon. Members on the other side of the House. They do not think of human beings at all. They would never regard a doctor as a human being. They regard people as either black or white. They would say that it is perfectly right and proper for a miner or a building operative to be interested in the of his labour, and in trying, to improve his position and that of his family; that is right and noble, but they will not apply the same principle—at least the hon. Member does not seem to do so—to the doctor. The doctor is human, and just like the miner or the operative, he is bound to be interested in his material conditions, in the welfare of his family, the future of his children.
  To deprive him, in his practice, of the inducement to improve his material position, to improve the prospects of his children, is to do harm, not to him but to his patients. It is to do harm because it will reinforce the tendency already begun, with the payment of the decreasing capitation fee and so forth, to sit back and look for his future and remuneration, not to an increase in the value of his practice, not to the impression he makes on his patient, not to the creation of goodwill. Again, it will force him to look to his administrative superiors. I believe that will have a very harmful effect upon the practice of medicine.
  We on these benches are in no way opposed to the principle of a comprehensive service. We support that principle and we will give the Minister every support we can in making it effective if he will only reconsider and modify his proposals about the hospital service and his proposals in Part IV of the Bill. We object to Part IV of the Bill because it destroys the existing relationship between

  81
  doctor and patient, it removes some of the incentives—not all of them but some of them—which the doctor at present has to serve his patient. It involves the unnecessary expenditure of £66 million of the taxpayers money. In our view it means that even if, by a combination of threats and bribes, the Minister persuades all the medical profession to work under him in making this Bill effective, the doctors of the future will not be as good as the doctors of today. The bad effects of this Bill, in so far as they are bad, on the points on which I have been speaking, may not be seen now or in six months' or a year's time but they will make themselves evident in 10, 15 or 20 years' time. By then it will be too late to do anything about it. I think the same is true of the hospital services. We are opposed to the Minister's proposals because they weaken local interest and initiative and the feeling of responsibility of the individual for his own hospital. The proposals weaken the fabric of local government.
  The Minister is dealing in these matters with something very different from housing, something in some senses which is far more important than housing. It is more important because if the Minister makes a mistake here, as I believe he is making a mistake, that mistake is irremediable: there is nothing we can do about it. If the House passes this Bill in its present form it means that we are taking a step from which there will be no going back. I believe it would be a fatal step. Therefore, I hope that between now and the end of our discussions, which I imagine are likely to be fairly protracted, the Minister will be able to consider very carefully the points that have been put to him. I hope he will consider more carefully than he has yet done, the points put by those who are interested in the hospital services and in the practitioner services, and by all those bodies of which in my judgment the Minister spoke with scant courtesy when he referred to them as "sectional interests" and "vested interests." I ask the Minister between now and the time when this Bill leaves the House, to consider very carefully the representations which have been made to him by people —I obviously do not mean myself—who know far more than he does of this subject, and who are likely to be far better judges than he of the tendencies which he has set in operation by this Measure.
  6.5 p.m.
  Dr. Comyns: I am grateful indeed for this opportunity to address the House for the first time, upon a subject in which I am deeply interested. For all that, I confess that I complain of the usual symptoms of nervousness perhaps common to most maiden speakers, and I ask the House for a generous dose of the indulgence which it customarily gives on such occasions. For my part, I promise to be as brief and as non-controversial as I possibly can be in the circumstances. My pleasure at being able to take part in this Debate is not diminished by the fact that seated on the benches opposite, is an hon. Member who some 20 odd years ago, took me severely to task for indulging in what he was then pleased to term "pernicious" political propaganda among my fellow students. According to the Oxford Dictionary, "pernicious" may be defined as "fatal" or "ruinous." However, mindful as I am of my promise not to be too controversial, I will leave it to my hon. Friends on this side of the House to judge whether Socialism would, in fact, have been as ruinous to the people of this country as the Tory politics advocated and supported by the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Graham Kerr).
  As an active medical practitioner in the Division which I have the honour and privilege to represent in this House, namely, Silvertown, I want quite emphatically to welcome this Bill. I congratulate the Minister on his speech this afternoon although I must admit I cannot agree with some of his arguments, a number of which I thought were ingenuous, if not ingenious. No one in the House or outside will deny that a Measure to provide for the establishment of a comprehensive medical service is long overdue. Every one must agree that the present medical services of this country need to be thoroughly overhauled, developed and improved. Despite this, unfortunately, we find that a good deal of the opposition to this Bill—I regret if this remark disturbs the right hon. Member for South Kensington (Mr. R. Law) —is based on narrow sectional interests. Surely, the test of any Measure of such a nature, intimately affecting, as it does, the welfare of every citizen of this country, should be the greatest good not

  83
  to a section of the community, but to every man, woman and child.
  A great deal has been said and written of the reaction of the medical profession to this Bill. It has been said that the Bill met with the disapproval of the majority, and even that strike action was being contemplated. So far as the question of a strike is concerned, I can think of no body of men and women less well organised and less likely to agree to such a serious step. It seems that the history of 1911 is about to be repeated, and that the medical profession will once again be in an undignified and sorry plight. It would be foolish, however, to deny that there is, in fact, a strong measure of opinion which is frankly critical of certain parts of this Bill. I have read a number of reports of various meetings of the profession; I have attended one or two myself, and have talked to scores of doctors on the subject. The impression which I have gained is that, for the most part, the adverse criticism of the profession is based on lack of information, or on wrong information which has been given to them.
  To me, it is a matter for serious regret that the leadership of this profession is not as inspired as it might be and that it has failed to keep abreast of public opinion. What does the average doctor want? He wants the opportunity of doing first-class work himself, and not to be just a clerk filling out certificates, or acting as a sorting office for different diseases and illnesses, and having to despatch his patients to one hospital or another for treatment. He requires, and rightly, a decent income, corresponding to his professional status in order that he may be free from financial worries and enjoy a reasonable amount of leisure. Not least important, he would like to have the opportunity of working with his colleagues, without the fear at the back of his mind that some part of his practice might be filched from him. Granted all these things, not only the doctor but the public at large would benefit enormously. It is my sincere belief and conviction that most, if not all, of these things can be obtained within the broad framework of this Bill.
  I wonder if hon. Members on both sides of the House fully realise that, for years past, many doctors have been, and still are, working under the most unsatisfactory
  84
  conditions both in rural and in urban areas. In many cases, only a strong social conscience and the age-long tradition of their profession have made work possible at all. It is, therefore, with much satisfaction that I welcome the decision of the Minister to set up health centres. If they are equipped and staffed as they should be, and as I believe it is the Minister's intention, that they shall be, they will certainly offer a tremendous incentive and encouragement to all who will be able to work in them to give of their best.
  I now venture to offer a few words of criticism on another aspect. I note with regret that the Minister has deemed it wise, or expedient—I know not which—to perpetuate one feature of the present unsatisfactory system which some of us had hoped to see disappear for ever. Personally, I deprecate the fact that it will still be possible for a particular doctor to give two standards of treatment, one within and the other outside the service. When everyone is entitled to free service, it is difficult to see why anyone should want to go to a doctor outside the public service unless he expects a better standard of service than that which the doctor usually gives to his public service patients. True, there are certain conditions, as the Minister pointed out, which the doctor must observe before he can treat patients for private fees, but it is my considered opinion that these conditions will offer no great obstacle to a widespread practice, and that much abuse may well result. I therefore ask the Minister if the privilege of combining public and private service will be in any way detrimental to the public service, and, if so, will he withdraw that privilege?
  A good deal of the discussion on this Bill revolves, ostensibly, around the question of free choice—the right of a patient freely to choose his doctor. What is the standard by which the layman assesses the degree of competence of any doctor? Has he, in fact, any real medical knowledge by which he can do so? Before the war, before we had a Minister of Transport, the public were very prone to assess the medical skill of a doctor by the year and make of his car, or, on occasions, by the number of new hats which his wife was seen to be wearing. Surely, of far more importance to the patient than a personal choice, based, of necessity, on unscientific prejudices, is an assurance of a high standard of competence. In any

  85
  event, is there, in fact, any large measure of free choice existing today, and is it exercised to any extent? In most rural areas, we find that there is only one doctor, or a partnership of doctors, available for all patients in time of need. In urban areas, where a greater choice is more readily available, we find that very few people indeed bother about it at all. As the Minister has pointed out, even when an entire practice changes hands and a new doctor comes into the district, very few—not more than about five per cent. of the patients on the list—feel it necessary to do anything at all about it. It is my belief that free choice, when applied to medicine, is simply a catch phrase which will not bear serious analysis.
  I do not propose to take up the time of the House any further, but this must be said. We may argue about different aspects of the Bill as going too far or not far enough, according to our individual points of view, but the fact remains, and it would be foolish to ignore it, that the Bill forms a framework within which a much improved service can be developed. Surely, therefore, it is up to all of us, in the interests of the people we represent, to cooperate and improve the details in order that a service worthy of the times we live in can be brought into being.
  6.18 p.m.
  Viscountess Davidson: It is my pleasant duty to congratulate the hon. Member for Silvertown (Dr. Comyns) on his interesting and informative speech. I think I had better leave the hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Graham Kerr) to deal with his former pupil, but I am sure the House will share with me the hope that we shall have the pleasure of hearing the hon. Member often in our future Debates. On one matter, all hon. Members are in full agreement; namely, that our health services should be so improved that all shall be able to obtain the best medical treatment. But we disagree with the Government on the best method of obtaining that treatment. Will this Bill benefit the individual citizen? Will he or she be better looked after, better cared for, receive kinder and more efficient attention? If so, then I am sure the Bill will be welcome, but, if it is likely to have the contrary effect, that is all the more reason why we are entitled to examine
  86
  it extremely carefully before we make the drastic changes which are suggested.
  May I first ask the Minister a question? Prevention is better than cure, and much preventive treatment is done. May I ask what will be the position of, may I call them "the unorthodox practitioners?" I have personal knowledge of the excellent work they have done, and thousands of people have great faith in their treatment, much of which is preventive. What will their position be under this Bill?
  Can they continue their treatments, or will the Bill place insuperable difficulties in front of them? Could a scheme similar to that in the Insurance Act, be applied under this Bill to the patients of those practitioners so that they could make a cash payment and make their own arrangements for medical treatment? Much has already been said about the position of the doctors and much more will be said in the course of this Debate. We are told that many doctors are in full approval of this Bill. I have not met them. I have received deputations and I have talked to many of them, and they are deeply apprehensive of what will happen to the medical profession when this Bill becomes law, viewing it not from any selfish motive, but in the light of how it will affect their individual patients.
  It is true that because of the fairly reasonable compensation offered, many older doctors who have carried on during the war will very likely retire. It is also true, no doubt, that many younger men coming into the profession will welcome the Bill because it offers a certain degree of security. They do not know what freedom of action they may be losing, because they are inexperienced, and it will not be until they find themselves on the same basis as other salaried servants of the State, bound hand and foot and unable to act on their own initiative, that they will regret the terms of the Bill, and then it will be too late. The men who enter the medical profession do not do so for reasons of security; they do not enter it for reasons of reward. They usually enter it because they have a vocation, a call, a very great urge to give service to their fellow men and women.
  The buying and selling of practices which has been much maligned and which is very little understood by the general public is, in itself, very often a safe

  87
  guard. It gives the doctor the independence he requires. As has already been said, he sells not his patients, but the goodwill which he has built up because he has been a good doctor. The better doctor he is, the greater value the practice. That is a safeguard to his patients, and the new man buying the practice has to keep up the same standard. He is not buying patients; he is buying the goodwill. Again, this is a safeguard to the patients which, to my mind, is the all-important matter. I am afraid that the keen, brilliant man will not join a profession where he will have no free scope for his abilities, but will be subjected to control and interference. Very likely, he will take up other work, or will go abroad. Who will suffer then? The men, the women and the children who will be served by a profession of the second best and the mediocre, who will remain.
  The Minister has frequently referred to the fact that under the Bill the family doctor will still be available. The public like the family doctor. They look on him as a friend as well as a medical adviser. It is clever wording and I think a good many people will be taken in, but I cannot see how the family doctor will remain. The patient will attend a clinic, and he or she will have to consult the doctor on duty at the time. There is no guarantee, when doctors work on a strict rota, which doctor patients will find when they arrive at the clinics. There will be no freedom of choice of doctors in hospitals, and patients will have to take the consultant appointed by the region. How is it possible, therefore, to assure the patient that he or she can be certain of the family doctor? The personal and the individual touch will be lost; the patient will not gain, the doctors will not gain, and no one, in the end, will benefit.
  There will be no partnerships in the way in which we have understood them in the past. As far as I can see, it will not be possible for a partially retired older doctor to continue in practice, the older doctor who can be of such value to the younger man of his choice who is gradually taking over and carrying on the practice and learning to know and understand the patients. It is true that there will be groups of doctors, and I suppose they are to form a kind of partnership. But those doctors will not
  88
  be free to choose who they will have with them. Any man, as far as I can gather, may be foisted on them by the region. In such circumstances, I cannot see very much hope for that close cooperation between the doctors which is so essential to the welfare of the patient.
  The Minister assures us that doctors need not come under this scheme. They can stay outside and take private patients, but all hospitals are to become the possession of the State, and the Minister will be all-powerful. Is there any guarantee that those doctors' patients will be admitted into the State-owned hospitals? May they not be refused admittance because they have preferred to consult a doctor who is not inside the scheme, and is this not a form of undue pressure being exercised on the free individual? One cannot help feeling that the Minister, in introducing this new scheme, would actually seem to be determined to prevent doctors from rising to great heights in their profession. It appears to me it is his never failing desire to level down standards, and not to lift they up. British medicine has always been in advance of medicine in other countries, but the result of this rightly called "most backward plan" will be that it will lose its position and its prestige in the eyes of the world which have been gained by the enterprise, initiative and the freedom of the members of what has been in the past one of the greatest professions.
  As to dentistry, we on this side of the House are in full agreement with what the Minister has said. It leaves a great deal to be desired, and we all want to see a vast improvement in dentistry in this country, but, as has already been said, what really matters is education. The use of the toothbrush from the earliest years is as essential as anything else, and education is as essential as making it possible for everyone to have proper dentist treatment.
  Next with regard to the hospitals. The war has taught us a great deal and we all realise that there are many faults and weaknesses, and room for great improvements in our hospital system. But could not those improvements have been made without destroying some of our most valuable assets? The combination of the voluntary hospital and the local authority hospital has maintained a local interest which means much to the patients and to

  89
  those who live in the district. Under this Health Bill a hospital will no longer be managed by people who understand and know the area it serves, or the people who require that service, but by a board centred miles away, whose members will be appointed by the Minister. The spur to improved efficiency in the individual hospital is lost, and the human approach is jeopardised. It is universally thought that most of the voluntary hospitals are seriously in debt and have no assets, and that the State is taking over merely a liability. In many instances that is far from true, and the State is taking over assets and funds belonging to individual hospitals, given and bequeathed to those hospitals for many different reasons. May I instance one hospital in which I am interested? In its balance sheet for 1945, assets of £159,000 and liabilities of £15,000 are shown—a clear asset of £140,000 which belongs to that hospital and to the patients whom it serves in that locality.
  Local hospitals have played a very great part in the life of the local community. They disappear, and with them the spirit of service, the personal interest and the enthusiasm of those who take a pride in their hospital. What remains? I fear another impersonal cog in the machine of State, with the result that the patients, in whom we are most interested, will not benefit but will lose.
  May I say a word about the research work which has been done in voluntary hospitals? They, because of their supporters and many friends, can call for help and quick action if any special research work is needed. May I instance a recent case? A new and very important apparatus was required for vital experiments on the brain. An "S.O.S." was sent out to a few friends who had always been interested in the hospital. The money was guaranteed, the instrument purchased and the experiments are now in operation. There was no relay, because of the appeal that hospital made to the sympathisers who loved their hospital. In the future, from my own experience of Government Departments, I conclude that that kind of appeal will go through all the machinery of Government Departments via regional bodies, and I wonder after the ball has been thrown from one to another, and the Treasury have had something to say about it, whether that instru-
  90
  ment will be available until after a wait of many years, when perhaps the patients will be dead.
  I return to another extremely important subject, that of the district nurses. This magnificent organisation which touches the lives of all and sundry is run by the Queen's Institute, and associated bodies. It supplies the district nurses, and their standard of training is very high. It is a national body and the chances of promotion are wide. It would indeed be tragic if this excellent organisation ceased to serve the community. The Bill leaves their position very uncertain. According to Clause 25, so far as I can understand, some local authorities may use them and some may not. May we have some assurance that these district nurses will continue to function? Those who live in the country know the value of their work and training, personal interest, and their esprit de corps. The patients will be the sufferers if the work of these district nurses ceases. What kind of guarantee have we of the standard of training, if the local authorities do not use them?
  I would like to ask the Under-Secretary what will be the position of a very small section of hospitals, but a section which is of vital importance; I refer to the hospitals for the dying. I have personal knowledge of the work done by these hospitals. Theirs is a Christian work. They exist usually through the charity or personal interest of people who have given or are giving money for the purpose of helping those who have not long to live, and nowhere else to spend the remaining months of their lives. They are staffed by remarkable people. They are attended by devoted doctors. Theirs is a grand work, and a spiritual work. I dread to think what will happen to these hospitals if they become parts of a crowd of impersonal hospitals, run by regional boards.
  I have already spoken too long; I know that many other hon. Members wish to speak in this Debate, but I seldom burden the House, and I feel very strongly about the Bill and all that it may mean. During this Session we have watched the passage of many Bills through this House. I believe very few, in the long run, will bring more happiness or prosperity to individual citizens. I admit that this is a period of very deep unhappiness for many of us. We have been through the

  91
  tragedy and horror of six years of war, during which we, as a nation, have risen to very great heights. Now we have to witness a deterioration setting in, which I feel is due largely to the actions of the present Government. I realise that many hon. Members opposite are most sincere in their beliefs, and are convinced that all the schemes which on paper sound so good will, when put into effect, have a beneficial result. I fear many of them may prove to be wrong because—and I say this in all sincerity—I feel that they are basing their beliefs on the wrong foundations. They give the impression that they are playing to the gallery, that they are bribing with promises, and appealing to the worst side of human nature instead of the best. They are gradually killing the finest characteristics of our people—the spirit of enterprise and of individual attainment. It appears to be a case of "What can I get, what can I take and what can I procure for myself?" and not "What can I give, how can I help, how can I serve?"
  To my mind this Bill saps the very foundations on which our national character has been built. It is another link in the chain which is binding us all to the machine of State. It is giving more power to the Minister and to the caucus. It is depriving the individual of yet more of his long-fought-for freedom. The Government believe that they can do as they like, because of the large majority sitting behind them. But the majority of today may be the minority of tomorrow. Toleration is the basis of successful democratic government. The rights of the minority must be respected, and no majority should exercise its mandate beyond the endurance of the public, or bitterness will result, and may lead to civil war.
  Hon. Members: Oh.
  Mr. Kirkwood: What was that?
  Viscountess Davidson: Yes, it is true. May I finish by quoting a sentence which appeared at the end of an article written by one of our best-known historians? He points out the danger of allowing the caucus to take to itself too great power, for all through history the result has been the same, disastrous. I apologise for reading the whole of it, but I would like the House to hear it:
  92
  "In recent years our senior civil servants; taking advantage of overburdened and too often inexperienced legislators, have introduced into Bills about to come before Parliament Clauses giving themselves judicial powers over their own actions. Such powers would have made the hair stand up on the outraged heads of Victorian constitutional historians and philosophers, who never tired of proudly pointing out that it was the absence of any special Droit administratif that saved Britain from the fate of the Continental tyrannies. Their diagnosis of the weakness inherent in so many European States was, of course, perfectly correct. Since their time we have seen that weakness produce terrible and almost unimaginable results. Belsen was the ultimate consequence of bestowing super-legal powers on the executive and the separation of political power from moral right. When Germans today declare that they could not prevent what was being done in their joint name at Belsen and Buchenwald, they are probably far nearer the truth than we give them the credit of being. Their offence was not so much that they let their executive commit frightful crimes against human justice and decency as that they had long allowed to their executive the right and power to do whatever it pleased to do. Let us see to it that we do not make the same mistake, or—if we have already made it—that we undo it before it is too late."
  6.40 p.m.
  Dr. Clitherow (Liverpool, Edge Hill): I congratulate the Minister upon introducing this Bill which, I am sure, will affect every person in this country for the better. I was very glad the Minister indicated that he had had consultations with various bodies, and that he explained the difference between consultations and negotiations. Had negotiations taken place he would have been unable to change certain parts without being placed in a difficulty. The hon. Member for Silvertown (Dr. Comyns) and I do not always see exactly alike, although perhaps we go 95 per cent. of the way.
  Speaking anatomically, the Bill is but a skeleton. The master brain controlling the nervous system is in place, in a skull well protected by the hard, bony majority possessed in this House; the nerve tracks are in positon to move the future muscles and coverings, which will be supplied at a later date by regulations; the intestines are ready to accept, digest, absorb and reject whatever may be offered. The regulations by which this Bill will work will be tremendously important. I personally would like to see all regulations treated as those referred to in Clause 69 (I) with reference to Clauses 63 and 64, that is, that a draft is made and receives approval of each House of Parlia-

  93
  ment by Resolution. By passage through the House this Bill will receive the breath of life, and I hope that the new Adam thus created will not have too much original sin of previous Acts. If carried out with good will by all concerned, having only the ultimate better health of the people as its object, the Bill will become a credit to the country and a pattern for the world.
  The Bill must be viewed from the fundamentals of what we want, and three main points are indicated. First, the best that medical science can provide must be available to all, from the time of conception until the time life passes. Secondly, health workers must have good conditions and fair rewards for their work, according to their qualifications, ability and responsibility. Thirdly, professional freedom, professional discretion, and professional education should be available to all health workers. Up to the present the doctor has usually been forced by a system of vicious circles, to be a slave of circumstances. He has had to work hard at his studies for six years or more after leaving school, and, after walking the wards for what is virtually pocket money he comes out into the world, at 25 years of age, or more, with little money. If he wishes to become a general practitioner, he must saddle himself with tremendous financial burdens. If he wishes to specialise he stays in the hospital; he takes his higher qualifications and then waits, as a hard working and grossly underpaid registrar, then a junior, and, when he is getting on in life, at last obtains a post on a known hospital staff ℄perhaps. In both cases, usually he never has the chance to enjoy life as other people do.
  From my experience I can assure the House that most newly qualified medical men recognise, in their acquired right to practise medicine, the privilege of serving and helping humanity to live a healthier, longer and happier life. This Bill will give the doctor the opportunity of realising his ideals while he still has them, instead of the system that spells slavery for so many years. In effect, I claim that the Bill offers to doctors the life spoken of by Henry VI:
  "So many hours must I tend my flock;
  So many hours must I take my rest;
  So many hours must I contemplate;…
  So minutes, hours, days, months, and years,
  94
  Pass'd over to the end they were created, Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely!"
  Salaries are wanted by many doctors, more especially the younger ones who, quite often, have no connection with the British Medical Association. But behind the wish for salaries there is, however, more than mere economic compulsion. The possibility of everyday consultations between general practitioners depends upon the removal of the competition for patients. With salaries as the main basis of remuneration this can easily be achieved. These consultations are more necessary than appear at first sight. They are not specialist consultations; they are consultations which take into account the industrial, home and habit background of the patient. Up to the present this side of the patient's life has been sadly overlooked. The specialist can be out of touch with the everyday life of the industrial patient, being usually in the rut of his own speciality, and quite often of fixed ideas.
  May I ask the Minister if it is his intention to continue with the existing Central Panel Conference, or with any similar body? If it is, would the Minister consider making such a body a statutory one, and specify its constitution, so preventing it from being manipulated by its present parent body, the British Medical Association, and presenting the views of the dominant specialist opinion in that body?
  Could the Minister declare in what direction he intends the maternity services to develop in the future? If he can do this he may remove a lot of misapprehension due to the brief references in the Bill. I make this request because the only advantage I see defined in the Bill is to ensure that hospital booked cases will have antenatal treatment by the obstetrical team who will be available at the time of the confinement. I can assure the House that the coordination of the full maternity service, antenatal and confinement, is in the best interests of mother and child, and the team gets to know the patient and most of her ways and habits.
  It is an undoubted fact that this kind of teamwork does keep down maternal and infantile rates. I have in mind the fact that in Liverpool we have been running clinics in association with our municipal hospitals, several clinics to each

  95
  hospital. The work has been supervised by the obstetrical staff, who are available for the confinement. As I read the Bill, it would appear to me that this growing practice of clinics associated with hospitals is likely to be disrupted and have a setback if the emphasis is to be on health centre and domiciliary treatment for midwifery under the control of the local authority, while the service I have in mind, which I personally believe is the best for the mother and child, is at the hospital level with a coordination not possible under the dual system.
  I should like to comment on the fact that the local authorities were first introduced to midwifery by the 1902 Act, and between that time and 1929, when the local authorities were instructed to provide hospitalisation to the ratepayers, this introduction had ripened into what we might a courtship between the local authorities and the maternity units. The 1929 Act, with its compulsion upon local authorities to provide hospitalisation, commenced the process of a marriage in leading to a single control of clinics and maternity units, which has been of the greatest value. The apparent double control of maternity services as far as the clinics are concerned is, in effect, the making of a divorce. I can assure the Minister that those hospitals working with clinics as a team do not want this divorce. I would ask the Minister to remember the injunction of the marriage ceremony: "Let not man put asunder." I would be happy to know that it is in the mind of the Minister to provide full maternity hospital service for those who desire it in the future, and that all those who desire hospital service shall have their clinics controlled by the obstetrical hospital team of their choice. I think this is reasonable and in the best interests of the patient and child. This would leave the domiciliary cases for the local authority to control, and to provide with a midwife nursing service. Frankly, I do not mind whether it is the local authority that controls it or an executive committee or the hospital board. For maternity purposes the whole service should be continued by a single body. If the double control is to continue, as it appears from the Bill, it will lead to a disruption of what is beginning to be a logical conclusion, and I feel that some means must be found to co-ordinate and not separate the maternity services.
  96
  In Clause 32, covering the various practitioners' committees, the Bill states that the Minister "may recognise" these committees. Could we have an assurance that, where these committees are formed according to the requirements of the Bill, the Minister "shall" recognise them, and thus do away with the feeling of ambiguity that these apparently permissive words cause in the mind of the layman? I am sure that the medical profession as a whole views with the greatest distaste the making of a special crime, with special and extremely heavy penalties, for the medical man who sells his practice. It is recognised that some steps must be taken to prevent such an offence, but I think that if it is left to the courts to decide whether there has in fact been any attempt to sell a practice, it will be better received by the profession than if it is left to a certificate of the Minister, even though the Bill provides that no prosecution will be undertaken without the consent of the Attorney-General.
  Speaking as a pharmacist, and in touch with the representatives of that profession, I should like to inform the Minister that the members of the pharmaceutical profession are almost unanimous in their intention to assist the Minister to the best of their ability to make their part in the new service a complete success. This Bill does recognise the part that the pharmacist plays in the health service of the nation, a part which, in the past, has been taken far too much for granted. I am of the opinion that the Bill will give the pharmacist a fuller part to play, and it will give the profession the chance to practise the craft in which they have been trained and educated. The original National Health Insurance Act provided that State prescribing and dispensing should be separated, and carried out by each section best qualified. I welcome the continuance of this principle in the Bill, both as a registered medical practitioner and as a pharmacist, as being in the public interest. During the last 30 years pharmacists have given the Ministry an efficient and helpful service in over 14,000 pharmacies, widespread over the whole country, and there is a feeling amongst the pharmacists that they are capable of still giving the same efficient service. But the Minister must provide a full service in the health centres, pharmaceutical as well as any other. which I hope will definitely include

  97
  clinical pathology and X-rays in every one. The background to an efficient dispensing service must be based upon these 14,000 widely dispersed pharmacies, which will continue to provide sound, efficient, comprehensive and convenient dispensing service for the public.
  In the past pharmacists have accepted the dispensing of National Health Insurance prescriptions as being a means of proclaiming their professional standing to the public. This was somewhat in the nature of an advertising medium, because from this recognition he obtained the more lucrative private dispensing and associated sale of proprietary and patent medicines. I hope that one result of this Bill will be a lessening of self-medication and a restriction of the sale of patent medicines, but I would ask the Minister to consider that, at once, the dispensing of State medicines will become a considerable part of the pharmacist's work instead of a minor part, as it is at present. and that when remuneration is considered this fact must be borne in mind. There will be no private dispensing left, and I can assure the House from personal knowledge that the present dispensing fees will be totally inadequate under the new conditions, and proper wages cannot be paid. Pharmacists are grateful for the recognition of their part, and they feel that their representation on certain bodies is not as strong as they would wish, but I can assure the Minister that the pharmaceutical profession accepts the main provisions of the Bill with enthusiasm.
  In taking my medical course I had to take the prescribed syllabus covering diseases and abnormalities of the eyes. I have had close contact with this side of medicine for some time, and I realise to the full how important it is that ophthalmic and refraction treatment should be fully available to all. Many times I have come across people suffering needlessly through having been treated by a quack, or through using spectacles supplied by a pedlar, store or other unqualified source. The fact that we are so dependent on one another today means that we rely on the eyesight of other people to a tremendous extent, and many innocent persons may easily be injured through some individual's defective vision which has been tampered with. The provision of optical services in this Bill is more than welcome. I am sure from the reactions I have noted among opticians that they are prepared to play
  98
  their part, particularly as the Minister has stated in the White Paper that they are to have proper professional status. Could the Minister tell us what he meant by proper professional status? At present the qualified optician is qualified by examination of his own free will, but anybody is free to give advice or supply glasses without any training or qualification at all. During the last 16 years the National Ophthalmic Treatment Board have had their clinics boosted high, yet during that time 90 per cent. of those needing treatment under the National Health Insurance Act went to qualified opticians.
  Surely, the Minister considers qualified sighttesting opticians as capable refractionists; he must, because he includes them in the scheme, but he indicates that they are eventually to be part of the specialist and clinic scheme. Could I suggest that, rather than placing them entirely under the surgeons in the hospitals and clinics, it might be better to see that, by law, nobody could treat eyes without proper qualification, and then to use these qualified refractionists, as he does pharmacists, in the pharmacies, hospitals and health centres? If he does not, I fear that many people will go without proper glasses and many abnormalities of the eyes will go undetected for a long time, for I am sure that the experience we have had of National Ophthalmic Board clinics does not indicate that the public want to go, in the first instance at any rate, to either a hospital or clinic when it is, possibly, plainly a matter of refraction. It must be remembered that a qualified refractionist is the first to recognise disease or abnormality and to refer the patient to the hospital.
  My final point, and one which is most important, is one on which I would like an indication from the Minister as to his position. In Clause 47, we read that any dispute under the Bill or regulations will be decided by the Minister or a person appointed by him. Is there any right of appeal to the courts, should any person find himself aggrieved by such a decision? I am sure the Minister would be the last to approve of the autocratic power wielded by the General Medical Council, who recently made two decisions, both miscarriages of justice, which have caused the constitution of that body to be questioned. One was declared to be unfounded by the courts of the land, and the other was condemned by Mr. Justice Charles.

  99
  I am sure the Minister does not want to be in this position, and I would not like to think that this power was delegated to his Department, or any other, for without the knowledge that a person has the right of appeal to the courts, I feel certain that we shall have started an absolute bureaucratic complex which will be welcomed by many Departments. Will the Minister give us an assurance that the courts will always be available as a last appeal? I must say that this Bill is greatly overdue, and it goes a long way towards making for better curative medicine. I sincerely congratulate the Minister upon its introduction.
  7.0 p.m.
  Commander Maitland: Not so long ago in this House we were discussing the whole question of special security as implemented by the National Insurance Bill, and at that time I thought —indeed, I have always thought—that the greatest social security that any Government can confer on the people of this country is good health and a good education. Therefore, I feel that the Bill we are discussing today is far more a social security Bill than the Bill we discussed in the past in these stormy economic times. Today I am going to talk for a few minutes about how this Bill affects the countryside, because I am certain that the Minister will agree that the countryside, where there are scattered populations and districts, presents a very special problem. I must say that I think the right hon. Gentleman's speech was a little urban—[An HON. MEMBER: "Urbane or urban?"] No, urban. I should like to refer to the hospital survey. The Minister referred to it in his speech. I think it is appropriate to refer to it now because it will be at the elbow of the Minister and the regional boards when they come to decide what they will do with the various hospitals. The Hospital Survey, for which I have the greatest admiration and to which I should like to make my tribute, because it is a magnificent effort, is, I think, a little harsh when it comes to reporting on the cottage hospitals. I say that from my experience in my district. I speak with great diffidence, but that is the opinion of the medical profession in that part of the world. It is suggested in that report that the cottage hospital should be the site for the health centre. I am not at all certain that in these scattered districts that
  100
  will always be the right thing. I am pretty certain it will not where doctors are living a long way apart from each other. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell us what he is going to do about the health centres in the country.
  Then there is the tendency to transfer people away to the bigger hospitals. We do not much like that in the country. I realise, as we all realise, that the patients' safety is absolutely paramount. It is the one important thing. Where, however, this transference is a matter of convenience only, the patient should be considered In the country, where we have big distances, it is important to people who have their nearest and dearest in hospital to be able to see them, but if they are 18 or 19 miles away in a big hospital in a town it will not be easy for them to get there, because our transport is not as good as it might be. Also, it is not easy to take the time off, and it is very expensive. Therefore, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give the small hospitals in the country, as distinct from those in the towns, special consideration, and will reconsider the whole question of their use and not lump them in generally with the small hospitals in the towns.
  To come to the Bill, I was very much encouraged when the Minister gave us his description of the democratic way of life, because I entirely agree with him. He said that it was not sufficient to put a cross against a name once in four years, and that what one had to do was to go in and work for the hospital. I entirely agree with him. That, I believe to be democracy. But let me describe how the local cottage hospitals work. I have four in my district. They have every year an annual general open meeting to which anyone can go. It is not necessary to subscribe in order to go. Anybody can go and everybody does. At that meeting the committee of the past year report, and are elected or not, as the case may be, for the coming year. That, I maintain, is direct democracy. What are we going to have instead? We are going to have a "wishy washy" form of indirect democracy, and the Bill does not make it clear how we are going to get it. If we are lucky we may get a chance to elect a member who, if he is lucky, may get the chance to get somebody on to a hospital management committee. I ask the Minister to think

  101
  really seriously about that point. It is very much worrying the people in my part of the world.
  Another thing that is worrying them is this question of taking away the endowments. Two of our hospitals are memorial hospitals. I do not want to sentimentalise about memorial hospitals, but, after all, the virtues of mercy and compassion are Christian virtues, and we cannot just stamp them out by Acts of Parliament. They cannot be delegated. You cannot delegate your conscience to a Minister, even if he is a Welshman, and I do ask the Minister to consider this in the sympathetic way that he should.
  Consider for a moment the people who work in the hospitals and who work for them. They often are not the sort who go in for local government. They are generally a different sort. They do not like the controversy and the battle and the fight of local government. They like working together for something they love. What is to happen to them? Why should they not have their job? I do not think they have under this Bill——
  Mr. Bevan: I appreciate the difficulties, but, of course, all this will be explained in detail when we come to the Committee. There will be house committees for each unit within the management of the hospital group, and there will be the hospital management committee itself. In fact, I attach the utmost importance to the house committees and local contacts.
  Commander Maitland: I am glad to hear that, and I would ask the right hon. Gentleman a question about it in a moment. I am grateful for the interruption. I regard the hospital management committees as key points in the Bill as it affects hospitals. But as the Bill is presented, the point is not clear. The people in my area are very much up in arms about it, and they are people whose ancestors were Cromwell's Ironsides. They are not moved very easily, but when they get up against things they are rather tough opponents. [An HON. MEMBER: "They have fallen from grace."] They have presented a petition to me. I must read it to the House, because it carries me to the next point. It was signed by over 10,000 people, and it was signed in a short space of time although the signatories are scattered. It was done without any political prompting. I give
  102
  my word to the House about that. It says:
  "We, the signatories of this petition, having learned that the Government have tabled a Bill which involves the transfer to the State of the buildings, equipment and invested funds of the several cottage hospitals, urge you to oppose such a Measure by every means in your power. We desire that our hospitals shall be allowed to play their part in any scheme for a national health service which does not entirely deprive the hospitals of their local management and local interests."
  Local management and local interests. This represents what the Minister rather pushed on one side when he spoke.
  Mr. Bevan: No.
  Commander Maitland: They want to play their part. I want to make suggestions how they can. The Minister referred just now to the whole question of the hospital management committee. He did not mention it in his speech. I am in agreement with him about the representation on the regional boards. They are so big. I think you have to wash out a great deal of the human interest if you divide the country into, I think, 16 parts. As regards hospital management committees, I cannot see why they should not have individual representation of the various hospitals in their group. I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman is nodding his head. I hope we may come to agreement about that later. But in order to make that effective there is one further point I would ask. In these country districts, which are scattered, it is not just sufficient to say that the group controlled by the management committee shall be in respect of a certain number of beds. There must be a question of an area being brought in as well. In some districts we may have to have a small number of hospitals served by one hospital management committee. It may be just as effective, and it will be necessary to get that personal touch.
  I was talking the other day in my constituency to a clergyman about this Bill, and he said that one did not have to look very far to find two causes for the greatest misery in the world—one is cancer, and the other is rheumatism. I should like the Minister to tell us something about that. The country would have been very grateful if, instead of this skeleton Bill, we had had something concrete about these two terrible diseases.

