Sitting of 26 May 1948

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock. The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers.

SHOREHAM HARBOUR BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.
CROMER URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT ADDISON): My Lords, I beg to move the Motion that stands on the Order Paper in my name.
Moved, That Standing Orders Nos. XXI and XXXIX be considered in order to their being dispensed with for the purpose of giving precedence to the Motor Spirit (Regulation) Bill over the other Notices and Orders of the Day, and in order to take the Bill through its remaining stages.—(Viscount Addison.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

MOTOR SPIRIT (REGULATION) BILL.
2.36 p.m.
Order of the Day for receiving the Report of Amendments read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT JOWITT): My Lords, I rise to move that this Report be now received. Before we deal with the Amendments on the Paper I would like to make a few remarks dealing with matters which are not covered in the Amendments. First, I want to apologise to your Lordships for having led some of you astray. I was asked by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, a question on Clause 4 about the phrase
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appearing in the top line of page 4, regarding the business of acquiring and selling motor spirit. On the spur of the moment I expressed the view that that would hit at anybody—for instance, a motor dealer who had some other business and who would not be able to acquire motor spirit for the purpose of that other business. On looking at the clause again, and being instructed, I realise that I was wrong, and mat I was reading the clause as if it were "acquiring or selling" when, of course, the words are "acquiring and selling"—acquiring, that is, for the purpose of sale. I think it is dear that if what the dealer does is to acquire, not with a view to selling but with a view to using in some other business that which he acquires, there would be no prohibition under that clause. That is the opinion which I can now give the noble Lord. I think it is better than the first opinion, because it is an opinion which has been arrived at after deep thought and after I have been instructed.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: I am grateful to the noble and leaned Viscount.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I apologise for having led the noble Lord astray. The next matter with which I want to deal arises on Clause 3. The question was whether we should leave out the words "or the Petroleum Board" which your Lordships will find in line 29. I do not care very much whether we do or not, but the Petroleum Board is coming to an end on June 30, and the only question is whether we shall insert these words to cover that period of time. The functions of the officials of the Petroleum Board, so long as they continue, will be to prepare commercial petrol; that is to say, to put into petrol the appropriate dye and the appropriate chemical. If we do not have those words, of course, the Ministry of Fuel and Power would have to authorise the people to act. On reflection, I am satisfied that they are not covered by the words
" done for the purposes of the enforcement of this Act."
Enforcement, to my mind, can arise only after the red petrol has come into existence, and I do not think the making of the red petrol can by any means be said to be enforcement of the Act. Therefore, I advise your Lordship?—I do not think

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there is anything controversial about this point—that it is better to retain the words "or the Petroleum Board," in order to avoid the necessity of the Ministry of Fuel and Power having to authorise all these people to act.
The only other point I would mention, apart from those which will arise on specific Amendments, is with regard to the clause dealing with directors. I looked into that to see how the position stands, and I find that this clause has been, dare I say, hallowed and sanctified (it depends upon what your Lordships think of the Acts I am going to mention) in other Acts. At any rate, it is common form in many Acts. It started in the Prices of Goods Act, 1939, and to come to more recent years the clause in its present form is to be found in the Borrowing (Control and Guarantees) Act, the Civil Aviation Act, the Atomic Energy Act, the Exchange Control Act, the Transport Act and the Electricity Act, and is also included in several Bills of the present Session. I admit that I was induced to make an exception in the case of the Companies Act. That was because it occurred to me that the only thing a director of a company can do with regard to the accounts of the company is to instruct a properly qualified person. That is rather a special case. Apart from that, we have the form, and I say frankly that I should be reluctant to depart from it.
I have this satisfaction, however, and I think I can give satisfaction to your Lordships, too. It has been arranged that so far as prosecutions of directors are concerned, they will be undertaken only after the matter has been referred to the Minister of Fuel and Power himself. I understand that chief constables and the Metropolitan Police are perfectly prepared to take that line. When such a matter comes before the Minister of Fuel and Power, the line he will take will be to ask for information as to which director of the concern is responsible for that class of business. The Ministry cannot know it, of course, and it would not do to put the onus on the prosecution in this matter, since the facts are peculiarly within the knowledge of the company. But they will ask the company who is the director responsible for that sort of business; and, normally, if they think there is a case for prosecution, they will prosecute that director, leaving it to
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him to find, if he can, the appropriate defence. I say "normally" because, of course, there may be the case of a dishonest company who either conceal the fact or put in a wrong name. In the case of a well-known and reputable company, the line I have mentioned will be that which will be followed. We shall bring into the prosecution only some director who is concerned more nearly than any other director with this particular branch of the business. I think that all the other matters which we discussed yesterday are covered by specific Amendments on the Paper, and we can discuss them when we get to that point. But I thought it convenient to make these few remarks in regard to matters which are not covered by the Amendments. I beg to move that this Report be now received.
Moved, That this Report be now received.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I am sure we are all grateful to the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor for the trouble he has taken in the night watches to elucidate these matters and for the very clear explanation he has given us this afternoon. I think he has cleared up quite satisfactorily the "selling" point; that is, that a man will not be prevented from using the petrol in his own business, but only from retailing it as a pump owner. That seems to be satisfactory. As regards the Petroleum Board, there seemed to be some doubt, as the Bill was drafted, whether the officers of the Board will be enforcement officers. Apparently they are not enforcement officers. As regards the director point, I do not much care what precedents are being followed. One can find these or similar words in many Acts of Parliament. What we have to look at is whether the circumstances to which those words apply in other Acts are similar to the circumstances which exist in this Act. I venture to say that there are no circumstances in any Act of Parliament in the past similar to those of this rather odd Bill which we have before us at the present time. On the other hand, it is only common sense that one should not go haling off all the board of directors of reputable companies to police courts all over the country.
At the same time, if we were to put into the clause words which I suggested yesterday, it would be up to the

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Ministry or the police to find out who was the responsible director. In the case of a reliable company they will be told who that is. But it is not the reliable company, probably, that will be getting into this sort of trouble. The kind of company that will get into trouble is the company who say they are not going to disclose who is responsible. I have only one suggestion to make. I am sure that this undertaking will be carried out, but I do not know for how long this Bill will be in force. As a general rule, where a definite principle is to be followed, the whole of that principle is down in the Bill. I think it is quite a common form in Bills that where the prosecution for a particular offence is to be undertaken only with the consent of the Public Prosecutor or the appropriate Minister concerned that is stated in the Act of Parliament. I suggest to the noble and learned Viscount that it would be convenient, so that the intention is made perfectly clear, to adopt that course here. To that end, perhaps a manuscript Amendment might be moved to-day.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to ask one question of the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor. The most important word in this Bill is the word "proof." We have a very clear definition of that laid down in the case of Carr-Braint. That case was decided in the Court of Criminal Appeal. But the Court of Criminal Appeal is not authoritative for the whole of the United Kingdom. I should like to ask what will be the position outside the areas where the Court of Criminal Appeal is authoritative. I should be grateful if something could be said on this point.
LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH: My Lords, may I express to the noble and learned Viscount my great appreciation of the manner in which he has dealt with the points I raised on the Committee stage?
On Question, Motion agreed to.
2.50 p.m.
Clause 2:
Offences by private motorists.
2.—(1) If at any time commercial petrol is present in the tank of a private motor vehicle, the owner of the vehicle and the person (if he is a different person) then in charge of the vehicle shall each be guilty of an offence:
Provided that it shall be a defence for any person charged with such an offence to prove—
(b) that he was present or in charge of the vehicle when the petrol was pat into the tank, but that he did not know that it was commercial petrol and exercised all reasonable diligence to prevent such petrol being put into the tank;
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved in proviso (6) of subsection (1), to leave out "exercised all reasonable diligence" and insert:
" did not neglect to take any step which in the circumstances he might reasonably have been expected to take."
The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, this Amendment is to meet a point which was raised yesterday by the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Maugham. I was asked to put the clause into this negative form. I hope that this meets with he noble Viscount's approval. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 30, leave out (" exercised all reasonable diligence ") and insert the said new words.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: My Lords, I have carefully considered the Amendment. Small as the alteration in language is, I think it is of considerable value to a person who does not realise the possibility of wrong petrol being pumped into his tank. For my part, I would strongly advise the House to accept this Amendment, and I should like to thank the Lord Chancellor for agreeing to alter the clause to the form in which it will now stand.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 3:
Other offences.
3. If any person—
>(a) puts commercial petrol into a pump used for the purpose of the supply by retail of motor spirit, not being a pump marked in the prescribed manner with the wood "Commercial";
he shall be guilty of an offence:
Provided that

(i) it shall be a defence for any person charged with the offence mentioned in paragraph (b) hereof to prove that he acted in the reasonable belief that the vehicle was not a private motor vehicle; and

(ii) anything done by a person authorised by the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Petroleum Board or done for the purposes of the enforcement of this Act or in connection with any proceedings in respect of an offence under this Act shall not constitute

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any such offence as is mentioned in paragraph (c), paragraph (d), paragraph (e) or paragraph (f) hereof, and

LORD SHEPHERD LORD SHEPHERD moved to add to the proviso:
" and
(ii) anything done by an inspector of weights and measures or a person acting under his direction, for the purposes of the Weights and Measures Acts, 1878 to 1936, or any regulations made under those Acts, shall not constitute any such offence as is mentioned in paragraph (a) hereof."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg formally to move this Amendment.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 34, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Shepherd.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, at this stage, may I point out that by a printer's error there is inserted on page 3 of the Bill at line 35 the Amendment which was moved by the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd. It is inserted there in error. We must assume that that paragraph is not in the Bill. The question is whether or not it should be put in.
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, when the noble Lord moved this Amendment yesterday, I promised to look into one or two of the points which he made. The first one was that he wished to have the inlet valve of the pump labelled as well as the outlet, and he suggested very cogently that that would be a considerable safeguard. I have had inquiries made into that matter, and I find that in fact it is already the practice, therefore I am sure that the noble Lord will be satisfied in that regard. Then, in order to safeguard the position of inspectors of weights and measures, the noble Lord was anxious that they should not be required, after a test had been completed, to return to the tank the petrol which they had withdrawn for the purpose of that test. In regard to that matter, I find that the law requires that the petrol must be handed back to the garage proprietor. Obviously it is a substantial quantity which is being withdrawn, and it would be quite wrong that it should not be returned to the owner. The inspector's obligation is to give him a written certificate to that effect. However, the Ministry are discussing the matter with the Board of Trade, and it seems that a satisfactory way out can be arrived at under which the garage owner will, in
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return for the certificate which he receives from the inspector, give a certificate to the inspector certifying that he has in I fact received the petrol back and has replaced it in the correct tank. In that way the inspector will be covered, because in those circumstances it would be practically impossible for anyone to contend that he had not taken reasonable care in carrying out his duties. Therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will be satisfied and will not press his Amendment.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I wish to express my appreciation for the way in which the Minister has met the points made by me yesterday. I now withdraw my Amendment without hesitation.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: What is the position now? Paragraph (iii) ought never to have been in the print of the Bill. Has some formal step to be taken to delete it, or are we to treat it as though it were not there?
THE EARL OF CLANWILLIAM: My Lords, paragraph (iii) has been inserted in the Bill as now presented to your Lordships' House. Surely the proper procedure to be followed now is to vote on the deletion of that paragraph. Having voted on that and deleted it in the proper way, then the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, can re-introduce it in his Amendment. I think it is quite incorrect that we should proceed, as we are doing at present, with a Bill in which has been written the word "delete" by somebody whose authority I do not know. I think that that is quite incorrect. The clause is presented to us with paragraph (iii) inserted. The noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor has told us that it should not have been put in. Therefore I cannot help thinking that, from the point of view of order, your Lordships should by a vote delete that paragraph, and having done that then the noble Lord, Lord Shepherd, can re-introduce it in his Amendment.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I can only advise your Lordships, but I do not think the noble Earl is right in what he says. This paragraph ought not to be in the Bill at all; it is not there with any authority. None of your Lordships has authorised its insertion. It is there in error and I think we should treat it as though it were not there. If we want it inserted there, we can put it in.
THE EARL OF CLANWILLIAM: My Lords, I cannot get over the fact that it should not be there. But it is there. Surely we should delete it. If we do not, in future anybody will be able to introduce anything in a Bill at any moment he chooses and then just put the word "delete" against it.
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: My Lords, this question of order is of some importance. I agree with what has fallen from the lips of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. This is not an Act of Parliament; this is a Bill. It is something which the House has ordered to be printed. What the House has ordered to be printed is the thing with which we are dealing in our debate. Ultimately, it may become an Act of Parliament, but at the moment no order has been given that this particular paragraph should be printed in the Bill; and the printer therefore had no right to print it. When the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack says that we should treat it as if it were not there, I entirely agree with him.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I am advised that that is right. If we want to comply with what the noble Earl has suggested, we should move that the House do not agree with the printer.
THE EARL OF CLANWILLIAM: If I had the honour of his acquaintance, I would tell him so.
LORD SHEPHERD: I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved to add to the clause:
"(2) Where the owner or the person in charge of a private motor vehicle discovers that commercial petrol is in the tank of the vehicle he shall, notwithstanding that the circumstances afford him a good defence to a charge under Section two of this Act, take steps, as soon as is reasonably practicable, to remove the petrol from the tank, and if he fails to do so, he shall be guilty of an offence."
The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, this Amendment is the one which I indicated to your Lordships yesterday I might move. I think your Lordships all agree that it is a reasonable Amendment and, having discussed it yesterday, I need do no more than formally move it. It means simply that a man, however innocent he may be, must not profit by an irregularity. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, at end of clause insert the said subsection.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD SALTOUN: My Lords, may I ask the noble and learned Viscount, is there any source from which the man can be recompensed? After all, he has paid for this petrol, and he is in fact suffering a loss if he has to give it up and receives no other.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: He may be suffering a loss, but I think he is getting rid of something which it is very dangerous to have.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 4:
Disqualification of retail dealers for twelve months after conviction.
(7) Where any person would, by reason of the disability imposed by any of the first three subsections of this section, be prohibited from carrying on the business of acquiring and selling motor spirit, or acquiring and selling commercial petrol, as the case may be, at any premises, and the court by which that person was convicted is satisfied, on his application, that it is expedient in the public interest, by reason that other facilities for acquiring motor spirit or, as the case may be, commercial petrol are not available within a reasonable distance, not being less than seven miles by road, of those premises, that he should be permitted to carry on the said business at those premises, the court may direct that the said disability shall not have effect or, in the cafe of a disability imposed under subsection (3), shall not have effect as respects those premises, and in that case the said person shall, without prejudice to the imposition of any penalty under the following provisions of this Act, forfeit the following sums:

(a) in a case where the disability arises under subsection (1), or subsection (3), the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds for each pump used or capable of being used at the time of the commission of the offence for supplying motor spirit; or

(b) if the disability irises under sub section (2), the sum of one hundred and twenty-five pounds for each pump used or capable of being used at the time of the commission of the offence for supplying commercial petrol;

and the payment of those sums shall be en forced and they shall be applied in the same manner as a fine imposed by the court.
VISCOUNT SWINTON VISCOUNT SWINTON moved in subsection (7), to leave out "seven" and insert "five" The noble Viscount said: My Lords, as the Lord Chancellor explained yesterday, there must be some hard and fast rule laid down so that all Benches do the same thing. I think we all agreed yesterday that to make people

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drive seven miles over a hill is asking too much. I would have suggested three, but I am quite agreeable to five. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 16, leave out (" seven ") and insert (" five ").—(Viscount Swinton.)
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I am happy to accept this Amendment.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR had given notice of an Amendment in subsection (7) (a) to leave out "used at" and insert "in use at or about." The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, I am sorry to say that there is an error, not in the Bill but in the form of the Amendment. I should have preferred to move the Amendment in this form—namely, to leave out not merely the words "used at" but the words "used or capable of being used at "and to substitute the words" in use at or about." That will apply to both paragraphs (a) and (b), and the clause will read as follows:
(a) in a case where the disability arises under subsection (1), or subsection (3), the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds for each pump in use at or about the time of the commission of the offence for supplying motor spirit…"
I think that meets the point which your Lordships had in mind yesterday, and if I move the Amendment in that wider form I think in effect it gives what I was asked for. I therefore beg to move the Amendment in that form.
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 27, leave out (" used or capable of being used at ") and insert (" in use at or about.")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT SWINTON: I think that exactly meets the point we had in mind.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move the corresponding Amendment to (b).
Amendment moved—
Page 5, line 31, leave out (" used or capable of being used at ") and insert (" in use at or about.")—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
Clause 5:
Disqualifications and special penalties in respect of offences by private motorists.
5.—(1) If any person, being the owner of a private motor vehicle in respect of which
1024
he holds or ought to hold a licence under Section thirteen of the Finance Act, 1920, or under that section as it applies in Northern Ireland commits an offence under Section two of this Act in respect of that vehicle and is convicted of that offence, then—

(a) if the court decides that he remains the owner of the vehicle at the time of the conviction, any such licence which he holds in respect of the vehicle shall cease to have effect, and it shall not be lawful, for a period of twelve months after the conviction, for him or for any other person to hold or obtain such a licence in respect of the vehicle; and

(b) in any other case he shall, without prejudice to the imposition of any penalty under Section eight of this Act, forfeit such sum as may be determined by the court to be equal to half the value of the vehicle, and the payment of that sum shall be enforced and the sum shall be applied in the same manner as a fine imposed by the court.

LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE moved to add to subsection (1):
" Provided that if a private motor vehicle was at the date of the conviction subject to a hire purchase agreement and before the expiration of the said period of twelve months the person from whom the vehicle was hired recovers possession of it under the hire purchase agreement paragraph (a) of this subsection shall not apply to the vehicle."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this Amendment is to protect concerns selling cars on the hire purchase system. At the present time, the effect of this Bill will be that the owner of a car who is convicted of an offence under Clause 2 will be unable for twelve months to obtain a licence for that car, with the possibility of a reduction to six months if the court so allows. The owner of the car is defined in the Bill as
" the person in whose name the car is…registered,"
but where a car is bought on the hire purchase system the ownership remains with the hire purchase company until the option to purchase is exercised by the hirer through the payment of the final instalment. If anybody acquires a motor car on the hire purchase system, then commits an offence and subsequently defaults on the instalments of his car, the hire purchase company repossess that car, according to their rights; but the hire purchase company would be penalised (and I think penalised unfairly), by the fact that they would be unable to obtain a licence for that car and resell it.
During the Committee stage yesterday, the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack pointed out that the reduction

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to six months of the period of suspension would largely mitigate any unfairness which operated against the hire purchase company, but it seems to me that there should be a specific Amendment to protect these hire purchase companies, because, even a six months' suspension would be unfair to them. It may be that someone has bought a car on the hire purchase system and within the first month commits an offence, for which the licence of that car is suspended. Because the purchaser has failed with his instalments, that car is repossessed by the hire purchase company, and for five months at least—and possibly for eleven months—the company cannot dispose of the car. It might be in the autumn, when the new models are coming out, and during that period of suspension the value of the car might fall severely. This is a case where this Bill will bear unfairly on a small class of business people, and since we want to see as fair treatment as possible for the whole community, I move this Amendment, in the hope that the Government will be able to see their way to remedy this matter.
Amendment moved—
Page 6, line 10, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Balfour of Inchrye.)
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord will not press this Amendment. As he has pointed out, it is designed to protect the position of people selling cars on the hire purchase system, and it is possible that occasionally hardship might arise in the way that he has indicated. On the other hand, I think the possibilities of difficulty, the possibilities of riding round the Bill, and also the administrative difficulties, which I will indicate in a moment, on the whole show that there is a balance of argument and convenience against accepting this Amendment.
In the first place, of course, the difficulty can arise only in cases where the hire purchase company do not get the car back before the conviction. It is only in cases where the road fund licence has been endorsed by the court that the difficulty can arise. In most of those cases—and there is no reason to suppose that they will be many in number—obviously it would be to the advantage of the convicted person to keep up his instalments during the time the car is immobilised because, as we all know, cars are very difficult to obtain and they will continue
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to be difficult to obtain. Therefore, it will be only in the occasional cases, where a man cannot pay his instalments, that the hire purchase company would want to take the car back into their possession. In that type of case, if the hire purchase company have to go to court to get the car back, it will take the better part of six months to get it back, so that there no special hardship will be involved. The only case where they can get the car back quickly will be by arrangement with the convicted person. Obviously, in that type of case there is a possibility of a bargain being struck between the hire purchase company and the hirer, by which they can get back something which they can dispose of profitably in the market. They might therefore pay the man who was being convicted by the court quite a substantial sum to be free of his bargain in order to get this car back into their possession for the purpose of selling it to somebody else. In that case the man would actually gain pecuniarily from the fact that he had committed an offence, so I think your Lordships will realise that it is hardly worth while opening up that sort of possibility in order to safeguard the hire purchase companies against the very small risk of loss.
There is another administrative difficulty. When the road licence has been endorsed by the court with the conviction that remains effective for twelve months, unless, at the end of six months, the court removes it. There are no provisions for removing it, and the noble Lord, in his Amendment, has not provided any means by which it can be removed. Obviously, therefore, without some further Amendment, providing some special method of removing the endorsement in this particular case—which will, clearly, be a cumbersome and complicated matter to provide, especially at this late hour—there is no effective method by which administratively the object which the noble Lord has in view can be achieved. I think that in the light of these difficulties, and in view of the fact that it is unlikely that there will be many of these cases, he will probably wish to withdraw his Amendment.
THE DUKE OF RICHMOND AND GORDON: My Lords, if I may, I would add a word in support of this Amendment. And may I say that I do so with not a little experience of the hire purchase

