Sitting of 1 May 1950

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

  CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL [Lords]
  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL
  WAKEFIELD EXTENSION BILL [Lords]
  Read a Second time, and committed.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  MINISTRY OF SUPPLY

    Motor Vehicles (Home and Export Markets)
    Mr. Bossomasked the Minister of Supply, seeing that our sale of motor vehicles abroad must unavoidably vary from month to month, if he will consult those in the closest day to day touch with our overseas markets about some longterm arrangements for disposal of cars in the home market.
    The Minister of Supply (Mr. G. R. Strauss): I am in regular consultation with the motor industry through the National Motor Advisory Council and with manufacturers individually. Manufacturers have been told how many cars they may supply to the home market for the whole of 1950. Separate quotas have been set for each period of three months, but it is open to manufacturers to adjust supply between one period and another provided their totals for the year are not exceeded.
    Mr. Bossom: Although the Minister has been having consultations, he never takes the advice of people with whom he consults. Is he aware that if he continues in this way he will create an impossible and ridiculous economic position? Manufacturers will not be able to supply either the home or the foreign market.
    Mr. Strauss: The economic situation will be far worse if we do not continue to export a major part of our car manufacture.
    Mr. Bossom: Is the Minister aware that we want to export but do not want to get into the stupid jam which he is creating by the present procedure?
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Minister of Supply whether he has considered the resolution of the Kingston-upon-Thames Chamber of Commerce, a copy of which has been sent him, on the subject of the restricted allocation of Roods vehicles to the home market for the year 1950; and what action he proposes to take
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: Yes, Sir; but the Government are not at present prepared to reconsider the policy of limiting the supply of commercial vehicles to the home market.
    Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, before they decided upon that policy, the Government consulted with the representatives of trade and industry?
    Mr. Strauss: We are continually having discussions, and I am personally, with this industry and with all other engineering industries.
    Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us of any industry which approves of this move?
    Mr. Strauss: That I do not know, but I know that it is essential, so that we should retain our balance of payments abroad and limit our capital expenditure at home, that there should be this limitation.

    Surplus Cars (Sale)
    Mr. Draysonasked the Minister of Supply if he will give details of the scheme whereby local authority officials and others are able to buy secondhand motor cars from his Department; on what basis the prices are fixed; and whether any restrictions as to resale are imposed
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: I will, with permission, answer this Question and Question No. 6 together.
    Mr. Keeling: On a point of Order. Can the first part of my Question No. 6 which has no connection whatever with Question No. 4, be answered separately?
    Mr. Strauss: I think the Questions are closely connected. The hon. Member presumably can ask a supplementary question on the particular point he has in mind.
    Mr. Keeling: I think it has been laid down by you, Mr. Speaker, that an hon. Member's permission is required for this procedure, and I think you will agree, and the House will agree that the first part of Question No. 6 has no connection whatever with Question No. 4.
    Mr. Strauss: I submit that it is very closely connected but, if it is desired, I will read the same answer twice.
    Mr. Speaker: I have no control over the Minister if he chooses to answer both Questions together. I think the hon. Member is wrong. It is not a matter for my permission.
    Mr. Oliver Stanley: If that is so, Sir, why has it been the custom of the Minister to say, " With the hon. Member's permission " if, in fact, it is not required?
    Mr. Speaker: It is not my permission; it is hon. Member's permission. I have nothing to do with it
    Mr. Strauss: The answer to both Questions is as follows: Until 31st March last, when the scheme was terminated, local authorities could buy surplus motor cars, but a condition of sale was that the cars should be used solely for the business of the council. The charge was at list price with Purchase Tax, less an allowance for depreciation. Surplus cars are inspected before disposal and are sold only if they are unsuitable for retention
    Mr. Drayson: If the price is fixed at the list price less depreciation, does the Minister know that cars only a few years old often command a premium over this price and that by selling them in this way he is depriving the Treasury of money.
    Mr. Strauss: Because second-hand cars carry with them usually an artificial scarcity price, an arrangement was come to, in collaboration with the Minister of Health, that cars that local authorities required for their own official purposes should be sold at a special rate. This is a fair rate, but it does not take into account scarcity prices.
    Mr. Harrison: Is the Minister aware that his answer that the Government are
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    not prepared to back up this second-hand second-hand car racket will be welcomed throughout the country?
    Mr. Drayson: Will the Minister see that cars are made available to local authority officials in my constituency?
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members do not seem to have noticed the excellent advice I received from the Father of the House, the right hon. Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton), that one of my very distinguished predecessors used to limit supplementary questions to two, or sometimes three, and very seldom more. We have a lot of Questions to get through, and if we are to get through, the matter might be left to my judgment. I think that the rule mentioned by the Father of the House is a good general rule to adopt.
    Mr. Walter Fletcher: On a point of Order. In view of the important principle which the Minister enunciated in his reply, about which I was not able to question him, relating to the whole question of disposal, I beg to give notice that I shall attempt to raise this matter on the Adjournment.
    Mr. Keelingasked the Minister of Supply why Government motor cars, less than three years old, are sold by auction instead of being retained in use; and in what circumstances such motor cars are sold to local authority officials at prices lower than those obtainable at public auction
    Mr. Keeling: May I say that it would be sufficient if, in reply to this Question, the Minister read the second part of his answer to Question No. 4?
    Mr. Strauss: I have to repeat the answer which I read before, because it is quite impossible to separate the Questions.
    Until 31st March last, when the scheme was terminated, local authorities could buy surplus motor cars, but a condition of sale was that the cars should be used solely for the business of the council. The charge was at list price with Purchase Tax, less an allowance for depreciation. Surplus cars are inspected before disposal and are sold only if they are unsuitable for retention.
    Mr. Keeling: Is the Minister aware that many of the 2,250 cars sold at this sale, a catalogue of which I have in my hand, fetched far more than the list price for new cars? Does that not show that they were in excellent condition? Does not the fact that the Government are selling cars only two years old mean that they are getting far more than their proper share of new cars?
    Mr. Strauss: I am not sure whether I followed the hon. Gentleman's question. These were old cars which were not required—
    Mr. Keeling: Two years old.
    Mr. Strauss: Over three years old.
    Mr. Keeling: No, some less.
    Mr. Strauss: If we had sold them by auction they would, no doubt, have fetched higher prices, but because they continued to be used for the public service we sold them at a reasonable price and not at scarcity value.
    Mr. Sydney Silverman: Are the cars sold to any officials at all? Was not my right hon. Friend's answer that they were sold to the local authorities and not to their officials, coupled with a condition of sale? May I ask whether the condition of sale was always observed?
    Mr. Strauss: These cars were sold to local authorities for business use. It appears that the local authority concerned re-sold these cars, in violation of the agreement. to certain officials of the council.
    Mr. Keeling: Is the Minister not aware that the first part of my Question refers to cars sold by auction? It has nothing whatever to do with the sale of cars to local government officials. They were cars sold by auction, which fetched far more than the new price.
    Mr. Strauss: Obviously, it is the duty of my Department, when selling surplus property, to get the best price possible for it, but I think it is a proper exception, when cars are to continue to be used in the public service, that an appropriate arrangement should be made with the local authorities who are to use them.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: Can the Minister say at what rate these motor cars depreciated before sale?
    Mr. Strauss: Not without notice.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: I will give the right hon. Gentleman notice.

    Japanese Copper Wire Rods (Price)
    Mr. John Grimstonasked the Minister of Supply what steps he proposes to take to ensure fair competition for those trades affected, in view of the fact that Japanese manufacturers have recently shipped to Europe copper wire rods at £90 per ton, while his Department's price was about £160 per ton
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to copper wire rods exported from Japan in August last at £90 a metric ton f.o.b. Japanese ports, when the United Kingdom price of rods was £113 10s. a long ton delivered consumer's works and not £160 a ton as stated in the Question. At that time the equivalent American price was £117 5s. a ton f.a.s. New York. The question of Japanese competition in European markets is a matter for my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.
    Mr. Grimston: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that had the London Metal Exchange been open, this difference in price would not have worked to the detriment of British manufacturers?
    Mr. Strauss: There was very little difference in price, but to purchase this single parcel of copper would have involved an expenditure of dollars which we were not prepared to undertake.
    Sir Herbert Williams: Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that a difference of 25 per cent. is very little?
    Mr. Strauss: No, Sir. If the hon. Gentleman will add to the £90 about £15 for costs and freights, etc., he will see that there is little difference between that and the English price.

    Ironstone, North Oxfordshire
    Mr. Dodds-Parkerasked the Minister of Supply what was the average tonnage of ironstone quarried in North Oxfordshire in 1940-45; and what tonnage was quarried in 1949.
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: The average tonnage of ironstone quarried in North Oxfordshire in the years 1940-45 inclusive was 1.200,000 tons a year. In 1949 the tonnage quarried was 800,000.
    Mr. Dodds-Parker: Have the Government any plans to reduce unemployment still further by quarrying this ironstone in Oxfordshire?
    Mr. Strauss: We do not quarry this ironstone. It is quarried by the iron and steel industry. I do not know whether the hon. Member is anxious that we should take responsibility for it as soon as possible.

    Electricity Supply (Poles and Cables)
    Mr. Crouchasked the Minister of Supply if he will increase the supplies of poles and cable to enable some of the arrears of electricity services to be cleared up
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: I am not aware of a shortage of poles and cables for the distribution of electricity, but if the hon. Member will let me have details of the particular cases of shortage he has in mind I will look into them, in consultation with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power.
    Mr. Crouch: Is the Minister not aware that the shortage of these materials is causing a delay of up to two years in the electrification of rural areas?
    Mr. Strauss: No, Sir. There is certainly no shortage of these materials.
    Mr. Spence: Will the Minister forward to the Hydro-Electric Board in Scotland a copy of his reply and see what they have to say?

    Electrical and Mechanical Engineering Inspectorate
    Sir Waldron Smithersasked the Minister of Supply who paid for the £13 loss in labour and material spent on private work at Foxbury Inspectorate of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: The loss was borne by my Department.
    Sir W. Smithers: Was no disciplinary action taken against those persons who misused Government time and labour?
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    Why were they not made to pay for the loss when they abused their privilege?
    Mr. Strauss: We thought that a severe reprimand, which they received, was the appropriate course to take on this occasion.

    Radar Patents
    Mr. Charles Ian Orr-Ewingasked the Minister of Supply how many dollars have been received since 1945 from the United States of America for the use of radar patents; and, in particular, the strapped magnetron and the plan position indicator
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: None, for Government inventions. No information is available about payments to private persons or companies.
    Mr. Orr-Ewing: Is the Minister not aware that these strapped magnetron patents are in the hands of the Ministry of Supply? I should have thought that it was up to the Minister of Supply to chase these dollars. Is the right hon. Gentle. man not aware that these radar patents are used in every sort of radar equipment in the air, on the ground and for airfield control? This could have been a valuable source of dollars in the last five years and could provide an enormous potential dollar income in the years to come.
    Mr. Strauss: It is not a question of chasing the dollars. The situation arose out of the relationship which was established between this country and the United States with regard to this matter during the war. As a result of that relationship, I am afraid that it is unlikely that we shall be able to obtain much in the way of patent licences as a result of inventions developed during the war.

    Lead (Government Buying)
    Mr. Russellasked the Minister of Supply whether in view of the relatively plentiful supplies of lead now obtainable from non-dollar sources he will now consider abandoning bulk buying of lead by His Majesty's Government and allowing private merchants to import it under a system of currency allocation
    Mr. G. R. Strauss: As the relative abundance of lead may prove to be only temporary I am not at present prepared to disturb the existing arrangements,

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    which enable us to obtain maximum supplies of sterling metal and to control effectively the expenditure of dollars and other hard currencies. The selling price of virgin lead in the United Kingdom is no higher than in the United States and the Chief Continental countries.
    Mr. Russell: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that if it could be decontrolled, the price would go down, as it has done with so many other commodities?
    Mr. Strauss: I do not think that that necessarily follows.

  MINISTRY OF WORKS

    St. Anselm's House, London
    Mr. Keelingasked the Minister of Works what rent he is paying for the office building called St. Anselm's House, for the construction of which he gave a licence; by whom it is to be occupied; and what residential accommodation will be released as a result
    The Minister of Works (Mr. Stokes): St. Anselm's House is being occupied by the British Council. This will enable me to make available for housing purposes Nos. 38, 39 and 41-43, Grosvenor Square and Nos. 39 and 41, Adams Row. It is contrary to the practice of my Department to disclose rent which is being paid for premises.
    Mr. Keeling: Before this British Council building was sanctioned, was the Minister's Department satisfied that the amount of residential accommodation which would be released was at least equal to what might have been built by the labour and materials used for the office?
    Mr. Stokes: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we never build if we can help it. It is only when we are sure that that is the case that we go ahead.
    Mr. Driberg: Could my right hon. Friend say whether this building is one of those which are being put up under what is known as the Lessor Scheme, and, if so, is he aware of the widespread concern among architects and others about the quality and design of some of these buildings?
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, Sir.

    Wood and Stone Carvers (Employment)
    Mr. Keelingasked the Minister of Works whether sufficient licences are now being issued for wood and stone carving to maintain full employment of carvers and to promote the survival of these crafts
    Mr. Stokes: I have no precise information as to the number of qualified carvers in wood and stone in the country. Some of them may not be employed in their own craft, but I am not aware of any unemployment. My officers are instructed to grant licences as freely as possible for this work, and I hope to see a revival of these crafts.
    Mr. Keeling: Does that answer mean that it is the intention of the Minister to maintain full employment for these people and to encourage these crafts?
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, most certainly.

    Temple Bar
    Mr. Eric Fletcherasked the Minister of Works whether he proposes to take over Temple Bar as an ancient monument
    Mr. Stokes: My Ministry offered last year to take over Temple Bar as an ancient monument. The owners did not accept as they feared that this would mean that the monument would remain indefinitely at Cheshunt, instead of being brought back to London as they wished. My Department could not pay for removal to London but we would not object to removal, subject to being satisfied that there was no risk of damage and that the site proposed was suitable.
    Mr. Fletcher: Would not the Minister agree that it is desirable that Temple Bar, in view of its historic associations, should be restored to London at some place where it would cause no traffic inconvenience, and might not the Embankment end of the Temple be an appropriate site?
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, Sir, certainly. I think the suggestion is a good one, but the authorities concerned would have to be consulted first.

    Industrial Building
    Mr. Bairdasked the Minister of Works if, in view of the urgency of the

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    housing position, he will further reduce the ceiling for industrial building without a licence
    Mr. Stokes: No, Sir; I do not think it necessary.
    Mr. Baird: Could my right hon. Friend tell me if he considers that all the work done in this way is essential, and how many building trade workers are employed?
    Mr. Stokes: There is really no evidence to show that the housing programme is being affected by people being drawn off for this kind of work.
    Sir Peter Macdonald: Do I understand that the policy of the Minister, not to build if he can help it, does not apply to Government buildings?
    Mr. Stokes: I hope it will be very clear to every Member of this House that I referred to Government buildings and not to housing, and that we are as economical as we can be in providing offices for the purpose referred to in the other Question which was asked.
    Mr. Baird: Does not my right hon. Friend think he should find out how many building trade workers are swallowed up in this type of building?
    Mr. Stokes: There is no indication of that. There is another Question on the Order Paper about this matter, and if my hon. Friend waits until it is reached, I think he will be satisfied.
    Mr. Henry Strauss: What does the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mr. Baird) mean by " reduce the ceiling "?

    Office Building, Aberdeen
    Lady Tweedsmuirasked the Minister of Works when the new temporary office building to be erected in Aberdeen is to be completed
    Mr. Stokes: Tenders for this project are at present under consideration and subject to a satisfactory contract being let it is hoped that the building will be completed early in 1952.
    Lady Tweedsmuir: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when he will release the many residential premises which are held
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    by his Department and now used for office buildings?
    Mr. Stokes: In so far as they are affected by this, as soon as possible thereafter.

    Building Labour Force (Housing)
    Mr. Gibsonasked the Minister of Works whether, in view of the increase during the past year of 3 per cent. in the number of building workers employed on projects other than housing, he will take steps, in consultation with the Minister of Health, to secure that this 3 per cent. of building labour is steered into the construction of new permanent houses, especially in view of the increased allocation of capital expenditure on housing during the next three years
    Mr. Stokes: About half the building labour strength is engaged on house construction or repairs to housing, the actual number of new houses showing a slight increase compared with a year ago. My hon. Friend may rest assured that the control over building work will be such as to permit of whatever adjustment may be necessary to ensure fulfilment of the new programme.
    Mr. Bossom: Would the Minister divide that answer, which he has lumped together? Is it not a fact that only about 26 per cent. of building trade operatives are now working on housing and that before the war there were between 33 and 34 per cent.?
    Mr. Stokes: I think the hon. Gentleman is wrong. It is just about the same as before and there has been quite a steady though slight increase in the number of people engaged on new housing.
    Mr. Gibson: In view of the reply which my right hon. Friend gave me last week, that there is 3 per cent. more building trade labour employed on other than housing work, does it not automatically follow that there must be fewer employed on housing work? Will my right hon. Friend do something to correct that?
    Mr. Stokes: With great respect, I think my hon. Friend is confusing percentages with figures. There is a great difference. The actual number employed on new housing has increased though, I agree, only slightly. The shift has been from

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    repairs and maintenance to the building of schools and other important buildings, but the actual number engaged on new housing is appreciably in advance of what it was a year ago.
    Mr. Duncan Sandys: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is widespread dissatisfaction in all parts of this House and in the country at the lack, of effort which is being put into permanent house building?— [HON. MEMBERS: " No."] Would he consider, at an early date, explaining to the House what are the principles which govern the allocation of building resources to the various classes of building projects?
    Mr. Stokes: If the right hon. Gentleman is referring to labour resources, I can reassure the House that the allocation is quite adequate for the house building programme, and that it is sufficient to continue the programme which is at present envisaged by the Government.
    Mr. Sandys: Which is entirely inadequate.
    Mrs. Middletonasked the Minister of Works what steps he proposes to take to stop the drift of building and civil engineering labour from housing and urgent reconstruction projects to less essential repair and maintenance work; and whether he is assured that the £100 limit for unlicensed repair and maintenance work is not being grossly exceeded in many instances
    Mr. Stokes: I am not aware of any drift of building and civil engineering labour from housing and urgent reconstruction projects. On the contrary, the numbers employed on the erection of new houses and on site preparation have tended to increase in the last year, and there has been a reduction in those engaged on repair and maintenance work. I have no reason to suppose that the £100 limit for unlicensed work is being grossly exceeded, but if the hon. Lady has any particulars I will have them immediately examined.
    Mrs. Middleton: Is not my right hon. Friend aware that in some cases local authorities are finding it impossible to build up to their allocation of houses because of the drift away of labour? Is he prepared to take steps to stop that?
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, I am prepared to take action if somebody will furnish me with the facts. The facts as I know them are that this labour is not interchangeable. It is a great mistake to suppose that the labour engaged on repair and maintenance is necessarily interchangeable with that for the building of new houses. This percentage difference makes no sense whatever unless people who quote it are properly informed as to the division of labour in the building trade.
    Sir H. Williams: Why is it that with the same labour force now as there was in 1938, the Government are building only about half the number of houses?
    Mr. Stokes: I do not think that is the case.
    Mr. A. Edward Davies: How does my right hon. Friend assure himself that the proper amount of labour is engaged on housing and is not being diverted to this non-licensed work?
    Mr. Stokes: I am in constant touch with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health, and his programme is being fully fulfilled. There really is nothing to worry about on this score, so far as I am aware.
    Mrs. Middleton: Can my right hon. Friend tell me whether there is any estimate of the amount of non-licensed work which is being done?
    Mr. Stokes: Yes, but my hon. Friend will have to put the question down before I can answer it.

    Offices, London (Licences)
    Mr. Gammansasked the Minister of Works how many licences have been issued for blocks of offices in the London area to be occupied by the Government under the Lessor Scheme; what is the capital sum involved; and how many similar licences have been granted for office accommodation for non-Governmental use during the same period, and to what value.
    Mr. Stokes: Since August, 1947, 40 licences to the total value of £10,137,470 have been granted for offices for Lessor Building Schemes. In the same period, about 275 licences, to the total value of some £6,300,000, have been granted for office accommodation for non-Governmental use.
    Mr. Gammans: In view of the great shortage of offices in London, is it not time that a greater percentage of these licences was given to non-Government offices?
    Mr. Stokes: I know there is that view, but I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that the figures I have given exclude any licences for a sum of less than £5,000. It is only a direct comparison of the bigger schemes, as the Question asked. There is a considerable amount of office accommodation made available which costs less.
    Mr. Driberg: While welcoming the assent of my right hon. Friend a minute ago to the proposition that there is widespread concern about the poor quality of design of these buildings, may I ask if he will consult with the Minister of Town and Country Planning to see what can be done to prevent the further defacement of London?
    Mr. Stokes: I have that constantly in mind, I can assure my hon. Friend.

    Hotels (Repairs)
    Mr. William Teelingasked the Minister of Works whether, in view of the Report of the Hotels Committee of the former British Tourist and Holidays Board into hotel services in Great Britain from the user's point of view, he can see his way to reverse his decision not to increase from £100 to £500 per annum the amount which can be spent on the repair or improvement of hotels, without licence
    Mr. Stokes: No, Sir. I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to the hon. Member for Weston-super Mare (Mr. Ian Leslie Orr-Ewing) on 13th March.
    Mr. Teeling: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise how difficult this is making things for the hotel keepers with regard to our own tourists, and even more particularly with regard to foreign tourists, who want to get some extra Amenities?
    Mr. Stokes: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the foreign tourist gets extra priority. The Board of Trade sanctions, and asks me to license, hotel extensions and improvements where foreign tourists are concerned. Beyond that I cannot go at present.
    Mr. S. Silverman: Can my right hon. Friend explain to the House how he proposes to increase the rate of house building, to increase the rate of office building and to increase the rate of hotel building without in any way exceeding the capital investment which the Opposition is continually begging him to keep down?
    Mr. Stokes: I think I ought to have notice of that question.
    Mr. C. S. Taylor: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why he does not treat the hotel industry like any other industry and give them the same limit of £1,000?
    Mr. Stokes: Because the arrangement is that preference is given to those hotels which really form part of our tourist trade, particularly those who are concerned with the dollar visitors.
    Mr. Taylor: But Why treat them differently?
    Mr. Stokes: Because that is found to be the most convenient way of dealing with the situation.

    Westminster Hall (Staircase)
    Mr. Dribergasked the Minister of Works the nature and purpose of the excavation begun last week in the staircase of Westminster Hall
    Mr. Stokes: The object is to adjust the level of the steps at the south end of Westminster Hall, which have been sinking for some years. A sharp eye will be kept for any sign of the King's Stone, in which my hon. Friend has shown so much interest.

    Cement Supplies, Essex
    Mr. Alportasked the Minister of Works if he is aware that the continuing shortage of cement in North-East Essex is causing concern; and what action he intends to take to improve supplies
    Mr. Stokes: Supplies of cement to this area are higher than ever before. If, however, the hon. Member is aware of any important work being held up by a shortage, perhaps he will let me have particulars.
    Mr. Alport: Is the Minister aware that it is generally known that throughout North-East Essex there is a serious shortage of cement and that this is

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    attributed to the continued high level of the export of cement and the failure of the Government to make up stocks after their extensive use during the last few months?
    Mr. Stokes: I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that cement has not been nationalised. The position is that there has been a record distribution during the last week or so. [Laughter.] Well, there is such a thing as coming events casting their shadows. I do not think there is anything to worry about.

    Reconstruction Schemes
    Mrs. Middletonasked the Minister of Works how many projects sponsored by Departments of State and concerned with reconstruction in the cities of Bristol, Coventry, Hull, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Plymouth, Southampton and Swansea, respectively, and in the City and County of London, were awaiting licence by his Department on 1st April last; and what is the total sum of capital expenditure involved for each of the cities indicated above
    Mr. Stokes: I would refer my hon. Friend to my reply of 24th April. The value of the schemes there mentioned was approximately £375,000 at Bristol, £700,000 at Plymouth, and £35,000 at Swansea. In the City and County of London there are a number of schemes for reconstruction which it has been impossible hitherto to fit into the investment programme, but I cannot put a definite number or value upon them.
    Mrs. Middleton: I understood from the answer to that Question that my right hon. Friend was talking only about schemes that came before his Department directly, and not schemes sponsored by other Ministries. I put this further Question down to get an overall figure of reconstruction projects, of both schemes he directs and those which come to him sponsored by other Ministries.
    Mr. Stokes: This would cover everything except housing.

    GAS CONSULTATIVE COUNCILS
    Mr. I. J. Pitmanasked the Minister of Fuel and Power how many of his appointments to the Gas Consultative
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    Councils have been coal and coke merchants; and, in view of the inescapable clash of interest, whether he will undertake to make no further such appointments
    The Minister of Fuel and Power (Mr. Philip Noel-Baker): There are 12 Area Gas Consultative Councils, with a total membership of 288. Of the 288, two members are known to be associated with the coal and coke trade. They were both chosen from the panels nominated by the associations of local authorities. I have every confidence in the judgment and integrity of the associations; and I am sure that in all their work in the Consultative Councils these two members will put their public duty first.
    Mr. Pitman: Is the Minister not aware that this Question is directed to future appointments, that the responsibility is his, and that all nominating local authorities or other bodies may not be aware of this clash and the extent to which coke deliveries for coke contracts are matters of the pleasure of the area boards? Will he consider it for the future?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: No, Sir, I am sure that the nominating authorities—the associations—have, in fact, considered all such things and have all such information, and I am not prepared to give the pledge which the hon. Member desires.
    Mr. Pitmanasked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he is aware that his appointments to the Gas Consultative Councils include nominations by the Standing Joint Committee on Working Women's Organisations; whether he is also aware that this organisation is related to the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, as an advisory committee; and whether, in view of the fact that such politically-nominated appointments when confined to one party are open to objection, he will undertake to make no such further appointments
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: In making his appointments to the Gas Consultative Councils, my predecessor sought to ensure the adequate representation of the special interests of women. He therefore invited the National Council of Women, the National Federation of Women's Institutes, the Women's Gas Council, the Women's Voluntary Services and the

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    Standing Joint Committee of Working Women's Organisations to nominate candidates from among whom he could choose. He included the Standing Joint Committee in his list not because of any political affiliations but because it represented a large body of working class women. The Standing Joint Committee has been consulted by Governments of all parties on a variety of women's questions since its foundation in 1916, and it has acted in an advisory capacity to a number of official bodies and Government committees. This being so, I cannot accept the suggestion which the hon. Member has made.
    Mr. Pitman: Is not the Minister aware that this is the only one representing a political body among those bodies, and that the purport of this Question is that he is receiving nominations from a body which is an advisory body to a political party, and whose membership is confined to members of that political party?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Yes, Sir, but it was asked to make nominations because it represents a very large number of working class women. People of all political parties belong to the other organisations which I have mentioned. [HON. MEMBERS: " No."] They nominate to the Councils, and I am convinced that all of them, understanding that this has nothing to do with politics, will do their duty, whatever party they belong to.
    Mr. Mikardo: Is it not a fact that this organisation is not the only one of these women's bodies which has political affiliations, but the only one which is honest enough to make its political affiliations apparent?
    Miss Horsbrugh: Will the right hon. Gentleman also ask for nominations from Conservative women's organisations and Liberal women's organisations?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: I will certainly consider it, if I can be sure that they represent many women not represented by these other bodies.
    Mrs. Middleton: Is it not a fact that this organisation contains not only women who are affiliated to a political party but representatives of trade unions and representatives of Co-operative organisations?
    1396
    Is it not desirable that those bodies should be represented on these Councils?
    Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many millions of working class women voted Conservative and Liberal at the last Election, and that they would scorn representation by a Socialist organisation?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: I am sure they are quite adequately represented in the Gas Consultative Councils.
    Mr. Pitman: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply I beg to give notice that I shall raise the matter again on the Adjournment.

  COAL INDUSTRY

    Calorific Standards
    Mr. H. A. Priceasked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he will consider establishing basic standards for coal, based upon calorific value, in supplementation of the present system of classification into varieties within which enormous variation in calorific value can and does occur
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: No, Sir. The grading of coal is a matter for the National Coal Board. The Board's price structure cannot be based solely upon calorific values. In house coals, strong local preferences exist, and prices are fixed largely on the basis of commercial experience; in industrial coals, factors other than calorific value must also be taken into account. Broadly speaking, however, the present prices of different varieties of coal do reflect both their calorific values, and their other important characteristics, for example, size, ash, moisture and sulphur contents, hardness, etc. Large variations in the calorific value of any given coal are infrequent. If they do occur, they are dealt with in an ordinary commercial way between buyer and seller.
    Mr. Price: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that coal has never been legally defined, and that well-known varieties often contain all sorts of foreign bodies varying from shale to carboniferous limestone? Since basic standards have been established for other nationally important commodities, why not for coal?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: The National Coal Board have the hon. Gentleman's view very much in mind, and they have begun and have already carried a considerable distance quite new and very important work on scientific analysis and grading, which ultimately will help all consumers.
    Mr. Hayman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that much of the coal which the ordinary consumer buys from his merchant contains a great deal of water?
    Mr. Butcher: Do we understand from the right hon. Gentleman's reply that he has no control whatever over the prices charged by the National Coal Board or any authority over the quality of coal they deliver?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: No, Sir, I did not say any such thing. In fact, prices are fixed in agreement with me.

    Dust Suppression
    Dr. Barnett Strossasked the Minister of Fuel and Power in how many coal mines in North Staffordshire is dust suppression by water spray and seam infusion in use; and what is the number of coal mines in which it is proposed to use this method of dust suppression ultimately
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: There are 20 large coal mines in North Staffordshire operated by the National Coal Board. In 15 of them, dust suppression by water sprays is in use. In the other five large mines, and in the smaller licensed mines, the evidence so far obtained seems to show that dust suppression measures are not required. Water infusion of the coal seams has not been used in North Staffordshire at all.
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Fuel and Power what use has been made of chemical detergents in the suppression of dust in coal mines; and how far they have been proved to be of value.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: The use of chemical detergents as wetting agents in the suppression of dust is under experimental trial at many coal mines. They are giving promising results, particularly in the consolidation of deposits of dry dust on mine roadways and in mines where the underground conditions make it desirable to use as little water as possible. The National Coal Board and His Majesty's Inspectors of Mines continue to give close attention to the matter.
    Dr. Stross: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a reduction in the over-all humidity in coal mines for the men at work would be very welcome and very beneficial; and, on the general question, is he satisfied that the process of using water infusion is beneficial to the men's health?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: In some places it has helped very much indeed, particularly in the Cumberland coalfield.

    Ex-Service Men (Training Scheme)
    Mr. Leatherasked the Minister of Fuel and Power how many men coming out of the Armed Forces have passed through the Coalmining Training Scheme
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: During the last six months of 1949, the number of new entrants into the coal mining industry who had been Regulars in the Armed Forces and who received preliminary training in accordance with statutory requirements was 138. This figure does not include new entrants who joined the industry after the completion of their National Service, as such men are not classified separately from other new entrants.
    Mr. Leather: Is the Minister aware that there is a very real suspicion that a lot of men coming out of National Service are taking advantage of this valuable training at the State's expense and then promptly leaving the industry; and will he look into that?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Yes, Sir, I will look into it, although I do not think it is true. Of course, a certain number of men who think they will join are not really suitable. Altogether, some 10,000 adults completed their training last year and about 700 left during their training.

    Open-cast Mining, Abberley
    Mr. Nabarroasked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he will furnish an estimate of the total planned coal production of the opencast workings projected in the Abberley area of Worcestershire and referred to on site plans "The Elms, M.O.F.P.-M/9/551 /1," and " Crundle, M.O.F.P.-M /9 /550 /1," in respect of each of the years 1950, 1951 and 1952.
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Before any production can be planned borings must be made to ascertain that the quality and the quantity of the coal would justify the working of the seams. These borings have not yet begun in the Abberley area, and I cannot, therefore, give the estimates for which the hon. Member asks.
    Mr. Nabarro: Does the Minister realise that during the last 50 years innumerable attempts have been made to extract coal from this area, and that all have proved abortive and uneconomical on account of the thin and narrow seams of low-grade sulphurous coal? Will he therefore take steps to prevent any wastage of public funds in further open-cast mine boring?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: I will consider what the hon. Gentleman says, but he must understand that we do things much better nowadays.

    Output (Saleable Coal)
    Wing-Commander Bullusasked the Minister of Fuel and Power what percentage of the additional gross output obtained by the National Coal Board since nationalisation of the mines consists of stone
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: The figures invariably used in published statements of coal output are for saleable coal. This has risen from 181.2 million tons in 1946 to 202.7 million tons in 1949. No information is available as to the average percentage of dirt contained in the total saleable output before nationalisation, nor is it yet practicable to provide a reliable assessment of the average dirt content of the saleable coal now being produced.
    Wing-Commander Bullus: Is the Minister aware that the estimate of the President of the British Association of Colliery Management is that 33 per cent. of the output is stone; and if he has not seen this statement, may I send a copy to him?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Mr. Walton Brown's views are entitled to every respect, but if he meant that one-third of the extra output which is going to the consumer is dirt, I could not 'possibly accept it.
    Mr. Mitchison: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the right hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan) described pre-nationalisation coal as fit only for crazy paving?
    Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Is the Minister aware that what he calls " saleable coal " includes just what the National Coal Board will sell the consumer, which includes dirt as well as coal?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: It is what the people will buy.

    Exports, Argentine (Price)
    Sir H. Williamsasked the Minister of Fuel and Power how the price of coal exported to the Argentine compares with similar coal sold inland
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: I do not fix or control the export prices charged by the National Coal Board, and I do not think it desirable to ask the Board to disclose the prices they receive for their foreign sales.
    Sir H. Williams: As the Board of Trade returns show the quantity exported and the f.o.b. price, would it be too difficult for the right hon. Gentleman to ascertain the information?
    Mr. Nicholson: How does the quality compare?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: It varies according to what the people abroad want to buy.
    Mr. W. Fletcher: But are not these prices fixed in consultation with the right hon. Gentleman in exactly the same way as he stated just now home prices are fixed?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: No, Sir.