  103
  How much more welcome would this Bill have been by everyone concerned if that had been so. Because this affects me, I want to talk for a few moments about the question of rheumatism. Rheumatism causes far more misery and far more unhappiness than is generally known. I speak on this with very great feeling, because I was crippled with rheumatism myself for some time. The trouble with rheumatism is that people laugh at it and think it is funny, but it is far from that and I promised myself that I would try and do everything I could for those people who suffer from this disease. I am very surprised that no mention is made in this Bill to the spas. Of course it is quite easy to laugh at the spas, "decoking Blimps" and all that sort of thing, but the right hon. Gentleman knows, and there is a Committee examining the whole question, what very valuable work they have done in the past.
  I am certain that there is a place for spas in this Bill. They need help to carry on these centres where rheumatism has been treated for generations past. I ask the Minister to use his great powers to help the spas, and to make their great knowledge available in a larger measure to the people in the areas they serve. I have little more to say, except to add in passing, that this Bill shows it has been introduced. without enough thought in regard to its immediate impact upon the country. In my constituency there are two elderly doctors who have just managed to hang on until now. They are infirm and cannot go on very well. What is going to happen to them during this interregnum before the D-Day of this Bill? They cannot sell their practices, and they cannot go on working. How, too, are the hospitals going to carry on in the meantime? These are things which really needed forethought, and if this is an example of forethought and planning as carried out by the Government, I think there is a good deal to be said for carrying on in some measure the hospital scheme we have at the moment.
  7.14 p.m.
  Mr. Sargood: In addressing the House for the first time, I do so with the diffidence which is usual on such occasions, but I am fortified in the knowledge that the House is usually very indulgent, and I hope that on this
  104
  occasion Members will extend their indulgence to me. Let me say at the outset that here in London we consider that we have the greatest municipal hospital service in the world. Those of us in control of affairs in the London County Council support the main proposals in this Bill. I do not pretend for a moment that our support is not given with some regret, because it will mean that we shall have to relinquish control of that very great hospital service. Nevertheless, we realise that in this Bill there are the possibilities of a very great national health service, and we are not opposed to merging the lesser in the greater. In that merger, there will be many complex problems.
  If I may cite an example without pleading a special cause, I would put forward the example of London. According to Clause II of the Bill, a university having a school of medicine is to be associated with the provision, by the regional hospital board, of hospital and specialist services, so far as practicable. The London University not only has 12 such schools of medicine instead of one, but it is also the natural university centre for a population of some 14 million people in South-East England. The gathering grounds of these 12 teaching schools naturally overlap, and the problem is further complicated by the post-graduate teaching hospitals in London. This makes it clear that arrangements which may be comparatively straightforward in other areas, and in their application to the country generally, may not be applicable to London. Therefore, I ask the Minister, before he finally decides on the form of a regional board applicable to London, to give it very careful consideration and take into consultation representatives of the London municipalities.
  During his statement the Minister deplored the possibility that, if a certain course were not taken, there might result the setting up of a number of nursing homes. I was very much struck by the fact that in the Bill before us he proposes not to interfere with mental institutions which are run for private profit. I ask the Minister to reconsider that point. When you have institutions run for private profit the incentive will be not to get rid of the patient, because by doing so the proprietor of the private mental institution will be deprived of his income. If it is deplorable to have private nursing

  105
  homes, I suggest that it is equally deplorable for the Minister to allow the continuance of private mental institutions run for private profit. I make the distinction that it is the factor of private profit I want considered, and not necessarily institutions run by private persons, many of which are excellently managed. Where profits are involved, it is obviously in the interests of the proprietor to keep a patient as long as possible, and not get him cured and out into the world.
  There is one very important omission from the Bill. With all the seriousness I can bring to bear, I want to impress this particular problem on the Minister's attention. I refer to the question of the setting up of some organisation for the bulk purchasing of supplies for the hospital services. I find no reference in the Bill indicating that the Minister has in mind the setting up of some such separate organisation. That is a very important factor. If we look at the sums of money involved, we find that expenditure on supplies, equipment, medicines, drugs, blankets, and all the necessities which go to make up the hospital services, is somewhere in the order of an annual sum of £20 million to £25 million. One has only to look at the fact that a 5 per cent. limit between spending too much and saving, would easily mean a saving or a loss of over £2 million a year. If we are to have the position of each regional board having its own buying organisation, I must point out that it would result in unnecessary competition, overlapping, and variations in the standard of equipment to be provided. I ask the Minister to give that point further consideration. Moreover, there is the important point of public accountability, and the provision of warehousing facilities and transport, all of which, if left to the regional boards, would mean a certain amount of waste.
  My final point, which I will put briefly because brevity is appreciated in the House, concerns the Board of Control. As a member of the London County Council I have had many opportunities of watching the Board of Control. A more futile body I have yet to meet, and I am surprised to learn that the Board are to continue, although, under this Bill, they will lose many of their functions. I urge the Minister to consider, before the Bill becomes law, if he cannot find a better way of dealing with the safe-
  106
  guarding of the liberty of the subject than by continuing the Board of Control.
  7.23 p.m.
  Mr. York: I offer my congratulations to the hon. Member for West Bermondsey (Mr. Sargood) on making, as I think the whole House will agree, a thoroughly constructive and helpful speech. I hope that we shall have many more contributions from him upon this and many other subjects. I think also that the hon. Member is to be congratulated upon the excellence of his delivery.
  I now turn to a subject mentioned by the hon. and gallant Member for Horn-castle (Commander Maitland), although only too briefly. That is the question of rheumatics and rheumatism. This matter is not touched upon in the White Paper. On page 5 there is a paragraph dealing with diseases in which one might have expected to find rheumatism mentioned. Reference is made to special hospitals, maternity accommodation, convalescent treatment and rehabilitation, and there is a long list of diseases, some of which I might not be able to pronounce properly if I read them out; but not one word do we see about a disease which has a more devastating effect on the industrial and home life of this country than any other single disease. One-seventh of the industrial incapacity in this country is caused by rheumatism, and if that is not a sufficiently strong fact to make every one conscious of the appalling incidence of this disease, then I think that it is only necessary for him or her to wait for those dreaded pangs which come to so many of us in due course. There should be a special service to deal with this matter in this comprehensive scheme.
  The control of hospitals and, even more important, of research will pass to the Minister of Health. All the initiative, drive and energy will pass under the control of the Minister and through him to the regional boards. Under the local and private ownership of hospitals this drive and energy were directed from practically one source only, and that was the spa towns, which are fairly well distributed over most of the country. In the spa towns and their doctors are concentrated all the best equipment, all the best knowledge, and all the best facilities. Moreover, great developments were being planned by the authorities and voluntary hospitals in those areas. Some of them

  107
  were local authority hospitals, but the majority were voluntary hospitals. Under the plan of the Minister of Health all the drive will be in danger of being lost, because of the loss of local interests and local enterprise. I, therefore, urge the Minister of Health—and I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will not fail to tell his right hon. Friend of this particular point tonight—to press on with the work of the advisory committee which his predecessor set up to advise him on rheumatic diseases and their treatment.
  I also hope—and this is a very important point—that he will see to it that rheumatism will be scheduled as a special disease and a special service set up to deal with it. I urge him to ensure that the local interests which have been built up in these spa towns is not wasted and dissipated in his centralising scheme. I know that the Bill, as it stands, can provide means to promote this service, but what I do not know is whether there is sufficient determination and drive in the Ministry of Health to put those powers into operation. That is why I press on the Parliamentary Secretary, and through him the Minister of Health, to see that something is started in regard to this matter. Let me make clear, from the outset, that the part which these spa towns play in this service is not primarily dependent on medicinal waters. These play a purely secondary although useful role. The important point to know is that the waters were the starting point from which this great service for the cure of rheumatism was built over the past 100 years or so, and the spas have now a complete and comprehensive range of treatment for the cure of various types of rheumatic disease. Most of the progressive authorities already have a wide range of treatment, and these spa towns have, what is more important still, the specialised medical knowledge and medical keenness.
  The present position is that in most parts of the country a good deal of work is being done by the local general hospitals where they have the necessary facilities available but—and this is a point which I have checked with my medical friends, so that I shall not say something which is unjust—the general practitioners throughout the country are not sufficiently knowledgable about this disease to treat
  108
  sufficiently seriously the early diagnosis of rheumatism, the early treatment of which would prevent unnecessary suffering and hardship. Specialist equipment and specialist medical knowledge have been concentrated in these few areas because facilities are available. If these facilities had not been available, or had not been sufficiently inclusive, then those towns would not have attracted the best medical brains, as they did. Therefore, the spa towns are obviously the starting places for the additional services and facilities which will be necessary under this new health service. In research the same thing applies. The greater part of research work on rheumatism is, again, concentrated in the institutions surrounding these spas, including, of course, a few universities. I know that in my own constituency, the Harrogate hospitals work in close touch with the Leeds University, and the research of the two parties is going on together. The Royal Baths Hospital at Harrogate may be termed the teaching hospital for rheumatics in that region.
  As to the future, if we are to attack this disease, as I believe it should be attacked, we have to be far more energetic and probably far more resourceful in research and in the provision of better equipment and facilities. Professor Davidson, the very well-known professor, of medicine from Edinburgh, was asked by Harrogate corporation to make a report on how that town could best develop its spa facilities for the treatment of rheumatism. May I quote a sentence, which has nothing to do with Harrogate, but illustrates the shortage of equipment and facilities? He says:
  "The shortage of institutional accommodation throughout the whole of Great Britain for this type of case "—
  he is referring, of course, to chronic rheumatism—
  "is one of the most urgent problems facing the new service."
  That means that of all the special services, including tuberculosis and possibly even cancer, rheumatism must be given a very high priority.
  In every region the Minister would be well advised to carry out the projects which have already been worked out in a number of these spa areas for development, for increases in the size and number of beds, and for increases in physio-

  109
  therapeutic equipment. These projects in my opinion, would have been far better left to the institutions which were going to carry them out, but the Minister, with the big battalions behind him, will, no doubt, ensure that his scheme goes through. Therefore, all I can do is to recommend to him that he should take up the projects which have been worked out with loving care by men and women who have put in long years of concentrated effort upon this single disease. That is the institutional side but there is also the clinical side. Out-patients' clinics will be necessary. I believe that the health centres will not be sufficiently large to cater for this particular type of disease, and I should think myself that it would be necessary to have additional rheumatic out-clinics, possibly attached to a general hospital. This means that there must be a better appreciation by the ordinary practitioner of the seriousness to our industrial life of this disease, and a lead must be given by the Minister of Health.
  These two parts of the service obviously come within the scope of the Bill, but there is a third part which does not, so far as I can see. That is what I would call the intermediate stage, a very large group of patients—I believe sufferers is a better expression—who require skilled remedial treatment under medical supervision following hospital diagnosis. These classes are called by my medical advisers ambulatory, which means that at the moment they can walk to the nearest baths.
  They can be divided into two classes—those benefiting by treatment at their local general hospitals, where I hope there will be separate specialist sections and the second type who need to go to a regional centre perhaps because home conditions are not satisfactory for cure or treatment, or perhaps because working or business conditions do not help to create the holiday atmosphere in which the necessary treatment can be effective. Therefore, I say that the provision of these special centres must be a very urgent part of the whole service, and it can be very well carried out by the expansion of the present facilities which are mainly to be found in the spa towns. In cooperation with the local specialist doctors and the local authorities, there is no reason at all why everybody under this service should not have a comprehensive range of treatment for this disease. The only demand which will be
  110
  made upon the hospital service will be for hostels; or it may be that as an alternative in the interregnum period some accommodation allowance should be made out of the health fund or from the Treasury, to those hospitals which exist in certain spas today. There are miners' homes, police homes. I see no reason why those homes should not be included in the service. I have said enough to inform the House, if hon. Members are not already well aware of it, that the disease of rheumatism is the most devastating in the country. Unless the Ministry of Health determines it shall make rheumatic treatment a special service, then the Minister of Health cannot claim that he has set in motion a comprehensive health service.
  7.37 p.m.
  Miss Bacon: I rise in this Debate not as a doctor, nor a dentist, nor a chemist, nor even as a member of a hospital committee, but simply as one of the millions of potential patients affected by this Bill. Earlier in the Debate this afternoon the hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Viscountess Davidson) said that minorities ought to be considered. While agreeing to some extent with this, it can sometimes go too far, and in this case particular interests, because they are so well organised, are able to impose their will over an unorganised and less articulate majority. My experience in many parts of the country among ordinary men and women leads me to believe that the Minister has overwhelming support for this Bill and for the measures contained in it. It is true that there are some defects, but those defects are matters of detail and the Bill, on the whole, is the greatest Measure for human wellbeing ever introduced into this country. Some hon. Members opposite and some whom I shall describe as vested interests outside, have denounced this Bill as taking away the freedom of the individual, and introducing into our health services what they call a "soulless bureaucratic machine." What loss of freedom can there be in giving to everybody irrespective of any conditions whatsoever a free choice of doctor, free consultant services, free hospital services, and, in fact, free medical and surgical service of every kind? This Bill gives to thousands of people freedom which they have never before enjoyed, freedom to consult a doctor or specialist without thinking of the cost.

  111
  With regard to the hospitals, I support the Minister entirely in taking over all hospitals, both local authority and voluntary, and organising them on a regional basis. Most local authorities, while they are sorry to lose their hospitals, agree that this is for the public good, because it is impossible to organise efficiently a local authority hospital service. Local authorities are of varying sizes; some are very small and some exceedingly large. We all know that in many cases, in a county borough, the large hospital in that borough serves not only the borough but the surrounding county districts as well. If we had a local authority hospital service we should have to have joint boards. That being so, I think it is much better to have a clearly defined region. The voluntary hospitals, through their organisation, the British Hospitals Association, are fighting this Measure in a document which they have issued. They refer to the transfer of the hospitals and their endowments as "taking away their hospitals and confiscating their property." But whose property is it? Whose endowments are they? The money which belongs to the voluntary hospitals is the people's money, which has been contributed by workmen's contributions, flag days and charity concerts. This money, while being technically transferred, is to be used in a much more economical way than at present for the benefit of the people who contributed it.
  Mr. York: Does the hon. Lady think that the citizens of Leeds will be pleased if their hospital money is spent in Bradford?
  Miss Bacon: I am coming to Leeds in a moment if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to proceed, because Leeds is a rather shining example, in some respects, in regard to a National Health Service Bill. In the circular issued by the voluntary hospitals they say:
  "…the whole cost of the hospital services will be defrayed by the Exchequer, and the extent and quality of the services will, therefore, be determined by the consideration of cost instead of need."
  That is ridiculous. In the past, have voluntary hospitals never had to consider the cost? Have they only been able to consider need? Have they always had the money for the improvement which they would have liked to have made in their hospitals? Of course they have not. All this is now to be possible, and I hope
  112
  that among the improvements we shall see, in addition to improvements in layout and equipment, improvements in outpatients' departments, which are rather pathetic in some hospitals.
  I hope we shall see nurses, particularly probationer nurses, being given better remuneration than they obtain now. While we have had some suggestions for raising the salaries of trained nurses we have had no suggestions yet for raising the remuneration of probationer nurses. It is true that the teaching hospitals are to be outside the regional authority, and that they are to have some measure of independence. While this may be desirable from some points of view, particularly because of their close connection with the universities, there are certain features about this which need watching. I understand that some municipal hospitals will probably become teaching hospitals, and that there will be more reluctance on the part of local authorities to hand over hospitals to become teaching hospitals under a separate board than under a regional authority. I have one criticism with regard to hospitals, namely, the provision in public hospitals for private paying patients. I know it is argued that we must give people the right to pay for privacy. But this is a legitimate argument only so long as those who desire privacy, and who have not the money to pay for it, are not denied it. Some people say that it would be purgatory to be in a long ward. It would be for me, I know, but it would also be purgatory for many more who cannot afford anything else. Therefore, I hope that in our hospitals of the future we shall see the end of the very long wards, and the provision of small wards with only four to six beds.
  The proposals regarding paying patients go much further than the provision of privacy. They allow specialists to treat and operate on private patients for fees, and I suggest that there might be a grave danger here, particularly in the teaching hospitals, where consultants will have a great deal to say as to what goes on. If we are not careful it will be much easier to enter a hospital, as it is now, as a private paying patient than through the normal channels. It has been said that a hospital will get no advantage by having a private patient. That is so, because the money that patient pays for his private room will go into the central fund, whereas the money which he pays to the

  113
  specialist who performs an operation upon him will go to the specialist. While the hospital may not gain, the specialist certainly will. These private beds are analogous, in some respects, to private practice, which is still to be continued by doctors in the public service. The doctors are to be paid a basic salary plus capitation, but, in addition, they can take any number of private patients they wish. While there is a limit to the number of patients a doctor may have on his list under the public service, there is no limit, so far as I can see, to the number of private patients which he can have in addition.
  It has been argued that this will be limited, that because everybody is covered under the public scheme, it will only operate occasionally. But it is open to abuse. There is nothing to prevent a doctor having a very large private practice in addition to his public practice. It is possible for a doctor to say to a patient, "I am very sorry, my public list is full, but I can take you on my private list." There is a maximum for a public list, but there is no maximum at all for his private list. Who will be neglected if the doctor takes on more patients that he can cope with? We all know the answer. It will not be the private fee-paying patient. This Bill also provides for doctors' assistants, but in practice the only doctor who will be able to afford an assistant will be the one who has a large private practice. Again, I am rather fearful lest the assistant will be looking after the patients on the public list, while the doctor who employs him looks after his private patients.
  These two things are, in some respects, fundamental. Why should anyone pay when everyone can get the service free? There is only one answer. It is because they will obtain, or believe they will obtain, better service by paying a fee than by using the public scheme. But it is not only those who pay we are concerned about; it is those who do not pay. Sick people are prone to a feeling of inferiority, and if the general public think that there will be a better service for those who can afford to pay for it then confidence in the State scheme will be shaken.
  This matter is really psychological. Not only must people get the best, they must also believe they are getting the best. It has been suggested that snobbery enters into these things, but there is a great deal of understandable sentiment when a very
  114
  near relative is ill. I have known people spend their life's savings in order to give private treatment to one of their relatives, believing that they were getting better service. This afternoon my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health said that if we were to have a State theatre, we should not have the same prices for all seats; but one cannot compare this health service with comfortable seats in a theatre. We cannot afford to have any secondrate seats in an operating theatre. We must see that money is not allowed to determine this, and we must see that the best is the standard.
  I come now to group practices and health centres. I believe the decision to set up group practices and health centres is one which will be of great advantage both to doctors and to patients. The general practitioner is very important, and we in the Labour Party have always said so, but if his service is to be used to the best advantage, we must give him the best equipment, which it has never been possible for him to have in his surgery when working alone. There is still a great deal to be done in research, particularly in respect of the two dreaded diseases of cancer and tuberculosis, but nevertheless, a great deal has been done in the last few years. What is serious and what is avoidable is the fact that the knowledge that has been discovered has not always been used to the full. There is still a great deal of wrong diagnosis which is not the fault of the doctor. It is due to the fact that he has not had proper equipment, that entry into hospitals for his patients has been difficult, and that consultants have been able to be called in only as a very last resort when the patient was nearly dead. I hope we are to see an end of these things through group practices and health centres. In Committee I hope we shall look very carefully at one or two things, particularly the maternity services and the school medical services, in order to see that we do not get a dual control.
  If I have enlarged on some of the defects of the Bill, it is not because I believe they are the most important parts of the Bill. The Bill is fundamentally right, but we want it to be the best possible Bill. I know that many of the defects are not due to the desire of the Minister, but to undue pressure which has been exerted, and some of them are the price which has had

  115
  to be paid for the Bill; but we on this side believe that the limit has been reached with the concessions that have been made. I think we should be doing doctors a disservice if we said that all of them are opposed to this Bill. They are not. Here I come to Leeds, which was mentioned a few minutes ago by the hon. Member for Ripon (Mr. York). In the City of Leeds, a part of which I represent, the branch of the British Medical Association has come out in support of nearly all of the proposals in the Bill, including the abolition of the sale and purchase of practices, and the public ownership of all hospitals and their organisation on a regional basis. Leeds, I believe, has been regarded as one of the black spots of the British Medical Association, which is discovering that it has more black spots than it thought it had originally. The Bill will confer great advantages on all sections of the community, and particularly on the middle classes, who have always been outside every scheme of National Health Insurance. They will feel its benefits very much indeed.
  Some people have said that this Bill deals only with ill health, and that in order to deal with the promotion of good health, we should deal with environment, cleanliness, food and housing. I think that hon. Members have received, in the past week, a very excellent publication which has been sent to them by the British Medical Association. This publication says:
  "A man needs not only a roof over his head, but a house which he can make a home for his family; not merely food to stave off hunger, but food of the right quality and quantity to give him adequate nourishment, and at prices within his reach; not merely work, but a congenial occupation suited to his individual capacity."
  That comes from a book published by the British Medical Association. I have here a slightly different kind of book which some hon. Members will recognise. In this book it is stated:
  "The nation wants food, work and homes. It wants more than that. It wants good food in plenty, useful work for all, and comfortable labour-saving homes that take full advantage of the resources of modern science and productive industry."
  I am very pleased indeed that the British Medical Association agree so much with the pamphlet on which we fought and won the General Election. This Bill is only one of the Measures which we are putting
  116
  into operation to bring about that social improvement which the British Medical Association say they desire, and which all hon. Members on this side of the House equally desire.
  7.58 p.m.
  Sir John Graham Kerr: In craving the indulgence of the House, to speak for a few minutes, I do not propose to criticise many of the innumerable points in this Bill, which have been raised in the course of the Debate. I wish to make a few remarks on a point of general importance, namely, upon that great unit of our medicine, the medical school and voluntary hospital I think everyone will agree that the whole future of any medical service depends upon the quality of the recruitment to the medical profession, and that, again, depends upon two things; first, the quality of the recruits, and secondly, the perfection of the training.
  I have had a little experience of this sort of thing. In this House I happen to be one of the representatives of two of the greatest medical schools in the country, the University of Edinburgh, in which I was a medical student, and the University of Glasgow, in which I was an active member of the medical faculty for 33 years. I was a member of the board of management, and, what is far more important, of the inner circle of the board of management, called the medical committee, of one of the greatest hospitals in the country, the Royal Infirmary of Glasgow, great in size—according to the last figures I could get, its income was £214,000 in the year, and its expenditure nearly £200,00—but great also in something that matters much more. The Royal Infirmary in Glasgow is often spoken of, with justice, as the birthplace of modern surgery.
  What are the conclusions that I have come to from my experience? First, let me go back to the question of the quality of recruits in medicine. I saw a good deal of all the different faculties in the University, and I can say, without fear of contradiction, that the best of the whole lot were the medical students. If ever there was a great movement that had to be carried through, it was the medical students who were the life and soul of it. Why did we get these brilliant recruits to medicine? No doubt some of them were attracted by

  117
  the high ideal of administering to the sick, but the ordinary young student is a practical creature, and is not swayed entirely by sentiment. I found that the great attraction to these students was the glamour of the prizes they saw before them—what seemed to them comparative wealth, and dignity, and the possibility of high honour. These young men were not the type who would be attracted by the principle of safety first, and salaries and promotion by age. It was the great possibilities of their future that brought them. If this Bill goes through in its present form, a large proportion of these brilliant young men will be wise enough to see that they should go in for some other line—for industry, for example—or, if they are so keen on medicine, they will go overseas to places where the career has the scope of which they dream. So much for the quality of the recruit.
  How are these young men trained? They have as their teachers the leaders in medical science, surgery, medicine and obstetrics That is what the university student wants. He does not want a professor who "gramophones" off the latest things from the latest textbooks; he wants the big personality that he knows is one of the leaders in his subject. That is where he gets his inspiration. How is it that the leaders in medicine and surgery are willing to give hours of their busy days to such work? No doubt in many cases they too are moved by high ideals, but there is also a very potent practical attraction. These men, who do their teaching partly in university lecture rooms but more, their clinical teaching, in the wards of the voluntary hospital, know the practical advantage that comes to them from giving their unpaid services there. It means that they get to know their clientele for later work in the profession. They know that these students, when they emerge into the world as practitioners, will tend to come back to their old teachers for consultations or operations.
  Need I say anything to drive home the truth of what I have already said about the great men who are willing to take up this task of teaching in the voluntary hospitals? I wonder if any hon. Member has ever read an account of a hospital ward in pre-Listerian days? There were none of the modern great operations of surgery performed then. There were no abdom-
  118
  inal operations, and none of the really difficult operations of today. Practically all that was done were simple things like amputation, and what was the result? Patients who underwent a mere amputation, which today would never be thought of as involving any danger at all, in those days underwent a very considerable probability of death; because the hospital wards were infested with such diseases as hospital gangrene, erysipelas, and pyæmia. I read the other day that in a single week in one ward of such a hospital there were five deaths after simple amputations as the result of pyæmia. Then Joseph Lister came on the scene. He had the intellect to see that the trouble with all these hospital diseases was something like what Pasteur had found to be the case in processes of fermentation. They were due to microbes, and he developed in that Royal Infirmary in Glasgow the antiseptic system which developed later into the aseptic surgery of today.
  I might take any number of examples but I will take a case from medicine. How many of us have read about the ravages of smallpox in the old days? How many of us have come across the quaint custom—as it seems today—that a person hiring a new servant took care to see that he or she was pockmarked and, therefore, free from danger of developing smallpox? Then along came a great individual, Jenner, and the result is that today smallpox has become very nearly non-existent. With regard to that other horrible disease, diphtheria, I remember so well when I was a boy, or even later when I was a young man, the terror it produced. If a case of diphtheria arose in a family the parents were reduced to despair. Here again there came a great individual, one who made experiments on animals. I happen to be a lover of animals and nobody prays more than I do for the day when there will he no need to experiment on these beautiful creatures any more, but that day is not yet come. In this particular case one of the great leaders of medical science developed the antitoxin method which has dragged myself and many other people back from the edge of the grave.
  The few words I have said are enough to indicate the sort of opinion that I have formed, out of experience, as to this Bill and its results. I hold that if a Government, voted into power in a period of postwar unrest and disgruntlement, were

  119
  to force the Bill through Parliament as it stands at present, they would be guilty of pitiful treachery to those who have passed, pitiful treachery to great Socialists. I do not mean my many friends who are great individualists but, who, in order to evade recognition, clothe themselves in an outer garment of Socialism. It is not to them I refer but to the real Socialists, who have given of their means for the succour of the poor and needy, and whose memorials are to be seen in the voluntary hospitals of the country—not merely the big hospitals of our great cities but those wonderful little cottage hospitals that dot the scenery of our land. The Government would be guilty, too, of a crime against the people whom they were entrusted to govern.
  8.11 p.m.
  Mr. Anthony Greenwood: Rising, with all humility and with great respect for the traditions of the House, to address you, Sir, for the first time, I would crave that indulgence which is customarily accorded to those who are what the noble Lady the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Viscountess Davidson) called "inexperienced legislators." I am reminded of what Mr. Valiant-for-truth said towards the end of "The Pilgrim's Progress":
  "Though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am."
  I regard it as a privilege to be able to speak tonight in support of this great Measure of social advancement. Criticisms of the Bill have been made in the course of the Debate, but I am sure that the Minister would not for a moment claim that this is a perfect Bill. I do not suppose there ever will be a perfect Bill. The Bill bears a great deal of evidence of compromise, compromise between the interests of the public, of local authorities, of voluntary hospitals and the medical profession. I see nothing wrong in compromise, so long as the Minister does not compromise either with his principles or with his honour. Compromise, if properly used, is constructive, and I believe that it has produced a Bill which commands general support. The Minister has added to those great qualities which we knew he possessed, the quality of adaptability, in which I am sure hon.
  120
  Members opposite would have preferred to find him lacking.
  Against that background of support, I wish to bring forward two points which I hope will not be interpreted as criticism of the Bill. The first relates to the scope of the Bill. I wish the Bill had been more a positive Health Bill than it is at the present time. It seems to concentrate not on the promotion of health, and not even upon the prevention of disease, but upon the cure of disease when it has developed. It is an unfortunate fact that very few people in this country, or perhaps in any other country, realise that they are ill until fairly late in the course of their disorder. Research carried on at the Peckham Health Centre and based upon periodic health overhauls, showed that only one man in 10 is really fit, that six people out of 10 have some disorder of which they are not aware and that three people out of 10 are definitely sick. That is a very heavy burden indeed, and I am sure that in present circumstances we cannot afford to carry it. When we remember that, even in 1936, recognised disease was estimated to cost the nation £300 million a year, it will be appreciated what an enormous burden we are carrying at the present time. I am sure that in due course we shall be forced to the conclusion that periodic health overhauls are essential to the health and wellbeing of the people of this country.
  The weakness to which I have referred is particularly noticeable about the health centres, which seem to me to be more disease centres than health centres. They are to be places to which the public will come only when a disorder is fairly far advanced and when valuable time has been wasted. They will be associated in the minds of the public at best with discomfort and at worst with actual pain and suffering. The kind of health centre I should like to see established would call for co-operation between the Minister of Education and the Minister of Health. They would be places to which the public would go for intellectual and physical relaxation and where the active promotion of health would be an important but unobtrusive part of everyday life. I very much hope that when materials and labour are more available than they are at present, the Minister of Health will consider enlarging his scheme in order to bring within it health centres of the kind to which I have referred.

  121
  The second point relates to the voluntary hospitals. Like other hon. Members I have received representations from the voluntary hospitals in my constituency. I appreciate the anxiety that they feel, but according to my interpretation of the Bill I think their anxieties are completely groundless. As we have seen this afternoon, different people can interpret the same words in different ways. It has been reassuring to find that the Minister of Health was able to give us an assurance in respect of the management committees of the voluntary hospitals. I am very glad that there will be a reasonable measure of representation of the existing management committees on the new beards of management. I hope that the house committees to which the Minister referred will contain suitable local representation and will have power to co-opt, in order to ensure a reasonable measure of continuity.
  I have given most careful consideration to the case of the voluntary hospitals. It has been said that State control will destroy the human atmosphere in the hospitals and the personal relationship between hospital and patient. That is a complete and serious misstatement of the situation. It is my contention that the human atmosphere depends entirely upon the personality of the medical and nursing profession and is in no way dependent upon the kind of ownership of the hospital. I can only feel that my assessment of human nature varies from that of the right hon. Member for South Kensington (Mr. Law).
  We have heard today what I regard as serious criticisms and reflections on the medical profession. If we carried them to their logical conclusion we should be forced to believe that doctors would do their work better if paid more money, and a surgeon would perform an operation better for 20 guineas than for five guineas. I believe, as the noble Lady the Member for Hemel Hempstead said, that medicine is a vocation. Men and women do not go into that profession in order to make money but, like scientists, teachers, and soldiers, in order to serve their country and their fellow men. I hope that that will remain the spirit of the profession for a long time to come.
  The right hon. Member for South Kensington referred to planning in terms which forced me to the conclusion that he did not altogether approve of it. I would remind him that we were given a
  122
  mandate to plan the economic and social affairs of this country. We have to appreciate that we are embarking upon a period in the history of this country when State control will be extended to a number of spheres of social activity which hon. Members opposite would no doubt prefer should remain sacrosanct. That is not going to be the case. It is essential that we should see that a spirit of humanity prevails. It is time that hon. Members opposite appreciated that we in the Labour movement are not pledged to Socialism merely because we believe that it means greater efficiency or because we believe it will present a neater administrative picture, but because we believe that only through Socialism can we give full scope to human individuality and to the rights of man. In the Bill we have an opportunity to give a practical demonstration of the beliefs which we have held for so long. I cannot imagine a better demonstrator of this than the right hon. Member who has risen to Cabinet rank with the rich emotional and intellectual life of the Welsh coalfields as his background.
  8.20 p.m.
  Sir Ralph Glyn: I believe I heard the hon Member who has just resumed his seat inform the House that it was his maiden speech. It seems hard to believe. He spoke with such assurance and with a spirit of youth that carried him along. I think, as a very old Member of the House, I may say that his speech, as a maiden speech, went very near the line of controversy, but that does not matter, because it was obvious to all hon. Members that he was so convinced of all he said, and what this House wants is sincerity and not humbug. I am sure we shall all look forward to his contributions to this House. I have no idea how old the hon. Gentleman is, but I hope he will always live to see this Parliament recognise young men who come in with new ideas and have the strength of character to say what they feel and give the impression to all who hear them that they believe all they say.
  I rise tonight with some difficulty and diffidence. I feel very intensely that on both sides of the House during the course of this Debate we have not really faced the situation which the House must face in regard to the health services of the country. We occasionally say before

  123
  business begins that we must discuss our affairs without prejudice and to the good health and wealth of the Realm, and I believe nothing is more important at the present time than a complete reorganisation of our health services. Therefore, I feel great difficulty personally in opposing the proposals of the Government on this occasion because I put my faith in what the Minister said, that on the Committee stage he would be willing—and he said it with great distinctness—to consider all the proposals made on the Committee stage and that he would try, if he thought they were workable, to bring them into the scheme in the Bill. I cannot imagine anything more disastrous than that, having produced these proposals, there should be by some mischance a long delay before putting them into force. I have been on teaching hospital governing bodies for 30 years and I know something about the feeling of the medical profession. I deprecate very much any remarks that are made which seem to indicate that doctors think only of cash. All the doctors I know undoubtedly got something far greater than mundane things. They had a call to serve their fellow men, and there are very few doctors I have met who put their service to their fellows second to their financial position.
  There are various things that I dislike very much in this Bill. Speaking generally, I believe the things I dislike are capable of moderation or of turning round a little. I have been very much fortified by the remarks of the Minister today because I believe he has honestly approached this question with a great sense of responsibility. I do not think that party or party views should be brought into a matter of this kind where we are standing at the crossroads of something which is far more serious than any party question. I shall be unpopular, I know, with others of my own party for saying that—[HON. MEMBERS: "No, you will not"]—but there are occasions—I have been in the House a very long time ℄when one must say exactly what one feels without any fear. My considered opinion is that if ever there was a case where there should be cooperation between people for the good of the country, it is in regard to the health of the people.
  My great regret is that industrial medicine and care have not been brought into
  124
  the Bill. I hope the time may come when they will be introduced. I believe, too, that the question of mental care is long overdue. I hope the Minister will accept proposals for hospitals which have medical schools, and perhaps some universities which are not at the moment engaged on the medical side, to study these questions of diseases of the mind. The war has taught us a great deal, and there has been a great advance in the study of lunacy and mental deficiency. I have had opportunities of seeing people who a few years ago would have been put aside as useless to the community but for whom great use was found in the war and who were able to do very great work. These are the sort of things which I think are of very great importance.
  Mention has been made of rheumatism, cancer and various other diseases of that kind, and I want to ask the Minister one thing which I hope he will bear in mind. One hon. Member mentioned the great help that is given by certain hospitals to those who are incurable, hospitals where they give care and attention and nursing to those who cannot be taken care of in their own homes. To my mind, they stand outside the ordinary range of hospital, but there is a very great need for extending them. I hope the Minister will, therefore, allow such religious organisations—there are many of them—which cannot be compared with the ordinary general hospital, to contract out of this scheme or to be in some other position so that they can continue to look after these people. I have known cases, and we have all known cases, of men suffering agonies from cancer and there has been no room for them in hospital and no proper means of nursing them. The family has had to sit up in relays to try to help them. That is a pitiful situation in 1946. Something has to be done, and I am not satisfied that this Bill deals with the problem. Therefore, all of us must concentrate on those things which impinge most hardly on the population of the country.
  Some time ago I was privileged to go through all the hospital and nursing systems of Sweden and I have a very high opinion of what is being done in Sweden.
  Mr. Messer: It is a State system.
  Sir R. Glyn: It is partly State. It is not altogether State. Some hon. Gentlemen today have been criticising the fact that

  125
  specialists in hospitals should have private patients. In Sweden there are several large hospitals operated by the Red Cross in which the specialists from the State hospitals function. I have been through all of them. There is an admirable service throughout Sweden to deal with what the Minister called the health centre. We do not know enough yet, and I rather think the Minister has been wise in not dotting the i's and crossing the t's of the health centre because it must vary in different parts of the country. There is no doubt that in Sweden, which is not afraid of calling things by their proper names, there has throughout the past 50 years grown up a tremendous feeling for the prevention of diseases. I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman who spoke last. It is on the prevention of disease that we must really concentrate.
  That brings me to a point I want to emphasise about the nursing services. An hon. Lady mentioned the Queen's Institute of Nurses. I have for many years known something about the work of the Queen's Institute in this country and in Scotland. There is a no more devoted body of women throughout this country than the Queen's Nurses. In the West of Scotland they have to proceed sometimes in the most appalling weather, under inadequate arrangements for comfort and transport, to get to a case. I have never known them fail in their duty.
  All this business of nursing is almost dismissed in a paragraph in the present Bill. I know the Minister could not mention everything today, but I like to think that in his concluding words he had specially in mind the question of district nursing and domiciliary work. The Queen's Institute of Nurses was established, I think, in 1887, and Florence Nightingale contributed to its formation. She was one of our greatest women, to whom this country should always pay tribute, for she did more to teach the world about the care of patients through nursing than anyone else. There are today over 8,000 of the Queen's Institute nurses. We who live in this country know them. We know how important it is that the standard of nurses should be upward, and I beg the Minister to be willing to consider the establishment of a statutory body of status and position, closely allied to the Central Medical Board, in whatever way he may think best, which will ensure that there shall be uniformity of inspection and of training of the nurses.
  126
  There is a great deficiency of nurses today, a deficiency in numbers but not in anything else. What is the cause of it? I think the cause is that they have not been sufficiently recognised for the wonderful work they do in preventing people, through their contacts, from becoming so sick that they have to go to hospital. In regard to maternity cases, they dealt with 84,000 last year—a large number—and it is an indication of their efficiency that the mortality was only one in a thousand. Remember, they deal with cases under appalling housing conditions, and if these devoted women can so help to bring children into the world with only the loss of one in a thousand under those conditions, surely it justifies the methods of training and the standards that have been set ever since 1887 by the Queen's Institute. The terms of the Bill lay down that the nursing services shall be under the local health authority of the county or the county borough. That is all right. I do not think there is anything to quarrel about in that, but it would be terrible if we removed the esprit de corps and the general standard that have now been reached after all those years, and removed the possibility of uniformity by allowing each local health training centre to be its own master as to what should be the standard. That is one of the most vital things for the health of the children before they go to school, and here is a link with the Ministry of Education and what is to be done to improve the health of the children when they are in school.
  I would like to make this suggestion: I believe a great deal more can be done than is being done, by having films and lectures in the winter evenings in village institutes and also in the schools, because half our trouble comes from ignorance—ignorance of the facts. We have listened to a remarkable speech from the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Graham Kerr)—[An HON. MEMBER: "Why was it remarkable?"] It was remarkable because few Members speak with greater knowledge, and have made a greater contribution to the medical knowledge of this country than the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities. His fear is, as are all our fears, including the Minister's, that anything should be said in this Debate which would prevent young men coming forward as medical students. We in Parliament may talk about Bills such as this, but what really matters is