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situation in regard to the sale and ownership of motor cars? I would like to correct two aspects of the case as put forward, as I understand them, by the noble Lord who has just spoken. In the first place, to contend that the question of repossession of the car by the hire purchase company, or the trouble which may be associated with repossession, is likely to occur before conviction is, I think, wrong. I believe that the type of man who is convicted of a serious crime is the very person who will require to depossess himself of the motor car after he is convicted. In the second place, a reference was made which, I think, is even more important for your Lordships' consideration—it was the reference to the repossession of the car by the hire purchase company taking, possibly, six months, owing to legal complications. To the best of my knowledge and belief—and I shall be corrected if I am wrong—I think the system whereby a hire purchase company repossess a car is not a legal one. It is simply a case of repossessing a car, according to an agreement; it does not require enforcement of any kind.
THE MARQUESS OF WILLINGDON: My Lords, I would just say a word in support of the last speaker's remarks. What he has said with regard to bona fide hire purchase agreements is correct.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, I am sorry that the Government will not accept this Amendment. I do not feel able to press the matter, I will only express my regrets and ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 9:
Institution of proceedings.
9. Proceedings for an offence under this Act shall not be instituted in England and Wales except by a constable or by or with the consent of the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Director of Public Prosecutions.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR THE LORD CHANCELLOR moved, after "Act" to insert:
" except subsection (4) of the last preceding section."
The noble and learned Viscount said: My Lords, I am obliged to move manuscript Amendments, arising out of what took place just now and the suggestion that the noble Viscount, Lord Swinton, made about directors of companies. He
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said, in effect, that if these prosecutions are to be instituted with the authority of the Minister, the Bill should say so. I have here two small manuscript Amendments which have that effect. I would remind your Lordships that this could not be done on the Third Reading, but we can do it on the Report stage. If your Lordships will turn to Clause 9, page 10, at the bottom of the page you will see this:
" Proceedings for an offence under this Act shall not be instituted in England and Wales except by a constable or by or with the consent of the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Director of Public Prosecutions."
I am proposing these two Amendments to that section, and I will read the section as it will read when the Amendments are made:
" Proceedings for an offence under this Act, except subsection (4) of the last preceding section, shall not be instituted in England and Wales except by a constable or by or with the consent of the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Director of Public Prosecutions "—
and then I go on:
" and proceedings for an offence under the said subsection (4) shall not be instituted except by or with the consent of the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Director of Public Prosecutions."
In that way it is made plain that an offence under subsection (4) is not an offence under the jurisdiction of the police but one which comes directly under the jurisdiction of either the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Director of Public Prosecutions. If that meets with your Lordships' wishes, I will now move the first of these manuscript Amendments.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 43, after (" Act ") insert ("except subsection (4) of the last preceding section ").—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, I am very much obliged. I am sure that these Amendments are entirely satisfactory.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I now beg to move the second of the manuscript Amendments.
Amendment moved—
Page 10, line 45, at end insert (" and proceedings for an offence under the said subsection (4) shall not be instituted except by or with the consent of the Minister of Fuel and Power or the Director of Public Prosecutions ").
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
3.17 p.m.
Then, Standing Order No. XXXIX having been dispensed with:
LORD CHORLEY: My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Charley.)
VISCOUNT MAUGHAM: My Lords, before the Bill is actually read a third time, may I venture to express a protest against something which, so far as my memory goes, is unusual in the course of our passing of an Act of Parliament? The objection which I have is one which I mentioned quite shortly in the course of the debate—namely, that, as I understand the Bill, it creates offences the nature of which and the very existence of which cannot be determined until rules or regulations have determined the meaning of the phrases "commercial vehicle" and "private vehicle." I say at once that I did not in any way press my objection, because I know that it is desirable that this Bill should become law as soon as possible and I understood that it was desired to give it its Third Reading to-day. But the case is, indeed, a somewhat unusual one. The general principle ought to be—and I hope the Government will agree that this is the right general principle—that in creating offences which may lead to imprisonment or to large fines, the nature of the offences should be clearly pointed out in the Bill which is approved by both Houses of Parliament and which receives the Royal Assent. In my view, it cannot be right, except in a very unusual set of circumstances, to leave the question of the liability to which I have referred to be determined by rules and regulations which have not received and will not receive the approval of the Houses of Parliament—and which, in fact, may be altered from time to time. A man ought not to go to prison because, according to a rule or a regulation of some kind, an act turns out to be one for which he is liable to the penalties which I have mentioned.
The main point with which I am concerned is this: that under this Act—if it becomes an Act—the fact that commercial petrol is present in the tank of a private motor vehicle becomes an offence committed by the owner or the person in charge. It is true that he has certain defences, but they may not be available.
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One cannot tell what are private motor vehicles which are of such a character and carry out such conditions until one has seen the rules and regulations which define them. For all I know, when this Bill becomes law, there will be plenty of people with motor vehicles in their garages or yards as to which they will not know whether they are public or private. If there should be commercial petrol in those cars, those people are liable to all sorts of penalties. Such a state of affairs is, in a general way, a breach of what I suggest is the principle which should animate any Government in creating by Act of Parliament offences of a serious character.
I hope the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack can give us an assurance that though in this case, for various reasons, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not agree with, it was necessary to leave it for regulations to designate what is a public and what is a private vehicle, this Bill will not be treated as a precedent for leaving it to a rule or regulation to determine whether a thing is subject to a penalty and to imprisonment or not. If I were to give rather an extreme illustration, I would say, supposing you are framing an Act under which certain penalties were attachable to larceny, that it would be quite wrong to say that you propose to define larceny in rules and regulations at a future date. You would have to define it in the Act. That may be an extreme example, but it is the sort of thing I have in mind when I say that this Bill ought not to present a precedent for leaving crimes, offences and misdemeanours to be determined by rules and regulations.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords. I quite agree with the general principle which the noble and learned Viscount has enunciated. The trouble is that it is very difficult to draw the line of demarcation between a private car and a public car. Although we know that the vast majority of cars will fall on one side of the line or the other, there may be some sort of strange vehicle which rather sits on the fence. I am afraid I have mixed my metaphors. But that is the reason why we ask for the powers contained in Clause 12 to make regulations defining the position. As a general principle, however, I agree with the noble and learned Viscount, and I will never

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hereafter rely on this as a precedent to justify my doing this again.
On Question, Bill read 3a with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

COMMONWEALTH AND EMPIRE TRADE.
3.23 p.m.
LORD BROUGHSHANE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, whether, in view of doubts which have recently been expressed, they will give an assurance that no agreement with America or any other foreign country will be ratified which in any way restricts the freedom of Great Britain to enter into tariff or other arrangements with any Dominion or Colony; and will the Government undertake that most-favoured-nation arrangements shall not apply within the British Commonwealth and Empire.]
THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (VISCOUNT HALL): My Lords, I presume that the noble Lord has in mind the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiated at Geneva last year, and the Charter of the International Trade Organisation drawn up at Havana by the International Conference on Trade and Employment. Both these agreements provide for most-favoured-nation treatment between the countries parties to them, but there is an exception for pre-existing preferences, including preferences within the British Commonwealth. The preferences saved in this way are subject to any modifications resulting from negotiations between the parties to the agreements. These negotiations were designed to bring about the reduction of tariffs and the reduction or elimination of preferences on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis. The agreements also provide that, subject to certain possible exceptions, existing preferences shall not be increased and no new preferences shall be introduced.
The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade incorporates extensive lists of reductions of tariffs and preferences resulting from the negotiations held at Geneva
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last year between the participant countries. It has not yet been brought finally into force, but has been applied provisionally from January 1 last between certain countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada and Australia. The Havana Charter is not in force, pending its acceptance by a prescribed number of Governments. Before His Majesty's Government take steps to accept the General Agreement finally, or to accept the Havana Charter, there will be opportunity for Parliament to debate those instruments.
LORD BROUGHSHANE: My Lords, I am sorry that the Government do not see their way to reply to my question whether they will give an assurance that no agreement with a foreign Power will be ratified which in any way restricts the freedom of Great Britain to enter into tariff or other arrangements with any Dominion or Colony. That is a very simple question and I should have thought it could be answered in a simple way. The rather long reply of the Government still leaves one in doubt as to the precise scope of the arrangements that have been made, especially as the noble Viscount says that no new preferences will be subsequently introduced. We are precluded from entering into any arrangements we think fit to make with any Dominion or Colony. The point of the question is—
VISCOUNT HALL: My Lords, I intervene with some reluctance, but I am advised that the noble Lord is entirely out of order in speaking on this matter. He is in order to put a supplementary question, but I think his statement has gone far beyond that.
LORD BROUGHSHANE: My Lords, I thought my remarks were a supplementary question regarding the noble Viscount's statement that no new preferences will be entered into. That seems to me to be in contradiction to the assurance I asked for in my question, that any arrangements made between Great Britain and her Dominions and Colonies shall not be affected in any way by arrangements made between Great Britain and a foreign Power.
VISCOUNT SWINTON: My Lords, arising out of that question, is it not clear that the answer of the First Lord of the

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Admiralty confirms the undertaking given by the noble Viscount the Leader of the House on a previous occasion, that whatever may be the contents of the Draft Havana Charter and the Geneva Agreement, no ratification can take place until both those instruments have been brought before Parliament and approved?
VISCOUNT HALL: That is so. It is the intention of His Majesty's Government to bring the matter before Parliament for approval, before ratification.

B.E.A. AND CAPTAIN FRESSON.
3.28 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, whether they are now in a position to make a statement in regard to the conditions and terms under which Captain Edmund Fresson was discharged from the service of British European Airways.]
THE MINISTER OF CIVIL AVIATION (LORD NATHAN): My Lords, under the terms of the Civil Aviation Act, 1946, it is a function of management reserved to the boards of Corporations to make appointments and discharges of staffs and to settle the terms and conditions of their employment. I would add that, in view of the interest which this case has attracted, I have thought it desirable, in order to avoid public misunderstanding, to make inquiries of the Corporation. As a result, I understand that Captain Edmund Fresson has been awarded compensation on terms which compare favourably with awards made in similar circumstances to other members of the staffs of the Corporations.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord for making inquiries in this matter, I should like to fortify his inquiry by quoting what he slid in Edinburgh on November 28, 1946, when opening the Scottish Division of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. He stated that the staff of the Division would very largely consist of those then running the Scottish air services and with special knowledge of conditions and needs. I would like to ask the noble Lord whether he is aware that Captain Fresson is a man of fifty-six, who has given thirty
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years' service to civil aviation. He has now had his tools of trade taken away from him and cannot practise. He is left, in fact, with one and a half year's salary at that age.

ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICERS IN AFRICA.
LORD RENNELL: My Lords, I beg to ask His Majesty's Government the question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
[The question was as follows:
To ask His Majesty's Government, how many administrative officers have been posted on first appointment (on probation and definitely) to Nigeria, Gold Coast, Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika, since January 1, 1946; and how many of these have resigned or been transferred at their request to other branches since that date.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE FOR COLONIAL AFFAIRS (THE EARL OF LISTOWEL): My Lords, the figures for which the noble Lord has asked are as follows: Appointments 470; resignations 11; transfers 2.

THE CIVIL SERVICE
3.32 p.m.
VISCOUNT MERSEY VISCOUNT MERSEY rose to call attention to the recent remarks of the First Civil Service Commissioner at Oxford, reported in The Times of March 22, on the low standard in personality and intelligence shown by applicants for entry in the Civil Service; and to move for Papers. The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this Motion has been on the Order Paper for some considerable time. The delay is not due to me, but to the well-known pressure of Government business. Indeed, the Motion would not have been on the Paper to-day had it not been for the kindness of my noble friend, Lord Teynham, who kindly postponed a Motion of his own. As it is two months old I think I had better shortly detail its history. On March 22 The Times printed a paragraph reporting a speech made at Oxford by Sir Percival Waterfield, the First Civil Service Commissioner. I will read the relevant part of what Sir Percival Waterfield is reported to have said:
" Of 3,000 men and women graduates interviewed for the Civil Service…40 per cent. of those who wanted to get into the administrative

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service and 50 per cent. of applicants for the foreign service scored marks for personality and intelligence which represented complete failure. From the point of view of the Civil Service they were not in the running. Indeed, about 5 per cent. in the administrative service and 8 per cent. in the foreign service were below even the lowest category. A disquieting feature was that among those who failed 60 per cent. had university or college scholarships and 20 per cent. were those who had State scholarships."
That seemed to me to be so important a statement that it deserved to be brought to your Lordships' notice.
Sir Percival Waterfield is not only a distinguished civil servant, but also a distinguished scholar. He was educated at Westminster and Christchurch, and he took double First Honours. He then passed the competitive examination into the Civil Service, and filled a number of important positions in that Service, until nine years ago he was appointed the First Civil Service Commissioner. As your Lordships know, the First Civil Service Commissioner is the gentleman who, in effect, directs all the examinations and tests for entrance into the Civil Service. I understand—though my noble friend will correct me if I am wrong—that he is one of the civil servants who are not in the habit of receiving directives but who are largely independent. I do not imagine that a gentleman with that record, and who has held those positions, is likely to make a statement of this sort without good foundation for it. There are, apparently, three points which arise. First, there is the training or the education to which these applicants have been subjected; secondly, the tests which are applied to them when they wish to enter the Civil Service; and, thirdly, the qualities which are judged necessary for the Civil Service. I shall not weary your Lordships, because I know that several other noble Lords who are much more conversant with the matter than I am, and who are more likely to engage your Lordships' attention, have expressed their desire to speak. I am also conscious that there are two other Motions on the Paper following this.
With regard to the first question of training and education, are we doing the right thing? Are we teaching the young people the right sort of things? Are we doing it in the right way? We
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hear a lot about State scholarships. A great many people in my neighbourhood in the country have State scholarships, and I hope that they really mean something. Many years ago I, myself, obtained a scholarship, and it was then thought to be quite a good thing. I did know some Latin, I did know some Greek, and I did know some history. I also knew some divinity—lists of the Kings of Israel. I did not know any science, I did not know much French and I certainly knew no geography. But, still, I knew something. Is the training that we are giving at present relatively adequate? And is it followed up in a satisfactory way? The advantage of the scholarship in my day was that we were all brought up together in one building. We all had the same sort of interests. We were not ashamed of our books, and we had a general interest in the humanities and in literary subjects. We all read. I heard a Manchester schoolmaster broadcast the other day, and he said that no young people read at all now. I do not know if that is true, but that is what he said. Personally, I am an unrepentant believer in the humanities. I always remember that Voltaire said that the classics were the amenities of later life. I remember, also, that Sir Robert Walpole, after twenty years as Prime Minister in the House of Commons, when he was old and infirm, said that the thing he most regretted was that he had forgotten his classics. Are the applicants taught any foreign languages? I believe it is rather the fashion at present, in the Army, to decry those who speak foreign languages; they are merely technicians. For myself, I think this is wrong; but there are other speakers who will comment on that.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: May I ask the noble Viscount whether he is talking about what people are taught before they come to the university, or what they are taught at the university?
VISCOUNT MERSEY: I am speaking at the moment about what they learn before they go to the university—those who secure the State scholarships. Even what they learn at the universities must be largely influenced by what they have learned before.
The second point is the tests. I am not going to concentrate upon Stoke d'Abernon. Many other speakers who know more than I do will have a good

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deal to say about that. Oral tests are probably a good thing. I might divert your Lordships with tales of oral examinations. It is alleged that they give opportunities for smartness; that the applicants are much handicapped by nervousness, and that luck and other considerations enter largely into them. The tale that always comes into my mind (perhaps it is already known to your Lordships) is that of the young undergraduate who was poor at his books, but who was a good oar, and whose services his college very much wanted to retain. His tutor said a word to the examiner—which no doubt did not influence him—and to the astonishment of everybody this young fellow passed Responsions, or whatever it was. Afterwards, his tutor said to the examiner: "How on earth did that poor fool get through his examination?" "Well," said the examiner, "it was only a qualifying examination, and 50 per cent. of the marks gave a pass. I asked only two questions. My first was: 'Do you know who wrote Aeneid?'; and the answer was: ' Yes, Homer.' Well, that was no good. Then I asked him my second question. I said: ' Do you know anything else that Homer wrote? ', and he said, ' No,' which was right. So he passed."
As to smartness, we all know the tale of the young naval cadet who, in his last test, came up before the board of three Admirals; and the presiding genius said to him: "Now, my lad, whom do you consider the most distinguished Admirals in British history?" The boy replied: "Lord Nelson, sir, Lord Howe, sir, and, if I may say so, yourself."He also passed. As regards nervousness, I remember the late Lord Burnham telling me that when he went up for his oral examination in his Honours Schools, he was so nervous that he asked the leave of his examiners for his wife to sit in the room. He had married at the age of twenty-one. His wife was admitted to the examination room and he also passed.
I should like to ask my noble friend whether the results on paper are as bad as the results viva voce; perhaps too much bias is given to the spoken rather than to the written word. It is a matter upon which I should be glad of some information. I have left the tests question alone. My thunder has largely been stolen by
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several comprehensive articles which have lately appeared in the daily Press.
As regards the qualities for the Civil Service, I may say that I have never been a civil servant, but I have been associated a good deal not only with the Civil Service in this country, in the Foreign Service, the War Department and the Board of Trade, but also with one or two Civil Services abroad. I was once in the Embassy in Russia and I used to see a good deal of the Civil Service here. Everybody wanted to join the Chin. You got a uniform, a position, and the premise of a pension. Many young fellows used to go up for this examination and fail. They had read a good deal of Marx and Spencer and that class of ideologist—I am not alluding to the stores but to Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. Those young men came away embittered and disgruntled, and were often a fertile forcing ground for revolutionaries. I am not at all certain that very much the same position did not at one time occur in India.
In France, where I was in Paris commanding a military mission for three years and where I got to know a good deal of the civil servants, they were extremely competent. They had a much wider range of knowledge than one generally expects in a man sitting in an office. But the quality that always impressed me—it is one which I have never been able to acquire myself, but it is common to all civil servants, not only in this country but in others—was the beautiful land they wrote—I know three noble Lords under whom I have had the privilege of serving, Lord Currie, Lord Bertie, and Lord Hardinge, who up to the end of their lives all wrote the most perfect copper plate hand. They wrote it without hesitation and without erasure, like Sir Walter Scott, who used to write page after page of his novels without a single erasure, so that they went straight to the printers. What a cheap bill for corrections he must have had! I know that the Civil Service requires particular qualifications—and no doubt Sir Percival Waterfield is amply qualified to say what they are—but possibly not the ability to make rapid decision such as a soldier, a sailor or an airman has to make I imagine that a civil servant, especially in a high position, needs chiefly the power of reflection and thought, which is not easy to acquire. It is possible that at present we are in a transitional stage. The after-

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math of the last war was much the same. There are a number of ex-officers who are anxious to get regular employment, and they possibly have not the knowledge they think they have. That may account for some of the very large number of failures.
I think I have now said sufficient. I am very happy indeed to know that the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, will reply. With his range and his versatility he will cover the field without any difficulty, but I do not want to put too bulky or too heavy a burden on his back. I have told him the questions that I propose to ask, and I will reiterate them. Do His Majesty's Government endorse the remarks of Sir Percival Waterfield? Is it true that the written replies in the examinations are of as low a standard as the oral replies? Is a sufficient importance attached to foreign languages? By foreign languages I do not merely mean being able to ask the way, but to read foreign literature and possibly to travel in foreign countries. Do His Majesty's Government suggest any alterations in the present system?
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (LORD PAKENHAM): I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount, who is being so very kind and helpful to us, but I am not quite clear about his third question in relation to foreign languages. Is the noble Viscount asking us a question about the use of foreign languages in schools and universities, or is he referring to the tests and asking whether sufficient emphasis is given to foreign languages in the tests?
VISCOUNT MERSEY: Both. In the preliminary training, which I imagine is largely influenced by what the Commissioner suggests, and also in the actual tests. I imagine that if there had not been some suggestion to the headmasters of schools that qualification in foreign languages was thought necessary, it would not be applied in the examinations. If the noble Lord, in giving a reply—which I know will be both amusing and illuminating, as his replies always are—decides in addition that he can lay some Paper, not to-day nor to-morrow, but within a reasonable time, I think he would give a great deal of satisfaction to many people who are exercised about this question. I beg to move for Papers.
Moved, That there be laid before the House Papers relating to the recent remarks of the First Civil Service Commissioner at Oxford, reported in The Times of March 22, on the low standard in personality and intelligence shown by applicants for entry in the Civil Service.—(Viscount Mersey.)
3.50 p.m.
LORD SIMON OF WYTHENSHAWE: My Lords, I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the noble Viscount for raising this very important question of the part that university graduates can play in the business of the Civil Service. I have long been actively interested in this question, and I think I was the first member of your Lordships' House to visit the country house at Stoke d'Abernon. I spent forty-eight hours there and witnessed the test which is known by the name of "C.S.S.B." I have recently met the Final Selection Board, who actually make the appointment. I have also, in view of this debate, taken the opportunity of reading very carefully the First Commissioner's speech. He speaks with unrivalled authority. He represents the Civil Service, which is the largest employer of university graduates in administrative positions of all concerns in the country. In the last two-and-a-half years, he has himself, I understand, interviewed over 3,000 candidates, mainly ex-Service men, for these positions. I do not think the speaker was aware that the Press were present when he made his speech, or he might have spoken in rather less strong terms. However, perhaps it is a good thing he did speak out, because it is probably the strength of his language which has given us the opportunity to-day of debating this very important subject. Sir Percival discussed all the broader qualifications which are required for the Civil Service, and summed up the main qualifications as "brains, guts and conscience." Perhaps we may put it, shortly and simply, as "brains and personality"—personality being an omnibus word, including the qualities of initiative, drive and power of co-operation required for various administrative tasks.
Your Lordships will remember that about a hundred years ago Lord Macaulay was responsible for introducing examination as a method of entry into the Civil Service. It was a great success. It is commonly said that it produced the best Civil Service in the world. That is probably true. After

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the First World War it was found desirable, in view of increasing specialisation, to add some test of personality. After the Second World War there were many ex-Service men who wanted to get into the Civil Service, and it was felt that a purely competitive examination would not be fair. Their five or six years of service would have told against them, rather than for them, and therefore this new system was introduced. In the past, the Civil Service has gone mainly upon the method of examination, whereas industry has gone on the method of personality as manifested by interview. I do not think Sir Percival had any complaint as to the brains or intelligence of candidates. They represented about the top one-third of our university products, and I think the Commissioners are entirely satisfied with the quality of their intelligence. He suggested that the universities might take more trouble in selecting their students. Education in our universities has become more and more specialised, and Sir Percival suggested a broader and more general education. It has been said that the science graduate knows nothing about the humanities and regrets it; while the arts graduate knows no science and is proud of it. Perhaps this is a sweeping statement, but Sir Percival went on to suggest to the universities that no more arts students should go out into the world without some knowledge of science, no scientists without some knowledge of the humaner studies, ancient or modern, and none without the ability of expressing himself in terse and vigorous English. He went on to say that the Commissioners would be glad to modify accordingly their examinations for the universities.
Now I turn to the second question, the question of the country house where the C.S.S.B. have their headquarters. There have been some rather violent attacks in the Press on the C.S.S.B. One paper with a circulation of millions, had a large headline:
"Careers lost in the week-end"
and asked:
"How many promising young men have had their careers destroyed because they have failed to pass a psychological test at a weekend house party? "
That seems to me a most unjustifiable and unfortunate reflection on C.S.S.B. It is completely misinformed. The answer is that no candidates have had their careers destroyed at the house party, because the
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house party have no authority to accept or reject. It is unfortunate perhaps that the Press were not admitted to see this work earlier. Noble Lords will have seen reports in the Press in the last day or two, much more adequate reports, and will no doubt be aware that the essence of this scheme is that candidates are examined in groups of about seven by three experienced interviewers who spend forty-eight hours with the candidates, singly and in groups. Then each of the three interviewers writes out a full report; they give a mark, I think for nine grades, for each candidate. They take no decisions at the country house. They simply grade the candidates. The reports they write are very full and they go to the Final Selection Board, who include civil servants from the Home Office, the Foreign Office, trade unionists, and so forth, and who are able to receive fuller information than would otherwise be possible.
There is no doubt that the science of interviewing is advancing rapidly. Sir Michael Sadleir reported in 1935 on the subject of interviewing and its importance. It is of interest to note the placing of candidates by a selection board. The results showed the method to be highly unreliable. The candidate which Board A placed first was placed eleventh by Board B, and Board B's first choice was placed thirteenth by Board A. Sir Michael Sadleir's report showed that they had not the same information before them; it all depended whether or not they found the right subject for a particular candidate. The whole point of C.S.S.B. is that they try to give the fullest possible information; to the Final Selection Board. I was greatly impressed by the mass of care-fully sifted and well thought-out information which they produced; there is no doubt that the Final Selection Board have better opportunities than they ever had in the past.
One striking piece of evidence of the value of the C.S.S.B. method is that large industrial firms are beginning to adopt it. I know two firms, both of whom have adopted the C.S.S.B. method, though rather differently. They have a selection board; they have about seven candidates and three or four interviewers, and they all live together for about twelve hours in one day. They have every possible kind of test, both in groups and singly. Then the interviewers meet and come to their

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decision. In that case, C.S.S.B. and the Final Selection Board amalgamate into one. What they want is to find the men with the best personality and those who are most likely, given the proper opportunity, to lead to the top administrative jobs. Then there is the question of the cost of interviewing. The cost of interviewing each student is about £20 and, owing to the tremendous flood of applicants, of which five out of every six are rejected, the cost per selected candidate comes to £120. In the case of the Civil Service, of course, that cannot be afforded. As noble Lords know, from the beginning it is responsible work, and, of course, there is security for life. Whereas industrial firms can afford to make mistakes, in the selections for the Civil Service mistakes cannot be afforded.
There is one other point I should like to raise now. A certain amount of prejudice has been imported into this because of the practice of having a professional psychologist as one of the three interviewers. It seems to be suggested that psychologists are a rather undesirable set of people. The psychologist is a person who studies human nature; he has studied psychology seriously at a university. He has worked at it for many years of his life before being chosen for a job of this sort. Psychology is, perhaps, the most difficult of the sciences; it is certainly in its infancy. The whole practice of the Civil Service Selection Board is to try to judge and understand the various mental characteristics of the individuals before them and to estimate how they are likely to develop. Surely that is a job not to be left to amateurs. It is extraordinary to say that it is undesirable to have the most experienced people who specialise in this subject doing this work. In my own firm in the last few weeks we have tried this method for the first time. The only way one can judge is to seek the help of the psychologist. A psychologist came down; he worked out the whole procedure; he spent a whole day with eight candidates and with three or four of my colleagues; and the next morning the interviewing board met. My colleagues told me that the psychological interviewer went through the whole list of his eight candidates, testing all their qualities, and gave what they regarded as a completely convincing and masterly
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performance. They all said that none of them had attempted to draw the conclusion which this man did, and he completely convinced them. I think one may go so far as to say that to start a selection board of this kind without a professional psychological adviser would be a complete waste of time. Therefore, those who arrange these things must have regard to that aspect of the matter.
In conclusion, I would just summarise the evidence for the success of this measure. Of the 3,000 candidates, 2,500 have been unsuccessful, not because they were not good candidates, for I think the quality has been high all through. However, in spite of their very high quality, 2,500 candidates have been unsuccessful. Here are 2,500 rejected candidates in the country. There have been two or three inquiries as to what they thought of the method employed and I am told that 90 per cent. of them took the view, in spite of the fact that they had been rejected, that the method employed is good, fair and better than the alternative method of examination. In addition, I think about a hundred distinguished people have been down to Stoke d'Abernon and spent forty-eight hours there. And there again, the great majority are in general favour of the system. I have already said that the leading industrialists are paying the system the compliment of copying it and, if possible, improving upon it.
On the question of what the Home and Foreign Civil Service think about it, I am told that they are favourably impressed; but no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, will give us fuller information when he replies. However, I think it is fair to say that this is the best method yet devised to enable a selection board to secure proper basic information. The system is affording valuable research and is adding to our knowledge in this important field. Of course, it is far from perfect; nobody would suggest that it is perfect. But what is certain is that the system is helping the Final Selection Board to make fewer mistakes and to make a better selection. I hope that noble Lords will agree, when they have heard the debate, that the late Government are to be congratulated on having set up this system, which was based on the War Office Selection Board's system employed during the Second World War. That system produced very satisfactory

