Sitting of 6 July 1950

Preamble
The House met at Half past Two o'Clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  CARLISLE EXTENSION BILL [Lords]
  (King's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.)
  Bill read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.

FORTH ROAD BRIDGE ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
  DARLINGTON CORPORATION TROLLEY VEHICLES (ADDITIONAL ROUTES) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL
  Read the Third time, and passed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

    Mentally Deficient Children
    Mr. Stanley Prescott,asked the Minister of Health how many mentally deficient children are awaiting admission to institutions; what were the comparable figures at the same date for 1947, 1948 and 1949; and what steps he is taking to expedite admission.
    The Minister of Health (Mr. Aneurin Bevan): Figures in regard to mentally defective children are not separately shown.
    Mr. Prescott: Even if the figures are not separately shown, could the right hon. Gentleman say what he is doing to expedite the admission of these children to homes? Is he aware that this is a very serious problem?
    Mr. Bevan: Within the resources available, we are, of course, adding to the accommodation. I am quite aware of the seriousness of the problem, and if we could make more accommodation available I would be delighted.
    Captain John Crowder: Is it not a fact that the right hon. Gentleman is also very short of staff to look after these children? I have had great difficulty in my constituency in finding room for mentally deficient children?
    Mr. Bevan: Staff is a little easier now than it was, as a result of improvements in conditions, but staff as well as accomodation is a limiting factor.

    Transport Scheme, Manchester
    Mr. Storeyasked the Minister of Health if he has considered the report of the West Manchester Hospital Management Committee upon their transport scheme for industrial workers attending the hospital out-patients department; and whether in view of the saving of manhours to industry achieved, he proposes to extend the experiment to other areas.
    Mr. Bevan: I am arranging for a report on this scheme to ascertain whether equal savings could be secured by other means.
    Mr. Storey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this decision will give great encouragement to people interested in the scheme which, by the co-operation of management committees, local authorities and industry, has saved 6,000 industrial man-hours?
    Mr. Bevan: This is a very imaginative and enterprising scheme by the local people responsible, and I am examining it with very great interest.

    Medicines (Supply)
    Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Mooreasked the Minister of Health what is the position of the patient in regard to his doctor who has resigned from the National Health Service and whether he will still receive his medicines at public expense.
    Mr. Bevan: The provision of medicines is restricted by the Act to patients who are receiving general medical services from a doctor taking part in the Health Service. A doctor who resigns is, therefore, no longer able to prescribe medicines for supply without charge.
    Sir T. Moore: Surely this is sheer blackmail. If a patient pays contributions weekly, what does it matter what doctor signs the prescription? Because

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    a doctor leaves the National Health Service it does not mean that he has lost his professional competence.
    Mr. Bevan: I do not know how often it is necessary to say that people do not qualify for the benefits of the National Health Service Scheme by the payment of weekly contributions, and, therefore, no contractual rupture actually occurs if they are no longer having free medicine. It is for the patient to secure another doctor who is in the Health Service.
    Sir T. Moore: Then that is blackmail.

    Hospital Accommodation, Surrey
    Mr. Blackasked the Minister of Health what is the number of persons suffering from tuberculosis and awaiting admission to hospital or sanatorium in the boroughs of Wimbledon and Malden and Coombe, respectively; and the average period of waiting.
    Mr. Bevan: I have no special figures for particular local authority areas.
    Mr. Blackasked the Minister of Health what is the number of aged sick cases awaiting admission to hospital and the average period of waiting in the boroughs of Wimbledon and Malden and Coombe, respectively.
    Mr. Bevan: Separate-information is not available for local authority areas.

    Seamen (Dental and Optical Services)
    Mr. Awberyasked the Minister of Health if he will give details of the action he proposes to take to assist merchant seamen, who are only in home ports for a short time, to obtain the necessary dental and optical treatment during these periods.
    Mr. Bevan: I hope shortly to announce arrangements to help British merchant seamen to obtain dental treatment. I do not think many of them have had exceptional difficulty in getting glasses; but if my hon. Friend will inform me of any such cases I shall be glad to make inquiries.
    Mr. Awbery: Is my right hon. Friend aware that I have a complaint from a seaman who was unable to have his dentures
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    repaired while in port, and had to go on a voyage for 12 months without dentures?
    Mr. Bevan: We are hoping to make arrangements to obviate that in future.
    Colonel Ropner: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he will be able to make his announcement?
    Mr. Bevan: Very shortly.

    Tuberculosis (Treatment)
    Dr. Hillasked the Minister of Health how many local health authorities are in possession of adequate supplies of B.C.G.; and whether he is satisfied that this method or prevention is being made available on an adequate scale and as rapidly as the paramount necessity of preventing tuberculosis demands.
    Mr. Bevan: One hundred and sixteen out of 145 authorities in England and Wales have so far had arrangements approved for B.C.G. vaccination at the discretion of chest physicians. They receive the vaccine as they need it, since it cannot be stored. As to the second part of the Question, I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Remnant) on 15th June.
    Sir Herbert Williams: Can the rest of us be told what B.C.G. is? Is it anything to do with O.E.E.C., or anything like that?
    Mr. Bevan: A prophylactic given in certain forms of tuberculosis.
    Dr. Hillasked the Minister of Health whether he will instruct regional hospital boards to arrange for the home treatment of tuberculosis patients, for whom there are no sanatorium beds vacant, by making available to them in their homes the services of chest specialists, portable X-ray facilities and any other facilities necessary for adequate and continuous treatment.
    Mr. Bevan: It is part of the normal work of the boards' chest specialists, with the resources of the hospital service available to them, to take part in the home treatment of tuberculosis patients.
    Dr. Hill: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that only in relatively few areas are the resources of tuberculosis services made available in the homes, and will

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    he, bearing in mind that tuberculosis is five times as common among contacts as among the population, do his utmost to relieve what is an urgent national situation, not only for the sufferers from tuberculosis, but for their families as contacts?
    Mr. Bevan: Yes, Sir, I am very well aware of what the hon. Member has stated. Of course, it must always be borne in mind in this very grave matter that the efforts that the service is able to make, result in a fall in the rates of mortality from tuberculosis. The hon. Member will find in the next few weeks that instructions will be issued dealing with those points.
    Mr. Drayson: Will the right hon. Gentleman remember that one of the greatest contributions he can make solving this problem is to get on with the provision of houses?
    Mr. Bevan: That is the case—and also houses for those who suffer from overcrowding, and not only for those who have overcrowded accounts at the banks.
    Mr. Snow: Would my right hon. Friend consider circularising to all local authorities a copy of the report of the Medical Officer of Health for Portsmouth last year, which gave information concerning control experiments with the use of B.C.G. vaccine?
    Mr. Bevan: I should like to see the report. I am quite sure that if it is of use, it is already known to medical officers of health elsewhere, but I will see whether its circulation is necessary.

    Disinfectants
    Dr. Hillasked the Minister of Health if he will consult the Medical Research Council, with a view to taking steps to ensure that disinfectants produced by manufacturers satisfy minimum standards of efficacy.
    Mr. Bevan: I am already in touch with the Medical Research Council, but, as the hon. Member is aware, this is a very difficult and technical subject.
    Dr. Hill: Will the Minister bear in mind, in any consultations he has, that there is a wide difference between the effectiveness of the various disinfectants on the market unbeknown to those who buy them, and that there is an important public health problem involved?
    Mr. Bevan: That is the reason why we have asked the technical authorities to lay down standards, but although this matter has now been pursued for very nearly five years no standards have yet been achieved because of the intricacy of the problem.

    Healing Aids
    Mr. Walter Fletcherasked the Minister of Health what is the average delay between the time of testing and the time of issue of hearing aids in all cases dealt with in hospital in the North-West; and what steps he is taking to decrease this delay.
    Mr. Sutcliffeasked the Minister of Health what is the average waiting period for aural aids in the North-Western area for those who are not on the priority list such as old age pensioners; and what steps he is taking to improve the present situation.
    Mr. Bevan: The waiting period varies so much according to individual needs, that averages have no meaning. I cannot at present undertake to increase the facilities in this area.
    Mr. Fletcher: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that delays of as much as 14 months are taking place; and is he satisfied that a really concerted and intelligent effort, using the mechanical genius of this country, is being made to tackle this very difficult problem?
    Mr. Bevan: The mechanical genius available in this country has been used to tackle this problem for the first time in English history. We have already issued between 80,000 and 90,000 aural aids. The limitation is not the mechanical genius of the country, because we are producing them from the industry faster than we have the technicians to enable them to be given to patients.
    Mr. H. Hynd: While appreciating what has been done, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he is aware that only 20 cases a week are allowed to go forward from the whole of the area covered by Blackburn, Accrington and Burnley? Does he think that this is satisfactory?
    Mr. Bevan: I think my hon. Friend's statement is probably wholly inaccurate.
    Mr. Hynd: It is not.
    Mr. Bevan: If my hon. Friend will send me the informtion I will have it investigated.
    Mr. Hynd: My right hon. Friend has got it.
    Mr. Bevan: At present we are sending out over 1,500 a week in the country as a whole.
    Mr. Sutcliffe: Can the right hon. Gentleman hold out any hope at all to these old people, many of whom have worked for very many years in industry, that there will soon be shorter periods than two years for them to wait?
    Mr. Bevan: I am delighted to note the sense of urgency on the other side of the House on this matter, although it is very belated. It is obvious that at the moment the older ones will have to wait for those who need aural aids in their occupations; that is the reason why the older ones are being subjected to delay.
    Mr. Hastings: Am I right in assuming that it was the genius of the Post Office engineers which was mainly responsible for this wonderful instrument?
    Mr. Bevan: It was the co-operation between the physicians on the one hand and the Post Office engineers on the other that produced this aural aid.
    Captain Waterhouse: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are between 10 and 12 people in my constituency who have been waiting for over 12 months?
    Mr. Bevan: I dare say that is true; they have now some hope of getting an aural aid where, formerly, they had none.

    Management Committees (Publicity)
    Mr. Geoffrey Cooperasked the Minister of Health why the management committees of hospitals conduct their affairs in secret; and why the Press is excluded from management committee meetings.
    Mr. Bevan: It is for each committee to decide whether to admit the Press to its meetings, and many, in fact, do so.
    Mr. Cooper: Has my right hon. Friend had any strong representations made to him from the public representatives on these hospital management com-
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    mittees to show that when they are trying to improve the service, and find obstruction from officials, only where publicity is sanctioned do they feel they have any influence over the officials?
    Mr. Bevan: No, I have not received any representations of that kind. I would ask the House to keep in mind that very often hospital management committees have to deal with very many intimate details of individual cases, and it is not desirable always to make them public.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Will my right hon. Friend nevertheless encourage hospital management committees to the fullest possible extent to issue reports of their proceedings to the Press?
    Mr. Bevan: I think that most of them do that, but the Question on the Order Paper concerns the admission of the Press, and I think that ought to be left to the discretion of the management committees.
    Sir H. Williams: Does that also apply to meetings at Dorking?
    Mr. Bevan: They have had no meetings at Dorking.

    Medical Officers
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Minister of Health what would be the approximate annual saving to the nation if only whole-time medical officers were employed under Part II (Hospital and Specialist Services) of the National Health Service Act, 1946.
    Mr. Bevan: I regret that the information is not available.
    Mr. Hastings: Am I right in assuming that there will be a saving of about 20 per cent.; and, if so, will my right hon. Friend communicate this to boards of governors when they are re-appointing officers in future?
    Mr. Bevan: As I said in my reply, as I do not know what the figures are I cannot say whether the figure of 20 per cent. is accurate or inaccurate.
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Minister of Health what steps he takes to ensure that part-time medical officers engaged under Part II (Hospital and Specialist Services) of the National Health Service Act, 1946, are actually employed for the number of notional half-days for which they are paid.
    Mr. Bevan: It is the responsibility of hospital boards and committees to see that officers carry out the duties for which they are remunerated.
    Mr. Hastings: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some officers are paid for sessions for which they never turn up?
    Mr. Bevan: I should like to have information as to that, because it seems to me rather extraordinary.
    Dr. Hill: Will the right hon. Gentleman resist such general allegations without a shred of evidence being produced in their support?
    Mr. Bevan: As I said, I should like to see the precise information.
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Minister of Health the total annual salary paid to part-time medical officers under Part II (Hospital and Specialist Services) of the National Health Service Act, 1946; and, approximately, what proportion of this payment is for travelling time.
    Mr. Bevan: I regret that the information is not available.

    Regional Boards (Expenditure)
    Mr. Watkinsonasked the Minister of Health if he will issue instructions to regional hospital boards to ensure that local needs are given priority when expenditure on new construction is authorised.
    Mr. Bevan: Regional boards already allocate capital expenditure according to the relative urgency of local needs.
    Mr. WatkinsonA: As that principle does not seem to be working out in Woking, will the right hon. Gentleman be kind enough to have a look again into a case which is already in his Department?
    Mr. Bevan: Certainly, but I should have thought that the regional hospital board had behaved here as it does elsewhere.

    Chemists, Middlesex (List)
    Mr. Keelingasked the Minister of Health the cost of printing and delivering to all medical practitioners in Middlesex a list of all the chemists in Middlesex; and what is the object of doing so.
    Mr. Bevan: About #x00A377. It was thought useful for doctors to have this, as they did under the old Health Insurance scheme, but I am consulting the profession as to whether it need now be continued.
    Mr. Keeling: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that an alphabetical and not a geographical list of nearly 1,000 chemists is of no possible interest to a doctor, who knows what chemists there are in his own district and does not want to know what chemists there are in other districts?
    Mr. Bevan: This list has to be prepared for patients in the area, so that there is not much additional cost involved.

    Folkestone Chest Centre
    Mr. Arbuthnotasked the Minister of Health the number of persons suffering from tuberculosis and awaiting admission to sanatoria in the area covered by the Folkestone Chest Centre; and what is the longest period of waiting.
    Mr. Bevan: Forty persons are awaiting admission. The longest period of waiting is 13 months.

    Medicine Bottles
    Commander Nobleasked the Minister of Health the total cost of medicine bottles supplied under the National Health Service in 1949.
    Mr. Bevan: I regret that the information is not available.
    Commander Noble: As the Minister will no doubt agree that it must be quite a large sum, does he not think there might be some economy in this direction if people were encouraged to return medicine bottles?
    Mr. Bevan: I have consulted the chemists in this matter, and quite recently we made a reduction in their remuneration. They would rather have the reduction than try to work a system of the return of bottles.

    Specialist and Administrative Staffs
    Mr. G. Cooperasked the Minister of Health in view of the rising costs of the National Health Service, if he will

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    institute an inquiry into its administration and the salaries now being paid to specialists and administrative staffs.
    Mr. Bevan: These matters are kept under constant review.
    Mr. Cooper: Has my right hon. Friend had representations made to him to show that there are unnecessarily inflated administrative staffs, or that the salaries paid to some people such as hospital secretaries are, in some cases, over double what they were before the National Health Service; and would he look into those cases with a view to making changes?
    Mr. Bevan: An inquiry is being made into these matters, which are always the subject of all kinds of general statements. If I were my hon. Friend, I would take them with a large slab of salt.

    Maternity Accommodation, Spalding
    Mr. Butcherasked the Minister of Health if he will now give the reasons why there is no accommodation for maternity cases in Spalding; and what action he proposes to take to ensure that such accommodation is made available.
    Mr. Bevan:I am informed that there never has been any such accommodation in Spalding, but that the regional hospital board are now considering the possibility of providing it.
    contribution>Mr. Butcher:Is the Minister aware that the local authority to whom responsibility has been transferred had plans and premises available, and that this need is very great indeed in that particular area? Is it not a fact that there was some accommodation available in prewar days and until quite recently for the accommodation of these cases?
    Mr. Bevan: My information is that there was no accommodation in Spalding, and that the regional hospital board are to try to provide it.
    Mr. Harrison: Is it not a fact that the people of Spalding are looking forward to the provision of this urgent necessity, which has been needed for many years, and which they have had no chance of getting before?
    Mr. Reader Harrisasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that regional hospital boards have not yet begun to offer clinical assistantships to general practitioners; and what action he proposes taking.
    Mr. Bevan: I know that appointments of this kind have been offered where the needs of the service demand it. If the hon. Member has any particular case in mind I shall be glad to hear of it.
    Mr. Hastings: Does my right hon. Friend realise how important it is from everybody's point of view to keep general practitioners in close contact with their local hospital?
    Mr. Bevan: I am very well aware of that, and, as my hon. Friend knows, part of the difficulty in this matter is to try to bring about a reconciliation between the conflicting claims of the G.P. on the one hand and the specialist on the other.
    Mr. Reader Harrisasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that the regional hospital boards are ignoring his directive to preserve some local hospitals for the use of general practitioners; and what action he proposes taking.
    Mr. Bevan: No, Sir, but I shall be glad to make inquiries if the hon. Member will send me his information.
    Mr. Butcher: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly examine the present position in Boston Hospital?

    PENSION CASE, LOUTH
    Mr. Osborneasked the Minister of Health if he is aware that Mrs. Harriet Pitt, High Holm Court, Louth, who worked for 30 years for the Stoke-on-Trent Education Authority and was granted a pension of 10s. a week has now, at the age of 84 years, had the pension stopped on the grounds of economy; and, in view of the correspondence sent to him, if he will restore the pension.
    Mr. Bevan: I have informed the council that if, having had regard to the increased social security payments now available, they wish to continue to pay the 10s. a week to Mrs. Pitt, I am prepared to give the necessary sanction under Section 228 of the Local Government Act, 1933.
    Mr. Osborne: On behalf of the old lady, may I thank the right hon. Gentleman for treating her properly?
    Mr. A. Edward Davies: In justice to the local authority, may I ask whether they were not statutorily bound to wind up this payment? This happened not because they desired this parsimony, but because they had to do it.
    Mr. Bevan: Yes, it is a fact that the local authority were restricted by two Acts of Parliament passed before the war to limit the payment to two years, and they had to obtain my permission to extend it.

    DISABLED MEN (CARS)
    Dr. Kingasked the Minister of Health whether supplies of the specially designed small cars for crippled ex-Service men may also be made available, in terms to be arranged, for similarly handicapped civilians.
    Mr. Bevan: I would refer my hon. Friend to my reply on 21st March to my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes).
    Mr. Wood: Can the right hon. Gentleman arrange some system of priority to provide very badly disabled civilians with some conveyance?
    Mr. Bevan: They are allowed, under the National Health Service Act, mechanically propelled tricycles, but not motor cars.

  HOUSING

    Farm Workers
    Mr. M. Philips Priceasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of a case which has recently arisen in Gloucestershire concerning the conditions under which local authorities let houses to agricultural workers, particulars of which have been sent to him, he will make it clear to what extent the regulations of his Department compel local authorities to let certain houses only to persons engaged in agriculture.
    Mr. Bevan: While the payment of agricultural subsidy is conditional on the reservation of a specified number of houses for members of the agricultural population, the selection of tenants is a matter
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    which has been placed by Statute in the hands of the local authority. I would, however, deprecate action by a local authority to evict a particular tenant merely because he changes his occupation.
    Mr. Price: While thanking my right hon. Friend for his statement, may I ask him if he will inform the local authority what both of us have in mind about these facts? Will he make them clear?
    Mr. Bevan: I think my views on this matter have already been brought to the attention of the local authorities.
    Mr. Snow: Has that been done recently, as I have in my division, a similar case?
    Mr. Bevan: Yes, this has been done within the last few weeks. I think that a local authority is not behaving properly when it behaves in this way.
    Mr. Baldwin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if steps are not taken to stop people taking these cottages as so-called agricultural workers, there will be no benefit to the agricultural community at all?
    Mr. Bevan: No, but priorities for agricultural workers given in the last few years have, in many parts of the country, been very greatly to the advantage of the agricultural industry. Indeed, in some instances priorities have had to be refused because of the needs of other applicants for houses.

    Flats (Applications)
    Mr. Woodasked the Minister of Health whether his regulations permit local authorities to ask for the names of prospective tenants of flats converted under their licence from large houses.
    Mr. Bevan: Local authorities, in considering applications for licences to carry out works of conversion, are expected to make such inquiries as they may consider reasonable to ascertain to what extent the converted dwellings would help towards meeting the most urgent housing needs.

    Private Building Licences
    Mr. Russellasked the Minister of Health whether he has considered representations from local housing authorities

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    regarding the postponement of the operation of the one-in-five ratio until 1951; and what answer he has made.
    Mr. Bevan: In answer to the very few communications received from local authorities the position has been explained as in the replies given to Questions asked by the hon. Member on 15th June and by the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) on 25th May.
    Mr. Russell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in answer to Questions by my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Braine) and other of my hon. Friends on 4th May, he gave the impression that this cut was to be restored immediately; and is he further aware that the delay in doing so is causing a great deal of disappointment?
    Mr. Bevan: No. The explanation is perfectly simple. Most of the houses in the 1950 programme were in hand before this modification was made. It was, therefore, quite impossible to make it retrospective. It will be made in the case of allocations for 1950-51.
    Miss Horsbrugh: Will any local authority which has not yet made arrangements for its full programme be permitted to increase the number of licences?
    Mr. Bevan: They ought to have made them by now, and I should be very hurt to hear that a local authority has not made the whole of its allocations for this year. If there is some local authority which has not done so I will certainly have a look at it.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicksasked the Minister of Health how many applications he has received from local authorities for permission to issue private building permits in excess of a ratio of one in five of their housing allocation; and how many he has granted.
    Mr. Bevan: If, as I assume, the hon. Member has in mind the arrangements which I announced on 4th May, the question has not yet arisen since the allocations for 1951 are only now in course of being decided.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: Is not the right hon. Gentleman prepared to receive, in exceptional circumstances, applications for additional allocation in 1950?
    Mr. Bevan: Obviously not, because if the local authority has been doing its work the 1950 allocations have already been made.
    Miss Horsburgh: Did not the right hon. Gentleman, a few minutes ago, say that he would be willing to look into any case where the allocation for 1950 had not been made?
    Mr. Bevan: I should be very sorry if there were any.
    Mr. Braine: Arising out of the Minister's reply to the supplementary question of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Joynson-Hicks), is he aware that local housing authorities have been seriously embarrassed in having to explain to applicants for licences, whose hopes were raised, that in his answer to me on 4th May he did not really mean what he said?
    Mr. Bevan: The hon. Gentleman is entirely inaccurate. If there is any confusion in the minds of people about this it is probably because of the speeches made by the hon. Members opposite.
    Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: Surely the heat shown by the Minister about inaccuracy is entirely unfounded. After all, everyone had the right to assume that when the Minister said something he meant it.
    Mr. Bevan: The hon. Gentleman said that when I made a statement I did not mean it. If the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will read the statement I made on that occasion he will realise that there is not the slightest justification for his impudent inference now.
    Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: I am about to ask the right hon. Gentleman a question, and may I say, in preface [HON. MEMBERS:"No."] May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he really assumes that all the poor people who had hopes raised by his statement that private building was about to increase would read every one of his statements with a lawyer's meticulous accuracy, which it now appears we must apply to everything he says and by which he will be the very great loser?
    Mr. Bevan: It was obvious when the statement was made about the variation of ratios that it was bound to apply to

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    new allocations to be made, and could not be made to apply to allocations already made.
    Lieut.-Colonel Elliot: In that case, what becomes of the statement which was made by the right hon. Gentleman to the right hon. Lady the Member for Manchester, Moss Side (Miss Horsbrugh)?
    Mr. Bevan: I am quite prepared—and this is quite consistent—where 1950 allocations had not been made—and they ought to have been made long ago—to look into the matter.
    Earl Winterton: On a point of order. In view of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has made use of an expletive at Question time, which I always thought was out of order, in which he referred to my right hon. and gallant Friend's question as an impudent one, would it be in order, Sir, to assert that the right hon. Gentleman's general attitude towards the House at Question time is one of gross offensiveness?
    Mr. Bevan: Further to that point of order, I did not refer to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's question as impudent.
    Earl Winterton: Yes.
    Mr. Bevan: I did not. I referred to the impudent inference in the question; and if hon. Members opposite like to give it, they must take it.
    Mr. Braine: Further to that point of order. I have in my hand a copy of HANSARD for 4th May according to which the right hon. Gentleman said that to enable each council to take account of the circumstances in the district he had decided to restore up to one-fifth.
    Mr. Speaker: We all seem at the moment to be generating a little more heat than we can contain.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: In view of the very unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's reply, I beg to give notice that I will raise the matter on the Adjournment at the earliest opportunity.

    Equalisation Grant, Burton-on-Trent
    Mr. Arthur Colegateasked the Minister of Health whether he has considered the representations made to him
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    as to the serious financial position of the county borough of Burton-on-Trent; and whether there are any steps he can take to ease the position which results in tenants of council houses having to pay as much as 12s 3d. per week in rates alone.
    Mr. Bevan: I have considered these representations. The statutory provisions about equalisation grants give me no discretionary power to increase the amount, and I have no other powers in this regard. The Statute provides for review of the working of the equalisation grants in the year of the first new valuation lists.
    Mr. Arthur Lewis: Would the Minister consider introducing suitable measures to give him the power to help councils who are finding difficulties so far as the rates are concerned?
    Mr. Bevan: No, Sir. It is the intention of the Act to try to iron out the inequalities, but there are, of course, always peaks at each extreme.

    Allocations, Chichester
    Mr. Joynson-Hicksasked the Minister of Health what were the allocations of houses which the Chichester Rural District Council were entitled to build in 1949 and 1950 respectively; and how long it is estimated under the present allocations it will take to meet the housing needs of the community in that area.
    Mr. Bevan: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Hardy) on 28th April, of which I am sending him a copy.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: With respect has the right hon. Gentleman answered the right Question?
    Mr. Bevan: I have answered Question No. 36.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: Will the right hon. Gentleman say why he replied to the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Hardy) about the number of housing allocations in Chichester?
    Mr. Bevan: I said that I would refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Salford, East (Mr. Hardy) on 29th April, of which I am sending him a copy.
    Mr. Joynson-Hicks: In view of the fact that the answer to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred can have no bearing on the question at all, will he now reply to the Question?
    Mr. Bevan: I suggest that the hon. Member reads the answer to the hon. Member for Salford, East. first.

    District Heating Scheme, Salisbury
    Mr. John Morrisonasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the fact that the Bemerton Heath district heating scheme which was originally sponsored by his Department as an experiment has resulted in charges to the tenants greatly in excess of those anticipated, he will alleviate the burden of the rising cost and hardship and reconsider the question and make a special grant to those tenants concerned.
    Mr. Bevan: There are no special grants provided for district heating schemes. I am aware that the costs of the Salisbury scheme have, due to a number of factors, exceeded the original estimates. On the other hand, improvements have now been made in the plant which, I hope, will produce more efficient and economical service.
    Mr. Morrison: In view of the ever increasing cost of fuel, will the right hon. Gentleman keep an open mind on this matter, because many tenants are in great difficulties at present?
    Mr. Bevan: I do not think that the increased cost of this scheme was due to the increased cost of fuel.
    Sir H. Williams: Has any district heating scheme in this country ever been a success?
    Mr. Bevan: Yes, I think so.
    Sir H. Williams: Which one?

  PUBLIC HEALTH

    Food Poisoning
    Earl Wintertonasked the Minister of Health if, in view of the number of cases of food poisoning that have arisen lately and the fact that official expert opinion has on more than one occasion drawn attention to the insanitary methods
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    of food handling in this country, he will issue a statement on the subject to be sent to all catering authorities.
    Mr. Bevan: This is a complex problem, and I propose to await the report of the Working Party on Hygiene in the Catering Industry before considering further action.
    Earl Winterton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the standard is unfortunately deplorably lower here than, for example, in Scandinavian countries, and that I myself have seen the catering staff of this House hand out pieces of sugar and bread with their hands—a thing which would not be tolerated in Scandinavian countries or in the United States?
    Mr. Bevan: I think the standards in the use of food are far lower than they ought to be. I hope that when we get this report we shall be able to take remedial action.
    Mr. Somerville Hastings: In view of the very serious urgency of this matter, will my right hon. Friend consider not waiting, but issuing model by—laws now?
    Mr. Bevan: I think it would be far better to issue by-laws that are likely to be practicable and useful than to act precipitately and merely issue edicts that are not likely to be of much use. I would rather have the technical advice first of all, and issue the by-laws afterwards.
    Sir Ralph Glyn: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that when the paper shortage necessitated the cessation of wrapping bread it was then stated that when paper became more plentiful that would be one of the first things to be done again?
    Mr. Bevan: Yes, but I think that that is not a matter for by-laws, but of usage.

    Air Pollution, Liverpool
    Mr. Kenneth Thompsonasked the Minister of Health if, in view of the nuisance caused to local residents by grit and smut effluent, he will instruct the Liverpool Regional Hospital Board to use in the boilers of Walton Hospital a better grade of fuel than the 1¼ inch washed slack at present used; and if he will authorise the purchase of a grit-arresting plant for use in conjunction with the present boilers.
    Mr. Bevan: The Regional Hospital Board is investigating the best solution of this problem.
    Mr. Thompson: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that something is done about this, in view of the very serious effect upon the health of people in the neighbourhood?
    Mr. Bevan: I understand that the main reason for this is the overuse of the apparatus, rather than in the nature of the fuel used.

  WATER SUPPLIES, EAST WITPERING
  Mr. Joynson-Hicksasked the Minister of Health whether he has yet given all necessary permissions for the execution of an approved water scheme for East Wittering in the rural district area of Chichester; and when the necessary works will be completed.
  Mr. Bevan: The council have been authorised to proceed with this scheme; it should be finished next year.

  TRANSFERRED OFFICERS (SUPERANNUATION)
  Mr. Odeyasked the Minister of Health whether he will take steps to deal with those cases of superannuation of individuals transferring from one Government service to another which occurred before 4th February, 1948, and who are, therefore, not covered by the Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948.
  Mr. Bevan: I understand the hon. Member has in mind transfer from local government service. The Act referred to provided for the maintenance of certain superannuation rights and I can hold out no prospect of making reckonable rights which had already been relinquished before 4th February, 1948, the date of introduction of the Bill for that Act.
  Mr. Odey: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that in cases where local government officers have been transferred to national work they have no right to superannuation for their services before the date mentioned, in 1948, and there are very grave injustices of which I have sent him particulars?

  SCHUMAN PLAN (MINISTER'S SPEECH)
  Mr. Boothbyasked the Prime Minister whether the speech of the Secretary of State for War at Colchester with reference to the Schuman Plan represented the policy of His Majesty's Government.
  Mr. Garner-Evansasked the Prime Minister whether the speech by the Secretary of State for War at Colchester on 1st July relating to the Schuman proposals represents the policy of His Majesty's Government.
  Mr. Alportasked the Prime Minister whether the speech made by the Secretary of State for War at Colchester on Saturday, 1st July, represents the policy of His Majesty's Government.
  Commander Nobleasked the Prime Minister whether the Secretary of State for War's statement at Colchester on Saturday, 1st July, with reference to the Schuman Plan represents the policy of His Majesty's Government.
  Mr. Julian Ameryasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the speech made by the Secretary of State for War at Colchester on 1st July with reference to the Schuman Plan; and if it represents the policy of His Majesty's Government.
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): I would refer the hon. Members to the reply I gave to the hon. Member for Chippenham (Mr. Eccles) yesterday.
  Mr. Boothby: Arising out of that reply, may I ask the Prime Minister two things; first, whether he was aware, when he gave his answer yesterday, that a full and accurate text of the speech had been released to the Press before it was made; second, in view of that fact, and as he has asked this House formally to welcome what has since been described by the Secretary of State for War as a"plot," he will now repudiate the sentiments expressed by the Secretary of. State?
  The Prime Minister: As I explained yesterday, I understand that the reference to a plot was not to the putting forward of the Schuman scheme. I quite agree that a full report was given, but I understand it was made clear at the time—it is always a difficult thing to do in a

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  speech—that that particular sentence applied only to Parliamentary proceedings and not to the question of the Schuman Plan.
  Mr. Churchill: Are we to understand that in this matter the right hon. Gentleman derived his information from the Secretary of State for War?
  The Prime Minister: I have, naturally, consulted my right hon. Friend on the matter.
  Mr. Churchill: How can the right hon. Gentleman explain the fact that the Secretary of State for War had handed out, both from the War Office and, I understand, locally, a textual report, which is confirmed by the Press Association, who took it down, in which the passage referring to the plot, as actually delivered by the Secretary of State for War, was as follows:
  "We shall get more and more of these schemes, no doubt, which, under the guise of internationalism, are designed to prevent the people really controlling their economic system"?
  Hon. Members: Read on.
  Mr. Churchill:
  "Labour has only to expose this plot in order to defeat it."
  On what grounds does the Prime Minister attempt—and I am really surprised that he should do so—to maintain in the House that"these schemes" did not comprise and were not indeed appended to the Schuman Plan, which is the only scheme before the House and the country at the present time? How does he explain it? Was he misled by the Secretary of State for War, or did he think of it on the spur of the moment? I have the greatest confidence—[HoN. MEMBERS:"Speech."]—in the Prime Minister's good faith, but I think he owes it to the House to give a much clearer explanation of how he escapes from the fact that the scheme we had been discussing, and which everyone had in mind, was not included in the scope of the word"plot" which the right hon. Gentleman used?
  Mr. A. Lewis: On a point of order. May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what is the Motion we are debating?
  Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman is putting his question in his own way.
  Mr. Churchill: On what grounds can the Prime Minister dissociate the word"plot" from"these schemes" and the Schuman scheme, which was the one before us? May I earnestly hope that we shall have better treatment from the Prime Minister, on a matter of this very important personal kind, than we have received so far?
  The Prime Minister: I have already explained this matter. I naturally did not answer on the spur of the moment. I naturally asked my right hon. Friend about the speech, and he made it perfectly plain to me that at this point in his speech he turned to the question of Parliamentary proceedings, and that the word"plot" referred to the activities of right hon. and hon. Members opposite.
  Mr. Churchill: What did the right hon. Gentleman say?
  The Prime Minister: I said that the word"plot" referred to the proceedings in this House, and not to the Schuman Plan.
  Mr. Churchill: If that be so, does not the text of the document, supplied beforehand on the authority of the Secretary of State for War to the Press, show that he completely misled the Prime Minister, and that this led the Prime Minister to mislead the House?
  The Prime Minister: No, Sir.
  Mr. Churchill: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will not go into this matter more in detail and examine carefully the text which the Secretary of State followed in his speech, and give, if I may say so, a candid and true opinion as to whether the mere assertion by the right hon. Gentleman, contrary to the text, that the word"plot" did not refer to the Schuman scheme, cannot in any way be possibly sustained?
  Mr. Mitchison: Will my right hon. Friend, if and when he complies with that request, look at the part of the speech the Leader of the Opposition omitted to read following directly on that part he did read?
  Commander Noble: May I ask the Prime Minister whether, instead of trying to excuse his right hon. Friend on very thin technicalities, he will in future try to restrain him from promoting his long-held opinions of Marxist orthodoxy at the expense of European unity?
  Mr. Amery: In view of the doubts that have been aroused about this, will the Prime Minister consider asking the right hon. Gentleman to explain himself to the House and tell us what he meant by it, and whether he still means it now?
  Mr. Marlowe: Is the Prime Minister aware that this speech contained the factual statement that the supra-national authority would consist of a council of eight or nine men who would have power to shut down half the coal mines of South Wales and the steel mills of Sheffield, provided it satisfied the shareholders profits? Can he tell the House whether the Government have received information to the effect that this is the constitution and powers of the proposed supra-national authority? If so, was this a leakage or was the right hon. Gentleman imagining it?
  The Prime Minister: My right hon. Friend was referring to the fact that there was a proposal to hand over these industries to an irresponsible authority and—
  Mr. Churchill: What proposal?
  The Prime Minister: The Schuman proposal.
  Mr. Churchill: Exactly.
  The Prime Minister: I am answering the hon. and learned Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe). I think that it is a perfectly fair comment, on looking at the scheme, to say that one would be putting into the hands of an irresponsible authority powers to deal on a very wide basis with all these industries.
  Mr. Churchill: is not the essential point whether the word"plot" covered the Schuman proposal? What other proposals were there before the public at the time, except the Schuman proposal we had just been debating? Surely the right hon. Gentleman will consider his own position very carefully in this matter.
  Lord John Hope: On a point of order. Owing to the obviously inadequate replies of the Prime Minister, I give notice that I shall raise the matter on the Adjournment.
  Sir Waldron Smithers: In view of the unsatisfactory reply of the Prime Minister, can you, Mr. Speaker, as the guardian of the traditions of this House, do anything to remove malignant tumours from the body politic?

  AGRICULTURE

    Apples (Marketing)
    Mr. M. Philips Priceasked the Minister of Agriculture whether, in view of the importance of meeting foreign competition by better grading and packing of apples and of the lack of standardisation existing in many fruit markets throughout the country, he will take steps to see that the grades and methods of packing recommended by his Department are known throughout the principal apple markets.
    The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Thomas Williams): I am satisfied that effective steps have been taken by my Department, acting in conjunction with the national organisations of producers and of the wholesale and retail fruit trades, to ensure that the recommended standard grades and packs for home grown dessert and culinary apples are made known to producers and packers and to the distributive trades.
    Mr. Price: As I was not able to hear a word of that answer, could my right hon. Friend say whether he will give special attention to the markets of the west of England, where the best apples of the country are grown?
    Mr. David Renton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that advances in the grading and packing of fruit are being prevented by the lack of suitable packing-case materials, and will he tell the House what steps he is taking to improve that situation?
    Mr. Williams: I should not say that grading has been altered by want of packing materials.
    Mr. Nabarro: In making that reply, surely the right hon. Gentleman has overlooked the fact that there is in the Question on the Order Paper a reference to

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    the packing of apples as well as grading. Is it not a fact that in Worcestershire, one of the principal apple producing areas, grading and packing is almost impossible on a good scale, because of the acute shortage of suitable timber and fibre board?
    Mr. Williams: That has nothing to do with the Question on the Order Paper, to which I have replied.
    Mr. Nabarro: But it says"packing."

    County Committees (Accounts)
    Mr. Heathcoat Amoryasked the Minister of Agriculture whether he will arrange for the future for the publication of the accounts of each individual county agricultural executive committee.
    Mr. T. Williams: No, Sir. Trading and profit and loss accounts for England and Wales as a whole covering the services provided by county agricultural executive committees in 1948–49 have been presented to Parliament and trading estimates are published in the appendix to Civil Estimates, Class VI, Vote 9. In my view it would be invidious and misleading to publish separate accounts for each county committee without detailed statements of local conditions and circumstances, which vary widely as between county and county.
    Mr. Amory: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that his refusal to allow individual accounts to be published may encourage the notion that the committees have something to hide or some expenditure which is not fully justified? That is unsatisfactory to the committees and the public. Does he not feel that the undoubted fact he has mentioned, that circumstances vary between one county and another, makes it still more desirable that individual accounts relating to these special circumstances should be published?
    Mr. Williams: No, Sir.
    Mr. Turton: Are the accounts available to members of the county committees, and do they know what other counties are doing?
    Mr. Williams: We advise county committees where we find they are, perhaps, not quite up to the standard of some of
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    the more efficient committees, always bearing in mind the widely varying circumstances in each county.

    Water Schemes, Devonshire
    Mr. Lambertasked the Minister of Agriculture how many claims he received from Devonshire for grants in aid of authorised water schemes for farms during 1949; and how many have not yet been settled.
    Mr. T. Williams: The answer to the first part of the Question is 189, and to the second part, three.

    Grassland Subsidies, Devonshire
    Mr. Lambertasked the Minister of Agriculture how many claims for subsidy his Department received from Devonshire for ploughing up grassland by 31st December, 1949; how many have been paid; and how many are still outstanding.
    Mr. T. Williams: Seven thousand and forty claims have been received since 1st October last, of which 6,470 have been paid, and 570 are outstanding.
    Mr. Lambert: Could the right hon. Gentleman say when all the claims will be paid?
    Mr. Williams: By the middle of July.

    Swaledale Wool (Price)
    Mr. Fortasked the Minister of Agriculture if he will consider increasing the price now being paid to farmers for Swaledale wool in view of the price it now fetches on the Bradford market.
    Mr. T. Williams: No, Sir. I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Louth (Mr. Osborne) on 15th June, in which I explained the principles on which the prices for the various types of wool for the 1950 clip have been fixed.
    Mr. Fort: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that the margin between what is being paid to the raisers of Swaledale wool and the price which is being fetched at Bradford is excessive by any standards of profit making, and that the raisers are entitled to a larger share of that margin?
    Mr. Williams: All that I can tell the hon. Member is that the estimated increased price of the cost of production

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    was allowed for in the 1950 price review, and that Swaledale wool has been brought more nearly into its true position in relation to the other types.
    Mr. Vane: Could the right hon. Gentleman say how the increased cost of production could have been taken into account in the price of this wool, seeing that what the grower gets has gone down?
    Mr. Williams: No wool producer has given any information that the cost of production has gone down.
    Major Sir Thomas Dugdale: Has not the price of wool fallen since last year?
    Mr. Williams: That may be so, but I understand that the price of Swaledale wool in relation to the price of other types of wool has been varied in accordance with the known market value of the type.

  FORESTRY (PIT-PROPS)
  Colonel Clarkeasked the Minister of Agriculture what quantity of pit-props were supplied by the Forestry Commission to the National Coal Board during 1947, 1948 and 1949; and what quantity it is anticipated will be supplied during the current year.
  Mr. T. Williams: The quantity of pit-wood supplied by the Forestry Commission to the National Coal Board either direct or through agents was 930,000 cubic feet in 1947, 2,700,000 cubic feet in 1948, and 2,900,000 cubic feet in 1949. It is estimated that production by the Forestry Commission in 1950 will be about 3 to 3¼ million cubic feet. Pitwood is also supplied to the National Coal Board by timber merchants from poles and standing timber sold to them by the Commission but no information of the amount is available.
  Colonel Ropner: Could the right hon. Gentleman say whether the figures he has given include a proportion of hardwoods, or whether it is all softwood?
  Mr. Williams: It is softwood.
  Mr. Vane: Could the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Forestry Commission is now selling to the National Coal Board under the terms of a long-term contract?
  Mr. Williams: I should want notice of that.
  Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Are these United Kingdom figures which the right hon. Gentleman has just given?
  Mr. Williams: Yes.