  127
  that we should go on recruiting the right type of man into the medical profession. The standard which has been reached in the past has been high. I believe it is possible so to amend this Bill in Committee that when it comes to Third Reading, we can be proud of a Measure which will not only safeguard the freedom of the patient, which is all important, but will ensure that the right type of people are encouraged to take up medicine. Incidentally, I also hope something will be done to encourage the right type of people to come forward as dentists. Unless we can do something to encourage such people to practise dentistry, we shall be in an appalling condition. It is quite impossible for the ordinary person in the country district to have a denture fixed and the poor people go about mumbling for weeks because there are not sufficient dentists and mechanics. One of the greatest professions in small engineering is that of the dental engineer. People do not realise what tolerance has to be reached. This may be something which we can teach disabled Servicemen. If the Minister of Labour would consider it, I believe there is great scope for men who have no legs or are otherwise incapacitated for other work.
  I am very much concerned about what may happen in the interim period between now and the time when the Bill becomes an Act. I must say in all fairness to the Minister that I believe the teaching hospital with which I am associated will be able to go ahead under better conditions than we have ever had. I hope that between now and the Committee stage, the Minister will be able to give an assurance to everyone in the country that through some machinery of a regional character endowments which have been given to specific hospitals will be earmarked if possible for those hospitals. Everyone's conscience would be happier if that were done. There must be more links between the teaching hospitals and the general hospitals to group them together. More must be done to evacuate beds so that more patients can go into hospital for surgical treatment. Far more must be done in regard to ambulance services. I do not agree that it is necessary to carry out major operations in a cottage hospital. I think that is nonsense. The war has taught us that, with penicillin, patients can he transferred quite safely. A person
  128
  who has been seriously injured on the road can be taken to a hospital where he can get the best attention and will not take up a bed in a cottage hospital which should not be occupied for that purpose. The reverse is equally important—a patient could be taken out of a general hospital in order to free that bed for someone waiting for it.
  The hospital with which I am connected has enjoyed what we describe as a "windfall" because it is very near this building and very near the Strand and traffic in the Strand is no respecter of persons. Very often people have been brought in who are well able to pay for treatment and who have left £20,000, £5,000 or £1,000 to the hospital. That, I believe, is because of the accident of location and also because there is a great density of pedestrian traffic crossing the Strand, greatly to the advantage of this hospital. But it is the spirit of giving which matters. We must see that good treatment in a hospital is not regarded as obtainable by simply pushing a bell and making complaints.
  We want people to be grateful for the devoted service of nurses and the rest in hospitals. We want people to be cooperators in hospital, because a tiresome bunch of patients can do a lot to upset other patients. There has to be instilled into the whole thing the spirit of working together. Therefore, I feel it is very difficult to vote against the proposals put forward by the Minister. I feel it is difficult, because I believe the Minister seeks the cooperation of all those who are interested in the health of the country. I do not think that that cooperation should be refused.
  There are certain principles in which I believe, and which I shall not forgo. Some of these principles are rather bumped and bruised by some of the proposals of the Minister, but I daresay that in the Committee stage he will be able to consider the constructive suggestions made. Irrespective of where we sit in this House, we must realise that we shall face five years of great difficulty in which, on account of the effects of the war and the shortage of labour and materials, we shall not be able to erect the hospitals which people expect. We have got to tell our constituents that many of the things contained in this Bill to which they look forward cannot come quickly. We therefore have to concen-

  129
  trate, I suggest, on the nursing services which I have tried to describe. I beg the Minister to do what he can to maintain that standard and to keep the Queen's Institute as the authority. I also believe that we must concentrate on the prevention of disease in this period, and, as the Minister said, do all we can for maternity and child welfare and for children in schools. In due course, let us hope we shall achieve for the adults of this country a medical service carried out, not by ignorant people, not by bureaucrats, but by those best competent to judge. I hope that the Minister will agree with what was said by an hon. Member on the other side of the House, that all regulations should be laid in this House, so that we can all feel we have a hand in what will be a most important thing in the next few years, not to condemn action by an individual but to cooperate with that individual for the good of the country.
  8.43 p.m.
  Dr. Morgan: I am indeed proud to take part in this Debate. I have lived for this day for the last 30 years. I have heard two great speeches delivered here today, one by that charming professorial tutor who first enlightened me in the delightful vistas of zoological learning, when, as a small boy, a Socialist from the tropics, I arrived penniless, friendless and alone in the great city of Glasgow. I went to the University, and for my first two months I sat entranced at the feet of a very great man, who gave me all the enthusiasm and all the learning and all the keenness for scientific interpretation of clinical signs in the human body which I have had throughout my life. He was a delightful tutor, a very gracious helper, and all through life, although we have differed politically, he has always been perfectly generous towards my scientific outlook.
  This is not my ideal Health Bill, but I must say that I like it very much. The Minister is to be congratulated on producing the finest Health Bill that could possibly be introduced as a compromise under present conditions. I have been able to hear the discussions in the British Medical Association, to hear them in the councils of the T.U.C., of the Socialist Medical Association and of the Labour Party upstairs, and I realise that in introducing this fine administrative structure
  130
  for carrying out the health scheme of the future, the Minister has done as fine a piece of compromise health work as is possible in this country at the present time.
  Reference has been made to Henry VIII taking over the monasteries. I only wish to remind the Minister that Henry VIII also was of Welsh descent. Although the Minister is taking over the hospitals for the specific purpose of helping the public, Henry VIII took over the monasteries in order to help his parasitical followers. The medical profession has a history. I love my profession; make no mistake about that. Today when someone charged my profession with certain things I jumped up at once and said they were not true. No man worth his salt, trained in true medicine, can but feel deeply when his profession is involved. I see nothing in this Bill which will disturb the great relationship between the profession and the public and the profession and the individual patient about which some of my colleagues talked a lot. The medical profession have asked for many things which are granted in this Bill. They nave asked for national coordination and control of research. That has been granted in the Bill. Really, when I hear some of my medical colleagues speak about the petty criticisms they have of the Bill, I begin to realise that some of my profession are so keen about their work, their livelihood and economic interests that they want to see the problem not only through a telescope, but through a microscope. They want porridge, golden syrup and all the necessary accessories put before them, before they can make a decision at any time.
  I like very much the coordination and unification of the hospital system. I have always thought the difference made between entry into one hospital and entry into another a tragic thing, leading to puzzling confusion and mistreatment. I refer to the discrimination between the finances, and between the consultant's skill and technique, in one institution as against another. I think the unification of the hospitals on regional lines is one of the finest things we could have in this country. If that were the only thing done by this Bill, I would accept it. But in addition to that it does many other things. I think everything in this Bill will depend on the Minister's regulations. I hope when the Minister is making his regulations, he will make them as elastic, fluid and workable as he can, so as to

  131
  secure the good will of the health workers of the country. I refer not only to the doctors, but the dentists, pharmacists, nurses and everyone else in the health institutions.
  Reference has been made to the shortage of nurses and the wastage in nursing. The hon. Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) gave his opinion on why there is a shortage of nurses. He said he did not think the work of nurses was sufficiently recognised. There may be a case there, but I do not think that is the real reason. The shortage of nurses exists because, in our present institutions, both local authority and voluntary, the conditions of pay and work of the nurses until recently have been a thorough disgrace.
  There has never been the opportunity in some institutions, which are voluntary institutions, for the staff to be allowed to join their own trade union; in fact, every possible obstacle has been placed in their way, by advice from the top, to prevent them joining their trade union in order that they might make organisational representations rather than personal vindication of their conduct. I could give the House some very good examples of the type of treatment which was involved. I hope the Minister, in framing his regulations, will see that the schemes—regional, central, local authority and G.P. practices—will allow both the professional side and the workers' side to have joint consultation and negotiating committees at all levels. If he does that, the feeling of anxiety which has been complained of will be removed.
  Reference has been made from the Front Opposition Bench to the case of a woman about to be delivered of a baby, who if she stayed at home, would be under one authority, if she went to an ante-natal clinic would come under another authority, and, if she had to go to hospital, would come under still another authority. Well, what happens now? If she stays at home, is she not under one doctor, employed by one authority or insurance committee? If she goes to an ante-natal clinic, is she not under a different authority, and, when taken to hospital, whether a local authority or voluntary hospital, is she not under a different authority again? Why all this petty partisan criticism in a great
  132
  scheme of this kind concerning the health of the country? I hope that this matter of the difficulties between the different authorities will be resolved and that there will be a proper junction between all of them under the regulations which the Minister will make so that this scheme will be as smooth and perfect as possible.
  I have always been interested in the unification of hospitals and in the national ownership of hospitals, but I realise that there are certain hospitals, especially local ones, with special claims. The Quakers' Hospital at York has a special aspect, a meditative, contemplative aspect which is very valuable in certain mental cases. When a hospital of a special kind is taken over, I presume that the Minister, as I feel sure will be the case, will not interfere with the unorthodox type of medical treatment which is given, and which is different from that given in other types of hospitals. It is essential that these hospitals should be treated as special cases, and allowed to carry on the very special form of treatment which they give. I am liberal-minded enough to say that these hospitals with a special outlook should be treated in a special way. I hear that the Royal Masonic Hospital is prepared to turn itself into a nursing home, rather than be included in this scheme. I do not know if that is correct or not, but I do say that these hospitals have a special outlook and need special care. The Manor House Hospital, with which I am associated, which is a voluntary hospital supported by the country people, is an example. I am not asking that none of these hospitals should be included in the scheme. All I am asking is that their special peculiarities should receive special consideration from the Minister.
  Take the case of the hospital for the dying in Hackney, where cancerous cases go just to die. I have seen nothing so pathetic as these patients going in there in their last moments to spend their last days in pain and suffering in spite of morphia. They are thinking more of leaving the world and going into eternity than of saving their skins. I feel sure that the Minister should make regulations in order that the special aspect of these hospitals should not be lost in the Bill. That is the only idea which I think might receive some special consideration in the course of this Bill. I am sorry that industrial medicine is out of the Bill.

  133
  I presume that Service hospitals are not to be taken over and are to be left in the hands of the three Services. There may be reasons for this, such as military discipline and that hospitals in Service areas cannot be taken over and run as civilian hospitals. What is to happen to Government hospitals like those of the Ministry of Pensions? Are they to be taken over and included in the scheme or are they to be left in the hands of the Departments concerned and, if so, why? I am convinced that a claimant for a pension should go into a hospital where he can get an independent opinion and not to one under the Department concerned with granting his pension I am not saying that the professional opinion given in any of these hospitals is not up to standard. I have never seen any false certificates. I have never given a wrong certificate in my life and neither has any one of my colleagues that I know about. There may be some black sheep here and there, as there are among lawyers. If the Ministry of Pensions hospitals are to be left out, the Minister will have to give some excuse for that being done. Time and time again pensioners have come to me and told me that they thought they were being asked to enter such hospitals in order that they might be done out of their pensions. That aspect may be wrong, but it exists, and I ask the Minister to give some consideration to it.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Kensington (Mr. Law) made a very Jeremiah speech this afternoon. He really did not know his case and I am sorry, as a medico, to have to say so. I do not know whether he is a lawyer or not, but he certainly did not know his case. For example, he spoke of the views of the Royal Colleges as if he were dealing with the pronouncements of a Papal Encyclical. The Royal Colleges are self-elected bodies and chartered, it is true, but they have no democratic backing. They are not legal, and although they give diplomas after examination, they really have no standing. They are not universities. But I am not challenging their professional ability in any way.
  I have never attempted to dictate policy. If my advice has not been taken I have said, "Well. that is my advice." The limitation of the professional expert is well known. He can see a microscopic point when he cannot always see the complete picture. To state that opinions
  134
  given by men with big names should be treated as if they were beyond criticism, is ridiculous.
  I could say a lot on this Bill, and I only wish I had more time. But I wish to mention two things. First is the question of the laboratory, blood transfusion and research services which the Minister is keeping in the hands of his own Ministry. I want to see the democratisation of the organisation which he sets up for these services. The research service is kept in the hands of a very small clique under the direction of the Privy Council. I want it to be democratised, to include the local hospitals and the research which is done by G.Ps. The same remark applies to blood transfusion and laboratory services. They should be democratised from the top to the bottom. My other point is with regard to ambulance services. In this respect there is a great blot on the Bill. I know the Minister has been approached in this matter and I know he has dealt with it very sympathetically. I agree that the local authorities have been very generous in their attitude to this Bill, and have agreed to give up their hospitals, but the Minister has hesitated to ask them to give up their ambulance services. I ask him to consider afresh the question of ambulance services from the regional point of view. In this Bill the local authorities are the bodies likely to have the control of setting up ambulance services. Not only is there tear of discrimination between different areas, but there is in this Bill power for local authorities to farm out by contract the ambulance services to private contractors who, so far as we know, may supply the ambulance services without any steps being taken to safeguard the terms of employment and conditions of work of those employed by the contractors. It would be a wise step to consider the advisability of allowing the ambulance services to be run, if possible, on regional rather than on local authority lines.
  I began by paying tribute to my profession. I love my profession. I know many of its members are frightened at the prospect of being made State servants, and they have a case. So far, as run by the present system of society, there has been no governmental medical service which has been a success. I shudder when I think of the Colonial medical ser-

  135
  vices of which I know; I tremble when I think of the prison medical services and pensions services. I conceive future medical services on entirely different lines. I believe that with democratic regulations, with consultative committees, a good Minister, good administration and a good department, we in this great pioneer country in social welfare could build on the lines which the Minister has presented in this Bill, a fine health service which would be an example to the world, which would redound to our credit down the ages, and give hope to this civilisation of which Great Britain is at the pinnacle. It is a delight to me to be able to support this Bill. I hope the few comments I have made, will, at any rate, receive consideration later on.
  9.5 P.m.
  Mr. Emrys Roberts: I want to deal with a particular aspect of this Bill—which I, with my colleagues, warmly welcome—namely, the provision of consultant services in the rural areas. The aim of any comprehensive Measure of this description is that all parts of the country shall be effectively served by efficient hospitals, properly staffed and adequately equipped. They should be properly staffed by consultants readily available in sufficient numbers, and with sufficient skill, to attend to the people who need them. In that respect the rural areas in particular have suffered in the years gone by. I would like to say a special word for North Wales, which is mainly a rural area. In the three counties of Merioneth, Caernarvon and Anglesey, with a population of 200,000, I believe the minimum number of beds for an efficient service is 2,000, one for every 100 of the population. Yet I doubt if at the moment there are 500 beds in that area. The result is that patients are waiting for from six to nine months for admission to hospital. People who should be treated as in-patients are being treated as out-patients. In the whole of Merionethshire there is not a single fever hospital, and people have died on the way to a fever hospital which was a considerable distance away. That is a disgrace in a civilised community. There are some consultants resident in the area. but others have to be drawn from Liverpool and Manchester, a comparatively long distance away.
  136
  It is an area where much of the housing is bad, where there has been ill nourishment as a result of unemployment before the war and where the slate industry accounts for a high rate of respiratory and rheumatic diseases. Incidentally, I regret that industrial diseases and services are not included in this Bill. I am anxious that this bad state of affairs should come to an end, and I see the possibilities of it in this Bill. But that will depend upon its administration. Much of this Bill is left to regulations. I hope the Minister has not yet decided how he will constitute his regional hospital boards. I want to make this point now in case I do not get another opportunity. If we tie up the rural areas with the great industrial centres too much we shall not get an efficient medical service in the rural areas. In regard to North Wales, in particular, if we link it up with the great industrial centres of the North West I do not see the possibility of an adequate, self-served area and medical unit being developed. We have a Welsh National School of Medicine. I ask the Minister when he comes to draw up his regions to treat the whole of Wales as one region. Let us have a transitional period, by all means, during which we can draw on the services of surgeons outside, from Liverpool or elsewhere. But I ask the Minister to consider with the greatest concern the provision of a full consultant service for this area, which has been so badly neglected in the past.
  There is the possibility in this Bill, if it is properly administered, of the poorest family—and I hope it is only a short space of time before poverty is banished from this realm—living in the most remote hillside farm or in the most isolated hamlet, being able, with swift ambulances at their disposal, to call for the finest skill which highly trained surgeons can give, and being given the best treatment that modern hospitals can give, without fear of the cost in money.
  9.11 p.m.
  Mr. Messer: I must confess to a feeling of grave disappointment in regard to this Debate, because I had imagined that we were going to get some opposition to the Bill. There has not been any opposition. There has not been any constructive criticism, apart from what has come from this side, and I hope that the Minister will regard whatever criticism does come from

  137
  this side as being intended to be helpful. I think that it is only right that those of us who have very definite views on what we believe to be the most important social service should say quite frankly what is in our minds, and I propose to do that tonight.
  One thing that the Minister has done is to bring order out of what really was chaos. Nobody can say that there was anything like system in these general health services My own view of the Bill is that it is not a health service Bill; it is a medical service Bill. A health service can, broadly speaking, be divided into three parts: the preventive health service, the curative and remedial service and—this is not touched on in the Bill—after-care and rehabilitation. A man or a woman who is sick is not just a case—he is a citizen, a human being, and it is not enough to have a health or medical service which is merely going to cure him of a particular complaint. There are many types of complaint which leave the patient quite unable to go back to the job he used to do and it is necessary for him to have some measure of rehabilitation to enable him to become a wage earner and a self-respecting citizen.
  Those are the three aspects, and I must confess that the preventive service, the first section, is not sufficiently emphasised in the Bill. What will happen is that the local authority, the county and the county borough will still have charge of that service. It is my view that there would be much less need of hospital beds if there were much more concentration on sanitation, land drainage, sewerage, and services of that description. I believe that it is far wiser to prevent a patient becoming a patient than to cure him afterwards. I will not spend too much time on that aspect of the matter because everybody must admit that the curative service at the present time is responsible for a lot of effort which is not shown in the results achieved.
  Let us take the general practitioner service. The panel system was an attempt to bring within the reach of every working man the opportunity of treatment without his having to put his hand in his pocket and pay for it at the time he was ill. But the service is very unsatisfactory, not because the doctor is lacking in any essential qualifications, not because the doctor is inefficient or less human than
  138
  anybody else, but because of the nature of the organisation or, rather, the lack of organisation of the service. It does not enable the man to make the contribution that is necessary. What usually happens is that a doctor sets up in practice or buys a practice centred in just an ordinary villa residence, in which one large room is the waiting room and a smaller room is the consulting room. There is no opportunity for a full diagnosis or examination to disclose all that should be discovered. It is no exaggeration to say that there are in our hospitals at the present time patients who would not have been there had there been the opportunity for that full diagnosis.
  There is the man who has had pleurisy and has been under the doctor for weeks and months until the general practitioner himself, dissatisfied because he cannot discover the cause of the condition, which was just that of pleurisy when he started to try to cure it, sends his patient to the tuberculosis officer. That officer has got what the general practitioner has not—the facilities for a correct examination. He is able to test by X-ray and to disclose the tuberculosis from which the patient is suffering. Then the patient goes to a sanatorium. Incidentally, at the present time there are somewhere in the neighbourhood of 4,000 people waiting to go into T.B. beds. That is because there is lack of accommodation and lack of staff. It is because we have not got the nursing staffs, nor have we the domestic staffs, and it is not possible to attract them because they are not being attracted in the right way. There are people who have had to undergo operative treatment for tuberculosis, pneumectomy, and all the cures for tuberculosis that could have been avoided had there been the general practitioner service to meet the needs of the people. The opposition to this Bill surely does not agree that that sort of thing ought to continue. Surely, it cannot be considered right that one is entitled to be ill only at certain hours of the day because the doctor says on his brass plate "10–11.30" in the morning and "6–7.30" in the evening. Nobody can suggest for one moment that the general practitioner service, with that large number of people waiting to go in to see the doctor, is the right form of organisation Moreover, it is entirely isolated from and unconnected with every other form of service.

  139
  The general practitioner service has nothing to do with the hospitals.
  We come to the hospitals. There has been talk of there being two systems in this country, the voluntary hospital system and the municipal hospital system. We have not anything of the sort. There is no hospital system in this country. The voluntary hospitals are individual, separate, independent units. There is not any coordination. There has been some slight improvement since Lord Nuffield took an interest and did something to bring in a little organisation, but still the hospitals are all individual, independent units. It is not true when we refer to the municipal hospitals, because the standard up and down the country is widely varied. You can go to Lancashire, which is not too bad, and to other parts of the country where there simply is no hospitalisation at all, where the only sort of hospital which can be found is the old infirmary. In East Anglia from Cambridge up to the coast, after you leave Cambridge, what hospitals do you find? There has not been any national organisation or any national standard about the hospital services. What the Minister has done is to bring some order out of that chaotic condition. Regarding the environmental services, he has attempted to bring that in line, but I am not sure that he has done it in the way that I would have done it if I had had my way.
  There are three essentials for a successful and popular health service. The first is that it is comprehensive, including everybody and every aspect of the health service. This Bill still keeps certain aspects of the service separate. It is not comprehensive in its control and direction. It is not unified, and in my view it is not democratic. To be democratic, I agree with the Minister, is not a question of counting heads; you have to be as near to the people as you can. The right hon. Gentleman who opened for the Opposition quoted a speech I made in this House some time ago. I said something then which I still believe to be true. Broadly speaking, there are two types of social services. The first is the mechanistic socialist services; the social services which affect people in a mass and not so much as individuals. It does not matter very much who it is that administers those services. It does
  140
  not matter much how it is done, providing it is done. If you have an abundance of pure water, it does not matter who is responsible for its distribution. If you have an abundance of cheap electricity, gas, and so on, all these things can be done remote from the people as a whole. Providing they are done cheaply and you can ensure efficiency, it does not matter very much who does them.
  The second type of social service is the human social service which affects the individual. In that type of social service are education and health. These are important not merely because of what is done, but because of the way in which it is done. They are important because you can get mechanical efficiency which still does not do all that is required. Anyone who walks the hospital wards knows quite well that the atmosphere of the hospital is as important as the cleverness of the doctor. I am not suggesting that in State hospitals we cannot get a good spirit, but what I do say is that the patients themselves should be in close individual contact with those who administer to ensure that the spirit shall be felt in the whole of the administration. I could not quite agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Dr. Morgan) said. I know that hospitals, like schools, have individuality. You can have an organisation like the London County Council, which in my view is over centralised, where you see so many hospitals so much alike. Their uniformity is not a good thing. But you can have hospitals under another type of control, which provides local colour and borrows something from the place where they happen to be.
  It is necessary in work of this description that the human aspect of it should be considered. What the Minister has done is to say: "I am the final arbitrator in deciding who shall man every stage of administration." The National Health Service Council will be the advisory and planning body, and I think that is quite all right. I think that for him to choose the people who are to advise him is the right thing, but when we get to the lower level of the regional board, surely there is something to be said for it being a representative body. Why this loss of faith in the elective principle? Why lose faith in what we believe to be democracy? Why should the regional body be a purely appointed body? I do not know how the

  141
  Minister is going to decide, from the names which are submitted to him, who are the best persons for the job. Under the Bill, he is going to consult organisations. What organisations? If he consults the organisations which represent the local authorities, will he consult the County Councils Association? That is an overwhelmingly Tory body, and they may not nominate me. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes, they would."] The possibility is that they would, because I have many friends among hon. Members on the other side, who have been able to overcome their political scruples when they have recognised real quality. How is the Minister going to determine, when the names are submitted to him, that they are not merely the names of popular members of an organisation, but the names of people who have some knowledge of the job? How is he going to decide that? [An HON.MEMBER: "How is the public to know?"] The public, in the final analysis, have a certain amount of horse sense in the people they choose. That is why I am here. When the public elect a local authority and it throws up certain failures, they do not get re-elected. At any rate, that is the responsibility of the public. On the elective principle, the patient has some check on administration, whereas accountability, under this Bill, is only to the Minister and Parliament through the Minister. I know that the Minister was democratically elected a Member of this House, but the public did not elect him as Minister of Health. They did not say: "What experience have you had in health administration?" I want to come to what I regard as a rather important aspect of this service.
  Mr. Bevan: Before the hon. Member leaves that point in his most interesting speech, I must say that it leaves the whole thing in the air. His speech is too abstract. How does he propose to apply the elective principle for regional purposes?
  Mr. Messer: If my right hon. Friend wants to know, I will tell him. I see no reason why you should not have your planning body appointed by the Minister and if he will take cognisance of the reports of Gray and Topping and the Nuffield Trust, the information at his disposal would give him what is really required, and which does not exist now.
  142
  That is the catchment area for health purposes. The lines of demarcation of local authorities bear no relation to the needs of health. Although I know what the Labour Party policy is in regard to this matter I never have agreed with it, because I have always believed in the regional principle. Take the county councils and the county boroughs. There is nothing mystic or magic in the name of a county borough or a county council. Can it be said, therefore, that a county council like the West Riding County Council, which covers something in the neighbourhood of 1,600,000 acres, can be compared with the Rutland County Council which, incidentally, can raise £450 from a penny rate? Canterbury, which is a county borough, has got a population of 18,000, less than one of the wards of the town in which I live. It is clear that unless the Government are going to do what should have been done long ago. namely, reform local government, they must decide that there is a natural area for certain services and organise for it.
  The Minister's Advisory Committee would plan these catchment areas, and when that is done there should be an elected body. The one weakness in my view is that he has separated this service from the other services with which it was connected and made it completely an ad hoc service. I am not sure that that is a good thing. When these catchment areas have been decided the Minister can have elected a governing body like the old school boards prior to 1902. That special health body within a region could appoint the regional body plus the necessary professional representation. That is where we would have got the elective principle, and it would have been possible. If that were not possible then the Labour Party held a conference to no purpose. Labour policy has been declared very plainly in regard to this matter, and I would like to quote this from it:

  LABOUR'S PROGRAMME.
  The Labour Party is determined that history shall not repeat itself. The Blackpool Conference has decided that nothing less than the proposals of the White Paper must form the basis for a comprehensive National Health Service, and that no scheme is acceptable which does not accept full public accountability for expenditure from public funds; give to Local Authorities control over municipal hospitals and medical services on statutory Health Councils and Committees."
  These statutory Health Councils and Committees would obviously be elected bodies.
  "End the National Health Insurance 'panel' system, with its one standard of service for the poor and another for the rich; give Local Authorities power of initiation and control of health centres."
  If hon. Members want to know, that is a quotation taken from a paper called "The Tribune" dated 29th June, 1945."
  Mr. Bevan:As the hon. Gentleman has just eloquently denounced the local authority area as the proper catchment area for hospital purposes, does he suggest that the Health Bill should have been postponed until the reorganisation of the whole of local government into regional areas?
  Mr. Messer:No, I do not suggest that but what I do suggest is the Advisory Committee to plan catchment areas and ad hoc elected bodies. But the Minister, in any event, has an ad hoc body. The difference between his body and mine is that his is not elected, and mine is. They are not even to be allowed to elect their chairman. The chairman can be appointed. I do not think that is the correct idea of democracy.
  Now let me come to what I believe to be weaknesses. I have always believed in the necessity for continuity in health services. What has happened in the past, and what is happening now, is quite wrong. A woman, when she is to have a baby, goes to the maternity and child welfare clinic of the urban district or municipal borough, but that authority has no power whatever to ensure that she should have a hospital bed. It may be a difficult case, in which event arrangements may be made for her to be admitted to the hospital. The Minister improves on that because he says that a specialist can now examine the woman before she goes to hospital. But in view of the fact that the admitting authority has no authority to examine ante-natal cases, I do not know that she will be assured of that bed. After she has gone to hospital, and has had her treatment, she goes back, after the birth of the baby, and again comes under the local authority. When the child gets old enough to go to school it comes under the school medical service.
  Here, may I digress for a moment to say that this Bill does not do enough in
  144
  regard to the school medical service? It still leaves the school medical service to he school authority. At the present time—and I say this with a due sense of responsibility—there are literally thousands of children in the country who ire educable yet who are getting no education because of their physical condition. There is need for hospital schools. In some places there are such schools, where beds are given over to teachers as well is to doctors. There is bedside instruction. I am not referring to mental defectives, or physical cripples. I am referring o tuberculosis sanatoria, where children remain for a long time. There is great need for linking up the educational and health organisations. Because you get an ad hoc authority you separate it, and I want to know how we are to get over that difficulty.
  Let me proceed with this variety of treatments. After the child has left school, where it had been under the so-called school medical service, it goes to work, and the Bill is sadly lacking in not providing proper medical service for the child then. We know that there are factories and workshops which have sections devoted to medical services, where cuts, wounds and bruises are dressed, but what is wanted is a medical service which will ensure that the workers are working under healthy conditions. We want a service which will take cognisance of the fact that a worker is coming back from an illness, and which will ensure that he is not working under too great a strain. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale said, to those of us who are interested in this point that time has no meaning. I am sufficiently conscious of the infliction I am imposing on the House not to develop my argument at greater length.

  I hope we shall see this Bill changed in the process of time so that it will do the three things that I regard as essential —make it democratic, make it comprehensive, and make it unified. The Bill brings hope to many of those who at the present time are hopeless; merely because we are making a health service gives them the hope which has been needed for so long. Notwithstanding my criticism I cannot do anything but admit that the Bill makes a very big step forward. It gives to men and women the right to a hospital bed, a thing they have never had before. I have never been able to under-

  145
  stand why it should be said by law that every child is entitled to a place at school and yet should not be said that every man and woman, when ill, is entitled to a place in bed in a hospital. This Bill does that. The Bill certainly widens the range of opportunity for the people, and to that extent I give it my blessing, with the qualification that it could be better. I hope that by the time its final stages are reached it will be better.
  9.42 p.m.
  Sir Henry Morris-Jones (Denbigh):I listened with interest to the remarks of the hon. Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer), who has for many years taken a great interest in public health and in hospitals, and up to the very last sentences of his speech I felt that, judging by the general tone of his remarks, he would support the Amendment from this side of the House. I want to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health on his speech and on the way in which he presented the Bill. It must have called for no small effort on the part of himself and his advisers to bring before the House a Bill of this kind. The right hon. Gentleman dealt with the subject in the masterly and clear way that we would expect of him. Having said that, I want to say at once that, to those who believe in nationalisation, this is a good Bill. It is the nationalisation of the health service at one short remove. The Minister is going the whole hog. He is undertaking changes on lines which are unfamiliar. That is the effect of nationalisation. There is no experimental, evolutionary process. One is irrevocably committed to ascertain course. The Bill is a good one to those who believe in nationalisation, but that can hardly commend it to hon. Members on this side of the House. I believe that no industry, and certainly no profession, can be improved by nationalisation. I am sure that to begin to nationalise the Health Service is to enter on very thorny and difficult ground.
  I am sorry the right hon. Gentleman did not, after all, have consultations with the various bodies involved in the Bill, because, according to the dictionary meaning of the word "consultation"—one does not need to explain the dictionary meaning to the right hon. Gentleman, who is such a master of vocabulary—he had no consultation with any
  146
  body interested in the Measure. The House has never objected to consultation. I do not advocate bringing before the House a cut and dried scheme agreed beforehand, but the House of Commons has never objected to consultations carried to a degree that established a fair measure of agreement.
  Mr. Bevan:The hon. Member is quite wrong. He is imagining that practices which arose during the Coalition years, were the practices which existed previously. The fact is that a Coalition Government does carry out a much greater degree of consultation than a Party Government, but I have known Bills which have had to be withdrawn, because consultation had taken place.
  Sir H. Morris-Jones:I am quite sure that a Bill of this description, touching so many interests in this country and the life of the people at so many points, would not have suffered from consultation with those who are responsible for carrying it out. In fact this is not a National Health Bill at all, but might not inappropriately be called "national ill health" or "national disease service" Bill, in the sense that it deals with ill health and sickness, and not with their prevention. The emphasis in the Bill is on disease. By a series of preventive measures in the realms of public health, housing, and sanitation over different areas, the Minister of Health might have been able to survey the field and bring to this House a Measure which would have laid emphasis not upon curing but upon preventing illness. The right hon. Gentleman has not done that. After all, this country has a very great record with regard to the prevention of illness, and I do not hesitate to say that Liberal Administrations in the past had a very considerable share in some of the legislation which has prevented and diminished the incidence of sickness in this country. I will not give figures in detail but the House may recall that the death rate has been reduced from 22.7 per thousand in 1875 to 11.9 in 1944, the infant mortality rate from 150 per thousand 50 years ago to 45 per thousand today, and deaths from typhus fever from 5,000 a year to 54. Smallpox is scarcely known at all at the present time, although I warn the Minister that by abolishing compulsory vaccination he will bring it back again before very long. I am very surprised that the responsible advisers of

  147
  his Department should have listened to a lot of faddists on this matter, for the protection of the health of the people is the most vital thing involved. I think the right hon. Gentleman has taken rather a serious step in abolishing compulsory vaccination.
  As has been pointed out, this Bill, although comprehensive, leaves very wide gaps in services of health. There will be a large number of health services that will not come under the Bill at all, among them the school medical service, and services under the Ministry of Labour, the Home Office, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Pensions and the Board of Trade. There are medical services in practically every Department of the State. The Ministry of Supply have a medical service. All these people, from top to bottom, will be coming compulsorily under the Bill and will have to pay. A large number of them will not come under the doctors provided by the Bill. That is a serious gap, in the sense that there will not be continuation of treatment and inspection. Illness cannot be divorced altogether from environment and the home, but, under the State scheme, the family doctor will not be treating these people.
  Legislation cannot create a good medical service. You cannot cure a man by a committee or a board. It has to be done by an individual. The Willink plan had the merit that it did, at all events, satisfy the people who were to undertake the work. That was very important The present Minister should have used the machinery in existence without too great a disturbance, and should have left it to the efflux of time to amend and correct a defect which would be found in his scheme. The right hon. Gentleman has chosen to make a clean cut. Nobody will deny that a large number of voluntary, and even of municipal, hospitals are inefficient and ill-equipped, but the voluntary hospitals have performed magnificent service, as the right hon. Gentleman admitted. They have been the source and the stimulus of every advance in medicine for generations. For centuries of history, in the evolution of medicine, their governing staff and medical staff have brought about reforms in an atmosphere of freedom. They have brought their profession to a fine art, till Anglo-Saxon medicine has been established in the very forefront of the medical art throughout the world. I am afraid that central guidance
  148
  under the scheme will curtail local interests and initiative. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will allow as much autonomy as possible to the voluntary hospitals, both in finance and in government. I am terribly afraid that there will be rigid standards of service allowing no originality, that officialdom will curtail the movement and the scope of service, and also the enterprise and enthusiasm which are needed and will clamp down upon the spirit of service in such a way as to take the whole life out of it. That is what I fear more than anything.
  I come now to a very important part of the Bill, the general practitioners service. It is very unfortunate that the terms of service are not incorporated in the Bill. It is hardly fair to the House, in relation to a Measure so large as this, that the large body of people concerned know nothing at all at present of the terms of service which they will have to render under the Bill. I do not think it is treating the House fairly. What medical men are more afraid of even than the terms of service is the loss of their freedom. The art and practice of medicine can only survive in an atmosphere of freedom. Initiative and enterprise in medicine have made a great contribution to the world.
  The doctor's responsibility is to his patient and not to the State. In the way doctors have been criticised, hon. Gentlemen opposite seem to think that the medical man has no right of his own at all. The position of a medical man is like that of any other individual in this country. He has three rights or duties. First, he must bow to the majority of this House. Secondly, he has the right as an expert to give technical advice on all matters on which he is in a position to be consulted. Thirdly, he has the same right as the miner, the docker, the agricultural labourer and everyone else in the country to practise his livelihood and to protect the livelihood of his family. It is a very great mistake to think that all medical men have gone into the profession as a pure vocation like clergymen. Large numbers have gone into the profession for economic reasons. They have chosen medicine as a profession for economic reasons just as they might have chosen any other profession, and we cannot treat them as a body of people who are surrendering all their rights without any regard to terms of service. Fifty thousand doctors have chosen

  149
  this profession for economic reasons, to make an economic livelihood in a sphere in which they think they can render service to the people and to the State, and to satisfy their aspirations to do the work they think they are capable of doing. From that point of view, they have every right to be consulted at every stage of this Bill and not to have reflections passed on their patriotism.
  I conclude by saying that the Minister of Health could have done as much for the state of health of this country by providing houses for the people as by introducing this Bill. There are not at the moment the doctors to work the Bill, nor have we the hospitals. In New Zealand doctors are grossly overworked and it takes six weeks to make an appointment with the doctor under the State scheme, and that country is over-populated with medical men and hospitals compared with this country. This Bill could easily be postponed until there is a better foundation for carrying it out. The hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food joined the anti-queue party before she came into office. I do not think she has done much to reduce queues. I can promise her that when these health centres come, she will have plenty of queues.
  It being Ten, o'Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

  E.N.S.A. EXPENDITURE
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. R. J. Taylor.]
  10 0 p.m.
  Mr. Walkden (Doncaster):The hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford (Wing-Commander Millington) was told by my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council on 12th March that the total expenditure on E.N.S.A. during the present financial year was to be reduced to £3,500,000 as compared with £4,500,000 spent in the preceding 12 months. The Lord President went on to say:
  "It is considered that the reduction of expenditure for the 12 months ending August next by £1,000,000 as compared with the previous year can be regarded as satisfactory."
  150
  Now at the date when that reply was given, I ventured to ask my right hon. Friend whether anyone in the present Government had troubled to go into the details of this organisation and so forth, to which the right hon. Gentleman replied:
  "The matter has been gone into thoroughly by the Service Departments and the National Service Entertainments Board."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th March, 1946; Vol. 420, c. 946-7.]
  —for which I believe, by reason of the office which he now holds, he is in the main responsible. I am very sorry that, despite the fact that this is the second Debate we have had on this very important issue, affecting such a large sum of money, no Member of the Government has accepted the responsibility of replying from that Box. I respect the hon. Gentleman who is to reply tonight very much, but I protest against the way we have been treated on this very important issue.
  I venture the opinion to my right hon. Friend that never was there such a loose reply given by him affecting such a vast sum of money out of public funds as this attempt to cover up the maladministration of E.N.S.A. In fact, I would say that my right hon. Friend, at the time he gave this reply, for once in a way got mixed up with his brief. He put forward the plea that E.N.S.A. will spend less this year as compared with last year. Well, no one can argue against £3,500,000 being less than £4,500,000; it certainly is that. But is this enormous sum not to be equated to anything at all? Is no one going to justify from the Government point of view such a vast sum of money when it is claimed by him that economy has been practised on this particular corpse?
  What are the facts? If we refer to the White Paper on Defence Services, we are told that roughly 5,000,000 men and women were in the Armed Forces last August. By June this year we shall have roughly 1,900,000. Last year we spent on E.N.S.A. £4,500,000 on over 5,000,000 men and women in the Armed Forces. This year we shall allow to be spent £3,500,000 with only 1,900,000 in the Armed Forces. If we call that five-fifths, then on 2,000,000 we should not spend more than two-fifths and if, to be more accurate, we regard that two-fifths as 1,750,000, that, without any economy whatsoever, should be the maximum amount they should be entitled to spend.