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results, although in that case candidates were selected for a quite different set of qualities, from those sought by the Civil Service Selection Board. I hope we shall hear that it is intended to maintain and to continue the system, and I hope your Lordships will agree that it is, in fact, going to make a real contribution to strengthen the Civil Service for its ever-increasing responsibilities.
4.8 p.m.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: My Lords, this debate appears to have become a debate largely on the C.S.S.B., but Sir Percival Waterfield was not talking about the C.S.S.B.; he was talking about the distressingly low standard of qualities shown by the candidates who came before the board. No doubt that implied that the yardstick of the C.S.S.B. was a true yardstick; nevertheless that was not what he was concerned with. He was concerned with the fact that his experience seemed to show that the quality of the candidates for the Civil Service was distressingly low. He connected with that the fact that many of those who failed, and failed very badly indeed, had won State scholarships. Therefore it did look, as the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, was concerned to say also, as though something was wrong with the State scholarship system.
If your Lordships will allow me, I want to say a little about both those matters. May I begin by saying that I have not, like the noble Lord who preceded me, been to Stoke d'Abernon, but I have had the advantage of many conversations with Sir Percival Waterfield on this subject. He has been extraordinarily helpful and instructive and I owe a great deal to him. I say that very firmly because, nevertheless, I do not agree with him. Sir Percival appears to me, in his criticism of the candidates, to say two quite different things. I am sorry to say that one of them seems to me to betray an elementary fallacy. He appears to have failed to notice that as the result of the employment of the C.S.S.B. and the doing away with the regular examination the ordinary screening of candidates for the Civil Service has for all practical purposes disappeared. Before the Second World War, the standard of the candidates, especially for the home Civil Service, was extraordinarily high, and no college tutor would ever have advised his
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pupil to go in for the examination unless that pupil was fairly certain of securing either a First or a very good Second. Now all that is necessary is that the young man shall be deemed to have a reasonable chance of getting a Second—a reasonable chance. Lawyers, of course, are more familiar with the meaning of that mysterious word "reasonable." My experience is that the young man, in contradiction to what we have just been told regarding the C.S.S.B., and not knowing what on earth they will say, thinks it worth while to "have a shot," whereas if he had had to take the big examination, his tutor would have said, "In the circumstances, you have not the faintest chance of making any show."
Therefore, with respect, I think that the remark that Sir Percival made about low intellect is nonsense. I have heard many experienced tutors say that the standard of the university man at the present day is very high indeed. No doubt universities have made more mistakes than usual, by reason of the fact that they have to admit ex-Service men without examination, and no doubt there are among their pupils a certain number of people who, in normal times, would not go to a university. Nevertheless their standard is very high. I think it is perfectly clear that this selection has been made out of a far larger number and of even less average quality than would have been the case had there been a regular written examination. Therefore, with great respect, I pay no attention what-soever to that first remark.
A NOBLE LORD: Would the noble Lord allow me to say that Sir Percival Waterfield was not criticising only their intellect.
LORD LINDSAY OF BIRKER: It is only the dons who do that! It is over forty years since I sent my first pupils into the Civil Service. I have watched their careers and have seen them gain distinction, and I do not think that intellect is the only quality that matters. I make that general point: that there was no screening. But Sir Percival said something much more serious, with which I am in broad agreement. He said there were a small number of people who were quite extra ordinarily bad, and especially poor in personal character. I have had something like the same experience. At the

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beginning of the war, at Oxford, I did something that heads of Colleges seldom do. I saw the whole of the Service candidates in the university. And I and my colleagues could not help being struck by the fact that there were a small number of boys (I cannot give your Lordships the proportion, but they were mostly State scholars) who were no good at all. Their health was hopeless, they had no physique, and they made one despair. I know how that comes about because at the beginning of the war I had to do a lot of teaching (which I had not done for some time), and I taught these boys. They were very able boys, coming from poor homes and small schools, and they were boys to whom a State scholarship meant absolutely everything.
The headmasters of these small schools were very much dependent upon getting a reputation on these scholarships. I am not criticising the secondary schools as against public schools. These boys had taken no part in the ordinary extra curricula activities of the school, and the severe competition for the State scholarship had ruined their health and usually ruined their minds. They were getting into the Civil Service and, what is worse, they would in some cases become teachers, so producing a fairly vicious circle. I am not sure of the machinery we should adopt, but I do not think we shall get this matter put right until local authorities have a qualifying examination in health, personality and spirit, and until it is made clear to the ambitious and unfortunate master of the small school, and to his purpose, that the boy has not the ghost of a chance unless he takes part in the ordinary activities of the school. We want to attempt in part the practice of the Rhodes Scholarships and in that way to insist on personality. Though I think things are better, now that there are more State scholarships, it is important to remember that the temptation to the poor boy and the temptation to the headmaster of the small school is very great. I remember well that on one occasion one of my colleagues said: "What is wrong with X grammar school? These are boys who have obtained scholarships from there. What is wrong with the boys? "It was a small unknown grammar school, and the headmaster did not know the ropes of Oxford and Cambridge, and
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he could secure recognition for himself and his boys only by getting these awards. Something must be done about that.
Now may I say something about C.S.S.B.? I have taken the only test I could take about C.S.S.B. I told Sir Percival that I could not judge the quality of my own pupils against the quality of pupils of other colleges, but I thought I could be fairly certain about the relative merits of my own pupils. I secured the final marks of twenty-seven of my men in the examination; I wish that I could have obtained the marks that they got in C.S.S.B., but that I could not do. However, I got the final marks of those twenty-seven men. In the judgment of my colleagues and myself nine were clearly wrong. The remaining eighteen were about right, but there were one or two very bad mistakes. There was one young man who was put very high indeed for his personality, but who was not passed and who was put on the reserve list. He was in the Treasury, and is now doing extremely well there. He went in again and passed very high. There is something odd there, one way or another. Broadly speaking, I have two criticisms of C.S.S.B. I admit that I am not frightfully excited about psychology. I am afraid that I tend to share the wonderful remark that a freshman once made when he said: "Here philosophy ends and error and ' psychology ' begin." I think it is much more subjective than people suppose.
There is one point, it seems to me, that the psychologist who tries these tests does not notice. There are people who are prepared to play games and face artificial situations with the same zest with which they face life; but there are others, just as good, who say: "I am not going to play this silly game." That applies, I think, to this whole psychological game. It is very ingenious, but there is a lot in it which does not deal with the unforthcoming person who despises it. Yet often, I think, that kind of man is very good. One often has before one a type of young man—and it would seem that almost two-thirds of the young men of this type come from Aberdeen—who firmly say: "I am not going to say a word to you damned idiots." They do not say it, of course, but their faces express it. Those young men are sometimes very good indeed. I entirely agree that so long as you have,

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as now, to make your appointments by interview, so long as you cannot supplement the system or add to it the written examination, C.S.S.B. is far better than an interview of half an hour unsupported by C.S.S.B. Therefore, I am not quarrelling with it. But I am appalled to hear that the Foreign Office propose not to restore the written examination, that they propose to go on with just the interviews. I regard that as a very serious matter. I do not understand that that is recommended by the Civil Service Commission. I believe that that is simply the recommendation of the Foreign Office. I am sure that it is wrong. I am sure that when people show themselves capable of passing these big written examinations and getting high marks, there is something in them.
I know several people of high attainments in the Civil Service. Time and again these people pass examinations and come out first, second or third. One cannot do that without a lot of ability—unless, of course, one happens to be merely an "examination wallah." I entirely agree that we need the interview to cut out the "examination wallah." The ideal system, I think, is something like that which we had before the war. We had the written examination and an interview for which was given, I think, something like five hundred marks. For my part I do not mind how the interview is weighted, but I think you must restore the solid evidence of achievement in a big written examination, because all other things are so extremely subject to personal judgment. I used to think big written examinations were not enough, and I still think so. I believe the right idea is to supplement the written examination with the interview. While I certainly think that the interview by C.S.S.B. is much better in many ways than the half-hour interview, I sincerely hope that the Foreign Office will change what I understand is their decision not to restore the written examination.
4.23 p.m.
LORD MORAN: My Lords, apart from creative work in science and the arts, apart from research and the writing of books, I suppose that your Lordships may agree that nothing contributes more to success in life, whether in war or in peace, than the gift of selecting men, of picking the right man for a particular
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job. Therefore, we are, naturally much concerned with how this is done. I remember a member of your Lordships' House, Lord Hirst, once saying to me: "I know when a man comes through the door if he is my man." There are, I am sure, men who can detect something wrong with a person remarkably early in their acquaintanceship with him, as others detect a wrong note in music. But these men are far too few to be considered in relation to any particular procedure. Their methods evade definition; they are subjective—they cannot be taught to others. Therefore, inevitably there has to be a search for more objective tests which can be applied by less gifted men. Now have they been found? I think that if you asked that question of the average senior soldier or sailor during the war, he would have replied with a flat "No." When a callow youth who has never heard a shot fired in anger, confidently claims that by his psychological tests he can tell whether an upstanding lad who has done well in the front line should, or should not, have a commission, naturally, and inevitably those soldiers and sailors grow impatient. It was perhaps not so much that psychology was a science in its infancy as that a few of those who practised it were in their dotage.
Though I think that many of us will sympathise with the criticisms which have been so common in the Army and Navy of these tests, still I am sure it will not be wise, in this very difficult matter of the measurement of men, to reject out of hand any aid to precision, even when it domes from quarters that seem rather suspect. I think we ought to guard carefully against the conservative instinct which is in all of us—even in the bosoms of your Lordships opposite—and which is rather affronted by anything new. I had a boy who for a year was head of his house at a great school, who was then awarded an Exhibition at a Cambridge College. Then he made good in the Navy and gained a commission by serving on small ships. I confess I was much perturbed when I learned that whether he was to be admitted to the Foreign Office or not was going to depend on a forty-eight hours' house-party of the kind which has been described, and that his fate would be in the hands of three people of whom one was a female psychologist. But I have to confess that when he

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passed, human nature being what it is, I began to wonder whether or not there might be something after all in this procedure.
Coming back to the question we are really discussing, the pronouncement of the First Civil Service Commissioner, two things strike me. One is that he has not been fully reported—at least, what he said is not available to most of us except in the columns of The Times. I gather that two statements have been made, and one is to the effect that he is not complaining of the standard of intelligence. But in The Times it is quite expressly said that of the candidates 50 per cent. and 40 per cent. respectively failed in both intelligence and personality, and he spoke of complete failure. Further, the noble Lord who spoke last was speaking of State scholarships and he distinguished quite clearly the 60 per cent. who have university and college scholarships from the 20 per cent. who had State scholarships—or whatever the percentage of State scholarships was.
I feel that the First Civil Service Commissioner should have given us more data if we are to decide whether there was anything in what he said. He surely could have told us what proportion failed in the intelligence test and what proportion failed in the personality test. If a considerable proportion of the failures—we are told they amounted to 60 per cent.—had actually occurred in the intelligence tests, then, since these were men of proved university merit who had won college or university scholarships, I am quite sure that the great majority of psychologists with any competency in this field would suspect not, as the First Civil Service Commissioner suspected, the method of awarding university scholarships, but these Civil Service tests. I say that because no such discrepancy has been found in the past in this country or abroad when comparisons of that kind have been made. If the failures were chiefly in the personality tests, I think it is necessary to remind your Lordships that those tests for personality have never been validated either in peace or in war. In using the word "validated," I am using the jargon of psychology. There is nothing to prove that our old traditional methods are not as good as these personality tests. We do not know in the least
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which is the better. Therefore the confidence of the First Civil Service Commissioner seems to be rather misplaced, for he is talking of tests which are entirely sub judice.
What does all this amount to? In the first place this whole procedure was introduced as an emergency measure. It was felt, and I think rightly felt, that it was not fair to ask a boy who had been at sea for four years during the war to compete with a boy who had never left England and who could put his nose into a book almost every day. Therefore tests were designed not to test knowledge but to see whether a boy could use his wits. But that emergency has passed, and presumably candidates for the Civil Service are now coming through the universities and we shall know how they have done in the Tripos at Cambridge and the Final Schools at Oxford. Surely, if we know the result of those examinations, we do not require intelligence tests any longer. The best psychologist I know, a man whom I think should be consulted in this matter, said to me quite definitely that if we have the results of the University Tripos and Final Schools we do not require intelligence tests.
Secondly, we do not want to test only the intelligence of candidates. Something more may be necessary. We must know the kind of things we are looking for. I think, and, what is more to the point, the vast majority of candidates seem convinced, that the Stoke d'Abernon week-end, if it is regarded as merely an elongated and prolonged interview, is far fairer than the short interview we had in the past. It therefore seems, as has been suggested already, that the results of the university examinations, such as we know them, plus the Stoke d'Abernon scheme for testing personality, would be a satisfactory method of assessing the merit of candidates. I cannot agree more with what the noble Lord said on the folly of giving up the written examination. This new method was a temporary expedient. It tests many qualities very thoroughly, but it is no substitute for the much more searching examinations applied in the universities. We should get a totally different type of man if we were to go back altogether on the past. Thirdly, if we are to use personality tests at all as part of this Stoke d'Abernon week-end, then they ought to be designed in such a form that after a year or two

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of experimental trial we shall know whether they are reliable or not. That cannot be said at the present time. The difficulty is, in spite of what has been said about brains and guts, that nobody really knows what are the criteria of success for the various branches of the Civil Service. Until we know that, we should arrange for records of candidates to be followed up to see whether they meet those criteria.
Finally, there is one point which may seem irrelevant but which I am certain is very relevant. When we are approaching the most difficult field of the measurement of men, I think we ought to approach our task in a state of humility. It is certainly not a field in which anybody can be dogmatic. We are only at the very beginning of a method of accurately assessing men, and it seems to me that when we meet, as I think we have met in the statement we are now discussing, a rather too confident assurance that a final and infallible method has been found, we are on the wrong tack. I happened a short time ago to be asked to lecture at the Staff College of the Air Force. I went down there and found there were 140 pilots, the pick of the survivors of the war, and I have never seen gathered together so many decorations of the kind that really mean something—V.C.s, and two bars to the D.S.O. That I, an elderly apothecary who had taken no part in the last war, should lecture those men on courage, made the sense of the ridiculous rise in me. But I was determined not to lose the opportunity that was given to me, and I asked them if they would answer a written questionnaire. They agreed, and I set them questions like this: From your experience, what qualities are necessary for a successful pilot? The answers I received to about a score of questions of that kind were quite remarkable. I believe that such records are badly needed.
A few days later I happened to find that a little book I had written on this subject had been put on the list of compulsory reading at the Staff College at Camberley and that the Commandant at Sandhurst had asked the publishers for permission to use two chapters for some literature he was preparing for the cadets. It occurred to me, as it must have occurred to many of your Lordships, that the lessons of the three Services during this war should be gathered together into a book. I went to
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the War Office and suggested such a book to them and said I would be glad to write it for them. But nothing happened. The War Office were quite happy that they had found at that time a final and infallible method of testing men. I can only say, my Lords, that it is not so simple as that.
4.37 p.m.
LORD ELTON: My Lords, I think I ought to begin by apologising to the House for adding to the number—I do not know the appropriate noun of assemblage—of Oxford dons and ex-dons who are to address your Lordships this afternoon, but I cannot help taking a special interest in the matter under discussion since for five or six years past, with tongue and pen, I have been doing my ineffectual and obscure best to suggest that there must be something fundamentally wrong somewhere with the cursus honorum, from the elementary and preparatory school right up to the Final Schools at Oxford, in that it confines itself to selecting the climbers on the ladder of educational preferment, the potential leaders of the future, by means of a narrow intelligence test, a mere examination in book knowledge. Since it is manifest that character as well as intelligence is indispensable to all high achievement, character as well as intelligence should be the concern also of the scholarship examination. Therefore, I must begin by agreeing to some extent with the strictures of Sir Percival Waterfield—I have committed myself thus far a hundred times over. I believe that the traditional tests are over-narrow in that they confine themselves to selecting persons likely to absorb readily and reproduce lucidly the ideas of other people.
So far as the traditional examination goes, in which I have often taken part myself in the past, the successful candidate need possess neither common sense nor common honesty, neither courage nor adequate physique, nor even an original mind. It is the kind of examination in which Shakespeare and Cromwell, and almost certainly Mr. Winston Churchill, would have ignominiously failed. For in early years the possession of a strong character or original mind only too often serves as a sort of non-conductor for the ideas of other people, so that the potential Cecil Rhodes, the potential George Washington, spends his schooldays consigned to the bottom of his class and leaves school hall-marked as a dunce,

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perhaps for lifelong obscurity. Not only does the traditional cursus honorum—and I include the scholarship examinations and the final Honours examinations of the universities in that phrase—jettison quite a number of potential leaders by the way; it also, as the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, has reminded us, nurtures, and sometimes no doubt fathers eventually on the Civil Service, a certain proportion of what I can only call idealogues.
The word "idealogues" was first extensively employed by Napoleon. I think by "idealogues" he meant the sort of person who possesses acute intellect insufficiently founded on character, and who may therefore be relied upon to embrace unreal abstractions without proper reference to practical possibilities. We have all met the arrogant intellectual who cannot keep his own shoelaces tied up, who cannot find his razor in the morning or live happily with his wife, but who is, nevertheless, completely prepared with a ready-made plan for reorganising British industry or reforming the United Nations Organisation. Anyone who has taught at a university, as at least four of the noble Lords who will have addressed your Lordships this afternoon have done, will agree, I think, that among the most brilliant of his pupils—among the inevitable laureates of any written examination system—there is a small but persistent proportion whom nobody who knew them intimately would trust to run a whelk stall effectively for a week.
What surprises me about the traditional system is that it has not produced a larger proportion of idealogues. I think there are two reasons for that. One is that in order to obtain a high class at one of the ancient universities—and I dare say at a modern university also—it is necessary to resist the various blandishments of life in a university town. That in itself requires a certain amount of character. Secondly, I suppose that until comparatively recently the majority of students, at any rate at Oxford and Cambridge, came from the public schools and, owing to the emphasis which the public schools have so long and so rightly placed upon character training, it was not really possible for a boy to pass through one of them and come out an idealogue. That tended to mask the dangers inherent in the traditional system of picking a prize
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boy, or potential leader, solely by a narrow intelligence test.
But, of course, the proportion of public schoolboys in the universities, and I suppose in the Civil Service also, is steadily diminishing. For that reason, as well as on many other counts, we should welcome, at any rate the principle which I take it lies behind the new Civil Service methods—the determination to apply a test considerably more comprehensive than the traditional examination in book knowledge. To that amount of stricture of the traditional past I am committed by what I have myself frequently attempted to say in public. But, while I welcome the determination of His Majesty's Government to found their selection for the Civil Service upon a more comprehensive basis, I must say that I have grave doubts about what I have been able to discover as to the actual methods which they are employing. On the whole, I find myself largely in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay.
May I at this point remind your Lordships of the existence of the Rhodes Scholarships, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, made a passing reference? For more than forty years the Rhodes Scholars have been selected from all over the United States and the British Commonwealth, young men who it is hoped, in the words of the founder,
" will esteem the rendering of public service their highest aim "
and will go back to their homelands and become the leaders of their generation. To put it crudely, what Mr. Rhodes laid down in his will was that a Rhodes Scholar should possess either first-class intellect, founded on sound character, or most exceptional character founded on sound intellect. In other words, he was requiring his executors and trustees to do precisely the job which the Civil Service is now trying to invent a new method for doing. The Rhodes Scholarship system has been trying for forty years to pick the man of all-round ability, the man who has brains, the man who has guts or character, or whatever you like to call it. By the prescience of the founder, setting what was then, so far as I know, a wholly unique precedent, the Rhodes Scholar is selected without any form of written examination. The technique of selection has been worked out with great care over forty years. It is infinitely simpler than

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the C.S.S.B. arrangements, about which we have been hearing this afternoon, and I think it is worth while pointing out to your Lordships that, so far as one can judge, it has been extremely successful.
In the first place I would mention the academic results. After all, the Rhodes Scholar, like the civil servant of the future, is not elected purely on intellectual grounds. Moreover, the young man coming to Oxford from the British Empire overseas, or from the United States, suffers very real handicaps in comparison with the undergraduate coming up from an English public school. The education which he has hitherto experienced is not calculated to the same extent to lead to success in the final Honours school at Oxford. Nevertheless, statistically, purely in terms of academic results, the Rhodes Scholar shows up only a little less favourably than the open scholar selected from English schools solely on the grounds of intelligence; and the Rhodes Scholar shows up distinctly more favourably than the open exhibitioner, selected from English public schools solely on the grounds of intelligence. The number of distinguished names of former Rhodes Scholars, in every walk of life all over the world, is convincing testimony that the selectors have, on the whole, succeeded in picking men of all-round ability. They have statistics in the United States comparing the past university careers of 100 Rhodes Scholars with 100 persons possessing the highest intelligence quotient (I apologise for the detestable but fashionable phrase), and the comparison is markedly in favour of the Rhodes Scholar.
Finally, it is worth remembering that three great universities in the United States hive already imitated the Rhodes system by establishing scholarships to which elections are made without written examination, and which follow the Rhodes model. Therefore, I think we may claim that the Rhodes Scholarships have behind them an accumulation of evidence that on the whole the process of selection has been successful—an accumulation for which, in the nature of things, the new Civil Service methods cannot hope for many years to come.
In some respects the methods adopted for the selection of Rhodes Scholars differ markedly from those which we are discussing this afternoon. There are local selection committees appointed all over
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the British Commonwealth and the United States. There is no real uniformity in their composition, but a general norm is a committee of seven representative men, experienced in academic and professional life and business affairs. A majority of the members of these committees are former Rhodes Scholars. In their selection they rely very greatly upon the school and university record of the applicant. They rely to a considerable extent upon testimonials from those who have known the applicant throughout his formative years, and upon a written statement by the man himself, giving the reasons for which he hopes to proceed to Oxford. Finally, they rely upon a very cartful interview, but an interview without any of the elaborate and scientific character of the new C.S.S.B. methods. There are two respects in which, so far as I can make out, the method of selecting Rhodes Scholars—on the whole so well justified by experience—differs, and differs fairly markedly, from the methods we are discussing this afternoon.
In the first place, it has proved most valuable to place great reliance on the school and academic record of the applicant. I do not think we know what is done by the Civil Service Commissioners in that respect, but I earnestly hope that the reports of C.S.S.B. and this week-end party—certain aspects of which re-mind me of the Mad Hatter's tea party—and the views of the three observers, will not be allowed to override, too readily at any rate, the opinions of men who have been in intimate touch with the candidate throughout his formative years. I am sure that if that happens a serious mistake will be being made. Secondly, we have no psychologists on any of the sixty or seventy Rhodes Scholarships selection committees. During the last twelve months I have been in the United States, Canada, South Africa and Rhodesia, and have met some hundreds of members of these selection committees. I took occasion quite a number of times to ask whether they would like a psychologist sitting with them upon their committees. Almost without exception these distinguished men, in these several different countries, with this very varied experience in various walks of life, greeted the suggestion with horror and apprehension. I retain an open mind, but I do suspect that psychology is a