  STATUTES (INDEX)
  Mr. Jannerasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when the next Chronological Table and Index of the Statutes is to be issued; to what date this will cover legislation; what will be the charge; and how this price compares with the pre-war price.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Douglas Jay): The next edition of the Chronological Table and Index to the Statutes will be published in the autumn. The Table will be in one volume, priced at a guinea and a half, and will cover legislation to the end of 1949. The Index, in two volumes, will be priced at three guineas, and will cover legislation to the end of 1948 in conformity with the third edition of the Statutes Revised. In the last pre-war edition the Table and Index made two volumes, and the price was 30s.

  NATIONAL FINANCE

    Purchase Tax
    Captain Ryderasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will make a further statement as to whether Purchase Tax should be chargeable on model aircraft accessories or not under his regulations.
    Mr. Jay: Model aircraft accessories are regarded as chargeable with Purchase Tax under Group 20 (a) of the Purchase Tax Schedule.
    Captain Ryder: Is it not a fact that half the industry have defied this ruling and that the case is now sub judice and has been for over a year? Could this matter be accelerated?
    Mr. Jay: I believe that the case is now before the courts, and I fully agree that the sooner it is settled the better.

    Death Duties, Penrhyn Estate
    Mr. William Elwyn Jonesasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, before he accepts farms belonging to the Penrhyn estate in Yspytty Ifrw district of

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    Caernarvonshire in settlement of Death Duties under Section 49 of the Finance Act, 1946, he will give an assurance that the tenants of such farms will be given an opportunity of purchasing the same at a fair valuation.
    Mr. Jay: No, Sir. The estate has been offered to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue as a whole, and it is not for me to suggest to the trustees that they should now withdraw that offer in order to split it up in the manner suggested.
    Mr. Elwyn Jones: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind the claims of the farmers whose ancestors lived on these farms for many generations?
    Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Could the Financial Secretary give us the pronunciation of the district in which this estate is situated?
    Mr. Jay
    Mr. Llewellyn: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that this is one method of leasehold enfranchisement, which can be effected prior to the introduction of new legislation?

    Tobacco Gifts (Customs Charges)
    Mr. Alportasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will consider exempting from Customs charges, amounting to £1 18s. 4d., a present of 50 cigarettes and 8 oz. of tobacco sent as a gift by his mother in Canada to Mr. B. G. Cleversey, a patient at Severalls Hospital, Colchester.
    Mr. Jay: I am afraid that remission of Customs charges on private gifts of tobacco from abroad cannot be allowed.
    Mr. Alport: In view of all the kindness which has been shown to us by Canada, and the gifts which came to private persons here from that Dominion during the war, does it not seem rather a mean decision that a present from a mother to a sick son has to bear this enormous tax?
    Mr. Jay: Concessions, as the hon. Gentleman knows, have been made in the case of food. It has been found from experience that similar concessions on tobacco unfortunately lead to abuse.

    Waste Paper (Salvage)
    Mr. Cuthbertasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he is aware of the loss caused to the nation's economy by the fact that local authorities are being prevented from collecting waste paper owing to the removal of tax-free privileges in connection with the trailers used for this purpose; and whether he will arrange exemption from the Road Fund tax in connection with this work.
    Mr. Jay: It has for some time been the view of the Board of Trade that salvage of waste paper should be arranged on an economic basis, and this, of course, includes payment of the normal excise licence duties on vehicles employed in collecting it. I therefore see no justification for seeking power to restore the wartime exemption.
    Mr. Cuthbert: Is it not a fact that the collection of waste paper products in the past was a great saver of dollars, and stopped us from importing a certain amount of newsprint? Should not the concession made with that object be carried on, as suggested in the Question?
    Mr. Jay: If it is agreed that this should be done on an economic basis, it is clear that these vehicles should pay duty in the same way as any other vehicles.

  LONDON MEAT DISTRIBUTION (STRIKE)
  Mr. McCorquodale(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Labour whether he has any further statement to make about the strike of London meat drivers.
  The Minister of Labour (Mr. Isaacs): Yes, Sir. There is no material change in the strike situation this morning. The distribution of meat and provisions continues with the help of Service personnel.
  Mr. McCorquodale: Is the Minister of Labour taking every step to bring home to the men, the great majority of whom will be ordinary, decent British citizens, the consequences of their action, by which they are not only injuring their own union and causing discomfort and distress to millions of their fellow-citizens, especially the poorer people, but are engaging in strike action which finds no support in any section of this House?
  Mr. Isaacs: The actual bringing home to the men of the consequences of their action is mainly in the hands of their trade union. I can do no more than to make the statements that I have made in the House from time to time, which I know have been noted but not, I am afraid, with very much effect.
  Commander Noble: Is there any further change in the supply of meat and other food to London?
  Mr. Isaacs: Not at the moment. We are continuing the supplies, and there is no deterioration in our programme.
  Mr. Gammans: Has the right hon. Gentleman considered appealing to the patriotism of these men, to make them realise that the battle of Smithfield is closely connected with the battle of Korea and that by immobilising the British Army they are acting as the unconscious agents of Moscow?
  Mr. Isaacs: Questions and answers which seem innocent, may sometimes inflame feelings, and I do not propose to take that step.
  Earl Winterton: Will the right hon. Gentleman do what he has done on previous occasions, pay a tribute to the discipline, good humour and most effective help given by the branches of His Majesty's Service who have been engaged in this work, in view of the fact that these people are counteracting action inspired by Communists quite as much as are their colleagues overseas?
  Mr. Isaacs: The noble Lord may accept it from me that such a tribute will be very honestly and generously paid at the end of this strike, which, I hope, will be very soon.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Churchill: May I ask the Lord President of the Council whether he has any statement to make on Business?
The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): Before announcing the Business for next week, I wish to refer to the Business for Tomorrow (Friday):
Before the Debate on the Reports from the Kitchen Committee, we shall ask the House to take the Second Reading of the
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International Organisations (Immunities and Privileges) Bill, which has come from another place. This is a consolidation Measure which has been examined by the Joint Select Committee on Consolidation Bills. There is some urgency for us to proceed with this Bill because it will be necessary to bring before the House for approval a draft Order in Council to give effect to the provisions of a general agreement on the privileges and immunities of the Council of Europe, which I think the House will agree it is more convenient to make under the provisions of the Consolidation Act than under existing Acts.
The Business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 10TH JULY—Third Reading of the Finance Bill until about 8.30 p.m.;
Committee stage of the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill;
Third Reading of the Cinematograph Films Production (Special Loans) Bill;
Committee and remaining stages of the International Organisations (Immunities and Privileges) Bill [Lords];
Committee stage of the Navy, Army and Air Expenditure, 1948–49.
TUESDAY, 11TH JULY—Supply (20th allotted Day), Committee: Debate on Education;
Consideration of the Motion to approve the draft Census Order.
WEDNESDAY, 12TH JULY—Supply (21st allotted Day), Committee: Debate on Colonial Affairs;
Consideration of Motions to approve the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) (Colliery Workers Supplementary Scheme) Amendment Order, and the Seasonal Workers Regulations.
THURSDAY, 13TH JULY—Debate on the Report and Accounts of the National Coal Board for 1949;
Committee and remaining stages of the Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill;
Consideration of Motions to approve the Draft Census of Distribution Order, and the Fertilisers (Charges) Order.
FRIDAY, 14TH JULY—Report and Third Reading of the Maintenance Orders Bill [Lords];
Committee and remaining stages of the Colonial and Other Territories (Divorce Jurisdiction) Bill [Lords];
Remaining stages of the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill;
Second Reading of the London Government Bill;
Committee stage of the Medical Bill [Lords];
On Wednesday, at the beginning of Business, a Motion will be proposed to refer the Allotments (Scotland) Bill, which is expected to be received from another place today, to the Scottish Grand Committee for Second Reading.
Mr. Churchill: In view of the incident which has taken place during Question Time today, it may be necessary that further discussion should take place through the usual channels as to whether the Debate on education should have first priority in the Supply discussion, set down for Tuesday, 11th July.
Mr. Janner: Now that, at long last, the Report has been received from the Leasehold Committee, can my right hon. Friend give an indication when we are likely to have some kind of legislation on that subject?
Mr. Morrison: Not at the moment, Sir. The Report is naturally engaging the urgent and careful attention of the Government, but I am not in a position to say when the legislation will be introduced.
Colonel Clarke: When is there likely to be an opportunity of debating the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Population?
Mr. Morrison: I am afraid I do not know, Sir.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: When are we likely to have time given for the discussion of salmon poaching in Scotland?
Mr. Morrison: I understand that this matter is engaging the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, but I am not in a position to say what the outcome of that consideration will be.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there will be no salmon left if we do not hurry up?
Mr. Morrison: I am fully aware that these capitalist depredations are going on.
Mr. Joynson-Hicks: In view of the fact that the Lord President is hardly able to find sufficient work for the House to do next Monday, is that an indication that the House will rise in the following week. or will he give us some indication?
Sir Herbert Williams: In view of the announcement that on Wednesday we are to take the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Order, and as, to my knowledge, that Order was moved last night and carried, but is not recorded in the Votes and Proceedings owing to the disorder at the time when hon. Members were leaving the Chamber, may I ask that there should be a pause of two or three minutes upon occasions when a Division has taken place on Government Business, so that the resumption of Business is not interfered with by the congestion of the Chamber and the approaches to the Chamber?
Mr. Speaker: I see no reason for that. It is the duty of hon. Members to be here. Yesterday, I find on inquiry, they had ample opportunity. Mr. Deputy-Speaker looked round and called the names one after the other, and the hon. Members were not present. Well, that is their fault. After all, when they know that the Lord President, say, is winding up the Debate, it is up to hon. Members concerned to be here and to be quite certain that they are here at the end. We sat here for five years in the last Parliament and we never had any difficulty whatever.
Sir H. Williams: May I with great deference, suggest that those who sit in the Chair cannot be acquainted with the appalling congestion which takes place in the narrow entrances. Are you aware, Mr. Speaker, that two hon. Members were within the precincts but were not in a position to get to the Chamber because of the congestion They could not actually get to their seats because a Division had been anticipated and, because they wanted to be available for the Business which immediately followed, they had proceeded to the Lobbies in order to get out quickly? [Interruption.] I am not quite certain why this should meet with such disapprobation from hon. Members opposite. Surely it is the duty of this House to conduct itself in such a way that Business can be transacted, and as last night,

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to my knowledge, the Minister of National Insurance moved a Motion and the Motion was put from the Chair and carried and does not appear in the Votes and Proceedings, surely that is a clear indication that the present arrangements are unsatisfactory?
Mr. Speaker: I am afraid that I do not agree with the hon. Member. We all know that there is great difficulty behind the Chair in getting into the House, but we have had that all this Parliament anyhow and hon. Members must make their own arrangements. As regards the last statement, I regret that it was not noticed that there was a Motion before the House,"That this House do now adjourn." That Motion had been moved and any further proceedings which might have taken place afterwards are out of order. They could not take place, and, therefore, nothing was carried because it was out of order.
Sir H. Williams: Further to that point, Mr. Speaker, for excellent reasons you were not present last night, but to my knowledge a Motion was proposed by the Minister of National Insurance before the Motion"That this House do now adjourn" was moved. [HON. MEMBERS:"No."] Certainly it was.
Mr. Speaker: It may be, but it was highly irregular. It certainly was not carried because there was another Motion before the House, namely,"That this House do now adjourn."
Sir H. Williams: The Motion"That this House do now adjourn" had not been moved. [HON. MEMBERS:"Yes."] I was one of the few hon. Members in this House who at that time appeared to be conscious, and I observed the whole proceedings. When there was a pause from the Chair it was actually on my suggestion that the Minister moved his Motion.
Mr. Speaker: I am assured that the Motion for the Adjournment of the House was moved by one of the Whips on the Government Front Bench.
Mr. Niall Macpherson: Is not the mere fact that, despite the natural courtesy of hon. Members in this House, the Minister of National Insurance had great difficulty in getting to the Box at all and in moving the Motion, which she did move—there is no question that she did move it—an indication that that moment was not a suitable moment at all to transact the Business of this House?
Mr. Speaker: It was not a moment when we could transact Business because the Question before the House was"That this House do now adjourn." That really was the Question. If anything happened, I admit that it was not regular, but it cannot be said—unless hon. Members would like to take that Motion without any discussion—that the Motion was carried.
Sir H. Williams: With great respect, Mr. Speaker, you were absent and I was present, and I should like to assure you that the Motion was moved before the Motion for the Adjournment. [HON. MEMBERS:"No."] As the majority of the hon. Members who are interrupting were not present in the Chamber I do not take much notice of their interruption.
Mr. Speaker: I was not present, but I am assured that the Adjournment Motion was moved before the other. I think we must leave it at that because we cannot settle it.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered:
"That this day, the Business of Supply may be taken after Ten o'clock and shall be exempted from the provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House) for One hour after Ten o'clock."—[The Prime Minister.]

ORDERS OF THE DAY
  SUPPLY
  [19TH ALLOTTED DAY]

  CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, 1950–51
  Considered in Committee.
  [Colonel Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

  POST OFFICE
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £116,791,000, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1951, for the salaries and expenses of the Post Office, including telegraphs and telephones and a grant in aid."—[Mr. Ness Edwards.]

  POST OFFICE (TRADE UNIONS)
  3.45 p.m.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: On this Vote this afternoon it is desired to raise the question of the action of the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster-General in refusing over a prolonged period to grant recognition to a trades union known as the Engineering Officers (Telecommunications) Association. Although I dislike as much as any hon. Member does the large number of initials with which our public affairs are decorated in these days, I would ask through you, Sir Charles, the permission of the Committee to use instead of the somewhat lengthy title of this union the initials E.O.T.A. throughout my observations on the subject. I can back that request with what I am sure all hon. Members will agree is the compelling argument that if permission is granted my speech will be that much shorter.
  I do not propose in discussing this subject, to enter into any general discussions on trade unionism or upon what are sometimes described as"splinter unions" I do not think that on this particular issue, to which at any rate I intend to direct my observations this afternoon, those general questions arise at all, but in so far as the opinion of any hon. Member is of relevance to it my general view
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  is that the less of what one might describe as nuclear fission that takes place in trade unionism or, indeed, in anything else the better.
  What I want to deal with is the more precise question of the administration by the right hon. Gentleman and to some extent by his predecessor in office of the rules governing recognition of staff associations inside the Post Office. The proposition which I desire to put before the Committee is that with respect to this matter the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor have been less than fair. I think I can start with two propositions which will, I hope, command the unanimous assent of the Committee.
  The first one is that where the State is an employer—in the case of the Post Office we are dealing with the biggest concern in this country in which the State is the direct employer—it is right that we should insist upon the most meticulous standards of fairness in dealing with staff and seek to set an example to private individuals, and that it is the responsibility of this House to ensure that Ministers of whatever political colour who sit on the Government Front Bench treat their staffs with meticulous fairness and with complete disregard for political or other, in these respects, improper considerations. The second proposition, which I hope will also meet the assent of the House, is that it is no business of an employer which particular trade union his staff elect to join. That view was, if I recall it correctly, very fairly put not long ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour in connection with a certain foreign bank.
  Coming to the immediate facts of this case, I do not anticipate that there will be very much dispute between the two sides of the Committee. The E.O.T.A. is a craft union concerned solely with the organisation of the technician grade in the Post Office. As hon. Members who are familiar with this question will know, the technician grade comprises skilled men and in this case they are concerned with the installation and maintenance of telecommunications systems. That grade of the Post Office has a total establishment slightly in excess of 11,000, and I understand that at this moment the membership of the Association concerned is between 5,000 and 6,000.

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  The other union concerned in the organisation of that grade is the Post Office Engineering Union, equally a highly reputable and respectable body which, I wish to make clear that at the outset, I do not criticise in any way. It is legitimately concerned, as are all unions, to preserve its interests and those of its members, and I have no criticism to make of it with respect to this matter. The criticism I desire to make is directed to the Postmaster-General.
  A substantial number of technicians have decided that they are better represented by E.O.T.A., which is concerned solely with the technician grade, than by the Post Office Engineering Union, which is concerned with a wider variety of grades in the Post Office. I shall not contend aye or no whether they are wise so to do. That is not a matter upon which it is wise or necessary to express an opinion. All I am prepared to argue is that they are entitled so to do, whether they be wise or not, are entitled to join such union as they think fit, and that if sufficient of them desire so to do—and this is an old problem in the trade union movement—they should then be entitled to recognition.
  I am not here to say that every small group in any industry, because they do not like the established union, are entitled for that reason to recognition. There must be a balance in the matter. There must be clear and comprehensible rules. All I am concerned to argue is that when sufficient men in a grade decide that they wish to join one union rather than another, they are entitled to recognition. The question then arises, what is sufficient? Fortunately, perhaps, for the clarity of this Debate, that matter has been thoroughly and lucidly dealt with in a publication of His Majesty's Treasury as recently as last year entitled,"Staff Relations in the Civil Service". It there sets out a rule which is the rule throughout the Civil Service as a whole, though it expressly mentions the position of the Post Office. In paragraph 13 at page 4 there occur these words:
  "To secure recognition an association must show that it is representative of the category of staff concerned. In the Civil Service recognition depends solely on numerical strength. The Postmaster-General has recently announced that the Post Office will consider a request for recognition if the association making the request can show that it has in membership at least 40 per cent. of the organised
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  staff of the grade or grades concerned; that where an association warrants recognition by the Post Office, this will be granted for an initial period of 3 years; that at the end of that period, or at any time subsequently, the question of withdrawing recognition will arise if the membership falls below 33⅓ per cent. of the organised staff of the grade; and that the question of restoring recognition once withdrawn will not be considered till the lapse of 3 years from the date of withdrawal."
  The only other passage I need quote is the subsequent paragraph 14, which begins with the important words:
  "As membership figures alone determine recognition…"
  That is the rule stated as recently as last year in a document issued by His Majesty's Treasury, and its reference to the Post Office is based on what is called the Listowel formula, so called because it was propounded by the noble Lord who was predecessor but two of the right hon. Gentleman. This doctrine is expounded in somewhat similar terms in a letter sent by the Post Office on 30th December, 1946, and as they are substantially the same as those in the Treasury document, I shall not weary the Committee with them.
  As I understand that formula, it amounts to this: not that an absolute and indefeasible right to secure recognition is given to any association reaching 40 per cent., but that the size of membership and the percentage of membership is the sole test of recognition, and that when 40 per cent. is included, the general presumption is that recognition shall be given unless some clear and compelling reason to the contrary arises.
  That view of those words is fortified by the fact that, so far as I know, certainly in recent years, throughout the Civil Service no organisation which has attained the 40 per cent. has been denied recognition until the case arose with which the Committee is concerned this afternoon. In fact the rule has been applied in the case of other comparatively small and specialist associations. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, it was applied some years ago to the National Guild of Telephonists and, so far as the Civil Service is concerned, it has been applied within the last 12 months to a small union inside the Customs, the Customs and Excise Association. Therefore the effect of the rule is pretty clear.
  If I may come briefly to the facts of this matter, on 25th April last year the

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  original claim for recognition was put in by these people. It was no doubt by coincidence that just at that time the Post Office, for some unascertainable reason, decided to tighten up the rules against unrecognised staff associations. That was done by circular C.68/49 dated 3rd May, 1949, and among other difficulties which it imposed upon unrecognised staff associations there is included an instruction that when such staff associations make representation they are not to be given a reasoned reply. Further rather petty restrictions were imposed such as forbidding them to put notices on boards in Post Offices.
  On 14th July, a check of the Associations membership figures showed a membership of 4,263 which, although it would amount to 40 per cent. if the grade were organised only to the extent of 90 per cent., did not amount at that time to 40 per cent. of the total, and as there is no dispute that the grade is a highly organised one, and as the formula applies to organised workers, not total staff, it was not unreasonable that at that stage the application should be rejected.
  What is important is the letter in which that application was rejected, of which I must read out some passages. It is dated 27th August, 1949, from the Personnel Department of the Post Office and addressed to the General Secretary, E.O.T.A.:
  "With reference to your letter of the 3rd August, and earlier correspondence about your Association's claim for recognition in respect of the technical officer grade, I am directed to inform you that the checks which have recently been made of the membership claims of your association and of the Post Office Engineering Union disclose that the grade is very highly organised. On the evidence available, it has not been established that the membership claimed by your Association represents as much as the 40 per cent. of the organised staff of the grade which is necessary before recognition can be considered."
  The letter goes on to say:
  "In view of the substantial membership of your Association it is, however, proposed to reconsider at the end of the year the question of granting your Association joint recognition with the Post Office Engineering Union in respect of the technical officer grade. This review will be made on the basis of membership figures to the 31st December, 1949, and you will perhaps be good enough to forward as soon as possible after that date a statement of the membership claimed by your Association at that date in the technical officer grade. This arrangement is proposed on the assumption that
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  in the meantime there is no change in regard to the principle on which the grade is used as a base for considering claims by staff associations to official recognition."
  With reference to those concluding words, whatever view hon. Members may take, the Postmaster-General has in fact told the House, as he did two months ago, that no change has taken place. It therefore appears perfectly clear that the Association were being informed in August that their claim was being rejected on the grounds that they had not reached the 40 per cent. and that, in view of their substantial membership, it would be reconsidered on the basis of their figures at the end of the year.
  That was the position at that stage, but on 8th October a further claim for recognition was submitted on the grounds that the Association had by then obtained 40 per cent. of the total workers in the grade and therefore, beyond any dispute, must have at least 40 per cent. of the organised workers. That claim was submitted on 8th October, and as nothing happened about it a Parliamentary Question was asked of the then Postmaster-General on 2nd November. The Postmaster-General announced that:
  "I am at present reviewing the basis on which recognition by the Post Office should be given to new staff associations and pending a conclusion of that review I regret I am not in a position to take a decision on the present claim."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd November, 1949; Vol. 469, c. 389.]
  In reply to a supplementary question, the right hon. Gentleman said that he was not disputing the figures. I ask the present Postmaster-General to note particularly that answer.
  On 14th December a written answer was given by the Assistant Postmaster-General, who I am glad to see has retained his office and is now present on the Front Bench, in which he stated, in answer to a Question of mine:
  "The second part of the hon. Member's Question refers, I presume, to the Engineering Officers (Telecommunications) Association. Their claim to recognition will be further considered by my right hon. Friend in the light of all the relevant factors, including the extent of their membership. On this latter point, as my right hon. Friend has previously indicated a check is to be made of the figures for 31st December, 1949."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 14th December, 1949; Vol. 470, c. 265-6.]
  I ask the Committee to note that, not only has that check never been made, but that despite the failure of the right hon.

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  Gentleman to make that check he thought fit at a later stage—although I understand he does not now do so—to challenge the figures. He did so in this House in reply to a Question on 29th March, after he had assumed his present office.
  The matter then comes down to the statement which the right hon. Gentleman made on 17th May, in which at long last he made an announcement in connection with this matter, which his predecessor many months before had said he was considering. I do not propose to read the whole of the statement, which is lengthy. No doubt the right hon. Gentleman has it in his possession and can invite the attention of the Committee to any part which he deems material and to which I do not refer, but I should like to read one paragraph:
  "Questions of recognition in the Post Office are not, in my judgment, suitable for settlement by reference to any automatic formula. Each case must be considered individually, and in any arrangement which may be made it will be one of my principal objectives to ensure that the interests of the staff are safeguarded."
  In reply to a supplementary question, the right hon. Gentleman said:
  "No, Sir, I have not changed any rule."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May. 1950; Vol. 475, c. 1193–4.]
  My own view is that the right hon. Gentleman has changed the rule. He has changed the rule from the basis of recognition being numerical, as stated in the Treasury document, to a position in which he has complete discretion to grant recognition whether or not the association concerned has attained any particular figure of numerical strength. If he has not changed the rule, why did he make inquiries, before introducing this, of many of the associations concerned whether or not there was any objection to the changing of the rule?
  But whether the right hon. Gentleman has changed the rule or not, it seems to me that on his handling of this matter he is subject to this criticism: either he held up recognition of an association which, it is now really beyond dispute on the figures, had a claim for recognition as long ago at least as 8th October, in view of the fact that he was going to change the rules, but not only did not change the rules, but did not grant recognition either; or alternatively—and it is for the right hon. Gentleman to select which of these alternatives he prefers—while refusing recognition to an association which was
  654
  entitled to it on the basis of the then rules, the right hon. Gentleman changed the rules in order that he should not give it. It is for the right hon. Gentleman to decide which of these alternatives he decides is more consistent with the high traditions of his office.
  The question inevitably arises, why was this done? There are one or two matters which may assist the Committee in forming its view and I should like first to refer to certain observations made by the hon. Member who now represents Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) whom, in accordance with custom, I have notified of my intention to refer to this matter, and who was, as hon. Members are aware, for a good many years General Secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union. Indeed, he has made so deep an imprint upon that organisation that those who receive communications from it can still decipher his name on its notepaper, deleted by a thin penstroke. The hon. Gentleman in the last Parliament represented one of the Blackburn constituencies and, what is more immediately material to this issue, held the appointment of Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade.
  The hon. Gentleman was, therefore, a Minister of the Crown, and it was while he was a Minister of the Crown that he attended the annual conference of the Post Office Engineering Union last June. He made there a speech, for the accuracy of which I rely upon the journal published by the Union, which, I am certain, is therefore a perfectly accurate record. In the course of his speech, the hon. Gentleman said this:
  "As you know, I receive E.C. reports—"
  I assume that that means the executive committee—
  "I do not pretend that I read every individual case but I do read all the important documents that come to me, and believe me I share your anxieties and your worries perhaps even more than I would do were I still able to be active about them. Occasionally I am unhappy through the fact that all I can do has to be done informally, but the E.C. know, and I would like you to know, that on every occasion that I have been able to do anything informally by discussion with my colleagues in the Government, the P.M.G., the Chancellor, the Financial Secretary and so on, on matters like the wage claim, superannuation, even recognition of E.O.T.A., I have always done so. I shall continue to do so as long as any members of the E.C. and the officers of the Union think I can be of any help."

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  So far as I know, it is an innovation in our constitutional procedure for an hon. Member who has the honour of serving as a member of His Majesty's Government to intervene with a Ministerial colleague on behalf of an outside organisation with which he was previously connected in a matter in which that colleague has to deal as between one organisation and another. I would be very glad, if there are precedents for this sort of action, if the Committee could be reminded of them. [An HON. MEMBER:"There are more than one."] It seems to me that the knowledge that this sort of thing has been going on throws an interesting and revealing light upon the otherwise inexplicable facts which I have recounted.
  The matter does not stop there, and there are two other quotations which I should like to read to the Committee. One is a report of a deputation to the late Postmaster-General which appears in"The post," the journal of the Union of Post Office Workers, with reference to a deputation which the right hon. Gentleman received from that Union on 29th September, 1949. According to this journal of the Union, one of the two purposes for which the right hon. Gentleman was asked to receive that deputation was
  "The modification of the Department's present policy on the recognition of staff associations."
  The then Postmaster-General's reply to the discussion is reported in these words:
  "The Post Office procedure regarding recognition of staff associations was tied up with policy followed by other Government Departments and he might find it necessary to consult those Departments about the matter. If it was decided to make any change that he would have to make any change, he would have to make sure he was carrying them with him, or he might be creating difficulties for them. He felt bound to mention that the present basis of recognition had been in operation a long time and if it were changed now when a new association was meeting with some success he might be accused of a breach of faith."
  I very rarely agree with the late Postmaster-General, but that concluding sentence carries my heartfelt agreement. The final speech was by the present Postmaster-General addressing the U.P.W. Conference a few weeks ago. I do not propose to trouble the Committee with all his Celtic eloquence, but I will quote one passage:
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  "But, in the House of Commons in the last fortnight there has been discussed a question about which you are most seriously and deeply concerned. I gave a decision on a recognition question in the House of Commons which has met with a great deal of hostility and also a great deal of approbation. I am not going to offer rewards to dissident elements."
  That particular phrase does not seem to me to indicate the almost judicial state of mind in which a right hon. Gentleman responsible for the employment of large numbers of people should approach these delicate questions of trade union recognition. Nor in a case where, for the first time for many years, a union which has received the requisite percentage has been denied recognition does it indicate that that matter has been approached in the right spirit, and for the right hon. Gentleman to refer to any section of those whom, on behalf of this House and of the Crown, he employs, as"dissident elements," seems wholly unworthy of the traditions of his office.
  Those are the facts of the matter and I only desire to make one brief comment. I understand, not least from sources close to the right hon. Gentleman, that some discussions, which may have some bearing on this matter, are to be undertaken, or may indeed have started. I do not know what those proposals are, although, if the right hon. Gentleman cares to inform the Committee of them, I can assure him we shall listen with every attention.
  But where the right hon. Gentleman has denied recognition to an association which was entitled to it under his existing rules, the proper way to start the discussion of a new system in an atmosphere of goodwill is, first, to grant that recognition, which ought never to have been withheld, and then to proceed from that basis to discuss the matter as between equals. Unless the right hon. Gentleman can say he accepts the principle of giving recognition to those who, under the old rules, are entitled to it, it seems to me that any consultative body or other organisation he may see fit to set up will be founded fundamentally and in the first place on injustice and prove to be an inefficient and ineffective way of doing what he wants.
  I put this to the right hon. Gentleman. He made a reply to a supplementary question of mine a little time ago in which he said that if the principle, to which I

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  have referred again this afternoon, were applied, he would be met by the demand for recognition by 500 unions. I do not know how seriously he meant that and how seriously he thought 500 unions could get 40 per cent. of the organised workers in the grades of the Post Office. But the fact remains that at this moment he is faced with one union and one only.
  The essence of the point I am putting to him is that if he is satisfied that his position will be impossible under the present law he is, of course, perfectly entitled to come to the House and change it. But, if he does change it, he ought to give to those who, under the old law, are entitled to recognition, that recognition to which they were then entitled. He is faced with the claim of not 500 unions, but one union, and he is not coming to the House and telling the House that with all the administrative resources of the Post Office the task would be impossible if he recognised one more union.
  Against the background of the events which the House were discussing yesterday, the matter we are discussing this afternoon is, perhaps, not a very great matter against the tumultuous background of our time, but I am not at all sure that it is not of greater importance than merely the conflicting interests of two trade unions. I believe that if any State or community when dealing with its employees departs from absolute fairness, that spreads throughout the community as a whole and in the long run may do as much damage to the community as the external dangers which are in our minds today.
  I therefore put this forward as something bigger than the fair treatment of 5,000 men, a matter involving the honour of a great Department of State for which, not only the right hon. Gentleman, but hon. Members of this Committee, are ultimately responsible to the Crown and people. I beg of the right hon. Gentleman to appreciate that he can gain nothing but esteem, nothing but repute, by administering his rules fairly, even if he is for other reasons not well disposed to those against whom he has so far administered them. It is the duty of this House to insist that Departments of State treat their staff, in words which all hon. Members know so well,
  "without fear, or favour, affection, or ill will."
  4.17 p.m.
  Mr. John Edwards (Brighouse and Spenborough): I am fortunate to catch your eye, Sir, and I count it rather a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) and also to deal with a great many things he has not mentioned.
  We are often indebted to the hon. Member for the skill with which he deals with technical matters, but his limitations have never been more apparent than they were this afternoon. How he could make a speech of this kind without ever asking whether this breakaway was justified in any way, without discussing its origin, without defending the methods that have been used, without a word as to the effect of the breakaway on the efficiency of the Post Office, or the well-being of the staff—how he could do such a thing is beyond belief.
  I would not deny that when the hon. Gentleman is putting Questions to the Postmaster-General he is obviously entitled to put them on a narrow field, but this afternoon we are not dealing with Questions from a back bench Member of Parliament; we are dealing with a matter raised, I understand, officially by His Majesty's Opposition. His Majesty's Opposition, whatever a backbench Tory may do, is in no position to avoid dealing with this as a matter of general principle for, if they fail to do so, all the talk we have from them from time to time, on trade union matters becomes quite meaningless.
  The hon. Member made it quite plain that he was not going to deal with general matters. He pleaded for meticulous fairness as between members of the staff. I want to plead for the same meticulous fairness to be given by hon. Gentlemen opposite to the legitimate trade union that has held this field ever since the early linesmen's movement at the end of the '80's of the last century.
  Before I proceed to develop my theme, may I correct the hon. Member on one point, upon which I think he would accept correction? At the beginning of his speech he talked a good deal about technicians. I think he will agree that he really meant to refer to technical officers.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter Mr. Boyd-Carpenter indicated assent.
  Mr. Edwards: That is all right. But it leaves a completely false impression if we talk about technicians because they are not the people in dispute here. Never once did the hon. Member mention technical officers. He must have been badly briefed or could not read his own writing.
  Since the Opposition have raised this matter officially, it seems to me important for us to consider the way in which this breakaway arose and its effect on the work of the Post Office. When I went to the Post Office Engineering Union in 1938, there were then four grades which we represented on the engineering side. There were two grades of killed workmen, 1 and 2, there were labourers and there were youths. It was then quite clear to the Executive of the Union, as it was to me, that that organisation was quite inadequate, because the Post Office had had increasingly to recruit either adults or secondary school lads who, in addition to having a high degree of manual skill, required consider- able theoretical knowledge.
  Nobody in this country has campaigned more on behalf of these people who, by comparison with their educational equals, the clerical people, were and still are considerably underpaid. At that stage, 1938–39, the Post Office Engineering Union was engaged in preparatory work for a new grade which would really take account of those circumstances. Then came the war. We debated yesterday the situation in Korea. I could not help remembering those days during the war, when as I am sure the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston) will agree, no one could have wished for greater co-operation than we had between the Union, of which I was General Secretary, and the Post Office, when we were facing the common enemy. I do not need to repeat all the tributes that have been paid to the telephone engineers, who did a magnificent job under the most trying circumstances, and indeed to the Post Office Engineering Union, who played their part in that matter.
  It was because of the war that the Union decided that one of the things we had to do was to adopt a policy of wage restraint. At no stage during the war did we present a wage claim for our higher paid people. It was not an easy thing to adopt that policy but we conceived it
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  to be part of our duty at that time. We carried out that policy resolutely and faithfully. Here then was the genesis of the breakaway, because even before the war was over, there were the beginnings of the intrigue which later, as soon as the war was over, produced this body called E.O.T.A. The very first issue of their journal which was then cyclostyled, a copy of which I have here, has an article on its front page headed"Any excuse better than none," and attacks the Post Office Engineering Union for the fact that we had not during the war been presenting wage claims for our higher paid workers.
  The hon. Member for Westbury, who I understand will speak later, and who was Assistant Postmaster-General, must, on his side, as I must, on my side, take some responsibility for that. We must also say to E.O.T.A. that the reproach that has been levelled, not only at me and those whom I represented, but at the hon. Member and the people he represented in those war years, is quite unfounded, and that we are indeed entitled to take some credit for that difficult job which we did together in time of war. Had the Union behaved differently in time of war this secession would have been prevented. Had we behaved irresponsibly, had we tried to exploit the war situation to get more money for the people who are now the technical officers, we could have prevented this secession.
  This is not a matter which the Opposition can ignore. I invite hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who sit on the Front Bench opposite to consider what they would have thought if, in time of war, there had been a Tory back bencher supporting and helping a body which was creating trouble of this kind? I can imagine the pearls of caustic sarcasm that would have fallen from the lips of the right hon. and gallant Member for Gainsborough (Captain Crookshank). Yet the Opposition apparently now think that they can have co-operation from the unions, although this type of thing is going on.
  I would also ask the Opposition whether they are indifferent to the methods that have been used by this breakaway body? This is not a matter which they can brush aside. Are they indifferent to this kind of gibe? The badge of the Post Office Engineering Union has clasped hands on it. It has been a reproach to the Union

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  and the Post Office that those clasped hands are supposed lo represent the union shaking hands with the Post Office. Yet, in a sense, that was a symbol of the relations which we had in time of war and, I am glad to say, very largely in time of peace. Do the Opposition stand for the kind of thing which I am now about to quote from a branch circular, a letter from the Chairman of the London Regional Committee of E.O.T.A., in August, 1949, in which it is stated:
  "In my view the Department are scared of losing the `cap in hand' men who have for so long salaamed to them."
  There has indeed been a campaign of calumny and abuse not only against the Union but against officials. So bad was it that in the end, the Union were obliged to take action in the courts. Since then, having had an abject apology and a complete withdrawal, we have not had quite the excesses which we had previously. But do hon. Gentlemen opposite stand for that sort of thing? Is this the way they show their appreciation of the help given so freely and generously during the war? I do not believe for a moment that they do. I am sure that the hon. Member for Westbury would be the first to say that he does not stand for that kind of thing. But unless he speaks out, he and all those with him will continue to be misrepresented throughout the country.
  Representatives of this Association go around saying,"We have this Member of Parliament who advises us on these issues,""We have the backing of a Member of Parliament." Yet, so far, the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames, who has certainly helped this body very considerably, has never spoken a single word against this criticism and abuse, even of decent civil servants, who are not able to speak up for themselves.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Would the hon. Gentleman allow me to say that I am not concerned, as I was not in my speech, with the things which, as he knows perfectly well, have been said by each of these rival bodies against the other? The last thing I want to do is to exacerbate feeling either way. Surely what is far more important from the public point of view is that the body concerned, be it a good one or a bad one, should have justice from a public Department?
  Mr. Edwards: It is all very well for the hon. Member to say that that is not
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  the point. He cannot avoid the fact that it is the point. If he and his Friends do not"come clean" on this matter they will be misrepresented—
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I am sure that we shall be.
  Mr. Edwards:—by the members of the very organisation which they have been helping. In any event, when the hon. Gentleman flings out the allegation that this has been mutual, I deny it. I challenge him to produce the evidence to support such an allegation. In fact, throughout this business, the Post Office Engineering Union has acted with conspicuous restraint, and I am sure that if anyone will take the trouble to read the respective journals and compare them, they will reach that conclusion.
  Mr. Henry Strauss: I wish to follow the argument of the hon. Member. Do I gather that he is justifying the conduct of the Government by the character of what he described as a"break-away" union? If that were the reason for the action of the Government, ought not the Government in the correspondence to have expressed its disapproval of the union? I would ask this of the hon. Gentleman He talks about the Opposition slipping out but the Government are slipping out if they rely on all these matters that have never been mentioned by them.
  Mr. Edwards: The hon. and learned Member is quote wrong. He must wait for my right hon. Friend to deal with those words. What I am concerned with is this. The Opposition cannot this afternoon avoid taking a line on this kind of opinion. If they do try to avoid it they will be misunderstood.
  I am sorry that the right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) has left the Chamber. We on this side of the Committee have been particularly interested in the speeches he made before the election about the relations the Conservative Party would like to have with the trade union movement. The spectacle of the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames helping, supporting and advising this break-away body is completely at variance with the words we had from the right hon. and learned Gentleman.
  I may say that this is resented in the Post Office Engineering Union by all our

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  members and resented even more by those of them who are Conservatives than by those who are Socialists—and with more reason. I can think of the secretary of one branch of the union who is the chairman of his local Conservative Association, and who wishes to know how the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames can reconcile this helping of a splinter breakaway body with the speeches made by people like the right hon. and learned Member for West Derby.
  Let us be clear on this point. If the hon. Gentleman and those with him had not given their support to this organisation, it would not have made the ground it has made.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I would deal first with the last thing which the hon. Member has said. This body had attained a membership in excess of 4,000 before, so far as I know, a single hon. Member of this House knew anything about its affairs. How does the hon. Member apply the term"splinter union" to a body which has in fact attained a degree of membership which for many years throughout the Civil Services of the Crown has been held to be a sufficiently substantial percentage to entitle it to recognition?
  Mr. Edwards: That is merely avoiding the issue. Unless the words of the right hon. and learned Member for West Derby are to be made to appear hypocritical—which I am sure we do not want to happen—the hon. Gentleman has to define his attitude to an illegitimate trade union movement and stop stirring up trouble in the way he has been doing. In a supplementary question the other day he said, if I understood him aright, that he was not the legal adviser of E.O.T.A. I do not think that bears the construction that he is not an adviser of E.O.T.A. If it does I would ask him to go to E.O.T.A.; to look at the file of their branch circulars; and to talk with the members of that body; and he will find that throughout the country, people are talking of the hon. Member as the adviser of this body. I am not saying that he is, but I am saying that that is what they say. And if he does not take steps to correct it, he must not mind if we misunderstand.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: As the hon. Gentleman has directed his remarks to
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  me I am grateful that he has given way. The hon. Gentleman has referred to me as the adviser of this body. They have been to me, as they have been to hon. Members on both sides of the House. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to press that matter further, he may find that certain of his own hon. Friends have in fact, to their credit, expressed sympathy with the position of this Association.
  Mr. Edwards: I myself, since I was re-elected to this House, have received representatives of E.O.T.A. in my capacity as a Member of Parliament. But there is a world of difference between a Member of Parliament receiving his constituents and a Member of Parliament giving advice to a national body. If the hon. Gentleman does not know the difference, at any rate I do. I am sorry to have taken so long over this matter, but I have given way to the hon. Gentleman on a number of occasions.
  I wish to ask these questions. In what sense was the break-away legitimate? I have shown the occasion of it. In my view, to make it legitimate, we have to show that the people who broke away really tried their best to use the machinery of the union and failed. With one exception, I cannot think of a single person associated with the leadership of this body who ever did anything within the Post Office Engineering Union, or who ever tried to.
  It might be said that the union was so organised that these people were not able to express their point of view. That again is quite wrong, because the union is so organised that the internal engineers, people who work on the internal side of the Department, can have their own branches. Even if they do not have their own branches, they can have their own meetings within the branches.
  It may be said that there was not proper representation of the technical officer grade on the Executive of the Union. Here again, in fact the representation is quite disproportionate. There are 23 members of the Executive of the Post Office Engineering Union at the present. Twenty of them are engineering officers, of whom 17 are technical officers; that is to say, something like three-quarters of the executive are technical officers although that particular grade is something like 18 per cent. or 19 per cent. of the total staff of the Engineering Department.

