Sitting of 6 November 1946

Preamble
The House met at Half past Two o'Clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS

  HOUSE POSSESSION CASES (COSTS)
  Mr. Michael Footasked the Attorney-General whether he will consider, without interfering with a judge's discretion in any particular case, the institution of a new county court rule directing that, in possession cases, there shall be no order either way with regards to costs unless, in his absolute discretion, the judge makes a special order to the contrary.
  The Solicitor-General (Major Sir Frank Soskice): The question of costs is one entirely in the discretion of the learned county court judge, and I do not think that the hon. Member's proposal is either necessary or desirable. Before making an order as to costs the learned judge is bound by rule to consider each case on its merits, both as to whether or not he ought in justice to make an order for costs in favour of the successful party, and, in possession cases, also as to the scale on which the costs, if awarded, are to be taxed. So far as the scale is concerned, there is a wider discretion than is given to the judge in ordinary county court cases, which is found very useful in practice.

  CROWN (ACTIONS FOR DAMAGES)
  Mr. Frank Byersasked the Attorney-General if he will make a statement on the possibility of introducing, in the next few months, legislation affecting proceedings of civilians against the Crown.
  The Solicitor-General: I regret that I can add nothing to the reply given by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General to a question by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson), on 8th October last, in which he stated that the Government are aware of the necessity of introducing legislation to deal with this matter as soon as Parliamentary time is available.
  Mr. Byers: Would the Government give serious consideration to the introduction early in the next Session in another place of the Crown Proceedings Bill, which is very largely an agreed Measure?
  The Solicitor-General: The Government have considered this matter in all its aspects as very urgent. Arrangements have been made, pending the possibility of legislation being introduced, to avoid injustice in particular cases; but the case of Adams and Naylor has created difficulties though it is found that in general they can be overcome.
  Mr. Sydney Silverman: Will not the Solicitor-General agree that one result of the remarks made in another place in the case to which he has referred has been to make this question much more urgent than it was before, because of the criticism of a device that had long been used to overcome the inherent injustice of the absence of this Measure? If these devices are to be frowned upon, then it becomes all the more urgent that this matter should be dealt with.
  The Solicitor-General: I agree that the case referred to does make this more important. As I say, it has been treated as a matter of importance but it still has to take its place in the order of priority.
  Mr. Stephen: Would the learned Solicitor-General not agree that there is so much unanimity on this matter that a Bill might not take up very much time?
  The Solicitor-General: I would say that the Bill must take some time because it is not quite as simple as hon. Members may think at first sight. It would be unwise, and I should have thought not conducive to any useful purpose, to introduce it unless it can be dealt with properly.
  Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Will there be any legislation to improve the administration of justice during the next 12 months?
  The Solicitor-General: That does not arise out of this Question.
  Captain Crookshank: Would not the learned Solicitor-General say that Bills which affect the rights of all citizens should have higher priority than Bills with purely political objects?
  The Solicitor-General: All Measures which the Government place high in the list of priority are of prime importance.

  LIBEL LAW (COMMITTEE'S REPORT)
  Mr. Wilson Harrisasked the Attorney-General when the committee sitting to consider the revision of the law of libel is expected to report.
  The Solicitor-General: My present information is that the Report of the Porter Committee on the Law of Defamation will be ready early in the New Year.
  Mr. Harris: Seeing that an inquiry into the Press was advocated on the ground that an inquiry into the law of libel is desirable, will the hon. and learned Gentleman ask this Committee to pick up a spare public relations officer from somewhere in order that their activities may be advertised to the world?
  Mr. Gallacher: When he is considering the Report, will the hon. and learned Gentleman take into account the present state of the law which, because of possible libel, caused me to make six changes in a pamphlet I did a short time ago? Will he see to it that something very clear is set down about what is libel?
  The Solicitor-General: The present state of the libel law obviously would be a material circumstance to be taken into consideration.
  Professor Savory: May I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman whether he will consider introducing the French law which gives the person attacked the right of reply in the newspaper and which requires that the newspaper shall give him the same amount of space as that used for the attack and just as prominent a place in the newspaper?
  The Solicitor-General: The citizen in this country who is attacked in the newspaper has every right to reply, and, as far as I know, that is a right which is vigorously exercised.
  Mr. W. J. Brown: Is the Minister aware that an earlier supplementary question made reference to the fact that six possible actions for libel were deleted, but that 18 others still remain?

  COMMISSIONERS FOR OATHS
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Attorney-General whether it is his intention to introduce an alteration in the official form of recommendation required to be submitted to the Lord Chancellor in respect of persons applying to be appointed commissioners for oaths.
  The Solicitor-General: It is very important that commissioners for oaths should be persons who may be relied on to perform the duties of the office strictly and conscientiously. No complaints have reached the Lord Chancellor that the precautions now taken are unnecessary. My noble Friend the Lord Chancellor has no present intention of introducing any alteration, but if the hon. Member has any suggestions to make, I shall be happy to bring them to the attention of my noble Friend.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In view of the fact that the form in question requires it to be certified that the applicant is well disposed towards His Majesty's Government, will the hon. and learned Gentleman reconsider the matter in view of the fact that that attitude of mind towards His Majesty's Government is confined to its own members?
  The Solicitor-General: I should want to scrutinise the form very carefully before I could accept the implication in the hon. Gentleman's question.

  ROYAL AIR FORCE

    Leave
    Air-Commodore Harveyasked the Secretary of State for Air if he will give details of future plans for leave for R.A.F. personnel.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Air (Mr. Geoffrey de Freitas): The present arrangements for leave in the Royal Air Force will continue until 31st March, 1947. Plans for the future are now being worked out, and an announcement will be made as soon as possible.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: Will the Under-Secretary give an assurance that, in considering his future plans, leave for air crew personnel will not be cut?
    Mr. de Freitas: Certainly, Sir. I give that assurance.

    Education Branch
    Air-Commodore Harveyasked the Secretary of State for Air if he will make a statement regarding the reorganisation of the R.A.F. educational service.
    Mr. de Freitas: On 1st October we set up the new Education Branch of the Royal Air Force. It replaced the civilian R.A.F. Educational Service. This change shows the importance we attach to education in the postwar Air Force. I am sending to the hon. and gallant Member a copy of the conditions of service in the new branch. To begin with, the permanent officers are being recruited from the permanent staff of the old Educational Service, but the normal method of entry is by short service commission and permanent commissions will be offered to selected officers towards the end of their short service. The Education Branch will now take its place as an integral part of the Royal Air Force in the same way as the General Duties and other branches.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: Will the Under-Secretary tell the House whether the education officers will qualify for the same rights as officers in the other Services?
    Mr. de Freitas: The rates of pay and pensions were announced in the House in July. There are certain technical points in regard to the pensions of officers who are now coming from the Educational Service so that I would not like to give an answer offhand on that.
    Mr. Pritt: Will the Minister say that that does not mean that the Secretary of State for Air is in favour of junior education officers receiving less than other junior officers in the Service?
    Mr. de Freitas: I will look into that point. As I have already said, the rates were announced in the House in July.
    Major Leǵǵe-Bourke: Can the Under-Secretary say whether any of the officers who have been put to this new Educational Service are men who have applied for release in order to resume their jobs
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    as teachers which they had in civilian life before the war?
    Mr. de Freitas: No, Sir. Applications are accepted, and are purely voluntary.

    Surplus Accommodation (Airfields)
    Mr. R. A. Butlerasked the Secretary of State for Air what proportion of the accommodation on the Ridgewell and Stansted Mount Fitchet airfields has been made available for the housing and community needs of the districts concerned.
    Mr. de Freitas: We have offered up half at Ridgewell and three-quarters at Stansted Mountfitchet. The Ministry of Health are considering, in conjunction with other Departments in need of accommodation, the best use that can be made of this space.

    Personal Case
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Secretary of State for Air when he will finally reply to a letter, dated 3rd June last, relating to 1261199 Corporal H. O. White.
    Mr. de Freitas: The hon. and gallant Member will now have received my reply of 2nd November. His letter raised a point on the regulations which had not at that time been settled by the Service Departments and the Ministry of Pensions. However, this does not excuse the delay, and I very much regret it.

    Japan (Miho Camp)
    Mr. William Teelingasked the Secretary of State for Air what steps are being taken to make the R.A.F. camp at Miho, Japan, habitable for the winter which is already approaching; and whether he is aware that the men there have no heating and are short of all foods, except carrots, and are in a discontented state.
    Mr. de Freitas: When we took over this airfield, conditions were very poor, but we have improved them a great deal. The buildings have been reconditioned against the winter and electric and coke stoves have been installed. At one time transport difficulties caused a shortage of fresh food, but the messing is now satisfactory. In spite of the difficult conditions which prevailed for the first few months, the morale of our men has been good.
    Mr. Teelinǵ: Is the hon. Gentleman certain that he is right in saying that everything has been prepared for the winter? Is he aware that, only three weeks ago, I received an air mail letter saying that nothing had been started, although everything had been promised to try to get some heating installed?
    Mr. de Freitas: Yes, Sir, I am quite certain that that has been looked at now and that those conditions do exist.

    Trinidad
    Mr. Teelinǵasked the Secretary of State for Air why six members of the R.A.F. have been left in Trinidad when all others have been repatriated; why no arrangements were made for their feeding and welfare; whether he is aware that for six weeks they had to live on the charity of one officer and their own savings; and what steps he is taking to remedy their present isolated condition.
    Mr. de Freitas: A number of airmen have been retained in Trinidad for essential meteorological work until civilians have been trained to take their place. We expect that all of them will have been brought home by the end of this year. I have called for a thorough investigation into the other points raised by the hon. Member, and will write to him as soon as it is completed.
    Mr. Teelinǵ: Does not the hon. Gentleman feel, in view of the fact that many more questions like this are coming in now, that it is possible that the welfare officers and adjutants on the stations are not, at group and command level, being encouraged to send in complaints if there are any; and will he make quite sure, in view of the end of demobilisation, that more will be done to ensure that these people do not feel that they are being forgotten?
    Mr. de Freitas: On the facts stated in the Question, there does seem to have been a bad failure in administration, but I have not yet completed my investigation into the matter.
    Captain Marsden: Surely, in a case like this, the Governor or the Commander-in-Chief of the island should take a hand? Could not the hon. Gentleman make some inquiries about that?
    Mr. de Freitas: Yes, certainly. Arrangements were made for his Colonial
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    Secretary to deal with the pay of these airmen. I have called for a full investigation.

    Transport Vehicles (Routinǵ)
    Mr. Dodds-Parkerasked the Secretary of State for Air whether his attention has been called to the frequent use in congested traffic areas of R.A.F. transport vehicles of a length far exceeding that permitted to commercial vehicles, for the purpose of carrying parcels and miscellaneous goods and not for their original purpose of transporting aeroplane fuselages, etc.; and if, in view of the congestion which is caused to traffic, he will ensure that the use of these vehicles is limited to essential purposes.
    Mr. de Freitas: We received a complaint from the police in June and, as a result, an Air Ministry Order was issued providing for R.A.F. vehicles to be routed away from congested streets whenever possible. To avoid waste, particularly on return journeys, these large trailers are not limited by regulation to carrying aircraft fuselages.

    Enǵineers (Trade Union Membership)
    Mr. Niall Macphersonasked the Secretary of State for Air what policy is being adopted by his Department towards the Aeronautical Engineers Association and its members; and to what extent members of the association who have served several years in skilled jobs are being now given the choice of either joining the A.E.U. or being registered as dilutees, with the prospects of early dismissal.
    Mr. de Freitas: The Aeronautical Engineers Association has never been recognised by the industrial side of the Whitley Council as a negotiating body and, in consequence, my Department has not felt able to recognise it as such. I do not quite follow the suggestion in the latter part of the Question and perhaps the hon. Member would like to send me particulars of the cases he has in mind. I cannot myself see how a situation could arise in which a man could be presented with these alternatives.
    Mr. Macpherson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, when a number of these men were taken over early in the war for training at Park Royal, and so on, they were given an assurance that they would not be registered as dilutees, and that they

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    are now being given the alternative of being registered as dilutees or joining the A.E.U.?
    Mr. de Freitas: I am not aware of that. With few exceptions, registration as dilutees must have taken place many years ago.
    Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison: Is it not a fact that this union has more than 50 per cent. of the ground engineering staff of three corporations, while some six other unions are competing for the bewildered remainder?
    Mr. de Freitas: The hon. and gallant Gentleman is referring to civil aviation. He should put down a Question in regard to the three corporations.
    Major Hauǵhton: Is the Minister aware that there was a definite undertaking at the time that these men were engaged as dilutees.

    R.A.F. Casualties since 8th May, 1945, in theatres other than Far Eastern theatre.

    Theatre.

    Place.

    Killed.

    Injured.

    Total Casualties.

    Europe

    Germany

    —

    1

    1

    Middle East

    Palestine

    —

    5

    5

    6

    Note: These figures are operational casualties; that is, they include casualties on missions such as dropping supplies to prisoners of war but not those resulting from accidents or deaths from natural causes.

    Polish Resettlement Corps (R.A.F. Camps)
    Mr. Piratinasked the Secretary of State for Air how many R.A.F. camps in Britain have been occupied by Polish airmen and by what number; and how many of these camps, now occupied by civilians but required for Government purposes, are to be handed over to the Polish airmen.
    Mr. de Freitas: There are 14,000 Poles at 20 R.A.F. stations. There are ten
    Mr. de Freitas: No, Sir, I am not aware that there was any such undertaking. The agreement which was made by the Air Ministry with the A.E.U. in October, 1939, when there were a Conservative Government and a Conservative Secretary of State, is the agreement which we are working in connection with dilutees.

    Postwar Casualties
    Mr. Piratinasked the Secretary of State for Air the number of casualties, killed and injured, in the R.A.F. since the termination of hostilities in Europe and in Asia; and details of the various military spheres where these casualties have taken place.
    Mr. de Freitas: With the hon. Member's permission, I will circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the statement:
    civilian families at two of these stations, but none at the stations we are preparing for the Polish Resettlement Corps.

    Auxiliary Squadrons
    The following Question stood upon the Order Paper:
    7. Mr. SIDNEY SHEPHARD,—TO ask the Secretary of State for Air how many auxiliary squadrons of the R.A.F. have already been formed.
    At the end of Questions—
    Mr. de Freitas: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will answer Question No. 7. Twenty, Sir. They are the Auxiliary Air Force flying squadrons which existed before the war and earned such distinction in action. Thirteen of these squadrons are day fighter, three are night fighter and four are light bomber. Before the war the squadrons were raised and administered by the County Territorial Army and Air Force Associations; we are grateful to the associations for undertaking these duties again. This weekend the 20 squadron headquarters will begin recruiting from former members of the Air Force. We shall be making an announcement later about other forms of non-regular service for those who are unable to join these squadrons.
    Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Can the hon. Gentleman give the location of these squadrons?
    Mr. de Freitas: There are three in Scotland, one in Northern Ireland, one in Wales and 15 in England.
    Winǵ-Commander Millinǵton: Can the hon. Gentleman say how soon it will be before he will be able to make a statement about the other forms of the non-regular service, as it is some six months ago since we were told that a statement would be made soon?
    Mr. de Freitas: It will not be long delayed.

  CIVIL AVIATION

    Boeinǵ Strato-Cruisers
    Air-Commodore Harveyasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation why it was necessary to order Boeing Strato-Cruisers from U.S.A.; and what was their cost.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (Mr. Lindǵren): The order has been placed in the United States for six Boeing Strato-Cruisers, in order to enable the British Overseas Airways Corporation to operate on equal terms with foreign airlines on the highly competitive North Atlantic route during the years 1948–50 before the new British trans-Atlantic airliners are ready. It is anticipated that their cost will be within a figure of 12 million dollars.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: In view of the continued shortage of British civil transport aircraft, will the Minister publish in the OFFICIAL REPORT when the new machines being built in this country under the aegis of the Brabazon Committee are expected to be ready for operations?
    Mr. Lindǵren: Yes, Sir.

    Empty Seats
    Mr. William Shepherdasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation the percentage of empty seats on British operated continental services during September.
    Mr. Linǵgren: The number of empty seats on British operated continental services, exclusive of those services operated by the Royal Air Force Transport Command, during September, amounted to 15.4 per cent. of the total seats available.
    Mr. Shepherd: In view of the fact that the percentage of low loading is increasing, why are the Government delaying the abolition of priorities on these routes?
    Mr. Lindǵren: The delay in the abolition of priorities is necessitated by priority travellers, although, in fact, at the London Priorities Board the priorities are reviewed almost week by week, certainly month by month. As and when it is possible either to reduce or abolish priorities entirely, that will be done; but low loading has nothing to do with the Priorities Board, because the seats are made available by the corporations, and in almost every case empty priority seats are released by the corporations.
    Mr. Marlowe: Could the hon. Gentleman say how many seats that percentage represents?
    Mr. Lindǵren: The total number of seats available was 8,540. The actual number of seats used was 6,871. However, those unused seats do not necessarily arise from failure to load in this country. While every effort is made to arrange through traffic, the lack of through traffic does mean that certain seats are not used for part of the journey.
    Lieut.-Commander Gurney Braithwaite: Is not the chief difficulty the fact that when these priority seats are released, insufficient time is given to allow them to be used for alternative commercial purposes?
    Mr. Lindǵren: No, Sir, that is not my information.

    Flyinǵ Boat Base
    Major Bruceasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation whether he is now in a position to publish the Report of the Pakenham Committee established for the purpose of selecting a site for an Empire flying boat base; and whether he will give any indication as to the future of Langstone Harbour, Portsmouth, in this connection.
    Mr. Lindǵren: The Report is under examination in consultation with the various Government Departments concerned, and no decision has yet been taken on it by the Government. My noble Friend has every hope that it will be possible for a decision to be taken by the Government in the early future. Until then, it is not possible to make a statement on the future of Langstone Harbour, or any other possible site for a marine base.
    Major Bruce: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that my city has been waiting in suspense on this Question for the last eight years? Will he also bear in mind that the establishment of an Empire flying boat base at Langstone Harbour, Portsmouth, would not prejudice the safety of the Royal Dockyard to any greater extent than the Heath Row airport is likely to prejudice the safety of the capital of the Empire?
    Mr. Lindǵren: That is not a matter for my consideration.

    Niǵht Flyinǵ
    Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Mooreasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation on what grounds and by what authority B.O.A.C. have issued a general prohibition against night flying.
    Mr. Lindǵren: No such prohibition has been issued. Night flying is normal practice on the overseas services operated by that corporation.
    Sir T. Moore: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that night flying has been prohibited between Prestwick and Belfast?
    Mr. Lindǵren: Prestwick and Belfast services are not under the control of B.O.A.C.
    Sir T. Moore: May I substitute B.E.A.C. for B.O.A.C.?
    Mr. Lindǵren: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman had put down a question about
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    B.E.A.C., I would have been prepared to answer it. So far as B.E.A.C. is concerned, there is no prohibition of night flying. The services from the continent do, in fact, come in to Northolt during the hours of darkness. What has been done, so far as internal services in this country are concerned, is that, as a safety measure and in view of the lack of certain ground facilities, time tables have been so arranged as to allow all landings of these internal services to take place during the hours of daylight, so far as possible.
    Sir T. Moore: As night flying has been carried out both in war and peace for some considerable time with considerable success, why this sudden change of policy?
    Mr. Lindǵren: There is no change of policy. It has always been the policy of B.E.A.C. that, so far as possible, until all landing aids are available, aircraft on the internal services shall land during the hours of daylight.

    Safety
    Sir T. Mooreasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation what instructions he has issued to the corporations charged with the conduct of civil aviation in regard to safety conditions.
    Mr. Lindǵren: My noble Friend takes the view that it should be a strict rule that operations must be restricted within the over-riding limits imposed by safety considerations, and is satisfied that the boards of the three airways corporations fully share this view.
    Sir T. Moore: Is the hon. Gentleman quite satisfied that perhaps an undue emphasis is being placed on these safety considerations, which might well hamper our whole future in civil aviation?
    Mr. Lindǵren: My noble Friend takes the view that safety is the first consideration.

    Prestwick and Renfrew— Belfast
    Sir T. Mooreasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation what was the profit per head on the 30s. air service between Prestwick and Belfast, now cancelled; and what is the profit per head on the 50s. air service between Renfrew and Belfast, recently inaugurated.
    Mr. Lindǵren: As the reply is rather long, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Sir T. Moore: Could the hon. Gentleman risk giving a resumé?
    Mr. Lindǵren: The reply runs into two full pages of foolscap. If, having read it, the hon and gallant Genteman wishes to raise any point, I shall be only too pleased to deal with it either in the House or in correspondence.
    Following is the reply:
    As regards the first part of the Question, the Prestwick service was operated with Dakota aircraft by Scottish Aviation Ltd., on its own account from January to August 1946, and then on charter to British European Airways Corporation from 2nd September until it was discontinued on 1st November. Certain figures have been supplied by Scottish Aviation indicating that the company made a small profit of 7d. a head over the initial seven months period of operation. During most of this period, however, landing fees in the United Kingdom were at a level which it would have been uneconomic to maintain. It is estimated that a continuation of the service on the same basis as before, with landing fees at the higher level introduced in July would have resulted in loss.
    As regards the second part of the Question, it is at present impracticable to allocate costs accurately among the different British European Airways Corporation routes. The Renfrew service, among others, is now operated by Railway Air Services, Ltd., as agents for the British European Airways Corporation with D.H.89 aircraft. The best estimate available indicates that there is a small margin of profit from D.H.89 operations on all the corporation's internal United Kingdom routes taken together. It should be noted that the fares quoted are not directly comparable; they cover differences in mileage and services rendered.

    Employees (Trade Union Membership)
    Mr. N. Macphersonasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation whether he is prepared to avail himself of the powers conferred on him by Section 4 of the Civil Aviation Act, 1946, to direct each of the airways corporations to adopt an impartial attitude towards trade unions to which their
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    employees belong, and forthwith to recognise whichever trade union has the largest membership within each corporation at the present time.
    Mr. Lindǵren: I would draw the hon. Member's attention to Section 19 of the Civil Aviation Act, 1946. The matter is one for the corporations.
    Mr. Macpherson. Is the Minister not prepared to bring pressure to bear on the corporations to make certain that the corporations are model employers? Is it a mark of a model employer to refuse an organisation which represents 95 per cent. of the employees in one case and over half in the other?
    Mr. Lindǵren: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's figures. but I am sure he will agree that this is a matter, in the first instance, for the trade unions concerned and the corporations who are the employers. A recognised form of machinery is now set up, and I am certain that it would be best to leave the normal industrial machinery to deal with normal industrial practices.

    COLONIAL EMPIRE (MINERAL RESOURCES)
    Mr. Rees-Williamsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will state the policy of His Majesty's Government on the ownership and operation of the mineral resources of the Colonial Empire.
    The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Creech Jones): I have recently conveyed to Colonial Governments, in a memorandum which I propose to publish shortly, my view that it is desirable for their legislation to provide for the reservation to the Crown of mineral rights in any future sale or alienation of Crown or public lands, and have suggested that the desirability of re-acquiring for the Crown mineral rights already alienated, should be reviewed in the light of local circumstances. I have, in addition, made it clear that Colonial Governments should, where necessary, be prepared to undertake mining operations on their own behalf.
    Mr. Rees-Williams: Is the Minister aware that this proposal is a great step forward in Colonial policy?

  AFRICAN COLONIES

    Kenya (Geoloǵical Surveys)
    Mr. Baldwinasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies 'what geological surveys are being made in Kenya.
    Mr. Creech Jones: Small surveys in the Kitui, Nyeri and South Kavirondo districts and other promising areas are at present being carried out, or are about to be undertaken. These surveys form part of the proposals for full scale geological surveys contained in the recently published report of the Kenya Development Committee. Unfortunately, the work is severely restricted by the difficulty of recruiting geological staff. I would remind the hon. Member that in the allocation of the Colonial Development and Welfare monies provision is made for a central service for geological surveys, and steps have been taken for the appointment of a director, in consultation with whom the new organisation will be built up.