    National Coal Board (Retail Supplies)
    Air-Commodore Harveyasked the Minister of Fuel and Power if he will make a statement regarding the extent to which the National Coal Board acts as a retailer in supplying householders with coal direct
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Under the Coal Mines Act, 1946, a number of retail businesses which had been owned by colliery companies were transferred to the National Coal Board. In paragraph 285 of the Annual Report for 1947, the Board said that they were working about 840 retail depots, which served about 410,000 retail customers. I understand that the position has not greatly changed since then.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: is the Minister aware that many coal merchants in the north-west of England have been unable to get their allocation of coal, and that in consequence householders have been without fuel? Will he see that there are fair shares for all?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Yes, Sir, certainly, and there are. The allocation of coal to each region or district is done on a perfectly fair basis for all.
    Air-Commodore Harvey: In view of the very unsatisfactory reply, I give notice that I shall endeavour to raise this matter on the Adjournment at an early date.

    Supplies, Oxfordshire
    Mr. Dodds-Parkerasked the Minister of Fuel and Power what immediate action he is taking to overcome the acute shortage of coal in North Oxfordshire
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: I have written to the hon. Member informing him of the steps that have been taken to assist the North Oxfordshire area.
    Mr. Dodds-Parker: Is the Minister aware that there is an acute shortage of coal in North Oxfordshire, that the " fair shares " in the Cotswold area have been fair shares of nothing during the last month; and that there has not been such an acute shortage since the period known in history as the Shin well wakes?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: In the early part of April, 500 tons were sent; on 18th April another 100 tons and 250 tons have been allocated for May supplementary to the normal allocation.
    Mr. John Hay: Will the Minister remember that many of the village people in this area use their coal not only for heating purposes but also for cooking, and will he do all that he can to see that they get an adequate supply?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: If a consumer is in difficulty, he ought to consult the local fuel overseer, who will do his best to help, and of whose courtesy I am constantly hearing great praise.
    Mr. S. Silverman: Can my right hon. Friend say how the people who had a grievance about the quantity or quality of their coal before nationalisation of the coal industry made their grievance known?

    Concessionary Coal, Lancashire
    Sir H. Williamsasked the Minister of Fuel and Power what steps he is taking to prevent the Lancashire coal miners from reselling their concessionary coal
    Mr. P. Noel-Baker: None, Sir.
    Sir H. Williams: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind, when considering fair shares for all, that these people are receiving four times as much coal as most people? Does he not think that he ought to take steps to see that they do not resell it at a large profit?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: Miners need a great deal more coal than other people owing to the nature of their occupation. [HON. MEMBERS: " Oh !" I Of course they do. The existing orders and regulations are quite adequate to prevent anything of the kind that the hon. Gentleman has in mind.
    Mr. Tom Brown: Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is a great deal more honesty and scrupulousness in the Lancashire miner than there is in the hon. Gentleman who put down the Question?
    Sir H. Williams: The Minister said that the existing regulations were adequate. Will he tell us precisely what they are?
    Mr. Noel-Baker: They are rather bulky. There are the Retail Coal Prices Order, 1941, and the Coal Distribution Order, 1943—I will send the hon. Member copies.
    Sir H. Williams: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that the miners know them all?

  PETROL RATIONING
  Viscount Hinchingbrookeasked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether he will now abolish the rationing of red petrol
  Mr. P. Noel-Baker: My right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport and I are satisfied that the de-rationing of red petrol would lead to an increase in consumption, and I regret that I am, therefore, unable to do what the noble Lord desires.
  Viscount Hinchingbrooke: Is it not a fact that the amount of red petrol in supply is adequate to meet consumer

  1403
  needs; and since the official price is now exactly the same as the economic price what prevents the elimination of coupons?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: I am afraid that if petrol were de-rationed there might be a great expansion of the use of red petrol for touring coaches, private excursions, light vans and many other purposes.
  Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: Will the Minister bear in mind that this scheme was introduced in quite different circumstances, when the Government had abolished the basic ration in order largely to facilitate a change of mind on their part; and will he not consider whether this complex administrative scheme is really worth while at the present time?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: I have considered it, and I have come to the conclusion that it is well worth while.
  Sir Ian Fraserasked the Minister of Fuel and Power the qualifications which determine whether an applicant for supplementary petrol is treated as category " S " or " E "; and if there is any difference between the limits of allowances for these two categories
  Mr. P. Noel-Baker: " E " allowances are granted to those who are engaged on activities which are vital to the life of the nation, and who, for carrying out these activities, must have the use of a car. " S " allowances are granted to other applicants who have a valid claim for supplementary petrol. The maximum of the " E " allowances is naturally higher than that of " S " allowances.
  Sir I. Fraser: Is there no discretion whereby the particular activity in which an " S " allowance citizen is engaged can be taken into account: For example is it true that all salesmen and managers of whatever kind are necessarily " S " allowance men?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: I should not like to answer that without notice, but special circumstances are taken into account for both " S " and " E " allowances.
  Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: Would the Minister bear in mind that these categories were designed for war purposes; and will he give an undertaking that they have been re-categorised to meet the present conditions?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: Unfortunately, we have not yet got over the results of the war so far as the supply of petrol is concerned.

  SLATE QUARRIES (DUST)
  Mr. William Elwyn Jonesasked the Minister of Fuel and Power whether the technological investigation recommended to be made by the Report of the Welsh Slate Quarry Industry Committee in September, 1946, with the view to reducing the incidence of dust in slate mines and in the sheds, has now been completed; and whether he is in a position to issue a report thereon
  Mr. P. Noel-Baker: Experiments with improved methods of dust suppression have been going on for some time at selected slate-dressing sheds at mines and quarries in North Wales. His Majesty's Inspectors of Mines and the owners of mines and quarries have given their full co-operation. The results have been satisfactory so far as they have gone, and similar improved methods are now being progressively installed in other sheds where they are required. Underground, the suppression of dust, particularly in the case of mechanical drilling, is the subject of special rules, the strict observance of which receives the close attention of the Inspectors. There is, as the scheme progresses, periodic consultation with the industry on the matter both with the owners and with the men. For this reason it has not been considered necessary to publish a further report.
  Mr. Elwyn Jones: While thanking the Minister for his reply, might I ask him to take steps to try to expedite the installation of dust suppression apparatus in these mines and quarries?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: Yes, Sir. If my hon. Friend will write to me about it I certainly will.
  Mr. Emrys Roberts: Is the Minister aware that the incidence of silicosis is still widespread in the slate-mining industry, and that the men really do fear it; and is his Department really tackling its prevention as an urgent matter?
  Mr. Noel-Baker: Yes, Sir, absolutely. We regard the prevention of dust disease as among the very first objectives in all quarrying and mining.

  FESTIVAL OF BRITAIN
  Mr. Llewellynasked the Lord President of the Council for how long H.M.S. " Campania " will call at Cardiff; at what other Welsh ports she will call; and whether he will publish her itinerary so as to enable the Welsh nation to prepare a traditional welcome for her
  The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): Arrangements are being made for the Festival ship " Campania " to be on show at Cardiff from 1st August to 12th August, 1951. I very much regret that it has not been found possible for the ship to call at any other Welsh port.
  Mr. Llewellyn: In reaching this decision, was the Welsh Advisory Council's advice taken? Will the right hon. Gentleman consider inviting the Council on board, so that the silent Services may become better acquainted?
  Mr. Morrison: I will see that that last point is considered. This had to be a national decision of the Council, upon which a representative or representatives of Wales sat, and they were consulted. I wish that the ship could have visited other Welsh ports, but it was quite impossible. I presume that the hon. Member is happy in that it is visiting Cardiff.
  Lord John Hope: As the only certain thing about this expensive boating expedition is that it will irritate a great number of people all over the country, in Scotland and Wales particularly, is it worth going on with it at a cost of £500,000?

  NATIONALISED INDUSTRIES (COMPENSATION)
  Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Lord President of the Council what is the total compensation for loss of office or emolument that has been paid or become due from industries now nationalised
  Mr. H. Morrison: As far as it has been possible to ascertain in the time available, I understand that the total expenditure incurred by the various Boards up to 31st March, 1950, has been about £600,000.
  Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: In order to dispel allegations that excessive amounts
  1406
  have been paid, will the Lord President arrange to publish the amounts paid to the people concerned, who are said to include Members of this House?
  Mr. Morrison: I was not aware of that. I would not like to give an answer without consulting the Ministers in charge of the Departments concerned, which I will do.

  STATUTORY INSTRUMENT No. 515
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenterasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why, by Statutory Instrument No. 515, 1950, he has found it necessary to amend nine former Statutory Instruments
  The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Ernest Davies): The purpose of Statutory Instrument No. 515 was, as stated in the Explanatory Note to the Order, to make it clear that exemption from Income Tax, granted to officials of international organisations, is limited to emoluments received from these organisations and that the exemption does not apply to income from other sources. Amendment to the nine earlier Orders was considered necessary to remove possible ambiguities.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Explanatory Note to which he has referred specifically states that the nine previous Orders were ambiguous; and will he see that when he exercises his powers of delegated legislation he does not involve himself in the same number of errors as the Chancellor of the Exchequer in devaluation?
  Mr. Davies: As the hon. Gentleman is aware, members of his profession are given to making ambiguities in drafting statements.
  Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Is the hon Gentleman aware that that observation, no doubt flippantly intended, is a reflection upon his own legal advisers?

  BRITISH PROPERTY, CANTON (DAMAGE)
  Mr. W. Fletcherasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he has taken to ensure the payment for British property in Canton for damage done in 1948
  Mr. Ernest Davies: I regret to say that no results were achieved by the negotiations which, as stated in my predecessor's reply of 1st November, 1948, were then being pursued with the Chinese Government.
  Mr. Fletcher: Has the hon. Gentleman made any attempt to get his hands on funds in this country which might be used as a set-off against this damage?
  Mr. Davies: I should want notice of that.
  Air-Commodore Harvey: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that if the Government had used their initiative they would have got compensation before the Communists came into power in China?

  SOVIET EMBASSY, LONDON (STAFF)
  Mr. Blackburnasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what answer he has received from the Soviet Embassy in reply to his protest concerning the disappearance of a number of Soviet officials from the Embassy
  Mr. Ernest Davies: No such protest was made. As I informed the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) on 27th March, an inquiry was being addressed to the Soviet Embassy. The answer shows that at the time of the reply 87 persons in all were employed on the Embassy staff. Since that date two further departures and three new arrivals have been notified by the Embassy. The present number is, therefore, 88.
  Mr. Blackburn: Is it not a fact that the Foreign Office believed the number to be very much in excess of 87; and can my hon. Friend say that he is satisfied that our security service knows when Soviet officials leave this country and what happens to Soviet officials when they leave the Embassy?
  Mr. Davies: In reply to the hon. Member for Solihull on 27th March, I stated that the number was roughly half. We believed it to be about half the number of which we had been informed earlier, which was 187. We do not consider that the difference between 88 and 93 is a very great discrepancy.
  Mr. Blackburn: Does that mean to say that we have no precise check on the
  1408
  number of officials at the Soviet Embassy? Surely, we ought to know how many are there.
  Captain Ryder: Can the hon. Gentleman say if the people who are missing still enjoy diplomatic privileges?
  Mr. Davies: That does not arise on this Question.

  JORDAN AND ISRAEL
  Dr. Strossasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he is taking to encourage a peaceful settlement in the Middle East, based on the existing areas controlled by Jordan and Israel
  Mr. Ernest Davies: I would refer my hon. Friend to the statement made by my hon. Friend the Minister of State on 27th April.
  Dr. Stross: In view of that statement, may I ask whether my hon. Friend himself is aware that there is both stability and strength in these two countries, and whether he will do everything he can to see that there is a decent settlement?
  Mr. Davies: We consider that the steps we are taking can contribute to that end, and we are doing everything to assist in the restoration of friendly relations.

  BRITISH ARMY STORES, EGYPT
  Mr. A. R. W. Lowasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has asked the Egyptian Government to help in reducing thefts of British Army stores in Egypt; and what has been the result of his request
  Mr. Ernest Davies: No, Sir. The British military authorities in Egypt are in close contact with the appropriate Egyptian authorities on this matter and receive valuable co-operation from them. An approach to the Egyptian Government on the diplomatic level is not considered necessary.
  Mr. Low: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the appalling losses suffered in Egypt in 1948 and 1949, recently disclosed in the Army Appropriation Account, and will he reconsider this matter to see

  1409
  whether by approaching the Egyptian Government at diplomatic level he can get something done about it?
  Mr. Davies: The situation has substantially improved since 1948. Steps have been taken, and the situation now is considered far more satisfactory.
  Mr. Mikardo: Considering that we gave away millions of pounds worth of military stores to the Egyptians, why should we go to the trouble of stopping them from pinching a bit more?

  RETAINED PASSPORTS (SECURITY FOR LOANS)
  Mr. Kenneth Thompsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (1) if he will issue instructions for the return of the passport of Mr. Albert Rogers of 40 Carisbrooke Road, Liverpool 4, taken from him as security for a loan of £6 Os. 6d. repatriation expenses, which sum has now been repaid;
  (2) why a British passport, particulars of which have been sent to him, was taken by a consul as security for an advance of repatriation expenses to the holder, a British citizen without funds, in a foreign country.
  Mr. Ernest Davies: When public funds are used for the relief and repatriation of United Kingdom citizens, it is the regular practice to withhold the passport until the person concerned has made satisfactory arrangements to refund the expenditure thus incurred. In the case of Mr. Rogers, the Consul-General at Marseilles paid on his behalf £6 Os. 6d. for his repatriation, and the Consul-General at Lyons advanced £17 9s. 9d. for hospital expenses. Mr. Rogers undertook to repay these advances and the sum of £6 Os. 6d. has been refunded; Mr. Rogers has not yet replied to the request for the refund of £17 9s. 9d. still due.
  Mr. Thompson: Is the Minister not aware that the passport was taken on the occasion of the loan of £6 for repatriation expenses, and that the £17 arose on an entirely different matter and at a different time? Does he consider it proper to transfer this form of security from one loan to another without communicating to the holder of the passport, or without any attempt being
  1410
  made in the civil courts to recover the debt?
  Mr. Davies: It is customary to withhold passports when debts of this nature are owed. The fact that the £6 was not repaid when the further loan was made required the withholding of the passport, and even if the first loan had been repaid, as security on the second loan.
  Mr. Teeing: By what authority does the Foreign Office withhold passports on these lines?
  Mr. Davies: By instructions given in 1922 by the then Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon.
  Mr. C. S. Taylor: How did the man get back without a passport?
  Mr. Davies: When passports are taken away and a person is being repatriated at Government expense, a certificate is given to allow him to get through the passport control at the port.
  Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: Will the Under-Secretary make it clear that in all circumstances a British subject has a right to return to this country with or without a passport?
  Mr. Davies: Yes, Sir. But to facilitate the Customs and passport officials in checking up on a person coming into the country, it is necessary for him to have some document.
  Mr. Lloyd: Will the Under-Secretary make it clear that it is the right of all British subjects to enter this country and that a passport merely facilitates entry?
  Mr. Teeling: Will the hon. Gentleman also make it clear that a British subject also has the right to leave this country, and does not require a passport?

BILL PRESENTED
  FOREIGN COMPENSATION
  " to provide for the establishment of a Commission for the purpose of registering and determining claims to participate in compensation under agreements with foreign Governments and of distributing any compensation received under any such agreements, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. Bevin; supported by Mr. Younger, the Attorney-General, Mr. Jay and Mr. Ernest Davies; read the First time; to be read a Second time Tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 19.]
ORDERS OF THE DAY
  SUPPLY
    11TH ALLOTTED DAY

      CIVIL ESTIMATES AND ESTIMATES FOR REVENUE DEPARTMENTS, 1950–51
      Considered in Committee.
      [Major MILNER in the Chair]
      Motion made, and Question proposed,
      "That a further sum, not exceeding £40, be granted to His Majesty, towards defraying the charges for the following services connected with Anglo-Canadian Trade, for the year ending on 31st March, 1951, namely:

      CIVIL ESTIMATES, 1950-51

      £

      Class VI., Vote 1, Board of Trade

      10

      Class I., Vote 4, Treasury and Subordinate Departments

      10

      Class VI., Vote 4, Export Credits

      10

      Class IX., Vote 3, Ministry of Food

      10

      Total

      £40 "

      —Mr. Harold Wilson.]

  ANGLO-CANADIAN TRADE
  3.34 p.m.
  Mr. Oliver Lyttelton: I think that any matter concerned with Empire trade will commend wide attention in all parts of the Committee. It is becoming clearer every day that the expansion of Imperial trade, the building up of the interchange of goods and services between countries in the Empire, is our first road to economic salvation. If I may be forgiven for referring to my own past, I have spent a large part of my business life in trying to build up the supply of metals within the British Empire so that we could be self-sufficient. I have hardly spent a day without being in touch by cables or negotiations with Australia, Canada, India, Burma, South Africa and Malaya. And so I have a particular interest in the subject.
  There will be other opportunities when we can debate the wider aspects of relations between the British Empire and Commonwealth and the United States, and the question of the freer interchange of trade in Western Europe. I want to focus the attention of the Committee this afternoon upon the direct subject of Anglo-Canadian trade. It used to be said
  1412
  that trade follows the flag, but it is equally necessary that trade should keep the flag flying. We all know that nothing can sever the ties which bind us to Canada in sentiment. Our hopes, ideals and loyalties are the same, as indeed are our doubts and fears, as theirs. But we must not allow trade relations to put a strain upon these higher relations, or to cross our common vision and purposes.
  I suppose it would be true to say that the dislocation of war and the extraordinary upheavals which it involved will have shown that during these five years it has been the primary producer who has been able to call the tune. There has been a great shortage of raw materials, either of food for ourselves, or of raw materials to feed the workshops and plant of the world. The days when the consumer, the great buying markets like Great Britain, were able to some extent to dictate the terms of trade have, at least for the moment, been superseded. The bacon and wheat, the copper, nickel or lead, in the case of Canada, or meat, in the case of the Argentine, which we buy can no longer be regarded as exports to an indispensable market. If we had based our thoughts about trade on that idea, we should have fallen into an error. In these times, it has been a shortage of raw materials rather than of markets seeking to find buyers for them which should be engaging our attention. I return to the point that Empire trade between the countries of the British Empire and Commonwealth is the first road to salvation. This is not to put into the shade the question of our relations with the United States or with the countries of Western Europe, but is to repeat what I consider to be an economic truism, that the Empire is first.
  The reason why we have taken this opportunity of putting down the subject of Anglo-Canadian trade is because our commercial relations, and indeed our commercial reputation, with Canada causes those of us on this side at least no little anxiety. The Canadians are prepared to forgive much, and I think they have forgiven much, and it is all the more necessary to look wide-eyed at some of our mistakes in our trading with Canada. There are four main causes for this deterioration. The first I put is the abrupt cancellation of food contracts a year or two after the end of the war. I put the second as the bad history of

  1413
  the paper contracts; the third, the propaganda, no doubt unintentionally carried on, by Ministers against British trade; and the fourth the further cuts in Canadian trade which have been necessitated by devaluation.
  I should like to turn first to the abrupt cancellation of food contracts. I remember very well talking with Canadian Ministers in Ottawa in 1945 about the food needs of Europe and our own country, and underlining the difficulties under which we would labour in providing dollars with which to pay for these imports. When the Government came into power, these warnings were not given their proper emphasis. The impression gained by speeches from Ministers here was that the sky was the limit for food exports from Canada to Great Britain. It is quite true that the Canadians might have realised the difficulties that would have arisen, but they took most of these statements at their face value. I do not think the general situation with regard to food exports could be better expressed than it was by an article in " The Times " on 20th December, 1948. I quote what the article said:
  " In recent months the public has become aware of growing differences and strains in the economic relations between Canada and the United Kingdom…. Whatever partial warnings there may have been in 1943, they were wholly effaced by neutralising assurances officially given at the same time, and still more by the continuous stream of optimistic forecasts of this country's capacity to take Canadian produce given by members of the United Kingdom Government during the first two years after the war. In 1945 Sir Ben Smith was appealing for more bacon and meat. In mid-1946 Mr. Morrison was in Canada asking that Canadians should push on with their food exports in the spirit of a ' battle against famine'; and in the same year it was officially stated that Canadian policy was maximum production of foodstuffs for the next four years,' in order to meet— "
  " The Times " puts the next word in inverted commas:
  " agreements' for deliveries of food to the United Kingdom ' over a period of years.' Neither this declaration nor the statement only 15 months ago that Britain wanted from Canada during the next two or three years all the bacon, beef, cheese, and eggs which could be got' was ever contradicted or questioned from this side. It was in September last year, after the exhaustion of the American credit, that the clouds began to gather. At the first impact of the crisis, this country appears to have expressed the desire to take virtually no food other than wheat in 1948."
  1414
  " The Times " then describes the various other cancellations such as canned salmon, apples—which resulted in the uprooting of 240,000 Canadian apple trees —poultry and so on, and goes on:
  " Now it is feared that the new contracts for 1949 will not absorb even the reduced surpluses. …"
  The article states in another part:
  " Canadian farmers have so far lost confidence in the reliability of this country as a customer that they have reduced their raising of hogs and poultry just as surely as they have dug up their apple trees. The loss of confidence goes deep. It results not only from the steady decline in this country's purchases. There is much evidence that some contracts have been terminated with unnecessary abruptness, and that these affairs have been handled by the Ministry of Food and its representatives in Canada tactlessly and without any manifest sympathy for the difficulties of the producer."
  As always happens in a planned economy—and democratically planned at that—these statements are made with out proper realisation of what the difficulties may be. When the American Loan was exhausted years before the present Financial Secretary to the Treasury estimated, an abrupt cut in our whole food policy with Canada was made necessary and a bad impression resulted. These violent reversals of policy always seem to be necessary in our so-called planned economy, and so often the contracts and assurances of today become the repudiations and apologies of tomorrow. I say—and I do not think that it can be controverted—that the impression, with some justification, gained ground in Canada that our statements, assurances and undertakings were unreliable.
  I now turn to the vexed matter of the paper contracts. I need not remind the Committee of the large investment of British capital in the Canadian pulp and paper industry. In all, Canada before the war supplied about one quarter of the newsprint requirements of the United Kingdom. Before the war some newspapers relied entirely for their supplies on Canada and Newfoundland. When the Scandinavian supplies were cut off by the war, Canada and Newfoundland became our sole suppliers. This supply was interrupted by the termination of Lend-Lease in 1945, and the contracts were-cut by Government order. We can hardly complain of such an action at that time.

  1415
  But after the American Loan had been negotiated, a new spirit seemed to animate His Majesty's Ministers, and new contracts were made which provided for a steady increase of supplies of newsprint to this country. The contracts were specifically confirmed and approved by His Majesty's Government. In August, 1946, the Board of Trade—the present Chancellor of the Exchequer was then President—wrote a letter in which they said:
  " The Government would be prepared to provide exchange and import licences for 250,000 tons of newsprint in respect of 1948, and 300,000 tons in each of the three following years, and you could contract in Canada on this basis."
  What happened? Contracts were actually entered into for delivery of 150,000 tons in 1947; 180,000 in 1948 and 300,000 tons in each of the three years, 1949, 1950 and 1951.
  These new contracts were again cut in July, 1947, after these specific assurances, and actually the permitted imports were 105,000 tons in 1947 against the contract figure of 150,000 tons, and in each of the years 1948 and 1949 instead of the 300,000 tons 100,000 were permitted to be imported. Finally, in January of this year the Government informed the Newsprint Supply Company that no imports of newsprint at all would be permitted in the first half of this year. I understand that negotiations are now proceeding with regard to supplies for the second half of the year.
  I must ask again, why is it that in our democratically planned economy it always seems necessary to make these abrupt reversals, and tear up solemn undertakings into which the Government recently entered? A natural question to ask is, is it in bad faith? I am quite certain that it is not in bad faith, but comes from basing the so-called plans on a number of assumptions which events invariably falsify. Again, the contracts " and promises of today become the repudiation, the excuses and the apologies of tomorrow. In this matter of newsprint an impression—and not without justification—gained ground that if Britain's word were as good as her bond. the bond must be subject to a considerable discount.
  Thirdly, I turn to the harm done by ill-advised statements about British industry, and the successful propaganda—no less
  1416
  successful because I am sure it is quite unintentional—carried on by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer when he was the President of the Board of Trade and by his successor in that office, against British industry. It is sad to think that in North America the man in the street, certainly, and many leading business men besides, believe that British industry is hopelessly obsolete, riddled with nepotism, relies upon cheap labour and the minimum of mechanisation and machines, and is protected by an impenetrable wall of price-fixing trade associations on the one side and by the most restrictive practices by trade unions on the other.
  His Majesty's Ministers complain that the name of Britain is often blackened abroad by travelling Britains and expatriates. Certainly none of us in this Committee would dissent from the rule laid down by my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) not to criticise the Government of his own country or engage in political controversy in foreign lands or in the British Empire. It is certainly one which we should seek to imitate. Ministers do not realise the extent to which their statements, made even in speeches at home, are listened to in North America—the United States and Canada. This continual carping at British industry is often done by Ministers who would not know the difference between a drilling machine and a planer. It would sometimes become them more if they were to talk about such matters as the efficiency of our steel industry.
  If hon. Members would like a quotation I will give them one. Speaking on 7th January, 1946, at Montreal, the Lord President of the Council—according to a report in the Montreal newspapers—said:
  " Some of those industries, such as coal, iron and steel and transport, are in pretty bad shape. They are definitely a drag on other industries, and hamper the efficiency and enterprise of trades and industries to which we look for … development."
  That was not a good advertisement to give the steel industry at a time when its need for export markets and its capacity to fulfil its deliveries were all-important.
  That kind of speech is one of the things that British industry is up against. It would be a good plan sometimes to refer to other things, like our leading position in the rayon and acetate silk industry, our

  1417
  lead in gas turbines, our lead in the efficient production of chemicals and our radar record, and sometimes to proclaim the fact that we can lick anybody for quality and costs on a whole range of engineering products specially built for the job—" custom built " is the American term. Whenever opportunity offers, the opposite lesson is rubbed in, and the whole apparatus of threats, working parties, development councils, too much price maintenance and high profits, is the almost daily dirge.
  I really do not think that Ministers understand how much harm is done, and that they are the most successful anti-British trade propagandists in the North American Continent. It would be foolish to say that there is not some foundation for these criticisms. Of course there is. There are weaknesses and bad spots in everything. Criticism of them will do no harm, but only when it is set against the background of our splendid achievements in research, development, quality and low cost.
  I have now discussed three of the reasons for the damage to our commercial relations with Canada. They are the abrupt changes and cutting back of food contracts at the time of the convertibility crisis; the repudiation of our paper contract; and, thirdly, the unhelpful, if unintended, propaganda by Ministers against British industry. Lastly, there is the greatly reduced trade which has now become necessary as a result of devaluation. It is fair to say that in a time of boom such as the present the damage to Canada has been much less severe than it might have been, but it has driven Canadian trade markedly more into the arms of the United States.
  The figures from the Canadian official trade returns for January and February are significant. In January, Canada's total exports amounted to about 221 million dollars. Of this, her exports to the United States amounted to no less than 130,859,000 dollars and to us 48-1- million dollars. That is a proportion of 59.1 per cent, of exports to the United States and of 21.9 per cent. to ourselves. In February, the total exports were just over 201 million dollars. Of that quantity, about 130 million dollars went to the United States and thirty million dollars to us. These percentages are 64.6 to the United States and 15.2 to
  1418
  the United Kingdom. We will all agree that this tendency is serious, both to Canada and to this country.
  I will now leave this part of the subject and I propose to turn for one or two minutes to other aspects of it. Before I do so I want to drive home the point that the first thing that is necessary in order to increase our trade with Canada is to try to restore our name for reliability.
  Mr. A. Edward Davies: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that part of the subject I should like to ask him a question. I listened to him indicting His Majesty's Ministers for denigrating this country. Who has done more in that direction than the party opposite, and particularly its leader, in their speeches in this country saying that we have never fallen to such a low level?
  Mr. Lyttelton: I was dealing with a point relating to British industry. am not aware that the party on this side of the House has ever engaged in denigrating—which is the modern word for " blackening "—British industry.—His Majesty's Ministers never get to their feet to speak on economic subjects without saying something of this kind. The President of the Board of Trade never speaks without referring to the " terrible days before the war," and so forth.
  Now let me turn to the matter of export, but I would first remind hon. Members opposite that the impression to which I have referred is far deeper than they think. I have not much time, but I have quotations from lectures given by an American industrialist. I think they are perfectly ridiculous but they directly reflect the unconscious Socialist propaganda. If the Committee had the patience to hear them perhaps I would read them, but I think I had better spare hon. Members.
  We have a large adverse balance of trade with Canada of about 401 million dollars, while Canada has a large unfavourable balance with the United States. Our imports from Canada amounted to 701 millions and our exports to 300 millions. Those are very large figures and they show how the adverse balance is made up. What is even more disquieting, or rather I should say what should spur us to still further efforts to export, is the

  1419
  fact that in 1938 we provided a little over 17 per cent of Canada's total imports and the United States 62.7, whereas today we provide only 11 per cent. and the United States 70j per cent. That is a direct challenge which we must take up. Perhaps in this market, as in other markets, over-emphasis is laid upon the export of goods for consumption. More stimulus should be given to the export of industrial equipment and of capital goods like machine tools, as well as to the export of raw materials. Canada will no doubt help by trying to buy more sugar, cocoa, and perhaps rubber, from the rest of the sterling area. A great market for raw materials is there, and we should push sales very vigorously.
  The other items will be semi-finished materials, and the principal exports will be steel, coal and petroleum products. The steel record is very good, in spite of the fact that the Lord President of the Council described the industry as a drag on other industries and in bad shape. This industry increased its exports to Canada from 38,000 tons of finished steel in 1948 to 73,000 tons in 1949. In the first quarter of 1950 it shows an increased export of nearly double the figure for the same quarter of last year. If that is being in bad shape we could do with rather more of it and with rather less threats of nationalisation.
  The situation in textile exports is disquieting. I am sure that the President of the Board of Trade will agree with that. I would trouble the Committee with some figures from the "Board of Trade Journal " of 8th April this year. They are sinister figures. They show that the imports of unbleached fabrics into Canada rose from five million lb. in 1938 to 22 million lb. in 1949. The imports of printed or coloured fabrics rose from under nine million lb. to 16 million lb. The level of imports from the United Kingdom last year were below their prewar level. The whole of the increase in unbleached fabrics came from the United States. Supplies from the United Kingdom fell from 2.7 million lb. to 0.6 million lb. Imports of printed fabrics from the United States rose from less than three million lb. in 1938 to nearly 9,500,000 lb. last year, whereas imports from this country dropped from 4,500,000 1h. to nearly 3,000,000 lb.
  1420
  There is obviously a great opportunity here. I am not levelling any criticism at the Government for being unaware of it in the matter of textile exports. There have been some complaints about shoddy goods being supplied from here, and I believe that, in some cases, Lancashire admits that that is so. I am not surprised when so many mills have had difficulty in getting exactly the right type of cotton to spin in their mills, which have been equipped for that type. That is no doubt a contributory factor. We really have to make an effort there. I should also like to compare the record of the cement industry, because it has also been threatened with nationalisation. In this industry the United Kingdom share of Canadian imports rose from 12 per cent. in 1938 to 20 per cent. in 1949.
  I have indicated some of the challenge to our exports, and we should certainly take up that challenge with enthusiasm. An adverse balance of 401 million dollars is a very big one. It may never be possible to close that gap entirely, but I am convinced that over a period of years we can reduce it to manageable shape. We shall want help from the Canadians in doing that. The reimposition of some of the textile duties lately, although they are due to guarantees and promises given to their manufacturers when they were taken off in the war, will be a further handicap.
  Nevertheless, we may be sure that in peace as in war we shall get help from the Canadians in our task. Their loyalty to the Crown and to the Empire and to our ideals has been written in the blood of their sons twice already in this century. In matters far less important, namely, trade but of which we must take care, I am sure their record will be equally good. We in Great Britain must begin by making sure that we carry out with the highest scruple every assurance and undertaking which we give to Canadian industry and to the Canadian people.
  4.3 p.m.
  The President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Harold Wilson): The subject which has been raised this afternoon by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) is one on which I am sure both sides of the Committee are in absolute agreement, at least so far as concerns the importance of realising the objectives which the right hon.

