Sitting of 1 July 1953

Preamble
The House met at Half past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS
  BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
  Considered; to be read the Third time Tomorrow.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  MINISTRY OF FOOD

    Flour Improvers
    Mr. Doddsasked the Minister of Food, in view of public concern, what progress has been made in prohibiting the use of agene in the treatment of flour for human consumption to conform with action taken in Canada, the United States of America, France, Belgium, Spain, Turkey, Greece and Switzerland, to protect the health of their people.
    The Minister of Food (Major Lloyd George): I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Beresford Craddock) on 23rd February. It would be premature to take any action until the investigations referred to are completed.
    Mr. Dodds: Is it not disgraceful that these investigations should have taken such a long time? Is the Minister not aware that there is great concern that tampering with the bread of the people is believed to be so bad that it is a menace to public health? Surely something more should be done. Does the Minister say that these other countries are wrong in banning it years ago?
    Major Lloyd George: They did not ban it years ago. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that investigations into matters of this character are of tremendous importance, and it is
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    idle to pretend that they can be done quickly. With regard to the other countries, it is true that it is prohibited in 10 countries but it is allowed in nine others, and two permit another substance on which we are taking action.
    Dr. Stross: Could the Minister tell us how long the investigations have now been under way? Is it 2½ or 3½ years?
    Major Lloyd George: I do not think that the time has been as long as that, but I would remind the hon. Member of something else which occurred. We are examining as well as agene the gaseous substance which is used in America, because we are not yet satisfied about either of them.
    Mr. Dodds: Will the Minister state how long he expects it to be before he can make a statement?
    Major Lloyd George: I cannot promise the hon. Member a date, but I promise that I shall do so as soon as I can.

    Meat Supplies and Ration
    Mr. Lewisasked the Minister of Food (1) if he is aware that on Saturday, 20th June, meat was sold off the ration in Newcastle; and what was the reason for this;
    (2) if he is aware that on Saturday, 20th June, in Newcastle public notices were exhibited informing the public that meat was on sale to all; and what action has been taken against those concerned for contravening the rationing orders;
    (3) what information has been given to his Department about meat being sold off the ration in Newcastle on Saturday, 20th June; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Shortasked the Minister of Food whether his Department authorised the sale of meat off the ration which took place in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 20th June; and what action he is taking.
    Major Lloyd George: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply given to the hon. Member for Durham, Northwest (Mr. Murray) on 29th June.
    Mr. Lewis: I heard that reply and it does not answer the Questions on the Order Paper. I asked what action is to be taken. Is the Minister further aware

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    that yesterday the butchers in London and other places were selling meat off the ration, and as this is a contravention of the rationing order and we are now getting rationing by price instead of through the ration books, will the Minister do something about it?
    Major Lloyd George: I think the hon. Member will find that the answer to which I referred him covers the subject.
    Lieut.-Colonel Liptonasked the Minister of Food what steps he is taking to dispose of surplus stocks arising from unsold meat rations.
    Major Lloyd George: As I announced on 26th June, I am, from 5th July, making arrangements which will enable retail butchers to sell surplus meat off the ration.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Is the Minister aware that meat rationing has now virtually collapsed in this country and that he cannot hope to sell this uneatable ewe either by increasing the ration or selling it off the ration or by increasing the butchers' profit margin? What is he going to do about it? The whole situation is so impossible that the public would much prefer that the Minister should take this uneatable ewe off the ration and sell it for what it can fetch.
    Major Lloyd George: The statements made about this matter are greatly exaggerated. The proportion of what the hon. and gallant Member calls uneatable ewe is very small indeed and will be smaller in the future. Why the hon. and gallant Member should complain when people are getting all the meat they want, I do not know.
    Mr. Chetwynd: Will the Minister consider a reduction in price to enable the poorer people to buy meat?
    Major Lloyd George: The hon. Member will appreciate that in this position of rationing meat of various prices has to be distributed as fairly as possible throughout the whole country.
    Mr. Willeyasked the Minister of Food the amount of bacon and meat not taken up on the ration for the latest available four weeks' period.
    Major Lloyd George: Six thousand six hundred tons and 830 tons, respectively, during the four weeks ended 13th June.
    Mr. Willey: Would the Minister agree that one of his present immediate difficulties is the exceptional amount of ancient mutton on the market because of the effect of wool prices on supplies from Australia? Would the right hon. and gallant Gentleman further agree that the only way to tackle this matter from a businesslike point of view is to alter the price schedule and allow a subsidy increase to cover that difference? Regarding bacon, the problem is the same; the Minister ought to amend the schedule and increase the subsidy to cover the alteration.
    Major Lloyd George: I cannot agree with what the hon. Member says about the "exceptional amount" of imported mutton. The total amount of imported mutton on the ration is 10 per cent., half of which is wethers and is perfectly good meat. With regard to bacon, the fact remains that the C bacon which is bought off the ration is greatly in excess of the amount not taken up.
    Mr. Shortasked the Minister of Food how many meat rations were not taken up in the county borough of Newcastle-upon-Tyne during the week ending 20th June, 1953.
    Major Lloyd George: At the most, about 6,000, or 2 per cent. of the ration issue.
    Mr. Short: Does not this figure indicate that in the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, part of which is represented by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman, while sections of the community are getting as much meat of the best cuts as they want to buy, the poorer people are getting none at all? Is not the new arrangement announced by the Ministry part of the illusion of phoney prosperity being built up by the Government?
    Major Lloyd George: The "illusion" has been well supported today. The fact that I said 6,000 has nothing to do with what sections of the community are getting it. The take-up there varies from period to period. In the period before it was nearly 100 per cent.
    Mr. H. Nichollsasked the Minister of Food if he has considered the reports of the rejection by butchers in Peterborough of ewe mutton unsuitable for sale on the ration; and whether he will make arrangements to ensure that the butchers in Peterborough will not be allocated any disproportionate share of the least popular cuts of mutton in future.
    Major Lloyd George: A small quantity of mutton was rejected by these traders. It was no different in quality from mutton issued to other traders and no more than a fair share. My hon. Friend can be assured that it is our constant endeavour to distribute the less popular cuts over the country on a fair and equitable basis.
    Mr. Nicholls: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the grading centres of Peterborough, Oundle and Thrapston the figures show that a large amount of good English meat is produced? Since his reply last week showed that certain other areas were getting a little above the average, we should like to be assured that the areas where we are producing it are not getting below the average.
    Major Lloyd George: In the case referred to last week my hon. Friend showed that the area referred to was getting a little more than the average. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the proportion of this ewe mutton is a little less than the average throughout the country.
    Mrs. Mann: Is the Minister aware that Scotland produces the finest quality butcher meat, and that we never see it, but what we are seeing is fat and gristle such as Peterborough is also suffering from? If he puts the matter right in Peterborough will the Minister also see that we in Scotland get good butcher meat to eat ourselves?
    Major Lloyd George: The hon. Lady will appreciate that because an area happens to be a meat-producing area it does not mean that all the meat goes there. Under a rationed distribution we have to spread the supplies available as fairly as possible. I have a feeling that I can trust Scotland to look after itself.
    Captain Waterhouse: In view of these complaints about the rationing of meat, will my right hon. and gallant Friend
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    take an early opportunity to do away with rationing altogether?
    Major Lloyd George: Of course that is the real solution, and as soon as possible it will be adopted.
    Mr. Nabarroasked the Minister of Food (1) what further changes he now proposes to make in the value of the weekly meat ration;
    (2) whether he will now state the precise terms upon which butchers can sell carcass meat ration-free; and how he proposes to amend the regulations formerly prohibiting this.
    Major Lloyd George: I do not propose to change the meat ration at present, but from 5th July butchers will be offered an extra two pennyworth of meat per ration book and any meat remaining after the ration demands of registered customers have been met may be sold ration free. Such extra sales need not be limited to registered customers. An amendment to the Meat (Rationing) Order, 1953, to give effect to this was laid before the House yesterday.
    Mr. Nabarro: Can my right hon. and gallant Friend explain how choice cuts of meat will now be available under this new system on an equitable basis and how he can put a stop to these complaints that are becoming ever more numerous from all parts of the country that there is too much ewe mutton, bull beef and fat pork in circulation? Cannot he now announce a firm date for ending meat rationing and thus put a stop to this unsatisfactory state of affairs?
    Major Lloyd George: I am sorry that my hon. Friend has joined in the general exaggeration. He talks about fat mutton and pork. The distribution figures are known. The actual proportion of ewe mutton is 5 per cent. and the proportion of pork, now gradually diminishing, does not exceed 7 per cent. in any week.
    Lieut.-Colonel Lipton: Will the Minister give an assurance that this extra two pennyworth on the meat ration which will operate in a few day's time will not consist exclusively of ewe mutton or these other unsaleable products in which he is so interested?
    Mr. Manuel: Is the Minister aware that we have been told repeatedly over

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    the past month, especially by his Parliamentary Secretary, that the meat ration was being uplifted week by week? If that is so, why is it necessary for him to introduce the new arrangement which he has described?
    Major Lloyd George: It is well known that at this time of the year there is a very great coming forward of home-killed meat. The purpose of the new arrangement is to utilise as much as possible. That is why it has been done. It has happened before.

    Tea
    Mr. Willeyasked the Minister of Food what steps he intends to take to redress the substantial decline in imports of tea this year.
    Major Lloyd George: The hon. Member may rest assured that the trade will take any steps necessary without prompting from me.
    Mr. Willey: Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that so far this year we have imported 36 million 1b. of tea less than last year, and considerably less than 1951, and that the trade is taking steps; it is increasing the price? The price of cheaper teas was increased by 4d. only last Monday. Cannot the right hon. and gallant Gentleman intervene to do something, for he has caused the situation?

    Fruit and Vegetables (Prices)
    Miss Burtonasked the Minister of Food whether he is aware that the Dutch wireless programme from Hilversum includes every morning a short programme dealing with the price of vegetables; and if he will consider a similar service in this country.
    Major Lloyd George: I understand that the Dutch broadcast daily information about supplies of fruit and vegetables, but that prices are not quoted. This is a matter for the B.B.C. who will no doubt take note of the hon. Lady's suggestion.
    Miss Burton: Does not the right hon. and gallant. Gentleman feel able to recommend such a suggestion to the B.B.C? [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If hon. Members opposite are not interested,
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    the housewives are. Is the Minister aware that when prices do go down in the wholesale market the benefit is not passed on to the shopper?
    Major Lloyd George: There are many reasons for that, as the hon. Lady knows. She has put down a Question which appears later on the Order Paper.
    Miss Burtonasked the Minister of Food whether he is aware that bananas are in plentiful supply on the street barrows but short in the shops, and that this is due to the high prices paid by the owners of the barrows; and whether, as the prices charged to the public by the barrow boys far exceed the old controlled price, he will re-impose controls on this commodity.
    Major Lloyd George: I have nothing to add to the reply which my hon. Friend gave the hon. Member on 22nd April.
    Miss Burton: Is the Minister aware that I have pursued this matter because small shopkeepers are saying it is quite impossible for them to compete in the price for selling bananas in view of the large amount of money paid on the side by the owners of barrows to the people selling the bananas in the first place?
    Major Lloyd George: The hon. Lady will realise that the average price varies from Is. 4d. to 1s. 4½d. I would also point out that this is the time of the year when the supply available from the British Cameroons is very low. I would also point out that there are plenty of other attractive fruits on the barrows and in the shops.
    Miss Burton: That is not the point. Is the Minister aware that I am not complaining about the amount of bananas available, but where they go? Does he not think that a system is wrong which allows prices of 2s. 6d. a 1b. on the barrows? I do not know where the right hon. and gallant Gentleman obtains his average price.
    Major Lloyd George: Only an hour ago I saw good looking bananas at 1s. 6d.
    Hon. Members: Where?
    Mr. Willey: In view of the fact that quite recently the right hon. and gallant

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    Gentleman undertook to tell me where I could buy these bananas, and he has failed to do so, I beg to give notice that I shall take an early opportunity to raise the matter on the Adjournment.
    Major Lloyd George: As a matter of fact the hon. Gentleman was not available, or I could have shown him some at 1s. 2d.
    Miss Burtonasked the Minister of Food whether he is aware that many growers of lettuces are at the present time ploughing them back into the ground because market prices do not cover production and transport costs; and if, as prices to the consumer are not similarly reduced, he will now consider an inquiry into the distribution of fruit and vegetables.
    Major Lloyd George: My information is that lettuces are now cheap and plentiful in the shops. The inevitability of wide fluctuations in the supply of lettuces is well known and does not, I think, justify any special inquiry.
    Miss Burton: Is the Minister aware that his stone-walling on this subject seems to improve? Is he not aware that growers are saying that the cost of transport and of picking will not make it worth while to send lettuces to the shops? Under those conditions, does he not think the matter should be inquired into?
    Major Lloyd George: It is difficult to inquire into the effect of the seasons on crops. One of the results of this particularly favourable season was a very big crop of lettuces, but it is possible to get a lettuce in London at about 3d.; indeed, to my personal knowledge last week they were selling at Id. or l½d.
    Mr. Baldwin: Is my right hon. and gallant Friend aware that there are cooperative auction markets within 15 miles of Coventry and co-operative retail shops in Coventry? If they cannot get the lettuces to the consumers at a low rate, what good will an inquiry do?

    Foodstuffs (Calcium Content)
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Food the amounts of calcium available in one pint of milk and 1 lb. of bread to which the statutory amount of chalk
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    has been added; and the annual cost of adding 11,300 tons of chalk to bread.
    Major Lloyd George: One pint of milk supplies 680 milligrams calcium; 1 lb. of bread, containing added calcium carbonate, 649 milligrams. The answer to the second part of the Question is about £50,000, which is the cost of treating flour costing £160 million.
    Dr. Stross: In view of the fact that milk appears to contain a very large amount of natural calcium and as this is the best way of getting it into the nation's diet, would not the Minister agree to spend money at present expended on chalk to subsidise the milk so that the present surplus could be used for drinking?
    Major Lloyd George: The amount of calcium costs £50,000. The extra milk to get the same amount of calcium would cost £180 million.
    Dr. Stross: Does not the Minister agree that at least there is a principle that it is wiser to have more milk consumed and less chalk added to our flour?

    Milk
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Food by how much the consumption of liquid milk has fallen in Stoke-on-Trent in 1952–53, as compared with the previous years; and, of the milk consumed, how much was sterilised, pasteurised or untreated.
    Major Lloyd George: It is estimated that sales in Stoke-on-Trent increased during the period in question by about 100,000 gallons. As the rest of the answer contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Following is the information:
    Milk sales in Stoke-on-Trent are estimated as follows:

    —

    Gallons

    1951–52

    1952–53

    Sales of Pasteurised Milk

    5,675,349

    5,626,080

    Sales of Sterilised Milk

    2,598,942

    2,749,774

    Total Sales

    8,274,291

    8,375,854

    Information about sales of untreated milk is not available but they would be negligible.
    Dr. Strossasked the Minister of Food whether he has noted the close correlation between the retail price of liquid milk and the volume of consumption; and what his policy is for encouraging increased consumption up to the level noted in Scandinavian countries.
    Major Lloyd George: No, Sir. The facts do not support the view that the ordinary retail price is the sole, or even the main, factor influencing consumption. Total liquid milk consumption is 80 per cent. above pre-war, and increased consumption is specially encouraged by the provision of cheap or free milk through the welfare and milk-in-schools schemes.
    Dr. Stross: Does not the Minister remember that as early as 1934 when a Report was presented to this House by Sir John Boyd Orr that fact was stressed—namely, the close correlation in all dairy produce including milk between price and the amount consumed? Will the right hon. and gallant Gentleman take care to see that the subsidy is never diminished but that it is increased to make sure that all dairy produce goes where it ought to go, and that is to those who need it most?
    Major Lloyd George: That has been our endeavour ever since the scheme was introduced before the war. In the period of the last three or four years it is true that the price of milk has increased by about 30 per cent., but consumption is down by between only 1 per cent. and 2 per cent.
    Sir H. Williams: Does not the Minister think that it is unfortunate that the doctor from Stoke-on-Trent lives so much in the past?

    Rabbits
    Major Anstruther-Grayasked the Minister of Food his arrangements for the import of frozen rabbits this year, in view of the ample supply of these animals available all over the country.
    Major Lloyd George: Rabbits were de-controlled in 1950, since when the trade has been entirely in private hands. I see no reason for making any change in that arrangement.

    Enforcement Officers
    Mr. Nabarroasked the Minister of Food how many prosecutions he now has pending, as a result of reports from
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    his enforcement officers, for contraventions by butchers and others of the meat rationing regulations; and whether he will now waive such pending prosecutions, in view of his proposed relaxation of the meat rationing arrangements.
    Major Lloyd George: Thirty-one cases are now down for court hearings. All of these relate to offences alleged to have been committed some time ago, and I am not prepared to seek the courts' permission to withdraw them.
    Mr. Nabarro: In view of my right hon. and gallant Friend's earlier allegation about exaggeration, may I invite him to come to the Midland counties and interview a few of the recalcitrant butchers who are fed up with the present arrangement? In consideration of the fact that none of us on this side of the House supports a system that involves the use of enforcement officers, will he disband that gallant corps at an early date?
    Major Lloyd George: As long as the rationing system obtains enforcement officers will be needed. I have no intention of disbanding them.
    Mr. Nabarro: Thoroughly unsatisfactory.

    Fish Products (Experiments)
    Mr. Grimondasked the Minister of Food what information he has about the production of a food from fish meal and oil which can be used as a substitute for milk for children in backward countries; and what experiments in its production have yet been carried out in this country.
    Major Lloyd George: I understand that at a recent meeting in Hull of a Working Party of the Food and Agriculture Organisation on Fish Products for use in Tropical Countries, the use of fish meal for direct human feeding in protein deficient areas was discussed and samples of high quality fish meals, developed both in this country and in Northern Europe, were submitted for selection for use in feeding trials in Latin America.
    Mr. Grimond: While thanking the Minister for his reply, may I ask him if he can say whether it would not be a considerable advantage for the fishing industry if these trials were successful and

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    whether the products would not command a fairly high price? If the experiments prove successful will he ensure that manufacturing processes are encouraged in this country?
    Major Lloyd George: I will certainly do everything I can to assist in what, I think, is a very good experiment.

  MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

    Guided Missiles (Operational Responsibility)
    Mr. Arthur Hendersonasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence what steps are to be taken to co-ordinate the respective operational responsibilities of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Navy and Anti-Aircraft Command for the ground to air defence of the United Kingdom, following the advent of the ground-to-air guided missile.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence (Mr. Nigel Birch): These new weapons will be operated within the existing system of air defence.
    Mr. Henderson: Does that reply mean that Anti-Aircraft Command will continue to be the responsibility of the War Office but that in time of emergency operational responsibility for ground-to-air defence will continue to vest in the commander-in-chief of Fighter Command?
    Mr. Birch: The system at the moment is that operationally C.-in-C. Fighter Command is responsible both for Fighter Command and for Anti-Aircraft Command guns and for the fire of ships in harbour. The ground-to-air guided missile, being a cross between an antiaircraft shell and a fighter, naturally falls under the same system.
    Mr. Emrys Hughes: Is not it true that in spite of the enormous sums spent on the Air Force since the war there is no real defence against these guided missiles, especially rockets?
    Mr. Birch: We are talking about ground-to-air guided missiles, which are a very good defence against aircraft.

    Officers' Pensions
    Sir Edward Keelingasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Defence whether the Government's promised efforts to find a fair solution of the
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    question of the retired pay of the 359 officers still surviving who were given in 1919 rates which were to vary with the cost of living but which in spite of the great rise in that cost have not been increased since they were anchored in 1935 at 9½ per cent. below the 1919 rates, have yet been completed, and with what result.
    Mr. Birch: Not yet, Sir.
    Sir E. Keeling: Considering that on 20th January the Minister of Defence said in another place that the case then put so cogently would be most earnestly considered, is not it treating Parliament with contempt that over five months later no decision has been announced? Can we have an assurance that a decision will be announced before we adjourn for the Summer Recess?
    Mr. Birch: I am sorry. I am not in a position to give my hon. Friend a firm answer.
    Brigadier Prior-Palmer: Will my hon. Friend convey to our right hon. Friend the fact that there is a feeling in all parts of the House that, because there are so few men affected and because they have nobody to represent them and to press their case strongly, the Treasury are ignoring a perfectly humane case which should be dealt with?
    Mr. Birch: I will certainly convey what my hon. and gallant Friend has said to the Treasury, but I have noticed that there are quite a number of people representing these officers—and very successfully.
    Mr. Lewis: As there are only 300 of these officers and the Government have already had five months, can the hon. Gentleman say why he cannot give the assurance that the hon. Member asked for? Why does he need a longer time?
    Mr. Birch: As has very often been pointed out in this House and in another place, the satisfaction of such a claim raises certain wider issues.

  COLONIAL JUDGES (MR. A'BECKETT TERRELL)
  Sir H. Williamsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to the decision of the Lord Chief Justice in the case of Mr. A. Terrell to the effect that colonial

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  judges are not protected against the Executive; and, in view of this, if he will consider introducing legislation to give colonial judges the same protection as the judges in the United Kingdom.
  Mr. Marloweasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the High Court of Justice has now negatived the ruling of his Department given to this House on 21st June, 1950, with regard to the security of tenure of colonial judges; and whether he proposes to introduce legislation to give these judges the security which his predecessor claimed they enjoyed but which the High Court says they do not.
  The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Oliver Lyttelton): I do not agree that the judgment in question has the effect that colonial judges are not protected against the Executive or that it negatives the statement made on 21st June, 1950. I consider that colonial judges are amply protected and secure in their offices and that legislation for this purpose is unnecessary. I also doubt whether legislation would be practicable.
  Sir H. Williams: In view of the decision of the Lord Chief Justice, is not it rather difficult to justify the statement my right hon. Friend has made? This man was dismissed; in effect he was deprived of his rights; the High Court in this country is deciding that he has been properly dismissed by the Executive. Should not judges be properly protected?
  Mr. Lyttelton: I think that the hon. Baronet is mistaken. It is very difficult to deal with this tangled matter by question and answer. In the first place, the judge was not dismissed. In the second place, I think that the Lord Chief Justice used a phrase to the effect that the judges hold their offices in Colonial territories at the Queen's pleasure. I must point out to the hon. Baronet that the Queen's pleasure can be exercised only upon the advice of Her Ministers—in this case myself. Since 1870 it has been an established practice which is de facto and not de jure that no Colonial judge can be dismissed by the Executive without reference to the Secretary of State for the Colonies and to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
  Mr. Marlowe: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his answer is really not in
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  accordance with the facts? The simple fact, as is the position of judges in this country, is that they cannot be dismissed while of good behaviour; but this judge while of good behaviour had his office terminated. Therefore, it is not true to say that they are in the same position. Will my right hon. Friend investigate why it was when I raised the matter on 21st June, 1950, with his predecessor—and I make no reflection on his predecessor because obviously this was on the advice of his legal advisers—he said that:
  "… it is the case that the tenure of office of Colonial judges is as secure as that of judges in this country."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st June, 1950; Vol. 476, c. 1277.]
  Yet when this matter came to the courts the assertion was made to the contrary. How does it come about that misleading information was given to this House?
  Mr. Lyttelton: The information is not misleading, because, as I have said, colonial judges hold their offices at Her Majesty's pleasure, and Her Majesty can only exercise her pleasure on the advice of her Ministers. In fact, the de facto safeguards which colonial judges have are at least as good as any which could be laid down by legislation. Other questions were raised whether it would be appropriate that this House or the Colonial Territories should legislate in this matter, but, if left to the Colonial Territories, other considerations would arise. I am very willing to discuss the matter, but I am in some difficulty in dealing with a matter so complicated by Question and answer.
  Mr. Hector Hughes: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the questions raised are very grave and far transcend the question of the dismissal or otherwise of a particular judge? Will he therefore consult with the learned Attorney-General as to the desirability and possibility of the same juridical principles being applied in these matters throughout the British Empire?
  Mr. Lyttelton: The hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to the dismissal of a judge. This is merely a question of the relationship between the date of his retirement and what pension he is to enjoy. I am fully aware that this is a most important matter, and I am quite

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  willing to continue my researches, but it would be only fair to the House to say that the further I look into it the more I am satisfied that the present system, which has been in force since 1870, gives more effective protection to colonial judges than any legislation.
  Mr. Dugdale: As I was definitely referred to by the hon. and learned Member for Hove (Mr. Marlowe) as having given the answer to his question in 1950 dealing with this subject, would I be entitled to ask a question which might throw further light on the matter?
  Mr. Speaker: I did not hear any reference to the right hon. Gentleman, but he may ask his question.
  Mr. Dugdale: Is it not a fact that, if this country were to be overrun by the enemy, judges in this country would be in exactly the same position as Mr. Terrell, and that that is what caused the difficulty?
  Mr. Speaker: That seems to me to be somewhat hypothetical.
  Mr. Marlowe: On a point of order. In view of the fact that my right hon. Friend has said that this is not a matter which can be dealt with satisfactorily by Question and answer, would you, Mr. Speaker, think that it might be a suitable subject for debate on the Motion for the Adjournment for the Summer Recess?
  Mr. Speaker: I will deal with that when I come to it.