    Water Power
    Mr. Baldwinasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies in view of the necessity for secondary industries in the East African territories what steps are being taken to develop the water power at present running to waste, particularly the Ripon and Murchison falls.
    Mr. Creech Jones: The East African Governments have the possibility of the utilisation of water power very much in mind, and a commission visited East Africa to report on hydro-electric possibilities during 1945. The report of this commission will, it is hoped, shortly be available.

    Medical Services
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if, in view of the pressing need, he will consider a greater expansion of West African medical services by 1951 and after than is at present contemplated.
    Mr. Creech Jones: The expansions of the medical services in the West African Colonies envisaged for the next 10 years are already considerable. Nigeria, for example, is devoting nearly £9,000,000 under its £55,000,000 development plan to these services, and by 1956 will have more than doubled its present annual expenditure of nearly £1,000,000. The number of hospital beds will be multiplied 2½ times
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    and the medical staff trebled. In addition, over £8,000,000 is to be spent on improved water supplies, and that should have a marked effect on the health of the people. In proportion to its resources, Sierra Leone proposes expenditure of a similar order; and although the plans for the Gold Coast and Gambia are not yet final, they too provide for substantial expansion.
    I have constantly in mind the pressing need to which my hon. Friend refers, but having regard to the limitation of the available resources, and the need of other equally essential services, I do not think it would be wise to contemplate further expansions unless the future revenues of the territories concerned turn out to exceed our expectations.
    Mr. Sorensen: Whilst the statement made by the Minister will undoubtedly give great satisfaction, is he aware that in fact it still leaves a very great deal to be done, and can he give any indication of the possibility of a new review of the situation in, say, a year or so's time?
    Mr. Creech Jones: We are aware of the limitations, due obviously to the inadequate finances, but the problem is under continuous review. Indeed, it is under review at the present moment, because the ten-year plans are being considered in the Colonial Office.
    Mr. Janner: Would the Minister say whether any additional grants are being given for the purpose of native students being trained in this country, so that they will be able to take up medical positions in West Africa?
    Mr. Creech Jones: Yes, Sir, a great deal of additional money is available for scholarships. Over and above that, we are almost immediately laying the foundations of a medical school in Nigeria.
    Mr. John Lewis: Would my right hon. Friend say if any steps are being taken to increase the production of drugs and pharmaceutical products, which are in short supply at the moment?
    Mr. Creech Jones: My information is that as far as the African territories are concerned their supplies at the moment are ample.
    Mr. Sorensen: Could the Minister say whether efforts are being made to bring over here a large number of African girls to be trained as nurses in the hospitals?
    Mr. Creech Jones: That problem is under consideration. We have recently appointed a woman adviser on the whole problem of nursing.

    Tanǵanyika (Diamonds)
    Mr. Dodds-Parkerasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is in a position to make any statement with regard to the recent new discoveries of diamonds and precious metals in Tanganyika; and when he anticipates that he will be able to make a full statement with regard to Government policy in this matter.
    Mr. Creech Jones: I hope to be able to discuss the policy to be adopted in the utilisation of diamonds and other minerals in Tanganyika with representatives of the Tanganyika Government in the very near future, and I trust I shall be able to make a statement before long.
    Mr. Dodds-Parker: Can I take it that the Minister does not propose to follow. up the speech made in another place, or to follow the President of the Board of Trade in spending the taxpayers' money in highly speculative gambles?
    Viscount Hinchinǵbrooke: In view of the most disquieting reply to a previous Question on mineral rights, are we to assume that the Minister proposes to lay his hands on these new discoveries?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I should imagine the African people themselves have the first claim on these discoveries. In any case, I must ask the noble Lord to wait until I make a statement on diamonds in Tanganyika.

    Newspapers (Kenya)
    Mr. Baldwinasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many African newspapers other than the Government newspaper are published in Kenya; what is their estimated circulation; and how many of these have made their appearance in the last year.
    Mr. Creech Jones: There are 17 newspapers for Africans in Kenya; their combined circulation is estimated at 68,300 copies; five of these newspapers have made their appearance in the last year.
    Mr. Baldwin: In view of the somewhat subversive nature of some of these newspapers, will the right hon. Gentleman consider setting up a Royal Commission to inquire into the matter?

  MALAYA

    Waǵes
    Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if an inquiry has now been held into the wage rates for workers in different communities in Malaya, both in Government and private service; whether any steps are being taken to limit or prohibit the sale or manufacture of toddy in Malaya; and whether improved water facilities are now available.
    Mr. Creech Jones: As regards the first part of the Question, there is a Wages and Cost of Living Committee, which has already issued an interim report. I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply my predecessor gave to him on 10th July. As regards the second and third parts of the Question, I am awaiting a report from the Governor of the Malayan Union, and I will write to my hon. Friend when I receive it. In Singapore, toddy sale is strictly limited through Government toddy shops, and manufacture is approximately half what it was before the war.

    Rice Supplies
    Mr. Rees-Williamsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that rice is the staple food of the Asiatic population of British Malaya; that the Malayan rice ration is less than a quarter of the Indian ration, about one-sixth of the Rangoon ration and approximately one-third of the Japanese ration; that although the rice allocation in Malaya for the second half of this year is considerably below that which was requested, only a half of this amount has actually been received; and what practical steps are now being taken to overcome the difficulties of rice transportation to Malaya.
    Mr. Creech Jones: I am very much aware of the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of rice for Malaya, and this matter is receiving my constant attention. But it is not possible to accept without qualification the comparisons set out in the second part of my hon. Friend's Question, since they leave out of account a number of factors, especially the inclusion of substantial quantities of flour in the Malayan ration. As regards the last two parts of the Question, owing to the sources from which Malayan rice is drawn, it was inevitable that less than half the second half-year's allocation should be received in the first four months

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    of the period, and I am afraid that even by the end of the year there may be some shortfall, but I am doing everything possible to keep it as small as possible.
    Mr. Rees-Williams: Is the Minister aware that it is no use talking about flour; that rice is the staple diet, and in many cases Asiatics will not eat flour even if they are given it, that they do not know what to do with it; and will he take steps to do something about getting rice from Siam, because that is really urgent?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I can only assure my hon. Friend that every conceivable step has been taken to increase the supplies of rice in Malaya, and that all possible sources have been tapped, including Siam. If flour is not included in the ration at the present time the population will die.
    Mr. Driberǵ: Has my right hon. Friend observed that there is likely to be an exportable surplus of a million tons of rice in Burma after the harvest next December, and will he take steps now to make sure that Malaya gets its fair share of that?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I repeat, every conceivable step has been taken. We are fully alive to all possible sources, and we are very conscious of the difficulties existing in Malaya.

    Clothinǵ Supplies
    Mr. Driberǵasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware of the continuing shortage of clothing in Kuala Lumpur and other parts of Malaya; and what steps are being taken to improve supplies.
    Mr. Creech Jones: Yes, Sir. I am continuing arrangements for the procurement, through Government channels, of surplus military clothing from the U.K., and in addition from various military depôts overseas. I am also doing my best to facilitate importation through ordinary trade channels.
    Mr. Driberǵ: Could my right hon. Friend say how far those arrangements have been successful, and how much clothing, approximately, has now been actually distributed?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I could not give that information without notice.
    Lieut.-Commander Braithwaite: Is the Minister aware that these difficulties also persist in the far more austere climate of Great Britain?

    Food Rations
    Mr. Driberǵasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what is the present ration of rice and other basic foodstuffs in Malaya; and if he is satisfied that it is sufficient to maintain life and health without recourse to black market purchases.
    Mr. Creech Jones: I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply which I gave on 23rd October to my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. Rees-Williams) about the rice rations in the Malayan Union and Singapore Colony. The other rationed foodstuffs are flour, of which the ration is 4½ ozs. daily, and sugar, of which the ration is 4 ozs. a week. Extra rations of cereals are given to heavy workers. These low rations have to be supplemented, especially in urban areas, by purchases of other foodstuffs. Bread is sold at controlled prices, but the prices of other foods to supplement the cereals ration are not controlled.
    Mr. Driberǵ: Am I to take it from that that the answer to the second part of the Question is in the affirmative?
    Mr. Creech Jones: No, Sir. Of course, I am not satisfied, but everything that can be done is being done.
    Lieut.-Commander Joynson-Hicks: Can the Secretary of State now say whether the probability of starvation has been avoided in this territory?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I think there is a degree of suffering, but I think that so far as resources could be mobilised they have been mobilised.
    Mr. Rees-Williams: Will the Minister inform the House why the ration of rice in the city of Penang is only three-quarters of the ration in the city of Singapore, a fact which is causing a lot of dissatisfaction in Malaya?
    Mr. Creech Jones: A long explanation is called for, and if the hon. Member will see me afterwards I think I can give it to him satisfactorily.
    Mr. Driberǵ: Will my right hon. Friend please circulate that long explanation in the OFFICIAL REPORT?

    Savinǵs Deposits (Currency)
    Mr. Keelinǵasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that residents in Malaya were allowed by the Japanese to draw from their preoccupation Post Office Savings Bank accounts limited amounts in Japanese currency which was inferior in value to Malayan currency; that the Japanese received deposits in these accounts in Japanese currency; and at what rates such withdrawals and deposits are to be debited or credited to these accounts.
    Mr. Creech Jones: Yes, Sir. I am aware of these withdrawals and deposits. The Malayan Governments have in contemplation legislation to regulate the debtor-creditor relations arising from the Japanese occupation, including those effecting bank deposits, and I hope it will be possible to make an announcement on this subject shortly.
    Mr. Keelinǵ: As the money was drawn from a savings bank which was provided by the enemy, and cost the British and Colonial Treasuries nothing, will the Government be generous in this matter and make up their minds soon?
    Mr. Creech Jones: As I have said, a statement will be made very shortly.

  CEYLON

    Constitution
    Mr. Prittasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will now amend Section 13 (3) (f) of the Ceylon Constitution Order in Council, 1946, which imposes a disqualification for election on persons convicted of offences, even political offences, even where they have completed serving their sentences as far back as seven years ago, which disqualification was to be found neither in the previous Constitution nor in the draft Constitution prepared by the Ceylon Board of Ministers.
    Mr. Creech Jones: No, Sir. I consider that any question of amending the Ceylon Constitution Order in Council, 1946, in the sense contemplated by the hon. and learned Member should await consideration in due course by Ceylon's new Parliament.
    Mr. Pritt: But will the right hon. Gentleman remember that there are many people of good character in Ceylon who will not
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    get into the Parliament there unless something is done?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I appreciate that this is an unusual safeguard, but it was recommended by the Ceylon Ministers and also by the Soulbury Commission.
    Mr. Pritt: Have not most of the Ministers since voted against it?

    Political Offenders
    Mr. Prittasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether as a temporary measure in order to avoid the operation of Section 13 (3) (f) of the Ceylon Constitution, he will consider granting free pardons without further delay to persons in Ceylon convicted of political offences, in the light of the widespread public demand for this step, and the large majority vote in the Ceylon State Council on the recent motion to that effect.
    Mr. Creech Jones: No, Sir. The prerogative of pardon is delegated to the Governor, who would no doubt consider, on its merits, any petition for an exercise of the prerogative in any particular case. The matter is one in which I can hardly intervene.

  WEST INDIES

    Bahamas (Constitution)
    Mr. Skinnardasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what proportion of the population of the Bahamas is entitled to vote in elections for the House of Assembly; what proportion of the members of the House of Assembly are merchants; and whether any reform of the Bahamas Constitution is contemplated.
    Mr. Creech Jones: In April last there were 10,944 registered electors, or 16 per cent. of the population. Many of those qualified under the franchise laws for the vote have not registered. I understand that 13 of the 29 members of the House of Assembly are merchants.
    With regard to the last part of the Question, my hon. Friend will be aware that the secret ballot was extended this summer to all the Out Islands. Although the franchise is liberal, it is, I think, generally agreed that a further overhaul of the constitutional machinery is necessary. It is obviously preferable that proposals to this end should be put forward from the Colony, rather than from outside, and I am hopeful that this will be done.

    Barbados (Government)
    Mr. Skinnardasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is prepared to make a statement on the proposal to develop Cabinet government in Barbados; and whether he intends to extend this experiment to other West Indian islands.
    Mr. Creech Jones: As the statement is rather long, I will, with my hon. Friend's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the statement:
    In Barbados, the Legislature consists of the Governor, a nominated Legislative Council, and an elected House of Assembly based on a liberal franchise. The main legislative power, apart from the Governor's veto, thus resides with the House of Assembly. The Governor has an Executive Committee of nine, including four members of the House of Assembly, but these have hitherto been chosen by the Governor, and do not represent any party in the House. They have had no collective responsibility, either for the framing of policy or for explaining and defending Government Measures in the House of Assembly. The result has been a tendency to deadlock between the Executive and the Legislature.
    The Governor announced, in proroguing the Legislature on 1st October, that in the hope of resolving this deadlock, it is proposed after the impending elections to ask the leader of the party which secures a majority in the House of Assembly to recommend four members of the House for appointment to the Executive Committee. These members will be given charge of the general policy relating to particular Departments, for the purpose of dealing with the affairs of those Departments in the Executive Committee and the House of Assembly. The Executive Committee will thus, it is hoped become an effective organ of Government, accepting collective responsibility for policy, instead of being merely a group of personal advisers to the Governor. This change in practice involves no formal modification of the constitution.
    With regard to the second part of the Question, the experimental step described above could not be applied without some modification in the other West Indian Colonies, where the constitutions differ
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    generally from that of Barbados. In Jamaica, the Executive Council, which includes members elected from the House of Representatives, is already the principal instrument of policy. The question of constitutional development in all these Colonies is kept constantly under review.

    BRITISH GUIANA (HOUSING)
    Mr. Skinnardasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps have been taken by the Government of British Guiana to enable rural families to purchase plots for the erection of their own houses with or without financial assistance; whether any model houses have been built by the Government; how many families have copied these models; and whether the Government has any organised plan for the erection of such houses in the counties of Demerara, Berbice and Essequibo.
    Mr. Creech Jones: Assistance to rural families to purchase land is provided through the Co-operative Credit Bank. The British Guiana Government does not propose itself to erect model houses, but financial assistance is given under the Essequibo Rural Housing Scheme to enable applicants to erect their own houses, and in submitting plans applicants have the assistance of the Government's housing supervisor. Applications have been granted under this scheme for 37 families and many more are under negotiation. No similar scheme yet exists in Demerara and Berbice counties, but the Town and Country Planning Ordinance and Housing Ordinance which have recently been passed by the Legislative Council will facilitate the establishment of rural housing schemes throughout British Guiana.
    Mr. Skinnard: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that a total of 37 families is in any way adequate to the housing needs in the three counties named and, if so, will he do all he can further to stimulate building?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I am not satisfied, but the Government in British Guiana have the matter well in hand, and will be driving forward with their new development plans.
    Captain Crookshank: Would the Minister call the attention of the Minister of Health to the admirable arrangement in Essequibo where applicants, according to the answer he has just given, are allowed to erect their own houses?

    PALESTINE (EDITOR'S DOCUMENTS)
    Mr. Footasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether it was by his order that Mr. G. Agronsky, editor of the "Palestine Post," was met on arrival in Palestine on 29th October, 1946, by C.I.D. officers and relieved of his documents; or by whom was the order given and under what authority.
    Mr. Creech Jones: No, Sir. No special order was issued in respect of the examination of Mr. Agronsky's documents, which were detained for examination in accordance with routine procedure under powers conferred by Palestine Defence (Emergency) Regulations. They have now been returned to him.
    Mr. Foot: Can the Minister say what discoveries were made from the seizure of these papers? Does he not consider that if the use of these arbitrary powers is routine procedure it would be much more conducive to conciliation in Palestine if the powers were used more sparingly?
    Mr. Creech Jones: I do not know what discoveries were made, but in any case the action of the authorities was purely routine. It is normal procedure in respect of all persons going into Palestine and, considering the present state of Palestine, is a necessary security measure.
    Mr. Janner: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the ironical fact that this took place when we were discussing in the House the freedom of the Press, and will he take steps to see that the freedom of the individual and the Press in Palestine does not suffer undue interference?
    Mr. Creech Jones: It is a security problem, and while the condition of Palestine remains what it is it is essential that the authorities should take all necessary steps to safeguard the best interests of the inhabitants of Palestine.

    ARMED FORCES (DESERTERS)
    Mr. Wyattasked the Prime Minister, how many deserters from all three Services are now at large who have been absent from their units for nine months or more; and whether he proposes to take any steps to deal with this situation.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): The figures are, for the Royal Navy, about 1,500, the Army, about 17,000, and, for the Royal Air Force, 284. As soon as a member of the Forces is declared illegally absent, everything possible is already done to trace and apprehend him. There are no other steps that can usefully be taken.
    Mr. Wyatt: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there are strong grounds for supposing that many of the burglaries which are now taking place are caused by these people? Further, is he aware that an amnesty has been granted to deserters in Canada, and will he not consider taking a similar step here?
    The Prime Minister: I do not think that that exactly follows:
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Will my right hon. Friend consider a form of amnesty conditional upon these deserters voluntarily coming forward to complete their term of service?
    The Prime Minister: I would like to see that question on the Order Paper.
    Mr. David Renton: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what proportion of these deserters went absent while serving overseas, and are still believed to be there?
    The Prime Minister: Not without notice.

    PUBLIC OPEN SPACES (REQUISITIONING)
    Mr. Keelingasked the Prime Minister whether the declared policy of the Government, that the public will be given every opportunity to object to any Government proposal to acquire a common or public open space requisitioned during the war, means that all such proposals will be made under the Requisitioned Lands Act, 1945, and not under the Defence Act, 1842, which does not require the Government to give any such opportunity.
    The Prime Minister: Part 2 of the Requisitioned Land and War Works Act cannot be used in cases where the land can be otherwise acquired under the Defence Acts. His Majesty's Government have, however, decided that in any case where the proposals now under examination involve the acquisition of a common or public space under the Defence Acts there will be full consultation, through the Minister of Town and Country Planning, with the local authorities and amenity societies which may be concerned.
    Mr. Keeling: Would the Prime Minister confirm the assurance given by the Under-Secretary of State for Air a fortnight ago, that the public will be given an opportunity to object in every future case when the acquisition of a common or open space is proposed?
    The Prime Minister: That is precisely what I have answered in reply to the hon. Member's Question. It is true that owing to a lapse on the part of the Conservative Government under Sir Robert Peel this provision was not in the Act of 1842, but we are correcting that.

    AUSTRIAN EX-SERVICEMEN, BRITISH FORCES
    Mr. Prittasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he is aware that numbers of men of Austrian nationality who, as refugees from Nazi oppression joined the British Army and Navy either in this country or in the Middle East during the war and after service throughout the war have now been demobilised in the Middle East, are not allowed to return to Austria; and what steps he will take to enable them to return to their own country.
    The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. John Hynd): No, Sir. In the case of Austrian nationals who enlisted in the United Kingdom Forces in this country or into British units abroad, repatriation is being undertaken by the War Office if they came to the United Kingdom to enlist after 1st September, 1938. Other Austrian nationals, who enlisted in local forces in Palestine, West Africa or elsewhere are demobilised in the country of enlistment, and in such cases the Austrian Government are ready to deal with applications to return to Austria.
    Mr. Pritt: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the practical result of this is that Austria is almost the only European nation whose nationals are not, in fact, going back to their country, and that if these people had not enlisted at all they would have been sent back to Austria long ago?
    Mr. Hynd: I do not think the hon. and learned Member heard the reply, which is that there is no bar to these Austrians returning to their country, and that there are two categories, and that in the second category are those who enlisted abroad, many of whom are not necessarily desirous of going back to Austria.
    Mr. Pritt: I heard the answer the first time, but I am asking whether it is not actually the result that these people cannot, in fact, get back, and that there are large numbers of them in Palestine, which is not very comfortable for them? Will he not inquire into it, and see what is the obstacle preventing them getting back?
    Mr. Hynd: No, Sir, I am not aware that there are large numbers in Palestine. I think there are 800. There are arrangements between the Austrian authorities and U.N.R.R.A., who are assisting in their repatriation. It is not the case that a large number of Austrians are being refused permission to enter into their own country.
    Mr. Pritt: Is the Minister aware that U.N.R.R.A. are refusing to assist them because they are not displaced persons?
    Mr. Hynd: I am aware we are in discussion with U.N.R.R.A. as to the most expeditious manner of returning them to their own country.
    Wing-Commander Millington: Who will pay the return passage of these 800 men if they go back?
    Mr. Hynd: In the case of those who enlisted in this country or in the British Forces abroad, the War Office are taking responsibility for seeing that they are repatriated. In the case of those who enlisted in local forces abroad, many of whom, incidentally, were transferred on their own initiative to the Palestine force, and many of whom are desirous of settling down elsewhere than in Austria, arrangements are being worked out with U.N.R.R.A. as part of their scheme for repatriating displaced persons.

  GERMANY

    Cooperative Societies
    Mr. James Hudsonasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he is aware that the rights of the cooperative societies to hold and control property in the Russian zone, which were suppressed under Hitler, have been restored free of charge to the newly formed societies; and whether any similar step is contemplated at an early date in the British zone.
    Mr. J. Hynd: Yes, Sir, this action is in conformity with the agreement reached by all four occupying Powers that such property should be returned where title or succession can be established.

    Sheet Steel Output
    Mr. Warbeyasked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster what is the current rate of output of sheet steel in the British zone of Germany; and what percentage this represents of the level of output permitted by the Potsdam agreement and the peak output achieved during the war, respectively.
    Mr. J. Hynd: The current rate is 300,000 tons a year. The peak-year output during the period 1938–1945 was 1,150,000 tons. Under the level of industry agreement no specified level is laid down for the production of steel sheet as such, but the total production of steel in the British zone is limited to 4⅓ million tons.
    Mr. Warbey: In view of the threat to the British export trade occasioned by the cutting down of steel supplies for the motor industry, will the Chancellor see what steps are being taken to improve the output of sheet steel in the British zone to get more for this country?
    Mr. Hynd: All possible steps, of course, are being taken, in the first instance, to raise production of the total steel output, which includes sheet steel, to the permitted level under the existing agreement, which is four and one-third million tons. The reason why this figure was not reached was, as is well known, due to the difficulties over the coal situation which, I think, is now in process of improvement.

  FOOD SUPPLIES

    Millable Cereals
    Mr. Turtonasked the Minister of Food why his Department is in no case
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    paying more than the minimum price for its purchases of millable barley, however good the quality of the barley may be.
    The Minister of Food (Mr. Strachey): Because, Sir, my Department provides a guaranteed market for millable barley which is not sold to other users, at that price of 20S. 3d. a cwt. No one is preventing other users from paying a higher price.
    Mr. Turton: Is the Minister aware that as a result of his policy, many farmers are losing 20s. a hundredweight on the barley of very good quality?
    Mr. Strachey: They are enjoying the free market in that barley. There is no one preventing any user of it paying any price he likes.
    Mr. Turtonasked the Minister of Food whether the deduction of 2s. 6d. per cwt. from the price of potentially millable wheat and barley is only made in those cases where the wheat and barley is actually conditioned.
    Mr. Strachey: A deduction, not exceeding 2s. 6d. per cwt., can be made from the fixed price of potentially millable wheat or the minimum price of millable barley in any case where treatment would be necessary to render the grain millable. The deduction represents the cost of conversion and an allowance for wastage.
    Mr. Turton: Is the Minister aware that the circular which his Department has put out throughout the country says that the reduction is 2s. 6d. a hundredweight and not 2s. 6d. per quarter, as I understood him to say? In view of his reply, will he withdraw that announcement, and make it that much less?
    Mr. Strachey: I am very sorry. I apologise if I said "quarter." It should be "hundredweight."
    Mr. Turton: In view of that reply, can we have at the end of the Session a change in the Minister's policy, and may we revert to 2S. 6d. a quarter?
    Mr. Strachey: No, Sir.