  1421
  Gentleman has mentioned. I could not say that I agree with by far the larger part of what he said as to his reasons for the difficulties, but I do not want to be drawn too far into debating the points which he has raised because there are a number of facts about Anglo-Canadian trade which I feel I ought to tell the Committee. Certainly I should express my disagreement with what he has said about some of the causes of the difficulties.
  The right hon. Gentleman made many complaints about statements by Ministers. He said that I have never got on my feet without talking about the grim days before the war. I can tell him that I made 76 separate speeches in Canada last year and never once referred to that subject. Indeed, I am bound to tell the Opposition that on the many occasions when Ministers do pay tribute to individual industries they do not, of course, get anything like as much publicity. On certain occasions when I have made statements in defence of British industries which have been attacked abroad, I have been taken to task by right hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Front Bench in this House for doing so.
  Only a few months ago when at Annecy, in answer to a very leading question from an American journalist about the level of our prices, I certainly refused to go on record as saying that our prices were too high for competition, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley) came to this House and, in a most condemnatory speech, attacked me for having said that our prices were not in general too high. Had it been the opposite and I had said that our prices were too high, we should have had a chorus of disapproval from the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues saying that I was always condemning British industry. I was certainly not going to make the task of British industry more difficult abroad by saying that their prices were too high. There were enough people saying that at that time.
  One point on which the right hon. Gentleman and ourselves will be in complete agreement, is that we want to conduct our trade with Canada at the very highest possible level. We have every reason for wanting that to be the case. The amount we can buy from Canada, is,
  1422
  as the right hon. Gentleman half suggested, limited by what we can pay for it. There is no question—I do not think anyone would suggest it—of a bilateral balance of trade or of payments between the United Kingdom and Canada. Even before the war our exports and our reexports paid for only 30 per cent. of our imports from Canada. The remainder was paid for in other ways. In 1949 the figure had been raised to 36 per cent., but in 1949 there was a very much bigger absolute gap still to be filled, and also in 1949 there were not available the means of bridging that gap which we had before the war.
  Canada has been affected by a similar problem, but, as the right hon. Gentleman said, although her surplus with us increased from 220 million dollars before the war to nearly 400 million dollars in 1948, her deficit with the United States worsened from 146 million dollars to 284 million dollars. I am quite sure that the Committee knows the main reason for the change in the position of Anglo-Canadian trade, though the right hon. Gentleman did not say very much about the main reason. Before the war, as I said, we paid for only 30 per cent. of our imports from Canada with our exports and re-exports. The remainder was paid for with United States dollars which were earned partly by investments but came mainly from the dollar earnings of the sterling area countries other than the United Kingdom.
  It was the famous quadrilateral system, which has often been referred to in this House. Canada had a large trade surplus with us and a large deficit with United States We had a deficit with Canada and a large surplus with the rest of the sterling area. The rest of the sterling area had a deficit with us and a large surplus with United States. From the, dollar earnings arising from that surplus we were able to pay Canada's surplus with us, and thus enable Canada to pay the United States. In addition, out of the same dollar earnings we were able to make a considerable contribution to the dollar needs of Europe.
  As the Committee knows, the war and the effects of the war have knocked away one of the fundamental props of this system. Taking the rest of the sterling area outside United Kingdom, in 1937 they had a favourable balance with North America of 190 million U.S. dollars. It

  1423
  is true that in 1938, thanks to the American recession, that fell to a slight deficit, but against that surplus or slight deficit of pre-war days the rest of the sterling area in 1948 had a deficit with North America of 360 million dollars and last year one of nearly 350 million dollars. With those figures, the whole financial and trade relationship of United Kingdom and Canada is bound to be affected because we have to pay for what we have imported.
  So, however much we want—we desperately want them—Canada's exports of wheat, timber, aluminium, other nonferrous metals, woodpulp, newsprint, meat, bacon, dairy produce, salmon, apples, and so on, the amount we can import has been limited by what we could pay for it, and it is impossible to get away from that single fact. I join with the right hon. Gentleman in his concluding words about the close link between Canada and this country, and about what Canada has done for us and with us in war and in peace alike. If ever we needed a reason, quite apart from that of economic interest, of friendship and kinship, to make us more keen to develop Anglo-Canadian trade and to take everything we can from Canada, we have the reason there, as the right hon. Gentleman mentioned; but we cannot get away from the brute facts of the dollar shortage.
  The dollar problem, as I have said, is not a problem of our own creation. The Committee knows what attempts are being made to recover from it. But the problem of the dollar shortage remains. There are some, of course, who will suggest that the whole responsibility for removing the dollar problem in our relations with Canada rests on our shoulders alone. There are some who say—and I heard it said in Canada on a number of occasions—that if we, the United Kingdom, would make sterling convertible, that would solve all the problems, as though the present absence of free convertibility of sterling into dollars were the cause and not one of the effects of the fundamental change in the dollar position which I have mentioned.
  This problem is undoubtedly our problem, but it is Canada's problem too, and it is the problem of many other countries in all parts of the world. I think the recent most helpful speeches by
  1424
  leading Canadian statesmen—the Prime Minister and other Ministers—in Canada have shown how fully that fact is realised and how keen are the Canadian Government and people to play their full part in solving what is a common problem. If it were not for that willingness on the part of the Canadian Government and people, a willingness which has already been manifest in so many different ways, our Canadian dollar problem would be a good deal worse even than it is. I need only mention the 1,250 million dollar line of credit granted in 1946.
  We are seeking, and our policy is dictated by this, to close the gap in trade and to find a balance—not a balance at the lowest possible figure by a sheer restriction of imports, but a balance at the highest possible figure of Anglo-Canadian Trade, by expansion of exports. The right hon. Gentleman gave one or two figures of the present trade gap. In 1947 it was 779 million Canadian dollars; in 1948 it was 600 million Canadian dollars; and in 1949 it was 536 million Canadian dollars. In the first quarter of this year it has been running at an annual rate of just over 200 million Canadian dollars, although that is profoundly affected by temporarily favourable seasonal factors. Nevertheless, if we take the figure of last year, the gap of 536 million Canadian dollars, it gives us some indication of the size of the problem still ahead of us.
  We are trying to bridge a good deal of this gap with our own exports—this gap which is due to the disappearance of those pre-war dollar earnings from the rest of the sterling area; although I do not think any hon. Member of this Committee would expect us to close the whole of the gap by our own dollar exports from this country. We hope to rely on increased earnings from invisibles, particularly tourism, and also we must count, I hope, and the right hon. Gentleman mentioned this, on some recovery in the dollar earnings of other countries in the sterling area. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the possibility of additional Canadian purchases of cocoa, rubber and so on.
  I should say that every suggestion—and we get many suggestions from people of all political parties—for increasing our imports from Canada at this time, however much we should like to take those increased imports, means an increase in

  1425
  the size of the gap which we still have to bridge, unless, of course, those imports of themselves lead to a further increase in exports which would not otherwise have taken place. The general problems of Anglo-Canadian trade and payments are, of course, as the Committee knows, under continuous review between the two Governments. There is the AngloCanadian Standing Continuing Committee and there are very frequent exchanges of views between Ministers. I do not think there is any lack of close liaison so far as that is concerned, and there are no items in our imports from Canada which are not discussed regularly and frequently between the two Governments.
  I should like to turn for a few minutes to the question of our imports from Canada, because the right hon. Gentleman dealt with that subject before he turned, as I hope to turn, to the question of our exports to Canada. As the Committee will be aware, there are certain imports which we are taking on a scale considerably in excess of pre-war and which have to come out of the dollars available for Anglo-Canadian Trade. As the Committee knows, last year we took 3.7 million tons of wheat, against 1.9 million tons in the average for the five pre-war years, an increase of nearly 90 per cent. In wheat meal we took almost double what we were taking before the war.
  Mr. Hurd: Is that flour?
  Mr. Wilson: Wheatmeal, including flour; wheatmeal and flour together. I.should make it clear that the first figure which I quoted, 3.7 million tons, was for wheat only; the second figure is for wheatmeal, including flour.
  Mr. Hurd: There has been a big increase in that, too?
  Mr. Wilson: Yes; practically double. As for aluminium, we are taking eight times as much as before the war. We are taking nearly double the amount of asbestos 23,000 tons against 13,000 tons. In wood pulp, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, we are taking 31 times as much as pre-war; and in plywood we are taking 78 per cent. more than pre-war. There are those items to be taken into account first, because this increase requires far more dollars to maintain our imports, quite apart from
  1426
  any increase in prices. There are, of course, many items which, to the regret of the entire Committee, are down by comparison with pre-war. There is, for example, tinned salmon which was referred to by the right hon. Gentleman; there is newsprint and there is, of course, softwood.
  I should like to say a word about softwood because the Committee and the House have at all times shown great interest in the question of softwood imports from Canada. Last year we took 258,000 standards of softwood against the prewar average, for the five immediate prewar years, of 428,000 standards. There has been a serious fall in quantity, although, in fact, the proportion of timber we are taking from Canada, as a proportion of our total imports, has increased by comparison with pre-war. In 1949, though there was a fall compared with 1947 and 1948, the figure was still higher, as a proportion of our total imports, than before the war.
  Taking quantity, before the war about 18 per cent. of our softwood came from Canada. Last year the figure was about 211 per cent. and in the previous year 29 per cent. Taking the c.i.f. value of the timber, before the war it was 18 per cent. and last year it was 25 per cent. Although Canada has suffered, and we have suffered, through our inability to buy more softwood, it cannot be said that we have been discriminating against Canada in the sense of taking a lower proportion of our imports from her.
  Before I come to what I think is the key to our trading relations with Canada. the question of exports, I should like to say a few words on what I think is a prevalent fallacy on Anglo-Canadian trade, a fallacy from which I think there are one or two hon. Members opposite who are still not entirely free. It is the suggestion that if we had diverted oar steel exports from other markets to Canada in the past year or two, in a period when steel was in very short supply indeed, it would have enabled us to import far more timber from Canada, using the dollars we had earned through selling steel.
  I dealt with this when I was in Canada, because I think it is a view which is held on a very wide scale in Canada; and I think I did something to satisfy them that there was, in fact, very little indeed

  1427
  in this point. There are, however, some people here who still believe in it vehemently. Last Thursday when I stated the position as fully as was possible in answer to a supplementary question, the hon. and gallant Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Colonel Gomme-Duncan) characterised my statement quite tersely as " rubbish."
  Because this is one of the fundamental points in Anglo-Canadian trade I should like very briefly to show that my statement was not rubbish. The proposition usually takes the form that we have sent too much steel to Northern and Eastern Europe under bilateral agreements, that we should divert some of that steel to Canada and that we should use the proceeds for buying timber, virtually on a barter basis. If we take the actual figures of exports to these other countries in the last two years, I think we can show how little there is in this argument. For instance, the amount of steel sent to the principal timber supplying countries of Northern and Eastern Europe—Finland, Sweden, Russia, Poland land Yugoslavia —in 1948 was 157,000 tons, some of it in forms which Canada would not have taken.
  If we had been able to divert that steel to Canada and to use the proceeds, at current prices, for buying softwood, that 157,000 tons would have bought about 163,000 standards of timber from Canada. In fact, the amount of timber we obtained under the bilateral arrangements, of which that steel forms a small part, was, not 163,000 standards, but 475,000 standards; so that had we broken off those bilateral arrangements and diverted that steel to Canada, we would have had far less timber at the end of the day.
  In 1949, the amount of steel which went to these European countries was 129,000 tons, a figure smaller than that of 1948. This would have bought, at current prices last year, about 131,000 standards of timber from Canada had we diverted the steel there. In fact, the softwood which we obtained from those European countries amounted, not to 131,000, but to 800,000 standards. This shows that we should not have had any gain, but that we should have had a great fall in the amount of timber which we were getting from those countries, had we diverted the steel to Canada.
  Mr. Russell: Could the right hon. Gentleman explain what he means by " steel "? Does he mean iron and steel and manufactures thereof, namely, Group C in the Trade and Navigation Returns?
  Mr. Wilson: No. I have separate figures for iron and steel and manufactures thereof, but, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, that category does not cover all the steel exports. There are, of course, in other sections of the trade returns, such steel items as tyres, axles, wheels and so on, which play a quite important part and, as the hon. Member will probably know, a growing part year by year, particularly in our trade with Canada. So far as last year is concerned —and I made this point in the House last Thursday—Canada did not take—
  Mr. W. Robson-Brown: Is the President satisfied that the steel industry of Great Britain is doing all that it can to satisfy the needs of Canada in the matter of supplies of steel; and was his answer to a question the other day, when he said that increased steel production in England would have made a great difference in the tonnages of steel going to Canada, in fact not correct, for reasons which he knows perfectly well?
  Mr. Wilson: If the hon. Member succeeds in catching your eye, Major Milner, no doubt he will be able to develop that point. The answer which I gave is perfectly correct. The time when steel could have been sent to Canada in greater quantities than was sent was 1947 and 1948. Had we had more steel available, then of course we could have been able to supply more and would have been glad to do so. In 1949, however, such efforts were made, and the supply position had improved so much, that Canada did not take all the steel that we were in a position to supply.
  Mr. W. Robson-Brown: Thank you.
  Mr. Wilson: An important point concerning the suggested barter arrangement of steel for timber is that the steel which went to the European countries did not pay for the softwood which we got. It was essential to secure agreements; but the softwood itself, not to mention other supplies which we received under those bilateral arrangements—wood pulp and paper from Finland and

  1429
  Sweden, iron ore from Sweden, large quantities of grain from Russia, and so on was paid for not with the steel, but with sterling, the sterling being in the form of other United Kingdom sterling area goods which those countries could, and would, take, and goods which, if we had not supplied them to Europe, would not have been taken in increased amounts by Canada. Therefore, there has been no diversion from Canada by the pursuit of trade with Europe. In the case of Russia, it has not been the steel which has been paying for the timber and the grain; it has been for the most part sterling area products such as wool and rubber.
  These bilateral arrangements are getting a good deal looser as trade is settling down to more normal channels, and certainly the steel position is a good deal easier. The figures of exports of steel to Canada in 1947 were 23,000 tons, on the basis which I have just explained to the hon. Member; in 1948, 42,000 tons and last year, 79,000 tons. In 1950, the quantity should be very much greater indeed than last year and, indeed, greater than in 1938. For the first three months of this year shipments of steel to Canada have been nearly double the first three months of 1949. As I said in the House the other day, the industry and the Government are confident that we shall be able to meet all the orders for steel from Canada, apart from one or two specialities, which Canadian consumers may care to place in this country.
  As far as steel is concerned Canada is a highly competitive country, with imports from the United States and a well developed industry of its own which is considerably bigger than before the war. If there were time I could, perhaps, deal with another similar suggestion on which there has been a great deal of misunderstanding; the suggestion that we should have diverted tinplate to Canada from Russia and bought salmon from Canada in consequence. I need not point out to the Committee that the tinplate was not used to buy the salmon; it was used to wrap it up. The position with Canada was that we did not have the dollars to pay for more salmon than we have actually been able to take in the last year or two.
  As I think I have shown, and as the right hon. Member for Aldershot himself
  1430
  made clear, the solution to this problem rests in an expansion in our exports to Canada. But before I come to that I should like to say a few words about tourism. Canadian tourists in this country can make a very big contribution indeed to our balance of payments, and of course we shall be delighted to see them on other grounds also. Last year over 33,000 Canadians came to this country. That was an increase of about one-third on the previous year, and we are hoping that this year the figure will go beyond the 40,000 mark, subject to what is at present the limiting factor—transport facilities across the Atlantic.
  I should like to turn now to the main export drive. The dollar value of our exports to Canada has shown a steady increase in the last three years. The figures for 1947 were 180 million Canadian dollars; in 1948, 290 million; and in 1949, 301 million. Last year we were continuing to expand with our exports but, of course, the falling off in trade and the falling off in orders just before devaluation reflected themselves in a serious fall in our export figures, which went on until the fourth quarter of last year. That, of course, reflected the cancellation of orders of which I saw something when I was in Canada. In the first quarter of this year, however, trade has picked up again very well. It is now up to 79 million dollars in this quarter and there has been a steady rise in the daily rate of exports in each month of this year. We are now beginning to see the results of the drive which has taken place over the last two years or more by industry and by the Government.
  The two industries which are making the biggest contribution to these high figures are wool and motor cars. Our exports of wool goods, which has always been a traditional staple trade to Canada, are keeping steadily up in increasingly difficult market conditions. Certainly the easier selling conditions of 1948 have now disappeared. Our exports of motor cars, the biggest single new item in our trade, really have been spectacular. In 1938 this country exported 584 motor cars to. Canada; in 1948, just short of 15,000; in 1949, 31,000; and in March of this year our shipments reached an annual rate of 77,000 cars. I actually should not attempt to place too much on a single month because obviously—
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Mr. Lord of Austins.
  Mr. Wilson: I thought the Opposition showed no sign of voting against this last week. Certainly, Mr. Lord should be thanked.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: And the men —everybody.
  Mr. Wilson: Mr. Lord and the men have been thanked on numerous occasions because of this, but, of course, this has not been confined to that particular factory. Other motor car firms have done extremely well.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: Sir John Black.
  Mr. Wilson: Yes, and Sir William Rootes, if we are to have the whole catalogue. The motor car industry as a whole has done a first-class job in Canada. Although it is difficult to foresee the future, as far as exports there are concerned, we should expect to find a big increase this year, even over last year.
  But there have been other important successes as well. Last year, with the support of my Department, the agricultural machinery industry sent out a mission to Canada, at the invitation of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. The suggestion came from the prairie farmers themselves, who wanted to buy more British agricultural machinery. The hon. Member for Fife, East (Mr. Henderson Stewart) was a member of the mission. I well remember meeting him in Vancouver. The Report of this mission has resulted in a considerably increased effort by many sections of that industry in what is, for obvious reasons, an extremely difficult market, and, in the first quarter of 1950, we shipped more agricultural tractors than in the whole of 1949. I have every reason to believe that this is the beginning of a very large flow.
  Mr. Lyttelton: The hon. Member does not know what the figure was?
  Mr. Wilson: I will get the figures for the right hon. Gentleman. There have been equally encouraging results in recent weeks from other industries as well. For instance, the cotton industry to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—
  Mr. Lyttelton: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves this subject, perhaps he will get us some figures about it. According to the " Board of Trade Journal." the
  1432
  export of tractors is, I think, specifically referred to as four in 1949, so doubling that would not be very great.
  Mr. Wilson: I am sorry to say that I have not the figures with me, but I will certainly see that they are provided. I can certainly tell the right hon. Gentleman that exports in the first quarter were a good deal more than before—
  Mr. Henderson Stewart: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Wilson: —as the hon. Member for East Fife will tell the right hon. Gentleman. The cotton industry has been facing great difficulties in Canada, partly due to the diversion of orders to the United States during the war of a very high proportion of our normal trade. But the industry has recovered following the pre-devaluation slump and in March of this year it did pretty well. So have many other industries which were feeling the draught considerably in the spring and summer of last year.
  Against this background, the suggestion we are getting in one or two sections of the Canadian Press that our export drive is losing influence can be seen to be wrong. There is every sign that our export drive is really getting under way in Canada. In no industry is this more true than in that referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, the engineering industry. In terms of United States dollars, the engineering and vehicle industries have increased their exports to Canada from 40 million in 1947 to 114 million last year. Following the pioneer work of the mission headed by Sir Harry Gilpin, who continues indefatigable in this cause, many sections of the engineering industry have attempted to establish themselves in Canada.
  With the help of the Export Credits Guarantee Department, permanent group representation for certain sections of the engineering industry has been established in Canada and, as a result of the discussions which the Gilpin Mission has aroused, many of our leading United Kingdom firms have been stimulated to extend and develop their own direct individual representation there. These developments also, of course, are being assisted by the Export Credits Guarantee Department. In addition, representation of this country at the Canadian International Trade Fair—which is to be held

  1433
  next month at Toronto—will exceed that of any other exhibiting country, not excluding Canada herself.
  Mr. Lyttelton: I must apologise. The figure of tractors I read was 4 per cent.
  Mr. Wilson: I though there was something wrong. In fact, in 1949 it was 105 a month and in 1950 it will be 200 a month-
  Mr. Henderson Stewart: It should be much more.
  Mr. Wilson: —and it should be much more before the end of the year.
  The Toronto Fair will enable the industry to put on what is the biggest concerted exhibit of British production of that type ever seen in North America and the Canadian buyers will for the first time have a real chance of seeing what our machinery and equipment, such as machine tools, scientific instruments, woodworking machinery and handtools can do. No one expects our engineering exports to Canada to reach the levels which the right hon. Gentleman and I hope we shall see in a matter of a few weeks or even months.
  As Sir Harry Gilpin said recently, " You cannot neglect a market for 30 years and then think you can make a spectacular entry into it overnight." There are many difficulties to be overcome. One of the biggest related to the different standards of the electrical engineering industry, and as a result of special discussions last year, arrangements have been made for speeding up the procedure for getting the necessary approvals for our electrical products in the Canadian market. Until that was done a great flood of possible exports from this country was being held back.
  In many other directions the engineering industry is getting away quickly. In recent months, large and important contracts have been secured for television equipment for the first two transmitting stations of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, for mechanical handling equipment, telecommunications and heavy electrical equipment, the results of which will not be reflected in the trade accounts for many months to come. As a result of activities both by Government representatives and by the trades concerned, with E.C.G.D.'s support, United Kingdom engineering firms are getting opportunities to tender for some of the major trans-
  1434
  portation and development schemes in various parts of Canada. But in engineering--hon. Members who have been on these missions to Canada will confirm what I am saying—so much depends on the individual Canadian engineer who, in the past, largely because of his technical training, has automatically looked more to the United States than to the United Kingdom as a source of supply. I felt this very strongly indeed when I was over there and it is a point made in the report of the Gilpin Mission.
  During my visit to Canada last year I had a number of meetings with representatives of Canadian universities and professional institutions to see what could be done to bring far more Canadian engineering students to this country at some time in, or after, their period of training. Representatives of the Ministry of Education and from the industry are at present in Canada discussing ways and means of doing this with the appropriate Canadian authorities, and to follow up their work we are inviting the Canadian engineering faculties to send over as large a representative team as possible of professors and deans to follow up these questions with British industry and British technical institutions, because, looking to the future, there is no more important development in our Anglo-Canadian trade than the possible development of engineering.
  I am certain that no single thing can contribute more to increasing orders for British equipment than a much greater awareness on the part of Canadian engineer and buyer of what this country can do and a more automatic tendency to think in terms of what this country can do rather than the United States. I am sure the Committee will join with me in hoping that these discussions will bring something really fruitful later in the year.
  I am sure the Committee would want me to join in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the welcome our efforts have had on the part of the Canadian authorities and the Canadian people. Throughout my visit—and I think I was the first British trade Minister to go right across Canada, to every single province except, I am sorry to say, Prince Edward Island—
  Mr. Geoffrey Lloyd: At the time of the Ottawa Conference the then President of the Board of Trade did so.
  Mr. Wilson: I am delighted to hear it. He would find, as I did—I found it perhaps even more in view of events since then—the greatest good will towards British trade exports. In the Maritime Provinces one found the greatest willingness to develop trade in all kinds of commodities. In the Prairies, we found the farmers only too desirous of taking more and more British goods, whether machinery or consumer goods, in order to make permanent the market for their own products, and in order, for quite noneconomic reasons, to increase the volume of trade. In British Columbia there was the traditional feeling which we have always seen there. Among the keen buyers of the industrial areas of Ontario. and Quebec, provided that our prices are reasonable, our delivery dates satisfactory, that we maintain our traditional quality and are prepared to study the market and send to Canadian buyers what they want, we found the same willingness to give our exports every possible chance.
  There is a general realisation in Canada that not only a possible increase but the maintenance of their volume of exports to this country depends upon Canadian willingness to take more imports from us.
  Mr. Harrison rose—
  Mr. Wilson: Time is getting on, and I should like to sit down very shortly. Perhaps my hon. Friend will be fortunate enough to be called upon to speak later. I have mentioned many parts of Canada but I did not mention Ottawa. Certainly in Ottawa we found on the part of the Canadian Ministers, and indeed among members of all parties, great willingness to further the progress of Anglo-Canadian trade. Mr. St. Laurent has himself said recently:
  " it is very strongly in our national interest to import from Britain."
  He has also stated that although British exports to Canada, with the assistance of sterling devaluation, may affect Canadian industries:
  " we must not attempt to deal with it in a way that would shut out such imports from our country."
  Members who have been on trade missions will know what our trade commissioners are doing there, and they will join in paying tribute to the value of the work of our Senior Trade Commissioner in Ottawa and our trade commissioners
  1436
  throughout Canada in helping the British exporter and in supplying information to this country of possible openings for trade. Those who have made use of its services would also desire to pay tribute to the Export Credits Guarantee Department in the special help it is giving in insurance against the special risks involved in getting into the Canadian market. Already the Department has issued policies for these special purposes to a total of £31 million for dollar exports, a fair proportion of them for Canada. Taking together all E.C.G.D. business, the Department guaranteed about £10,500,000 of British exports to Canada in 1949-50.
  The work of the Dollar Exports Board is too well known to require me to say anything about it. I am sure that here again hon. Members in all parts of the House would wish me to say how much we value the work being done in Canada by the Dollar-Sterling Trade Board of Canada under the chairmanship of Mr. James Duncan, to make Canadian buyers aware of the part they can play, and the advice and help it is giving to our dollar exporters in selling their goods in that highly competitive market. If, in terms of quality, price deliveries, styling packaging, advertising and what our Canadian friends call " merchandising," we will provide for the Canadian market what that market wants we can greatly increase the volume of our exports.
  It is a difficult market and a highly competitive one. What it is not is a temporary market. There are still many who feel it is temporary and not worth risking money, time, trouble and enterprise in trying to get into it. But it is a market which is vital to this country. The great developments that are going on in that country provide a tremendous opportunity for our exporters and an assurance of a permanent market for them. There are electric power development for the great new oil fields of the West, iron ore and other raw materials, great new schemes of irrigation, drainage and transport—all these will develop to a tremendous extent Canada's production and standard of living.
  These developments make Canada not only a land of great opportunity for Canadians, but a land of great opportunity for our exporters, an opportunity which is as unbounded as the good will there is in Canada for this country and her

  1437
  exports. If we approach this question in that spirit, and all our exporters do so, I am certain that the problems referred to by the right hon. Gentleman, and those which we all have so much in mind, can be solved to the greater benefit of this country, Canada and the whole world.
  4.46 p.m.
  Miss Hornsby-Smith: I am grateful for the opportunity to address this Committee and the House for the first time. I do so with considerable diffidence, following as I do the two distinguished speakers who have opened this Debate today. I ask the customary forbearance which this House has granted so generously to so many of my colleagues in this new Parliament.
  The subject of Imperial trade has been one of my prime political studies ever since I interested myself in politics some 17 years ago. But the subject is so vast, and the commodities in the many countries so diverse, that all too often in debate and discussion on Imperial trade one can deal only with wide general principles instead of with practical proposals. I therefore welcome the opportunity which this Debate provides to confine our arguments to Anglo-Canadian trade which, as the President of the Board of Trade has said, has special features and problems of its own that do not apply to other Dominions and colonial territories.
  Even if one disregards the ties of kinship and sentiment—intangible as they are and incalculable as they proved to be in 1939—there is still the practical consideration that Canada has wheat, newsprint, aluminium, bacon and timber—all goods that we want. We on our side have capital equipment, steel, motor cars, high-quality textiles and china, goods that Canada wants. We are Canada's best market, and for three centuries trade has flowed between Canada and this country. But Canadian trade is dollar trade, and although last year we imported goods from Canada to the value of £224 million, our exports to that country, as has been pointed out by the two right hon. Gentlemen who preceded me, amounted only to £79 million.
  To redress that lack of balance we have, unfortunately, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) has pointed out, cut down our
  1438
  imports of food, broken our contract for newsprint, and eliminated our purchases of barley, oats, and milk products, amongst other things; in short, a curtailment of Anglo-Canadian trade which hit the Canadian producers very severely. One wonders what would have happened and what would have been the reaction in the Argentine under similar treatment, when one remembers the hullabaloo that arose recently when the Minister of Food remarked somewhat trenchantly, and I feel with some little justice, that we expected a square deal from that country. We have treated our sister Dominion Canada badly. We accepted her most generous gifts after the war; gifts which per head of her population, were, I believe, even greater than those we received from the United States. On the one hand, we have taken those gifts, and on the other—no doubt regretfully—we have cancelled many of the orders which we promised to her.
  I most sincerely believe that to restrict trade with the Canadian market and with the colonial territories and to switch the purchase of essential foodstuffs from the Empire countries to foreign countries is a bad policy. Experience should have taught us that foreign markets are rarely as secure, nor are they generally as favourable to us, as are our Empire markets. At a time when we have the gravest possible warnings from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that when Marshall Aid ends there is no other source from which we can sustain our standard of living or maintain our employment except by increased production and trade, we should be fostering Empire trade by every means in our power, and not spurning it.
  I am one of those people who believe that Britain's recovery depends on the widest possible extension of inter-Imperial trade. A long-term policy for the expansion both ways of Commonwealth trade is long overdue. I believe that we want another Ottawa Conference. In his concluding remarks the President of the Board of Trade pointed out very truly that in Canada there is an expanding market, that she has an increasing population, that there are vast resources as yet untapped which will demand capital equipment and absorb more and more consumer goods. If at this stage we start to restrict the goods we buy from

  1439
  Canada; if we buy from the foreigner before we buy from Canada; if Canada is forced to find new outlets for her primary products, then we must expect her to buy the plant and capital equipment and the greater supplies of consumer goods, which she will so shortly need in opening up this vast terrain, from those who have treated her more generously.
  We deceive ourselves cruelly if we imagine that we can maintain our present standard of living, to which we all subscribe, the social services and, not least, our present level of employment, unless they are in fact based on a solid foundation of Empire prosperity and inter-Imperial trade. The Canadian market can be both lasting and expanding. The foreign market is often transitory. Many of those things which we sold to devastated Europe in the years immediately following 1945 we cannot sell today in competition with Belgium, Germany and Italy.
  In this connection, may I join with those who view with real concern the sinister and progressive whittling down of our rights to grant Imperial Preference to our own Dominions and Colonies under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, generally referred to as G.A.T.T., or " Gatt "? I believe that " gatt" is the slang term for a gun. It is about time we turned this one away from the head of the British Empire—at which it is principally aimed—and killed the Havana Charter in so far as it denies us our right to conclude agreements with our own Dominions and Colonies.
  Mercifully, we have not ratified the Havana Charter, and I do not believe that hon. Members on either side of the Committee, on the second thoughts which have occurred, or indeed other signatories, hope that the original pact ever will be ratified. We should remember that that Charter imposes a condition to buy at the lowest world price. Such an attractive slogan provides no safeguard whatsoever for the nation with a high standard of living or a high standard of social services and wages. In effect, it opens the market for the nation working the longest hours at the lowest rates of pay; and paying the lowest Income Tax and levies for its social services. How long will our standards be retained if we accept these discrimina-
  1440
  tory terms and destroy our very valuable Empire trade?
  So far as Anglo-Canadian trade is concerned, I agree with all that has been said by the previous speakers in regard to extending the market and the desire to see that neither dollars nor distance shall divide us. We need Canada's market and she needs ours. Let us go out and win it. We start with some very material advantages. Canada does not want to be commercially absorbed into the United States. She is encouraging the entry of British goods through the Imports Division of the Foreign Trade Service, and she is short of United States dollars. As proof of her desire to buy our goods, it is true to say that last year —with a population roughly one-tenth of that of the United States—she bought as much from this country as did the United States. The atmosphere is therefore good.
  Devaluation has made our prices in Canada more attractive and a " buy British " policy reflects Canadian awareness that it is in her long-term interests to buy more from us in order to safeguard her own future sales to us. To me it is a great tragedy that, even if she wishes, she cannot under the present stringency of " Gatt " offer us any preferential help. Our goods were denied to the Canadian market during the war years and we have to acknowledge the fact that we have to compete with some of the smartest salesmen in tit world from across the United States-Canadian border. We can, however, win on quality, price and service.
  I agree with the right hon. Member for Aldershot that there has been much adverse comment against British manufacturers which has been widely publicised in Canada and used against us. First, we should recognise that we cannot compete in the cheap, mass produced article, for the production of which the United States and Canadian industry is specially attuned. We can, however, hold our own in high-quality goods in which we specialise in this country.
  I am particularly interested in woollen textiles and linens, and it is on that subject that I wish to conclude. The President of the Board of Trade, if I understood him aright, mentioned that we have a certain resistance to meet in competing with our woollens and textiles. I believe that we must give our manufacturers every possible chance to win their way in that

  1441
  market. To do so, we must encourage them to have their salesmen on the spot. Canadian tastes cannot be judged from a Bradford office, nor can orders be won from the fastness of a Belfast linen mill. Our salesmen, our technicians and our executives must have knowledge of the markets, and most of our go-ahead employers are very anxious that they should have such knowledge.
  We must have representatives on the spot. Too often in the past we have expected a trade catalogue deposited in a Toronto head office to sell goods in Winnipeg in competition with a high-pressure American salesman, standing on the office mat. We must have our resident salesmen not only in the eastern provinces, but out west in Calgary, in Victoria and Vancouver. In this connection, particularly with reference to the granting of currency allowances, I hope that the Treasury will recognise that many a fat order is clinched over a good dinner —and it strengthens the position of the seller considerably if he has enough money in his pocket to pay the bill.
  American competition is keen and every magazine bears American advertisements, which in many respects are more akin to Canadian taste in colour and design. They have always encouraged prompt delivery and personal service to a very high degree. The increasingly difficult market for British worsteds is one which is of very great interest to me. We must remember, however, that the United States sells in the home market and then exports its surplus, often at reduced prices. Here, our policy is the reverse. We make it as difficult for ourselves as possible by imposing a heavy Purchase Tax on the home market and making home sales almost impossible. What should be a spring-board to boost exports is a bed of nails, each nail a new tax driven in by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Our export prices are, therefore, relatively higher than those of many of our competitors. If, for example, we could cushion our exports of linen by making ten gross of dinner sets for the home market, then the next ten dozen of the same weave on the same loom could be sent abroad at a more competitive price. Similarly, if one weaves a fine worsted, knowing that one can launch 100 pieces on to the home market, then one has a greater opportunity to be competitive with
  1442
  the next 100 pieces in a foreign market. But on. fine linens and worsteds we levy a Purchase Tax of 664 per cent. There is little home sale to enable us to close the margin against foreign competition.
  The manufacturer has to provide a very wide range in competition with America. Canadian importers want to see many patterns and to have a wide choice. The manufacturer in this country is at a grave disadvantage if he knows that every piece of fine worsted which he makes, if it is not of a pattern which sells abroad, will stay in his storeroom here, because the 664 per cent. Purchase Tax upon it will make it increasingly difficult to sell it. That hinders his ability to provide that breadth and variety of range which is part and parcel of the textile trade.
  I should like to express my thanks for the opportunity of addressing the Committee on this subject. I am grateful to the Committee for the courtesy and forbearance which has been shown me. To sum up, I would say that Canada wants goods and she wants money. Let British, as well as American, money be invested in Alberta and Labrador, because from such investments we gained much of our strength in,pre-war years. Secondly, I hope that the limit of £1,000 per family for those who wish to emigrate can be raised, because if Canada is to open wide this new territory she will need technicians and professional men, and more and more population. What better aid to that than the raising of it from British stock?
  Canada needs goods. We must supply them by every means in our power. She needs money. We would do well to invest in her great new development. She needs people. Again, I ask, what better than encouraging family emigration from our own shores? Let us lend our endeavours to our great sister Dominion. Let us join forces with her in mutually expanding trade and in providing tangible resources which will help to give to the British peoples lasting prosperity.
  5.4 p.m.
  Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu: The hon. Lady the Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith), who has just addressed the Committee most effectively for the first time, was preceded into this House by a very lively political reputation. Certainly, we on this side