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young science, a tentative science, and one which is making rather exaggerated claims.
I cannot get out of my head certain reports which came to me of the work of psychologists on the boards which selected officers for commissions during the war. One young friend of mine told me that the first question asked him when he appeared before this board was: "Are your parents married?" That is a question, of course, to which a great many possible reactions could be imagined, some of them surprising and indeed painful to the asker of the question. But I cannot believe that the answer, whatever the reaction of my young friend may have been, necessarily threw an unerring flood of light upon his qualifications for a commission. I know of another young man who, after being asked four or five questions, said: "Well if this is the sort of question which I have to answer in order to obtain a commission in the Army, I would rather remain in the ranks," which he did—no doubt to the loss of the Army, for he was a promising candidate.
LORD PAKENHAM: May I interrupt the noble Lord? He has informed us that certain aspects of C.S.S.B. remind him of a Mad Hatter's tea party. Could he mention the aspects in question?
LORD ELTON: It is really a sense of strain—rushing from one place to another, writing reports on imaginary situations in an imaginary island, and then discussing them, aware all the time that a relentless eye is boring in on one and that the person with whom one is supposed to be in consultation is a deadly rival, whose contributions to the discussion may place him higher in the final order.
LORD SIMON OF WYTHENSHAWE: Has the noble Lord any evidence that this sense of strain existed? I saw no sign of it whatever.
LORD ELTON: I have not myself attended a session of this kind. I have heard from one or two young men who have, and I can only say that I was extremely self-conscious at that age, and that I should not in the least expect to do myself full justice under the conditions which one pictures after reading those interesting articles in The Times and elsewhere. I have not had the advantage
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of the noble Lord in actually being present. I hope we may hear more of the psychological tests, but for the time being I hope that His Majesty's Government will at least agree that they are sub judice.
Before I sit down, the noble Viscount who introduced the Motion asked me to put one question which he himself forgot to put. He wished to ask the noble Lord, whether there is evidence that the winning of a State scholarship implies a definite standard of merit. For myself, I would merely end by saying that while I am fully in agreement with Sir Percival Waterfield and the other critics, that the traditional system of narrow intelligence tests does need widening, I hope it will also be agreed that the system which is in process of superseding it has yet to prove itself.
4.58 p.m.
LORD PIERCY: My Lords, I feel sure that when the distinguished and, I would join with the noble Viscount in saying, the brilliant and charming First Civil Service Commissioner had his tilt, at Oxford, against the Common Entrance and scholarship systems which produce the candidates for university education, he had no intention of provoking a widespread discussion on the C.S.S.B. However, I am afraid that that was inevitable, although the subject he raised was, as the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay of Birker, rightly said, the subject of the educational ladder.
I want myself to talk about the C.S.S.B. and some related matters, but I think it would be reasonable to say a word or two upon Sir Percival Waterfield's speech. I can speak of it only as reported in The Times, which is naturally a summary and, therefore, perhaps rather more picturesque than the speech itself which my noble friend Lord Simon of Wythen-shaw has read in full. I would be inclined to say that, in drawing upon C.S.S.B. results for criticising the machinery producing candidates for the universities, Sir Percival allowed too little weight to one or two facts. The first is that the C.S.S.B. is designed to select for a particular vocation. It is based upon a careful study of the requirements of the highest levels of the Civil Service. Therefore its proceedings are, so to speak, "angled" that way. Of course, conditions in the Civil Service change. My father-in-law had two friends living at Wimbledon who were both members of the golf club; in the morning, if fine, they

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would play a round of golf, have their lunch and then go to Whitehall. Sometimes, if the match was closely contested, they would play a second round after lunch and go to their offices at about 4.30. It is not like that now. And the Civil Service is demanding, through its examinations and other procedures, the very pick of the young population. Therefore it was going a little far to suggest, as the First Commissioner seemed to do, that the bulk of the University population should consist of people who would prove to be suitable for top-ranking civil servants.
Secondly—a point that has been made—this reconstruction intake of candidates does not represent a normal intake from the universities. It includes older people, people of lesser intellectual brilliance; in many cases people who have not had a full university education; and so on. Besides these arguments, I find it difficult (and perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, would clear up this point) to reconcile the figures given in The Times summary of the First Commissioner's speech with the figures which in the last few days have been handed out by the Civil Service Commissioners. These figures go up to the beginning of 1948 and they relate to 2,725 candidates. The numbers graded "successful" were 608 candidates, or 22.3 per cent.—rather more than would be required to fill the number of actual vacancies. If we add together those graded "successful," "near misses," and "within striking distance," we get a total of 73.3 per cent. That leaves only 26.6 per cent. and these are described as "not in the running by the standards of this competition." I draw your Lordships' attention to that rubric. In that 26.6 per cent. rather more than one-half are classified as "of sound general ability "—" ability "being used in this context in rather a wide sense, to include qualities of personality. Those are the actual figures: 73.3 per cent. "within striking distance" or better; 14.4 per cent. Of "sound general ability." I hardly see where Sir Percival's "40 to 50 per cent. of completely useless people" came in.
I would now like to say something about the C.S.S.B. In the first place, as has been pointed out, this selection procedure of the C.S.S.B. is part of the machinery for conducting the reconstruction competition
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and those 2,725 candidates were candidates for the reconstruction competition, which must be distinguished from the normal intake for the Civil Service. To deal with those it was necessary to have some machinery which could deal with candidates of varied ages, experiences and education. The object of the competition was to select future civil servants of the rank of Assistant Secretary to Permanent Secretary and the machinery consists of three parts. First, there is a qualifying examination of simple traditional type; secondly, this grading by what we call group procedures—C.S.S.B.—and, thirdly, a very conscientious boarding by the Final Selection Board. This is, in fact a selection board of a conventional type working on complete material, including the results of C.S.S.B., in a very thorough way. The relations between C.S.S.B. and the Final Selection Board should be mentioned. The derision, and the responsibility for it, rests in every case with the Final Selection Board; C.S.S.B. collect evidence and make it available for the Board. Candidates have taken very divergent views of the two. Most of them have found C.S.S.B. satisfactory and like it much more then the Final Board—which one young person described to me in the intemperate language of youth as "absolute drains." The consistency, however, between C.S.S.B. grading and the Final Selection Board grading appears to be very high. I have here some figures, which are not official figures, according to which the rankings of the Board and of C.S.S.B. have shown in some cases a correlation as high as 95; and it has never fallen below. 8.
Certain advantages are claimed for the country house method. There are four which I should like to state. First, the selection by C.S.S.B. is selection for a particular occupation, based on an extremely careful and detailed analysis of the qualities required in that occupation. It is directed to something quite different from the competitive examination of the old type. Secondly, the procedures of C.S.S.B. are designed to exhibit the candidate's qualities in a group context. He is to be seen in activity among the people with whom in the future he will work, and in the company of the people under whom he will work. He gets a chance to show his qualities in various ways, in

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a spacious period of time—forty-eight hours—and in circumstances which eliminate nervousness and shyness and remove the feeling of being tongue-tied. I have been at the arrival of candidates at Stoke d'Abernon; and within a comparatively short time I have seen and heard a babble of young people who appeared to be perfectly at their ease. Thirdly, the system of tests and exercises is designed to bring out native capacity and effective intelligence as distinct from acquired knowledge and practice, the real quality as distinct from the content of the mind which results from experience. Fourthly, the whole test, occupying forty-eight hours, is intended with all its ancillary parts to be completely comprehensive. There are the tests which are as complete as possible; in addition to that, every available piece of information about the candidate, his tutor's observations, his school record, his personal experience and performances, is carefully scrutinised and built into the complete picture; and it is this complete picture, systematically analysed, which goes to the Final Selection Board.
That is the C.S.S.B. system. A great deal has been said about the psychologists. What is the position of the psychologists in this set-up? There are three psychologists at Stoke d'Abernon. Usually there are three Boards working at the same time, and each Board consists of a psychologist and two other persons, generally high-ranking civil servants. So that the selection instrument has a psychologist as an element, and two other persons to provide general experience, to preserve a balance. Nevertheless, the psychologists are fundamental to the whole system. They are there in three capacities. First of all, they are there as members of the Boards in right of their own capacity and experience, because these psychologists have had great experience in group testing, in individual testing and in the theory.
Secondly, they are there as advisers to the administration and to the other members of the Boards on the tests which should be applied and the underlying principles. Finally, they are there as a kind of over-all check to see that the whole system is run upon sound scientific lines. They provide the techniques, and they often devise them. They devise the form
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of records and see that proper records are kept. That links up with the point that was impressively put by the noble Lord, Lord Moran, about validation. The validation of these tests must take time because the validation arises out of the subsequent performances of these people in the vocation for which they have been selected. It can be based only upon proper records properly kept. That is an indispensible part of the work of the psychologist in this set-up. It might well be thought that, as a device for dealing with an exceptional situation, nothing much better could have been found than C.S.S.B. but, of course, it never can be claimed that any system is infallible. However good a system of selection may be, it must have its failures. The test really is whether a given form of selection from time to time and on the whole gives better results than any alternative form.
I do not know that the actual validation of the C.S.S.B. procedures can be expected at short notice but, as has already been pointed out, C.S.S.B. was modelled in its underlying principles upon the procedures employed by the Armed Services during the Second World War. It is tackling a different problem, but it is tackling it by fundamentally similar procedures. During the Second World War, as is well-known, the Services—that is to say, the Army, the Navy and, to a more limited extent, the Air Ministry—employed these group methods including the use of the psychologist (and, in the case of the War Office, the psychiatrist also) for a wide range of purposes; in particular for the selection of candidates for O.C.T.U.s in the Army and for officer selection in the Navy. The Boards that selected for O.C.T.U.s during the Second World War were known as W.O.S.B.s. The Civil Service Selection Board is a C.S.S.B. and the War Office Selection Board is a W.O.S.B. The W.O.S.B.s during the period of the Second World War handled very large numbers of men and, although war is not a good time in which to think of scientific problems of verification and the like, still it was possible during the Second World War to apply to the results of the W.O.S.B.s scientific principles of verification—that is to say, to check the results of selection by W.O.S.B.s with the results of selection by traditional methods. Men were selected to go into the O.C.T.U.s by the respective methods. Their ranking

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when they passed out of the O.C.T.U.s could be compared. The result was a most impressive demonstration of the superiority for the then purposes of the War Office of the W.O.S.B. methods.
I have here some figures which I can quote. The figures of one large sample came out like this. They are figures related to candidates passing out of the O.C.T.U.s and I think they will be familiar to the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell. The results are divided in this way: Above average, average, and below average, of candidates passing out. By the traditional method you get: Above average, 22.1 per cent.; of average quality, 41.3 per cent.; below average, 36.6 per cent. Those were the figures of the traditional method. The group, put through the W.O.S.B.s, came out like this: Above average, 34.5 per cent. as against 22.1 per cent.; average, 40.3 per cent. as against 41.3 per cent.; below average, 25.2 per cent. as against 36.6 per cent. These figures illustrate my two points: first, that none of these systems as at present devised can be 100 per cent. perfect; secondly, in those conditions and for the purposes for which the W.O.S.B.s were employed, they did their work of selection with an impressive margin of superiority over the ordinary methods.
That was the background of the C.S.S.B. system. I would like to take a few moments, if I may, in sketching more widely the whole question. The use of these group procedures by the War Department, by the Admiralty and by other Departments in war-time was the largest and most impressive experiment in those methods that there has been; but the history of these methods goes back for thirty or forty years at least. I know about those because I was associated—and for many years with the noble Lord, Lord Woolton—with the National Institute of Industrial Psychology, which is occupied with these subjects. This is a scientific body founded by a distinguished member of the Royal Society, Dr. Charles Myers, and built up by a number of distinguished psychologists including Sir Cyril Burt. For twenty-five years or more it has specialised in procedures for vocational guidance and vocational selection and, although it did not originally institute these group procedures, it has been a pioneer in this field. The extent of its position in that field, I think, is shown by the fact that when the Admiralty and
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the War Office decided to employ psychological methods in their selection procedures, they turned to the Institute for trained staff. We supplied the Admiralty with eight trained psychologists, of whom one is to-day the senior psychologist at the Admiralty; and to the War Office Directorate of Selection of Personnel we supplied five psychologists who were, on that side, the backbone of the organisation which was set up by General Sir Ronald Adam. One of our psychologists was the first chief psychologist to that organisation, and to-day the chief psychologist to the Man-power Planning Department is a former member of our staff, Colonel Ungerson. In addition to that we lent staff to the Air Ministry and are assisting the Home Office. I might add to that that the three psychologists who are doing the work at Stoke d'Abernon are also all former members of the Institute's staff.
The reason we were able to do this was, of course, the fact that for so many years the Institute has been employed on these problems in individual cases and in industrial establishments. That is really the broad front of this whole matter. It is also its backward perspective and its prospect, because these procedures for selection of men are of extreme importance to the industrial future of this county. It has already been pointed out in this debate that a number of big firms, which include Unilever, Imperial Chemical Industries and the Philips Electrical concern, are all selecting their intake of new people by these group procedures. Your Lordships will observe that the problem for these big industrial concerns is a different one from that for, let us say, the Civil Service. The Civil Service, in selecting for the administrative class, is deliberately aiming at getting a selection of the very pick of our young people—the best in brains and in all-round personality. In these large industrial establishments staff has to be taken at all grades, because we cannot all be intellectuals or administrators of the level of Civil Service administrators. Many of us have got to be managers, clerks or sales personnel, or whatever it may be. These procedures to-day are being devised and adapted to the needs of this general intake, the object being the simple one of making the best possible use of available man-power, and bringing it into situations in

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business concerns where it can be of the most value in the job. At the same time it performs the great social function of bringing people into the kind of work where they will find the utmost effectiveness and satisfaction.
The application of those methods is not by any means limited to big firms. It is to-day being applied also to small firms, because in a small firm (which is often a tight and peculiar little social group of its own), the selection of a new works manager or managing director is of very great importance, and the procedures to do that successfully have to be carefully thought out. But this type of method is being applied in those circumstances to-day with a measure of success which compares favourably with the ordinary haphazard methods which usually are the only ones which can be employed in business. Finally, in the supervisory grades of industry—particularly foremen—there again methods are being devised which will ultimately he of great importance. I think it was worth sketching in this background because it shows that C.S.S.B. is not an isolated fantastic experiment; it is a major example of the employment of group procedures in a context which has great social importance.
I must not take up more time and I would like to conclude with a word on validation. We have heard a good deal about psychologists. Psychologists have been spoken of in terms which would hardly be applied to physicists or chemists or other scientists. I beg your Lordships to bear in mind that psychologists are just plain ordinary scientific men, like other kinds of scientists, who are working away at these matters—collecting facts, analysing them, collating and trying to draw inferences from them, using observation and experiment and the familiar if humble apparatus of science. In the long run, the psychologist, like the scientist in other fields, will come out with important results; indeed, he has already produced important results. He is dealing with a very difficult subject matter, particularly when he is dealing with the behaviour of human beings in groups; but he is working upon scientific lines with the requisite scientific humility. He is more closely chained to practice than many scientists, and part of his job is devising the applications to practice. These applications in W.O.S.B.s are
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supported in some degree by records of success, but there does arise in connection with the whole subject the problem which was emphasised by Lord Moran—namely, the problem of verification or validation.
Validation in these matters takes quite a considerable time. You can check or select a man going into an O.C.T.U., and you can then compare your selection procedures with the man passing out of the O.C.T.U. All that has been analysed. But to get a complete result you would like to follow these men into combat, where they are officers in charge of part of the operations. And that kind of evidence has proved rather difficult to obtain. The same consideration applies to C.S.S.B. It will be some years before you see the results; but if you want to get the results, if you want to secure validation, you must prepare for it from the beginning; and validation and preparation for it, and following it up, are expensive. No doubt the Civil Service Commissioners can do it, but over the whole of industry it may be more difficult to arrange, although it is important that it should be arranged. There I think the bodies which have been interested in this subject, namely the Medical Research Council (which, over a long period have supported research in these subjects), and the new Human Factors Committee set up under the Treasury should devote some part of the funds that are available to them to support research and organisation for the validation of these procedures. It is not the most spectacular work, but in the long run it will be most useful.
Before I sit down, I think I might add this, which is my firm conviction: that for the immediate purpose of the reconstruction competition C.S.S.B. has proved its worth, even although it is certainly not 100 per cent. perfect or foolproof. Possibly with the normal intake of the Civil Service in the future—in conjunction, it may be, with an examination of the old type, and certainly in conjunction with an examination of some type—it will also prove itself to be the best method. At the moment, I understand, the Civil Service Commissioners, have the new intake for the home Civil Service on the footing that 25 per cent. of the candidates are to be examined by the C.S.S.B. method and 75 per cent by the old method. Up to a certain point

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that is a controlled experiment, and in a few years it will be interesting to see which of the two methods has proved itself the more effective.
5.29 p.m.
LORD MONKSWELL: My Lords, what is sought is some method of assessing personality and intelligence in persons between the ages of twenty and twenty-five, with a view to discovering what these qualities are likely to be when the persons in question have settled down to the more important work which they are to perform, in most cases after reaching the age of forty. I should have thought there was no great difficulty in regard to assessing intelligence; in the ordinary sense that could be done by means of examination. Personality, including character, is a different matter. The first serious difficulty that strikes me is that it is impossible to forecast what a person of twenty-five is likely to develop into when he is forty. Men and women who develop slowly, and whose character and personality are unformed at twenty-five, are often those who in the end go furthest, while those who at twenty-five give the impression of firmness and decision are often too rigid to learn by experience, and remain stuck. A further difficulty is that the development of character and personality after a man's life-work has begun depends to a great extent on the treatment which he receives from his seniors—instruction and encouragement on the one hand, or neglect on the other. To hope for equality of treatment between man and man is, of course, absurd. So long as the world endures there will be favourites with undue influence exerted on their behalf.
Beyond the fact that members of the Civil Service have shown by passing the examination that they have a certain power of application, I should not say that there was the least difference between them and their contemporaries. What makes the difference between a successful Civil Servant and a commonplace one depends far more on the chances they receive than on any virtues or defects in the individual. I was a civil servant for ten years—five uneventful and fairly satisfactory years in the Diplomatic Service and five years of miserable and unrequited drudgery in the Foreign Office, to which, nearly forty years later I still look back with incense dislike. In my time there were no tests of personality or
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character, except such as might be inferred as a result of the written or oral examinations. My own feeling is that a boy who by means of intensive work could mug up enough knowledge to enable him to pass in the ten or eleven compulsory subjects, gave evidence of possessing character enough for all reasonable requirements. As regards personality—a quality yet more elusive than character—there is the trouble that there exist young people, by no means otherwise admirable, with a type of mind that enables them to pass any examination with ease. But even if a personality test should make it possible to eliminate them—which I doubt—they are, fortunately, not very numerous.
The whole subject is beset with difficulties. If examinations are to be retained, cramming is unavoidable. Nobody believes that cramming is otherwise than harmful. A friend of mine who was a don at Cambridge—quite out of fashion here to-night—told me that the men who came up with scholarships were usually 30 much exhausted by cramming that for their first year they were of very little use. On the other hand, examinations appear to be the only alternative to a system of pure favouritism, which is rampant enough as it is. For these reasons, I do not look on character or personality tests with either confidence or favour, and I believe that in spite of manifest defects, the old system of a grilling entrance examination alone is more likely to produce the desired results. But, as I have indicated, I regard this as only the beginning of the matter. What the new entrant needs is the confidence that would be inspired by making it clear to him from the beginning that he is recognised as an essential part of a living organism; that he is not to be a drudge and not to be treated as one. Such improved treatment might also have the effect of teaching him to stand on his own legs, and of discouraging him from the habit of avoiding every difficulty by passing it on to someone else.
5.36 p.m.
LORD CHERWELL: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, for having initiated this debate, for the education and selection of the civil servants who are so largely responsible for the administration and government of the country is, of course, of supreme importance to our whole

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future. I should be less than frank with the House if I did not say at the outset that I am in serious disagreement with a great part of the speech of—I was going to say my old friend, but perhaps I had better say my former friend, Sir Percival Waterfield. He deplores the calibre of the men entering for the Civil Service, and he appears to blame the universities for this. But, clearly, there are many differences between present-day entrants and pre-war entrants which vitiate any simple comparison. As the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay of Birker, pointed out, many men are now entering the lists who would have been weeded out when passing through the universities in the ordinary way—if, indeed, they ever reached a university—but who think they may as well try their luck at Sir Percival's fancy tests.
Amongst the men who obtained university scholarships before the war, many have been away fighting for three or four years and are handicapped by this in any intellectual test. Even amongst those who have taken their university degrees in the normal course there are many who might well have entered for an intellectual test but who are repelled by these new weird methods of selection and who prefer to enter professions in which sheer mental ability is valued more than slickness in answering riddles and so-called intelligence tests. It may be that the only way to sort out men who have been out of contact with intellectual studies for a long time is by these elaborate interviews and curious methods. But I repudiate the idea that the average mental level of our students is lower than before, that the universities are selecting the wrong people and are training them wrongly, as Sir Percival suggests, or that the old-fashioned method of entry to the Civil Service by competitive examination should be superseded by the impressions of psychiatrists and professional interviewers. But, before dealing with this matter in detail, I feel that I must say a few words about what I cannot but describe as the lack of judgment and balance—qualities which Sir Percival appraises so highly in others—shown in certain strictures, which he passes on science and the scientists.
It is true that near the end of his speech Sir Percival Waterfield made the admirable suggestion, which I heartily commend, that no arts student should go out
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into the world without some knowledge of science, and no science student without some knowledge of the humaner studies. That is an excellent sentiment but it is scarcely supported by passages which preceded it. I am quite ready to accept Sir Percival's definition of education as
"the ability to think in general terms, an active attitude of mind towards knowledge of all kinds, curiosity or eagerness to learn new things and an ability to relate the new learning to that already acquired in a gradually enlarged and loftier vision of knowledge as a whole."
What I complain of is that, having said this, he goes on to quote with approval the description of a science student as "practically illiterate," as "an uneducated human being," and to suggest that
"they have usually spent their University careers shut up within the narrow confines of their own special subject without ever lifting their mental vision to the wider horizons of the busy intellectual world around them."
I yield to no one in my intense dislike for early specialisation. Indeed, I would be glad to see it banished altogether from the schools. What I complain about is the attitude of mind—by no means confined to Sir Percy Waterfield, I am afraid—which, whilst condemning specialisation in science, approves it in the so-called arts. I say, without hesitation, that the average scientist has a far greater knowledge and appreciation of history, literature, languages and the humanities than the average art student has of science. You will scarcely find one scientist who could not name twenty Kings of England and place them in their correct chronological order. How many arts students could name twenty elements, or place them in their correct order in the Periodic Table—if, indeed, they know what the Periodic Table is? Every scientist has heard of the Magna Carta and could tell something about its provisions, and the circumstances in which it was extorted. How many of the Sir Percival-educated arts men could tell us anything about the law of least action which governs all mechanical processes—and apparently a good many political ones too?
I have never yet met any scientist who has not read at any rate some of Shakespeare's plays. How many arts men have read any of Darwin's works? There are very few scientists who would not be able to tell you something about the Diet of Worms. I am referring, of course, to the historical assembly at which Luther