    Wheat Position
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Minister of Food whether imports of wheat up to 31st August, 1946, reached the estimated amount; how much wheat was saved as the result of bread rationing

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    prior to 31st August, after allowance for excess drawings prior to bread rationing; and what were the stocks of what in this country on 31st August.
    Mr. Strachey: The answer to the first part of the Question is that arrivals to 31st August turned out to be even lower than the estimate on which the decision to ration was taken. We estimate that in the six weeks of bread rationing to 31st August, 166,000 tons of flour were saved. We estimate that as against this there was an increased usage of 36,000 tons in the first week's rationing. So the net saving was some 130,000 tons. As regards the last part of the Question, I am sending the hon. Member a copy of the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Northern Dorset (Mr. Byers) on 10th July.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether that answer does include a specific answer to the last part of the Question?
    Mr. Strachey: It does not include a figure, if that is what the hon. Gentleman means
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what his objection is to giving the amount of the stocks for as far back as 31st August?
    Mr. Strachey: The objection is that the commercial advisers to the Ministry firmly believe that publication of our stock figures would not be in their interest—and, therefore, not in the national interest—as buyers of the food supply of the country. So long as they take that view I propose to support them.
    Sir Waldron Smithers: Is not the main reason for the shortage of wheat bulk purchasing by inefficient negotiators with no business experience?

    Jamaican Coffee Purchase
    Sir W. Smithersasked the Minister of Food if he will give the names of the persons or firms who conducted the negotiations for the purchase of the Jamaican coffee crop; and what is the cost per lb. delivered in a United Kingdom port.
    Mr. Strachey: No, Sir.
    Sir W. Smithers: If these negotiations had been conducted by experienced brokers they would have been done much more expeditiously and much more economically.
    Mr. Strachey: No, Sir. These negotiations, and other negotiations of the kind, were done by businessmen, if I may so, very much more experienced than the hon. Member.
    Sir W. Smithers: May I ask why Ministers on the Front Bench should be so rude in their answers?
    Captain Crookshank: How can an answer to a Question about the cost per lb. be "No, Sir"? Does the right hon. Gentleman mean there is no cost?
    Mr. Strachey: I was under the impression that the hon. Gentleman was asking Question 56 and that he was asking a supplementary.
    Mr. Eden: It does not make sense.
    Mr. Strachey: I am telling the hon. Member I am unable to give him that figure. That is sense. If hon. Members have any difficulty in construing it, I am very willing to explain to them.
    Sir W. Smithers: Is the right hon. Gentleman unable to tell, or will he not?
    Mr. Strachey: I am perfectly able, but I am refusing to do so for the reasons I have just given.

    WINE (GOVERNMENTM PURCHASES)
    Sir W. Smithersasked the Minister of Food when he will be in a position to furnish information concerning Government purchases of wine, in accordance with his recent promise.
    Mr. Strachey: I have written to the hon. Member regarding this matter. Since July, 1945, the Ministry has purchased 1,900 tons of Algerian wine and 300 tons of Italian wine. It is not in the public interest that I should disclose the cost price of these wines or furnish an estimate of the profit that may eventually accrue when the transactions are completed.
    Sir W. Smithers: Can the Minister give any previous cases where a promise was made across the Floor of the House, and that that promise was hidden behind a letter? How many times before have Ministers broken their word?
    Mr. Strachey: I cannot possibly agree that there was any breach of any promise here.
    Sir W. Smithers: On a point of Order. The right hon. Gentleman said that there was no breach of any promise. Yet he said:
    "I am having this information extracted and will circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd August, 1946; Vol. 426, C. 300.]
    Mr. Strachey: I had certain information extracted, some of which I gave the hon. Member in the letter, and some of which I have put down in the answer to this Question.
    Sir W. Smithers: The right hon. Gentleman broke his promise.
    Mr. Strachey: Nonsense.
    Mr. Eden: Whatever reason there may be for secrecy in State dealing with wheat, what in the world can the reason be for secrecy in respect of wine?
    Mr. Strachey: If we give the cost of particular transactions, the prices paid for particular lots of wines in the opinion of the eminent businessmen—
    Sir W. Smithers: Rot.
    Mr. Strachey: Well, of course, my view of businessmen may be different from the hon. Member's. But we usually hear from that side of the House eulogies of these negotiators; and, as a matter of fact, I think they are extremely able men. Their view is that if this information, whether about wheat or about wine or about other commodities, is disclosed to the House their hands will be hampered; and whether that is true or not, so long as they even feel that, so long as they feel that their transactions will be hampered—
    Hon. Members: Speech.
    Mr. Strachey: I have been pressed on this matter a great deal, and I am going to give an explanation. So long as they feel that their transactions and their work on behalf of the nation would be hampered by the disclosure of these figures, I am not going to disclose them.
    Mr. Eden: I want to be clear what the position is. If the Government are going to continue trading in wine, surely they are not going to refuse to give the House or the nation any information as to the result of that trading?
    Mr. Strachey: Certainly, Sir, and the House can, of course—and does—through
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    the Public Accounts Committee take the most exacting account of every one of these transactions down to the last penny, and that is the proper place for doing so.
    Viscount Hinchinǵbrooke: Is it the case that the more the Government do the less the public knows?
    Mr. J. Hudson: Is not one of the main reasons why secrecy should be regarded in this matter that we ought not to know whether we are using up good currency to buy an article of no particular necessity?
    Sir W. Smithers: I beg to give notice that I shall raise this matter again on the Adjournment.

    QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS
    The following Question stood on the Order Paper:
    58. Mr. R. A. BUTLER.—To ask the Minister of Food whether he will state the number of building firms and contractors in the Saffron Walden, Dunmow and Halstead rural districts who have been able to organise canteen services in order to enable building workers to take out adequate packed meals.
    At the end of Questions—
    Mr. Driberǵ: On a point of Order, Mr. Speaker. Can we have an oral answer to Question 58, since you did call the name of the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler) before the point of Order raised by the hon. Member for Orpington (Sir W. Smithers)?
    Mr. Speaker: Not unless the Minister chooses to do so. I laid it down the other day that hon. Members cannot get up and ask for Questions to be answered. It is the Minister's prerogative as to whether he will answer a Question. I am sorry for the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. R. A. Butler: I hope that it is not suggested, Mr. Speaker, that I did not rise in my place. I was deferring to your Ruling which permitted someone else to ask a supplementary question.
    Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman's own leader got up, and I called upon him to ask the supplementary question.

POLICE (IMPROVED PAY AND CONDITIONS)
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Ede): Meetings of the Police Council for England and Wales were held at the Home Office on 25th October, 1946, and 5th November, 1946, at which the following improved scales of pay for police were unanimously recommended to me:
Constables (Men): 105s. a week rising to 140s. a week, including long service increments.
Constables (Women): 94s. a week rising to 125s. a week, including long service increments.
In the case of both men and women these scales represent an increase of 15s. a week at the minimum and 17s. a week at the maximum.
Sergeants (Men): 150s. a week rising to 165s. a week.
Sergeants (Women): 135s. a week rising to 148s. a week.
In the case of both men and women the sergeants' scales represent an increase of 22s. a week throughout the scales.
The Police Council also recommended the following improvements in conditions of service:
(a) the reimbursement of income tax paid on rent allowances;
(b) the payment of an allowance of 25s. a week to any married man in a police force who is living apart from his family because he cannot find suitable accommodation within a reasonable distance of his place of duty;
(c) improved rates of lodging, subsistence and refreshment allowances.
The revised scales of pay for the ranks of constable and sergeant, and the other improvements in conditions mentioned above, were adopted freely by all interests represented on the Police Council as a satisfactory settlement of the claim submitted by the Police Federation, on the understanding that the scales of pay now recommended would remain in force until 1st January, 1950, and that, before that date, there would be an inquiry by an independent committee into the whole question of pay and conditions of service of the police.
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I have accepted all the recommendations of the Police Council, together with certain other recommendations for improving the conditions of service, and propose to make police regulations today to give effect to them. The improvements in pay which have been agreed will come into effect as from today. Discussions on the subject of the pay of the higher ranks of the police service are taking place with the representatives of the police authorities and of the ranks concerned.
I have also accepted a recommendation of the Police Council that a Committee of the Council should be set up at once to review local rules or conditions of service which may unduly restrict the liberty of members of the police service and their families.
Mr. W. J. Brown: While thanking the right hon. Gentleman for his statement, which I feel will be welcomed in all parts of the House, may I ask him whether, in order to avoid this situation cropping up again, in which we are confronted with a great shortage of police and then have to take emergency action to relieve that situation, he does not feel that the time has come when he should lift the ban on trade unionism in the police service, and let them have their proper organisation for negotiating these things from day to day?
Mr. Ede: What I have announced is not in any way an emergency action. It has arisen on the normal submission by the police force of an application for increased pay, and it has been considered by the Police Council and agreement reached, so that all sides of the Police Council made a unanimous recommendation. With regard to the last part of the supplementary question, that is a matter which would be within the terms of reference of the committee of the Police Council, which I have agreed to set up.
Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon Gentleman say whether the question of police pensions will be within the terms of reference?
Mr. Ede: I should not have thought so. It is to deal with conditions of service of serving policemen.
Mr. H. Hynd: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether these, or similar rates, will be extended to prison staffs?
Mr. Ede: No, there is separate negotiating machinery for prison staffs. They have a trade union. These rates should not be confused with those of the prison staffs.
Sir Ralph Glyn: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether these new rates and conditions are applicable to all constabularies throughout the country?
Mr. Ede: To all constabularies in England and Wales, including the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police. I understand that the Secretary of State for Scotland is to make a statement with regard to Scotland.
Mr. Gallacher: Will the right hon. Gentleman recommend to the Government similar conditions of work and pay for the miners of this country to encourage the production of more coal?
Mr. Ede: That is another question.
Mr. Stubbs: Can the Home Secretary say if the question of overtime will come up; and is he aware that the question of pensions is one of the important things affecting the police and is partly responsible for the difficulty in recruiting?
Mr. Ede: I do not think that that is so. I have had very considerable experience in addressing members of another public service, and it is quite a mistake to think that a person joining a service at a young age has very much interest in the superannuation prospects at the end.
Sir Henry Morris-Jones: Can the right hon Gentleman say whether consideration is being given to the housing of members of the police forces in view of the present housing position in this country?
Mr. Ede: I have made representations to the police authorities about this matter, and I mentioned it to the meeting of the Police Council yesterday. Among the concessions made is one which will ease the position of men who, at present, owing to the difficulties of the housing situation, have to maintain two homes.
Mr. Georǵe Thomas: Would the Minister say whether consideration has been given to the question of the higher cost of living in the London area, and the appeal of the lower ranks for similar consideration to that given to teachers and civil servants?
Mr. Ede: That was not mentioned to me by the Police Council yesterday, or by representatives of the Federation who were present.
Wing-Commander Roland Robinson: Will the Home Secretary follow up his announcement with a vigorous recruiting campaign to bring in the younger men and thus increase the police forces all over the country to full strength so that they can deal with the present crime wave?
Mr. Ede: I am hopeful that these concessions will have an effect on recruiting, but I am quite certain that the conditions of service in the Force as well as the rates of pay have an effect on recruiting and that is why I have asked this Committee to consider conditions too.
Winǵ-Commander Millinǵgton: May I revert to the question of pensions and ask the Home Secretary to cast his mind back to his reply to an earlier supplementary question? While it is true that men joining a service do not cast their minds forward to retiring, is it not a fact that one of the great problems of the police force and of maintaining its strength is that men are resigning after some years of service, because their pension prospects are so bad?
Mr. Ede: The increase of the maximum salary for the ranks mentioned today will have a very considerable influence on the rates of pension, and in any consideration of the financial cost of these proposals I have had to bear in mind the tremendous effect it will have on the pension payment that will accrue as a result.
Colonel Wheatley: Can the Home Secretary say whether the increased rates of pay will affect widows' pensions?
Mr. Ede: No; that is a matter which was submitted to the police a few years ago, when they were offered an improved rate of pensions for widows if they would agree to a slight increase in the rate of deductions. They declined that, and I do not think myself that it will be possible to improve the rate of widows' pensions so long as the deductions from pay remain as they are.
Mr. Austin: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether consideration has been given or is contemplated in regard to promotion prospects in the police force?
Mr. Ede: Promotion prospects come under conditions, and one of the effects of increasing the difference between constable and sergeant is that it may be possible to insert between those ranks a rank similar to that of corporal in the Army. That would certainly give some people an additional chance of promotion and might reduce the number of acting sergeants who do sergeant's duty but receive only constable's pay.
Mr. Stubbs: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider that a pension of £75 for the widow of a chief constable and £35 for the widow of an ordinary policeman is adequate?
Mr. Ede: No, I do not, but I have already dealt with the difficulty that would arise on the question of the widows' pension, and I do not feel inclined to alter the answer which I gave in that respect.
Mrs. Ayrton Gould: In view of the new rates of pay, would it not be advisable to put forward again the suggestion that it would be a good thing if the widows' pensions were raised; and might not the men now be prepared to pay more for this purpose?
Mr. Ede: I think the representatives of the police on the Police Council know very well the attitude which the Home Office has consistently adopted on this point, and if they like to raise the matter in the way indicated by the hon. Lady, I shall be very glad to receive their representations.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Westwood): It may be to the convenience of the House if, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I explain the position in Scotland with regard to the questions of police pay with which the Home Secretary has just dealt for England and Wales.
I have had discussions with the Scottish Police Council about police pay and con-
1398
ditions of service. There was unanimity on the question of a refund of Income Tax on police rent allowances, the payment of an allowance of 25s. per week to married police officers who have to live apart from their family because of shortage of housing accommodation, and on improved rates of lodging subsistence and refreshment allowances. There was also complete agreement that a substantial increase in police pay was called for; and increases of the same order as have been recommended by the English Council were accepted by all sections of the Scottish Council as an interim settlement—the Police Federation reserving their right to press further claims for additional increases which they consider justified. After careful consideration of all the circumstances, I propose to make regulations incorporating the improved conditions upon which agreement was reached, and fixing new scales of pay at the same rates as those which will apply in England and Wales. As regards the pay of the higher ranks, I am having discussions with the representatives of the police authorities and the ranks concerned.
Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: Are these increases to hold good until 1950 as in England, or is this reservation on the part of the Police Council to apply?
Mr. Westwood: These rates are to apply until 1950, in accordance with the statement made by the Home Secretary. Before that time, a committee of inquiry will be set up, as promised by the Home Secretary, to deal with the conditions of service and pay.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: On the question of pensions, can the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that what the Home Secretary said will be applicable to Scotland?
Mr. Westwood: Yes, the Government always speak with a united voice.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  STATE OPENING OF PARLIAMENT
  Message from His Majesty [4th November], considered.
  Message again read.
  Resolved:
  "That on the day to which Parliament shall stand prorogued this House do meet at Eleven o'clock in St. Stephen's Hall; and that, after this House shall have returned from hearing His Majesty's Gracious Speech, Mr. Speaker shall resume the chair at Four o'clock and forthwith adjourn the House without Question put to the Chamber at present appointed for the use of this House."—[Mr. Herbert Morrison.]
  To be a Standing Order of the House.
  Sitting suspended until a Quarter past Five o'Clock.

  ROYAL ASSENT
  Message to attend the Lords Commissioners.
  The House went; and having returned—
  Mr. Speaker (standing in the Clerk's place at the Table): I have to acquaint the House that the House has been to the House of Peers, where a Commission under the Great Seal was read giving the Royal Assent to:

  1. Police (Scotland) Act, 1946.

  2. Education (Scotland) Act, 1946.

  3. Hill Farming Act, 1946.

  4. Coinage Act, 1946.

  5. Public Works Loans (No. 2) Act, 1946.

  6. Unemployment Insurance (Eire Volunteers) Act, 1946.

  7. Association of County Councils (Scotland) Act, 1946.

  8. Supreme Court of Judicature (Circuit Officers) Act, 1946.

  9. Public Notaries (War Service of Articled Clerks) Act, 1946.

  10. Atomic Energy Act, 1946.

  11. National Health Service Act, 1946.

  12. Cable and Wireless Act, 1946.

  13. Roosevelt Memorial Act, 1946.

  14. Ardrossan Gas Order Confirmation Act, 1946.

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  15. Ministry of Health Provisional Order Confirmation (Norwich) Act, 1946.

  16. Aberdeen Harbour Order Confirmation Act, 1946.

  17. Northmet Power Act, 1946.

  18. Glasgow Corporation Act, 1946.

  19. Banbury Corporation Act, 1946.

PROROGATION

  HIS MAJESTY'S MOST GRACIOUS SPEECH
  Mr. Speaker: I have further to acquaint the House that the LORD CHANCELLOR, being one of the Royal Commissioners, delivered His Majesty's most Gracious Speech to both Houses of Parliament, in pursuance of His Majesty's Commands, as followeth:
  My Lords and Members of the House of Commons:
  When I opened this Session, the first of a new Parliament, there was in all our hearts a deep thankfulness to Almighty God for our deliverance from the war and an urgent desire to do everything in our power to repair the ravages which it had caused, both at home and abroad. A notable beginning has been made with this task.
  My Government have taken a leading part in formulating treaties of peace with Italy, Roumania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland. The conference of My Allies convened in Paris to consider the draft treaties and to submit recommendations on them to the Council of Foreign Ministers has concluded its labours. I have welcomed the thorough discussion which has given an opportunity for a full expression of views by My Dominion Governments and My many gallant Allies and has enabled the general belief to be expressed that the treaties should be based not on vengeance but on justice. I hope that these peace treaties will soon be signed and will substantially contribute to the rehabilitation of a devastated continent.
  It gave Me great pleasure to welcome to this country the delegates to the inaugural session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. My Government have given every possible help and support to the United Nations

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  Organisation, its Economic and Social Council and Security Council, and the many international bodies which are to be associated with it. Representatives of the United Kingdom have shared fully in the work of the International Labour Organisation.
  My Government have accepted membership of the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and it is My hope that these institutions will help to bring greater security and a better standard of life to the peoples of the world. It is a source of gratification to Me that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been selected as Chairman for the coming year of the Board of Governors of the Fund and of the Bank.
  Financial agreements have been concluded with the Government of the United States and with My Government in Canada, under which substantial credits have been extended to My Government to assist them in overcoming the difficulties of transition from war and in moving towards a freer and more stable system of international trade. Important economic agreements have also been made with various countries.
  In defeated Germany and also in Austria My Forces of occupation and civil authorities, co-operating with those of My Allies, have continued to carry out with great devotion and diligence the tasks of restoring ordered government, repatriating displaced persons, preventing famine and disease, and finally eliminating Nazism. I welcome the progress which has been made towards the restoration of the freedom and independence of Austria and the close cooperation which is being established with My United States Allies as a step towards the treatment of Germany as an economic whole; and I trust that it may be possible to lighten the heavy financial burden which the present state of Germany imposes on the people of the United Kingdom.
  The trial of major German war criminals at Nuremberg has been carried through with dignity and impartiality, and in full accordance with the best judicial traditions. The proceedings were a signal example of inter-Allied cooperation and the principles
  1402
  laid down by the Court, which represent an important development in international law, will, I earnestly hope, prove a lasting deterrent against aggression.
  One of the first concerns of My Government on the surrender of Japan was the repatriation of all My subjects who had been held captive by the Japanese. We give thanks to Almighty God for their safe return after their many sufferings.
  In Japan British Commonwealth Forces are making their contribution towards the work which is being undertaken under the direction of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers for the restoration of a peaceful and productive way of life in that country.
  In other parts of the world My Forces are playing their part in helping a return to the conditions of peace; and many members of them have been engaged, both overseas and at home, on the difficult and dangerous task of mine clearance.
  It gave Me special pleasure to welcome the Prime Ministers and other Ministers of the self-governing members of the British Commonwealth to this country in April and May for discussions with My Ministers in the United Kingdom on many important matters. These discussions contributed greatly to the elucidation of many problems and to a mutual understanding of the issues involved. Discussions have also taken place in London with representatives of other parts of the Commonwealth on other matters of common concern, including scientific collaboration and commercial policy.
  My Government have given their most earnest attention to the affairs of India, where changes of unparalleled importance are taking place. The visit of three of My Ministers to India earlier this year has resulted in the election of a Constituent Assembly to frame a constitution for India on the basis of the statement made by My Government on the 16th May last. Provision has also been made for associating the Indian States with this work.
  Pending the completion of the work of the Constituent Assembly, an Interim Government has been formed which is

  1403
  representative of all important elements in British India. I pray that India will prosper under their guidance and will achieve through the deliberations of the Constituent Assembly that freedom which it has long been the policy of My Ministers and Parliament to promote.
  In Burma the Governor has reconstituted his Executive Council on a broader basis and with a wider authority which will enable the principal political parties to make their contribution to the economic and political reconstruction of their country.
  In Newfoundland a National Convention has been elected to make recommendations with a view to a subsequent referendum as to the future form of the Government of the Island, and it is My earnest hope that they will be successful in achieving their object.
  I have made an Order in Council providing for a new constitution in Ceylon under which responsibility for the internal affairs of the island will pass to a Parliament of Ceylon. I congratulate My people in Ceylon on this achievement and extend to them My best wishes for the future.
  During the past Session the territories of North Borneo and Sarawak have come under My sovereignty. I have been glad to extend a warm welcome to their inhabitants and to assure them that it will be the constant care of My Government to promote their welfare.
  Members of the House of Commons:
  I thank you for the provision which you have made for expenditure on reconstruction and other public services.
  My Lords and Members of the House of Commons:
  Despite the heavy responsibilities of My Armed Forces, no fewer than four million men and women have been released from them since June, 1945. During the same period the transfer of two and a half million workers from war to peace-time production has been smoothly effected without giving rise to any large measure of unemployment in the country as a whole. Good progress has also been made with the rehabilitation of disabled persons and their resettlement in employment.
  The Merchant Navy is rapidly returning to its normal peace-time tasks and My Government have taken part in an International Labour Conference designed to secure improvements in the conditions of employment of merchant seamen.
  Controls imposed during the war over labour, materials and other resources have been relaxed, wherever the removal of restrictions could be carried out without damage to the national interest; and arrangements have been made for regular consultation with a National Joint Advisory Council, representing organisations of employers and workers.
  At home there has been an increasing flow of consumer goods and a substantial advance has been made towards that great increase in exports which is necessary to secure and pay for the imports of raw materials and other commodities which we need from abroad. The Exhibition of Industrial Design which I opened in September is an impressive sign of the achievements of our manufacturers and designers.
  In the face of a continuing and most serious world shortage of food My Ministers have been concerned to maintain the essential supplies of My peoples and also, so far as lies in their power, to help in preventing the spread of famine overseas. In accordance with the policy of ensuring that the necessaries of life are fairly distributed, My Government have been obliged to continue, and even to extend, the rationing of the main foodstuffs.
  Farmers and agricultural workers have made great efforts to maintain a high level of food production in the United Kingdom. They have had to contend with exceptionally adverse weather conditions during the harvest months and My sympathy goes out to them in the difficulties which they have had to face.
  The repair of war damage to schools and colleges and the return of teachers from war service have helped towards the rebuilding of our educational service. Improved arrangements for granting assistance to students at Universities will make it easier for young men and women to continue their education. Milk has been made available

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  free for all attending school; and facilities for children to have meals at school are still increasing rapidly. The provision of milk and vitamin supplements for mothers and young children has also been continued with good results.
  The financial credit of My Government has been fully maintained. In the course of the Session rates of interest for both short-term and long-term borrowing have been substantially reduced. This policy has lightened the burden of the national debt and has assisted the financing of capital expenditure on reconstruction incurred by My Government and by local authorities.
  I have given My assent to a large number of important measures during the Session.
  A measure has been passed to nationalise the coal-mining industry. Thereby it has become possible to set in hand the reorganisation of this great industry which is one of the foundations of our country's strength and prosperity.
  I have also given My assent to legislation to nationalise the Bank of England, to regulate the borrowing and the raising of money and the issue of securities, to enable guarantees to be given for loans for industrial reconstruction or development, and to substitute cupro-nickel for silver in the coinage.
  Provision has been made for a national health service in England and Wales; for the creation of a national scheme of insurance against industrial injuries in place of the present system of workmen's compensation, and for the expansion and improvement of the existing schemes of social insurance. A system of family allowances and the higher rates of old age pension under the new social insurance scheme have been brought into operation.
  I have given My assent to legislation to finance the production of houses by My Government and to subsidise house building by local authorities. I have also assented to a measure to control the rents of furnished houses.
  Legislation has been passed to improve the procedure for the acquisition of land for public purposes and to pro-
  1406
  vide for the creation of new towns to help in securing a properly balanced distribution of the population.
  Acts have been passed to improve the efficiency of the police services, to increase the productive capacity of hill farming areas and to assist fishermen in obtaining boats and gear for the white fishing industry.
  I have assented to legislation to secure the development of air transport services under public control, to bring overseas telegraph and wireless services under public ownership, and to facilitate the provision of nationally owned airports.
  A measure has been passed to promote and control the development of atomic energy.
  My Government have welcomed the proposal of the Pilgrims Society to erect in the gardens of Grosvenor Square a memorial to that great and far-sighted statesman, the late President Roosevelt, and by a measure to which I have given My assent they have undertaken the duty of maintaining the statue and the gardens.
  I pray that the blessing of Almighty God may rest upon us in the completion of the arduous tasks that lie ahead.
  Then a Commission for Proroguing the Parliament was read in the House of Lords:
  After which The LORD CHANCELLOR said:
  "My Lords and Members of the House of Commons:
  By virtue of His Majesty's Commission, under the Great Seal, to us and other Lords directed, and now read, we do, in His Majesty's Name and in obedience to His Majesty's Commands, prorogue this Parliament to Tuesday, the Twelfth day of November, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty-six, to be then here holden; and this Parliament is accordingly prorogued until Tuesday, the Twelfth day of November, One Thousand Nine Hundred and Forty-six."
  End of the First Session (opened 15th August, 1945) of the Thirty-Eighth Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in the Ninth Year of the Reign of His Majesty King George the Sixth.