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  Therefore I would say that there was no excuse for this break-away and I would ask the hon. Gentleman to tell me why he thinks that such irresponsibility deserves the support of His Majesty's Opposition. I hope he will answer, because it is important, and we are entitled to know where the Conservative Party stands in this important matter.
  May I say a word about the grading position? Towards the end of the war, anticipating the peace, and with the full approval of my executive, I was able to start a series of informal discussions with the engineering chiefs, with the approval of the Postmaster-General, into the organisation we should have after the war. Finally, we were able to have formal negotiations, and instead of the two skilled grades we had had previously, skilled workers Class I and skilled workers Class 2, we were able to get agreement to have three grades that now bear the titles of technical officer, technician 1 and technician 2.
  That is to say, we began the process of getting the Post Office organisation more in accord with the situation and the needs of the time. The technical officer grade was the grade set on one side for people who not only had to have this technical skill but also a high degree of theoretical knowledge. It was not E.O.T.A. who thought this reorganisation was coming. In fact E.O.T.A., when it was started, said that all they wanted was a new name for the two new grades. But we, in association with the Post Office, effected this new reorganisation and I would invite the hon. Gentleman to note this point because it is important.
  It would have been easy for the Post Office Engineering Union, if it had been concerned merely with its own organisation, not to have agreed to the creation of a new grade of this kind; but we preferred to put the well-being of the staff before the organisation. It is a little ironic that, in fact, I negotiated on behalf of my union the very agreement that created a grade which was merely part of a field covered by a secessionist body, and so gave them an opportunity which otherwise they would never have had. Yet I was carrying on—and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree that it was right for us to carry on—these war-time
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  discussions into the peace, to help to create a better organisation more fitted for Post Office purposes.
  It is well-nigh impossible to separate these grades in any way that would provide a proper medium for representation. We have technical officers, technicians grade I, and technicians grade II. We have a situation where some technicians grade II and technicians grade I can spend 15 per cent. of their time on the work of technical officers. I would defy anybody properly to organise this on the basis of taking technical officers out and disregarding the rest.
  We have the strange position where the E.O.T.A. at present will recruit youths under training, technicians grade II and technicians grade I, but only if they are on the internal side. Therefore, they make no claim to try to represent the grade. In the technical officer grade, they seek to represent the whole grade. They have recruited large numbers of people in the technician grades most dishonestly for whom, on their own showing, they could never put forward a valid claim for representation, because they have said that they will not have any external technicians in their organisation.
  Mr. Peter Thorneycroft (Monmouth): The hon. Gentleman is making accusations of dishonesty against the rival organisation to the one he sponsors. Will he deal with the point made by my hon. Friend, namely, that he was using his position inside the Government to try to secure advantage for his own organisation as opposed to the one he is now attacking?
  Mr. Edwards: I am sorry that intervention was made. People in the last Parliament know perfectly well that I am not the kind of person to burke such a personal issue. I have been given due notice of that point, and I will deal with it. I do not mind giving way to hon. Members if they want to raise points on what I am saying, but I beg the hon. Gentleman not to suggest for one minute that I am the kind of person who would run away from an attack.
  Before I deal with the personal point, there is a matter which is of some consequence. We must consider the effect of recognition of this break-away body on the constructive and co-operative relation-

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  ships in the Post Office. On the engineering side the relationship is very good. We have joint production committees, and so on, at work. It would be almost impossible for that kind of relationship to be maintained if we had a situation where the break-away body had been granted recognition.
  The break-away body would never be accepted in the Whitley system, as the National Whitley Council for the Civil Service and the two departmental sections in the Post Office have shown. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. H. Wallace) can speak with greater knowledge than I can about the disastrous effect on the relationships that we had in the past with that queer body called the Extra-Whitley Council. At present when the needs of the Post Office cannot properly be met by new capital, because it is so limited, they necessarily must devote attention to the more effective use of manpower. We must do everything we can not to undermine in any way the co-operative relationships which exist between the two sides.
  Mr. Ian L. Orr-Ewing (Weston-super-Mare): Will the hon. Gentleman explain something which he has said? He gave the impression, certainly to me, that he was arguing that it was impossible to have representatives of more than one union on any joint production committee. That is not my experience and I do not think that it is the experience of any other union member or any other employer. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will correct that statement.
  Mr. Edwards: The hon. Gentleman must have misunderstood. I did not say anything of the kind. However, I will say that while I do not agree with the views of my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General about the desirability of one union in the Post Office—
  The Postmaster-General (Mr. Ness Edwards): I do not know from where my hon. Friend gets that idea. He did not get it from me. I have never said that.
  Mr. Edwards: I apologise to my right hon. Friend. It is most undesirable to have two organisations representing the same grade. If hon. Members think that I am wrong, I quote in aid some words of Lord Wolmer when he was at the Post
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  Office. In January, 1926, he received representatives of the break-away body called the Guild. He said:
  "The class of skilled workmen numbered about 20,000 and the Post Office had to negotiate agreements covering the wages and conditions of service of the class. The Guild represented numerically only a very small fraction of the class and, if recognition were given to them, other sections also would claim separate representation and future negotiation might have to be carried on with a number of separate bodies instead of with a single union. Such a state of affairs must lead to great inconvenience, overlapping and delay, as past experience has shown."
  I only say in a different way precisely what Lord Wolmer said in 1926. I do not believe that anyone who has been in office at the Post Office would seek to deny that it would be a great embarrassment and would cause all kinds of trouble if 'in fact we had two bodies purporting to speak for the same grade. I assure the Committee that there is nothing political about this matter. I do not purport to speak for the U.P.W., which is in a different position, but the Post Office Engineering Union has no political fund and is not affiliated to the Labour Party. It decided by ballot not to have a political fund.
  Therefore, anything that the hon. Gentleman said about E.O.T.A. in this connection cannot really be given any credence. The Post Office Engineering Union has large numbers of people in it—from my personal, political point of view, too many—who support hon. Gentlemen opposite. As I have already said, those members of the union are even more resentful of the operations of the hon. Gentleman than those members of the union who support the Labour Party. The hon. Gentleman tried to suggest that some words I used at the annual conference of the Post Office Engineering Union last year constituted something in the nature of an intrigue behind closed doors about the recognition of E.O.T.A. It is strange that the hon. Gentleman should have waited for 13 months before drawing the attention of the Committee to a matter with which he must have been familiar for at least 11 months.
  But, leaving that point on one side, I think that I am as conscious of what is required of a Member of this House and a Member of His Majesty's Government as is anyone here. I desire, therefore,

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  to make it quite plain that neither the general secretary nor the executive of the Post Office Engineering Union ever asked me at any time to intervene with the Government on this matter of recognition of E.O.T.A. I have received deputations in my constituency, both in my last constituency in Blackburn and in Brighouse and Spenborough, and I have forwarded those representations, as hon. Members must have done commonly, to the appropriate Minister concerned. I always held it to be proper that my experience should be available to any of my colleagues when I was in the Government, if they wanted it, but from the time that this speech was made, until I ceased to be a member of the Government, following the General Election, I neither made any representations to nor did I have any discussions with the Postmaster-General on this matter. I hope the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames will take my word for it.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: That was not the allegation. The hon. Member says that from the time that speech was made until the fall of the Government, he had no such discussions. What concerns me is the discussions which, when he made that speech, he said he had had with the Postmaster-General and which, therefore, in the nature of things, must have taken place before rather than after he made that speech.
  Mr. Edwards: If the allegations have any substance, they must mean that I brought undue influence to bear at a relative time. At the time when this question of recognition was being considered, I at no time either discussed it with or made representations to the Postmaster-General, who at that time was my colleague in the Government.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: In the hon. Gentleman's own interests I cannot let that go. He said, in the speech which I have quoted:
  "On every occasion that I have been able to do anything informally by discussion with my colleagues in the Government, the Postmaster-General…. on matters…. even recognition of E.O.T.A…."
  If the question of E.O.T.A. arose only after he had made the speech, can the hon. Gentleman say how he none the less managed to discuss it before the speech was made?
  Mr. Edwards: As I told the Committee, I have received deputations from my constituents on this matter and at a very early stage I forwarded those representations to and talked about them with the Postmaster-General, but it is an extraordinary doctrine, I must say, if it is being enunciated today that a Tory lawyer can give all the help he can, all the advice he can, use every piece of Parliamentary mechanism to support a breakaway body, while a person who has had a long experience of the legitimate trade union which is involved is not to be permitted to discuss the matter with his colleagues.
  Mr. P. Thorneyeroft Mr. P. Thorneyeroft rose—
  Mr. Edwards: I cannot give way or we shall go on interminably.
  Mr. Thorneyeroft: I thought the hon. Gentleman said he was prepared to meet a personal attack.
  Mr. Edwards: I have given my answer to it. I want to say two other things. The first is that the Postmaster-General has, I gather, seen the representatives of the E.O.T.A. I want to tell him this. It is important that he should be careful in his relations with E.O.T.A. because of the misinterpretations which may be placed on what he says. Already the E.O.T.A. have circulated two sets of rumours. The first is to the effect that the Postmaster-General has said that he proposes to set up a wages council and that he has told the E.O.T.A. they would be allowed one seat on such a council. That is a lie, and I should like the Postmaster-General to confirm that it is a lie.
  The second rumour is that the union's wage claim, now before the arbitration tribunal, has been postponed and that the Postmaster-General has promised to have another meeting with the E.O.T.A. when their recognition will be discussed, and that this is likely to have repercussions in the arbitration court. Again, I should like to ask the Postmaster-General to deny that rumour, which emanates from the E.O.T.A., because in fact the arbitration tribunal has had one day's sitting and the case is to be resumed as soon as the tribunal is available to sit again.
  Mr. Charles Ian Orr-Ewing (Hendon, North): Would the hon. Gentleman clarify that point? He was obviously reading

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  from a statement and was quoting a rumour. Could we have a reference to let us know from where these two accusations or statements come?
  Mr. Edwards: If it is in the nature of a rumour, I cannot actually give a printed document, but I know that it is a fact that members of the E.O.T.A., according to the information supplied to me, have been circulating these rumours in London. Certainly any hon. Member can go into any telephone exchange in London at the present time and hear those very rumours.
  Finally, I would say that the union has behaved with very great restraint about this whole matter. When they have had to consider the re-admission of people who have been in the break-away body, the line has been taken—no fines, no penalties. In 1927 we had a similar break-away body. The breach was healed and many of the people who had served in the break-away body, became good, loyal members of the union. Many of them attained national distinction. I believe this can happen again, but not if there is any suggestion that His Majesty's Opposition are supporting this break-away body.
  I want to ask hon. Members opposite, for this is a serious matter, whether they would not consider using their good offices and such influence as they may have with this body to see whether this breach could not be healed. The fragmentation of unions will do no good to the Post Office. It will do nothing but harm to the Post Office engineers. I believe it to be in the interest of all of us that harmony should be restored as soon as possible and that people should be allowed to get on with their real work. Their real work after all, is that of improving the telephone service and improving the conditions of those people who work in the telephone services.
  This is far too serious a question to be treated as though it did not really matter, apart from some precise, particular formula or from some careful argument about this or that minutiae concerning recognition. It is a matter concerning the future of staff relationships in the Post Office, and I ask right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite, and particularly the hon. Gentleman who is to see whether they can do anything to try to
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  close this gap, to heal the breach, so that all of us can get on with our proper work.
  4.58 p.m.
  Mr. Bishop: I want this afternoon to seek my share of the indulgence which is always extended to a Member making a maiden speech and as I do not wish to abuse that indulgence or to risk doing so, I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. John Edwards) in a great part of his speech. I do not propose to say anything about the methods which may have been used between these two unions and still less anything about the personal aspects of the matter. If there is any more to be said on those aspects, then it can be said by others of my hon. Friends.
  I want to say a few words on the general aspect of this problem which I agree is a serious and important one, and I want to refer to two points which the hon. Member mentioned in his speech. In the first place, on all the facts available I do not agree that we are dealing here with a splinter union, with dissident elements, or with a break-away body. Secondly, I do not agree at all with what the hon. Gentleman said about the impossibility or undesirability of there being in some cases two associations to represent a single grade of employees. That point is dealt with specifically in the Treasury publication which has already been referred to. In paragraph 12 of that publication, after stating that a list of associations is given in the Appendix, it says:
  "It will be seen that in some cases there is joint recognition. This means that no single association is regarded as adequately representative of the group of staff in question to the exclusion of the others in the field, but that two or more associations between them are so regarded. Matters affecting the group are discussed with both or all of the jointly-recognised associations, either jointly or separately, as may be found convenient, and written agreements are signed by both or all."
  That, then, is the principle recognised by the Treasury—that there may be joint association in cases where it is convenient. I suggest that the question which the Committee has to consider this afternoon is whether this is not precisely one of those cases where there should be joint recognition in this way.
  I want to deal with it on purely practical grounds. May I say that I think

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  we do recognise that the Postmaster-General has many problems to face when the question of the recognition of another trade union arises. Of course, there is a large number of unions representing the Post Office staff—I think I have heard it said that there are 35 of them, which is a large number. But the Post Office is a very large organisation, and the number of unions representing the staff is, in itself, a reflection of the vast scale and great diversity of the work which the Post Office conducts. It may be that the Post Office itself is, perhaps, an overgrown institution which ought to be broken down into separate sections, but that is another subject, and I am certain that, even in a maiden speech, I would not be allowed to pursue it very far.
  In my own experience in the newspaper industry—with which I have been associated all my life—there are also many trade unions. It is a highly organised industry from the union point of view, as I am sure hon. Members know, and in a single newspaper office—not necessarily a large one, but one perhaps employing 1,000 to 1,500 people—there are as many as 13 or 14 trade unions with which the management has separate agreements. No difficulties arise on that score. The unions themselves have their own federal arrangements by which matters of common interest can be discussed jointly. One would hope—I do not know whether it is the case—that similar arrangements exist in the Post Office, too. There is no question in the newspaper industry of the number of unions being the result of dissident elements or splinter groups. They would not have any chance in that industry.
  I suggest that in any industry the question is not whether the unions representing the staff are many or few, or whether they are large or small. The question is whether the unions do adequately and effectively represent the whole of the staff engaged in the industry. One would have thought that on any democratic principle it must be for the staffs themselves to say whether they are adequately represented, and not for the management to determine what organisation they should join.
  One knows, of course, that there must be some practical limitation to freedom
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  in this respect, as in others, and that splinter groups or dissident elements are a nuisance from every point of view. But the question is whether we are dealing here with a splinter group, and I want to say one word on that subject. In recent years, the Telecommunications Department of the Post Office has naturally been a very rapidly growing and expanding one, and as it has grown and expanded centrally, there has been a greater differentiation of functions among the people employed in it. The hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough referred to that point, and other hon. Members no doubt have had a communication from the Post Office Engineering Union on this subject.
  In 1946, there were four organised grades—skilled workman, class I; skilled workman, class II; labourer, and youth in training. In that year there was a new agreement, and additional grades were brought in. We then had technician; skilled workman, class I; skilled workman, class II; labourer, and youth in training. In 1948, again, the grades were revised, and for the first time we had"technical officer" coming in at the top, followed by technician class I and II, 2a and 2b, labourer, and youth in training.
  I suggest, without claiming any inside knowledge at all of the Telecommunications Department, that that is evidence of a process of development, growth and differentiation which, on the face of it, suggests that it may be highly reasonable to suppose that there is here room and need for another association to represent the technical officer group which has only appeared in the grading in the last few years. Certainly, they think so, and I, in common, 1 have no doubt, with several other hon. Members, have many constituents who are very much concerned about the matter.
  It appears to me that this is precisely the kind of case envisaged in the Treasury instruction which I have just quoted. No one on this side of the Committee, I think, any more than on the other side, wants to see the Postmaster-General called upon to recognise splinter groups or dissident elements, or anything of that kind. Everyone with practical experience in this field will sympathise with him in the number of associations with which he already has to deal. But that is the

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  fault of the organisation, and is not necessarily evidence that splinter groups are, in fact, in existence. On the other hand, we do not want to see the Postmaster-General, if I may so put it, sitting on the safety valve and refusing to recognise the natural course of progress and development. Still less do we want to see him denying justice to any important group of people employed in this vast Department.
  There is no doubt at all that at present many men in the technical officer grade feel that they are being denied justice, and I think there is some ground for their complaint. They base their claim for recognition on the rules laid down by the Post Office, and they claim that they have conformed to those rules. They received a promise that their claim would be examined. That promise, so far as we know, has not been carried out, and now, in addition, it appears that there is at any rate a suspicion in their minds that there is some intention of altering the rules before their claim is dealt with, and that we are to have another example of retrospective action at their expense. That would not be fair, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman has no such intention.
  I venture to suggest that in the circumstances of the present case, which has gone so far and has such a history behind it, the only sensible and reasonable thing to do, whatever rules the right hon. Gentleman may intend to make for the future, is to recognise this association now in accordance with the conditions which have existed in the Post Office during the time that their claim has been outstanding.
  5.8 p.m.
  Mr. G. Lang: I am very glad that it has fallen to me once again to congratulate an hon. Member upon the successful accomplishment of what is always a considerable ordeal. It does not much matter how long ago it is since some of us underwent that ordeal, we still remember it, and still sympathise with hon. Members who go through it, and we still very sincerely congratulate those who, like the hon. Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Bishop), have gone through it so well.
  I am thankful, in more ways than one, for the hon. Members intervention because it has cooled down an atmosphere
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  which was getting a little difficult and painful. I think he has rendered a great service in lowering the temperature in that way. I also feel, knowing his important association with the newspaper world and with newsprint, that if the lamentable situation arises in which, once again, we are to have the misery of smaller papers, it will be some satisfaction to think that the hon. Gentleman will be here to make up, by his undoubted eloquence, for the information of which we shall be deprived in the future.
  What I have to say on this matter will be very brief, but I am concerned with it, as I am sure a great many hon. Members are concerned. I hold no brief for one union or another, for the parent organisation or its progeny or, if that should be the case, for a breakaway union. Nobody who knows the long history of the building up of the trade union movement in this country would wish to give lightly any kind of support to anything which would tend to depreciate the value of unions, or their bargaining power and unity. That is not the question at the moment. Neither would any of us wish to turn aside from those of our constituents, or anybody else's constituents, who come—as they have a perfect right to come—to Members of Parliament to lay before them their grievances and complaints and have them attended to.
  I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) on his speech, though it was not a maiden speech. We have heard him often at that Box, but very often rather too late at night or early in the morning to enjoy his eloquence. We are glad to have him back, especially to deal with the particular matters that have arisen. All who know him know that he is utterly incapable of doing anything that is in the least bit wrong in these matters.
  I should not think it very wrong if the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) was an adviser to this body. I see nothing wrong in a Member of Parliament of his experience giving advice to people who want to know how to get about doing something. I have given advice, though not as eloquently as the hon. Member, to people, with a perfect understanding that I did riot necessarily wish to stir anything or

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  propagate anything. Members of Parliamen have a duty besides that of voting and answering letters, and I hope that we shall always feel we have a responsibility in these things.
  An official of this union came to see me, because I had already met my constituents who are associated with it. I told them I was prepared to listen to what they had to say and was prepared to do what I could to help them so as to have any grievances—and they thought there were grievances—put right. I hope I am not wrong in this, but I am a wee bit anxious at the way in which it is becoming more difficult for those who have not the good fortune to be in large and highly organised bodies, to have the powerful and eloquent support of my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough and the hon. Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. H. Wallace). Those hon. Members have a splendid record of service to the whole community, for a good trade unionist is an invaluable servant to the whole community and those who make him a good trade unionist are invaluable servants too.
  I am concerned with those who have no such voice in this House, and who wait for the recognition they think they ought to have. I hope that the bitter and personal things said this afternoon—I suppose inevitably in the stress of Debate—will be forgotten. My right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General, whom I have known for a very long time and whose career I have watched with interest, proved at the Ministry of Labour in the last Parliament that he possesed a great reserve of ability in administration and great shrewdness and powers of judgment. I am sure that in his well-deserved promotion he has brought those qualities with him.
  I have every confidence that the Postmaster-General can find some way of gathering these people together, letting them ventilate thoroughly what they consider to be wrong, and then using his good offices to bring some sort of agreement, or perhaps reconciliation. That is what we all desire. I have spoken because I did not want it to be felt that there is no room in this House for those outside organised unions—and I am outside such unions—to raise a voice on behalf of people whether right or wrong, whether
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  well advised by the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames or totally misguided. They certainly persuaded me that they had a sense of grievance.
  So long as citizens feel they have a grievance, so long will this Committee, or the House, be a place where those grievances can be ventilated and their case heard. Our duty is to see that there is reasonable fair play. I hold no brief for either side. I do not pretend to know the rights or wrongs of this matter. I know that some very good people feel they have had very bad treatment. The sooner that is put right the better. I rely upon my right hon. Friend to use his good offices, as he can; and I am quite certain that this rather unhappy business, perhaps a wee bit awkwardly handled, will resolve itself in a satisfactory manner.
  5.17 p.m.
  Mr. Quintin Hogg: I am very glad that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Lang) said what he did say, and that what he said came from that side rather than this side of the House, because he was saying, much more appropriately, I think, from the Labour benches, one of the things I wished to say in reply to the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards). Before I deal in detail with that speech, perhaps the Committee will allow me to associate myself with the congratulations rightly given to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Bishop) upon his successful maiden speech. I think it required something of courage to choose this particular occasion to make a maiden speech. He did so in admirable good taste, and without in any way infringing the tradition or desires of the House in matters of this kind; and he evidently feels himself very much at home in the atmosphere of debate.
  I should also like to apologise to the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough if, by any chance I missed the first few sentences of his speech. It was not due to any desire to miss them. Indeed, the more I heard the more sorry I was to have missed what had already passed before I arrived. But it seems to me that one or two things he said require some answer from this side of the House.
  He asked us to state the view of His Majesty's Opposition on this question. It seems to me to be utterly wrong that

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  either one party or the other party should have a party position about this particular question. I have, of course, used the various research organisations open to all Members of this House, and those particular ones open to Members of the Opposition, but, as a rule, I do not allow people to make up my mind for me. I approached this problem from the position of how we should do what is right rather than of how I should decide what a Conservative ought to say about this question. I am convinced that this is the attitude of my hon. Friends in the matter. We do happen to intervene in this controversy from time to time, but it would be a great mistake to suggest that an Opposition has or ought to have a party view about this matter.
  Mr. J. Edwards: The hon. Member will recollect that I was addressing my remarks primarily to the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston) who is sitting on the Front Opposition Bench and, I understand, is likely to speak later. Therefore, I think it is quite in order to ask him as representing those who sit on that bench to state their view, because we really ought to know what collective view there is about matters of this seriousness.
  Mr. Hogg: I, too, was in order in saying that I very much hoped that my hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston), who occupies the Front Bench with such distinction, would not attempt to define a party point of view about this, because he would be doing a great disservice to the Committee in this matter if he attempted to do so. I do not think there ought to be a party point of view. Obviously, the Government have a responsibility as a Government, but if we criticise the Government about some of the aspects of their handling of this matter, it is not as a party that we do so but as Members of Parliament.
  I can only say for myself that I approach this question from this point of view. We are sitting here as a Committee of employers, for that is what we are. We are the employers of certain groups of men and we are discussing how we ought to treat our employees. It so happens that the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) in one sense represents those employees,
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  but he is, of course, like the rest of us, primarily here as a Member of Parliament. He is an employer, in other words. He represents the employers.
  Mr. J. Edwards: I do not purport in anysense to represent the Post Office Engineering Union. It is true I am an officer of the union, but I have been on indefinite leave since February, 1947, and I have drawn no remuneration at all since that day. Therefore, while I was anxious to give the benefit of any experience I might have, I did not purport to be speaking for the Union.
  Mr. Hogg: I quite understand that, and I did not mean to suggest the contrary. But I think I should be speaking no more than the truth if I said that the hon. Gentleman's speech reflects fairly accurately the point of view which the Union happens to possess, so far as it may be said to possess a collective point of view.
  That brings me to the second of the two points which certainly do colour my approach to this matter. A Post Office union of which the hon. Gentleman happens to be a member is represented here in the sense that he is here. The other union is not. The hon. Gentleman holds, and obviously holds deeply, some very genuine and sincere opinions about the merits of this dispute. He is in a position to give the Committee the advantage of his opinion. The other union is not. That is no fault of the hon. Gentleman, and it is no criticism of the hon. Gentleman that it should be so, but it is a fact. When I approach this problem I bear that fact in mind.
  I do not know anything about this other union except what I happen to have read in published papers. It may be a good union or it may be a very bad one—I do not know—but I start from the proposition that the other point of view is going to be put forward very much more eloquently and with a great deal more knowledge than the point of view of the E.O.T.A. For that reason I start very much determined in my mind that this body, which I call unrepresented in the sense which I have defined, has not got a spokesman, and very much determined that it should have a fair crack of the whip. I do not think there is anything to be ashamed of in that way of approach. I hope, therefore, that the

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  hon. Gentleman will not think that I am in any way seeking to attack either his union or himself if I scrutinise what is being said. That is the first thing that I want to say.
  I did not hear what form the criticism took and, therefore, I can neither dissociate myself from it nor associate myself with it, but it is obviously a matter to be considered. An hon. Gentleman representing his constituents perfectly properly and holding an honourable place in the Administration, happens to be an officer of one of the unions which is a party to this dispute, and I think inevitably discusses the matter with his colleagues at a particular moment of time in such a way that he may influence them. I do not myself suggest that there is anything dishonourable in that. I would not dream of suggesting it. I should very much imagine that I should do the same thing in his place. But obviously that is a matter which has to be considered and upon which hon. Members are entitled to make some comment.
  If it had been the other way about—if we were discussing, for instance, the affairs of a company and an hon. Member happened to be a director of that company or happened to have been a director of the company before he took office, and then had said in a public speech that he had been discussing informally with his colleagues in the Government the affairs of this company—I should be the last to suggest that there was anything dishonourable in it, but I should not be very much surprised, nor, in fact, very resentful, if hon. Members on the Opposition benches did draw attention to the fact and questioned how far he might not have succeeded in influencing his colleagues in a way which the other party to the dispute was quite unable to answer.
  Mr. Porter (Leeds, Central): If the argument of the hon. Gentleman is that the statement made by my hon. Friend was a result of the deliberations of a certain union, will the hon. Gentleman also agree that those people who were concerned in those deliberations were concerned as workers in precisely the grade which is now asking to form this new union—19 of them?
  Mr. Hogg: I am not quite sure that I understood the purport of that question. I should certainly answer it if I did.
  Mr. Porter: Will the hon. Gentleman allow me to ask my question again? Does he know that 19 members of the executive committee of the union of which he suggests my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) is the spokesman, are working in the grade who are now asking to form a new union?
  Mr. Hogg: Why should I doubt it? I am not going to dispute facts of that kind, but I am so purblind as to be unaware of their relevance. All these things have to be discussed in relation to this dispute.
  That brings me to the Government's handling of this matter. I have followed this matter almost from the first moment that it came before the House, and I have since refreshed my memory by reading, as far as I know, all the references in the OFFICIAL REPORT to the matter at all stages when it came before the House. What made me start taking a rather peculiar interest in this question was this. I knew that as long ago as 1947, because I well remember being there, the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury, as the head of the Civil Service, said:
  "…it has always been the Treasury practice to base formal recognition in the full sense on numerical strength."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th August, 1947; Vol. 441, c. 2395.]
  Those were the rules of the game as I knew them. I knew them a long time before, and then the Financial Secretary told them to me.
  When the matter first came before the House in the form of a Question to the then Postmaster-General, he gave a series of answers fully recognising that fact. He gave it to be understood that the only obstacle which was standing in the way of the recognition of this particular union was the fact that he was waiting to check their figures of membership and that if it turned out that their figures of membership were 40 per cent. of the whole, then the question of recognition would be determined according to the result of the check. There are two or three references in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I have refreshed my memory about it and, quite independently of that, my memory was absolutely perfect. If those are the rules of the game, recognised in general as regards all Civil Service unions and recognised in particular in regard to the Post Office, then it is cheating to alter the rules of the game while the game is being played.

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  That is what I cannot understand in this matter. It may be perfectly right that the hon. Gentleman's union is the better of the two, and I do not want to express an opinion about it. I have no reason to doubt it, and it may very well be the case. I do not desire to question the statement that its service during the war was a first-class service. I do not think it is for me, as an employer, to take sides in a dispute between two bodies of organised labour to decide which has split away from the other. This union may on this matter have shown a smaller sense of responsibility to the public than the hon. Member's union that may be true and it may also be his case, but I do not think that it is for me, as an employer, to express an opinion about it.
  What I am certain of is that, if an employer says he will recognise a union on the basis of numerical strength alone, and if he lets it be understood universally that the basis is 40 per cent. of the grade, and he then changes the rules while the game is being played—that is, after the application for recognition had been made on that basis—that employer is cheating his employees, It does not matter one iota whether the hon. Member's case is right or wrong. I do not believe this union has had a fair crack of the whip, because the rules of the game have been changed.
  It so happened that I was in the House when the matter was first raised, and, after certain supplementary questions had been asked, I asked the then Postmaster-General whether he could give me the assurance which I wanted and which would have satisfied me if I had got it I asked him:
  "At all events, will the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster-General give us an assurance that his review is not being undertaken for the exclusion on political grounds of unions whose basis of membership is otherwise adequate for recognition?"—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, 2nd Nov., 1949; Vol. 469, c. 390.]
  I got no such assurance, and that was the first thing that interested me in this question. That was long before the rules had been altered during the game. That was long before I even suspected or knew that, for reasons which I am perfectly prepared to accept were honourable and proper, the hon. Gentleman who has been an officer of the union had been discussing it with his colleagues in such a way that his representations could not have been
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  answered by the other side. Then, we find out in the end that, during the change of Postmasters-General, the check upon membership which had been expressly promised to this House in answer to questions, was not pursued by the present Postmaster-General.
  The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Hobson): It was because of the fact that we accepted that 40 per cent. of the members of the grade were of that union.
  Mr. Hogg: That is precisely the point I am trying to make. The check was given up because, obviously, the new Postmaster-General had decided to change the rules of the game and agree to new rules, the exact nature of which have never been promulgated by the Government. Membership is not to be the decisive or reliable test. Therefore, it was very easy for the hon. Gentleman and his chief to say that they were not going on with that check and that they would admit the claim on numerical strength being adequate.
  That increases the mischief of which I amcomplaining. First, they let it be known that the test is numerical strength. and then they let it be thought that 40 per cent, of the grade is the test, then representations are received from officers of the union, and then they change the rules of the game when the application had been made under the old rules. That is what I think is not playing fair, and nothing that is said about breakaway unions and nothing about this question of recruitment, which may or may not be true, has anything to do with this issue in the case, as I see it.
  That brings me to one or two reflections about breakaway unions. I do not want it to be thought for a moment that I am saying that breakaway unions are good or desirable things in general or in particular, but I question myself whether a union which has 40 per cent. members which it claims to represent—very nearly half—can properly in any sense be called a splinter or breakaway union. I cannot, as an employer, go into the question of the methods of recruitment. Hon. Members opposite know perfectly well that no employer can go into methods of recruitment of unions in order to make a choice of which union to recognise. So to do would cut at the whole basis of trade union organisation.

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  I cannot, as an employer, and hon. Members, also as employers, should not, go into the question of recruitment by a union, making it the basis of the test for recognition. All I know is that this union got 40 per cent. of the grade among its members, and that is enough to call a substantial proportion. Nor is it right for an employer, or for the hon. Gentleman opposite in his capacity as employer, to go into the merits of the dispute which led to the split.
  Mr. J. Edwards: If I may say so, the hon. Gentleman is confusing the constitutional position. It is quite wrong to suggest that, in this capacity, hon. Members of this House are employers. We are not the employers. We happen to be public representatives, and, when serious matters of this kind come forward, while we are quite entitled to say to the Postmaster-General,"You are the employer, and we are going to scrutinise what you are doing," we are also entitled to consider the wider public aspect.
  Mr. Hogg: I think the hon. Gentleman is allowing his very understandable feelings to cloud his judgment. These people are public servants, servants of the public employed by the public. We are the representatives of the public. We are therefore the representatives of the committee of management of the employers, and we give power, by our confidence or want of it, to be exercised by the Executive. To pretend that hon. Members of this House are anything less than employers in this matter is nothing but a quibble.
  It is absolutely wrong for employers as such to go into the question of the merits of a dispute between two unions and to call one of them a break-away. That would strike at the root of one of the most fundamental principles of the trade union movement, although I must say that hon. Members opposite seem to be quite astonishing in their willingness to do so. They utterly fail to see that the basis upon which the trade union movement originally objected to the existence of break-away or splinter unions was because it weakened the position of organised labour in relation to the employers.
  That was the reason why that was objected to, but, in this case—and I am not saying that this is an evil thing, but
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  only trying to show hon. Members opposite where they are going—in this case, the union which is in the weaker position of the two is, in fact, the T.U.C. union, because it is inevitably bound up by intimate personal and political ties with members of the present Government, which is the employer. That will be the case from time to time, if the Labour Party is in power in this country. It may be that a union which hitherto we have been supporting has not on the whole given us good service, and hon. Members opposite may be right or wrong about that. It is inevitable, with the position of the parties at present, that that will happen in the history of this country from time to time.
  As an employer, I am not going to stigmatise any union as a break-away union in that sense where, at any rate, it has managed to carry with it a substantial proportion of fellow workers, because in my judgment, at any rate, this is a question for the organised workers to decide for themselves. The proof of this pudding is in the eating, and in nothing else. If these people have, in fact, 40 per cent. of their fellow workers behind them, it is not for the Government, still less is it for the representatives of other trade unions, still less is it for this Committee or the House of Commons, to go into the merits of the dispute, and say we are going to crack one of the disputants on the head and refuse to recognise him and that we are going to back up the other and call him a good boy. If ever we do that, we shall make every Civil Service union in the country a house union—which is one of the most detested names in the whole history of the trade union movement.
  The hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) said at the conclusion of his speech, in what, I think, was a moving, sincere and eloquent passage, that he hoped that my hon. Friend would do what he could to heal the breach between these two bodies. I certainly would hope that anybody in this Committee, whether my hon. Friend—I do not know whether he possesses any influence—or anyone, on either side of the Committee, will do his or her best to heal any breach that may exist which can be healed by good feeling and honest representation.
  However, I do issue what I believe to be a perfectly sincere warning to the hon.

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  Gentleman. He will never heal a breach on the basis of one side in the dispute believing, however wrongly, that they are the victims; he will never heal the breach between these two bodies if the power of the Government is used, with the whole of the T.U.C. movement behind it, to crush out of recognition a body of men who have formed a separate union precisely because, rightly or wrongly, they have come to question the services which they are getting from the official movement. If he wants to heal a breach he must do so on the basis of generosity to his opponents, and not on the basis of force.
  I am a Conservative. I am outside this dispute to a very large extent. I have heard it suggested that the union whose cause in a sense I am pleading—though it is in no sense my own—has a number of Communists in it who have dictated part of its policy. I have not the remotest idea whether that is true or false.
  Mr. Pannell: We have not said that.
  Mr. Hogg: I heard it suggested earlier.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: It was withdrawn.
  Mr. Hogg: I understand it was subsequently withdrawn, but it was said. But whatever the position, I feel absolutely certain that hon. Members opposite, whose feelings are very closely bound up with this matter, whose prejudices are very closely bound up with this matter, are leading one another along the wrong path, and that it behoves them to consider very carefully where they are going, otherwise they will pull down that which their predecessors, by suffering and travail, laboriously built up.
  5.43 p.m.
  Mr. Macdonald: I rise to speak as a member of a minority party in this Chamber; and, as a minority, we always are very sympathetic to the causes of other minorities. I do not know whether E.O.T.A. is a good or a bad union. All I know is that it is a minority group seeking justice—a minority group that qualified itself for recognition by its number of members. I listened with great sympathy and attention to the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards), and
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  the very eloquent case that he put forward, but I cannot believe for one moment that there are 5,000 mischief-makers in one union just trying to cause trouble to another great union. I think they must have some cause for wishing to break away from that larger union—because they do not feel that it entirely represents the things for which they wish to fight. It may represent quite a number of things they require, but there may be other things that they require in addition. I am quite sure it includes amongst its members some very public-spirited and very fine individuals. It may have its mischief-makers, as every organisation has.
  I think we are all very indebted to the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Lang) and the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg), both of whom have tried to keep this Debate upon a constructive level and in a friendly tone, because I believe that if we are to have lasting justice within this trade union movement it must be carried on in a spirit of good understanding throughout the whole movement. Therefore, I say that the Liberal Party, of which I am a member, have been very upset by some of the statements made by the Postmaster-General, for whose ability we have a very high regard. On 25th May, at a conference of the Union of Post Office Workers—this has been quoted before; and, indeed, many of the things I meant to speak about today hon. Members have spoken about already—the right hon. Gentleman went so far as to say:
  "As Postmaster-General I am not going to offer rewards to dissident elements."
  I do not consider that this is a dissident element in that sense. I think it is a minority group which is trying to secure justice. Then he went on to say:
  "I assure you it is not serving the best interests of the people you represent that attempts should be made on the part of minorities to use the House of Commons as the place for the settlement of these matters, which properly should have been settled inside your own union."
  I do not believe this matter would ever have come to this Chamber—it need never have come here—if justice had been done at that time.
  The hon. Member for Oxford has pointed out that this is a minority union which qualified under the rules that then

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  existed for qualification; but it has not been recognised for one reason or another, and there is a very strong rumour afoot that it is intended to change the method of recognition. Therefore, I can quite rightly feel that it has cause to bring this matter forward, first in negotiation with the larger union and the other unions of the Post Office, and then, failing to get justice there, to bring it, as any individual in this country would do who was searching for justice, to the Floor of this Chamber to be discussed.
  I have quoted two statements by the Postmaster-General. I will quote another made here. I am taking extracts, and in that way, perhaps, not doing full justice to the statement that he had. He said:
  "Each case must be considered individually, and in any arrangement which may be made it will be one of my principal objectives to ensure that the interests of the staff are safeguarded."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May, 1950; Vol. 475, c. 1193.]
  I assume by this that he meant all the staff, not a section of the staff; and if he meant all the staff, then he should do justice to the minority as well as to the majority. Further on in that same statement, he said:
  "It is essential also to take into account wider questions, such as the effect of a change in representation on the general working relationships in the Post Office."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 17th May, 1950; Vol. 475, c. 1194.]
  I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman this question. What has the major union in this matter to fear from the recognition of the minority union? If the minority union's cause is just and the majority union's cause is just, surely it will be a better service to the members of both unions if recognition is given. If there is something to hide, then let us have it here on the Floor of this Chamber, so that we may be able to judge for ourselves whether E.O.T.A. is a minority seeking justice or just some organisation that is trying to fool this Committee and the House into giving it sympathy and confidence.
  I ask in a spirit of goodwill, which I hope will exist throughout these negotiations, that the Postmaster-General should call a conference of all the unions concerned. I ask that, if he does that, he will give, as far as the period of the conference is concerned, at any rate full recognition to E.O.T.A. as a union,
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  so that it may speak equally with any other union at that conference and so that all the necessary matters can be discussed there. Otherwise the Association will be without any form of representation for its members, while the existing recognised unions will be in a position to obstruct and delay such discussions, if they so desire. The Postmaster-General should at least, in our opinion, grant local recognition to E.O.T.A. until the discussions, if any, are finished. Unless some steps of this kind are taken, unless some proof of trust in E.O.T.A. is given until the end of that conference, it will be quite useless to call any conference, for E.O.T.A. will not be represented there with the other unions.
  I hope that the Postmaster-General will consider settling this matter on a friendly basis. E.O.T.A. must have a good case. I do not know the points of that case, but there must be quite a lot of strong points in their case; otherwise I feel they could not have attracted 5,000 members representing 40 per cent. of the people whom they wish to represent.
  I close my remarks on that theme. This is a matter that can be settled on a friendly basis. In other words, as the hon. Member for Oxford put it, we shall never get unity by saying, as the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde suggested, that the large union is prepared to accept these people back into the union and to let bygones be bygones. These people feel that they have a definite case, and they have fought that case for a considerable time. I hope that the Postmaster-General will be able to give E.O.T.A. the recognition which many hon. Members believe is just.
  5.51 p.m.
  Mr. Pannell: The hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) said that many hon. Members on this side have prejudices. In this matter, I suppose that prejudices are closely allied to traditions. In spite of what he said, I cannot enter this Debate thinking of myself entirely as an employer. It is true that in another capacity I have led the employers' side on a joint council when I was a member of a local authority, but in this matter I speak principally as one with a long knowledge of the trade union movement, and with all the characteristic prejudices—to put it no higher than the hon. Member for Oxford put it.