  NIGERIA

    Constitution
    Mr. T. Reidasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what further progress he can report in respect of the proposed conference of Nigerian leaders in London.
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement regarding the date, composition and agenda of the forthcoming conference in London to consider the Nigerian Constitution.
    Mr. Lyrtelton: I have at present nothing to add to the information I gave in reply to Questions on 24th June; but
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    I will make a further statement as soon as there is definite progress to report.
    Mr. Reid: Could the right hon. Gentleman say if the conference is to be held at all?
    Mr. Lyttelton: I should not like to be too optimistic, but it looks hopeful. There are one or two matters which I regard as of great importance which we must clear up before I can give a definite answer.
    Mr. Brockway: Without wishing to embarrass the right hon. Gentleman—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"]—because I want the discussions to take place—may I ask him whether discussions are taking place with the leaders of the parties in Nigeria, and when he thinks those discussions are likely to come to a conclusion?
    Mr. Lyttelton: I can certainly answer the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question by saying, "Yes, Sir; they are taking place." In the second part of his question, the hon. Gentleman asked me once again to assume the role of prophet, which I feel in my present office I cannot do.

    Agricultural Settlement Scheme
    Mr. J. Johnsonasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will make a statement upon the winding up of the Bamenda-Cross River-Calabar agricultural settlement scheme in Nigeria.
    Mr. Lyrtelton: I am asking the Governor for information about the future of the scheme and will write to the hon. Member when I have received it.

  WEST INDIES (EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES)
  Mr. D. Jonesasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what methods are used by the West Indian Governments to make known to the population of their Territories the educational opportunities and assistance offered by, and through, the United Nations and the Caribbean Commission; and whether he is satisfied that such information is known to all the persons who might benefit from such opportunities and by such assistance as is offered.
  Mr. Lyttelton: I cannot say exactly what the arrangements are, but, if the hon. Member will supply me with any information which leads him to think that they are inadequate, I will make inquiries.
  Mr. Jones: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I have already sent him information from Grenada to show that the local government had not taken any initiative in making these facilities available to the people, but that, when people got the information, they placed all obstacles in the way of their taking advantage of it?
  Mr. Lyttelton: That is not in accordance with my information. Prima facie, I think the publicity arrangements for these awards are adequate. There were 219 applicants from British Caribbean Territories in 1951 for 30 scholarships offered through the Caribbean Commission, and British West Indians secured 24 of the 30 places.

  KENYA

    Mau Mau Terrorists
    Mr. Edelmanasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what instructions he has given to the security forces in Kenya for accepting surrender by suspected Mau-Mau terrorists.
    Mr. Lyttelton: I have given no instructions on the subject to the security forces in Kenya.
    Mr. Edelman: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of some anxiety in this country about the disparity between the number of those killed in these actions and the number taken prisoner? Is he aware that, in the Fort Hall area, 100 Africans were killed, but only two rifles were captured? Does that not indicate that there is room for inquiry?
    Mr. Lyttelton: There is no information, or any case that I could trace, in which security forces had disregarded an attempt to surrender on the part of Mau Mau gangs. There is no recorded instance, as far as I can find, but I will continue to watch the subject.

    Mombasa Water Supply Scheme
    Colonel Clarkeasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware of the threats to amenity and
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    nature-conservation in the Tsavo Royal National Park inherent in a scheme now before the Government of Kenya for supplying water to Mombasa from the Mzima pools; and if he will ensure that detailed examination is first given to the alternative suggestions put forward by the trustees of the park.
    Mr. Lyttelton: I am assured that everything possible is being done to provide Mombasa with a safe and adequate water supply at a reasonable cost, with the minimum of damage to natural amenities, and I understand that the Kenya Government are to investigate further the plans for the headworks and offtake.
    Colonel Clarke: May I ask my right hon. Friend to appreciate that the trustees of the National Park and many others concerned will be grateful for his assurance, and may I ask him if he will bear in mind the fact that the advice on which the trustees are acting comes from the highest engineering levels?
    Mr. Lyttelton: There is an investigation taking place on whether one of the pools will be raised by eight feet or not. I think that both my hon. and gallant Friend and I are concerned about its being necessary for hippopotami, but, after all, the water supply of Mombasa will have to take first place.

    Tribesman's Death
    Mr. Hastingsasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will make a further statement regarding the case of Elijah Njeru Gideon who died on 29th January as the result of beating and, in particular, why the two Askaris who carried out the beating under orders were not called as witnesses at the inquiry; how many persons, white or black, have been charged in connection with the death of this man; and what charges have been made against them.
    Mr. Lyttelton: Two Europeans, an officer of the Kenya Police Reserve and a warrant officer of the Kenya Regiment, have been charged with manslaughter in this case. The African askaris involved have now given full statements, and it is proposed to call them as Crown witnesses.

    Labour Ordinance
    Mr. H. Hyndasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies in view of the report published by the International

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    Labour Organisation on 23rd June, in which it is stated that the Voluntarily Unemployed Persons Ordinance in Kenya could be applied, although it appears that it is at present not being applied, in such a way as to result in a system of forced labour, if he will now abolish that ordinance.
    Mr. Lyttelton: No, Sir. It is a temporary law renewable annually and I have no doubt the observations of the committee will receive consideration from the Kenya Legislation when the ordinance is again due for renewal.

    Detainees (Legal Defence)
    Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether detainees in Kenya are permitted legal defence when appealing before the Advisory Committee against their detention.
    Mr. Lyttelton: Counsel are not allowed in these appeals.
    Mr. Brockway: Is it not the case that detainees are permitted the help of lawyers to prepare their case but are not given any information as to the character of the charge against them, and that lawyers are not permitted to represent them when they go to the Advisory Committee? Would the right hon. Gentleman look at this matter again?
    Mr. Lyttelton: Certainly, we will look at it again. As I understand the hon. Gentleman, he has said, as I believe to be the case, that detainees get the advice of lawyers but at the present moment lawyers are not allowed to appear for them. The reason for that is the number of cases. If lawyers were allowed to appear before the Advisory Committee we might get very long and protracted hearings.
    Mr. Brockway: Would it be possible for detainees and lawyers to be informed of the charges so that they can effectively prepare their defence?
    Mr. Lyttelton: I am not accepting the hon. Gentleman's premise that they are not so informed, but I will look into it.

    Death Gratuities (Soldiers' Dependants)
    Mrs. Whiteasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what compensation is paid to relatives on the death, on
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    active service, of Africans serving with the military forces in Kenya; and when these amounts were last revised.
    Mr. Lyttelton: The following rates of gratuity are payable to the heir of a deceased African soldier: warrant officers and staff sergeants, £40; sergeants and below, £30. These rates were reviewed in 1948, and are being considered again.
    Mrs. White: Would the right hon. Gentleman ask the Government of Kenya to expedite this matter, which has been under discussion since 1951? It is not a very good way to encourage loyal Kenya Service men, to give such a very low rate of gratuity.
    Mr. Lyttelton: I agree with the hon. Lady's desire that a conclusion should be reached.
    Mr. Awbery: What are we doing about it?

  HONG KONG (RENTS CONTROL COMMITTEE)
  Mr. Rankinasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the functions and the membership of the Rents Control Committee in Hong Kong; who appoints it; and what increases in rents it has recommended.
  Mr. Lyttelton: As the Answer is rather long, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
  Mr. Rankin: Could the right hon. Gentleman say whether or not rents are being increased, and by how much?
  Mr. Lyttelton: I must really ask the hon. Member to look at the details I am supplying, because some of the rents are being increased.
  Following is the answer:
  The Rent Control Committee was appointed by the Governor of Hong Kong in 1952 to inquire into and make recommendations on questions of rent control. Its members were Mr. John McNeill, Q.C. (Chairman), Mr. Thomas Archdale Martin, Mr. Lee Wai Tong and Mr. Frederick Shanks (Secretary).
  The Committee recommended that rent control of business premises should continue for a further three years and then cease, and that increases in standard rents (over and above the permitted increase of 100 per cent.) should be permitted during those three years to the extent of 50 per cent. immediately, a further 50 per cent. after one year, and a further

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  100 per cent. after two years. As regards domestic premises, the Committee recommended that rent control should continue for at least three years, the position being reviewed after two years, and that increases in standard rents (over and above the permitted increase of 30 per cent.) should be permitted to the extent of 50 per cent. immediately and a further 50 per cent. after two years.

  SINGAPORE

    Kandang Kerban Hospital
    Mr. Awberyasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that the Vickers plan for improving Kandang Kerban Hospital, Singapore, makes no provision for a teaching department; and if he will take steps to include one.
    Mr. Lyttelton: No, Sir. The development scheme for the hospital already includes full provision for teaching.
    Mr. Awbery: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the scheme propounded by Messrs. Vickers is not satisfactory in regard to the number of beds to be provided and the needs of the area, which are for approximately 350? Will he consult medical opinion in Singapore in this matter?
    Mr. Lyttelton: That is a quite different question to the one on the Order Paper. The hon. Member asked me if I was aware that the scheme makes no provision for a teaching department, to which I answered "No, Sir."

    Tuberculosis
    Mr. Awberyasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the percentage of persons suffering from tuberculosis in Singapore; what hospital accommodation there is for dealing with these cases; how many specialists there are, trained in thoracic surgery in the Colony for dealing with this disease; and what steps are being taken to prevent it spreading.
    Mr. Lyttelton: I am consulting the Governor, and will circulate the information in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    Mr. Awbery: Is the Minister aware that tuberculosis is the No. 1 killer in Singapore, and will he do all he possibly can to provide the necessary hospital accommodation for people suffering from this terrible disease in the Colonies, and, particularly, in the Peninsula of Malaya?
    Mr. Lyttelton: I quite agree with the hon. Member about the importance of this matter, and we are doing all we can to increase the treatment of this disease.

  CENTRAL AFRICAN FEDERATION
  Mrs. Whiteasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies by whose authority provincial and district commissioners in Nyasaland were instructed, on or before 10th May, to inform the local population that Federation had then been decided upon, or that it was certain that the law making Federation would be passed at the Third Reading by the British Parliament, when the Enabling Bill had not at that time reached the Committee stage in the House of Commons and had not been considered in the House of Lords.
  Mr. Lyttelton: After the Federation Bill had been read a Second time on 6th May, the Nyasaland Government instructed the Provincial Administration to make it known that Federation had been decided on and to urge all communities to get together with the sincere intention to make the scheme work for the greatest possible good of Nyasaland. The Governor has asked me to convey to the House his regret for this anticipation of the decision of Parliament. He also regrets that, HANSARD not being available, the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was misquoted as saying:
  "Now that it has been decided upon by Her Majesty's Government "
  instead of:
  "If this becomes the law of the land."
  I feel sure the House will accept this frank expression of regret for this misinterpretation of the meaning of a Second Reading. I trust the right hon. Gentleman will also accept that the instructions were in full accord, as they were certainly meant to be, with the spirit of the wise words with which he ended his speech on Second Reading.
  Mrs. White: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that hon. Members on both sides of the House are very glad to have his explanation for what was a very regrettable act?

  TOGOLAND (DISTRICT COUNCILS)
  Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many district councils have been established in Togoland; whether they are working satisfactorily; and whether the elections for the Joint Council for Togoland Affairs have now been completed.
  Mr. Lyttelton: The Northern Section of Togoland under United Kingdom Trusteeship falls within the areas of four district councils, which were established last year. They are working satisfactorily. In the Southern Section, two out of three district councils have recently been established. The Joint Council for Togoland Affairs is not yet reconstituted. A joint statement issued by the British and French Administering Authorities on 12th June invited the views of the population on methods of doing that.
  Mr. Sorensen: When is the council likely to be constituted and to become operative, and how long will it take before district councils cover the whole of the area?
  Mr. Lyttelton: I should not like to commit myself to a date, but I think that it will not be very long.

  KANO RIOTS (INQUIRY)
  Mr. Fenner Brockwayasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the results of the inquiry into the causes of the riot at Kano which resulted in the loss of 46 lives.
  Mr. Lyttelton: The administrative inquiry into the Kano riots is nearing completion and I hope to receive its report in the near future.
  Mr. Brockway: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that statements are being made that the administration of the Native Authority are taking evidence from door-to-door in this matter, and that that evidence is very often of a very unreliable character?
  Mr. Lyttelton: I am not aware of that. Until the report is received it would be as well not to make allegations.

  TANGANYIKA (CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES)
  Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what progress has been made in respect of constitutional changes in Tanganyika; and what official proposals thereto have been presented by the Tanganyika European Council.
  Mr. Lyttelton: The Tanganyika Government have prepared and published a comprehensive Local Government Bill to give effect to certain recommendations in Professor Mackenzie's report which the Legislative Council is to debate towards the end of the year. I am not aware of any current official proposals put forward by the Tanganyika European Council.
  Mr. Sorensen: Can the right hon. Gentleman indicate how long it will take to implement the proposals?
  Mr. Lyttelton: The hon. Gentleman is asking me almost to make prophecies about things which are not in my control. We must allow the Legislative Council to debate these matters towards the end of this year, then we can see whether the recommendations can be implemented.

  SEYCHELLES (COPRA INDUSTRY)
  Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies why the export duty on copra has been reduced in the Seychelles from 23½ per cent. to 5 per cent., with the result that this increases the profit on coconuts by £4 2s. 6d. per 1,000; and why no action has been taken to increase the present wage of 33s. 9d. per month for labourers.
  Mr. Lyttelton: The reduction of the export duty on copra from 1st January, 1953, was a corollary of the imposition from the same date of Income Tax on income derived from agricultural products including copra. This was done so as to secure a more equitable distribution of the burden of taxes and duties in Seychelles. With regard to wages, the hon. Member is misinformed. The statutory minimum wage has been 40s. 6d. per month for men working more than 33½ hours per week since 1st March, 1952.
  Mr. Sorensen: Has there been any increase at all since the reduction in the export duty was made? Is it not rather unfair that there should have been that reduction but no corresponding increase in the wages of the workers?
  Mr. Lyttelton: The cost of living fell in 1952 by four points and the average actual earnings in 1952 for a 40-hour week came to about 78s. a month.
  Mr. Awbery: Is any attempt being made to develop the trade union movement? What are the Government doing in the matter.
  Mr. Lyttelton: That question seems to be rather wide of the original Question.
  Mr. Awbery: The right hon. Gentleman's reply dealt with the question of wages.

  ROYAL NAVY

    B.B.C. Broadcast (Cancellation)
    Mr. Callaghanasked the First Lord of the Admiralty why he requested the British Broadcasting Corporation to cancel a light-hearted talk by a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve rating about his training experiences.
    The First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. J. P. L. Thomas): This is a matter between the Admiralty and the rating, and not between the Admiralty and the British Broadcasting Corporation. In accordance with the Regulations, a draft script of the talk was submitted by the author for Admiralty approval. This was withheld because of the contents of certain passages, but the Admiralty are prepared to reconsider the script after amendment by the author.
    Mr. Callaghan: Is the First Lord really going to set himself up as a censor of taste? Is it not the case that no security Regulations are involved here at all?
    Mr. Thomas: That is quite true. As the hon. Gentleman says, this is not a security question but only a question of taste. There were certain paragraphs in the proposed talk, certainly about elderly ladies who were guests on board Her Majesty's ships, which were hardly up to the Admiralty's standard as hosts.
    Mr. Callaghan: Does the First Lord really think that it is his duty, in the case of a civilian who is doing training with the Navy as a R.N.V.R. rating, to come between him and the B.B.C. in regard to the text of this talk, which was acceptable to them in terms of taste and humour, and forbid its publication?
    Mr. Thomas: Under the Regulations in regard to ratings of the R.N.V.R., which have been in existence a very long time, the B.B.C. are not in a position to accept a talk of this kind. It was at the request of the author himself that the B.B.C. sent the text of this talk to the Admiralty for their comment and approval.
    Mr. Marlowe: Could not this sort of difficulty be avoided if there were an alternative form of television?
    Mr. Dugdale: As the right hon. Gentleman has said that it was the Admiralty that censored these words, will he state exactly what the words were to which the Admiralty took exception?
    Mr. Thomas: I do not propose to read the actual words to the House. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Because if the words had been broadcast they would have made people mentioned in this talk definitely identifiable, and I repeat that it would not have been in keeping with the Admiralty's reputation as hosts.
    Mr. Speaker: This is more a matter for a debate on the adjournment.
    Mr. Benn: Is it in order for me to ask the Minister to put the censored passages in the Library of the House?
    Mr. Speaker: I have nothing to do with that. My control of the Library does not extend to that.

    Naval Review (British Railways Cruises)
    Sir J. Lucasasked the First Lord of the Admiralty what facilities were provided by his Department for ships operated by British Railways undertaking a cruise to witness the Naval Review.
    Mr. J. P. L. Thomas: Berths in the Review area were allocated to all British Railways' steamers for which applications were received. Steamers were at liberty to cruise through the lines of the Fleet

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    before taking up their berths and again between 6 and 8 p.m. on the evening of the Review Day.
    Sir J. Lucas: Is the Minister aware that British Railways charged £2 for a cruise which could not take place, except in words and not in the spirit? Will he not convey to the British Railways authorities that a suitable refund should be made?
    Mr. Thomas: It is not a question for the Admiralty or for the Minister of Transport. It is one for British Railways with whom my hon. Friend can take up the question direct.

    Coronation Day (Damaged Uniforms)
    Mr. Dribergasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how far officers and men of the Royal Navy, on duty in London on Coronation day have been required to replace, at their own expense, uniform and equipment damaged by rain; and if, in view of the special nature of the occasion and the severity of the weather, he will consider making good such damage at the public expense.
    Mr. J. P. L. Thomas: Inquiries were put in hand at once about the damage done to the uniform and equipment of the Coronation naval contingent. The payment of compensation to officers and ratings in the processional and street-lining units who are not insured or otherwise covered in respect of such damage, is under sympathetic consideration.

    Ship Repairs and Maintenance, Welsh Ports
    Mr. Gowerasked the First Lord of the Admiralty what plans he has for Her Majesty's ships making greater use of the Welsh ports, particularly the ports of the Bristol Channel; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. J. P. L. Thomas: The hon. Member no doubt has in mind facilities for ship repairing. The Admiralty will continue to give full consideration, when allocating contracts for warship refits and repairs, to the capacity and labour available, including the facilities in the Welsh ports, but I am unable at present to offer any hope of any considerable increase in the future volume of such work. Ships of the Reserve Fleet are, however, to be berthed at Cardiff, Penarth and Llanelly
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    and this arrangement will provide a new and continuing source of employment on the maintenance of these vessels. As regards ship construction, inshore minesweepers and coastal craft are under construction in North Wales.
    Mr. Gower: While I thank the Minister for that reply, may I ask if he will keep the matter constantly under review in view of the fact that the civil use of the ports has declined since the war?
    Mr. Thomas: Yes, certainly.

  TELEVISION

    Aberdeenshire
    Mr. Hector Hughesasked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he is yet in a position to state when the new television station for Aberdeen will be available for use; where it will be situated; and how far it will be effective to transmit pictures to the whole North of Scotland.
    The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. David Gammans): A general statement about the development of the television service will be made tomorrow. The B.B.C. station for Aberdeen is to be at Core Hill in Aberdeenshire and the Corporation expects that it will give a satisfactory service over most of the counties of Moray, Banff, Aberdeen and Kincardine, and over part of Angus.
    Mr. Hughes: While thanking the Minister for that answer, which will be much appreciated by the whole of the North-East of Scotland, may I ask him whether it is not a striking fact that this announcement was made possible by public opinion and the churches having killed sponsored television?
    Mr. Gammans: I think that the hon. and learned Member had better wait and hear what the television statement is tomorrow.
    Lady Tweedsmuir: Can my hon. Friend tell us when the service will be in full operation?
    Mr. Gammans: I think that must wait until tomorrow, too.
    Mr. Popplewell: Will the Minister assure the House that no broadcast wavelength allocation is given for this or any other television station until such time

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    as there is a separate wavelength given for Northern Ireland and North-East England?
    Mr. Gammans: I think that must wait until tomorrow, too.

    East Anglia
    Mr. Fellasked the Assistant Postmaster-General the number of television licences that have been issued to people living in East Anglia.
    Mr. Gammans: In the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, the number of current television licences is about 2,500, 5,300 and 12,000.
    Mr. Fell: Will my hon. Friend consider whether there is any way in which people who cannot receive television but have television sets in their homes can be relieved of these licences until such time as a programme is available? Is he aware that he may be getting quite a large number of postcards with more than political slogans on them if the people in this area do not receive television programmes soon?
    Mr. Gammans: I would not advise anybody in any part of the United Kingdom to buy a television set until he is quite sure that he can get reception with it.
    Mr. Fellasked the Assistant Postmaster-General the total population of the area to be covered by the proposed British Broadcasting Corporation Channel Islands television transmitter; and the estimated population of those areas of East Anglia that are unable to receive a regular television broadcast.
    Mr. Gammans: The stations planned by the B.B.C. for the Channel Islands and East Anglia will serve about 100,000 and 1,000,000 people, respectively.
    Mr. Fell: Does not my hon. Friend think that in view of that reply it will be difficult for the usual generosity of the people of East Anglia to show itself? Will not their generosity be strained if the Channel Islands are to receive a television programme and they receive it before East Anglia does?
    Mr. Gammans: No statement has been made that the Channel Islands are to receive a television programme.
    Brigadier Medlicottasked the Assistant Postmaster-General for an assurance that when the next areas for the extension of television facilities are decided upon, the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk will be given at least equal priority with any other areas, especially in view of the fact that the nature of the country is suitable for television transmission.
    Mr. Gammans: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to my answer to the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mr. Bullard) on 24th June.
    Brigadier Medlicott: May I ask the Minister not to be influenced too much by the question of population only, but to bear in mind that these are all agricultural communities and that the people who do so much to produce our food are entitled to a higher priority in amenities of this kind?
    Mr. Edward Evans: Are we likely to get a satisfactory answer tomorrow on this question?
    Mr. Gammans: I suggest that the hon. Member should be in his place.
    Mr. C. Williams: Will my hon. Friend remember that Devon and the West Country are much more important in an agricultural way and in everything else than all the Northern and Eastern counties?
    Brigadier Medlicottasked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he is aware of the disappointment which is being expressed in many parts of East Anglia resulting from the fact that although the Coronation was seen on television in many parts of Europe, including France and Germany, nothing was done to make effective signals available for the people of many parts of East Anglia and particularly the County of Norfolk; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Gammans: My noble Friend has great sympathy for the people of East Anglia in this matter, but, as I have previously informed the House, there is no question of facilities having been made available for foreigners in preference to British subjects. The equipment used to enable other countries to take the Coronation programme was quite unsuitable for a television station in this country.
    Brigadier Medlicott: In this matter, and particularly in his statement tomorrow, will the Minister bear in mind the warning of Solomon which is contained in the 29th Chapter of the Book of Proverbs, that:
    "Where there is no vision, the people perish"?
    Mr. H. Morrison: Will the hon. Gentleman keep in mind that it would be as well to concentrate on giving a universal B.B.C. service to our own country before we start playing about with commercial television?
    Mr. Gammans: I think the right hon. Gentleman had better wait until tomorrow's statement.
    Major Legge-Bourke: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that the treatment which the B.B.C. have given to East Anglia, both in sound broadcasting and television, is one of the finest arguments for commercial television?