  151
  We have in addition certain boasted economies, referred to by the right hon. Gentleman in his reply to the Question, which were declared by the Under-Secretary of State for Air in the Debate on 12th March. These economies refer to live entertainment and there is to be no more live entertainment for the home Forces. There has been a severe cut in cinema entertainment and there are to be no more broadcasts. Increased responsibilities of C.E.M.A. are to be taken into account. Then there are the increased responsibilities of Army welfare. There is the reduction of staff, again an enormous economy. Every one of these economies suggests that E.N.S.A. is spending less and less. But, it must be remembered —and this is of paramount importance—that this expenditure comes from the hard-earned pay packets of men and women in the Armed Forces. It comes from their beer, "'baccy," buns, tea or whatever other commodities they purchase from N.A.A.F.I.
  If we compare the per capita charge on the strength of the Armed Forces, E.N.S.A's cost on the soldier's pay packet of last year was roughly 18s. per person for the year. If my right hon. Friend cares to work it out in £ s. d. and to equate it to the soldier's pay packet, this year, with all this vaunted economy, we are spending not 18s., but 35s. Is that economy? I wish my right hon. Friend were replying to the challenge. Where is the money going? The old gang of Drury Lane, the Colonel Blimps of theatre-land, know the answer already. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend has had consultation with them. Maybe it is one way they have of providing themselves with a gratuity, because they cannot get one out of the War Office. We are informed that there are Treasury watchdogs at Drury Lane. I did a job or two in connection with E.N.S.A. during the war and I know there are watchdogs. They are audit clerks who tick off figures all day long. I can assure my right hon. Friend that figures are all they do tick off. They are very nice fellows and I like them, but as watchdogs they are about as powerful as a Pomeranian would be in a lion's den.
  No one must imagine that the well-paid hierarchy are folding up, because they are not putting up the shutters yet.
  152
  They are not hurrying back to their former employment. Like the Peers in "Iolanthe," they
  "throughout the war. Did nothing in particular. And did it very well."
  They are hanging on to four-figure incomes with grim determination. The smaller fry did a grand job of work throughout the war. They knew nothing of what was going on. They have been completely liquidated. Hundreds have been sacked. It was necessary, but unfortunate that that should be so. While I am mentioning expenditure, might I refer to that very much travelled gentleman, the world-wide traveller at public expense, Basil Dean, with his £3,000 a year salary, his unlimited expenses, free car and chauffeur, two secretaries and medical expenses provided and uniforms and ribbons as well—all paid for by soldiers, sailors and airmen? He has been, throughout the war, or at least since N.A.A.F.I. took over the responsibility, more generously rewarded than Montgomery, or even the right hon. Gentleman himself, as figures can prove, if these watchdogs at the Treasury care to reveal everything to the Financial Secretary. I understand that he is now spending his leisure time writing a book on what he has done for the Forces throughout the war.
  When the Lord President says that the matter has been gone into thoroughly by the National Service Entertainments Board, does he not know that that only means Basil Dean? It is only one man, it does not mean a Committee. The Board meets sometimes but until my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger), who is now Financial Secretary to the War Office, kicked up a dickens of a row in this House the Board had hardly met at all. Months and months after the Lord President of the Council at that time talked about this Board, they never even met. Everybody in theatre land recognises that the real title for the Director—I should give him his correct title, the Director-General of E.N.S.A.—is "The Lord Poo Bah of the land of bluff and make-believe," with incidental music provided by Sir Edward Ellington, the Chairman of the Board, who, by the way, is in receipt of a handsome pension from the Air Ministry in addition to his E.N.S.A. salary.

  153
  A nice little carve-up is taking place at E.N.S.A. Hitler's chairs, for example, were removed from the Berlin Chancellery to Drury Lane disguised as stage props, and are somewhere here in London. Who has them at the moment I do not know, but some folk have a good idea. There is another emissary, who was sent all the way from London to Berlin in recent months to acquire a Leica camera, because one cannot be bought in London. The camera may have been paid for, but the journey and so forth were paid for at public expense. There are caravans lying in backyards in Hamburg or Brussels, all for the convenience of this Director-General, which have hardly been used. They are lying there, rusty, all paid for out of the soldier's pay packet. Indeed, there are tens of thousands of gramophone records lying somewhere in this country. They are tucked away all right. They are waiting for someone to pick them up later on. That they will pick them up I have no doubt.
  There are three London theatres still occupied by E.N.S.A. for no particular reason whatever—no one really knows why, except that they are tenanted by E.N.S.A. for no real purpose, and no one seems to be bothered about it. There is a scarcity in this matter, as London theatre managers know. Only a few weeks ago, after the hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford raised this matter in this House, the Director-General of E.N.S.A. went all the way to Egypt to stage-manage or present British drama for rich Egyptian civilians, again at public expense, out of the soldier's pay packet, and this kind of business still goes on. Important charges have been made by the hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford. Not one of those charges has been answered by the Government.
  We read vague paragraphs in the public Press about the Arts Council, Army Welfare, the Army Cinematograph Corporation, etc., and we are told that these organisations are taking the place of E.N.S.A. But it is over six months since the matter was raised. These people, so we are told, are now to have their finger in or their share out of the N.A.A.F.I.-E.N.S.A. pie. The fact remains that E.N.S.A. is dead and done for. My right hon. Friend knows that the corpse stinks. It stinks in the noses of all decent people in theatre land and
  154
  the commercial theatre. The theatrical profession itself is bewildered as to why this rotting carcass should be left lying about to contaminate the reputation of theatre land at all. I suggest that it is high time that the body was laid decently to rest. To spend £3½ million on embalming this corpse is a tall order, rather more than the country ought to be asked to supply.
  I ask my right hon. Friend, or the Minister who is going to reply, for a clear statement on the future of E.N.S.A. It is long overdue if only to vindicate the actions of those of us who rather than be a party any longer to what was obviously wrong—we had to endure it because there was a war on and we wanted to see the job through—resigned our posts at a time when we felt we could with dignity. We have been begging ever since for some action to be taken. Therefore, I ask the Minister to make a definite statement tonight. I have put to him a direct question and I want a direct answer this time. Is the E.N.S.A. organisation to be wound up, and if so, when? I say to him that the past is the past and we cannot do much about it. In fact, I asked on the Floor of the House when questions were submitted some months ago whether it was worth while to hold a public inquiry or some kind of Commission such as was suggested at the time. I submitted it would be a waste of time, energy and public funds. I now maintain that the Government are not playing fairly on this question. Nobody is recognising the important issues that have been raised by the hon and gallant Member for Chelmsford and myself. I beg the Minister and the Government to be frank, honest, and open with the country. Tell the men and women in the Armed Forces what they are prepared to do. Give us the shape of things to come, but, for Heaven's sake, see to it that no further maladministration of the kind I have indicated shall take place in the future.
  10.18 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Glenvil Hall):My hon. Friend is quite right This matter was debated before, when my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Wing-Commander Millington) raised it at a somewhat later hour than this. We then had quite an interesting discussion, though I was not, on that occasion, called upon

  155
  to reply. In the limited time at my disposal tonight, I shall try to deal as best I can with the main points raised by my hon. Friend. He made three points, so it seems to me, with variations. He alleged that there was excessive expenditure on E.N.S.A., that there had been maladministration, and, finally, he made certain charges against those in control. With regard to expenditure, the procedure laid down has been, I think, good. There is, as my hon. Friend said, a National Service Entertainments Board in existence which has a Government finance officer on it. In addition, detailed control was delegated by that Board to a Finance and Organisation Committee upon which this finance officer also sat.
  That Committee and the Board with the assistance of the Departments concerned between them, worked out, over a fairly long period, the overall global commitments and arrangements which it was felt E.N.S.A. should undertake. Departments would indicate the kind of entertainment they wanted, and where, and, within this global sum which the Treasury had vetted and agreed to, the Committee got down to it and worked out the details. That, I submit, was the only way in which this kind of thing could be run.
  It became a vast organisation, giving concerts and shows all over the world, often in very primitive conditions; obviously this was going to cost money, and, sometimes, things were undoubtedly inclined to go wrong. Although that is a fact, if we look at the magnitude of the operations undertaken and the difficulties which had to be surmounted, there is a great deal to be said in favour of those who ran E.N.S.A. and did provide such valuable entertainment. Many of the shows, I quite agree, were not perhaps such as would commend themselves to the majority of hon. Members of this House; they varied undoubtedly in both calibre and quality. Nevertheless, the men liked them when they were at the ends of the earth and enjoyed them thoroughly, and, in my view, the money was very well spent.
  The accounts of the Department, although they have been audited in the same way as those of N.A.A.F.I., are open to the scrutiny of the Departments concerned and of the Comptroller and
  156
  Auditor-General, and, so far as my knowledge goes, we have found nothing seriously wrong with them. It is true that, in a thing of this magnitude, here and there things did go wrong, but, so far as we know—and, if the hon. Member has any evidence to the contrary, we shall be glad to have it—during the five or six years in which this organisation has been running, the organisation has been run, on the whole, efficiently and well. We have no evidence whatever of any defalcations at all.
  Mr. Walkden:I never suggested that in the slightest degree.
  Mr. Glenvil Hall:I accept that, but I thought I had better make the point in case some people thought that was implicit in what has been said. The total expenditure for the five years up to 1944 was £7,890,000. Of that amount, N.A.A.F.I. itself found £5,070,000, and the balance has been advanced by the Treasury. I should add that N.A.A.F.I. has set aside in its accounts a reserve sum to meet this liability in full. N.A.A.F.I.'s current contributions since 1940-41 have been equated to N.A.A.F.I.'s current payments out of profits to Service charities. But in the Summer of last year, it became clear that the cost of entertainments had reached a level at which, if N.A.A.F.I. were to continue to make its contributions to Service charities, it could not meet the full cost of E.N.S.A. entertainments as it had in the previous five years. Therefore; the matter was discussed between the Service Departments, N.A.A.F.I. and the Treasury, and, as a result it was decided to terminate the old agreement. Thereafter until August, 1946, N.A.A.F.I. profits will be allocated between the Service charities and entertainment on a basis to be agreed with the Treasury, and any balance of the cost of entertainment remaining will be met finally by the Exchequer. The sum involved will not be large. The accumulated contingent liability up to August, 1944, will he repaid by N.A.A.F.I. in full.
  We have not yet got the 1944-45 accounts, but from what we know of the out-turn of the year, I can tell the House that the loss to the Treasury under this new arrangement will not be great. As my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council told the House in answer to a Question the other day, the expected cost that year will be something in the

  157
  nature of £5 million, including £500,000 for capital depreciation which he did not refer to when he gave his answer to the hon. and gallant Member for Chelmsford.
  My hon. Friend said that, considering the rate at which men are being demobilised from the Forces, the amount which is to be spent during the present year is vastly in excess of what it should be. What he forgets, I think, is that most of the sum which my right hon. Friend mentioned was spent in the earlier months of the year. During the latter five months, ending next August, the amount which we expect to expend in this direction will be no more than £1 million. My hon. Friend will be glad to know that it has been decided to close down this side of E.N.S.A.'s activities in August this year. Thereafter, the Service Departments themselves will become responsible for the provision of their own entertainment with, of course, the assistance of the N.A.A.F.I. organisation and out of N.A.A.F.I. funds.
  Mr. Walkden:Will E.N.S.A. be dead altogether?
  Mr. Glenvil Hall:E.N.S.A. will come to an honourable, but, in the view of many, not untimely end in August of this year, and, as I have said, thereafter the Service Departments will provide their own amusements and entertainments.
  A great deal has been said about some of the personnel who during the last five or six years have worked in E.N.S.A. and controlled it. We have had one view expressed tonight, but it would be unfair to Mr. Basil Dean and those who work with him if I did not say that there is another view which has been equally and
  158
  firmly expressed to me. I have not met Mr. Basil Dean for some years, but it is only fair to him to say that he has devoted a great deal of energy during the last six years to this work. He has been criticised year after year, but, nevertheless, he has gone on. He has provided entertainment for troops all over the world and we must recognise that he has fulfilled a great and useful function to the State during these stressful years.
  I find it difficult to reply to my hon. Friend on the charges he made towards the end of his speech. I can only say that, if he will give me details, I will have them gone into in order to see what truth there may be in them and if it is necessary to take action against anyone for bringing anything illicitly into this country that action will be taken. The short answer is that during the war every care was taken to see that this money was expended as wisely and judiciously as possible. The organisation will end in August and the Services will find their own entertainments and the money for it will not come out of the Treasury, but out of N.A.A.F.I. funds which is, as my hon. Friend rightly says, provided out of the profits of the canteens of that organisation.
  Wing-Commander Millington (Chelmsford):The Financial Secretary said that if specific information of breaches of law could be given to him he would see they were investigated and the appropriate action taken. Specific instances were given——
  It being half-past Ten o'Clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

EMPLOYMENT

  Wales
  Mr. Mainwaring
  asked the Minister of Labour the number of registered females unemployed at the following employment exchanges on 1st April, 1946: Ferndale, Porth, Tonyrefail, Tonypandy and Treorchy, respectively.

  Mr. Isaacs:
  At 11th March, 1946, the latest date for which figures are at present available, the numbers of unemployed insured females, suitable for ordinary employment, on the registers of the employment exchanges in question were as follows: Ferndale 551; Porth 508; Tonyrefail 374; Tonypandy 781; Treorchy 564.

  Mr. Mainwaring
  asked the Minister of Labour how many female unemployed persons have left the employment exchanges at Ferndale, Porth, Tonypandy and Treorchy, respectively, for work elsewhere since 1st January, 1946; and what number have exhausted their statutory benefits in the same period.

  Mr. Isaacs:
  The numbers of unemployed women and girls placed in work in other districts since 1st January are as follows: Ferndale 64; Porth 47; Tonypandy 53; Treorchy 26. I understand from my right hon. Friend the Minister of National Insurance that the numbers of women registered at the exchanges in question who have exhausted their statutory benefits since 1st January, 1946, were: Ferndale 35; Porth 34; Tonypandy 24; Treorchy 49.

  Disabled Persons
  Mr. Warbey
  asked the Minister of Labour how many persons in Luton and Dunstable have registered under the Disabled Persons Act; how many of these were unemployed at the time of registration; and how many of those who were unemployed at the time of registration have subsequently obtained employment.

  Mr. Isaacs:
  The number of persons registered as disabled under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act on the 18th March, 1946, at Luton and Dunstable was 2,539 and 285 respectively. Statistics relating to the second and third parts of the Question are not available, but the number of registered disabled persons un
  2
  employed at these two offices at the above date was 123 and 14 respectively.

  Mr. Warbey
  asked the Minister of Labour how many persons have registered under the Disabled Persons Act; how many of these were unemployed at the time of registration; and how many of those who were unemployed at the time of registration have subsequently obtained employment.

  Mr. Isaacs:
  The number of persons registered as disabled under the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act at the 18th March, 1946, was 402,190. Statistics relating to the second and third parts of the Question are not available, but the number of registered disabled persons unemployed at the above date was 51,816.

BRITISH ARMY

  Wives (Baggage Entitlement)
  Brigadier Low
  asked the Secretary of State for War what arrangements there are to assist foreign born wives of British soldiers to bring with them their luggage and property when they travel from their country of origin to England to join their husbands.

  Mr. Bellenger:
  Foreign born wives of British soldiers are entitled to the same allowance of baggage which may be conveyed at public expense as British born wives. My right hon. Friend gave full details of the scales at present in force in his reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Newport (Mr. Peter Freeman) on 19th February, but the whole question of baggage entitlements is under review in the light of postwar requirements.

  Iraq Command (Python)
  Mr. Paget
  asked the Secretary of State for War the period of foreign service for Paiforce; and whether men in Paiforce are being relieved in time to enable them to get home within the period of foreign service.

  Mr. Lawson:
  Paiforce no longer exists as such. Iraq Command is part of M.E.F. where the qualifying period for Python is now three years nine months. Until 1st April, 1946, it was four years, and as I

  3
  stated in my speech on the Army Estimates the process of reduction will be complete by the end of June. So far as I am aware there is no undue delay in the despatch of Python personnel from Iraq.

  In addition to the Python scheme, there is an arrangement under which personnel serving in Iraq are crossposted within M.E.F. after two hot seasons. This crossposting is carried out whenever possible although in the case of certain specialist personnel it has not, unfortunately, always been practicable owing to lack of suitable men of the required types.

  Civilian Lecturers, Woolwich
  Mr. G. Williams
  asked the Secretary of State for War what compensation is paid to prewar civilian lecturers at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, who are now unable to be reinstated.

  Mr. Bellenger:
  When reinstatement is not reasonable and practicable no compensation is payable.

  Quartermasters (Pay)
  Mr. Hollis
  asked the Secretary of State for War how soon the statement of the pay and allowances of quartermasters, promised in Section 65 of the White Paper on Army Pay and Allowances, will be issued.

  Mr. Lawson:
  This matter is still under consideration and I regret that I cannot yet forecast the date on which it will be possible to announce a decision.

  Personal Case
  Lieut.-Colonel Byers
  asked the Secretary of State for War why 14702013 Lance-Corporal J. P. Coombes, 14 I.T.C., Hampshire Regiment, The Barracks, Northampton, an agricultural worker who has served for 2½ years has not been offered Class B release under the block system; and whether he will expedite this release.

  Mr. Lawson:
  Lance-Corporal Coombes has not been offered Class B release as he is not recorded as an agricultural worker on enlistment. If, however, his release as an agricultural worker is recommended to the War Office by the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Labour I should be prepared to consider the case on its merits.

  ANTI-NAZI GERMAN PRISONERS
  Mr. Edelman
  asked the Secretary of State for War when he intends to repatriate the anti-Nazi German prisoners of war who, after carrying out special duties such as radio broadcasters in the B.B.C. prisoner of war programme, have been awaiting repatriation for over six weeks at Transit Camp 186, Colchester.

  Mr. Bellenger:
  They are due to embark today.

NATIONAL FINANCE

  Cost-of-Living Subsidies
  Mr. Erroll
  asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer to what commodities the cost-of-living subsidies are applied; and the amount by which each commodity has been so subsidised during the most recent convenient accounting period.

  Mr. Dalton:
  The commodities affected by the cost-of-living subsidies, and the approximate cost in the financial year 1945–46, are shown in the following table. Before 1st September, 1945, no loss was incurred on Lend-Lease foodstuffs.

  £ Million.

  Bread, flour and oatmeal

  60.1

  Eggs, fresh, frozen and dried

  28.5

  Meat

  28.5

  Milk

  24.0

  Potatoes

  22.9

  Sugar

  19.1

  Cheese

  10.8

  Butter

  8.5

  Dried and condensed milk

  4.2

  Dried fruit

  3.9

  Tea

  3.5

  Bacon

  2.6

  Margarine, cooking fats, oils, net

  1.0

  Pulses and soya products

  0.5

  Net gain on other foodstuffs, etc.

  cr. 0.8

  National milk and milk-in-schools schemes

  20.0

  Other welfare schemes

  3.4

  Animal feeding stuffs

  18.1

  Fertilisers

  6.5

  Contribution to New Zealand subsidies

  4.0

  Total foodstuffs, etc.

  269.3

  Clothing

  4.9

  Raw Materials

  2.1

  Coal transport

  1.0

  Total, all items

  277.3

  Foreign Exchange Allowance
  Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport
  asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he is aware that those wives of

  5
  officers who cannot live on their husband's pay and who cannot obtain sufficient foreign exchange, are unable to live with them abroad; and whether he will increase the present allowance of foreign exchange to more than £100 per annum, if such wives can show that it is necessary to enable them to live with their husbands overseas.

  Mr. Dalton:
  I cannot accept the hon. and gallant Member's suggestion that the pay and allowances of an officer serving abroad are insufficient to enable him to support his wife without recourse to other funds, but I shall always be ready to consider exceptional cases not satisfactorily met by existing facilities.

  Anglo-French Financial Agreement
  Mr. T. Macpherson
  asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he has any statement to make on the conclusion of a financial agreement between this country and France.

  Mr. Dalton:
  An Agreement was signed yesterday. It prolongs the existing mechanism for payments between the Franc and Sterling Areas until 31st December, 1946.

  The French Government paid £40 million in gold on 28th February and thus reduced to £110 million the credit of £150 million granted to them by His Majesty's Government under Article I of the Financial Agreement of 27th March, 1945. The balance will be repaid under the new Agreement in agreed instalments over the next three years. The Agreement also provides for the financing of current purchases from the sterling area during the rest of this year.

  The text of the Agreement will be presented to Parliament and copies will be available in the Vote Office on Thursday.

  PERFORMING ANIMALS (REPORTS)
  Mrs. Manning
  asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury on what date, approximately, the 1921 and 1922 Select Committee's Reports on Performing Animals ceased to be purchasable at H.M.S.O.; why they were not reprinted; and, in view of the widespread feeling against cruelty to animals and the belief
  6
  that performing animal acts can be produced without cruelty, he will arrange for both Reports to be reprinted with a reliable index, and sold at a low price.

  Mr. Glenvil Hall:
  The 1921 Report has not been available since 1930, and the 1922 Report since 1935. In neither case has there been a sufficient subsequent demand to warrant reprinting.

  FAR EASTERN VOLUNTEER FORCES
  Sir J. Lucas
  asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that there are serving in England a number of ex-prisoners of war of Asiatic origin, who were imprisoned in Japanese hands from such units as the Singapore Volunteers, who have been wrongfully sent to this country and should be repatriated to Malaya; and what steps are being taken for their immediate return.

  Mr. George Hall:
  A number of British subjects of Asiatic origin belonging to the Far Eastern Volunteer Forces came to this country with Europeans of the same force sent here for demobilisation. All these persons will be provided with free passages to their home countries if they so desire, and in every case which has been brought to notice the individual concerned has been informed to that effect. Some have already left. If the hon. and gallant Member has information regarding individual cases in which difficulty has arisen I shall be glad if he will furnish me with particulars. Aliens in this category, of whom there are also a few, are repatriated as passages can be made available for them unless permission is given for them to remain in this country for special reasons.

  COAL COMMISSION RESERVE
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd
  asked the Minister of Fuel and Power the purpose of the revocation of the Coal Commission Appropriation to Reserve Regulations, 1943(a).

  Mr. Shinwell:
  The original purpose of the Regulations had already been served in that the Reserve Fund had been built up to a figure in excess of the minimum of £1,500,000 prescribed by the Coal Commission Minimum Reserve Regulations, 1943.

  ILLEGAL OPERATIONS
  Mr. J. Freeman
  asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORTS the number of convictions for performing or assisting at illegal operations in each of the years 1939, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944 under the following headings: convictions of male qualified medical practitioners, female qualified medical practitioners, unqualified males and unqualified females, respectively.

  Mr. Ede:
  The following statement shows the number of qualified medical practitioners and unqualified persons convicted for performing or assisting at illegal operations, or procuring abortion, during the years 1939–1944.

  Year

  Number of Convictions

  Qualified Medical Practitioners.

  Unqualified Persons.

  Male.

  Female.

  Male.

  Female

  Male.

  Female.

  1939—

  With Instruments

  12

  44

  2

  —

  10

  44

  With Drugs

  9

  2

  —

  —

  9

  2

  Total

  21

  46

  2

  —

  19

  46

  1940—

  With Instruments

  19

  27

  1

  —

  18

  27

  With Drugs

  2

  5

  —

  —

  2

  5

  Total

  21

  32

  1

  —

  20

  32

  1941—

  With Instruments

  15

  40

  —

  —

  15

  40

  With Drugs

  6

  5

  —

  —

  6

  5

  Total

  21

  45

  —

  —

  21

  45

  1942—

  With Instruments

  23

  69

  2

  —

  21

  69

  With Drugs

  2

  9

  —

  —

  2

  9

  Total

  25

  78

  2

  —

  23

  78

  1943—

  With Instruments

  33

  117

  3

  —

  30

  117

  With Drugs

  3

  9

  1

  —

  2

  9

  Total

  36

  126

  4

  —

  32

  126

  1944—

  With Instruments

  17

  117

  4

  —

  13

  117

  With Drugs

  4

  11

  1

  —

  3

  11

  Total

  21

  128

  5

  —

  16

  128

  Grand Total

  145

  455

  14

  —

  131

  455

  600

  14

  586

DEMOBILISATION

  Building Operative, Lewes
  Major Beamish
  asked the Minister of Works on what grounds the Service Department concerned refused to approve his representations for the release of 14996525 Lance-Corporal J. S. Parsons, a plumber and decorator, urgently required by G. Parsons and Sons, of Lewes.

  Mr. Tomlinson:
  In considering the release out of their turn of individuals who are claimed to be specialists, regard is paid to the size of the firm, its need for supervisory personnel and the age and experience of the man concerned. The circumstances were not considered to justify the release of Lance-Corporal Parsons who was only 19 when he was called up.

  Out-of-turn Releases
  Mr. Erroll
  asked the Minister of War Transport whether he is aware that certain officers of his Department who responded to his appeal, at the end of 1944, to leave the Fighting Services and return to work of greater national importance in the Ministry have thereby suffered financial loss by forfeiting their rights to leave with pay; and whether, to reimburse them, he will take the necessary steps to increase their present rates of pay, to allow them leave with pay from his Department or to recompense them in some other way for the loss referred to.

  Mr. Barnes:
  These officers were granted indefinite release from the Army to perform important work in my Department, in which they were employed as permanent civil servants prior to their Army service. In common with all other members of the Forces released out of turn they do not qualify for the special leave privileges granted to those released under the normal demobilisation arrangements. I regret that I cannot regard the circumstances in which, at the instance of my Department, they were granted indefinite release from the Army as justifying any special compensation as suggested by the hon. Member.

  INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM OF INFORMATION
  Mr. E. Granville
  asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will propose, as a question of international cooperation, the abolition of the controls over the free flow of news and opinions from one country to another, to include radio and the Press.

  Mr. McNeil:
  His Majesty's Government fully appreciate the desirability of encouraging the free flow of news and opinions from one country to another by Press, radio and other means. They have hastened to abolish wartime controls over information matters in this country and they would welcome any international action facilitating the free interchange of information and ideas as a means of advancing international understanding. The question is under active consideration by the United Nations. Freedom of Information is one of the subjects on which the Commission on Human Rights
  10
  of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations is to report and make recommendations. A proposal to call an International Press Conference is on the agenda for the next meeting of the United Nations Assembly in New York in September and this will no doubt lead to further international study of the promotion of freedom of information. His Majesty's Government will cooperate actively in this work in the hope that positive results will be obtained.

  FRENCH LECTURERS (VISITS)
  Mr. H. Hynd
  asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that several successful visits have been made to France by lecturers from this country at the invitation of the French Government; and whether he is making reciprocal arrangements for French speakers to come here.

  Mr. McNeil:
  My right hon. Friend is aware of the successful visits to France, made at the invitation of the French Government, of lecturers from this country

  The machinery for inviting French speakers to come here has been working for some considerable time, and there is a fairly steady flow of such speakers whose lectures, covering a wide variety of subjects, have been given all over the country under the auspices of the Information Departments, and the British Council, often in cooperation with the French authorities.

FOOD SUPPLIES

  Milk (Heat Treatment)
  Dr. S. Taylor
  asked the Minister of Food what would be the approximate cost of installing and operating machinery to ensure that all milk sold to the public in England and Wales received heat treatment.

  Sir B. Smith:
  It is extremely difficult to make a reliable estimate of the capital cost of installing the plant necessary for the heat treatment of all milk, but it is thought to be of the order of £10 million. The cost of heat treatment of all the milk sold to the public based on the present rates payable by my Department for heat treatment would be about £4 million per annum.
  11
  Dr. Taylor
  asked the Minister of Food what percentage of milk sold in England and Wales to the public in June, 1945, was receiving heat treatment; and what percentage is receiving heat treatment at the present time.

  Sir B. Smith:
  In June, 1945, some 70 per cent. of the milk sold for liquid consumption was heat-treated; the proportion is about the same at the present time.

  Dr. Taylor
  asked the Minister of Food in which towns with populations of more than 100,000, 90 per cent. or more of the milk on sale to the public is heat treated.

  Sir B. Smith:
  Accurate information is not available of the quantities of heat treated milk sold in all towns with populations of more than 100,000, but so far as can be ascertained in London, Croydon, Derby, Nottingham, Middlesbrough, Southampton and Walsall, 90 per cent. or more of the milk sold is heat treated.

  Wheat Stocks
  Sir A. Salter
  asked the Minister of Food whether, in view of the statements on the subject recently issued in connection with the allocations under consideration by the Combined Food Board, he will now state the amount of the wheat stocks in this country and, on a comparable basis, the stocks at the same season in 1938 and 1939.

  Sir B. Smith:
  I know of no statements made in connection with matters under consideration by the Combined Food Board which would justify any departure from the practice of not making public the amount of the stock of any individual food commodity controlled by the Ministry of Food.

  Temporary Ration Cards
  Mr. E. Granville
  asked the Minister of Food if he is prepared to allow shopkeepers to serve holders of emergency ration cards in the same way that they do their registered customers.

  Sir B. Smith:
  A retailer is expected to serve temporary ration card holders with rationed foods if he has supplies available. He can obtain replacement of the food sold against those cards. A particular retailer may not always be in a position to supply the holder of a temporary ration card but the holder of such card
  12
  should be able to find in any district a shop or shops able to serve him. Temporary ration cards are purposely made available for use at any shop.

  Civilian Ration Standard
  Sir R. Glyn
  asked the Minister of Food by how much and in what essentials does the standard civilian ration in this country today fall below that laid down in 1933 by the Government of that day as being the minimum necessary to support those who were unemployed and receiving relief in a distressed area; and whether he will cause the statistical tables issued last November to be brought up to date.

  Sir B. Smith:
  I am sending to the hon. Member the revised tables and other information which he desires.

  CANARY SEED
  Mr. Channon
  asked the Minister of Food if he will consider controlling the price of canary seed, in view of the fact that whilst in 1938–39 the price was 6d. and 8d. per pound, the price today is 13s. per pound.

  Sir B. Smith:
  I have already considered this matter. No imports of canary seed are allowed and there is only a small quantity of home produced seed which is used in a large variety of bird mixtures. Price control would have to apply to all these mixtures and would create an administrative burden disproportionate to the quantities involved, without increasing the supply. I cannot therefore see my way clear to introduce price control.

  TEACHERS' TRAINING SCHEME
  Mr. Asterley Jones
  asked the Minister of Education whether all civilian candidates who were accepted for the Emergency Training Scheme in 1945 will begin their training during 1946.

  Miss Wilkinson:
  On the present programme for the provision of colleges, and after allowing due priority for candidates released from the fighting services, it is hoped to admit to training before the end of 1946, all the men, and very nearly all the women, civilian candidates who were accepted in 1945.

  INDIAN ECCLESIASTICAL ESTABLISHMENT
  Mr. King
  asked the Under-Secretary of State for India if the Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment is to continue in its present form; and if he will make a statement on the matter in view of the uncertainty and
  14
  anxiety which now exists among chaplains.

  Mr. A. Henderson:
  Chaplains of the Indian Ecclesiastical Establishment are in the same position as members of the All-India Services and I do not think that I can say more at the present time than that their interests have not been overlooked.

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers.
The Lord Wynford—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
Several Lords—Took the Oath.

GAS LIGHT AND COKE COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a, and committed: the Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
ROTHERHAM CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
RUSHDEN DISTRICT GAS BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

THE LATE LORD KEYNES.
2.37 p.m.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DOMINION AFFAIRS (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, I am sure it is in accordance with your Lordships' wishes that the first business on our re-assembly should be to pay tribute to a very distinguished member of this House who has died since we separated—Lord Keynes. It is very difficult to estimate the extent or our loss, the extent of our national loss, and even the extent of the international loss which has followed the death of Lord Keynes. He had a penetration and clarity in complicated matters that in my estimation amounted to genius, and the country owes more than we can yet clearly appreciate to the guidance which he gave us in very critical times.

913
It seems almost as if it were only the other day that we heard him speaking from the Bench opposite on the subject of the American Loan in a brilliant, penetrating discourse, to which it was a joy to listen, and which I am sure will be a perpetual inspiration to read. It was an exceptional Parliamentary performance, and I am sure that all your Lordships, whatever your views on the merits of the matter under discussion, were united in appreciating it from that aspect. Lord Keynes had the happy knack of dealing with highly complicated issues without using jargon. He made them plain to ordinary people. To those of us, including myself, who made no pretence to having penetrated the so-called mysteries of high finance, he made things clear and understandable. He made the principles clear. As with his speeches, so with his writings. Those of your Lordships who have had the advantage, as many of your Lordships have had, of reading his departmental memoranda, will doubtless treasure them for their scholarship, their wit, and the apt and penetrating way in which they pointed to conclusions. I know of few Government papers that can compare with those for which Lord Keynes was responsible, in the delight which they give us to re-read.
Those inside the circles of Government of course knew the value of the advice and guidance that Lord Keynes gave, and appreciated the great debt that was owed to him. I believe it is true to say that his loss almost spread dismay amongst the ranks of those who were in the best position to judge the high value of his services. As a matter of fact, if we review his exposition of the principles of national financial policy during the last twenty-five years we shall I think agree that the mass of the people of this country owe much more to Lord Keynes than they suspect. They certainly owe to him a great deal of their ability to buy things during a time of scarcity. They certainly owe a great deal to him in the fact that at the end of these difficult years their savings are greater than ever. It is impossible at a moment when his loss is so recent, to appreciate what the country really does owe to Lord Keynes for the guidance he has given us and the help he has rendered in matters vital to the life, the well-being, matters such as the weekly earnings and the weekly living costs of millions of people. I doubt not,
914
my Lords, that his memorial in the history of this country will be found most fittingly in the benefits to the lives and well-being of the mass of the people which followed the policies he advocated. I am sure your Lordships will wish me to associate with this tribute to the memory of a great public: servant our heartfelt sympathy with his widow and his aged parents.
2.46 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, it is right that in this House, where only so short time ago he made his last great speech, we should pay our tribute to one who was a prophetic teacher and a great public servant. There can be no doubt that Keynes's influence on economic thought was revolutionary. I suppose that the only parallel of an economist with equal influence is to be found in Adam Smith, but I think Keynes's influence was even more remarkable. Adam Smith propounded an economic philosophy which made a ready appeal to the sentiments and to the commercial trend of his time. He found his public, so to speak, ready-made and receptive. Keynes preached a faith which in important aspects challenged long-established doctrine and dogma and which ran counter to very strong nationalistic sentiment and nationalistic prejudices in the postwar world after the last war. I think it is all the more remarkable that he succeeded so well and so quickly.
Sooner or later great economic writers have influenced the men of State, generally at second hand. It was given to Keynes not only to inspire and instruct but himself to play a leading part; and a leading part it certainly was. At times, indeed, he was so far ahead that others could not follow, or could not follow at once. But he was receptive enough and human enough to accept limitations and practical compromises. Towards the end this must have been specially hard for him, for only he and those nearest him knew how he was taxing his strength and how he was wearing himself out. He must indeed, in those last months, have echoed the cry of another: "So much to do: so little time to do it in."
Wherein lay the secret of his signal success? There was his burning faith in what he taught; there was his gift of expression, equally clear and cogent in the written or the spoken word. There was equally his very human sympathy, and

915
his ability to see the picture whole, which perhaps was why he was so often right. He gave all he had, his great gifts of mind and character and more than his strength, to the service of his country and of the world. Quite literally, he was a casualty of the peace, giving his life to try to build the peace for which others had died in war. He leaves affectionate and grateful memories in many walks of life which will live as long as the youngest of his friends and disciples survives; and he leaves a memorial which will last longer still in the faith he taught and lived long enough to see, in part at any rate, come true.
2.50 p.m.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, it is often said that this is an age of specialists and of narrowed lives, but we have among us from time to time examples of many-sided talent. John Maynard Keynes was certainly such an one. He was a man of wide knowledge and broad culture; he was devoted to the arts, especially to the theatre, music, painting and literature. He was himself gifted with an admirable prose style, and was an excellent speaker and a brilliant conversationalist. He did not allow his energies, however, to be dissipated by diffusion but concentrated on his own subject, economics, theoretical and applied. There he was supreme. It is seldom that the word "genius" is used in application to an economist, but it is the one that comes naturally to the lips when one is speaking of Keynes. His influence spread wide and sank deep. He was indeed one of the seminal minds of this generation of mankind.
Speaking from this Bench perhaps I may be allowed to recall that he was in politics all his life a Liberal. When, not quite twenty years ago, we faced the task of reshaping British Liberalism in the light of twentieth century economics and of reformulating its creed and policy, a book was written which had considerable influence in this country and elsewhere, in the universities and on the platforms, and which was reflected not least in many parts of the programme of the present Government. On that work Keynes's mind, fertile in ideas, very practical in their application, left its stamp more than that of any other man.
916
But he had his greatest opportunity and rendered his most valuable service in the management of our national finances during the late war. It is commonly agreed that those finances were far better managed during the second world war than during the first, and that was due to the fact that the Government of the day had at its disposal a galaxy of outstanding talent, drawn from the worlds of industry and finance, from the civil service and from the universities. Among those men Keynes was unquestionably the leader. Declining any remuneration, out of sheer public spirit and love of the work, he served at the Treasury all through the war, giving all that he had and, as it proved, physically more than he had, to the service of his country and, through it, to the service of the world. His last speech in your Lordships' House was undoubtedly his greatest speech. Although he looked so ill after his return from his labours in America, he spoke with much energy. That speech was a model of cogent argument, illuminated by brilliance and by wit, and it had a profound effect at a critical moment upon your Lordships' House and upon the nation. How we shall miss him in the years to come in this difficult and dangerous field of the management of the public finances! He leaves to his devoted wife and family proud and precious memories, and to the world a great and honoured name.