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  I ask the Committee to examine this matter against the background of the wider principles to which the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) referred. I do not think that we can look at this purely from the point of view of 5,000 people in the Post Office, and my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) was on quite firm ground when he spoke of other public considerations.
  The trade union movement in this country has been a movement of long, slow and often painful growth, and I do not think it can be denied that, generally speaking, in the past the opponents of the trade union movement were hon. Gentlemen opposite. Those of us who have a long history in the trade union movement must not be blamed if we say, when we find the party opposite propagating the cause of a trade union, that we remember that that same party have been the traditional enemies of trade unionism.
  A short while ago, when I was contemplating trying to catch Mr. Speaker's eye in a Debate on joint consultation, which the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames wound up for the Opposition, I went to the Library to look up an historic Debate of 30 years ago, when my union fought the major classical battle for joint consultation, and I thought how the debating climate in this House had changed in those 30 years. On that occasion, only 30 years ago, the whole of the party opposite went into the Lobby in a refusal even to allow that dispute to be referred to arbitration. That was something which occurred during my apprenticeship days, and it is perfectly fair that we should comment that there has been a considerable change of heart on the part of hon. Members opposite with regard to the trade union movement.
  I remember in those days the association of the then Member for Croydon, Sir Allen Smith, with the Engineering Employers' Federation, and their claiming the right to send a man where he liked. Nobody who remembers the terms used in this House in those days on the question of the right of the engineers to have consultation,
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  when there were 80,000 of their members out of work, can doubt that there is a certain background of prejudice in our minds which will take a long time to eradicate.
  It is only under the impact of war that hon. Members opposite tend to think of employers and employed as equal partners in industry. It has taken full employment to remove from industry the idea of the bully and the bullied, the master and the man. The test on this question of joint consultation in industry, about which hon. Members opposite spoke so eloquently recently, will come if there is ever a trade recession and the unemployed walk the streets again.
  It must be remembered that the trade union movement started as the general defence of the poor in the days of the Combination Act, put upon the Statute Book by the ancestors of hon. Gentlemen opposite, as anybody who knows anything about industrial history will admit. We also still remember that it was an Act put upon the Statute Book by the party opposite which gave the Civil Service trade unions a very special position—the penal provisions of the 1927 Trades Disputes Act. It is not unreasonable, therefore, that the Civil Service trade unions should look at this question against that background.
  At what point should break-away unions, formed by those who think they have special claims, be allowed? The principle of trade unionism is to band together so many men that they speak on equal terms with employers. The ideal, of course, is when shops are 100 per cent. organised in the trade union movement. I am now speaking, not as an employer, but as a trade unionist with all his prejudices. It is perfectly natural, therefore, that engineers, or whoever it may be, should bitterly resent, break-away unions. I do not think the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames could object to that as a proposition, because such bodies tend to 'break down what trade unionists consider to be their prime defence.
  Even in the Post Office there is a long history of this sort of thing. It must be borne in mind that the Post Office union started in the 'eighties, and flourished in the teeth of the opposition of successive Tory Postmasters-General.

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  As a matter of fact, the precious 40 per cent. quota which has been put up here—
  Mr. Osborne (Louth): Why call them"precious" merely because they are 40 per cent. of the total?
  Mr. Pannell: I do not get the point of that intervention.
  Mr. Osborne: What was the meaning of the word"precious," when the hon. Gentleman said they were a"precious 40 per cent."?
  Mr. Pannell: I referred to this"precious 40 per cent." because it is rather a curious figure. If it pleases the hon. Gentleman, I will withdraw the word"precious." This 40 per cent. proportion started in the old days, when consultation was not at the present level; it was a convenient formula to say"As long as you represent 40 per cent. you will be recognised." The Tory Party themselves are not entirely in the clear on this. For the teachers, hon. Members opposite have preached an entirely different doctrine. Successive Ministers of Education, both Lord Halifax and the right hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mr. R. A. Butler, refused entrance of the National Association of Schoolmasters to the Burnham Committee, and also I believe the women teachers' organisations, for no other reason than that the National Union of Teachers refused to take part in negotiations with them.
  Mr. Charles Ian Orr-Ewing: On this point of 40 per cent., I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not suggest that the National Association of Schoolmasters have got 40 per cent.
  Mr. Pannell: The fact that there are more teachers than Post Office engineers does not seem to prove anything at all. I suggest that we have to look at this now because the trade unions are at an adult stage in a time of full employment. We never get this argument about breakaways used by professional bodies, who are often represented by hon. Gentlemen on the other side. Who could envisage a breakaway body in the Law Society or the British Medical Association?
  Mr. Macdonald: I happen to be an employer, and in the employers' association to which I belong there have been
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  two breakaways, both recognised. There are three associations in my industry from the employers' point of view.
  Mr. Pannell: I never did think that employers understood collective bargaining. An employers' association is not a trade union—[HON. MEMBERS:"Oh, yes, it is."] It is not, it is usually a trade association for anti-social purposes, whereas the trade union serves a social purpose.
  Mr. McCorquodale: I think that the hon. Gentleman can be assured that it is a fact that the law recognises employers' associations as trade unions.
  Mr. Pannell: I will accept the law's interpretation for purely legalistic purposes. I ask this question of hon. Gentlemen opposite: Are they attempting to foster a virile trade unionism or the old philosophy of divide and rule?
  Mr. Hogg: For the benefit of the people.
  Mr. Pannell: The hon. Gentleman is speaking from the narrow view of the employer.
  Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman must not misrepresent what I said. I said that we in this House were in fact the employers of these men, and we must on both sides of the House try to behave like decent employers, and my criticism of him was that he was trying to benefit one side.
  Mr. Pannell: No employer would strain himself to represent a minority point of view. If he were looking at it from the point of view of the ordinary normal employer, he would merely consider it as a matter of convenience. There was a curious analogy brought out on the question of the newspaper printing industry, when it was suggested that there were many trade unions in that industry but no two unions catering for one grade.
  Mr. McCorquodale: Thirteen or 14 in one office.
  Mr. Pannell: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell me two printing trade unions catering for one grade?
  Mr. McCorquodale: In my firm, we employ compositors who are in the Typographical Association in the country and compositors who are in the London

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  Society of Compositors in London, and at the present moment they are in violent disagreement with one another.
  Mr. Pannell: That is particularly an employer's contribution, and it proves my point. One of these organisations caters for the London area and the other for the Provinces, but not in the same office.
  Mr. McCorquodale: One is in the country and the other in London, and they are disputing with one another. I challenge the hon. Gentleman to say whether either of them is a breakaway union.
  Mr. Pannell: Both points of view have been discussed this afternoon and when all is said and done, the case was put with no greater force by my hon. Friend than it was for this union by its adviser. With regard to altering the rules of the game, I remember the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) using the same argument when the hon. Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Bing) had challenged him to produce the balance sheet of his party in the last Debate in the last Parliament.
  We are told that this question is much bigger than the treatment of 5,000 skilled men. It is a matter of public honour and also a matter of public policy whether the trade union movement, which has been built up over 100 years of struggle, should be subject to these threats. Speaking for my own trade union, we should bitterly resent the idea that after 100 years of history and the building up of our funds to win a position for the engineers at the present time, any sort of dissentient element, encouraged from the other side, should come in and have any sort of representation.
  We have paid the price for our position, and we will defend our interest in this matter quite as stoutly as the lawyers and doctors, and for better reasons. We shall soon come to the position, if this sort of thing goes on, of having independent trade unions of rival bodies being sent up to the Trades Union Congress, and, in a period of recession, we shall have unions supported by the other side who have never really believed in the trade union movement. More and more as the State takes over private enterprise shall we need to be in a strong position to defend ourselves against the possible unhappy return of a Tory
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  Government, and the employees will really need to be organised. I think it is just as well that we should maintain the trade union movement at the greatest possible strength.
  6.8 p.m.
  Brigadier Rayner (Totnes): I have to feel very strongly about anything to try to catch your eye, Major Milner. The standard of maiden speeches in this Parliament is so high that I find it difficult to compete. I should like to say something very shortly about E.O.T.A. because a great many members of it served under my command or with me during the course of the war, in the Royal Signals. The Royal Signals is not a corps which advertises itself to any great extent except by winning rather more than its proportion of Army sporting events. It is however perhaps the most vital corps in the Army.
  If one takes out of an Army in the field 2,000 infantrymen or 2,000 cavalrymen, or even 2,000 gunners, one merely makes that Army a little smaller but if one takes 2,000 telecommunications personnel then there is no Army left because the Army just cannot hang together. In the war the telecommunication personnel of the Royal Signals did a first-class job of work. They had to stand on their own feet, to use their own initiative, and to take the responsibility for any job they happened to be given. All that they are asking now is to be allowed to stand on their own feet. The right hon. Gentleman says, in fact, that he will not stand for their standing on their own feet and running their own union. He wants to be one of the big bosses of Socialism. He wants to press these technical officers into the mould of a Socialist approved union. He tells them that they must join the Post Office Engineering Union, which is the union approved by the powers that be and that they must accept his edict.
  All of us went out in the war, including these chaps in telecommunications, to fight against dictatorship, but now they come back to find that their P.M.G. is a bit of a dictator himself. They went out to fight for the rights of minorities, but they come back to find that as a minority in the Post Office they have no rights at all, and I feel rather strongly about it. The speech the Postmaster-General made at the conference of the Post Office Workers' Union has already been quoted,

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  but I should like to quote something else that he said. He stated:
  "And I assure you that it is not serving the best interests of the people you represent that an attempt should be made on the part of minorities to use the House of Commons as the place for the settlement of those matters which properly should have been settled inside your own union."
  Surely, if a minority in the country has a grouse, the right place in which to bring up that grouse is the House of Commons. I hope we shall show these chaps in E.O.T.A. that they have had a fair hearing tonight and that if they do not get a fair deal, we shall, in due course, play general post with the Postmaster-General by removing the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues from that Front Bench, and see that they get their fair deal. As a soldier who has worked with these chaps in the field, I feel that they are worthy of it.
  6.12 p.m.
  Mr. Harry Wallace: As my time is short, I cannot give the attention I should have liked to give to all the points which have been raised. I hope that the hon. and gallant Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) will forgive me if I do not follow the charging brigades. I cannot help thinking that had it been a case of 2,000 deserters the hon. and gallant Member would have had a very different point of view, especially if it were at a time when the enemy were attacking.
  I speak as one who was in the Post Office service when official recognition was granted for the first time in 1904. I warn the staff that they are forgetting much of their history when they go out to multiply the number of organisations in the Post Office service. They forget the old days when Select Committees of the House of Commons were appointed and sat for two years inquiring into their grievances, then giving a shilling on the maximum and teaching them that the word"plus" meant a decrease and not an increase. That was the experience from 1895 downwards.
  We are living in calamitous times. We are not yet out of our economic difficulties, and there is a threat of war. I have seen the number of unions reduced, not by using the bludgeon, but by common sense and negotiation. As the number has decreased, the staff have
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  gained more improvements. Recognition has meant much more to them, and their Whitley Committees have produced better benefits. Their status in the industry has been greatly improved. Reference has been made to the staff relations in the Civil Service. Let me quote from this official document.
  "The great strength of Whitleyism in the Civil Service is that of an idea; the idea of bringing together the whole Civil Service; or the whole staff of a Department, of promoting on each Whitley body a single viewpoint and spirit, and of giving to civil servants a voice in the management of their profession as a whole."
  We worked for that, and we believe in it. Let not those Members who speak eloquently on the case for the minority not forget that this is a matter affecting nearly 250,000. We cannot determine this issue on the basis of 2,000 to 4,000 men.
  Mr. Osborne: That is the sort of thing Hitler said.
  Mr. Wallace: Never mind Hitler. I am quoting from this official document on the Staff Side Relations in the Civil Service. The hon. Member may want Hitler, but—
  Mr. Osborne: That is your policy.
  Mr. Wallace: I am saying, and I repeat it, although I know the hon. Member has only just arrived,—
  Mr. Osborne: No.
  Mr. Wallace: Perhaps the hon. Member has not yet arrived. The point I am making is that this issue cannot be settled on the basis of 5,000 men when it affects nearly 250,000.
  The Postmaster-General has reached a decision in line with all the recommendations made by the Select Committees of the House of Commons from 1906, which deplored the multiplicity of unions and the many voices speaking on the one interest. Time and again the Department has recognised the inconvenience, the delay, the leakage of information, the instability of agreements, the weakening of negotiations, which has resulted in the staff having to suffer. It is no use the staff thinking that if they split themselves up into small unions they will get an advantage over the rest of the staff. They must work with their fellows on any question affecting the whole.

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  My right hon. Friend has not excluded discussions, and one of the biggest unions in the Post Office has invited all the organisations to come together to discuss this problem. If the outside organisations will accept this invitation to come together and discuss the problem, I am sure they will find the Postmaster-General willing to listen and do his best to try and solve the problem. I hope I have said nothing to destroy any goodwill that exists in bringing about a settlement. There are many years of bitter suffering which lie behind the growth of their trade unions, and I warn the staff that they will suffer if they increase the multiplicity of the trade unions. I hope they are not going to undo the work that was done by their fathers and grandfathers, who took punishment and suffered poverty in order to make possible what they now enjoy. I hope they will listen to the advice and discuss it. It affects 250,000 workers.
  No Tory Party will settle this issue. Those workers would be wise to accept the invitation, and I am sure my right hon. Friend will do his best to bring about a solution. The decision he has given is in accordance with the experience of the last 40 years. It can only be decided on merit, for it has always been so decided. It is not a question of recognition when 40 per cent. in strength is the claim.
  6.21 p.m.
  Mr. R. V. Grimston (Westbury): I think it was suggested in some quarters that this was not a matter which ought to be discussed in the House of Commons. All I can say is that if that view had held, we should have missed a very interesting Debate, in the course of which we have had an impressive and able maiden speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Bishop). I do not think that the doctrine that this matter should not have been discussed in the House of Commons could be upheld for a moment, particularly in this case, because amongst the nationalised industries the Post Office has a unique place. Whatever may apply to the other nationalised industries, the Postmaster-General is responsible to this House for the day-to- day administration of the Post Office. We have a right, and, indeed, a duty, to bring that administration under review, which we are doing in this instance in raising the matter of the refusal of recognition
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  to the E.O.T.A. Therefore, I repudiate any suggestion that we should not be discussing this matter.
  Further, it has been suggested that the Tory Party favours breakaway or splinter unions. [HON. MEMBERS:"Hear, hear."] I hear support for that from the other side of the Committee. Let me say quite categorically that we have no wish to encourage such movements either amongst the trade unions or the employers' organisation. If I may digress for one moment. Reference has been made to the fact that the then Lord Wolmer, when he was Postmaster-General, refused recognition to a breakaway union. If the Government supporters are going to pray Lord Wolmer in aid in that way, they cannot at the same time accuse the Tory Party of being in favour of a breakaway union. They cannot have it both ways.
  From the employers' point of view, it is obviously much more convenient to minimise the number of bodies with whom negotiations have to take place, and minimise the risk of negotiations being upset by rivalries. For that reason I repeat we do not wish to see these breakaway unions. From the trade union point of view, obviously those that are established in a certain field do not wish to see others entering that field. That is perfectly natural, and by and large splinters and breakaways are a nuisance to authority.
  But having said that, we might remember for a moment that it has happened more than once in our history that some person or body, through making themselves a nuisance, have in fact, preserved liberties which might otherwise have been taken away. If I might bring that illustration home, I would say that I have been in the House a certain number of years now, and I wonder how often have we seen an individual Member of this House making himself a nuisance to the Whips to preserve some right of this House? It has happened on more than one occasion, and not only on one side of the House, either. I think I can say something about that because I have been a Whip.
  What I am really driving at is that our ordered liberty, upon which we pride ourselves in this country, and which we believe we have given to the world through our democratic system, depends for its

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  preservation on a right balance between nuisance and authority. In the case of the Post Office representations, this balance between what I might call ordered liberty and nuisance has been preserved by what is known as the 40 per cent. rule. I will not call it a rule if there is an objection to that word, because I know that the Postmaster-General has asserted that there never was a rule. Let us call it a practice, which has been followed for many years.
  The reason we raise this case today is that the Postmaster-General has in this instance departed from this practice, because there is no dispute at all now that E.O.T.A. have got a 40 per cent. membership, which is essential for recognition if it is to be granted. The gravamen of our charge, as made by my hon. Friends the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) and the Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) is that the Postmaster-General, for other purposes which I shall discuss later, altered the rules in the middle of the game.
  Let me digress again for a moment. The hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards) will agree with me here when I say that it is not easy for a new organisation to build up 40 per cent. against an already recognised trade union. There are certain advantages enjoyed by a recognised trade union such as being able to collect subscriptions in Post Office Departments, and being able to do certain of their business in Post Office buildings—facilities which are not enjoyed by the organisation which is attempting to build itself up for recognition. Thus, there are handicaps in building up a new organisation as against an organisation holding its position. From that one can deduce that where a new union has been successful in building up a genuine 40 per cent. representation there must be some real strength of feeling behind it.
  Under the old practice the Engineering Officers (Telecommunications) Association would have had recognition and the question we are asking, is why have they not? One reason is to be found in the opposition of the Post Office Engineering Union, and that is perfectly natural. This brings me to the speech made by the hon. Member for Brighouse and Spenborough. His speech was ably disposed of by my
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  hon. Friend the Member for Oxford, but as he addressed one or two remarks directly to me I should like to deal with them. He referred to the co-operation which he, as general Secretary of the union, gave to the Post Office hierarchy during the war. I had the honour of being Assistant Postmaster-General during the war and I should like to pay my tribute to that co-operation and to commiserate with him upon the irony of the fact that through that co-operation he may have lost some influence. That we cannot help.
  The hon. Member went on to suggest that because that co-operation had been received during the war we should now take up sides on behalf of the Post Office Engineering Union. He completely misjudges the issue. We are not taking sides with anybody. I say that most emphatically. We are concerned to see fair play between two claims, and that the rule to preserve a reasonable balance between common sense and authority, which has worked very well over a considerable number of years, is not arbitrarily thrown on one side for what we believe are political reasons.
  That is the position we take up. The question of giving support to a particular union, in this case giving support to the P.O.E.U. because of its co-operation during the war, completely misjudges the situation and puts that union upon a lower level of co-operation than it ought to occupy.
  Mr. J. Edwards: The hon. Gentleman and I took our share in creating a situation but now he contracts out. I would expect him to admit that in a matter of this kind one has to consider all the circumstances. That is all I am asking for and his side should use their good offices to put an end to it.
  Mr. Grimston: That interjection of the hon. Gentleman shows that he continues to misrepresent the situation. I repudiate the suggestion that we should take sides in this matter, and I must say that I personally am sorry if his union is losing representation, but I think that he has to look out for that. To ask me to give support to a particular union as a quid pro quo for the support that he gave to the Government during the war is a most astonishing attitude.

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  The hon. Gentleman raised one or two other matters, but I must not take too long because I have promised the right hon. Gentleman time. The hon. Gentle- man complained of calumny, misrepresentation and abuse being used by this other union. All I can say is that he ought to have been a Tory. He would have been more accustomed to it. He can find some solace in the philosophy that with British people that kind of thing does not pay in the long run. None of us here are accusing him of doing anything dishonourable, but when he makes a speech in which he almost boasts of the contacts that he has among his colleagues in the Government even to discuss the E.O.T.A., he cannot complain that it appears that some political pressure has been brought to bear upon his colleagues. I leave it at that.
  I turn to one or two remarks which have been made by the Postmaster-General, and which are relevant. I refer to a speech which he made at the conference of the Union of Post Office Workers on 25th May. It has already been referred to and I am sorry to trouble hon. Members with it but it is relevant. The right hon. Gentleman said:
  "I gave a decision on a recognition question in the House of Commons which has met with a great deal of hostility and also a great deal of approbation."
  He went on in another part to say:
  "We have great power; we have entered the door of the House, but far too many still knock on the door forgetting we have occupied the House."
  What exactly does that mean?
  The Postmaster-General (Mr. Ness Edwards): Cannot the hon. Gentleman read on? I am sure he does not wish to misrepresent what I said.
  Mr. Grimston: The right hon. Gentleman went on to say:
  "We socialised an industry"—
  Mr. Ness Edwards: Will the hon. Gentleman permit me to interrupt? He has quoted from my speech and he has selected paragraphs from it. I should be glad if he would read on.
  Mr. Grimston: The next paragraph goes on:
  "We have in this period a new responsibility; we have a responsibility to society. We have a responsibility you have to your
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  members and you must balance that. In the society through which we are moving today we require from the trade union movement the highest degree of statesmanship."
  It does not alter the context at all of what I previously read. The hon. Gentleman cannot get away from:
  "We have great power; we have entered the door of the House but far too many still knock on the door forgetting we have occupied the House."
  Nothing can detract from that statement standing by itself. I go on to another quotation:
  "We socialised an industry but we hesitate to socialise or to organise our trades unions on the same basis that we socialised industry."
  What does that mean? It means that they have nationalised a number of industries but that they have not yet nationalised the trade unions. [HON. MEMERS:"No."] That is the only inference to be drawn from it. The Postmaster-General goes on to say—[Interruption.]—I can see that hon. Members opposite do not like it:
  "This jungle of unions inside the postal service (Cries of 'Oh')"—
  from the Gallery even there.
  "Yes, the jungle of unions, 35. There is more time taken up in talking about problems in the G.P.O. than there is in doing the work.…"
  and so on. I give these quotations. The House has heard them and can judge for itself. I come back to say that the only inference, particularly with regard to the remarks about the House and that hon. Members are there and God help anybody else who tries to get there too, gives one a very unpleasant reminder of what we had in the days of National Socialist Germany and a pretty sickening reminder of what happened to trade unions under that system and what happens to trade unions under Communism today.
  I do not wish to hold up the right hon. Gentleman any longer. Let me say in conclusion. We believe that he has altered the rules and has refused recognition not on the merits of the case but for political considerations. We condemn him for that and unless he can satisfy us that that is not the case, I shall ask my hon. Friend to divide the Committee.
  6.39 p.m.
  The Postmaster-General (Mr. Ness Edwards): I was very much afraid that the Debate on this matter would embarrass me in what I am trying to do

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  outside. Fortunately, we have had an excellent Debate upon a really difficult problem. I should like to associate myself with the complimentary remarks made about the maiden speech from the back bench opposite by the hon. Member for Harrow, Central (Mr. Bishop). It was a very sensible speech which showed a grip of the problem. I hope that we shall hear more contributions from him of the same concrete character that we heard today.
  We have had a number of very interesting speeches. The hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) has not been as provocative as usual. I am very glad, because no one could have stated the case for E.O.T.A. better than he did this afternoon. I shall try to deal with his points in the time at my disposal. We had a very good speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Brighouse and Spenborough (Mr. J. Edwards), whom we are glad to see back with us. He dealt with a number of points of mechanical detail with that complete knowledge that he has of this side of the problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Lang) approached the problem very sensibly and made an appeal for reasonableness in dealing with this matter. I hope that I shall not be deaf to an appeal of that sort.
  The hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Hogg) dealt, among other things, with the job of getting these people together, and I shall come to that later on. The hon. Member for Roxburgh and Selkirk (Mr. Macdonald) seemed to me to approach the problem but not to see all the difficulties. I am sure that he would not agree that any dissident body should have a North korean liberty to do what it wanted to do. I really did not know what the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Totnes (Brigadier Rayner) was driving at, except that he mentioned the fact that the members of the parent union rendered very great service during the war. The majority of them still belong to the parent union and not to E.O.T.A. My hon. Friends the Member for Walthamstow, East (Mr. H. Wallace) and the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Pannell) showed just how strong are the feelings underneath the ordinary trade unionist in relation to this problem.
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  I was glad of the approach of the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. R. V. Grimston). We were pleased to have his assurance that the Conservative Party did not want to encourage dissident elements or breakaway organisations. I was delighted to hear that in view of something which was shown to me today—that one of the dissident unions had published on the back of its journal,"Join the Conservative Party." Let me say right away that it is the duty of the Postmaster-General to view these problems fairly and without political prejudice. He ought not to take into account political affiliations and he ought not to take into account trade union affiliations, and I assure the Committee that I have looked at this problem objectively and that I have taken my decision on merit, and if the union had been affiliated to my political party I should still have taken the stand which I have done.
  There is no need to argue about the details of the charges which have been brought up today, except this one. It was suggested by the hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames that E.O.T.A. was concerned with only one grade. That is quite wrong. E.O.T.A. is recruiting members from three grades at least. It is claiming recognition for one grade, but the work of the three grades is interchangeable. Men who are employed in Grade A do work in Grade B when Grade A work is not available, and men who are in Grade C will do work in Grade A when work in Grade C is not available. Therefore, we have a complete interchange of function over three grades whose wages and remuneration must be related to these differentials.
  Despite the fact that it is making a special claim for recognition for one grade only in which it has a minority of members, the union is recruiting members in other grades for whom it does not claim recognition and for whom it has never made a representation to the Postmaster-General, and as far as I can see it is not in a position adequately to represent the persons engaged in the functions which the three grades cover.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Ness Edwards: I have been asked by the Clerk to sit down a minute before

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  7 o'clock. I have quite a lot to say about this matter, and I shall be obliged if the hon. Gentleman will allow me to proceed.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I felt that I could save the right hon. Gentleman's time.
  Mr. Ness Edwards: I have had much less time than the opening speakers had and I have to reply to a Debate in which eight hon. Members have been engaged. I do not mean to be discourteous.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The right hon. Gentleman has the amount of time for which he asked.
  Mr. Ness Edwards: I now come to the Listowel formula. It is alleged that I have changed the rule, but it is only alleged and not a single fact has been brought before the Committee to show that I have changed the rule.
  Mr. H. Strauss: Except the refusal to recognise.
  Mr. Ness Edwards: The Listowel formula has nothing to do with the claim of E.O.T.A. Let us look at the situation in which the Listowel formula came into existence. There was an application by the Union of Postal Workers for a closed shop in the Post Office, and my predecessor, Lord Listowel, in his reply to this pressure for a closed shop, gave an undertaking to the union that he would not even consider any application for recognition unless the union making the application had at least 40 per cent. of the members in the grade. The hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames recognised in what he said subsequently that the achievement of 40 per cent. of the members in a grade did not automatically entitle them to recognition.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Has it ever been refused?
  Mr. Ness Edwards: It has never been the case in the Post Office, and I defy hon. Members opposite to quote a single case where the achievement of 40 per cent. membership has automatically entitled a union to recognition.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman quote a single case in which a union which has achieved 40 per cent. membership has been denied recognition?
  Mr. Ness Edwards: Yes. My predecessor, Lord Listowel, who was a Conservative—
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Lord Listowel a Conservative?
  Mr. Ness Edwards: I mean Lord Wolmer. My apologies to Lord Listowel. Lord Wolmer, who was a Conservative, rejected an application in a case where 40 per cent. membership had been achieved. I assure the Committee that I have not changed the rule. All that has happened is that the Opposition have tried to persuade themselves that the achievement of 40 per cent. membership in a grade automatically entitles one to recognition. That is untrue. Hon. Members may read Estacode, the book about staff relations, any statement made by my predecessor and any speech which I have made, and the most that will be conceded is that only when 40 per cent. of the membership of a grade has been achieved will an application for recognition even be considered.
  On the announcement of the Listowel formula E.O.T.A. wrote to my predecessor and asked what the rules were that would determine recognition after the 40 per cent. had been achieved. So E.O.T.A. has never been under any misapprehension about this, and I beg hon. Gentlemen opposite not to advise these members that they are entitled to press for recognition under a misapprehension. What is happening is that a number of the members now think, because of the pressure in the House of Commons, that I am deliberately doing them an injustice. [HON. MEMBERS:"Hear, hear."] I want to assure hon. Gentlemen opposite that I am not, and from what I have said it cannot be suggested that I am doing them an injustice. What is happening now is that in every journal issued by a dissident union, and there are four of them, charges are made of spying, of tyranny. Let me quote one. One of these dissident unions—
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Which?
  Mr. Ness Edwards: N.A.P.T.O. This is typical. The Postmaster-General is being abused by a counter clerk in a public conference in the most shameful manner. If he will behave like that in public to the Postmaster-General, what

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  sort of courtesy do hon. Members expect in the post offices of this country to the ordinary citizen? There is being encouraged in the Post Office by this political support a spirit of indiscipline, in some cases a spirit of sabotage. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite think I am exaggerating. Let me give an example.
  A complaint came from an hon. Member below the Gangway about delay in answering a telephone. In the office in which this complaint arose there are four supervisors and 20 telephonists. Two of the supervisors are in a dissident union, two of them are in the parent body. The operators are split up in the same way. What happened? Supervisors belonging to the dissident body obviously tried to cover their own members. The supervisors of the parent body obviously tried to cover their members. Each one blamed the other. And I have to write to the hon. Member and say,"I am sorry, I cannot explain the cause of the delay." [An HON. MEMBER:"Shocking."] Of course, it is shocking, but it is true. Registered letters disappear in circumstances of that sort for which I cannot give explanations because there is in the post offices of this country a spirit of non-co-operation and a vendetta between various members of the staff. Is it suggested in those circumstances that I should make permanent that position?
  I have only a short time in which to speak and I want to come to the good things I want to do. I have taken the view that this problem cannot be solved by a simple act of recognition of E.O.T.A. because what is given to E.O.T.A. must be given to each of the other dissident bodies. There are 250 grades in the Post Office and the logic of it is that we could get 500 unions. Is it not far better for everybody on both sides of the Committee to use what good offices they may have to end this business once and for all?
  The hon. Baronet the Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) made a suggestion some time ago. I acted upon it. I went to the Union of Post Office Workers. Incidentally, I do not thank the dissident union who circulated extracts from my speech which completely misrepresented what I said at Margate. I told the Union of Post Office Workers that they had to show statesmanship in dealing with this problem, that they had to put their house in order
  710
  as well as attempt to put the economic house of the nation in order. I thought I was doing something worth while, occupying the position I do. The suggestion made by the hon. Baronet has been acted upon. A circular has been issued by one of the large unions and circulated to the other unions inviting them to discuss how they can rationalise the unions inside the Post Office. I think that is the correct approach.
  Now there is this problem of E.O.T.A. and the three other dissident unions. I am authorised by the parent bodies to say that they are prepared to come into conference with the dissident bodies to find a solution to this problem co-operatively. Let us forget these vendettas and this bad spirit, because while it persists we cannot make the Post Office the efficient instrument it ought to be. Therefore, I ask hon. Members on both sides of the Committee to help us in this matter by refraining from worsening feelings.
  I have already had discussions with E.O.T.A. I have had discussions with the P.O.E.U. Both Unions are prepared to meet together under my chairmanship, and I regard that as the best way of dealing with this problem. The chairman of the association representing the supervisory grades has said in regard to their dissident body that they, too, will meet under my chairmanship and are prepared to make all sorts of concessions to get unity. On the postal side I am having some difficulties. Personalities are involved and nasty things have been said one about the other. However, if we can solve this problem, we can move forward to the situation envisaged by the hon. Member for Abingdon, where we can have a rationalisation of this organisation so that every grade shall be represented adequately.
  It is suggested that I should recognise E.O.T.A. before these discussions, but that would make the discussions impossible.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Why?
  Mr. Ness Edwards: Because everyone must come in unconditionally. I cannot lay down conditions for either side. Therefore, everybody comes in on the status quo and we will argue the thing out freely and frankly. With goodwill from both sides of the Committee—I am sure it can be forthcoming—and with

  711
  the help of hon. Gentlemen opposite who have been acting as advisers, we ought to end this problem in the Post Office and establish a splendid spirit of cooperation to get the maximum result for the nation.
  Mr. Grimston: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for sitting down a minute before time, but he has not met the point put by my hon. Friends, that if there is to be a successful conference those who are entitled to recognition under the present rule should have it. As he has not met us on this, I must ask my hon.
  Friends to divide the Committee. I beg to move,"That Subhead A.1, Salaries, etc., Headquarters Establishments, be reduced by £1,000."
  Mr. Ness Edwards: I cannot get a conference on those conditions. The important thing is to get them talking and if I lay down that condition I cannot get a conference.
  Question put,"That Subhead A.1, Salaries, etc., Headquarters Establishments, be reduced by £1,000."
  The Committee divided: Ayes, 236; Noes, 258.

  Division No. 59]

  AYES

  7.0 p.m.

  Alport, C J. M.

  Eden, Rt. Hon A.

  Leather, E. H. C.

  Amery, J (Preston, N.)

  Elliot, Lieut.-Col. Rt. Hon. Walter

  Legge-Bourke, Maj. E A H

  Amory, D. Heathcoat (Tiverton)

  Erroll, F. J.

  Lennox-Boyd, A. T.

  Arbuthnot, John

  Fisher, Nigel

  Linstead, H. N.

  Ashton, H (Chelmsford)

  Fletcher, W. (Bury)

  Llewellyn, D.

  Assheton, Rt. Hon. R. (Blackburn, W.)

  Fort, R.

  Lloyd, Rt. Hon. G. (King's Norton)

  Baker, P.

  Foster, J. G.

  Lloyd, Maj. Guy (Renfrew, E.)

  Baldock, J. M

  Fraser, Hon. H. C. P. (Stone)

  Lloyd, Selwyn (Wirral)

  Baldwin, A. E

  Fraser, Sir I. (Lonsdale)

  Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C

  Banks, Col C

  Fyfe, Rt. Hon. Sir D. P. M

  Longden, G. J M. (Herts S.W.)

  Beamish, Maj. T. V. H.

  Gage, C. H.

  Low, A. R. W.

  Bell, R. M.

  Galbraith, Cmdr. T. D. (Pollok)

  Lucas, Major Sir J (Portsmouth, S.)

  Bennett, Sir P. (Edgbaston)

  Galbraith, T. G. D (Hillhead)

  Lucas-Tooth, Sir H.

  Bennett, R. F. B. (Gosport)

  Gammans, L. D.

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O

  Bennett, W. G (Woodside)

  Gates, Maj. E. E.

  McAdden, S. J.

  Birch, Nigel

  Gomme-Duncan, Col. A

  McCallum, Maj. D.

  Bishop, F. P.

  Gridley, Sir A

  MaCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S

  Black, C. W.

  Grimston, Hon. J. (St. Albans)

  Macdonald, A. J. F. (Roxburgh)

  Boles, Lt.-Col. D. C. (Wells)

  Grimston, R. V. (Westbury)

  Macdonald, Sir P. (I. of Wight)

  Boothby, R

  Hare, Hon. J. H. (Woodbridge)

  Mackeson, Brig H R.

  Bossom, A. C

  Harris, F. W. (Croydon, N.)

  McKibbin, A.

  Bower, N

  Harris, R. R. (Heston)

  McKie, J. H (Galloway)

  Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.

  Harvey, Air-Codre A. V. (Macclesfield)

  Maclay, Hon. J. S

  Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W.

  Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

  Maclean, F. H. R.

  Brooke, H. (Hampstead)

  Hay, John

  MaoLeod, Iain (Enfield, W.)

  Browne, J. N. (Govan)

  Head, Brig. A. H

  MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

  Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.

  Heald, L. F.

  Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

  Bullock, Capt. M.

  Henderson, John (Cathcart)

  Macpherson, N. (Dumfries)

  Bullus, Wing-Commander E. E.

  Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W

  Manningham-Buller, R. E

  Burden, Squadron-Leader F. A.

  Higgs, J. M. C.

  Marlowe, A. A. H.

  Butcher, H. W.

  Hill, Mrs E. (Wythenshawe)

  Marples, A. E

  Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (S'ffr'n W'ld'n)

  Carr, L. R. (Mitcham)

  Hill, Dr. C. (Luton)

  Marshall, D. (Bodmin)

  Carson, Hon. E.

  Hirst, Geoffrey

  Marshall, S. H. (Sutton)

  Channon, H.

  Hogg, Hon. Q

  Maude, A. E. U (Ealing, S.)

  Caarke, Col. R. S. (East Grinstead)

  Hollis, M. C.

  Mandling, R.

  Clarke, Brig. T H. (Portsmouth, W.)

  Holmes, Sir J Stanley (Harwich)

  Medlicott, Brigadier F

  Colegate, A.

  Hopkinson, H L. D'A.

  Mellor, Sir J.

  Conant, Mai R. J. E.

  Hornsby-Smith, Miss P

  Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir T

  Cooper, A. E. (Ilford, S.)

  Horsbrugh, Miss F.

  Morrison, Maj. J. G. (Salisbury)

  Craddock, G. B. (Spelthorne)

  Howard, G. R. (St. Ives)

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

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

  Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

  Nabarro, G.

  Cross, Rt Hon. Sir R

  Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

  Nield, B. (Chester)

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E

  Hudson, W. R A (Hull, N.)

  Noble, Comdr. A. H. P

  Crouch, R. F.

  Hulbert. Wing-Cdr N. J

  Nugent, G. R. H.

  Crowder, F P. (Ruislip—Northwood)

  Hurd, A. R.

  Nutting, Anthony

  Crowder, Capt. John F E. (Finchley)

  Hutchinson, Geoffrey (Ilford, N.)

  Oakshott, H. D

  Cundiff, F. W.

  Hutchison, Lt.-Com. Clark (E'b'rgh W)

  Odey, G. W.

  Davidson, Viscountess

  Hyde, H. M.

  O'Neill, Rt Hon. Sir H

  Davies, Nigel (Epping)

  Hylton-Foster, H. B.

  Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D

  Deedes, W. F.

  Jeffreys, General Sir G.

  Orr, Capt. L. P. S

  Dodds-Parker, A. D

  Johnson, Howard S. (Kemptown)

  Orr-Ewing, Charles Ian (Hendon, N.)

  Donner, P W.

  Jones, A. (Hall Green)

  Osborne, C.

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord M

  Kaberry, D.

  Perkins, W. R. D.

  Drayson, G. B.

  keling, E. H.

  Peto, Brig. C. H M

  Drewe, C.

  Kerr, H. W. (Cambridge)

  Pitman, I J

  Dugdale, Maj. Sir T. (Richmond)

  Lambert, Hon. G.

  Prescott. Stanley

  Duncan, Capt. J A L

  Lancaster, Col. C. G

  Price, H. A. (Lewisham. W.)

  Duthie W. S.

  Langford-Holt, J.

  Prior-Palmer, Brig O

  Eccles, D. M

  Law, Rt. Hon. R. K

  Profumo, J D.

  Raikes, H. V.

  Spearman, A. C. M.

  Vane, W. M. F.

  Rayner, Brig. R

  Spens, Sir P. (Kensington, S.)

  Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

  Redmayne, M.

  Stanley, Capt. Hon. R. (N. Fylde)

  Vosper, D. F.

  Renton, D. L. M

  Stevens, G. P.

  Wakefield, E. B. (Derbyshire. W.)

  Robertson, Sir D. (Caithness)

  Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)

  Walker-Smith, D. C.

  Robinson, J. Roland (Blackpool, S.)

  Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

  Ward, Hon. G. R. (Worcester)

  Roper, Sir H

  Stuart, Rt. Hon. J (Moray)

  Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

  Ropner, Col. L.

  Studholme, H. G.

  Waterhouse, Capt. C

  Russell, R. S

  Sutcliffe, H.

  Watkinson, H.

  Ryder, Capt. R. E. D

  Taylor, W. J. (Bradford, N.)

  White, J Baker (Canterbery)

  Sandys, Rt. Hon. D.

  Teeling, William

  Williams, C. (Torquay)

  Savory, Prof. D. L.

  Thomas, J. P. L. (Hereford)

  Williams, Gerald (Tonb dge)

  Scott, Donald

  Thompson, K. P. (Walton)

  Williams, Sir H. G. (Croydon, E)

  Shepherd, W. S. (Cheadle)

  Thompson, R. H. M. (Croydon, W.)

  Wills, G.

  Smiles, Lt.-Col. Sir W.

  Thorneycroft, G. E. P. (Monmouth)

  Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

  Smith, E. Martin (Grantham)

  Thornton-Kemsley, C. N.

  Wood, Hon. R.

  Smithers, Peter H. B. (Winchester)

  Thorp, Brigadier R A. F

  Young, Sir A S. L

  Smithers, Sir W. (Orpington)

  Touche, G C.

  Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)

  Turton, R. H.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Snadden, W. MoN.

  Tweedsmuir, Lady

  Major Wheatley and

  Mr. Wingfield Digby.

  NOES

  Adams, Richard

  Dugdale, Rt. Hon. J (W. Bromwich)

  Jeger, Or. S. W. (St. Pancras, S)

  Albu, A. H.

  Dye, S.

  Jenkins, R. H.

  Allan, A. C. (Bosworth)

  Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C

  Johnson, James (Rugby)

  Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

  Edelman, M.

  Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

  Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)

  Edwards, John (Brighouse)

  Jones, D. T. (Hartlepool)

  Awbery, S. S.

  Edwards, Rt. Hon. N. (Caerphilly)

  Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

  Ayles, W H.

  Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

  Jones, William Elwyn (Conway)

  Bacon, Miss A

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  Keenan, W.

  Baird, J.

  Evans, E. (Lowestoft)

  Kenyon, C.

  Balfour, A.

  Ewart, R.

  Key, Rt. Hon. C. W

  Barnes, Rt. Hon A. J.

  Fernyhough, E.

  King, H. M.

  Bartley, P.

  Field, Capt. W. J.

  Kinghorn, Sqn.-Ldr. E.

  Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

  Finch, H. J.

  Kinley, J.

  Benson, G.

  Fletcher, E. G. M. (Islington, E)

  Kirkwood, Rt. Hon. D

  Beswick, F.

  Follick, M.

  Lang, Rev. G.

  Bevan, Rt. Hon. A (Ebbw Vale)

  Foot, M.

  Lee, F. (Newton)

  Btenkinsop, A

  M. Forman, J. C.

  Lee, Miss J. (Cannock)

  Blyton, W. R.

  Fraser, T. (Hamilton)

  Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

  Boardman, H.

  Freeman, J. (Watford)

  Lever, N. H. (Cheetham)

  Booth, A.

  Freeman, Peter (Newport)

  Lewis, A. W. J. (West Ham, N)

  Bottomley, A. G

  Conley, Mrs. C. S.

  Lewis, J. (Bolton, W.)

  Bowden, H. W.

  Gibson, C. W.

  Lipton, Lt.-Col M

  Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton)

  Gilzean, A.

  Logan, D. G.

  Brockway, A. Fenner

  Glanville, J. E. (Consett)

  McAllister, G.

  Brook, D. (Halifax)

  Gooch, E G

  MacColl, J. E

  Brooks, T. J. (Normanton)

  Greenwood, Anthony W. J (Rossendale)

  McGhee, H. G.

  Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

  Greenwood, Rt. Hon. Arthur (Wakefield)

  McGovern, J

  Brown, George (Belper)

  Grey, C. F.Griffiths, D. (Rather Valley)

  McInnes, J

  Brown, T J. (Ince)

  Griffiths, Rt. Hon. J. (Lianelly)

  Mack, J. D.

  Burton, Miss E.

  Griffiths, W. D. (Exchange)

  McKay, J (Wallsend)

  Mackay, R W. G. (Reading, N.)

  Butler, H W. (Hackney, S.)

  Gunter, R. J.

  MoLeavy, F

  Carmichael, James

  Hale, J. (Rochdale)

  MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

  Callaghan, James

  Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)

  Mainwarlng, W. H.

  Castle, Mrs. B. A.

  Hall, J. (Gateshead, W.)

  Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)

  Champion, A. J.

  Hall, Rt. Hn. W. Glenvil (Colne V'll'y)

  Malialieu, J. P. W. (Huddersfield, E)

  Clietwynd, G. R

  Hardman, D. R

  Mann, Mrs. J

  Ginnie, J.

  Hardy, E. A.

  Manuel, A. C

  Cocks, F. S.

  Hargreaves, A

  Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A

  Coldrick, W.

  Harrison, J.

  Mothers, Rt Hon. George

  Collick, P.

  Hastings, Dr. Somerville

  Mellish, R. J

  Collindridge, F

  Hayman, F. H.

  Messer, F

  Cook, T. F

  Henderson, Rt. Hon. A. (Rowley Regis)

  Middleton, Mrs L.

  Cooper, G. (Middlesbrough, W)

  Hobson, C. R.

  Mikardo, Ian

  Cooper, J. (Deptford)

  Holman, P

  Mitchison, G. R.

  Cove, W. G.

  Holmes, H. E. (Hemsworth)

  Moeran, E. W.

  Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

  Morgan, Dr. H. B.

  Crawley, A.

  Houghton, Douglas

  Morley, R.

  Crosland, C. A. R

  Hoy, J.

  Morris, P. (Swansea, W.)

  Cullen, Mrs. A.

  Hubbard, T.

  Moyle, A.

  Dames, P.

  Hudson, J. H. (Ealing, N.)

  Mulley, F. W

  Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

  Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayr)

  Nally, W

  Darling, G. (Hillsboro')

  Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

  Noel-Baker, Rt Hon. P J

  Davies, A. Edward (Stoke, N)

  Hynd, H. (Accrington)

  O'Brien, T.

  Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

  Hynd, J. B. (Attercliffe)

  Oliver, G. H.

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

  Orbach, M.

  Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)

  Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

  Padly, W. E.

  Deer, G.

  Isaacs, Rt. Hon G A

  Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

  Delargy, H. J

  Janner, B.

  Pannell, T. C.

  Dodds, N. N.

  Jay, D. P. T.

  Pargiter, G. A.

  Donnelly, D.

  Jeger, G (Goole)

  Parker, J.

  Driberg, T. E. N.

  714

  715

  Patcn, J.

  Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

  Wallace, H. W.

  Pearson, A.

  Smith, H. N. (Nottingham, S.)

  Webb, Rt. Hon M. (Bradford, C.)

  Peart, T. F.

  Snow, J. W.

  Weitzman, D

  Poole, Cecil

  Sorensen, R. W.

  Wells, P. L. (Faversham)

  Popplewell, E.

  Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir F

  Wells, W. T. (Walsall)

  Porter, G.

  Sparks, J. A.

  West, D. G.

  Proctor, W. T.

  Steele, T.

  Wheatley, Rt. Hn. John (Edinb'gh, E.)

  Pryde, D. J.

  Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

  White, Mrs. E. (E. Flint)

  Pursey, Comdr H

  Strachey, Rt Hon. J

  White, H (Derbyshire, N.E.)

  Rankin, J.

  Strauss, Rt. Hon. G R (Vauxhall)

  Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W

  Reeves, J.

  Stross, Dr. B

  Wigg, George

  Reid, T. (Swindon)

  Summerskill, Rt. Hon Edith

  Wilcock, Group-Capt. C. A. B.

  Rhodes, H.

  Sylvester, G. O.

  Wilkes, L.

  Robens, A.

  Taylor, H. B. (Mansfield)

  Willey, F. T. (Sunderland)

  Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvonshire)

  Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)

  Willey, O. G. (Cleveland)

  Robinson, Kenneth (St. Panocras, N.)

  Thomas, D. E. (Aberdara)

  Williams, W. T. (Hammersmith, S.)

  Ross, William (Kilmarnock)

  Thomas, George (Cardiff)

  Wilson, Rt. Hon. J. B. (Huyton)

  Royle, C.

  Thomas, I. O. (Wrekin)

  Winterbottom, I. (Nottingham C.)

  Shackleton, E. A A.

  Thomas, I. R. (Rhondda, W.)

  Winterbottom, R. E. (Brightaide)

  Shawcross, Rt. Hon. Sir H

  Thorneyeroft, Harry (Clayton)

  Wise, Major F. J.

  Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E

  Thurtle, Ernest

  Woodburn, Rt. Hon A

  Shurmer, P. L. E.

  Timmons, J.

  Woods, Rev. G. S.

  Silverman, J. (Erdington)

  Tomlinson, Rt. Hon. G.

  Wyatt, W. L.

  Silverman, S. S. (Nelson)

  Tomney, F.

  Yates, V. F.

  Simmons, C. J

  Vernon, Maj. W. F.

  Slater, J.

  Viant, S. P.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Mr. Hannan and Mr. Wilkins.

  Question put, and agreed to.

  Original Question again proposed.
  It being after Seven o'Clock,The CHAIRMAN left the Chair, further Proceeding standing postponed until after the consideration of Private Business set down by direction of The CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 7.
  Mr. SPEAKER resumed the Chair.

  BATH EXTENSION BILL [Lords] (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed,"That the Bill be now read a Second time."—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]
  7.10 p.m.
  Mr. Leather: I rise to protest against this Second Reading of the Bath Extension Bill and to put to this House and to the Minister of Health the case on behalf of my constituents, which we feel very strongly the Minister has not at any time heard or considered.
  First, may I make it perfectly plain that we in North Somerset know perfectly well that the City of Bath must have more houses and more land on which to build them. There is no doubt about that, but in seeking this land on which to build houses, two principles must be carefully borne in mind. The first is that they must not choose the best possible agricultural land they can find on which to put houses when other land is available. Secondly, we feel the strongest objection to anything in the nature of a large and wealthy cor-
  716
  poration pushing small country authorities around and doing a deal over their heads by which the views of local people have not only been ignored, but completely flouted.
  In regard to the first principle, the question of agricultural land, we are convinced that if the Minister would send any independent inspector to see, he would find sites. I suggest that in the City of Bath and in my constituency there are sites where houses could be built quite reasonably. But, if we read the statement presented by the promoters, we see that the parishes of Claverton, Englishcombe and Monkton Combe—all very small places, but places which mean a lot to the few hundred residents of those villages—are mentioned, and they represent some of the finest agricultural land in Somerset. We protest most strongly against the Minister approving the taking of that land when he cannot possibly be satisfied that other land is not available.
  On the second point, the views of local people, I hope in the few minutes at my disposal to produce ample evidence that the local people are 100 per cent. united against this Bill and that in fact it is fair to say that half the citizens of Bath are against it. I have evidence here to support those statements. In one case, which I will quote, the district council originally sought to find out what were the views of the local people and when they found that 99.9 per cent, were against the Bill, they said,"We will forget about that, and not bother to ask anyone else." That is what has been done, and I submit that this is certainly not democracy.

  717
  Originally the City of Bath hired a planner. Sir Patrick Abercrombie, who produced a monumental document, representing thousands of pounds—a grand plan. They did not propose only to take the few villages I have spoken of, but half the county and villages seven miles from Bath to make the plan complete. Then the local authorities got cold feet. The idea was appeasement—"For heaven's sake give them something to keep them quiet" —and a deal was done over the heads of the people of these parishes. They were not consulted. I submit that the Minister should consider that as and when the Bill is allowed to go upstairs to Committee.
  I would also point out that in one case, in the parish of Claverton, they are proposing to take for housing purposes one of the finest farms in the County of Somerset. Only a few months ago they bought a piece of land on the other side of the road to prevent houses from being built. I wonder whether the Minister is aware of that? They are endeavouring to do what we always understood the Minister disapproved of—they are making this extension for the sole purpose of avoiding having to pay rates to other authorities for education and other facilities. The Minister has told the House time and again that he will not agree to extension of boundaries purely for the convenience of a large authority at the expense of a smaller authority.
  I would like to give the Minister some of the evidence, and I stress that it is independent unsolicited evidence. These letters have come from my constituency and from people in Bath without any asking. There are the Women's Institutes to start with. They are a very powerful force in my constituency—[Laughter.]—I do not know about the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, but he is a brave man if he flouts the Women's Institutes in his constituency and I implore him not to flout them in my constituency. Then there is a letter from the clerk of the Claverton Parish Council at which a resolution was unanimously passed protesting against the proposal; and further evidence is given, which I will read. This is an official letter from the clerk of the parish council:
  "A special meeting of the Council was held on 25th October, 1946. The Clerk to the Rural District Council attended and explained at length the proposed City extension and why it should be opposed."
  718
  That is the clerk of the district council who is reputed or alleged to agree to the Bill.
  "The Chairman proposed a resolution pledging full support to the Bathavon Rural District Council on this matter and it was carried unanimously."
  There has been an outburst of letters in the Bath newspapers in the last few days, from which I will read one or two extracts. One, from the vice-chairman of the parish council, which appeared in Monday's paper, says:
  "It is common knowledge in Bath, whatever the Minister of Agriculture may think or say, that the main object of including a large part of Claverton in the Bath Extension Bill is to obtain land for building.
  Even if Bath City Council succeed in including Claverton Down within the new boundaries, the Minister of Agriculture has stated to Mr. Ted Leather that he would resist any specific proposals to acquire land for housing at Claverton unless it is quite clear that no suitable alternative site of less importance to agriculture is available.
  Alternative sites are obviously available. No large-scale attempt has been made to rebuild the blitzed areas within the city. Here drains, water, gas, electricity are already installed, streets are waiting for houses; sites are ready for homes for people who work in Bath and want to live near their work and not on the top of Claverton Down, three miles away uphill, however much they may enjoy a country walk there along the field paths on Sunday afternoons."
  Another letter from a resident of
  Claverton says:
  "A total of 144 letters was sent to people at Claverton and we have had 78 replies. Of these, 76 said they did not want to be absorbed by Bath, and two said they did.
  My family, of three, received no such letter and pone of our friends have heard anything of these letters. We should all have welcomed the chance to register unyielding opposition."
  The National Farmers' Union have sent evidence, details, figures and statistics of Rainbow Wood Farm at Claverton, Mr. Hignett's Manor Farm at Southstoke, and Mr. Perry's Heather Farm at Weston and they also point out that, in estimating the loss of food to the nation, if more than 50 acres of good land were taken from agriculture it would mean a loss of the milk ration alone to 800 people, and we are all milk-producers in Somerset.
  The next letter I should like to quote comes from the chairman of the Bath Preservation Trust, a prominent and leading citizen in the City of Bath. This is what he says:
  "Claverton Down is one of the last remaining lungs on the immediate outskirts of the

  719
  city within easy walk. The Twerton area has been destroyed in a most heartless manner, the Admiralty hutments and ribbon development on the Warminster Road are deplorable. The Ensleigh huts on the top of Landsdown have pushed the town another quarter of a mile into the country, and so it goes on.
  The cost of services at Claverton Down will be gigantic. Water in Bath is notoriously short. Sewage will have to be taken by a new sewer down into Claverton Village. Rock will nave to be excavated to lay the sewers. If the city put a new population of 1,000–1,500 people at Claverton Down there will be no church, shopping and amusement facilities, and a new and intensive bus service via Widcombe Hill will be called for. To my mind the whole thing is an outrage."
  That, I repeat, is from the chairman of the Bath Preservation Trust.
  I have a letter from the Vice-Chairman of the Bath Ratepayers' Association.[Laughter.] I am delighted to hear that hon. Members disapprove of people paying their rates. He writes:
  "No public meeting has been called by the sponsors of the Bill either within this city or outside.
  The only public meetings of protest have been held by this Association, in the Guildhall, Bath; the meetings were packed, and the public were unanimously against the Bill.
  A protest was made from the gallery of the council chamber by myself, when the Council decided to take the matter over in committee, thereby turning the public and Press out.
  The Council were challenged by letter and Press notice to appear in the Guildhall and defend their policy, but not one appeared at the meeting arranged for them.
  Finally, I quote from the letter which I received from the Minister of Agriculture, of which the Parliamentary Secretary is aware. The Minister wrote:
  "The fact that the extensions sought by the Bath City Corporation—as modified in negotiations with the promoters—are not opposed by the Government does not absolve the Corporation, if the Bill is passed, from the need to obtain the approval of all the interested Departments to the acquisition or use for housing or any other purpose of any of the lands, comprised in the added areas. The Ministry of Health have specifically pointed this out to the promoters.
  I have not so far heard of any specific proposal to acquire or use for housing any particular sites in the parish of Claverton…but if and when any such proposal materialises it will be thoroughly investigated by my Land Commissioner, and you may be assured that we will resist it unless it is quite clear that no new suitable alternative site of less importance to agriculture is available for the purpose in mind."
  720
  I submit that my case is complete and clear. Alternative sites are available if anyone chooses to look. The views of the local people have been ruthlessly ignored and overriden. In the case of the Bathavon Rural District Council, the three representatives for the parishes concerned which would be swallowed up under this Bill knew nothing about the Bill until it was complete. To this day one of them contests the legality of what was done. I believe that he was right. I implore the Minister, before these people are swallowed up in a thoroughly undemocratic and high-handed manner, before some of the best agricultural land is swallowed up for housing when other land is available, to look at this Bill carefully, and if we allow it tonight to go upstairs to the Committee, to see that it is drastically amended in the interests and the desires of those concerned, except those very few in the Bath Corporation who are pushing this Bill.
  7.24 p.m.
  Mr. Snow: I wondered whether I should ask if anyone can join in this private dogfight, but on a matter of principle I should like to resist this Bill, as I resisted the Wolverhampton Bill a fortnight ago—[An HON. MEMBER:"And lost."] —That may be so. That is how the House functions. The House will remember that in the case of the Wolverhampton Bill there was a typical land grab by an ambitious town clerk representing a local authority, using all the machinery at his disposal to bring pressure to bear on the Members of this House. I had no constituency interest in that case, and I have no constituency interest in the case now before us. Nor, with respect, have I any interest in the political views of the hon. Gentlemen who, I suspect, will speak from the other side of the House.
  My view is that if we go on permitting these local authorities to nibble away at the little remaining beautiful countryside of this country, we shall reach the position of the West Country being a sprawling squat mass such as one finds in the Midlands of this country, and which I do not want to see repeated. I should like to make three points. I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the format of this Bill is suspiciously like that of the Wolverhampton Bill. Whole paragraphs are duplicated. One has the impression that town clerks in the various local

  721
  authorities have their eye on a piece of land which they want. They watched the progress of the Wolverhampton Bill and said:"Here boys—we're off." For Lower Penn substitute Claverton, and thus we have an exact duplicate of that Bill presented to this House, and the same sort of arguments put forward, such as are contained in this statement prepared on behalf of Bath.
  We ought to put a stop to this sort of thing. Has the Minister of Health demanded of these local authorities—in this case, Bath—any information as to the density programme for the city? I was discussing the Wolverhampton Bill with a colleague after its Third Reading, and he queried my plea that there should be more flats provided in provincial cities. I did not understand his argument. I do not know of any case in which a county borough has taken the trouble to find out what demand there is, if any, for flats. I wonder whether there has, in this case, been any inquiry? The ambition of many people who come to London is to have a luxury flat. I cannot believe that in these provincial cities there is not a fairly large proportion of people who would like to live in flats. Therefore, why must we have this persistent spread of squat buildings into the countryside? Why cannot we start building up a little, if necessary copying from the example of some North American cities, some of which are very beautiful indeed, and are to my mind examples which we might copy in this country.
  The agricultural question has been raised by the hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather). The House should have an explanation from the Minister, because I understand that the Minister of Health has made it known that he would give his blessing to boundary extensions which could be proved to his satisfaction to be necessary for the provision of houses. We now know that the Minister of Agriculture reserves the right, even if a Bill like this receives its Third Reading, to refuse clearance for that land to be used for house building. Would it not be better to find out, before the Bill receives a Second Reading, whether the Minister of Agriculture would, if the Bill were passed, give clearance; because we understand that he would not do so in this case—so what is the use of the Bill?
  722
  I make this protest because I am a lover of the English countryside which I see bit by bit, year by year, being whittled away. It is about time we waited until the structure of local government is amended and changed before permitting this persistent nibbling away to continue.
  7.29 p.m.
  Mr. Odey (Beverley): As one who is interested in agriculture and food production in this country, I wish to say how much I sympathise with the remarks that have been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather), and the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow). There are very sound grounds for objecting to this Bill from the point of view of food production but in the few minutes that I propose to address the House, I wish to draw attention to Clause 47, which deals with the compensation of local government officers and which, in my view, has a great deal to commend it.
  This House last week considered the South Shields Extension Bill and a Motion was carried which had the effect of replacing a Clause in the South Shields Bill, similar to Clause 47 of this Bill, by the 1948 Regulations. Now in this Bill for the City of Bath, no such Motion has been tabled. I ask is it that the Minister of Health, from whom we understand this proposal emanated, has changed his mind? Has he considered the Debate that took place on the South Shields Bill, and fallen in with the view that was expressed that the 1948 Regulations were quite unsuitable in replacement of the 1933 Act? If there is something wrong with the 1933 Act, the proper thing is for the Minister to bring in an amending Bill and not to insert the 1948 Regulations.
  In the debate on the South Shields Bill, the Parliamentary Secretary joined issue with me about the length of the discussion which had taken place on the 1948 Regulations. When I stated that the 1948 Regulations had been discussed only for a matter of about half an hour, he made the statement that the debate went on for two hours. In point of fact, that is quite untrue. I have referred to the actual Debate. It began at 11.30 and terminated about 12.15. The whole point of my contention is that this question of the 1948 Regulations has never been adequately

  723
  considered by the House. I hope, therefore, that this Bill represents a change of heart on the part of the Minister of Health and that the fact that there is no opposition to Clause 47 does indicate a change of mind so far as the Minister of Health is concerned.
  7.32 p.m.
  Mr. John Cooper: In view of what has been said, I wish to make certain observations on this question of towns being obliged to go out into the countryside if they are to provide their people with decent housing accommodation. I was amazed to hear about an area like Wolverhampton the suggestion made that rather than go out into the countryside, Wolverhampton should build flats. The case of London was quoted. As a member of the London County Council, I can state the fact that in London there is so little available building space within the County of London that we have perforce to build upwards in the form of flats; but I would remind hon. Members that we are building a considerable number of cottage-houses on the estates outside the boundary.
  At one time in Manchester I was connected with a very interesting experiment in the Wythenshawe ward, for which we now have a representative in this House. The same opposition was put up against Manchester going out into the countryside. People who know Wythenshawe will say that today it is a model example of housing development. Those who are perturbed about the swallowing up of agricultural land might take courage from what happened at Wythenshawe. There the Minister of Agriculture did step in. Although we extended the Manchester boundary into Cheshire and were able to give people cottages instead of flats, nevertheless the Minister of Agriculture did protect a considerable number of market gardeners in that area—some were displaced but they were found other spots—and we got development—
  Mr. Snow: I hope that my hon. Friend will not accuse me of asking that tenements should be erected. There is a distinction between the kind of tenement he has in mind and the type of modern flat in which a great many people would like to live.
  Mr. Cooper: It is impossible to have a fair and reasonable distribution of houses on a modern town planning conception for cities the size of Bath without the possibility of broadening out.
  Another interesting point which must not be forgotten is that in this sparsely-populated area around the periphery of the city, many people enjoy cheap rural rates and at the same time all the amenities of the town. When the hon. Member talks about the need for the development of a sewerage system and better transport, is it not a blessing to the countryside to get such modern local government development?
  Mr. Leather: If the hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Cooper) will forgive me, he has missed the point. Quite obviously it could not be, if the farmers who at present make up the countryside were kicked out and told to go elsewhere. That is what we are complaining of.
  Mr. Cooper: There are other people living in the countryside in addition to farmers, as there always have been. Of course, they resent the encroachment of the town and the town stretching out in order to give its people decent housing accommodation. The Bath Council have been sufficiently careful in their development planning to bring in Sir Patrick Abercrombie as a consultant. If it is suggested that his view with regard to development ought not to be given due weight, that is raising a very serious challenge. I noticed that the hon. Member did say there has been an attempt to modify Sir Patrick Abercrombie's original plan. That may be, but nevertheless I submit that, taking the Bath case, the fact that they have called him into consultation is an indication that they do not wish to plan haphazardly, and that they want the most eminent specialist to assist them.
  Mr. Leather: I apologise for interrupting the hon. Member again, but I stress that he should have a look at the Bath plan. The thing we complain about is that, having gone to all this trouble and expense, they have now completely ignored that plan, and have done exactly what Sir Patrick Abercrombie advised them not to do. Claverton was the only part of Sir Patrick Abercrombie's green belt that they had not built on, and now they are going to build on it.
  Mr. Cooper: I think that is an assumption and the same sort of assumption that occurred in the case I have quoted in Manchester. There the assumption was that the city would extend over every available area, but anyone who knows anything about Wythenshawe will know it is just the opposite.
  Mr. Leather: Does the hon. Member know anything about the Bath scheme?
  Mr. Cooper: It is a balanced development.
  Mr. Leather: It is not.
  Mr. Cooper: The Wythenshawe scheme in Manchester is a balanced development in which the Minister of Agriculture has protected the agricultural interests, and it is, as I think most people who are interested in housing development will agree, one of the finest schemes in the country.
  I have joined in this discussion because it appears to me that very narrow-minded motives indeed are being put forward to prevent a large city from taking the opportunity of housing its people reasonably well.
  7.39 p.m.
  Mr. I. J. Pitman: I am glad that the Heather Farm, Weston, has been mentioned, because in my very early youth the milk upon which I was brought up, I am quite convinced, came from that particular farm. Therefore, I have a very real sense of the difficulty of balance between the claims of agriculture and the very human and rightful claims of housing.
  I have the authority of my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather), to say that he will not divide the House if he can obtain from the Minister of Health the assurance for which he asks, that the question of whether there are any other alternative sites on which houses can be erected will be considered before that particular agricultural land to which he has referred is built upon. I believe that that assurance can, and will, be given by the Minister, who I am sure will consult the Minister of Agriculture and go into the precise proposals, when they are made, very carefully indeed, to ensure that no building takes place unless there are no alternatives and then only the minimum. That being so, in the hope that the House might allow me to speak
  726
  again, if anybody else other than the Member most concerned wishes to divide the House and says so, I will cut my remarks down to the minimum.
  There is one misunderstanding, however, under which the hon. Member for Lichfield and Tamworth (Mr. Snow) may be labouring which I ought to clear up; it is that, whereas the Wolverhampton Corporation Bill was bitterly opposed by the county council and the rural district council, that is not the case with this Bill. The county council and the Bathavon Rural District Council have agreed this Bill with the Bath City Corporation, and I wish in this House to support the properly constituted authorities for representing the people both of the rural district, the county and the city which I have the honour to represent
  Mr. Snow: It was only out of a sense of delicacy that I did not mention the Somerset County Council, which I do not think has done its job as a planning authority.
  Mr. Pitman: I submit that I should reserve my answer, because there always are two sides to every case and, if there is not to be a Division, then the proper place where the answer to this case should be given is upstairs in Committee. There is a petition there already, and there is all the machinery available. If that is not sufficient, there is the Report stage and the Third Reading. With those three securities, and with the additional security for which my hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather), has asked, namely that the Ministry should take great care to see that this proper balance is maintained, I commend the Bill to the House.
  7.42 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Blenkinsop): It might be convenient if I intervened now to support the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Pitman) that the matters which we are discussing should properly be considered by the Committee upstairs, which will have the opportunity of considering all these questions rather more fully than we can consider them on the Floor of the House—which is the normal constitutional procedure on Private Bills. I would only add that the general question of the use of the land had been under consideration be-

  727
  tween the Ministries concerned before agreement was given for this Bill to go forward.
  It is true, as was made clear in the letter sent by my right hon. Friend to the hon. Member for Somerset, North (Mr. Leather), that the actual use of specific parts of this new area will still be submitted to the ordinary procedure. There will be the fullest examination of the use of the particular parts of this new area before any housing or other work can be done upon it. The point about the position in Manchester and Wythenshawe is perfectly relevant. We are satisfied that there is the fullest protection of agricultural interests, and the fullest consideration will be taken of them before any project for housing work is started in the area.
  Mr. Pitman: Will the hon. Gentleman give my hon. Friend the undertaking that he will look very carefully into the matter, and that no building will take place unless there is no alternative site?
  Mr. Blenkinsop: That is always the assumption upon which we proceed. We consider any proposals most carefully with the Ministry of Agriculture before any approval is given.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed.
  Resolved:
  "That, in the case of the said Bill, so much of Standing Order 115 (Notices to Members of Committees) as provides that the Committee of Selection shall give not less than seven days' notice, by publication with the Votes and Procedings or otherwise, of the week in which it is necessary for a Member to be in attendance for the purpose of serving as a member of a Committee on an Opposed Private Bill, and Standing Order 177 (Interval between Committal and Sitting of the Committee) be suspended, and that the Committee of Selection have leave to appoint the Committee on the Bill to sit and proceed on Wednesday, 12th July."—[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

  Supply
  [19TH ALLOTTED DAY]

  CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, 1950–51
  Again considered in Committee.
  [Major MILNER in the Chair]
  Question again proposed,
  "That a sum, not exceeding £116,791,000, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1951, for the salaries and expenses of the Post Office, including telegraphs and telephones and a grant in aid."
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

  CLASS VI

    MINISTRY OF CIVIL AVIATION
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    "That a sum, not exceeding £14,180,410, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1951, for the salaries and expenses of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, including certain grants and subsidies."—[Mr. Beswick.]

  CIVIL AVIATION
  7.48 p.m.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: This is the first general Debate that we have had for over a year on the problems of Civil Aviation. We have had a number of smaller Debates on a wide variety of subjects including, for example, the merger of B.S.A.A. and B.O.A.C. and the consequent Air Corporation Bill; on accidents, particularly the accident at Prestwick; on Supplementary Estimates; on charter companies in the Colonies and other encroachments by the Corporations on the charter companies' guaranteed rights. But we have not had a general Debate for over a year. Unfortunately, this will be a short Debate and I shall set a good example by making a short speech.
  I shall do that to enable some of the large number of new Members who have strong views on this subject to express them in a Committee where their expert knowledge is greatly welcomed. I understand that the Parliamentary Secretary to

  729
  the Ministry of Civil Aviation, with our complete approval, will not answer my speech now, but will answer the general Debate at the end, in order to allow a still longer time for other Members to take part. I hope that we shall have another Debate soon, for the short time we are taking tonight is certainly no indication of the importance of the subject.
  There are many grave issues upon which I hope some hon. Members will be able to touch but with which they cannot possibly deal fully. There are the problems of aerodromes and their ownership and purchase. We must consider the position of the great cities which many of us feel are qualified to run their own aerodromes. We must also consider the position of private companies who have built up aerodromes in the past and run them well. These are important subjects which justify the whole of one day in this Committee. There are also the many problems concerned with those charter companies which are blazing a trail for Britain in all corners of the world.
  We welcome the recent announcement that some concessions are to be granted to charter companies, in particular the fact that they will now be allowed to deal direct with the Ministry and not through the Corporations and that the payment of commission to the Corporations will now cease. This is an improvement for which the Conservative Opposition have pressed for a long time, and we welcome it very much indeed. It is a step towards those happier days when the spirit and the words of the Civil Aviation Act will, we hope, be fully and honourably observed. But there are many other problems concerned with charter companies which deserve ventilation in this House, not least among them the strange refusal of various applications for licences and associate agreements, and I hope that a chance will arise, either tonight or later, to have this subject more adequately explored.
  There is the question of air accident procedure in which our national honour is so much involved. I do not intend to devote much time to it tonight; it is a subject which needs a Debate by itself. As the House will know, the Minister of Civil Aviation has the judicial function to inquire into an accident and the administrative function of of setting what he is
  730
  going to do with the findings of an inquiry. This is a delicate duality at any time, but in a largely nationalised industry, where the Minister is responsible for so much of our internal and international flying, it makes him the judge in his own case, and this is clearly wrong. Whatever solution may be found for this problem, the Minister must be bound by the findings of fact of an independent tribunal.
  As I said, this raises great issues. The Government have made approaches to us. Members of the Government have made approaches to Members of the Opposition to see whether we have profitable suggestions to make on this question and we are working closely on it. We are grateful to the Government for having brought us into the picture. I shall not deal further with that subject tonight, but it is one which must eventually be ventilated in this House.
  While I have been dealing with one judicial matter, I should like, if I may, to deal with another matter involving elementary principles of justice. This afternoon we have had a long Debate on a trade union problem which, I understand, has excited very strong feeling. I want to refer briefly to the position of the Aeronautical Engineers Association whose plight has been increased through the amalgamation of British South American Airways and British Overseas Airways Corporation. I see on the Order Paper of another place that there is to be a Motion for Papers next Thursday on this subject. That will probably be a better opportunity for the whole matter to be fully ventilated, but I should like the Parliamentary Secretary, if he will, to assure some of us on one or two points in his concluding speech.
  On the plea of redundancy many former members of British South American Airways who belong to the Aeronautical Engineers Association are now being offered jobs which are far less-well paid, in some cases £2 a week less than they received before, as an alternative to dismissal. A few weeks ago when 13 inspectors of the former South American Airways were offered, instead, hourly rated mechanics jobs, it was a curious fact that none of these men belonged to A.S.S.E.T., the majority union, and that nine of the 13 belonged to the Aeronautical Engineers Association, the existence of which we know is deeply resented by

  731
  the majority union, which alone has the right of membership of the National Joint Panel.
  Only a few days ago, on 29th June, there was a meeting of the National Joint Council. I understand that the trade union representatives stated straight away that they would not in any circumstances consider the redeployment of any workers in British Overseas Airways Corporation who were not members of an affiliated union. They said that if the Corporation refused to comply with this request they would call a strike and that, in that event, the strike would not be limited to any one base. When one unfortunate man asked for help of the National Joint Panel employees' side, he was told by the chairman that he was only interested in helping through the National Joint Council those people who helped the National Joint Council's affiliated unions financially by belonging to them.
  I do not want to be drawn into this internecine issue between the trade unions, but this situation makes nonsense of the solemn assurances given in this House and in another place. For instance, there was the recent assurance of the noble Lord the Minister, that he could give an absolute assurance—and he told the other place this in the previous Session—
  "that individual members of the A.E.A. will be treated in the matter of redundancy on a precisely equal footing with members of the staff of the Corporation who are not members of the A.E.A. There will be no discrimination whatever either in theory or in fact."
  There appears, in fact, to be the grossest discrimination and we should like tonight to have some assurance from the Parliamentary Secretary as to how far the Minister, who made this pledge, is in a position to see that his pledge is carried out.
  I should like next to make some comments on those two Corporations which, of course, occupy the attention of most people when they are dealing with problems of civil aviation. I imagine that nearly everybody in this House has travelled on one or either, or both, of these Corporations, and nothing can exceed the courtesy and efficiency of the staff of both Corporations. If courtesy and efficiency were all that were needed,
  732
  Great Britain would be leading the world in civil aviation. There is, however, a further partnership; there is the Ministry of Civil Aviation and there is Government policy as a whole. There is also the fact that perhaps the whole structure of the Corporations was wrongly conceived and that the efforts of many people are sterilised by this original error.
  I do not think it can be denied that the constant changes in the high command of the Corporations, and particularly of B.O.A.C., have led to lack of confidence throughout these Corporations; and what many people regret in the case of B.O.A.C. is that self-aggrandisement at the top of the Corporation has led to disillusion and distress in the other ranks. The necessary economies of staff which have to be made to run these bodies like commercial operators have often been conducted in such a way as to leave in the minds of those people who still hold jobs no feeling of security of tenure. I know myself of a small travel agency in London which, a few months ago, wanted a booking clerk and advertised for one. They had 71 replies and, of those 71 replies, 38 came from clerical employees of B.O.A.C. alone.
  No one can suggest that that argues confidence in the future. As to the late British South American Airways Corporation, the South American Division of B.O.A.C. as it later became, the strange disappearance of Mr. Booth from his executive position has obviously increased the disquietude there. He is known to many hon. Members as the only man at the top of B.O.A.C. whose whole life has been spent in actual commercial transport and who, in particular, knows the problems of South America, the Caribbean and their transport problems better, probably, than any other person in Great Britain.
  We were told by the hon. Member's predecessor that the amalgamation of these two Corporations would not mean that the smaller Corporation would simply be swallowed up by the larger. But that appears to be what is happening. It is, I think, no secret that Mr. Booth applied business methods in his day-to-day administration in the Corporation. Was he allowed to go, or rather encouraged to go, because his departure would create fewer political

  733
  complications than any other administrative change? There is a strong reason to believe that that is so.
  I asked the Parliamentary Secretary whether he would give us the travel figures for the last six months on the South America and mid-Atlantic routes. He told me a moment or two ago that although he could do so later, he would not be in a position to give the figures tonight. It is my belief that the figures may well show a significant drop in the percentage of that trade enjoyed by the British Corporation. These are matters deeply affecting the prestige and prosperity of Britain and they also affect very considerably the taxpayers of the country.
  In the last five years up to the end of the present financial year, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has cost the taxpayer £124 million. As to the Corporations, they have lost in the same period £44 million. Though there are many excuses and many explanations—and some of them are well justified—a loss of this kind cannot possibly be allowed to pass uncommented on in the House of Commons. It is argued that much of the loss is due to the fact that B.O.A.C., in particular, has far too many aircraft, as one man said, eating their heads off in the various aerodromes of the world. Those hon. Members interested in these things could well profit by looking at the intended timetable of the Hermes and the Canadairs when in service, and will find from that, I think, that the lesson has not yet been well learned.
  I see the hon. Member for Itchen (Mr. Morley) opposite, and I should like to refer to the stopping of the Solent flying-boat service, which has been flying almost to full capacity for the last six to nine months. Many of us have the strongest possible confidence in flying-boats. We believe that for an island Empire like ours, flying-boats should have a particular appeal, not based on sentiment alone, but on commercial considerations—flyingboats with which the name of Air-Commodore Brackley will be for all time associated. It now means that no Corporation from Britain will have any flying-boats whatever operating for some years in any corner of the world. This in a country like ours—a manufacturing country—seems quite deplorable, and a very bad preparation indeed for the Princess flying-boat, when she comes along.
  734
  With the closing of the Southampton base and the intended closing of Augusta in Sicily by October this year, which has only recently been completed at great expense, there will be no more flying-boats flying from Great Britain for years to come. When we consider that the cost of the Southampton base was under £200,000, what a trifling economy it seems to make for such disastrous results. Thereafter the only flying-boats operating from Britain will be those of a private charter line, Aquila Airways, to which we wish every success. They have a domestic service from Southampton to Glasgow and Edinburgh, and an overseas service from Southampton to Madeira. When the Johannesburg service was cancelled, they asked to take it over with flying-boats, but were refused.
  In dealing with the Corporations, I wish to make a brief reference to British European Airways. They have undoubtedly made strenuous efforts to turn themselves into a commercial structure, but it may be that the whole composition of their Corporation, as, indeed, of the larger one, was faulty from the start. It might, perhaps, interest the House to hear this brief comparison of their operating costs with what would be the operating costs of charter companies using the same aircraft on the same routes. In 1949, which is the last full year for which we have information—though we have not yet had the full account—we are told that B.E.A. flew 15,500,000 miles, and that their revenue was £6,400,000. This shows that the revenue per aircraft mile was 8s. 3d. They flew Vikings, Dakotas and Rapides. All three types of aircraft may be hired from the charter industry for less than 8s. 3d. a mile, so it is safe to say that if the whole business had been contracted out there would have been a profit.
  We have not had the accounts for this year, but we have them for last year, and with the same aircraft and with the same mileage, private operators claim that they could have made a profit of £472,000 instead of a loss of £2,500,000. Therefore the Exchequer would have had £3 million more, quite apart from the ordinary taxes from the private operators profits. I hope that when the Minister has had time to study this calculation he will later give us his comment on it, either tonight, if possible, or later on.

  735
  I do not claim that a single private operator could have achieved that successful result, but a series of small manageable units of some 15 to 25 aircraft could achieve results of that kind. The taxpayers of Great Britain, sorely tried now, and to be still more sorely tried by the inescapable obligations of the British Empire throughout the world, cannot afford to reject any chance of economy, coupled as it would be with highly efficient management.
  Mr. Mikardo: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether his calculation was based on the same rates of wages and on the same working conditions?
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: It was the very first question we applied, because, although it may surprise hon. Members opposite to know this, we also believe in the principle of model employment. The wages and pension rights would be exactly the same as those guaranteed under any Government Corporation.
  That is really all I want to say, but I would not like to close on what might otherwise appear to be a largely gloomy note. This has not been an unsuccessful year in aviation. It has seen some splendid enterprises and magnificent achievements. For example, it has seen the first flight of the Brabazon I, and I personally, and, I am sure, many of my hon. Friends on both sides would like to wish to the Brabazon I, its pilot, Captain Pegg, and its crew, every possible success, and to pay a tribute to all those in the Bristol Aircraft Company and elsewhere whose courage have made her flights possible.
  In paying tribute of that kind, we must not forget the taxpayers whose large bill will have to be paid in the future. To them I should like to say this—and I hope it does not lead to an indignant denial from the Cunard Company—that if the Queen Elizabeth had to be built today it would cost £12 million, and that even though she was built at less than half that cost before the war she could not be built without subsidy.
  We have the Brabazon I, and a few weeks ago the Gloster Meteor recovered for Britain the prize in the 1,000-kilometre closed circuit race held for the last four years by the United States of America. The year has seen the highly successful
  736
  trips abroad of the Vickers Company and other great companies, and it has seen, perhaps, above all, the record flights of the Comet to Rome and back in four hours, to Cairo in five hours, and to Copenhagen in 78 minutes.
  Our aircraftsmen, mechanics, engineers, and directors are the best in the world, and they can take genuine pride in what has happened. I hope they know that this House shares that pride and realises the sacrifices involved. While we are rejoicing in the record achievements of, for example, the Comet, many of us know that she would not be flying as she is today but for the work of the D.H. Flying Wings, the last of which crashed very recently, with their brave pilots from the family firm who have done so much to maintain our honour in the world.
  8.9 p.m.
  Mr. Ralph Morley: I must apologise to the Committee for again referring to a subject which I discussed when we were last debating civil aviation in this Committee and which has already been referred to by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) in his eloquent and interesting speech, that is, the decision of B.O.A.C. to cease operating the Solent flying-boats from Southampton to South Africa, and to substitute instead the land plane Hermes.
  I feel, in the first place, that this change will mean a loss of passengers to this particular service. There is a specialist type of passenger who has always preferred the flying-boat. That type, of course, is the elderly passenger and the invalid. They have preferred the flying-boat on account of the greater comfort of travel as compared with the land plane. I fear, also, that perhaps when this change is made we shall lose some of the South Africans of Boer origin who used to travel from Southampton to South Africa by means of the Solent flying-boats. They travelled in these boats because of greater comfort and convenience. If the Hermes is substituted for the flying-boats, then I think that their patriotism or racial feelings will induce them to travel by K.L.M., or perhaps even by Sabena, rather than by Hermes.
  I am also instructed by people who know something about aviation that both K.L.M. and South African Airways will

  737
  have Constellation planes in the near future in their services. I am informed that the Constellation plane is a very efficient and attractive plane indeed, and is likely to prove more attractive to passengers than the Hermes. I am not an expert and cannot say that with certainty, but those are the instructions I have received from people who claim to be experts in this matter. This change will mean a loss to this country of passengers flying from England to South Africa.
  The change has been made, apparently, on the ground that it will effect a very considerable economy, but it is true that the operational cost of the Solents has been reduced fairly considerably in recent months. The present operational cost is £118 per flying hour. I imagine that cost will compare fairly favourably with the operational cost of most land planes in the service of B.O.A.C. The load factor of the Solents is quite good. I think it is quite as good as the load factor of the Argonauts, which were substituted for the flying-boat service in the Far East. The executives and workers in the flying-boat base at Hythe believe that, with a proper streamlined organisation, Solent flying-boats could be made to pay their way fully. Even supposing that they cannot be made to pay their way fully in the next two or three years and there is a loss, I do not think that loss would be more than £100,000 a year. That would mean that in the next three years, by the time the Princess boats are in operation, the total loss on the Solent planes would have been £300,000.
  We have to offset that probable loss against the certain loss that would accrue because this change is being made to land planes. First, we would have the loss of the cost of construction of the airport at Berth 50, Hythe. As the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire said, that airport cost £150,000 to construct, and if it is no longer in use, that is the loss. Then large sums of money have been lavished in past years upon the maintenance base at Hythe, which would be lost if the Solents no longer flew from the airport.
  Then there is the cost of training the navigators, the pilots and the technicians to work the flying-boats. That cost has been very considerable during the past years. If flying-boats no longer run, either those men will be lost entirely to the service of civil aviation and will transfer
  738
  their abilities and acquired skill to other industries and occupations, or else they will have to be trained in the service of land planes. Then there is the cost of the Solents themselves. They cost something like £ million to the taxpayer of this country—indeed more than £2 million when alterations made to them are taken into consideration; and I do not think any hon. Member believes that we are going to get anything like £2 million from selling them.
  Adding these things together, it does not seem to me that the plea of economies to be effected by changing from flying-boats to land planes is a very valid one to advance. I know that, in all probability, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation will tell me that there is considerable cost in maintaining the air bases of all the flying-boats. I believe, however, that if offers from other countries had been taken up, it would have been found that the cost of maintaining the flying-boats would have been shared by those countries.
  Last December, for example, Mr. Halstead, a leading statesman from Southern Rhodesia, was speaking in this country. He said that Southern Rhodesia would be quite willing to share in the expense of maintaining the flying-boat base at Victoria Falls. He regretted the fact that B.O.A.C. had decided to discontinue running flying-boats. On behalf of Southern Rhodesia he offered to share in the expense of maintaining the base at Lake Victoria, because that would have enabled Southern Rhodesia to avoid very heavy charges for making a land-plane base.
  More recently, Mr. Walinsky of Northern Rhodesia, who I believe is Prime Minister of the Northern Rhodesian State—I do not quite understand the constitutional position there—said to Sir Miles Thomas that the two Rhodesias, together with Nyasaland, would be willing to share in the expense of maintaining flying-boat bases, so as to avoid the expense on their part of constructing bases for land planes. As far as I can make out, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has taken no notice of what I should have thought were the very acceptable offers of those two gentlemen.
  The nigger in the woodpile, as far as I can see, is a gentleman called Mr. Whitney Straight, Deputy-Chairman of

  739
  British Overseas Airways Corporation. Apparently, Mr. Whitney Straight does not like flying-boats. He does not like them, apparently, because flying-boats are not manufactured in the United States of America; and Mr. Whitney Straight has a preference for articles which are manufactured in those States. I hope that is not ungenerous, but I am just repeating the opinions of my own constituents and what is current gossip amongst the people employed in the airport base at Hythe. Southampton.
  The trade unionists employed there are especially annoyed with Mr. Whitney Straight because, apparently, he told a deputation he interviewed in 1947 that he was going to give Solent flying-boats another three years in which it could be seen if they could show a profit. Almost immediately after giving them another three years to make a profit, the fleet of flying-boats was cut down from 18 to 12, thus increasing their overhead charges, and lessening their opportunities of making a profit. And the decision to discontinue the Solent flying-boats was taken long before the 1950 datum line announced by Mr. Whitney Straight.
  I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary what is the position of the Princess flying-boat. It is a magnificent job of work. I am informed that Mr. Whitney Straight is also opposed to the Princess flying-boats, and that in February of this year he inspired an article in the"Daily Express" which condemned the Princess flying-boats. If the Solent flying-boats are to be discontinued, if Southampton airport is to be continued upon a repair and maintenance basis only, and if all the trained technicians, navigators and pilots go into other occupations, in three years' time, when the Princess flying-boats are ready, are we going to be told by Mr. Whitney Straight or by B.O.A.C. that it is impossible to run them because the personnel, skilled staff and technicians are not available at Southampton airport for those aircraft to be properly run? These flying-boats have cost the taxpayer £9 million and probably they are the finest achievement in the whole realm of civil aviation. I sincerely hope that they will be running in a year or so from Southampton airport.
  I should like to know whether my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has consulted the Defence Ministers in this
  740
  matters of the abandonment of flying-boats. Have not flying-boats a considerable and almost indispensable part to play in the proper defence of this Realm? Is it not a fact that flying-boats can operate in places and under conditions where land-planes cannot operate? As the science of aviation progresses, aircraft get bigger and speedier year by year and require bigger and bigger landing grounds upon which to land. The Brabazon is an example of that fact. The biggest landing ground in the world is the ocean, and it is also the cheapest landing ground. I know that to describe the ocean as a landing ground is something approaching a "bull," but the Committee will understand what I mean.
  It seems rather foolish that this country, an island with great overseas connections, should abandon the use of the flying-boat in civil aviation. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will try to persuade B.O.A.C. to change their minds in this matter of discontinuing the Solent flying-boat. Perhaps he will be able also to persuade them to find another sphere of employment for Mr. Whitney Straight where his great abilities would be employed more to the advantage of the country as a whole.
  8.24 p.m.
  Mr. Perkins: The Committee will remember that in 1937 the House asked for an inquiry into civil aviation. The inquiry was granted and the committee reported in the spring of 1938. The committee used these words about the state of British air transport at that time:
  "We view with extreme disquiet the position disclosed by our inquiry."
  The Government of the day put down a whitewashing Motion to which an Amendment was moved by the Opposition. It was moved by no less a person than the present Prime Minister who was then Leader of the Opposition. The Amendment read as follows:
  "In view of the disclosures of long-standing ministerial neglect and of gross inefficiency in the management of a heavily subsidised company, the explanations and proposals of His Majesty's Government cannot be regarded as adequate to allay public concern."
  My only regret is that the Prime Minister is not here today on the Front Opposition Bench to move a similar Amendment, because what was true then is equally true today.