ROYAL AIR FORCE
  Temporary Commissions (Pay)
  Temporary Commissions (Pay)
  Maintenance Units (Discharges)
  Maintenance Units (Discharges)
  Camp, Padgate (Investigation)
  Camp, Padgate (Investigation)
  CIVIL AIRCRAFT (THIRD-PARTY INSURANCE)
  CIVIL AIRCRAFT (THIRD-PARTY INSURANCE)
  AIR MINISTRY (SECRETARY OF STATE'S ABSENCE)
  AIR MINISTRY (SECRETARY OF STATE'S ABSENCE)
FOOD SUPPLIES
  Linseed Oil
  Linseed Oil
  Canteen Services, Essex (Building Workers)
  Canteen Services, Essex (Building Workers)
  Imported Fruit (Allocations)
  Imported Fruit (Allocations)
  Lard
  Lard
  Bottles, Return
  Bottles, Return
  Food Parcels (Prohibition)
  Food Parcels (Prohibition)
  Jam
  Jam
  Salt
  Salt
  Dates
  Dates
  Bread Rationing
  Bread Rationing
  Points Goods (Retailers' Supplies)
  Points Goods (Retailers' Supplies)
  Combined Harvesters (Drying Facilities)
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  School Milk
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  Maize (Imports)
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  Distribution Figures
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  Canned Fruit
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  Vegetable Oils (Tanganyika)
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  Shell Egg Registrations
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  Unmillable Wheat (Sale)
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  Bacon Ration
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  Rations (Stockmen)
  Rations (Stockmen)
  Tomato Crop, Channel Islands
  Tomato Crop, Channel Islands
  Flour (Milling Costs)
  Flour (Milling Costs)
  Commodity Prices
  Commodity Prices
  BREWING INDUSTRY (BARLEY)
  BREWING INDUSTRY (BARLEY)
  WINES AND SPIRITS (PRICE LISTS)
  WINES AND SPIRITS (PRICE LISTS)
TRADE AND COMMERCE
  Men's Clothing
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  Waste Paper
  Waste Paper
  Woollen Goods
  Woollen Goods
  Austrian Knitwear
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  "Britain Can Make It" Exhibition
  "Britain Can Make It" Exhibition
  Personal Case
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  Timber Licences (Farmers)
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  British Films
  British Films
  Office Furniture (Manufacture)
  Office Furniture (Manufacture)
  Plastic Material
  Plastic Material
  Artists' Materials
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  Wild Animals (Imports)
  Wild Animals (Imports)
AFRICAN COLONIES
  Cotton Prices
  Cotton Prices
  Gold Coast (Water Supply)
  Gold Coast (Water Supply)
  Northern Rhodesia (Mixed Farming)
  Northern Rhodesia (Mixed Farming)
  Tanganyika (Transport)
  Tanganyika (Transport)
  Geological Survey (Tanganyika)
  Geological Survey (Tanganyika)
  Air Services
  Air Services
  Nyasaland (Rooke Report)
  Nyasaland (Rooke Report)
  PALESTINE POLICE (WAR BONUS)
  PALESTINE POLICE (WAR BONUS)
  BRITISH HONDURAS (GRANT-IN-AID)
  BRITISH HONDURAS (GRANT-IN-AID)
WEST INDIES
  Montserrat (Grant-in-Aid)
  Montserrat (Grant-in-Aid)
  U.S. Bases (Compensation Arrangements)
  U.S. Bases (Compensation Arrangements)
  Jamaica (Cost-of-Living Subsidies)
  Jamaica (Cost-of-Living Subsidies)
  Trinidad (College of Agriculture)
  Trinidad (College of Agriculture)
  Cigar Industry, Jamaica
  Cigar Industry, Jamaica
  ST. HELENA (DEVELOPMENT)
  ST. HELENA (DEVELOPMENT)
  CYPRUS (DEVELOPMENT)
  CYPRUS (DEVELOPMENT)
  HONG KONG (WATER POLICE)
  HONG KONG (WATER POLICE)
  GIBRALTAR (SPANISH REFUGEES)
  GIBRALTAR (SPANISH REFUGEES)
  FOREIGN BUSINESS VISITORS (VISAS)
  FOREIGN BUSINESS VISITORS (VISAS)
  BELGIUM (VISAS)
  BELGIUM (VISAS)
COLONIAL EMPIRE
  Students (U.K. Universities)
  Students (U.K. Universities)
  Officials' U.K. Leave (Air Transport)
  Officials' U.K. Leave (Air Transport)
  BURMA—SIAM RAILWAY (SALE)
  BURMA—SIAM RAILWAY (SALE)
  ANGLO-URUGUAYAN TRADE AGREEMENT
  ANGLO-URUGUAYAN TRADE AGREEMENT
  ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC.
  ARCHBISHOP STEPINAC.
  GORDON COLLEGE, KHARTOUM
  GORDON COLLEGE, KHARTOUM
  UNITED NATIONS (PORTUGAL)
  UNITED NATIONS (PORTUGAL)
  FOREIGN SERVICE (CANDIDATES)
  FOREIGN SERVICE (CANDIDATES)
ROYAL NAVY
  Shipyard, Sunderland
  Shipyard, Sunderland
  Ships, Corfu (Mine Damage)
  Ships, Corfu (Mine Damage)
  Artificer Instructors (Pay)
  Artificer Instructors (Pay)
  Chief Petty Officers (Status)
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  SCOTLAND (HERRING EXPORTS)
  SCOTLAND (HERRING EXPORTS)
SHIPPING
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  s.s. "Empress of Australia"
  s.s. "Empress of Australia"
ROADS
  Government Surplus Lorries (Width)
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  Bridge, Walberswick
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  Bottleneck, Hampstead
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  Main Road, Snettisham
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AGRICULTURE
  Cattle Feedingstuffs
  Cattle Feedingstuffs
  Peatlands Farm, Essex
  Peatlands Farm, Essex
  Poultry Rations
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MINISTRY OF SUPPLY
  Sheet Steel
  Sheet Steel
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  DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE
  DEPARTMENTAL CORRESPONDENCE
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Income Tax (Overtime)
  Income Tax (Overtime)
  Travellers' Currency
  Travellers' Currency
  UNIVERSITIES (APPOINTMENT BOARDS)
  UNIVERSITIES (APPOINTMENT BOARDS)
  KREIS LEVEL (STAFFS)
  KREIS LEVEL (STAFFS)
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES (GRANTS)
  LOCAL AUTHORITIES (GRANTS)
HOUSING
  Military Camps
  Military Camps
  Bontnewydd
  Bontnewydd
EMPLOYMENT
  Technical Schools (Attendance Returns)
  Technical Schools (Attendance Returns)
  Appointments Department
  Appointments Department
  Football Pool Industry
  Football Pool Industry
  Liverpool
  Liverpool
  RIVER TEES (POLLUTION)
  RIVER TEES (POLLUTION)
  ARMED FORCES (RELEASE PROGRAMME)
  ARMED FORCES (RELEASE PROGRAMME)
  THAMES BARRAGE PROPOSAL
  THAMES BARRAGE PROPOSAL
  GERMANS (NATURALISATION)
  GERMANS (NATURALISATION)
  INDUSTRIAL DISEASES (RESEARCH)
  INDUSTRIAL DISEASES (RESEARCH)
BRITISH ARMY
  Arrest, Germany
  Arrest, Germany
  Lectures (Political Propaganda)
  Lectures (Political Propaganda)
  Requisitioned Land, Ashdown Forest
  Requisitioned Land, Ashdown Forest
  Court-Martial Sentences (Promulgation)
  Court-Martial Sentences (Promulgation)
  Doctors (Release)
  Doctors (Release)
  Eritrea
  Eritrea
  Polish Personnel
  Polish Personnel
  NEW PENSION BOOKS (ISSUE)
  NEW PENSION BOOKS (ISSUE)

Preamble
The House met at half past eleven of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers.
The Lord Bishop of Durham—Took the Oath.

SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (CIRCUIT OFFICERS) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the consideration of Commons Amendment read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD JOWITT): My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendment be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons Amendment be now considered—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENT.
Clause 1, page 1, line 8, after ("barrister") insert ("or solicitor").
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that this Amendment be now agreed to. The Amendment is a very simple one. In the Bill we proposed that the Clerk of Assize should be a barrister of five years' standing. That has been altered to "barrister or solicitor of not less than five years' standing." It is obvious that the position of Clerk of Assize should in practice be held by a barrister. It has been held by a barrister almost without exception. There was an exception once, for a short time in 1915. Fortunately, we have a Lord Chief Justice in whose wisdom and sagacity we can all completely rely. It would be an evil day for this country if we ever had any other type of Lord Chief Justice. The effect of this Amendment is simply to enlarge the scope of his choice and we may be certain that he will use that choice wisely.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE BILL.
11.40 a.m.
Order of the Day for the consideration of Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments be now considered.
Moved, That the Commons reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT.
[The references are to Bill 126 as first printed for the House of Lords.]
Page 18, line 44, at end insert—
("(4) The application of this section within the Administrative County of London shall be subject to the following provisions:—

(a) The Council of the Administrative County of London (in this subsection referred to as the county council) shall delegate to the Common Council of the City of London as respects the City of London, and the councils of the metropolitan boroughs as respects the respective areas of those boroughs, their functions under this Part of this Act in relation to the services hereinafter mentioned, and the Common Council and the councils of the metropolitan boroughs shall discharge the functions so delegated.

(b) The following services shall be the services to which this subsection refers:—

(i)arrangements for the care of expectant and nursing mothers and of children who have not attained the age of five years and are not attending primary schools maintained by a local education authority;

(ii)provision for the visiting in their homes of such mothers and children as are mentioned in the foregoing paragraph for the purposes mentioned in Section twenty-four of this Act;

(iii)the arrangements for vaccination and immunisation mentioned in Section twenty-six of this Act;

(iv)such arrangements for providing home nursing and domestic help for households as are mentioned in Sections twenty-five and twenty-nine of this Act;

(v)the services relating to notification of births and child-life protection to which subsection (3) of Section twenty-two of this Act applies; and

(vi)the provision, equipment and maintenance of premises for the foregoing purposes.

(c) Before submitting proposals to the Minister in pursuance of Section twenty of

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this Act the county council shall, in respect of the services to which this subsection applies, consult with the Common Council as respects the provision of such services in the City of London and with the council of each metropolitan borough as respects the provision of such services within the area of the borough, and the provisions of subsections (2) and (5) of Section twenty of this Act shall apply as if the Common Council and the council of the metropolitan borough were a voluntary organization for the purposes of those subsections.

(d) The county council shall pay to the Common Council and the councils of the metropolitan boroughs one-half of the cost incurred by them in discharging the functions delegated in pursuance of this section.")

The Commons disagree to the above Amendment for the following Reason:
Because it is expedient that all the services provided under Part III of the Bill in any area should be the responsibility of a single local authority, and the appropriate authority, in the County of London as in other counties, is the county council.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, the first Amendment which we have to consider is that to add to the end of Clause 19 a new subsection, with which your Lordships are all familiar. This was a matter on which I had made up my mind many years ago, but when I hear such a speech as I heard from the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, revealing a complete knowledge of the subject, and a speech which was obviously of the utmost force and sincerity, I always remember a letter which Oliver Cromwell wrote to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: "I beseech you brethren, in the bowels of Christ, to think it possible you may be mistaken." Accordingly, I was at pains—as I think the noble Lord knows—to get this matter reconsidered by the Minister and his officials. I will frankly say that in the course of those considerations I rather played the part—I will not say of the devil's advocate, because I was the advocate of the noble Lord, but I was concerned to put forward, so far as I could, the noble Lord's point of view, and to see that it was carefully considered. As a matter of courtesy to him, and to your Lordships, may I tell you very briefly the sort of argument with which I was met and which, I am bound to say, made me come to the conclusion that for once my earlier opinion was right?
The effect of the noble Lord's proposal, which involves that the maternity and
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child welfare services, as well as other services, should be dedicated to the borough councils and the City of London, would, of course, destroy the unitary basis and, I think, the efficiency of the local health services. May I illustrate this by considering simply maternity and child welfare? What would be the result? The London County Council are now, and would be under the noble Lord's Amendment, responsible for the domiciliary midwives service. Before the war 25 per cent. of the births which took place in London were attended through these L.C.C. services, and there is no doubt that that figure has substantially increased. To be effective, the supervision of expectant mothers and pre-natal and post-natal care must be closely co-ordinated with the domiciliary midwives service through one authority responsible for all related facilities. Will you consider the case where hospital treatment for maternity patients is necessary? There again, obviously, arrangements by the Hospital Regional Board, or Boards—there may be one or two for London—must be co-ordinated with the supervision of pre-natal and post-natal care. If pre-natal and post-natal care comes under the boroughs and the City it means that the London Regional Board will have to co-ordinate with thirty separate bodies—the L.C.C., 28 borough councils and the City of London. Clearly, that would be impracticable. And if there were more than one Regional Board—which is very probable—it would be still more difficult.
Now, consider the case of infant welfare. The L.C.C. are the education authority, and as such are responsible for the school medical service; that is, for the "over-fives." But the L.C.C. are also running nursery schools for children from the age of three. Before the war there were no fewer than 40,000 children under the age of three attending schools, often in nursery classes. For the health of those children, when attending school, the L.C.C. are responsible. Frequently children between the ages of three and four go to the schools in summer, when their health is the responsibility of the L.C.C., and are kept at home in winter. The borough councils and the City are now, and would continue to be, responsible by the proposed Amendment. To have this divided responsibility would go far to destroy a comprehensive health service.

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Then let us consider the doctors. They will be under contract, of course, with the local executive council. They will be increasingly engaged on infant welfare and school medical work, and it is really essential that one authority and not thirty authorities should be responsible for infant welfare, whatever the age of the child. It would be indefensible under the new scheme to separate maternity and child welfare in the health services—they would be a focal point in the new services—from the other domestic and domiciliary services which are ancillary and must be closely associated with maternity and child welfare.
Having said that, I want now to go on to a further point. I had hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Latham, would have been here today. He asked me to express his regret that he is unable to be here. In what I am now going to say I am stating his point of view. The London County Council are fully aware of the necessity of avoiding undue centralization and of securing decentralization locally. They have already declared by a resolution on the 28th May of this year that they will seek the largest practicable measure of local decentralization and will entrust the day-to-day management of the local health services to area committees, to which members of the metropolitan borough councils and the City will be appointed, and also that members of those bodies will be appointed to the Statutory Health Committee of the London County Council.
The metropolitan boroughs and the City will therefore not only have members on committees charged with the day-to-day management of the services but also on the Central Committee which will formulate policy. Those area committees, the noble Lord assures me, will have real and genuine executive powers. Thus the boroughs and the City will be effectively associated both with the making of policy for the whole of London and with the administration of the local services on the spot, and local interest and local touch will thereby be adequately preserved. In settling the areas of the local committees, it will be the resolute endeavour of the London County Council to avoid dividing any metropolitan borough or the City and it is confidently expected this will be possible. The London County Council are fully and sympathetically aware of the great interest and pride
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which the metropolitan borough councils have always taken in their health services and, so far as it rest, with them, they will see that there is still ample scope for local interest and local enthusiasm. Accordingly I beg to move that we do not insist upon this Amendment.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
11.47 a.m.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, may I begin by expressing my pleasure at seeing the serried ranks of the noble Lords beside me? If my efforts have done nothing else, they have at least secured a considerable attendance on this side of the House. The argument of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has filled me with admiration. Once again it has demonstrated what a wonderful case can be put up by the skilled advocate on theory. The noble and learned Lord's argument was admirable theoretically, It is in practice that the case demands other treatment. The noble and learned Lord said that this Amendment would destroy the unitary basis and efficiency of the local health services. On paper that may appear to be true. The noble and learned Lord said—and he gave a very cogent example—that in the midwifery service co-ordination is necessary. Profoundly true. What is the position today in the boroughs where these services are so admirably carried out? Midwife is a service which was transferred from the borough councils to the London County Councils only a few years ago, and I took the trouble to ask, when going into this matter, what the position was The position is that a mother in Kensington is unaware what local authority's servant she is dealing with, so well integrated are the services. They all work together so well. The integration is so complete that the mothers who attend these centres, I am assured, are sublimely ignorant of the fact that the midwife is the servant of the London County Council and the health visitors are the servants of the borough councils.
If I may pass for a moment from the argument of the noble and learned Lord, which was so skilfully presented to your Lordships, I should like to refer to the argument used in another place by the Minister, because there I think we can see what the result is going to be if your

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Lordships agree to allow this Amendment to go:
"Under this proposed scheme the metropolitan boroughs would be encouraged to have buildings of their own in which they would give certain health services and alongside in another building the L.C.C. would provide other services."
What does the Minister take us for? We have in Kensington all the services provided in the same building and anybody other than an infant in arms would see that that was done. The Minister said:
"Concerning accessibility of the local authority to the population, I attach the utmost importance to this point. I believe that the local authority ought to be capable of being approached by the citizens, but if, in the future, a citizen has any difficulty about his health he will go to the health centre and not to the town hall."
He will go to the health centre and not the town hall! But health centres do not exist yet except in a few places like Kensington where we have the embryo. If the lady who is going to have a baby is going to look for a health centre I am afraid she will have a pretty considerable hunt. Why not leave well alone, at all events until the health centres exist?
As to the statement which the noble and learned Lord made on the authority of Lord Latham, of course, I welcome that as far as it goes, but unfortunately it does not go very far. Lord Latham has given an assurance that he is fully aware of the necessity for avoiding undue centralization, and that there is to be the largest practicable measure of decentralization. In order to secure that, there are going to be area committees set up on which members of the metropolitan councils will be appointed, and also they are to be on the Central Committee. There is no guarantee whatever that any member who knows about maternity and child welfare will be associated, and in any case they can only be very few. It may work; I hope it does, but I am bound to say that the past history of any kind of co-operation of that sort is not very encouraging. Over and over again we have had these Acts allowing the County Council to delegate, and even promises of delegation, but nothing happens. I do not wish to inject any note of bitterness, but this is a thing on which borough councils do feel just a bit sore. Their local knowledge is not made use of, the London County Council take the service over, Acts are passed
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giving them power to delegate, but nothing happens.
I hope Lord Latham and the County Council will this time be a little better than their word. I would like to draw attention to Section 166 of the London Government Act of 1939, because if the County Council chose to do what I think would be a sensible thing and delegate to the people who are really doing it well, there is a power in that section. It says:
"The Minister may, on the application of the County Council or of any association or committee which is in his opinion representative of borough councils, by order provide—

(a)for the transfer to all borough councils of any functions exercisable by the County Council;

(b)for the exercise by any such borough council as may be specified in the order, as agents for the County Council, of any functions of the County Council: Provided that no functions relating to the relief of the poor exercisable by the County Council shall be transferred under this subsection."

There it is if the County Council choose to play the game. There is the power under this Act. Having said so much, I can only say that of course I must submit to the general wish of the House that this is not an issue on which we should insist. I have, therefore, nothing more to say.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

LORDS AMENDMENT.
Page 26, line 16, at end insert—
("() The remuneration to medical practitioners undertaking to provide general medical services in pursuance of the provisions of this Act shall be fixed by the capitation method except in any cases where the Minister on the recommendation of the Medical Practices Committee considers that exceptional circumstances necessitate remuneration on a different basis.")
The Commons disagree to the above Amendment for the following Reason:
Because it is inexpedient that the method of remunerating the doctors providing general medical services should be laid down in the Statute.
11.55 a.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this is a question of salary, not as opposed to a capitation fee but as an adjunct to a capitation fee. I submit to your Lordships that it is too restrictive to lay down the method of remuneration in the Statute. It has never been done with regard to national health insurance; the method of remuneration has always been left to regulations and settled, as it must be settled, in consultation with the profession. It really would be rather

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ridiculous if an Act of Parliament were necessary to vary the method of remuneration agreed to by the profession. Secondly, I suggest to your Lordships that it is quite inappropriate that the Medical Practices Committee should be the judge of special circumstances. Under the Amendment we inserted it is for them to make a recommendation to the Minister upon whose shoulders the responsibility for securing the adequacy of the service rests, as it must rest, fairly and squarely.
This question of eliminating the possibility of agreeing that a salary shall form some part of the remuneration would, suggest, be undesirable for other reasons. First of all, there is such a thing as healthy competition between doctors. I do not dispute that, but there is also a danger of that healthy competition developing into a rather unseemly scramble for patients. I have already given your Lordships some illustration of that which came to my knowledge when I was Minister of National Insurance. Secondly, the salary method does assure a modest competence to any practitioner starting practice and it provides a definite vehicle for variation to meet varying circumstances, such as sparsely populated rural areas, for instance, the Highlands and the Highland services and unattractive urban areas. I cannot say what the exact proportion of salary should be in the normal case. That must depend on the consultation which we shall enter into with the profession itself, but the Government's intention, subject to what the profession may say, is clear. It has been said several times. It is that a salary should be an element only, a minor matter, and that the major method of remuneration should be by way of capitation fees. That has been stated by the Minister several times, and was restated when the Commons considered this matter again. In those circumstances I beg to move.
Moved, That this House doth not insist on the said Amendment.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
11.59 a.m.
LORD LLEWELLIN: My Lords, this was an Amendment which I proposed to your Lordships and which was adopted here after a Division on the Committee stage. What some of us were anxious about was to see that there should still be more consideration placed upon the
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relationship of patient to doctor rather than that of doctor to the State. It was that basic idea which many of us had in mind at the time the Amendment was under discussion in this House. I was supported on that occasion by my noble friend Lord Horder and my noble friend Lord Moran. Both gave similar advice to this House. Let us he fair, however, about this. There is quite a lot to be said for not putting in the Act itself what the exact terms of the remuneration shall be, when the discussions have not been finally concluded between the Minister and his officials on the one side and the medical profession upon the other. There is quite a lot to be said for that, and since we carried this Amendment we have had the statement from the Minister of Health in another place, and repeated by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack to us this morning, saying that it is intended, except, I gather, in exceptional circumstances, that the salary shall be a minor element and the main part of the remuneration shall be by capitation fee. That was an announcement which we had not had before we put our Amendment down, and I think our Amendment has been valuable in bringing those statements both from the Minister and from the noble and learned Lord.
I think we have improved this measure during the course of these discussions in this House. I myself am grateful for the many points on which we were met, most of them without a Division, in this House, and I am glad that the Government have accepted another Amendment of mine on which we were forced to divide in this House. In my original speech on the Second Reading I said—and I think I spoke for all noble Lords who sit with me on these Benches—that our endeavour would be to improve this measure and we were not going to do anything to wreck it. I rise today, therefore, to say that I accept the proposition which has been proposed by the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack. I certainly would not at this stage wish in any way to wreck this Bill by insisting on an Amendment which just puts in the Bill what probably in any event is going to be the fact.
12.2 p.m.
LORD HORDER: My Lords, I will not detain your Lordships for many minutes, but I wish to say just a few words in regard to what my noble friend has just said about the spirit in which his Amendments