  1443
  of the Committee, and, I should think, hon. Members in all quarters, have been waiting for her maiden speech with expectant anticipation. Not one of us has been disappointed this afternoon. If she will allow me to say so, her speech sounded every bit as attractive as she herself looks. I am not sure that I should call it a non-controversial speech. At any rate, if it was non-controversial I shall look forward eagerly to the moment when she plunges into controversy. I am sure that I can say, on behalf of political friend and foe alike, that we heard her with great interest and that we shall look forward to hearing her many times in future.
  I wish I could say the same about the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton). I am bound to say, in a phrase of the Lord President of the Council, that the right hon. Gentleman's speech was, " a bit rough." He was introducing a subject about which there is great interest on both sides and about which, so far as aim is concerned, there is complete unanimity. But he chose to open this objective survey with a series of charges which were replete with blind bias. For example, he said that our export trade was being interfered with—was being diminished—by speeches, allegedly denigrating British industry, which were being made by His Majesty's Ministers.
  I simply do not believe that buyers in Canada will be put off buying British goods because we on this side say that, before the war, certain sections of British industry were inefficient. What, however, I do think is possible is that they might be put off by some of the remarks which have fallen from the lips of the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. It was not His Majesty's Ministers, but the Leader of His Majesty's Opposition who told the world that Britain was becoming a nation of " tired Tims and weary Willies." He said that on the ground of the Wolverhampton Football Club, of all places.
  Mr. John Hay: I was present. I heard the speech. It was said at the Albert Hall.
  Mr. Mallalieu: Then the right hon. Gentleman must have said it twice.
  Mr. James Hudson: It was a gramophone record.
  Mr. Mallalieu: I know the Wolverhampton Football Ground very well. I have often seen players on that ground put the ball through their own goal but I have never seen a player perform that feat and be pleased about it afterwards. Apparently, the right hon. Gentleman was so pleased that he repeated it. An even more damaging thing that he said was that the mainspring of British productive enterprise had been broken. People do not want to start having business dealings with a country whose mainspring of productive enterprise has been broken. These sort of speeches are to be discouraged, from whatever quarter they come.
  I was worried, too, by the right hon. Gentleman's main approach to this question. He quoted a number of examples where, in his view, we had seemed to let Canada down. One of the examples he quoted was that of the Canadian newsprint contract. I remember speaking on that subject in the last Parliament. I myself greatly regretted that that contract was broken; but we should be missing the point if we thought that, by breaking that contract, we were doing down Canada. We were not. We were doing down ourselves. The Canadians would not have the slightest difficulty in selling all their newsprint to the United States. One of the great fears I had was that we should lose the last Empire source of newsprint. There was a danger that that would happen. It was suggested that, so that Canada might help Britain a bit, we should be allowed to maintain that Canadian contract, but, because of the desperate need to save dollars, we should cut down our consumption and resell the surplus abroad. That would appear to me to be a perfectly feasible transaction and a perfectly sensible way out of the serious dollar difficulty. But it was not Britain who turned that proposal down. It was, in fact, the Canadian Government.
  Then the right hon. Gentleman went on, at some length, to bring up the old story about the deals in bacon. I think it is a non-controversial statement, one on which the majority of us will agree, that if we possibly can, rather than import our eggs and bacon, it is much better to produce them here, but that if we are to do that we must have feedingstuffs. In

  1445
  the first two years after the war, it was virtually impossible for us to import feedingstuffs. They were rationed. We were told that if we took coarse grains, we could only do so on the understanding that they were to be used for human consumption. It was impossible to build up the numbers of livestock and the pig industry in this country to anything like the extent that we should have liked, and we were therefore forced to import bacon.
  When we made the deals with the Canadians, we made it perfectly clear that it could only be a temporary arrangement, and that it would continue until the feedingstuffs position began to improve. We gave them the fullest possible warning, and I say that because I happened to have a sort of office boy connection with that Ministry at that time, and I was interested in this matter. I remember that very clear notice was given —I do not know about it being given privately, but certainly through the medium of the Press.
  Squadron-Leader Burden: Are we not importing bacon now?
  Mr. Mallalieu: We are, because we still cannot get all the feedingstuffs we need; as we import more, so our imports of bacon will go down.
  Squadron-Leader Burden: Canadian bacon producers are made fully aware of the situation by reason of the transfer of purchases elsewhere, and there will be resentment if the Canadian bacon producers are unable to sell their products.
  Mr. Mallalieu: I quite agree, and we ought to publish more about the facts of trading between the two countries. One of the troubles is that Canadians do not seem to understand, as many people in America do not understand, that unless they are willing to buy our goods we cannot afford to buy theirs. The more and more that that fact can be made public in this country, in Canada, the United States and elsewhere, the better it will be for all concerned. It is not fair, in my view, to charge the Government with shilly-shallying about the bacon contract, because it was a perfectly legitimate and straightforward deal. It was only made on a temporary basis.
  Mr. Hurd: When the Lord President of the Council spoke in Mon-
  1446
  treal, he asked Canadian producers to give us more bacon, but he put no time limit to the period of our need.
  Mr. Mallalieu: My right hon. Friend said that it was only for six months, and made it clear why it could not be a longterm arrangement. Where we have entered into long-term arrangements, we have made long-term contracts.
  So far as I can remember, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot did not refer to one long-term contract which has been an extraordinary boon, both to the Canadian producers and to ourselves, and that is the wheat contract. May I recall to the Committee, though I am sure that most hon. Members will remember the details, that as a result of that contract, we in 'this country achieved immediate benefits in the first two years after the war, because we were able to buy our wheat at prices far below the world price, and I do not think that, at any stage, we were over that level in terms of price. The Canadian producers could have offered to sell their wheat in a free market and might have got a better price for it. Then we, in our turn, would have had to pay a very much larger sum. Therefore, that particular contract was a tremendous boon to us on this side of the Atlantic. It was equally a boon to the Canadian producers.
  One of the curses of primary production the world over has always been its uncertainty. High prices have restricted demand, and low prices have often involved the producers in loss. This longterm contract has lasted for four years, and for the first time on record has brought a little stability into a most uncertain trade. I think this particular longterm contract was a typical example of the kind of efforts which the Government have been making to try to secure better trading relations with Canada, and I believe that that contract was the first serious attempt, since all the centuries ago Joseph of Egypt built his granary to introduce a little common sense into the grain trade. I believe that it was a magnificent contract, I hope it will be continued and that through its influence we shall be able to extend future Anglo-Canadian trade.
  5.16 p.m.
  Mr. Dodds-Parker: The first point on which I should like to follow the hon. Member for Huddersfield, East

  1447
  (Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu) is that of the Canadian wheat agreement. Without going into details, may I say that I think that this agreement will shortly come up for renewal, and I hope that the President of the Board of Trade, when discussing this matter with the Canadians, will put up to them the point which has just been made by the hon. Member opposite. For producers an agreement such as this is acceptable, while we on this side of the Committee feel that these agreements need not be in the form of bulk purchase by the State, because it is possible to achieve our objects by other methods.
  I hope the President will ask the Canadian authorities to consider extending a similar assurance to the Empire sugar producers; the Canadians have not so far been willing to give the same assurance of reciprocity to the Empire sugar producers as this country is giving to the Canadian wheat producers. I therefore ask the President most seriously to take up this point when he discusses any new wheat agreement with the Canadians. If they would undertake to give priority to some 300,000 tons of Empire sugar, it would do much to increase the stability of the Empire producers.
  I think that all hon. Members on this side of the Committee were amused by one aspect of the President's speech. His usual offensiveness, to which we have become accustomed, was not there, and possibly, with his small majority, he may not feel so safe and if he has not changed his constituency by then, may well find himself in Canada or elsewhere trying to sell some of these goods. I should love to see his offensiveness turned into aggressiveness and the right hon. Gentleman himself go out as an aggressive salesman, when he would find that it is much more difficult to sell £10 worth of these goods than it is to lose £10 million worth of public money or criticise traders on the Floor of the House.
  There are two points which I want to raise with the right hon. Gentleman on his speech, and the first is on the subject of steel. He has said, for instance, that by selling steel east of the Iron Curtain we have received far more timber. I think this is a very dangerous principle, for it seems to imply that we are pre-
  1448
  pared to take these perhaps slave-produced imports from Russia or her satellites rather than from free Empire producers. There is another point concerning steel. The right hon. Gentleman said that in 1947 and 1948 it was not possible to export enough finished steel products to Canada. I think, at that time, it was suggested in certain quarters that we should import from Canada semifinished or raw steel, finish it here and reexport it to Canada, but this project was turned down by the right hon. Gentleman's department.
  We on this side of the Committee do not approach these difficulties on the basis of bilateralism. It was agreed by us that this case should be argued today on the bilateral basis because there is no time today to talk about the full implications of the dollar gap and so on. I feel that the width of the dollar gap today is not necessary, but that it has been increased by two major actions of this Government. The first is the releases of sterling balances and other credits to the extent to which it has been done in the last two or three years. The second and most serious point is that this Government have failed to restore world confidence in sterling as the lubricant of world trade which, sooner or later, has to be restored if this country is to survive. We were always told by hon. Members opposite that the only excuse for devaluation was that it would lead to convertibility of current transactions. Yet here we are today, with convertibility as far off as ever. As I have said, it is not appropriate on this occasion to go into detail on that argument.
  I wish to put one or two specific points to the President on the export of anthracite from this country to Canada. I have a Question down for next Wednesday on the export of anthracite from this country, and I shall be glad if the right hon. Gentleman can either confirm or deny whether it is true that Canada would take from Britain, if available, one million tons of anthracite this year; that there are only about 450,000 tons available, and, at the moment, shipping space for only 200,000 tons. This is a point which needs to be gone into, and we on this side of the Committee would be glad if the President of the Board of Trade would tell us whether these figures are correct.

  1449
  The second point I wish to put to the right hon. Gentleman is about compensation trade. Here I speak from commercial experience, for which I make no apology to the Committee, because often it is only by one's own commercial dealings that one finds out what is going on. What is the ratio of dollar earnings to dollar expenditure in so-called " compensation deals "? Incidentally, I am against compensation deals, just as I am against bilateralism, although I realise that we have to accept a certain amount of such deals in the interim period between the war and a return to multilateral trade. Is it true that the ratio today is so fixed that three dollars must be earned to every one offered for sale? In this connection, I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith) said about development in territories such as Labrador. I think that on a basis of compensation trade we might be able to invest capital in the form of capital equipment in the great development areas, not only in ironstone in Labrador, but also in oil production in the West.
  There is another point I wish to put to the right hon. Gentleman. As hon. Members on this side have said, I think the greatest sin of this Government has been the encouraging of Canadian producers—despite what an hon. Member said just now—to go ahead and produce, only to find that they cannot sell their products. " Britain will take all you can produce," was the attitude adopted in 1945-46 by Sir Ben Smith and the Lord President of the Council. Take it, yes, but we cannot pay for it.
  That is the problem we are up against. I think that the figures of non-wheat imports into this country are in volume fairly significant ones. The non-wheat imports were down to 14,500,000 tons in February, 9.4 million in 1947, 3.6 million in 1948 and two million in 1949. That is in volume; in value, of course, the figures are even more telling. They represent things like bacon, cheese, and so forth of which we are short. Wheat is the one thing which has gone up, to 971 per cent. of our food imports from Canada.
  Finally, there is the question of tobacco. In Southern Ontario two years ago I had the privilege of seeing tobacco production in Canada. There they have gone
  1450
  ahead, again believing that we in this country could absorb all the tobacco they could offer us. They have now many millions of pounds of some of the finest cigarette tobacco in the world which they cannot sell to this country because they are told that there are not the necessary dollars available. Their only alternative is to plough it back into the ground as a fertiliser. Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is not possible to give some hope to these people that some of that tobacco will be taken by this country?
  I have asked the President to give us some indication of the Government's attitude towards the creation of new blocked credits and their use in payment for such urgent necessities as foodstuffs and timber, whether on private or public account. Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to allow imports into this country against a time when they can be free and convertible, or must all imports be paid for out of current transactions? I believe there are a number of people in Canada and in this country who could arrange for the time being—always, of course, under the control of the right hon. Gentleman's Department—credits which would be of mutual benefit to both countries for the immediate period ahead.
  What I said earlier about sugar is an example of something which could be of very considerable benefit both to this country and to Canada. I hope that in that particular connection, above all, the right hon. Gentleman will do all he can to help. Like my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee, I believe that the solution of the problem of AngloCanadian trade is likely to prove the key to the whole dollar problem.
  5.26 p.m.
  Mr. Edgar Granville: I do not think the Government can complain about some of the speeches made in this Debate this afternoon. There has certainly been a desire on both sides of the Committee to make suggestions to the right hon. Gentleman for increasing AngloCanadian trade. Only a few weeks ago, the Chancellor of the Exchequer was telling us that the life of this country depended on an increase in our exports to the dollar countries.
  I thought that the President of the Board of Trade sounded a trifle gloomy in his speech this afternoon—certainly

  1451
  gloomier than on the last occasion when he addressed us on this subject—which I considered rather surprising after his visit to Canada, and certainly surprising on May Day. I found myself wondering what had happened to the spirit of pioneering and adventure which, only a few months ago, he associated with his appeal for the export drive to the United States and Canada. I hope it does not mean that the right hon. Gentleman is disappointed with the result of the increase of exports from this country.
  I agreed with the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) when he said that he thought the various pessimistic statements which are made do a great deal of harm. An hon. Member opposite spoke on the same point. I have no doubt they do. When the right hon. Gentleman was making his statement, an hon. Member interjected that statements in this House are telegraphed to the United States and Canada. I would say that some of the speeches made by business men or visitors to the United States are telegraphed across the frontier to the " Montreal Star " or to Ottawa and the Western newspapers, and are reproduced there.
  I was sorry to hear that the Lord President of the Council made a statement during his trip to Canada—when he was respendent in a fur coat—which could be interpreted as detrimental to British trade. It seems clear that Canada must reduce her imports from the United States and increase her exports from this country, if she is to reduce her own dollar gap with America and our gap with her. The hon. Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith), who delivered a brilliant maiden speech this afternoon, referred to capital investment in Canada. I hope that somebody in the right hon. Gentleman's Department or in the Treasury is applying himself to the solution of this problem of capital investment and to the matter of the disadvantage from which we suffer at the present time because the United States have virtually taken from us the markets which we held in Canada before the war. I know there are tremendous difficulties, but I hope the Minister will not put it on one side as being impossible of solution, and that the matter will continue to be taken up by our representatives at Ottawa at the
  1452
  highest level under Mr. St. Laurent or his many capable Ministers.
  As the President said, the main emphasis has still to be on our export drive. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman knows by now, from the experience of the last three or four years, that it is quite clear that the increase in our drive must come from our main traditional exports from this country. I am not complaining because a very large number of business men, encouraged by the Board of Trade and the various speeches of the right hon. Gentleman, have been to Canada to try to work out some sort of arrangement for the purchase of our consumer goods and so on. But, in the end, as the hon. Member for Chislehurst said, we shall have to depend on exports of woollens and cotton, upon textiles and engineering, which the right hon. Gentleman referred to. and upon motor cars.
  I have no interest in this at all, but I notice reports in the newspapers that Canada has turned over to the purchase of United States aircraft. I am sorry to see that. I realise that behind it there must be a tremendous problem with regard to expenditure; but I had hoped that the exporters of British aircraft to Canada were going to find a semipermanent market.
  Mr. Dodds-Parker: They buy Comets from this country as soon as they get delivery.
  Mr. Granville: They do, and we are very glad to know that, but I am afraid there is a decision to buy other aircraft, perhaps fighters and so on, from the United States. I hope the President will have a talk with the Minister of Supply who, I think, is responsible and find out what is happening.
  Possibly the President touched upon one of the reasons for these purchases when he referred in his speech to what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot said about electrical equipment and standardisation. I believe that in the engineering and electrical engineering industries, this country will have to take radical and bold new steps forward in the matter of co-ordination of American and United Kingdom measures. It involves the whole question of exports and of servicing and spares and the whole question of defence. It is an enormous

  1453
  problem and I know that the Ministry of Supply has started to tackle it. If we want to maintain our exports of engineering goods and similar material to Canada, we shall have to make a bold move in reaching agreement with the United States on the standardisation of engineering equipment.
  Price is still a very important factor in the Canadian market. In many ways, certainly with regard to consumer goods, Canada is not a rich market. The enormous populations of Quebec, Montreal and similar cities are very " pricy buyers " and there is keen business competition from the United States. If one can say, " This is British quality and British workmanship and the price is right," one is on the way to securing something approaching a semi-permanent or even a permanent market for our exports to Canada.
  There is, however, the important question of the lag in time of delivery which the President has run up against over and over again. It is a tremendously important question to a buyer in Canada. A traveller goes out, encouraged by the Board of Trade and armed with export credits and currencies and so on, and he says, " I am out to sell poplin." The buyer says, " When can you deliver? " The traveller replies, " In six months—well, I think in six months." The Canadian buyer understands American styles and tastes and, though the quality may not be as good as British, the patterns are good and the style is first-class; he is absolutely certain that he can get delivery in a few weeks and that he may be able to buy at prices even lower than those prevailing when he made the contract.
  I have suggested to the Minister in the past that his Department might look into the possibility of exporting to sell from stock in the United States and Canada. I know that many of the powerful manufacturing companies in the textile industry are doing this, but most of our exporters cannot afford to export for stock, either in Toronto, Montreal or New York. As the hon. Member for Chislehurst said, first-class salesmen should be able to go out there and say to buyers, " Here are the actual goods you are going to buy, and you can get them tomorrow—they are in stock." If the right hon. Gentleman could do that, through
  1454
  the various agencies established by the Board of Trade for group exporting by the smaller firms, it would go further than any other method to deal with this question of delivery, which is perhaps the most difficult problem of all at the present time.
  I should also like the President to consider the question of incentives. Appeals are rightly made to exporters to try to get into the Canadian and American markets, but what are the incentives to export? An engineer in capital goods, who has spent 20 or 30 years of his life building up a business in the Middle East where he has customers and goodwill, is asked to pull up his roots and go out and get what, before 1939, was the most difficult and most chancy market in the whole of international trade.
  Many of these companies who could export to Canada are saying, " Why should we? What is the incentive? Why should we give up our regular customers and the trade we have built over a number of years? Why should we say goodbye to all that and risk what has always been a semi-permanent market in Canada? " We shall have to address ourselves sooner or later to this problem of incentives, in the form of reduced taxation or of allowing exporters to keep some of the dollars earned abroad or by encouraging workers to work overtime by a reduction in income tax. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to go into this. To give him his due, he has achieved a great deal but if we are to bridge the gap we must tackle this question of incentives.
  The target is that if we can take away 15 per cent. of the trade from America that goes to Canada at the present time, we will double our exports to Canada and close the Canadian dollar gap. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give even greater encouragement to chambers of trade and chambers of commerce in the country to see that no stone is left unturned to try and produce more dollar exports. I should have thought that following the Festival of Britain, we could have had an export exhibition in Sheffield, Manchester and the other larger manufacturing towns.
  Mr. Henderson Stewart: There has been a very good one in Scotland.
  Mr. Granville: But even so, many of the manufacturers are not at all clear on

  1455
  the point. It is not enough to explain the problem in a speech at a luncheon or something of that sort.
  Mr. H. Wilson: The British Industries Fair opens next week, and that is the biggest trade fair of its kind in the entire world. I agree that it takes place only in London and Birmingham, but the hon. Gentleman surely knows that as part of the Festival of Britain, there are arrangements for a trading exhibition on the lines he has in mind in parts of the country.
  Mr. Granville: I know something about the British Industries Fair, but I am taking literally the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that when Marshall Aid ends the life of this country will depend upon our being able to bridge the dollar gap. It is not enough to put all our effort, our advertising, entertainment and publicity into a trading exhibition which is covered by the British Industries Fair. The Government will have to make a more specific approach to management and workers and make known in all the big manufacturing towns the advantage which will accrue from getting our goods into the American market.
  5.42 p.m.
  Mr. Malcolm MacPherson: The hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville) began his speech by suggesting that the President of the Board of Trade was gloomy. I cannot imagine an adjective less suited to my right hon. Friend's speech. I think the hon. Gentleman may have confused the speech of my right hon. Friend with that of the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton).
  Mr. Granville: I think they were both gloomy.
  Mr. MacPherson: I agree that the right hon. Member for Aldershot was gloomy. But surely the figures relating to the motor trade which my right hon. Friend gave were the very reverse of gloomy. The whole picture which my right hon. Friend painted of Anglo-Canadian trade was one of increasing success, particularly in regard to its development.
  There are one or two other points in the hon. Gentleman's speech which call for a certain amount of comment. He
  1456
  referred to the lag in delivery time which Canadian buyers of our merchandise are experiencing. Surely the most important thing is the success with which our exporters are overcoming that difficulty. The time lag in deliveries is decreasing, which suggests that we have got the problem in mind and that it is well on the way to being solved. The hon. Member also suggested that we should export for stock in Canada. That suggestion sounds sensible enough—in fact, it may well be sensible enough—but those of us who have noted what is being said about the difficulties of our export trade with Canada will realise that this is not a problem to be dealt with casually. A great many warnings have been issued on the subject of trying to sell from stock in Canada, and it is not by any means the kind of problem which can be dealt with casually in the absence of a good deal of expert knowledge.
  Mr. Granville: I do not suggest that we should try to sell new lines. We should only sell routine lines and approved commodities which have a regular run in the market.
  Mr. MacPherson: That seems to me to be the policy to adopt after our trade is well established. We are trying to build up our trade in the post-war years. Our trade with Canada is not as widely developed and fully established as most of us hope it will be in the course of a number of years, but it is on the way. It is doing extremely well, and we hope that it will become even more fully established. The hon. Member also expressed misapprehension about the Festival of Britain. He suggested that there should also be an export exhibition. Surely the main idea behind the Festival of Britain is just that, that it should be an export exhibition. I was glad that an hon. Member opposite reminded him that there had been a very successful exhibition of this kind in Scotland.
  The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker)was guilty of several statements which seemed to be misleading. His statement that the width of the dollar gap was entirely due to actions of the Government was quite unjustifiable. He would surely not exclude the effect of the so-called American trade recession. When he spoke about devaluation as having for its only excuse—I think that

  1457
  was the phrase he used—the fact that it would lead to convertibility in dollar-sterling transactions, surely he was putting a completely wrong construction on the matter. I am sorry that he is now absent from the Chamber. One of the main aims of devaluation was to help increase our dollar trade and so help to bridge the dollar gap. Experience since devaluation has proved that the judgment of the Government was wise in that respect.
  One or two speakers have already pointed out that so far as our exports are concerned, the Canadian market is a permanent and not a temporary market. I am glad that that has been stressed, because there are a number of things which are of considerable importance in a temporary sense in the Canadian market; but basically the market will last. The agricultural production of Canada is likely to supply us permanently with much that we need, and I suppose that we shall continue for a long time to buy Canadian wheat. Canada realises perfectly well that, however, much she may develop her own economy, one of her problems will be to conduct an external trade. In our trade with Canada, however, there are difficulties on both sides which, fortunately, each of the two nations recognises. It is not just completely free trade; it is not a completely natural trade. It is not the kind of trade which can go ahead to its full fruition if things are left to laissez faire principles.
  Canada, for example, finds it necessary to divert a certain number of her purchases from the United States of America, and she is actually doing that by methods which we should call controls. She has set quotas on certain imports, for example. We, on our side, have a parallel difficulty. The markets in Western Europe and in the stering area generally are perhaps more attractive and more easy to satisfy than.the Canadian markets. To develop a large-scale Canadian trade means giving up, to a certain extent, other markets which are considerably easier. Therefore, on each side certain practical difficulties have to be faced. But, as has been stressed more than once, there is a good deal of good will to us on the Canadian side, and vice versa.
  I support the suggestion put forward, first by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) and then by my right hon. Friend, that
  1458
  we should develop our trade in capital goods with Canada. That should be the centre and basis of our export trade to that Dominion. As the hon. Lady the Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith) mentioned, there are oil developments in Alberta and Labrador and the posibility of a considerable iron and steel industry in the East. These developments involve the transfer of possibly the greatest part of the oil from Alberta right across to the Eastern industrial zone and, in addition, the Labrador developments will add to the industrialisation of Eastern Canada.
  A few days ago hon. Members opposite suggested, at Question time in the House, that Canada was very nearly in a position to supply all her own needs. She may well be in the future, but before she has reached that stage she must carry out a considerable amount of capital equipment of new industries. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Works, when a back bencher in the previous Government, raised the matter on the Adjournment and suggested that during the next few years Canada would be developing a capital equipment programme of £7,600 million—a terrific development.
  That temporary situation—in a longterm sense, because it will last over a number of years—is a strong indication to us to enter the capital equipment market in Canada. That line of development has the additional advantage to us that it means strengthening what is, after all, our strongest industrial suit, the capital equipment of heavy engineering and the various things associated with it. Machine tools and agricultural machinery have been mentioned, and I would suggest, also, scientific instruments as well as the range of equipment that goes with the building up of capital installations of one kind and another. Our trading position in the coming generation or two should be one in which we will do our best to equip not merely Canada but a large number of other areas in. the world that will need a considerable amount of capital equipment before they can produce to their full potentiality.
  I was interested when the President of the Board of Trade mentioned the question of Canadian engineering students being given some experience in universities in this country. That merits a great deal of fresh attention. Anyone who is

  1459
  familiar with the workings of the interchange of mature students in the field of pure scholarship through the Rhodes scholarship system, the Commonwealth scholarship system, and others of less importance and not so well known to the public, realises how much it has enriched both this country and other countries inside and outside the Empire which have participated.
  I have often wondered how far it would be practicable to extend such a system to the technicians, to the younger executives and even to the salesmen in our bigger and more fundamental industries. It seems to me that while there have been the beginnings of that, it has not had such authoritative backing as the remarks of the President today. I hope it will be put into practice not only for Canadian engineering students but for technicians in other industries, particularly our basic heavy engineering industries.
  5.55 p.m.
  Mr. Beverley Baxter: I understand that the time is short and, therefore, I shall be brief in what I have to say. We should congratulate ourselves on the extraordinary thing that is happening today: we are actually having a Debate upon Commonwealth affairs—upon Anglo-Canadian trade. This is really a remarkable thing and I am glad to see that for the last hour the Minister of Commonwealth Affairs has been in the Committee. I want to congratulate the " usual channels " on finding three and a half hours for this subject. It is almost as important as the reclaiming of marginal land—not quite, but almost—and nearly half as important as the film industry. We are getting on.
  I cannot remember when we had our last Debate on Dominion affairs, and I hope that the " usual channels "—and I see one of the " channels " entering now, the Lord President of the Council—will realise how glad we are. Having started so well—if I could have the right hon. Gentleman's ear—may we hope that within a couple of years or so we shall be allowed one and a half hours to debate the Colombo Conference? Are we asking for too much? At any rate we have started well today with this three and a half hours, and now I will get on with what I have to say.
  1460
  Let me say, while the Lord President is here—I know he has a lot to do, and he will have a lot more to do presently—that in his absence this afternoon it was mentioned that when he encouraged the Canadians to grow apples, it was no laughing matter when the Canadians, who took him seriously, had to pull up thousands of apple trees. Men who had sown the seed and watched the tree grow and watched the fruit come to the branch were told, " There is no place for it, the people will not take it."
  The Lord President of the Council (Mr. Herbert Morrison): Can the hon. Gentleman tell me when these negotiations about apples took place between myself and the Canadian Government? I do not remember them.
  Mr. Baxter: Yes, it has already been stated this afternoon that the right hon. Gentleman encouraged the Canadians to grow everything they could—Britain would take everything they could give us in the way of fruit or foodstuffs.
  Mr. Morrison: It was no specific guarantee.
  Mr. Baxter: But the Canadians were led to understand that.
  Another thing about which we should be glad today is that the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) and the President of the Board of Trade both reveal that we have in the two of them complete Empire Ambassadors. I do not think it does any harm if we have a coalition on the subject of Empire—I wish the Lord President would give me his ear because I am talking about a coalition, and that is his business. I am giving him a lot of good advice if he would only listen. We all have to listen to him a lot. If we are to have a coalition, let us begin with a coalition on the Empire. That is one thing we can afford to do.
  Now I want to say something about the visit of the President of the Board of Trade to Canada. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not mind if I say something which begins more harshly than it will end. I went across Canada, just after he had been there. In Montreal the right hon. Gentleman made a bad impression.I do not know why it was, but I found the people there very hostile to him. In fact,

  1461
  if he goes back there, I would advise him to wear a beard. However, I give him credit for the fact that while Toronto was critical, the further west I went I found that he had improved, or else they liked him better. The British Trade Commissioners told me—they were talking quite bluntly—that they found him friendly and accessible and that the ideas they put forward to him he took up swiftly; and they paid their tribute to him as a Minister. I am merely putting on record that this is a fact. I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman said today.
  In Vancouver I met a young Trade Commissioner, a civil servant. So often civil sercants are described, foolishly, as men who are clock-watchers and tea-drinkers, but I found there that this young man, who handled the British trade with British Columbia and Alberta, could not have worked more skilfully or with more enterprise or more spirit if he had been getting 25 per cent. profit on everything he did. I am sure the President of the Board of Trade will bear out what I say. I was immensely struck by that. In Winnipeg there was the same thing. I pay that young man and others like him, engaged in that work, full tribute for what they are doing.
  I turn for a second to attack and criticise some of the things I saw—not the Government, but British industry. Travelling right across the 3,000 miles of Canada last September I did not meet one British industrialist. Yet Canada is so constituted as to be at once so narrow and wide—[HON. MEMBERS: " Narrow and wide? "1 Yes, it is. It is wide from east to west and narrow the other way. In travelling across the country, had there been any considerable number of British visiting industrialists, I should surely have come across some of them. However, I did not find one. Another thing I saw was the advertising literature. It was deplorable, though not so far as textiles and the motor industry were concerned. I could have given examples to the Committee, but I promised not to be long.
  As has been said already today, the whole tempo of Canadian life is in tune with the American. There are the American radios, American magazines, and
  1462
  American tourists all the time, and British industrialists are too slow in realising that showmanship and packaging have an immense amount to do with sales in Canada. I was told, for instance, that a Canadian lumberman will come into town to buy an axe. There is a British axe with a plain handle. It is the best axe that can be bought. Beside it is an American axe with a painted handle. The lumberman, coming in from his hard work out in the woods, likes the look of the painted handle, and so he buys the American axe rather than the British.
  I have a cousin who is the head of the Macassar Mines, and who wanted to place an order for £10,000 worth of machinery. On some of this machinery a man has to sit at a certain height, and he has to have a seat. The buyer required the seat on the equipment to be a foot higher. The British said that they had always had it that way and would not change it. My cousin told me that himself. An Englishman said to me when I was over there, " The trouble is that in Canada they are not satisfied with a gold watch. They want hot chocolate sauce on it." I think the answer to that is that if we want to sell goods to the Canadians and the Canadians want gold watches with hot chocolate sauce on, we must give them gold watches with hot chocolate sauce on them. There is no doubt that some of our advertising literature and our packaging is very bad, and does not conduce to the sale of our goods in the Canadian market.
  It is very unfortunate, but I must leave out a lot of what I wanted to say if I am to keep my promise not to speak much longer. I should like to know, however, what the President has to say about some revelations which appeared in the " Financial Post " in Canada about woollen and worsted goods which were rejected by the Canadians. The " Financial Post " is a journal of the very highest integrity, and I should like to know whether it is true that there has been such a falling off in the quality of some of our textiles that they are being returned by the Canadians, sometimes at the rate of as many as from 30 to 40 articles in a package of 100. The " Financial Post " lays the blame on the British Government. It says that this falling off was because of encouragement to make cheaper goods to earn more dollars. I shall be very pleased if the President can say that that story is not

  1463
  true, or if he can give any explanation of the facts, because it is a very serious thing.
  To me, as one who was born in Canada, it has been an encouraging and thrilling thing to hear the tributes to Canadian generosity and Canadian loyalty. The things said in those tributes are true. We must not forget though, and the Canadians must not forget—and perhaps I can say this more easily than anyone else in the Committee—that the Canadians need the sterling area, too. Canada could not keep her identity as a nation in relation to the United States but for what we can give to Canada. This is not a one-way proposition. When I went across Canada I pointed out to the audiences I spoke to that Canada should try even more and more to find some way of trading within the sterling bloc. It may mean dual currency, but if she wants to keep her independence as a nation, she must turn to us, just as we, if we want to keep the Empire going, must turn to her.
  Canada is a growing country. It is a young country in many surprising ways. At present there are two births in Canada to one death They are about to bring the St. Lawrence waterways plan into commission, and soon ocean-borne traffic will go up the Great Lakes even to Chicago. I have seen the oilfields which they have brought into action. In Labrador there is a great new mass of minerals. As one sails across the ocean and draws near to Canada one can see, as it were, a pencilled shadow against the horizon. That is Newfoundland, and that is Canada, too. Let us on both sides of the Committee, regardless of what our politics are regardless of the differences in our approach and methods, realise that there is an enormous brotherhood in Canada, that our eldest son is growing up, and let us act wisely and enthusiastically. I am glad indeed that we have had a chance today to discuss Canada in this Committee.
  6.7 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Foot: The hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Baxter) who has just addressed the Committee obviously has very special qualifications for speaking in this Committee on Anglo-Canadian trade, even though perhaps that was not fully evident
  1464
  from his speech, because he is himself by way of being a kind of frustrated import. However, in the last part of his speech he did touch on one aspect of the subject which has not been fully discussed in this Debate, and that is a matter to which I wish to refer as briefly as I can. I quite agreed with the hon. Gentleman when he stressed the fact that Canada needs the sterling area just as we need Canadian trade, and I believe it is that major aspect of the matter which has not, perhaps, been fully discussed in this Debate.
  I must confess that from some of the speeches that have been made one would suppose that the difficulties that arise between this country and Canada in our trading relations are due to the way in which Ministers frame their speeches, or to some odd remarks they may have made at some dinner in Montreal or Winnipeg, or that they arise from some particular contract that happens to have been broken; and these things have been put up and presented to the Committee as the reasons for the difficulties which have existed in expanding Anglo-Canadian trade as we wish to see it expanded.
  But we all know that these are not the real reasons. We all know that this matter we are discussing today is the most serious aspect of our dollar problem. Indeed, so great has been the progress which has been made in the past few months in dealing with the dollar problem that it may almost be said that if we were to overcome this aspect of the dollar problem we should hardly be faced with an immediate dollar problem at all. Therefore, I believe that this subject we have been debating here today will be discussed with greater frequency in this Committee, and I think that the hon. Member for Southgate will have his wish fulfilled, and that we shall discuss this matter again very soon, because I believe that the nearer we come to the end of Marshall Aid the more glaringly will be illumined the facts about Anglo-Canadian trade, and the more there will be the desire for a new approach to this problem.
  This can also be illustrated from another aspect. All of us agree with the general sentiments the hon. Member for Southgate expressed about our association with Canada. Nobody in any party in this Committee wishes to see any strain