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was condemned, and not to some new brainwave of Mr. Strachey or Dr. Summerskill to increase the interest and variety of our food. How many arts men know anything about the economic importance of the ordinary earthworm? There is scarcely a scientist who does not know something about the works of Dante Molière, and Goëthe. There are very few arts men who know anything about the works of Mendel or Coulomb or Helmholtz. Indeed, if it comes to that, I observe that when some monoglot foreigner appears on the scene, it is usually the poor, illiterate, uneducated scientist who has to speak to him in his own language, while the arts man looks on with a superior smile, trying to indicate that he could easily join in the conversation if only he thought it worth while to unbend. Every scientist knows about the big broad historical milestones that mark the emergence of Europe as we know it. How many arts men could tell you anything comparable about the world in which they live, about the nebulae and the galaxy, about the origin of the sun's heat, about atomic structure, interference phenomena, why a body is solid or liquid or gaseous, about the laws of electrostatics, or electrodynamics, or a host of similar elementary matters?
I think we are entitled to ask Sir Percival Waterfield why we should be expected to know about Paradise Lost, while the arts man parades his ignorance of the Principia. Why should I be expected to know about the Byzantine Empire, while the arts man boasts his ignorance of the Binomial Theorem? Why is it more cultured to know about the mistresses of Louis XIV than about the chromosomes he so industriously disseminated? Why is it regarded as a scandal for an educated man not to know about philosophical induction, whereas it is quite all right for him to know nothing about electrical or magnetic induction on which all our electrical appliances depend? Where is "the curiosity and eagerness to learn new things" in the repudiation of the most rapidly advancing branches of knowledge, or "the loftier vision of knowledge as a whole" when all those forms of learning whose applications have transformed our whole culture in the last 150 years are thrown aside as of no account? I am absolutely amazed by the arrogance, the hubris—if I may use the word—of the arts men who
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are totally ignorant themselves of the material world around them, who hardly know what a unit of electricity is (although they have to pay for it every quarter, and will probably have to pay more now that it has all been nationalised) who often do not even know the difference between mass and weight, and yet who dare to describe scientists as "uneducated human beings." I am sure if the ordinary scientist knew as little about history and literature as the ordinary arts man knows about science, he would be certified and locked up within a fortnight.
I make no apology for inflicting these views on your Lordships. They are relevant at only one remove to the immediate point we are discussing. This attack on the scientists formed a part of the speech which we are considering, in which Sir Percival Waterfield complained about the deplorable standard of present-day entrants for the Civil Service. And in my view the conclusions he draws, from which I dissent, are largely due to his unscientific approach, which is not surprising, perhaps, although it is distressing in an arts man who is criticising other people for their alleged lack of judgment and balance. As I see it, the position is broadly this. Some hundreds of years ago it was widely behaved—probably rightly—that nepotism and jobbery were rife in Civil Service appointments. To prevent this, it was held that the best thing would be to institute selection by competitive examination, rather than by nomination. This system was in operation for about eighty years and gave us what is agreed by common consent to be the finest Civil Service in the world. During the war a series of so-called intelligence tests and psychiatric tests were introduced for weeding out unsuitable applicants for commissions in the Services. And these gave, so it was claimed—though many dissented—satisfactory results. When it became clear that this investigating apparatus would no longer be required for the armed Services, it occurred to somebody that it might as well be used for the Civil Service.
It seems to be the results of such tests, and his own impressions at interviews, which have given Sir Percival Waterfield the jaundiced views he has expressed, not only about the hordes of abnormal candidates, who would formerly not have entered at all, but also about normal candidates and the universities which

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selected and trained them. Anyone with a scientific habit of mind would have reasoned as follows. Comparison of candidates whose training and background has been different owing to the war with normal candidates is meaningless. But why is it that men who have won university scholarships and who would, under the old dispensation, undoubtedly have won positions in the Civil Service, make such a bad showing under the new dispensation, as Sir Percival believes they do? Clearly it must be because the new-sets of tests select a different sort of man.
The old tests, admittedly, selected first-class civil servants. If the new tests select a different set of men, there is every reason to doubt whether they will be such good civil servants. This does not seem to be the way Sir Percival Waterfield reasons. He assumes the new tests to be infallible and concludes that the men and the universities who pick them and train them, on exactly the same lines as have been successfully used before, must suddenly have all gone hay-wire. It is as though a man who had suddenly decided to use a sun-dial instead of a watch, and found he always missed his train, concluded that since nationalisation trains always started before their scheduled time. To a scientist this seems a most extraordinary form of reasoning. The first thing we do if, on introducing a fresh instrument, we find a discontinuity, is to examine the instrument and see whether the fault does not lie with the instrument. Even at the risk of seeming inhumane, I may perhaps be permitted to examine Sir Percival Waterfield's instrument and see whether there is really any reason to take it for granted that it is infallible.
As has been mentioned, and as has appeared in the Press, the new system consists of three tests: first, a very simple written examination designed to weed out people who are, to all intents and purposes, illiterate; secondly, a visit to a house party at which all sort of tests, politely called intelligence tests, are made; and, thirdly, an interview at which the usual rather banal questions are fired at the candidate by a set of Civil Service Examiners. No one can object to some process for eliminating people who are not even up to the low standard of education nowadays, apparently, deemed sufficient
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to qualify for the Civil Service, so long as it is clearly understood that it does not pretend to select the best men from a large entry. But the idea that anyone who could pass it would have got at least a second-class honours degree at a reputable university is farcical. As they have been described to me, the intellectual tests would not even secure a man a scholarship. As to the general paper, which consists of finding rhyming synonyms, and sorting long lists of words into categories against a time limit, perhaps the least said the better.
The house party seems a more dubious affair. The entrants are, we have been told, sub-divided into groups of seven or eight and given various tasks to perform in the presence of an official observer. For instance, each man has to preside in turn over the rest and make a verbal report on action recommended on some problem propounded; or they have to discuss some topic while the observer sits in a corner assessing their personality. It must be a wonderful performance. Should the un-fortunate candidate try to shout the others down to try to show his personality, or should he behave with civility and restraint to prove his team spirit? It must be as bad as one of the Labour Party's Wednesday morning meetings, with all the small fry trying to show their personality and catch the Prime Minister's eye without deviating from the Party line. So much depends upon the observer. Behaviour which might appeal to Mr. Attlee might not appeal to Mr. Shinwell. But, at any rate, the back bencher does know something about his variegated leaders. The unhappy aspirant for a post in the Civil Service has no idea about the whims and crochets of the official examiner, on whose impressions his whole future career might depend. After all this, it seems that each candidate has to give marks to his competitors, which are counted and given some weight in assessing the men's qualities. This must lead to some difficult questions for the examinees. Should they give the man they think good a high mark, or the man they think the examiner will think good? Should they perhaps give him a low mark, in the hope of reducing his chances in the examination? Everything depends upon the system of assessment their particular examiner happens to favour.

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The only tests which allow a quantitive comparison of candidates' performance seem to have little to do with their potentialities as civil servants. One man was given a paper with a lot of little dots on it and told to see whether he could join them up so as to form some predetermined figure. This sounds like an introduction to doodling, in which I believe the Prime Minister finds considerable relief during some of his colleagues' speeches. But should civil servants be encouraged to practise the art? No doubt they will pick it up quickly enough at committees if they have any bent that way. Then this candidate was shown a drawing of a heap of bricks and told to say how many had one or two or no sides exposed. We can all see why a civil servant might be interested in exposed bricks in the symbolic sense. But is this realty a measure of his aptitude in detecting and concealing the variety which Ministers drop?—admittedly one of their main functions. He was then asked to forecast how a clock, which lost two minutes an hour and had been set at twenty minutes to ten one evening, would look at five-thirty the next afternoon seen upside clown in a looking-glass. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, would say that this was to bring out his latent intelligence, or perhaps whether it was to enable him to read the time in committee without appearing to look at the clock. Another test consisted of free association—the sort of experiment beloved by psychoanalysts, known, I believe, in the profession as the "Gold Rush." As the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, told us, psychologists are fundamental. Sometimes a picture is thrown on a screen, usually of two people of opposite sex, and the candidate has to write a story about it in two-and-a-half minutes. Sometimes a word is shot at him, and he is told to say instantly what comes into his mind. One man I was told was faced by a highly coloured young woman, who cast a languishing glance at him and said, "Mother." He somewhat tactlessly replied, "Anyone but you." But I do not think he passed.
What are these sort of tests supposed to show? A civil servant does not say the first thing that comes into his mind; that is the privilege of the Secretary of State for War. An educated man, surely, should think before he speaks. As
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the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, told us, we have all heard of absurd conclusions which emerge from such psychiatric examinations. I myself have heard of at least two men who had done and were doing very well at the Foreign Office, who were failed by the Commissioners. Fortunately they are now successfully filling very responsible posts. Then there was the case of the major with the D.S.O., M.C., and all the rest of it, who dressed as a sergeant and was marked "unsuitable for a commission." Sometimes, of course, the tests do hit the nail on the head, as, for instance, in the case of the distinguished psychiatrist who rashly submitted himself incognito to such a test and was marked: "Definitely subnormal; should consult a psychiatrist." But such a triumph as this should not blind us to the many failures.
Lastly, we come to the interview proper. Anyone with experience of this sort of thing knows how hopeless it is to form really accurate judgment from the behaviour and answers of a man on such an occasion. It selects the "smart Alecks," the sort of men who could sell a dud motor car to an Aberdonian. Perhaps that is the type of man the Socialists are looking for to sell their policies to the public. In my view, it would be heading for disaster if we staffed the whole Civil Service with people of this type. There is a much more serious aspect. Entry into the Civil Service by competitive examination was instituted, as I have said, in order to get rid of any suspicion of jobbery or nepotism. If this is replaced by a system which allows entry into the Civil Service to depend merely upon the impressions of examiners about a man's personality, instead of upon the quantitative assessment of marks, all the old ugly rumours and suspicions will be resuscitated. Anyone who knows Sir Percival Waterfield recognises how absurd any suggestion of that sort is. But not every body does know him, and there is no disguising the fact that unpleasant stories are already going the rounds. In this matter, as in others, it is important that justice should seem to be done. If it were frankly confessed that this new system of selecting civil servants was just a makeshift, many of my objections would vanish. Obviously, men who have been in the Forces for five years or more cannot be expected to shine in a competitive

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examination. If some sort of method can be devised to sort out those capable of becoming useful administrative or executive civil servants, so much the better. Clearly, in view of the vast numbers, only fairly rough and ready tests can be considered, and it may be that the elaborate pseudo-scientific procedure which has been adopted at any rate makes those who fail believe that they have been given a run for their money and that they have not been turned down out of hand.
What I complain about is that this makeshift affair is now being erected into a permanent piece of machinery. All the foreign service, as we have been told, and a considerable part of the home service, is to be recruited by this means indefinitely. This, in my view, will be the road to ruin, paved—not to say greased, as it may be—with Sir Percival's good intentions. As the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, said, although the noble Lord, Lord Piercy, did not agree with him, a man who has passed a difficult examination in several subjects with high marks has shown that he is capable of hard work, that he can apply his mind to various topics, that he can understand what he has read and collate it with other pieces of information when required, and that he can reproduce considered views and ideas in clear straightforward English.
I dare say there may be many ways in which the old Civil Service examinations might be improved. But I would far rather select a man who has done well in any good examination in a variety of topics than a man who is good at answering trick questions at the double, joining up points to make patterns, or fooling psychiatrists. The technique of doing this can easily be taught once the coaches know what the psychiatrists are up to. The crammers are already advertising that they can coach for this type of interview. These so-called intelligence tests may be all very well for weeding a few bad people out of a large number of fairly good people. I do not believe that they are any good for picking out the best people from a large group of fairly good people. Even if they do select people with good powers of reasoning, they give no indication of or weight to a man's industry, concentration, power of collating facts and presenting them. Indeed, one of their principal protagonists, Professor Godfrey Thomson, has specifically stated
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that he makes no plea for using them to choose children for university training. The prominence given to them seems to me to be only one more symptom of the general trend, which I regard as one of the most lamentable signs of the times, that there is no need to learn anything, that education is no use and that anything that requires hard work cannot be right. Nor do I believe in the infallibility of the interview which selects men who are good at getting jobs but not men who are good at doing jobs.
If the validity of the new method of selection is denied, obviously Sir Percival Waterfield's strictures on the candidates fall to the ground. Scholarships are awarded much as they used to be, training in the universities has not altered in character, and if a man were selected on the same principles as formerly, I have no doubt we should continue to get first-class civil servants as we did before. But if the Civil Service Commissioners insist on picking men by trick questions and psychiatric methods, and ask the universities to select their scholars and train them so as to conform to their novel ideas, I hope the universities will refuse. It is not our business to turn out plausible "Smart Alecks," nor do I think that really intelligent people who had any alternative open to them would enter a profession in which these qualities were the primary consideration. It is because I fear that Sir Percival Waterfield's speech may have given the impression, even though it be erroneous, that the Civil Service is looking for men of this type that I regret that it was couched in the form it was.
6.6 p.m.
THE CHANCELLOR OF THE DUCHY OF LANCASTER (LORD PAKENHAM): My Lords, I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, in the congratulation and thanks he extended to the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, for raising this subject to-day. I agree with little else that fell from the noble Lord in one of the most entertaining, one of the most brilliantly phrased and one of the most misleading speeches that I have ever listened to in this House. I do not think that any of your Lordships, although every one of us enjoyed himself to the full—we might say we rocked with laughter—will take it seriously. I hope not. If that went out to the world as a

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statement coming from a noble Lord of such pre-eminent talents as the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, speaking from the Opposition Front Bench about a system which was originated by the late Government, I am bound to say that very strange views would be taken of Mr. Churchill's administration, and I cannot help thinking that the noble Lord might get into trouble with his old chief.
LORD CHERWELL: It was only introduced for the transitional period while we had no proper intellectual tests.
LORD PAKENHAM: If this system was based on the tomfoolery the noble Lord would have us believe it was, it would not have lasted over a period of three years. The noble Lord cannot have it all ways at once. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, who has felt compelled to leave us, was not apparently altogether clear about the distinction between psychologists and psychiatrists. That is a point which is essentially a matter of science and, I should have thought, a most elementary point of science. I should have thought it was a subject upon which we should have had a certain amount of guidance from the noble Lord. Not a bit. Either he does not know the difference—which is unthinkable in a man of such universal culture, denied to us poor humanists—or he is deliberately concealing the truth from the House, and that I do not think would for a moment occur to him. He might be completely misinformed about the whole C.S.S.B. business, which is a possibility which seems to me far the most likely in the circumstances. He has refused to go there.
LORD CHERWELL: I have not been invited.
LORD PAKENHAM: Then the noble Lord misunderstood the invitation which was extended, or it failed to penetrate his very acute intelligence. But the invitation was extended. Many others who are almost as busy as the noble Lord have found the time and energy to go there before speaking in a debate of this kind.
LORD CHERWELL: Then the Postmaster-General was at fault, because I certainly never received an invitation. On the other hand, I did have the advantage of speaking to a great many people who
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have been there as candidates and not as examiners.
LORD PAKENHAM: Then I have all the advantages referred to, including attendance. If the noble Lord was going to put out this peculiar view of an institution started by his own Government, the Government of which he was a member, I am surprised that he did not even go down and have a lock at the place. I say hat deliberately. I think that is the least we could have expected, and I am sure that before we debate these matters again he will come down with me and we will study the thing together. It is rather a peculiar thing that those who have been to C.S.S.B. seem to take a very different view from those who have not. The difference has appeared even in this debate. We have had noble Lords who have been there, as, for instance, Lord Simon of Wythenshawe, Lord Piercy and I myself. Then there is the second category of noble Lords, who have not been there but who, in the circumstances, prefer to suspend judgment; and finally there are the others, who have not been there but have pronounced judgment in advance against C.S.S.B.
On this subject of scientists, I will no detain your Lordships. There is no doubt that there is a widespread view that scientists are dull dogs. That view may or may not be correct; they may keep their scintillations to their own circle. But I am bound to say that on many occasions in the past when I have said, "I am bringing a distinguished scientist to dinner," the answer has been "For heavens' sake, don't." When I have mentioned that it was the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, I have been told, "He is the exception who proves the rule."
LORD CHERWELL: Lest any errors in the humanities should creep into the record, may I say I hope the noble Lord will remember that the word "proves" is a mistranslation of the Latin word probat, which means "tests"?
LORD PAKENHAM: I do know what probat means. Be that as it may, Sir Percival Waterfield has expressed the opinion that scientists in some cases might take a wider view of life. My experience coincides with his; I think we might all take a wider view of things. There is one point in respect of which Sir Percival has

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been completely misunderstood, both by the noble Lord, Lord Cherwell, and the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay, and it may be by persons outside your Lordships' House. As is known, I think, Sir Percival was not aware that he was being reported. He delivered a long and carefully-balanced speech on his personal authority in what he understood was a private meeting; but some of his statements were wrenched from their context. It is generally thought, for example by Lord Cherwell and Lord Lindsay, that Sir Percival announced that the standard of candidates was lower than before the war. It is absurd that Sir Percival could not have realised that conditions were very different and comparison very difficult. Sir Percival knows the differences better than most of us, and I only regret that noble Lords have not had the opportunity of studying the speech in full.
It is getting late, but the debate has hitherto been one of great distinction, and I know your Lordships will expect a fairly full reply. Three particular questions seem to me to have merited attention, besides a number of incidental points and questions to which I may perhaps be allowed to reply by correspondence or in discussion. First of all, it seems to me that the House is anxious to ascertain whether we are getting enough recruits of adequate quality for the Government service; secondly, what light is thrown on the educational system of the country, and especially on existing methods of awarding university scholarships; and thirdly, whether the present methods of selection for the home Civil Service and the Foreign Service which we have employed since the war have been the best that could be devised, and what view should be taken of them in relation to the future.
Of these, the third question is the one which has engrossed most of your Lordships' attention this afternoon and I shall deal with it at the greatest length; but I must say a few words about the others. Are we getting enough recruits of adequate quality for the Government Service? It will be realised at once that we have been dealing since the war with an exceptional, because a transitional, period. I am sure that that is in the minds of all noble Lords: but I was surprised that anyone should have
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I thought that it was not in the mind of Sir Percival Waterfield. It will be realised also that the recruits who have come in through the special reconstructional examination are of a different type inevitably, mainly through differences of age and also because their education has been interrupted. It will be realised further that normal peace-time examinations are starting again only this year: they are, in fact, in progress at this moment, and I have had the pleasure of seeing some of their stages. The normal peace-time competitions or examinations, therefore, give us no clue. We are left only with the information which is available to us from these reconstruction examinations, these special transitional arrangements, with a very special type of candidate.
These reconstruction examinations or competitions have been required to bridge the gap created by the war and to cover the whole period 1939–48, the candidates being anywhere between twenty-one and thirty-one years of age. In the view of the Government, therefore, whatever the test that has been applied to these reconstruction candidates, it would be highly imprudent and unscientific to try to make any real comparison between their quality and the quality of the candidates before the war. It is therefore with a good many warnings that I offer your Lordships the following figures.
During the five years, 1935–39, the average intake into the Home Civil Service was fifty-three and into the Foreign Service twenty-one. That was the last five-year period before the war. These figures were a good deal higher than previously and it was proving harder than it had been to maintain the standard, but the standard was, in fact, being maintained. During the war, vacancies accumulated to such an extent that during the nine years 1940–48 the total number of reconstruction vacancies to be filled has been 520 for the Home Service and 220 for the Foreign Service: that is to say, 56 for the Home Service and 24 for the Foreign Service for the year of the reconstruction examinations, against 53 and 21 respectively before the war. Here I would like to impress on your Lordships the considered view of those who have had the greatest responsibility for investigating the matter. There is every evidence that the entrants who have been

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accepted since the war have fully maintained, to say the least, the pre-war standard and tradition. The Departments are emphatic that they are getting very good material. Of the first 114 recruits to the Home Civil Service on whom detailed follow-up reports have been received, 74 have been rated "Outstanding" or "Very good." Only one was rated "Poor." As regards the Foreign Service, the Foreign Secretary, as I will explain more carefully later, has given a most practical demonstration of his good opinion of the post-war entry by insisting that the present system of selection be retained for the Foreign Service for the next few years. Candidates actually selected give every ground for a confident, optimistic reply to the question about the quality of the recruits.
There is, however, one qualification that should be entered at this stage. If anything, the standard for the Home Service and, to a lesser extent, for the Foreign Service, appears to have been pitched too high, and at the present rate we shall not reach the full targets that I have referred to in either branch of the Service. It has therefore been decided to lower slightly the pass mark in the case of the Home Service—retrospectively, of course, so that people who have just failed would be brought inside the line—so as to take in the top layer of candidates who were not accepted but who were referred to as "deserving consideration." It is worth observing that this group includes a number of candidates who have worked in Government Departments, who have previously just failed but who should now be accepted, including a number who have worked in Government Departments as temporary assistant principals and who have been recommended by their employers unreservedly as qualified for establishment in the administrative class. The Foreign Service, who have a far smaller gap to fill, have not yet decided how to remedy the position. May I sum up this part of the discussion, therefore, by saying that it was bound to require a big effort to cover the nine years' gap without lowering the standards, in view of the losses sustained during the war and the great interruption in their studies, but while an element of conjecture still remains, the grounds at this stage for giving an optimistic answer are quite as good as those for giving a pessimistic answer.
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With the permission of the House, I will not spend long over the second question, although I know it is close to the heart of the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey. I refer to the question of the light thrown on the educational system of this country. I will not spend long on this, partly because little light is thrown upon that question by those records. I fully agree with him that on another occasion the question of the scholarship system at all stages is one that we might profitably explore, and explore more than once. It seems to me that the essential fact—indeed, the only fact—that gives us much indication as to the national trend is the one that I have already given—the fact that in spite of war losses and interruptions we can still find as many top-quality candidates as before the war. That seems to me significant. Even that has to be accepted with various warnings and caveats. The ratio of passes to failures does not seen to me to point to any particular conclusion, because in this post-war period there is no doubt at all that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lindsay of Birker, has said, many people have put in for an examination of this kind who would not have entered before the Second World War. Therefore, I do not think the ratio would give us any clear indication, although if the House requires it I can provide the information.
In view of the references that have been made to the figures that Sir Percival Waterfield gave in his speech, I would just make, at his request, one correction of the figures that he then gave. A later and larger sample than that referred to in his speech has now been taken of the candidates. Sir Percival gave figures of 41.3 per cent. and 53.1 per cent. for candidates for the Home and Foreign Services respectively who passed the original qualifying test but who were finally graded as out of the running. Those figures of 41.3 per cent. and 53.1 per cent. of total failures should be brought down in the light of the larger sample to 26.6 per cent. and 30.7 per cent. respectively. That, of course, is a more encouraging view. I do not believe that this question of the ratio throws much light on the national education system to-day because there are so many candidates who have put in mere readily than before the Second World War.