  POST OFFICE

    Official-Paid Envelopes
    Sir E. Keelingasked the Assistant Postmaster-General whether the Post Office insist on payment by nationalised industries of the surcharge of 5d. due on every letter from a Member of Parliament in an official-paid envelope which they accept.
    Mr. Gammans: No, Sir. All letters posted in "Official Paid" envelopes would normally be treated as fully paid. The onus of deciding whether such envelopes may properly be used for a particular purpose, or to a particular address, rests with the hon. Member concerned.
    Sir E. Keeling: Although the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said in this House on 11th June that hon. Members ought not to use these envelopes for letters to nationalised industries, is my hon. Friend aware that the reply which he has just given indicates quite clearly to hon. Members that whether they do or do not the result will be precisely the same—the letters will be delivered without surcharge?
    Mr. Gammans: No, Sir. I think that this is a matter in which we must trust hon. Members of this House.
    Mr. Fernyhough: Is the Minister aware that the reason why many hon. Members communicate direct with the nationalised industries is to save cluttering up the various Ministries with letters which they afterwards have to pass on to the nationalised industries?
    Mr. Gammans: Yes, we do not mind that. All that we are anxious about is that they put a 2½d. stamp on the letters.

    Belfast Office (Political Slogans)
    Mr. Healyasked the Assistant Postmaster-General whether his attention has been drawn to complaints in reference to political slogans inserted on postcards by members of the staff in Belfast Post Office, as well as letters being opened and enclosures extracted; and what steps are being taken to remedy these irregularities.
    Mr. Gammans: Presumably the hon. Member is referring to the complaints he sent to me recently, one relating to a postcard and the other to a letter. As I have already informed him, I have not been able to discover where these irregularities took place.
    Mr. Healy: Is not the Minister aware that there have been a great many more complaints than those which I have sent to him? Is it true that only in the case of those passing through the Belfast office are cards defaced and contents removed from letters? Have not some of the hon. Gentleman's own officials been prosecuted, and will he not inquire whether the officials of the Northern Government now engaged in censoring letters might not know something of this? Will he not inquire from them?
    Mr. Gammans: I can only investigate those complaints that are sent to me. If the hon. Member cares to send any more, if he hears of any, I shall be only too glad to investigate.
    Captain Orr: Will my hon. Friend not encourage such slogans as "Remember 1690" and "No surrender" as being good for the soul of the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Healy)?

  TELEPHONE SERVICE

    Kiosks, Sunderland
    Mr. Willeyasked the Assistant Postmaster-General whether, in view of the loss of time in obtaining medical assistance following recent accidents and the grave public inconvenience caused by their absence, he will ensure the immediate installation of public telephones on the Red House Estate, Sunderland.
    Mr. Gammans: I expect that one kiosk on the estate will be available to the public about the 10th July.
    Mr. Willey: Is the Minister aware that his reply will bring great satisfaction to this estate? Will he try to improve the co-operation between his Department and local authorities so that telephones can be provided expeditiously on housing estates?
    Mr. Gammans: The difficulty was the main cable. This has now been finished and that is the reason why we have been able to supply this estate with a kiosk.

    School Premises, Leicester
    Mr. Jannerasked the Assistant Postmaster-General when he intends to install the promised telephone of the Forest Lodge Infant and Junior School, at Charnor Road, Leicester, which was to be connected within a few months.
    Mr. Gammans: The telephones were installed at these schools on Monday, 22nd June.
    Mr. Janner: About time, too.

PRIME MINISTER'S ABSENCE (ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS)
3.31 p.m.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. R. A. Butler): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a short statement.
I undertook on Monday to make a statement about the addressing of Questions to the Prime Minister.
Questions on foreign affairs should normally be put down to the Secretary of State and will be answered by the Minister of State or the Under-Secretary. From time to time there may be Questions on foreign policy which would be answered by the Prime Minister; such Questions Should continue to be put down to him.
404
This also applies, of course, to general Questions which are not the responsibility of individual Ministers. The Prime Minister's Questions will be answered on his behalf by myself or the Lord Privy Seal.
Mr. H. Morrison: The House will be obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for the statement that he has made, which should help to clear up matters, but there are one or two points that I should like to put to him in the hope that he can give the House some further guidance.
First, it is said in the statement that from time to time there may be Questions on foreign policy which would be answered by the Prime Minister. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman can give any guidance as to the scope or standard, so to speak, of Foreign Office Questions with which the Prime Minister himself would deal or would have dealt with on his behalf. May we take it that with regard to Korea, for example, they will continue to be dealt with on the Prime Ministerial level, whether the Prime Minister answers personally or somebody answers on his behalf?
Finally, I presume that the words of the statement about general Questions which are not the responsibility of individual Ministers, which the Chancellor has said may be answered by himself or by the Leader of the House, apply to non-Foreign Office Questions. I quite understand that in that case it would be desirable to divide them according to the nature of the Questions, but may we take it that if Foreign Office Questions reach the Prime Ministerial level, one Minister will deal with them? Otherwise, it will only lead to confusion if two Ministers at different levels deal with Foreign Office Questions.
Mr. Butler: The answer to the last part of the right hon. Gentleman's question is that he is quite correct in assuming that the ordinary general Questions for the Prime Minister will be dealt with in the normal way as Prime Minister Questions. I think it is important that the normal Foreign Office Questions should be put down to the Secretary of State, but the Government wish to be at the service of the House and of right hon. and hon. Members; and if there is any doubt on a major Question I shall certainly be very glad to answer it myself, and if I am not able to do so the Leader

405
of the House will answer it. That answers the right hon. Gentleman's point that there should be one Minister who will normally answer in the event of the Foreign Office Ministers not being able themselves to answer.
It is impossible to define exactly what type of Question would be put to the Prime Minister or to the Departmental Ministers. It is because we have found it difficult to define exactly the type of Question that we prefer to give the opportunity to hon. Members to put down the Questions as they think best. I do not think a subject like Korea should necessarily be treated in such a way that Questions on it are always put down to the Prime Minister. Questions on it might well be on aspects which the Foreign Office as a Department is more competent to answer than a Minister answering on behalf of the Prime Minister.
Mr. Morrison: I am much obliged, but I am still a little worried about the division of Foreign Office Questions on the higher levels. Perhaps we are agreed about it. I think it would be inconvenient, as a matter of normal principle, for the answers to those Questions to be divided between two Ministers. Are we to take it from the Chancellor's reply that normally he will answer those if they reach what we may call the Prime Ministerial level, but that in his enforced ab-
406
sence they would be answered by the Leader of the House? If so, I think that is a reasonable assumption, but I would hope that one Minister would take primary responsibility at that level for answering Foreign Office Questions.
Mr. Butler: I think the answer is quite clear about that. I shall be ready to answer normally, and if I were to be absent my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal would answer. Otherwise the arrangement would be that the Lord Privy Seal, as Leader of the House, might take some of the other Prime Minister Questions by agreement between us.

BILL PRESENTED
  MONOPOLIES AND RESTRICTIVE PRACTICES COMMISSION BILL
  "to make provision for a chairman and deputy chairmen of the Monopolies and Restrictive Practices Commission, and for the tenure of office and superannuation benefits of the chairman and deputy chairmen thereof; to enable functions of the Commission to be exercised by groups of its members; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. P. Thorneycroft; supported by Mr. Boyd-Carpenter and Mr. H. Strauss; read the First time; to be read a Second time To-morrow, and to be printed. [Bill 101.]

DEATH PENALTY (SUSPENSION)
3.36 p.m.
Mr. Sydney Silverman: I beg to move,
"That leave be given to bring in a Bill to suspend the death penalty for the period of five years."
Under the rules of this House, I can make only a short speech in support of this proposal, and he would be a bold man who would attempt to review the arguments for and against the death penalty within the limits of time that the rules impose. Fortunately, it is not necessary to do that. In 1948 the House had a full opportunity of debating the whole case in a debate which I am sure those who recall it will agree showed the House at its debating and, I think, statesmanlike best.
The Government of the day, to whom we were all grateful, permitted—and I am sure it was right to do so—the question to be decided by the votes of Members guided by their own consciences and judgments and in no way influenced or guided by what we call the usual channels. In a debate conducted in that way and on that basis, the House of Commons decided by a majority of 23 that the death penalty should be suspended for five years. I realise that the House is differently constituted today, but I believe that the House today will not, any more than the House in 1948, allow its judgment on this question to be affected one way or the other by any kind of party political considerations or any considerations of party advantage. I believe that the House will be permitted today, as it was then, to make up its own mind, by each of us voting as we think right in our own consciences and judgments.
The proposal that was carried in the House of Commons then was defeated in the House of Lords. It was then suggested that an attempt might be made to find some sort of compromise in order to meet difficult and exceptional cases raised in their Lordships' House. That attempt was made, and a new Clause was sent up. That Clause was rejected because their Lordships felt that it created more anomalies than it cured. We were therefore brought back to the view that this question could be settled only on the general overall basis—
408
though, indeed, we left out any question of political crimes, limiting it only to the death penalty—by a simple trial, experimental period of doing without this thing in our country for five years, as nearly every country in Europe has done without it for so many years past without any visible or provable harm.
I shall limit myself to one or two short points in support of the proposition that this is an appropriate moment for the House to re-enact that defeated Clause. There are many who say that this is an inappropriate moment in that there is a Royal Commission on the death penalty, and we are awaiting their Report. I gather that their last sitting to hear evidence was nearly two years ago, and that they have since been considering their Report ever since. I can deal quite quickly with any suggestion that we ought not to deal with the matter today, but ought to wait until the Commission report, by reference to the statements that were made by my right hon. Friend who was then Prime Minister when the Commission was appointed.
It is quite clear that the Report of the Royal Commission will be irrelevant to the question which I am inviting the House to decide today, because the question of the abolition or suspension of the death penalty was expressly excluded from their terms of reference. I shall not take up time in reading the terms of reference, but my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. J. Paton) pressed the then Prime Minister very hard about it. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West said:
"… may I implore the Prime Minister to reconsider these terms of reference to make it abundantly apparent that the Commission is to have a free vote?"
The then Prime Minister replied:
"I am quite sure that is not so. I have made it abundantly clear, as I stated, that it is for Parliament to decide on that issue. I am quite sure that if we put up a Royal Commission with terms of reference to consider abolition, we should merely get majority and minority reports, and I think it is much more useful to set up a Commission with these terms of reference."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th January, 1949; Vol. 460, c. 330.]
I call the attention of the House to what was then said:
"I have made it abundantly clear that it is for Parliament to decide on that issue."

409
Therefore, I say that we should not wait for the Commission's Report. That Report has nothing to do with this question. It is for Parliament to decide. Let Parliament decide.
I want to make one reference to the Motion in the name of six of my hon. Friends about the Macnaghten Rules. They are quite right, but I would remind the House that all these questions of diminished responsibility or partial responsibility—or any responsibility less than full responsibility—are difficult only because of the death penalty. Whoever heard of a shoplifter, a burglar, or a blackmailer pleading guilty but insane? The reason is that so long as the man is alive, serving a sentence inflicted by the courts, the Prison Commissioners have full rights, full opportunity and full means to apply such remedies, curative or penal, as they may decide in the particular case. One cannot do it if the man is dead. Therefore, all these questions arise only because we retain the death penalty.
The only other matter with which I want to deal—a matter which has always influenced thinking on this problem—is the finality of the death sentence. If we make a mistake there is nothing we can ever do to recall our error. I believe that a great many people who otherwise might have opposed the death penalty were influenced in their vote by the view that such a mistake was a virtual impossibility. The right hon. Member who is now the Home Secretary dealt with this express point on the occasion in 1948 to which I have referred. One of my hon. Friends, who was later Solicitor-General, interrupted him when he had said:
"As a realist I do not believe that the chances of error in a murder case, with these various instruments of the State present, constitute a factor which we must consider, …"
My hon. and learned Friend interrupted and asked whether there was any possibility that an innocent man might be put to death. He said:
"Will the right hon. and learned Member say that here is no possibility at all of that?"
The right hon. and learned Gentleman who is now Home Secretary replied:
"There is no practical possibility. The hon. and learned Member asks me to say that there is no possibility. Of course, a jury might go wrong, the Court of Criminal Appeal might go wrong, as might the House of Lords and the Home Secretary: they might all be stricken mad and go wrong. But that is not
410
a possibility which anyone can consider likely. The hon. and learned Member is moving in a realm of fantasy when he makes that suggestion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th April, 1948; Vol. 449, c. 1077.]
I should like to know from the Home Secretary today whether he still believes that. Was my hon. and learned Friend moving in a realm of fantasy? This week we have had completely established that a case was made against a man on a charge of murder; that it succeeded; that the appeal failed; the application for reprieve failed; the man was hanged, and we know today that he was convicted and hanged on a false case. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] This morning an experienced, sober and reliable crime reporter—Mr. Stanley Bishop of the "News Chronicle"—reported that Christie had, since his conviction, confessed to the murder of the Evans baby. The Home Office know whether that statement by Mr. Bishop is right or wrong. I say they ought not to allow this House to vote on my Motion today without telling us whether Mr. Bishop's statement is right or wrong.
Mr. Dudley Williams: Surely the important thing is whether Mr. Christie's statement is right or wrong?
Mr. Speaker: There can be only two speeches on this occasion under the Standing Order.
Mr. Silverman: I quite agree that Mr. Christie's evidence on that or any other matter is not conclusive, but I think we are entitled to know now whether he has said it. The Home Secretary is not here. I do not know whether the Home Office are represented at all, although I think they are. If their representatives can tell us whether that statement has been made, I hope they will tell us before we vote, but in any case I think there will be no dubiety or difference of opinion when I say that this matter must be probed to the bottom by a full and public inquiry into the whole case.
But I want to say to the House that such an inquiry would be irrelevant to our present purpose. It might prove that Mr. Evans was entirely innocent or it might prove that Mr. Evans was guilty of the murder for which he was hanged. Even in the latter case, he will be convicted on a case which he has never heard and which he can never hear. He will be convicted on a case which denies the

411
case on which the prosecution relied for his conviction at the trial. It will be an inquiry at which the principal witness will be forever silent. It is not right, even if a man is ultimately proved to be guilty of such a thing, that he should pay for a crime on evidence which everyone now knows is evidence on which no reliance ought to be placed.
I do not want to overstep my privileges. In conclusion, I say to the House that it ought now to agree to my Motion on the ground that we have no right, until human judgment is infallible, to pass and execute an irrevocable doom.
3.53 p.m.
Mr. Hylton-Foster: I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) that this is an absolutely non-party matter and I entirely agree with him that it is quite impossible under the Standing Order to go into considerations of capital punishment, aye or no. I ask the House to reject the Motion because I am convinced that this is the wrong time to ask the House to come to a decision upon this extremely important matter. Perhaps hon. Members will allow me to develop that.
I do not agree that the Report of the Royal Commission will be irrelevant to this inquiry—and that is a point which I will develop later. In my belief, the hon. Member is asking the House to make a very grave, important and difficult decision. I am grateful to him for referring to the history of the case—which showed how difficult it is—and to its treatment in 1948 as a question of conscience. After the persuasive—if I may say so—speech of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne—I did not hear it, but I read it—and the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Hollis), they got a majority in this House—a small one, with some notable abstensions, and contrary—I speak in the presence of the then Home Secretary—to the advice of the then Government. That is how difficult the problem is. It all ended with this House, after time for consideration, deciding that that was not the time for the suspension of the death penalty.
I should have thought that if this is now to be treated as a matter of urgency, if the House is to be required to reverse
412
that decision, if possible, as a matter of urgency, then there must be some urgent new factor. Where is it to be found? Some people—I say "some," because I want to state it as fairly as I can—believe that capital punishment is a useful deterrent, not, of course, for all contemplated murders but for some murders.
I look at the criminal statistics but I do not find there a reason for suspending a penalty which some people think is a useful deterrent. I look at the police establishment figures and I do not find any reason there. We all have to form our own view about what public opinion is at any given moment, but I do not believe there is any sudden upsurge of public opinion to show that it is yet attuned to or ready for suspension. Of course, the House must lead. Of course, the House must not drone along in the wake of the opinion of its constituents, but in an important matter like this of the penalties imposed by the criminal law, we must be careful to carry public opinion with us.
What is the new factor suggested? It is the case of the man—it is easier to speak in names—named Evans, who, as the hon. Member is now asserting, is already shown to have been convicted on a completely false case. If I am misquoting him I am sorry, but I think it is a fact that he puts it as high as that. I would beg hon. Members not to jump to that conclusion. It is a little embarrassing to talk about this case, because the case of Evans is tied up with the case of Christie, and although we read in the newspapers that Christie does not intend to appeal, I imagine that it would be wrong and out of order, that not being an irrevocable decision, to say something here and now affecting the case of Christie until the time for appeal has run out.
Perhaps, without offending, I can put the point in this way. We know there are a variety of statements by Evans, mutually contradictory. There are a variety of statements and evidence by Christie, mutually contradictory—and mutually contradictory on oath; and all human experience suggests—
Mr. S. Silverman rose—
Mr. Speaker: On these occasions it is not customary to interrupt.
Mr. Silverman: I am rising to a point of order. I do not want to interrupt the

413
argument, and I know that it would be quite out of order to do so, but surely it is not out of order to correct an accidental mis-statement of fact. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that Evans' statements were mutually contradictory on oath. I am sure he knows that is not true.
Mr. Hylton-Foster: If I said that, I apologise. [HON. MEMBERS: "You did not."] It is worth while examining all the material carefully before arriving at any conclusion, and it is when we find mutually conflicting statements given by men in varying circumstances, some on oath and some not, that we must be careful. I do not know what material the hon. Member for Kensington, North (Mr. G. H. R. Rogers) has. I merely submit to the House that no one can form a view about the Evans case or try to form a view about the Evans case unless it be a person who has before him the whole of the material at one and the same time.
If there is the slightest shadow of a scintilla of doubt on that case, I hope my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary will have whatever he feels is the right form of inquiry or investigation so that any public doubt about that matter may be completely cured and so that the public may be satisfied that the matter has been probed to the very depths. Until that time and until that is done, I would beg the House not to jump to any conclusion about that case whatever. If we do not, then the only new factor which the hon. Member suggests today does not exist.
The hon. Member was perfectly accurate, of course, in what he said about the terms of reference of the Royal Commission: abolition is excluded from the terms of reference; but the terms of reference comprise—I shall not weary the House by quoting all—how capital punishment, in effect, should be limited or modified, and if so, to what extent. It follows that they can limit it, if they
wish, right down to everything but zero. That is within the terms of reference.
Capital punishment is to be justified, if at all—and I am expressing no view at all about it today—because people believe it to be a deterrent, and I for one, if I were asked to decide about this matter here and now, would urgently want to know what the conclusions of the Royal Commission were about whether it is a deterrent or not. They have been hearing evidence from policemen, from prison officials, from Professor Sellin—those are published things—on the matter whether it is a deterrent or not, which anyone would want to know about before arriving at a decision on this matter.
The House will remember when this was debated before, what stress was placed on what would be the proper alternative punishment, on what we should do with a murderer if we did not hang him. There was discussion on solitary confinement in Belgium, and the rest of it. Those surely are matters about which the House will want, before arriving at a decision, to know what the Royal Commission's answers are, and that is expressly within the terms of reference of this Royal Commission.
It is my belief that if we had now a Second Reading debate and a decision on this problem, there would be hon. Members, no doubt, whose minds are so made up one way or the other about this that they would say that nothing the Royal Commission would say would affect them, but I believe most of us would regard that as wasting time seriously, and would be saying: Before I am called upon to vote about this, I should like to know what the Royal Commission we have appointed have found.
Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 12.
The House divided: Ayes, 195; Noes, 256.

Division No. 209.]

AYES

[4.2 p.m.

Acland, Sir Richard

Baxter, A. B.

Bowden, H. W.

Albu, A. H.

Bence, C. R

Bowles, F. G.

Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

Benn, Hon. Wedgwood

Boyle, Sir Edward

Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)

Beswick, F.

Brockway, A. F.

Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

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

Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

Awbery, S. S.

Bing, G. H. C.

Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

Bacon, Miss Alice

Blackburn, F.

Brown, Thomas (Ince)

Baird, J.

Boardman, H.

Burton, Miss F. E

Balfour, A.

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)

Callaghan, L. J.

Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

Reid, William (Camlachie)

Carmichael, J

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

Champion, A. J.

Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.

Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Chapman, W. D

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Robinson, Kenneth (St. Paneras, N.)

Chetwynd, G. R

Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Clunie, J.

Janner, B.

Ross, William

Coldrick, W.

Jeger, George (Goole)

Royle, C.

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)

Shackleton, E. A. A.

Cove, W. G.

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Short, E. W.

Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

Jones, David (Hartlepool)

Shurmer, P. L. E.

Crosland, C. A. R.

Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

Silverman, Julius (Erdington)

Cullen, Mrs. A.

Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Daines, P.

Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

Skeffington, A. M.

Darling, George (Hillsborough)

Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)

Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

Smith, Ellis (Stake, S.)

Davies, Stephen (Merthyr)

Lewis, Arthur

Smith, Norman (Nottingham S.)

da Freitas, Geoffrey

Lipton, Lt.-Col. M.

Sorensen, R. W.

Deer, G.

MacColl, J. E.

Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank

Delargy, H. J.

McGhee, H. G.

Steele, T.

Dodds, N. N.

McGovern, J.

Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

Donnelly, D. L.

McInnes, J.

Stokes, Rt. Hon. R. R.

Driberg, T. E. N.

McLeavy, F.

Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

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

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Stress, Dr. Barnett

Edwards, Rt. Hon. John (Brighouse)

McNeill, Rt. Hon. H.

Swingler, S. T.

Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

Sylvester, G. O.

Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

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

Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

Mann, Mrs. Jean

Taylor, John (West Lothian)

Fernyhough, E.

Manuel, A. C.

Thomas, David (Aberdare)

Finch, H. J.

Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

Thomas, George (Cardiff)

Follick, M.

Mason, Roy

Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

Foot. M. M.

Messer, Sir F.

Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

Forman, J. C.

Mikardo, Ian

Thornton, E.

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Mitchiton, G. R.

Timmons, J.

Freeman, Peter (Newport)

Mcnslow, W.

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Morley, R.

Usborne, H. C.

Gibson, C. W.

Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

Viant, S. P.

Glanville, James

Mulley, F. W.

Weitzman, D.

Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)

Nally, W.

Wells, William (Walsall)

Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J

Wheatley, Rt. Hon. John

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Oliver, G. H.

Wheeldon, W. E.

Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

Oswald, T.

White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

Griffiths, William (Exchange)

Paget, R. T.

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N. E.)

Grimond, J.

Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

Wigg, George

Hale, Leslie

Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

Wilkins, W. A.

Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)

Palmer, A. M. F.