  1465
  imposed upon the good relations between this country and Canada, especially in view of the services they have rendered to this country during and since the war. But it still is an unalterable fact that our policy in relation to the rest of the Commonwealth is bound to be different from our policy in relation to Canada. Whereas in the case of all the other Commonwealth countries our economic and sentimental interests go in the same direction, in the case of Canada that is not so, and we have to recognise this simple point.
  One of the main ways in which we have sought to overcome the dollar problem during the past few years, and one of the ways in which we have been strikingly successful, is by diverting our source of supply away from the dollar area to, in particular, the Commonwealth countries. In the Debate a few days ago, the President of the Board of Trade gave again the remarkable figures showing the way in which during the past four years there has been the biggest expansion of Commonwealth trade that has ever taken place in this century. That is what the facts show, and that is the way in which we have been successful in reducing our dollar difficulties during the past four years. But the more we are successful in reducing our dollar difficulties by that means the greater are the economic conflicts which we are bound to be engaged in to some extent with Canada. These are the awkward facts of the situation, and I believe it is good for the health of our two countries that we should face those facts as squarely as possible
  At the last Commonwealth Economic Conference, which took place last year, there was such a successful agreement between all the other Commonwealth countries in reducing their dollar imports that they made a 25 per cent. cut, which contributed so largely to the figures which the Chancellor of the Exchequer was able to read out about our balance of payments situation a week or two ago. It might be said that what happened at that Conference was that all the other Commonwealth countries gathered together and agreed to impose upon themselves cuts in dollar imports, with the consequences that would mean to their livelihood, in order that we should be able to go on meeting the Canadian dollar deficit. It could be put that way.
  1466
  Of course, it would be harsh on the Canadians to put it bluntly that way without adding certain other facts to the situation, but that is the fact. All these other Commonwealth countries met together and cut down their dollar imports, and at the same time Canada is maintaining a far bigger dollar deficit than she had before the war. Now that is nobody's fault. It arises because of the war, and because of the whole transformation in the relationship between this country and Canada and the dollar area as a whole.
  It is nobody's fault, but I believe that a very considerable amount of complacency has been shown in this Debate about the means by which we shall overcome this difficulty. The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker) seemed to suggest that it could be done if only we returned to convertible currencies; that it was all the fault of the British Government that we had not had this return to convertible currencies. Everybody knows that is nonsense, including I imagine the hon. Gentleman who said it. We shall not have a quick return to convertible currencies, and I should have thought anyone who imagines that we can escape from our difficulties by that means would have learned better from our experience during the first two years after the war. That is not a solution.
  Everybody agrees that we must step up our exports to Canada as swiftly as possible. Certainly the President of the Board of Trade was able to give good evidence that that is starting, but I do not believe that we can ever increase our exports to Canada sufficiently to be able to buy all the expanding amount of materials we want to get from Canada. We may be able to do it partly by increasing exports from the rest of the sterling area, but I do not believe that those amounts together will enable us to meet this difficulty, or to do what I am sure the Canadian farmers and farming community want us to do, and that is in future to expand our imports of many of their agricultural products.
  There are people in Canada who have approached this problem very much more seriously and proposed solutions to the problem which are much more dramatic than any put forward in this Debate today. These are matters with which we shall be increasingly concerned as Marshall Aid comes to an end and as we

  1467
  have to think of other arrangements. A policy has been advocated in Canada by the political party which corresponds most closely to the Labour Party in this country—the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. For four years they have been advocating in Canada a policy which would have gone very much further to solving our dollar difficulties here in Britain than anything the present Canadian Government has yet found itself able to do.
  There are three main points which the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, which might be called the Labour Party of Canada, has advanced over the past four years, and which they adumbrated again several weeks ago as measures which they believe should be taken to try to assist in solving the common dollar problem which faces us here in this country and which faces the Canadians as well. These are the three points they make. First, they suggest that Canada should accept payment in sterling for a substantial and reasonable part of Canadian exports to the sterling area, and that this money could be left in Britain to be used for investment in under-developed areas or to purchase goods as and when they became available. Secondly, they suggest and urge on the Canadian Government that increased British imports to Canada should be made possible by further tariff reductions and by cutting Canadian purchases from the dollar area. Thirdly, they suggest they should help to meet the Canadian dollar deficit by cutting out a certain amount of luxury travel in the United States and by cutting down other inessential imports from the United States. I believe that some of those kinds of steps will have to be followed if we are really to overcome this problem.
  I want to conclude generally by referring to a point made by the hon. Member for Banbury when he referred to the possibility of the Canadian Government playing a further part with us in building up certain of our arrangements with the British Commonwealth. He referred to the sugar agreement with the West Indies, a subject to which I have referred before in this House. One of the difficulties that has given rise to the failure to reach agreement between ourselves and the West Indians on the question of sugar is that
  1468
  the Canadians are not prepared to come in on the kind of agreement which we have made to guarantee greater and expanding production within the West Indies.
  I believe that the Canadians ought to be more willing to come in on that kind of agreement. If we are to have a real Commonwealth policy in future we must devise some method by which investment in the British Colonies comes not only from this country but from the great Dominions as well. It would certainly be a great advantage if Canadian investment in the West Indies could be greatly increased; if they could perhaps use part of the sterling which they would pile up in payment for their sales here by investment in areas such as the West Indies, and in developing various industries. which we wish to see developed there.
  I think that those proposals of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation of Canada could go a long way in solving the difficulties, which are bound to get increasingly glaring as we come to the end of Marshall Aid and to the period when we shall no longer have any American dollars we can use to help in paying for the products we want to get from Canada.
  Mr. Henderson Stewart: I would point out that there is no originality in any of these proposals. The first, for example, has been advocated by Mr. Amery and many others. The second has been advocated by industrialists for many years. None of these proposals is new.
  Mr. Foot: I am not claiming any originality for these proposals The proposals may not be original, but they are not in practice, they are not in operation. I quite agree that Mr. Amery did propose this in an article dealing with AngloCanadian trade, with which I almost entirely agree. All I am saying is that there is a political party in Canada appealing for the votes of the people of Canada which has advocated this for four years, and I should have thought that was a matter of some interest to this House.
  A matter not previously mentioned by any speaker in the Debate is that a suggestion has been made that a considerable part of the payment should be made in sterling. As no one has mentioned it before in the Debate, I should have thought it was perfectly proper for us to raise it and

  1469
  try to urge upon the House of Commons what many people are urging on the other side of the Atlantic. Moreover, as we come to the end of the period of Marshall Aid and as we try to work out what is going to be the relationship between the dollar world and the rest of the world after that period, I think that we have more and more today to discover methods by which the dollar area, including Canada, shall invest in the underdeveloped parts of the world. That is the other part of the programme advocated by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation in the Dominion of Canada. These are some of the means by which, I believe, we can approach what is bound to be, and will continue to be, a most serious aspect of the whole dollar problem which we have to face here in Britain: and, indeed, which the world has to face.
  6.21 p.m.
  Mr. Lennox-Boyd: I am sorry to get up now and to deprive one at least of my hon. Friends of a chance of taking part in this Debate. I believe that there are at least eight hon. Members behind me who would be glad to take part in the Debate, and no doubt one or two on the other side of the Committee. I hope that all of them will have a chance at an early date to take part in another discussion on this all-important topic of inter-Imperial trade.
  I should like to begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith) on her admirable maiden speech. She has shown that she can make an excellent speech from the Floor of the House of Commons and a magnificent speech on a platform in the country, a very rare combination. I am sure that everyone who heard her today will hope to hear her on many future occasions.
  We have had also one or two most entertaining comments on this subject of Anglo-Canadian trade. The hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Baxter) quite rightly pointed out that this is a two-way problem in which both Canada and the United Kingdom are equally interested. We have just had a speech in an unaccustomed vein of moderation from the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Foot). I wondered at first why it was that he did not try to conjure up the inter-war years before he dealt with the present problems of Anglo-Canadian trade. Then
  1470
  I remembered that there has lately been in a newspaper with which he is associated comments from a certain political party in Canada which, no doubt, gave him sufficient factual information to deprive him of his normal form of Parliamentary fireworks.
  In regard to what he said, I have some comments to make, and I will come to them a little later on. I agree with him that in this very difficult problem no solution ought to be ruled out because it appears to be a novel one, although I know that he also recognises that not his exact solution but a form of it has been advocated in other quarters in previous years.
  May I make one brief reference to the right hon. Gentleman who used to sit for Sparkbrook in this House, and whose son, I hoped, would be one of the speakers had this been a longer Debate. No one has done more in this country than he has, and now his son, to advocate ways of getting out of the terrible difficulties that confront Anglo-Canadian trade. I hope that in the years that lie ahead some solution will be found to a problem which will tax Imperial ingenuity very considerably.
  I do not think that we need have any apology for this Debate, because it deals with our relations with a great country and a most valued nation in the Commonwealth—a nation that is now the third largest trading nation in the world. If its population is only one-half of 1 per cent. of the population of the world, that at once makes this vast trade all the more remarkable, and it is a challenge to us and to all the British race throughout the world to see that her population expands, realising always that in any problem of this kind it is for the Canadian Government naturally to make the decision.
  If I may be allowed to do so, I want to make one comment on this subject in relation to emigration to Canada. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there has been a recent fall in the emigration figures, and I believe they show the effect of the reduction to £1,000 in 1948, spread over four years, of the amount of capital that even married people with young children are allowed to take to Canada. I would not suggest that we should not be careful about conserving our resources, but I hope that this limitation

  1471
  will be reconsidered, because it works very unfairly between different parts of Canada. In the middle of Canada and in the far west, it is manifestly absurd to expect people of the type they need to start a new life in Canada with such a limitation.
  Nor, I think, will any hon. Member on either side of the Committee suggest that there has not been enough cause for anxiety and alarm in the last year to justify a calm Parliamentary discussion on Anglo-Canadian trade in the confident knowledge that it will not be followed by a vote in the House of Commons. We have had a number of very significant speeches made both by Ministers here, British Ministers in Canada and Canadian Ministers in their own country. Only a few months ago—last December—we had the statement from the Canadian Minister of Agriculture that a very decided official effort—and mark the word " official "—is being made in the United Kingdom to drive every one of these products—and he was talking of apples, eggs and bacon—except wheat, off the British market, and he added,
  " Now that the four-year wheat contract is drawing to a close, an effort is being made to drive off a considerable part of our wheat as well."
  We know that is not in fact the case, but these remarks should not pass unnoticed, and it is a good thing that they should be discussed in the House of Commons and more than ever important that they should be discussed on the eve of the reconsideration of the Canadian wheat agreement.
  We have also had speeches like those made by the late Minister of Food, the present Secretary of State for War, who, as one observer on his return from Canada said lately:
  " treated the Canadians in a manner as cold as a prairie winter."
  Only three months ago he spoke of our being able only to earn enough dollars for " some Canadian wheat " and nothing else if Canada did not buy enough from the United Kingdom. The Canadians, on the other hand, see the British Government claiming that the standard of living in this country is improving and rations are improving, and they are bound to notice in particular two chief commodities. They realise that whereas two years
  1472
  ago 48 of our 52 weeks' ration of butter came from the Empire, last year it had dropped to 42, but, more significant still, whereas two years ago 36 weeks of our ration of bacon in the year came from the Empire, last year only eight weeks of our bacon ration came from the Empire. They are bound to ponder among themselves whether it is altogether desirable for them to gear their economy to meet the British need.
  As many people realise, this is all the more maddening because they thought that what they were doing had the direct support of the British Government. The hon. Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu), may claim that many warnings were given to the Canadians that we could not possibly sustain after the war the same high level of purchases of foodstuffs as we did during the war; but all these statements—and they are not very many and not made by Ministers—are neutralised by what has been said since.
  In 1945 it is true there was no dollar shortage we knew of because we were still living under Lend-Lease. Yet in 1946, when the Lord President of the Council was in Canada and urged the Canadians to help us to raise our bacon ration from three ounces to four ounces and to tackle the problem of feeding Britain in the spirit of a battle against famine, we had a dollar deficit of £315 million. They argued not unjustly that, knowing the dollar deficit at that time, the British Ministers should not have given these new assurances to Canada on which they have once more geared their national economy.
  Again, many Canadians argue that because we had an overall deficit and believed that dollars were the problem we switched our purchases to soft currency countries, paying more for our products than if we had bought from dollar sources. They say that then we asked higher prices for our goods, which the foreign countries were ready to pay because they had the available sterling, with the result that our costs went up and our goods became too expensive for the dollar countries to buy. This is what they argue, and this is why it is a good thing to discuss these matters.
  Nor are they very much impressed by some of the arguments used by Government spokesmen in the House. We

  1473
  have heard a good deal about exporting to Canada, and we all hope that this country will be able to fulfil all that Canada may need, but it is only a few weeks ago that the Prime Minister of British Colombia flew some 6,000 miles for a function over here and used these words. Many of us know him and have been accustomed to trust and have confidence in him. He said:
  "I find it difficult to understand why Canada, with an annual importation of iron and steel to the value of 782 million dollars, should obtain from the United Kingdom less than 7½ per cent. of it. The market is there, the goodwill is there, and the stuff is here. You want our timber. We want your steel. What is it that keeps these two things apart? "
  Nor is there anything that is more satisfactory in the field of newsprint. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) has already referred to this. We must note that this sudden termination of all newsprint purchases for the first six months of this year does not even allow for a carry-over, as in agriculture, for the next year, or even for a token purchase this year which would have kept alive the principle and our obligations.
  In regard to the various food contracts that have been mercilessly slashed, I am very glad it has been possible to manipulate the dollars allocated, so that a number of Canadian interests in many districts will receive some share of the British market. But the net effect on Canada's agriculture is very serious indeed. It has had one consequence, which I do not suppose the Government are very pleased about, and that is that it has disillusioned the Canadian people about the merits of bulk purchasing by Governments. The Anglo-Canadian Trade Committee, which reported only a few weeks ago, have asked their respective Governments to restore private trading and to end Government bulk buying. The Canadian farmers also can see no security in Government long-term arrangements which leave them at the mercy of overnight shifts in the purchasing decisions of the British Government.
  I am very glad that in this discussion tonight a number of Members have referred to the very great contribution Canada has made by loans and gifts to help to tide us over these difficulties. Their loans and gifts, during the war and since, total some 6,000 million dollars.
  1474
  Their loan alone is some one-third of the American loan, whereas their national income, as compared with that of the United States, is only one-twentieth and their population 12 million compared with 134 million.
  All this should make us desperately anxious to play our part. We have a number of Canadian and British agencies, the United Kingdom Dollar Export Board, the Dollar-Sterling Trade Board, the F.B.I. special office in Toronto and the Trade Commissioners, all doing splendid work, and we wish them success. I would refer particularly to the work of Mr. Duncan, Chairman of the Dollar-Sterling Trade Board, who has repeated and proved over and over again to Canadian retailers and constructional engineers the need to buy British products. Not least would I refer to his remarks, made a few weeks ago, that a 15 per cent. switch from United States markets to the United Kingdom markets would increase British exports by no less than 90 per cent. All these have done considerable work, and the dollar deficit is now reduced to what appears at first sight to be manageable proportions.
  I join issue with the hon. Member for Devonport, who suggested, in a sense, that if this particular limited difficulty could be overcome we should have no dollar problem again. The problem will still remain. The immediate difficulties have been overcome in a number of unusual ways. We have cut our Canadian imports by some 100 million dollars. We have monthly aid from the Canadian loan of 10 million dollars, and we have an advance from E.C.A. for purchases from Canada. The first ends in 1950, the second comes to an end in two years' time. The problem will remain, and the British people and the Canadian people cannot be asked permanently to face up to this problem knowing that there is no solution to it however desperately they try to close the dollar gap, and that if it is closed it will be equally hard to keep it closed.
  Already most dangerous signs are apparent in Canada. In the first two months of this year Canadian domestic exports fell by 20 million dollars, which is about equivalent to their losses in the British market last year. Their aggregate farm income also fell by some 125 million dollars, and there are all the signs that

  1475
  without the British market, which is the most valuable market in the world to the Canadian farmer, the whole economy of Canada will be dislocated and the immense industrial and mineral development by which she can solve her problems will be heavily handicapped. The Governor of the Bank of Canada, when asked about the feasibility of trading with Britain against blocked sterling, indicated that this policy was in reality, only another form of credit and would depend on Britain's willingness to accept more credit and Canada's willingness to extend it. When somewhat similar ideas were raised at Washington, they were scoffed at. The British Government, not unnaturally, were unwilling to endanger the future of their currency by accumulating sterling debts in Canada which one day would have to be repaid in dollars.
  There must be some half-way house to this problem, and it is imperative that we should apply our minds to what the solution should be. I am a convinced believer in the system of Imperial Preference and in nations whose interests are complementary to each other making their own trade agreements. I know that one in three of all the gainfully employed people in Canada works for the export trade. I know that those who are working in the export trade to the sterling area are working on the goods that have the highest labour content of the goods produced in Canada. Any attempt now, while America, not unnaturally perhaps, bases her economy on a surplus of exports over imports, to fasten discriminatory multilateral trade on the world, with the chief nation of the world in its present frame of mind, would restrict world trade and lead to further nationalist trade policies, as well as being terribly harmful to the future of the British Empire. Therefore, the nations whose interests are complementary must get together.
  While in the last few weeks there has been a significant jump in Canadian exports to the United States—actually last month they were 20 per cent. above what they were two years ago—Canada cannot possibly expect America to absorb her huge farming surplus. Canada cannot expect America to take from her those goods which the sterling area used to buy, unless her own surplus of these goods can be sold by the United States herself in the
  1476
  world markets. American productive capacity has gone up in the last 10 years by 60 per cent., but her population has gone up by only 12 per cent.
  It is quite impossible to expect Canada, during this interim period, to find an adequate answer in this way to her problems. Canada herself, we were told last week, has a carry-over of 198 million bushels of wheat and the United States expects to have in the next three years nearly 300 million bushels annually. All who follow closely Canadian and American farming see every sign of what they call the " old corn hog cycle " coming back again. Already the farmers of the United States, far from allowing their Government to import Canadian food, are trying to sell it in Canada.
  It is essential that we should realise these difficulties from the Canadian point of view. This time last year when Mr. Howe, the Minister of Commerce in Canada, was over here for the British Industries Fair, he declared that Canadian and British trade had never been in balance, but what it was necessary to do was to balance Canadian trade with the United Kingdom, the rest of the sterling area and the Empire as a whole. In the last few weeks very significant signs have emerged of the drop in Canadian trade with the Colonial Empire. Last year exports to Malaya alone fell by four million dollars and imports fell by five million dollars.
  Today we are told it is not possible, for example, for Jamaica to buy her malt in Canada because of dollars. She has to get it in Denmark. Trinidad cannot get her meat products from Canada but has to get them from Australia with a larger haulage. In Bermuda hams are not allowed to come from Canada but have to be got from Australia. Canada, with an import trade of four times what it was before the war, has now, in effect, a standstill in trade with many Colonies and a decline in trade with some others.
  Meanwhile, the immense resources of Canada are steadily coming to light, even when we are engaged in trying to solve these difficulties, which are largely the product of the war but not alone due to that source, for they are magnified by agencies that should be our servants rather than our masters. In the development of these resources we can play such

  1477
  a pitifully small part unless we are prepared to tackle these problems in a new way. There are the oil deposits in Alberta, in the development of which our restrictions on capital are heavily handicapping us; the iron ore deposits in Labrador and north of Lake Superior; the expected fields of uranium and radium in the North West; and, above all, the immensely fertile farming life of Canada as a whole. These are all fields with which we could identify ourselves. It is in order further to impress on our friends and kinsmen in Canada that we believe in their destiny and that we feel we can help them to fulfil it, that the Opposition asked for this Debate tonight.
  6.48 p.m.
  Mr. H. Wilson: This has been a very interesting Debate, and the only regret which hon. Gentlemen and I have is that so many hon. Members were prevented by the shortage of time from joining in it. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Food was sitting with me on the Government Front Bench with the idea that if the Debate concentrated on food he would intervene at the end, but, as hon. Members would agree, most of the discussion has been on the export and import trade, and it would be for the convenience of the Committee if I were to speak again and follow hon. Members in what they said'.
  I should like to begin by expressing agreement with the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) about the maiden speech to which we have had the privilege of listening this afternoon, and I would join with him and with my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East (Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu) in commenting on the speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith), and in congratulating her on the striking contribution which she made to our Debate as well as on the very clear and sincere way in which she expressed the point she had to put.
  The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, referred to a number of points. He quoted the speech of Mr. Gardiner, the Canadian Minister of Agriculture. I think perhaps it would be better if I did not go into that, more so as the issues have been put in their proper perspective in previous statements made both in this House and in the Canadian Parlia-
  1478
  ment. I have made it clear this afternoon already in the Committee, that we are buying and shall buy everything from Canada for which we can provide dollars.
  The hon. Gentleman went on to say that he thought that the Canadian producer had lost confidence in Government bulk buying, and he quoted the findings of a committee in favour of that, but as far as the wheat agreement is concerned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, East, said, if the hon. Gentleman argued about it on the prairies he would find himself lonely indeed. As the hon. Member for Fife, East (Mr. Henderson Stewart) can testify, the farmers felt that the wheat agreement had been of an estimable value both to this country and to the primary producers of Canada. The hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker) began his speech by acquitting me of offensiveness —it seemed from his next few remarks that he wanted all the offensiveness for himself. He seemed to want Canada herself to go in for a policy of bulk buying to aid in insuring a market for sugar producers within the Commonwealth.
  Mr. Henderson Stewart: It should be said that when the President of the Board of Trade and I were in Canada, we found the wheat farmers in the prairies by no means satisfied with the prospects of our continuing to buy their wheat. Whether that was the fault of the right hon. Gentleman or not I do not know.
  Mr. Wilson: I found that there were some apprehensions as to whether bulk buying was going to continue and thus guarantee a market for some time. The hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, referred to the question of Imperial Preference in connection with our trade relations, and this was mentioned by a number of other speakers, particularly by the hon. Member for Chislehurst. I have no doubt from all the hon. Gentleman said that there may be an opportunity before long of discussing this question.
  Since it has been mentioned, I should like to remind hon. Members that Canada has herself played a leading part in the negotiations for the general agreement on Tariffs and Trade, to which she is one of the contracting parties, and also in the negotiations leading to the Havana Charter. Of course, it is Canada who provides the distinguished public servant

  1479
  who is presiding over a great part of the discussions with the contracting parties, both in relation to Havana and in regard to the Geneva agreement. We have been left in no doubt at all that Canada attaches the greatest importance to the development of multilateral trade. As we are debating Anglo-Canadian trade and Imperial Preference, it is only right that I should suggest that hon. Gentlemen and hon. Ladies should take some account of what the Canadians themselves want, and not only of what they think the Canadians ought to want. There may be an opportunity for discussing them against a rather broader background, but since it was mentioned I thought it was only right that I should say so.
  Throughout the Debate there has been a considerable volume of agreement about the objectives at which we are all aiming. Most of the criticism has been of our inability in this country to buy more of those Canadian products which Canada would like to send us and which we would most certainly like to have. The real question is the amount of dollars available for expending on those things, combined with the fact that a number of the things we are buying from Canada we are taking in increased volume compared with before the war. That leaves fewer dollars over for the buying of other things. There has not been a sufficient realisation that what we would like to do in respect of Canadian imports is dictated by the amount of dollars we can get.
  A number of hon. Gentlemen and some of my hon. Friends have stressed the importance of the export drive. The right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) began it. The hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville) referred to capital investment. As he knows, we have no surplus available for investing in Canada, but I agree that in individual cases where we can encourage the establishment of branch factories in Canada and where we cannot sell the goods direct, a valuable contribution can be made to the development of our export of components, machine tools, semifinished manufactures, and so on. I agree with a lot of what he said about the styling and packaging of goods that we send to Canada. When I was out there I was told several times that whereas the Canadian buyer used to
  1480
  think exclusively in terms of price and quality, he is now thinking much more in terms of price and eye-appeal—that is a Canadian phrase. I think it was eye-appeal that the hon. Member for Eye was describing.
  The hon. Member mentioned also the importance of exporting for stocking and selling from stock in Canada. I agree with him about the importance of that and I have on other occasions brought to the attention of British exporters by speeches, direct contact with them and articles in the " Board of Trade Journal," the facilities that exist for stocking goods. As the hon. Member knows, the Export Credits Guarantee Department provides facilities for insuring against the risk and for covering the capital involved in holding stocks before they are actually sold. He made the point that many exporters are operating on too small a scale to be able to finance this operation themselves. I have often mentioned, in this connection, the need for private enterprise to develop collective selling arrangements on the lines of the Hambro organisation.
  He was followed by the hon. Member for Southgate (Mr. Baxter), who outlined the kind of things that our exporters ought to do if they wanted to sell more goods. His judgment about what ought to be done is very much the sort of thing that was said to me when I was in Canada last year, but if I had said to the Committee what the hon. Gentleman had said this evening I should have been attacked from the Opposition side for criticising British exporters and for attempting to teach them their job, which is the last thing I would want to do. Certainly, it is right that these things should be said. The right hon. Member for Aldershot was dealing with the weakening of our sellers' position by the statements which, he said, had been made by Ministers here at home—I think he meant here at home rather than abroad, with the exception of the quotation which he made from my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council.
  I am bound to say that when I was in Canada, so far as the position of this country being weakened by criticism is concerned, I found that it was far more a question of criticism which had been taken abroad by some of our exporters who, I suggest, ought to have had quite

  1481
  enough to do in selling goods without exporting our politics abroad. I heard far more about the welfare State and about production costs arising from all those things with which the Opposition agree—or with which I understood them to agree—far more about wigs and false teeth, than I heard about other aspects of our industrial costs.
  Mr. Baxter: Will the right hon. Gentleman be able to make a statement upon what I quoted from the " Financial Post."
  Mr. Wilson: Yes, Sir, I am just coming on to that point. I have been very concerned about the statement in the " Financial Post." I agree with the hon. Gentleman that statements in that quarter have to be taken very seriously indeed. I should not like to say anything which would countenance the suggestion that the statements about the falling off in the quality of our goods, or that our exporters are losing interest in the Canadian market, contain any great amount of truth. I have seen no evidence to suggest that there has been a falling off in quality. Individual cases there may be, but very often those cases are generalised out of all relation to their importance.
  The market is becoming more competitive, and it may be that when the home producers are able to supply it more successfully there is a growing volume of complaint about the quality of our goods. One difficulty is that there are different methods of examining wool cloth in the two countries. Until our exporters and their importers understand one another on that side it may be that those complaints will go on. I would agree with what hon. Gentlemen have said in stressing the importance of maintaining our quality. It is on our quality that we shall sell our goods, but unless we combine with that quality satisfactory prices—which we can do and are doing —and also satisfactory assurances about the time of delivery and the appropriate approach to problems of styling, packaging, and all the rest of it, we shall not succeed in getting that increase in exports which we are discussing this afternoon.
  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn

  CLASS VI

    VOTE 13. MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT
    Motion made, and Question proposed,
    " That a sum, not exceeding £1,728,350, 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 Transport, including expenses of the Transport Tribunal, the Road and Rail Appeal Tribunal and the Transport Arbitration Tribunal, and sundry other services."

  ROAD HAULAGE
  6.59 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Thorneycroft: My hon. Friends and I have selected the salary of the Minister of Transport as the subject of discussion during the second half of this Supply Day. Whatever may be the views of the Lord President of the Council, we are of the opinion that there cannot be too many Debates upon the problems of the transport industry, whether those problems arise out of the industry itself, like the complicated relationship between road and rail, or whether they are artificially imposed upon the industry, such as the tax of £86 million which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put upon the road haulage side in recent weeks.
  In the short time at our disposal this evening, we thought it would be convenient if we concentrated attention upon the problems of the free road hauliers—that section of the road haulage industry which is not yet nationalised. It is a branch of the industry to which far too little attention has been paid so far. It is not a small branch. The lorries in the hands of the free road hauliers are two or three times the number of those in the hands of the Road Haulage Executive. It is, therefore, no minor or insignificant section of our economy which we discuss in the few hours before 10 o'clock.
  We claim—I certainly hope to demonstrate it in the course of my argument—that the men engaged upon this important service have been treated with grave injustice by the British Transport Commission and His Majesty's Government. We believe that they have a real grievance, and we also believe that if their problems and the injustices to which they have

  1483
  been subjected are brought into the open and published, the men and the organisations who have inflicted them will rightly be condemned by the British public.
  It is not for me to prescribe the area of debate tonight, because that is a matter for the Chair, but, having regard to the shortness of the time available, I suggest that we do not range over the whole subject of the 9d. on the Petrol Duty or the 33-i per cent. on commercial vehicles. That is certainly a very grave burden to place on the shoulders of these men, but we shall have further opportunities—of which we shall avail ourselves in full—of discussing this in a few weeks' time. Nor would it be proper to discuss alterations in the law on a Vote in Supply. However, I might observe that if the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues had had the exiguous majority which they now enjoy, they would not have been able to pass the Transport Act in 1947.
  It is not the passing of the Act but the abuse of the powers conferred under it to which we wish to draw attention tonight. The case we wish to put can be stated quite simply and shortly. It is that His Majesty's Government and the British Transport Commission have been engaged upon a deliberate attempt to force these men out of business, to smash them up and to ruin them, and to extend the field of Government monopoly and, having captured the whole field, to be free to put up the fares and the rates against the British public.
  In opening my remarks, I remind the Committee of the background and the motives which are involved. The background to this case is as follows. As the Committee will remember, long-distance road transport was nationalised and the firms were taken over under the Transport Act, 1947. I should not like the Committee to think that the owners were paid for being taken over. I do not want to talk at large about compensation today, but to my knowledge there are firms which were expropriated in January, 1949, who have certainly not been paid any substantial sum of the amount of money which is owing to them. By a coincidence, I got a telegram from one of these people this morning. He says:
  " As one with 10 vehicles compulsorily acquired on 19th May, 1949 "—
  1484
  that is, a year ago—
  "and still without settlement, please do your utmost for the dispossessed in the forthcoming debate. Thanking you."
  They ought to thank the Minister. That is all I want to say about the compensation side of the matter, but I must add that if private people acquire other people's businesses they generally have to pay in a rather shorter space of time. It is about time His Majesty's Government began to honour some of the obligations which they have incurred in this matter.
  Long-distance road haulage was taken over by the 1947 Act, but there were certain exceptions to the take-over. There was, for example, the short-distance haulier. Such a man may operate his lorries within a narrow radius of 25 miles. If he is unfortunate enough to live on the coast, he has only half of that circle in which to carry on his trade. For any journey or traffic beyond that radius he has to apply for a permit, not to an independent tribunal but to his principal competitor, the British Transport Commission. That was the legislation which was inflicted upon us by the Socialist majority in the last Parliament. In addition, there are certain traffics, notably the carriage of livestock, household removals, the bulk carriage of liquids and a few others of that character, which were not included in the take-over, but the Government have to some extent encroached upon them because some of the firms which they took over, like Pickford's, had branches engaged upon these traffics.
  Our charge against the Government—I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would wish me to put it absolutely plainly—is that they have abused their position under the Act, that they have used the vast resources of the State and their immunity from any need to apply to an independent licensing authority—a remarkable advantage which they took for themselves—to encroach upon the excluded traffics, and, so far as the short-distance hauliers are concerned, that they have used their power to refuse to grant licences or permits in such a way as to drive many of them—they are attempting to drive many more right out of business.
  Mr. Sydney Silverman: The hon. Gentleman makes these charges of unfairness and all that kind of

  1485
  thing and of driving people out of business, but are there not now three times as many such vehicles on the road as there were when the Transport Act was passed?
  Mr. Thorneycroft: The hon. Gentleman is obviously mixing up " C " licences with " A " and " B " licences. I suggest that he takes a little more trouble to understand just what is involved here. He sets himself up as an expert on every subject.
  To turn to the argument which I was addressing to the Minister of Transport, before I finish I shall justify the charges of unfairness which I have made. I have evidence, my hon. Friends have evidence and hon. Members opposite also have evidence of the unfairness with which these men are being treated. There can scarcely be an hon. Member who has not had a letter from some road haulier or other saying exactly what is being done to him at the present time.
  Before coming to the precise methods adopted by the right hon. Gentleman and the British Transport Commission, I want to say a word or two about their motives. After all, if a criminal is in the dock one is entitled to examine the motive of the crime. The motives for the crime in this case, for the treatment of these free hauliers, are, I think, twofold. First, there is the desire of His Majesty's Government to nationalise anything and everything they can lay their hands on. With their present majority they are finding that there are difficulties about nationalising new industries, but they have these powers under the Transport Act and they intend to use them to get as many transport concerns as possible into their own hands. It is a sort of backstairs nationalisation.
  Mr. Awbery: At least the industry would belong to the taxpayers who pay.
  Mr. Thorneycroft: That is the first motive. The second motive is to bolster up the rather groggy finances of the British Transport Commission. The Committee will recollect that at the time of our last Debate that Commission were and still are, losing public funds at the rate of £50 a minute, and quite obviously the right hon. Gentleman and his friends had to do something about it. One of the things which they have done recently is to announce the increase of railway rates
  1486
  by 16½ per cent. But they cannot stop there. Under the system to which they have adhered, it is necessary for them to do what they call " co-ordinating or integrating inland transport." That means that incompetence and high prices in one sector have to be reflected in incompetence and high prices in any other sector. That is the modern interpretation of fair shares for all. If we study their statement of the principles of a common charging policy, we shall see that it follows, as night follows day, that road charges, sooner or later—I do not say at once—will have to be correlated with the increases which at present have been imposed upon railway freights.
  What is the public reaction to all that? The public reaction, of course, is quite obvious. What any business man would do in such circumstances would be to try and get " C " licences of his own or employ private hauliers, and the concern of the Government is to try and stop up those two last refuges of a free society—to close them down, if they can. We are not discussing " C " licences to-night, but the idea there is to impose savage and discriminatory taxation. The road hauliers are to have the same taxation. but, of course, there are even further methods which can be adopted in cases of that kind and I turn now to the precise methods which are being adopted to hound these men from the businesses which they built up over many years.
  The first thing which the Government try to do is to smash them up even within the limited field which has been left to them—the 25-mile limit. Bearing in mind the difficulties which confront them —with much of their outside traffic shorn off they are compelled to compete within the narrow confines of a 25-mile radius —one would have thought that they might at least have been left to get on with that little bit of their business; but if any private road haulier applies for extensions to his licence or his fleet within the 25-mile limit, who opposes him? He is opposed not so much by his fellow hauliers as by the Road Haulage Executive themselves, composed of concerns with long-distance haulage. They are the people who come before the licensing authority, briefing counsel and using every argument and method they can—
  Sir Wavell Wakefield: And public money.
  Mr. Thorneycroft: I agree—and using public money to stop these men from extending and from trying to save what little is left of their business. But the Road Haulage Executive do not have to go to a transport tribunal or a licensing authority at all. When one has these powers and these immunities, it is amazing what one can do, if one is quite ruthless, to ignore all the advice of every licensing authority in the country.
  Let me give one practical example, and I take it from Salisbury. In Salisbury, early in 1949, British Railways, Southern Region, decided that they would deliver their goods direct from the railhead in Salisbury instead of taking them by rail to railway stations—a perfectly sensible proposition, if I may say so. They asked Hay's Wharf, a subsidiary of theirs, to apply before the local licensing authority for a licence. The free hauliers, who had been delivering the goods, objected to that licence. Hay's Wharf came before the independent tribunal, briefing counsel and all the rest of it; the local firms opposed them, and won. Hay's Wharf were refused a licence and the local firms allowed to do the job.
  What happened? Shortly afterwards, Hay's Wharf came into the Road Haulage Executive. Did they pay the slightest attention to the arguments and the judicial decision which had been reached? Not at all. They sailed straight in, took the traffic and did not worry a bit about the decision which had been taken. We could not have a better example of the wasteful operation of traffic, of unfair competition within the 25-mile limit and of utter indifference to the judicial processes. And that sort of thing is also going on in areas other than Salisbury.
  I turn next to the question of excluded traffic. The Road Haulage Executive are branching out into that as well, and, again, they have no need to apply for a licence, whereas the free hauliers have to do so. The right hon. Gentleman may say that I am complaining about competition between the State and the private firms. I am not. What I am complaining about is competition when one of the competitors has his hands tied behind his back.
  1488
  Of course, the right hon. Gentleman has other weapons at his disposal, too. There is petrol rationing. That has proved a most convenient method for injuring the interests of the free section of the road haulage industry. I cited a case in the last Debate on transport, an example which I will not repeat today but in which a firm in my division, with seven lorries, was at a standstill for three weeks because it had no petrol on which to run its lorries. How can anybody run a transport firm if it is suddenly brought to a standstill for three weeks because of the lack of such a vital commodity? I think the Government have now succeeded, by that and other methods, in forcing an acquisition notice on that firm. That is the method they adopt, the way they try to do it.
  I came across another case last weekend. It was a case of a road haulier whose petrol ration has been cut by one-quarter. The arguments are most ingenious. What happens is this. First, the Road Haulage Executive refuse to grant any permits for the firm to travel outside the 25-mile limit. The moment that is done, the petrol authorities who are responsible for the allocation of petrol—still under the same Ministry—come along and say, " Now that you cannot travel over 25 miles, you do not need any petrol." Some clerk in the petrol office says, " What shall we do here? Shall we halve what they had before? No; the Minister made a speech about petrol and economy, and I think a quarter will do them perfectly well." Thus the man is brought to a standstill. Yet these men are expected not only to carry on their business in these conditions, but to try, and compete against one of the greatest road haulage monopolies which has ever been set up.
  I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what rationing of petrol there is for the Road Haulage Executive. Will he describe to the Committee the processes involved? What steps are taken to see that the lorries of that Executive, which are running up and down the country, very often empty, are rationed? I will warrant that the only form of rationing of red petrol in this country is the petrol rationing of the free haulage industry. It is not used to conserve petrol but to smash competition, and the sooner it is stopped the better.