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I will pause to say one or two words about the national State scholarship system. I have a great deal of information which I can give the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, if he requires it. I think the whole House agrees that we want to make it possible for the poorest boy in this country, if he has the talent, to get to a university. I am sure that we are all agreed upon that. Therefore, I suppose we are all working and concerned simply to make sure that merit is always the test in selecting those who make their way to the universities. On that subject, I have no special information to offer the House to-day. I would simply say that of course a high standard is expected for the universities, but whether it is entirely the right standard, and whether the use made of the Higher Certificate is necessarily the most effective way of doing the job, are questions which, with others, are now being considered. I would say now only that the Minister of Education has set up a working party to consider, in consultation with local education authorities and others, the various problems concerned with university awards. No doubt the House will be keenly interested in the outcome of those consultations.
I am uncertain as I approach the third question of the actual methods employed, how long your Lordships would wish to bear with me, or how much should be placed on the record. We have had various interesting, though partial, accounts and so I am bound to set the question in an official form. The complete reconstruction competition as we have seen it after the Second World War, can be said to have four stages. First, a candidate for the administrative class must have had at least a year's university training and must have been certified as being up to Second-class Honours standard. The latter qualification, but not the former, is also required in the case of a candidate for the Foreign Service. I am dealing with what is obviously reconstruction since the Second World War and not what will be the practice in future. Secondly, there is a qualifying examination, consisting of an essay, a précis and explication of difficult passages in English, a general paper (three half-hour questions on current topics), an arithmetic paper and an intelligence test. In practice, this examination
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eliminates about 40 per cent. of the candidates. Thirdly, there are the series of tests, exercises and interviews, lasting forty-eight hours, at C.S.S.B., whose function is advisory only, without power of rejection. I feel that there is still a certain amount of uncertainty on that point. Certain noble Lords have talked of people being rejected or accepted at C.S.S.B. That cannot be so. C.S.S.B. are simply advisory. They put in a report which contributes to the total amount of knowledge possessed by the Final Selection Board at Burlington Gardens. Fourthly, there is the interview of half an hour or one hour by the Final Selection Board at Burlington Gardens. The Final Selection Board take into account not only their own impressions of the candidate but also his record and references and, in particular, the evidence provided by the C.S.S.B. reports.
I know that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, whose speech, through his work I in selecting Rhodes Scholars, carried a great deal of authority, attaches particular importance to studying the previous records of the candidates. That is done by C.S.S.B. and also at the final interviews. This third stage at C.S.S.B. is one that aroused so much interest. Details have appeared in the Press, and I must run over them very briefly. The whole of the course at C.S.S.B. is in-tended to draw up a report for the benefit of the Selection Board. The twenty-four candidates are dealt with on a course in three groups of seven or eight candidates. Each group is in charge of three members of the directing staff, of whom one is a trained psychologist. I repeat: he is a psychologist, not a psychiatrist. On the War Office Selection Boards during the war there was a psychiatrist who was required for a completely different purpose. I think probably the noble Lord, Lord Elton, had a good deal to do with that when he was at the War Office. The psychiatrists had been thought to have done a good job, but one of a different nature. These men at C.S.S.B. are psychologists, experts in normal psychology, and not specialists in handling the morbid or neurotic. I myself sat through this mysterious private interview between one of the psychologists and a candidate, and I suggest that if any of your Lordships can manage to get away you should go down and do likewise. I hope that

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invitation will not be accepted by all members of the House at once, but I can assure you that I am specially charged to say that all members of this House, and also those in another place, will be very welcome at a C.S.S.B. party. At this point I would like to add that if the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, feels after this discussion that a White Paper is still desirable, I will gladly see what can be done. I am authorised to say that we expect to be able to meet him if he still feels that it would be in the public interest and generally helpful.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Would the White Paper give illustrations of the so-called intelligence tests?
LORD PAKENHAM: I should certainly hope so. There might be a difficulty about indicating to people exactly the kind of questions that are likely to be asked, because they might cram for them. I am not hesitating to supply the noble Viscount or anybody in this House with copies of the questions that are asked, and I hope that such an indication would be given in a White Paper.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Is there a record of the questions that are asked in an intelligence test?
LORD PAKENHAM: I should not like to answer that without notice, but I believe that all the written tests would be available. It is another thing to promise that every oral question that has ever been asked of anybody has been recorded. Every question that has been the subject of a written test would, I think, be available; and I imagine there would be no difficulty in supplying the noble Viscount with a very full dossier.
You have, then, this group of seven or eight candidates, and first of all, as a group, they go through a series of exercises. There is an unprepared discussion on some subject of current importance—say the Marshall Plan or national sovereignty, or whatever may be thought fit. They are given a file, as a group, containing the essential facts and figures on the political and economic situation in an imaginary island or territory. That seems to me an idea that can be most valuable, and it is based in fact on the kind of file that one might find at the Colonial Office. This is an attempt to
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study the person's ability and direct reaction to the kind of work he might be told to do in the Civil Service. The group are asked to work on this file and have to form themselves into a little committee, with each member taking the chair in turn. Apart from the group exercise, they are subjected to individual tests. There is a short paper on a specific question—in other words, a short essay question on a practical subject drawn from the material provided for the group test. Secondly, each candidate has to give a ten-minute talk, after twenty minutes' preparation. Then all the candidates go through various intelligence tests. Finally, each candidate is interviewed alone by the three members of the directing stuff attached to his group. I am afraid I am saying this rather swiftly, but when noble Lords study it in Hansard I think they will see that that is a really thorough form of testing. When this test has been completed, and the record of the candidate has been taken into consideration, the directors meet and send in their recommendations to the Final Selection Board, which meets at Burlington Gardens.
I cannot conclude this part of my account without expressing my strong personal admiration for the way in which the technique of selection, whatever its merits or demerits in principle, has been applied and developed by the C.S.S.B. team under the wise, the Rhadamanthine, presidency of Colonel Pinsent, whose work as chairman of one of the War Office selection boards during the war has given him special qualifications for the task. I myself found a fairness, a zeal, a humility and also a lack of fanaticism and dogma about their methods which I am sure will make a deep impression on any member of the House who is able to visit them.
But what of the system itself? That is, I think, what the House is most of all concerned with to-day. Perhaps I may concentrate mainly on the C.S.S.B., although that is only one part of the totality of the reconstruction arrangements. The opinion of outside observers has undoubtedly been favourable, quite apart from the noble Lords who have spoken to-day. Out of 77 distinguished educationalists and others who have given their opinion, 75 have pronounced in its favour as a transitional expedient, and 69 have recommended its retention for permanent use. The vast majority of the

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candidates have declared in favour, but I am not quite sure how much weight to attach to their evidence. Certainly the evidence given during the course might be regarded as rather biased. At the same time those journalists who visited the C.S.S.B. in large numbers last week made rather careful inquiries from candidates, and found that they were well satisfied. The general Press were suspicious—I think it is fair to say, unfriendly—until they went there, but since they have been there it seems to me they have not only been very fair but also enthusiastic.
The House is entitled to ask for the verdict of the Government. On its record to date the verdict of the Government (and this applies to the whole reconstruction competition as well as to the C.S.S.B. part of it) is perfectly clear and emphatic. First, the war interruption in the education of the candidates, and the difficulty of making comparisons between men and women of all ages from twenty-one to thirty-three, has rendered an examination on peace-time lines quite out of the question. Secondly, any arrangements this time have worked much better, so far as we can judge, than those employed after the last war. Thirdly, C.S.S.B. has served and is serving admirably the purpose for which it was intended. In the circumstances prevailing, it has not only been a necessary expedient but a genuine success. That is not to say, however, that the Government have yet made up their mind or intend to make up their mind quickly about the desirability or otherwise of retaining the method of the reconstruction examination, including C.S.S.B., as the normal method of peace-time entry into the Civil Service. We were told, I think, by at least one noble Lord that it had already become perpetuated. It may become perpetuated, but it would be wrong to say that it has become perpetuated. At the present time the Foreign Secretary is personally so satisfied with the recruits he has been obtaining that the Foreign Office intend to rely on this method during the next few years for their recruits.
VISCOUNT SIMON: As I am rather interested in this Office, would the noble Lord explain to me something that is not clear? As the matter stands at present, does the scheme include examinations in any language?
LORD PAKENHAM: At the present I time there is a test of a candidate's capacity to learn languages. That means he is given a language test, but he is I not expected to achieve a high standard in the language, so long as he proves that he is capable of reaching a good standard later. That, of course, was inevitable, in view of the special post-war circumstances, where you could not expect a man to prepare himself in the old-fashioned way by going abroad and learning a language or two. In the trial period of the next few years this method will still be relied on. I understand that the standard of language required is being somewhat raised, but it is, and will remain during this trial period, a test of a man's capacity to learn a language. We are not asking him to present himself as a complete linguist already.
VISCOUNT SIMON: Could the noble Lord explain exactly what is to be the test of a man's capacity to learn a language if he does not know any foreign languages?
LORD PAKENHAM: The noble Viscount, I am sure, will not really think I am suggesting that we shall be testing men who do not know any language at all. The men of whom I am speaking will, in fact, be given an easy linguistic test, and this test will be rather stiffened in the future. But the men will not be expected to reach the standard which would be expected from someone passing a stiff language examination. I should not think that it would be very difficult, and our experience in the last few years has not found the system defective in any way. I know that there are now working in the Foreign Office a number of these young men, and they seem to be able to pick up German very quickly in cases in which they did not know it before. Upon this matter I am not arguing one way or another. I am simply informing the noble Viscount that the existing method is being retained—that is, the test of a man's capacity to learn a language which involves a fairly easy linguistic test—and that that test is being somewhat stiffened in the immediate future.
So far as the home Civil Service is concerned, as explained in the White Paper—Cmd. 6567—the Government have decided that, for an experimental period, two systems of recruitment should run concurrently. The first is a mainly

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written competition, corresponding partly with the pre-war written examination; and the second is the reconstruction method which we have been discussing this afternoon—with, of course, in each case the final interview along familiar lines before the Selection Board at Burlington Gardens. For 1948 three-quarters of the vacancies in the home Civil Service will be filled by what might be broadly called the pre-war method, and a quarter by the new reconstruction method. Before a decision is taken on the proportion of vacancies to be filled by the two methods after this year, a comparison will be made of recruits obtained by the two methods.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: They will rank pari passu?
LORD PAKENHAM: Yes. As I say, three-quarters will be obtained by what might be called the old method and one-quarter by the reconstruction method. After this year we shall see what the proportion will be. The two methods are being tried out to see which produces the best results, and I think Lord Cherwell and others would describe that as a fairly scientific method of approach. The Government are still of an open mind about the future of these various methods, and your Lordships will not expect me to say very much more upon it to-day. I would just like, however, to offer one or two final reflections. The real issue—because so many of the elements will be common, whichever method is adopted—is whether to rely on a thorough paper examination plus a final interview, or a week-end scrutiny of ability and personality plus reports and interviews with, of course, a qualifying academic standard, such as second class Honours, in the background in each case. The difference betwen the two systems is, in the one case, competitive examination, in the other case, week-end scrutiny.
Competitive examination, it seems to me, if I may sum up without attempting to speak with any kind of final authority—for every one is likely to take a slightly different view of the tests—tests knowledge and brain power, and throws some light on certain aspects of character such as diligence and perseverance, and also on stamina. The week-end scrutiny tests mental ability with rather more emphasis on speed and practicality than in the written examination. Unlike the written
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examination it does not test knowledge or, very closely, the power of acquiring large blocks of knowledge. The week-end, however, does make an attempt to measure what the written examination does not—that elusive thing, personality. Though one can define that in various ways, if we are to think of it apart from brain power, moral qualities and physical qualities, it really comes down on the one hand to personal initiative and on he other to the power to co-operate with other people. That is the sort of thing which it is sought to try our more thoroughly than ever before. The week-end method also throws some light on certain aspects of moral character—though I believe that its possibilities in this connection have not yet been sufficiently explored and that more work could be done upon that line. It also throws some light on stamina.
There is the comparison as I see it. Some will pronounce in advance in favour of one system and some in favour of the other. To me it seems that both have strong merits on paper, and I would submit to the House that the Government are taking the wisest course It is not a Party matter: this reconstruction competition was started before the present Government came into power. I submit that the Government are taking the wisest course in trying out both systems and seeking to judge which system appears to give civil servants who will maintain and enhance the great traditions of the public service of this country. I am most grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Mersey, for raising this debate.
VISCOUNT SIMON: The noble Lord has said, as I understand him, that it is intended in future to try out the two systems. Is it the intention that the candidates should be able to say: "I prefer to be examined in the things I know" or, on the contrary, "I should prefer to have the week-end test"?
LORD PAKENHAM: He has his choice. In the present year three-quarters of the vacancies will be allotted on what was approximately the pre-war system.
LORD ALTRINCHAM: May I ask another question about the language test, in which we in this House are very greatly interested? Is any attention paid to pronunciation? We all know people who can read and write a foreign language with

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efficiency but are quite unable to make themselves intelligible if they try to speak it. This question of pronunciation is one which from the point of view of the foreign branches of the Civil Service is very important.
LORD PAKENHAM: I cannot profess to possess on that point knowledge which I do not possess. I would suggest to the noble Lord that he should put down a question on that matter which could be answered in this House. I hope that it will be possible by an answer to such a question to clear up any point which is not clear at the present time.
I cannot end without thanking the noble Viscount for giving us the chance of holding this debate and expressing also—since some attacks have been made upon him—my own complete confidence and the confidence of the Government in the justly famous Sir Percival Waterfield.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for his speech. I am always grateful for his speeches, even when they are not concerned with my questions. I accept gladly his offer of some sort of a Paper. I am certain that what he puts into it will be "meat." His speeches are seldom without that, so I am sure the Paper will contain it. I should also like to thank other noble Lords who have spoken, and particularly Lord Lindsay of Birker, who raised several questions which were in my mind a great deal better and more clearly than I could have done. I hope that what he said about the written examination will be especially noted. I trust that that written examination is not going to be too rapidly eliminated, because it certainly provides a test of industry and knowledge.
Finally, I wish to make it clear—though I think it is already clear—that this Motion is not in any way intended as an attack on the Government. I know very well that this system is not the device of this Government but was inherited by them. I am not at all prepared to disagree with what the noble Lord has said as regards its usefulness in this transitional period.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONWEALTH AND EMPIRE MIGRATION.
6.50 p.m.
THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH rose to call attention to the urgent need for increased migration from this country to other parts of the Commonwealth and Empire, in order to ensure not only our own economic and military security, and that of the other nations of the Commonwealth, but also the security of Western Europe; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I am afraid I cannot offer your Lordships' House an apology for delaying your Lordships before you go your peaceful ways to other avocations. It has not been due to any fault of your Lordships that time has not been found at an earlier date for this Motion, and I feel it is of such importance and the time is so ripe for discussing it that we would be failing in our duty were we not to carry on to-night rather than seek some other moment, which might or might not be forthcoming under the pressure of Parliamentary business. I owe some apology to those of your Lordships who were supporting my original Motion in that, in order to concentrate on the importance of Empire migration, I cut out at the last moment the earlier part of the Motion which dealt with the decentralisation of the Government at home. Owing to the likelihood of a forthcoming meeting of the Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth and Colonies, I think this is one of the most important junctures in which to discuss the problem which has arisen, not only in the minds of the Government but in the minds of the people of the country and in the Press.
To begin on the domestic factors, I have for years maintained that with great pressure and high training we could probably produce food for 40,000,000 to 45,000,000 of the population of this country. But that is not the whole picture. At the present moment I believe that on the food side alone, with an intensification of the methods we are now using and with a thoroughly well thought out drive, we could produce food for 30,000,000 to 35,000,000 people. Apart from that, we are a nation of 48,000,000 people who have to import timber and raw materials for manufacture, and we are even probably going to be short of water as well. All that means scarcity; scarcity means controls; and controls

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mean an increasing bureaucracy who are not productive, bouches inutiles to feed without a corresponding ratio of production.
It has been argued that we could become the leading nation in new high-technique production processes, as we might well be capable of doing, and that we might go on living as before the war, if we were able to expand on the strength of our exports. That demands a continuous, steady development of world trade. It does not foresee slumps or future difficulties. To rely on that as the single factor for our future is far too dangerous. Equally important, it would mean that we are more and more continuing the dangerous process, which has been going on for years, of becoming a dis-balanced nation, far too crowded in one small area of land. Past empires have failed because there was too great concentration of population. The rabbit warren becomes rabbit sick; land becomes man sick. Too many cattle at the water hole fouls the water and the cattle become ill and the land becomes eroded all around. Militarily over-population in this country is a great danger, because there is always the temptation to attack people who cannot feed themselves and must import so much, and who are concentrated in good targets for aerial attack.
If we are to have a healthy, balanced life for our people and military and economic security, we should aim at a maximum of 35,000,000 million as the healthy population of this country. I do not believe that can be achieved or ought to be attempted to be achieved by the anti-biological and anti-social method of excessive birth control. There remains only one other course, that of careful, ordered and planned voluntary migration of whole cross-sections of the population, including dependants. Does this marry with the needs of the British Commonwealth to-day? I feel certain from many points of view that it does. Take defence alone. There are widely scattered areas in the Dominions and Colonies which require a far greater stiffening of population. The white population of the Commonwealth is less than half the population of this one small group of islands. I will leave military security to those who are experts. The Commonwealth have in principle, for the most part, agreed
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already on the advisability of taking a cross-section of our population. I believe that the meeting of Empire Prime Ministers is the greatest opportunity for a reorientation of the whole common purpose that we have had in our history during this century.
Your Lordships would have no wish and no right to make decisions on the policy on which the leaders of the Commonwealth are themselves the people to decide, but I cannot help hoping that our deliberations this afternoon may be of some use. Although many things I put forward may have been long in the minds of the leaders of the Commonwealth I hope they will provide some common grounds for future decisions. Already, to mention only two members of the Commonwealth, Australia and Canada have given a lead not only in words but by strong practical action in face of great difficulty. Peace becomes indivisible only when based on a common purpose among a great people. There is a tendency to-day for the world to fall into regions, such as the Pacific region, A Erica and Western Europe. The Commonwealth and the British Empire in general has this one supreme advantage: it is a unit divided by miles of sea, oceans and ranges. Therefore, if every member of the Commonwealth in his own region is strong, is capable socially, morally, economically and militarily of giving a lead, then our strength is multiplied tenfold when we come to world considerations, because it is the British Empire in this circumstance that may be the cement of peace on a world scale. I am not at this moment mentioning the United States, not because she has not with us an enormous part to play, but because time is so short that we need to consider our own affairs domestically and in the Commonwealth almost exclusively in this debate.
Those are our needs, May I detain your Lordships for a few moments on possible methods? Our tropical Colonies demand a far greater administrative technical population than they have had up to date—namely, farmers, civil servants, engineers, business men and so forth. There is no question that our own population will thrive at the expense of the native African, for instance. After all, Africa would starve if it were not for the white man's ability to check erosion as much as he has done; and there is need for him to be there to

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check it far more in future. Obviously, transport is the greatest single physical factor adversely affecting the speeding up of migration at the moment. But I feel that it is a matter of will; where the will is there the transport will follow. We may plead transport for a year or two, but it is an excuse which will not serve for long. The true problem, and by far the greatest, is the orderly absorption of the migrants, the preparation of the land, the buildings, the works on the land, the developments and so forth. Mr. Hudson, the United States Ambassador to Australia, has told the Australians, among other things, that her prime needs are immigration, irrigation and transportation. Of every sparsely populated country in the world it would be nearly true to say that these are the key factors.
Obviously, those abroad in the Commonwealth and the Colonies have given much thought to, and have already gone far in solving, many of these problems. I dare say the same problems have been occupying His Majesty's Government equally. But I should like to suggest that, apart from what has already been done and the schemes already envisaged, we should look at the whole problem with a far greater vision. From the Zambesi to the Fraser River, or whatever part of the Commonwealth you like to put forward. I venture to say that there is hardly one great watershed or one great river system that is not crying out for development and conservation of our resources. Sir John Boyd Orr has pointed out in terrifying terms the need to stop world erosion, and the need to feed the extra mouths. Already in the last ten years the population of the world has increased by more than three times the population of this island. While men multiply, acres are narrowing because they are being wasted, and when that happens belts must tighten, and perhaps wars become inevitable.
I suggest that there is a chance in the Commonwealth and in the Colonies for a survey to be made, taking in all those things that are necessary throughout its length and breadth to combat erosion, to develop hydro-electric resources, to develop minerals and so forth, in such a way as to ensure that it will be done with a balanced method giving priority, naturally, as the survey proceeds, to those part which are proved to be the most
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necessary either for industry or for agriculture. As this would work out, I believe it should be treated as a sort of great co-partnership, as it were, on the lines of a military operation. You would start on your development areas, on the analogy of the Tennessee Valley, with hutted camps where you could have married quarters, where you would start on the great work necessary: here it might be hydro-electric, there it might be dams; and elsewhere it might be afforestation. You would move to reclaim that land and develop its area. As the works were completed, so would more people come. You would have there a population who had migrated to that part, who would then have been acclimatised by years of work on that land, and would settle to their various jobs in their right proportions; who would have been screened by the very events through which they had gone, and above all, because they had worked with their brains and hands to develop that area, would feel that they had their roots in it; for what men do for themselves, they cherish afterwards.
In the next two or three years, perhaps only a few hundred thousand can leave this country, but if an ordinary progressive development, such as I have tried to outline in the few moments at my disposal, were to take place it would mean a continued demand, not only in this country but throughout the Commonwealth, United States and Western Europe for plant and material, and that would keep field and factory, office and business and shipping, all going at full capacity. If we do not do something of this sort how, when Marshall Aid comes to an end, are we likely to avoid the disasters of a world slump—a slump which is already being banked upon by at least one division of the world for its own ends? If we carry this out, I do not believe that that need ever occur.
That brings me to the last part of my Motion, about the survival of Western Europe. England—Great Britain if you like—struggling to keep its head above water can give neither hope nor a lead to the nations of Western Europe. With Britain and those nations working to a common purpose, with everything going well, all the industrial resources will be needed. But Europe's Colonial Empire—the Colonial Empire of the French, the Belgians, the Dutch and the Portuguese—will equally be joining in such a

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scheme as this. Half the nations of the world can work to save themselves from immediate disaster and ultimate starvation. I do not believe that this is a little England policy to work for a much smaller population at home. In the greatest crises of our history, with the exception of the last few years, we have had an infinitely smaller population and have always been up against the preponderance of others. Real strength will lie when we make individuals men with hope, families units with opportunity, at home and throughout the British Empire, when we have filled it with homes that really mean something. Naturally, I do not expect the noble Viscount the Leader of the House to commit himself on any details, but this is an urgent and a vital problem. It is something upon which our whole future depends. What I do expect and hope is that he will show evidence, if your Lordships will forgive the phrase, that there is fire in the belly of those who govern us with regard to their intentions. I beg to move for Papers.
7.11 p.m.
LORD BARNBY LORD BARNBY had given Notice of his intention to ask His Majesty's Government their present plans for assisting migration within the Empire; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this question seems to fall into two categories. First, the position of those who wish to emigrate, including all the ex-Service men, whose numbers, if we are to believe the Press now run to great numbers. That is the short range. The second category is that which believes that dispersion of population and industry is a necessary development if we are to save the rest of the community of this island from economic and defence dangers. That is long range. We have had many discussions in this House on this question, and it is right that it should be discussed here. I ask myself exactly what we want to achieve? The aim is to get some encouragement from the Government on points that have been repeatedly raised. Before I sit down I intend to raise again some of these points, of which I have given the noble Viscount notice.
On the first of those two angles, there is no necessity to emphasise the anxiety in the minds of those who wish to emigrate—
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and I press this from the point of view of the ex-Service men. On the second of those angles, I wish to pay a tribute to my noble friend Lord Ports-mouth. He has indeed performed a great service in the timeliness of raising this question at this moment, and he has brought to these discussions an emphasis on new angles. He speaks with scientific knowledge and wide experience from overseas, which he has to our benefit recently reinforced with visits to parts of the Commonwealth. I am satisfied that in associating myself emphatically with his remarks, there is little need to add to the general question, I hope his speech will be widely published. It will give great comfort and encouragement to those who read it throughout the Commonwealth, and it will give inspiration to enormous numbers in this country who are vitally interested in this question.
The noble Earl emphasised the desirability of the dispersal of the population. Naturally, only a relatively small member can be moved within measurable time. But it is there that we seek some indication of whether the Government are in sympathy with plans in that direction. On searching through the past debates, it has not been easy to form any clear indication. I confine myself on that head to the belief in the accuracy of the forecasts that a change in the world activity of trade must necessarily come. Particularly in the consumer industries, it will come much sooner than appears to be the expectation of the Government from their export targets, and I feel that he consideration now of plans for the dispersal to the Empire of some part of our population, and our machinery and our capital with it, should engage the attention of the Government.
This is not a Party question, and from the remarks in the Press the strength of its belief in Socialist circles is becoming more and more manifest. I have just been reading an article by a writer for the Daily Herald much on the lines of my noble friend's speech this afternoon. It is a widespread belief, and we should seek indications from the Government as to what they plan to assist it. I recollect that at about this stage after the termination of hostilities in the First World War, I associated myself with a movement in another place urging the Government to ask Parliament to vote a sum of

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£100,000,000, to be spread over ten years, for the purpose of assisting the dispersal of the population to the Empire. I am convinced, in the light of experience since then, that had some part of that aim been achieved, we would have strengthened the outstanding parts of the Empire. I realise that in all these matters there are two parties to an arrangement, and it is necessary that there should be reciprocity on the part of the receiver. Our hope of achieving something along those lines did not materialise, and I believe that as a result of it the Dominions—particularly Australia, New Zealand and South Africa—were less able in the last war to give us aid than they would have been. Mercifully, through their assistance, and by their manufacturing capacity—I propose to deal with Canada in a moment—we were largely assisted by their supplies in carrying on hostilities.
The noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, emphasised the timeliness of a conference between the Dominions and I agree with that—in spite of the statement by the Prime Minister on April 22 in answering a question on this subject (I quote from Hansard.)
"No consultations have been held between the Governments of Commonwealth countries on this subject."
That was on the subject of migration. I believe that momentarily there is evidence of a distinct change of outlook in Australia towards migration. In this connection, perhaps I may be allowed to quote from some remarks recently made by Mr. R.G. Casey, an Australian who has served this country in a prominent position with great ability during the war. Speaking in Australia he said:
"It was vital that the United Kingdom should decentralise her population throughout the British Commonwealth. Until she ceased regarding herself as an isolated community and planned her economy accordingly, the people of the United Kingdom had little hope of rising above their present drab austerity."
I pass from those general remarks to three points on which I hope the noble Viscount the Leader of the House will be able to give us some information to-day. It has been emphasised that to achieve easy migration there must be some helpfulness with regard to the transferability of accumulated contributions to social services in this country. I am indebted to the Commonwealth Relations Office for
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giving me some information. Apparently there is no evidence yet—perhaps some will be given to-day—that the Conference which took place last year has resulted in the completion of these arrangements. The second point relates to shipping. I was taken to task by the Leader of the House in the last debate on this subject for suggesting that facilities up to then had been inadequate. I hope the noble Viscount will give us some indication that plans are being made to enable the situation to be helped by means of American assistance. I do not believe that dispersion will weaken this country's prestige. To suggest that is a fallacy. I believe that it will increase the strength of this country if all other units of the Commonwealth are strong. On this point I should like to quote from the Evening Standard of May 3:
"Emigration will never weaken Britain. Her strength lies in the Empire. If the Empire is peopled with British stock, Britain herself will be guarded more securely and her influence in the world will not diminish."
I am satisfied to stand on the strength of the Monarchy. I believe that the sentimental ties of the Crown will assure a continuance of that bond, whatever may be the degree of dispersion within the Empire.
I now turn to the last point of which I gave Notice to the noble Viscount. It concerns the recent restrictions on the transfer of migrants' funds from this country to Canada. There appears to be an almost vicious discrimination against Canada. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has stated that it involves an annual cost which in present circumstances cannot be borne. Let me refer to the answer given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in another place. I quote from Hansard of April 8. In reply to a question by Colonel Crosthwaite-Eyre, who asked:
"Will he give an assurance that the Canadian Government agreed to this modification….?"
The Chancellor of the Exchequer replied:
"As the honourable and gallant gentleman knows very well, it is of the utmost importance that we should not waste dollars."
There was no statement as to whether Canada had been consulted or merely informed. I should like to draw attention to Section 95 of the British North America Act. I will not quote it, but the interpretation clause certainly shows that