Willey, F. T.

Hamilton, W. W.

Pargiter, G. A.

Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)

Hannan, W.

Parker, J.

Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

Hastings, S.

Paton, J.

Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)

Hayman, F. H.

Pearson, A

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

Herbison, Miss M.

Peart, T. F.

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

Hobson, C. R.

Popplewell, E.

Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

Hollis, M. C.

Price, Joseph T. (Westhoughton)

Wyatt, W. L.

Holman, P.

Proctor, W. T.

Yates, V. F.

Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)

Pryde, D. J.

Younger, Rt. Hon. K.

Holt, A. F.

Rankin, John

Hubbard, T. F.

Reeves, J.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

Reid, Thomas (Swindon)

Mr. Blyton and

Mr. Sydney Silverman.

NOES

Aitken, W. T.

Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)

Digby, S. Wingfield

Allan, R. A. (Paddinglon, S.)

Braithwaite, Lt.-Cdr. G. (Bristol, N. W.)

Doddt-Parker, A. D.

Alport, C. J. M.

Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)

Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.

Anstruther-Gray, Major, W. J.

Brooman-White, R. C.

Doughty, C. J. A.

Arbuthnot, John

Browne, Jack (Govan)

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm

Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)

Buchan-Hepburn, Rt. Hon. P. G. T.

Drayson, G. B.

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

Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

Drewe, Sir C.

Baker, P. A D.

Burden, F. F. A.

Dugdale, Rt. Hon. Sir T. (Richmond)

Baldwin, A. E.

Butcher, Sir Herbert

Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

Banks, Col. C.

Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Saffron Walden)

Duthie, W. S.

Barber, Anthony

Campbell, Sir David

Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.

Barlow, Sir John

Channon, H.

Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

Bartley, P.

Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

Beach, Maj. Hicks

Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

Fell, A.

Beamish, Maj. Tufton

Cole, Norman

Finlay, Graeme

Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

Colegate, W. A.

Fisher, Nigel

Bennett, F. M. (Reading, N.)

Conant, Maj. R. J. E.

Fletoher-Cooke, C.

Bennett, William (Woodside)

Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert

Ford, Mrs. Patricia

Bevins, J. R. (Toxteth)

Cooper-Key, E. M.

Fort, R.

Birch, Nigel

Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

Bishop, F. P.

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

Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe & Lonsdale)

Black, C. W.

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)

Boothby, Sir R. J. G.

Crouch, R. F.

Galbraith, T. G. D (Hillhead)

Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.

Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

Gammans, L. D

Braine, B. R.

Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)

Garner-Evans, E. H.

416

417

George, Rt. Hon. Maj. G. Lleyd

Low, A. R. W.

Renton, D. L. M.

Godber, J. B.

Luoas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

Robertson, Sir David

Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.

Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

Robinson, Roland (Blackpool, S.)

Gough, C. F. H.

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

Graham, Sir Fergus

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.

Roper, Sir Harold

Gridley, Sir Arnold

McCallum, Major D.

Russell, R. S.

Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

McCorquodale, Rt. Hon. M S

Salter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

Macdonald, Sir Peter

Sandys, Rt. Hon. D

Harden, J. R. E.

Mackeson, Brig. H. R.

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

Hare, Hon. J. H.

McKibbin, A. J.

Shepherd, William

Hargreaves, A.

Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)

Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)

Harris, Reader (Heston)

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)

Maclean, Fitzroy

Snadden, W. McN.

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

MacLeod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)

Spearman, A. C. M.

Harvey, Air Cdre, A. V. (Macclesfield)

MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W.)

Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

Macmillan, Rt. Hon Harold (Bromley)

Spens, Rt. Hon. Sir P. (Kensington, S.)

Harvie-Watt, Sir George

Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)

Stevens, G. P.

Hay, John

Maitland, Comdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)

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

Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)

Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

Heald, Sir Lionel

Manningham-Buller, Sir R. E

Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.

Heath, Edward

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Storey, S.

Henderson, John (Cathcart)

Marples, A. E.

Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

Higgs, J. M. C.

Marshall, Sir Sidney (Sutton)

Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Maude, Angus

Studholme, H. G.

Hirst, Geoffrey

Maudling, R.

Summers, G. S.

Holland-Martin, C. J.

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

Sutcliffe, Sir Harold

Holmes, Sir Stanley (Harwich)

Medlicott, Brig. F.

Taylor, Charles (Eastbourne)

Hope, Lord John

Mellor, Sir John

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

Hopkinson, Rt. Hon. Henry

Molson, A. H. E.

Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.

Moody, A. S.

Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)

Horobin, I. M.

Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir Thomas

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence

Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.

Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)

Houghton, Douglas

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)

Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

Mort, D. L.

Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Thurtle, Ernest

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

Nicholls, Harmar

Touche, Sir Gordon

Hurd, A. R.

Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)

Turner-Samuels, M

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

Nield, Basil (Chester)

Turton, R. H.

Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P.

Tweedsmuir, Lady

Jennings, R.

Nugent, G. R. H.

Vaughan-Morgan, J. K.

Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

Nutting, Anthony

Vosper, D. F.

Jones, A. (Hall Green)

Oakshott, H. D.

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Odey, G. W.

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)

Kaberry, D.

Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)

Keeling, Sir Edward

Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian (Weston-super-Mare)

Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

Keenan, W.

Osborne, C.

Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C

Kerr, H. W.

Partridge, E.

Watkinson, H. A.

King, Dr. H. M.

Peake, Rt. Hon. O

Webbe, Sir H. (London & Westminster)

Lambert, Hon. G.

Perkins, W. R. D.

Wellwood, W.

Lambton, Viscount

Peto, Brig. C. H. M

Williams, Rt. Hon. Charles (Torquay)

Lancaster, Col. C. G.

Peyton, J. W. W.

Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

Law, Rt. Hon. R. K.

Pickthorn, K. W. M

Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A H.

Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Pitman, I. J.

Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

Llewellyn, D. T.

Powell, J. Enoch

Wills, G.

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

Price, Henry (Lewisham, W)

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.

Wood, Hon. R.

Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

Profumo, J. D.

York, C.

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.

Raikes, Sir Victor

Logan, D. G.

Rayner, Brig. R.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Longden, Gilbert

Redmayne, M.

Mr. Deedes and Mr. Hylton Foster

Remnant, Hon. P

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  SUPPLY
  [17TH ALLOTTED DAY]
  Eighth Report from the Select Committee on Estimates considered.

EDUCATION (SCHOOL-BUILDING)
4.12 p.m.
Mr. Ede: I beg to move,
"That this House approves the said Report."
My hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates), in two successive years, has presided over a Sub-Committee of the Estimates Committee which has produced a unanimous Report on subjects of very considerable interest. Last year it produced a Report on prison buildings, which formed the subject of a very useful debate which we had for half a day. This year my hon. Friend has produced, with the assistance of his Sub-Committee, a further Report which is unanimous, and which deals with a subject which, so far as I know, has never previously formed the subject of discussion in the House.
Ever since the establishment of the public education system, we never appear to have had a full day's debate on the subject of school-building. My hon. Friend is to be congratulated that on this occasion he has managed to get not merely from his Sub-Committee but from the Committee as a whole a unanimous Report, and, so far as we on this side of the House are concerned, we are prepared to accept the Report. We ask the House to give the Report its approval.
The Sub-Committee examined a number of witnesses, it heard evidence from the Ministry itself, from representative bodies, from the Association of Education Committees, from the National Union of Teachers, from various local authorities and from persons engaged in the building industry. As a result of these investigations and listening to the witnesses, the Members were able, in the end, to put before the main Committee the Report on which the main Committee also found it possible to be unanimous.
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There is a leading article in "The Times" this morning, which starts off by saying:
"It is hard to controvert the main conclusion of the recent Report issued by the Select Committee on Estimates on the state of the schools. This was that the recent rate of school-building is 'quite inadequate' for the nation's agreed aims in education. When the Report is debated in the Commons today, something more will be called for than a mere display of party fisticuffs, for the Report is constructive as well as critical and its criticisms apply to both main parties. Implicit in its pages are larger questions. How serious is the nation's concern for education? What is it prepared to forgo in order to secure proper schooling for the present generation of children?"
I accept whole-heartedly the comments and advice tendered in that paragraph, which is in contrast to a number of lines in the leading article of the "Sunday Times" of 28th June, which said:
"The shortage of schools, and the low standard of many still in use, is largely due, like the housing shortage, to six years of wartime abstention from building. The effect is worse for schools because at this moment they are undergoing the pressure of the great 'bulge' in births just after the war. On top of these loads came the raising of the school-leaving age, which in the housing analogy was equivalent to a sudden addition of some 5 million to the population. This was the Socialists' own policy, and they must take responsibility for its consequences."
May I say that every Member of the House who was here in 1944 will agree that the raising of the school-leaving age was the policy of every party in the House at that time. To suggest that in some way or other, after 1945, we invented the raising of the school-leaving age is really to play tricks with history which even the "Sunday Times" ought to avoid.
Let us be quite clear about exactly what the Coalition Government did. They were faced with the problem as to whether to deal with the raising of the school-leaving age to 15 in some way similar to that in which Mr. Fisher dealt with it. He said it could be raised in various places by bye-laws. The principal place that raised it by byelaw was Carnarvonshire. In the greater part of the country it was ignored. I am sure that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were here he would agree with me that we had discussions as to what was the best thing to do about the raising of the school-leaving age.

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We could have said that there should be an appointed day in the future when the school-leaving age should be raised to 15. That, of course, would have meant that it would still have been left an open question. What we did was to pass Section 35 of the Education Act, which enacted that "compulsory school age" should mean "any age between five years and 15 years."
But knowing, in the midst of the war—and not knowing at that time when the war would end—that at the appointed day for the Act we might still be at war, provision was made whereby the implementation of the raising of the school-leaving age to 15 should be put in the Act in the form that I have just read, with a proviso elsewhere in the Act that it might be postponed to two years from the appointed day for Part II of the Act.
No sooner was the Act passed than Circular 1, issued by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that it should be postponed for a year. That was from 1st April, 1945, which was the appointed day for Part II of the Act, to 1st April, 1946. My right hon. Friend the late Miss Ellen Wilkinson, in her first year of office, issued a similar statement with regard to a second year's postponement, which was the maximum postponement allowed under the Act. Therefore, the bringing into force of the raising of the school-leaving age to 15 was effected in accordance with the provisions of the Act, with reservations that had been agreed on by all the parties during the passing of the Act. Therefore, it is evident that the first complaint made by the "Sunday Times" is not relevant.
I now come to the second complaint they make, which is equally unsustainable. It is as follows:
"Again, with the false priority of the ideal or showy before practical, standards were set for new school accommodation which must mean that while some lucky pupils were taught in luxury, others languished in dark, cold and insanitary schools which the building resources could not be stretched to replace. Luxury is, of course, a relative term, but the minimum proportions fixed for washing facilities and w.c.s, corridor garage floor space, and so forth, and the insistance on separate gymnasiums and school halls, set standards above those thought adequate by parents paying for their children's education at expensive public and private schools."
The first building regulations under the Act, which were those under which
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building started, were drafted and approved while the present Chancellor of the Exchequer was still Minister of Education; and the idea that in some way or other the troubles that have overtaken the schools arise from something that the Labour Government did that was not contemplated by Parliament and by the Coalition Government is quite unsustainable. I do not imagine that in anything which the right hon. Lady may have to say today she will adopt either of the lines that were adopted last Sunday by the "Sunday Times."
I have mentioned these matters because I think it should be borne in mind that the Education Act, 1944, was a great joint effort on the part of all persons interested in education to try to get education into a position where we could all have a joint responsibility and feel that we were engaged on a great national service. So far as I am concerned today, I hope that I shall say nothing that will belie that view, which I held then and which I still hold.
In discussing this question of school-building, it is very easy to proceed on the basis of the simplest rules of arithmetic, to say that the Labour Party had six years in office and built so many places, so many a year, and that the Conservative Party have had two years in office and have built so many places, so divide the number by two, and, if it is better, that proves that the Conservatives are better than the Labour people. [Interruption.] That is the simplest arithmetic, about level with the mind of the right hon. and gallant Member for Leicester, South-East (Captain Waterhouse).
Let us examine what the Act requires. There, for the first time, every local education authority was given the task of preparing a development plan showing what were the suitabilities of the existing schools and what schools were required to fill out that existing provision to reach what could be regarded as an adequate provision under the Act. Section 11 laid on the local education authorities the duty to do that within 12 months of 1st April, 1945, with a provision that if they could not do it in that time the Minister had power to extend the period. As is well known, local education authorities move at different paces, and a good many of them took more than

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double the time allowed by the Act to produce their development plan so that we could get an idea what the requirements of the country were and arrange for allocation of materials.
Therefore, to divide by six is certainly to divide by too many, and the right hon. and gallant Member for Leicester, South-East, when he does his division sum, might consider whether four or three might not be the more appropriate figure to put in. Then we come to what has been done since the General Election of 1951. It does not follow that because a school is built during the time that a Government are in office that it was arranged for and the materials were arranged for and the consent given to proceed with it during that time. I wonder how many schools now in operation have originated entirely within the right hon. Lady's term of office. I hope she will deal with that point.
I know that there were great arguments behind me a few weeks ago as to whether the number was two or three. Taking the higher number, to give the right hon. Lady the benefit of the doubt with regard to the converted golf club which, I understand, has been put in as a new school, that does show that to draw these easy arithmetical conclusions, devoid of all logic, from the statistics for the years since about 1947, is to fall into a fallacy, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will not ask us to do that this afternoon.
I have said this much because I wish to make it quite clear that so far as I am concerned I accept the findings of the Committee, which did not attempt to apportion blame between one Government and another. I accept their conclusions as being an accurate representation of the facts, and, although they disclose some shortcomings, I am quite willing to accept those shortcomings and not to waste too much time in attempting to defend them, but simply to say that they existed and that steps were taken to remove them. But one cannot get away from the unanimous finding of this Committee, which is to be found at the foot of page VII of the Report, that among the things which produced an effect were the cuts made in capital expenditure in 1951 and the subsequent three months' moratorium.
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One part of the Report is devoted to proving—as has been urged rather frequently by hon. and right hon. Members opposite—that we attempted to do too much, which, in public administration, is a thing of which I would always rather be accused than anything else. If the thing cannot be made to fit exactly, I would sooner try to do too much than too little, because there are all sorts of lags and other things that come in which make it rather difficult to keep up even to one's more ambitious programme. At any rate, it was an effort to do something, whereas the moratorium was a declaration that nothing was to be begun, and from that moratorium have flowed a good many of the difficulties that now confront the local authorities.
Now that we are getting away from the moratorium, I hope that the right hon. Lady will be able to tell us whether the development plans and the programmes that were based on them will be reinstated, or whether there is to be a perpetual postponement which, in some areas, I find is a steadily growing postponement of things for which a date had been fixed. I happen to be a governor of a Roman Catholic Convent School—a county council governor of it; I want to make that quite plain. We had a proposal which we hoped would materialise somewhere about 1956. We are now told that the earliest date by which we can expect to get sanction for it is 1962.
I have in front of me the "Bletchley District Gazette" for Saturday, 20th June, 1953, in which there is the heading:
"Minister Cuts School-Building Plans, Bletchley Gets One, Slough Gets Five."
I want to make it quite plain that I am not taking part in any controversy between Bletchley and Slough as to what is the right number they ought to get. The report in that paper ends by stating
"Twelve months ago, the Minister of Housing and Local Government met the Bletchley Urban Council and gave the firmest promise that he would go back to his fellow Ministers and stress the need for Bletchley's educational requirements under the new expansion scheme to be given the first priority."
Perhaps when the right hon. Gentleman replies tonight, instead of the Parliamentary Secretary, he will be able to tell us what he means by "the new expansion scheme" and "the first priority." I must

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say that until I read about it in this paper I did not know of its existence.
"The reply to our request "—
says one of the members of the Divisional Executive—
"on this new programme indicates to me that nothing of the kind is being done. We were congratulated by the Minister and everybody concerned for our public spirit, for being the first to accept the expansion under the town Development Act, but we now find that at the first opportunity they have failed to implement their promise, and that, instead, we are getting sheerly neglected."
This moratorium brought to an end all new starts with regard to schools for a period of three months at the beginning of 1952. We would like to know how far into the future that is to be projected. Is it possible that there will be a restoration of the dates for some of these schools that were in development plans and programmes, or will the three months remain about the period during which everything will be delayed; or, again, is it now proposed that the development plans generally shall be revised and new starting dates fixed for projects that have been put into them and sent to the Ministry of Education? I think that we are at least entitled to know that.
The problems that have so far confronted local authorities who have not been disturbed by a great influx of population have, in the main, been in the primary schools, but starting from about the end of 1955, or possibly a little earlier, that problem will move over to the secondary schools. Of course, if we are to get anything like parity of treatment for the different types of primary schools, we have to bear in mind that where old buildings are relied upon, a good all-range school, which may very well now be a secondary modern school, was built for classes of 40, and, in some cases, even more.
The reduction in the size of a classroom during my lifetime has been rather considerable. The first school in which I taught when I left college in 1906 had 73 pupils in a class. I ceased my life as an active teacher in 1914, and I had never had a class of fewer than 55 in a county where standards were always rather high compared with the rest of the country. Those schools are now being asked to accommodate, with a larger school population, secondary schools in which the class, we hope, will not be larger than 30.
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I know that there are some people who say, "Well, you can double up classes in a room. You can have two classes in a room." I do not believe that anybody who knows anything about the subject would regard that as a satisfactory method of conducting a school. My mind goes back to the elementary school in which I was taught where we had four classes in a room, and one normally learned more about the lesson being given to another class than about the one intended for oneself. We should like to hear from the right hon. Lady what are her proposals for dealing with the influx of children into the secondary schools, not merely in the new areas, but in the old areas where, if classes are to be small, she will lose a considerable amount of accommodation.
For the first time again in the history of education we get from a Committee of this House a full and impartial investigation of the problem of the old school and the black-listed school. I regard these as among the most valuable of the Committee's paragraphs, because they bring into light after an investigation a problem which has been known for a good many years and which has presented in various parts of the country a considerable difficulty over a long period.
I see the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Sir S. Marshall) sitting opposite me. He and I were engaged for many years in a county where we had a considerable influx of population into the northern part where good, new schools were built, but we were left with old schools in the rural areas of the county which we were unable to deal with owing to building operations going on in the other part.
I was continually being confronted—and I have no doubt the hon. Member was when he became chairman of the education committee—with the old residents in the county who said, "Why should all these newcomers get the good schools while we, who have lived here all our lives and our parents before us, have to send our children to the old, insanitary schools in the villages?" As a matter of fact, that county never had a blacklisted school, which made me feel that the criterion was very bad indeed for a school to go on to the black list.
This is the problem which has been posed in this Report, and it is a problem

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which the right hon. Lady and whoever holds her office during the next few years will have to take into very serious consideration after the limelight that has been directed into these places by this Report. I should like to ask her whether, in the first place, she proposes to have the new survey that the Report recommends, because, after all, black-listed schools were so listed about 1924, and there are plenty of schools in the country whose buildings and sanitary arrangements have deteriorated seriously in the 29 years between that period and this. I hope that we shall have a statement on this matter.
There is a reference in the Report to another matter on which I think the right hon. Lady should be willing to say something today, and that is the problem of the schools which have become controlled schools. There was an arrangement in the Education Act by which two choices were given to the managers of denominational schools. They could become voluntary-aided schools, in which case they retained full control over the teaching, appointment of staff, and so on, and were responsible for substantial charges in respect of the fabric of the school building. It was recognised from the first that the controlled school status would only be of value to the Church of England.
The Roman Catholic community made it plain from the first—and I do not think that anybody ever doubted but that they would stick to that decision—that they could not accept the controlled school status which would mean the transfer of the fabric of the school to the local education authority, the acceptance of the agreed syllabus, and an alteration in the balance of managers so that instead of one-third being representative of the public, one-third would, in future, be representative of the denomination. The school fabric would become the entire responsibility of the local education authority
I know that there is some evidence in this Report that there are some people who resent schools becoming controlled. I have always hoped myself that a larger proportion than those now controlled would, in fact, become controlled, because I believe the controlled school is the proper school for what is known as
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"the school" in the single-school area. Such a school is frequently in bad condition, though the site is usually right for the village. It is a great advantage that these schools can be brought up to modern conditions, and the sites represent the best place in a village or small town for the school to be.
I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us how far it is now possible to have a programme for dealing with those schools which have already been controlled, because hitherto their repair has been a matter of voluntary contributions. From now on it is a charge on the public funds. I sincerely hope that an effort will be made to utilise these schools and to make provision on their suitable sites especially for primary schools up to the best modern standards.
There is a further difficulty which arises in this matter. While we loosely talk of them as church schools, not all of them are the financial responsibility of the Church of England or any other denomination. A good many of them are privately owned and although they bring some scandal to the Church because they are referred as church schools, in fact, they are the property of a family which possibly represented the squirearchy in the district in the old days, but they are not now in a position to bring them up to date. I am informed that, on occasions, conflicts arise between managers and trustees about the appropriate service to be rendered to these schools.
I hope that the right hon. Lady will be able to tell us what is the attitude of the Ministry towards the problem that the great number of controlled schools presents. May I be allowed to add that I hope there will be a far larger number of schools becoming controlled within the next few years.
A substantial part of the Report deals with the time lag between housing and the provision of school buildings. This is a thing which has given a good deal of trouble and it appears to show a lack of co-ordination—if I may use a word which I do not very much care for using; I share with my right hon. Friend the Member for Lambeth, South (Mr. H. Morrison) his general objection to it—possibly at Ministerial level, possibly at local authority level with regard to the incoming of new populations of children.