  1489
  I now turn to what is perhaps the most important weapon which the Government and the British Transport Commission use for eliminating the inconvenient competition of road haulage—the refusal of permits. May I open by saying that on 22nd June last year, Sir Cyril Hurcomb, head of the British Transport Commission, made a statement which some of us hoped might mean that at least some justice was to be done in this matter. I will read it, and then I want to compare what he said with what in fact happened:
  "It is our intention that the latitude to issue original permits to continue operation shall be exercised in a manner and in a spirit which will acknowledge the importance of just treatment of the individual haulier and the interests of the trade as well as the convenience of administration, which should be a secondary consideration."
  That is what he said. I am bound to say that that is not what has happened.
  I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman tonight will attempt to quote the figures of permits which have been asked for, permits which have been granted and permits which are to be refused. He did it the other night when my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir), was speaking on a Scottish question. They bore no relation whatever to the facts. The Transport Commission and the Government lump together under " permits granted " any permit which is given upon any terms whatever. Some of them are given for one ton a year. Some are given for the outward load but not for the return journey; and all sorts of things of that kind. They are all shown as " permit granted." I hope, therefore, that we shall not have any figures of that kind quoted this evening. I hope, however, that if any figures are quoted, we will have details of the terms upon which the permits have been given. The methods about the granting of these permits can be summed up as follows. First, there is the outright refusal—there are quite a lot of these.
  I have a case here—I make no apology for quoting individual cases, and I hope that my hon. Friends will do so also, because only by the piling up of these individual examples can we see exactly what has been done to these people. I start with a case from near my own constituency, that of a Mr. E. J. Roberts, of Newport. He applied for an original
  1490
  permit for all goods for a 50 miles radius for one vehicle and for 30 miles for the other. The permit was issued for household goods and effects only. I did not think that a permit was needed for items of this kind. The Road Haulage Executive were asked to reconsider the matter. but the application was refused.
  Mr. Roberts then applied for an ordinary permit, which means that if that was withdrawn he would not get any compensation, but even that was better than nothing—he could carry on his business. The permit was issued for a 40-mile radius on one vehicle only. The district manager of the Road Haulage Executive—his competitor—was again asked to reconsider the case. The application was refused and no reason what ever was given for the refusal. This man of whom I am speaking served throughout the war and restarted his business in 1946. He is now in hospital suffering from tuberculosis, and has a wife and four young children. Is that justice to the individual operator? I challenge any hon. or right hon. Gentleman opposite to say that that was the way in which Sir Cyril Hurcomb's pledge ought to be carried out. That is not just one individual case; there are dozens of cases of that character, and no doubt some of my hon. Friends may quote them.
  I will take another case, and I give the right hon. Gentleman the name of the firm. It is the Reliance Transport Company, of Radstock, which is run by two brothers named Moreton. They were not here in 1946, so they could not get an original permit. Why were they not here? Because they happened at that time to be serving their country in India. Everybody had been appealing for people to go on staying in the Army in those places, because it was said that their services were necessary to their country. Nobody can blame them for not having been here on the " appointed day " or during the " relevant period."
  What happened is that they applied for an ordinary permit, and their business was slashed effectively by about one half. They tell me—and I have no doubt that it is true—that of their whole business they are left with only three of their customers for whom they are allowed to carry. In such circumstances, probably the only thing they can do—unless, as I

  1491
  hope, some alteration is achieved by this Debate—is to apply to be acquired by the Transport Commission.
  Here is another case, from Scotland. This is a letter which is addressed to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, South. I will read one paragraph to illustrate what is happening in that area:
  "Having read of your criticism in last night's debate, I hasten to inform you that we received an original permit for 50 instead of 200 miles"
  For only 50 miles! It does not matter to these people whether they have to stop in the middle of moorland in Scotland
  "carrying two classes of goods instead of 20 as applied for."
  Their appeal failed. They operate five vehicles on an " A " licence. They built up their business from a start of £30 in 1933 throughout the whole of that period, except for the four years from 1941 when they were in the Army. One of the most tragic things is the extraordinary number of ex-Service men who are involved. I am bound to say that they deserve rather a better deal from the Government than they are getting on this particular question.
  Another, and most ingenious, method which is adopted—and this all counts in granting permits—is to grant a permit for the outward traffic but to deny it for the return load. The economics of road haulage is always to try to get a load back, and that is what the Road Haulage Executive sometimes are rather failing to do. U they can impose these difficulties on the free hauliers, they will be able to knock them out much quicker.
  My next example is that of a Mr. Thomas, who served in the Forces from 1940 to 1946. He was given back his pre-war " A " licence and re-commenced his normal work in October, 1946. This consisted, among other things, of a regular weekly trip to London with livestock and a return load of agricultural goods. such as hay, corn, straw and implements. What he does, of course, is to carry livestock, but he is denied the opportunity of any return load at all and so he will, probably, come out of business in the same way. I dislike, but I almost admire, the ingenuity with which this operation is being carried out.
  I do not want to quote too many cases. but let me give just one more example.
  1492
  Of course, applications are turned down right away if any flaw whatever is found in them. No lawyer could be so pedantic as are the Road Haulage Executive in exercising a judicial decision upon their principal competitors. Here is a man called Mr. Gretton, who comes from Abergavenny. His application was refused because his form gave insufficient information. He offered to give more information but was told that it would not make the slightest difference. Who would have thought that this was to be the calm, impartial, judicial decision as to what was to be done to these men?
  But I sympathise with Mr. Gretton for not having given too much information, and I should like to draw the attention of the Committee to what happens when any information is given. The information, of course, is promptly used to tout the customers of the firm which is being refused a permit. There is a standing form of letter which is used. The one I have here is sent to me by a well-known solicitor in Norwich, in a case which came to his notice! I am not quoting the name of the firm but the solicitor no doubt could inform the right hon. Gentleman of the full particulars. This is the letter which the Road Haulage Executive sent out. They say that this firm
  " have made application for a permit to carry goods for you and in view of the facilities which this Executive has available, it has not been possible for the application to be granted beyond the end of February.
  With the very large organisation we now operate, I am sure we can meet your needs, and if you desire, it will be arranged for. a representative for our King's Lynn group at North Everard Street, King's Lynn, to call and give you full particulars.
  I would assure you of the Executive's ability and desire to give manufacturers, traders and the public at least as efficient a service as that which they have enjoyed in the past, and as the organisation of British Road Services develops,"—
  they are, obviously, going to develop pretty fast—
  " the additional advantages of our wide ramifications will become increasingly available."
  I will read the answer:
  "Thank you for your letter of the 28th February the contents of which come as a bitter disappointment. The cartage of vegetables to different markets in London and the Midlands is never an easy job, particularly

  1493
  when done on the scale on which we grow, and it has been a constant pleasure to work with this firm who have taken a personal interest in our problems and have given us every satisfaction. It seems quite iniquitous that two such hard-working people as the proprietors should be squeezed out off business by this confounded bureaucracy which now pervades our once free country.
  It may interest you to learn that our loading sometimes amounts to some 4–5,000 bags per day and during the 1949 pea-picking season the services of British Roadways were used by a firm of Great Yarmouth for whom many of our peas were grown on contract. In this job it is impossible to forecast the day's pick even to within 2,000 bags and the situation changes constantly throughout the day. The lack of flexibility of your services became grossly apparent and there was a constant muddle concerning collections. It then took more than a fortnight to sort out the accounts as the system of records, though extremely cumbersome, appeared to be inadequate.
  You can understand, therefore, that we view the prospects of being forced to place all our transport with your services with very grave misgivings but we suppose that it would be advisable for your representative from King's Lynn to call on the writer by appointment as soon as possible."
  If anyone seriously suggested that that is giving justice to the individual road haulier, or showing concern for the interests of the traders involved, I should be amazed. I would say it was an open and obvious breach of the pledge given by Sir Cyril Hurcomb and we always said that this would happen. We always said that, in our view, the moment the Government had got these powers they would use them, by unfair means, to throw the system right out. I remember a Debate on the Transport Bill when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, who is now the Minister of Supply, said, when we had been suggesting that just what I have said has happened would happen:
  " Therefore I suggest, in the first place, that if it "—
  that is, the British Transport Commission—
  started out to try to drive the local haulier out of business—and I cannot understand why in the world it should want to do so—but, if, by any chance, it wanted to do so, it would be directly flouting the duties placed upon it by Parliament. That duty, I say, is to integrate the existing public services in the country and see that they are as efficient as possible and serve the public as well as possible. It would be quite contrary to the direct instructions given to the Commission by Parliament if it proceeded along the lines suggested by hon. Members."
  1494
  These are the words to which I wish to draw the attention of the right hon. Gentleman:
  " Any Minister of Transport would inevitably give the Commission directions, if he suspected for one moment that they were setting out on a line which was contrary to that imposed by Parliament."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 29th April. 1947; Vol. 436, c. 1865-6.]
  We invite the right hon. Gentleman to give them some directions. I suggest that these pledges have been broken. We say to the British Transport Commission and the Government: " You have broken your pledges and abused your power," and to the road hauliers we say: " Hold on and hang on until we get in, and we will rid you of these ludicrous restrictions."
  Mr. Mitchison: Does the hon. Gentleman want public road transport to succeed or not?
  7.32 p.m.
  Mr. McAdden: I am very grateful for the opportunity of addressing the Committee this evening. Some hon. Members may remember that I was fortunate in the Ballot for Private Members' Motions and put down a Motion on the subject which we are discussing, and I am grateful that this discussion has been advanced this evening because it gives an opportunity for the Minister to reply on a Monday instead of a Friday and I hope he will be more amenable than he might be late on a Friday afternoon.
  In that optimistic hope, I want to support the appeal made by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) to the Minister to give those directions which lie in his power in order that the grave injustice at present suffered by private road hauliers might be put right. I feel it is important for us to remember that the original Transport Act, which it does not lie within our power to discuss this evening in detail, was passed at a time when the House was differently constituted than it is at the moment. Because of the great powers given at that time and because the discussion was very much curtailed, due consideration was not given to all the various complications which would arise unless the Act was interpreted in the spirit in which it was commended to the House.
  It is our contention that the measures adopted by the Road Haulage Executive

  1495
  are against the intentions of the House when the Act was passed. In spite of many warnings given from this side of the Committee at the time, we find there have been grave injustice inflicted on road hauliers. I do not doubt that in due time we shall be told by the Minister and others that all these things of which we complain are necessary for the more efficient integration and co-ordination of their transport arrangements.
  I remember that on the last occasion when the activities of the British Transport Commission were discussed here we were told by the right hon. Gentleman that in spite of the deplorable state of affairs to which we drew his attention, these things could be justified because the death rate was lower than previously. I hope he will not tell us that these things have to be put up with now because there may well be an increase in the birth rate, but that he will advance a more sensible argument than he did on the last occasion when deficiencies in the industry were discussed. I have no doubt that we shall be told that the Minister through the Transport Commission is attempting to build up the integration of road-rail transport and that steps are being taken for the bulk of transport of goods formerly taken by road to be taken in some cases by rail. This is no innovation. Private organisations such as Suttons were engaged in similar bulk transport of goods long before the Commission was set up.
  I should like the right hon. Gentleman to point out where there are any great advances as the result of the measures he is taking to crush the private road haulier out of existence. We are told that hon. Members opposite believe in a policy of fair shares for all. They have repeatedly given expression to that view. Yet having entrusted this vast transport monopoly, the Road Haulage Executive, with complete powers for the transport of long-distance goods subject to such other limited powers as are given to " A" Licence holders under very difficult conditions, one would have thought they would have left to the private haulier some little field in which he could operate.
  But what do we find? We find this vast organisation in every advertisement they issue seeking to acquire the benefit
  1496
  of those particular forms of traffic which originally were excluded under the Act—furniture and bulk liquids and things of that kind winch were excluded traffic are now the main object of attainment on the part of the advertising section of the Road Haulage Executive. Surely that is not in pursuance of the policy of fair shares for all.
  We are further told that "A" and " B " licensees are now restricted to a 25-mile radius except under permit. Hon. Members who represent some constituencies may think that 25 miles radius suggests a diameter of 50 miles, but to a person like myself representing a coast town it represents nothing of the kind. I do not doubt that those responsible for planning our future will in due time draw attention to the great inefficiency of the Tories for not building our towns the correct number of miles apart to conform with their plans today and this will be held up as a relic of Tory misrule.
  Nevertheless, the fixing of this arbitrary figure of the radius in which people ara allowed to operate has not paid due regard to the conditions which should obtain between one district and another. A sense of grievance is felt in my district. In a radius of 25 miles of Southend-on-Sea we find that half is in the sea and a large proportion is across the Thames in Kent. The main transport of goods from Southend is not in the direction of Kent but towards London, but because London is 37 miles away we are placed in a disadvantageous situation.
  We are not suggesting any change in legislation but it is possible for the Road Haulage Executive, if the Minister would drop them the hint, to issue permits for a greater distance than at present without any change in the law so as to enable those in that part of Essex which I believe the right hon. Gentleman knows fairly well to indulge in some form of business. The right hon. Gentleman knows that 25 miles from Southend towards London along the arterial road does not take them very far but that a few more miles would do the trick. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, not only so far as my own division is concerned, but also in respect of other coast towns, to have regard to the circumstances of the case and not worry too much about the niceties of the charts drawn by, planners in various departments under his control.

  1497
  The original permits issued to people engaged in long-distance haulage prior to November, 1946, are granted in the first instance for one year and subsequently they may be granted for a further three years. It is our contention that very severe restrictions are operating in the issue of these permits, and that every technicality that can be devised, as has been instanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth, has been made use of by the Road Haulage Executive in order to deny the issue of original permits, with the compensation rights which they carry with them.
  We find, in the case of the business of a man who may have died and whose widow has taken over the concern, that the change in title of the business has put her outside the compensation benefits to which the operator would have been entitled under the Act. If the Road Haulage Executive adopted a sensible way of looking at these matters, without seeking to crush their competitors out of business, they would not take advantage of technicalities such as these.
  Let us further remember that the compensation to which these people are entitled is based on the long-distance traffic which they carried in the year previous to the revocation of the permit which they may be granted. If the Minister, through his subsidiaries, is to use his power in order to restrict the volume of traffic which these concerns carry it will seriously and adversely affect the compensation right to which these people are entitled. We find that the ordinary permit is, in practice, being granted only for a period of something like three months in order that the operator may have the chance to try to arrange some kind of business within the 25 miles' radius. That permit does not entitle him to any compensation. In spite of that fact, we find the Road Haulage Executive entering into the fiercest competition in order to prevent him earning the very meagre livelihood which is available to an operator who works within such a limited radius.
  Turning again to my own constituency for an example—the principle applies throughout the country—I can tell the Minister of a case of a firm which, for years before the Labour Party was formed, was engaged in the transport of goods from the railway in the whole of
  1498
  the district from Shoeburyness to Pitsea. The name of the concern was Jacobs. [An HON. MEMBER: " By motor vehicle?"] They have had this contract for years, and they have been carrying the railway parcels over that area. We find that, since nationalisation, the railways have given notice of the termination of their contract. The business which they built up and have carried on for years has been taken away from them. They have been refused any kind of compensation and any kind of licence except to operate within a 25-mile radius, which as I have tried to point out is in itself very considerably restricted—
  Mr. Collick: Will the hon. Member tell us where the motor lorries came from in the years before the Labour Party was born?
  Mr. McAdden: I said that they were responsible for the distribution of these goods for years before the Labour Party was born. I did not say and never have suggested that motor vehicles were then in existence, but these private enterprise people, unlike the Labour Party, move with the times. Having found a more convenient and better method of transport, they took the earliest possible opportunity of introducing motor transport for delivery work, whereas the party opposite, having evolved a policy in the middle part of the 19th century, have not paid any regard to changed circumstances, but still stick to it today.
  I wish to refer to the helpful intervention of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth, in which the hon. Member drew attention to the fact that there has been a very large increase in the issue of " C " licences. I wonder whether hon. Gentlemen have given any thought to this question? Surely the fact that there has been this large increase in " C " licences can be shown to be due to the fact that people who want their goods transported from place to place do not think much of the service of the Transport Commission, are prevented from having the services of a private haulier and so intend to take advantage of the best service they can get. It is because that is true, that the party opposite is seeking to put this savage tax on the motor vehicles which supply this best and most economical form of transport. I

  1499
  hope that the private hauliers will be supported in their fight against a party which professes not to believe in monopolies but which spends all its time building them up as strongly and viciously as it can.
  7.48 p.m.
  Mr. Harrison: I intervene to call the attention of the House to the apparent concern of the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) about the competition which the British Transport Commission had organised against hauliers in the different areas of the country. During the passage of the Transport Act we realised that a large number of these small firms would inevitably disappear from the road haulage business. We took a lot of pains to ensure that when they went out of business fair compensation terms were offered to them. Both on the Floor of the House and in Committee we took the opportunity of making sure that the compensation terms were really just and fair.
  I am quite sure that no hon. Member opposite can point a finger to a case in which these fair and just terms have not been carried out. If they know of any such cases we should all like to hear of them. That pledge was given throughout the passage of the Transport Act, and I for one am prepared to stand by any promise which we, in the Committee, obtained from the Minister during the passage of the Act, and do all I possibly can to see that those terms are honoured.
  The half-circle which the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. McAdden) mentioned in relation to the coast towns was also discussed. There was nothing which we could devise, and nothing has ever been devised to overcome that fact of geography. It has been a condition under which the road haulage firms on the coast have operated ever since road haulage firms have been organised there.
  Mr. McAdden: Has the hon. Member given consideration to allowing them to operate up to 60 miles instead of having these circles, and so forth?
  Mr. Harrison: We discussed at some length the question of the coast towns.
  Sir William Darling: A deep-sea licence?
  Mr. Harrison: We even went so far as to discuss deep-sea operation for hauliers
  1500
  on the coast. But everyone found that the conditions operating in coast towns would be the same after the passing of the Bill as before.
  Sir W. Darling: Amazing!
  Mr. Harrison: They operated in the half circle before and they operate that way now.
  A point of importance was made by the hon. Member for Monmouth when he was discussing the issue of permits and new licences. I suggest that for a long time now road hauliers have not been in a position to face fierce competition. There has always been a great limitation in the number of firms permitted to operate in any given area. That was a factor of road haulage for a long time before nationalisation, and it is because of the relatively exclusive position of many of those road haulage firms at the present time that the advent of competition is something new in many areas.
  Another point made by the hon. Member was with regard to excluded traffic. It was never suggested, and it is not contained in the Bill that the Transport Commission's road undertaking should not compete for this particular traffic. The condition in the Bill was that such traffic of that character conveyed by road hauliers should be excluded from nationalisation. But it did not exclude the Transport Commission's vehicles from competing with those road hauliers for that particular traffic.
  The hon. Member for Monmouth and the hon. Member for Southend, East, seemed to fear the developing competition of the British Road Haulage Executive not only in regard to this excluded traffic, but also in general in regard to short-distance traffic. I am very pleased to see that the Road Haulage Executive have so developed their business that they constitute a real and substantial competitor to these private firms. It indicates that the Road Haulage Executive have developed a standard of efficiency which is a threat to the ordinary road undertakings. I am very satisfied because from it I deduce that the Road Haulage Executive are doing their job. Because they are doing their job efficiently hon. Members opposite complain so bitterly. The passage of the Bill visualised the condition we are facing tonight and fortunately from the point of view of the nationalised

  1501
  industry the Road Haulage Executive seem to be holding their own. They are holding their own in spite of an efficient road haulage service, and I am pleased to hear it. We never expect hon. Members opposite to give credit in that particular direction, because we know that, lock, stock and barrel, they are against and opposed to any idea of the nationalised industries succeeding in any direction.
  The hon. Member for Monmouth sug- gested that the Transport Commission's road vehicles were coming back empty from their journeys and were therefore running watsefully from the point of view of the economics of the industry, I would challenge him to submit to this Commit- tee any substantial evidence on that point. He makes an allegation without giving any idea of any evidence which might exist, and I challenge him to submit evidence that the vehicles of the Road Haulage Executive are going out loaded and coming back on a substantial number of occasions empty, and therefore running uneconomically.
  If we could obtain such evidence it would, of course, reveal an unsatisfactory state of affairs, but I am of opinion that such evidence does not exist. Taking into account the short time they have been in existence, I consider that the Road Haulage Executive have done a lot to eliminate journeys with empty vehicles and that they are making a tremendous success of the road haulage undertaking. I am particularly gratified to hear the complaints from hon. Members on the other side of the Committee, because they do testify to the ability and efficiency of the Road Haulage Executive.
  7.55 p.m.
  Lord Dunglass: It would be extremely easy for us all to be successful competitors, if our ideas of fair play in business were first of all to tie the hands of a competitor behind his back, and then to knock him out. We could all do that, and the complaint we are making is that the Transport Commission and the Road Haulage Executive are using their powers improperly to curtail competition. None of the hon. Members on this side of the Committee has ever liked nationalisation of Road Transport and the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Harrison), is perfectly correct in saying so.
  But when his party and the Socialist Government admitted the principle that
  1502
  private owners and privately operated units might operate alongside a State-controlled concern, we were entitled to expect that the units would receive fair treatment. During the last few weeks that hope has weakened, and by the examples which have come to us in our constituencies, and by the examples already given by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) and the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. McAdden) it is pretty clear that this hope will be finally extinguished unless the right hon. Gentleman will take action this evening. Examples of harsh treatment are so numerous and so widespread, and their pattern is so uniform as to leave no reasonable doubt at all that the Road Haulage Executive are pursuing a subtle policy of discrimination against the private haulier in order to squeeze him out of business.
  I propose to give two detailed cases. The first one is according to the method described by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth and is a case of a haulier carrying cement from Carlake in Lanarkshire to Ayr. He is given a permit to carry his cement but he is refused a permit for the return journey, without which of course the whole of his business is uneconomic. That case, to my certain knowledge by conversations with hon. Members, is repeated time and again all over the country. That is a typical case and I will give the Minister the name of the firm if necessary.
  Let me give a case which illustrates another method. This is a case of a man and his brothers named Mitchell in the village of Douglas Water in Lanarkshire. For 20 years they have been hauliers running between Douglas Water and Annan and Carlisle, a distance of some 60 to 65 miles. The right bon Gentleman has had particulars of this case because I sent them to him. He may remember that it is a case of eleven men all of them ex-Service men, all of them married with families and all of them with established homes of their own in this village. For 20 years they have carried out this service, except for a period of four years, including the year 1946, when they were directed by the Ministry of Supply to carry timber; but, of course, that was not their fault. Along come the Road Haulage Executive and they limit the distance over which this

  1503
  haulier can carry his goods—building materials—to 40 miles. That, literally, leaves him high and dry in the middle of waste moorlands.
  I have examined it to see whether in this system of re-zoning there is, first, any uniformity of treatment and, secondly, any gain in efficiency. It might be that in re-zoning there were compensating areas to the Carlisle area which this haulier could pick up and in which he could practise his business. But that is not so. What is more, I find that the firms who have taken over Mr. Mitchell's business come from 30 miles or so south of Carlisle. They actually pass Mr. Mitchell's door and are allowed to operate 30 or 40 miles to the north of him in the Glasgow and Edinburgh districts. I will give details of that case to any hon. Member. They can examine it in every way and I defy anyone to find any justification for it either in equity, common sense or in efficiency. That is, in my opinion, a clear example of biased treatment by the Road Haulage Executive to a competitor.
  If this man is to lose his business it will cause a minor social upheaval in this small village. The people whose goods he hauled will have to find other and less satisfactory transportation. I have made inquiries, such as those which the hon. Member for Nottingham, East suggested, about the return journey of the lorries. In five cases out of 10 they return empty. I wrote to the Minister and asked for his assistance; but in this matter he is an untouchable. With the greatest courtesy in the world, I am bound to say, but with absolute firmness, he puts on an act of non-intervention. He washes his hands of responsibility and says that he cannot intervene.
  But the right hon. Gentleman and his party were responsible for this Act. They put it on the Statute Book. If injustice on the scale that we see it is perpetrated, it is up to him to put it right. He must take action, because this is a real case of hardship which is duplicated many times in the experience of my hon. Friends, if they would get up and say so, in the experience of hon. Gentlemen Opposite.
  Sir W. Wakefield: They are afraid to do so. They dare not.
  Lord Dunglass: The Minister says that if this firm does not like the conditions, they can get compensation. There is provision for that in the Act. But these people are proud of their business. They have built it up over 20 years. They are a fine team of ex-Service men and they give good and efficient service to the public. They do not want to be compensated; they want to carry on their business and to continue to give good public service. What is more, they have a shrewd suspicion that it may be many years before they get their compensation, even if they ask for it.
  This is a serious matter and we feel it deeply. I ask the Minister, first, to make a definite declaration tonight, on behalf of His Majesty's Government, that it is intended that small privately-owned road haulage concerns should have a fair deal. Secondly, I ask him to give a general directive to the Transport Commission to that effect, and to tell them that they should employ much more elasticity in the granting of permits and much more common sense in the whole affair. Lastly, although, of course, we are not allowed to suggest anything tonight which would involve legislation, the Minister must, in all fairness, set up some impartial machinery for appeal if he is not ready to take action himself.
  8.5 p.m.
  Mr. Mitchison: I wonder what the attitude of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite is to an industry which has become, as the Road Transport Industry has to some extent become, the property of the public and, to that extent, their responsibility as well as ours? I listened to the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft), and to those who spoke after him, and I felt that he, particularly, was prostituting his undoubted talents in standing up in this Committee as such a partisan advocate of certain private interests. He also has a responsibility in the Government of this country and he should be as anxious as those who sit on this side of the Committee that public undertakings should succeed. I asked him that question and gave him an opportunity to deny, if he so chose, that he wished success to public road traffic. I got no denial, and I hope that I get none, because in spite of what he said he may perhaps still feel his responsibility for the

  1505
  success of an undertaking which has been taken over as a public service for the public interest.
  I regard it as of some importance that the Opposition should state clearly what their attitude is in these matters. I can understand them if they desire to complain of this or that incident, of this or that practice, but I completely fail to understand an attitude which appears to be that the public service, whether the Transport Commission or the Road Executive, is always wrong and the so-called free haulier is always right. I have listened most attentively to the Debate. It seemed to me that hon. Members opposite were not keeping clear in their own minds—and still less, perhaps, in the minds of those who might read their speeches—the distinction between the functions of the Road Executive and those of the free hauliers.
  It is the intention of the Act that the Road Transport Executive should deal with long-distance goods haulage, and where permits for it are given they are intended to be, as I understand it, somewhat exceptional, the intention being that the free haulier should operate within the 25-mile radius. I will not go again into the question of the 25-mile radius, which was discussed ad nauseam in Committee and when the Bill was before this House. How many times have we heard the argument that, if one is on the coast, half a circle is not the same as a whole circle? That geographical platitude has been stated and discussed so often that I should have thought that even hon. Members opposite might have found something new to talk about on this occasion.
  What I listened for, and what I failed entirely to find, was what the noble Lord the Member for Lanark (Lord Dunglass) called a lack of common sense in dealing with these applications. I wanted to know what the criterion was that hon. Members opposite wanted to be applied to an application for a licence beyond the 25-mile radius. We have not had a word about that. We have had a number of cases brought forward, coupled with what I can only describe as some exceedingly wild suggestions. I agree that if one gets enough swallows one can have a summer, but certainly if those are all the swallows that can be produced, and if they arrive with such a cacophony of
  1506
  abuse, I would not attach too much importance to them.
  We have to remember that the Road Hauliers' Association has from time to time shown itself to be a somewhat politically-minded body, and that hon. Members opposite have had the advantage of briefs which often cover every possible case of a " grouse " or hardship. I would have expected that, instead of these isolated instances, delivered with all the vehemence which they could possibly command—and I certainly do not blame them for that—we should have had some serious criticism of the principles that were being applied.
  If I understood the hon. Member for Monmouth correctly, and I am sure he will stop me if I misrepresent him in any way, I understood him to say that the object of this incredible and improbable malevolence of the Road Transport Executive was to enable them to acquire other undertakings. Surely, the position is that, as regards undertakings which had to be acquired under the Act, they were in the first instance, a matter of negotiation, until the end of June, 1948, when no further voluntary purchases of that type of undertaking were made and steps were taken to complete the compulsory acquisition which was required by the Act itself.
  Any acquisition that can be in question now, unless I am entirely mistaken, is the acquisition of some undertaking which is carrying on a purely local business, but the instances given to us were not that kind of thing at all. They were instances of long distance transport. If the hon. Member for Monmouth will make his point clear, I shall be only too glad to give way to him. There appears to be no answer to that, and, therefore, I can only assume that the confusion which his speech produced in my mind must have originated in the substance of the speech itself and not in any lack of understanding on my part.
  There is one other point on which I want to touch. A casual reference was made to some unjust tax or something of that sort—I have forgotten the exact language used—on road vehicles and its effect on road haulage. I imagine that everyone in the Committee recognises that a duty on petrol and commercial vehicles is a serious matter. It has to be recognised, of course, that the money

  1507
  raised in that way is being applied for a purpose which commands the full sympathy of hon. Members on this side, and I should have thought also the sympathy of hon. Members opposite. It is to reduce the incidence of Income Tax on its lower level, and, for that purpose, I feel sure that all of us would be prepared to give a great deal. I only want to say this.
  Looking at the figures, I am struck by two things. The first is that there has been a very rapid increase in the number of road vehicles on the roads of this country, and that is a matter which requires to be taken seriously, not only as regards such questions as public safety and convenience in our large cities, but also on the question of whether, when we are having to economise in many directions, we should allow this very large expansion in one particular direction. I have no doubt that the view of some hon. Members opposite who attribute it to the increase in " C " licences is perfectly right.
  I think the question of " C" licences needs careful consideration for this reason. As long as it is open to anyone to operate a " C " licence, there must be the risk that the " C " licensees will, within the limits where they are available, cream the traffic which might otherwise be gathered. I cannot believe that creaming of that sort is in the interests of the most efficient operation of the transport system, apart from the question whether the rest of the transport system were in public or in private hands.
  The same thing happened, I believe, in Northern Ireland, where again it was found that the " C " licensees, or the people in Northern Ireland who were in the corresponding position, were using the facility thus provided beyond the requirements of the best system of transport and were doing it half deliberately and half unreasonably to such an extent that, instead of transport being cheap and efficient, it was to that extent made expensive and less efficient. I am not saying that that has happened fully here; I only say that the figures look as if there is some considerable danger that way, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister, when replying, will let us have his views on the question of the considerable increase in these commercial vehicles and the apparent increase of " C " licences.
  1508
  I want, with respect to the Committee, to say to every hon. Member here that it is really impossible that the Opposition, whether it is the present Opposition or any other Opposition which there may be in future, should continually take the attitude that a public service is wrong and that the individual, whoever he may be —the free road haulier in this instance—is always right. I do not believe that the Government of the country and the best interests of the public can really be helped by tactics of that sort.
  I am aware that road haulage is the only one of the nationalised industries which, at the General Election, the Tory Party showed some signs of wanting to put back into private ownership. I am bound to say that I took a very poor view of what they appeared to propose, since, apparently, it was intended that it should be put back into the ownership of the former owners, and, so far as I can see, there was no provision for the reality of free enterprise by allowing new blood in the industry. That is a matter that falls to be considered, and I cannot claim to be an authority on the policy of the Opposition.
  Surely, however, it does not stand to good sense that, while we leave the railways in public ownership, we should be willing to take back, and only willing to take back, road haulage. The history of this long dispute between road and rail shows that, at any rate, some form of co-ordination and integration between the two is now imperative in the public interest, and that to put one back into private ownership while leaving the other in public ownership cannot be a step forward and cannot be in the best interests of the country.
  8.19 p.m.
  Mr. Martin Smith: I am not going to waste the time of the Committee by indulging in a long argument against the nationalisation of road haulage. I do not agree with it at all. The hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) talked about the public service, but there is a great difference between the public service and a service to the public, and I think he has forgotten that difference. What we want to see is the public getting a proper service. But the point which I wanted to discuss tonight is not the costs which are inherent