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immigration is jointly a responsibility of the Dominions and Provincial Governments.
It is well known that the Province of Ontario has been carrying out an emigration programme from this country. It would seem reasonable to ask the Government to say definitely whether Canada, Ottawa and Ontario were consulted and agreed to these modifications. I wish time made it possible to give an idea of the hardships that are being caused by these regulations. They are making it very difficult for ex-Service men who intended migrating to Canada; they are tending to break up families who wish to move as a unit. But I would emphasise a still more important point. A proportion of British migrants to Canada, and a proportion of migrants from other countries—including the European E.V.W.'s—is altogether desirable. Canada has been most generous to us in lending us large sums of money, and to say now that we are out to save the equivalent of £2,500,000 sterling in dollar remittances for migrants to Canada is surely absurd.
Your Lordships will be aware that the increase of population in the United States of America in the current decade will exceed the total population of Canada. This country, after all it has received from Canada, should not baulk at a small outlay to avoid the complaint by Canada of discrimination. In this connection, I must quote a despatch from the Sunday Times of Ottawa of May 16 as an example of the dangers facing us. I think it is significant. I quote:
"Big business interests……in the province of Ontario are already shaken by the growth of Socialism and State trading in Western Europe, and are now looking askance at Western Union…. They are tending to believe that their economic future lies with the United States."
The importance of this question of remittances to Canada is so great that I hope the noble Viscount the Leader of the House will be able to convey some correction. His sympathy in all matters of Empire is well known. In conclusion, I should like to associate myself most emphatically with the address of my noble friend the mover of this Motion.
7.32 p.m.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, at this late hour it would indeed be brutal of me to detain your Lordships for longer than is absolutely necessary. I can assure your
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Lordships that my intentions in that respect are most kindly. Nevertheless, there is a matter which I feel I most raise this evening because I believe it to be one of considerable importance. The noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, has raised this question, and we are all grateful to him for raising it at this particular moment. Both he and the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, I think, might be described as having dealt with the matter in general terms and in the light of a long-term policy—the problem of the redeployment of our people and of our capital resources. I should like to associate myself most cordially with much that they have said. However, I would like to remind your Lordships that there are immediate problems of emigration which, in my opinion, brook no delay whatsoever. It is to one of these problems that I should like to devote a few minutes this evening, partly because I believe that if this problem is not dealt with it will represent great hardship to some 32,000 people, and partly because, in view of my connections with the British community in Egypt, I feel it my duty to raise this matter.
The problem is that of the British community in Egypt at the present time, consequent upon the withdrawal of the majority of our Forces and influence from that country, and upon various laws which have been passed by the Egyptian Government. Briefly, I should say a word about the British community themselves. At the end of the last war, they consisted mainly of three classes: officials, senior and junior, business men and a broad class which I think we might describe as employees. They were employed by somebody or were small traders. Broadly speaking, they were the wage-earners and the salary-earners on a small scale. To-day most of the officials have left Egypt, probably wisely. The ones who left earlier received compensation; those who left later received little, and they had difficulty in finding employment on their return to this country. They have largely left the country. The business men do not constitute part of this particular problem because most of them are eminently capable of looking after themselves Therefore, it is the mass of the employed people to whom I wish to refer. In addition to that, perhaps it would be suitable if I reminded your Lordships of the general composition of the British community it

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Egypt because, of course, they are not by any means all Anglo-Saxons. Figures are one of the great difficulties in this particular problem because, so far as I know, there are no official figures available. If I quote any figures this evening, I do not quote them with authority and I hope that the noble Lord will forgive me for any errors that I may make. They are only figures from private sources and I am prepared to accept correction with reference to them. I am informed that the total of the British community in Egypt is about 32,000 and they are divided approximately as follows. People of the Anglo-Saxon element number about 17 per cent. of that population, many of whom have mainly Syrian or Egyptian wives but who are themselves of British descent and are mainly ex-soldiers who settled in Egypt after either the First World War or the Second World War.
LORD PAKENHAM: I did not quite catch that figure.
LORD LLOYD: Seventeen per cent. They are mainly ex-soldiers who settled in Egypt after the First World War or the Second World War. Some of them traded on their own account; others were employed by various commercial concerns; a few were employed by the Government, and some by the Army. The next group are the Maltese who form about 27 per cent. of the whole. I should like to say a word about the Maltese in particular, because they are a very large community and they are an extremely hard-working and loyal people who are intensely proud of their British nationality, They are proud of their British nationality because of the policy that has been pursued in Egypt since the year 1924, when the High Commissioner at that time took certain special steps to infuse a spirit of Commonwealth solidarity into the British community in Egypt, a step which I believe was thoroughly desirable. In particular, he took the pains to make sure that all people who were British citizens were made aware of the fact that they were British citizens. They were given the opportunity of having British education. British schools were provided and, where they had to go to foreign schools—mainly Roman Catholic schools—British priests were brought out from England to teach in those Roman Catholic schools, so that
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they had the benefit of British education and were taught to be English, as opposed to Italian or French. Therefore, the Maltese have been brought up to think of themselves as British and to be proud of it. The Maltese community carry out a large number of tasks, I think, with considerable ability. They are mostly clerks, store-keepers, merchants and small traders. Then there are the Cypriots who form 34 per cent. of the whole. They are mainly Greek in sentiment, but they are too multifarious in character for me to worry your Lordships with them to-night.
Finally, there are the rest, who are I again multifarious—a large Jewish community of all kinds, of Levantines of British nationality. I will have a word to say about them in a moment. Perhaps your Lordships may think that this has little to do with the question of migration, but I will come to the point of my discourse. The British community in Egypt at present are undergoing very great hard-ship and misery, and great unemployment, by reason of the situation in that country. The causes of that situation are two-fold. In the first place, I would remind your Lordships that during the last war the National Service Act was applied in Egypt. I believe it to be the only country outside the British Commonwealth where conscription to the British Forces was applied. In most of the British community, it was welcomed with alacrity, but the fact remained that men of the British community in Egypt of a military age were conscripted into the Forces in one form or another, and at the end of the Second World War, when they went back to their jobs they found in many cases that their jobs were no longer there. That was due, if I may say so with respect and without upsetting the foreign relations of His Majesty's Government, to the fact that Egypt is not such a civilised country as ours, and there were no laws like we have here to make sure that those who deserved well of the Egyptians—and they deserve a great deal better of the Egyptians than the Egyptians themselves—should get their jobs back. As a result, in many cases they did not get their jobs back.
The second point is the recent attitude of the Egyptian Government to foreigners in their country. I have a copy of the most recent laws on employment in Egypt. Those laws provide that in future

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40 per cent. of the directors of all limited companies in Egypt must be Egyptian, that 75 per cent. of all the salaried staff in all limited companies in Egypt must be Egyptian, and 95 per cent. of all the workpeople drawing wages in all limited companies in Egypt must be Egyptian. Therefore, it is clear to your Lordships that anybody in Egypt who has not a job at the present time is extremely unlikely to find one, unless he happens to be an Egyptian. Again, the result is self-evident—namely, that the British community in Egypt, who are deserving well, not only of Egypt but of this country, are undergoing times of great difficulty and of great unemployment. There is growing up something which I think is unfortunate—a poor British population in Egypt. I can hardly conceive of anything worse for our prestige in the Middle East.
I am unable reliably to give the figures of actual unemployment. Perhaps the noble Viscount will be better armed than I am, and will be able to give more accurate figures. But I understand there are about a thousand people of various kinds—about whose nationalities I will not weary you at this late hour apart from saying that the Anglo-Saxon element is the smallest—at present unemployed. In addition there are another 1,400 people who are at the moment employed by the forces in the Canal Zone, who presumably will become unemployed very shortly, as those forces are progressively withdrawn. Nor, incidentally, could their living conditions in the Canal Zone be regarded with satisfaction. Many of them have their families in Cairo and they have had to go to the Canal Zone to get work. Consequently, their wages are inadequate to support them in the standard of life to which they have been accustomed. Furthermore, such figures as I have do not take into account the many members of the British community in Egypt who have had to take such jobs as they can get, many being extremely inadequate by reason of their wages or salaries to maintain them in the standard of living to which they are accustomed, and also, in my opinion, entirely unsuitable.
It is evident to me that the position of the British community in Egypt is one which we cannot contemplate with a clear conscience, and one which we cannot leave
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as it is, It is a very unhappy position, and I feel that something should be done about it. I admit freely that the proportion of those affected who, if I may use the phrase, are Anglo-Saxons, relatively small compared with the others, but that is no reason why we should forget them. After all, they are British subjects and they are our responsibility. What is more, I feel most strongly that we owe them a great debt of gratitude for the services they rendered during, the war, and for their loyalty. As I have already said, there is no more loyal community than the Maltese, whom we rightly taught to regard themselves as British. I believe the noble Viscount is at one with me on this matter, and I most earnestly submit that it would be the greatest disaster if, when times are bad, we let those people down; I believe it would be unjust from their point of view and what is more, it would be a very poor advertisement to others who at the moment believe that in belonging to the great British. Commonwealth they belong to something which provides them with a strength and security which they can nowhere else receive. Therefore, I feel that both for our honour and for our prestige something should be done.
I am sorry to take so long, but I have a few more remarks to make about this difficult problem, and I would not like noble Lords to think that nothing is being done, because a very great deal of relief work is being carried out by the benevolent societies in Cairo and in this country, of one of which I have the honour to be President. Nor have the Government neglected the situation. For example, all those whose distress is directly attributable to the recent Egyptian laws, or to the transference of troops to the Canal Zone, are entitled either to repatriation to this country, or to a dole of some kind to keep them going while times are bad. But these are mere palliatives to the situation. It is not good for any man to be unemployed and to live upon a dole. Equally, as those who are repatriable cannot be repatriated unless they are virtually penniless, it means that men, many of whom have put in years of service abroad, arrive back in this country without a penny. They are not suited to work in this country; it is difficult to find them houses; and it is difficult to find them jobs.

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They realise all this, and in the vast majority of cases they do not wish to come back here.
Therefore, I feel that all this is appropriate to a debate on the general subject of emigration, because I believe most sincerely that the only answer to this problem is for an organised system of emigration to be arranged for the British community in Egypt. We should cease to deal with the situation piecemeal, by individual cases, and should try to investigate the whole situation and find out whether something on a larger scale cannot be done. I would remind the House that many of these people who have served so long in Egypt are particularly suited for work in Africa or in other parts of the British Empire—much more suited, indeed, than they are for work in this country. Many of them have occupied positions of responsibility and trust and, particularly in the junior administrative groups, the Maltese are first-class people to employ. I hope, therefore, that something can be started upon these lines, because I believe it is vitally important that if anything is going to be done it should be done quickly. Many of these people are unemployed at the moment, and in my opinion the situation will deteriorate as we progressively withdraw from Egypt.
The first thing I suggest is that the problem should be properly investigated. There are few figures available as to how many people are involved, and in what categories they are to be found, what are their capabilities, and in what possible places they could be offered jobs. I do not believe, with great respect to the noble Viscount, that it has got to that stage yet, but I believe it is important that a real and full investigation of this situation should take place, with a view to finding out what sort of people there are, what sort of jobs they have been doing, what sort of experience they have had, and whether they could be catered for in the many schemes that are in operation to-day. To take only a few examples, there are the ground-nuts scheme in Tanganyika and the great Middle East base that is being built up in Kenya. And I believe more schemes of development are taking place in Australia which might possibly provide jobs for some of these people. I believe that this is a problem
1112
of emigration which cannot wait. Something must be done, and I believe that if we tackle it we shall not only do something which is thoroughly desirable from the point of view of the British Commonwealth as a whole, but we shall have discharged a great debt of gratitude which we owe to the British community in Egypt.
7.50 p.m.
LORD FAIRFAX OF CAMERON: My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Lord who has just sat down for his speech. It is fitting that he should concern himself so anxiously with the welfare of British nationals and others in Egypt. I should like to turn, however, to what may be called the longer-term aspect of the subject, and I wish at the outset to express my appreciation of the opportunity of being able to speak on a subject which I believe we should regard as an important part of Empire policy and not as merely incidental to it. This long-term aspect makes it a matter that young people, I believe, should study with care, because it is likely to affect the world in which they will live even fifty years hence. Your Lordships will be well aware of the great numbers of people who desire to emigrate from this country to the Dominions at this moment. I believe that shipping com panies have 30,000 people on their books for Australia alone, and the Dominions have made clear their willingness, even their desire, to take all the people with whom we can supply them. I gather that the maximum intake per annum that Australia is prepared for, is 70,000.
If there is such a widespread desire for migration, some good reasons must exist for it. We have lost the position which we held before the war as the pre-eminent industrial nation, and with it our capacity to pay for our full requirements in food and raw materials, half of which have to be imported. But I will not weary your Lordships by describing a state of affairs with which yon are only too familiar. It seems to me that we are reaching a situation in which, if we cannot sell all the goods that we need to sell, that part of the population which is dependent upon the sale of those goods for its sustenance will have to go elsewhere. If that were to happen, home agriculture would come into its own, and would be able to support a far greater I proportion of the population, thereby

1113
making us stronger not only in war but also in peace. At the same time, the shipping that would be released from carrying the food which we consume here would be made available for earning foreign currencies in the carrying trade of the world.
That is one aspect of our situation, but there is another to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention, because it is one which is not often touched upon. The population has now risen to well over 49,000,000 and although the birth-rate is falling the total population is likely to go on increasing until, I believe, 1970 or 1980. The people of this country are living in overcrowded conditions and I suggest that those conditions may well be a cause, rather than a potential cure, of the man-power shortage, for in a highly complex society such as ours there must be a high proportion of the total population employed in non-productive trades of all kinds. If the population were to be thinned out a smaller proportion would be employed in those trades. I believe that that is a matter which is well worthy of consideration. As conditions; are now, they are an overhead cost that must be met in prices, and I believe that together with the cost of carrying imports that we need from overseas they are a powerful factor in maintaining the cost of living at its present high level.
In these circumstances, I cannot wonder at the constant demands for higher pay which one hears continually. But on top of all that, what one might call this cacophony of activity and life must be administered, and for that purpose a large, complicated and expensive Civil Service is required, the cost of which is additional to all the other costs. But, apart from expense, there is another point which I should like to bring to your Lordships' attention. That is the shortage of space. One sees, on every hand, the sad spectacle of the promoters of new towns, green belts, and overspill areas, the farmers and the War Office all competing with each other for the same pieces of land. I will not touch upon the result of overcrowding on family life and its attendant effects upon the birth-rate, because that is such a large matter that it ought to be dealt with separately. I would, however, remind your Lordships that in the last century the average number of children per
1114
family was in the neighbourhood of five, whereas in the ten years before the war it had dropped to two.
Now, for a moment, I would like to turn to the position of the Dominions. Your Lordships will be only too keenly aware of their rapid industrial development in the last few years. The value of Australia's primary products in the year 1944–45 was £278,000,000, where as the value of her secondary industrial products was £362,000,000. We can no longer regard Australia as not being an industrial nation. Take the case of Canada. The value of her motor vehicle exports in 1939 was 25,000,000 I dollars, whereas in 1945 the value of her I motor vehicle exports had risen to 351,000,000 dollars. We have learned the value of the industrial capacities of the Dominions in war and we are learning their value to us in peace. But, great as their development has been, they still require the experience, as well as the people to man their industries, with which we can provide them. I believe that a a diminution in industrial activity in this country, so long as there is a corresponding increase in industrial activity in the Dominions, will be no loss to us here.
There are one or two aspects of migration in the past upon which I should now like to touch. It is just over one year, I believe, since the agreement was made with Australia, and during that period of time over 25,000 people have gone to Australia—compared with a possible maximum intake of 70,000. Under the present system of migration, I think that we cannot and, perhaps, never shall be able to provide sufficient people to meet the Dominions' requirements. In that, there is a possibility of danger that I think we should watch. Some of the Dominions—Australia in particular—urgently require a certain minimum quota of emigrants, and if they do not get those emigrants from this country there will be plenty of people on the Continent who will be waiting and only too eager to accept the chance of going to one of the Dominions The United Kingdom has a vast capacity for absorbing large quantities of foreign blood into her midst without the national characteristics of the people being materially altered in any way; I do not believe, however, that the Dominions, which are still young countries, have quite the same

1115
capacity. If any Dominion were to take in a large quantity of foreign blood, it might well in the long run prejudice its relations with the rest of the Commonwealth. It has been said that past migration has been haphazard, that it has been what one might call "unconscious migration." That may have been all right in the past, but there is now danger to us in that kind of migration, unless it is carried out on a community basis. There is always the possibility of its giving rise to the economic refugee. The disappointment of a migrant, when he arrives at a place which does not quite come up to what he has expected, causes resentment which may result in damage to other people who are thinking of migrating.
We should remember that migration tends to attract chiefly able-bodied men and women, and so long as the problem of migration is not faced squarely, and this seepage process is allowed to continue, there will be a danger of our balance of productive and unproductive persons being upset. At the same time such a seepage process can cause suspicion between Governments, in the belief that some kind of body-snatching is going on. Although one may not, perhaps, notice it at the time, that is a matter which may well cause friction and bad relations between the Dominion Government and the Government of the United Kingdom. If these beliefs are true, the present attitude towards migration is inadequate and even at times harmful. We must regard the whole matter in a bigger way.
I come to my final point. I think we should take advantage of the widespread desire that exists for migration, both here and in the Dominions, for making closer unity of the Commonwealth, and for making the Commonwealth more powerful. To-day we have to think in terms, not of haphazard migration, or even of community migration, but of communities going with their industries as complete and self-contained units. Only in that way can we overcome the danger inherent in our overcrowded existence, without at the same time upsetting our balance of productivity. Obviously, such a plan could not originate from the Government—although perhaps on this side we might be glad if they themselves
1116
were to migrate! It is a matter for Empire industry as a whole, for the trade unions, the employers' associations, the chambers of commerce and the financial institutions. The first move must come from them, but the Government can help by giving their blessing and encouragement. Here I should like to ask the noble Viscount the Leader of the House a question. I am sorry I did not give him notice, and as it is a matter which affects Government policy, I shall understand if he cannot answer it to-day. Are the Government prepared or not to encourage and support the large-scale migration of industry within the Commonwealth? This is a subject for discussion between all Empire interests concerned. I believe they must discuss it sooner or later. It is up to Empire industry as a whole to unite. I believe that it is on the unity of Empire industry as a whole, that the unity of the Commonwealth must ultimately be based. If anything concrete arises from those discussions, then would be the chance of the Government to assist in carrying them I out. I do not believe just one industry or one section of the community is affected by this plan; it is the whole Commonwealth. I believe that if the wealth of experience and productive capacity massed in these Islands can be distributed within the Commonwealth to those points where it can increase and be most effective, the rôle we shall play in the future and the contribution we can make to world peace will be far greater.
8.7 p.m.
LORD TWEEDSMUIR: My Lords, this is the third debate we have had on this subject in one year, and I think it extremely unfortunate that the rush of Parliamentary business should mean we must have this debate at a late hour, and at an awkward time. I do not suppose that could be helped, however. We are all grateful for the thoughtful and interesting speech of the noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, in introducing this Motion. I listened with great interest to the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, who has made a long and careful study of this subject. They advocated what we might call the wider plan. As my noble friend Lord Lloyd pointed out, while we must consider the wider plan we must keep our minds on the not less important question of those

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communities, on whose behalf he spoke so eloquently, who have fallen into honourable misfortune, and whose plight will bear no delay in its recognition. I was interested in the suggestions which the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, made, upon which I will comment a little later. I will not detain your Lordships unduly long.
I think that anybody who studied the British Commonwealth more objectively than we are able to do, would think it surprising that whereas many years ago we had a centralised Government of the whole Commonwealth, and long ago gave it up, we still have a highly centralised population. It is a remarkable thing that of the English-speaking British stock, five-sevenths live in one-ninetieth part of their territories—and not the richest part. These territories—Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, seventy-seven limes the size of these islands, have a population of not more than twice that of Greater London. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax of Cameron, who said that the redistribution of the British race was, to quote his own words, "an important part of our Imperial policy and not merely incidental to it." I would put it much higher than that. Sometimes one reads in newspaper articles of the necessity to disperse our population. That, of course, is the wrong word. One talks of dispersing a crowd—it is a transitive act. This is something quite different. It is a great, spontaneous, migratory urge which no Government could instigate, but which it is the duty of the Government to guide. It is a search for countries of greater opportunity, and because it is the search for greater opportunity, it takes the most adventurous.
If we stand in the way of the adventurous, or, rather, if we had stood in their way in the past, we should never hold the position we do now. It is that which guides the outflow of people, which guided it up to the 1914–18 War and in the years immediately following it. It brought an ebb tide in the 1930's when the depression gripped the Commonwealth countries. They came back to Britain as a country apparently of greater opportunity. It is the root of that strange population state of affairs which exists in Canada. Canada has a re-migration problem. Thousands—in fact, millions—have gone to Canada since the year 1867,
1118
the year of Confederation; millions have left Canada in later generations; but if nobody had gone to Canada since 1867, and nobody had left Canada, the population of that great country would be what it is to-day. War accentuates this trend, and I think conscription probably has also something to do with it. Young men come out of the Forces a year beyond the time when they would normally have been settled in civilian life, possibly with their outlook slightly broadened. War makes people realise that the world is a bigger place than they had ever before realised.
We are overcrowded in this country in the sense of accommodation in many ways—in our schools and in many other aspects in our national life. But, due to the shortages and restrictions which now afflict us, I think we probably all have a much greater feeling of overcrowding than actually exists. They give us the feeling that if only there were fewer of us there would be more to go round. Noble Lords have spoken of the great numbers of people who now have their names down to emigrate—I believe nigh upon a million. This, of course, is a gross figure, because some have their names down in several places, and some might perhaps change their minds when it came to the decision. But the net figure, though it would be smaller, would be gigantic. In these days emigration can be no haphazard process, but must be calculated on the absorptive capacities of the countries to which the emigrants go, and the willingness of those countries to receive them. There is great talk of targets. Sometimes people emote figures of how many people Australia or Canada can take over the next few years; and, in fact, how many people we in this country can afford to lose. Whether it is the country of adoption or the country of origin, I do not believe one can make a safe bet in fixing a target. A century ago the Australians thought that their country was reasonably populated. It was only four or five years after, when gold prospectors found the enormous goldfields, which became Ballarat and Bendigo, that the population of Victoria doubled within a year. Things like that can go on happening, and one cannot forecast what population can be accommodated in, say, even five years' time. But, whatever the figure is, it is vastly in excess of