  741
  I believe that and grave public concern in this country about this nationalised industry with its ever mounting losses. The general public believe that there has been gross mismanagement in these Corporations. I believe the general public today would welcome some kind of inquiry into the whole business in order to clear the air. If some such inquiry took place the result would be very similar to the result of the last inquiry, and the committee's report would contain the same words:
  we view with extreme disquiet the position disclosed by our inquiry."
  The need today is greater than it was at that time. At that time the operating organisation, the chosen instrument, was Imperial Airways with two Government directors on the board. It was possible to raise the question of their conduct on the Floor of the House every day at Question Time, but that is not possible today. Hon. Members in all quarters know that owing to the rules of this House it is almost impossible to raise any matter connected with B.O.A.C. or the other chosen instruments. These Corporations today work in secrecy behind closed doors and very little information is available for any Member of Parliament. Sometimes a little titbit escapes the censor and something slips out. Only a few weeks ago a little bit of information got out and it was very satisfactory information, which I am sure will bring joy in all quarters of the Committee.
  I should like to make my position clear, as I have been rather critical of these Corporations. I voted in the House for setting up B.O.A.C. I want B.O.A.C. to continue. I want it to be a success, but I want to see an end to these ever-recurring losses. I want to see B.O.A.C. run as a business concern. These little bits of information that have come out have shown us that in the last two years the administrative costs of B.O.A.C. have been reduced by £ a month. They have also shown us that since April, 1948, 47 employees who were receiving salaries of from £1,000 up to £3,500 a year have been dismissed, and they have also shown us that within the last three years the number of people employed by B.O.A.C., after allowance has been made for taking over the South American run, has dropped from 26,000 to 17,000—a drop of 9,000, or pretty well one-third of the
  742
  whole staff. The same is true to a lesser extent of British European Airways.
  I am sure the Committee are very glad to know that this organisation is being streamlined and that these lampreys—for that is what they are—are being swept away. That is indeed good news. But I want to ask the Minister—and I should like to put it before some committee of inquiry: why were these 9,000 people ever taken on? During the time that they were employed by B.O.A.C. what were they doing? Were they playing cards? I suggest that here is something which might usefully be put to some impartial committee charged with the duty of investigating the whole operation of B.O.A.C.
  Then there is the question of the charter companies. The hon. Member for Reading, South (Mr. Mikardo) raised a very important point, whether the charter companies paid the same scale of salaries as the Corporation.
  Mr. Mikardo: No, I did not ask that as a question about present payments. They are paid at present because there is an obligation under Section 41 of the Act. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) gave particulars of a hypothetic calculation which he said had been made against certain conditions, and I merely asked whether those conditions enabled the payment of the regular wage.
  Mr. Perkins: I am connected with the trade union that makes this arrangement with the employers, and I rang up the trade union this morning to make quite certain that they were completely satisfied and they gave me the assurance which the hon. Gentleman has repeated, namely, that old-established, recognised charter companies are in fact paying approximately the same type of salaries as those paid by B.O.A.C.
  The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire put forward certain figures which suggest that these private enterprise charter companies can operate far cheaper than B.O.A.C. I do not know the rights or wrongs of it, but I think that probably what the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire has said is perfectly true. I think that these charter companies could undersell B.O.A.C., but I should like this referred to some impartial tribunal in order to see whether it is true or not, and

  743
  whether in fact the overheads of B.O.A.C. are not far too high. That is not quite all.
  I want the inquiry to go farther afield than merely these two Corporations. I want it to take up the whole question of accident procedure and the present position of municipal airports and to make suggestions as to who should own and run them. I want it also to look at the position of the aero clubs and the charter companies and the desirability of having some kind of Port of London Authority to take over all flying control and all the "met" services in this country. I should also like it to look into this new trade union which has been formed—A.E.A. I want them to have a roving commission right through the whole of British aviation, to look at what is going wrong, to improve it for the future and to make suggestions in order that our civil aviation may be the best in the world.
  I have three minutes left of the time allotted me, and I want to ask the Secretary of State two questions. First, as to flying clubs. He knows, as well as I do, that the Air Training Corps subsidy for flying clubs will only go to certain flying clubs, only to the oldest flying clubs, in fact only to the rich flying clubs. The poor flying clubs out in the country will get nothing out of this scheme from the Air Training Corps. What does he propose to do to save these flying clubs from extinction?
  I understand—I hope I am right—that certain negotiations have been going on. There are rumours that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to pay back to all these flying clubs 9d. a gallon on all petrol they use in their club aeroplanes. I hope that is true. I hope that the Minister can tell us today something about that. I warned him not to make the mistake of giving this grant only to the clubs' aircraft, because, if he does, he will create a black market. The answer to that problem is to give this rebate to all civil aircraft flying internally in this country.
  Lastly, can the Minister tell us how Green Airway I is progressing. I raised this matter three months ago. I was then told that a committee was going into the whole matter, and that negotiations were going on with the Air Ministry. Has any progress been made in those negotiations, or must we await until the inevitable
  744
  accident happens and public opinion demands an inquiry?
  8.35 p.m.
  Mr. Pargiter: There are one or two points raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) with which I should like to deal, but before doing so I cannot help commenting upon the speech that has just been made by the hon. Member for Stroud and Thornbury (Mr. Perkins), who referred to the mounting losses of B.O.A.C. I should have thought that the efforts made by B.E.A. during the last year were deserving of the highest commendation, and that the efforts being made by B.O.A.C. to make their organisation fit the job also deserve commendation. If they are doing a good job in bringing their administrative staff into line with their requirements, it would be much better if, instead of telling them that there is to be an inquiry, we said, "You are doing the job very well, so keep on doing it." We should give them credit for the things they are doing.
  I was very glad to note the tributes that were paid to those on the manufacturing side for the very splendid achievements that have been made as a result of cooperation between the designers, management and workers in the industry. They all share equally the praise in this matter. With all respect, I do not think A.E.A. is very much concerned on that particular side; in fact, I do not think they are to be found there.
  I should also like to say a word about the charter companies. I think there is a parallel here which Members, particularly those connected with London, will recall. The London General Omnibus Company used to run the buses in the London streets. They had a very heavy responsibility administratively, having to charter routes, arrange services and provide buses on unremunerative routes, which any company giving a general service has to do. A few people muscled in, seeing a chance to make a profit, and put buses on the most profitable routes, saying how much cheaper they could do the job. The position got so bad that the House had to take definite steps to remedy the situation.
  This analogy may not be complete, but there is an analogy here in the case of the charter companies operating on our main line routes. It should not go out

  745
  that a charter company can do this work so much better and so much cheaper. That would not be the case if they had the overall responsibility to run scheduled services, charter new routes and try out aircraft, which is a very long and costly process before they can be put into operation. We must have regard to these factors. It is not a fair comparison to suggest that the charter companies can run so much per mile cheaper than B.O.A.C.
  Air-Commodore Harvey: The hon. Member has made this assertion, but does he realise that many charter companies have offered to take over the unprofitable routes of B.E.A.?
  Mr. Pargiter: They will take them over on conditions.
  Air-Commodore Harvey: No.
  Mr. Pargiter: It is the conditions under which they will take them over which very much concern us. In any case, there is no guarantee that they will have stability. They may be able to do certain things for a certain time, but I am not satisfied that they have the stability required to provide the services now being provided by B.E.A.
  Air-Commodore Harvey: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that when the transport authority is granting the licence they take up all the points about finance and maintenance about which he is talking?
  Mr. Pargiter: They do not grant the licence unless they are satisfied about the matter. He would be a bold man who would say that the council would grant a licence for a company to run on a particular route. That is in the lap of the gods, and I imagine that some of the companies put forward their applications with their tongues in their cheeks, knowing what the result will be.
  I should like to say a word about the Aeronautical Engineers Association, and particularly its relationship to the joint panels within the industry. The joint panels were established from the recognised bona fide trade unions which had membership within the organisation of the general airways structure. It was a satisfactory organisation, co-operating as it did with the management in many branches. It should also be borne in mind that the trade unions, from which
  746
  this panel was drawn, in the early days of the war took a very grave step when they agreed to the relaxation agreement permitting people from outside into the industry. I do not think any one could minimise the gravity of that step from the trade union point of view.
  They were giving something away, but they required certain specific safeguards, and the safeguards they wanted covered the event of redundancy in the industry. Never mind who these men were. They came into the industry as a result of that agreement, and should there be redundancy they should be the first to go out. I invite the hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) to see what the standing of these people was.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I tried to limit what I said strictly to the undertaking given by the Minister, who made no reference to any considerations of that kind, but said that in the matter of redundancy or reemployment, membership of the A.E.A. would not penalise any man. That undertaking has not been kept. I do not doubt but that the Minister would like to honour it, and I am waiting to hear why it cannot be honoured.
  Mr. Pargiter: The Minister is bound, in spite of what he would like to do for the A.E.A., by the agreement arrived at by recognised trade unions, by which they arranged redundancy arrangements in the industry. It was not what the Minister wants or would like to do; it is what certain cast iron agreements provide and that is what he must do. Hon. Gentlemen ought not at this stage to be putting it in such a way that it would appear that they would be anxious or at least happy to break the agreements, which were solemnly arrived at in 1939.
  Mr. Niall Macpherson: Is the hon. Gentleman seriously contending that nobody should be admitted to this industry in full status since the time when these relaxation agreements were agreed to, because that is the assumption which one must make from his argument?
  Mr. Pargiter: No. I would invite hon. Members to have a look at these agreements and understand them before speaking about them. I have not the time to explain the whole ramifications of the relaxation agreements, nor would it be

  747
  proper for me to do so. Anyone can apply to a recognised trade union who will advise them. They do not operate to prevent people coming into the industry. The question of redundancy must be dealt with in accordance with the agreements arrived at, and I do not think that anybody would like to break them.
  The A.E.A is an organisation which has no background, and no capacity in the engineering industry as a whole. It should be borne in mind that workers in the engineering industry are not peculiar to one part of it, like the people who are in this splinter section which is called the A.E.A. The men who work in this industry generally can work in other sections of the engineering industry as well as the aircraft section. The arrangement by which a union is recognised as serving, by and large, the whole requirements of men skilled in an engineering capacity, be they engaged in aircraft or general engineering, has long been accepted and recognised generally, as well as by employers' federations in this country.
  We must be clear about this. There is no question of somebody being bludgeoned, hut of the way the system shall operate. The panels say quite rightly, "We consist of representatives of recognised and bona fide trade unions, and we are not interested in splinter organizations" As an engineer I am not interested in splinter organisations, either. It is quite easy in any set—up to get a dissident body. You find somebody who is not quite satisfied and build round him. One can build up some sort of an organisation. One can say to a man: "You are not really as other men are. You are a little bit better. Let us make an organisation and see whether we can get recognition and so get a bit more pay for ourselves."
  There is a good deal of that sort of thing done, but it should not be countenanced on any side of this House. I hope that hon. Members opposite will take note of that. I hope that they will go into questions of the origin and structure of the A.E.A. and I am sure they will come back to the position that it does not speak as a representative body with a background but as a body trying to dodge an agreement that was arrived at between trade unions and employers generally. As such it ought not to be
  748
  countenanced. These things ought to be said so that hon. Members do not get a wrong impression of how trade unions behave in these matters, that they are out to crush this, that or the other body.
  I view with alarm the coming into being of splinter bodies. I do not think that they make for good co-operation between employees and managements because they are an irritating sore on the body of the trade union movement. If they are encouraged, the general effect is not towards good work in industry or good relationships between the different sides of industry. I would ask hon. Gentlemen opposite not to pursue this matter without closer investigation. The main union concerned is the Amalgamated Engineering Union, which has a very fine record of co-operation and war effort. It was the leader in the suggestion that there should be relaxation, and it is determined that there shall not now be an attempt, in spite of what any Minister or anybody else says, to get round an agreement already arrived at.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I do not propose to deal in detail with what the hon. Gentleman has just said. Other hon. Members can make their speeches, but there will be a Debate next week in another place on this subject. If I do not reply to the hon. Gentleman, it does not mean that I accept the accuracy of what he says.
  Mr. Pargiter: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has said that. I would ask him not to accept what I say but to go into the matter a little more thoroughly. If he wants information from this side, where we are in possession of the facts, we shall be very glad to see that he is properly briefed on the matter. We can see that there is not much need to go further at this stage if there is to be a Debate in another place. We must really establish, on behalf of bona fide trade unions, that we do not intend to encourage the formation of such organisations as the A.E.A. and that we shall do our best to see that they go out of existence.
  8.50 p.m.
  Lieut.-Colonel Sir Walter Smiles: I want to call attention to two subjects which have scarcely been discussed tonight. I shall hardly touch upon the disagreement between the

  749
  A.E.U. and the other smaller unions. When I was in the Ministry of Aircraft Production during the war I saw the formation of the little union in Northern Ireland—it has grown bigger since then—and it was of great use in the middle of the war. I have been principally concerned with the A.E.U. during my life, and I have no intention of interfering in this internal disagreement.
  I want to raise with the Parliamentary Secretary the question of the accident to the Dakota flying from Belfast to Manchester on 19th August last. There was a very full investigation under the chairmanship of Mr. Cohen, and I think that all of us who had relations or friends killed in that disaster welcomed the thorough investigation made by the Court of Inquiry.
  I wish to speak about Part 6 of the Report of the Court of Inquiry which deals with the recommendations which were made after the accident had been investigated. One of the first recommendations was that a standard procedure should be introduced for landing in bad visibility and bad weather. I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will answer that when he replies. Captain Sherwood, who was a pilot of the B.O.A.C., disagreed with the majority findings and wanted even more particular arrangements and a safety height maintained for longer than did the two other members of the court.
  The next recommendation was that there should be an approach chart for all aerodromes showing the height of all the hills and mountains surrounding the aerodromes. It was suggested it would be a simple and comparatively inexpensive matter to see that these approach charts were printed and in the hands of any pilot approaching an aerodrome at which B.E.A.C. and B.O.A.C. land. I should also like the Parliamentary Secretary's report on this.
  Another suggestion was that when pilots have a complaint to make about the controls given to them as they approach an aerodrome, they should report the faults in writing. Is that being done now? Another matter was that some degree of responsibility for safe navigation should be placed on the control officers. The court could not come to an agreement on that and said that it was a matter for further investigation.
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  Has it been investigated or is it being investigated? It is an important matter.
  There is no doubt that a bad accident like this one, or like the one which happened in Wales to the Tudor, is no advertisement at all for civil aviation. After the accident I made some inquiries into the ground and airborne equipment, and I understand that in April, 1945—more than five years ago—contracts were placed with three firms—G.E.C., Marconi and Pye—relating to some of the installations which were required on the ground for aircraft approaching aerodromes in bad weather.
  At the moment some of those items of equipment have been made and two are working in South Africa, one in Pretoria and one somewhere else in the Union of South Africa, but I understand that not one of those modern equipments is working in the United Kingdom today. I am told that seven stations are ready to be equipped, but they have not been inspected by the Aeronautical Inspection Department, nobody knows that they are going to be used, and no buildings or even foundations have been provided for the purpose of establishing the modern equipment at those stations. I should like to have some information on that point from the Parliamentary Secretary.
  I am not sure if it has been decided yet whether the Manchester Corporation or the Ministry of Civil Aviation will own the aerodrome at Ringway, Manchester. At any rate, to make that small aerodrome safe it will probably have to be extended. The pilots to whom I have spoken are not yet satisfied with it, and if a machine like the Brabazon is ever used to fly over from America for the Manchester November Handicap, no one on board, whether pilot or passenger, will care when he looks down through fog whether the Manchester Corporation or the Ministry own the aerodrome. All they will care about is whether it is a safe aerodrome to land on. That is the first matter which the Parliamentary Secretary should think about.
  Flying-boats have been mentioned by the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley), especially the 10 remaining Solents that are to be discontinued in the near future. I have interviewed technical experts on this subject and am told that with similar engine

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  capacity a flying-boat will take 45 people and a land aircraft only 44, so the advantage is slightly in favour of the flying-boat. Section 14 of the Civil Aviation Act deals with Charter aircraft. If B.O.A.C. are giving up all flying-boats they should give an opportunity either to shipping companies or charter companies to use them.
  There should be a five-year plan. Time must be made available for the charter companies. It is no use playing cat-and-mouse with them, letting them start a service, finding it pays well, taking it away again. That is the way the charter companies have been treated in the last few years. For instance, there was an efficient charter company running between Basra and England, carrying the employees from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. That service has been taken away from the charter companies and put under the auspices of B.O.A.C.
  The quarrels between the charter companies and B.O.A.C. resemble a couple of little girls wanting to carry each other's dolls in their own prams. For instance, on the West African route, when some of the charter companies offered to take B.O.A.C. passengers in their planes, B.O.A.C. refused. They also refused to allow wives of civilians in West Africa to go on charter planes, and thereby separated wives from husbands for two or three months and gave them the extra expense of running another home. That is a petty thing for a Government institution to do, and if the Parliamentary Secretary has never heard about it I can name him the book in which this was mentioned
  The people of South Africa do not like the service of flying-boats to Southampton being discontinued. The people in Durban at one time used to come right through on a comfortable trip. I know, for I have flown that way myself from Cairo to Khartoum, to Uganda, and on to Nyasaland. If ever I made that journey again, I should like to do it by flying-boat, which is certainly far more comfortable than was the trip out to India in a York. I am told by technicians that flying-boats would be just as fast, as comfortable and as safe as any land aeroplane, and I think that if the Corporations do not intend to make use of them the charter companies should have the chance of doing so.
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  Then there is the question of the cost of bases. The total cost of flying-boat bases last year amounted only to £158,000. Southern Rhodesia are building a big irrigation dam at a cost of £1 million. They thought that they would support two birds with one dam, that they would have their water for irrigation and at the same time provide a landing area for flying-boats. Mr. Halstead, the Southern Rhodesian Minister of Commerce, has already commented on the fact that his country could embark upon an expenditure of millions of pounds on the construction of land aerodromes for the use of somebody else's Constellations.
  Look at the fares. What is the cheapest flying fare in the whole of the world? It is 4½d. a mile, which is even cheaper than a London taxi driver can do, and is on the return route from Sydney to Auckland, which is a flying-boat service. Then there is the question of costs and the amounts already spent on the great new aircraft which are coming along. On the Brabazon, £11 million has been spent, and on the Princess, £7 million. On the Princess it is expected to get back £1 million in the first year, but I hesitate to say that we will get back £500,000 in a year on the Brabazon.
  I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will have read the recent Keith-Lucas lecture, in which confidence is expressed that in the future the larger flying-boat will win. The London Airport is to cost £40 million. In this country, that is chicken-feed, but in smaller countries like Denmark or Norway, for instance, £40 million is as much as their total expenditure for a whole year. Water is available for flying-boats, but aerodromes may be too expensive. In the recent war flying-boats were not used so very much on this side of the Atlantic, but America used them in the war against Japan. There was the very famous "Horseshoe" route, and when the Japanese bombs fell the aerodromes were not ruined. The aircraft were refuelled under makeshift arrangements from tiny little boats.
  It would be a very dangerous thing for this country if we did not keep an insurance company of pilots and engineers to maintain a fleet of flying-boats. In the old days people used to sneer at these things. When the projected service between the U.S.A. and Bermuda was

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  mentioned in 1936, all the shipping magnates laughed, but today more passengers are carried between Bermuda and the U.S.A. in the air than in any steamboat. Naturalists have pointed out why the great dinosaurs of thousands of centuries ago became extinct. It was because there were no "aerodromes" big enough for these heavy creatures to land upon.
  9.4 p.m.
  Mr. Rankin: I want to deal as briefly and concisely as I can with certain aspects of the Scottish air services, but I feel impelled to say that I thought the hon. and gallant Member for Down, North (Sir W. Smiles) was not quite fair in saying that the Brabazon had cost £11 million. He must know that in the capital cost of that aircraft, even admitting that it is large, there is embodied the cost of runways, hangars, and all the research which will enable us to produce any type of aircraft up to £300,000 without the least difficulty. I think it only fair that that point should be kept in mind in dealing with the cost of the Brabazon.
  Unlike the hon. Member for Stroud and Thornbury (Mr. Perkins), I want to pay a tribute to the work of B.E.A., particularly in Scotland. They are providing us with a very fine service which from the point of view of sufficiency, of range, and of frequency is meeting the demand placed upon it. Practically every major town in Scotland now has an ample service—
  Colonel Gomme-Duncan: No.
  Mr. Rankin: —and B.E.A. have even gone out of their way to encourage the development of air services and the development of air-mindedness among certain sections of the population who, when a service was first given them did not show a great deal of enthusiasm in supporting it. We had to withdraw the service from Edinburgh and because of demand, a demand which as far as I know, is met wherever it is made, we restored the service to Edinburgh. Perhaps my hon. Friend may be able to say tonight how far we were justified in doing that.
  But while I pay tribute to the general efficiency of the services in Scotland, there are certain problems which are still not
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  being met. There is the problem of comfort. Comfort is always an asset in travel, and especially in aircraft. In Glasgow we still have an air terminal which is not merely insufficient to meet the demand but insufficient to give that comfort which we want to give to people who are waiting. During July and August air passengers find themselves crowded out of that tiny little waiting room, and when it is too full they have a converted stable into which they may go until the time of departure. That terminal is not a credit to Glasgow nor to B.E.A. and I hope my hon. Friend will note that.
  The second point with regard to comfort is the condition of the aircraft. The Dakota which carries on the service from Renfrew to London is a fine utility plane but unfortunately, Dakotas are of various vintage and some of the vintages are perhaps a trifle more obscure than others. I do not know how far they date into the past but I have had the experience of sitting in the rear seats of Dakotas, from Renfrew to London, and once enjoyed, the motto is, "Never again." It is impossible in the winter months to travel in the rear seats of these older machines unless one covers head and ears with a coat. I have had that experience and so have other hon. Members. That is due to the fact that the airframe is completely done and has to be—
  Air-Commodore Harvey: The hon. Member is making a most serious allegation because, as he knows, all aircraft have their certificates of airworthiness renewed annually by a Government Department. If the hon. Member insists on making a statement like that, the Government Department concerned ought to be overhauled.
  Mr. Rankin: In stating that it is not very comfortable to travel in one of the older Dakotas, I do not think I am in any way suggesting that the aircraft is not airworthy. That aspect does not enter into it in the least.
  Mr. Kirkwood: No one knows that better than the hon. and gallant Member.
  Mr. Rankin: I am always grateful for the assistance of my right hon. Friend, and I thank him very much. He has just taken the words out of my mouth. I am not alone in saying that the airframes of the

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  older Dakotas are out-of-date and ought to be rehabilitated at once in the interests of the comfort of the travelling public.
  But there is a more serious aspect of this question of comfort because from time to time there are passengers who find themselves compelled to go beyond the rear seats to another place, and to visit that other place is to approach as near the conditions of the Arctic as one possibly could. I have heard tales that would freeze one's blood but to visit the tail of the Dakota is to freeze, or to run the risk of freezing, far more than one's blood, and sometimes to give the passenger the feeling that his best endeavours are quite fruitless. That is a very important point with which I hope my hon. Friend will deal urgently.
  There is a further point which concerns safety. I promise Members who have heard me speak before on this topic that I shall not mention crash survivability. I return to the point which I raised concerning the accident over Coventry between an Anson and a Dakota. The Parliamentary Secretary will remember that I then raised the question of creating air corridors for our internal services so that civil aircraft would fly between certain fixed minimum and maximum altitudes in complete safety. That suggestion was resisted by the Air Ministry, but one or two of us have been fighting the matter by way of Question and answer in the House. I am beginning now to hope that the Air Ministry have withdrawn their opposition, and that perhaps my hon. Friend may have something further to say in regard to this question of creating air corridors for civil aircraft, in the interests of passenger safety.
  I wish to submit to my hon. Friend a further point which may not come exactly within his purview but which nevertheless is bound to affect the work of civil aviation. We are seeking to develop the Western Isles services, which have for so long and so honourably been carried out by the D.H. Rapide. We have, I believe, got the Marathon. Whether the transaction is completed or not, I do not know, but I believe that the Miles Marathon, which is the best aircraft ever produced by Handley Page, is being considered. I should like to know what will be the effect of that machine on the economy of that particular service.
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  Has any other machine of a cheaper kind, such as the Merchantman, which I believe costs about £25,000 and would be more effective and useful on that service, been considered instead of the Marathon, which costs nearly double and might have an adverse effect so far as the cost of that service is concerned.
  My final point concerns the development of Renfrew airport. I know there are serious problems involved, because there is the danger that the development of Renfrew airport may come into conflict with the general development of the Clyde. The Clyde is the lifeline of the City of Glasgow, and if there is to be any conflict between the development of the airport and of the Clyde then, although I have always claimed that Renfrew airport ought to be the main internal airport for our air services, I think it may be necessary to reconsider the whole problem. There was one further point I should like to have developed, the aviation industry at Prestwick, but other hon. Members who are more closely interested in that subject, wish to speak, and I shall leave that point for them to develop.
  9.18 p.m.
  Mr. Niall Macpherson: I should like to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow, Tradeston (Mr. Rankin), with a few remarks on Scottish aviation before turning to another point. The first thing that strikes me about Scottish aviation is that in spite of the fact that it is claimed that the whole of the planning of the services is concentrated in Scotland, yet we have this difficulty, that there is in Scotland the Advisory Council which has as its Chairman a member of the Corporation of B.E.A.
  I submit that sooner or later we must realise that that is entirely a wrong set up. We cannot have a man performing two functions. Either he must be a member of the board and accept the advice of the Advisory Committee, or he must be the Chairman of the Advisory Committee and organise the advice which is to be given. He cannot be in both positions at the same time, and I do not think we shall have a satisfactory position with regard to aviation in Scotland until we get away from that. I am not dealing with personalities in this case but the system which must be put right in that regard.

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  The second point I wish to make concerns the smaller airfields in Scotland. One of the improvements which I understand has been made is a certain relaxation in the conditions of the use of airfields. This is a matter on which I speak entirely as a layman. I feel that the technicians in these cases are a little too exacting. So long as there are means on an airfield of giving some kind of "met" advice, and of being able to communicate to the local authority the news when an aircraft is about to land, so that the necessary fire and ambulance services will be there when the aircraft does land, it is not necessary to be exacting in the amount of personnel on the airfield. The future of aviation, like any other form of transport, must depend in the long run on its being made cheaper for the travelling public. Undoubtedly, safety must be a prime consideration. But I wonder whether we are going quite fast enough in finding out just which of the conditions of perfection can be relaxed with safety.
  The hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) dealt with the question of internal services. We must face the fact that unless something in the form of internal feeder services are organised, Prestwick will lose all its international services one by one. K.L.M., Sabena and the others will fall off one by one, unless something is done in that way. I know that 80,000 passengers pass through Prestwick in a year and that 10,000 land there, but that is really a drop in the bucket when we consider the capacity of the airport and the fact that the cost of services between Prestwick and New York is £14 less than the cost of services between London and New York. For the people of two-thirds of the British Isles it is cheaper to go from Prestwick. It is time that due cognisance was taken of that.
  I wish to refer to a question first mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) and then replied to at some length from the opposite side of the Committee. It will be within the recollection of hon. Members that, at about this time last year, we were dealing with the absorption of British South American Airways by B.O.A.C. The most specific assurances were then given on two points. First, it was said that there would be no discrimination against B.S.A.A. personnel in comparison with B.O.A.C. personnel and,
  758
  secondly, that there would be no discrimination between one worker and another within those units. That was the pledge. It is absolutely immaterial to us on this side of the Committee to which union any of the people belong.
  The hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) said that it was the intention of the union, to which I presume he belongs, to crush another union out of existence. He said that that union had its origin in the dilutees. That may be so but, if it is, he cannot also say that it is a splinter union. He cannot have it both ways. In civil aviation this dilutee business does not apply very much, especially in B.S.A.A. because that was only set up long after the 1939 dilutee agreement was arrived at. One of the special problems is that the No. 5 line of B.O.A.C., which was the South American line and more or less covers the B.S.A.A. personnel, is being closed down. That is something which was not envisaged, at any rate from this side of the Committee, at this time last year.
  We thought that we had sufficient assurances that British South American Airways would be kept as an entity even though they were to be absorbed into B.O.A.C. That has not been done. There may be good economic reasons, but it puts a greater onus on B.O.A.C. to make absolutely sure that there is no discrimination whatsoever against British South American Airways personnel. There was a time, not long ago, when it looked probable that all the No. 5 Line personnel would be made redundant. Fortunately there was some happy intervention from some quarter and that idea was scotched, but what is happening now is that some postings are being made to other lines in the same grade and some employees are being offered lower grades. If they do not accept them they might as well go out altogether.
  It looks as though there will be a complete re-organisation and settlement of this matter in the autumn, and I ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether it is the understanding that all British South American Airways personnel will receive consideration for posting, for absorption into B.O.A.C., and as far as possible in their own grades. We do not want to see a situation in which B.O.A.C. say, "We will transfer away as many of those people as we can"; and the remainder are left behind and made redundant.

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  One of the difficulties is, of course, that which has already been referred to today—that the established unions, which the hon. Member for Southall is pleased to call bona fide unions, whatever he may mean by that, are virtually declining to agree to the transfer of any of the Aeronautical Engineers Association or of nonunion personnel until all the personnel of the unions which they represent have been transferred.
  Mr. Mikardo: The hon. Gentleman is repeating the statement made earlier by his hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd). As a member of the trade union side of the National Joint Council for air transport, I can tell them both that there is absolutely no truth whatever in that statement, and that no such demand has been made by the trade union side of the National Joint Council.
  Mr. Macpherson: The last time the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. Mikardo) intervened during one of my speeches on this subject he had the advantage of having been present at the meeting. On this occasion he has not the advantage of having been present at that particular meeting and I claim that my information is quite as good as his.
  Mr. Mikardo Mr. Mikardo rose—
  Mr. Macpherson: I shall not give way again. I hope the unions will not continue in that attitude because, if they do, they will make it completely impossible for their own Minister to carry out his pledge. I am sure they would not wish their Minister to be placed in a position in which he has to break his word. They cannot have it both ways. Either they claim to represent all the workers or they do not. If they claim to represent them all, then they must treat them all alike. If they do not claim to represent them all, then they must make way on the National Joint Council for somebody who will represent them and speak for them.
  In effect, in this question of redundancy, the National Joint Council is being placed in a managerial capacity and, as such, it is under an obligation to be absolutely impartial as between worker and worker. In this case they must be determined to place justice before
  760
  loyalty to their own organisation. We always know that an organisation is prone to give preference to its own members. We knew that in our regiments during the war. Only yesterday I was complaining of a case in which commandos are being given second place to the Army which happens to administer them.
  That is always liable to happen unless there is somebody right at the top to see that it does not. That was one of the great advantages of having somebody like General Eisenhower in charge of S.H.A.E.F. I want the Minister to do just that—to make quite certain that the members of this National Joint Councils are fully conscious of their responsibility vis-à-vis the employees. I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary has this in mind and that that is his intention.
  I am well aware of the difficulty of the job that B.O.A.C. has to face. The whole Committee, of course, insists that the services should be run as economicaliy as possible and wishes to give the fullest assistance to the Parliamentary Secretary in that regard. But there is evidence that there has been discrimination. I am passing on that evidence to the hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friend, and I hope that he will examine it fully. I may say that I have made repeated attempts to get Questions accepted by the Table on this matter, and I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman's predecessor, having said quite specifically that if there were any complaints to be made about the running of this scheme they should be raised on the Floor of this House, would have made provision for the Questions to be accepted at the Table. Unfortunately, that is not so, and I have failed to get the Questions accepted. I feel that if a Parliamentary Secretary takes responsibility for seeing that a thing is done, then he is also responsible for seeing that he can be questioned in this House as to how it is done.
  The main point for the future—and I close on this—is that the assurances that have been given in another place will be adhered to, that is, that in this re-deployment and re-organisation there will be no discrimination between former B.O.A.C. and ex-B.S.A.A. personnel, or between representatives of unions represented on the National Joint Council and others. Secondly, that if any man can show that

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  he has longer service and higher qualifications than another who has been preferred to him, he should at least have the right to be heard.
  9.32 p.m.
  Mr. Mikardo: I had not intended intervening in this Debate, and it was for that reason that I did not seek to catch your eye, Mr. Mathers, but I have been challenged on a matter which involves me personally, and I am therefore grateful that you should have given me the opportunity of replying to the hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) who found discretion the better part of valour in not giving way a second time for fear that I might then, as I now propose to do, correct the wrong information which he gave to the House.
  Both the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) and the hon. Member for Dumfries referred to the Aeronautical Engineers' Association, a subject to which they and other hon. Members have directed their attention from time to time. In the course of their remarks, they made quite unjustified aspersions upon the outlook and the conduct of the trade unions which constitute the workers' side of the National Joint Council for Civil Air Transport. I do not altogether blame these hon. Gentlemen; they are in a difficult position. The proceedings of the National Joint Council, for reasons which I think are very good, and which all hon. Members will approve, are necessarily confidential, except in so far as there is agreement on both sides of the Council from time to time to release information on certain points to the public. If that were not so, it would be quite impossible for a negotiating body so constituted ever to do its work at all.
  The consequence is that a good deal of the information which reaches hon. Gentlemen opposite—and none of it comes from people who are parties to and members of the National Joint Council—comes from totally unreliable sources, which are equally unreliable—
  Brigadier Prior-Palmer: How does the hon. Gentleman know that it comes from unreliable sources? Will he substantiate that statement?
  Mr. Mikardo: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will not interrupt, he will get
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  his answer in 20 seconds. I was just about to come to it.
  I have already explained that the proceedings of this body are confidential. Consequently, anybody who is not there cannot possibly know what has transpired. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman wants to know the sort of source from which this information comes to Members of the Opposition, he should ask the hon. Member for Dumfries. The sources from which hon. Members opposite get their information are equally unreliable whether they are outside this House or somewhere in the vicinity. They are bound to be not at first-hand, because they come from people who are not present at these meetings. One of the principal sources of information, a principal officer of A.E.A., is one of the most notorious "snappers-up of unconsidered trifles" and listeners at metaphorical keyholes and peepers under metaphorical skirts, that this country has come across.
  I will give three examples of the way in which hon. Gentlemen opposite have been misled in this matter, and I give them full credit for having said what they have said in the utmost good faith. In the first place, it was almost implied—though I do not think he intended it—by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire that redundancy in British Overseas Airways Corporation was being applied only to members of A.E.A.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I do not think the hon. Member was here when I delivered that part of my speech—certainly he was not in his usual place. I said that when 13 inspectors were offered alternative employment as mechanics, none belonged to the majority union and nine belonged to A.E.A.
  Mr. Mikardo: I was referring to a previous passage which seemed to suggest, though I do not think the hon. Gentleman intended it, the redundancy in toto was being confined to members of A.E.A. The hon. Member for Dumfries suggested that in some way or another, there was deliberate disadvantaging of members of A.E.A. When redundancy is operated in the Corporation, it is operated under the terms of an agreement entered into by the two sides of the National Joint Council some time ago. That agreement, broadly, is based upon the principle for which the

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  hon. Member for Dumfries asked, and which has become to be known as "first in, last out." There are exceptions of a very minor nature. The only one of any significance, and to which I am sure the hon. Gentleman would not object, is that where a person has some special irreplaceable skill, that should be taken into account in considering his redundancy.
  There is nothing in this agreement which specifies that members of one organisation should have an advantage over members of any other organisation, or that members of any organisation should have preference over those who are not members of an organisation. So far as the trade union side are concerned, they have not in any way instructed, asked or empowered the Corporation to exercise any discretion in any respect in favour of their members and against any other group. If, in fact, the Corporation were exercising such discretion, that would not be in accordance with the terms of the agreement of the trade union side, and would not be at all on the basis of any replacement from the trade union side.
  I do not know whether the two hon. Members opposite were suggesting that when the Corporation were considering redundancy they got out a list of people who had to be considered and made lists of those who were members of A.E.U. and A.E.A. and other organisations. The Corporation, like other employers, have no right to ask any employee to what organisation he belongs. In the case of most of the unions I have ever been associated with, if members were asked to what organisation they belonged they would quite properly refuse to say.
  Mr. N. Macpherson Mr. N. Macpherson rose—
  Mr. Mikardo: No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman, he would not give way to me. He will get some information in a moment.
  I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that when redundancy arises, men are told, "You belong to A.E.A., go; you belong to A.E.U., don't go" Nothing of that sort took place, or possibly could take place. I only reiterate this point so that it may be perfectly clear beyond all doubt that people are not selected for redundancy arbitrarily. Selection for redundancy is covered by a very close, detailed agree-
  764
  ment which operates, except for some minor internal reservations, absolutely automatically, and even if one wanted to discriminate against members of one organisation in favour of those of another, it would be impossible to do so under the terms of the agreement. Perhaps hon. Gentlemen opposite have not been told about that.
  As to the special case which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire quoted of 13 inspectors, he spoke—and he was corrected by one of my hon. Friends—as though it was A.S.S.E.T. which was the main rival to A.E.A. It is the Amalgamated Engineering Union which caters for most members of A.E.A. I can say as a member of A.S.S.E.T. that at no time whatever, directly or indirectly, formally or informally, or in any way have we asked the Corporation to discriminate in favour of our members. If a selection has been made, under the terms of the redundancy agreement it could only take into account length of service and a marginal degree of skill, and this will have been only in marginal cases.
  If it has come out that, in fact, all these persons are not members of one organisation and that nine are members of another, this can only be coincidental or because the Corporation are leaning over backwards to do on behalf of the union something which the union has never asked them to do. I cannot believe that. It is not my business to defend the Corporation. That is for the Minister to do. When I have defended the Corporation in the past, I have not always been thanked for it. I am giving the point of view of the trade union side on the National Joint Council, and I repeat that they have never made a request to the Corporation to favour their members against other persons.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: In view of the absolute contradiction of evidence on this matter, will the hon. Gentleman use his influence with the National Joint Council to have the minutes of the particular meeting on 29th June published as this is genuinely believed, and, quite frankly, I do not believe the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Mikardo: I am bound to say that the last few words of the hon. Gentleman will not encourage me or anyone else to give way to him in the future. I will