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One difficulty is that while in county boroughs the housing and the education committees are the same, in the counties outside London the county council is the education authority but the housing authorities are a variety of county district councils within the county. It may be that there is some need there for greater co-operation between the education authority and the housing authority. But that very considerable difficulties have arisen cannot be denied, as the Report shows, and there is nothing that antagonises more the women who go out to a new housing estate than finding when they get there that no provision, or inadequate or unsuitable provision, has been made for the education of the children they bring with them or who are born on the estate.
Apparently there is also a problem in some of the cities where I would have thought that co-ordination internally in the local authority would have been easier than in the counties. This has led to considerable charges for transport. I hope that every effort will be made to ensure that schools shall be available in these big cities in close proximity to the children. If there is one thing that gives to a suburban estate something of a community spirit, it is the provision of a school to which not merely the children can go, but in the hall of which the various social functions of the new locality can be performed. It is absolutely necessary that as soon as possible after that type of estate has been established there shall be created a satisfactory social life.
There is another valuable section of the Report which deals with the building of the new schools. I welcome especially the paragraphs which indicate that teachers should be associated with the planning of new schools in those areas where opportunity has been taken to set up a consultative committee between teachers and the local education authority, for there can be no doubt that the schools become far more practical for working in than in those places where the architect has no opportunity of knowing what is required in a school that is being built. It is necessary to have something more than a co-opted teacher who may happen to be on the education committee. What is wanted is a panel of teachers
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from different types of schools who will be able to give to the local education authority the kind of advice that will enable them to have schools which can be pleasant places to work in.
I want to say a word or two about some of the suggestions with regard to prefabrication. Where it can be employed without detriment to the permanent value of the school, I think it is to be welcomed, but I hope that we shall have schools of which the children can be proud. After all, the school is the first contact of the child with the wider life of the community, and a building which has its own individuality, not necessarily with ornate architectural features but something that makes it their school, to which they can allude with reasonable pride, and in the upkeep of which they can also be persuaded to take reasonable pride, is a valuable help to any education system.
The recommendations that are to be found on pages 21 and 22 of the Report appear to me to be fully justified by the evidence that the Committee heard. I hope sincerely that Her Majesty's Government will find it possible to accept all of them and to put them into operation as speedily as circumstances will allow. I can see no reason why the Government could not have accepted the Report in the same spirit that I have endeavoured to indicate we accept it on this side of the House. I do not wish to over-emphasise this point but, after all, they had a slight majority on the Committee.
This is a unanimous recommendation, not of people who met together for one afternoon but who sat and heard evidence and who, it is quite plain from the evidence, were inspired by a common purpose, irrespective of their party allegiance, to do the best they could, to get at the truth of the present situation, and to provide for something better for the future.
Brigadier Christopher Peto: May I put a point to the right hon. Gentleman? I think he is alluding to the whole Estimates Committee when he refers to the majority, but when he refers to the people who, like myself, were sitting on the Sub-Committee, the majority lay slightly on the side of the Opposition.
Mr. Ede: I accept what the hon. and gallant Gentleman has said, but I am sure he would be the first to say that if there had been anything in the Report of the Sub-Committee to which he objected, he would have taken the necessary steps on the Sub-Committee to see that his views were appropriately recorded.
Brigadier Peto indicated assent.
Mr. Victor Yates: Would my right hon. Friend permit me to interrupt, because we do not want a misunderstanding? In fact, there was not a majority of a political party on the Sub-Committee because the Chairman of the full Committee has full membership of the Sub-Committee. I am only emphasising this because no question of party arose.
Mr. Ede: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I gather from the nods of the hon. and gallant Member for—Torrington, is it not?
Brigadier Peto: Devon, North.
Mr. Ede: Yes, he and I had some argument as to what the name of his constituency should be and I regret to say that I won.
That interchange of views is really confirmatory of what I have said. I am certain that if any hon. Member on either side had felt that the findings were not in accordance with the evidence, they would have expressed their views by calling a Division, and the same would have happened on the main Committee. I am certain that if any hon. Member on the Sub-Committee had been outvoted on the Sub-Committee, which did not happen, when he came to the main Committee he would have taken the necessary steps to see that matters were put right there.
Mr. Norman Smith: No one did.
Mr. Ede: This is a unanimous Report from a representative Committee, who gave a great deal of time to the consideration of these matters. I would have hoped that the Government could have accepted the Report and have given us an unequivocal assurance that they would do their best to implement it. However, I see that there is an Amendment on the Order Paper and that the
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right hon. Lady has been put in her proper place by her colleagues in the list of names at the head of it. They are the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Lord Privy Seal, the Secretary of State for Scotland—he is an Education Minister—the Minister of Housing and Local Government and then, number 5, the Minister of Education. We believe that this is part of the trouble. The right hon. Lady is not a member of the Cabinet. She is sent for when she is wanted and, if she wants to come, she has to let them know she is coming.
In my view, no Minister in that position gets appropriate consideration at a Cabinet meeting. Ministers in that position are always there as special pleaders. The value of being in the Cabinet is not that they have to give up a great deal more of their time to reading papers. It is the fact that they can be constantly bringing before the Cabinet, as other items arise, the matters that reflect on their own Departments. I regret that the right hon. Lady is not a member of the Cabinet. I would regret that any Minister of Education in any Government, except, possibly, a Government in time of war with a War Cabinet, should be out of the Cabinet.
I sincerely hope that one effect of this Report, unanimous as it is, will be to impress on the Prime Minister, when, as we hope will shortly be the case, his health is restored and he can give his attention to these details of the Government, that the Minister of Education should be within the Cabinet. Education is the one Department which can secure that victory on the battlefields becomes a permanent victory for the country. It is the children in the schools today who will determine whether the sacrifices were worth while and whether the spirit of our people is to be as high in the future as it has been in the past.
I was reading last night,
"But an hour of Grace and Walter Read."
I thought that an hour by Watson and Bailey was quite as good as anything that they could have done. I do not believe that there is any falling off in the spirit of our young people. Many people write to me as if I invented juvenile delinquency. All the problems of youth arose when I went to the Home Office. Twice in my lifetime I have seen the older generation lament the falling off of

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the younger, and I have seen the younger prove that they were at least as good as their detractors—and I believe the same today.
But the younger generation have a far heavier and far more serious problem to solve than any that confronted us or our predecessors. The right hon. Lady's Department is the place where they can be equipped for it, and they should have schools of which they can be proud. They should have buildings, as far as the resources of the nation will allow, that will enable them to get, according to their several aptitudes, the training that will equip them to take their place in society when their time comes.
I should have hoped that this Report could have been acccepted, but I am asked in the Amendment to welcome
"the emphasis laid in the said Report on the importance of school-building"
and then to express my confidence
"that Her Majesty's Government has made and is continuing to make the best use of available resources. …"
That is a three months' moratorium. No use of the material resources—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] After all, during three months—[Interruption.] Perhaps the hon. Member for Ealing, South (Mr. Maude) would make that remark aloud.
Mr. Angus Maude: If the right hon. Gentleman wants to know what I said, I said, "Do not spoil a good case. Try to be sensible."
Mr. Ede: This is not old age detracting youth. This is youth advising old age, and I am prepared to take my own estimate of what is the proper course to pursue. That three months destroyed the confidence of the local education authorities. It will be a very long time, unless this Report is, not merely adopted, but speedily implemented, before that confidence can be restored,
5.5 p.m.
The Minister of Education (Miss Florence Horsbrugh): I beg to move, to leave out from "House," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
"welcomes the emphasis laid in the said Report on the importance of school-building and is confident that Her Majesty's Government has made and is continuing to make the best use of available resources in the interests of the children, in order to deal with the serious educational situation which they found on taking office."
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There are many points on which I fully agree with what the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) has said. I think we all want to see good schools. We all want to see schools of which people can be proud, and we all want to see more schools.
Mr. Percy Wells: And more teachers.
Miss Horsbrugh: And we all want to see more teachers. In fact, I think I shall be able to show that on all those points there is no disagreement.
I am not addressing the House on party disagreements. I want to examine the Report and to give the House the facts and figures from the documents that we have and to point to certain facts and figures in this Report. It is an entirely factual survey that I wish to give first. I have noted the right hon. Gentleman's questions, but if there are any that I overlook I shall see that they are answered.
I do not wish to be rude to those who have compiled the Report—as the right hon. Gentleman says, it has nothing to do with party, because both parties were on the Committee; but, looking at it as a document that is going out to the public, I think that in many cases the drafting is most unfortunate. Take, first, the introduction. Most of us know a good deal of the inside history of what has been done, but to the public and to people who have not the same information I think that the drafting is most unfortunate.
Paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Introduction, on page vii, contain what I might call the aims of the 1944 Act. What was wanted to be done was described by the late Miss Ellen Wilkinson as "the overhaul of the entire system of State education." She also called it, and I thoroughly agree, "a job for a generation."
Where I would say that the drafting is unfortunate is that these two paragraphs represent the big scheme that is ahead of us all and the use of that as the background for the discussion of what is going on now and has been going on during this period. I feel, and I know from conversations I have had with others, that it has been thought, the Committee having said that that was the background, the whole scheme should take up a generation and that the amount which had been done was a criticism, and that quite a substantial part of the big scheme could

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have been done by any Government during these seven years. I think that that is unfortunate drafting.
It would have been better had a paragraph been inserted between those two to explain that the job was an enormous one. I know that suggestions have been made as to its size. A rough guess was made, I am told, in 1946 that something like £1,000 million would be involved, spread over 15 years at £70 million a year. Now, I am told that the figure would be quite half as much again. I only say this because I think it is unfortunate that the one is against the other. Furthermore, the real situation was vastly different, and it was thought perhaps that we would have all the children in light, airy educational buildings. I wish that we had, and so do we all; but I think that for the public the drafting is unfortunate.
Dr. Horace King: I am sure that the right hon. Lady wants to be fair to this Committee. If she looks at the paragraph to which she has referred she must admit that the Committee then proceed to point out the difficulties which no one could have foreseen.
Miss Horsbrugh: That is paragraph 8. I can assure the hon. Member I shall not leave that out.
Mr. M. Tumer-Samuels rose—
Miss Horsbrugh: I would suggest that I should be allowed to make my speech without interruption and to make as clear and factual a statement as I can. The question is very complex. There are a great many figures I want to give the House for the House to judge, but if there are constant interruptions it will be very much more difficult.
The second thing I would say is that the matters mentioned in paragraph 8 were said to be unforeseen by the Acts of 1944 and 1946. I gather that it is suggested that those in charge of those Measures when they were being passed could not foresee these things, not those who began to carry out those Measures. It is a little difficult to know which the Committee mean. Take, first, the high birth rate between 1944 and 1948. It had been increasing in the years before the war, but the peak certainly was 1947.
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Therefore, it was known even by 1945 that it was beginning to go up and I do not think we can say that the increase was unknown or could not have been foreseen, although I do say that the total increase in the year 1947 could not have been known before 1948. Those would be the children coming into school in 1952. But local authorities had been warned there would be more children in the schools in 1949; that is in the circulars; they were the children born in 1944. I do not think that is a very factual statement, but it may perhaps have been thought worthwhile putting in.
Of course, the defence programme certainly made a difference, but that was not until 1950, so it did not affect the position in the early stages. Now I come to item (iv). Here is rather a confusion because it says:
"The competing demands upon materials and labour made by the housing programme which, in their present"—
This present—
"expanding form, make it difficult for schools to keep pace with houses in spite of evidence before Your Committee which clearly stated that 'it is the policy of the Government that the school-building programme should, in general, keep pace with the housing programme.'"
There, of course, is the point.
It is not only competition in materials between housing and schools—there are many more competitions even inside the educational sphere. We have the competing demands of technical education, special schools and nursery schools, and also the competing demands of industry which uses more steel and is, therefore, likely to be a competitor. But, apart from competing demands, I think that what is meant here is synchronising, getting the schools and houses ready at the same time so that, as the right hon. Member said, families going to housing estates will not be extremely annoyed because their children have to be exported somewhere else.
Miss Alice Bacon rose—
Miss Horsbrugh: I am sorry that I cannot give way. Perhaps the hon. Lady will be speaking later.
The difficulty as we have seen is that of getting houses and schools ready at the same time. Where I think Committee are not clear on this—to all of us, and

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certainly for the public who have not the opportunity of looking into the matter—is where they say:
"clearly stated,"
which is true,
"that it is the policy of the Government that the school-building programme …"
But they do not point out that it had not been the policy of all previous Governments. It had not been the policy of the Labour Government. It was the policy of this Government, the Government now in office, but it was not the policy before. That seems to have been forgotten—[Interruption.]—I am dealing with the Report, which is what we are discussing.
I have said that I do not think it was wise to put that statement into this paragraph unless it had been stated that it was the policy of this Government and had not been the policy before. If it was not the policy before, as I think people would infer from the words "the Government," I think it would have been better to add that it was now the policy of the Government and had not been the policy before; those words should be in.
Mr. Yates: We wanted to make the point but actually we only used the statement from the Ministry memorandum.
Miss Horsbrugh: Exactly, that is the point. The Committee have taken the statement from the Ministry memorandum saying that this is the policy and "is" is the present case, but the policy before was quite different. It would have been right if they had said it was the present policy.
What was the policy before? It was stated quite clearly by the then Minister of Education, the late Miss Ellen Wilkinson, on 1st July, 1946. She was receiving similar Questions to those put to other Ministers on this subject of labour and materials and competing demands. She said:
"Other Departments have claims on labour and materials as well as the Ministry of Education, and housing has an overriding priority."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st July, 1946; Vol. 424, c. 1804.]
That has never been brought out. So, at the beginning, housing had a priority, an overriding priority. I suppose that the right hon. Member would call that a time when schools were sacrificed to
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houses. The next point is on the subject of sub-paragraph (V). The right hon. Member thought this one of the most important. This sub-paragraph says:
"The cuts in capital expenditure made in 1951 and the subsequent three months moratorium, which undoubtedly had an adverse effect on the school-building programme."
That would seem a very clear statement and there are some notes in the margin to show the reference for the evidence. But this is quite the most peculiar paragraph and I am sure all hon. Members of the Committee must have read and re-read it. I cannot understand how they did not come to look into it more closely. First of all:
"The cuts in capital expenditure made in 1951 …"
Did the Committee see whether that was correct? There was more capital expenditure on school-building in 1952 than there has been in any other year.
Mr. F. Blackburn: That could not be helped. It had already been started.
Miss Horsbrugh: I am not talking now about starts or completions. More work was done in 1952 than had been done in any other year.
Secondly:
"… the subsequent three months moratorium …"
Again I say that that has gone out to the public as if it meant a moratorium on all work. Why did they not put "a moratorium on new starts"? I know from the people who have written to me and asked me about it that it has been thought that "the subsequent three months moratorium" meant a subsequent complete moratorium on school-building. Hon. Members know that that was not the case, but if we did not know that it was not the case the words in the paragraph would give a wrong impression.
Then we have:
"… which undoubtedly had an adverse effect on the school-building programme."
There are certain notes to show where one should look far that, but there is no evidence in the Report, as far as I can find, that that was the case. We find that starts were put back. We find that if we read Annexes 1 and 5 and the answer to Question No. 1984. But why, when the Report was compiled, were the

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answers which really deal with the matter not included?
What about the answer to Question No. 1408? This is given by the Hertfordshire authority, which is praised in the Report—"a most efficient one, extremely good," as the right hon. Gentleman says. Did anybody look at what was said by the representatives of Hertfordshire and has been excluded from this reference and is exactly contrary to the evidence? What did they say? They said that the moratorium on new starts was the best thing that could have happened. Hon. Members can read what they said; I do not want to take up time by quoting it. They said that the schools were being built slowly, but this was the best thing that could have happened and as a result they got their schools built more quickly.
Did anyone look at the answer to Question No. 453? There the representatives of the Local Education Authorities Association are complaining that too many schools were started and that they were getting to the stage when starts were taking place rapidly and completions were slow. A point about that has already been made today. The strange thing is that, when the Report was being compiled, it was not discovered that that was not according to the evidence. The Committee may think that it was undoubtedly an adverse effect but as they put that in when the evidence was exactly the opposite they should at least have had a note in the margin to direct the reader's attention to the fact.
I know that the Committee took a great deal of trouble and a great deal of evidence, but—it might have been because there was not enough time, or there might have been some other reason—some of us who are interested in this are sorry that evidence was not given by the County Councils' Association or the Association of Municipal Corporations.
Now I come to the points in the Report and the reasons which I want to give the House for the changes that I made. As I go along, I want to deal with the recommendations and to answer the questions which the right hon. Gentleman put to me. The Report covers six years of the Labour Government and 16 months of the Conservative Government, but I am responsible, and this Government is responsible, for all the changes that we
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have made, and I want to show the House what was my reason for making the changes and let the House judge by the facts, against the background of the years before, whether they were right or wrong. I must give the House a good many figures. I feel that the public and the House ought to know these facts.
I say at once that they were years of great difficulty at the beginning. At first, the whole machine had to be built up and everything had to be arranged, and all this had to be done in the face of very great difficulties. The right hon. Gentleman talked about not deferring any longer—it could have been done by legislation—the raising of the school-leaving age to 15. I want to keep entirely outside, as far as I possibly can, any discussion on whether policies were right or wrong. It could have been done by legislation. We know about the Orders in Council for the one year and the two years.
The reason given for the delay was that there was not an adequate supply of teachers and schools—I am paraphrasing, but I believe that the word "supply" was used—for the children between five and 14. If there was not an adequate supply for children between five and 14, it could have been put off for the two years in order to build that up. I am not going to argue—I am merely stating the case—whether it would have been better one way or the other, but anyone can see that it was not an adequate supply for the children from five to 14 for very long. There could have been legislation. But I said quite clearly that I am in favour of the 10 years from five to 15. The whole problem is, "Was the timing right?"; but I am not going to argue policy. I shall simply deal with the facts.
So it was arranged not to defer the raising of the school-leaving age, and it was stated in HANSARD of 1st July of that year that there would be an extra 390,000 children by September, 1948, because of the raising of the school leaving age alone. Of the places required, 168,000 were to be provided in temporary huts. It was well put by Miss Wilkinson that in dealing with this enormous problem we could either go forward, dealing with it on a broad front, or could take certain important things and, as she said, put the whole of the weight of the Department behind them.

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She and the Government chose the latter course, and continued to choose it, and I think it was right to do so. It was said that that was the first priority. There were the extra children remaining in the schools and the first priority was to provide places for them. Permanent accommodation could not be provided for them in time, and so 168,000 had to be accommodated in huts, and it was stated that that programme would go on through 1946 and 1947 and into 1948.
It was said that the next priority would be the school meals service. Then, while the local education authorities were being given time to produce their development plans, what was the next urgent job? It was the replacement of inefficient and insanitary buildings and schools and the provision of buildings for new housing estates. That was said in July, 1946. It was again said, quite rightly, that once we had the priorities we must stick to them. But it was found that it was not possible to stick to the priorities.
The next thing I want to point out, because it leads to my difficulties, is that the priorities had to be changed, and changed within a year. They were changed, and a circular went out in June, 1947, announcing the change. They were changed because, as will be seen, the difficulties were very much the same, in a great many cases, as we have been dealing with ever since.
This is what Circular 143 said in June, 1947:
"The national deficit of building labour is likely to be matched—and, in the next year or two, exceeded—by the shortage of certain principal building materials, notably steel and timber, and will inevitably entail drastic curtailment of new works programmes generally."
So, within the year, it had to be changed and we had to have new priorities and programmes.
In December of this year, 1947, Circular 155 stated:
"Since even in 1949 it will be essential to avoid new building wherever possible the Minister will require to be assured in each case that there are no existing premises which can reasonably be used to meet the need."
By December, 1947, priorities were fixed. There was to be building for the extra number of children coming into
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these schools, because of the school-leaving age and the extra number of births, and there was to be planning for new housing estates, but not to replace old schools. There was not to be building for the decrowding of old schools. We were to use—and we have used ever since—any premises which could be found. That is the policy the last Government continued, and I have not changed it. I wish I could have changed it, and I am sure the previous Government did not like it. But that was decided in 1947 and has been carried on ever since.
Having decided the policy, and having said what were the difficulties the next point is how did they deal with them? These schools had to be built. I would point out, in passing, that the number of extra places required because of the raising of the school-leaving age, was 390,000—that was stated on 1st July. We must remember that there were spare places in the schools at that time, but the number of new places added between 1945 and 1948 was only 300,000. So by 1948 the situation, as can be seen from the circulars sent out, was very serious. Already there was a young population in the school, which would increase in 1949, and there would be more in 1950 and 1951, because that was when the bulge was coming. But by 1948, for one reason or another, no effective steps were being taken.
Mr. Arthur Moyle: Will the right hon. Lady—
Miss Horsbrugh: May I finish please?
There was the same mistake throughout, and I have tried to correct it. Too much was started and too little completed. The yardstick has always been how much was started. Look at the speeches in each Estimates debate. What is the yardstick which is taken?—"We have more schools being built"—"we have started more schools"—"the number of schools on the ground is going up." But what was wanted, what we all wanted and what we now regret we did not get, were completed schools. The schools were started, but were not completed and could not be used by the children—[Laughter.]—yes, I am going to finish—
Mr. Frederick Peart rose—
Miss Horsbrugh: I am going to finish, I must get these facts in order. As I have already said—
Mr. Peart: It is nonsense.
Miss Horsbrugh: —I shall have to give a lot of figures and facts. In the three years, 1946–47–48, projects for primary and secondary schools were approved to the value of £34·3 million. But projects have only been started amounting in value to £23·4 million, and the amount of work done in 1947 was only £5·5 million. The amount of work done, the value of the work done, in 1948 was £12 million. So, right from the start, we find that is the amount of work done which could be used by the children. And, as I say, in 1945–48 only 300,000 places were added. What happened after that?
Mr. James Carmichael: The right hon. Lady did not get started.
Miss Horsbrugh: I have always wondered, when I have read in the Reports of the added facts which could not have been foreseen, why the several financial crises were not included, because they did make a great difference. I know that in one case it is stated that houses were held back in one year because of a fuel crisis. I do not know whether that was foreseen.
Mr. William Hamilton: Is the next one foreseen?
Miss Horsbrugh: What it is quite clear were not foreseen, and are not included, are the financial crises. I realise the difficulties of 1949 and the financial crisis then. I realise that the then Prime Minister, now Leader of the Opposition, had to come to the House and say that because of it there must be a slowing down in the advance. But in 1948, in spite of the fact that this amount had been approved, and some of it started, and so little completed, an even larger programme was started.
This time it was to be projects up to £51·7 million which were approved. What happened? The same weary story which has been repeated the whole way through. At the end of the programme year only one-third was completed. The year after the end of the programme 40 per cent. of the work was still undone. So that is the stage at which we had
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arrived at the end of 1949. When I took office at the end of 1951 that is what was not done.
What are the facts? I was confronted with a situation where there was £120 million worth of work on the ground which was not completed—[Interruption]— I am giving the House the facts. When I took office there was £120 million worth of work on the ground not completed, and no use as schools. That figure included 400,000 school places. An amount of £15 million was for technical purposes, but we will not go into the rest of it because we are dealing with schools. There were 400,000 school places not finished; £120 million worth of work not completed.
What was the reason? Why did the representatives of Hertfordshire and others say that it was a good thing that we had a moratorium? In November, as the House will remember, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the new policy, the moratorium on new starts for three months. I was absolutely convinced, and it is only common sense, that these places were wanted urgently and would be completed more quickly if no new starts were made for a short time.
There was also a shortage of steel. One of the reasons building has been so slow is that too many schools had been started and the materials were not available. When one makes inquiries one is told by the architects, "We started; we had to wait; we were waiting for steel from such and such a date.'" At the next place they say that they were waiting for something else. There was a shortage of steel. There was £120 million worth of work on the ground. It was urgently required, and I was quite convinced then that it was right to make that change.
We can tell whether or not it was right by the result. The amount of work done went up in the next year. I am not talking of completions and of starts. I am talking of actual building work done. I want to apologise to the House. Last week or the week before, in a Parliamentary answer, a figure was given wrongly. The figure for the amount of work done in 1951 was not correct. It was £34,500,000. I came in at the end of that year. I regret that the figure for 1952 was not given correctly. It was

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given as £36,400,000. I apologise for the mistake. The figure was found to be £38 million.
Mr. Carmichael: Go to the top of the class.
Miss Horsbrugh: Until now I have claimed—and it is a very good claim—that the fact that the moratorium on new starts was made resulted in £2 million worth more being done. I now find that it was £3 million worth more.
Miss Margaret Herbison: What about the places?
Miss Horsbrugh: I am coming to that. The number of extra places—
Mr. Edward Short: What about the first three months of this year?
Miss Horsbrugh: I must get on.
The point was to find how we could get places for the children to go into. We are now getting the starts kept more in line with the rate of building. This year we shall have a further increase on the £37 million.
Mr. Stephen Swingler: £38 million.
Miss Horsbrugh: I am sorry it was given as £36 million, but it should have been £37 million. The difference between the one year and the other is £3 million. It went up, and £3 million worth more work was done in 1952 than in 1951. We are now getting into the stage where it will be £40 million. We are getting the starts stepped up to £40 million.
I now come to the extra places. The mistake at that time was in beginning too many and finishing too few. We wanted to get these schools built for the children to go into. I do not believe that these schools would have been completed now if we had gone on with the same policy. In 1950, the number of places completed was 131,000. In 1951, it was 159,000 and in 1952 it was 218,000.
Mr. Peart: Started by a Labour Government.
Miss Horsbrugh: Started by a Labour Government, who now have the glorious reputation of starting much and doing practically nothing.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: How many have the present Government started?
Miss Horsbrugh: We are dealing with the schools completed. I am glad to tell hon. Members that this year I confidently expect the 218,000 to increase to 250,000. That satisfactory result is described in the Report by the statement that this moratorium on new starts undoubtedly had an adverse effect. The adverse effect was that there were more school places ready for the children to go into.
There are several reasons why school building was so slow. I say at once that in 1949, when the Leader of the Opposition, who was then Prime Minister, announced that because of the financial crisis there had to be some slowing up of the advance, he also announced that a committee would be set up to go into the question of costs and design. I wish that the Labour Government had done that earlier, because by 1950 they began to cut down costs, which have gone down very considerably since then. We all know that one of the reasons for the very slow building was the design of the schools and also the organisation not getting the materials there.
The reason we are getting schools more quickly is, first, that we do not start too many so that we cannot complete them and, secondly, that we have new designs and good organisation for consultation between the Ministry and the local authorities. Here I would say that I thoroughly agree with the recommendations in the Report about maintaining and improving that organisation. The administrative arrangements set up by the Ministry of Education for dealing with this matter are given the highest commendation in the Report.
What has happened is that now there is a reduction of nearly 50 per cent. in the labour and materials for schools compared with 1949. In 1949, £1 million was the amount spent to produce 2,800 secondary school places. Now, for the £1 million, we get 3,800 secondary school places. If hon. Members examine the facts and figures they will find that costs have been brought down in the last two years. It began before—
Mr. Short: Then give credit for it.
Miss Horsbrugh: I mentioned it, as hon. Gentlemen know.