1119
their present populations. Those countries are just as eager to receive our settlers as our settlers appear eager to go there. My noble friend Lord Barnby said in his speech that this involves two questions. It is a question of those who wish to emigrate, and a question of the future of the Commonwealth itself.
The Commonwealth countries want our settlers for very good reasons. I think war has shown everyone that a vast country with a tiny population is a precarious place in which to be in such a conflict as we have recently experienced. As my noble friend Lord Fairfax said, they are now industrialising hard. They need a growing population to absorb a growing home market. They have capital installations—docks, railways, and services of Government—that could take care of far larger populations than they now maintain, whose presence would help to spread the taxes of their maintenance more thinly. They badly want our settlers, and our settlers want to go. But what are the long-term considerations? To that question we must address ourselves. Under two heads, briefly, they are strategy and economics Some people still write and speak as though, if war broke out, we could evacuate the inhabitants of these islands to Australia, to Canada or elsewhere, at a moment's notice. That is physically impossible, as any sensible man must realise. Then the specious but intriguing argument is often put up that if this island is defensible in war we should keep everybody here, so that we shall have as many people as possible to defend it; or, if it is not defensible, let us clear out not 5,000,000 but 48,000,000—and that with the greatest possible expedition. I have heard that specious argument put forward. What is perfectly plain is that, however strong Britain is, if the other Commonwealth countries are weak, then the Commonwealth as a whole is weak, and Britain's strength is nothing. The converse is also the case. There are those who like to cast doubt, too, by saying that it will lead only to a weakened Britain and a Commonwealth not strengthened in proportion; or perhaps to a group of middle Powers, all having average strength but none with sufficient strength to exercise a necessary leadership, or to rise to the full heights of production. Well, like all these things, it is a matter of balance.
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Then the economic argument is put forward—an argument, in many ways, I think, somewhat degrading to human personality, because it balances the human being who leaves this country in the same scale as if he were some article of merchandise. It is true, of course, on narrow logical grounds, and on economic grounds, that every emigrant who goes from this country represents a certain capital investment by this country; and that he takes out a certain part of the country's capital in leaving it. I do not believe that argument takes us anywhere. Nor do I believe in the argument that if we emigrate large numbers of our young men we shall find more and more people who cannot work, because they are past it, being supported by fewer who can. That would be the case had not every one of the Commonwealth countries agreed with us (I think I am right in this) to take a cross-section of our population. There is no doubt that when an able-bodied and intelligent man leaves this country for some part of the Commonwealth, whatever the ultimate benefit to the Commonwealth—and we know it will be great—we suffer a certain initial loss, and make a small sacrifice. But if we make that sacrifice, what sacrifices are those Commonwealth countries not making for us now, and what sacrifices have they not made over the last few years? Think of the 300,000,000 dollars that Canada forwent on the Wheat Agreement, and the 1,000,000,000 dollars interest free a few years earlier.
The noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, ventured on to a piece of ground on which I must say I should be terrified to follow him. I know now why economists shun like the plague all problems of population density. I would merely say this. I think the noble Earl put forward a most interesting argument on the reduction of the population of this country. Some people think rather loosely (sometimes one reads it, too) that our standard of living, our strength and well-being would automatically rise if the population were lower. That is not the case, of course. But I believe with the noble Earl that we are capable, with a much smaller population, of having as high a standard of living as we have now; and perhaps a much higher one. But I put more stress on technical efficiency than does the noble Earl. If one had to select the race with probably the highest standard of

1121
living in the world to-day, one would probably select the Swiss. The Swiss have no advantages, except certain natural resources of their country to produce hydro-electric power—and not as many of those as most people suppose. They have this high standard of living partly, it must be admitted, because they do not spend anything like the same proportion on national defence but also because they have a high standard of technical excellence. I believe that the standard of living is a thing which is not allied, as many people would say, to a large population.
I must bring this rather lengthy speech of mine to an end. The noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, spoke of the progressive development of lands yet awaiting development, and the noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, spoke of the movement of industry as a means of community emigration. I do not take quite such a robust view as my noble friend. I see the question not so much as of industries being taken wholesale from this country and being deprived of valuable continental markets, and leaving a gap behind them, but rather as opportunities where new industries are to be created in the Commonwealth, those industries now in Britain throwing out offshoots and branches which can expand within the other countries of the Commonwealth. We have only one example in our history of community emigration from our country, and that was the Highland clearances in the Eighteenth and the Nineteenth Centuries. By whole villages and communities they left this country. They went under tragic and deplorable circumstances, but because they went, sailed, and settled as communities, they conferred immeasurable benefit on the countries to which they went.
The noble Lord, Lord Fairfax, made some mention of the people of Europe, many of whom we have taken into this country as citizens. Of course we have not the people in this country, even if we emigrated the total population, to provide the total populations that the Commonwealth countries say they want. Australia is taking a great many people from Central Europe. Canada is taking them in on a quota basis, which is calculated at one to so many from Britain. As the noble Lord said, we in this country are the great assimilating nation. We took the French Hugenots in early in the
1122
Eighteenth Century, when they were fleeing from persecution in their own country, in a ratio of one to seventy of our own population. We assimilated those people, and, so far from being impoverished from their coming, we have been vastly enriched. There is also this trend of circulation, which I think is one of the strongest influences in the Commonwealth. Not only are people going from his country, and many more people wishing to go, but also many are coming to it from outside; and there is now for the first time some movement between the Commonwealth countries themselves. Since this war ended no less than 10,000 Canadians have come to make their homes in Britain.
The noble Viscount who is to answer this Motion has been asked a great number of questions, of most of which I understand he has been given notice. This is the third debate we have had on this subject. In the first debate we inquired from this side of the House as to what the Government's policy was regarding emigration. The second debate was to get more reassurance and what might be called a situation report; an interim report. We hope now that in this third debate the noble Viscount will be able to reassure us on the Government's attitude and also release a shower of facts to which he has access and we have not. If it is a question of attitude—and this is a great spontaneous movement of mankind—there are only three attitudes the Government can adopt. One is actively to discourage immigration; one is to tolerate it passively, and one is actively to encourage it. We hope to hear from the noble Viscount that the last of those three is the object of His Majesty's Government now.
We would like to hear from the noble Viscount something about shipping. When we suffered so many shipping losses in the war, we received a blow which must nearly have proved fatal to a great maritime nation such as ours. But in fact we have since been building more ships than the rest of the world put together, and surely some help lies in that quarter. I do not suppose they are all passenger ships, and I imagine that some are built to sell. In providing shipping for would-be emigrants, is it merely a question of what ships are available, or are emigrants given a high priority?

1123
The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, has touched upon the question of the Budget and of taking capital to Canada. I think that restriction is a most unfortunate thing, and I cannot deny it. I think the Canadians are faced with not getting what they agreed to take, and what they wanted, which was a cross-section. If only that limited amount of capital can be taken, they will be getting the young settlers of limited means whose parents will be handicapped and in fact prevented from following them if they have more than £1,000 saved up from the thrift of their lifetimes. I believe that a brake on men and capital going to Canada is a very bad investment indeed. We buy everything at a price. We need dollars badly, and I think we have bought them at far too heavy a price.
There is one question of which I have not given notice, but I would be grateful if the noble Viscount could say something in reply. We do not have spectacular conferences between this country and the Commonwealth powers, but we have a very efficient liaison. Can the noble Viscount tell us whether the question of emigration is being discussed on a shipping basis between this country and the Commonwealth countries particularly interested, or are all the representatives of the Commonwealth countries concerned coming together to talk the matter over around one table at one time? I am afraid I have gone on rather too long, but I hope the noble Viscount will be able to answer our questions. I believe as firmly as other noble Lords who have spoken that upon the successful redistribution of the British race depends the whole future of the British Commonwealth. I think that one of the lessons that we have to teach the world is that unique form of co-operation that we have built up within the Commonwealth; and in the resettlement of the peoples within that Commonwealth I trust that the handling of emigration will be another shining example of that particular quality, of which the rest of the world so badly stands in need.
8.28 p.m.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: My Lords, in the first place I should like to express my hearty agreement with the opening sentences of the noble Lord who has just spoken, which were that pressure of Parliamentary business has compelled discussion on this very important subject to
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be put off until late in the evening, at the termination of an otherwise hard day of Parliamentary work. I should also like to express my sincere admiration to noble Lords who have taken so keen and active an interest in this subject, and who are so anxious that it shall not be lost sight of. They will receive no discouragement from me or from any member of this Government.
I was very impressed with one sentence in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir. I do not think I have his precise words, but I am sure I have his meaning. He said that emigration depended upon the absorptive capacity of the country to which the emigrants washed to go, and the arrangements and opportunities awaiting them there—or words to that effect. We have to bear in mind that we are dealing with human beings and, as the noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, said, we have to rely upon the voluntary movement of people; we cannot shift whole populations en bloc as we can animals and as some enthusiastic persons have sought to impress upon us we should do. It just cannot be done, and I do not think I need waste any time in discussing such propositions.
I will try to tell the noble Lord something of what we are doing and of our attitude, though I cannot, at this time, pretend to cover all the ground in detail. I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, that the problem of population and productive capacity in these Islands is clearly one of the key problems of the future. I do not agree with him that mere density of population is the test, either of the standard of life or of productive capacity. If density of population were the determining factor, I suppose the standard of life in China would be higher than anywhere else in the world, whereas we know it is very low indeed in some parts. It depends, as the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, said, upon the efficiency of the population, on their capacity and readiness to produce, and upon a hundred other things connected with personality. Nevertheless, without allowing myself to be tempted into those regions of thought, I should like to impress upon your Lordships that, notwithstanding our large population in this country, we still seem to need labour at the present time in order to get the production required to feed ourselves.

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This is a fact of which we ought not to lose sight: that never within the last hundred years, or during nearly that period, has this country been able to export sufficient to pay for its imports. The balance has been made up by other methods of earning—shipping services, insurance, banking, and a score of other services. But, so far as actual production is concerned, it is a long time in our history since we were able to produce in exports all that we required in imports in terms of material. I still think that we have not by any means reached the limit of productive capacity, either in this country or in any other. Human ingenuity is unfathomable. I believe we could produce an enormous amount more food from our own land, if the land were properly used, than we are doing to-day—but there again I am going to restrain myself. We have to bear these fundamental facts in mind when we are thinking in terms of the figures which the noble Lord mentioned. I am not saying this in adverse criticism of his main contention as to what should be our long-range view of these matters.
The noble Lord who spoke last, and one or two others, asked me about the coming talks with the Commonwealth Prime Ministers upon these matters. I hope sincerely that it will be realised that it is impossible to imagine that we should have conferences without the question of migration being amongst the topics to be discussed. I think I can say that we have been exceedingly forthcoming, because notwithstanding our shortage of man-power in some directions, in concert with the Commonwealth we have deliberately encouraged and provided facilities for emigration to different parts of the Commonwealth—even in the time of our worst scarcity. That was far-sighted and right Commonwealth policy. It began a considerable time ago; I myself took part in Conferences with representatives overseas on this very subject more than a year ago. Presently I will give some of the consequences of those conferences. But I want noble Lords to bear in mind that this is not a one-sided affair. We want to do our best and so do our brethren in the Commonwealth. But it is necessary that in so far as there is migration it should be of what can be described as a cross-section of the population. We cannot afford to denude ourselves of our most
1126
highly-skilled young technicians. That is well understood, and in the scheme now working with, for instance, Australia, there is a joint arrangement, which has resulted from that joint consultation, for selecting applicants in concert with our own Ministry of Labour.
We must also bear in mind—and I am glad to say that our brethren in the Commonwealth are also bearing in mind—that we cannot move people in any large numbers unless there are arrangements at the other end for their reception So far as my travels in the countries of the British Commonwealth are concerned—and they are very extensive now—I have found that each of them has a housing problem just as bad as our own. Therefore, it is no good dumping people in numbers in any part of the Commonwealth unless there is somewhere for them to go and sleep when they get there. The Commonwealth countries are all fully conscious of the relationship of the housing problem to the reception of migrants, and we cannot lose sight of it. Then there is the question of employment. Noble Lords who have spoken have all been to these countries, as I have; and every one of us comes away from those glorious places impressed with the enormous opportunities there are for further development. There is room for pioneers in abundance, and we shall all be stronger if they go. I said "pioneers," because the amount of the country that is still undeveloped in each of those great places is almost immeasurable in the terms of measurement that we are accustomed to employ in this little country of ours.
So far as the possibilities are concerned, then, we are giving as active support as is possible. But there are certain limiting factors, and we have to deal with realities. One of the first is shipping, as the noble Lord, Lord Barnby, said. May I give your Lordships one figure, one glimpse of what our shortage is? At the present time, in older to serve the needs of this country and of the territories which the companies serve with oil, more than 50 per cent. of the ship building capacity of the country at the present time is devoted to building tankers. It must be so, otherwise we should be more impoverished than we are. I give that figure as some indication of the prodigious demands there

1127
are for shipbuilding, and I am glad to say that, of course, we are building large numbers of vessels for other people. I think our shipbuilding effort at the present time is greater than it has been at any time in our history.
The noble Lord asked me if these questions are being discussed with the members of the Commonwealth. It is some considerable time since I gave up the charge of that office, but, when I was there, I scarcely knew a day in which there was not some communication upon one or other aspect of the realities of migration to one of the Commonwealth countries. I can say that these questions are being continually discussed in every conceivable form. Amongst other forms of help which we are giving, we are meeting the cost of the passage to Australia of ex-Service men and women who have been accepted as migrants by the Australian authorities. With regard to another great class, the Australian Government and our own Government meet the cost of the passages of non-ex-Service men accepted as migrants to Australia, except for a small contribution. New Zealand are operating in concert with us a system of their own, and I am glad to say that they have extended it lately. New Zealand offered schemes for free and assisted passages at their own cost for single men and women up to thirty-five years of age. I am glad to say that they have lately extended that rather specialised category.
Your Lordships will be gratified to hear the figures in a moment with respect to Canada. They have a more restricted and selective scheme of their own, but there is a considerable scheme which is now in operation for transporting migrants by air. In South Africa, various other schemes to help people are offered. The schemes adopted by these countries all differ. South Africa offer interest-free loans on commercial transport to South Africa, and various other forms of assistance. The number of emigrants we sent to Australia last year was about 27,000. That used up all the shipping that could possibly be made available. To give your Lordships an illustration of the extent to which we, in our helpful spirit, are trying to help, I may say that the figure for next year is expected to be 55,000, and they will all be approved migrants.
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Up to March, under the free passages and assisted passages which I have already mentioned, 10,100 people have already been assisted in their movement to Australia.
I will now give your Lordships the movements which have actually taken place in the last two years. In the case of Canada, it includes an exceptional number of promising young women and brides. Since 1946–47, 75,439 people of British stock have gone to Canada. The number who have gone to Australia is 22,604 but, as your Lordships are aware, that figure will be more than doubled for the present year. The figure for New Zealand is 11,346. The figures which I am quoting are to the end of 1947. The figure for British South Africa is 37,269. If you add those, figures together, your Lordships will find that they come to a great total, and that is only the beginning of this scheme. I think I could fairly reassure your Lordships that, bearing in mind the realities with which we are at present confronted, we are doing everything we can to help.
The noble Lord, Lord Barnby, asked me about the social services schemes in Australia and in other places. We have been negotiating with the Commonwealth countries, in a Conference which was held on my authority in 1947, with a view to bringing more into harmony the social services and benefits obtainable in the different countries. At the present time these matters have not yet been brought into line, but in Australia there is a very generous scheme for extending to migrants similar or equivalent benefits to those to which they are entitled in this country.
LORD BARNBY: But what about transferability of the compounded amounts? The noble Viscount did not make any reference to the transferability of the compounded amounts.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: No, because I am afraid that in many of these cases arrangements have not yet been completed. However, active negotiations for the harmonising of these social benefits are going on progressively. As your Lordships are well aware, each of the different countries has its own system. Those systems vary in detail and it is difficult to fit one into another, although we are doing our best.
LORD BARNBY: I regret to interrupt the noble Viscount again, but the question

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of the transferability of accumulated interest is vital to the whole system of migration. We have raised this point in this House five times in the last four years, and we have not yet arrived at a categorical statement as to whether it is likely that there will be agreement upon an inter-Empire scheme of transferability.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I have told the noble Lord that we are doing our best to secure agreements between the different Governments on these matters, but it is exceedingly difficult. If the noble Lord can suggest any rapid prescription for the problem which will give us quicker results, I shall be indebted to him. Let me give the noble Lord this illustration to show how difficult these things are. There were 40,000 men from Southern Ireland who volunteered and who served in the British Forces. In the British Forces, they had various subtractions made for unemployment and other benefits under the National Insurance Scheme. When they went back to Eire, they apparently lost the result of their payments. We set to work with great good will to get the thing married up. However, it took more than a year. It has been done, and it is working exceedingly satisfactorily. If the noble Lord had any conception of the multiplicity of benefits and forms of subscription which prevail throughout the British Commonwealth, he would be surprised at the progress we have made, not at the fact that we have not brought them all strictly into line—because we shall never do that.
I note what the noble Lord said about the diminution of transfer of assets, particularly to Canada. That has been done for the time being to help in the difficulties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I shall certainly bring to the Chancellor's attention the strong expressions of opinion of the noble Lord opposite, but at the moment I am afraid that, not being the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I can say no more than that. The diminution is due to our terrible and distressing shortage of dollars and to other collateral circumstances. Nobody likes doing these things. We dislike it very much indeed, but it appears for the time being to be a necessity. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, kindly gave me notice of his intention to refer to the conditions of some of our fellow subjects in Egypt. He did not paint a picture which is at all worse than
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the realities. Some of the conditions there are most unfortunate. We are doing what we can to help, but it is not at all easy to act in somebody else's country. But we are doing what we can. I find that 13,000 of those people were originally inhabitants of Cyprus, and we have arranged that the Cyprus immigration law shall be altered so as to enable them to return to Cyprus and for them to retain the nationality of Cypriots when they get there. That has already been provided for, and efforts are being made to help a considerable number of others who are Maltese. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord said as to their condition; but he knows, just as well as I, how difficult it is sometimes to help people in somebody else's country, although we are doing our best.
Now I want to turn to another matter. Noble Lords in different parts of the House have said how necessary it is to have a better conception of the development of our Commonwealth and Empire possibilities. I entirely agree with them, and I would like to say that at the present time we have in hand the greatest project for help in the development of production that this country has ever undertaken in the continent of Africa. It is in its early stages and I would not like to be too sanguine as to what will be the result or how soon it will be achieved, because everybody who has had experience of these things knows that a good many disappointments are encountered in the early years. But already we have had made surveys and obtained reports of the possibilities all over that continent. The noble Lord himself referred to some of the work that is now being carried on in some parts, and I hope it will provide an outlet and a relief to some of the people who are in this distressed condition in Egypt. I will see that it is brought to their attention.
LORD LLOYD: Would the noble Viscount forgive me if I put to him one point about which I am rather anxious? I feel that the trouble in Egypt at the moment is that there is nobody who is really getting down to the task of discovering how many people there are and what is the extent of the problem. If the noble Viscount will give me an assurance that the Government are going to look into the thing as a whole, I believe it would be an assurance not only to myself but to all those people there.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I can give the noble Lord the assurance that I received from the Foreign Office—namely, that they are making every possible effort to inquire into those distressing conditions, and to do everything they can to help. It was as a result of their communications that I was able to give as an example the figures of the number of people from Cyprus. But I would like to say this—and I am sure noble Lords will help us because this is not a political matter at all. There are immense possibilities of development in the great continent of Africa, for example, and I agree with what the noble Earl, Lord Portsmouth, said, that between now and the end of Marshall Aid we must realise a great many of those possibilities or we shall be in even more distressing circumstances than we are now. We are bending every possible effort to it, but it is a gigantic task, and we shall meet with all kinds of difficulties and disappointments in the early stages—of that I am well aware. But we will start it. We are not afraid of tackling it, and I am perfectly certain that in due course it will be justified.
I have replied only in a general way to many of the points raised by noble Lords, but I hope that the spirit I have displayed, which is a true representation of the spirit of His Majesty's Government, shows that we are fully alive to the importance of this great effort and are doing what we can to deal with it within our limitations at the present time.
LORD FAIRFAX OF CAMERON: Before the noble Viscount sits down, could he give an answer to my question—namely, is His Majesty's Government prepared to support and encourage the migration of industry from this country to the Dominions or not?
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I would not care to answer a question in that form of general terms; I should like to know what you mean. We cannot lift up an industry and its population from this country and plant them down, we will say, somewhere in Australia. That is not a practical proposition. Suppose we took a population which was making straw hats (let us say a portion of the town of Luton), and dumped them down somewhere, there would not be anybody to sell the hats to. Really that kind of question requires considerably more in the way of definition
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than the words in the noble Lord's question.
LORD FAIRFAX OF CAMERON: May I explain? Let us say that a small industry or company that makes hats wants to take itself off from England to South Africa or Australia. There would be certain obstacles and difficulties in the way of making arrangements to go. Some employees or employers would like to go too. Would His Majesty's Government encourage that company in its plan, and give it every assistance in making the arrangements to go?
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I am always very chary about giving absolute answers. I will give the noble Lord an illustration. The Colonial Development Corporation, of which Lord Trefgarne is Chairman, are making arrangements with industries and undertakings in this country who are capable of extending their activities or initiating their activities in different parts of the world—in this case in Africa. But that is a different thing from transferring an industry.
LORD FAIRFAX OF CAMERON: A company perhaps.
VISCOUNT ADDISON: We are in that way invoking the aid of a large number of industrial concerns in development in Africa, at any rate, and I think that that is the only practical way in which it can be done. We cannot uproot people.
8.57 p.m.
THE EARL OF PORTSMOUTH: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Viscount who has just sat down for the very friendly and, in many parts, informative things he has had to say to us. I would like to say both to him and to my noble friend, Lord Tweedsmuir, that had more time been available, and had I been able to deal with the full Motion which previously I had down on the Paper, I would have had a full tilt at the population problems of England. There is only one point I would like to take up with the noble Viscount, and that is the old cry that we are short of labour in this country. Quite honestly, I do not think we are short of labour; we are short of the right labour being directed into the right channels. We are absolutely overburdened with parasitic labour. I have nothing against those people; it is not their fault, but they are being forced into parasitic labours. There

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are more and more people being appointed to check each other instead of being directed into their proper industry. In regard to shipping, I realise what the difficulties are to-day, but I do not think shipping can go on being a stumbling block for ever, or even for a very long time. Last year something like 200,000 people went to Switzerland in one summer. I would not mind betting everything I have that had we asked for 30,000 immigrants to go to Switzerland, we would have been told that transport difficulties across the war-torn railways of France made it an impossibility. However, I will not keep your Lordships any longer. I welcome the hint, which naturally was very vague, about the African development. There is some suggestion of a wider vision, but if there is not the fire in the belly I should like to see, there are some sparks in the midriff. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
8.59 p.m.
LORD BARNEY: My Lords, before the Motion is withdrawn, perhaps I might make reference to three points arising out of the noble Viscount's reply. I would like to pay my contribution to the appreciation of this reply. I intervene now for the convenience of the House and as an indulgence before the Motion is withdrawn. The last speaker has signified his intention to withdraw his Motion, but the Motion for withdrawal has not yet been put. Therefore, as an indulgence to the House since I intend to withdraw my Motion—
VISCOUNT ADDISON: I do not want to be unfair, but it is not in order for the noble Lord to make a second speech on this Motion. It is not in accordance with the traditions of the House.
LORD BARNBY: My Lords, I hope the noble Viscount the Leader of the House took note of the fact that I intimated that I was asking the indulgence of the House, and that I intended to withdraw my Motion. On that Motion I believe, according to the practice of the House, I still have the privilege of speaking.
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I think that that is a correct interpretation. With the indulgence of the House, I was going to save time by making now three points which arose out of the noble Viscount's reply. The first is that in his references to the category of overseas earnings he omitted any mention of earnings of migrants, including the profits of branch establishments overseas. I would secondly ask him whether he could use his persuasion with the Departments concerned and impress them with the need for speeding up decisions of the Capital Issues Committee, and for the granting of export licences for machinery in the case of contemplated transfers of plant to the Dominions. My third point refers to the treatment of Canada. The noble Viscount kindly intimated his readiness to make representations to the Chancellor, and I trust that he will emphasise how strong is the feeling of this House that the amounts advanced to us by Canada should permit these relatively insignificant amounts to intending migrants to Canada.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ST. HELENS CORPORATION (ELECTRICITY AND GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and referred to the Examiners.

CERTIFICATE FROM EXAMINERS.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificate from the Examiners that no further Standing Orders are applicable to the following Bill:
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENEIAL POWERS):
The same was ordered to lie on the Table.
House adjourned at nine o'clock.