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  come in a moment or two to the so-called meeting of 29th June and deal with it in the most specific terms. [Interruption.] If I may be allowed to make my speech, I shall probably get through more quickly. This meeting of the National Joint Council on 29th June has been referred to on more than one occasion. The last meeting of the National Joint Council was on 26th June. No meeting of the National Joint Council has taken place since 26th June.
  I was present at the meeting on 26th June from the moment the chairman opened the meeting to the moment he closed it. The hon. Member for Dumfries will be able to say next time that I had the advantage of being at the meeting and hearing what was said, instead of mishearing all the other back-stairs tittle-tattle. At the meeting on 26th June nothing of what the hon. Member for Mid—Bedfordshire described as having happened there took place—not one single thing. The hon. Member went into a great deal of detail about what happened, ending up with a threat of a strike. No such thing took place.
  I want to ask him—I will not ask him, because he might be tempted to answer. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh"] He can answer on some other occasion. It would be interesting to know where he gets his information of what took place at a meeting of the National Joint Council, at which no one was present except members of the Council, and in respect of which no statement has been issued by the Council. It would be very interesting to know that, because not even the omniscient Mr. Stephenson was present and knows what took place. The hon. Gentleman can say what he likes about not believing what took place, but I was there, and it so happens that in the middle of it I looked out of the door and did not even see any Member peeping through the keyhole. I merely say that all these detailed, lurid accounts which Members opposite have given of what took place at the last meeting of the National Joint Council, the date of which they even got wrong, did not take place—not even the strike threat.
  Lieut.-Colonel Sir Thomas Moore: On a point of order. Can you, Sir Charles, give me a little guidance? Is it your intention to follow the example of your predecessor and allow anyone
  766
  who interrupts a speech to speak for a quarter of an hour in regard to that interruption? Perhaps you are not aware of what happened a few minutes ago. The hon. Member for Reading, South (Mr. Mikardo) interrupted my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson), and my hon. Friend gave an answer. Whereupon, the hon. Member for Reading, South, apparently, went to your predecessor—he told us that he had no intention to enter this Debate —to insist on having an opportunity to justify his interruption. The result is that he has now spoken for a quarter of an hour, going into a lot of irrelevances which have nothing to do with the original interruption. May I ask for your protection for those on both sides who want to participate in this Debate?
  Mr. Mikardo: Further to that point of order. May I submit, with the utmost respect, that the suggestion that your predecessor, Sir Charles, was, so to speak, bullied by me seems to be a gross reflection on that extremely worthy gentleman? For the benefit of Members opposite, may I say that it is, of course, not true?
  The Deputy-Chairman (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew): I am afraid that I did not hear the first point of order.
  Sir T. Moore: It was whether you intended to follow the example of your predecessor and allow an interrupter to speak for a quarter of an hour to justify his interruption, going into a lot of irrelevances which have nothing to do with the original interruption.
  The Deputy-Chairman: If that plan were adopted, anyone who made an interruption could be called.
  Mr. Mikardo: I was saying that that is not, in fact what took place, and that to suggest that it took place is a grave aspersion on your predecessor which ought not to be tolerated.
  If I have taken a quarter of an hour, it is because I have been subjected to constant interruptions not by the courteous method of Members opposite geting on their feet, but by the discourteous method of keeping up a constant fluttering in their places. I merely reiterate the two salient points I have been making: first, that hon. Members opposite should beware of accepting as an account of what took place at a meeting of the

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  National Joint Council, versions given to them by persons who have not been there and had access to the proceedings; second, that redundancy in the Corporations is governed by an agreement, which would not allow the Corporations, even if they were so minded, to discriminate as between members of one organisation and another.
  Hon. Members opposite, instead of being annoyed at my making these two points, should welcome the first-hand information which I give them. I hope that on reflection, when they think about it, they will welcome it. I know that they have as great a desire as we on this side have to see a successful British aviation industry, and they will be glad to be reassured that the fears they have of unfair discrimination have no foundation in fact.
  Mr. N. Macpherson: I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman two questions before he sits down. First, does he think it is worth while every time, after I have spoken on this subject, to get up and sully a reputation, which he does regularly; and secondly, is he aware that almost everything he has said is completely irrelevant and beside the mark? He has not dealt with the meetings which we have been dealing with, nor the dates.
  Mr. Mikardo: Since I am asked to answer these two questions, I must say that I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means when he talks about sullying a reputation. If he thinks my remarks were irrelevant, that seems to me to be a grave reflection on you, Sir Charles, and not on me.
  9.52 p.m.
  Lord Malcolm Douglas - Hamilton: I shall not keep the Committee long putting two points in connection with the aircraft industry in Scotland. In speaking about the industry in Scotland I do not want to speak from any partisan Scottish point of view, but I want to stress this aspect of its vital importance to the whole country. Prestwick Airport has been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson). I feel that the importance of Prestwick goes far beyond Scotland itself. We have here the possibility of the development of a great trans-Atlantic airport with its immense encouragement to the Indus-
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  try in the district. It has to be remembered that Prestwick is near to the great engineering centres on the Clyde, and as well it could give an encouragement to the tourist trade. It is in the heart of the Burns country and a beautiful tourist country, while it is also on the threshold of the Highlands.
  I also want to emphasise the position in which the Scottish aircraft industry finds itself, not simply because it is the Scottish aircraft industry but because Glasgow is the second city of the Empire and the area shall play its part in this great industry. Decentralisation of air potential is one of the most important aspects which we should bear in mind today, important, both strategically and also in the matter of the re-distribution of the industry.
  This aircraft industry at Prestwick has not been handled well by the Government. It has got hanging over its head like the sword of Damocles the threat of expropriation ever since December, 1945. It never had a chance to get into its stride, and its case has never been heard in public. It has been heard always in private and the objectors have twice had put their case without publicity. At the present time the case of the Prestwick aircraft industry is in the hands of the Air Minister, and has been there since 25th April. It was last heard on 25th April, but the objectors wanted to postpone the hearing because their counsel could not attend on that date. The Minister would not allow this, presumably because there was not time enough. That was April, and this is July; still we have not heard the result.
  The aircraft industry is a potentially great one. During the war it employed a full designing staff of 5,000 technicians and workers. It could still be great, if the Government would make up their minds. No industry can survive in such a period of uncertainty. Aircraft development in Scotland is hampered and crabbed by an unimaginative outlook. Even such industry as exists in the country has not been fairly handled. The White Paper on Industry and Employment in Scotland has only one entry about the aircraft industry, in Table 5, Appendix 1 (Aircraft). It is:
  "There is no output of new aircraft from Scotland."
  It is terrible and disgraceful that that should be the case.
  Mr. Emrys Hughes: Private enterprise.
  Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton: Private enterprise is not allowed to. It has turned out one aircraft actually of its own design which could be suitable to use in taxi and ambulance work in the Western Isles. That is all that it has been able to do. Even the industry of the maintenance of old aircraft, in Scotland, has not been fairly treated. The B.E.A. at Renfrew send their engines away for overhaul instead of using the facilities that exist at Prestwick. Of the £92 million given by the Government in contracts to the British aircraft industry, apart from the —4 million to Rolls-Royce, the Scottish aircraft industry received 1/40th of 1 per cent.
  I stress these matters, not from the narrow viewpoint of Scotland but because they are bad for the United Kingdom as a whole. We want to see the industry better distributed as between Scotland and England. I ask the Minister what he proposes to do with Prestwick. Are we to have it brought up to date so that it can be used as a trans-Atlantic airport for modern planes? What does he intend to do in regard to the aircraft industry in Scotland?
  9.59 p.m.
  Mr. Edgar Granville: No one doubts the ability of the hon. Member for Reading, South (Mr. Mikardo) to make an explanation on the subjects on which he speaks, but he does also defend the Government, although he is not yet upon the Government Front Bench. I want to hear a categorical statement from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The long explanation given by the hon. Member for Reading, South, does not interest the Committee. An undertaking was given on behalf of the Government by a Minister that there would be no discrimination whatever, and those who take even a layman's interest in this question want to hear tonight a clear statement that there has been in fact no discrimination in this matter.
  Those of the public who take an interest in our civil aviation will note the speeches made by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) and the hon. Member for Stroud and Thorn-bury (Mr. Perkins). The figures which
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  were given by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire about the expenditure upon civil aviation on behalf of the taxpayers will require some explanation from the Parliamentary Secretary.
  The hon. Member for Stroud and Thornbury had some influence many years ago upon the setting up of a committee of inquiry into civil aviation. He has again asked for an inquiry, and I believe that the public want to know if they are getting some value for the astronomical figures which are being spent upon this form of transport, however it is run, whether it is nationalised or under a monopoly. In spite of the Debate which we have had on this subject and the expressions of dissatisfaction by hon. Members, no one can yet see the effect of this enormous expenditure. In spite of the continual changes which have been made in the holders of the office of the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary, no one can say that we have yet a satisfactory internal form of civil aviation.
  As for overseas, look at the money we are spending on the building up of our overseas airlines. I wonder what members of the public do when they want to buy a ticket from here to somewhere else. I imagine that they buy the cheapest ticket for what they think is the best form of transport. Before the war the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Bowles) was in favour of an international set-up for civil aviation; but the Government appear to have lost their Socialism and their internationalism, and it now seems almost irrelevant to suggest to hon. Gentlemen opposite that there should be something in the nature of an international set-up for civil aviation.
  Look where it is getting hon. Members opposite, because they are in charge of it and they are responsible. We go round the West End of London and elsewhere and we see dozens of offices set up by various airlines. They are all fighting for trade and they are all taking the best places they can get. They are all trying to raise the national prestige in civil aviation. I wonder how much duplication there is between our airlines and those of the Commonwealth in services, in expenditure on those services and in the training of crews and in other ways. Many of the services use the same aircraft and the same engines but they have different colours and different flags are

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  flying. The same thing applies to ground transport.
  How long is this to go on? An enormous amount of money has been spent by the present Government and by successive Ministers in an attempt to build up a national prestige in civil aviation. A fantastic and fabulous expenditure has been undertaken in an attempt to give the public a satisfactory form of civil aviation. If the inquiry suggested by one hon. Member were set up I believe that one of its recommendations would be the abolition of the Ministry of Civil Aviation. It ought to go. It ought to go into the Ministry of Transport where it belongs, and hon. Gentlemen opposite have advocated this for years. I believe also that a full inquiry into this enormous expenditure would show that the Ministry of Supply should hand over all questions of design, technical development and research.
  If the Government are not prepared to advocate a greater measure of internationalism in civil aviation, why is it that we are not able to make a better arrangement with T.C.A., with Canada, Australia, and other members of the Commonwealth in the setting up of a Commonwealth Council for civil aviation, in this country? If we did that, we should avoid this enormous expenditure, a great deal of duplication, and some other problems such as whether we should see the end of the flying-boats and Southampton as a base.
  I believe that if we set up a Commonwealth Council, if we had a Commonwealth air line, we would not lose Southampton and the flying-boats. The question of defence would come into it amongst other questions. Here we are asking the taxpayer of this island to foot a bill in order to build up national prestige in civil aviation. Instead of holding meetings of I.A.T.A. at Montreal, we should get together a Commonwealth Council here to deal with the matters I have mentioned. In addition to the saving, we would no longer carry on the Civil Service policy, completely lacking in imagination, which is being carried on at present. We would be aiming at turning the Commonwealth into a continent and building up a network of international aviation within the Commonwealth which would give its peoples an opportunity to travel at reasonable rates.
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  I appeal to the Parliamentary Secretary, who is relatively new to this office and has taken a great deal of interest in these questions since he has been in the House, to do something bold and visionary. If he is not prepared to adopt a bold policy of internationalism—which will have to be done in the end—he should advocate the abolition of his own Department and the transfer of civil aviation to the Ministry of Transport where it belongs, with the building up of an effective Commonwealth Council which will turn the Commonwealth into a great continent.
  10.9 p.m.
  Mr. John Grimston (St. Albans): The scope of the Debate has been extraordinarily wide and is clear evidence that in half a day we are far from able to cover the complete range of this vital subject. We have covered every kind of facet of civil aviation and our discussion has been much enlivened by the description by the hon. Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) of his travel in the nether regions of an older-vintage Dakota. I rise with some trepidation because until this morning my instrument rating, which is permission to fly an aeroplane in bad weather, was in the nature of an awaited gift from the Parliamentary Secretary. It arrived by post this morning, however, so I feel that I have a clear conscience and may, therefore, be rather tougher than I might otherwise have been.
  The hon. Member for lichen (Mr. Morley) spoke at some length on the future of the flying-boat. In the course of what he said—it may have been because of the effect of the problem on his constituency—he made some most ungenerous remarks about Mr. Whitney Straight, from which I should certainly like to dissociate myself and my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee. It is perfectly possible to object to the flying-boat on purely technical and objective grounds, and I rather count myself amongst those who feel that for long-range work, the flying-boat has a great deal against it.
  I have no very fixed views, however, and I think it is most unwise for any hon. Member to have them, but when the hon. Member rather implied that because oceans covered the world, they were all landing grounds for flying-boats, he somewhat under-estimated the fact

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  that for most of the time in most of the oceans there are waves which are considerably higher than this Chamber, and that if anyone flies into them at 100 miles an hour, it does the flying-boat no more good than it would do a landplane; and one might just as well do it in a landplane if one wants to do it at all.
  The discontinuation of flying the Solents from Southampton raises a most important question, which I hope to underline and to which my hon. Friend for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) referred; that is, what is the future of the Princess flying-boat, and of the Duchess if it comes along? For the sake of carrying on some flying-boat experience for a year or so, are we to lose much of the ground and air skill which is necessary for operating these machines? A flying-boat pilot acquires his experience over an extraordinarily long time and takes longer to train, as I think the Parliamentary Secretary will agree, than does a comparably skilled land-plane pilot, because he has in addition to contend with all the problems associated with manoeuvre on the sea. If we lose this skill, we shall find ourselves unable to put these new boats into efficient and quick service if we continue with their construction. I ask, therefore, for a clear answer on the future of these boats, and also on the future crossings of the Tasman Sea, which, as other hon. Members have said, is at present done largely by flying-boats.
  Another question which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and Thornbury (Mr. Perkins), and also by the hon. Member for Tradeston, is the future of air corridors. One hon. Member said that the Air Ministry have withdrawn their insistence on having the right to fly jet and fighter aircraft in these corridors. I think that they must withdraw sooner or later, but it is news to me that they have already done so and I should like to have a clear assurance from the Parliamentary Secretary that this is so.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and Thornbury also raised the question of accident investigation. This is an extremely debatable point. One thing which appears very clear to us on this side is that it must seem wrong to foreigners£unfortunately, as aviation is international, foreign aircraft from time
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  to time are involved in accidents here—that the Minister of Civil Aviation is not only a judge but an advocate in his own case. We in this country know that he would behave with the most scrupulous regard for propriety of every kind, but we, as the authority of this country, surely have a duty to make it perfectly clear to anyone who comes from abroad and is involved in an accident, that the Minister is absolutely impartial in regard to whatever findings are come to by a committee of investigation.
  A question which could take a whole day's Debate is that of bad weather aids in relation to the Ringway accident, which was referred to by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, North (Sir W. Smiles). Surely the day has come when very much greater powers have to be put into the hands of ground controllers than they have at the moment. One facet of that accident was that an aeroplane came down below the safety height and informed the ground controller that it was doing so. I know that at the moment flying control have no power to order such an aeroplane to another height, but, to my way of thinking that is clearly a necessary power for them to have.
  There is another side to this question. In London, complete congestion of traffic is certain to take place in the next few years if the one-way traffic routing through the area is not used. In answer to a Question which I asked some weeks ago I was told that the I.L.S. system in B.E.A. for landing aircraft in this country has been adopted. I ask whether this is a final decision, because it seems clear that unless one positions an aircraft by some form of ground radar, such as the G.C.A. operated at London Airport, one will not be able to achieve the high rate of landings we must have if we are to operate our aerodromes economically.
  To give an example, the Minister may know that in one period of 51 minutes at Northolt 17 aircraft were landed by the radar system and the next aircraft which came in, using another system of its own, took eight minutes. That kind of thing going on throughout the day must hold up the whole of our airline schedules and lead to more congestion, unless the Minister is prepared to see that the most efficient system is used from the point of view of time.

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  A considerable amount has been said about the future of charter companies. I will not weary the Committee by reading out the assurances that have been given by successive Ministers as to their wish that charter companies should have a fair deal, but at the moment charter companies are finding themselves in increasing competition in charter work with the Corporation. A particular case, about which I asked a Question only the other week, has now arisen in West Africa in the charter-flying of troops to and from West Africa. Will the Minister make the position absolutely and abundantly clear? Either the charter companies are to be left free in the charter field or the charter companies are going to find themselves squeezed out by subsidised competition, because we cannot dissociate entirely the revenue flying-time of the Corporation from any time they put in on charter work.
  Another complaint they have is the condition of their airfields. No doubt the Minister will counter this by saying that he must keep down the costs of airfields. I quite often fly into one of the smaller Customs airfields of this country. I will not tell him which one, because I do not want him to go there and make a lot of trouble. Every time one hits the ground there is costs 50s. because one has to hit the runway and cannot use the grass field adjoining, which would seem a simple thing to do. Then one is met by one or two men who show the position of the aircraft, three porters to take the luggage out, a Customs officer to check it, a doctor who asks where one has been for the last 14 nights—as if it were any business of his—and two landing officers and another man to collect the 50 shillings. Is it not absolutely clear that all these people are in addition to the essential parts of that business namely, the flying controllers, the wireless operators and the weather people? Surely some "concertina-ing" of function, if that is the phrase, would be possible, to the great benefit of the Department's Vote.
  Much has been said by a number of hon. Members about A.E.A. The hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter), who was the first Member on the other side of the Committee to speak of it, made one or two assertions which although they were made in a moderate way, ought to be corrected. He said that we should
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  keep out these—[Interruption]—I am doing my best to meet the wishes of the Minister to finish in time. It is extremely difficult when hon. Members opposite behave like that.
  The hon. Member for Southall tried to imply that we on this side of the Committee are encouraging splinter unions. That is not at all the position. I have probably as much experience as any hon Member of persuading people to go into the proper union, when they want to go into what hon. Members would call a dissident union. I am not in favour of having to negotiate with a whole range of unions it makes matters difficult. But if there is a genuine grievance, and there usually is an underlying one in such cases, although it is not always apparent, leadership on both sides is needed to meet the legitimate grievances and encourage the people concerned to come back again under the umbrella of a single union. That requires magnanimity of a kind of which I could find no trace in the speech of the hon. Member for Reading, South (Mr. Mikardo).
  In the case of this particular union it seems that certain specific pledges were given in another place by the Minister. If the Minister who is to reply to the Debate finds himself unable to comply with those specific assurances, I should like him to say so, because we shall then know where he stands. If he says that he is complying with them, I would ask him to look into this matter and see whether or not the figures quoted by my lion. Friends as to how redundancy has operated have not a great deal of substance in them. I am convinced that there would not be the strong agitation there is without some solid basis of fact behind it. The speech of the hon. Member for Reading, South, does lead one to wonder whether his membership of the J.I.C. is best calculated to forward the smoothness and harmony with which this great British undertaking must function.
  The hon. Member for Tradeston spoke at some length of types of aircraft. That subject will clearly need a whole day's debate, and I have little time to comment on what he said. I should like, in the greatest friendliness towards the Corporations, to put a point to the Minister. All of us want to see those Corporations successful, and my hon. Friends on this

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  side of the Committee are at least as anxious as any other hon. Members to see the name of British aviation stand high in the world. Will the Minister examine a problem common today to the whole of industry? I refer to the question of the optimum size for efficiency. Because something is big, it is not necessarily efficient. I hold very strongly the theory that everything in this world should be done by the smallest unit that can possibly do it efficiently.
  Operating aircraft is not really of itself a very big business. The essential units of a crew are three—pilot, navigator and the second pilot or radio operator. Units of three flying about are probably best operated when the total number in any one management is 15, 20 or 25. I cannot see that the service from London to Paris necessarily operates more effectively because the service from, shall we say. Southampton to Jersey, is operated by the same management and the same undertaking.
  Let us examine these Corporations. We started with three, we have now got down to two. Surely, between the two there is room for doubt as to which is the proper number. I would suggest that a much larger number than two is probably the right one for the whole of the services operated by this country from this country. An argument which appeals to me in favour of bigness is the opportunity it gives for experimentation. I shall judge the future of the Ministry and the Corporations by the dynamic use that they make of the British genius for design and construction of modern aircraft.
  10.26 p.m.
  The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation (Mr. Beswick): We have had a very interesting Debate and, with one brief interlude, a very agreeable Debate. If some of the old world courtesy shown to me on my first appearance at this Box has been missing this evening, I do not complain.
  There have been a number of points put to me which I shall endeavour to answer, but those to which I cannot give a reply this evening I will look at and send a reply by letter to the individual questioner. I was asked about the system of airways we propose to set up in this country. As the House will know, we had agreed in principle a system of
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  national airways along which, for a width of 10 miles between the heights of 5,000 and 11,000 feet aircraft would be controlled in the interests of safety.
  The implementation of this principle obviously presented considerable difficulties. I would say that the mischievous comments made by the hon. Member for Stroud and Thornbury (Mr. Perkins) some months ago in this respect were quite uncalled for; because we have had the utmost co-operation between the military and the civil side in a determination to achieve the reconciliation of two apparently conflicting interests. I pay my tribute to all those who have taken part in quite difficult and complicated negotiations, and I am happy to say that an agreement has now been reached which is acceptable to both sides.
  Broadly, it means that jet fighter aircraft which cross the airway will normally do so under control based on radar surveillance, whilst all other military aircraft will normally obtain clearance either before take-off or when airborne prior to crossing the airway. The full details, however, will be published in an appropriate form within the next few days; and it is expected that the Green Airways I, which will serve the main trunk air routes from the Atlantic and, stretching from the Pembroke coast to the Metropolitan Control Zone, will come into operation at the beginning of next month.
  This will be a great step forward towards air safety. It will not be perfect, but we shall gain valuable experience and I have no doubt that we shall improve upon it, given the good will already displayed. It is hoped that the remaining airways south of Birmingham will come into operation by November, and the target date for the remainder is the end of this year.
  I was also asked about charter companies. The hon. Member for St. Albans (Mr. J. Grimston), whose speech we all welcomed and listened to with great interest—I expected a very relevant speech from him in view of the many questions I have already had to answer—asked me to state our attitude to charter companies. From what has been said from time to time in this House and in the Press outside, one would imagine that we in the Ministry of Civil Aviation

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  regard these charter operators as our mortal enemies, but I am bound to say that has not been the impression I have received since I have been in my present office.
  I have no doubt some companies would have made a good deal of money if they had been allowed to skim off the cream of the scheduled services. It is true that it has been the policy of the Government to reserve the majority of scheduled services starting from Great Britain to those corporations to whom public funds are granted. Nevertheless, there is a field for the private enterprise operator and within the limits set out in the Act, my noble Friend has been determined that these companies should get fair treatment and all appropriate help.
  Earlier, tribute was paid to the changes which have already been made. Reference was made to the changes in the placing of charter contracts on behalf of the civil departments of the Government and these changes were not laughed at as they are now being laughed at by the hon. Gentlemen.
  Mr. George Ward: Five years of skimmed milk; that is what you are offering.
  Mr. Beswick: The milk throughout the world has been pretty thin since the war. It has been because the airways under public ownership have been subsidised that we have gradually been able to build up a system because of which Britain is properly regarded as being a foremost airline operator.
  I was asked if I could say something more about charter companies and the position with regard to air trooping. I cannot say anything definite about that this evening. It is not a simple or easy problem, and the economics of air trooping are complicated, apart from the question of which company should be given any particular contract. We now have a good deal of information on this problem and there is an inter-departmental committee working on it. That is as much as I can say at this moment, excepting that when a decision is made it will be based on the real interests of the nation and not on any alleged prejudice.
  There is another field in which private operators have a part to play and which
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  my Department have encouraged under the system of associate agreements between the corporations and private companies. We have had some experience of this over the past few years. There have been various criticisms against these associate agreements and in particular against the period for which the agreements have hitherto been granted.
  Here again the viewpoint of the private companies has been listened to sympathetically and my noble Friend has decided to amend the directive to the Air Transport Advisory Council in one important respect. There are various details still to be settled. The general terms of the directive will be the same, but I can say that it will be possible to extend the period of the agreements in suitable cases up to a maximum of five years, which should make it a much more realistic proposition, especially for those companies which may have to contemplate the purchase of new aircraft.
  I was also asked to say something about the Brabazon aircraft, that controversial giant the specifications for which were first drawn up by a committee under a predominantly Conservative Government. The original idea was that this first prototype would not be flown on commercial operations, and many people doubted whether that, or any subsequent model of the same machine, would ever fly at all. However, there is no doubt, as stated by the hon. Gentleman opposite, that since the display of the Brabazon at London Airport the stock of the Brabazon has risen sharply. There are now two proposals for using the aircraft on a limited number of commercial services. If it is to be practicable, it will need a good deal of technical development at a much more rapid rate than the first prototype has enjoyed. The second prototype, with the Proteus propellor engine, should make its first flight in September, 1952, and no decision will be made about the three further aircraft until we have had a good deal more experience with the first prototype.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Morley) made a most formidable case for the flying boat. If I may say so, each time he puts this case he makes it better. All I can say to him is that the case has been studied already with great care, and it was with the greatest of expert opinion,

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  and after the most careful consideration, that the decision was made to take the Solent off the South African route. I think, however, that my hon. Friend spoiled what was otherwise a good case by his references to the Deputy-Chairman of British Overseas Airways Corporation, Mr. Whitney Straight. I think his remarks about Mr. Straight were uncalled for. Mr. Straight has the complete confidence of the Minister of Civil Aviation, and any decision made about flying-boats, land-planes, or British aircraft is made on the basis of the best possible information and without any of that prejudice which my hon. Friend suggested Mr. Straight had.
  Mr. Morley: Can my hon. Friend say whether Mr. Straight has any prejudices against flying-boats?
  Mr. Beswick: I have been in the aviation world for several years, and I have still to find a man who has not a prejudice for or against the flying-boat.
  Mr. Charles Ian Orr-Ewing: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the Minister of Defence has been consulted in this matter of flying-boats, for there is a strategic consideration in this? Can we have it that the Minister of Defence has been consulted?
  Mr. Beswick: This question has been considered from more than one angle. There are all kinds of people putting forward theories about the Princess flying-boats and the Brabazon I. Every hon. Member must have read interesting papers submitted to various societies on this subject, but the hon. Gentleman can rest assured that that aspect has not been overlooked.
  I was also asked a good many questions about the Scottish services. It is my view that the interests of aviation in Scotland are well served by the Scottish Advisory Council. I think, too, the criticism made about the Chairman of the Council being on the Board of British European Airways Corporation was out of place. He sits on the Board of that Corporation as Chairman of the Advisory Council in order to be in a position to give full weight to the views of the Council. I think that that set-up is most satisfactory, and it has been developed in the same way as some of the area boards of the Gas Council.
  Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton: I do not consider that Scottish air services can be in any way satisfactory while there still exists that enormous number of communities completely uncovered by any air services.
  Mr. Beswick: I have recently had an opportunity of going to Scotland and taking part in the most violent discussions that go on there about these matters. If time permitted I could give some conclusive statistics which show that Scotland gets its fair share of what is going so far as aviation is concerned. I do not think that I ought to go into any more details about that this evening. I should like to see a full day's Debate. Although I confess my ignorance on this point, if it were possible to discuss these matters in the Scottish Grand Committee, I should be most happy to present myself for slaughter.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Tradeston (Mr. Rankin) raised the question of the airport at Renfrew. I agree that this airport is not what we should like it to be. I do not accept his criticism that it is a discredit. On the contrary, I think that it is the greatest credit to Scotland and the people working there that they get so much traffic through it, with what I agree are not the very best terminal facilities. We are proposing to spend some money at Renfrew now that we can see a further period of use for the airport. I hope that will meet the approval of my hon. Friend when he has time to return from the cold quarters where he has had such unfortunate experiences.
  I was asked about this imaginary sword of Damocles hanging over Prestwick. This is a complete figment of the hon. Member's imagination. There is no such sword. There is no reason why Scottish Aviation, Ltd., should feel that there is any insecurity of tenure as far as the accommodation at Prestwick is concerned. There was some delay in getting that matter settled, as far as the acquisition of the airport is concerned. The delay is not due to my Ministry. We should have been very glad to have got it cleared up years ago, but we have been subjected to what I would describe as delaying tactics I hope that the report of the Commission of Inquiry will be published very shortly, and then possibly the hon. Member can pursue his inquiries

  783
  on the basis of the decision to be made by my noble Friend in regard to the acquisition of that airport.
  May I say a word about the accident investigation procedure, about which a number of hon. Members have asked me questions? In regard to the specific points raised by the hon. and gallant Member for Down, North (Sir W. Smiles), perhaps I might be allowed to reply to him in detail by letter. I think that would probably be the best way of dealing with them. On the question of the procedure for investigating air accidents, I have listened very carefully to what has been said. I was very pleased with the spirit in which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) approached the problem. The matter is one which, I hope, we can look at outside the scope of party controversy. It is a matter of constitutional importance, and we are looking forward to the proposals which Members opposite say they are going to submit to us.
  For our part, since we last discussed this matter we have had the advantage of two public inquiries. We have gained a certain amount of experience from these inquiries. We should like to await the Report of the Llandow inquiry. It may be that the president of the court, having had experience of two inquiries, will be able to give the benefit of his experience. Shortly after that, we should be very pleased to meet informally those Members of the Opposition interested in this problem.
  Air-Commodore Harvey: Will the hon. Gentleman undertake to study the recent Dutch report on the accident at Prestwick, in comparison with the British report, and see how they can be married together?
  Mr. Beswick: Yes, I have already got a note of that. I would like to see that, for I am certain that the abbreviated reports in the British Press about the Dutch inquiry did not give the full information which we would like to have if we are to benefit by that comparison.
  May I turn for a moment to the rather vexed question of the Aeronautical Engineers' Association and the general question of the labour relations within the Corporation, and whether or not there has been breaking of pledges, as has been alleged this evening. But let me first
  784
  make one correction about the Prestwick Report. It is not true to say that the Report will be published, but the Minister's decision on that report will be published within the next few weeks.
  The first point I would like to make regarding the Aeronautical Engineers' Association is that responsibility for these matters, and for relationships between the management and the men is not a direct one for my Ministry. There is an appropriate machinery set up to deal with these matters. It is laid down in the Act that all matters affecting rates of pay, conditions of employment, and anything affecting the efficiency of the industry can be discussed through this machinery of consultation. I think it is a very good machinery. As I have stated before, I look to the National Joint Council to become the parliament of this industry and within that parliament and its local constituent bodies those employed can be properly consulted on any relevant matter, including the method of allocating redundancies.
  I think that the hon. and gallant Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) approached this problem in a moderate fashion, and I should like to see our continued discussion and examination of this admittedly difficult problem carried on in the same way. It is alleged that there were specific pledges given by my predecessor at the time of the merger of B.O.A.C. and B.S.A.A., and that they have not all been honoured. As the Committee will appreciate, this allegation has concerned my noble Friend, and he has caused this matter to be carefully investigated. He has charged me particularly to investigate specific cases where it is alleged that these pledges have been broken.
  First of all, I have obtained from B.O.A.C. comparative totals of men recently discharged through redundancy and have compared them with similar totals for the old B.S.A.A. Previously I have given figures in an Adjournment Debate. The present figures are 677 for B.O.A.C. and 33 for B.S.A.A. redundancies. There is no suggestion in these figures that B.S.A.A. men have been treated with anything but the utmost fairness. Indeed, I think it can be claimed with justification that the Corporation has leaned over backwards to carry out the letter and spirit of the undertaking given

  785
  at the time of the merger, Now we have had these details of 14 cases—
  Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing: To clarify the matter, could we have the dates to which the figures apply?
  Mr. Beswick: These figures apply from the time of the announcement of the merger to the present day. Now we have had details of 14 cases in this circular letter which has gone round to hon. Members, where it is said that there has been downgrading from the rank of inspector among ex-B.S.A.A. personnel, and in the selection of which it has been alleged that there has been prejudice and discrimination against men of a particular organisation.
  The first thing I ought to make clear is that this question of downgrading is not a matter related to the merger. For various reasons B.S.A.A. had a disproportionate number of inspectors as against hourly-rated staff; that fact, when new machines came along, would have needed attention in any case, quite apart from the question of the merger. The charge here is that the individual inspectors were downgraded after being selected on a prejudiced basis according to their union affiliation; but I have myself seen this original list of ex-B.S.A.A. inspectors from which the selection for redundancy was made. The original selection was actually made by the management, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, South (Mr. Mikardo) has said, on the basis of an agreed formula which took into account, among other things, particularly the fact of seniority and the technical experience of the men and the technical requirements of the administration. I am assured, as apparently my hon. Friend is assured, that the management did not know whether these men belonged to one organisation or another, or whether they belonged to no organisation at all when they made the selection for redundancy.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I do not want to delay the hon. Gentleman, but earlier this evening his hon. Friend the Member for Reading, South (Mr. Mikardo) queried what I had said by a deliberate confusion of the word "council" or the word "panel." Will the Parliamentary Secretary say whether it is not a fact that at the panel meeting at London Airport on 29th June the management were informed
  786
  by some unions that they would not retain any members of A.E.A. if any of their people were stood off?
  Mr. Beswiek: I should like to deal with one thing at a time; I am dealing with cases of alleged discrimination, and the only ones brought to my notice are those of the cases of the 14 former inspectors. I am dealing with that point. I was saying that these 14 were selected by the management on the basis agreed with the Joint Council. It is true that this list, in accordance with agreed procedure, was then submitted to the local panel and it would then have been open to that panel, in the light of local knowledge, to submit their observations and to suggest possible amendments on grounds of hardship, or for compassionate reasons. But, from the very full information given to me, I am convinced, having seen all the relevant papers, that no adjustment was, in fact, made. The men eventually downgraded were those same men who were selected on the basis of the agreed procedure.
  It does seem, therefore, that this charge of broken pledges or injustice so far as these, the only concrete examples submitted to date, are concerned, falls to the ground completely. I cannot understand how the men can have persuaded themselves that they should have maintained their status on the basis of seniority or experience while others were downgraded. However, it is still open to any of these individuals who feels aggrieved to seek details or reconsideration through the usual channels provided by the Corporation and, in the last resort, they have access to the Deputy-Chairman. I should have thought that that would have been the better way to have had the matter investigated rather than that it should have been brought on to the Floor of the House, stimulating ill-will as between one employee and another, which does no benefit to the Corporation at all.
  I was asked a number of questions about the state of the two Corporations; I am afraid it is not possible for me to go into details in the time available to me tonight, but the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire said that it was significant that the figures for the South American routes had dropped. It is suggested that the traffic there is now

  787
  lower, and I am going to provide him with the figures when I get them. I think they will certainly show that the traffic has dropped but that was only to be expected in view of the fact that for a long time after the Tudors were taken off we were flying down there a rather unsatisfactory aircraft. Now that the newer aircraft are being put on, it is hoped the traffic will build up again, although it is a difficult job to recover business once it is lost.
  I was grateful to the hon. Member for Stroud and Thornbury for exposing so completely the unhappy state into which civil aviation in this country had fallen before the war. I thought his contribution to that extent was extremely useful. I am pleased to think more and more people are beginning to appreciate some of the difficulties the Corporations have had to contend with since they took up the threads again after the end of the last world war. I was reading the other day a most interesting comment in that lively and well-informed magazine of the Air League of the British Empire and I recommend the hon. Member to read it. He will probably see the passage in the July edition where it says:
  "There is no evidence available which would enable anyone to prove that had the two British Corporations not been nationalised their financial results would have been remarkably different."
  I do not want to bring that magazine into a political controversy but it does say that:
  "British European Airways in particular operates over a continental area which has just been ravaged by war, the routes cross numberless boundaries, meteorological and navigational facilities still vary enormously"—
  and so on. When hon. Members, as they sometimes are tempted to do, compare conditions here and the achievements of the British Corporations with those of some of the air-line operations in the United States of America, it would be as well to remember some of the difficulties they have had to contend with. The magazine of the Air League of the British Empire says this of the facts I have just detailed:
  788
  "All this is now an old story but it is too frequently forgotten."
  In some quarters, at any rate, there is not a very great effort made to remember it at all.
  I am not going to hazard any prophesies into the future because, after all, this aviation field is a most speculative field of human endeavour. There have been several Continental countries recently which, although for some years they have shown nominal profits themselves last year suddenly reported a substantial loss. The difficulties they have had to contend with are by no means peculiar to those countries. They are difficulties that we are coming up against along many of the routes in the international field. All I would say to the hon. Member opposite who asked for some figures, and who tried to say that we are not so efficient as some of the other countries, is that if he took such indices of efficiency as the capacity ton miles per employee, he would see each year a progressive improvement both in the case of B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. I hope that improvement will be continued.
  We are going to have some difficulties and no doubt some setbacks. The hon. Member for Stroud and Thornbury, whose contribution I must say irritated me in several respects, was, I think, talking utter nonsense when he said the activities were shrouded in mystery. I invite him to go round the bases. Some of us who went round last year were greatly impressed by the keenness and efficiency of those men and women whom we saw at work. I would be very happy to answer any questions he may raise and I invite him to ask for information, and I am sure he would get a much more optimistic view of the Corporation than he now enjoys.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Committee report Progress; to sit again Tomorrow.

  INDIA (FAMILY PENSIONS SCHEME)
  Order read for resuming adjourned Debate on Question [28 th June]:
  "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, in pursuance of Section 309 of the Government of India Act, 1935, praying that the Government of India (Family Pension Funds) (Amendment) Order, 1950, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament on 16th June."—[Mr. Gordon-Walker.]
  Question again proposed.
  11.0 p.m.
  The Secretary for Overseas Trade (Mr. Bottomley): My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations would have explained more fully the purpose of this Order had it not been for the procedure in the House at the time when he was speaking on 28th June. That being so, I should now like to put the position as clearly as I can in the shortest possible time.
  The object of the Amendment to the Government of India (Family Pension Funds) Order is to enlarge the powers of investment of the trustees established as a result of the Act. It enables the commissioners to buy annuities on the lives of pensioners and to extend the present powers covering the purchase of property rights. The reasons for this are that there are difficulties in being able to meet the present liabilities to pay the present pensioners. The decline in the yield on gilt-edged securities soon after the war has been one of the causes for this, and another reason, a very fortunate one in some respects, is that the pensioners are living much longer.
  The custody and investment of these funds are in very good hands. They are the responsibility of appointed commissioners, one of whom is the Public Trustee, and I can assure the House that the Order is one which is worthy of its support.
  11.3 p.m.
  Mr. Manningham-Buller: I want to draw attention to one minor point with reference to this Order in the hope that in any further Orders this error will not be made. In considering the full effect of an Order like this, it is of great convenience to have a reference,
  790
  on the Order, to any other Orders which are amended. If the Secretary for Overseas Trade has studied this Order, he will see that while specific reference is made to one amending Order, no reference is made to any of the other Orders making subsequent amendments.
  I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that when an Order of this nature is laid, it facilitates comprehension of what the Order means if any amending Orders also are specifically referred to in a footnote. I say that by the way, because it is only a minor point but is one to which, I think, it is worth drawing attention.
  We do not object to these powers of investment being extended. I should, however, have welcomed a fuller account from the hon. Gentleman of the way these funds have been managed. There have been rumours—I do not know with what truth, and I should like to know—that considerable sums have been lost since the power of investment was transferred to the commissioners. I would like to know to what extent that is true and whether to any extent that was the result of advice or instructions from the Treasury.
  It may be—I do not know—that there was considerable investment in the stocks commonly referred to as "Daltons" and, perhaps, in nationalised industries. But we certainly do not object to this extended power of investment, and it is perhaps worthy of note that this power of purchasing annuities, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, was first suggested on 9th March, 1949, in the House of Lords. That suggestion was not adopted. I am glad that the Government, rather belatedly, have now thought fit to adopt it. I hope that if any losses have been made as a result of investment in "Daltons," or things of that sort, these wider powers of investment which are now being taken will lead to these losses being recovered, so that at least the beneficiaries under the Fund, to whom we all owe an obligation, will secure their full pensions and their full rights.
  Mr. A. R. W. Low: What the Secretary for Overseas Trade has said, has been little more than what was said by the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. Gordon-Walker) in the short time available to him

  791
  on 28th June. However, he omitted one thing which the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations said on that occasion. I believe he was wise to omit it, for what he said was:
  "The effect of the draft Order would be to enable the rates of pensions to be increased.."(OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th June, 1950; Vol. 476. c. 2361.)
  As I understand it, that is the object of the Order. It is certainly not the object set out in the explanatory note, and it will not be the effect of the Order according to the Secretary for Overseas Trade, who said that it was necessary to maintain the rates of pensions. This is not just quibbling because the words of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations were read by many people interested in this Fund. They are naturally excited, to put it no less than that, at the prospect that their pensions may be increased again to the rates they have been lead to expect.
  Mr. Speaker: I do not think the amount of the pensions comes into the Order, as it only provides for the enlargement of the powers of the authorities to buy annuities on the lives of those people affected by it.
  Mr. Low: I was trying to correct, or ask the Government to correct, the statement by the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, Sir. We should be clear, for the benefit of the people to whom these pensions apply, whether the result of the Order will be to increase their pensions, or, as the Secretary for Overseas Trade said, to maintain the rate of pensions. It is quite a short point but it has, to my knowledge, affected a great many people concerned with these pensions, and I am sure they would like to know who is right.
  My second point is to mention again the purchase of annuities. This is perhaps a commentary on things we discuss at other times, whether insurance should be in State hands or not. In this case, in order to get a better yield, it has been decided, quite rightly, to purchase annuities from other people.
  Mr. Manningham-Buller: Are we not to have a reply to this Debate?
  Mr. Bottomley: By leave of the House I would like to speak again. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Low)
  792
  wanted to know whether the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations or I were right. We are both right. If my right hon. Friend had been able to finish what he was saying on 28th June, he would have said what I have said tonight, that the reason is to maintain the existing rates to beneficiaries. I will see that the first point of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Northants, South, (Mr, Manningham-Buller) is duly noted.
  In connection with the way we propose to operate, I should say that within the powers we are circumscribed but the commissioners have done their best. There is the Public Trustee, whom I have already mentioned; there is a person of high repute in the City of London; a Commonwealth Relations Office representative, and two representatives of the pensioners themselves. I think, therefore, that we may be reasonably assured that the interests of the pensioners will be well looked after.
  Mr. Manningham-Buller: The hon. Member has not answered the question put by my hon. Friend. Are the rates to be increased or not? He must give an answer to that.
  Mr. Bottomley: I thought I had made it clear that there will not be any increase.
  Resolved:
  "That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, in pursuance of Section 309 of the Government of India Act, 1935, praying that the Government of India (Family Pension Funds) (Amendment) Order, 1950, be made in the form of the draft laid before Parliament on 16th June:"
  To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of His Majesty's Household.