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If we take the cost of a school put up in 1949 and put it into the value of mid-1952 prices, what difference do we find? A primary school put up in 1949 cost £260 a place. In 1952, they were being built at £136 per place, and the figures for secondary schools in 1949 and mid-1952 were £434 and £235 respectively. Before 1949, they were even worse, and more expensive.
The time taken on the traditional method of building has also been reduced by about one-third, and sometimes more, whereas, in the case of pre-fabrication, the time is probably one-third less. On the point made in the Report about pre-fabrication, I was interested to hear what the right hon. Gentleman said about it, and I quite agree with the recommendation about maintenance charges and with the comment that the new materials are standing up to the different uses to which they have been put. On this wonderful increase in building, I should like to give full credit to those who worked at that time in the local government offices, in my Department and in the building industry, because it was an absolute triumph that that amount of work was got through. In 1952, the rate was such as had never been achieved before.
We hear a good deal about the estimate of 1,150,000 places which was made by my predecessor. When I saw that estimate, and all the way through this controversy, I did not think that the estimate mattered at all. I knew that it must be the essential minimum, and my idea was to get on and see whether we could not build more. When I saw the situation with all these schools unfinished, I did not think at that time that we would have reached the estimate, and we would not have done unless we had had this extra pressure in 1952. I am glad to say that it will be reached, and I would have liked to have been able to give an exact figure, but I think it is wiser to wait until the end of the year. I will say, however, that it can be reached, and that I hope we shall have more places still—even in excess of that estimate.
In fairness to my predecessor, because I think it is only right, I want to say that I did not fix that estimate. I had nothing to do with it. The estimate had been fixed, and it has been criticised for not taking into account the continuance
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of above-average classes and makeshift arrangements, such as hired halls. The Government's policy was decided, and the circulars to which I have referred were sent out in 1947. They pointed out that the Government were going to build only for the extra population and the housing estates, and that they were not, building to deal with overcrowded classes or to replace old schools, because they were going to keep the hired halls and the old schools. It was on that basis that the estimate was made, and it is only fair to my predecessor to say so. I notice that the right hon. Gentleman opposite did not mention that it was the estimate of the late Mr. Tomlinson which was being criticised, and I therefore thought it only fair to put that on record.
I fully accept the point made about consultation with local authorities. I assure the Committee that these consultations do go on, and that I want them to go on. Consultations can even go on after programmes have been sent to the local authorities, and if they can put up a good case for more schools, that case can be considered.
I should like now to refer to Question 418 in the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee, because I know that there has been a good deal of feeling about this matter in educational circles in the North Riding of Yorkshire. Here, unfortunately—and I am not blaming anybody—the witness made a statement which is not correct. It is about overcrowding in a number of schools, and the witness said:
"It is stated quite baldly in the North Riding that within a year they will have to operate a shift system for infants. They will have to use schools twice."
Those are not the facts, and I now have other information which I have been given, and I think it is right to give it to the Committee. I have had the information from the North Riding.
In September, 1952, a programme was sent in, but objections were taken because there were not enough places. It was said that, if the programme was so limited, there would be this difficulty, but never was it said that it would arise within a year. By November, 1952, that had been changed, and the programme had been enlarged in order to deal with this problem. I think the Committee ought to know that, and I myself quite realise that the witness who gave the evi-

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dence could not, I am perfectly certain, have had the information that the change had been made in November. He was giving evidence in February, and I think it was very unfortunate that there should go into that Report some evidence that was not correct. These particular facts had to be brought out, because of the feeling on the matter in the North Riding.
Now, in regard to consultations on advanced programmes, the difficulty arises because of this recommendation about three years. I do not think it is possible to have absolutely firm arrangements three years ahead. At the present time, programmes are being drawn up with a reserve list, and the authorities get practically three years' notice, at any rate, for half the programme. Another difficulty is that the local authority itself cannot be absolutely certain of the location of all these schools. I think there is also some difficulty in regard to this estimate of 1,150,000 places.
There should be as much consultation as possible to try to get the schemes through, but the actual final sanction cannot be given three years ahead. I do not think that any Government of whatever party could say that they would always be willing to state the exact amount of capital investment that could be arranged for schools three years ahead, but I do agree that schemes should go forward, though I do not think an absolutely firm and irrevocable decision can be given.
Now I come to the subject of the gaps between the houses and the schools. The Committee urged that these gaps should be closed as quickly as possible, and I quite agree, but the Committee seem to think in terms of an expanded housing programme. Before I go into the details, I would point out that, whatever we have in the way of materials and everything else, we cannot necessarily guarantee primary and secondary schools being opened at exactly the same time as the houses are completed. A decision is taken that a certain site is to be a housing estate. It is for houses, and not for schools, and unless we can be certain that the schools are started ahead of the houses, we shall not necessarily get both completed at the same time.
The only way to keep them together and prevent this situation from arising
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would be to hold back the construction of the houses, and I do not think that any hon. Members of this Committee would suggest that. It is better to let the people go to the new houses and allow the children to be transported to the schools, because I am perfectly certain that, from the point of view of the health of the children, as well as from the educational point of view, it is far better to do that; and the right hon. Gentleman opposite will appreciate that point, in consequence of his experience in his discussions with the teachers. What do the teachers say in areas where there is inadequate housing? They say that the children cannot get enough sleep. When there is a whole family in one room, the children come to school dead tired. It is very important that children should have a good home and have a chance to sleep and, if necessary, should be transported to school.
Mr. Ede: My experience is that this matter is best dealt with by the housing authority giving notice, as soon as it has got the idea of a housing scheme, to the education authority that it proposes to build the houses. Then there is a chance of starting to build the school before the houses.
Miss Horsbrugh: I quite agree. The gap has not been entirely closed, because there was a big gap before. When we start with a big gap it is very difficult to close it in future years, but I think we are getting nearer to doing so. The difficulty has been that housing has had an overriding priority. My predecessor, the late Mr. Tomlinson, made this statement:
"It is surprising how many housing estates are started without anyone's seeming to realise, until the houses have been built, that schools will be needed to serve the children living on the estates."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th July, 1949; Vol. 466, c. 1980.]
That has nothing to do with our expanding housing policy. The gap was there. Let me quote again from what Mr. Tomlinson said:
"Looking at the country as a whole, therefore, I think there should be no great difference between the number of school places available and the number of children to be taught. But in individual areas there may well be temporary shortages of accommodation. This will largely be due to the fact that in some areas the rate of housing development has not been sufficiently clearly

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foreseen, with the result that school building has lagged behind house building."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1950; Vol. 474, c. 1933.]
It is clear and can be proved, and there is no need to dispute it.
I am not saying that it was wrong that house building went on more quickly than school building. In the last two years since we have been in office we have tried to get them very much nearer together, but we have not been able to close the gap. My predecessor spoke of the lag between the building of schools and houses in some of the housing areas. I can find no evidence to justify the word "most "but perhaps "many" or "some" can be used. More care should be taken to say that this took place in the early years and not in the later years since the housing programme expanded. I apologise to the Committee for taking this time, but we have to get the facts.
I come to the far more difficult part of the subject, the problem of the old schools. This problem has been clearly known for many years, but sometimes I think there are people who believe that I found these schools and suddenly put them down in the country. Minister after Minister has described these schools, and no one in more lurid terms than the late Mr. Tomlinson. We know, and hon. Gentlemen opposite knew, about them and Annual Reports of the Ministry of Education give the facts, which are now known by everybody. It is not a party matter. Sometimes the facts came out with the development plans. Let us remember that every local authority is taking, or has taken, a survey of its area for its development plan. I do not want to see too many surveys, because the skilled officials should be getting on with that work, but my predecessor referred on 5th July, 1949 to this matter. After emphasising, as he always did, the policy that he had followed since 1947, and which I have carried on, to provide places for children of statutory school age, he went on:
"It is impossible at the same time to carry out the vast programme of improvement and replacement which will be necessary in order to bring many, if not most, of our existing schools up to a reasonable standard."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th July, 1949; Vol. 466, c. 1980.]
The next reference was in 1950 when the then Parliamentary Secretary was
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replying to the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. King) who put much the same questions to the Minister then as he has often put to me. The reply was:
"The plain fact is that we are already meeting the most urgent needs of the day to the very limit of our capacity. There are literally no further steps we can take in order to deal specifically with the conditions to which my hon. Friend has called attention unless we divert manpower and materials at present devoted to providing school accommodation for housing estates, to meet the increased birthrate, and to meet the imperative needs of technical education."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1950; Vol.474, c. 1866.]
It was made clear at the beginning that this was an urgent problem. I quite agree that it accumulated with the years. The decision was taken but the problem was not tackled.
On the subject of repairs and maintenance, I agree with the right hon. Member for South Shields that the particular difficulty was with schools that were voluntary schools and are now becoming controlled schools. Hon. Members opposite know the number of circulars that went out, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman does also, dealing with the subject of improvements. Different changes were made, so much more money being allocated here and so much less there. I ask hon. Gentlemen to bear in mind that repair and maintenance of schools is a local authority responsibility and is a charge on the local estimates in the usual way. What are called "minor works" are for improvements and additions and are quite separate. One is on capital account and comes under the control of the Ministry's building programme and the other is a matter for the local authority's estimates.
I quite agree with what has been said about the appalling condition of these schools, and if the local authority in any particular case is not doing its duty—I believe that the enormous majority are, in the matter of repair and maintenance—I shall not hesitate to take action. Hon. Gentlemen must remember that I have been in office only for 18 months, and if local authorities were not doing repairs before that time it must have been the result of economy in the last Government. I can assure hon. Gentlemen that I have never asked a local authority to reduce money spent on repair and maintenance, nor has a local authority asked me for more money and I have refused.

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The second part relates to minor works, a capital cost which is under the control of the Ministry, and called "improvements." The last Government made a change at the time of the financial crisis but later some more was given. Then in September, 1951, only a couple of months before I took office, there was a further change when it was said that the plain fact was that the Government could not give as much as they had been giving and that the policy was still to devote the greater part of their building programme to new schools.
I looked into the arrangements whereby 9s. per head was paid and I made certain small improvements. Where there were particular difficulties I allocated sums of money in addition to the 9s. per head. It has been said that it was a matter of luck whether an authority received that or not, but surely hon. Members do not think that a local authority were told that they would receive extra money and then they made a claim. Discussions took place and allocations were made for specific purposes. Stress was laid on improvements that would result in more places being provided. But now, as a result of the extra money which I am providing for extensions, a greater proportion of the 9s. allowance can be used for repairs other than those designed to increase the number of places, use being made of the extra allowance for the latter purpose.
Hon. Members may ask why we do not increase the main grant rather than adopt this method. That is a matter of opinion on which I shall be glad to hear the views of hon. Members, but the last Government stated clearly that if that were done there would not be room in the schools for children of statutory school age and they decided to put all their efforts into providing new places.
A further change which I made was to increase from £5,000 to £6,500 the amount which could be expended by the authority on a project without their being required to provide the Ministry with details. A few months later I changed the formula slightly for the rural areas. There are a large number of small schools in the rural areas and therefore improvements in those areas cost more money. I have tried to help them. I agree that there are some schools and some houses which we should all like to get rid of.
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In the past seven years—and here I am defending my predecessors just as much as myself—about £22 million has been spent on minor works. About £3 million were spent in 1950 and a little over £3 million in 1951. I increased the amount and it is £4 million for 1952. I am glad to say that it will be rather more for this year. We are moving in the right direction. I want to make rapid progress, but if I took money from the main grant in order to carry out these improvements, it would be said that I was keeping children of statutory school age out of school.
It was announced by my predecessor that a Committee had been set up to examine the question of the number of school teachers required. The Committee examined staffing for 1950 and they suggested that we would need to recruit 4,000 more a year to maintain the necessary number. They also said that in the difficult years between 1950 and 1960 we would have to recruit 4,000 more a year to keep up the 1950 level of staffing and that, even so, in the middle period the level might be below the 1950 level.
I am glad to say that we have had two record years of improvement in which we have added not 4,000 but 5,000 more to the number of teachers. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking the teachers who have come back to the schools to help us in these difficult times and also the teachers who have stayed on. Never before have we increased the number by 5,000 and I am confident that we shall do as well this year. Because of this progress we shall have more teachers than the maximum originally suggested.
As regards the suggested survey of bad schools, I do not think that if we had a survey now it would make the slightest difference. We have the surveys of the development plans and I believe that we would be wasting manpower to have another survey now. If I had the money and the material we could get to work on these schools straight away. That is not the difficulty. The difficulty is to take our present resources which are being devoted to one plan, that is to the provision of new schools and the bringing of children of school age into them, and devote those resources to replacing the old schools. [An HON. MEMBER: "More money."] I was speaking of

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what we could do with the resources which we have now, which fortunately are more than any Minister had under a Labour Government.
The late Miss Wilkinson is reported in HANSARD of 1st July, 1946, as saying that that was the first year that the Estimates of the Ministry of Education were above £100 million. My Estimates this year amount to £227 million. Whatever we think about the recommendations in the Select Committee's Report, I think we are all agreed upon the background of what we have to do and we all agree with paragraphs 6 and 7 of the Report. I agree with the majority of the minor recommendations, but at the same time I do not think that they would make a tremendous difference to solving our problem. We have to face two questions. The first is whether the resources available could have solved our problem if they had been used to the best advantage. The second is whether these resources could have been larger. I have shown that the present Government have incurred more capital expenditure than has ever been incurred before and I have shown that we have obtained better value for our money.
Mr. Hamilton: You are wonderful.
Miss Horsbrugh: I thank the hon. Member and I take the compliment on behalf of Her Majesty's Government.
It has been said that I should have pressed for more money and that if I had been in the Cabinet I could have obtained more money. Apparently I am looked upon as such a frightened person that I would be quite content with picking up the crumbs under the table left by the big bad wolf, my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: The right hon. Lady is carrying the legacy of Tory Government.
Miss Horsbrugh: No. Unfortunately I am carrying the legacy of two Labour Governments, and in each of those Governments the allocation to my Department was less, both on revenue and capital account, and the Ministers were in the Cabinet. The capital now allocated to school-building is more than
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it has ever been. The capital spent on school-building under previous Governments was less. Hon. Members opposite may say that they required more money. I invite them to say why their Government did not give them more.
Two years ago under a Labour Government this country was heading for the worst financial crisis that we have ever seen. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at the London Institute of Education, said that the first duty every generation owes to its children is to make its country and theirs safe and solvent. Nobody can say that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has failed in his duty, particularly when we bear in mind the 1944 Act. Anybody who is interested in the welfare of children knows that that is true.
Under this Government our national resources have been built up. An immense defence programme is being achieved. The houses are going up at a rate that hon. Members opposite said was impossible. More school-building is being done than ever before. No member of this Government, whether inside the Cabinet or outside, will be deterred by taunts, or gibes or abuse from carrying on the policy, and if possible extending it, which this Government initiated when it came into office—a policy that has brought us more schools and which has the support of the people of this country.
6.23 p.m.
Mr. Victor Yates: I can well appreciate that the right hon. Lady has felt obliged to speak in rather a political sense because of the provocation which this Report has created in certain quarters. But I do not propose to enter into a political wrangle. I think it is unfortunate that a Report of this nature, an all-party Report to which Members of all parties have contributed, should be the subject of very acute political controversy. This Committee endeavoured to place before the House an objective statement on this matter. Therefore, I personally deplore the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of the Report in certain quarters.
I do not think the right hon. Lady has fully appreciated the spirit that was behind the Committee when this Report

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was framed. The Committee over which I had the honour and privilege to preside began with a consciousness that school is the place where the child's mind and character can be developed and where children can learn to live together good social lives. Bearing in mind this ideal, it was felt desirable to place evidence before Parliament which would enable the House to plan the future of the children in the interests of their welfare. The Report was framed in this spirit. That is a factual statement. We realised when we framed it that it would cause widespread public comment and interest, because it was the first time that a Select Committee of the House have considered the subject of education.
I must say that I regret the way in which this Report was received in some sections of the Press. There is no recommendation in this Report that could give the Press the impression that the all-party Committee had framed a Report which was an indictment against any particular Minister or Government, although some organs of the Press have said that such an impression was created. I want to consider this Report more objectively. Hon. Members can draw what conclusions they like from the facts which are in the Report. All that I think it necessary to say on behalf of the Committee of which I was Chairman is that we framed a Report which was designed to present facts and not opinions on policy. That is a matter for the House to decide.
May I refer to the introductory statement to the Report. We mentioned that we were confronted with a disquieting situation. Of course, that has been known for many years. There has been overcrowding, lack of schools, shortage of teachers, insanitary schools and dangerous school buildings. In fact, while the Committee were sitting there was a report in "The Times" on 3rd March which was headed:
"Overcrowded classrooms. Growing plight of the primary schools."
"The Times" gave full details of the overcrowding, in greater measure than we had done in the introduction to our Report. This report by a special correspondent to "The Times" concludes by saying:
"It is part of the price the Government are paying for their target of 300,000 houses "
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It goes on to say:
"In spite of a great reform"—
that is referring to the 1944 Act—
"primary school conditions are worse than before the war, and only a Government decision to go slow on housing and fast on schools could make much difference."
When we presented this picture, which we were able to form after eight months of careful investigation, we could mention only those factors which we thought were having an adverse effect upon the school-building programme. We were expressing no opinion about them. The right hon. Lady seems to have laid great stress upon certain points that we mentioned. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) also laid stress on one statement which we made about the cuts of 1951 and the moratorium. We were only saying, in a form which the House could recognise, that on these matters we had no control. We had no right to make any proposition, nor do I propose to make one today.
There was the effect of the birth rate; the shortage of labour and materials, and the defence requirements. Can any Member of the House say that the defence programme of £4,700 million, spread over a period of three years, as proposed by the Labour Government, had no adverse effect upon the building of schools or other buildings for social purposes? We were not saying it was the fault of this Government or that Government. We said that these were factors which had profoundly affected the situation. If some of my right hon. and hon. Friends think that in the planning of a future educational programme the children can be led into the promised land whilst, at the same time, we hold such a heavy defence programme, I can only say that, speaking personally, I do not think it can be done.
Mr. Harmar Nicholls: The hon. Member is very properly defending the Sub-Committee, and he has correctly referred to comments made by certain hon. Members, but on consideration of paragraph 8 (v) of the Introduction to the Report—where reference is made to the cuts in capital expenditure and the subsequent three months' moratorium—does he not think that the Index could have shown that the evidence did not altogether agree with that statement,

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or that the Index could have shown that there was substantial evidence which was not in step with it?
Mr. Yates: We could not put into the Index all the opinions which were expressed in so much evidence. I propose to deal later with the question that has been raised, because the Introduction to our Report is only a statement of the difficulties that we could see. I propose to deal with those difficulties, because there is ample evidence in the memoranda submitted to the Sub-Committee by the Ministry of Education, without going any further.
I was talking about the effect of the defence programme. I read a very interesting letter from the National Union of Teachers, who stated that the staffing position in the schools was deplorable. If the National Union of Teachers want to be objective they must also realise that compulsory National Service has a profoundly disturbing effect upon the supply of teachers. In fact, whilst the Sub-Committee were meeting, I read a pamphlet about the teaching problem in Scotland. It was stated that if compulsory National Service were abolished we could have 1,000 more teachers in Scotland. I am not mentioning this in a partisan spirit. I am merely saying that this is what we meant when we mentioned the factors which adversely affected the school-building programme.
Our report went on to describe how overcrowding could be lessened, and what economies could be derived from a better system of planning new schools. The right hon. Lady has mentioned the question of an estimate. There is overwhelming evidence that if we want to have a building programme based upon scientific facts we must have an accurate estimate as far as we can, although it is difficult, so that we can base our plan upon it. If any hon. Member reads the Report and the evidence that was submitted to us by the Association of Education Committees, and the evidence later taken from the Ministry officials themselves, he will realise that this estimate was based upon guesswork. In fact, to use their own words, it was "a whole mass of guesswork."
I am fully conscious of the fact that that estimate was accepted by the late George Tomlinson. I think he was not
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correctly advised. If an estimate has been based upon guesswork to this extent and, as has been proved, has been arrived at without consultation with those who are able to contribute useful information, it is necessary to make the recommendation which the Sub-Committee makes, that the Ministry should consult with those who are able to contribute this useful information.
The principal witness from the Ministry of Education—about whom I could say a good deal—seemed to think that one could talk to people until they were blue in the face, but if they did not want to understand one they would not. I should not have thought that that was the kind of approach that the Permanent Secretary should have made to a body like the Association of Education Committees.
Miss Horsbrugh: As I am the Minister of Education and have responsibility for the staff of the Ministry, criticisms should be addressed to me and not to individual officials. I am perfectly willing for the hon. Member and others to say, "The Minister of Education did this," rather than, "Somebody on the staff of the Ministry of Education for which the Minister is responsible did this."
Mr. Yates: Whilst I appreciate the point which the right hon. Lady has raised, I do not think that any Member of the Sub-Committee over which I presided could possibly ignore the evidence presented to us by the officials. I think she will find that, as Chairman, I tried to be courteous, although it was sometimes a little difficult in the special circumstances. I should like to refer to Question 1813, on page 168 of the Report. I said:
"It would appear on the face of it that there is a necessity for some closer consultation with the authorities concerned in this?"
The answer was:
"May I be frank? You can consult till you are blue in the face. If the other fellow does not want to understand you, he will not, and the only result is that he thinks of a different reason for making the same remarks as he made before. …"
Mr. Speaker: Do I understand that the hon. Member is referring to a civil servant who came before him.
Mr. Yates: I am quoting from the Report.
Mr. Speaker: If it is in the Report I cannot say that it is out of order, but we usually direct our attacks at Ministers.
Mr. Yates: I followed this with Question 1814:
"May I say we have been much impressed with the very great satisfaction that exists in the country as to the consultation between the Ministry and the local authorities. I was not suggesting there is any lack of it, but I would not think our experience would lead us to believe that if you talked to people till they were blue in the face you would not get any real satisfaction."
I put this question because I think it is vital—it was vital when a Labour Minister was in office—that the estimate should be and should have been based on more scientific methods.
I am sorry to hear from the right hon. Lady that she does not favour the planning of schools on a three-year basis, because we thought the evidence for that from the authorities was overwhelming. I cannot recollect any authority which did not approve of a longer-term plan. The right hon. Lady referred to the moratorium as it affected Hertford, but I would say that this was an example where the Ministry had more or less given carte blanche to this authority on a £7 million programme over a longer period than three years, and if every authority had been given such a generous approval we might have had to have a moratorium to hold things up a little.
Certainly the holding up of the programme was adversely felt, and we thought it was not good enough for authorities to plan from hand to mouth. That is what is happening on a one-year programme. May I quote the example of the south of Sheffield, which hon. Members will find mentioned in Question 427? There we had a situation which was obviously disturbing. There were no school places and a new estate had gone up—a very large estate. A timber school was built in 5½ months, but how was it built? By overtime. I expect it was the most expensive school which has been built. I do not think it is good planning to have to build schools quickly like that and to build them by the most expensive method—for everyone knows that overtime is a very expensive method of work. This was in an area where it was stated in evidence that another nine schools were required, although only one had been built.
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It may be true that in some cases it would be difficult for authorities to work much more quickly because of other problems, such as those of labour and materials. At the same time, I think most of the evidence which we collected made us feel that it would be better and more economical to consider a three-year plan.
I turn next to the time-lag between the building of houses and of schools. It is necessary for hon. Members to read that paragraph together with the paragraph on transport, because they are bound up together. The right hon. Lady does not seem to think there was very wide evidence on this point. May I say at once that I do not think this is a new problem? I was a member of the Birmingham Education Authority from 1927 to 1930, and again from 1934 onwards, and there was always a time-lag between the building of schools and the building of houses. We recommended that the time-lag should be decreased, and hon. Members will see that mentioned in paragraph 25 of the Report. We thought—I am sure my Committee will agree—that the evidence was very clear that this time-lag was general. There may be some exceptions, but the time-lag was widespread both in England and Scotland. It seemed that in Scotland there were greater difficulties in this connection. In transport, Glasgow is the worst-hit city, having to transport children at the cost of over £100,000 this year because schools are not available.
While we thought there should be greater co-ordination between the various authorities, both in this country and in Scotland—hon. Members will see that in paragraph 25—we said that the Committee's
"general conclusion is that while the gap between house and school building on new estates may not widen appreciably it cannot possibly be closed while the amount of capital investment now going into school building is insufficient to carry out the policy of the Government …"
We inserted that because we did not want to lead the House to believe that we could close this gap by some special arrangements made between local authorities.
I turn to the question of old schools, probably amongst the most vital of our comments. The Committee did not merely take evidence from authorities. We were not content to rely on written