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have been received and the attitude taken in another place. I still feel that the principle which underlay this Amendment of the noble Lord when he brought it before your Lordships has not been modified by the Minister, but I do agree that to some extent the position has been clarified. Therefore, when the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, says that your Lordships have not spent your time in vain in discussing this Amendment, nor in dividing on it, I agree that that is so. The actual words to which the noble Lord has just referred are no doubt as follows. The Minister said that
"… it is not proposed that the basic element should be the main part of the remuneration. The main part of the remuneration will be by capitation and the basic element a smaller part."
That is a statement of faith on the part of the present Minister of Health, and it is true, of course, that he cannot speak for future Ministers.
Nor at present does he say what the regulations may do. If it may be assumed, as I hear it may be assumed, that the regulations on this and other matters will come up for discussion before they are finally put into operation, then I think we may feel more satisfied than we did before this matter was debated two days ago in another place, because it is still possible by regulation to change the percentages of these two forms of remuneration, and I understand it is even possible by regulation to do away with one or other of these two methods. Of course, if the capitation method of payment was done away with at some future time, then the fear which I reminded your Lordships has never been removed from the minds of the doctors, that this was the thin end of the wedge in respect of a national service, would not only remain but would intensify. As to that, again we are assured by the present Minister of Health that we need not be anxious. Mr. Bevan said:
"Some doctors have expressed fear that this is merely the beginning of establishing a fulltime salaried service … but that is not our intention. Our intention is that the main source of a doctor's remuneration shall be by capitation …"
and so on. To have got as far as that I think calls for a little gratitude, although perhaps not quite so much gratitude as has been expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin. Talking to my colleagues
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in general practice I still find that they are left rather cold by this small morsel of comfort which has been thrown to them. I say in your Lordships' House that if the Minister wishes to have the profession with him, as he said he did and as he realizes is essential to the success of his scheme, he could have gone some way further than throwing this small morsel to, shall I say, the wolves.
Finally, I would like to say that it is still a matter of doubt as to whether or not the doctors are going to come in willingly and enthusiastically to work this scheme. I hope they will. It is odd that so much should be said about their security when they say so little about it themselves. This attitude of the Government of doing certain things under the Act for the sake of the doctors, for example, so that they shall do their work without financial anxiety, and they shall be freed from competition, is odd when, as I say, no clamour in respect of either of those two matters has been heard from the rank and file of the profession. They are not dissatisfied with a certain amount of insecurity when they start, and they are certainly not dissatisfied with a healthy spirit of competition as they go on. So they remain not enthusiastic about this scheme in respect of their freedom and the way of doing their own work. However, as I say, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Llewellin, that the Amendment which your Lordships passed in this matter has not been without at least some effect.
12.9 p.m.
LORD MORAN: My Lords, I sometimes fancy that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack is as averse from violent and extreme measures as I am myself. I would like on behalf of the profession to which I belong to thank him for the reasonableness which he has shown in the discussions on this Bill. I am sorry that the noble and learned Lord has called this Amendment, which we considered fundamental, a blemish on the Bill. I am sorry because I think not only that it is fundamental but that it is very important even at this late hour that we should know exactly what is the doctor's attitude towards this particular thing.
I have read and reread Hansard and I have listened to all that has been said in defence of this basic salary. It really boils down to two arguments, if your Lordships

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would consider the word "argument "to be not too weighty to describe what has been said in support of it. The first argument is that it is a measure of security for the young practitioner beginning practice. I notice that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has not used that argument. In his profession the casualties in the early years are, I believe, much heavier than they are in my own. One might have imagined that he would have gone to his own profession and suggested a basic salary to prevent those casualties, but he has not done so. I imagine that he has not done so because his judicial sense would be affronted by providing security for the youth of one profession and denying it to the youth of another. Again, he has not done it, because barristers do not want a basic salary. Neither do the doctors.
As the noble Lord, Lord Horder, said, that is almost a unanimous opinion. The doctors find it very difficult indeed to know why the political world is so anxious to provide them with security for which they have not asked. I was Dean of a Medical School for twenty-five years, and each year about sixty or seventy men qualified and went into practice. Throughout those years I never once heard the question of security discussed; it was a fundamental belief throughout the profession that there was something profoundly wrong with a man if he could not make a livelihood in medicine. I would go so far as to say that this question of a basic salary is a figment of the political imagination and has no support in the facts of the doctor's life. I would say that it is a debating point and no more.
The second argument fiat has been used in support of the basic salary is that payment by capitation fee leads to abuses and undesirable practices. The noble and learned Lord has said that there have been instances of lax and even dishonest certification. In another place the Minister said the panel has frequently become undesirably swollen because some doctors have apparently made enormously long prescriptions, including many drugs—not so that the blunderbuss should hit the target but so as to impose on the credulity of their patients. I do not for a moment say that there are not black sheep occasionally, but these storms which come up from time to time are not really evidence. But even if they
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are, let us accept them. The noble and learned Lord said that it does not apply to many doctors, and in another place the Minister said it does not apply to anything more than a very small proportion of doctors—I think those were his words. So we have their case built on isolated instances. Because there are a few black sheep, we are going to have the whole of the remuneration of all the rest of the honest members of the medical profession altered, and altered in a way which the profession almost unanimously feels may result in a deterioration of medical practice in the future.
Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to make two final observations. The first is that I am very glad that the noble and learned Lord says this refers only to a very small minority of the profession, because presently this Bill will become law, and when it does become law, the vast majority of the profession will work under it. It is of enormous importance that they should have confidence in the Ministry of Health and it would not really contribute to creating that confidence if there were any impugning by the political world of the honesty of the great body of the profession.
The second observation I wish to make is simply this. There has been a considerable amount of puzzling in the medical world about this particular Amendment. The debates on it have seemed to them to be almost unreal because, generally speaking, doctors do not believe that the reasons which have led to the introduction of a basic salary are the reasons to which I have been referring. They do not believe that the zeal and fervour of the rank and file of the Labor Party for this basic salary is inspired solely, or even mainly, by solicitude for young practitioners starting practice. In a word, they think it is an instalment—an instalment which they profoundly believe may conveniently be added to from time to time—towards a condition of affairs which will ultimately result in the basic salary becoming a whole-time salary. I accept entirely what the Minister said in another place as to his intentions; but Ministers of Health come and go, and this principle remains as a basic faith on the part of the Party which has so often expressed it. That is why there is this great anxiety. Let me say that if ever this basic salary does become a whole-time salary, you will

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embark upon a condition of affairs whose effect upon the proficiency of the profession it will be impossible to calculate.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
[House adjourned at seventeen minutes past twelve o'clock and resumed at two o'clock.]

R.A.F. AUXILIARY SQUADRONS.
VISCOUNT TRENCHARD: My Lords, I beg leave to ask His Majesty's Government the following question of which I have given private notice: How many auxiliary squadrons of the Royal Air Force have already been formed?
LORD HENDERSON: My Lords, His Majesty's Government are glad to announce that the twenty auxiliary Air Force Flying Squadrons which existed before the war, and earned such distinction in action, have been re-formed. There are thirteen day-fighter, three night-fighter and four light-bomber squadrons. The squadrons were raised and administered before the war by the County Territorial Army and Air Force Associations. His Majesty's Government are grateful to the Associations for under taking these duties again. Recruiting from former members of the Royal Air Force will begin this week-end at each of the squadron headquarters. An announcement will be made later about other forms of non-regular service for those who are unable to join these squadrons.
VISCOUNT TRENCHARD: I thank the noble Lord for the courtesy of his reply and for stating the number so fully. In view of the importance of the most magnificent work they did in the 1939–1945 war for this country, I am glad to hear that these squadrons are being re-formed. I hope that in the new Session His Majesty's Government will see fit to double the number.

CONDITIONS IN GERMANY.
2.2 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN LORD SALTOUN rose to ask His Majesty's Government what steps have been taken and what steps they propose to deal with the famine now prevalent in the larger cities of the British zone in Germany, and what is the policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to the future of the zone; and to move for
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Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion which stands in my name on the Order Paper. When the successful outcome of the last war became apparent we all were saying to one another, "We must re-educate the Germans." I notice that that statement of policy appears in the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates. I remember it being used on what I think was called "Education Sunday" in a broadcast service, and I think I may take it that that is the policy of His Majesty's Government to-day. There are many kinds of education; there is the penetrating influence of a superior character on an undeveloped or inferior one, and that crude education expressed in the phrase, "I'll learn him."
The point is that any system we choose to adopt was open to us when we entered Germany, because everybody is agreed that in most places we were welcomed as deliverers. The task before us was colossal. I will not attempt to describe to your Lordships the shattered state of German cities. It would be a very good thing if representative British citizens, Londoners, could be taken to visit German cities, and representative Germans could be brought to visit London—of whose destruction they were so often been assured by their own Government—in order that a comparison might be made. It would do both parties a great deal of good. I have found in Hamburg people who were unable to take me to a street in the town in which they had lived all their lives because they could not recognize places or tell where they were in the shattered heaps of bricks that surrounded them. In Hanover a bare quarter of the normal accommodation was capable of giving any shelter at all. In town and country the average floor space for all the needs of life for an individual is only seventy-two square feet, and in that computation children only count as one half and babies not at all—very much the computation which is adopted by our own railways. All communications had broken down, and famine was obviously on the threshold. Famine follows every war. So far as that is concerned, I think that it is right to say that all the physical factors in the problem before us at the present moment were perfectly clear a year ago.
It is now three months since I visited Germany. I did not make speeches and I did not make sermons, but I went about and saw what I could. I am bound to

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admit that I find myself very easily irritated by conversations with Germans, and I only used my time to get all the information I could. I think it is right that I should lay that information before your Lordships to-day. At that time there was a grave shortage in Germany of all textiles. The children were clothed in weird brands of ticking. Probably the greater proportion of the German people had only one suit of clothes. Returned prisoners found it hard to get any at all, although sometimes the British Red Cross was able to help them. The shortage of footwear was quite critical, especially in view of the approaching winter and the very great severity of winter on the Continent. There is practically no domestic coal and very little fuel of any kind, and the soap ration is minute.
Time will not allow me to give your Lordships an adequate picture of the conditions so far as these things are concerned; but all these conditions are exacerbated by the hunger of the great cities. In the country, of course, people do get food because it is produced at their doors. I will give your Lordships a few facts which came under my own observation and what I was able to obtain by inquiries in Hamburg. In passing through the streets the lassitude of the population was so marked that anybody who was moving with any briskness immediately caught the eye. The older children showed sunken eyes, drawn faces, shrunken legs, sometimes with sores which were probably due to anemia. I saw young children with faces that I could have covered with the palm of my hand. It is true to say that I did not see many of these, but I did see such cases. In spite of the all-pervading limy dust and the lack of soap, the population was incredibly clean, and all the time I was conscious of a sweetish, sickly smell, which other people have also noticed. I do not know what the cause of it was, but I consulted a doctor and he said that it may come from a derangement of the liver which is caused by hunger.
I have lived in famine stricken populations and suffered to some extent in that way myself. It was perfectly clear to my observations that the people around me were suffering from an advanced stage of malnutrition, and I should have called it famine. I was informed that there had been a very considerable loss of weight amongst the population, and that was
1014
borne out by my own observation as far as I could see. The population was incapable of a full day's work and although men engaged in heavy occupations were given supplementary rations, yet I am told that there were cases where the men preferred not to work a full week because, they said, the supplementary ration did not compensate them for the energy the extra work would require. In addition to that, it was a very common thing for school-teachers to faint in afternoon classes. The teachers, of course, do not share in the midday meal which is distributed to the children. Hunger oedema is very prevalent, and it is just as great amongst the better-to-do as it is amongst the manual workers, so that it is not a question of its occurring only among the poorer classes or anything like that. It was thought very improbable that any mother could suckle her own children. Young children, of course, get preferential diet, and yet the infant mortality rate in Hamburg has trebled over the figure in 1938. They have even been, driven to having recourse to mineral oils as substitutes for the necessary fats. I do not know how they treat these oils or what the results of their use have been. It was merely told me as an example of the sort of experiments which they are trying.
Contrary to what one would expect in such conditions, infectious diseases do not show any very marked increase. That was attributed, in this Report, to the excellence of the British sanitary arrangements. I am very glad to think that that is so, but I would like to point out that probably it is also to a very considerable extent the result of the extreme cleanliness of the population, which, as I have said, is really remarkable in the conditions which exist. Against that, tuberculosis has made enormous strides—especially recently. For example, the rate in Hamburg for the first five months of this year was nearly three times the rate for 1945, and it was increasing. So your Lordships will realize that you must not take that as merely the measure; it is an increasing progression, and I should be very much surprised to find that tuberculosis has not made much greater strides in the interval which has elapsed since I left Hamburg. In fact, if I may trust what has appeared in the papers—and especially what has appeared in The Times today—all the fears which I

1015
then formed have been borne out very fully.
When I was there I was told that I could go where I liked, see what I liked and ask anybody any questions that occurred to me. I availed myself of that permission, and the results are what I have endeavoured to give your Lordships today. But I will say this; I have written to try to get some of the figures amplified, and I have been told that it was not permitted to give me certain figures for which I asked; the matter would have to be referred to higher authority. I would also say that in the case of one or two things which I could not be given to take away with me and which I asked should be sent on afterwards, they have never arrived. I am, naturally, very apprehensive as a consequence of this. I hope that there is not going to be an iron curtain between your Lordships' House and what is going on in Germany, because that would be a very great misfortune. The primal needs of the country are coal, food,—especially vitamins—and, after that, textiles and building materials. Time will not allow me to go into these matters this afternoon but I hope that my noble friend Lord Beveridge will do so. I will merely say that I was begged by very many people—both members of the Military Government and others outside the Military Government—to let the people in this country know what the condition of things was in Germany, because it horrified them. And that is the duty which I am trying to discharge this afternoon.
The next questions which occur to me as being of importance are: What is to be done now and how did this state of affairs come about? I think that we have to consider these things very carefully. I have not the slightest doubt that at any time after the middle of the year 1944, at any rate, we could have made peace by negotiation with the Germans. I have no doubt that we could have made peace at any time we wanted after that on terms that would have been favourable to us. But we refused. We spent at the rate of £14,000,000 a day and sacrificed the lives of hundreds of thousands of men—better men than ourselves, I think your Lordships will probably agree—in order to gain unconditional surrender I say plainly that it is a betrayal of the dead who gave us that victory if,
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having received unconditional surrender, we turn our backs on the duties which civilized communities have always considered incumbent upon those who receive unconditional surrender. A question which I very much want to ask is this. The greater part of the coal export of Germany, in the past year has I understand been sold through the European Coal Organization. I would like to know how much if any of the price of that coal has been applied in the payment of reparations, and if any of the products of German industry have been taken on account of reparations. I make that point for these reasons. It is impossible to get reparations out of a country which is lying prostrate, and we had a very good excuse for deferring the reparations until we could get the country on its legs. As I expect a great many of your Lordships know that it is contrary to our own laws to claim a payment on account of an unliquidated debt, and the amounts of reparations have not yet been fixed. That would have been a very good reason, if we have wished to put the country into a position to pay reparations, for deferring the exaction of them.
I want now to go back to the question of food. I have made inquiries as to the food position, and I am told that there is no food to spare. Yet during the whole of this summer the fishing fleet of Scotland has been working on short time on the orders of the Government, and, even so, cases have occurred of fish being thrown back into the sea because there was no market for it. If your Lordships follow the papers you will realize that the Government and the fishermen and the Government and the curers, have very often been quarrelling over terms. But to my mind the most important thing is to get all the food out of the sea that we possibly can. I recall how quite early in the year—I think it was about May—I ventured to write to the Government on this subject, because I remembered how after the last war there was an extraordinary slump in the British fishing. That persisted for a few years after the war, and I realize the importance of securing the German market to our fish this time if that can possibly be done.
One of the answers which I got on this subject was to the effect that there was no transport, no boats available either for taking the cured fish or for "Klondyking" and taking them to Germany. His

1017
Majesty's Government have the whole of the resources of this country at their disposal, and I am bound to say that that answer does seem to me to suggest that the feeding of starving Germany did not have a sufficient priority. I do not believe for a moment that there were no vessels available for this work. It is merely a question of priorities. One thing that does spoil that defence a little is that about a year ago a public announcement was made by a Minister that "the Germans are at the end of the food queue." I am not going for a moment to say that that brutal phrase was not justified. I am not going to say that the condition in question was not a practical necessity. But I am going to say that the phrase should never have been uttered, because it makes it extremely difficult for His Majesty's Government to say now that they could not help it. That is the kind of phrase that sticks. Whenever there is an official problem of difficulty in this connexion to be solved, always that phrase rises in the mind and it does a very great deal of harm. The worst harm which it does, I think, is that it makes it very difficult afterwards, when history comes to be written, for us to say that this has come about without our will, that it has come about simply by the force of events. It is extremely difficult, and I think one could excuse even the most candid German if he failed to accept that because all the facts that I have given about the fishing and so on are no secrets—they am well known to everyone. I think that if the Government can give a convincing answer upon this it is their duty to do so.
We are told that we have been disappointed, and that food is not coming into the west of Germany from the east as was expected under the Potsdam Agreement. If that Agreement has broken down, I think it would be much simpler to acknowledge the fact, and take the necessary measures which we ought to take, independently of it. I have always held that it was a mistake ever to imagine that under the Agreement food would come from the east of Germany to the west. I cannot imagine anybody who realizes the condition of eastern Europe ever thinking for one moment that we should be likely to get that food. It would be very much better to say now that our occupation of Germany in the British zone will go on
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indefinitely, and to restore trade and industry to the utmost extent, always making quite sure of our own strict control.
What I am going to say next, I will preface by recalling that when I was in Germany I was immensely impressed by the magnificent efforts that members of the Military Government were making to deal with the difficulties which they had before them. Yet they gave me the impression of being cramped and confined by orders from outside Germany which they could not set aside. They were doing their level best to make the country go, in spite of all the difficulties. Having said that, I would also add what seems to me of great importance—that the kind of administration we have set up seems to be very largely an administration of pinpricks. May I give your Lordships a few examples? We have abolished almost all war disability pensions—even to the blind—and we have heavily reduced the few which we have left. We have asked men to go without clothes for weeks while their uniforms, their only clothes, were being dyed. We have forbidden Germans to wear medals won by gallantry in the field, when even Hitler, with all his power, was unable to persuade German regiments to abandon their British battle honours. I do not know what your Lordships feel, but I know that I should blush to have to give such orders; and if through some misfortune I had to receive them, I should certainly receive them with the greatest contempt.
It seems almost as if that sort of thing were done on purpose, because when the furniture was requisitioned for the British wives who were going to Germany—quite properly requisitioned—it was requisitioned in a manner which would bring the utmost pain and annoyance to the people to whom the furniture belonged. The very people who had to carry out that requisition were bitterly ashamed of their task. I have spoken about that once before, and I have complained previously about people who sit comfortably in positions of authority ordering soldiers, sailors or airmen to carry out duties of which they are ashamed. It is an immoral thing, and a wrong thing, to do. These men are under the severest possible discipline, and the people who give them orders ought to be particularly careful how these orders are to be carried out and what they entail. It is the kind of thing which makes one wonder whether the first quality demanded of a

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member of the administration is not the quality of hate. And I do not think that anything sound can be built on hate.
I have heard, too, of Germans in charge of factories receiving contradictory orders from different administrative departments. We are accustomed in our country to that kind of thing, and we are accustomed to the vagaries of civil servants; but it did not happen in Germany, and it brings us into contempt. A German tells the man in charge of his factory. "I know I have to obey your orders, but which master am I to obey this time?" I have heard of a large foundry getting one ton of materials as a ration allocation. That is no use to a great factory, and it is not worth starting the furnace for; but it is of the utmost use to a blacksmith in a country district. Unreasonable distribution such as that, simply encourages the black market. Then I have heard of the Ministry of Supply taking a key machine from a factory and paralysing the works, when plans and specifications would have answered every purpose which we required. That seems absolutely senseless to me.
From what I have said, your Lordships will be able to judge whether this is education by the influence of a superior character over an inferior—or what kind of education it is. My own suggestion is that we should go back to the original idea of the control devised for the end of the war; that is, a system of control, not of administration. The Germans can never become a danger while we are in control. Let us give the Germans a chance to rise to their feet, through their own efforts, instead of interfering in every little detail of their lives. If the Potsdam Agreement has broken down, let us acknowledge that. It is surely better, instead of picking quarrels with our Allies about elections in Bulgaria or Rumania or Kamchatka, which are bound to irritate them, to make up our mind to set our own house in order, and to get our own zone running well, even if at the expense of the Potsdam Agreement, which we all admit has failed.
May I now say one word about politics? Everybody appears to be extremely satisfied with the results of the elections in Germany, and they seem to feel that it is a reward for all the trouble they have taken to stimulate German political life. I am convinced that this is an illusion. I have had the privilege
1020
of observing German political leaders in contact with our own Members of Parliament, and it was perfectly clear to me that the German leaders knew exactly where they stood with every Member of Parliament they talked to. On the other hand, it was quite impossible for anyone, even after years of experience, to gauge their own true aims and sentiments. I put it to your Lordships that a country in the starving and shattered state that Germany is in to-day is incapable of true political life, in any particular shape. The Germans will shape themselves into the form which they think will yield the best results. The Russians have accused us of favouring the Social Democrats. I do not know if we have or not, but I am perfectly certain that the Germans believe we have. They think that that is the political shape which would pay them best and that is the reason their political life has taken that form.
I would point out, however, that although their political activities may look pretty from the outside, they have no hold on the people. Whatever Party holds power in the near future under the British will certainly be swept from the saddle if Germany is given any measure of independence. I believe that that might be avoided, but at the present stage I do not think it is worth while offering any suggestions. Germany cannot conceivably be a danger as an aggressor nation while we are in control nor, if we are wise, for a long time after we have ceased to be in control. As a vacuum, of course, Germany is always a danger; and she always will be. But to my mind the danger is very different. The noble Lord who is to reply to this debate and I have one thing in common. We have exactly the same proportion of Irish blood in us, and he will know, as I know, the cost to this country of the mistakes that British Governments have from time to time made in Ireland. We know what they have cost us so far as public opinion is concerned in the United States and also in the rest of the world. What I should like to ask again—and this is the danger—is this: Is it worth while to add to the ranks of exiled Irishmen the members of a people who, even when you have said the worst of them, are intelligent, frugal, and industrious, and generally welcomed in the world as colonists, and allow them to become a centre of justifiable hatred of England wherever one of them is to be