TRADE DISPUTES AND TRADE UNIONS BILL.
2.54 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD JOWITT): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a second time. In moving the Second Reading of a Bill before your Lordships' House, I always make a point of telling your Lordships whether the Bill is or is not controversial. Carrying out my usual practice, let me assure your Lordships that this Bill is controversial in every line and every comma. It is, however, short and clear, and it has, therefore, the merits of brevity and clarity. Some of your Lordships may think those are the only merits it has, but it certainly has those.
On a large variety of topics, although we come to different conclusions, we are well able to understand each other's point

917
of view. I do not suppose that if I had the eloquence of a Demosthenes and a great deal more time than I intend to occupy, I could convince all your Lordships, or perhaps even the majority of your Lordships, that this is as good a Bill as it in fact is. But at least I think I can get your Lordships to appreciate the point of view of those who are putting forward the Bill. We had a speech only a few weeks ago from the noble Lord, Lord Cornwallis, in which he said this was a Bill for "bigger and better strikes." He attributed all sorts of strange views to the Labour Party, but he was so obviously enjoying himself that we enjoyed it too. That is one view; that this is a Bill for bigger and better strikes. On the other hand, there is Mr. Churchill's view, put forward in one of those election speeches which set the key in which the election music was going to be played. This is what Mr. Churchill said:
"I declare to you that the freedom of the wage-earner to choose or change his employment or to use collective bargaining by that means, including the right to strike, runs absolutely counter to the Socialist doctrine and theory of the State."
I know less about racing than any single member of your Lordships' House, but I understand that there are some circumstances in racing where you are running two horses and where you have to declare to win with one or the other. Whether you are going to declare to win with the horse called "bigger and better strikes" or the horse called "no strikes at all," I do not know. It is pretty obvious that they cannot both win, and I venture to think they are both of them rank outsiders.
In the last few days I have had the doubtful privilege of reading and rereading the debates of 1927 and 1931. I do not wonder that the view was expressed in another place that we should avoid what was called another "lawyer's benefit." I am bound to record that on neither of the last two occasions, so far as I know, did anybody hand the hat round. The speeches reminded me rather of Euclid's definition of a line—my own, perhaps, more than any other. They were very long and I do not think they had very much breadth. Though I must, I am afraid, be rather long to-day in expounding this Bill, I hope I shall achieve a little breadth. The long and short of the matter is this. There are two approaches
918
to his topic. You may approach it from the legal point of view—and, of course, as Lord Chancellor, I cannot overlook the legal point of you may approach it from the human point of view. I venture to think that in this controversy both sides have tended to over-emphasize their own point of view and to neglect the point of view of the other side. If I remind your Lordships of how the strike arose, I hope I shall not create the impression of giving a lecture to the fourth form, because when the fourth form is mentioned my natural place is amongst the pupils. But, after all, it happened twenty years ago, and some of your Lordships at any rate were then schoolboys, so perhaps you will forgive me if I recall a few salient points.
It was in July, 1925, that the Royal Commission was appointed—a Royal Commission which was presided over by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel—and the Government of the day, after considerable hesitation, decided for some nine months to pay a subsidy, and the subsidy came to an end in April, 1926—I think my dates are right.
VISCOUNT SIMON: This very day, April 30.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It cost some £24,000,000. The position of the millers in the list of wage-earners before the trouble arose was, I believe, 65th. They perform a not very pleasant task, and it is a task which is absolutely fundamental to all industry. It is a task which perhaps has the highest accident rate of any trade or industry in the country. They were threatened with a further substantial loss in wages, and it would have meant they would have gone down very much lower than even 65th place. The consequences were quite easy to foresee. You were never going to get out of your mining trouble on those lines at all. Recruitment to the industry would become absolutely impossible; you would not get young people into the industry. That is how the other industries saw it. They also saw it from this point of view because, after all, it was not Hitler who was the first person to invent the "one by one" technique, that is to say, dealing with your adversaries one at a time while giving the others smooth promises. The other industries thought that if there were to be an attack on the miners' wages and the miners were

919
dealt with first of all, their wages in due course might follow suit. Consequently the other industries were determined to support the miners in resisting the attack which was being made upon them.
So arose what was called the General Strike. I believe it is a fact that only twenty per cent. of industry struck. I will say at once, as I said many years ago, and have always said, that strike was ill-advised and ill-considered. I think it would have been, if only from the point of view of tactics, far better for the other industries to stay in and levy themselves to support the miners, but I do not regard it as discreditable that they should have sought to protect the miners against the attack. One of the well-known trade union leaders said, after the strike, that what happened was "Our hearts ran away with our heads." I think that is about true. It may be very unsatisfactory that hearts should run away with heads, but it is better than that the heads should so control hearts that the ordinary emotion of the heart is buried underneath a mass of technical formulae. I think that in calling the strike wholly insufficient regard was paid to the constitutional issues involved. But there it was, the strike came. It lasted for some nine days, and I think it came to an end on the 12th or 13th of May, 1926.
We had all heard of this General Strike before; we had all heard of the monster, which frightened the spinsters of both sexes; of this dragon bringing in its train red ruin, with the breaking of laws and all the rest of it. After some nine or ten days, if we are quite candid, we all saw that this monster of the General Strike was rather a knock-kneed thing which had not been able to stay the course. In all human probability on the 12th or 13th of May we had heard the last of the General Strike. Now, what was to be done? A message coming from a source far above party controversy was read in both Houses of Parliament, and this was the burden of the message:
"Let us forget whatever elements of bitterness the events of the past few days may have created, only remembering how steady and how orderly the country has remained though severely tested, and forthwith address ourselves to the task of bringing into being a peace which will be lasting, because, forgetting the past, it looks only to the future with the hopefulness of a united people."
920
That, I believe, was true wisdom: Forget the past, and look to the future, with the hopefulness of a united people. Mr. Baldwin, who was then Prime Minister—and I refer to him as Mr. Baldwin, as he then was—said:
"This is neither the occasion for malice nor recrimination nor for triumph. I cannot imagine that there will be an attack on the trade unions as such; I could not countenance it. There are some who like fishing in troubled waters. Let us get the waters calm as soon as we can."
In a somewhat long recollection of public life, I should say—and I think many of your Lordships will agree with me—that one very often sees cases of people who do not know when they have won. If ever there was a case when a battle was won, it was then. If ever there was a case when magnanimity and generosity would have paid, it was then. If ever there was an occasion when it was foolish to rub the noses of the defeated adversary in the mess of their past follies, that was the occasion. But it is quite obvious there were two schools of thought in the Government of the day. Mr. Baldwin explained that he was pressed to introduce legislation before Christmas, and he said that had he consented it would have been far more drastic than anything he had ever contemplated. He was urged to do something, and he added this:
"I felt that if the country had a little breathing space during Christmas time, and the papers were talking a lot about Christmas, we might come back in a better mood."
I cannot help feeling rather sorry for a Prime Minister who had to rely on Christmas to try to get his extremists back in a better mood. Mr. Churchill had, no doubt about his attitude and he explained it in this way:
"It was upon the morrow of this cataclysm"—
that means shortly after the General Strike was over, I suppose—
"that the Government began to consider the necessary curtailment of trade union privileges—not rights—which bitter experience had shown to be necessary."
Your Lordships will remember that phrase—"which bitter experience had shown to be necessary." As I go through some of the provisions of this Act I shall ask what bitter experience had shown those provisions to be necessary, and in the course of this debate, which will last for two days, we shall no doubt get an explanation.

921
When it became known that legislation of this sort was going to be introduced the Liberal Party took a strong line and a united line. Lord Grey and Mr. Lloyd George both made public statements to the effect that it was appalling folly to bring in legislation to deal with this matter. Let me record the fact that on the Second Reading of the 1927 Bill, as it then was, not one single member of the Liberal Party went into the Government Lobby in favour of the Bill. There were certainly some abstentions, but those young, stalwart Radicals like Lord Hutchison, Mr. Ernest Brown and Mr. Hore-Belisha, all voted against the Bill. There had been no consultation with the T.U.C. They had never been given a chance to make any representations, and they had never been given an Opportunity to make any explanation. The National Industrial Alliance, composed of representatives of the employers and the men, protected against the introduction of the Bill. Men like Sir Hugh Bell, Sir Arthur Pease, and Sir Edward Manville, from all Parties, said that it was extremely unwise, and so far as the Labour Party were concerned Mr. Clynes, speaking for that Party, made the position quite clear. He said:
"It would be the duty of the Opposition when, in the natural order of things, it becomes a Government, no matter in what form this Bill may pass, to repeal that Act and we make that declaration now."
That was the inevitable result of bringing in at that time, when you had won the battle, a Bill which was bound to be a highly controversial Bill.
Was it vindictive? It is not my habit to impute motives to anybody, but I say it argues bad knowledge of psychology to bring in that Bill at that time. What did it do? Well, the first thing it did, and did beyond all question, was to make any such strike as took place in 1926 illegal. There have been, as some of your Lordships will remember, confident assertions by very eminent people—including one of His Majesty's Judges—that it was illegal in the then state of the law. I might rest on that, and I might, therefore, argue that it was quite unnecessary to bring in this Bill. I am not going at this stage—and indeed I hope at no stage of the Bill—to become embroiled in a legal controversy. We do not want to have a lawyer's benefit. But may I assert what my own view of this matter has always been? I believe
922
that the uncertainty arises not so much from any difficulty in formulating the legal position but from differences as to the true inference to be drawn from the facts. Was a large-scale strike, or rather I should say a series of sympathetic strikes, each one of which was in furtherance of the existing trade dispute—that dispute being between the miners and the mine-owners—legal? There can be no doubt about this, I think: You could have a sympathetic strike in those conditions perfectly legally, if it was in furtherance of a dispute existing in some other trade, although there was no dispute in the particular trade which called sympathetic strike. If, on the other hand, on a true view of the facts it was clear that the motive, the real underlying object, of these strikes, was to try to substitute the rule of Transport House for the rule of law, I have no doubt at all that the strike was illegal.
Might I give your Lordships an illustration? Take, for instance, the strike that was called on the railways. Section 3 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875 is as follows:
"An agreement by two or more persons to procure to be done any act in furtherance of a trade dispute shall not be indictable as a conspiracy if such act committed by one person would not be punishable as a crime."
And there is a similar provision with regard to civil liability to be found in the Trade Disputes Act of 1906. If a man is to be convicted he must first of course be indicted. Now suppose one of the railway leaders had been charged with a crime or sued for damages. In my view the Judge would have had to address the jury in this way: "You have to make up your minds as to whether what this man did was in furtherance of a trade dispute. If so, then he is not guilty of any crime and he is not civilly liable. If, on the other hand, you think that that was not his real motive, if you think that he was trying to overthrow the institutions of this country or the Government of the day, you will find him guilty of crime or civilly liable, as the case may be."
My noble friend Viscount Simon, for whose legal views I have profound respect, said this:
"Every trade union leader who has advised and promoted this course of action is liable in damages to the uttermost farthing of his personal possessions."
I think the noble Viscount expressed that opinion because he formed the view on the

923
facts—whether he formed it rightly or wrongly I am not now concerned to argue—that the trade union leader to whom he referred was not acting in furtherance of a trade dispute.
May I conclude (I do not want to get technical about this) by reading a short passage from an article written by a very distinguished man with whom I had the great honour and privilege to be first instructed in the Common Law—Professor Holdsworth. The Professor, after referring to the views of the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, writes:
"It is by no means certain that that view of the Jaw is correct. The true view of the law depends at bottom on this short point. Was the proclamation of the General Strike an act done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute? It seems to us that to answer this question correctly we must distinguish between a strike and the object aimed at by the strike. Clearly the strike itself did not arise from a trade dispute between the strikers and their employers. But it does not follow that the act of striking and all the consequential acts were not done in furtherance of a trade dispute. Obviously they were done in furtherance of a trade dispute, to wit, the dispute between the coal owners and mine workers. If the strike itself and all other consequential acts were done in furtherance of a trade dispute they are protected by the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, and the bottom is knocked out of Sir John Simon's argument."
He then goes on to a further comment on Sir John Simon's and Mr. Justice Astbury's view of the law: "To acquiesce in Sir John Simon's and Mr. Justice Astbury's view of the law, to suppose that it is incontrovertible, may well be to enter into a fool's paradise."
I am not sure that there will really be very much controversy between us now. When I declared that this was the correct view of the law in 1931 I was roundly told that I was a disgrace to my profession, notwithstanding that Professor Holdsworth had taken this view, and also Professor Goodhart, in a very interesting essay in his book, Essays on Jurisprudence and Common Law, which it may be of interest to consider. In the recent debates in the House of Commons no one disputed this view. Therefore I feel that that matter may be left to the judgment of posterity. I believe the judgment of posterity will be that before the 1927 Act, the question as to whether a man was acting illegally or was liable in damages depended upon the answer to a comprehensive question
924
of fact as to whether he was or was not acting in furtherance of a trade dispute. One man might have been found guilty having regard to speeches he made, whilst another one would not.
The Act of 1927 certainly cleared that matter up, but any certainty gained there was only gained at the price of a very much greater uncertainty on the law as it stands under the 1927 Act itself. In effect the 1927 Act says that every sympathetic strike is illegal, because if it is on a large scale it is inevitable that it will tend to coerce the Government by inflicting hardship upon the community. Just imagine yourself in the position of a Judge dealing with, shall I say, a small scale sympathetic strike; for example, coastal shipping people coming out on strike in support of railwaymen. The Judge, in order to determine whether that strike is legal or illegal, has to say "Is it or is it not likely to coerce the Government, either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community?" Well, my Lords, some Governments are much easier to coerce than others. How on earth is a Judge on an affidavit to decide whether it inflicts hardship on the community, or on a section of the community? To tell me there is no ambiguity there is to tell me something I cannot believe. Lord Reading, who spoke in the debates in this House, and who had served as Lord Chief Justice, said that the Bill "is so indefinite, so vague, so lacking in the precision required when creating a criminal offence as to be quite unsatisfactory." Therefore I say to your Lordships, you will be far better under the old system of law than you were under the ambiguity imposed upon us by the 1927 Act.
Now a word or two about intimidation. It is really an insult to trade unionists to suppose that they want to employ the weapon of the bully and the blackmailer. It is not so. Intimidation has always been a crime. What the 1927 Act did was to create a definition of intimidation which made the whole thing completely vague. Now the artificial definition of intimidation says "to create in the mind of a person"—(it is subjective, you see)—"a reasonable apprehension of loss of income or occupation." There was this case, the only case I know decided under this clause. There were eight men working at Chester. Seven were members of one union and the eighth was either a non-unionist or a member of some

925
other union. The seven men were minded to strike. They saw the employer and told him the situation. His reply was "Very well, I shall get rid of this non-unionist so that you can carry on." Therefore one of them went, perfectly peacefully, to the non-unionist and said: "Look here, trouble is brewing up, and my mates are not going to work with you, although there is no reason why you Should not join our union. That will get rid of all our trouble." That was held to be a criminal offence. The limit of this thing is difficult to see. Take the case of an ordinary canvasser who goes round, knocks at a door and asks "How are you going to vote?" The canvasser then says: "If these wretched Labour people get in, your savings will be in jeopardy." Under the strict wording of this Act, that is a criminal offence, because it might create in the mind of the person a reasonable apprehension of loss of income. It does not matter very much because, thank goodness, juries and judges alike have a good deal of common sense in administering the law and therefore it would not be employed in cases of this sort.
I am fully aware there are much more subtle forms of intimidation. Old friends may give you a cold look instead of a friendly glance; your wife may not be asked out to tea; your daughter may be given the sack from the local cinema; there are hundreds of ways in which this form of intimidation can be used. All I say is this. Let us never make the mistake of thinking that the area to be covered by the criminal law can be co-extensive with the area to be covered by the moral law. It is only with the cruder forms of intimidation that the criminal law can deal, and with these it should deal drastically; and the law as it was before the 1927 Act was passed contained all the necessary provisions for doing so. It is absolutely foolish to think that you can bring within the area of criminal law all sorts of caddish behaviour, which is the subject of moral law and not criminal law.
Contracting in is my next topic. You know the position about trade unions. Before a union can have a political fund at all it must have a secret ballot and must secure the approval of the majority of the members. Every member of that union has the right to contract out if he so desires. What evidence was there that
926
undue pressure, intimidation, or duress, was placed upon these men? If trade unionists are to adopt this sort of method why cannot they do the same sort of thing and force a member to contract in? What was the "bitter experience" that Mr. Churchill referred to here? (because this question has to be answered, if you say this Act was not vindictive). The long and the short of the matter is that most of our fellow countrymen have an instinctive horror of filling up forms, and consequently there are a great many people who do not feel very strongly about a thing and therefore will not fill up a form. The difference between contracting in and contracting out is that you get the benefit of the inertia of those people who will not take the trouble to fill up a form. We say it is right that where a union has had a policy, and has had a fund, that the system of contracting out should apply.
I come next to the established civil servants. Take the Post Office workers. For years they had been affiliated to the T.U.C. They behaved quite well in the strike. They did not come out. What was the bitter necessity which convinced you that they were no longer to be affiliated to the T.U.C.? Was it an endeavour to denigrate the T.U.C., or what have Post Office workers done? (because the wages of Post Office workers and other Government servants are fixed in relation to wages paid outside). One always quotes the figure of what other people are getting when we discuss wages of Government servants. What was the reason to prevent Government servants then becoming affiliated to the T.U.C.? They were prevented under the doctrine of what was called undivided loyalty to the State. That is a doctrine which I absolutely repudiate. It smacks too much of the Fuhrer principle. The difficulties of life come from the fact that you get divided loyalty. There is no general principle of one loyalty to take precedence over another unless it be the loyalty which is referred to in the quotation:
"To thine own self be true …
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
Then there was the question of the local authorities who were deprived (what was the necessity I do not know) of the right which ordinary employers had of saying that their men must join a trade union. I say quite frankly that if I were a member

927
of a local authority I should be very hesitant about exercising any such right. But if public utilities and corporations have it, why should not local authorities have it? So much for the Act of 1927.
I will now say something of the history after the Act was passed, and first of all I would remind your Lordships of a saying which I came across recently in John Morley's recollections, where he said:
"Even the heathen make a point of not keeping their war trophies in repair."
I thought that was a very wise saying—if only the Conservative Party had not been so insistent on keeping their war trophies in repair! When I was Attorney-General in 1930 I was entrusted with the duty of dealing with this matter. I will be quite frank with your Lordships and tell you something which has not been revealed before. The Bill I drafted was the Bill as it is here to-day. The transitional provisions were slightly different, but that was the Bill. But the political circumstances of the time were such that that Bill did not commend itself to a majority of the House. Consequently I had to set about drafting some kind of compromise measure. It was a very difficult task and I am not at all sure I succeeded. Anyhow, in introducing my Bill I made it quite plain that I was inviting criticism and help, and was willing to modify and improve the Bill if I could. Those of you who happen to read these debates have realized that this much is plain: I certainly got no thanks. Indeed, the official Conservative spokesman said it would have been much better in the interests of the community if I had gone for a straight repeal. When Mr. Churchill said that the Bill was to be taken upstairs and its dirty throat cut, that was regarded as a piece of scintillating wit. That was my attempt at compromise. Standing here as Lord Chancellor I have got no dispatch box to thump. I have only got the head of the noble Lord on my left. If I had a dispatch box I could thump it, and say that so far as I am concerned, I shall not myself make the smallest effort at compromise again.
During the war we tried—I think everybody agrees that the trade union leaders were doing their part in the war—to see if we could not get some com-
928
promise then. We were told the Conservative Party would resent any tinkering with the Act. We must go to the people. We have been to the people, and the Bill which we are proposing today is the result of the mandate we have received. We are proposing—and I want your Lordships to understand this in deciding whether or not to give this Bill a Second Reading—a straight repeal. We shall be content with nothing short of a straight repeal. And we want it because, if I may use ecclesiastical language, we regard this Act on the Statute Book as a stumbling block in the way of the co-operation between management and men which we so sadly need.
Of course, I realize the importance of the law to the ordinary citizen. Thank God we are a law-abiding race of people and I hope we shall always remain so. But I believe there is something even more important than formal declarations of the law, for after all, during war-time, when the law said that all strikes were illegal, we did not avoid strikes. I believe, therefore, there is something more important than formal declarations of the law. I believe that the people of this country know that from Parliament they can always obtain justice, that Parliament is here to redress grievances, that Parliament will hold the scales evenly and fairly between all sections of the community, and that Parliament will not pass vindictive or repressive laws. That is more valuable than formal declarations of the law and it is because Parliament, by passing the Act in 1927, rightly or wrongly in the view of a very large number of people in this country, did fall from its own high position, that this feeling has arisen. We ask you to remove this Act, root and branch.
There comes a time in the history of nations, as it does in the rebuilding of cities, when the true task of statesmanship for the moment is to destroy, but to leave a site on which in the future some better building can be erected. So long as the Act of 1927 encumbers the ground, that is impossible. Once this Act is removed, what sort of building are we to try to erect? In the first place, it is quite plain it must be a building erected with the consent of both sides in industry. Secondly, I believe myself that for a long time ahead the right to strike must remain, but it must be in the background, and not in the foreground. That, I think, is very important.

929
If we can re-establish and re-assert the authority of the trade unions over their members, which this Act did so much to destroy, if we can speed up the conciliation procedure, if we can bring about a state of affairs so that resort is always to the conciliation procedure before the use of the crude weapon of strike, those are the lines on which I would like to proceed. If we could do that, the interval of time which would be involved might lead in time to the abolition of strikes without notice, and might render innocuous the immunity in respect of the procuring of breaches of contract which has always seemed to me the most questionable of the trade union privileges.
For the rest, it is obvious that the Government of the day must have the most ample powers. We have them under the Emergency Powers Act of 1920. As I said years ago, so I say now, that, it these powers are inadequate, we should make them stronger. The Government must see that its lieges are protected from hardship, and so on. That is our position. I hope I have made it plain that I do not want this Bill because I want bigger and better strikes. I do not ask you to pass the Bill because I want no strikes at all. I believe that if we are successfully to get out of the grave difficulties which confront the nation to-day, we cannot afford the luxury of all the trade disputes which we had in the old days. We must, therefore, not only get conciliation machinery. The machinery is no good without good will behind it. We must establish good will, mutual confidence and trust among all sections of industry, and it is because I am certain that you will not establish that good will, you will not establish that mutual confidence and trust so long as this Act remains on the Statute Book that I beg leave to move the Second Reading of this Bill to repeal that Act.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
3.39 p.m.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My Lords, we have become so familiar with the adroitness and the finesse with which my noble friend the Lord Chancellor is accustomed to present to this House Bills which it is expected the majority of the House will not like, that it is almost superfluous to say we all recognize that he has made a most moving and powerfully construc-
930
tive speech. His method varies with the occasion. There was an occasion, not so long ago, when he moved the Second Reading of a Government Bill of which he said he hoped that for the rest of his life he would never have to move another one like it. It was a very conciliatory way of proceeding! I think I recall another occasion when he told us that he was not very proud of the Bill and took a great deal of objection at any rate to the form in which it appeared.
Now let us at least be at one at the beginning and agree that the Lord Chancellor has shown great aplomb in presenting his arguments to-day, for he has a past in the matter. He referred to it briefly as the period when he had become Attorney-General in the Labour Government. I was one of those in the other House with him and. I very closely followed those proceedings. What he was then doing, on behalf of the Labour Government, was proposing certain Amendments in this Act of 1927. I am not concerned to say that there may not be respects in which the language of the Act can be improved. But what is very remarkable to me is that on the last occasion when he took part officially on behalf of the Labour Government in proposals for legislation on this very difficult subject of trade disputes he should have been responsible for a Bill which his own colleague, his own Solicitor-General, explained would make a General Strike illegal, and which preserved, quite untouched, very important parts of the Act of 1927—not, I feel sure, because my noble friend had a twinge of Liberal feeling that such proposals were justified, but because they plainly were justified and are justified now.
Therefore, though I have listened with the attention which it is always right to give to what he has said, and while I greatly admire the course of his arguments, I must say that for my part I thought the most convincing part of his speech, though it was a brief part, was that in which he claimed that the present Government had a mandate for the Bill. There he may be on pretty sound ground. I do not think that the mass of the electors, if they were set a short examination paper on the contents of the Act of 1927, would have got full marks. I doubt very much whether on any side in the Election controversy this formed a very leading feature of debate. Mr. Ernest Bevin

931
made very powerful speeches at the Election; but it was not at the Election, it was on the Second Reading of this Bill in another place the other day that he declared that the real reason for the Bill was not to change the law but to remove what he regarded as a slur upon himself. That was not an Election argument. I do not think any of the legal gentlemen who were supporting the Government at the late Election used the argument which has since been used in another place by the head of the Bar to the effect that it is no use having legislation like the Act of 1927, for if people did not choose to obey it of course they would disregard it. I do not recall these very remarkable statements being urged during the Election.
I wish to be perfectly fair about it, however, and what is true is that the repeal—and my noble friend is perfectly right in insisting upon that word—of the Act of 1927 was made part of the Labour programme which was very widely distributed to many people who are not supporters of the Labour Party. That is perfectly true, and what is also true is that a number of Labour members or candidates—I think the figures are something like one in twenty—actually mentioned it in their addresses. I do not consider it would be candid or that it would correspond with the facts of the case as I understand them if I did not go further and say that I have no doubt that it has been the purpose, and sometimes the declared purpose, of the Labour Party, if they came into power, to repeal the Act of 1927.
Well, I do not know whether you call that in the full sense a mandate. I think I should call it a sort of a mandate. Some of the older of your Lordships may remember that when the Boer War was supposed to be over, the Conservative Party of that day—it was in the year 1900—had a Khaki Election, and won it handsomely. The only inconvenience was that after the Election the Boer War went on. When the Lord Chancellor's predecessor was challenged on that subject, however, he gave a very effective answer. What Lord Halsbury said was: "You may not call it a war, but it is a sort of a war." I may say, in the same way, "You may not call it a mandate, but it is a sort of a mandate." I take the view, and I think it is the view taken by my noble
932
friends around me, that we have to accept that position and that we ought to accept it, because undoubtedly, examining the result of the Election and the appeals made to the electors, that was in substance the authority which the Government then obtained.
But that is a very different thing from saying that debate on the subject is useless, or that even vox populi is enough to make Parliamentary analysis redundant. One of the duties of a Member of Parliament, I suppose, is to use whatever skill or experience he has to show what is the real nature of legislation that is proposed. On the present occasion I think your Lordships' House has a special duty to do so, for there is this very remarkable contrast between the Act of 1927 and the Bill now before us: the Bill now before us was disposed of in another place in, I think, two days' discussion on Second Reading, three or four days in Committee and a Third Reading, whereas the Act of 1927, first and last, occupied twenty-eight days of Parliamentary time. It is true that a good deal of that time was occupied, as I well remember, by the most respectable and honourable members of the Labour Opposition prophesying that that Act would put a stop to trade unionism; that it was an assault upon working men's combinations, and I do not know what else—language so absurd that it is not necessary now to rouse feelings by reminding people of it. In point of fact, the Act of 1927, which has been on the Statute Book for nineteen years, has not inflicted any injury on the trade unions, unless you regard it as an injury that trade unions should have to get the approval of a member before a contribution can be exacted from him for a political fund. With that single exception, I do not think it can be seriously said that the Trades Disputes Act of 1927 has obstructed the trade union movement. That movement has gone from strength to strength, and more and more it speaks for the labour and industry of the nation.
As the noble Lord Chancellor said, this measure now proposed has indeed the merit of brevity and clarity. Nothing could be more brief and nothing could be more clear as far as it goes. If you look at it—and this is all you will get from the Printed Paper Office or from the Table of the House—it merely says "The Trades

933
Disputes and Trade Unions Act, 1927, is hereby repealed." That is all. No doubt it was very brief and clear when the Duchess shouted "Off with his head," but that was not really an argument in favour of the course so briefly expressed.
LORD CALVERLEY: The Red Queen.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I am greatly obliged. I apologize to all Duchesses, whether in their own right or otherwise. It seems to me that in order that we may look at This matter fairly there is really no course more useful to take than to look at this Act of 1927, to which the Lord Chancellor has referred, and to call attention, as objectively and accurately as possible, to what in fact it provides. It is on the Statute Book and it is now proposed, nineteen years after its enactment, to get rid of it, lock, stock and barrel. You will not get any information from looking at the Bill now proposed. Your Lordships are under a certain disadvantage; you cannot do on this occasion what is done on most occasions, that is, get the Bill before the debate begins, examine its clauses, form a broad view of what the purposes of those clauses are, and then prepare to hear the debate in detail in order to make up your mind whether the Bill is justified or not. This all refers back to the Act of 1927 and I propose to call attention to the sections which your Lordships' House is now invited to repeal.
Apart from the short title, there are seven sections, and each of them is important. If you take those seven sections together, you find they form a very considerable part of the trade union code. The idea that you are really getting rid of some provision about a General Strike—the words "general strike" do not occur in the Act of 1927—is a complete delusion. Here you have a section first of all endeavouring to define what strikes and lockouts are illegal. For the sake of brevity I will say "strikes" hereafter, but the term includes lock-outs all the way through.
It is admitted by the spokesmen of the Government that some strikes are illegal. Although I do not think the noble and learned Lord Chancellor used it, the phrase which is current amongst supporters of the Bill is, "We admit that a revolutionary strike is illegal." At this time it might be useful to inquire what is a revolutionary strike. At any rate it is admitted that some strikes are illegal,
934
and it is further admitted, I should think, that after the events of 1926, and indeed during the so-called General Strike, there was a great difference of opinion as to whether or not those particular events constituted an illegal strike. Quite naturally, the Lord Chancellor used a few quotations designed to show that the view that it was illegal was mistaken, and very possibly it was, although there is plenty of high authority to the contrary. But that is not really the point; the point is that after the events of 1926 it was clear to everybody that there was a great deal of honest dispute, misunderstanding and vagueness in the country as to whether events like those of the General Strike were legal or illegal. I merely point out to your Lordships that the first section of the Act of 1927 which is now to be repealed is a section which defines, as well as it can, what an illegal strike is. I can perfectly well understand the action of the present Lord Chancellor when he was in another place in 1931 and when he proposed to amend that definition. It did not appear to some of us to be a very wisely drawn amendment, but that is what he attempted to do. He never suggested that it was a good plan to leave the law on this all-important subject in a state of doubt.
What are the particular circumstances in which this doubt arises? I have not the faintest doubt in my mind that there, were hundreds of thousands of people who took part in the General Strike of 1926 who believed they were doing something which was perfectly lawful from beginning to end. I am very glad to see my noble friend Lord Walkden opposite me and to learn that he may take part in this debate. We have all learnt to know him and to respect him. If he took part, as I believe he did, in the General Strike of 1926, from what I know of him I am perfectly convinced that he believed he was doing the right and lawful thing. There were hundreds of thousands of people who, rightly or wrongly, were under the same impression. Is it really tolerable that on a matter of that importance, when there was shown to be so wide a difference of opinion, the course taken by the Labour Government because it has the power should be to say "Let us wipe away all definitions of an illegal strike; let us leave the working people of this country in the future in the same state of confusion and doubt as they were found to be in in the year 1926?" I say

935
that is not fair and that there is no subject on which it is more obvious that there ought to be a wisely devised definition than on a subject of that sort.
I am not going to follow the noble Lord, the Lord Chancellor, though it tempts me very much, in spending some time on quotations about the legality or illegality of the General Strike. As I have said, that does not seem to me to be the real point to-day. The real point to-day is that there were two opinions about it, there was doubt about it, and hundreds of thousands of people did not know whether they were doing right or wrong. I say it is not right so to change the law as to make that position again as obscure as it was in 1926. However, I hope I may be forgiven if I indulge in three quotations, for it is twenty years ago. It is agreed that a revolutionary strike is illegal, and I select as one of my quotations a declaration made by a very well-known Labour leader, the Industrial Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, after the strike was over. Three-quarters of a column of The Times newspaper was occupied with his speech in August, 1926. He was a member of the General Council of the T.U.C. which took over operations, and he was the head of one of the two great railway trade unions.
This is what Mr. C. T. Cramp said on August 18, 1926, to a Labour summer school. He was referring to the General Strike and how he understood it. I would ask attention to these words:
"In order that the General Strike might be successful it was necessary to enforce the resignation of the Government. In spite, therefore, of the General Council of the T.U.C.'s denials being made during the strike—obviously for reassuring the timid—the issue was a constitutional one."
I recall that my noble friend, in his speech just now, said that he thought not sufficient attention had been paid to the constitutional issues. So it appears. Mr. Cramp went on:
"If successful, it did involve a revolutionary change in their methods, and it was as well to face the fact. In the circumstances prevailing during the General Strike there was no halfway house between the ballot box and the machine gun."
Then came an expression of the natural disappointment that these designs had failed—
936
"Whereas we expected food supplies to grow scarce in a couple of days and business to come to a standstill, nothing of the kind took place."
One of the leaders who took over the direction of the strike, one of the half-dozen men who were really deciding the issue, said, in August, 1926, what I have just read. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, was very well justified when he said just now that not enough attention had been paid to the constitutional issue. The truth, as it seemed to me and to many others, though not everybody agreed, was that in fact the action that was taken in calling the General Strike was an endeavour to bring such pressure upon the community and the Government so as to compel them to give way in the direction which the T.U.C. required. People may have different views as to whether that is a lawful use of power, but that that is what was intended is, I think, beyond any question.
I now give my second quotation. The Daily Herald, which dealt with this matter very fully and, as far as I know, quite accurately, published an hour or two before the General Strike was proclaimed these sentences which I have extracted from that newspaper:
"At midnight tonight, unless the Government"—
mark you, the Government—
"changes its position on the mining lock-out, a great national stoppage of industry will begin. All forms of transport, printing (including all newspapers), the iron and steel and applied industries, together with the supply of gas and electricity for power purposes, all building other than housing and hospital work are to stop."
I am perfectly willing to be told that in the view which I formed, and thought it my duty to express, I was forming a judgment on a matter of fact, and that is true. It is quite true that before you can say that operations of this sort are illegal operations you must, as the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, very kindly recognized, come to a conclusion on a fact. Sometimes you need to empanel jurors and hold long inquiries before you can ascertain a fact, but in the face of that declaration, and in the face of what Mr. Cramp afterwards said, is it a very difficult conclusion to draw? Is it not as plain as the nose on your face that in point of fact, no doubt without realizing all its implications, what was being done

937
at that time was to attempt to hold the community up to ransom?
I will say two things about that. First of all, I have not a shadow of a doubt so far as my personal judgment is concerned that an attempt thus to hold up the community to ransom is against the law, and secondly, if by any chance it is not then it certainly ought to be. It is in these circumstances that the Government come forward and say: Away with any definition of an illegal strike. We are not going to amend it; we are going to get rid of it. We are going to leave people where they were in 1926. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, used some strong expressions about where they were, and I hope he has got sufficient absolution for the purpose. He described them as having acted ill advisedly and without consideration, with wholly insufficient regard to the constitutional issues involved, and said that what they produced was a knock-kneed thing. With reference to this Act, while he thought it was rubbing somebody's nose into it, what was the nose being rubbed into? He said it was the mess that they had made.
The third quotation, and the only other I would ask to be allowed to make, is a clear statement made in this House by the Earl of Oxford and Asquith. He was not only a great master of speech but he was a very profound constitutional lawyer, and I have never seen any adequate challenge to the statement he made. I will read to your Lordships: what the noble Earl said while this General Strike was going on:
"Now there is a very broad and obvious distinction between a General Strike and those particular strikes or lock-outs in various industries which have from time to time taken place and which have been painfully frequent in our own industrial annals. What distinguishes a General Strike from all others is this, that it is a blow, not struck at one combatant or the other, but directed, whether in intention or not in intention, by its inevitable results at the very vitals of the whole community."
Is there any noble Lord opposite who had any part or lot in the General Strike who will deny that the General Strike was a blow directed at the very vitals of the community? You cannot stop all the newspapers of the country; you cannot stop all the transport of the country, and you cannot stop all the iron and steel trades of the country—
A NOBLE LORD: Or the coal.
VISCOUNT SIMON: You cannot do those things without striking at the vitals of the community. My noble friend makes an interjection, and it leads me to say one thing more on that before I pass to the next point. The noble Earl gave a short account of what preceded the General Strike, and rightly referred to the Royal Commission over which my noble friend Lord Samuel presided. The Government of the day, in order to give that Commission every chance to find a solution, did a very extraordinary and a very unusual thing; it provided out of public funds a substantial subsidy which would enable the existing of miners to be continued to be paid for another nine months. I think 70 per cent. of the wages paid in that interval were in fact thus made possible. Then my noble friend Lord Samuel just before April 30, just before the nine months expired, reported and I invite the House, although it is twenty years ago, to remember what Lord Samuel's Commission reported.
First of all, it is interesting to notice, it rejected the solution of nationalization unanimously. But that was twenty years ago. Sir William Beveridge was one of the Commissioners. Secondly, it recommended that the State should secure the royalties in coal. And that has been done. Thirdly—and I call particular attention to this—it insisted that the subsidy must be ended. I quote a sentence:
"… We think its continuance indefensible. The subsidy should stop at the end of its authorized term, and should never be repeated."
And it did stop on the 30th of April—just twenty years ago to-day. Fourthly, my noble friend Viscount Samuel's Commission came to this conclusion. This is how it is put:
"We come reluctantly but unhesitatingly to the conclusion that the costs of production, with the present hours and wages, are greater than the industry can bear."
That was the result of their impartial inquiry. The Government made very great efforts to try to find an adjustment or compromise. The story of their efforts is available and it is well known. Many of your Lordships no doubt have studied it. It is no good asking why or how at this stage, but there was not an agreement. The result was that you had this proclamation by the Trades Union Congress.