  1509
  in the nationalisation of road haulage, but the injustices which have been done to road hauliers.
  I wish to mention one case which is typical of many in my own division and in every other division in the country. I choose it because it happens to be a case which has had a most recent development. It concerns a Mr. Scott of Walcott, who took over his step-father's business in 1947. He, like many others, had been away on other service, and was therefore precluded from having a permit under Section 53 of the Act. However, the Road Haulage Executive agreed that his case was one in which the provisions of the Act operate with severity—I quote their words—and they wished to alleviate any hardship. They promised that an ordinary permit would be granted for one month—from 1st February until 28th February.
  When that expired, they issued him with another permit carrying certain conditions. He was allowed to carry one ton of agricultural produce per annum outside the 25-mile limit. What was the point of that? Such a permit was useless to him, especially as he was giving a service to the public—to the local public, I agree—by taking their goods to market in the Midlands and Yorkshire. I do not know why such a condition was made except perhaps to give him a breathing space in which to decide whether he should apply to the Road Haulage Executive to serve him with notice of acquisition, and then look for another job, or carry on in the 25-mile limit. As I say, it was his step-father's business which had been built up from practically nothing. This man decided to carry on and to try to " make a go " of the business within the 25-mile limit. It will be very hard for him to make a livelihood.
  That is bad enough, but, even worse, his licence has expired, and he has applied to the local licensing authorities for another. One would not think that mattered, but who should object to the granting of another licence but the Road Haulage Executive! I ask the right hon. Gentleman to find out why that should happen. If this man wishes to carry on, let him have a licence. If he is going to be of service to the public, they will use him; if not, he will find that his lorry is not being used and will have to get another job. But why should the Road
  1510
  Haulage Executive oppose this extra licence? Do they want to push him out of business altogether? Or is it because I and many others have tried to help him? Is it a question of victimisation? I do not know.
  Before taking up the case I asked whether it was worth bringing it to the notice of the right hon. Gentleman. I was told that it was absolutely useless to do that as he had no power to interfere. Even if he has no power to interfere, I should like the right hon. Gentleman to do something to help such people and to see that they are not pushed out of business when they are giving a useful service to the public. This is only one of many similar cases. Why not let these people carry on? Why oppose their licences? The public do not use these men because they like their faces; they use them because it is worth their while to do so. We are asking for no more than justice. If hon. Members opposite do not know of similar cases in their own constituencies, then they are not doing their job.
  Mr. Mitchison: That has been said several times. I sit for a constituency which covers a considerable country area and which is dependent on vehicular transport to a considerable extent.
  Sir W. Darling: It is a great railway centre.
  Mr. Mitchison: It also includes a great deal of countryside, and I can only assure the hon. Gentleman that, as it happens, I have not received a single complaint of the kind he mentioned.
  Major Sir David Maxwell Fyfe: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman expect, after the line he took, opposing every possible concession to hauliers throughout the whole of the passage of the Transport Bill in this House, that they would think of writing to him?
  Mr. Mitchison: If I may reply to the personal point, I hope—
  The Deputy-Chairman (Colonel Sir Charles MacAndrew): Order.
  Mr. Martin Smith: All I can assume is that people in the hon. and learned Gentleman's division do not think it worth while writing to him. [Interruption.] This is my second speech, and I can be interrupted; indeed,

  1511
  I am very pleased to be interrupted. [An HON. MEMBER: " Do not get excited."] I am not excited. The only time I get excited is when I see in justice being done to people in this country, and all I wish to do is to ask the Minister to see that justice is done.
  8.28 p.m.
  Mr. Poole: I always say that I am not going to take part in a transport debate in this Chamber, because on transport matters I certainly do not hold the views of hon. Members opposite, and nor do I know of any hon. Member on this side of the Committee who holds the same view as I do on this question. But, transport being in my blood, I suppose I cannot keep out of these Debates. I find myself following this Debate, so far, with mixed feelings. Before I forget, I wish to take up the point of the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. M. Smith) who said, regarding a particular man, " If he wants a licence, let him have it. I invite him to tell us—or, if he will not, I invite the right hon. and learned Gentleman—
  Mr. M. Smith: It is up to the local authority to grant that licence.
  Mr. Poole: —who is replying for the Opposition to say whether it is his party's policy in regard to transport, that everyone who applies for a licence should have a licence granted to him. I hope he will deal with that point, because it never has been the policy of the party opposite to grant licences to everyone who wanted them. I want to know whether the back benches and the Front Bench opposite are of one mind on this question of licences.
  I regard the complete integration of transport in this country as the only sane and intelligent policy to adopt. It is a case I have argued with my own colleagues, and some day I hope to carry the Minister with me. I can understand the policy which the hon. Gentleman has just put forward of allowing everybody who wants to have a go, to have a go.
  Mr. Fernyhough: " Set, the people free."
  Mr. Poole: As my hon. Friend says, that is setting the people free. They do not understand this policy of the Conservative Party of allowing a certain
  1512
  number of people to come into transport and then shutting the door and opposing every other application which goes to the licensing commissioners—a policy made possible by Conservative legislation and carried through in extenso, in all the years between the wars.
  I am glad to see in the Chamber the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson), who in a recent Adjournment Debate on smoking in restaurant cars, said that he was probably the only hon. Member who had had the opportunity of prosecuting people for smoking in non-smoking compartments. I am one of those—I do not suppose I am the only one in this Committee—who had the job of going to licensing commissioners on behalf of the privately-owned railway companies to oppose applications of road hauliers for road licences. It is no use the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) weeping crocodile tears about the poor ex-Service men who have now lost their licences, because after the 1914-18 war thousands of ex-Service men who bought ex-Army vehicles and tried to set themselves up in the road haulage business were smashed by his road haulage friends.
  The Opposition really ought to make up their minds whether they believe in a coordinated transport system or whether they do not. If they believe in a co-ordinated transport system, they had better do a little bit of hard thinking and decide where they are going to get it from; they had better decide exactly what they are going to do with all these people who want licences, whether they be " A ", " B " or " C " licences. But if we are an intelligent community with any regard to the economic user of transport in this country the present position, even under the Transport Act, is intolerable.
  There was some challenge made when my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) criticised the present position regarding " A " and " B " licences. Let me put these figures before the Committee, not in order to make a party point but because I am anxious for the successful operation of an economic transport system. In 1947, the number of goods vehicles operating in this country was 555,000. By November, 1949, that figure had risen to 783,000, yet there was very little increase in the traffic operating. In a period of two years there has therefore been an increase of

  1513
  228,000 goods vehicles on the roads competing for the available traffic.
  I suggest that that must result in an entirely uneconomic user of the available transport. How many of those 783,000 vehicles are in the hands of the British Transport Commission to provide the very serious competition we have heard about tonight from the hon. Member for Monmouth? Thirty-six thousand: 4 per cent. of the total goods vehicles today are in the hands of the British Transport Commission, yet they are the great menace to the 96 per cent. who remain outside its operations.
  I suggest that those figures show the very dangerous path along which we are travelling. It is a path which must result in fantastic and colossal expenditure on road development during the next few years. It must do that. It will mean that good agricultural land, in which hon. Members opposite claim to be interested, will have to go, to make mammoth roads for these vehicles if they are to continue in operation. Who in this Committee would suggest that in 1949 there was need for 361,000 more road vehicles than were operating in the peak period of the war? I submit that we are getting into a position where the transport situation is rapidly becoming ridiculous.
  What has happened in connection with A " and " B " licences? Of necessity there must be a curtailment because the Transport Commission has been operating and has taken over certain undertakings. In 1938, there were 148,000 " A " contract and " B " licensed vehicles. This bears out to some extent the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne. By 1947, the number of those " A " contract and " B " licensed vehicles had risen to 162,000. Today we are asked to assume that so many of them have been wiped out that they are almost non-existent, yet we find that in 1949 there were still 129,000 of them in operation—a decrease of only 13 per cent. in spite of all this viciousness on the part of the Transport Commission.
  When we turn to the " C " licences we see the great weakness in the Transport Act because, as I have said so many times in this Committee, the hope of having a co-ordinated and integrated service was given away under the " C "
  1514
  licence system. What has happened? We have suffered a loss, as I have said, of 33,000 in " A," contract " A " and " B " licensed vehicles; but " C " licences to compensate for that have increased by no fewer than 195,000 in the same period. In 1938, there were 365,000 " C " licensed vehicles in this country, and at the time of nationalisation 487,000. In either of those periods there was more traffic than there is today. Yet today we are cluttering the road with 672,000 " C " licensed vehicles.
  I should like the Opposition to tell us where they stand with regard to these " C " licences. Is every man who wants a licence to have a licence, as suggested from the back benches, because if so we are completely crazy. It is no new thing in this House to plead for coordination of transport. I have heard it done by Members of the Opposition in the years before the war. Many of those statements by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) are on record, but I think I ought to resist quoting him tonight because his quotations are so damaging to the line taken by other speakers on those benches that I do not wish to humiliate them by quoting their leader against them. They are, however, on record for the coordination of transport.
  Tonight, hon. Members opposite ought to say whether they want co-ordination of transport or not. In 1926, the right hon. Member for Woodford—I said that I would not quote him but I will quote him in another connection when he was not keeping company quite as bad as that which he keeps at the present time—was filled with concern over the position then arising. Regarding the building up of the road transport industry in this country, he said then that it was impossible to watch this development which was taking place both with regard to freight and passengers without considering it in its reaction on the railways. The right hon. Member for Woodford was concerned with integrating transport 25 years ago as between road and rail, and it is a great pity that he cannot carry his own party with him at the present time.
  I want to make one point about the operation of road transport so far as the British Transport Commission are concerned. The point was made on the other side without figures as affecting the private

  1515
  operators. What is happening in this country as a result of the increase in the number of road transport vehicles is that the percentage of road miles run today is fantastically wasteful, and good dollars are being poured out for petrol for vehicles which are carrying nothing up and down the country. That is the trend of modern transport today.
  Let us take the British Transport Commission road haulage executive figures for February of this year—the latest date available. The milage which their vehicles ran loaded was 41 million miles in the four-weekly period. The empty mileage was 10 million. For every four miles which they carried a load they ran one mile empty. I suggest a ratio of one in four empty miles is absolutely fatal to the economy of any transport undertaking. If we perpetuate " C " licences we are going to run empty vehicles on a scale which, I suggest, the economy of this country cannot afford. Therefore, we must have courage in tackling this position
  I conclude by saying that I am not happy about the way the small road operators are being treated at the present time. I confess that; but I think that we must now look at the position in the light of the legislation which this House has passed—legislation to which I did not subscribe. I do not think we can justify the position that prevails to day in very many places. I am to some extent with Members opposite here. I cannot think it is right or desirable, or that the House ever intended it, that men should neither be taken over nor left with enough traffic to earn a living. We must do one of two things. Either we must take them over and compensate them, or leave them with their vehicles and traffic. To leave them neither taken over nor with traffic with which to earn their living is an impossible position.
  I ask the Minister and the Transport Commission, as quickly as possible to resolve this problem. The House knows the way that I would resolve it. I apologise for using a phrase I have used before, but it is the " overriding national interest " which demands an integrated and co-ordinated transport system. We cannot have that by allowing everyone who wants a licence to have one, or by
  1516
  allowing the number of vehicles that operate on the roads to grow as it has been growing in the last few years.
  8.41 p.m.
  Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton: I was very interested to hear what the hon. Member for Perry Barr (Mr. Poole) said about co-ordination. There is a wealth of difference between co-ordination and monopolistic control. It is a very good thing to have a policeman directing traffic down a street, but we sometimes have the feeling that Members opposite would like to see him driving the cars. As I have said, there is a wealth of difference between co-ordination and exerting a monopolistic control, driving the small man out of business. We have nothing against public services as such. What is important is that the public services should not lose us too much money and should be run efficiently.
  I want to say a word about transport as it affects us in the north of Scotland. Transport is our life and breath in that part of the world. We depend upon transport, which is a great deal more important there than it is in other parts of the country, although we know it is important enough there. Without adequate transport, the Highlands cannot develop; indeed, we cannot even live. I am very glad to see that the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is present, because transport should be the concern of anyone who has anything to do with the handling of Scottish affairs.
  I wish to quote one or two examples of how the Transport Act has hit the north of Scotland. The first is the case of a haulier at Newtonmore who built up over a number of years a very good business that operated over a radius of 100 miles. He served the district very well; he was efficient, cheap and he knew the local conditions. Now, under the new regulations, his " B " licences have been restricted to two permits instead of four, and his distance to 25 miles. I do not know whether many Members opposite know the district of Newtonmore, but 25 miles in that part of the world will take one past a certain number of lochs, a few mountains and across some moors, but not very near to any big centre of population. In other words, 25 miles for a haulier in Newtonmore is not much use.

  1517
  What will happen to this man? His years of business will be wasted and he will have to go out of business. The hon. Member for Perry Bar talked about adequate and fair compensation. I do not know how fair compensation can be assessed when a great monopoly turns a man out of his lifework. What will happen in Newtonmore will be that the Road Haulage Executive will establish a depot and with complete freedom will operate in any direction. All the road operators in the district will simply be swallowed up by the monster.
  The Minister of Transport, in the Debate the other evening on road transport, said that for the Highlands there had been 93 original applications, 80 of which had been granted and the other 13 refused. As my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) said earlier, it is no use saying that unless we know the details of what permits were actually granted. In that same speech the right hon. Gentleman referred to the operations of the British Transport Commission and especially to Messrs. Pick-ford's, who have now been taken over by the Transport Commission. He said:
  "In Messrs. Pickford's the British Transport Commission have an organisation for removals, which perhaps has more experience of removal of furniture than any other firm in the country. I commend their enterprise in extending that organisation and giving the Scottish people the opportunity of availing themselves of a magnificent and very efficient removal organisation."—(OFFICIAL REPORT. 27th April, 1950; Vol. 474, c. 1281-21
  I should like to tell the House of one incident that happened when Pickford's succeeded in carrying through a certain deal in Inverness. There was a local firm, which had been furniture removers for many years in Inverness. They applied in November of last year to extend their removal business beyond a radius of 50 miles. There were many applications for them to carry outside that distance, and the only objectors were the Railway Executive. The case was heard on 16th March, 1950. The application was refused. The inconvenience and delay to customers was testified to at the hearing. One of the reasons given was that Pickford's had arrived from London and could now carry furniture in a pantechnicon. They arrived in January, 1950, and, previous to that they were granted the lease of a shop in competition with other offers in the dis-
  1518
  trict. They got it because they were prepared to offer three times the assessed rent. That is an example of how public money is subsidising competition against local interests.
  I am glad to see the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland in her place, because recently, in answer to a Question, she said to me:
  "The whole Highland area can be given special attention and it has been given it for the past four and a half years. I am certain that that will continue to be done by this Government."--OFFICIAL REPORT. 21st March 1950; Vol. 472. c. 1741]
  The Government have of late given very special attention to the Highlands in the shape of a heavy blow in the solar plexus, followed up by a right blow on the chin, first with 9d. on the petrol and then the 16i increase in rail freight charges. Today I received a resolution sent by the Inverness Chamber of Commerce, which reads as follows:
  "The Inverness Chamber of Commerce views with profound alarm the disastrous effect on Highland economy of the 164 per cent. increase on rail freight couplied with the proposed 10 per cent. increase on road transport rates. The incidence of high transport rates in the Highland area and its geographical position in relation to sources of raw materials, ports, and centres of production, has already had a crippling effect on trade, commerce and industry. The new increased rates will be a severe blow to any plans for Highland development and will inevitably cause unemployment, further de-population, and a cost of living higher than that in other parts of the country.
  The Inverness Chamber of Commerce strongly urges the Government to introduce special transport rates for this selective area which will have the effect of: (1) Affording a measure of relief to trade, commerce and industry necessary in the interests of Highland development; (2) establishing the principle of 'fair shares for all ' by. reducing the increased burden on consumers in this area.'
  I submit that one of the first things we can do is to give special consideration to transport in the Highland areas, and one of the best ways of doing that is to free the small road haulier to operate. We cannot have too many of them at present in the Highlands
  8.50 p.m.
  Mr. Ivor Owen Thomas: Listening to the contributions to this Debate which have come from the other side of the Committee has confirmed my conviction, previously fairly firmly held, that the Tory Party agree to changes only

  1519
  when they have become inevitable. It is interesting to remind the Committee that in the Coalition Government of 1921, in which the Conservative Party were in a majority, they were responsible for the passing of the first Transport Act in this country which effected any great measure of co-ordination of the transport services of the people. They did not go far enough at that time for the simple reason that, although they were doing something which had become inevitable,they did not really believe in what they were doing; and therefore they did it half-heartedly and in a very unsatisfactory manner. However, the Railways Act, 1921, passed by a predominantly Conservative Government, was the confession of the total bankruptcy of British transport which had been reached up to that time.
  Incidentally, there is one other thought that has passed through my mind while listening to the contributions of hon. Gentlemen opposite, particularly that of the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft), who opened this Debate, and it is that one of the shining lights of the Conservative Party 100 years ago was that great railway pioneer the late George Hudson, at one time the Member for the City of York, who ended up his dazzling career as a great railway pioneer by scuttling to the Continent because his creditors were after him.
  Anyway, when we get down to this question of the co-ordination of transport, we find it is inevitable that there will be a continuation of the struggle that has gone on during all the years that have passed since we first had a modern transport problem in this country—the struggle between those who fight against every possible improvement in the way of coordination and those who want the best, most efficient and most economic transport system for the service of the people. Therefore, this Debate, in my opinion—I have not time enough to develop the whole of my argument as I would have wished—merely underlines the fact that hon. Gentlemen on the opposite benches are still fighting the rearguard action of a bankrupt system of transport in this country. What they want is not an efficient system for the benefit of the people of the country but a transport setup which still allows people to come into the industry and make a profit at the
  1520
  expense of the general interests of the community.
  Mr. Reader Harris: Nonsense.
  Mr. Thomas: Nonsense? In fact, that statement has been proved by the action of our political opponents themselves, because in the days of the Labour Government of 1929,.a Bill was introduced by my right hon. Friend who is now the Lord President of the Council for the public ownership of the London passenger transport industry. That Bill did not reach the Statute Book, but a subsequent Tory Government could not leave the matter as it was because London passenger transport had reached such a state of chaos and unbridled private competition that even that Tory Government had to do something about it. It passed a somewhat more modest Bill which became the London Passenger Transport Act, 1933.
  Do our political opponents believe in free competition in transport as a principle? If they do believe in free competition as a principle in all forms of transport and announce it as their policy, how do they explain the passing by themselves in 1933 of the London Passenger Transport Act which transformed the privately-owned transport system of London into the first public passenger transport board in this country?
  The Opposition's protest sounds hollow and insincere. The Government have taken a further great and necessary step towards the co-ordination of the country's transport services, and it is now too late to go back to the days of the jungle when transport was anybody's business and nobody's business, and when the public were always the sufferers. There is absolutely no basis for the false protests made here this afternoon. I am confident that when the people realise that transport is a service which must necessarily be co-ordinated and that we cannot get the best transport service in a field of unbridled competition, they will support the principles involved in all the Measures relating to transport which have been passed by the Government.
  8.59 p.m.
  Major Sir David Maxwell Fyfe: In spite of the gallant attempts, not least by the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. I. 0. Thomas), to

  1521
  draw red herrings across the perfectly clear line of our discussion, we have established our purpose, which was to call attention to the inequitable, unfair and unjust administration of the Transport Act in relation to road hauliers who are still in the free sector of the industry. I have not heard any attempt by hon. Members Opposite to deny that the examples which we have given are examples of unfairness and lack of equity.
  The hon. Member for Perry Barr (Mr. C. Poole)tried to get me to express once again what I should do with regard to road transport. I cannot think how often I have expressed it in this House, but tonight we are not dealing with legislation which we might pass; we are dealing with the administration of legislation which has been passed and with the statutory provisions with regard to permits, which are the forefront of our attack.
  I am not sure whether hon. Members opposite have appreciated the position under the Act—namely, that there is this sphere of road transport not nationalised and that there are these two forms of permit—one an original permit which, when it is granted, carries with it rights to demand acquisition and compensation and the other an ordinary permit which brings none of these things with it. What we say, broadly, is that original permits have been refused whenever that is possible or have been granted with serious limitations in cases where a refusal would be too bad; and that ordinary permits, again, have been given with conditions which make them quite useless for those who have asked for permits at the present time.
  The point we make—and I should have thought that the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison) might at any rate have appreciated this—is that if we lay down in our Statutes that applicants have to go to their trade competitors to get these statutory privileges, then that lays a most heavy and severe responsibility upon the trade competitor to act fairly and in every way equitably in considering these matters. Surely that is a fundamental principle from which one cannot depart.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) made this point, which again is unchallenged, that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of
  1522
  Supply, then Parliamentary Secretary, said that if there were found to be a policy carried out by the Commission which almost exactly describes the policy of which we are complaining tonight, then it would be the undoubted duty of the Minister to give a general direction to put that policy right. That is what we are asking for, and we have had from the other side of the Committee not one word of sympathy for those people who are put in that position. We are, therefore. entitled not to expect that sympathy.
  Let me see why there has been injustice. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth quoted—and again it is unchallenged, unexplained, undiluted—a statement made by the Chairman of the British Transport Commission. It was clearly understood, on the indication of the chairman of the British Transport Commission and the chairman of the Road Haulage Executive, that original permits would be granted for the first 12 months broadly as applied for and on terms which would enable the continuance of traffic being carried at the time. This only applied to those who were in the position before November, 1946, when the Transport Act was introduced into this House. The other point which was made perfectly clear was that original permits would not be refused solely because the Road Haulage Executive wished to take over the traffic involved or to acquire the firm involved.
  These were the principles that were stated, and there were other matters that were made clear—for example, that road hauliers, if they objected to the decision, were to have the right to put forward reasons for consideration. When that has been done, broadly the answer on all divisional levels has been that it was useless for them to ask for reconsideration because the divisional manager of the Road Haulage Executive had decided to acquire the firm and was certain that R.H.E. units could do the work. That is our point. We say that these were the lines that were suggested and that they have not been carried out.
  I have attempted to analyse the principles of nonsense on which I find the various cases of which I have seen so many dozen based. They are mainly negative, but one can extract the principles of nonsense and I want to give them quite briefly to the Committee. The first

  1523
  principle is that one must disregard entirely the needs. not only of the haulier. but of the producer for whom he carries. That is well shown by one example which I will give of a firm who have specialised in the carriage of ships' stores and were carrying to all parts of the country since 1946.
  Since then they concentrated on a run to Newcastle and the North with ships' stores and brought all varieties of goods in return. The permit gave them the right to carry ships' stores in the Western and Midland divisions. Sir Charles, your greater knowledge may have given you some experience of the shipping in the Midlands but, apart from a few canal barges, I have not seen it myself. That is the sort of way in which it is done. These people are cut out of the old line.
  Mr. Poole rose—
  Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I said " Midlands " and expressly excepted " Western," and I put the point again. Here we have people who were carrying to Newcastle and the ports on the North-East coast, and the permit is not taken away—no, they are given the permit to carry from South Wales to the Midlands. That is one absurdity.
  Let me give another. Even the hon. Member for Perry Barr will find it difficult to get round this one. The regular work of a firm before and since 1946 was carrying coal from South Wales to Cheshire, Shropshire and the Midlands, and bringing firebricks on return. The permit was granted, but it was granted so that they could carry these goods in South Wales only. Hon. Members have told us the position of coal in South Wales and, of course, no firebricks are produced in South Wales. The firm are given a permit, therefore, to carry coal in South Wales, where coal is almost everywhere, and to carry back firebricks which are not made. I say that that is the quintessence of nonsense.
  Mr. Poole: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman allow me? He challenged me on this.
  Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: No, I did not.
  Mr. Poole: The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that I should find great difficulty in getting round it. Does he
  1524
  suggest that it is economic to carry coal by road from South Wales to Cheshire?
  Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: If firebricks are being carried back, yes. The answer was that it was done and served a need for years. The question went before an impartial tribunal, who decided that it was necessary. If there was anything in the point which the hon. Member has made, the Traffic Commissioners and the licensing authority would have decided otherwise. Of course, hon. Gentlemen opposite do not like an impartial tribunal. They want to be the masters themselves.
  Mr. I. O. Thomas rose—
  Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: I have only a limited time. The next principle in this vicious system is to operate just as clearly even if it is only a mile or two over the 25 miles. One of the best examples I have is that of hauliers who carried all sorts of goods within a 30-mile radius. They were refused the original permit and their main work was the haulage of fertilisers, for which it was necessary to go just over 25, but within 30 miles. Although that is their established work, which they have done for many years—and this was pointed out over and over again—they were refused even that small indulgence. That again is a silly way of trying to run a new system.
  The third principle is that any technicality is pounced on and used in order to defeat the road haulier. What I have in mind is this sort of thing; a man puts in his ultimate points—in this case it was from a point in South Wales to Shrewsbury—and he is granted permission strictly to the two points mentioned. When he makes representations that he meant a reasonable area around those points and that it was a mistake to put it in that bald way, his representation that it is a mistake is disregarded.
  Then, as my hon. Friend said, someone asks for 160 tons per month of goods to be carried to Stourbridge and South Worcester. That is refused because the form gave insufficient information. He offers further information and is not even given a chance to put further information forward. That is not the right way to run anything. Hon. Members have asked if we are never going to give any chance to public enterprise. I would not

  1525
  give a chance to any enterprise which ran on a basis of injustice like that. Of course a faithful statement of goods produces a limitation. There are the most absurd limitations and if one puts down what one carried last year and one is fortunate one is tied to that, although it may be a question of carrying potatoes to Newport instead of to Cardiff, or something of that kind.
  The next principle I have extracted is that every possible point is made against the haulier. There were innumerable cases in which in 1946 a 60-mile limit obtained. Since then there has been a great enlargement of production, in some cases a vital enlargement and one meeting the appeals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to increase export trade and the like. There the haulier, because in 1946 there was that limitation, is placed back on the limitation. With all the increased work of the years since then which he has been doing and for which he has been given additional licences by the licensing authority—and he can only get these under two principles, not only that he had a customer but that the existing traffic cannot do it as well as he can—although he has extra vehicles, he is put back to the position of 1946. Again, that is absurd. It has no relation to the growing industrial effort of the country in order to meet our requirements today.
  There are many other cases in regard to which I find something distasteful. I am sure that hon. Members, whose views on many matters I know so well, and which I have heard them expressed, would also find it distasteful, too, if they were free to give voice. I refer to cases when someone applies for a permit and honestly and properly gives a list of his customers in his application. Of course he is refused, but at the same time the Road Haulage Executive are round soliciting his customers. I do not like that, and I am sure that hon. Members opposite, in their heart of hearts, do not like it either.
  We have heard the answer about the numbers of permits but I do not intend to deal with the figures for the reason which I and my hon. Friend have indicated, and which is clear to everyone in the House—that unless one knows the period of a permit and the limitations that have been imposed, the fact that a permit is granted may mean nothing at
  1526
  all. We have looked in vain for the real answer. which would be impossible to give because m every case, even when a permit has been granted, there has been this incision into the rights of the haulier today.
  If one tries to sum up this matter, I am inclined to agree with my hon. Friend that one is almost surprised at the distorted ingenuity which has been used in order to make these applications fail. If we leave that aspect on one side, if we leave aside these technical points which have been taken, and if we leave aside the matter which I mentioned just now, distasteful as it is, about the soliciting of customers, we still come back to our main complaint. That is that there is a disregard not only of the haulier's position but of the position of those who employ him and depend upon him.
  As I understood the Chairman's statement and have understood the other statements that have been made, the primary regard that was to be had was to be to the needs of the producer and the customer, with due regard to the position of the haulier at the same time. But that has been departed from, and we ask ourselves what is ignored. Clearly, there is ignored the great problem which we have seen in this country of being a high-cost community in a more and more competitive world. Every speech which has been made by hon. Gentlemen opposite has shown a complete disregard of the problem of lower transport costs. They will not face up to the point that unless people are able to get what they consider to be more efficient and cheaper transport the result will be to add to the costs of our production and affect our chance of competition in the world. All this is disregarded.
  What do they regard? First, they want to build up their own road services to be worked in conjunction with the nationalised railways, and any efficient competitor is an embarrassment to them. Therefore, everything is being done to try to force this section of the industry into a condition of inefficiency which is no fault of theirs, but is imposed upon them by this unfairness, and by this going back on the principles enunciated as being necessary to bring this legislation into effect.
  In that position we must consider the matter with the seriousness that it de

  1527
  serves. We shall not allow this section of the industry to be trampled on in this way if we can do anything to prevent it. I have given the heads and my hon. Friends have given examples from their constituencies of injustice which, as I say, has not been seriously defended. It could be dealt with by general direction. We have had no suggestion that it is to be dealt with or that any attempt is being made to improve the position.
  Therefore, to show our distaste at the methods and our disgust at the treatment that these road hauliers have received, I beg to move, " That Subhead A, I (Salaries, etc.) be reduced by £1,000."
  9.22 p.m.
  The Minister of Transport (Mr. Barnes): The right hon. and learned Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe) commenced by stating that we were not discussing legislation, but no one could have listened to this Debate without at once appreciating that it has been nothing more or less than a side-door attack by hon. Members opposite on the legislation embodied in the Transport Act. Every speech and every case quoted was really a request that the British Transport Commission and the Road Haulage Executive should have acted as if the Act of Parliament had not been passed. An examination of the powers and obligations which Parliament has imposed upon the British Transport Commission would provide a complete reply to all the issues which have been raised tonight. To suggest that the road haulage industry in this country should have been carried on, or was entitled to be carried on, without any disturbance at all after the passage of the Act, does not represent a fair picture of the situation.
  The first thing I wish to do—because the right hon. and learned Member made certain quotations—is to quote from the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply, who was formerly Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, in order to show clearly that the issue we have been discussing was fairly and fully and extensively debated both on the Committee stage and on the Report stage of the Bill, and that there was no attempt at evasion of the consequences that must necessarily follow the giving of these powers to the British Transport Commission. We were discus-
  1528
  sing issues raised on that occasion by the right hon. and learned Member and the hon. Member for Renfrew, West (Mr. Maclay), who was then the hon. Member for Montrose Burghs. We were discussing the question of permits. The then Parliamentary Secretary said:
  " I think I should reply to the further points made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for West Derby (Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe), and also to those made by the hon. Member for Montrose Burghs (Mr. Maclay). I do not know whether he thought that when the Commission gave a permit to a haulage undertaking to go more than 25 miles, that was likely to be a permanent permit. Of course, it is meant to be nothing of the sort. Normally, it will last for the same period as the licence. It is an un doubted fact that, in the early days "—
  I want hon. and right hon. Members to note this, to make it clear that there was no attempt to evade the issue—
  " when the organisation is being built up and becoming efficient, they will allow a very large number of these licences over 25 miles. Later on they may want to withdraw some of these permits. That is a perfectly fair point. When they do, the undertaking will get the proper and full compensation laid down in the terms of the Bill. I cannot say that the hon. Gentleman is wrong when he says there are likely to be large numbers of permits to start with, and fewer later on. I think that is inevitable. We must face that."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee B, 19th March, 1947; c. 2067.]
  That proves conclusively that it was generally understood that the issue we are debating tonight would be a consequence of the passing of the Transport Act.
  For the purpose of clarification, I should like to state exactly what has transpired since the Road Haulage Executive took over this function. Clearly, under Part III of the Transport Act, it was laid down that they had to take over those firms the majority of whose work had been long-distance transport. There was no alternative. Although the Commission have acquired a very considerable proportion of those long-distance firms by voluntary agreement, nevertheless it was implicit in the Act that they should eventually take over the whole of those undertakings by the process of compulsory acquisition. That process is now practically complete.
  It was also recognised that there would be a considerable number of undertakings which would not come under the formula and be compulsorily acquired, but which had a considerable proportion of work that reached beyond the 25-mile radius.