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found? At the present moment we must appear to them to be both brutal and stupid. I would earnestly ask His Majesty's Government to take every possible step to remove that impression. I beg to move for Papers.
2.32 p.m.
LORD BEVERIDGE, who had given Notice that he would call attention to conditions in the British zone of Germany; and also move for Papers, said: My Lords, I have myself a Motion on the Paper following that of the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. I hope, however, that it will be for the convenience of your Lordships if I state the case upon my Motion in supporting his. I went to Germany last August at the invitation of the Chancellor of the Duchy, who is in charge of our Control Office. At the outset of my remarks, I should like to take this opportunity of thanking him and his staff, both in this country and in Germany, for the helpfulness and the complete openness with which they received me.
We all ought to realize how troublesome must be the job of administering Germany by people who have continually buzzing around them Members of Parliament, sometimes even Members of your Lordships' House, and all sorts of people from this country who go to Germany for the ostensible purpose of lecturing the Germans—as I went—and come back to lecture the Government. I should like to express my sympathy with the Chancellor of the Duchy in that position. But after all, self-knowledge and self-criticism are the law of democracy, and although I shall have to criticize what we are doing, and therefore what the Government are doing, in Germany, in the remarks that I make, I hope that the Government will not be inclined to think that my criticism is captious. I feel sure that the noble Lord who is to reply for the Government will not think so. If I may give my credentials for not making captious criticism against the Government in the sphere of foreign affairs, I would point out that at least in the other place I have supported them in taking such an unpopular line as that which the Foreign Secretary has taken with regard to Spain.
When I was in Germany I took the opportunity of defending the work of our administrators there against what seemed to me to be unjustifiable criticism. But
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I think there are some justifiable criticisms, and those are the criticisms which I shall try to make. I am going to talk very shortly about the actual conditions in Germany, because really it is undeniable that at the present time the conditions of life for the German people as a whole are absolutely intolerable, with the rations of food, when they are honoured, and nowadays we know that they are not being honoured, half what is needed; with industry hardly started again; with housing appalling, and with hardly any consumer goods in the shops. That is, broadly speaking, the picture to-day in Germany. Within the last day or two those of your Lordships who read the newspapers—as no doubt most of your Lordships do—will have seen Mr. Gollancz's letter in The Times. I am quite certain that what he mentions there is the true account of the conditions he found in Germany. Your Lordships, no doubt, have seen what is stated in The Times to-day and in other newspapers, that the conditions in Germany are appalling and intolerable.
They are such that I am sure that not one Briton in ten, if he really knew what was happening in Germany, would want them to continue. That, I think, is without question. What makes the matter worse is that such a state of affairs should exist in Germany eighteen months after total surrender of the Germans. There have been some improvements. One must admit that things have been done in Germany. We could not remain in Germany for eighteen months without improving some things; but, broadly, for the mass of the people no substantial improvement has been made, and one finds their health and energy suffering under privation. That state of affairs is producing hate, instead of reconciliation and re-education. I am quite certain that as a result of what we are doing we are probably most hated now in such places as Hamburg where formerly we were most popular. Hamburg was an anti-Nazi city and always was. We are doing this at great material cost to ourselves. It has been stated that it is costing us a figure in the region of £80,000,000. I am not going to dwell upon that fact any longer because it is beyond question or argument.
Nor am I going to say much with regard to two other arguments, but I want to mention them in passing. I hope that

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the noble Lord who is going to reply for the Government is not in any way going to justify this state of affairs as a piece of vengeance for what the Germans did in the war. It cannot be justified in that way. As the Foreign Secretary said in another place recently, it is true that the Nuremberg judgment does not wipe the whole slate clean. There are some criminals still to be punished. But once again I do not believe eighteen months after the end of the war that one Briton in ten in this country would wish to continue to punish the whole of the German population—the women and children and the helpless old people—because of the crimes of the Nazis during the war. To do so would be lowering ourselves to the standard of Hitler or even below that standard. Secondly—I am sure that the noble Lord who is to reply will not use this argument—I hope this will not be defended on the ground that it is necessary for the prevention of future wars. For the prevention of future wars there must be disarmament in Germany; the Germans must be prevented from ever re-arming. That I am clear about. But it is not necessary to impoverish the whole of Germany for that reason.
Leaving this possible argument on one side, the question is: Is this state of affairs inevitable? Is it really beyond our power to remedy? That is the real, practical issue, and in what I say I want to stress that we must distinguish between three elements in the present position of Germany. There are some things which it is wholly in our hands to remedy. There are some things which are wholly in our hands, but if we apply a remedy we should affect and wholly displease others of our Allies. But we are not bound by any binding agreement not to act. Thirdly, there is what we are bound to do if we carry out the Potsdam Agreement. Those are the three classes of topics about which I want to speak. Some things are in our hands only, and let me say at once that most of them are quite minor things. Their importance is really psychological rather than material, although not wholly so.
There is of course the question of the wives of the members of the B.A.O.R., whom we have sent over and whom we are sending over. Of course we ought to
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send them over; but equally, of course, we ought to send them over without making intolerable conditions worse, and we ought not to send them over with the kind of publicity which accompanied the sending of them over. I noticed that in another place in the discussion of this matter the Chancellor of the Duchy said he had no evidence of luxurious living on the part of the wives we have sent over. I can only say that the Chancellor's Press service is less efficient than the voluntary Press service of my correspondents. If he had looked at the Sunday Graphic of September 1 a copy of which I have sent to the noble Lord who is to reply, he would have seen the most revolting pictures of luxurious living, such as that of a sergeant and his wife collecting a joint of beef weighing over 5 lb.; a sergeant and his wife giving instructions to their servant in a luxuriously-furnished flat, knowing that all the furniture must have been requisitioned from some German. He would have seen really the most revolting publicity. I do not think that it is typical, but the unfortunate thing is that somebody in this country should have thought it desirable to feature that element.
There is another thing which the Chancellor of the Duchy said on this particular point. He said that in the minds of casual visitors there was great confusion as to the living conditions of the people who were turned out and the real living conditions of, say, the people of Hamburg. I think that he would say that the people who were turned out to make way for these wives were not themselves living in bunkers and would not be sent to live in bunkers, but, quite obviously, turning them out to make room for the wives meant that people who were living in bunkers and cellars would have to go on living there. There is no sense or reason for that particular action, but it is comparatively unimportant. There is a second thing, the Hamburg Project as it is called, the concentration of all our administrative offices in Hamburg and turning out 30,000 or 40,000 people before there is any alternative accommodation for them. I hope the noble Lord may be able to assure me that the project has gone into storage for four or five years. It is very doubtful whether it will be effective if we are going to work

1025
with the American zone, because Hamburg is very remote.
There is a famine of scientific and other periodicals in Germany. It is quite impossible to send them, though I believe there is now a scheme whereby periodicals like the Economist and the Spectator and scientific journals may be sent. I do not know how good that scheme is, but it is still impossible to send books by parcels post. Why is there no parcels post to Germany? I hope the noble Lord who is going to reply is going to explain that there has not been a parcels post but that shortly there will be.
Then there is the question of the prisoners of war. I do not want to dwell upon that; it is of course a larger question. Our zone in Germany is entirely starved of men of working age. It is just full of women and children, old people and invalids, and crocks sent from other zones. To keep the prisoners of war here for the purposes of slave labor when they want to go back cannot be justified. In one paper it is said that among the displaced persons there is plenty of labor only too anxious to come here. The new plan of the Government for the prisoners of war is entirely inadequate. They are postponing the date of returning to the end of 1948.
Regarding the problem of the numbers and efficiency of our staff, I think it is pretty clear that, instead of merely doing control work, we are attempting to do too much in the way of doing things which the Germans could do. Undoubtedly also a great many of the people who tried to do things there are suffering from a sense of acute frustration. When I spoke the other day the noble Viscount the Leader of the House assured me—and I have no doubt he had been so assured by the Chancellor of the Duchy—that His Majesty's Government are doing everything possible to revive German industry. I may say that this has produced a letter from a perfectly responsible person who was an administrator in Germany. He says that half of the statement is simply not true. All who were in charge of the industry said that again and again practical schemes put up were either rejected or unduly delayed until the time had passed. Since I came back I find that similar attempts have been made and have been defeated. With regard to the economic splitting of Germany, that is
1026
regrettable, but it must not be made a convenient excuse for avoiding the taking of decisions. I am sure we could do more to get ahead with industry in Germany, and that we are delayed by doing unnecessary work. These are really in themselves matters of comparatively small importance.
Then we come to my second category of the things which we are not bound to do by the Potsdam decision and which cannot be done without affecting the interests of others as well. Although perhaps the most urgent thing now is food, the most urgent thing when I was there was to have more coal in the British zone of Germany. It is urgent that more of the coal that is produced there should be made available for industry and the production of consumer goods. Consumer goods include boots, and it is very difficult to be an effective agricultural labourer without boots Consumer goods means not luxuries, but the real necessities of life. These are not being produced. We want more coal for industry and more coal for domestic heating. Of the total output in the British zone roughly half stays within the British zone, one quarter is exported to other countries and one quarter goes to other zones or is used for general purposes like railways outside the zone. The fact that we do export so much coal from the British zone of Germany is partly due to the fact that we are failing to export coal from this country. We are in a difficult position regarding France and Belgium and other countries, because no export of coal comes from here and we are under great pressure to export coal from the British zone. We must admit that, but the only effect of it is that we cannot get industry started again.
We cannot produce exports and that is one of the explanations for our £80,000,000 a year cost of the administration of the British zone. It is really as important to us to export goods from Germany as it is to export goods from here if we want to avoid unnecessary expense. I have mentioned this coal as one of the things on which we are free to act and on which we are not bound by the Potsdam decision. I want to say that I have just seen the evidence which General Robertson gave to the Select Committee of the House of Commons in July in which, speaking of the coal and the fact we did not get

1027
enough coal, he reminded the Committee that the question of coal was a question for the quadripartite authority. That is to say, it has to be agreed with America, France and Soviet Russia. I would like to ask the noble Lord who is to reply why the allocation of the coal that is produced in the British zone of Germany is a matter for quadripartite decision when the allocation of food that is produced throughout Germany is not a matter for a quadripartite decision, but can be settled, and is being settled, unilaterally. In the name of common sense, why this distinction between coal which is mainly produced in the British zone and the food which is mainly produced in other zones? There is no sense in it at all. Until there is some real change in this matter we shall have to go on buying because you cannot finance the highly industrialized population of our zone by exporting its raw materials like coal and timber. I think the noble Viscount the Leader of the House said something about what we were doing to export timber. We do not want to export timber, we want to use the timber for more production in Germany. You cannot finance the British zone by exporting raw material, and that is what we are doing. Until we can get something like a moratorium upon coal exports we shall never make sense of the British zone. I want to urge that pretty strongly indeed on His Majesty's Government.
The coal lack was the most urgent thing that I saw there, but probably to-day food is the more urgent. I do not want to dwell upon this dreadful crisis of food, of which the noble Lord opposite probably knows more than I do. I only read the newspapers, but I know that these people were living from hand to mouth. Since then we have had the American shipping strike and other great difficulties and we are finding it, I gather, impossible to honour the ration. Of course, this is one of the real world difficulties in dealing with the problem. What we can say is that we must somehow put the demands of our zone of Germany for which we are responsible higher in the scale of priority. It is true they are the last in the queue, but in an organized world even the last person in the queue should have the minimum ration before other people get more than the minimum ration. Somehow or other we have got to do that.
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A number of other matters which are now dealt with by quadripartite decision seem to me to be open to criticism. I mentioned them in the article I wrote in The Times. I only want to mention them now and I will not dwell upon them. There is the cutting off of pensions to the German war wounded, which I venture to say is a thing which has offended the sense not only of Germans but of all responsible people in the British zone. They are being treated as war criminals, whereas they are really war victims. I heard that spoken about in the strongest possible terms by the most responsible people in the British zone. That we do as the result of the quadripartite decision; but why should we agree to do such a thing? Then we have been revising the social insurance without consulting the trade unions. It seems odd that this Government should be revising social insurance without consulting the trade unions, but that is what has happened. Then, under quadripartite decision, we have cut off all business communications between people in Germany and other countries. Cutting off business communications does not matter in the Soviet zone, because all business communications are Government communications. But it does matter vitally to us, unless we have already decided that the coal of our zone shall be completely socialized, and I do not think we have. I suggest that that is an example of control gone mad, control for the sake of control. In all this business, we are just trying to agree with others when they are wrong. I suggest that we ought to have our own mind on things and not go on agreeing with others when they are wrong.
Let me come now to the most important, but by no means the longest, topic of the Potsdam Protocol. There is real difficulty in discussing the Potsdam Agreement in this country, because it has never been laid before either House of Parliament and it has never been published as a White Paper; indeed, if what I am told in Germany is true, there are some parts of it which have never been published at all. They are being acted upon, but they have not been published. I do not want to say more on that than this. I want to suggest that if there are parts of it which have never been published we ought to lay down the principle that, while secret discussion of agreements is right, no democracy can be bound by an agreement

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which is kept secret, and nobody who represents a democracy ought to make a secret agreement in peace time. I suggest that as a principle of democratic government in foreign affairs we should have confidential discussion in making agreements but we should not have secret agreements. I do not personally want to revise the Potsdam Agreement, or to give it more publicity than it has had in the past. I think we all know, because the Foreign Secretary in the other place made it quite plain, that the Potsdam Agreement has been completely flouted by our Allies in some respects.
May I just remind your Lordships of one or two of them? One of the points is that so far as is practicable there shall be uniformity of treatment of the German population outside Germany. Other points are that Germany shall be a single economic unit; and that exports from current production and stock shall be available in the first place for payment of imports. Clearly the Potsdam Agreement implies an absolute, single united administration of Germany; the different troops in different parts of Germany, the Russians in one part, the Americans in another, the French in another, and the British in another, but with a single united administration. We all know that nothing of the sort has happened and that, in fact, there is no free access for our people to the Soviet zone at all. I suggest that until we get that real co-operation in administering Germany as a whole in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement we should say that for our part the Potsdam Agreement is in suspense. The position reminds me very much of the position of Mr. Morris Finsbury, the character who was once adjured by a friend of his that he should act as a gentleman. His answer was: "Many years ago I tried acting as a gentleman, but with the legal profession as it is it is such a one-sided business." I suggest to you that, with the international world as it is, acting as a gentleman is a one-sided business, and we are rather in that position.
I do not want to make that my main point. I do not think carrying out the Potsdam Agreement would really be acting as a gentleman, because I do not think the Potsdam Agreement is acting in accord with the Atlantic Charter or is in itself practicable. I want to urge that we should now come out with complete revision of
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it, and particularly of two things. One is the industrial side. The industrial side of it lays down the elimination of all industry that could be used for war. If you say "elimination of all industry that could be used for war", that is obviously nonsensical, because there is no industry which cannot be used for war. If you want to know how far we have gone, or nearly gone, into the purely ridiculous in applying that, here is one example. In Hamburg there were discovered to be a number of sheds which at one time were just ordinary plain sheds, four walls and a roof, which used to be used for making fireworks and, therefore, during the war were used for some kind of explosives. The military authorities were determined to destroy these on the ground that they could be used for war purposes. Fortunately they were saved and are now being used to house people. We are threatening to abolish a shipyard which is making fishing boats on the ground that it could be used for war purposes. Of course, every fishing boat could become a mine-sweeper or a mine-layer.
If you insist on the elimination of everything that could be used for war, you must eliminate the whole of industry. Elimination is an absurdity. What you have to do is to emphasize the other side of it, which is control of all that can be used. Let us have control and do away with elimination. I suggest that is the line we ought to take. The trouble with that common-sense procedure, saying that we are going to do away with elimination and we will only control that which can be used for war purposes, is that unfortunately this Potsdam business of dismantling is tied up with reparations to the Allies. What has happened is that the Potsdam decision was followed last March by a level-of-industry agreement which we made under the Potsdam decision, which laid down how much per cent. of every industry Germany should be allowed to have, and everything she is not allowed to have is liable to be sent to Soviet Russia, Yugoslavia, or wherever it may be, as reparations.
I would like to ask the noble Lord who is going to answer whether he is able to tell me anything as to what is going to happen to the Stulcken Works, which I mentioned in my article in The Times, which for seventy-five years had made fishing boats and are now making

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fishing boats. When I was in Hamburg they were told they had to be shut up, although fishing boats were most urgently needed. I wrote and I spoke to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and I got the answer that they were on the list for reparation supplies and therefore must be shut up. That is the last answer I had. I hope the noble Lord is going to-day to be able to give me a different one, because I cannot imagine anything that would be less defensible than to do that, following on the blowing up of 12,000 tons of one shipyard and the dismantling of another.
I hope the noble Lord may also have something to tell us about what was in the Manchester Guardian on Saturday, November 2, as to the dismantling of all these places in the Ruhr. The whole of this dismantling of German industry is thoroughly bad for four reasons. First of all, it actually delays recovery. I have had it from people engaged on it that they could have done much more reconstruction if they had not been spending so much time on dismantling. Secondly, it destroys the morale of the German people because it destroys their hope. Thirdly, it is bad because it is keeping faith with people who have not kept faith with us on the Potsdam Agreement. Finally, it is putting the means of making further wars beyond our control, whereas at the moment they are under our control in the British zone. I do not want to dwell on that, but that is a fourth sufficient reason. I think the Government should stop at once the elimination of anything with a peace potential and work out a new plan for control, not elimination, for the whole of Germany.
One word only about the companion problem of denazification. Under that heading, the Potsdam Agreement involves the removal from positions of public or private responsibility of anyone who has been more than a nominal Nazi—the dismissal of anyone who has risen as high, for example, as a corporal in the Nazi organization. I gave in the article in The Times the case of the best oculist in Hamburg who was not allowed to cure people of blindness because of that. I can add now from my postbag the case of the best seed expert in Germany. He was never a Nazi but he was so good that he was given an honour by the Nazis and therefore
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he is now in prison. I will give details of that case later to the noble Lord if he will get it looked into.
Here again, we are playing the game but the Soviet is not. Why do we go on playing the game? I suggest that we ought to pray in aid the words which stand at the head of the Potsdam Agreement—namely, that it is an agreement for the initial period of control, and only for the initial period of control. We should say that now we have got to the point of beginning to discuss a treaty the agreement is in suspense and all destructive action under it is suspended until that treaty is made. To repeat a point I made the other night, the Potsdam Agreement is, I think, impossible anyhow, but the Potsdam Agreement for the level of industry in Germany, combined with the new frontiers which are projected for Germany on the east, is utterly and hopelessly impracticable. I think we ought to say that the two things hang together.
I have already taken too long, but now I want to come to the last point of all. I do not underrate the difficulties of our task in Germany. The difficulties are immense and the task is extremely important. Its importance is a reason for giving it more attention, and more authoritative attention, than we have given to it in the past. We have been governing our zone in Germany by a species of remote control from London to Berlin, which is not in our zone, and which in some ways is out of touch with our zone—it must be. I have no doubt that it is this remote control which, in small things, has led to our getting a reputation for, I should-almost say, callous incompetence. I do not think we deserve it—we are neither callous nor incompetent—but the way in which we have administered our zone has given us that reputation in Germany. We have sat down for fifteen months under the complete flouting of the Potsdam Agreement by our Allies, and all we have done about it is to protest verbally and say things about it. We have gone on carrying out our part of the Agreement.
There has been this same weakness in dealing with our Allies in relation to the urgent coal needs, food needs, and material needs of the British zone, for which we are responsible, and for which, therefore, we pay if it cannot pay for them itself. I do not, of course, underestimate

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the difficulties of getting things done in Germany; nor do I ignore the fact that the really authoritative people in this country have had many other things to occupy their time. Germany is both a local problem and one of the political issues in our relations with our Allies and with the world as a whole. Therefore in the last resort the big decisions must come back to the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet; but somehow or other that has meant that for fifteen months Germany has not had the important attention that it should have had—because it really is of first-rate importance.
When I am told that the Foreign Secretary has dealt with this matter before—and we all know how busy he has been—I confess I am a little reminded of the Minister in the First World War who was dealing with food and who did not manage to deal with all his problems in time. He explained "I cannot drive all my buses through Temple Bar at the same time; they have to wait their turn." But his successor solved that problem by the simple device of removing Temple Bar—namely, the bottle-neck of his own mind—and having any number of really responsible people in charge of the different sections of his work. I do not know how it can be done, but, somehow or other, I am sure it has to be done in dealing with this international problem. I think it means having a really responsible Minister of Cabinet rank living in the zone. I suggest that would be a better way in which to administer it. I say deliberately "living in the zone" and not in Berlin. There can be, if you like, an Ambassador to deal with the Soviet and our other Allies in Berlin. Germany is a very important part of the British Commonwealth at the present moment—a very important part indeed. My final word is this, and I hope I shall not be accused of lapsing into sloppy sentimentality. I think we should assert more to our Allies our views of humanity, justice, democracy and tolerance. I think we should make more of the Atlantic Charter and less of the Potsdam Agreement.
3.8 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: My Lords, I have just returned from a second extensive tour of the British zone, from the Ruhr to Berlin, at the head of a joint delegation of Protestants and
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Roman Catholics to the Protestant and Roman Catholic Churches of Germany. I saw not only churchmen but representatives of every class—burgomasters, industrialists, trade unionists, Party leaders, university teachers, and social workers. Like the noble Lord who has just sat down—to whom we are all indebted for a most authoritative and persuasive speech—I should like to thank the Control Commission and the officers concerned for their great efficiency, kindness and hospitality.
The situation as we saw it was far worse than a year before, when I was there in other circumstances. I would repeat what one of the most influential authorities said to me at an early stage. England does not realize it. It is necessary to see the stark realities, both psychological and physical, on the spot. I wish that the Foreign Secretary and also the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go to the British zone and study the situation there, for they would then see in a much more tangible way than they can from a distance the gravity of the crisis facing all Europe and Britain, as well as Germany. There are two fundamental facts, firstly, the complete prostration of Germany, including the impossibility of establishing a war potential for the next thirty years at least, and secondly, the fact that the Government of Germany to-day is formed by the occupying Powers, the Quadripartite Commission, and as one of those Powers it is the British Parliament and the British Government who are responsible for the life and future of the German people in the British zone.
The two noble Lords who have spoken have just given you a clear analysis of the main elements of the situation in the British zone, and nobody could read the papers to-day without appreciating the new and alarming increase in the gravity of the food situation. I would give you just one or two brief illustrations of what we found on our tour. Dusseldorf has a population of 400,000 persons; 9,000 persons live in cellars or shelters with no windows; 1,500 to 2,000 persons have no fixed shelter at all and have to seek a place to rest their heads afresh each night, and 47,000 persons live in very dilapidated houses without windows or doors. The infant mortality in Dusseldorf has risen from seven per cent. to thirteen per cent. I was in Hamburg with a Salvation Army worker going round a great number of hovels, cellars and attics, inspecting them

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with my own eyes. You cannot imagine the damp, wretched, windowless dungeons in which people have to live, or the material, moral or medical consequences of such habitation. In Berlin in 1939 the total number of tuberculosis cases was 8,000. On July 31 of this year there, were 62,000 including 3,560 new cases in July.
The situation could hardly be more serious, and I noted, as the noble Lords have noted, an extraordinary change in the attitude of the whole population to the British Authorities. There is an almost complete want of confidence. Rumours are rife everywhere, and quite fantastic rumours, such as the statement that the English remove the food from Germany in order to feed the English and starve the Germans. Questions are asked, and as they are asked they ought to be noted: Is the paralysis intended? Is the destruction deliberate? Do the British really want the German people to die? There will be both a material and a psychological catastrophe with unpredictable consequences unless a great change is brought about in the next few months. By this I do not mean a change in Military Government, for although there are no doubt details and agents to criticize here and there in the Military Government, as in every other occupation, I should like to record my own admiration of the leaders of the Control Commission and Military Government in the British zone. No one who saw them and talked to them could fail to be impressed by their high standard of public service, the sense of responsibility and the desire to do their very best for the German people as trustees for Britain, by which they are inspired.
What is needed is a change in policy, a change in attitude, a creation of trust and a new basis of confidence, which is indispensable. In this I suggest that four principal factors are involved. I would agree in passing with what the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, said about the revision of the Potsdam Agreement, root and branch, but subject to that working within the present framework. I would say first that we should insist upon the immediate fulfillment of the Potsdam decision to treat Germany, during the period of occupation, as a single economic unit involving, of course, the establishment of common policies as to mining, industrial production and allocation of import and export programmes for Germany as a whole. I understand that
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when the Soviet authorities were asked why they did not work their zone as part of an economic unit they said it was not opportune. If, after the other three occupying Powers have pressed as hard as they can, they still refuse, then we have a right to reply for our part that it is not opportune to remove industrial equipment from the Western zones, to destroy Germany's productive capacity and to continue to export German coal on the present scale.
A second principal factor in creating a basis of confidence is the bringing of the present process of denazification to an end. There was criticism on all sides throughout the zone of the present system. Denazification cuts at the root of all German life. In the early days after our victory it was regarded as the key to the whole problem of Germany, but now that is seen to be an error. National Socialism is generally recognized by the Germans as the path of madness, and the real danger is lest by unwise actions and policies on our part we should renazify the German people. The best of the Germans—nearly all, but not quite all—have been killed by Hitler, but subject to that the truth is that the great majority of the younger men of initiative could not very well help being members of a party or organization. If all of them are disqualified from taking an effective part in Germany's recovery, German life cannot get going again. Eighteen months after the war we are not within sight, on the present basis, of the end of denazification.
There are two classes—those within the internment camps and those who are denazified outside them. There are 38,000 persons in the British zone who are interned. I spent several hours at one of these civilian internment camps—No. 7 Esenheide near Haumuhle. It has been newly reopened. Conditions were very bad but there is a first-class Commanding Officer and a staff all doing their best. There you find Gestapo men, brutal murderers and war criminals. I talked to many and I found among them a boy of eighteen who at sixteen and a half had been interned as a corporal of the Hitler Youth Organization. He may have had some other offences against him but that was what was told me. Others in the camp included persons holding small posts in the local kreis, clerks in the Health Through Joy movement, those