939
I say it is my firm judgment on very plain facts that they were in fact endeavouring to put the maximum amount of pressure on the whole community in general, and on the Government in particular, in order to force a continuance of the subsidy. That was not trying to make the owners do something; it was trying to make the Government do something. I will never subscribe to the doctrine, however powerful a trade union may become, that it is a lawful use of trade union powers to bring overwhelming pressure to bear on the community or Parliament for the purpose of getting its own way. Once that doctrine is accepted as constitutional we shall substitute government by the T.U.C. for government by Parliament. Therefore I venture, with great respect to those who take a different view, to assert that there is no excuse at all for saying: "Let us get rid of all definitions of illegal strikes." To do so, I maintain, is not to do what is the business of Parliament when it legislates—namely, to clarify the law. It is doing the exact opposite and is throwing this most important subject back into the fog of doubt and dispute which existed when the General Strike took place.
Much more briefly, let me refer to these other sections of the Act of 1927. Some of my noble friends who will speak hereafter will deal with them in more detail. Let me take Section 2. I do not think the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, referred expressly to it. Section 2 of the Act which the Government wish to repeal is the section providing for the "protection of persons refusing to take part in illegal strikes or lock-outs." That is a perfectly accurate description of the section. I hardly think that the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, can be very proud of fathering a Bill which aims at removing that protection. There are great penalties which can be imposed if that provision goes. You can forfeit a man's rights, you can expel him from your union, you can turn him, against his will, into a blackleg, all because he refuses to take part in an illegal strike. That is one section which is to be got rid of in this brief and easy manner.
Section 3 of the Act deals with the prevention of intimidation. Here I would like to ask the noble and learned Lord,
940
the Lord Chancellor, to be good enough to check what I say and tell me if what I am stating is not his view of the matter. I will only take a minute or two, but I want to know if I am not right. Section 3 (1), as I understand, did not change the law. It was an attempt, I think, and on the whole a very good attempt, to bring together into one subsection clauses which have to be found in various places including the Act of 1875 and, I think, the Act of 1906. These were clauses which, as they stood, had very frequently honestly misled workmen who were acting on pickets. There is plenty of evidence of that. On subsection (4) I shall value the Lord Chancellor's concurrence in my view that it was new law. Let us see then what is this subsection (4).
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Is the noble and learned Viscount quite right? I had thought that there was provision in the Act of 1875 to deal with cases of anyone watching or besetting houses.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I do not think so, but we will not, of course, argue it now. I have looked at this with some care, and I think that others of my noble friends will also have something to say about it. I suggest that this was new law, an additional protection which by this repealing Act is going to be withdrawn. Let us see what it says:
"Notwithstanding anything in any Act, it shall not be lawful for one or more persons, for the purpose of inducing any person to work or to abstain from working, to watch or beset a house or place where a person resides or the approach to such a house or place, and any person who acts in contravention of this subsection shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding £20 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months."
In my belief—and I am quite willing to be corrected hereafter if I am wrong, but I have had occasion to study this subject—that was new law. It is being taken away by the Bill now before the House, and when one considers what it means to watch or beset a house for the purpose of inducing any person to work or to abstain from working I should like to ask if my noble friends opposite are feeling very happy.
We will not argue, but suppose for a moment that I am right—after all, I may perhaps be right sometimes. Are my noble friends opposite really very happy when they are repealing that law? Watching or besetting a house or a place where

941
a man lives, where his wife lives, where his children live! Watching or besetting a house for the purpose of inducing any person to work or to abstain from work! I know very well that there are noble Lords sitting on the Benches opposite—good trades unionists—who would never demean themselves by taking any sort of action which might seem like compelling a wife or frightening a child. I am sure of that. But what do you mean by repealing a thing when there it is on the Statute Book as a warning that people with less control than you are not to indulge in that particular form of persuasion or inducement?
I take Section 4 very briefly indeed. It deals with contracting in and contracting out. Here I have a confession to make. I originally thought, and thought for some years, that the distinction between contracting in and contracting out was not very important. It is I, if I may say so to the noble and learned Lord Chancellor, who was the author or inventor of the phrase about the benefit of inertia. I used to take the view that probably it was just slackness which caused a number of trade unionists not to subscribe to their union. They had no objection to subscribing but, as my noble friend said, they did not bother and would not fill up forms. As long as it was plausible to think that, I expressed the opinion that it might well be that the position under which people were required to contract out was just. But, really, it is quite impossible to hold that simple view any longer. The real motive behind some of the enthusiasm for this Bill is the intention to collect money for the political purposes of a trade union from people who are not willing to give it. Undoubtedly that is true; it is for your Lordships to judge whether such a provision is just. I content myself with two simple figures, both given by Labour Ministers. In 1926, so the present Lord Chancellor informed another place when he made a speech in 1931, the numbers of registered unions which had political funds at a time when members had to pay unless they especially contracted out was 77 per cent. That is one figure. Now we have been told by the Minister of Labour that if we take the number of registered unions having political funds, when there is a requirement that members must contract in, the figure is 43 per cent.
942
What is the explanation of this difference? Obviously there is only one explanation. That is; that as long as a man must contract in there are a very large number of people who will not make the contribution. As long as you say "If you want to get out of this contribution you must contract out—give me your name and I will mark it on the list; never mind about the Ballot Act, that does not apply"; as soon as that happens you get a situation that is wholly different. I have come most clearly to the opinion, as I told another place, that it is quite impossible to suppose that this is merely due to inertia. I is due to the fact that there are a large number of members in the trade union movement who do not want to have their money taken for political purposes, which at present means for Labour purposes. And some day it may mean for Communist purposes. They intend to keep their money for themselves. I wonder whether we really are to understand in this House that the position of trade unionists is so precarious that it is necessary to indulge in this highly profitable change.
Perhaps I might ask one further question, without being too pressing. Even if it is a profitable change, is it just? Is it just that you should say to a man, who no doubt ought to be a member of his trade union as he receives the services of the union and perhaps a pension system, as well as help from the secretary "Ah, but there is another thing. We have a political fund. This political fund goes to help finance the most wealthy party in the State—the Government in fact—and I am sure you would like to subscribe to our political fund. It would be much nicer for you if you did." it is very embarrassing, I am sure, for any individual to find that he is to be a marked man, as a person who will not undertake to do this. I really think that that is, in some respects, the most deplorable part of what I regard as a very deplorable Bill.
Clauses five and six, which deal with established civil servants, and with what a local or public authority is allowed to do in making it a condition of employment that a person shall or shall not belong to a trade union, I leave to some of any noble friends to deal with hereafter. They do not seem to me to be unjust. I cannot conceive that they are any slur on Mr. Ernest Bevin. They

943
seem to me a reasonable provision which, standing by themselves, might be accepted. I come to the last, and in some respects the most anxious of all parts. This Bill of 1927 which was carefully drafted, contained at the end what is most necessary in Acts of Parliament—a section supplementing the declaration of what was lawful and what could be done by a clause which provided the machinery for finding out how the clause was to be applied. It provided that the Attorney-General might apply to the Courts for an injunction restraining any application of the funds of a trade union in contravention of the provisions of Section 1; that is to say, if they were being used for an illegal strike. If you do not have a provision of that sort you may beat the air with general Acts and sections, but in the end you will be defeated because you have no machinery by which you can get a doubtful case decided. The object of this Section 7 was simply to secure that if a situation should arise in which it was doubtful whether or not a strike was illegal there should be as rapid as possible a method of finding out. The Lord Chancellor wants to repeal that section. He admits there are such things as illegal strikes; at least (I will not put it personally) the Government admit there are such things as illegal strikes. The Government are unable to substitute a better definition than the definition in the Bill.
I will put this question and then I will conclude. Let us suppose there occurs again in this country an incident corresponding to what is commonly called the General Strike of 1926—holding up essential services, stopping all transport, forcing typists and hairdressers, as we saw twenty years ago, to walk miles and miles from their lodgings to their work. Let us suppose that that all happened again, and that the Government of the day, the Prime Minister of the day, turns to his Lord Chancellor and to his Attorney-General to ask "Is this legal?" What is their answer to be? Their answer will be: "Do not ask me; I do not know." That is the only answer they can give. The essence of these General Strikes is the suddenness with which they take place. It is their "Blitz" quality that is their danger. And here you have deliberately removed from the Statute Book the provision by
944
which the responsible legal adviser to the Government may go to the Courts and say: "These are the facts as we understand them. We have served notices, and we want to know whether this strike is legal or illegal." Under the Act of 1927 you could do that. The Government is now quite deliberately proposing to get rid of that section as well as every other section.
I claim to have shown at least this, that there are very serious objections to the repeal of these sections and putting nothing in their place. I am not denying at all that amendments here and there might be improvements. But that is not the point. For the Government quite deliberately to say, as my noble friend has told us, that they are going to have the repeal, and nothing but repeal, and let the devil take the hindmost—I say that by so doing you are perverting the proper use of Parliamentary powers. The duty of Parliament, when it passes an Act, is to try to make the law clearer. Here you are quite deliberately making the law more vague, more doubtful and more difficult. Let it be granted that my views of twenty years ago may have been wrong. That does not matter at all. The greatest Common Law authority of the time, Sir Frederick Pollock, happened to think I was right, but what does that matter? The point is that there was an honest difference of opinion, which the Act of 1927 cleared up. How can it be right for that difference of opinion to be restored? I say again it is a cruel thing to change these provisions for the protection of persons refusing to take part in an illegal strike. I say it is an unjust thing to remove any portion of the protection in Section 3 of the Act in respect of intimidation in a man's own home. That is not quite correctly expressed. Intimidation in any case is unlawful. What I mean is that you should not permit pickets to attend at a man's home in order to try to persuade him that he ought to join in a strike. Picket the factory gates, if you like, picket the public-houses if you like, but at any rate protect the wives and children from that sort of pressure which this kind of thing inevitably involves. I say that, as things are, there is no justification, except the justification of increasing the funds of trade unions, for turning contracting-in into contracting-out. I say, although it sounds a small point, it is a very big one; that just as serious as

945
the others is the deliberate removal of Section 7 by which, and by which alone, a Government through its appointed Law Officer can do its utmost to find out quickly whether a terrible disturbance such as there was in 1926 is within or without the law.
It is twenty years ago, within a few Clays, that I thought it was my duty to make a speech on this subject. It was not made with any sort of enmity to trade unions. The very first thing I ever did in my Parliamentatry life was to argue in favour of the Trades Disputes Act of 1906, and Mr. Balfour, as he then was, was good enough to say that the argument then advanced was one which could not be resisted. Trade unions have been given immense and special powers. Their funds are absolutely safe from being touched, whatever be the civil wrongs they inspire. Their leaders, who persuade other people to break their contract, cannot be used when they attempt so to do. I thought those provisions justified because I thought trade unions, as they had grown up, had always believed that was the law in their favour, and I still abide by that. But with regard to this measure, it seems to me now that the hackneyed quotation which I remember using twenty years ago in the House of Commons is the best quotation to sum it up:
"O, it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant."
4.35 p.m.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: My Lords, the House has listened with interest to two speeches from great legal luminaries who have illuminated this subject with lights of different colours, and I am not quite sure whether at the end we see more or less clearly than we did at the beginning. The Lord Chancellor is always suaviter in modo. In view of his remark about thumping the box, on this occasion I was glad he was not fortiter in "Rea"! He made clear a fact which many of us suspected before, that this Bill was a controversial Bill. Whenever a controversial Bill comes before this House we have in these days to consider two quite distinct questions: First, the merits or demerits of the particular measure and the desirability of rejection or amendment or passage; secondly, what the action of the House
946
of Lords should be in view of the political conditions of the country.
We have a Parliament of two chambers, the one wholly elected, the other consisting of members two out of three of whom sit here by hereditary right. Although in very many cases they have personal qualifications of a high order, that is what one might call only a fortunate by product, and is not a requirement. In the elected House we have at the present time a Labour Party majority of two to one. In this House we have a Conservative Party majority of three or four to one. In these circumstances, if there were a chronic divergence between the two Houses, it is obvious that the Constitution would not work, and before long there would be a great contest, which history shows would be likely to and only in one way. Therefore, on an occasion such as this, what is likely to prove decisive is the advice which is given by the leaders of the Conservative Party to their supporters in this House with regard to the action to be taken on the Second Reading. I gather from the speech which has just been made by the noble and learned Viscount that that advice is not to challenge the passage of this Bill. That seems to me to be right in the circumstances of the case.
There is no doubt that the Labour Party made clear before the last General Election, that one of their first acts would be the introduction of precisely this measure, and one must therefore expect a Bill of this character to be introduced by a Labour Government. Some one has written that you cannot have Falstaff and have him thin. Well, you cannot expect to have a Labour Government and that they should leave the Act of 1927 as it was. Consequently, so far as any definite action is concerned, our present debate is really academic. Nevertheless it is desirable that we should express our several opinions, because they may help to guide public opinion in the country at large and because they will remain on record in view of discussions on any later measures dealing with the same subject. So far as the Liberal Party is concerned, as the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has stated, we were against the Act in 1927. Mr. Lloyd George, who was then leader of the Party, denounced it on the Second Reading in the House of Commons. Viscount Grey

947
also, in a letter to The Times on April 11,1927, said with regard to its introduction that he thought it was "a mistake fraught with real peril to the interests of the country," and he gave his reasons. For my own part, I was not then in the House of Commons, but I made a speech in the country in which I said I thought the attack on trade unions was both unwise and unnecessary; I deplored the introduction of the Bill and said that if I were a Member of the House of Commons I should vote against it on Second Reading. When that Bill came before your Lordships' House, Lord Reading, then the Leader of the Liberal Party here, spoke against it, and he and Lord Grey and the Liberal Party in general divided the House on the Second Reading, and many of them also voted against it on the Third Reading. Consequently to-day we are not likely to be greatly perturbed about the repeal of an Act the original passage of which we so strongly resisted.
Now with respect to the effect of the Bill on the position regarding the General Strike, I most vividly remember the first week of May twenty years ago. The strike had been declared and there were no negotiations proceeding for its ending. The Government of the day—Mr. Baldwin's Government—had said that until the strike was called off they would not resume any negotiations for the ending of the dispute in the mining industry; while the Trades Union Congress said that until negotiations were opened in the mining industry they would not call off the General Strike. The deadlock was complete. At that juncture, being, as has been mentioned, the Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Coal Industry whose Report had considerable relation to the events that were then happening, I intervened as an individual, and I had an opportunity, through the intermediation of Mr. J. H. Thomas, of meeting the Working Committee of the Trades Union Congress. We met morning after morning for several days, secretly, at the house of Sir Abe Bailey in Bryanston Square, in the somewhat incongruous surroundings of a millionaire's drawing room hung with great old masters, and on one occasion we met also the leaders of the Miners' Federation. Those negotiations were, in the end, successful, not in persuading the
948
miners but in persuading the Trades Union Congress to call off the strike; and it was called off on May 12.
Now the principal reason why that strike ended was, in my view, that the public opinion of the nation had declared itself against it, and not least amongst the working classes, whose homes were subjected to great hardship through the gradual cessation of supplies. The Trades Union Congress was surprised that the sudden shock of the great strike had not resulted in an immediate victory, but as it did not, the current was all against them and they saw, all over the country, men going back to work in greatly increasing numbers. They were anxious to end the strike and were grateful to anyone who would provide them with a ladder down which they could climb. But also one of the causes, I have no doubt at all, was the discovery by the trade union leaders that, in all probability, their action was illegal, as Lord Simon had said. They had not anticipated that it would be declared in any quarter that this was not a trade dispute within the meaning of the Trade Disputes Act and thought therefore that their action was protected; and when the noble Lord himself, Lord Simon, speaking with the authority of an ex-Attorney-General, declared publicly that the very leaders whom I was meeting in that room were liable in damages to the uttermost farthing of their personal possessions, it was a very unpleasant situation for them to be in.
The trade unionists of this country are average, sensible British citizens, not in the least revolutionary, and they had no intention of engaging in any defiance of the law and Constitution. Consequently they were greatly perturbed at the position in which they found themselves and were only too anxious to find some way of escape. Doubts have been expressed to-day as to whether such a strike was in fact illegal at that time. Lord Haldane in this House declared that it certainly was legal, and he quoted various authorities to that effect.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Lord Buckmaster declared it was not.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: I know there was a complete divergence of views, but still the fact remains that at the outset and during the strike the predominant view, especially in view of the judgment of Lord Astbury, from which there was

949
no appeal and could not be an appeal; it was an ex parte action—well, I do not know whether I am right in saying there could not be an appeal, but at any rate there was no appeal—was that it was illegal; for that judgment, which carried great weight, declared in categorical terms that the whole proceeding was illegal. Now if in fact the strike was illegal, as Lord Simon declared at the time—and I do not know that he has since changed his opinion—and as Lord Astbury declared, then on the passage of this Bill before the House it remains illegal still.
VISCOUNT SIMON: It remains in doubt.
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: If the noble Lord doubts his own judgment, he will say it is still doubtful. Other people, he will say, might doubt or question his opinion. I quite agree it would be better to remove doubts now that we are legislating, and to make the law more tidy than it would remain if this Bill is passed simpliciter: but I imagine the Government would say they have no time to be tidy, that it would take a great deal of Parliamentary time, and that the legislative timetable is far too crowded to enable this to be undertaken. For my own part, speaking personally, I do not think it matters very greatly one way or the other, for I hold that public opinion would certainly decide any similar event in the future as it did on the last occasion; and that if such a strike were disapproved by public opinion it would certainly fail, even if it were legal, whereas if it were approved by public opinion it would certainly succeed, even if it were declared illegal. That is the very essence of the whole matter.
The Act of 1927 includes several particular points, and its repeal therefore raises a number of separate considerations. I shall not myself deal with any of those matters—they may be dealt with perhaps on Committee stage, if any noble Lords put down Amendments—with one exception, which indeed is not a minor point but is of great importance and which when you come to examine it raises constitutional matters which are perhaps of fundamental importance. My only remaining observations will be directed to that point, and it is the question of contracting in or contracting out. Let us view this matter in the first place historically and see why it is that trade unions have a special place under the
950
law in matters that are political and not merely industrial. When, after 1832, this country set itself to establishing a democratic Constitution, it gradually, stage by stage, enlarged the franchise until, irrespective of class, it included all grades of the community, and further more the House of Commons was left open without any property or other qualification to any citizen who could secure nomination and election. But it was soon found in the working that that is not enough to establish a democratic Parliament. Universal franchise and the absence of any restrictive qualifications were not enough because it was found in fact that the House of Commons was not the Commons House; its membership consisted almost entirely of members of the class of landed gentry, leaders of commerce and industry, lawyers and other professional men, and the workers who were in the vast majority in the population had hardly any representatives amongst the representative assembly at all.
That was no doubt primarily, or at any rate partly, because Members of Parliament were unpaid. John Stuart Mill wrote that an unpaid Legislature was a contrivance for keeping the Legislature securely in the hands of those who could afford to serve without pay. He went on to say that of the able men the country produced, nine-tenths at least were of the class who could not serve without pay. Then there were also election costs, which were very heavy, and the politically minded workman found his access to the House of Commons absolutely closed by those financial considerations. The only way in which he could overcome those obstacles was by the help of the trade unions, large bodies of men with very large funds, which could afford themselves to pay Members of Parliament and their election expenses.
In 1913 the Liberal Government, of which I was a member, passed the Trades Union Act of that year which enabled a political fund to be established by any registered trade union if the majority of its members agreed. That Act provided that any person who wished not to subscribe to it could be exempted by contracting out. That was the law then; but in 1927 it was turned the other way about and it was decided that any person who did wish to subscribe to the political fund must take action on his own motion and

951
contract in. The Bill which is before us this evening is a Bill to revert to the earlier law. After thirty-three years experience of the Act of 1913, for my part I find myself in the same position as the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, in thinking that the matter should be reconsidered. It is no longer essential that the trade unions should have great political funds in order to obtain access to the House of Commons for the working classes. Members of Parliament now are paid salaries—again owing to the action of the same Government at about the same period, 1911—and those salaries are now about to be increased. Official election expenses have been placed upon the public charge and are no longer paid by the candidates, and in other ways, by free postage and so on, election expenses have been reduced. Therefore, in general, there is not the same overriding necessity to provide political funds of that character.
Furthermore, there is a constitutional point to which I would beg very earnestly to invite the attention of your Lordships, for it is one which, so far as I know, has not yet been raised in Parliament and very seldom outside. It relates to the constitution of the Labour Party. It may be said that this is merely a domestic matter for the Labour Party and is not our concern outside, but that is not so, for on it depends the way in which we are governed and the whole working in practice of our democratic system. The Labour Party deals, of course, as a party (as any political party would) not only with industrial matters but with all questions of State, home and foreign. Its supreme authority is the Labour Party Conference, which in the last resort determines the policy of the whole party. That conference—and here I am coming very soon to the precise point with which we shall be dealing in this Bill consists of representatives of the trade unions, of the constituency Labour parties, of the area federations of the Labour Party, of various Socialist societies such as the Fabian Society and one small Co-operative Society. Last year the Conference consisted of 557 delegates. Of those delegates, 393 were trade union representatives and 164 were not.
But when it comes to a vote, there is an even greater authority in the power of the trade unions. Voting is on the basis, not of the number of representatives present, but of the number of persons
952
whom they represent, on the footing of one vote for every five thousand persons represented. On that footing, the trade unions can poll 2,400,000 votes in the Labour Conference, whilst all the others put together—all the political Labour parties throughout the country and the Socialist societies—have only 573,000 votes. Therefore in the ruling body of the Labour Party the trade unions have a majority of four to one. But not only that; the five largest trade unions, if they vote together, have by themselves a majority in the whole assembly. The five largest trade unions can, in the Labour Party Conference, cast as many votes as all the rest of the small trade unions, all the local Labour Party constituency associations, all the area federations and the Socialist societies put together. The Big Five have a veto, if they wish to exercise it, as complete as the veto which the Big Five have in the United Nations. Consequently we have in this country at the present time in our Constitution two separate methods of control. We have the ancient constitutional system by which the House of Commons of 640 members is elected by some 30,000,000 voters divided into geographical constituencies, the members making pledges to their constituents and being responsible to them. In addition, we have a different authority; we have the Labour Party Annual Conference which controls the policy of the Party inside Parliament and its presentation to the country, and in that conference the trade unions have a majority of four to one over everyone else.
The trade unions were originally formed to promote the industrial interests of their members, to promote their welfare as workmen in their several trades and to improve their conditions of employment. In other matters, political matters generally, their members were on the same footing as all other citizens; they could intervene on any question, whether it was our relations with Russia, conscription or whatever it might be, as citizens, as voters, in the ordinary way. The law then recognized the trade unions for industrial purposes; it gave them registration, facilitated their work and protected their funds. Then owing to the essential need which I have mentioned of securing to the working classes access to Parliament, the law gave the trade unions also these political

953
functions and allowed them to raise a political fund. That is how the system now works. On such matters as, for instance, our relations with Russia or conscription, the trade unions have an absolute majority in the Labour Party Conference, and the Labour Party Conference exercises a moral, and in fact a very real, control over the policy of the Party as a whole. Let us imagine that as applied to some other party. Most employers of labour in this country are Conservatives, although not by any means all; the great majority belong to and support the Conservative Party. Their representative body is the Federation of British Industries. Suppose we knew that the Federation of British Industries had a four to one majority in the annual assembly of the Conservative Party. There would be instantly the most vehement protest against any such influence being exercised over a political party. I am not sure that it is any better if such control is exercised by the trade unions.
I am the last man to be animated by any prejudice of any kind against trade unions. On the contrary, I am very proud to think that my first activities in public life, as a young undergraduate, were to act as a trade union agitator and to go about the villages of South Oxfordshire stirring up the farm labourers to join the Dockers and General Workers' Union. All through my life I have supported all the legislation that has been introduced for the assistance of the trade unions, including the Act of 1913. I do not believe the trade unions, except in the one lamentable instance of the General Strike, have in fact ever abused the strength that they possess, and I do not think there is any likelihood that they will do so to-day.
All this talk that we heard at the last General Election about trade union dictatorship, a Socialist Gestapo and so forth, I should stigmatize in somewhat strong language if it were not for the illustrious source from which it emanated. I will be content to say that it seems to me to have no substance whatever. Nevertheless, it is contrary I believe to sound political principle that we should have this second channel of control apart from the electorate, the members of Parliament and the Government, through trades unions, the Parliamentary Labour conference and the Labour Government.
954
The trade unions, therefore, are put in a highly exceptional and privileged position so far as the government of this country is concerned. No industrial organization has any such powers or any such functions, and neither has any profession. The lawyers, for example, could not as a profession, or the doctors as a profession, exercise control over any particular political party and create a party which has a class basis of this character with a four-to-one majority and with the greater part of its funds provided from the same source: As the law stood until the Act of 1927 was passed, and as the law will stand when this Bill passes, every member of every trade union who has become a member for industrial reasons, because he is an engineer, because he is a railwayman, or because he is a carpenter, or whatever he may be, having joined the trade union for those industrial purposes, finds himself, unless he takes, definite action to the contrary, obliged by the rules of his union to subscribe to a political fund for a particular party. He is liable to be sued for the sums he owes if he does not so subscribe, unless as I say he declares himself, so to speak, a conscientious objector, and contracts out. That is a very invidious decision to require him to take.
The late Lord Fisher, in a letter quoted in a book which I happened to come across, wrote, in quite a different connexion, these words:
"This free country, where every man can do as he likes, and if he doesn't, he's made to."
I think there would be a good deal of that in the trade union world when it comes to this question of contracting out. When the only access to Parliament was through political funds of trade unions, that was perhaps the overriding consideration, and I for one and the Liberal Party in general supported the principle of contracting out. But as I say, after a third of a century of experiencing its working, we realize that A is wrong in principle, whether it is applied to an organization of work-people or to an organization of employers, or let us say to an organization of an ecclesiastical character such as prevails in some other countries, that such an organization as such—I emphasize "as such"—should exercise control from within over any political party in the State.

955
Therefore, if we were legislating afresh, we ought not in my opinion to include this provision, necessitating a contracting out, but should leave this inertia—an important factor, as there is apparently £25,000 worth of inertia in this matter—to function not on behalf of the very exceptional position allowed to the trade unions, but on behalf of the normal political situation in the country. The Liberals in the other place, on this Bill, moved an Amendment to that effect, and it was on that Amendment that a debate took place. They were, of course, defeated. In the House of Commons the Conservatives and the Liberals, if they do act together in any particular matter, are still far too few to have any effect, but in this House the Conservatives alone, and still more the Conservatives and the Liberals acting together, are too many to allow them to venture upon action at all. Consequently we have this strange paradox that we are a Second Chamber which has become impotent through possessing too much power.
5.5 p.m.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: My Lords, anyone who has read the debates on this Bill in another place must, I think, have been struck by two things—first, the difficulty of distinguishing between speeches on Second Readings and speeches in Committee; and secondly, the curious disparity between the speeches by lawyers and by laymen. With regard to this second point, a challenge by laymen is very rash in another place, where the legal luminaries are almost like Wordsworth's daffodils,
"Continuance as the stars that shine
and twinkle on the Milky Way."
Let me get on to the other point. It is very difficult to distinguish between Second Reading speeches and Committee speeches because of the nature of the 1927 Act which has not got any unity of substance. It has a unity, I think, of panic, of fear. I am not necessarily saying it was vindictive, because I think I can understand and, to some extent, sympathize with the attitude of the Government at that time. I think they said to themselves: "We have escaped from a great danger; we have been very fortunate, and the country has been very fortunate; and we have done that by the magnificent behaviour of everybody concerned"—I think they were quite right
956
to say that—"but that may not happen again. Therefore, let us try and do what we can in order to make that impossible again." I hope noble Lords on the other side who were in the Government at that time will not think I am being unjust in thinking that something like that was probably in their minds. I do not want to make a point about the technicalities of the General Strike, because I think what they may well have said is that the law, as it looks from the point of view of lawyers and as it looks from the point of view of the ordinary person, is not the same thing. If you solemnly declare that a General Strike is illegal, it may make people, in any form of general strike, whether revolutionary or not, say: "Look here, some of us had better think twice." Though I will not dispute what happened in 1926, such a consideration might do something, and the fact that it did something might be held to be in its favour.
The argument I want to develop before your Lordships I put with some fear and trembling, because I think it is quite clear that almost no one will agree with me, and some of the things I say go profoundly against what seems to be the general opinion of the House. But I feel very strongly in this matter. I think as so often happens, Parliament at that time prepared against the last war; they guarded themselves against dangers which had disappeared, and they paid no attention to dangers which were in the future. It is about that that I feel very strongly. May I just remind your Lordships that something happened in 1933—not in this country but in Germany. Hitler got into power by using legal forms. We blame the Germans for not stopping him. How could they have stopped him in any way but by an immediate and "blitz-like" General Strike? The tragedy is that there was not in 1933 a General Strike in Germany. I do not want to speak lightly about a General Strike, for, as Viscount Simon has said, when you embark on such a strike you are doing something very serious indeed. But I think it is a safeguard—and I know something about this—that people who want to undertake a General Strike have got to undertake it at the cost of very great sacrifices and very great risks. They will not do it lightly. I think that our danger now is not that the Government should be too weak but that the Government should be

957
too strong.
I think that the dangers which we face in the future are those of totalitarianism and mass democracy. And I think that these are very serious dangers. I would invite noble Lords just to think about what has happened not only here in 1927 and in Germany in 1933, but in France in 1940. In 1940 the legal Government of France betrayed the country. I was very much struck by what a distinguished Frenchman, a man who joined the underground movement, said when I saw him in this country. "Alas," he said, "what happened was that we Frenchmen had forgotten the duty of resistance." He said that seriously, and I think it is true. He no doubt was thinking of a famous passage, the last article of the Declaration of Rights of 1793:
"When Government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each section of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties."
Very beautiful, very revolutionary and very French. But I do say very seriously that there is something in that. What has now happened is that the technique of revolution has changed. Up till really the final defeat of the General Strike in 1926 there had been for a very long time a notion that the General Strike was the ideal revolutionary weapon. Your Lordships will remember that the distinguished French author, M. Sorel, wrote a book Reflections on Violence in which he re-referred to the myth of the General Strike. General strikes were defeated in Sweden, in Australia and in this country in the only way in which a General Strike ought to be defeated—that is, as Viscount Samuel has said, by the people as a whole showing that in that matter they were behind the Government and not behind the people who were acting against them.
But there might be occasions when you wanted the other thing demonstrated, when you wanted it demonstrated that the people as a whole thought that the Government were exercising their powers in such a terrible and revolutionary way that they ought to be resisted. Noble Lords may say: "Ah, yes, but this could not ever happen in this country—this blessed country in which, of course, nothing of that kind can ever happen." But, after all, that was Sir Oswald Mosley's concept. He proposed to get
958
into power by legal means and then to make it impossible for there ever to be an alternative Government. He quite seriously had that intention. I agree that it is very unlikely, but I do not think it is altogether impossible that at a time of crisis you might get a situation where a Government, with the law behind it, was doing things which would pervert the Constitution unless it were resisted.
I think that the 1927 Act is a totalitarian Act. I think it neglects our whole traditions. Totalitarianism acts in two ways. It wants undivided allegiance of the people to the Government, which I think is a dreadful and horrible doctrine, and it wants there to be nothing except the territorial constituency between the individual people and the Government. I am most grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, for raising that last issue, though I disagree wilt almost every conclusion that he drew from it. But I am going to follow him in dealing with it. I ask noble Lords to consider and remember what happened in this country in 1926 and compare it with what happened in Germany in 1933 and with what happened in France in 1940. Will it not make them even prouder than ever of this country and its behaviour, because it was prepared, however mistakenly, to say there are occasions when the only thing to do is to try to stop the Government by means of a strike: That was a serious thing then and it would always be so. But what I have outlined is, I think, far the most important danger against which we must guard, and readiness to strike would be the only way to guard against it.
I know that there might be occasions when I should feel it my duty to strike in such a way as I could, or to do such illegal action as I might, in order to stop the Government. I am sure that that is true, and I think that tie state of mind which has legality too much imposed upon it in these fundamental matters is not a good state of mind. I would remind noble Lords that the French Government which betrayed their country was the very Government which a few years before had passed an Act insisting that all individuals in France must owe undivided allegiance to the State. That of course is against the traditions of this country. It has been the great division between the British and

959
American democracies on the one hand and the Continental democracies on the other that British and American democracies have always believed in divided allegiance. Both our forms of democracy learned from noncomformists—the Puritans on the one hand and noncom-formists on the other with some help from sections of our Church—that there were societies to which you owed as primary an allegiance as you owed to the State, that there were times when you had to support the State against those societies, and also, though you prayed that this would never happen, that there were times when you had to support those societies against the State.
If I may say so with very great respect I think that the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, speaking as he has done, has forgotten, for a moment, the rock from which he was hewn. I have not done so and I do not propose to. I think a State which too much stresses this view of undivided allegiance is just asking for trouble. The philosopher Hobbes—if I may be pedantic for a moment—the most un-English and Continental of our philosophers, and one who has never had any honour in this country but is adored in Germany, spoke of associations as "worms within the entrails of the body politic." When I read the debates which took place in another place and listen to some of the speeches in this House I am reminded of Karl Marx's statement that Thomas Hobbes was the father of us all. By "us all" he meant Materialists and Communists. When I read these debates I feel that, as befits a friend of Charles II, Hobbes has left his descendents in unexpected places.
May I now say something, because it has been raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, and discussed by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, about contracting in and contracting out? What surprises me in this discussion, although I am not a lawyer, is that we have heard nothing about the Osborne judgment, because before that judgment it was taken for granted that if a trade union's essential purpose included the taking part in public affairs, then of course it could use its funds for political purposes. Of course difficulties would arise over the dissentient individual, but they are bound to arise and are allowed for if any association is to do something as an association.
960
I have the honour to be a vice-president of a body called the Workers' Educational Association which, like the Labour Party, consists of bodies, largely trade unions, co-operative societies, working men's clubs and other things of that kind, and many individual members. The trade union world, so far as education is concerned, is divided between support for the Workers' Educational Association, which stands for scholarly and impartial education, and a body called the National Council of Labour Colleges, commonly called the N.C.L.C.—which stood, although I have not known it for some time, for class war and dogmatic Marxian teaching. I have no doubt that there are some members of the unions which support the N.C.L.C. who think its doctrines are as pernicious as I do, but I do not think these members have any remedy except that of conversion. And I do not think they ought to have. It is important and vital—it is not a matter of funds—that trade unions as trade unions should regard education as their business, and I see no fundamental difference between that and politics.
In those fortunate days when I had a modest motor vehicle—it had only three wheels, but it was my own property—I belonged to the Automobile Association, because for various reasons I practically had to. It was almost as compulsory as membership of a trade union. That Association took funds, which I partly subscribed, although not largely, to promote things which I, as a member of the Pedestrian Association, regarded as disgraceful. Had I any remedy? No. Ought I to have had? No. I am sure there are members of the British Medical Association who do not approve, on the whole, of the line the British Medical Association is taking about the National Health Bill. Have they any remedy? Yes—to convert their institution. Ought they to have any other remedy? No, because it is worse that the B.M.A. should not concern itself officially and as a body with great matters of this kind than they should go against the minority of members. That was all taken for granted before the Osborne judgment. What, I believe, are called the rationes decidendi in the Osborne judgment I think differed. They were not the same. I refresh my memory by reading from a pamphlet by the late Professor Geldart. On the whole, the factor which carried the day was that the trade union