  1529
  The provision made by Parliament in the Transport Act was that those individuals could apply for an original permit—and they represent a special category of permit holders—for that part of their business which went beyond the 25-mile radius. If the Transport Commission, functioning through the Road Haulage Executive, imposed any conditions, as it was foreseen that they would, which interrupted their business in any substantial way, their alternative was either to require the Commission to take over the whole of the business, in which case they would receive compensation terms similar to those organisations taken over in the first instance, or, alternatively, they could require the Commission to take over the relevant part of their business which had been seriously interfered with by any limitation of the permit.
  Therefore, so far as these firms were concerned—and they are easily the majority of the undertakings applying for permits—they have the alternative of requiring the Commission compulsorily to acquire the whole of their business on the compensation terms laid down, or part of their business if they did not wish the whole of it to be acquired. Apart from that event, the other concerns not covered by that arrangement are dealt with by ordinary and job permits, with which I will deal later on.
  Let us look at the facts of the situation, because we all know that it is quite easy for hon. Members to raise individual cases and quote them in a general way without anyone being able to ascertain the facts on the spot. When we deal with the whole of the situation, as I am going to deal with it now, it will be demonstrated quite clearly that, in my view, a vast number of businesses of this kind have been fairly treated, so that individual cases should be considered on their merits. The original permits represent the vast majority of undertakings affected by the -administration of the Road Haulage Executive, and they represent hauliers who were engaged in business on or before 28th November, 1946. Incidentally, that disposes entirely of the case raised by the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. P. Thorneycroft) when he wanted to introduce the ex-Service men into this Debate.
  Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: My hon. Friend did not, because the cases that we had—my hon. Friend had some, I have some
  1530
  and the Minister himself must have had them in the past—are cases of people who got out of the Army in 1946 and restarted their businesses. In one case which my hon. Friend quoted, the date was as late as October, and there were other cases in June. These are the cases of men who had only small businesses in 1946, who have seen them grow and who have been refused permits.
  Mr. Barnes: Since 1946?
  Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe: Yes, they were in business before 1946.
  Mr Barnes: If they were in business before 1946, I think they would be covered by the special arrangements made by the road haulage Executive for hardship cases, because I have in front of me a statement that absence in His Majesty's Forces is one of the circumstances that had to be taken into consideration. [Interruption.] I beg to differ, and it is no use hon. Members making allegations and statements of this kind, because they require to be examined in detail to prove whether they are correct or not. [Interruption.] I intend to state my case here tonight. I have listened to all the Debate without a single interruption, and hon. Members have made all kinds of allegations, many of them, I think, grossly unfair, and I do not think they are entitled to get away with that, if we are to maintain the standard of public life in this country.
  In the case of a man who served in His Majesty's Forces and had his business interrupted, if he was entitled to an original permit, the Road Haulage Executive made special arrangements, as they did in cases where, as the result of death, the ownership had changed to another member of the family. When this matter first arose, there was one point raised on the Floor of the House; it was suggested that the case of a change in ownership from one member of a family to another was not covered, and we frankly, thought that such cases were covered in the terms and provisions of the Transport Act. Nevertheless, the Road Haulage Executive have made special arrangements, and many of these have been discussed with the representatives of the Road Hauliers' Association. In many cases, a special arrangement, with a special set of conditions, was made

  1531
  and a permit granted to these individuals, carrying the same rights as the original permit.
  Mr. P. Thorneycroft Mr. P. Thorneycroft indicated dissent.
  Mr. Barnes: It is no use the hon. Member for Monmouth shaking his head. I know for a fact that that is so. If there is any individual case which has slipped through and which does not conform to these conditions, then it is entitled to be dealt with under those provisions. It is no use making general allegations when the majority of them are quite unjustified.
  Let me give the figures, because I am confident that when they are stated the statements of hon. Members opposite cease to be of any value. The number of applications for original permits—that is, those who were in before 2nd August, 1949—total 17,246. I remember the accusations and wild statements made here a little while ago that no one knew that they had to apply for these original permits. I find that they did know, as obviously was the case in view of the campaign which has been steadily carried on in regard to this matter. As I say, 17,246 original applications for permits were lodged. The following is the way in which they have been treated: 10,974 have been granted, and 2,214 have been refused; 4,025 were invalid applications or were put in unnecessarily and there is a balance of 33 pending decision. The number of undertakings which have applied to be taken over under Section 54 of the Act is 167.
  Mr. David Renton: Could the right hon. Gentleman say how many were granted entirely as applied for, and how many subjected to restriction?
  Mr. Barnes: That interruption supports my first statement, that what hon. Members opposite are demanding here tonight is that the Transport Act should not be applied, and that there should be no interference whatsoever with regard to existing conditions. [HON. MEMBERS: " Answer."] I may tell hon. Members that it is no use shouting at me; they will not extract from me by shouting across the Chamber any reply which is not based on fact. We went through all this in the Committee stage
  1532
  of the Bill, and it was never, suggested and never intended that after the passing of the Act every road haulier who came under the provisions of the Act should carry on as if nothing had happened. What hon. Members want cannot be met in that way.
  Sir Peter Macdonald rose—
  Mr. Barnes: No; I am prepared to give way at the proper time, but I am not going to have these figures and their presentation interrupted or diverted. The number of undertakings which consider that their business has been seriously injured by the decision, or the form of the permit granted, and which have therefore decided to avail themselves of the facilities of the Act and be compulsorily acquired, either wholly or in part, is 167. It is not the slightest use hon. Members opposite coming to the House of Commons and suggesting that there is widespread hardship under which these individuals would suffer when they have the right to compensation in the form I have already indicated.
  Before leaving the question of the treatment of the industry and the assumption that has been running through this Debate that the British Transport Commission and the Road Haulage Executive comprise a huge octopus crushing out all the small and private hauliers, let hon. Members just digest these facts. These flow from the 1933 Act which a Conservative Government passed. The first restriction on and the first interference with the field of the road haulage industry was introduced by the party opposite in 1933. Then, for the first time, they began to lay down conditions and to restrict the free entry of new persons into this industry. They established the test of need, which is applied by the licensing authorities.
  Nevertheless, in 1949, 85 " A " licences were granted, 2,606 " A ". contract licences, and 1,735 " B " licences, making a total of 4,426 new entrants into this industry. Since the 1933 Act it has always been the practice for the licensing authorities to impose conditions on any permit granted, so it is not the Transport Act that has introduced the principle of attaching conditions to any licence or permit granted. The party opposite must accept full responsibility for introducing

  1533
  into our road traffic laws the principle that the licensing authorities could impose conditions on the granting of a licence. The Transport Act merely continues that principle into the field of public ownership.
  Mr. P. Thorneycroft: Does the right hon. Gentleman attach no importance whatsoever to the difference between an independent tribunal attaching conditions to a licence and the same sort of conditions being attached by the man's principal competitor?
  Mr. Barnes: In the general way, and in the conditions that prevailed before the Transport Act, yes, but with the passing of the Transport Act, Parliament placed upon the British Transport Commission the right and responsibility to have a monopoly in long-distance road transport. That has been the issue. After all, that is the issue which divides hon. Members opposite from those on this side of the Committee. As the Transport Act imposed that obligation upon the British Transport Commission, no one can complain if they carry it out. But that is not the point I am making at the moment. The point I want to make now is on the monopoly issue.
  In 1949, as my hon. Friend the Member for Perry Barr (Mr. Poole) has stated, there were 672,301 " C " licensed vehicles in this country. In addition—and this is in the field of the road haulage industry in which hon. Members opposite state that the free haulier has not a fair chance —there are 129,460 under " A " licences or " A " contract licences or " B " licences, making a total on the roads of this country of 801,761 private commercial vehicles. Against that, the Road Haulage Executive have 36,312 motor vehicles and the Railway Executive 13,078, a total of 49,390. In other words, for every British Transport Commission commercial lorry on the roads of this country there are 16 commercial vans or lorries owned by private enterprise. I suggest that it is sheer nonsense to talk about a monopoly, unfair competition or the crushing out of the small haulier or small operator.
  I will deal now with the problem of compensation. It is continually suggested that the British Transport Commission, in taking over these undertakings, are not meeting their obligations
  1534
  with regard to compensation. From inquiries that I have made, I find that in almost every case where the full compensation is not paid it is due to the private operator being unable to submit proper and adequate accounts of his business, and in many instances the British Transport Commission, to help him, have brought qualified accountants to the aid of the private operator for the purpose of assisting him in this direction. I suggest that, in view of these facts, it is grossly unfair to suggest that the Commission are withholding payment to many of these undertakings which they are taking over.
  The position on 31st March, 1950, was as follows: 1,672 road haulage undertakings had been transferred to the Commission and provisional ascertainments of compensation had been made in respect of 1,234 of these claims. In well over half of the cases outstanding—I want hon. Members to note this—the claims are still awaiting accounts or other information from the transferors. Nevertheless, the compensation provisionally ascertained in the 1,234 cases I have mentioned was £21,546,000, and in making payment on account the Commission retained 10 per cent., in accordance with the Act, pending final ascertainment of the total amount payable in each case. Thus, there was a net total of £19,391,000 payable up to the end of March.
  I suggest that these figures do not support in any way the accusation that the British Transport Commission or the Road Haulage Executive are holding up this matter. If we reflect on this attack and many other representations that are being made from time to time, it clearly indicates that hon. Members opposite are not prepared to give a public undertaking a fair chance. I ask hon. Members opposite to quote any instance in the history of private enterprise in this country where any organisation has been charged with the responsibility of taking over 2,000 to 3,000 separate undertakings and welding them into a co-ordinated national organisation.
  That is why Members opposite are so zealous and persistent in their attack. They know very well, as they see the British Transport road services spreading throughout the country, that it represents the death knell in a very short space of time to all this propaganda they are

  1535
  able to carry on at the moment. Therefore, when it comes to competition, hon. Members opposite have always stated, particularly tonight, that given the opportunity of free competition they could meet it, whereas I have noticed that they wither and wilt directly pickfords' or anyone else enter the field of competition with them.
  I suggest that as the people of this country see the advantage of this situation they will realise that the British Transport Commission, through its road haulage organisation, are doing a better job in conveying goods by road than has ever been done before. Members opposite know that that is the case. The British Transport Commission have re-
  duced empty running very considerably. Despite what Members opposite have said, the organisation, as it spreads throughout the country is developing the most economical form of road transport we have seen. Hon. Members opposite know that to be the case, which is why they are afraid to face up to the position.
  Question put, " That sub-head A. I be reduced by £1,000."
  The Committee divided: Ayes, 278; Noes, 278.
  The numbers being equal—
  The Chairman: In those circumstances, in order that another opportunity may be given to the Committee to consider the matter, and in accordance with practice, I declare my voice with the Noes.

  Division No. 10

  AYES

  [9.55 p.m.

  Aitken, W. T.

  Crowder, F. P. (Ruislip, N'thwood)

  Holmes, Sir J. Stanley (Harwich)

  Alport, C. J. M

  Crowder, Capt. John F. E. (F'chley)

  Hope, Lord J

  Amery, J. (Preston, N.)

  Cundiff, F. W.

  Hopkinson, H.

  Amory, D. Heathcoat (Tiverton)

  Cuthbert, W. N.

  Hornsby-Smith, Miss P

  Arbuthnot, J. S.

  Darling, Sir W. Y. (Edinburgh, S.)

  Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence

  Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)

  Davidson, Viscountess

  Howard, G. R. (St. Ives)

  Astor, Hon. M.

  Davies, Nigel (Epping)

  Howard, S. G. (Cambridgeshire)

  Baker, P.

  de Chair, S.

  Hudson, Sir A. U. M. (Lewisham, N.)

  Baldock, J M

  De la Bère, R.

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

  Baldwin, A. E

  Deedes, W. F.

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

  Banks, Col. C.

  Digby, S. Wingfield

  Hulbert, Wing-Cdr. N. J.

  Baxter, A. B.

  Dodds-Parker, A. D

  Hurd, A. R.

  Beamish, Maj. T. V. H.

  Donner, P. W.

  Hutchinson, G. (Ilford, N.)

  Bell, R. M. (S. Buckinghamshire)

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord M

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

  Bennett, Sir P. (Edgbaston)

  Drayson, G B.

  Hyde, H. M.

  Bennett, R. F. B. (Gosport)

  Duncan, Capt. J. A. L

  Hylton-Foster, H. B.

  Bennett, W. G. (Woodside)

  Dunglass, Lord

  Jeffreys, General Sir G

  Bevins, J. R. (Liverpool, Toxteth)

  Duthie, W. S

  Jennings, R

  Birch, Nigel

  Eccles, D. M.

  Johnson, H. S. (Kemptown)

  Bishop, F. P.

  Eden, Rt. Hon. A.

  Jones, A. (Hall Green)

  Black, C. W.

  Erroll, F. J.

  Joynson-Hicks, Hon L W

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

  Fisher, N. T. L.

  Kaberry, D.

  Boothby, R.

  Fletcher, W (Bury)

  Keeling, E. H

  Bossom, A. C

  Fort, R.

  Kerr, H. W. (Cambridge)

  Bower, N.

  Foster, J. G.

  Kingsmill, Lt.-Col. W. H.

  Boyd-Carpenter, J. A

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

  Lambert, Hon. G.

  Bracken, Rt. Hon. Brendan

  Fraser, Sir I. (Lansdale)

  Lancaster, Col. C. G.

  Braine, B.

  Fyfe, Rt. Hon. Sir D. P M

  Langford-Holt, J

  Braithwaite, Lt.-Comdr. J. G

  Gage, C. H.

  Law, Rt. Hon. R. K

  Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W.

  Galbraith, Cmdr. T. D. (Pollok)

  Leather, E. H. C.

  Brooke, H. (Hampstead)

  Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

  Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H

  Browne, J. N. (Govan)

  Gammans, L. D.

  Lennox-Boyd, A. T

  Buchan-Hepburn, P. G T

  Garner-Evans, E. H. (Denbigh)

  Lindsay, Martin

  Bullock, Capt. M.

  Gates, Maj. E. E.

  Linstead, H. N.

  Bullus, Wing-Commander E. E.

  Gomme-Duncan, Col. A

  Llewellyn, D.

  Burden, Squadron-Leader F. A

  Gridley, Sir A.

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

  Butcher, H. W.

  Grimston, Hon. J. (St. Albans)

  Lloyd, Maj. Guy (Renfrew, E.)

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

  Grimstan, R. V. (Westbury)

  Lloyd, Selwyn (Wirral)

  Carr, L. R. (Mitcham)

  Harden, J. R. E.

  Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C

  Carson, Hon. E.

  Hare, Hon. J. H. (Woodbridge)

  Low, A. R. W.

  Channon, H.

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

  Lucas, Major Sir J. (Portsmouth, S.)

  Churchill, Rt. Hon. W.S

  Harris, R. R. (Heston)

  Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

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

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

  Lucas-Tooth, Sir H.

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

  Harvey, I. (Harrow, E.)

  Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.

  Conant, Maj. R. J. E.

  Hay, John

  McAdden, S. J.

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

  Headlam, Lieut.-Col. Rt Hon. Sir C.

  McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M. S.

  Cooper-Key, E. M.

  Heald, L. F

  Macdonald, A. J. F. (Roxburgh)

  Corbett, Lieut.-Col. U. (Ludlow)

  Heath, Colonel E. G. R

  Macdonald, Sir P. (I. of Wight)

  Craddock, G. B. (Spelthorne)

  Henderson, John (Cathcart)

  MoKibbin, A.

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Hicks-Beach, Maj. W. W

  McKie, J. H. (Galloway)

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

  Higgs, J. M. C.

  Maclayy. Hon. J. S.

  Cross, Rt. Hon. Sir R.

  Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

  Maclean, F. H. R.

  Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

  Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

  MacLeod, I. (Enfield, W.)

  Crouch, R. F.

  Hollis, M. C

  MacLeod, J. (Ross and Cromarty)

  Macmillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

  Rayner, Brig. R

  Taylor, C. S. (Eastbourne)

  Maitland, Comdr. J. W.

  Redmayne, M.

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

  Manningham-Buller, R E

  Remnant, Hon. P.

  Teeling, William

  Marlowe, A. A. H

  Renton, D. L. M.

  Thomas. J. P L (Hereford)

  Marples, A. E.

  Roberts, Emrys (Merioneth)

  Thompson, K. P. (Walton)

  Marshall, D. (Bodmin)

  Roberts, H. (Handsworth)

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

  Marshall, S. H. (Sutton)

  Roberts, P. G. (Healey)

  Thorneycroft, G. E. P. (Monmouth)

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

  Robertson, Sir D. (Caithness)

  Thornton-Kemsley, C. N

  Maude, J. C. (Exeter)

  Robinson, J. Roland (Blackpool, S.)

  Thorp, Brigadier R A F

  Maudling, R.

  Robson-Brown, W.

  Tilney, J. D.

  Medlicott, Brigadier F

  Rodgers, J. (Sevenoaks)

  Touche, G. C.

  Mellor, Sir J

  Roper, Sir H.

  Turton, R H.

  Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir T.

  Ropner, Col. L

  Tweedsmuir, Lady

  Morris, R. Hopkin (Carmarthen)

  Ross, Sir R. D. (Londonderry)

  Vane, W. M. F.

  Morrison, Maj. J. G. (Salisbury)

  Russell, R. S.

  Vaughan-Morgan, J.K

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

  Ryder, Capt. R. E. D

  Vosper, D. F.

  Mott-Radclyffe, C E

  Sandys, Rt. Hon. D

  Wade, D. M.

  Nabarro, G.

  Savory, Prof. D. L.

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

  Nicholls, H.

  Scott, Donald

  Wakefield, Sir W W. (St. Marylebona)

  Nicholson, G.

  Shepherd, W. S. (Cheadle)

  Walker-Smith, D. C

  Nield, B. (Chester)

  Smith, E. M. (Grantham)

  Ward, Hon. G R. (Worcester)

  Noble, Comdr. A. H.

  Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

  Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

  Nugent, G. R. H.

  Smithers, Sir W. (Orpington)

  Waterhouse, Capt. C

  Nutting, Anthony

  Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)

  Watkinson, H.

  Oakshott, H. D.

  Snadden, W. McN.

  Watt, Sir G. S. Harvie

  Odey, G. W.

  Soames, Capt. C.

  Webbe, Sir H. (London)

  Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W

  Spearman, A. C. M.

  Wheatley, Major M. J. (Poole)

  Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

  Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W)

  White, J. Baker (Canterbury)

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

  Spans, Sir P. (Kensington, S.)

  Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

  Orr-Ewing, Ian L. (Weston-super-Mare)

  Stanley, Rt. Hon. O. (Bristol, W.)

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

  Peake, Rt. Hon. O

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

  Wills, G.

  Perkins, W. R. D.

  Stevens, G. P.

  Wilson, G. (Truro)

  Peto, Brig. C. H M

  Steward, W. A. (Woolwich, W.)

  Winterton, Rt. Hon. Ean

  Pickthorn, K

  Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E)

  Wood, Hon. R.

  Pitman, I. J

  Storey, S.

  York, C.

  Prescott, Stanley

  Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

  Young, Sir A. S. L. (Partick)

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

  Stuart, Rt. Hon. J (Moray)

  Prior-Palmer, Brig. O

  Studholme, H. G

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

  Profumo, J. D.

  Summers, G. S.

  Mr. Drewe and Brigadier Mackeson.

  Raikes, H. V.

  Sutcliffe, H.

  NOES

  Acland, Sir Richard

  Collick, P.

  Fraser, T. (Hamilton)

  Adams, Richard

  Collindridge, F

  Freeman, J. (Watford)

  Albu, A. H.

  Cook. T. F.

  Freeman, Peter (Newport)

  Allen, A. C. (Bosworth)

  Cooper, J. (Deptford)

  Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N

  Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

  Corbel, Mrs. F. K. (Peckham)

  Ganley, Mrs. C. S

  Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R

  Cove, W. G.

  Gibson, C W.

  Awbery, S. S.

  Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

  Gitzean, A

  Ayles, W. H.

  Crawley, A.

  Glanville, J E. (Consett)

  Bacon, Miss A

  Cripes, Rt. Hon. Sir S

  Gordon-Walker, RI. Hon. P. C

  Baird, J.

  Crosland, C. A. R

  Greenwood, A. W. J. (Rossendale)

  Balfour, A.

  Crossman, R. H. S.

  Greenwood, RI. Hon. A. (Wakefield)

  Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J

  Cullen, Mrs. A.

  Grentell, D. R

  Bartley, P.

  Daines, P.

  Grey, C. F.

  Ballenger, Rt. Hon F J

  Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

  Griffiths, D (Rother Valley)

  Benson, G.

  Darling, G. (Hillsboro')

  Griffiths, Rt. Hon. J. (Llanelly)

  Beswick, F.

  Davies, Edward (Stoke, N.)

  Griffiths, W. D. (Exchange)

  Bevan, Rt. Hon. A. (Ebbw Vale)

  Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

  Gunter, R. J.

  Bing, G. H. C.

  Davies, Harold (Leek)

  Haire, John E. (Wycombe)

  Blackburn, A. R

  Davies, R. J. (Westhoughlon)

  Hale, J. (Rochdale)

  Blenkinsop, A.

  de Freilas, Geoffrey

  Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)

  Blyton, W. R.

  Delargy, H. J.

  Hall, J. (Gateshead, W.)

  Boardman, H

  Diamond, J.

  Hamilton, W. W.

  Booth, A.

  Dodds, N. N.

  Hannan, W.

  Bottomley, A. G

  Donnelly, D.

  Hardman, D R

  Bowden, H. W.

  Donovan, T. N.

  Hardy, E. A.

  Bowles, F. G. (Nuneaton)

  Driberg, T. E. N

  Hargreaves, A

  Braddock, Mrs. E. M.

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

  Harrison, J.

  Brockway, A. Fenner

  Dye, S.

  Hastings, Dr. Somerville

  Brook, D. (Halifax)

  Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C

  Hayman, F. H.

  Brooks, T. J. (Normantort)

  Edelman, M.

  Henderson, Rt. Hon A (Tipton)

  Broughton, Dr. A. D. D

  Edwards, Rt. Hon. N. (Caerphilly)

  Herbison, Miss M.

  Brown, T. J. (Ince)

  Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

  Hewitson, Capt. M

  Burke, 'W. A.

  Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)

  Hobson, C. R.

  Burton, Miss E.

  Evans, E. (Lowestoft)

  Holman, P

  Butler, H. W. (Hackney, S.)

  Ewart, R.

  Holmes, H. E (Hemsworth

  Callaghan, James

  Fernyhough, E.

  Houghton, Douglas

  Castle, Mrs. B. A.

  Field, Capt. W. J

  Hoy, J.

  Champion, A. J

  Finch, H. J.

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

  Chetwynd, G. R.

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

  Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

  Clunie, J.

  Fotlick, M.

  Hughes, R. M. (Islington, N.)

  Cocks, F. S

  Foot, M. M.

  Hynd, H. (Accrington)

  Coldrick, W

  Forman, J. C.

  Hynd J. B. (Attercliffe)

  1538

  1539

  Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

  Morris, P. (Swansea, W.)

  Stokes, Rt. Hon. R. R

  Irving, W. J. (Wood Green,

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

  Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

  Isaacs, Rt. Hon G. A

  Mort, D. L.

  Strauss, Rt. Hon G R. (Vauxhall)

  Janner, B.

  Moyle, A.

  Stress, Dr. B

  Jay, D. P. T.

  Mulley, F. W

  Summerskill, Rt Hon Edit.

  Jager, G. (Goole)

  Murray, J. D

  Sylvester, G. O

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

  Nally, W

  Taylor, H. B (Mansfield)

  Johnson, J. (Rugby)

  Neal, H.

  Taylor, R. J (Morpeth)

  Jones, D T. (Hartlepool)

  Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J

  Thomas, D E (Aberdare)

  Jones, t twyn (Weal Ham, S)

  O'Brien, T.

  Thomas, T George (Cardiff)

  Jones, W E (Conway)

  Oirlfield, W. H

  Thomas, I O (Wrekin)

  Keenan, W.

  Oliver, G. H

  Thomas, I R (Rhondda, W.)

  Kenyon, C.

  Orbach, M

  Thorneycroft, Harry (C.ayto.)

  Key, Rt. Hon C W

  Padley, W. E

  Thurfle, Ernest

  King, H. M.

  Paget, R. T

  Tomlinson, Rt. Hon. G

  Kinghorn, Sqn.-Ldr. E

  Paling, Rt. Hn Wilfred (Dearne V'lly)

  Turner-Samuels, M

  Kinley, J.

  Paling, Will T (Dewsbury)

  Usborne, Henry

  Lang, Rev. G

  Pannell, T C

  Vernon, Maj. W. F

  Lee, Miss J (Cannock)

  Pargiter, G A

  Viant, S P

  Lever, L. M. (Ardwick)

  Parker, J

  Wallace, H. W

  Lever, N. H. (Cheatham)

  Paton, J.

  Watkins, T. E

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

  Peart, T F

  Webb, Rt Hon M (Bradford, C.)

  Lewis, J. (Bolton, W.)

  Poole, Cecil

  Weitzman, D

  Lindgren, G. S.

  Popplewell, E

  -Wells, P. L (Faversham)

  Lipton, Lt.-Col. M

  Porter, G.

  Wells, W T (Walsall)

  Logan, D. G

  Price, M. Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

  West, D. G

  Longden, F. (Small Heath)

  Proctor, W. T.

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

  McAllister, G.

  Purley, Comdr H

  White, Mrs E (E. Flint)

  MacColl, J. E.

  Rees, Mrs D

  Whiteley, Rt Hon W

  McGhee, H. G.

  Reeves, J.

  Wigs, George

  Mack, J. D.

  Reid, T. (Swindon)

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

  McKay, J. (Wallsend)

  Reid, W. (Camlachie)

  Wilkes, L.

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

  Rhodes, H.

  Wilkins, W. A.

  McLeavy, F.

  Robens, A

  Willey, F. T. (Sunderland)

  MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

  Roberts, Goronwy (Caer. arvonshire)

  Willey, O. G. (Cleveland)

  Mainwaring, W. H.

  Robinson, Kenneth (St. Pancras, N.)

  Williams, D. J. (Neath)

  Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigs)

  Rogers, G. H. R. (Kensington, N.)

  Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

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

  Ross, William (Kilmarnock)

  Williams, Rt. Hon. T. (Don Valley)

  Mann, Mrs. J.

  Royle, C.

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

  Manuel, A. C.

  Shackleton, E. A. A

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

  Marquand, Rt. Hon. H A

  Shawcross, Rt. Hon. Sir H

  Winterbottom, I. (Nottingham, C.)

  M.athers, Rt. Hon. George

  Shurmer, P. L. E.

  Winterbottom, R. E. (Brightside)

  Mellish, R. J

  Silverman, J. (Erdington)

  Wise, Major F. J.

  Messer, F.

  Silverman, S S (Nelson)

  Woodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

  Middleton, Mrs. L

  Simmons, C. J

  Woods, Rev. G. S.

  Mikardo, Ian

  Slater, J.

  Wyatt, W. L.

  Mitchison, G. R.

  Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

  Yates, V. F.

  Moeran, E. W

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

  Younger, Hon. Kenneth

  Monstow, W.

  Snow, J. W

  Moody, A. S

  Sorensen, R W

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

  Morgan, Dr. H. B

  Soskice, Rt. Hon Sir F

  Mr. Pearson and Mr. Sparks.

  Morley, R

  Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

  Question put, and agreed to.

  Original Question again proposed.
  It being after Ten o'Clock, and objection being taken to further proceeding,
  The CHAIRMAN left the Chair to report Progress, and ask leave to sit again.
  Committee report Progress: to sit again Tomorrow.

  EASTERN AVENUE, ILFORD (BRIDGE)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, " That this House do now adjourn "—
  [Mr. Popplewell.]
  10.10 p.m.
  Mr. Geoffrey Hutchinson: My purpose tonight is to direct the attention of the House to the highly unsatisfactory and dangerous state of affairs which exists upon part of Eastern Avenue in Greater London. As hon. Members are no doubt aware, Eastern Avenue is one of the main traffic arteries in Greater London. It is the principal outlet for traffic going to the Eastern counties and to the East coast. Throughout the year Eastern Avenue carries a very heavy volume of traffic. During the summer months, and in particular at week-ends, traffic is exceptionally dense, by night as well as by day.
  Eastern Avenue is a trunk road. There is a double carriage-way about 40 or 50 feet in width throughout the greater part of its length and, for the greater part of its length, Eastern Avenue is a derestricted trunk road. At Newbury Park Station it crosses what was formerly a branch line of the London and North Eastern Railway. The railway has only recently been reconstructed and is now part of the latest extension of the Central London tube. At this point, at Newbury Park Station, the roadway is carried over the railway by the old, narrow, humpbacked bridge which was constructed many years ago when Eastern Avenue was a country road.
  At the time when Eastern Avenue was constructed, between the wars, it was, of course, known that the railway would eventually be rebuilt and that conditions at Newbury Park Station were likely to be entirely changed. Reconstruction of the bridge was, therefore, presumably postponed until the reconstruction of the railway and the station had taken place. As Eastern Avenue approaches this bridge the carriage-way narrows considerably. The width over:he bridge approaches narrows down to about 27 feet in the two carriage-ways and on the crown of the bridge it is a good deal less—somewhere, I think. about 20, 22 or 23 feet.
  We have here, therefore, a modern, densely populated—if I may use that
  1542
  expression—highway which is carried across the railway by a bridge designed many years ago for farm carts and, I suppose, for use by cattle. As soon as the changes in the railway had been completed, the reconstruction of the bridge and its approaches became a work of outstanding urgency which ought to have been undertaken without delay.
  It is not surprising that, in the circumstances which I have endeavoured to describe, this place has an exceptionally had accident record. If I may take recent figures, year by year, in 1948 there were altogether 68 road accidents in that part of Eastern Avenue which is within the Borough of Ilford. Of those 68 accidents 14, some of which were fatal, took place within 150 yards of either side of the crest of Newbury Park bridge.
  The Minister of Transport (Mr. Barnes): Has the hon. Member the 1949 figures?
  Mr. Hutchinson: Yes. In 1949, if I may give comparable figures, there were 105 accidents in that part of Eastern Avenue which is in the Borough of Ilford. Twenty-four of those accidents, one of which was fatal, took place within the distance to which I have referred at Newbury Park bridge, on either side of the crown of the bridge. [his year, the figures until the end of March are a little better than the other two years. There have been 14 accidents, two of which took place on the bridge at Newbury Park. The traffic statistics, therefore, show clearly that this is a place where accidents occur with disturbing frequency.
  Everybody, I think, including the right hon. Gentleman, has agreed for some time that this site is a place which calls for treatment at the earliest possible opportunity. In March of last year the local authority were informed that the Ministry would keep closely in mind the proposal for widening the bridge and reconstructing the roadway and that the work would be started as soon as funds and materials became available. Later in the same year, the local authority were informed that the reconstruction of the bridge was on the priority list of the Ministry and that it was hoped to put the work in hand during the year.
  Last November, however, the situation changed. The local authority were then

  1543
  told that it was out of the question that the work would proceed for the time being. The reason given was that the economic crisis—I think that that was the expression used by the Minister—had necessitated a curtailment of the capital expenditure programme. When I put a Question to the right hon. Gentleman at the beginning of last week, I received the same reply. He said that he was not then able to say when it would be possible for the work to be undertaken.
  The local authority and others who are concerned with this matter understand, of course, the necessity for restricting financial and economic commitments of this kind. What they fail to understand is how, at a time when it is not possible to spend what is needed to put this bridge in a safe and proper condition, it is at the same time found possible to spend a very large sum of money, exceeding, I believe, the amount which would be sufficient to put this bridge in a state of safety, on a temporary footbridge, adjoining Hungerford Bridge, for use at the Festival of Britain. People who use this road and know its dangers are not able to understand how it comes about that material and labour can be allocated for a temporary purpose such as this temporary bridge, when the Minister says that it is not possible to find the means to put this bridge at Newbury Park Station into proper order.
  Not only is the bridge itself quite unsuited to the class of traffic using Eastern Avenue, but the approaches to the bridge are occupied by important public buildings. one side of the bridge there is a large hospital and, on the other side, London Transport Executive have recently erected a new omnibus station from which 'buses serving various parts of the Eastern counties, start and terminate. The result is that on either side of the bridge, within a very short distance of the crown of the bridge, there is a constant entry into Eastern Avenue of traffic from the hospital and from this new 'bus station. The traffic entries on the approaches from either side are practically blind and that has added very considerably to the danger of the situation. On the other side of Eastern Avenue there are one or two subsidiary road entries into Eastern Avenue which aggravate the danger for traffic approaching from either side. Those conditions
  1544
  ought not to be allowed to continue any longer.
  I know that the right hon. Gentleman is personally acquainted with the conditions on this part of Eastern Avenue. He told me the other day, when I put a supplementary question to him, that he knew very well the dangers involved. We have seen tonight that the Government majority is somewhat precarious and I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that, if for no other reason than the stability of the Government, our experience tonight has shown that no further accidents should be allowed to take place on this bridge. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to assure us that this work will be delayed no longer and that that which is needed for the safety of the traffic and of those who use this bridge will be attended to at the earliest moment.
  10.24 p.m.
  Squadron-Leader A. E. Cooper: I will not weary the House for many moments at this late hour, but I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that this particular spot has a history. Before the war it was intended that this bridge should be made with a dual carriageway, but it coincided with Newbury Park Central Line station, which at that time was only being thought about. When the roadway for the whole of the 35 miles of Eastern Avenue was thought about, it was considered desirable that the widening of the bridge should be held over until the railway station was completed; but the war came, and it was of course impossible during the war to carry on with the Central London extension. Then, when the Central London Line was extended at the conclusion of hostilities, it was found impracticable on the score of cost to proceed with the widening of this bridge.
  We are not asking for this improvement merely to benefit the people of Ilford. This road is one of the main arteries from London out to the East Coast, and as such, in time of emergency such as war, it would be used in large measure by His Majesty's Forces. It is, therefore, most essential that this vital bottleneck should be cleared as quickly as possible. My hon. and learned Friend has spoken of the aggregation of important buildings at this spot—the King George Hospital, the Newbury Park railway station and

  1545
  now the new bus station. All these converge on to this one spot.
  Only last evening I took the opportunity, at about 9.30 p.m., of driving to this place to see what it was like. There was a queue of eastward travelling traffic more than a mile in extent waiting to cross over this bridge. The amount of petrol which must be wasted Sunday by Sunday at this spot would, it seems to me, far outweigh the cost of putting this bridge into proper condition now. There is considerable agitation in Ilford for this bridge to be put right. I should like to underline what my hon. and learned Friend has said. The people of Ilford cannot appreciate why it is impossible to allocate £84,000 for this bridge to be put right while at the same time it is possible for the Government to allocate more than £100,000 for a temporary bridge for the Festival of Britain.
  It is time for this House to tell the right hon. Gentleman that he must bestir himself with his colleagues and make sure that he gets for its proper purpose a due amount of that sum of money which is available year by year. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer has just extracted something like £80 million out of the motorists of this country, it is high time that some of this money was allocated for proper measures that will indeed safeguard the lives of the people of this country.
  10.28 p.m.
  The Minister of Transport (Mr. Barnes): The hon. and learned Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Hutchinson) and the hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South (Squadron-Leader A. E. Cooper) have quite rightly taken the opportunity of pressing upon me tonight the claims for the completion of the dual carriageway past Newbury Station. They have not, however, left me much time in
  1546
  which to explain the position to them. The hon. and learned Member made great play about what had happened a moment or two before this Debate started. I am glad that he and I are discussing this matter in a calmer and less dangerous atmosphere so far as the Minister or the Government are concerned. I have just escaped a cut of £1,000 in my salary. I do not know whether it is suggested that I should allocate part of that to this road improvement.
  Mr. Hutchinson: We should welcome even the smallest contribution.
  Mr. Barnes: I wish to take this opportunity of reaffirming the statement which I have previously made to the hon. and learned Member and the hon. Member. Both I and my Department recognise the claim which this road improvement has upon our future resources. We have never hesitated to suggest that this is an important improvement. On more than one occasion I have made the position quite plain to them. The funds voted out of the Road Fund are not sufficient for the purpose of carrying out new reconstruction work of this description. Some £2,300,000 only are available for reconstruction work, and over £2 million are to be used for the completion of work already in hand. This includes the strengthening of certain weak bridges. The bridge at Newbury Park station is not weak—it may be inconvenient, it may be dangerous. There just is not the money, but I assure the hon. and learned Gentleman that we will bear this in mind and will do what we can at the earliest possible moment.
  Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-nine Minutes to Eleven o'Clock

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