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with small posts in the S.S., three hundred doctors and two hundred teachers locked up without charge. They were unable to communicate with their relatives except by means of twenty-four words on a postcard, once a month, the postcard to be censored in Bonn. Think of it: thirty-eight thousand postcards a month to be censored in one place! It is generally acknowledged that a very large proportion of these men will eventually be set free. In the meantime, they are suffering injustice and when they get out their livelihood will either have gone or have been very greatly impaired.
Then there is the second class, those outside the internment camps, the very great majority. We have to remember that among very many large numbers of these were nominal members of the Party; that, at the later stages of the war, transfer from the Wehrmacht to the S.S. was compulsory; and that the date of joining is, therefore, no real index to a man's present attitude. Many started as idealists in 1928 or 1929, and then saw the wickedness of the system. There are many young men who do not remember the world before 1933. The present procedure is to examine every single case in great detail. In Hamburg I was told there are five courts which examine thirty cases per week. There are eighteen thousand cases to be investigated, which means, assuming that the procedure continues at the present rate, that the whole job will take twelve years. Now there is the new edict, No. 38, published three weeks ago, since Nuremberg, by the terms of which not only wrongdoers but those who in the opinion of the Zone Commander might become dangerous come within its range. This, surely, is a crowning illustration of the fact that the conception underlying the system is wrong, for it would seem to aim not at actual criminals but at potential criminals. Everyone is in danger under such a system. All sorts of opportunities are offered to the denouncer and the hunter of witches. Indeed it brings back the terror State. Nobody who has not lived in a terror State, such as Germany was, can imagine what it means. No one who has stood under its ban can forget.
One of the most urgent and essential things is to deal with this whole question. October 16 should mark the beginning of a new chapter in the attitude to those
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who were under Hitler's sway. It is not only a question of acceleration of release or of increase of staff or of administration, but of guiding principles. The guiding principles, I suggest, should be these. Those who have committed crimes under the law should be punished as soon as possible if found guilty by a proper court. Those who, up to the last moment, with leading positions, were active for National Socialism and fought for it, should be removed from all leading positions in public and private life. In all other cases people ought to get the opportunity to start a new life and to stand the test.
The third principal factor in establishing a basis of confidence is to give the Germans more responsibility for their own internal and industrial life. I know that efforts are now being made, but much more is required. At present, as a burgomaster told me, the Germans have no right to say anything. The burgomaster gave me some telling illustrations of the disastrous economic results of failure to consult. You cannot truthfully say, as paragraph 16 in the Potsdam Agreement says, that the responsibility for the administration of such economic controls and any breakdown in those controls will rest with the German people, until you really give effective control to the German people. Now everyone can say when they see breakdowns or inefficiency or collapse: "It is the British who are guilty." At least tell the Germans what kind of a Germany they will have under the Peace Treaties. At present there is a complete disbelief in the existence of justice and there is no hope.
I suggest, first, that we should make it plain that Germany, East and West, shall be one for certain purposes, however much devolution to regions may be worked with it. Second, we must face the fact, as Lord Beveridge has faced it, of the reduction of German territory in a provisional way. There are twelve million refugees from the east populating the western zones, and nearly two million of these are in the British zone. They cannot live on charity indefinitely. In the long run, a political solution has to be found. This question ought to be faced in the most serious way: whether the whole of the territory provisionally administered by the Polish State ought to be ceded to Poland at the peace settlement seeing that

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it is much more than enough to compensate the Poles for the territory lost to Russia.
In conclusion, I would plead for a restoration of confidence. Let the Germans see that no stone is left unturned to cope with the famine situation. Remove the obstacles which stand in the way of self-determination. Let the Government do their best to banish mistrust as to the intentions of the victorious States. It is impossible to hide the hard fact that the Germans have a hard row to tread for a long while. Once it is clear that there is a basis for confidence, all the best forces in Germany will do their utmost for recovery.
3.30 p.m.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: My Lords, I do not want to criticize anything said by noble Lords who have so far spoken. I think I agree with almost everything they have said. But nobody can look at this question without feeling the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, that lots of things which we want to do in Germany are not in our control. We can only say, and I am sure His Majesty's Government can only say, that in regard to some points of the Potsdam Agreement about treating Germany as an economic unit we are doing our best to get those things put right. Of course a person who works with the Russians needs not only a long spoon but a great deal of patience. You cannot hurry those things.
I want to put to your Lordships' House certain things which I think we can do now. I will enumerate them first, and later I will say something about them. I think that the British Control Commission, especially in this country, suffers from security madness. The amount of censorship and examination of persons is just awful, and I do not believe that it is in the least necessary. Secondly, I want to repeat something that I have already said twice in this House. Nobody has paid any attention to it, and I might add that I propose to go on until somebody does. That is, that if you are to get first-class men to do this most difficult of jobs you must give them Civil Service security. That has now been stated by the Committee, whose Report I have here, and perhaps some attention will be paid to it. Thirdly, I want to plead with the Government to second to Germany, for a
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year, between six and a dozen first-class practical economists, to deal with the extraordinarily intricate questions which are confronting us all over the place. Lastly, I want the Government to reexamine the set-up of the Control Commission, which is suffering very severely through certain faults in that set-up.
May I take, first, the Control Commission? In my experience, one's heart is lightened by the industry and the nobility of its members, and by the fine things they are trying to do. One soon realizes, however, that they are working under incredibly difficult conditions. We ought, in this House, to remember that we have by far the most difficult section of Germany to administer. The British zone is one of extraordinary industrial complexity. We administer the zone in a very odd way. Our system is not a free economy; it is not a Socialist economy controlled by itself. It is controlled by the Occupying Power, and the questions which arise are of very great complexity. I do not think that they can be answered by ordinary hard-working officials who are occupied with daily problems. We have got to do something about that. If you go to the Commission, you find intolerable delays.
I will give you one experience, which contrasts with the American and French zones. A young man came to me in Oxfort last summer and said that he and some others would like to go to a conference to confer with German students. I put his request to the Control Commission, who welcomed it but said that the officials in Germany would reject such a visit. Opinion in Germany then changed. They said they would like the men to go, and I was asked to get hold of the young men. (It was a little late by this time, as six weeks had elapsed.) I did find the young men, and was then told that they could go only if they paid all their own expenses. Oxford students are not now the millionaires they used to be, and they cannot easily go on trips to Germany, paying their own expenses. After some negotiations, it was stated that they could go on payment of half the expenses. By this time it was well on in September, and the opportunity was lost. To my surprise I found that there had been two international conferences of students, one in the American zone and one in the French zone—surprisingly enough—which had

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been held without all this fuss, and that two of the young men had gone from Oxford.
That is one instance. Another is more absurd. I heard last week of one officer of the Control Commission—a Major in the Army, with a lot of experience in Germany—who had come home for demobilization and who was wanted back at once. He could not get back until he had gone through Bletchley. But he cannot go through Bletchley, because there are no vacancies. What is there at Bletchley? There is a school to teach people about Germany. There is far too much wellintentioned, meticulous, and unimaginative conscientiousness. That applies above all, I think, to the security regulations which are always coming in the way of progress.
May I read a paragraph in a most interesting document about present conditions of Germany, written by that great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth? I wonder how many of your Lordships, in the dark days of June, 1940, read his noble message to the French Protestants. It rang like a challenge. He writes in this recent document:
"Germany is to-day one vast hermetically sealed prison camp. It is only in exceptional cases that Germans can travel abroad or foreigners visit Germany (as I at least have been allowed to do) Postal communications are impeded and made difficult by the censorship which, for example, expressly forbids the enclosure of printed matter (even newspaper cuttings). Germans read no foreign papers and books, and foreigners no German ones. Germans are living to-day—in continuation of their way of life in the Third Reich—shut up in a terrifying way in themselves, left alone with their own cares and problems, imaginings and ideas. But in the long run it cannot be healthy for the other nations only to know the Germans of to-day from a distance and in the light of the nightmare pictures of the period of the wars of domination—now luckily at an end It seems to me an urgent command not only of humanity, but also of a wise policy to open at last the closed doors between Germany and the world outside How can the Germans be readmitted to the fellowship of the other nations and learn to trust them and win their trust, as long as they continue to form the ghetto to which they are condemned today?"
I do pray that people should realize that you do far less to make the Germans Nazis again by allowing a few suspicious characters to go to Germany, than by allowing a continuation of the conditions which now exist, because they are bound to breed Nazism. Far be it from me
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to deny the importance of starvation and food, but I sometimes think that hopelessness affects people a great deal more. We do not mean it, but unwittingly we are allowing that state of affairs to continue.
The second thing I want to say is this. I do not want to ask the Government to give security to all the 26,000 members of the Commission in Germany, but I do say that if you want to get the best men to do this very difficult job you must give them the same sort of security that you give the young men who go into the Foreign Office or the Civil Service. We have young men from Germany to-day—quite first-class men, with plenty of knowledge and experience. Are they to go back to Germany, and be thrown out of employment in five or seven years, just when they cannot find it? It will be many times worth while to give them some sort of security, and to make some sort of provision for them. I will not enter into a long discussion on that. It is recommended in the Report of the Committee to which I have referred.
I want now to say something of more importance. We are concerned, in Germany, with a matter of frightful complexity, and I am sure that it needs a great deal of expert advice. And I say "advice" very advisedly. I do not want the Government to take economists, however distinguished, and put them in positions of executive power. It is not the business of Cabinet Ministers or executive powers to be economists, but it is their business to have their advice. We are dealing with questions of very great complexity. May I give an instance of the sort of thing that happens? Prices have all gone entirely "phoney." A miner working in the Ruhr six shifts a week, will get, after he has paid his tax, 150 marks a month. If he likes to sell his cigarette cards for the same period he will get 250 marks. The production of a certain quantity—I cannot remember what the quantity was but it does not really matter—of copper costs, everybody agrees, 1,000 marks. The controlled price at which it may be sold is 250. What happened about that was that the people producing the copper said they were going bankrupt and must stop. The Finance Commission then told the banks to lend them the money. The banks said they would not lend money to people

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obviously going bankrupt. They were then told "This is a military order." The firms said they would not have a loan, because it would make them bankrupt. The finance commission fortunately did not control the firms. They then asked the Economic Organization, which is a different section, if they would order the firms to take a loan which would enable them to go on towards bankruptcy!
There are problems of that kind. I do not think it is anybody's fault. I think it needs expect knowledge. May I give an instance of the kind of thing I know has happened? The British section of Berlin was a place of great industrial activity, and of great importance to German industry. Something like three-fifths of the electrical goods produced in Germany were produced in Siemens, from our part of Berlin. Siemens fortunately has been almost completely destroyed. It therefore was not concerned with the thought that it may be taken for reparation. It was then arranged that there should be some allocation of coal—which so far there had not been—to Siemens. Before that Siemens employed 150 men. They are now employing 15,000. Fortunately, Siemens, which has been destroyed, is not liable for reparations. We are conducting this whole business of trying to assess what firms are superfluous for reparations with extraordinarily meticulous conscientiousness with the result that up to a few weeks ago we had declared four firms superfluous. My informant, a trained man, could not put a figure as to what it had cost us. He thought obviously more than £1,000,000, and possibly not so much as £3,000,000. He was certain it would have saved a lot of money to have made a present to the Russians of the same factories out of this country. This process is going on. It is very good of us to do this. We are fulfilling the Potsdam Agreement with this prodigious conscientiousness, with this silly result.
Further, there is the very difficult problem about the currency. There is an immense mass of purchasing power in Germany. If you let it loose and if there were any goods to buy, the result would be dreadful. What are you going to do? The Russians have blocked these markets. I understand there is a contest going on in our zone as to what should be done.
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What I want to emphasize is that it is not an easy question to solve. It is a very difficult question to know what you ought to do with German currency under those conditions. There are similar problems about the allocation of things like coal. I may make a point about that. On hearing this, I recognized the situation I was up against in the First World War. On the general principle that one was asked to do a thing as unlike as possible what one did in real life, I was made a controller of labor in the First World War. I found, if I may say so with respect, what the uneconomic mind does about things. It asked for demands. It then took the demands, found what proportion could be satisfied and cut everybody down proportionately. Anybody with any sense recognizes it does not cost more to ask for 10,000 things than for one. Therefore, if you have any knowledge of what is going to happen, you ask for, let us say, 5,000 tons of coal, knowing you can use 1,000 and, expecting to be cut down half. When you get 2,500, you use your 1,000 and you sell the rest to the black market. It is quite simple. Any sensible person would do it. But it is a subtle business to put right. I do not know what the right answer is except that I gather this has now been put right.
I shall not keep your Lordships much longer. I could enumerate many problems of this kind. I am sure that what you want with these overworked executives, in whose decisions everybody seems to have the utmost confidence, is that they should be assisted by people whose business it is to deal with problems of this sort, recognizing the complexity—and it is a great complexity to combine a planned economy run by an Occupying Power with a certain amount of free industry. I do appeal to the Government to try and get young practical-minded economists. I hope it will be realized that any young economist who is now unemployed in this country will probably be a bad economist. There is far too great a demand for good young economists in this country to take people who do not happen to be employed. I am perfectly certain if the Government realized how important this was, and went to the universities and said, "Will you second A, B or C to the German Control Commission for a year?" they would do it. The Colonial Office do it.

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The Colonial Office gets young men to go out for a year to some place like Malaya to advise the authorities there. I know that some colleges when asked about this, have said, "In spite of the great shortage of teachers, if you can assure us that this is a really important business we will try to lend you these men." I think if the Government would do that, if they could get between half a dozen and a dozen good young economists and take them from their jobs for a year, They would get them, and. I think that might make an enormous difference to our administration in Germany.
Lastly, I would pray the Government just to look again at the set-up of the whole Commission. It is only too obvious that there are very great faults. Several of the noble Lords who have spoken have mentioned the shortage of houses. I am told in the Russian zone there are fifteen square yards per person, in the American zone ten square yards and in the British zone four square yards. Who is going to run things if man-power and housing are in one special Sub-Commission and industry and building in another Sub-Commission? Any unfortunate German trying to run this has got to deal with these people. What is much worse is the separation of the Economic Sub-Commission and the Finance Sub-Commission. These two things are clearly dependent and complementary, and you cannot run Germany unless you put these economic things together. These things, I think, are all possible without necessarily getting the agreement of the four Powers, and certainly without getting anything changed in the procedure. Do noble Lords realize that German industry is working now under thirty per cent. of what is allowed under the Potsdam Agreement? If these things were done I think we really could say, at any rate, that we have done the best job we can do within the conditions we have got and thus have a much better case to argue that those conditions must be improved.
3.51 p.m.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I think it would be wrong if this important debate were to pass without a speech from this Bench. I propose to be as brief as I can. I also hope I shall be constructive. It is very easy to diagnose the disease—the vicious circle of shortages and deficiencies of food, coal, houses, and consumer goods, all inter-dependent and
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each shortage breeding another shortage. If you can relieve the shortage of one you relieve the shortage of another. That is common ground, and it is easy to say. It is a great deal harder to prescribe the remedy, but I am sure it is not worth while speaking in a debate like this unless you try to offer constructive suggestions and try to offer remedies which are within our capacity and, as has been well said in this debate, within our powers as they are to-day.
I should myself find it easier if I were a little career as to what is the precise relationship between the civil administrations and the military administrations in Germany. If the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, with his usual courtesy and clarity, for both of which he is renowned, could tell us very briefly what is the relationship between the military and the civil, I think we should all he obliged. I am glad to find myself in complete agreement with Lord Beveridge on my first point. I am perfectly certain that you have got to have on the spot a Minister with real powers to take decisions and to make those decisions effective on the spot. I have said that very dogmatically, and I venture to do so because I had for two years in the war exactly that experience of being sent out as a Minister of Cabinet rank to do a war job. It was a job of production, of supply, of strategy and of control in our own territories in West Africa, and to work in the closest co-operation with the territories of our Allies, the Belgians, the French, and further down with the Portuguese. It was exactly the situation which exists in Germany to-day. There is our own zone which is the exact equivalent of the territories I had, and there are the adjoining zones which is again exactly the relationship which I had with the French and with the Belgians.
Now the first thing is that the Minister should have power to take decisions and to see that those decisions are made effective. There need be no risk, if you give the Minister that power, that you are overriding or treading on the toes of this or that Government Department. He should be, as Resident Minister, or Minister of State or whatever we call him, a projection of his colleagues in the Cabinet. Policy is laid down and is agreed and there is not the least difficulty in that Minister carrying out that policy and giving his directions to the different

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authorities, military or civil. I had not the least difficulty when I was in West Africa in giving directions to the three Service Ministries, to the Colonial Administrators or in regard to foreign affairs, or in matters of supply. In food, for example, Lord Woolton and my noble friend Lord Llewellin were here, and of course we agreed the policy together. The policy was laid down and it was not merely a question of having an agreed policy in the British Cabinet, it was a question of having agreed policies between all the Allies or certainly between ourselves and the Americans. One's contacts were nearly as much with Washington as with England. It was the only way of getting the job done.
Of course, that does imply that you have got to have a policy and if there is not a policy then no Minister can carry it out, but you do not make it better by having several Ministers. The next thing I would say is that that Minister must be on the spot. I agree entirely with Lord Beveridge in this, and I think Lord Lindsay would agree too. Everything turns on personal contact. It is no good receiving reports in Whitehall. When I was in West Africa I flew a thousand miles a week on an average. The only way of getting the job done was to sit in with the men, whether it was a military, a naval or a supply job. I flew to Freetown to sit in with the Admiral and the Air Force, and the same with supply, because you had to go round your territories and sit in with the men having the problems before them. You had to go down and visit your neighbours constantly. I would get a message from the Governor-General of the Congo about something and it was no good sending telegrams about it. The simple thing to do was to get in one's aeroplane and fly sixteen hundred miles because everything depended on personal contact. You get to know your staff that way, and get personal contact with the people in the other zones.
I am sure it is true you do not want a vast office. I think our own administration is too big. I do not speak with first-hand experience of Germany, but I feel sure that what we want is fewer and better. I do emphatically agree with Lord Lindsay that you are not going to get the good few unless you offer the right terms. You may get this or that
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man of public spirit spared by his firm or university to go out for a year to do a job, but some of the best of these men are young men who are standing to-day at the parting of the ways. They can come forward and do work that nobody else can do, but how can you expect them to do that if you give them a five years' contract? If you say to a man of 25 or 26 "Very well, you have done well in the war and are the right man for the job—"
A NOBLE LORD: One year.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I am not sure that one year is not better than five, but the vital thing is that he is going to have the risk that you will throw him adrift at a time when he cannot go into a business. If we are going to occupy Germany for a long time, as I have no doubt we shall have to, I would take my chance and offer him a longer period, and if these are the people who are really well worth having you would much better say "I will keep you on in the public service whether it is the Foreign Office or the Colonial Office." If they are the men who are really good and not the men who want a job and are looking for a safe job, you probably will want to keep them at the end of the time, and quite a lot of other people will want to get them away from you. But you have no business to ask those men to play for uncertainty when you want to be sure of them.
The next thing I want to say is this. Do not let us try to do every German's job, whether it be in administration or in industry. We are not competent to do it. If we try to do it the German loses heart, and I think hopelessness is perhaps worse than hunger. He tends to lean back upon us and fails to develop a sense of responsibility. And it is not going to be too easy to develop a sense of responsibility in administration in a country that is accustomed to being run from the top and from the centre, and we shall be blamed for everything that goes wrong.
Another point is that we must have a sense of proportion and a sense of balance in this matter, and it is most of all necessary in regard to Germany economically. Of course we have got to prevent German rearmament, but that is not going to be a very difficult thing to-day. The thing the Germans are worrying about to-day is not building guns but getting enough to eat and enough to wear. The danger

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to-day is not rearmament, but a danger of a hungry, homeless and hearthless population. I would say this—and I think it is the only point with which I disagree in the Foreign Secretary's speech—do not let us impose our economic ideology on them from outside. I am not saying for a moment whether a socialized industry in Germany, in this or that industry, is right or wrong, but I do say that the people who ought to decide that are the Germans and not ourselves.
I say that for two reasons. First of all, it is contrary to all that we are arguing for in international affairs to-day. Surely, the whole plea we put up is that neither the great Powers nor the combined Powers should dictate to a country what it should do internally, provided that it is not doing something which is damaging to the security of the world. After all, we fought this war for freedom and "freedom "means the right to determine your own fate provided you do not create a security threat to other people. It would be wise to leave the Germans to decide this for themselves, and unless they decide it for themselves they are not at all likely to stick to what is imposed on them. Nor is it in the least necessary from the point of view of security. In things great and small we have gone rather silly, I think, if I may respectfully say so, about security. I also had some-thing to do with security in the course of the war. It is quite absurd to say that officers are not to be driven about by German chauffeurs for fear that they may be insecure, while chauffeurs who are badly needed in industry in England are sent out to Germany at eight or nine pounds a week, when the German chauffeur is really quite competent to drive the car and, as his livelihood depends upon it, he will probably be quite as secure.
One of the things about security, I will not say I had to teach people during the war, but, at any rate, we learnt together during the war, is that it does not mean casting a wide meshed net round everything in the world. That is the last way in which you get security. Security means a very careful narrow net drawn where you have a risk, and in fact security all the time has got to be informed by intelligence, intelligence with a big "I" as well as intelligence with a small "i."
So much for the smaller side of it. To take it on the big scale, do you have to have a particular system in Germany in
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order to prevent that industry from turning over to being a war danger? It is not really sensible. I speak subject to correction and the noble Lord will correct me if I am wrong. The key to all this is the Rhineland and the Ruhr. That is where all the motive power has to come from. Of course you have to get coal; there is not dispute on that, and everybody agrees that we have to get out as much coal as we possibly can. So there is no security question there. With regard to steel, we have to produce a great deal more steel, and we have probably got to produce more than is provided for in the Potsdam plan. But we are nowhere near the Potsdam plan as vet in the steel figures. What is the risk in the production of steel? Is it not a fact that 85 per cent. or 86 per cent. of the iron ore which goes into the making of steel in the Ruhr, comes from abroad? If that is so, the way to control the Ruhr industry is to control it by licensing the imports of raw material. That is much the most effective form of control you can have; and if you want to carry it further you can also make a condition of your licence that you should have control over where the manufactured or semi-manufactured articles go to afterwards. We seem to tackle the Ruhr last; we ought to tackle it first, because it contains the prime movers, the coal and the steel.
I would like to make one or two other constructive suggestions about that. The best way you can use the Ruhr coal is to use it on the spot in the production of electricity. That certainly applies to the brown coal lower down in the Cologne area where there are great electrical plants. It is a great deal easier, as well as being more economical, to carry current on high tension wires than it is to carry coal, and the maximum amount of electricity should be produced on the spot. Again, the thing moves in a circle—shortage of mining machinery. I do not know whether some of the plants which make mining machinery have been designated for reparations, but surely the very first thing one wants to-day is to have the full mining machinery of German industry working. It is needed for their own mines, and we need a great deal of that machinery here. I believe one of the difficulties in English coal mines is that you cannot get the mining machinery. Take another thing—fertilizers. We have got to get the maximum we can out of