961
had not the right, as a trade union, to concern itself in politics.
I think that the opposition to this Bill and the defence of the 1927 Act, largely arise from people who think that industrial action by trade unions is good, and that their political action is bad. That is really the issue. If you think that a trade union should take part in politics, and has a right to do so, then the 1913 Act was a compromise with the position before the Osborne judgment. It provided, as the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, said, for the conscientious objectors, and I do not think it was at all unreasonable as a compromise. But the 1927 Act took away that compromise altogether and it took a line only justifiable if you believed that trade unions had no right to take part in politics. I remember Professor Geldart, Vinerian Professor of English Law at the time of the judgment, talking to me about that judgment. He did not think that it was an easy question. He thought that the right solution depended upon the kind of organization which you believe a trade union is. That determination, he admitted, was not easy. He thought there were two kinds of association, but that the Osborne judgment had put trade unions in one and they ought to have been put in the other. I cannot remember his legal terms of art, but the main distinction between the two categories was quite clear and I think this distinction is partly an answer to what has been said by the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel.
The two categories of association are these. There are associations which you may call primarily interest groups, and these are associations of the kind which, if you belong to them, cause you to think more of the interests of the association, and less of the interests of the community, than you would if you thought as an individual. But there are other associations, such as those affiliated to the National Council of Social Service for example, which are training grounds in politics and in political thought. I do not think anybody who knows anything about trade unions can deny that they are training grounds in political thought. I have had the honour to be very closely connected with adult education for nearly forty years, and I have found it almost invariably the case that where you have strong trade unionism you have a strong and lively interest in all questions of citizenship. The remarkable growth of adult education in this country
962
which has done more than anything else to prevent this country from succumbing to the evils of what is called mass-democracy is due to the interest in citizenship inspired by membership of a trade union. Men learn to think together as neighbours. You cannot think together as a crowd. There is a famous passage is Burke—a name which should appeal to noble Lords on the opposite Benches—where he says that men learn public concern first in the small unit before they learn to think of the State as a whole:
"To be attached to the sub-division, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a Jove to our country and to mankind."
That is most easily done in neighbourhood groups. It can still be so done in a Swiss commune, or in many villages of this country. But in the frightful, urbanized communities in which we live to-day the links are sometimes very weak and other groups like trade unions have to take their place. I do not know if any of your Lordships have read a bock which came out in the twenties by the great Spanish author, Ortega-y-Gusset, called Revolt of the Masses. He prophesied what would happen, because he showed how, as de Tosqueville said one hundred years ago, a mass democracy leads straight to dictatorship. Hitler began his preparation for mass democracy by breaking down and distintegrating all the social groups in which men learned public affections. I think that that is a matter which really is the concern of us all.
I read the other day in the Spectator a moving article by Lord. Hinchingbrooke, for whom I have a very great respect, about the Conservative task, which he said was
"to meet the challenge of Communism with every weapon in their armoury and every fibre of their being."
If it is to attempt to do that, I would say, "more power to their elbow." But it is not a very good omen for this crusade which calls on us, if I may quote his glowing words:
"not to bend the knee be ore a spurious collection of aliens who have no knowledge of England, no roots in our history, no regard for our traditions."
The one measure in opposing which the Opposition in another place has shown real passion is this Bill, repealing an Act based upon totalitarian principles which

963
have no roots in our history and no regard to our traditions. I say that quite solemnly. The great Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, saved the Constitution of the United States by that famous judgment, in Marbury versus Madison, by delivering a judgment against the immediate interests of his party in order to establish securely the fundamental principles for which his party stood. I commend his example and its success to noble Lords opposite.
5.35 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: My Lords, you have listened to an extremely interesting speech from the noble Lord who has just sat down. I, for one, can say, if I may, with respect, that my appreciation of it was in no way dulled by the fact that I disagreed with almost everything he said. We have heard memorable speeches from noble Lords who participated in the events which took place in 1926 and in 1927, but I believe that much of this Act is the province of the layman, as it is that of the great lawyer. I was very young at the time of the 1927 Act. Perhaps I, and those of my age, may claim to approach the subject with a slightly greater degree of impartiality for that reason. Those of us who were young at the time and did not go through these days form three schools of thought with regard to the Act of 1927. Some are in favour of it; some are against it; and some have not read it.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: And then what?
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: Noble Lords will remember that up to the beginning of this century, the trade unions were in need of the protection they could receive by legislation. The Conservative Party can justly claim to have afforded them a great measure of that protection by legislation. After the turn of the century, the trade unions grew so greatly and so speedily in stature that in 1927 this Act was passed which clarified many points regarding their position and also clarified the position regarding trade disputes. Now we are faced with a Bill for the repeal of that Act. To some extent the issue has been prejudged. The Press of all denominations has run riot throughout the country. Supporters of total repeal must contend one of two things: either that the Act was a just and fair one when
964
it was passed and that changing circumstances have rendered it a present anomaly, or that the Act was always wrong and unjust and should not have lived as long as it has lived. To that latter argument His Majesty's Government incline.
If the Act is wrong and unjust, it must be wrong in every section. The Socialist Government in 1931 were content merely to seek to amend it. Now the Socialist Government, differing from their predecessors, attempt its repeal, root and branch. His Majesty's Government in the speeches we have heard, contend that the effects of that Act have been bad, but there is no scrap of evidence of any trouble or confusion which has arisen directly from its provisions. Since it was passed trade unions have prospered. Labour relations have bettered. Those who were responsible for the passing of the 1927 Act said that this would be the result. The Government cannot now say that it has not been. The object of that was not to put the large number of people who took part in the 1926 General Strike in the wrong, but to clarify the law. In the many strikes that have taken place since, no striker has been unfairly hampered or penalized. It set out the law quite clearly. In Britain we like our laws to be clear-cut. There is a great respect for the rule of law in this country. It is the one quality for which other countries admire us more than any other. If your laws are not clear-cut you have some difficulty in obeying them and they and those who made them fall into disrepute.
What are the arguments so far advanced for repeal? First, there is stigma. Stigma is a state of mind. It is not an argument. It is like beauty. It is in the eye of the beholder. It will not look impressive as a motive for legislation in the history books of the future. After all, we have suffered from people who were under delusions with regard to stigmas in recent years. For six years the world has been in convulsions because one man persuaded himself and then persuaded a once great country that the Treaty of Versailles had set a stigma upon them. Then, again, it has been said it was an attempt to cripple the trade unions. Not only has it not had that effect, but, if you examine the Act, it could not possibly have had it. There is nothing in the 1927 Act that could conceivably hamper the legitimate life and

965
functions of the trade unions. Then, again, it has been alleged it was a punitive measure, and was rushed through. The fact that the Government of the time waited the long period that it did in order to allow the heat and emotion that surrounds the General Strike to die down, and to allow the issue to be more coolly debated, was, I think, an effective answer to that. As to being rushed through, it received some four or five times the period of consideration in another place that the Bill for repeal has been accorded.
Last of all, let me take that ancient and honourable expression, the electoral mandate. It is an honourable expression, becoming somewhat tarnished, I feel, by its very frequent use. Was this really one of the measures which the Government was determined to carry out? The Party manifesto made very small mention of it. A few Socialist speakers mentioned it in their addresses. Are members of either House importuned on this matter in greater or equal proportion as they are importuned regarding housing, demobilization, fuel or food? I doubt it. The noble Lord who will wind up this debate will no doubt enlighten us on some of these points. What is the real argument that is behind this? Because after all, this Bill has been launched at seemingly a very inopportune time. It is using up that highly rationed commodity, Parliamentary time, on a measure that can bring no immediate material benefit to the nation in relation to the nation's pressing material wants.
I will glance briefly, with my layman's glance, over the sections. I will omit the first three—they have been dealt with very completely and I think they are in the province of the lawyers. Let me take section 4, dealing with the political levy. The system of contracting in introduced by the 1927 Act was attacked as a system to cripple trade unions. When you subscribe to a political party or any other object with which you are in sympathy it is a voluntary and deliberate act. Contracting in is a highly reasonable method; contracting out, on the face of it, is not—it means that a man, in order to avoid payment, has to go to lengths of inconvenience and perhaps incur notoriety which he does not wish to court. It cuts across the rights of an Englishman to make his politics his own affair, and that, I feel, is one of our most-treasured rights.
966
It has been contended that the difference in ethics, in logic and in reason between the two systems is really minute; that there is no difference. If that is the case, why should this section be repealed.
But there is a reason. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, gave you figures which made this very clear. I might, with respect, give you two more. In 1927 there were 78,000 trade union members who did not contribute to the political fund; in 1943 there were something of the order of 3,375,000 who did not contribute. Sixteen per cent. less contributed in 1929 than in 1926, the year before the Act: was passed. On this side of the House we are frequently criticized for believing in the profit motive, but ours is rather a different one. We believe in fair profit as a reward for energy and enterprise. These, however, are the spoils of man's inertia. His Majesty's Government—and I say it in all respect—in their praiseworthy attempts to find a short cut to heaven, are a little apt to forget some of the teaching of history. They are a little apt to believe they will always be in power. You do not have to look far back in history to find that political fortunes in this country change, and change with most bewildering rapidity. Who may be garnering these spoils of inertia in fifteen, ten or even five years' time? On these Benches we have an old-fashioned idea, an old-fashioned belief in the liberty of the individual. You will remember that in the old days at a Parliamentary election the voter had publicly to declare his vote at the top of his voice. It was then recorded. That conflicted with the right of a man to make his politics his own affair, and it was changed to our present system of a secret ballot. For exactly the same reason contracting out was changed to contracting in.
I will trouble you with just two more sections. The first relates to civil servants, who stand, to my mind, in exactly the same relation to the Stare as do the Armed Forces, in that they must have only one loyalty. I was a civil servant myself some years back and I know a little about the subject of which I speak. If they are affiliated to political bodies you have a political Civil Service. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, who I see is absent for the moment, said on January 22, 1931: "I entirely agree that

967
we must leave the Civil Service outside the storm and stress of Party politics." I entirely agree with him, and so, I imagine, do most noble Lords on these Benches. But I think there was a case for an Amendment of this section. The words "Civil Service" and "civil servant" have become, after all, somewhat inelastic for our present needs, after nineteen years. It is contended by the protagonists of repeal that the 1927 Act cast a slur on civil servants and trade unionists alike. Well, if this section is repealed, what is the result? It is practically nothing, until you amend and alter the Civil Service Regulations in tune, as I imagine they will be altered. Now how will they be altered? We have a right to know this. Will membership of the Civil Service unions be confined to servants of the Crown? Will they be allowed to have political objects? Will they be allowed to strike, and will they be allowed to affiliate to outside bodies? We have a right to know the answers to those questions, and I trust the noble Lord who will wind up this debate to-night will furnish them. One more matter while I am on this section. The Trades Union Congress in the past at different times have been at odds with the Government of the day. If civil servants are allowed to affiliate with bodies who owe loyalty to the T.U.C., and the T.U.C. are at odds with the Government of the day, those loyalties are irreconcilable. That can only redound to the detriment of the State.
Last of all let me take Section 6, dealing with the right of an authority to make it a condition of employment that a man should belong to a trade union. By "authorities" I presume is meant also public authorities, which would include the nationalized industries. On this side of the House we regard this as a rather obnoxious form of compulsion and, apart from its face value, which is not pleasant, I would draw your attention to the possibilities of its abuse. If it is possible to insist that a man must become a member of what is supposed to be a voluntary organization, it may, with a little abuse, be possible to insist that he should belong to a certain party, and then you are on the road to One Party Government, of which the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, warned us so carefully. The organization that a man may join is, in my opinion,
968
his own affair. Surely the trade unions must have sufficient faith in the justice of their cause to rely on attracting members to their ranks, rather than on any form of coercion. That is very briefly the section, glanced at by a layman.
The noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, spoke very interestingly on the ethics of a General Strike. To my mind, to remove a specific Statute that prohibits a General Strike is to countenance a power set above Parliament, and if you countenance a power set above Parliament you have no faith in Parliament and not much in the country which that Parliament rules. Some say that legislation can never hold back the great tidal wave of emotion which is pent up in the circumstances that may lead to a General Strike. I would remind your Lordships that in this country, as in no other in the world, there is a great and deep respect for the rule of law. It is a quality which other nations admire in us more than they admire any other and it was magnificently demonstrated in 1926. On May 4 the General Strike began, on May 11 it was declared illegal and on May 12 it stopped. That was a great tribute to our reverence for the rule of law. If this Bill goes through it will throw us back to the confused state of the law before 1927. To say that the 1927 Act was a slur on the trade unions is no argument, but to say that it was a wrong and unjust Act is an argument. If it was wrong and unjust, surely it is better to change the law rather than to repeal it and put nothing in its place.
There are one or two conclusions from which I cannot escape. One is that His Majesty's Government are rather enamoured of the role of St. George. You cannot be St. George unless you have a dragon, and if you have not got a dragon you must invent one. If you repeal this Act to satisfy the amour propre of the trade union leaders it will set a very poor Parliamentary precedent and will exchange the practice of the Mother of Parliaments for that of its least successful imitators. This is legislation by catchword and war cry. If we are assembled to-day to hold two minutes' silence for an imaginary wrong allegedly carried out nearly twenty years ago, against the background of a world striving to recover from its ruin, it makes a shoddy spectacle. In this His Majesty's Government, I say with respect, has deserted Parliamentary

969
principle, and history relates that no Party which has deserted principle has long endured in this country. The historian's verdict on Acts of Parliament is not based on the quantity of the legislation but on the quality and on its effect on the lives of the people of the nation. It has been alleged that this was a stain upon the Statute Book, but history may well relate at no distant time that the stain was not upon the Statute Book but on the hands of those who removed it.
5.55 p.m.
LORD CALVERLEY: My Lords, the more I listened to my noble friend, the more I liked listening to him and the more I disagreed with him. But I listened to him with respect. In somewhat sepulchral tones my noble friend, gazing round the House, said "Who will be garnering the fruits of victory if this Bill is passed?" He foreshadowed the downfall of the Labour Party, which I hope will never occur except by the votes of the people. If the Party to which he belongs wins and garners the fruits of political victory—bur I need not pursue that. The Conservative Party headquarters have already come to the conclusion that the Labour Party is in for the next fifteen years.
LORD LLEWELLIN: Certainly not.
LORD CALVERLEY: There is a difference of opinion on that, but that is the considered opinion of the pundits of what used to be St. Stephen's Club. I do not know whether they still meet there, but that is by the way. My noble friend has been talking about contracting in and contracting out. I would like him for a minute to imagine that this noble House is a political club. If we took a secret ballot of the 840 of us 775 would vote for affiliation to the Conservative Party, 30 of us on this side would vote solidly against it, and the Liberals would be divided, except for those Liberals without suffix or prefix. After that secret ballot my noble friend would give to the Horatios holding the bridge here, and also to my Liberal friends across the way, a freedom of conscience to be conscientious objectors and to refuse to affiliate to the body to which he undoubtedly would want all those shillings to go, the Grand Council of the Primrose League. The same position will arise if we pass this Bill and revert to the 1913 position.
970
I do not want to dwell too much upon past history, but I would remind your Lordships that this House has played a great and honourable part in remedying injustices by setting its seal of approval upon two Acts. The first, was, I believe, in 1906, and followed the Taff Vale decision. I think that was in connexion with the Osborne judgment.
NOBLE LORDS: No.
LORD CALVERLEY: I will not dwell on that, but we had at any rate a Bill in 1906. Then we had a later Act which this House accepted and which was irresistibly pleaded in the lower House by my noble friends Viscount Simon and Viscount Samuel and, incidentally, by Mr. Churchill—no mean propagandists for what they believed to be justice. I emphasize the word "justice" because my noble friend put it in that way. That is why I wish to emphasize that this House gave justice to the members of the trade unions by enabling them to take a secret ballot to decide in a democratic way whether they would agree with a political levy. This House agreed to that provision, and this House properly said that if the majority decided upon a political levy (with that sense of justice which is part of our tradition) and if there are any members of that trade union, the minority, who did not wish to subscribe-to the Labour Party but to subscribe to the Primrose League, they should have perfect liberty to do so. That was, as far as I understand it, the 1913 Act.
One thing I have liked this afternoon is the fact that there was hardly any legalistic argument in what the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, had to say. He emphasized the human side. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, in opening the debate, emphasized not whether the thing was legal or illegal, but the psychological and human side of it. That is why the Labour Party insist that the 1927 Act shall go. The reason why it has to go—and here I speak not as cue of the leaders of trade unions, but as one knowing the rank and file, by mixin.:2-, with them—is that the 1927 Act is locked on as a reprisal, and the very word "reprisal" smells, it stinks, in the mind of the average Britisher. He does not like it, The Act of 1927 has got to go for that reason. The noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack did not put on a white sheet, but he certainly apologized for introducing

971
a Bill in 1931. I was a Member of that House, where we were in a minority, for two-and-a-half years, which seemed to me like nearly two-and-a-half centuries. I am very pleased now that Mr. Churchill's dictum was obeyed, and that they did cut the dirty throat of the 1931 Bill, because it has provided this House with an opportunity to give its approval to the repeal of the 1927 Act. I feel certain that this House, with its sense of justice, is going to do so.
My noble friend Lord Tweedsmuir said there was a wave of emotion in 1927. There was not only a wave of emotion, but a surge of righteous indignation. You could not have got members of the N.U.R. and the other great trade unions to have gone on strike if there had not been a moral issue behind it all. Noble Lords will be conversant with what happened in the chapel in the Daily Mail office that night. I agree that those men behaved wrongly, but I do not apologize for it, and I hope no Englishman ever will apologize. If a man or woman is moved by righteous indignation you will have another strike in the future, but I hope that with more common sense we shall not.
There has been another criticism. The amount of money we receive has been rather exaggerated. Some unions levy one shilling, some rather more. But in Transport House—it may comfort the noble Lord to learn this—the contribution amounts to something like £56,000, the price of two baronetcies under the 1927–1932 régime, which went into other Party coffers. That £56,000 also goes into Party coffers. As the noble Lord quite rightly said, there will be another 25,000—to put it vulgarly—to go into the kitty. I hope so, although I do not touch any of it.
I am rather proud this afternoon to be in this House and to have listened to the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, saying how he was betrayed by the Conservative Government after the time he spent in trying to heal the breach in the coal lockout. That was never a strike, and I want noble Lords to realize that those men, after the second week in May, when what was called the "Black Friday" occurred, were locked out until Christmas. Then the Conservative Party went carol-singing, because that is what it amounts
972
to. They appealed to the faithful and so the miners were starved into submission. From that day to this, the findings of the Samuel Commission have never been honoured, but they are going to be within the next three months, because that is a mandate with which we have to deal.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: The noble Lord did not recommend nationalization.
LORD CALVERLEY: I stand corrected. I know my noble friend was in the Commission. What the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, did try to do was to give a square deal to the colliers, and he failed owing to the Baldwin Government.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My noble friend said I was in it, but he was on the other side. Let us be fair and accurate about this. I would challenge him to this: Is it not a fact that Mr. Baldwin's Government, of which I was then a member, agreed that provided the miners would accept the report, whether we liked all of it or not, we were prepared to accept and put into force the whole of the recommendations of the Samuel Commission?
VISCOUNT SAMUEL: That is so.
LORD CALVERLEY: I expect the miners wanted rather a more full-blooded solution than that. The then Government, with its policy of appeasement, even in those days, gave a subsidy and then cut it off. Then, as I say, the colliers were starved into submission, and we have got that feeling to this very day. As I have said, I am glad and proud to be here this afternoon "garnering the fruits"—I like that expression of Lord Tweedsmuir's—
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: "Spoils" was the word.
LORD CALVERLEY: Very well then, garnering the spoils—I will accept that. I am glad to be here to help in garnering the spoils of the victorious, because "the spoils to the victors" has been the slogan of the Conservative Party as long as I can remember and as long as I have been able to read history books. But I am speaking this afternoon as a peacemaker. Speeches to which we have listened this afternoon have been constructive. I am afraid that my own intervention may not be so constructive. But may I be allowed to say that this House has proved, within

973
the last six or seven years, what a contribution it can make to healing and to promoting unity. This House has of late been carrying out the functions of an amending and healing Chamber. Noble Lords speak for all sections of the community, and not in a negative or destructive way. I am hoping, therefore, that a Second Reading of this Bill will be agreed to without a Division.
I do not know what will happen in the Committee stage, but when this and similar Bills come to this House I am hoping the House will follow the new tradition and not the rubber-stamp tradition which prevailed in the days when Conservative Governments simply told the House what to do and the House did it. If that went on very long in these days there would soon be no House of Lords. But that is not going to happen. I am confident that we are going to get a Second Reading of this Bill. I do not see how this measure can be amended because it is really the reintroduction of a Bill which was perfect in every detail, a Bill which had the advantage of being introduced by men like my noble friends Viscount Simon and Viscount Samuel, and one of the greatest Yorkshiremen that ever lived, the late Lord Oxford and Asquith. That Bill of 1913 was sponsored by those men. This House can now do no better than give it its blessing once more, and repeal this wretched piece of legislation of 1927. When that is done we can get on to other business.
6.15 p.m.
LORD CHESHAM: My Lords, I am not qualified in any way to deal with the legal aspect of this matter, and, indeed, it has already been most ably dealt with this afternoon. Nor do I want to refer back to the General Strike and to other things that have happened in the past. The question that is really worrying me is what is going to be the effect, in the future, of this piece of legislation on the working men of this country. In that respect, I admit that I am extremely apprehensive. The noble Lord who has just spoken, Lord Calverley, said that he spoke as a peacemaker. I came to the conclusion that he really was not awfully fond of the Conservative Governments we have had in the past, and that he was not considering coming over to this side of the House just yet. I shall speak as a peacemaker of the
974
same kind, but I may say that I am not going over to that side of the Chamber.
I am very much worried indeed about the part of the Bill that deals with intimidation. We have been told that really it does not much matter repealing this clause with regard to intimidation and picketing because the substance of it is all in previous Acts. But when there was any effort to get it left out of this repeal Bill in the other place effort was resisted to the utmost. If it is truly of no effect why cannot it be left in? The withdrawal of these provisions against intimidation and against interfering with a man's house and home life are going to have a very great effect on the working men of this country. I think it was the noble and learned Lord Chancellor who said that there are many ways of intimidation, many ways of influencing a person, without breaking the law of intimidation. It is going to be virtually possible to boycott a man's house and to interfere with his home life.
If you pass this Bill—as undoubtedly you will—the security and the independence of the home lives of these working men are going to very seriously threatened. Their freedom and liberty, both on and off duty, are going to be threatened, and they are going to be controlled. That is the deliberate intention of this Socialist Government. And they claim that not only is it their intention but that it is the desire of the people of this country and that they have a mandate for it. With the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, I admit that there is a measure of truth in that claim, but I do submit that when they got that mandate from the country they got it by completely false representation of what this Bill meant. It was never represented to the people of this country that their freedom in their homes, their liberty of thought and their liberty of choice of the way in which they should live would be prejudiced. The Act of 1927 was represented to them as a stumbling block in the path of the trade unions. It was also described, I think, as a slur on Mr. Ernest Bevin. Moreover, the 1927 Act was represented at the last Election by the Socialists as a reprisal. Now nobody on this side of the House ever considered it a reprisal and it never was one. But, as I say, it was represented by the Socialists at the last Election as a

975
reprisal which—I agree with the last speaker—stinks.
This Bill was never represented as a threat to the freedom of life of these people. That to my mind is a part of the whole aim and ambition of this Socialist Government. They have started with the nationalization of our industries. Control, of course, was not sufficient; they had to have complete ownership. But it seems to me that this ownership and control of our industries is not enough to give them that stranglehold which they intend to take on the complete life of this country. They have got to go further, they have got to obtain ownership, as it were, of the lives of the working men, and this is one way in which they are doing it—by interfering with the home life of the working men in this country. The working man must not be allowed to think for himself, or to choose his politics. If there is a strike he may not be allowed to abstain from it. His home can be pestered—I have forgotten the wording of the phrase, but virtually pestered and boycotted until he has to submit—
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Would the noble Lord like me to read the words of the 1875 Act? The Act says an offender is a person who "watches or besets the house or other place where such other person works or resides or carries on business or happens to be" at such time. That is the old law of 1875, which has never been repealed and which we are not seeking to repeal.
LORD CHESHAM: I am very grateful to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. Even if a man is satisfactorily protected his house can be picketed, and all kinds of persuasion can be used on him in various ways—as has been said to-day—without breaking the law of 1875. My Lords, it is not enough. To control the industries of this country you have to control the lives of the working men, and the working men of this country have got to make themselves subservient to the Socialist State. To my mind that savours too much of Nazism. And there is one thing we must also remember—that it was Socialism which bred Hitlerism and the vile dictatorship.
LORD PAKENHAM: No.
LORD CHESHAM: Yes it was. It was a form of Socialism which bred Hitlerism. And that is what you are trying to do with the working men of this country, under the guise of telling them that it is removing a reprisal.
LORD PAKENHAM: I do not wish to interrupt, but can the noble Lord substantiate his statement that it was Socialism which bred Hitlerism?
LORD CHESHAM: Nazism means National Socialism.
LORD PAKENHAM: Again I do not wish to interrupt, but is the noble Lord telling us that Socialism necessarily begets National Socialism?
LORD CHESHAM: Not necessarily, but it is tending that way, and it very easily might. I do not want to be rude to the noble Lords opposite because I do not think they believe all that other members of the Socialist Party believe or are working for. I hate to say it, but I think you are being duped as much as anybody else. Seriously, I think repealing the 1927 Act is a morally evil thing to do. It is evil and it is dangerous to remove what is the protection of the individuals of this country. It cannot be denied that in the 1927 Act the individual working man of this country had protection. But it is intended by this Socialist Government that that protection should now be removed. It is pathetic to my mind to see certain members, leaders of the Socialist Party, yapping with joy over it and gloating over the power which they possess to work this evil. I am afraid that this Bill which we have before us to-day is an Easter egg which has taken just nine months to lay. But when that egg hatches out, and you see the results of this Bill to which you intend to give a Second Reading, the true intentions of the Socialists in this country will be apparent to the public. I do not think there will be any fifteen years of life for the people who introduce this measure.
I must apologize for having spoken so strongly, but I have spoken from a very firm conviction. I believe that it is time these things were said. I believe them, and I have thought over them. I believe that this Bill to-day is the greatest mistake that this Government have made. I believe that they will be called to account for it. I believe that it is an evil and dangerous measure. It is for those reasons

977
that I have found myself frankly in a quandary—with some others of your Lordships—as to what to do with it, whether to oppose it actively on the Second Reading. I have given the matter very much thought and to my mind—and I think I am in agreement with Lord Calverley here—the function of this House is not to oppose the expressed wish of the people, especially a mandate (although it may be improperly represented to the people) which was obtained within the last year. I believe it is more important for us to continue to carry out our true functions, our obligations in this House, than to give way to what is an obvious inclination and to kick out—I mean to oppose—this Motion and throw out this measure. Therefore, I have decided—I can only speak personally—to say what I have said very clearly, although it is no intention of mine to vote against the Bill. I value the true functions of this House more highly than I do this most unpleasant measure.
6.27 p.m.
LORD BROUGHSHANE: My Lords, I ask your Lordships' indulgence in rising to address you for the first time. I recently had a conversation with an old and distinguished member of this House and when I expressed to burn my admiration for the succinctness, clarity and brevity of the speeches which I had heard and read, he said: "Well, you see, members of the Lords do not, as a rule, intervene in the debates unless they are experts in the subject under discussion." As I am not an expert on any subject I felt that I was condemned to perpetual silence in your Lordships' house. But the repeal of the Trade Disputes Act is something which may affect every citizen in the land, and I hope that I may be allowed to say a few words as to how the repeal of this Act strikes an ordinary individual, who is not a legal expert, and to ask the Government a few questions from the point of view of the man in the street.
The first thing which strikes me is, what can be the objection to a definite declaration by Parliament that a General Strike is illegal? Is it not a first principle of all democratic government that the decisions of. Parliament, the body elected by the people as a whole, should be obeyed, and that the daily life of the community should not be held up in order to enforce the mandate of some
978
outside body other than Parliament? If that is so, and I think your Lordships on all sides of the House will agree that it is, what is the objection to Parliament's removing any doubt in the matter and declaring anything in the nature of a General Strike illegal? Do the Government really desire that the uncertainty which undoubtedly exists in this matter, as was shown by the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, most clearly in his quotations; and as was admitted by the Attorney-General, the principal Law Officer of the Crown, in another place, as to the legality of a General Strike, should be allowed to remain?
Next I ask: Do the Government approve of the intimidation, apart from violence, of a workman's wife and family? That has been alluded to very feelingly by Lord Chesham, who has just addressed your Lordships, and while it may be true as the Lord Chancellor has just indicated, reading the words of the Act of 1875, that the picketing of a workman's home and the causing of unhappiness or distress would be illegal under that Act, there is a doubt in this matter. What is the objection to taking away this doubt and making it clear that the picketing of a home and a man's wife and family is illegal and has been so decided and proclaimed by Parliament?
Thirdly, do the Government desire that a workman should be compelled to subscribe to the funds M. a political party unless he expressly signs a declaration which may be, as has already been pointed out to-day, very invidious? If you go to a man, who has received and hopes to receive benefits from a trade union, and say: "Well, now, we have a political fund; you will not object to giving a shilling or two a week—it is only a small amount—in support of the trade union to which you are so much indebted," it would be very invidious for that workman, or any person belonging to an association of that kind, to say: "No, I do not want to subscribe to that. In many ways I do not agree with all your political views, and I do not want to subscribe." Lord Calverley indicated that the amounts proposed to be raised were not so much as some people have said. I have heard it quoted on very good authority that the Socialist Party expect to receive about £100,000 per annum, and that meetings have already been held in

979
order to decide how this very large amount should be divided up. The Attorney-General referred to the fact that the very large number of workmen who were not subscribing now was due to human inertia. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, did not altogether agree with that. I think there is a great deal in what Lord Simon said in his speech; there was more than inertia in not subscribing. Even if it was due to human inertia, is it right that this very large sum of money, up to, say, £100,000, should be poured into the coffers of a particular political party?
With regard to the local authorities, and the repeal of Section 6 of the Act of 1927, which your Lordships remember made it illegal for local or public authorities to make membership of a trade union a condition of employment, it was urged by the Attorney-General in another place that this procedure might be very advantageous, and that many industrialists had found that it was so. The fact is, however, that the repeal of this section does not enable employees to continue to belong to their own union or a particular union; it gives power to the local authority to order the employee to belong to some particular union that that local authority selects, and I submit to your Lordships that that is a very serious infringement of the liberty of the individual workman. With regard to the Civil Service, do the Government no longer desire that individuals entering the national service should give undivided allegiance to the State? Every noble Lord, and every member of the House of Commons, I should hope, desires that civil servants should give their undivided allegiance—
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: May I interrupt? There may be more than one allegiance. I have heard people say that they should obey God rather than man. There is that kind of allegiance.
LORD BROUGHSHANE: Well, I am interested to know that there is one member of your Lordships' House who considers, with regard to State servants who are employed to administer Acts of Parliament which Parliament has laid down for the administration of this country and its affairs, that it should be open to them to have some other loyalty than loyalty to the Government of the day. When the
980
first Socialist Government was elected the then Prime Minister testified to the fact that no body of officials, although they had been appointed under a Conservative administration, could have given greater help to a Socialist Government and to the plans which they were putting forward for the Government of the day than the civil servants of the various Departments.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRDER: May I just explain to the noble Lord? You can give service of that kind, with which I entirely agree, when you have not got undivided allegiance.
LORD BROUGHSHANE: Well, I think I must leave it there. I have made my case very plain. We have it in the Bible that a man cannot serve two masters. A civil servant may belong to a trade union outside, and that trade union may desire something with which he may sympathize. It is very difficult for him—I do not say he would be disloyal to his allegiance, because they have got such a wonderful tradition in the Civil Service. It would take more than a little thing to overcome such a tradition, like that of the Indian Police and the Royal Irish Constabulary and other bodies which have a very great tradition. But I do not think it is desirable, I do not think it right, that temptation should be put in the way of the weaker brethren.
Another matter which puzzles me as a man in the street is that, notwithstanding the Government's complaint of lack of time to deal with urgent matters requiring immediate solution, the Attorney-General minimizes the importance of this Bill in repealing the Act of 1927. The whole tone of the speech of the Attorney-General, of which I heard a great deal, in introducing the Bill, was quite remarkable in this regard. He described it as really quite a modest little Bill, and not intended to make any great contribution to the building up of a new heaven and a new earth. "A modest little Bill!" Elsewhere he speaks of the Bill as "not being for any practical object", but—and here again I quote his words—"merely a psychological part in the Government's programme." So this Bill, which the Lord Chancellor has said is likely to arouse very strong feelings in the country, is being introduced by the Government, in the words of the Attorney-General, for a psychological object and without any practical object.