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evidence. We made visits. I think we were shocked—at least I was shocked—to find the condition of the 21 schools in Manchester which were black-listed in 1925 and which are still in operation. We should bear in mind that 50 of the schools in Manchester were built before 1902 and there are 100 voluntary schools, many of which are in a very serious state of decay and disrepair. I can only say that colossal expenditure will be involved if these schools are to be put right. One school we visited had not been painted for 20 years, we were informed. The inspector had called attention to that. What is the use of inspectors calling attention to things if they can do nothing about them? There were 250 schools that needed painting. They hoped to paint five. In fact, they could not get the money for that.
Mr. George Thomas: All in Manchester?
Mr. Yates: I am only quoting Manchester. All they could do was to obtain the money for white-washing the lavatories. In my own City of Birmingham every pre-war school is deficient in sanitary accommodation, and the inspectors have called attention to it. That is to be found in the Report. I am not saying this is the responsibility of the Government. Two of the black-listed schools out of the 600 in the country happen to be in my own constituency in Birmingham.
One of the first questions I raised in the City Council of Birmingham 26 years ago was that of one of those black-listed schools. I was, perhaps, not quite so diplomatic in those days, and in consequence I brought the Church authorities against me, when I said of that school that it ought to be pulled down. The vicar went on to the political platform at the election against me, and I lost my seat. I am not saying that the vicar was responsible altogether, but he may have had a little effect. I did not think that 26 years later I should be speaking in this House about that school.
Brigadier Peto: Would the hon. Gentleman say whose responsibility it is to paint the schools and to keep them in suitable repair?
Mr. Yates: I think it is the local authority. If I wanted to blame some
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one for this school in Lady wood I should have to blame more than one city council and more than one Government. I did not think that that school, any more than the others, would survive the Labour Government. It did, however. I am speaking objectively, and I do not want to present this case in any way I think is unfair, but I do say—and I am sure the right hon. Lady will agree—that no real value can accrue to the country if the children are unable to learn because of the hopeless teaching conditions. It is no use our burying our heads in the sand. We must not shrink from our responsibility. A considerable amount of money will be required to put these schools right, but to refuse to do so is a false economy, fraught with great danger.
I am sorry I have spoken so long, but this is such a vital Report on which much has been said. The effects of bad conditions upon the recruitment of teachers was made very clear. Only this morning I received a letter from someone in the education service in Birmingham who apparently has to visit schools, and he says:
"Going round the schools in the course of my work I have sometimes said that if only people knew what was happening something would be done. Last Saturday I heard that one young teacher has given up after bravely trying to teach a class of 61. I have been trying to persuade another not to resign her class, which is of about 50 five-year-olds. I sometimes wonder if one ought to encourage such people not to give up."
I do think this makes it unquestionably necessary that there should be a survey of the old schools. I have the greatest admiration for the men and women who have to teach children in conditions which are the negation of all good education. It must be heartbreaking as each year there is a further deterioration. I ask the right hon. Lady to say whether she will consider seriously that recommendation of a survey of the old schools? [HON. MEMBERS: "She said no."] I did not hear the right hon. Lady say so.
Miss Horsbrugh: I said that we had just had a survey for the school development plan. We know of the more appalling schools. There is more to be done than any of us think we can possibly do in the immediate future. I said I thought that as we had got this work to do it would be better not to try to make a further complete survey at the present

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time, since we had had one for the development plan. I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) agreed when I said I thought we had better get on with what we had got planned, rather than with a complete survey, which would not help us at the moment.
Mr. Yates: I am sorry that the right hon. Lady takes that view. Our evidence was from only some places. We ought to know the measure of this problem in the whole country. I think it must be alarming.
Miss Horsbrugh: It is.
Mr. Yates: It is alarming. There must be considerably more schools than stated in such a very seriously dilapidated condition.
Surely, the formula to which the right hon. Lady referred is most unsatisfactory. Under the formula the London County Council is entitled to £230,000. If they come along and say, "We cannot manage on that," the Ministry say, "We will give you £300,000." Birmingham was entitled to £80,000 and was given £140,000. Manchester ought to have been given more. Probably it is Manchester's own fault it has not got it, for not asking. There is no doubt about that, but it does not seem a very scientific method of dealing with this, to base it on 9s. per child.
All the arguments I have used tonight apply also to Scotland. No expenditure whatever is being incurred on the replacement of obsolete, unsatisfactory premises in Scotland. We had before the Committee a most interesting report on school buildings in Scotland which was apparently approved by Mr. Tom Johnston when he was Secretary of State in 1945. It was emphasised in that report that deficiencies which could no longer be tolerated included
"rooms where artificial light is constantly necessary, where deafening is seriously defective, or where heating and ventilation are bad, rooms with no access to a corridor or which can be entered only through other rooms, and the lack of reasonably satisfactory cloakroom accommodation or of latrine and lavatory arrangements."
This was Scotland in 1945. Evidence before the Committee shows that nothing has been done at all by either the previous Government or by this Government. Therefore, I submit these facts with the object of trying to get the House to
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appreciate that this is not so much a question of who is to blame as of what ought to be done.
Mr. Ellis Smith: There is no doubt about who is to blame. Go to Manchester and ask them.
Mr. Yates: I have tried to state the view of the Committee in an objective and impartial manner and, I hope, free from political controversy. This was the spirit in which the Report was considered and framed by the all-party Committee working together over a period of eight months. There was no political division of opinion on this Committee at all. We were unanimous in presenting this factual statement. I ask the House to accept the Report and to discuss it in the same spirit, bearing in mind that the welfare of the children should have a higher priority than the claims of partisan politicians.
This nation is at a critical period in its history. Never at any time did the country more need the science, technique and skill which knowledge can make secure through a highly-developed educational system, and one of which the country can be reasonably proud. An educated nation is an efficient nation. If this Report is used to further this ideal, education will be raised to a higher status in our national life, and equality of opportunity will be given to all our children, thus enabling them to play their full part in a community which can truly be regarded as an educated democracy.
7.2 p.m.
Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper: I shall try to be brief because I know that there are many hon. Members who want to say something in this debate. I have listened to the hon. Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) with very great interest because all of us, in all parties, respect his independence of thought and the view which he expresses not only on this matter but on many others. But I want him to be under no illusion about this debate. Many of his hon. and right hon. Friends have made it painfully clear that this is a political issue of the first order.
Mr. G. Thomas: The Minister made it clear.
Squadron Leader Cooper: Furthermore, during the by-election at Abingdon, which has just been so successfully concluded, it was one of the prime issues of that campaign. Let us, therefore, be under no illusion but that the Opposition party in this House look upon this report as manna from Heaven. They must have been very disturbed, if looks were anything to go by, by the very factual and, I think, conclusive case put forward by my right hon. Friend the Minister. As my right hon. Friend said, one would have imagined that this problem of old schools had just descended upon us; in fact, it has been with us for a very long time. What hon. and right hon. Members opposite fail to tell the country is what was done by successive Conservative Governments between the wars to deal with this problem.
Miss Bacon: Oh.
Squadron Leader Cooper: Let me tell the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Miss Bacon) some facts which, apparently, she does not know. In the original black list of 1925 there were no fewer than 2,827 schools and the late Mr. Tomlinson, in answering a Question on this subject in July, 1947, pointed out that there were then left only 667 of that number; in other words, something like 2,200 had been dealt with by successive Governments between the wars. I think that that is a very considerable achievement. Of the 667 that were left in 1947 there are still 93 in use, which the Labour Government admitted were incapable of repair.
In the following year, when the late Mr. Tomlinson was answering Questions on this same topic, the Labour Government had only dealt with two of those 93 schools and 91 still remained in existence and in use at that time. It really is nonsense and, if I may say so without using an unparliamentary term, hypocrital of hon. Members opposite to use this Report as a stick with which to beat the Conservative Government. If they had done half as much in their six years when they had undisputed control of the affairs of this country we should have been a little better off than we are today.
Notwithstanding all that, the fact remains that we still have very serious problems confronting us, and we still have the overriding problem of how to provide
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more places for our growing population. It is not only new schools that are wanted for primary children. We need secondary schools in considerable numbers to cope with the "bulge" in 1959, 1960 and 1961 and, so far in this debate, nobody has made any reference to that.
One of the difficulties of the shortage of accommodation at present and one which causes a great deal of heartburning among parents is the problem of transporting children many miles from their home. Not only is it a great cost to the nation, but it tends to break up families when they have one small child going to one school and another small child going to another, and administratively it is very difficult for the local education authority. The Labour Government had a very serious responsibility with regard to our primary school deficiencies at present.
The Education Act, 1944. laid upon local education authorities the responsibility of providing development plans. Nearly every local authority had produced these plans by 1947. I have heard of a development plan submitted by the Ilford Corporation which, finally, went to the Essex County Council and to the Ministry of Education. These development plans were all reviewed by the Ministry of Education and new ones had to be submitted. The result was that the schools under the original plan which were due for completion in 1948 and 1949 were not even started and were, in fact, deferred until 1950 and 1951, and even these revised starting programmes have been very seriously deferred.
Hon. Members opposite must realise that they have a very serious responsibility for the slowing down of starting dates under the various development plans called for under the 1944 Act. It is well within the knowledge of the House that we ran into various financial crises every other year when hon. Members opposite were in office, and in 1949 they did not, as the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) was at great pains to tell us we had done, propose a moratorium of three months as we were forced to do. They put a complete stop on all capital building for school dining rooms and school kitchens.
They may not have thought that that was a very serious step, but it was a material influence on the overcrowding of our schools. Why? Because the

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school meals service was built up during the war years in an improvised sort of way when many of our schools were vacated, particularly in the London area, and it was possible to use existing classroom accommodation for kitchens, dining rooms and the like. With building difficulties immediately after the war, it was not possible to start many new dining halls; therefore, as children came back to London and other heavily populated areas, it was still necessary, because of the growth of the school meal service, to use school halls and classrooms for such meals. The result was very severe overcrowding. If the Labour Government had been more far-seeing and had used some money at that time to enable the building of school dining halls to continue, we should have released a considerable amount of classroom accommodation which was already in existence.
I can quote from the experience of my own authority. The problem is not so severe now because we have built one or two schools within the last year, but we had eight schools in which a large number of classrooms were being used for that purpose and in no fewer than 15 of our senior schools all the school halls were being used for at least one session, and mostly two sessions, during the day so that such things as assemblies and other normal school activities could not take place. Thus, a heavy responsibility rests upon the Labour Government for failing to appreciate what could have been done in a small way to alleviate a greater problem.
I wish to deal also with the secondary education. I have here a graph provided for me by my local education authority. I was rather staggered when I saw what it implied. The school-building programme which is at present envisaged for primary schools is based on a classroom population of 40, but secondary school accommodation is for 30. Thus, to cope with our secondary school population we must have a far greater number of schools than we have at present. The bulge takes effect in 1959 and 1960 and will probably reach its peak early in 1961. Thus an enormous sum of money will be required if we are to cope with the problem when it arises. We have had plenty of warning.
I was very disturbed to read the answers to Questions 1794, 1795 and 1796
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in the Report. In every case the word used by the officer giving evidence was "guess." We are entitled to ask for an explanation for this from the Minister. Why did the previous Minister of Education "guess" when the plan was being developed? Because of the development plans, which were most carefully compiled by local aducation authorities and submitted to the Ministry of Education, there was no necessity whatsoever to guess. Within reasonable limits, a fair appreciation of the problem could have been made. Apparently very little was done about the plans which were submitted. Otherwise, why should "guess" have been necessary?
While my hon. Friends and I are satisfied that the Minister has done all that it has been possible to do in the past 18 months within the limits of the tools with which she has had to work, there still lie in front of us very many problems in the education service. Not least of these problems is finance. How are all these great projects to be financed? Already this year local authority rates have increased by an alarming amount, and if all these old schools are to be dealt with properly and effectively, and if we are to provide an education service of which we can all be proud, an even greater sum of money will be required in the future.
This throws into stark relief the whole question of local government finance, and, for that reason, I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government will reply to the debate. I am sure that it is no disparagement of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government is to reply. Housing and building generally come within the responsibility of my right hon. Friend, and it is necessary that both Ministries should work together if we are to achieve all that we seek.
7.15 p.m.
Miss Margaret Herbison: The Report applies not only to England and Wales, but also to Scotland, and I support the Motion to accept it. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), I am very surprised that the Government should have felt it necessary to put down an

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Amendment to the Motion. I hope the Secretary of State for Scotland, as the Minister responsible for education in Scotland, will carefully examine, if he has not done so already, the recommendations and take steps to carry out most of them. He has already taken steps to bring into force one of the recommendations.
I was very surprised at the Minister of Education. No one could say other than that her speech was a political, partisan one. She said that too much had been started and too little completed under the Labour Government. She made great play of the evidence given by Hertfordshire. I have other evidence which comes from the biggest city in Scotland, evidence given in the progress report of the Glasgow Director of Education. The Report says:
"Prior to the Government's decision at the end of 1951 to suspend indefinitely the award of starting dates for new school buildings, we were within sight of closing the gap between the demand and supply of primary school places in new housing areas, but the hold-up in the building operations, combined with the shortage of steel, has thrown the programme back many months."
That is a very serious statement indeed. Later, I shall link it up with the cost of transport in Glasgow. The Report goes on, at the bottom of the same page, to say:
"Since the Government's decision to suspend starting dates came into operation at the end of 1951, no new building, primary or secondary, other than several small prefabricated units, has been started in Glasgow. This will mean that in 1954, and probably the whole of 1955, not a single permanent school building will be completed. It is a discouraging prospect."
What has the Secretary of State said about this? A statement of his was given to the Press and published in the "Scotsman" of 5th February, 1952. He was speaking about the cuts and the moratorium and said:
"The effects of this inevitable delay in starting new schools and school extensions will become apparent in 1954. The areas most affected will be Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, some towns in the industrial belt and the developing mining areas in Fife and Lothian."
This is the area which the Joint Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Fife, East (Mr. Henderson Stewart), represents, and I do not suppose that he will suggest that those words are not true.
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In the Estimates debate last year, I raised the question of the delay in new starts. The Joint Under-Secretary did not seem to think it was a serious question, and the Lord Advocate, who replied to me, said:
"I am not prepared to say that there will not be as good"—
that is, the completions—
"a production of schools in the next year as has taken place in the past. When we come here again next year I may be able to say that there has been an increase."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 8th July, 1952; c. 2856.]
What wishful thinking, because the figures that have been produced show that far from there being an increase even in completions, there was a decrease in the number of places provided in Scotland in 1952. The final words of the Joint Under-Secretary in that debate were:
"I give my pledge to the Committee that ours will be a great ideal."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Scottish Standing Committee, 10th July, 1952; c. 2933.]
I wonder what has been the result of this great ideal.
Let us look at the school places that have been provided. If we take those provided by local education authorities we find that in 1950 there were 17,451; in 1951, 18,505, and in 1952 only 14,997. That is a very different picture from the one that the Minister of Education gave for England. It shows that even if England has been successful, Scotland certainly cannot claim that by holding back new starts it has been able to complete more new school places.
If we take the figures for those produced under the H.O.R.S.A. scheme and add them to those produced by the local education authorities, we find that in 1951, 20,225 places were completed in Scotland. In 1952, 16,397 were completed. This Government with their great ideal and who tell us that in 1954 we shall reap the result of their policy, even in 1952, having taken these steps, produce almost 4,000 fewer school places in Scotland. That seems to me a very disgraceful matter indeed.
If we turn to that part of the Report where evidence is given by the Scottish Education Department—the part that gives us the deficits—we see that in 1951 the deficit in school places was 53,400.

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In 1952, a deficit of 54,500 places was expected, but in that same Estimate the Department thought that we would get 19,900 in 1952. Instead, we have 4,903 permanent places fewer, so that to that extent we are considerably behind the Department's estimate. What will it be in 1957 if this same incompetent Government are in charge of Scotland? If we have this failure in 1952, I dread to think what will be the educational prospects for our children in Scotland by 1957.
I come now to the cuts in school-building. I find from an answer given by the Secretary of State that there was a 40 per cent. cut in new school-building started in 1952 as compared with 1951, and that as regards extensions and other work in Scotland there was a 15·5 per cent. cut in 1952 as compared with 1951. These are the results that are to be serious in the future. These bad results of this Government in 1952 are even worse when we consider that there was, in 1952, an 8 per cent. increase over the 1951 figure in the cost of building all over the country.
Not only is this position serious because of the policy of the present Government in cutting down starts and in failing to get completions, but, in 1952, Glasgow spent £103,900 in transporting children from new homes to old schools, very often taking them back to the slum schools in the areas from which they came. A very little more than that figure would give us a new primary school. In the same way, Edinburgh spent over £10,000, and we can find all the other figures in the Report. That is a very heavy expenditure indeed for local authorities in Scotland to bear.
The Minister can make all the case she can of a balanced programme and of greater completions—I have doubts about what the effects are going to be even in England and Wales—but the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Joint Under-Secretary cannot even make that claim for Scotland. I say quite clearly that we in Scotland realise that unless something is done to give cities like Glasgow and Dundee quicker starting dates, and unless the other recommendations made in this Report are accepted, this problem of school places, instead of becoming easier, will become much more serious. I am sure that the
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Department and the Ministry can prove no case at all if they stick to the facts published in their own Report.
7.29 p.m.
Lieut.-CoIonel Sir Thomas Moore: I do not propose to confine my remarks entirely to Scotland, because I think that Scottish Members have an equal right to take an interest in English education as in matters connected with Scotland. One thing that has struck me is the tone and moderation with which this debate has so far been conducted. Indeed, one would gather from it that there was no real ground for alarm and despondency in this Report. Why, therefore, have the newspapers given it such dramatic significance? Why do we hear in every political speech that it is a matter for the deepest thought? Indeed, in the Abingdon by-election this Report was put forward as one of outstanding importance.
Indeed, only about a week ago the hon. and learned Member for Gloucester (Mr. Turner-Samuels) put a Motion on the Order Paper which for temerity, naïveté or sheer stupidity would beat anything of which even that hon. and learned Gentleman has hitherto been capable. One expects anything from the hon. and learned Gentleman but, as we expected, when an Amendment was proposed to that Motion which brought to the attention of the House and the country that, whereas the Socialist Government had been in office for six years, the Conservative Government had been in office for only 18 months, it was tactfully and quickly withdrawn.
Mr. F. H. Hayman: For generations.
Sir T. Moore: So it was reasonable to suppose that the shocking conditions described in the Report were largely due to the shocking neglect of these conditions by the previous Government. Another point that we should bear in mind is that during the period 1945 to 1951 this was not only a passive neglect; it was actual, active and positive; and, to make matters worse, at an entirely unsuitable moment, April, 1947, the Socialist Government brought in the scheme for the raising of the school-leaving age. That was done at the very time when the school buildings, school

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teachers and even text books were in shortest supply.
That added over 300,000 children to the already over-sized classes, and placed a further intolerable burden on the already overworked teachers in their already understaffed schools. That was a short-sighted and foolish action. The idea, of course, was envisaged in the 1944 Act, and we all agreed with it. Everyone expected that it would be done at the earliest moment that the finances of the country permitted. In view of the particular time when that step was taken, it can only be described as sheer stupidity.
Then in Scotland they introduced into the schools some 700 uncertificated teachers. I suppose the nominal intention was to relieve the pressure undoubtedly existing, but the ultimate result was to reduce the already lowering standards of education. How could the standards of teaching be maintained? [Interruption.] I wish some hon. Members opposite would keep their conversations to each other instead of allowing Members on this side of the House to hear what they are saying. How could good teaching be maintained when the children were being taught by those who were little more educated than the children themselves? That was no fault of theirs, but only of the Government's policy.
Mr. William Ross rose—
Sir T. Moore: No, I am not giving way as time is short. It was, therefore—
Mr. G. Thomas: On a point of order. Whilst I know that the rules of order are very wide, is it not straining the rules of the House to libel a profession within this House and then not give an opportunity to reply?
Mr. Speaker: There is no point of order in that. Professions are used to being libelled.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: Further to that point of order. That does not make a libel permissible.
Mr. Speaker: What is said of people in the mass is generally much worse than what is said of them in particular.
Sir T. Moore: In any case I made no criticism of anyone, but merely of the policy that allowed uncertificated teachers to be brought into our schools.
I have already mentioned the Motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Gloucester. After it was put down the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) withdrew all to do with it, and put down the Motion now on the Order Paper.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: On a point of order.
Sir T. Moore: Mr. Speaker, I should like to protest.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: I am rising to a point of order. The hon. and gallant Gentleman has just made an assertion which is incorrect. He has said that my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. Morrison) withdrew the Motion which I put on the Order Paper—
Sir T. Moore: I did not.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: —in regard to this matter. That is incorrect, for my Motion is still there. It has not been withdrawn.
Sir T. Moore: It is not on the Order Paper today.
Mr. Speaker: There is no point of order in that. Many statements are incorrect without transgressing the rules of order. I am only concerned with the rules of order.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: Most of the hon. and gallant Gentleman's statement is incorrect.
Sir T. Moore: The House can see that this verbose Motion is not on the Order Paper today, nor has it appeared this week, whereas the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South and his colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench know—
Mr. Turner-Samuels rose—
Sir T. Moore: No.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: On a point of order. Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman entitled to persist in that inaccuracy? The reason the Motion is not on the Order Paper is that so many Members on this