  GREENWICH HOSPITAL AND TRAVERS' FOUNDATION
  11.12 p.m.
  The Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. James Callaghan): I beg to move,
  "That the Statement of the Estimated Income and Expenditure of Greenwich Hospital and Travers' Foundation for the year ending on 31st March, 1951, laid before this House on 13th June, be approved."
  This Trust is one for which the House of Commons is responsible through the

  793
  Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, and it involves a very considerable income and expenditure. The income of the Trust is derived, as hon. Members will see from the statement before them, from estates in the North of England, and Greenwich, from interest on Government and other securities and from the Foundation called the Reade Foundation. The total income is £227,000.
  Apart from administrative costs, the expenditure is mainly in respect of pensions and the cost of the Royal Hospital School. The expenditure is adjusted so as to tally with the amount of income. Details are given on pages 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the statement as to how the income and expenditure are made up. I gather, Mr. Speaker, that some hon. Members propose to speak if they are fortunate enough to catch your eye, and as I shall have to ask leave to speak again, I do not intend to go into details now. I would not, however, like hon. Members to think that I do not regard this as a matter of importance, but as I shall have to ask leave to speak again I do not consider it proper to make two lengthy speeches.
  I have turned up the figures for 1914 and 1950 to see how the policy of the Trust has been moving. Broadly, we spend now about £124,000 on the school and about £40,000 to £50,000 on pensions, in which there is an element in respect of children's pensions. The reverse was so in 1914, when by far the greater bulk of the Trust was spent on pensions and a comparatively small amount on the school. The policy has been changed again because the State has come into the pension field more and more and taken the obligations and responsibilities which used to fall on the Trust. We have, therefore, been able to devote more income to the boys at the school, as well as to a number of other children pensioners who are not at the school.
  About three or four years ago a new educational policy was adopted for the school which is proving extremely satisfactory. This is a matter of particular interest to me, because I was invited by my predecessor to serve on the committee of management of the school—not in respect of the whole trust, as the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. J. P. L. Thomas) knows, but in respect of the school only. The hon. and gallant Member for Horn-castle (Commander Maitland) and I have
  794
  been members of the Management Committee since that time.
  The policy of the school has been altered so that it is now on the point of providing a good grammar school education generally, with a substantial technical stream for those who do not wish to go into the grammar school stream; and we are achieving better results every year. As a result of this new policy 23 boys gained School Certificates in 1949. There will be fewer going in for the examination this year because of the age restriction placed on entries, but 23 is the largest number who have obtained certificates since the new policy was brought into being.
  Another thing about which I am particularly pleased is that for the first time we have put in two candidates for cadetships at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. I am glad to say that both of them passed the written examination and attended the subsequent oral. One of these boys has succeeded in the oral examination and will become a Dartmouth cadet. That is a remarkable fact, on which I think the House will want to congratulate the headmaster.
  This information has not yet been published. It is due to be published in a day or two, but the First Lord has agreed to my telling the House tonight. I hope that Holbrook will develop more and more as a breeding ground for Dartmouth. It will be an excellent thing if it does. That is all I wish to say at the moment in commending the Estimates to the House. Should hon. Members wish to ask detailed questions, I shall, if I have leave of the House, be glad to answer them.
  11.17 p.m.
  Mr. J. P. L. Thomas: The Parliamentary Secretary was right to make a short speech in introducing these Estimates as he will undoubtedly have to ask leave to speak again later in the evening. During the war, I understand, these Estimates went through "on the nod," but the Admiralty did not take into consideration the presence of the hon. Member for Croydon, East (Sir H. Williams), the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) and the noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton). That formidable array has now been increased by the hon. and gallant Member for Hull. East (Commander Pursey), who is always

  795
  good for half an hour on Holbrook. Therefore, perhaps the tactics of the Parliamentary Secretary this evening are wise.
  One difficulty in discussing the Estimates is that the accounts which, I know, we cannot discuss tonight, but which we need as the background of our study of the Estimates, are only available for the year before last. I will try to surmount that difficulty. I call the attention of the House to the fact that the estimated income of £257,430 for 1950–51 is an increase of £14,708 on the estimated income for the previous year. We on this side of the House consider that to be very satisfactory and a matter for congratulation to the Admiralty and all concerned When we turn to the pensions to officers, the Estimate is £12,000, an increase of £2,300. Estimated expenditure on pensions to seamen stands at £50,700, an increase of £5,644 on the previous year. That, too, is a matter for congratulation.
  But we would be more encouraged by these figures if it were not for the disappointing results shown in past years. In 1948–49 it was estimated that officers' pensions would amount to £11,260, but only £8,766 were disbursed, while pensions to seamen had been estimated at £45,256 and only £32,571 were actually spent. Would the Parliamentary Secretary tell us how the actual payment of pensions for 1949–50 compares with the Admiralty, that the Estimates this year, both for officers' and seamen's pensions Estimates? Could we have an assurance, from the hon. Gentleman on behalf of the are not over-optimistic?
  There is also another question, also page 2, and this relates to the Admiralty estates in the north of England. The Government tell us that the object of their agricultural policy is to encourage farmers and land owners to increase their capital investment in land and buildings. Why, therefore, does the estimated expenditure for 1950–51 on these estates appear only to show an increase of £280 over the estimated expenditure for last year? This would seem to me not to be enough, even to compensate for the increased cost of buildings. Is there not a danger that there may be less improvement in 1950–51 than there was in 1949–50? The point I am getting at is that I hope the Admiralty will be able to
  796
  say they are better landlords than the figures in the Estimates would make them appear to be.
  If I may trespass on the ground of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Hull, East, and turn to the Royal Hospital School, the increase in the numbers, as shown on page 5 of the Estimates, must be a great encouragement to him just as they are a great encouragement to all of us. Can the Parliamentary Secretary say how many there were in 1949–50, and how many he expects to be there in 1950–51? I see the estimated cost per boy at the Royal Hospital School for 1950–51 is less that it was for 1946–47, but more than in 1948–49 although at that time there were more boys. The cost of maintaining a boy at Holbrook for 1950–51 is estimated at £185 a year. That, in comparison with other schools, is a heavy cost, for I am informed that the cost of grammar schools and free grant schools is £120 a year. Take the case of Christ's Hospital School which, like Holbrook, bears the cost of clothing: There, I under stand the total cost of maintaining a boy is £120 a year, compared with £180 a year at Holbrook
  When we turn from the Royal Hospital School to the Travers' Foundation, we find, according to page 7 of the Estimates, that, as usual, the expenditure is still in excess of income, although there has been a great improvement in 1950–51 compared with 1949–50 and there is a drop from £207 to £8. I see the cash balances in this Foundation on 1st March, 1949, were £794, so there is still something in hand for this continuing deficiency; but, surely, as I said last year when speaking on these Estimates, the time has come for the whole position of the Travers' Foundation to be examined. We cannot go or indefinitely year after year with a charity where the expenditure always exceeds the income.
  The general position shown by the Estimates is, I think, far more satisfactory than it has been in the immediate past, but I think the points which I have raised call for answers by the Parliamentary Secretary, and I hope he will be able to reply to them later in the Debate.
  11.25 p.m.
  Commander Pursey: This is the annual occasion for dealing with these accounts, which, unfortunately, are

  797
  always brought forward at a late hour. The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. J. P. L. Thomas) has stolen a lot of my thunder by taking up points which I have always raised in previous years. The first point to be emphasised about these accounts is that they are presented in considerable detail, so that the dog can see the rabbit, which is in striking contrast to the accounts presented by the War Office in regard to the Royal Patriotic Fund, from which it is impossible to discover where the money is going. Here, we have a fund of £4 million, and an income of £1 million.
  We ought to keep in mind the object of the School—I will confine my remarks to the School—and that is that it was established for the maintenance and education of the sons, preferably orphans, of poor seamen. The School dates back to 1694, although I will not cover the intervening years. I should like to hear that the policy is to give first preference to orphans, not only of ex-Service men of the Navy, but also of the Mercantile Marine, and also to poor boys, because if boys who can make their way with advantage in other schools are accepted, it will defeat the whole objects of the School.
  There was a period when they were taking the cream of the applicants to save the School staff trouble in teaching education, discipline and everything else. The idea was to turn it into a "posh" School, and the School was drifting into the position where the orphans of poor seamen could not find a place in the School. I hope that the right policy is now being followed.
  The point about the two candidates at Dartmouth is a good one, for which credit is deserved, but if that is to be developed on a large scale it shows that the main objects of the School are not being carried out. It is not the intention of the School to train boys for entry into the Navy as cadets. The object should be to select boys who would normally enter the Navy on the lower deck and improve their position whereby they get in as artificers with the object of becoming commissioned officers. These should be the ordinary types of boys, not the "posh" cream with the idea of turning the School into a "posh" School, the poor boy being handicapped because he is poor. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]
  798
  I am not objecting to them going to a "posh" school, but referring to the others who cannot get into a "posh" school.
  I think there is no question that my hon. Friend, understands my point. I have debated this subject before. I want the orphan boys of the poorest ex-Service men of the Navy and the Mercantile Marine to get the advantage of this luxurious School, which, originally, cost £1 million. Those who are capable of fighting their own battles, and standing on their own feet, should go to the ordinary schools of the country. I think that is a sound and logical case to put forward, because this is a charitable institution.
  It would also be of advantage to the House if the Financial Secretary were able to give the recent awards of sub-lieutenancies. In my time we were able to get larger numbers. In recent years Royal Hospital School boys have not been able to; yet, when war broke out three of them were in command of cruisers and have since reached the flag list, and one is now serving as a vice-admiral on the active list. If the School were carried on as originally intended, we would be able to get these lower standard boys and bring them forward to reach the top of their profession in the Navy.
  Then there is the point about numbers. The old school at Greenwich accommodated 1,000. The new school at Holbrook was also to accommodate 1,000, but two houses were not built, and the number was then reduced to 840. The hon. Gentleman opposite referred to the increase in numbers. I want to suggest to the Financial Secretary that although it is Admiralty policy not to overcrowd these boys, a school built for 1,000 plus ought to be able to accommodate 600 plus without overcrowding. There ought not to be any necessity to reduce the numbers by 25 per cent.
  There are two other criticisms which have been levelled at this School. One is the rebuilding and knocking about of buildings, whereby accommodation has been lost. The other is an unduly high proportion of high salaries as compared with the other expenses for the benefit of the orphans. There is the case of the headmaster. His salary is £1,650, plus £250 entertainment allowance, which gives him £1,900 a year in cash, plus an official residence, plus the services of a gardener

  799
  and a boy at the expense of the School funds. These emoluments are, I believe, far above those for what the Parliamentary Secretary has referred to as a grammar school type of school. I understand that in the near future there will be a change of headmaster by virtue of retirement, and I suggest that the Admiralty should consider the total of emoluments for the new headmaster.
  Another post on the senior staff is that of the chief naval instructor. That is a new term which has come into use in comparatively recent years. Originally, there was a captain's superintendent, with a second in command. They were responsible for discipline, and so on. The headmaster was responsible for education. These changes occurred, I believe, during the tenure of office of the hon. Member opposite during the Coalition Government. The Admiralty decided that the captain superintendent should go, and that the headmaster should be responsible for the whole thing.
  The question which arises is: Having reduced the standing on the naval side of the naval officers, who is the present holder of this post of chief naval instructor? He should be someone to whom the boys should look up, and this is the one post in the School which should be open to an old boy. There was a change after my time at the School, and a lieut.-commander, who got his commission as a mate, was appointed. But when the School was moved from Greenwich, the idea seemed to be that the stall should be selected, not so much because of their previous history, but because they came from "county" families and were able to mix with the "posh" people in the county of Suffolk. As the captain-superintendent has gone, and is replaced by a headmaster, who may or may not be able to mix with the important county families, this post should be filled by an old boy. If that was done, at least the boys could say "Here is an old boy who has got on" and that would mean an inducement to them.
  I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will deal with some of the points I have raised—although, admittedly, I have not given him notice of them. I say to the Admiralty, "Stick to the original objects of the School; make certain that priority is given to orphans of
  800
  ex-naval and Mercantile Marine men, and make certain that money is not wasted in buildings or on staff which should be better devoted to the boys". Those boys should have every opportunity to get as far as possible, both in the School and in the Navy when they join it.
  11.37 p.m.
  Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu: There is one point of elucidaion which I would like to make, and that arises from the claim by the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. J. P. L. Thomas) that the total cost of maintaining a boy at Christ's Hospital School is £120 a year.
  Mr. J. P. L. Thomas: It is accurate.
  Mr. Mallalieu: It strikes me as very low, but, of course, I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. However, the point which we have to bear in mind is that this School is saddled with rather nigh costs from the buildings, and I would suggest that the really true comparison is between this School and the costs of a boarding school. The boarding school may go from £300 to £400 a year, and I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to give us his idea of the true comparison.
  My second point is that which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) has made, that the original idea of this School was to give the orphan sons of seamen the chance to get a better eduction in order to go on in the Navy. My hon. and gallant Friend was rather critical of the suggestion that we were sending boys to Dartmouth, but I cannot see any point there; I am all for these boys getting out and going as far as possible. But it seems to me that whatever the original intentions of this School may have been, later developments have given us an opportunity for experimentation.
  It is generally believed, although I do not know whether it is right or not, that the boarding school systems in this country is the best, but it has been confined to those with means In this School, the poor boy has got the chance of having the best system of education which this country can provide. Let us aim at making this School not only the machine for turning out seamen, but a new type of school for giving the finest possible education to boys who happen to be the

  801
  sons of seamen, but who may not, themselves, want to go into the Navy at all.
  I am delighted to find that the naval side of this has been played down and, moreover, that the civilian side is being played up. I believe we have an enormous opportunity here of making this School an example to the country, a school which has the best traditions of the public school without the one defect of making entry money the criterion.
  11.41 p.m.
  Sir Herbert Williams: I believe that I was responsible for the first Debate which took place on this subject for over a quarter of a century, and I am delighted to know the Debate is carried on year by year. I believe my intervention eight years ago had a very useful effect. The Lords of the Admiralty did not realise until then that they were responsible for this educational institution. It is sometimes useful to remind people in high office of their responsibility.
  Commander Pursey: I know that the hon. Member would like to get this right and correct on the record. Frankly, he is absolutely wrong because, many years before this, the Committee of Public Accounts got at this and there were lengthy debates in the House some 15 years ago or so, so that any idea he has that he has drawn attention to the fact the Admiralty were responsible for these accounts is entire nonsense.
  Sir H. Williams: I am sorry that I have provoked so much steam and heat, if I may say so. I did not trouble to look this matter up, but information came to me to that effect from the Admiralty at the time. I am sorry if I was misinformed. I will take the trouble, when I have a few spare moments, to check up what I have been told.
  I want to ask two questions. Only a few minutes ago we were discussing something else to do with finance and the question of investment of funds, and of funds which are held in trust being invested in trustee securities. There is a very interesting item on page 3—interest on loans, £43,400. I imagine that there must be a capital sum there, and I am surprised the Admiralty are starting out as money-lenders. To whom are they lending this large sum, and what is the
  802
  interest they are getting? I think it is some comfort to the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) because this document reinforces. his view, and the next item is an interesting one: "Parliamentary Grant: Receipt from the Consolidated Fund in lieu of Merchant Seamen's Sixpences Act, 32 & 33 Vict. c. 44."
  I suggest that the Financial Secretary might look that up in the Library and that when he makes a speech next year he might be able to tell us all about the Merchant Seamen's Sixpences.
  Mr. Callaghan: By leave of the House, I will reply as briefly as possible. The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. J. P. L. Thomas) asked me a number of questions based on his annual examination of the Estimates. I think he now knows as much about them, or perhaps more, than the hon. Member who stands at this Box for the time being. However, I will do my best to answer the questions he put. He asked, first, why we do not spend the amount that is estimated in respect of pensions and how the payments for 1949–50 compared with the Estimates. The answer, I think, is that the Greenwich Hospital Trustees, do not wish to come to the House for Supplementary Estimates if they can avoid it, and, therefore, they tend to overestimate the number of applicants for pensions.
  I think this is hardly even a venial crime since they are not asking for public money. It is really an allocation of their own money which they are spending as Trustees. I suggest that it is no crime that they should slightly over-estimate the amount they expect to spend in order to avoid a Supplementary Estimate when they are not asking for the taxpayers' money.
  Sir H. Williams: The figure is £45,000 estimated but only £32,000 spent, an error of one-third.
  Mr. Callaghan: It is not ill-estimating; it is over-estimating the number of applicants who are to receive pensions. If I may give the answer for 1949–50, I am told that as far as officers' pensions are concerned, the amount spent will probably equal the estimate; so that this item will not be very much out. As far as children are concerned, the amount will not be fully spent.

  803
  I do not think we ought to press the Director of Greenwich Hospital to estimate all this exactly every year or that we should treat him as being at fault if it does not work out that way. I do not think it really matters from an accounting point of view, and I am by way of being something of an accounting purist on some of these matters.
  The hon. Member then asked why the increased expenditure on the estates appears to be only £280 at a time when the Government are pressing landlords and those who own property in the country to spend as much money as possible in improving their estates. If the hon. Member reflects, he will appreciate that these Estimates are concerned only with income and expenditure. There is a great deal of capital expenditure that is not reflected in the Estimates but is, of course, shown in the accounts. In fact, the amount which is being spent on improving the estates this year is of the order of £15,000. That will be charged to capital, and will affect the rent that is charged to the tenants in respect of the improvements that are made. If the improvements are permanent, 5 per cent. of the cost per year will be charged by way of increased rent. For temporary improvements—for example, a temporary farm building—8 per cent. is the basis of the charge. I have not all the details with me, but that is, roughly, the way in which it works.
  I hope that the hon. Member will go North and look at the large estates, which total some 20,000 acres, because I should like to have his opinion as to how Greenwich Hospital are standing up as landlords. There is a programme, over a period of five years, for spending something like £75,000 in improving cottages and farm buildings in that area. That is something of which we can be really proud.
  On the question of the School, the hon. Member asked how many boys there were and also questioned the figure for the cost of the School. At this stage, perhaps I might reply also to various other points which were raised, My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) suggests every year that we ought to have more boys at the School. I want him to understand clearly that so long as I am Financial
  804
  Secretary I do not intend to have more than the present number of boys there. The reason for that is that I have seen the place and he has not.
  Commander Pursey: Yes, I have.
  Mr. Callaghan: Well, not for a very long time. The plain truth is that with the present complement of about 650–660 boys, the School is comfortably and adequately full. We are not going to have them packed in like sardines in a tin or living like seamen on a mess deck; we intend to give them proper accommodation. I ask my hon. and gallant Friend to go and have another look for himself, and then he may come back and revise some of the ideas with which he entertains us every year about the School. Let him see whether he does not think that the accommodation is used as well as it can be.
  I do not pretend that the School was laid out originally as well as it might have been. That is something which the present Management Committee have to put up with. It is perfectly true that there were some rather grandiose ideas about the School originally, but I believe that the existing policy, within the limits that are imposed upon the Management Committee by the physical shape of the buildings, is as good as it ought to be. In answer to the hon. Member who raised the point, it is my intention—and the Management Committee give me full support in this—to keep the number of boys at about 660. In fact, the figure is now about 652. It is higher at the beginning than it is at the end of term. Normally it is between 650 and 670, and that is where it is going to stay. Anyone who looks at this question carefully will agree that that is right.
  The figure 1 have for Christ's Hospital for 1948–49 is nothing like that quoted by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hereford. Whereas the cost of a boy at Holbrook is £171 the figure for Christ's Hospital is £179, which seems to be more likely than the figure of £120 that he gave.
  Mr. J. P. L. Thomas: If I gave the wrong figure, of course, I withdraw it. I had it looked into carefully, and that was the figure I was given. I will check it later.
  Mr. Callaghan: Anticipating that some comparisons might be made I went to

  805
  the Ministry of Education and asked them for some specimen figures. Christ's Hospital was among those given to me. I have figures for some other schools. I am not prepared to give the names, but I ask the hon. Gentleman to accept them as reasonably representative schools. School "A" with 400 pupils costs £168; school "B" with the same number, costs the same; and school "C," with slightly fewer, costs £183. So Holbrook compares not unfavourably with these schools, particularly when one appreciates the quite fantastic sum it takes to provide heat and water to the place. I think we shall find that, taking into account that at Holbrook the School provides everything from bootlaces to cricket bats, while comparable schools are not responsible for anything like the same expenditure, the figure is not unreasonable. The Management Committee—of which the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Horncastle (Commander Maitland) is a member, as I also was, until I became Financial Secretary, when I then became its chairman—has effected considerable economies during the last few years without cutting down essential services.
  With regard to the function of the School, I really did not like the terms in which the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East, spoke. To talk of poor, handicapped children having to come first, and using such expressions as, "This is a charity," paints a picture of long blue stockings and the dreadful sort of atmosphere of the charity school. That is not the sort of place we want, and it is not going to be that. We want a decent place where every child has the best opportunity of developing his talents to the fullest extent and that is the sort of school it is going to be. During the last four or five years it has come along in that way. I am proud that we have had two boys who have got as far as the oral at Dartmouth, and that one has got through. I hope many more will follow.
  The booklet which is sent out to prospective entrants to the School contains the following sentences:
  "Priority is given to those whose fathers have been killed or died on service. Other things being equal, preference is given to sons of those who served as ratings."
  That is in keeping with the modern interpretation of a charter dating from the reign of William and Mary. We ought not to be bound strictly to a charter set
  806
  out in those days, and I think this is a reasonable and commonsense interpretation of it.
  We are shortly appointing a new headmaster, and the Management Committee has just agreed that his emoluments should be roughly those of the old headmaster.
  We have done that because, having consulted with various educational authorities and those who are in a position to advise us, we have come to the conclusion that that is the right figure for the new headmaster. I am glad to say that my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu) has accepted my invitation to join us on the Management Committee. He will have an opportunity of expressing his views there on the form that the School should take and we shall listen to him with great interest.
  On the question of who is the chief naval instructor asked by the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East, he is a major of Marines selected by the Management Committee about a year or 18 months ago, after they had interviewed a number of first-rate applicants. He is doing a very useful job at the school and he is certainly someone to whom the boys can look up.
  The hon. Member for Hereford suggested that the Travers' Foundation was having a continuing deficit. I do not think he has grasped the point. There is no continuing deficit. The hon. Member raises this point year after year, and I will attempt to explain it. The position is simply this: every year there are a fixed number of pensions and they cost a certain amount. Because of deaths and the interval that occurs between one death and the establishment of the next pension there is a balance at the end of the year, due to the total annual amount of the pensions not being spent. That balance accumulated for a number of years and resulted in a fairly considerable sum, with the consequence that the Trustees were able to increase the number of pensions for a short time in order to work off this balance.
  The Foundation is not, therefore, running a deficit. It is, in fact, paying the cost of additional pensions over and above the establishment out of its balance of money in hand. We shall always be able to do that as long as there is a gap between the death of one pensioner and

  807
  the appointment of another. I can assure the hon. Member that there is no accounting jugglery. It is a perfectly sensible operation.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East, suggested that the naval side of the School was being played down. That is not the case. A large number of boys are still leaving the school to join the Navy, and I trust that will continue. The number has varied in the last three or four years between 70 and 94. Speaking from memory, that represents about 60 to 70 per cent. of the boys who leave, and I consider that a good thing. Of the 23 boys who obtained School Certificates in 1949, 17 went into the Navy, four entered civil employment and two are still at the School; one of these is also hoping to go into the Service eventually. I am delighted that the Royal Navy should be able to get these boys of School Certificate standard and feel sure that the Navy will provide them with a good career. I hope I have answered all the questions—
  Sir H. Williams:What about the money-lending point?
  Mr. Callaghan: I do not know the answer to that question from the hon. Member, but I will give him the answer in due course, in writing. Apart from that, I hope I have answered all the questions put to me.
  Dr. King: I was rather troubled about the point raised by the hon. Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey), that there was a policy of excluding poorer boys. I should be glad if my hon. Friend would answer that.
  Mr. Callaghan: There is no such policy at all. These boys are selected every term from those who apply, and generally speaking, 90 per cent. of those who apply are selected. There has to be an element of competition, because, there are rather more applicants than there are places, if we are to keep the School operating on what I consider to be a reasonable complement.
  Resolved:
  "That the Statement of the Estimated Income and Expenditure of Greenwich Hospital and Travers' Foundation for the year ending on 31st March, 1951, laid before this House on 13th June, be approved."

  POSTAL AND TELEPHONE SERVICES
  Motion made, and, Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Royle.]
  11.59 p.m.
  Mr. Carson: I wish to raise the question of the oldest nationalised industry, the Post Office, and the only nationalised industry in which the Minister is responsible for day-to-day affairs, as indeed he should be. Our telephone system is one of the best in the world. I do not want to bring any false accusations against it. It is excellent for those who have a telephone, but I propose to deal with those who, I regret to say, have not one. I wish I could say the same about the postal system. I hope to start by being polite to the Assistant Postmaster-General about the telephone system, but I am afraid I shall end up by being less polite about the postal system.
  The telephone system is good. I have been round Europe and seen a good many other systems. I remember waiting patiently—how patiently!—for a call in Barcelona, in Spain, only 30 miles from where I was calling, and I waited very patiently for 2½ whole days—and finally got a call to the wrong number. Because we have a good telephone system, that is no reason why we should rest on our laurels and say that
  "God's in His heaven—
  All's right with the world!"
  If we do that, others will pass us and become more efficient and we shall be left standing.
  The waiting list for telephones on 30th September, 1949, was 552,415 people, and I noticed that the Postmaster-General yesterday at Question time said it was still about half a million. I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he will give us the exact figure, because although 552,000 is almost the same as half a million, we should like to know whether the waiting list is growing less. Is it going up or down? Is any change taking place, and are we improving the position? As to the number of telephones in operation, culling my figures from statements of the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend, on 31st December, 1949, we had the following: Government lines, 44,000; business lines, 1,379,000; and private

  809
  lines, 1,511,000. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman divides business and private lines. For example, I suppose Members of Parliament would be classed as business lines, but I do not think they would consider themselves business lines when faced with their telephone bills and when they ask their wives why those bills are so large. Forty-four thousand seems a large number for Government Departments, and I should like to ask whether this could be brought down. I realise that it was brought down a year ago, but is there a constant effort on the part of the Post Office to bring down the number of telephone lines in the employment of the Government?
  I do not want to make a constituency speech, but I should like to give one or two facts about my own constituency, as I think it is comparable with any other part of the country. Our waiting list is 800, which is large for a small, compact body of people. Of these, 714 have been told that they will have to wait until underground developments are possible. I understand that that means they may have to wait two or three years, possibly four years. That is a pretty hefty time to have to wait.
  I realise perfectly well that the hon. Gentleman and his staff will consider urgent cases at once, and I know of many cases of people like nurses and doctors who have been given telephones in two or three weeks when it was really urgent. That is good, and I commend the Post Office for it; but there are other urgent cases constantly cropping up with the changed conditions. For example, I know of a farmer in my own constituency who, being on the priority list for his farm, was given a telephone at his farm. He had the misfortune, because of the housing difficulty, to live seven miles from the farm and although the farm was a priority, his house was not, and therefore he could not communicate from his house to the farm. This is the sort of case—and there are many, far too many—which should be taken into consideration by the hon. Gentleman.
  Another case is that of the many ex-Service men who are trying to open private hire-car businesses. They are now able to open them without petrol restrictions. The only restriction they still find is the lack of a telephone. If a person has a private hire-car business he is not
  810
  allowed under the existing law to ply for hire in the street. He has to sit at home until called for to do a specific job, and he cannot be called for unless he has a telephone. When people want a car, they want it quickly and cannot write for it one day and hope to get it the next. They might not even get it next day, as we shall see when I deal with the postal service.
  How long does the hon. Gentleman think this enormous waiting list is to go on? When will it be dealt with? It really is no good for the hon. Gentleman to get up and say how many lines are being laid now, as compared with before the war. That does not affect the argument at all, because we produced what was wanted before the war and are not producing what is wanted now. That is a basic difference. I appreciate the difficulties. We had six years of war during which no lines were laid and very few new subscribers were put on, and I realise the task the Government have to face; but at the same time it is not a fair analogy.
  We have had a good many debates on this subject, and the Government have tried to ride off on the question of the export of equipment. I have taken a certain amount of trouble to get figures of what we exported. Last year—I am quoting from the United Kingdom Trade and Navigation Accounts, December. 1949, page 195—we exported £8,093,481 worth of telephones and ancillary equipment. Of this, only £285,000 went to dollar countries and if that is reckoned in as a percentage—I could not work it out myself and four other hon. Gentlemen could not work it out either—it is 3.7 per cent.
  The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Hobson): I intervene because this figure is rather important. The exact figure was given by the President of the Board of Trade in answer to the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt). It was £602,000.
  Mr. Carson: If I am wrong, I withdraw, but I am quoting from the United Kingdom Trade and Navigation Accounts. I copied them out fairly carefully, but I will look at them again. That is 3.7 per cent. on my figures, and on the hon. Gentleman's figures it would still not be a substantial amount of the whole figure.

  811
  I hope the hon. Gentleman will realise that if that is so, things can be speeded up in our programme at home. He must realise there are new priority classes constantly being produced.
  The question of the postal services ties up with that of the telephone service, and I have had a good many complaints in my area recently. Again, I think my constituency is an example of the whole country. We have in our three main towns—Ramsgate, Margate and Broadstairs—two deliveries a day. We do not complain about two deliveries a day, provided they are at the right times. But they are not at the right times. We get two deliveries both in the morning before noon. That is not good enough and really does not serve the people in this part of the country. The second delivery is a waste of time unless it can be made later. So far as collections are concerned, they are not nearly late enough and they do not serve the villages in the rural areas—and part of my constituency is a rural area.
  May I give the hon. Gentleman an example? A letter posted in Ramsgate after 4.30 p.m. will not arrive at the village of Minster, which considers itself a substantial village and which is only five miles away, until the following evening. That is 24 hours for a five-mile journey. The hon. Gentleman must realise that it is possible for Id. or 2d. to phone that distance. Therefore, I think there is a case for speeding up deliveries from and to big towns, and from and to rural areas. I see that the hon. Gentleman said, in the Debate on 24th March, that he was looking into this matter. I should like to ask him whether he has had any results.
  The last matter I want to raise is that of the 2½d. postage. This becomes rather ridiculous when we remember that it is now five years since the end of the war, and that the whole object of raising the cost from 1½d. to 2½d. was to stop people writing too many letters, thereby easing the work of the Post Office. I ask the Assistant Postmaster-General whether something cannot be done. I ask him to look at the suggestions of the Postal Reform League to see whether anything can be done on those lines, whereby letters posted before a certain time at a
  812
  cheaper rate are not delivered until the following morning.
  I have tried to make a few constructive suggestions. It is natural that in a Debate one should be critical, but we do not desire to harry the hon. Gentleman or to be unreasonable. We know how much he is interested in the efficient running of the Post Office. Our only object is to help him to do what I know he has at heart, and that is to make the Post Office as efficient an organisation as possible.
  12.12 a.m.
  Major Hicks-Beach: We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Carson) for raising this important subject tonight. Those of us who have opposed nationalisation for a great number of years have always accepted the fact that the Post Office is a good example of a nationalised industry. There is a great danger today of the good example falling to the ground because of the great criticism that is being levelled at it due to the lack of energy in delivering the goods by the Post Office services. We all appreciate that they are suffering from the difficulties from which everyone else is suffering today, the lack of equipment, labour and the like; but if the Assistant Postmaster-General would really apply the brains of his Department to this problem, a great number of the difficulties could be overcome.
  All of us are continually having complaints from our constituents because telephones cannot be supplied within a reasonable time. Is that really necessary, when the war has been over for five years? Cannot the telephone service be made a priority? The Assistant Postmaster-General indicates that it cannot, but I believe that it could be if this problem were tackled in a big way. The telephone today is an essential part of our national life. I hope we can have an assurance that some arrangement will be made so that the customers of the Post Office can get the priority they deserve.
  12.14 a.m.
  Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: I wish to ask the Assistant Postmaster-General the question which I asked the Postmaster-General yesterday, and which he refused to answer. The question is this:
  "May I ask this special question on behalf of the Knutsford division, and I implore the

  813
  Minister to give a straight answer? How does this increasingly bad service, at greater cost to the public, square with the Chancellor's exhortations to industry to produce more at less cost? Should not Government Departments set a good example instead of a very bad one?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th July, 1950; Vol. 477, c. 452.]
  I hope that the hon. Member will now give the answer to that question.
  12.15 a.m.
  The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Hobson): I want first to thank the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet (Mr. Carson) for informing me beforehand of the specific points on which he required an answer. That makes my task infinitely easier, and I appreciate his action very much indeed. We have had many debates in this house on the shortages of telephones. Let me say that it is obviously in the interest of the Post Office to instal as many telephones as it can. That is apparent. What precludes us from doing that? It is the control of capital investment. That is the reason. There are many other industries urgently crying out for capital for development. For example, there are the mines, the railways, the refineries, the Post Office, and private industry. They all have to be considered in the light of the capital investment available.
  As far as the Post Office is concerned, we have this year got 44½ million pounds to spend upon capital investment. The bulk of that will be spent upon telephones, because there is very little capital investment required as far as the postal service is concerned. Anyone who has been round a sorting office will appreciate that immediately. With regard to the wiping out of the waiting list for telephones, I had better give the exact figures. The exact number of people waiting for telephones in Britain today is 547,765.
  Mr. Carson: It has gone up?
  Mr. Hobson: Slightly, though compared with last month there has been a reduction. If one goes by the figure of the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet there has been a slight increase. To reduce that waiting list to infinity would require capital expenditure of more than £300 million When that figure was stated in the House during the Debate on the Estimates, there were cries of amazement; and quite rightly. I want the House to appreciate that it is not only a question of liquidating the waiting list
  814
  but of keeping pace with the growth of the trunk network. The trunk traffic today is 100 per cent. above the 1938 traffic, and it is growing at the rate of between 7 per cent. and 8 per cent. annually. We have kept pace with that growth. Hon. Members therefore will appreciate that the problem is a difficult one.
  I think we are entitled to give credit, as indeed the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet gave credit, to the Post Office engineers for what they accomplished in difficult circumstances. One in three of the telephones in Britain has been installed since 1945; 1,400,000 telephones have been installed in the last two years; 12,000 farmers have been connected with the telephone service in each of the last two years, and 5,000 kiosks have been provided in rural areas. That is work at a far greater pace, and with far greater regard for the needs of the community, than was shown before the war. That is the position.
  With all these people waiting for telephones, what does it indicate? First, it indicates the buoyant economy which is only brought about by control of capital investment. Frankly, I do not think that humorous, if the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks-Beach) does. Those who were unemployed before the war did not think it humorous. That is the reason that people today can afford the telephone, and are demanding the telephone. Those who have used the telephone in the Services have come back and are in the position to have the telephone. This amenity is increasingly common to all classes, and this is as it should be.
  Major Hicks-Beach: Those who came back from the Forces want telephones, but how long does it take them to get telephones?
  Mr. Hobson: Not every person gets them, but there is greater demand than there is equipment available. There is, I would remind hon. Members, a system of priorities.
  Major Hicks-Beach: They fill in a form.
  Mr. Hobson: A cheap gibe about filling in a form shows the hollowness of the comments of the hon. Member for Cheltenham. We have a system of

  815
  priorities, and it is a system which we think is fair and equitable and just. First, there is what I may term the "lifesaving" services—doctors, nurses, midwives; they get top priority. Then come public utility undertakings; businesses concerned with export; ex-Service men; people who were connected before the war and, finally, private residents. That is fair and equitable, and every time the point is raised in the House it has been appreciated.
  Brigadier Clarke Brigadier Clarke (Portsmouth, West) rose—
  Mr. Hobson: I cannot give way; I have little time left, and hon. Members opposite know that I am not used to burking any point raised by hon. Members. If the hon. and gallant Member will restrain himself, I want to speak of exports. In answer to the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Mr. Langford-Holt), who recently asked a Question on the subject, it was stated where the telecommunications equipment is exported. Fifty per cent. of the equipment manufactured in this country goes for export; £602,000 goes to the dollar area, and £10,640,000 to the sterling area. This, while not a direct help in the dollar problem, does save dollars in so far as these countries in the sterling area, if they could not get the equipment from British firms, would get it from manufacturers in the dollar countries and the hard currency areas.
  Mr. Carson: Does not the hon. Gentleman think that if the firms in the Empire could not get the equipment they wanted from us, they would realise the dollar difficulties and have a waiting list, and share the equipment out with us?
  Mr. Hobson: I disagree. I believe that there is a very considerable saving to the non-dollar area by virtue of the fact that our telecommunications equipment is exported to these sterling countries. Now I should like to refer to the postal services.
  Brigadier Clarke: Before coming to that, will the hon. Gentleman—
  Mr. Hobson: I really cannot give way. I have only five minutes left. The postal services in the Isle of Thanet area compare very favourably with those existing
  816
  in other parts of the provinces. While tribute is paid to the efficiency of the British telephone service, we can also pay tribute to the British postal services. There are not, it is true, the same number of collections and deliveries as there were before the war, because of the limitation of manpower. That is the reason.
  Brigadier Clarke: What about unemployment?
  Mr. Hobson: As far as unemployment is concerned, there are far more jobs in this country than there are people to fill them at the present time and that is a very healthy sign. I have been into this very carefully, and I know of no other country where the postal services are as efficient as they are in Britain; but I agree with the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet that this does not mean that we should not strive to improve them. We are always striving to improve them. Regarding the demand made by the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet for a later delivery in his area, in our view that is not a practical proposition. I have been into this matter very thoroughly, and there would be three times more letters delayed than there would be accelerated if we accepted the hon. Member's proposition. Therefore, we think the business people of Margate and, indeed, the denizens of the boarding houses of Margate, would far rather prefer to have the present arrangements than to have a delay in the delivery.
  The hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham raised a point about the telephone service which I think I have answered completely. There is just one other matter and that is about the delay with regard to the delivery of letters from one village to another in the constituency of the hon. Member for the Isle of Thanet.
  Mr. Carson: From a village to a town.
  Mr. Hobson: That is the first I have heard of it, but I am not complaining. After all, this is the hon. Member's Adjournment Debate. But let me give this assurance. If he will let me have details of that, we will look into it and if any steps can be taken to improve the service, they will be taken. In the Post Office, we always regard very kindly any suggestions that come either from my hon.

  817
  Friends or from hon. Gentlemen opposite whereby we can improve the service. The hon. and gallant Member for Knutsford (Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport) raised a question which, quite frankly. I was not quite able to grasp. I know that he has been having controversy with the Department with regard to parcels between Knutsford and Portsmouth—
  Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: And letters.
  Mr. Hobson: And letters, and I think my right hon. Friend has given him an assurance that he is looking into the matter. We are still endeavouring to deal with that problem. It is not easy. After all, delivery of letters and parcels is always a tricky business for the simple reason that it is dependent not only on the postal service but on the railway service and road transport, and if one has a breakdown, one gets a delay.
  Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: Can the hon. Gentleman answer the question I asked him?
  Mr. Hobson: Quite frankly. I did not quite grasp the question, but it was something about efficiency in the Post Office.
  Lieut.-Colonel Bromley-Davenport: If I may repeat it, I asked the hon. Gentleman how does the increasingly bad service of the Post Office, at greater cost to the public, square with the Chancellor's exhortation to industry to produce more at less cost? Should not Government Departments set a good example?
  Mr. Hobson: Certainly they should. They should do everything to bring about an improvement, and we are doing so. With regard to the question of cost. I was asked whether we could reduce the postal rate from 2½d. to 2d. If we did that, we would wipe out the postal surplus.
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock upon Thursday evening, and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put. pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at Twenty-Nine Minutes past Twelve o'Clock.

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