981
The Government, while admitting that the law as to trade disputes is doubtful in many respects, consider, as was stated by the Attorney-General in another place, that this position should not be clarified by Parliament. Will your Lordships allow me to quote a few lines again from his very remarkable speech in the House of Commons, when he said that the position should not be clarified by Parliament, but should be submitted to:
"the goad judgment and common sense of twelve men in a Clapham omnibus—in other words, by a common jury of the common people; they are the people who should decide whether or not particular persons indicted before them have had criminal intentions in regard to a strike or not."
And again we are told that should the Government of the day be faced with the emergency of a General Strike and find that their existing powers are not adequate, all they have to do is to go back to Parliament and ask for whatever additional powers are necessary in the circumstances that have arisen. Meanwhile the General Strike would proceed. But it is surely desirable that the Government of the day should have legal powers to deal with such an emergency promptly and immediately, and that all concerned in it should know that they are breaking the law if they join in a strike of the kind we have been discussing. Flow leisurely are the proposals of the Government in this matter: the summoning of the twelve men in the Clapham omnibus, followed, if necessary, by a special meeting of Parliament! Meanwhile the public might be without bread and without transport.
The uncertainty of the position which would be caused by the repeal of the 1927 Act is emphasized by the fact that while the Attorney-General described the repeal of the Act as a matter of little importance, we find that Mr. Isaacs, the Minister of Labour in the present Government, referred to the Bill now before your Lord ships as "another milestone on the broad highway on which we are travelling towards the new freedom for which we, the Labour movement, have been longing." There is a very great difference between this "psychological measure of no importance" and the Bill that is "another milestone…for which the Labour movement have been longing."
And Sir Walter Citrine, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress,
982
in an interview published in January of this year, stated that while Parliament ought to have a brake on anything in the nature of a General Strike, there should in future be no law against a General. Strike. I think it is better that your Lordships should hear the words of these gentlemen rather than my words, because, after all, they represent the Government and the trade union movement. Sir Walter Citrine's actual words are these:
"Only in the most exceptional circumstances and when no other remedy appeared possible would such a method be employed."
That method is the General Strike. Your Lordships will therefore see that according to Government spokesmen and the views expressed by Socialist leaders, in certain circumstances a General Strike against Parliament and the national Government is justified. The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, has quoted this afternoon the words of Mr. Cramp and also has read the article in the Daily Herald threatening the Government with what would happen if they did not give way. The threat of a General Strike is to be kept in hand in case the Government of the day refuse an urgent demand made upon them by some outside body!
I will not detain your Lordships more than a moment more, as time is getting on. As your Lordships are well aware and as has been pointed out to-day, a General Strike is different from all other strikes: it is not against an individual employer but is a strike by a section of the community for their own purposes against the Government and Parliament duly elected by the universal suffrages of the whole of the people of this country. The ordinary trade unionist is not a law breaker; he is a law-abiding citizen. If he knows for certain that he is breaking the law if he takes part in a General. Strike, he will hesitate to do so. But if the legal position is in doubt, he may easily be led astray. I would submit to your Lordships that in a matter of this vital importance to the maintenance of the supremacy of Parliament, it is essential that the illegality of a General Strike should remain clear without doubt. It is surely for Parliament to clarify the law, as it has done in the Trade Disputes Act which we are being asked to repeal. What 3 travesty on democracy to repeal that Statute in order to substitute for

983
Parliament in clarifying the law the unrepresentative passengers on a Clapham omnibus!
6.46 p.m.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I am sure that however much the arguments which I am about to address to your Lordships in a moment may not find favour with some of you, you will unanimously agree with me in congratulating Lord Broughshane on the speech to which we have just had the pleasure of listening. The force and sincerity of his argument could not but attract the attention of those on this side of the House who are unable to agree with the substance of the arguments he addressed to us. He spoke hardly as one making a maiden speech but with a readiness to deal with interruptions which I am quite sure must have appealed to all those of us who not very long ago were in the same position as he was himself. I am quite sure we on this side of the House will look forward to hearing him again on subjects which are perhaps not quite so controversial and to which he can bring knowledge which does not involve perhaps so much legal acumen as the subject we have to discuss this evening.
Now I should like to comment, if he will permit me, on his speech and the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, who preceded him, and on the attitude they take up to the repeal of this Act of 1927. One would think, to listen to the force and vigour of their speeches, that the repeal of this Act of 1927 and the restoration of the law as it existed at that time and under which this country got on very well for a considerable number of years, was a revolutionary event. Surely that condemns itself as being obviously nothing of the sort, and the contention of the Attorney-General in another place that this is a comparatively minor Act is borne out by the whole course of trade union history.
I should just like to comment on one or two of the speeches which were made earlier. I must say that the attitude of the noble and learned Lord Chancellor in his speech seemed to me to strike exactly the right note for dealing with a subject of this kind, and in particular when he said, in regard to the General Strike, that it was a case where the hearts of the great mass of working people of
984
this country got the better of their heads. How very true that was, and how much more important it is that the great mass of the working people of this country should be stout hearted than that they should be logicians and too intelligent! What would have happened in 1940 had it not been for the stout hearts of the working people of this country? If we had adopted a logical attitude towards the events of that time we should have thrown in our hands, just as people all over the world who took a logical attitude expected us to do. It was because we were stout-hearted, because our hearts were stronger than our heads, that we went on and eventually triumphed.
I should like, with his permission, to comment on a number of the arguments in the very subtle speech of the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Simon. He said it was not so important to know whether a General Strike in 1926 was or was not illegal, as to get a clear definition of what was an illegal strike, and as far as that goes I think everybody would subscribe to that argument. But he entirely omitted to deal with the conclusive argument addressed to this House by the noble and learned Lord Chancellor to the effect that this Statute which was put on the Statute Book in 1927 did not accomplish that object. In fact, it left the law a great deal more vague than it was before the Act was passed. It did not, in fact, give us a clear definition. Lord Broughshane asked what was the objection to a Statute which declares a General Strike to be illegal. This Statute does nothing of the sort. From beginning to end it does not mention a General Strike; it adopts a form of words which was intended, and which was deliberately intended, to widen the area for attack on sympathetic strikes. If it had adopted a form of words which was genuinely aimed at a real General Strike it would have been a different kettle of fish altogether.
Just in the same way, the noble and learned Viscount produced quotations from speeches of trade union leaders like the late Mr. Cramp, as he was entitled to do. But, if I may say so, with the characteristic subtlety of argument which so many of us who were his juniors in days gone by learned to admire so much in the Courts, he went on from reading Mr. Cramp's statement that the object was to obtain the resignation of the

985
Government—and surely it is a perfectly legitimate object—
VISCOUNT SWINTON: By a strike?
LORD CHORLEY: To make it go to the country in order that the country might pass a verdict on this business. We are all occupying ourselves the whole time trying to bring pressure to hear on the Government.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Is that what the present Government are seeking to do and to legalize by this Bill?
LORD CHORLEY: My contention is that pressure on a Government, provided it is of a legitimate kind, is quite common. To withhold one's work is perfectly legitimate; anybody can withhold his work. The whole time the people are trying to bring pressure to bear on Governments to do this, that and the other; it is the whole business of politics. But there is all the difference in the world between that and what the noble and learned Viscount went on to say—namely, that it was holding the country to ransom. That is quite a different kettle of fish.
Then he went on to deal with coal, and it was characteristic that he moulded his arguments round certain proposals of the Samuel Commission. But of course the history of this coal business does not start at that time; it goes very much further back. It goes back to the time, and beyond the time, of the Sankey Commission and the promises of the Conservative Government of that time to implement the recomendations of that Commission. Those promises they never carried out; nor did they implement the most important recommendations of Lord Samuel's Commission.
LORD LLEWELLIN: The noble Lord will forgive my interrupting, but Lord Sankey's Commission recommended that the miners should give up the right to strike.
LORD CHORLEY: That is obviously a recommendation which no Government could adopt. That is characteristic of the way in which this business was handled in 1926 and 1927. Then the noble and learned Viscount went on to tell us how he had himself for a long time believed that the method of contracting out was the right one and how in his youthful days he had been a strong supporter of the Trades Disputes Act of
986
1906. It seemed to me that his conversion to this more reactionary way of thinking, if he will permit me to describe it in that way, was contemporaneous with his conversion to the politics of the Conservative Party. But I for one, at any rate, prefer the outlook which he had in 1906, at the time of the Trades Disputes Act, and the outlook which he had in 1913, at the time of the Trade Union Act of that year.
VISCOUNT SIMON: The date of any change in my opinions is of no importance to anyone but myself, but I am sure my noble friend will not mind my telling him that if he read Hansard in another place he would find when it was that I explained the reasons why I thought my original view on this point was wrong. It was long before any of the matters he is referring to now.
LORD CHORLEY: Obviously when one changes one's views one finds reasonably good arguments in one's own mind for doing so, but that is no reason why somebody who thinks that the earlier views were correct should not express himself to that effect. The noble Viscount said that in the uncertain state of the law as it would be, when the Government asked for the opinion of the Lord Chancellor or the Attorney-General of the time all either of them could say was "I do not know." The state of the law which will exist on the repeal of this Act will be exactly the same as it was at the time when he himself was a Law Officer of the Crown. I have no doubt at all that he would be prepared to advise the Government to the best of his ability, and that Lord Chancellors and Attorney-Generals will advise the Government to the best of their ability just as ably as they could have done at that time, and Judges will be prepared to lay down the law with all the vigour and conviction of Mr. Justice Astbury in the famous case of the seaman in the time of the General Strike.
The object of this Bill is a very simple one; it is simply to restore the legal position of the trade unions in the community to the 1926 position. At that time, after a great deal of legislative history and of judicial decisions, a modus vivendi had been reached which on the whole was not unsatisfactory, although it was not the ideal solution. I suggest to your Lordships it was unsatisfactory in a number of respects. The trade unions, although it is quite true

987
they had in some ways received privileges under the legislation of 1906 in particular, were nevertheless in other respects still unprivileged. The privilege which an ordinary association has of using the money of the association in the way in which the majority of the members desire that it should be used has been taken away from trade unions. In other respects, as, for instance, in regard to the question of picketing, there were certain doubts and difficulties which no doubt made the law somewhat unsatisfactory.
It might have been contended that there was a good case for a tidying up of the law relating to trade unions taking place after a careful inquiry and after reasonable discussion on both sides, but that was not done at all in the Act of 1927. If that had been done there would have been a good deal to be said for it, but one of the grievances which the trade unions had in 1927 was that there was no attempt to make any such inquiries, there was no attempt to give any sort of real consideration to the pros and cons of the situation. Nevertheless, the trade unions on the whole were not dissatisfied with the law as it stood in 1926. They had obtained that situation as the result of enormous effort on their part by bringing continuous pressure to bear, particularly upon the Liberal Administration of 1906 to 1915. This modus vivendi was roughly, vindictively, and I should almost say insensately disturbed by the Act of 1927. Mr. Baldwin had been trying for a number of years to prevent the more extreme members of his Party from intervening in this situation. Until the General Strike occurred he had been successful, but the General Strike let loose passions in the Conservative Party which swept over the dams of common sense which had been erected by statesmen such as Mr. Baldwin, as he then was. The noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, has told us of the attempts he made to stave off this eruption of the tide of bitterness, hatred, and indeed fear. He failed. I suggest to your Lordships that hatred and fear are the worst counsellors one can take.
You may say that it is an exaggeration to talk about hatred and fear, but I challenge anybody to read those debates dispassionately—which as Mr. Eden in a recent debate in another place acknowledged were characterized by animosity—without feeling that fear and hatred had
988
brought this legislation before Parliament at that time. Fear and hatred are evil counsellors, and every one of us who remembers that particular time must remember how a sort of shiver of fear passed over all sorts of people in the country. It was perfectly unjustified, because the amount of violence which occurred in connexion with that so-called General Strike was negligible, as was admitted by all afterwards. Yet I remember very well a little man who was attempting to teach me to drive a motorcar, explaining to me how he had taken the whole of his money out of the bank and how he was making inquiries at the travel agencies as to how soon it would be possible for him to get abroad. You may say that is an exaggerated case, but it was quite symptomatic of the way a very large section of the people in the community were stupidly frightened by the events of that time.
It was as a result of that fear and hatred that this Statute was put on to the Statute Book. Subsequently, as we have heard this afternoon, attempts were made to obtain some sort of a compromise, but unfortunately they failed. We need not go into the history of it in detail, but I regard that failure as a major calamity. If this compromise could have been obtained during all those years, when the trade unions were asking for it, then a great compromise could have been obtained. But this bitterness on the part of the Conservative Party stood in the way the whole time.
The Labour Party and the Labour Government are engaged upon a great enterprise, an enterprise which can only be 100 per cent. successful with the co-operation of all classes of the community. If it fails, that failure will be even more disastrous to the people who are opposing it than to the people who are carrying it through. This attitude of the Conservative Party, in my submission, is symptomatic of their failure to give willing co-operation to the work of the Government in their scheme, and I regard that as being one of the major calamities. If it is maintained it will lead to an exceedingly serious situation, and some of the speeches from the other side of this House this afternoon have made it clear that that may in fact be the case. Not very long ago I re-read the famous description by Thucydides of the Peloponnesian War. Just this sort of

989
vindictiveness was largely responsible for the breakdown of that tine civilization—perhaps the finest the world has ever seen--which flourished in Athens and in Greece over those years. We must get a greater magnanimity. That was referred to by the noble and learned Lord, the Lord Chancellor, in his speech this afternoon, and I entirely agree with everything he said on that score.
The 1927 Act has remained to the great mass of the working people in this country the emblem of reaction. Noble Lords opposite regard that as an exaggerated view. It does not matter whether it is exaggerated or not, that is the feeling which exists among these great numbers of people. The reasons for it are not that they were beaten in the General Strike, or that many of them exhausted the funds which they had built up over long years of saving, although no doubt they felt that seriously. The reasons, I think, fall under two heads. There was this feeling of stigma which has been referred to, and there were historical reasons. I will not weary your Lordships by going into the history of the trade unions in this country, which is so much better known to noble and learned Lords like Lord Simon, but I would just ask you to think about a powerful speech made in another place. Mr. W. J. Brown referred to the ghosts of the Combination Acts, and of the To puddle Martyrs and the tailors of Tooley Street, and other passages in the history of the trade union movement. Go back a little more than a hundred years, and try to nut yourselves into the shoes of the working people at that time, with the struggles which they had to carry through against the violence of their employers and the cruelties of the Governments of those days, and you can understand something of the feeling which they had.
It was not until quite late in the last century that trade union law began to be a reasonable law. It was not until after they had secured enfranchisement that they were able to obtain even moderate privileges for the trade unions which they had built up with such difficulty and on which their livelihood and a possibility of reasonable standards of life in the future depended. As I say, by dint of astonishing exertions, they had succeeded in obtaining a modus vivendi. The
990
ordinary workman in this trade union was not so privileged as all that; the position which had been obtained in 1926 was hardly a heaven upon earth, and this Act came along and seemed to shatter it. That is one of the reasons why this was a rankling sore among trade unionists. A long time ago, in a book which is almost as famous now as it was then, Disraeli said this was a country of two nations. That was a great truth. Even now there is truth in it. Now the under dogs, the nation below, had, during the earlier years of this century, begun to feel that that was ceasing to be true, and that there was really beginning 70 be a merger of the two nations into one nation. And then the Act of 1927 was brought in. One of the two nations, being in a political preponderance at that time, made use of its position to push the other nation underneath once more. Can you wonder that there has been great feeling about this among the working people of this country?
Now with regard to the question of stigma. Lord Chesham has said this was not a case of reprisals at all. But surely anybody looking at it in an objective sort of way must find it difficult to agree. First there is the General Strike and then, immediately after it, this, Act is passed which destroys so many of these privileges to which I have been referring. If that is not a reprisal, then what are reprisals? The noble Viscount, Lord Simon, has said that he has no doubt that tens of thousands of men, as ell as their leaders, who took part in the strike of 1926, honestly and sincerely believed that they were doing what they had a right to do. Surely that was so, and yet ex post facto it was asserted that this was a criminal offence. The Government of the day said: "We declare that this was a criminal offence." That is a stigma. It is the stigma which the Foreign Secretary, in his speech in another place, said was being wiped away by the repeal of this Act. Of course it was a stigma. These men, some of whom had already held office in the Government of the State, and many of whom in years to come were to bear the greatest heat and burden of the day, men on whose ability, tenacity and courage the safety of this country was very largely to depend, were declared, in fact, to have been guilty of criminal conduct. Of course they want to get that stigma swept away and this Bill will sweep it away.

991
It is the psychological inability of the leaders of the Conservative Party—or some of them because I do not believe that they all take this view by any means—to understand this feeling which fills me with dread for the future. Cannot we agree to sweep this wretched legislation of 1927 away? Cannot we prepare the ground for a reasonable piece of legislation to be put in its place. It is absurd for members of the Conservative Party in the existing circumstances to expect of any Government which is committed to such a tremendous programme of social reconstruction, that in a few months they should be in a position to place proposals before Parliament for a really well constructed trade union law. If they are to carry out the mandate which they received from the people they have obviously got to sweep aside this legislation of 1927, at once and Quickly. If they did otherwise they would not be carrying out their promises to the electorate.
As one who took a considerable part in the last General Election, and who moved about a great deal among working people, I can assure your Lordships that this is a matter which is very much in the minds of the working people of this country. Reading the reports of debates in another place and listening to speeches which have been made by some of your Lordships this afternoon I cannot help wondering how much knowledge the Conservative members have of what goes on in the minds of the working people of the country. I do not think it would be possible for them to make the sort of speeches which they sometimes do make—speeches in which they say that this is a matter which is not deeply felt by the working people—if they really knew what working people think about. Here would have been a magnificent opportunity for the leaders of the Conservative Party to adopt a magnanimous course and say: "We do not agree with a great deal of the privileges which have been conferred upon the trade unions, but in order that the Government may go ahead and carry out the great programme of social reconstruction which is before us in the coming years we will agree that this Act of 1927, put upon the Statute Book as it was at a time when feeling was still high, this Act which at any rate was obviously the cause of a great deal of feeling and was open to a considerable amount of criticism from the
992
working people and trade unionists of this country, should be removed from the Statute Book, and the way prepared for a new constructive Statute to be put in its place."
7.16 p.m.
LORD WALKDEN: My Lords, we have had a most interesting—indeed a wonderful—debate to-day. It has, I think, been one of the most interesting and important of this Session. For my own part I have enjoyed listening to all the speakers, both the newcomers and the older members of this House. To begin with, I would like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Broughshane on his maiden speech. It was full of his old-time vigour and was every bit as good as any I have heard him deliver in another place. In fact it was better than many of his past efforts. I hope that he will deliver many more speeches in this House now that he has broken the ice. I was sorry to note that he was so much concerned—indeed his whole speech seemed tinged with undue concern if I may say so—about the position with regard to illegal strikes. He thought we ought never to be the least bit uncertain about illegal strikes. The same note was struck by several other speakers. I assure them that there is no need to be concerned about this.
We know what an illegal strike is—everybody does. It is a strike against the State, an attempt to make the State do something by improper means; to get something done in an undemocratic way. I remember an instance in Belgium some Years ago when there was a carefully planned strike of working people to force a reform of the franchise. That clearly was a political strike, and we, in this country, would regard it as illegal. And may I say that I am sure that the people of this country are so right-minded that they would never dream of taking that sort of action to secure that sort of end? The idea that anything of that sort would ever be tolerated by any Government of this country need not unduly concern my noble friend or any other noble Lord. As your Lordships no doubt are aware, there have been one or two instances recently in which wrongful strikes have taken place. They have been unofficial strikes. They have been strikes contrary to the instructions and the advice of the men's unions as well as to the law of the moment which prohibits strikes during a war period and while

993
the present regulations continue. I was very pleased that recently the Government when an unofficial strike occurred took action at once to see that food was not hindered in its transport to the people. I am quite confident that any Government in England would act similarly in the case of any such wrongful strike in the future.
How we shall stand in the future having regard to the Act of 1875 and the Act of 1906 has, I think, been made clear from the Woolsack. It has been shown that those Acts will meet the case against any attempted intimidation, violence or undue overbearing of people who differ from others when a proper strike is taking place.
LORD DE L'ISLE AND DUDLEY: May I be allowed to interrupt for a moment? I believe it to be true that it is illegal for members of certain industries, such as the gas and electrical industries, to strike under the Statute of 1875. I would like nay noble friend to tell us what action was taken against those who took part in the recent strike in the gas industry.
Lorna WALKDEN: I am not aware that the Act of 1875 prohibited strikes in the electrical industry. If a strike takes place we shall have to see about it.
LORD DE L'ISLE AND DUDLEY: There was no electricity in 1875. Only gas.
LORD WALKDEN: There may have been a lot of gas strikes since 1875. If they have been mentioned in the Act of 1875 it only goes to show that you can make what laws you like but if the strike is right, the law will not run; that is all. There have been many cases in my time. It rather reminds me of the dear old lady and Thomas Carlyle. She asked him a question about the French Revolution and added: "Do you think there will be another revolution?" Carlyle's reply was: "There will be another if necessary; there will be as many as are necessary." There will be strikes in any industry, if there is gross injustice, law or no law. I warn you about that, and that it is quite wrong to make any other representation about industry. Greatly as we all respect it, law is not the whole of life. We in this country believe, and my noble friend Viscount Simon should know, from his great knowledge and from his antecedents, that a great deal of the progress of this country has been achieved through
994
deliberately resisting unjust laws. He and I can remember the late Dr. Clifford, in the Nonconformist world, urging people in the chapels to resist an Education Act and to refuse to pay their rates. My father, a great Radical, said that that was fundamentally wrong and unconstitutional. But Dr. Clifford gave that advice, and the people's homes were sold up when they would not pay the rates.
You will gather from this that the law is not absolutely sacrosanct. There are some things greater than the law. While I was charmed, as I always am, with the noble Viscount's speech, with its beautiful dulcet tones and clear exposition of the points he was making, yet I was deeply grieved because he seemed to betray an absolute absence of regard to that great human virtue called sympathy. He is trying to uphold with his forensic eloquence an enactment which forbids people to be sympathetic to one another.
VISCOUNT SIMON: No.
LORD WALKDEN: Yes. The 1927 Act forbids sympathetic strikes—never mind about political strikes. That is our reading of it. That is why people object to it. It prohibits the seaman from taking the part of the docker, and the docker from taking the part of the railwayman. He must not strike outside his own narrow range of work. That is certainly the main reason why trade unionists are bitter about this. And they are bitter; they have been all along. I do not think you will ever be able to stamp out sympathy from the human heart. I think this Bill will clean away a lot of bitterness, and leave our hearts free so that we can look at one another in industry as ordinary Englishman, not unduly tied by laws, but as people who understand one another. It would be a great roifortune to industry if it were run by people who took such a narrow view of life its my noble friend Viscount Simon. A great many men in industry are great-hearted fellows and they get on tolerably well with trade union leaders because of those qualities.
The noble Viscount referred to Mr. Cramp as having made a terrible disclosure or confession, and attached a good deal of importance to him. I venture to point out that the late Mr. Cramp—he was a very nervous man and he did not live very happily in the trade union world—was not a member of the trade unions' council and did not help to conduct the

995
General Strike. He was not speaking for his union or the trade union movement. Whatever he said to a little group of students at Oxford was not responsible in any way, and should not be exaggerated as being a statement of any great importance.
VISCOUNT SIMON: My noble friend knows more than I do of this, but might I just ask him one thing? I happen to know that Mr. Cramp's signature was the first on the admission made on behalf of the railway trade unions at the end of the strike that they had been in the wrong. Is my noble friend really telling me that Mr. Cramp and Mr. J. H. Thomas, who signed second, were not the leaders of the railway movement in that connexion?
LORD WALKDEN: All I said was that he was not the leader of the General Strike. He was a leader in the railway men's union. It is true that he signed that document. I had to sign it. I am surprised the noble Viscount should have brought it up. From time to time we trade unionists do have to sign humiliating documents to get our men back to work. That was the position then, when there were thousands of men that the railways would not take back.
VISCOUNT SIMON: I am sure my noble friend wishes to be quite fair. I made the reference simply because I understood him to be representing that Mr. Cramp was quite unimportant. I made no reference, although I knew it perfectly well, to the terms of the conclusion but surely the person who led those signatures cannot have been of no importance. His statement was not repudiated.
LORD WALKDEN: We always try to avoid dragging disputes further. We do not always reply to one another. We endure things that are said wrongfully and let them pass. Mr. Cramp was in the second position and not in the leading position. And in addressing the students he was speaking on his own account, and not even for his union. Therefore I venture to put to the House that the statement which he made was not quite so important as the noble Viscount contended.
I could not possibly attempt to follow all the other points made by the noble Viscount. I will not call them quibbles,
996
but legal points raised in fine detail. I think that they were all answered in advance by the Lord Chancellor. A good deal of the noble Viscount's contention is also covered in a general statement which I will make in a moment. The noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, made some reference, I am informed, to the position of the Labour Party. I am very sorry I was not present, as I had been called out of the House. I gather that he was rather concerned that some of the great trade unions—I think he referred to the "Big Five"—might dominate everybody, and develop a tyrannical position. There are five unions bigger perhaps than others, but they do not always agree, and do not usually agree. At trade union gatherings, at any rate, they often disagree; then things are thrashed out by the protagonists of the big unions, and settled by the majority of votes of the lesser unions. So far as the Labour Party is concerned, trade union power in the Party is not increasing so rapidly as the power of the local individual members who form the local Labour parties. Membership is growing, the members are subscribing more money to the movement, and they figure much more prominently in the conferences. If your Lordships will be kind enough to notice what happens on the reports at Whitsuntide from Bournemouth I think you will find that weight will be shown in the votes cast at the Labour Party Conference. I am sure the Press will analyze them and show the respective weights of the different sections. These local Labour parties have financed and run their own nominees, who in the majority of cases have not been trade union nominees. Indeed, in the House to-day in the Parliamentary Labour Party there is a substantial majority of non-trade union nominees, who are not responsible to trade unions but to the electorate in their constituencies.
There is no serious danger of a top-heavy balance of power by big unions, nor is there any serious danger of the likelihood of Communistic preponderance or control. That has been checked and held closely down in the trade union movement and in the Labour Party's political movement. The country should be very grateful to the men in these movements who have fought down Communism, because Communism is dictatorial and against the English way of life. For the twenty years

997
during which it has been vigorously supported and financially supported in heavy measure from somewhere, it has not been able to secure any strong footing in this country. Whereas one sees all over Europe Communism getting in and becoming the largest single party or the predominant party, in this country only two Communists have been elected to Parliament. In this country they can not capture the trade unions, nor can they capture the Labour Party. We should be very grateful to the very brave men who have withstood many bitter, nasty and venomous attacks—men like Sir Walter Citrine and the present leader of the House of Commons, Mr. Herbert Morrison, who have all through the years fought these people just as cleverly as they have tried to beat us. They have kept them at arm's length, and this country therefore has been saved from being captured by the Communist movement.
I would like to refer to what Lord Chesham said. He proclaimed himself a peacemaker, for which I was glad. He concluded by making a very peaceful statement. In reply, I would like to say that I thought he was unduly pessimistic. I had no idea he was so gloomy in his heart about this or anything else. I was quite surprised that he should be so gloomy. I do assure him that what he is worried about will not occur in practice. He was terribly worried about working people intimidating one another. Well, they just do not do it. The working classes to-day are quite well-behaved people; they are quite fair to one another, and as to going and frightening a woman at her home and telling her she has got to compel her husband to do this and to do that, to join up and pay up, it really does not happen. Neither is our business carried on in the way the noble Viscount, Lord Simon, described. You do not get a man in the parlour, squeeze him, make do this and that, and intimidate him. If the man does not want to pay up, it is a matter of saying, "Very well, we will take a note. Sign this, and you need not pay any more." That is how it is done.
I think that covers the chief points. The question has been raised as to why we should bring in this Bill at this time and press it so vigorously as the Government are doing. For nearly twenty years, repeal has been pressed for and demanded
998
by the trade unions as a whole. What Mr. Clynes said in 1926 has been the leading point so far as this matter is concerned throughout We movement all through these years. Specific unions adversely affected by certain sections of this Act have themselves been pressing us even more closely. There is the case of the Union of Post Office Workers, who have always been worried as to why they are not attached to the Labour Party and to the Trades Union Congress. They have approached the Conference of the Labour Party and also made direct approach to the Government. That has been going on until very recent times, right up to the Election. They have shown wonderful forbearance under continued provocation. They have made specific application to be allowed to join the Trades Union Congress. Many members of the Congress were quite prepared to accept them, but that would have been acting contrary to the Act of 1927 and in breach of that Act. Wiser and more constitutional counsels prevailed. They were persuaded to withdraw their application, and they did not insist. All those bodies now are plainly entitled to benefit from the democratic decision of the nation as given in the General Election.
In our view the Ad itself was a piece of very bad statesmanship passed by a feeble and vindictive Government. That is the common feeling in the Labour movement throughout the country. It was based on an industrial conflict nothing more. That was the pretext given for introducing this measure. That conflict, of course, took place in 1926, but the Bill went far beyond that pretext, and Sections 4 and 5 definitely sought to hamstring the Conservative Party's political opponents. It was political. It had nothing to do with industrial action at all.
Let us glance back at the great conflict that did take place. My first contention is that it was purely as industrial conflict, and was not political in its essence at all. It was nothing like the Belgian case. There was absolutely no thought of politics in it whatever. It began as a lock-out quite definitely instigated by the mine owners, and supported by their friends in Parliament. It began distinctly as a lock-out, exactly as a lockout is defined in Section 8 of the Act of 1927, which states:

999
"The expression 'lock-out' means the closing of a place of employment or the suspension of work, or the refusal by an employer to continue to employ any number of persons employed by him in consequence of a dispute, done with a view to compelling those persons, or to aid another employer in compelling persons employed by him, to accept terms or conditions of or affecting employment."
Well, the coal-owners took up that position in connexion with a dispute between their workers and themselves. That is exactly how it began. They had posted notices, and in the industrial world it is a terrible thing for employers to post notices that changes have got to be accepted, whether negotiated or not. These notices terminated the previous rates of pay and hours of labour, and specified that the coal-owners' own worse working terms were to be imposed on the men up to May 1, 1926.
That was a very bad day's work by the coal-owners. In consequence the industry of the country has suffered badly from that day to this. Of course, the miners, finding themselves faced with a heavy worsening of their conditions of life, which are always hard, always very severe and difficult to bear, came to their friends at the Trades Union Congress and asked for help—quite a natural and right thing for them to do. The Trades Union Congress consulted with the trade union executives. Now spontaneous sympathy for the miners had already become overwhelming amongst all classs of the community, right up to eminent Prelates who occupied seats on the Benches on my left. No one was more sympathetic to the miners than the Bishops. They formed a little committee and the miners' leaders were in constant contact with them. Many eloquent sermons were preached expressing sympathy with the mine workers. That had become general with the leaders of all other bodies. Certainly the Roman Catholic hierachy were sympathetic with the miners, as were all other religious leaders.
Naturally the trade unions were equally sympathetic, and they agreed on intervention, first to prevent the stoppage, if possible; secondly, to secure a fair settlement; and thirdly, to prevent future trouble by urging the implementation of overdue reforms in the mining industry. Everyone knows those reforms were overdue and that the whole industry was terribly out of date. May I remind your Lordships that Sir Arthur Pugh was Presi-
1000
dent of the Trades Union Congress at that time. A thoroughly sound representative man, he dealt with the whole situation in a perfectly proper manner. Under his leadership and that of Sir Walter Citrine, an equally genuine and patriotic man, the Trades Union Congress decided to organize assistance for the mine workers.
The unions decided to take action if the coal-owners' notices were not withdrawn. Certain unions, but not all, decided to strike in sympathy if necessary. The Railway and Transport Unions in particular decided to help. The railway men remembered a stoppage in 1912 when the mine workers sought to secure a minimum wage of only 5s. a day. A Liberal Government was in power at that time. The mineworkers gave full notice of their intention to stop work unless they could have a minimum rate guaranteed of 5s. a day. The House at that time, under a Liberal Premier, resisted that very modest claim, and a stoppage resulted which lasted a great many weeks. The railway men remembered it because it held up the coal traffic of the railway service. The business of the railways consists roughly of one-third passengers, one-third general merchandise and one-third coal. When the coal was held up, a great many railway men had to be stood off and to lose their pay. That even went through to the clerical staff; men on regular salaries were given notice terminating their engagements with the railway companies, and were put on day-to-day terms. They were given one or two days' work a week and turned into casual workers. That was remembered, and if there was to be a long stoppage again in the coal world the railwaymen knew that that would be repeated. Therefore they wanted to secure a quick settlement. Their action was quite as much in their own interests as it was in sympathy with the miners.
Even the clerical staff of my own union, all salaried workers—perfectly sound and I might almost say highly respectable and very constitutional people—decided to act in sympathy with the other railwaymen and come out with the miners. They behaved very well on that occasion: they spent £250,000 of their meagre funds which they had been thirty years building up. I myself was their secretary, and it was no easy matter to get an organization of clerical workers together and persuade

1001
them to pay a contribution sufficient to build up funds. All those funds went. That is a fair measure of the depth of feeling at that time of the working people of this country, supported by the general public, and it explains the action of the miners and of the Trades Union Congress. To attempt to make out that that was a strike with political objects and revolutionary aims--and that was all the argument advanced in regard to this Act—was simply not true. The strike was a perfectly natural, ordinary, sympathetic strike such as had previously always been understood and allowed.
There was another reason. The coal-owners plainly intended to destroy the National Wages Board which had been set up for the mining industry. One may remember that the Agricultural Laborers' Wages Board was also destroyed. It was a period of rank reaction. The workers were greatly concerned. We in the railway world were very concerned. We had been given our Wages Board in 1921, and if that of the miners was destroyed we knew that ours might be also. Indeed, all the reforms dealing with the labour questions which had been initiated on the Whitley Report resulting from a Government inquiry into industrial conditions were thrown into jeopardy by the action of the mine-owners.
That is how the case developed. We all agreed to stand together and to endeavour to get a quick and fair settlement for the mineworkers. I am sorry the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, has had to leave us—the hour is late. I wish to thank him for the very helpful action he took to assist us in trying to get a quick and fair settlement. He did his utmost, but his suggestions were not acceptable. The trade unions' suggestions broke down. Nobody seemed disposed to agree to anything--it was a dreadful time—and after nine days of this struggle we had to close up the General Strike. We had not been able to get the settlement we hoped to reach within a week, and we had to call the strike off and do the best we could. That is the story of what happened in 1926.
I say there was no justification for the Bill which became an Act in 1927, and it was not the way to deal with this great problem. The Government, instead of trying to be vindictive with the men and their movement, should have dealt with
1002
the industry—that is where the root and cause of the trouble was. The industry was out of date, stagnant, not properly conducted or organized. Its sales arrangements were all wrong. There were over 900 collieries competing with one another instead of being under unified control. The Government should have dealt with that and decided, never mind who agreed or disagreed, to carry out the recommendations of the Samuel Commission. That, however, was not done.
We have had examples of Governments handling situations of this kind. I have referred to recent troubles in our own country. The way the late President Roosevelt dealt with great stoppages in America was exemplary. He took hold of the industries themselves and provided for them to be run under Government ægis until arrangements were made to cure the troubles disturbing the peace and progress of the industry. I do not want to enlarge on that. We regard it as a shameful thing that, apart from bringing in legislation to deal with what was called the illegal strike, the Government, under Section 4, should have attacked the Labour Party by canceling the 1913 Act which arose from the Osborne judgment. That point has already been dealt with by my noble friend Lord Calverley, and I need not stress it further.
The Act of 1927 deprived the Labour Party, as it was intended that it should deprive it, of many thousands of pounds a year. It put trade union secretaries to endless trouble and labour and a big card index had to be maintained for each branch of each union. It was a purely political attack and was so regarded by the workers concerned. It had nothing to do with the strike, and, if my memory serves me correctly, remembering reports in The Times, Section 4 was put in, at the behest of the Tory Party agents in the constituencies, who wanted the measure of 1913 changed and contracting in istead of contracting out compelled.
So far as Section 5 is concerned, that equally had nothing to do with the strike. Section 5 prohibits Civil Service organizations from joining the T.U.C. or the Labour Party; but the Civil Service unions had not participated in the strike and were not expected to participate. Indeed they were advised not to contemplate participation. Why they should have been specially penalized by the Act of 1927 no one could understand. They

1003
certainly have resented it very bitterly ever since and they consider they are perfectly entitled to join the T.U.C. or the Labour Party. This exclusion debars them from many advantages and opportunities. The Trades Union Congress indulges in activities which spread in all directions, throughout the country and throughout the world. In the national sphere they provide people to serve on consultative committees, often established by the Government, and they have contacts with very important bodies like the British Medical Association and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. This section preventing those unions from participating in that work is resented very bitterly.
Perhaps this case will illustrate what it means. We had a very valuable man on the General Council of the T.U.C. His name was Bowen and he was the General Secretary of the Postal Workers' Union. In two or three years he would have been President of the Congress. He knew all the history and workings of the movement of that day and we were all very fond of him. But he had to leave, and his seat was kept vacant pending the carrying through of this Bill which is on the Table to-day. Although he has gone into retirement his successor will undoubtedly be welcomed back into the councils of the trade union movement. He was the member for Crewe and some of your Lordships may be able to recall him. On the international side it must be remembered that this Labour movement is a very great movement. It is not a localized thing; it is not a sectional workers' movement; it embraces workers of all kinds; and that is why its membership goes to millions. The position is utterly different from the position of the professional workers. The accountants, actuaries, lawyers and doctors are for themselves alone; they have no Congress; they never get together and concern themselves about the country as a whole or about the wide world. The trade union movement, however, does; its key-word is "Fellowship," not merely of all workers in our own country, but of all the workers of the world. It sends delegations all over the world. My noble friend Lord Ammon went to America in 1915 for the first time to represent the trade union movement. The present Foreign Secretary, Mr. Ernest Bevin, went with him,
1004
and that was the beginning of the development of his own marvellous knowledge of international affairs.
The Labour movement is an international movement; yet this Bill cuts away all right of participation on the part of unions whose membership consists of people in the public service. There is no reason why they should be penalized; there is no reason why they should be victimized or kept out of this wonderful movement—this movement which gives those who participate in it an extraordinary joy in life. It is something more wonderful than most Conservatives can appreciate. I am so sorry that they do not understand it. To me it is a lovely movement, and it gives joy and strength to all who participate in it.
Section 6 debars local authorities from deciding to employ trade unionists. I do not see why they should be debarred any more than other employers. There are good reasons why they should decide that they will have only trade unionists working for them, for if you have non-unionists amongst a majority of unionists in any employment there is always bad feeling and friction. What public authorities want in connexion with all their work is harmony; they want satisfactory working. It is all a matter of industrial psychology. If engineers and managers engage men for public employment under the municipalities they should be able to tell them frankly: "We would much rather you were in Mr. Will Thorne's union," or whatever union it may be. "The other men are, and they would not like it if you were not in with them. They all work together very well. We have a Whitley Council to deal with complaints. I come and sit on that Council every month or every three months and it is a means of working together pretty well. We would prefer it if you were in a union." If the man said "I will not join" it should be possible to tell him to go and get some other employment.
The municipal engineer should be free to insist, if necessary, and if he is desired to do so by his council, on the employment of trade unionists. There is a lot of sharp feeling in professional circles if people are not members of their professional associations. A doctor came to me last Sunday and told me how dreadfully he had been cut and cold-shouldered as he had ceased his membership of the

1005
B.M.A. because he dissented from their present policy in opposing the Govern-merit and asking every doctor to put up 25 to fight the Government. He did not agree with that, and now he is being cut and is feeling it very much. Yet a council may not require everybody to be in a trade union, although I should think it would require a professional man to have all the credentials that are usually expected in whatever line of business he may be qualified.
Finally, some scepticism has been expressed about our mandate for this Bill. No One can maintain an objection to our claim that we have a mandate. The repeal of the 1927 Act was demanded prior to this Election and prior to the war; I mean actually demanded in recent times, and considerable pressure was put on, particularly in the year 1939. We were fobbed off by one Prime Minister after another at that time and after the war broke out. As has been correctly described by my noble friend the Lord Chancellor--and this is what has often been attempted to be discounted—throughout the General Election itself at nearly all our meetings questions were pressed about whether we would take action to annul the Trade Disputes Act of 1927. I addressed quite a lot of meetings (I had nothing much else to do at that time and I was glad to go and help in the Election) and I was surprised at the persistence with which men came along and put that question, if it had not been mentioned in any of the speeches or by the candidate. I believe the men generally who came were postmen, because postmen feel very bitterly about it indeed. That large and very worthy body of men is adversely affected by the Act of 1927.
The repeal of the Act was demanded in the Elections of 1929, 1931 and 1935, and the Labour Party made it a cardinal item in their programme for the recent Election, the programme which was entitled "Let's Face the Future." The Government not only pledged themselves throughout the Election but they certainly are clearly mandated. The electors have settled the question decisively. I was very pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, say that for his part, and I gather it is the case with others, there is no intention to seek 10 frustrate the will of the people.
1006
Your Lordships will be well advised not to seek to frustrate the will of the people, which has been made abundantly clear.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned.
Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Lord Llewellin.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificate from the Examiners that no Standing Orders are applicable to the following Bill:
North West Midlands Joint Electricity Authority Provisonal Order,
also the Certificate that no further Standing Orders are applicable to the following Bill:
Great Western Railway,
and also the Certificate that the Standing Orders have not been complied with in respect of the Petitions for the following Bills:
Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital, Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital, Central London Ophthalmic Hospital (Amalgamation, etc.).
West Sussex County Council (Shoreham and Lancing Beaches, etc.).
The same were ordered to lie on the Table.
ROYAL LONDON OPHTHALMIC HOSPITAL. ROYAL WESTMINSTER OPHTHALMIC HOSPITAL, CENTRAL LONDON OPHTHALMIC HOSPITAL (AMALGAMATION, ETC.) (PETITION FOR BILL).]
WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL (SHOREHAM AND LANCING BEACHES, ETC.) (PETITION FOR BILL).
Examiners' Certificates of non-compliance with Standing Orders referred to the Standing Orders Committee.

  REGISTRATION OF HOTEL VISITORS.
  REGISTRATION OF HOTEL VISITORS.
  WOOL STOCKS.
  WOOL STOCKS.