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the land. How absurd it is, if it be true, that any limitation should be put upon fertilizers. The danger to these people is starvation. We have but a very small amount of agricultural land in our zone of Germany, and we need all the fertilizers we can get.
Let me put this to your Lordships in conclusion. The most important thing is to get the immediate things done as quickly as possible. Do not let us wait for great long-range plans which may be all right but which will take years to accomplish, or on which you may never get agreement and which may never mature. Planned navigation is a very good way of avoiding shipwreck, but when you have got a shipwreck and when people are floundering in the water, you do not want long-range plans; what you want is salvage and first-aid. The French have a very good motto, "The better is the enemy of the good". In this reestablishment of German industry I am sure the motto we should set before ourselves and the principle which we should put into practice is that the better is the enemy of the good, and we should get the practicable things done in any way we can as quickly as possible.
Even if co-operation in all the zones were complete, I say this would still be the right policy to get German industry going as and where we can. But that co-operation is not there, and I would certainly say that we are much more likely to get co-operation from our Allies if, within the zone which is under our control and which is our own responsibility, we go forward doing that which is right and necessary. In that way we are more likely to get co-operation than by waiting to try to secure theoretical agreement. Let us go forward without delay in doing what is immediately practicable. That is in our own interest and in the interest of the Germans, and neither in our interests nor that of the Germans can we afford to wait.
4.12 p.m.
LORD ROCKLEY: My Lords, it is with much diffidence that I attempt to make a contribution to this debate, but I am prompted to do so because I was a member of the Military Government which went into Germany, after experience with civil affairs in Belgium and France. As has been said by some noble Lords, I think that people over here do not fully
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appreciate the conditions in Germany. When we went in at the end of hostilities there was really a complete dislocation of transport. The rolling stock had almost disappeared, lorries were non-existant, and thousands of bridges over almost all the roads had been blown. In addition, of course, there were acres of houses reduced to rubble in every city, and very little clearing up had been done. On top of that, there were literally millions of displaced persons who were wandering about the countryside carrying in their wake general hooliganism. I remember going along some twenty miles of road near Munster in the beginning of June, 1945, and seeing a steady stream of Germans and foreigners going in both directions, simply trying to get back to their original locations. In these conditions the central and local government had completely broken down, and as our Armies advanced most of the local officials disappeared. So it really was a case of starting from scratch. Control had to be built up from the bottom, beginning with Kreis-Regierungsbezirk-Provinz. No doubt we made many mistakes, but I think it is fair to say that when the Control Commission officials took over at the end of the summer of 1945 control had reached the Provinz level.
Two or three noble Lords have talked about the reconstruction of the Commission and the personnel involved. That is the point which is, I think, one of the most important to-day. The number of officials we employ clearly depends on the form of control and the level at which we control. It would be reasonable to assume that as the administration machinery improved, so you would be able to withdraw personnel from the lower levels. But the opposite seems to have happened; there has been an enormous increase in our officials, mainly, I think, because we have recruited the wrong type of person and because many have been attracted who can earn there probably two or three times what they could earn anywhere else in the world. Living is cheap and gin is 3d. a glass. The result has been an increasing number of mediocre men, either young and inexperienced or old and a bit passé, who are incapable of taking a decision on the spot. Those who are good are rather swamped by the number of such people there.
I feel that the situation has drifted and that the basis should be altered. A far

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better and firmer control would be obtained by having a limited number of really good men with civil rank, backed up by a military force, and by making the German officials, who know the job, do all the donkey work. As the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, has said, I think it has a good deal to do with the security question that they do not employ Germans half as much as they might in doing the most ordinary menial tasks. To obtain better men, I think it is essential that they should alter their unimaginative recruiting policy. I am afraid I have not read this latest pamphlet, but I know the original terms of service of one year, two years or until general demobilization were hardly attractive for any young man who wanted to make anything like a career out of it. It is essential that they should be given a salary for at least ten years and that that salary should not be dependent on the number of personnel who are in their branches. I believe that they have recently been offering contracts for six or seven years, but in the agreement there is also a clause which specifies that there can be one month's notice on either side. The contract, therefore, can be broken at any time and is really absolutely null and void.
In order to get work out of the Germans I think they must be given a future; it may be a hard one, but at any rate they should be offered the prospect of a home and food for their families. They must see some hope of getting out of the obvious mess in which they and the whole country are. From the food point of view I know there are many difficulties, but there is one point which has not, I think, been mentioned. The loss of the seed-growing area round Magdeburg is really of the greatest importance. Their existing stocks have largely run down. That would apply to clothes too. They were largely built up by plundering neighbouring countries, but now I think it is true to say they are really non-existent. I feel there can be no economic stability until we have faced such problems as the internal debt or the constitution of the Reichsbank. I hope I have not been too disparaging about members of the Control Commission, because I really do appreciate their difficulties. I hope the Government will give a lead for a drastic reduction and reorganization, and that the Control Commission will cease to become the happy hunting ground for
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promotion and the rendezvous for people without any special qualifications. If our administration falls into further disrepute, it may have far-reaching repercussions on British prestige and possibly the future peace of Europe.
4.20 p.m.
THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (LORD PARENHAM): My Lords, I am sure that we all agree, as we always do, but even with more conviction than usual, that this has been a most helpful debate. I myself have learnt a great deal, and hope that when we resume the debate on some other occasion I shall have had time to visit Germany, which I conceive it my duty to do as the spokesman in this House of the Control Commission. Most of us were taught many years ago that when the wicket is at all sticky there are two courses open to the batsman. Either he can run out to the ball and try and hit a six, or he can play back a long way in the direction of his stumps. Well, I would be delighted to run out a long way and attempt to hit one or two sixes, but unfortunately I might break a neighbouring window, and windows far outside this House and far outside this country. I may be forced, therefore, rather far back on my stumps.
I hope that you will allow me to be somewhat less frank on this occasion than we all try to be when we speak from tins Box. Take the great questions which have come up again and again this afternoon, and about which we all feel so strongly, and about which there is no difficulty whatever in holding very frank exchanges in private between members of the Government and members sitting elsewhere. Take the great question of food; take the question of coal and, particularly, the question of coal exports, or take the whole attitude of Soviet Russia. With regard to food—about which I shall say a good deal in a moment—the international position is about as delicate as it well could be. If we take coal, and above all the question of coal exports, the attitude of His Majesty's Government is extremely well-known, but to labor it to-day might prove to be a poor service to some of our closest friends abroad at this moment of all moments. Finally, I do not suppose any of your Lordships wish me to "come clean" about Soviet Russia this afternoon. I do not imagine

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that any of you would feel that I had performed a useful service to the country in doing so. Before, however, attempting to set out the Government attitude in so far as I can do so without the gravest indiscretion this afternoon, I would just like to say one or two words—nothing like enough, nothing like their deserts—about the speeches to which we have listened.
I would like to begin by congratulating the last speaker. His speech was a most polished affair. The noble Lord, Lord Rockley, brings a special knowledge to our debate this afternoon as having been prominent on the financial side when first we went into Germany, and I must say that I hope whenever the question of Germany is raised in this House he will find it possible to offer us his guidance. I should like, if I may, to pay a special tribute to the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, who, if I may say so speaking as a much less experienced man in the service of the country, was at his kindest and best this afternoon. I think we may put it that when he is good, he is very very good, and on other occasions he is nearer one's own level.
The noble Viscount asked for a clearer explanation of the relations between the civil and military sides. The Control Commission is a civil administration. There are many soldiers in it, as is inevitable since it was at the start wholly military. But the whole Government machine is subject to the Chancellor of the Duchy, which is a point I think the noble Viscount may have desired me to elucidate. The Commander-in-Chief has a dual function. He is head on the one side of the military forces of occupation and on the other of the Government machine. In that latter capacity he is responsible to the Chancellor of the Duchy. The Control Commission is in no way controlled by the military.
The noble Viscount, the noble Lord who has just spoken, and the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, all stressed the necessity of making service under the Control Commission more attractive. I believe I am right in saying that that is very much in the minds of the Control Commission themselves and those responsible for it. There is no doubt at all that the present conditions are not tremendously attractive, and somehow or other we have got to make sure that a young man, think-
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ing of a career in Government service, decides that this has similar attractions to other branches of the service. It is not an easy problem; the future is so indefinite. But I can assure noble Lords that I will lay before my right honourable friend all that has been said and emphasize the very strong feeling of the House—
VISCOUNT SWINTON: Including the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
LORD PAKENHAM: Yes, I shall even dare to beard the Chancellor and stress the points which have been made. There again, I shall be very much surprised to find that he does not feel a certain emotional sympathy.
Now there were a great number of points raised by the first two speakers, as was right and proper. If I may just pick out two or three questions that were put to me by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, I would assure him that no proceeds from exports of current production in the British zone have gone to reparations. They are set off against the cost of imports. This answer of course covers coal. The noble Lord put another question which I must confess took me off my normal beat, wide as that is occasionally forced to be. I can give him a little information about herrings, but I warn him that if he chooses to put any supplementary questions he will find me very much at a disadvantage. I would assure him that contracts have been placed with the Ministry of Food for 25,000 tons of cured herrings and 20,000 tons of Klondyke herrings for delivery over the second half of 1946. By the end of September, 7,555 tons of cured herrings and 4,322 tons of Klondyke herrings had reached the zone. These were the total tonnages available in the United Kingdom at the time. The German fishing fleet has been put to sea in the maximum strength, and has also contributed substantial quantities of fish. I must ask the noble Lord to restrain that desire for further cross-examination which I am sure afflicts him.
The noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, will, I hope, receive a full reply to what you might call his central point. There were one or two smaller issues which he raised. He referred to war pensions, and suggested that we behaved in a particularly callous way on that subject. Now these war pensions were deliberately inflated by

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the Nazis as a military measure to popularize the Army. What we have done is to bring the Army into the social insurance system applicable to all other Germans. I cannot see any great hardship in that.
The noble Lord then referred to some photographs with suitable captions which had appeared in the Daily Graphic, and may I thank him for his courtesy in sending me an advance copy of what he was going to say on that subject. As I am an old pupil of his, perhaps he feels a small vested interest in my performance, and he is no doubt anxious that I should not fail too completely. I appreciate very much his friendly and paternal attitude. I am afraid that the Government, which must take responsibility for many things, cannot take responsibility for the Daily Graphic. It is no doubt an excellent paper. I do riot: read it regularly myself, but I read it as a child. I have no doubt that if you exclude certain political passages it makes excellent reading to-day for the children of this country., but, honestly, I do not think that a Government spokesman should be compelled to defend the Government because certain things have appeared in the Daily Graphic.
On the subject of wives going to Germany, I feel very strongly indeed that we were right to send them, I am quite clear in my own mind that if we are going to have an Army over there we must let them take their wives, and we could not delay much longer the arrangements for that to be done. I can appreciate the generous sentiments which animate noble Lords in dealing with this subject. But I feel that the case for doing what has, in fact, been done, was overwhelming. There was no other course open to the Government. It should be recognized—as I am sure noble Lords will recognize—that these wives are not living in the lap of luxury. Their food has to come from this country, and their standard of living is, in fact, a very modest one. I am rather surprised that the noble Lord should have been so misled on this subject.
He raised a question about the Stülcken shipyard. I have no doubt that here again he possesses specialized knowledge—he has made quite a study of this subject, I understand—which may prove very troublesome to combat. But the facts, as I have been able to ascertain them, and they are official, are these.
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The Stülcken shipyards were very heavily bombed during the war, and as a result it has not been possible to carry out any new construction of vessels in them, though repairs have been carried out to various types of craft. A decision was reached that the facilities available at certain other yards in Hamburg were such that work should be concentrated there, with a view to economizing coal and electric power, and also man-power. I have satisfied myself, and I hope that I shall be able to satisfy the House, that in this case no loss whatever occurs to Germany, and that a small gain "though I am afraid it will be very small, because the plant was practically destroyed), will accrue to the Allies in reparation payments. So much for the Stülcken shipyard.
Now we come to the broad issue of the food situation in Germany, and the question of what the Government is going to do about it. There is no concealing the fact—it would be absurd, imprudent and dishonest to attempt to do so—that the position is extremely serious. The present ration of 1550 calories a day for the normal consumer, while sufficient on our reckoning to sustain life, is not sufficient to enable a man to undertake reasonable work for a long period. It is about half the German pre-war consumption, and a little more than half the present level of our own rations. None of us can feel complacent: if 23,000,000 people for whom we possess any share of responsibility whatever, are living at that standard of life. I do not suppose that the most hard-hearted members of your Lordships' House could remain deaf to the kind of appeal which the right reverend Prelate has made. It is a heartrending affair, and what has to be said in reply is almost bound to seem callous. It is very difficult, at any rate, not to make it seem callous. One has to point out what is familiar to all of us, but it is a duty to place alongside what we have heard from the other standpoint this afternoon, that this tragic mess in which Germany is placed to-day, as regards not only food, but also coal, housing, and consumer goods, not a mess of our making. It is, I am afraid—though God forgive me if it is an unfair thing to say about people who are now suffering as they are suffering—a mess of their own-making. In so far as we human beings can ever judge one another, one is bound

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to say that, in fairness to our own people, and looking at both sides of this matter.
Nevertheless, it must be a constant preoccupation of the Government to see how Germany can be enabled to consume more, or at least be prevented from having to consume less. There are four ways in which the problem could be tackled. The British zone could grow more food herself, and, I think the House has been told on other occasions how we are doing everything in our power to make that possible, and to bring it about. The British zone could obtain more food from what, before the war, was Eastern Germany. I use that expression because, in fact, a good deal of the old food supply would now have to come from territory that is under Polish occupation at the present time. But more could be obtained, and should be obtained, from those quarters if others shouldered their full responsibility as this country is trying to do.
Third, Germany could obtain more food at the expense of the people of this country. Now here I wish to speak with extreme care because various negotiations are taking place, and I do not wish in any way to jeopardize the chance of their success. The question of whether to lower the British standard of living further in order to assist Germany is perhaps the hardest moral issue that this Government have had to face. The Government are reluctantly but absolutely clear that nothing more can be done in that direction at the moment. To attempt to solve the problem along those lines by our own actions, by our own direct assistance, would be to attempt an impossible task, and would, in our opinion, be likely to bring down this country and Germany in common ruin.
I am sorry to have to put the matter before the House so plainly this afternoon, but I know that the House likes plain speaking. In the long run, the food situation in Germany will be cured by the recovery of food production in the world. In the short run, everything hinges on what can be obtained from overseas—much of it at the expense of the British taxpayer, but all obtained from overseas. I would like to explain the situation as it stands at the moment. The long American shipping strike has accentuated supply difficulties for both the
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British and the American zones of Germany. It has hit the British zone particularly hard because indigenous production there is relatively lower than in the American zone. It is true to say that we are, at the moment, in Western Germany, on a hand-to-mouth basis, and working stocks of bread grain in hand on November 1 did not exceed ten days' supply. Everything possible is being done to accelerate the collection of the harvest, but the position at present is that we cannot hope to get through, even during the last weeks of the year, at the existing very moderate calory level of distributions without some wheat being made available in addition to the import arrivals at present anticipated as coming to the British zone. Urgent negotiations have already begun in Washington, and I am sure the House would not wish me to prejudice them in any way.
May I take a broader view of the factors behind the food shortage in Germany? Many factors have co-operated, and most of them, if not all, have already been referred to earlier this afternoon. What is the result? We see an area which is potentially one of the richest areas in the world, dependent (and bound to continue dependent) on the charity of others. That is a position which cannot go on indefinitely; we are determined that it shall not. But it is the position at the present time, and somehow or other we must enable the British zone to pay its way and to export enough to buy essential imports. There, I know, we are all entirely at one. Noble Lords have rightly stressed the great importance of increasing German production—above all, German production of coal—in the British zone. Germany is bound to continue dependent on others until we can get coal production somewhere near its pre-war level. That is the long and the short of the economic problem.
At this stage of the debate I will not begin describing the vicious circle which has been so well explained by the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, and other speakers—the way in which the coal problem, the consumer goods problem, and the food problem are all inter-connected. At times, it seems impossible to break the chain; but break the chain we must, and will. The figures for coal production are, perhaps, the best available guide as to how the economic life of the zone is faring. It would be untrue to say, as has been said

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in certain responsible quarters—although not. I think, here to-day—that the position is deteriorating. As a result of measures which we have taken to encourage coal production the figures now show that 186,000 tons of coal are being produced per day—the highest level since the zone was first occupied. There has been a steady although small rise since the end of September; so that in that respect there has been an improvement which is not entirely negligible although, of course, in its turn, it has to be much improved upon in the future.
I come now to the heart of the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge. It raises an issue which I think ran right through the speeches of all noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon—the Potsdam Agreement and the level-of-industry plan. Your Lordships will remember that the level-of-industry plan was designed to carry out the provisions of the Potsdam Agreement in the field of the industrial disarmament of Germany. The noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, does not like the level—industry plan. We in the Government have never liked it. We did not like it when it was signed, although it was the best compromise that we could get at that time. We do not like it now. Speaking for myself—and I hope I am not running "beyond the book"—I may say that I like it a good deal less than I did a few months ago. At any rate, we have no affection for the level-of-industry plan.
If I may say so, however, with great respect, the noble Lord tends to exaggerate the direct contemporary effect on German industry of that plan. To-day there is scarcely an industry in Germany which is operating anywhere near the level provided for in the plan. The noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, said that it was operating to 30 per cent. of what was allowed. I know that the figure is somewhere in that quarter, and I will willingly accept it from my old teacher. (I see many of my old teachers around the House to-day, but the time has not yet come when I see any pupils.)
But the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge—and I say this in all seriousness—has not been able to bring forward any very striking examples of his thesis. He has referred to this yard which was making fishing boats—and he has not been able to refer to very much else on that subject.
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He has written articles for The Times; he spoke last week, and he has spoken again to-day; but I do not feel that he has been able to lay before the House a well-documented explanation of how the level-of-industry plan, in the direct material sense, is affecting German industry. I am in the judgment of the House on this point. The House must judge my statement against that of the noble Lord, and read them both in Hansard. I agree, however—and this may enable harmony to be restored between the noble Lord and myself—that indirectly the level-of-industry plan is retarding German recovery. It does that in various ways. There is the general psychological effect, and there is also the uncertainty to which, I think, those who have been to Germany attach special importance—the uncertainty in the minds of any particular group of people whether a particular factory is to go or is to remain. It is the uncertainty about the future, rather than the harshness of the plan's immediate contemporary operation, that is causing the trouble at the moment. It is for these reasons, because we do recognize the indirect damage which it is already doing and, taking a longer view, the direct damage which it might do in the future, that we are quite clear that the present state of affairs cannot continue indefinitely.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: And the borderline plants will not be allowed to go? The noble Lord made a point about uncertainty. Even more important—as I think we are all agreed—is the point that if the plan ought to go, we should not now do anything by way of reparations in getting rid of plants which in a year or two's time ought to be in production.
LORD PAKENHAM: The noble Viscount raises an essential element in the problem, which leads me to remind him—although I am sure he does not need reminding—that the Council of Foreign Ministers are considering the whole question of Germany this month. Noble Lords may have seen an official statement in the papers to-day, that British and American experts are going to meet, and our experts are now on their way to America, to discuss these matters on an economic experts' level. Perhaps I had better be precise there. The announcement states:

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"Discussions will take place in Washington between representatives of the British and United States Governments on certain financial and economic questions related to the bizonal arrangements between the British and American zones in Germany.… The British Government is sending to Washington a group of experts to assist the Embassy in the discussions, including Lieut.-General Robertson, Deputy Military Governor of the British zone of Occupation, Germany, and representatives of the Foreign Office, Control Office for Germany and Austria, and Treasury. Discussions are expected to begin on 12th November. They will be exclusively concerned with financial and economic aspects of the bi-zonal arrangements which have not been worked out in Berlin or which require governmental approval."
We have, therefore, two kinds of discussions about to take place in America—those on the high Ministerial level between the Foreign Ministers, and expert discussions between British and American experts, regarding the bi-zonal problems.
I need not say a great deal more, because we have a Royal Commission shortly, and most of the points raised this afternoon are either of such importance that they should be discussed again and again in this House, or of such minute detail that they are best dealt with by letter, or privately in other ways. I would remind the noble Lord, Lord Beveridge, and the House, that we were not completely mad when we decided—when all Parties decided—at the end of the war, that Germany must be disarmed, and must stay disarmed. One is so apt—I know how my own feelings go in these matters—to move rapidly from one extreme to another. While it is most proper that the other side of the case should have been stated by the great humanitarians to whom we have just listened, we must remember that basically we all agree it is a duty—if I may quote the expression used by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun—to those who died in this war, and a duty to those who might die if another war were to break out, to make sure that Germany is never again given the opportunity to make war. That does involve a drastic measure of industrial disarmament.
But it is all very well to say, "Let destruction come to an end; let the work of construction begin." We would all have preferred that destruction should have already been completed. But it is not so. It has not yet been finally completed. It would have been completed
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much more rapidly if we had gone in for a policy of wholesale demolition, and if we had paid no attention to the future needs of the German people; but just because of that very scrupulousness which has been referred to earlier with somewhat faint praise, and because of our anxiety to look to the future of the German people, we have taken rather longer than perhaps one would have hoped and expected to complete the work of destruction, and some destruction must still go on. It would be misleading the House to give any other impression. At the same time, we do realize that the sooner it is brought to an end the better. The sooner we can say to the German people, "Henceforth all is construction; all is creative," the sooner we shall be able to make the real move forward to which we are all looking.
I conclude by hoping that your Lordships will not think I am claiming too much for the Government, because it is not a question of credit for the Government. Let the Government take any blame that is going, but let the credit for anything that has been done in Germany go to the men on the spot. I know that they will be watching this debate with great interest, and I hope that it is possible to send out there to these Englishmen who are performing a task of unparalleled difficulty with great courage and determination, a message of encouragement from every member in every quarter of this House.
4.55 p.m.
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, I should like to endorse the words with which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, concluded. I should like to take this opportunity—I did not do it before—of thanking the Chancellor of the Duchy and everybody under him for the kindness and help which I received in Germany.
In conclusion, I must congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, on the fact that he believes that hope is more important than food. It indicates that he has never been really hungry, because with lack of food comes hopelessness. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, for his statement that no exports will be taken for reparations. I think that that should receive very wide publicity. It is a very important statement, but a large number of people doubt that that is so. With regard to the rest of what he has said, I would just like

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to say that, if this situation had suddenly blown up out of a clear sky, I think it would be a most magnificent answer. But this situation has been inherent for a very long time. When I listened to his answer I kept thinking of the fishermen on short time in the north and the herring that remained in the sea or that had gone back to the sea. That source of food which was neglected would be of the greatest help now. I am the last person in the world of force this question to a Division. It is in the hands of His Majesty's Government, and on what they do our credit and our future in the world must depend. I beg your Lordships' leave to withdraw my Motion.
4.57 p.m.
LORD BEVERIDGE: My Lords, I do not wish to press my Motion. I do not know whether, with the leave of the House, I might say a few sentences on a number of points which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has made. Before doing so, I still disagree with my pupil on many of the minor points he raised. I am only going to ask him to read my speech carefully when printed and change his mind about some of the things I said. I have only one point to make on this main issue of the level-of-industry plan and destruction. Of course, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, that, although there are cases in which our process of destruction—and I can quote them to him; I will send them to him—has in fact delayed reconstruction, the level-of-industry plan is not the main cause at the moment of the material distress of Germany. That is lack of coal. Let me make one point, in respect of which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has not answered me. Why is coal a matter of quadripartite decision, whilst food is not?
LORD PAKENHAM: I have got the answer and I will give it to the noble Lord.
LORD BEVERIDGE: It is the case that the level-of-industry plan with the destruction has a profound demoralizing psychological effect in Germany. There is no doubt at all about that, and it is tied up with reparations. May I mention the case of the Stulcken shipyard? Why should we decide it will never be necessary
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for Germany now? Why should we destroy it? I hope in fact the Government can come to a decision to stop destruction until we have got a proper statement on the future of Germany. Let them stop, and not go on making things worse and worse.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

  ROAD MAKING PLANT.
  ROAD MAKING PLANT.
  ROYAL COMMISSION.
  ROYAL COMMISSION.
  PROROGATION: HIS MAJESTY'S SPEECH.
  PROROGATION: HIS MAJESTY'S SPEECH.