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side of the House had signed it that there was then none left to add his name. Because of that the Motion did not appear on the daily Order Paper but it still remains in the current Order Book of the House.
Mr. Speaker: The whole of this discussion is entirely irrelevant on the Report of the Committee.
Sir T. Moore: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, for your support.
Mr. Turner-Samuels: It is the hon. and gallant Gentleman who is irrelevant.
Sir T. Moore: In view of the time taken by this irrelevant discussion, I will reduce my speech accordingly because I realise there are hon. Members whose remarks will be more interesting than mine who want to speak.
Mr. Ross: And more relevant.
Sir T. Moore: I am not going to take up the argument about the additional money being spent by this Government over what was spent by the previous Government, because costs rose very dramatically from 1947 to 1951, and there is no particular relevance in talking about cash expenditure. In my opinion, our case is sufficiently strong to be able to disregard points like that. What does this Motion, in effect, say?
Mr. Ross: Which Motion?
Sir T. Moore: I am for the moment referring to the Motion in the name of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Gloucester. It put in exaggerated form the views of the Select Committee, and that is why I feel that the complexion given to this Report by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) is not a fair representation of the position. Certain figures were mentioned by my right hon. Friend and there are two or three which struck me as being of special significance because of two factors, the effect of the housing programme and the effect of the school-building programme on each other. Unless we can keep those marching hand in hand our whole balance in building will be thrown out of gear. We want to have the schools ready for the children, and we want to have the children ready to go into the schools.
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And now may I give some figures very briefly which I hope will confirm my arguments. The number of schools completed in the year ended 1st January, 1952, under a Tory Government was 519 as against 265 during the year ended 31st January, 1951, under a Socialist Government. I admit that it can be claimed that this is no proper comparison since schools may well be under construction for quite a while and we know that, in effect, they were. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Education said so several times. So we will take the number of schools started because that gives an indication of the desire of the Government to do their best for the children.
In the year ended 31st January, 1951, under a Socialist Government, 365 were started, and in the year up to January, 1952, under a Tory Government, the number was 358, or seven less. It should be remembered, however, that that was really during a nine months' period when there was the so-called moratorium. In other words, it included the three months when the present Government were looking round and trying to assess the financial mess left to them by their predecessors.
The results of houses completed are equally staggering. In 1950, under a Socialist Government, 172,000-odd were built whereas in 1952 under a Tory Government the number was 208,975, so that the whole case for the Opposition falls to the ground and becomes meaningless.
I shall not deal with the question of the dilapidated condition of school buildings because we know that all the major operations in this direction were banned by the late Government in 1947 and the ban remained until 1951. Despite the good defence put up by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Ladywood immediately after the speech of the Minister, and apart altogether from the point of view of whichever side of the House we sit on, there is no room for complacency. We are all deeply conscious of the dreary, drab and Borstal-like institutions which so many of our schools resemble. I exempt, of course, my own constituency where we are more fortunate than in most districts. That is, I suppose, natural since we have Tory and therefore more progressive and imaginative town councils.
Mr. Ross: The town council does not build schools; it is the county council.
Sir T. Moore: And in due course, when we achieve the same happy result in the county, the results will be even better.
There was one charge made in the dead Motion of the hon. and learned Gentleman and contained in the live Report which must be met, and that is the implication that houses get priority over schools. Even if that were true—and I think that I have disproved it—why should they not? Is not a clean, happy, healthy home at any time preferable to an additional classroom? It is a platitude, I know, to say that character is formed in the home even though the mind is trained in the school. We want both—and we have the Ministers for the job.
I have known the Minister of Education for many years. I know her keenness, enthusiasm, ingenuity and courage. I believe that the Minister of Housing and Local Government and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland provide that combination by which we shall preserve the perfect balance I mentioned in the beginning, and that we shall get the houses for the families and the schools for the children. If we succeed in doing so, we shall have justified the slogan of our party at the last election, "We will win through."
7.46 p.m.
Mr. William Hamilton: I do not think anyone need waste any time either in commenting today on the speech we have just heard or in reading it tomorrow. Anyone who has read the Eighth Report of the Estimates Committee will realise—quite apart from party politics which the other side are anxious to avoid whenever they are on a sticky wicket—that it is the healthiest thing that has ever happened to education for many a long day. I hope it has brought both parties down out of the clouds into the field of reality. If it has done nothing else, it has performed a valuable service.
I shall deal briefly with some of the Scottish aspects of this problem. I know that both sides are anxious to apportion blame to the opposite side of the House, and I feel obliged to come to the defence of my own Government between 1945 and 1951. To do that I shall quote figures given at an E.I.S. conference in Scotland,
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which is the equivalent of the N.U.T. in England. That conference on school conditions was held on 10th March, 1951,
The figures given there showed that between 1945 and the end of 1950 there were completed in Scotland 39 new primary schools, one new junior secondary and that there were under erection 51 primary schools, seven junior secondaries and one senior secondary. In addition, there were under consideration at the planning stage 101 primary schools, 25 junior secondaries and 12 senior secondaries. Between 1947 and 1951 the Labour Government in Scotland started no fewer than 140 new schools at a total cost, including extension to old ones, of more than £19½ million.
The 1951 figure of new starts was approximately £5½ million. The 1952 figure went down from £5½ million to £3½ million, a reduction of 40 per cent. If we look at the number of schools we find that 47 were started in 1950, 37 in 1951 and 28 in 1952. In other words, we find an average of 42 for 1950 and 1951 and the figure for 1952 represents a cut of 33⅓ in the number of new schools started under this Government.
One of the first actions of this Government on taking office was the notorious moratorium, the standstill order on new starts. I remember reading the circular sent out by the Scottish Education Department, giving the reasons for that. They said that when they came to office they found approximately £12 million worth of school-building under construction and that, as a result, the programme was ill-balanced. We were not getting sufficient completions; there was too big a spread of the available resources. That argument was advanced as a reason for holding up new beginnings in favour of completions.
But what did the Secretary of State for Scotland say yesterday in the Scottish Standing Committee? He boasted that the amount of building now under construction was not £12 million, but £14,750,000, which, he said, was the biggest post-war figure. If that is accepted, the right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. The building programme must be more ill-balanced now than when there was only £12 million-worth of building under construction. Which of the two is correct?
Mr. W. G. Cove: What is the figure for Wales?
Mr. Hamilton: The disturbing story is told in the table on page 207 of the Select Committee's Report. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) has gone over some of the figures, and I need emphasise just one. The peak of the deficit in the number of school places since the war was reached in 1948 during the time of the Labour Government as a result of the raising of the school-leaving age, when the figure reached a peak of 64,900. Until 1951 it decreased, to 53,400.
Now, for the first time since 1948, there is an increase in 1952 of 1,100, and in 1957, assuming that the 1952 building rate continues and that the housing programme continues at its present rate, we will get a deficit of 66,900, which will be the worst post-war figure. In 1957, therefore, we shall be worse off than at any time since the end of the war.
By that time it may well be that a Labour Government will be back in office. Assuming the worst, however, and that we still have a Tory Government, they will be provided with the perfect alibi for lowering the school-leaving age. One of the resolutions put forward at a recent Tory Party conference in Scotland was that the school-leaving age should be lowered now. The present outlook is creating the alibi for that policy.
Mr. Niall Macpherson: Will the hon. Member give way?
Mr. Hamilton: I am sorry, I have not very much time.
On 25th November last, in answer to a Question, I was told that from 1953 to 1956 inclusive, an average annual total of 25,000 new school places would be provided. In other words, 100,000 new places would be provided from 1953 to 1956. When we look at the table on page 207 of the Report, however, we find that, not 100,000, but less than 80,000 places, will be provided, which means a deficiency of 20,000 on the answer which I was given in the House last November. The number of places required will be 88,900. I should like the Joint Under-Secretary of State, when he intervenes in the debate, to say which is the correct figure, the one which he
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gave me last November or that which is contained on page 207 of the Report.
The hon. Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore) implied that if there was any reduction in the school-building programme, it was due to the fact that the Government were building more houses in Scotland. Since the Minister for Housing and Local Government is to reply to the debate, I assume he will contend that if there is a deficiency in school-building, he has made it good in housing. That does not, however, apply in Scotand.
On 24th February I asked a Question about the number of two, three, four and five-room houses built in Scotland in each year from 1946 to 1952. It is true that in Scotland the number of houses, the house being, on paper, a unit, shows an increase in 1952 as compared with 1951, but when we count the number of rooms provided these are the figures that we get. In 1949, 40,000 rooms. In 1949–50, 95,000 rooms. In 1950–51, 168,000 rooms. In 1951–52, 94,000 rooms. That means to say that under the house building programme last year in Scotland, only slightly more than half the number of house rooms were provided than in the last year of office of the Labour Government. The Scottish Office cannot, therefore, say that if there is any deficiency in the school-building programme, it is due to any increased acceleration in the housing programme.
The school-building programme in Scotland is in drastic need of overhaul. We are agreed, I hope, on both sides, that an increased proportion of the capital investment must be given to education. It must no longer remain the Cinderella of the social services. The country is fighting for national survival, and we depend first on the ability of our children to read and write. That can only be provided in the schools.
The Ministry of Education and the Scottish Office had better make the position plain to the Treasury and inside the Cabinet. After all, the Secretary of State for Scotland is in the Cabinet. The Minister of Education has some excuse in being able to say that she is not invited to Cabinet meetings. The Secretary of State, however, does not have that excuse. I wonder how many times in the Cabinet he has asked for more money for

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Scottish education. I wager that they can be counted on two fingers. If the right hon. Gentleman has not asked for an increased allocation of capital investment for Scottish education, it is time that he did so, because Scottish education in the last 18 months will go down as a very black record. The sooner we get the increased allocation the better it will be for our children and for national survival.
7.58 p.m.
The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Henderson Stewart): I occupied some time yesterday in the Scottish Standing Committee in dealing with education and, therefore, in view of the character of this debate, all that I feel justified in doing is to reply as shortly and, I hope, as succinctly as I can to the points that have been raised.
I agree entirely with the opening sentence of the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. Hamilton), when he said that the Report and this debate upon it were one of the healthiest things that had ever happened for Scottish education. That is also the view of the Government. We welcome the emphasis that has been laid on the Report and on the importance of the subject. I am pleased that the people of the country have been shaken up and brought to realise how many bad schools we have and the shortages of accommodation which exist. Unless we can carry the nation with us we cannot make any real progress in education. Therefore, with those sentiments we are all agreed.
The hon. Member seemed to suggest that the Government were being more parsimonious about education than were their predecessors. That statement, however, will not stand examination. Let me give the hon. Member a figure which has not before been announced in the House in this way, although it is to be found in published documents. The capital investment for education in Scotland in the last few years—
Mr. William Ross: Forget the increases in teachers' salaries.
Mr. Stewart: I must be allowed to answer the hon. Member for Fife, West.
In 1950, the total capital investment allocation for education in Scotland was £5·4 million. In 1951 it was £5·6 million,
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in 1952 it was £6·4 million, and this year it is £7·4 million. That, surely, disposes once and for all of any argument as to whether the Conservative Government are spending more or less money upon Scottish education. The hon. Lady asked me—
Miss Herbison: The hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friend has given very specific figures in answer to a Written Question on 30th January this year, and has given them in table form for the years 1947 to 1952. He dealt with
"estimated value of new schools started"—
that is what the Report is dealing with—
"and estimated value of extensions and other work."
There is not any doubt about it that in 1947 and 1952 one was 15 per cent. and the other 5 per cent.
Mr. Stewart: The hon. Lady is dealing with a different set of figures—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Of course she is. I do not know why her friends are laughing at her—[An HON. MEMBER: "We are laughing at the hon. Gentleman."] My figures stand. I will give her the capital investment allocation for Scottish education in these years—
Mr. Ross: Let us get down to school-building.
Mr. Stewart: In the present year it is £7·4 million; in 1950 it was only £5·4 million. I will come to the figures quoted by the hon. Lady, which are different figures, but, first, I want to deal with one or two points she raised on the report of the Director of Education for Glasgow. I will ask her to believe in respect of these quotations that the Director of Education for Glasgow, whom I like and admire, is not correct. I will take them one by one. First, there is the quotation on page 8:
"Prior to the Government's decision at the end of 1951 to suspend indefinitely the award of starting dates for new buildings."
That is a manifestly incorrect statement because there was no such decision. There was no indefinite postponement. The Government decided that no new starts should be made between 1st December, 1951, and 1st March, 1952. It was, therefore, only a three months' postponement. The total effect on Glasgow's programme was to delay the starts of 12 elementary classrooms—not schools but classrooms

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—four for two months and the other eight for one month. Those statements should not be made in a Report of that kind.
Take the next question to which the hon. Lady made reference, again on page 8:
"With the slowing down of the school-building programme the situation must inevitably become worse."
It is most misleading to say that the school-building programme in Glasgow has slowed down. It is quite true, as the hon. Lady said, that the number of school places has fallen. I will explain that in a moment, but the fact is that the value of work done on school-building—I am not talking of buildings under construction but of work actually done in Glasgow—has increased from £400,000 in 1950 to £800,000 in 1951 and to £1,300,000 last year. That surely disposes of that criticism.
The third point was the criticism that since the decision of the Government to suspend starting dates came into operation at the end of 1951:
"no new building, primary or secondary, other than several small prefabricated units, has been started in Glasgow."
That is an extremely incorrect statement. The "small prefabricated units" he talks about and of which, apparently, he does not think a great deal, consist of eight new aluminium schools and one timber extension having a total of 47 rooms. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rooms."] I do not want to carry this on unduly, but I give these as examples of the sort of Report which misleads the House.
Miss Herbison: This is a very serious matter indeed because the Director of Education for Glasgow is an important person in education, not only in Glasgow but in Scotland. Quite rightly, I gave the evidence I got from the Report and I take up the last point made by the hon. Gentleman. He says that the Director of Education is incorrect in this and tells us that in all these wonderful prefabricated houses we are to get 47 rooms.
Mr. Stewart: I am sorry. I do not know whether the hon. Lady thinks that 47 rooms is negligible. For myself, I would be very glad to see in many parts of the country an addition of 47 rooms provided—
Mr. Ross: It is nothing to boast about.
Miss Herbison: On a point of order. This is a most serious matter, one in which the honour of an important educationist in Scotland is concerned and it seems to me that I ought to have a chance to get these matters corrected for the sake of the person I have quoted.
Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Hopkin Morris): It is not a point of order to ask whether something is right or wrong. I ask hon. Members to remember that the House is not in Committee.
Mr. Stewart: Perhaps I should add, to put the whole thing in perspective—and I say this quite seriously—that the Department do not think the education authority in Glasgow, even now, have any permanent schools ready to start at this moment.
As the hon. Lady knows, there have been local difficulties in Glasgow, local internal difficulties. We have been endeavouring to help Glasgow. We have invited the Glasgow authorities to meet us and the City Architect in Glasgow is now in charge of the school-building as well as the house-building programme. That may make a considerable difference.
There has also been set up a Working Party between the Department and the Education Committee which will meet at least once a month to take all these matters step by step and open up any bottlenecks that arise. I have also seen the Edinburgh authority and the Dunbartonshire authority and I can assure hon. Members from Scotland that we are doing everything possible, and shall continue to do everything possible, to avoid further delays.
I agree that the number of starts has been fewer than it was before, but I hope we shall not get starts on the brain. I will give the House the figures of work actually done—not starts but work done in various areas. I am not talking of schools completed or work under construction, but work done.
Miss Bacon rose—
Mr. Stewart: I am about to give the figures.
In 1947, the total value of work done on school-building in Scotland was £2 million; in 1948, it was £3·7 million; in 1949, £4·2 million; in 1950, £4·4 million; in 1951, £5·3 million; and, in 1952, £6·5 million. That shows that the work actu-

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ally being done in the finding of places for children is growing year by year and was bigger last year than it has ever been before. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] My claim, which is supported by every technical expert I have met, is that by holding up the starts for three months at the beginning of last year we did, in fact, make it possible for the whole sweep of the school-building effort in Scotland to move forward more steadily. I am confirmed in that view not only by the figures I have just quoted—
Mr. Ross: Four thousand fewer places.
Mr. Stewart: —but by the Report itself. If hon. Members will look at page 16 they will see that the Estimates Committee draw attention to the confusion which arises when we have too many starts, which is what we have found—
Miss Herbison: We have fewer starts and fewer places.
Mr. Stewart: The Report says:
"One difficulty is the need to avoid at any time overloading the building industry in an area with the result that its total resources are spread out over starting new factories, houses, schools or other buildings and only a minor part of its efforts devoted to completion."
Miss Bacon: I should like to ask the hon. Gentleman a question which I wished to ask the right hon. Lady, but she would not give way. Would he define what is meant by "work done," as distinct from work started or work finished? The right hon. Lady kept using the term "work done." What does it cover?
Mr. Stewart: We get a report every three months from all the local authorities on the work they have completed. Let us get this quite clear. I admit to the House that there was this three months' moratorium. What does it mean in Scotland? The value of work deferred in Scotland because of the three months' ban was about £600,000. Only relatively few schools were held up for a relatively short time, and the total involved is just above £600,000.
Dr. King: Can I pursue this question of work done a little further? If a school costing £100,000 is finished in a year, does the Minister count that as £100,000 worth of work done in that year?
Mr. Stewart: I do not think I can answer that without notice. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] If the House feels disturbed about it, I will try to give an answer to the question before the end of the debate. What I said to the hon. Lady was that it was work actually done by the local authorities in that quarter. Therefore, I think my answer to the hon. Gentleman is that it is only work done in that year. It is work done, and the value that is placed upon the work done.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Stewart: I am trying to resume my seat as quickly as I can.
The hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) was also a little troubled about new places. I admit that last year the number of new places fell, but I would invite the hon. Lady to look at the Annual Report of our own Scottish Department of Education, where, at the top of page 53, she will find the reason, which, very shortly, is this In the first years of the post-war period most of the Scottish education authorities concentrated upon primary schools. In recent years—beginning at the end of the period when the hon. Lady opposite was occupying my present position—the tendency was more towards secondary, which are larger schools, and it is because of that—and we have figures to support it—that the number of places is smaller. Fewer schools have been completed, because they are bigger schools, but, in due course, the total number of places will have been increased.
Miss Herbison: We do not get that clear, and I should like to have from the hon. Gentleman any Scottish figures, which ought to have been supplied in the Report.
Mr. Stewart: I have asked the hon. Lady to be so kind as to read the Report, when she will find the answer to her question.
The hon. Lady also suggested in her speech, as did the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. Hamilton), that there has been a diminution of work done on improvements and repairs and maintenance. I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets his figures, but perhaps I may give him the latest figures. These are the figures of expenditure on improvements

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in Scottish schools: In 1950, £457,000; in 1951, £380,000; and, in 1952. £455,000. So that it is going up, and has been going up in our time, though I should like to see those figures go up a great deal more.
The figures for expenditure on repairs and maintenance are, roughly as follow: In 1950, £1,400,000; in 1951, £1,400,000: in 1952, £1,455,000; and in 1953, our closest estimate, £1,554,000. Of course, costs are up a little, but some of the costs are not increases on last year. The hon. Member for Fife, West and his hon. Friends have been saying all afternoon that we are spending less than they were. I say that that is not true, and that every figure proves it to be absolutely untrue. The truth is that this Government are doing more, spending more money and building more schools than before, and hon. Members opposite cannot possibly avoid it.
I should have liked to have said much more, but let me finish in this way. As the House knows, the Select Committee on Estimates made a number of recommendations with particular reference to Scotland. There were five major recommendations and three minor ones. I take, first, the major ones. First of all, they suggested that there should be better coordination between house-building and school-building. My right hon. Friend has taken steps to ensure that whatever can possibly be done to improve relations between the Department of Health and the Department of Education will be done, and, indeed, action is being taken now.
The second recommendation was that the architects and buildings branch of the Ministry of Education should be mirrored in Scotland. We did that in April last, although the Select Committee did not know it. The next recommendation was that there should be a maximum in the cost per place in primary and secondary schools. We sent out the other day a new building circular intended to do precisely this, and, there again, we are meeting the recommendation of the Committee.
Another recommendation was that there should be established a body equivalent to what they have in the Ministry of Education to produce the necessary
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standard components for prefabricated schools. That is exactly what we hope our new Building Development Group will be able to do. Therefore, we can say that, in regard to all these recommendations, we have either accepted them, acted upon them or will do something about them.
There are left the three minor recommendations. One was that the Secretary of State should have the right to waive byelaws.
I do not know whether that may be possible in England, but it is a rather contentious matter in Scotland, and could not be done without consultation with the local authorities, but we will consider it. The next was that we should set up consultative committees of the local authorities and their teachers. This is also controversial, and I know many local authorities that would not like it, but we will look at it to see what is possible. The last one was that headmasters should be given discretion to spend money, within a fixed total, on certain equipment. We do not do that in Scotland, but we are quite willing to look into it. In our circular, we have urged the local authorities to get the teachers to co-operate with them in planning their new schools. It is, therefore, designed to do the same thing.
For these various reasons, I do not think the Report has done any harm at all in Scotland. The bulk of the recommendations have already been accepted or will be accepted, so that I can stand here, with my hand on my heart, and say that we are doing well, but that we should like to go a great deal better for Scottish education.
Mr. Swingler: On a point of order. May I call your attention, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to the fact that it is now 8.20 p.m. and that only two hon. Members for English or Welsh constituencies have been called in this debate? I wonder whether I might ask you to use your good offices with the usual channels in order to see whether, when we have a debate in future on education in England and Wales, more back benchers may be called?
Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That is not a point of order. It is a matter for the House itself.
8.20 p.m.
Mr. Dryden Brook: This has been an interesting debate for the reason that we have had from the Minister of Education her usual performance in creating an alibi for her misdeeds, but we cannot allow either the Minister or hon. Gentlemen opposite to have it both ways.
The Minister, and the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, who has just concluded his speech, laid the blame on the Labour Government for starting too much work and not being able to complete it. The hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader Cooper) blamed it all on the Labour Government for slowing down their building programme in the latter years, and both Ministers made much of the so-called "moratorium" being only for three months. The evil was not that it lasted for only three months but that it continued all the way down.
My contribution to undermining the alibi of the right hon. Lady can best take the form of giving the experience of my own constituency. Halifax is a representative county borough, with about 100,000 inhabitants. Figures which I will give for the major building projects which have been granted to Halifax over five years can probably be generalised throughout the country. In 1950–51, Halifax was granted a building programme of £241,260; in 1951–52, that had dropped to £49,280; in 1952–53, the figure was £37,000 and for 1953–54 it is £39,640. For 1954–55 the present allocation to Halifax is exactly nil.
Although representations are being made to the Ministry, we have not been granted any projects for 1954–55. As our Chief Education Officer wrote to me only the other day, taken diagrammatic-ally the Halifax allocations are shaped like a funnel, beginning with a broad top in 1950–51. At the present time we are in the process of going down the spout.
The Halifax situation is probably typical of other towns throughout the country. This is supported by the evidence that was given by Dr. Alexander on behalf of the Association of Education Committees, who said that in 1946 they began to discuss projects and that by 1949 they had reached an approximation of £70 million a year. That has been
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continually falling under this Government until this year it is approximately £56 million, according to the Report.
I want to examine the Minister's argument. Repeatedly she has said in this House that more schools had been completed this year than in any year when we were in office. That is quite easy. In Halifax, we began developments costing £241,000 in 1951–52, as the result of the permissions we got in 1950–51. That work had all been completed in 1952, so that the Minister is taking credit for completions in 1952 for all the projects for which permissions were granted under the late Administration. That is still going on at present, and I imagine that it is true of all the towns throughout the country.
What are the implications of this process of which the Minister is so proud? What was the initial programme of 1950–51, and what did it involve? Not merely the finishing labour but also blocks of ancillary labour which was engaged in preparing sites, architects and many other kinds of worker were put out of harness as soon as the Minister's edict went out that only completions were to be allowed.
Completing work means that only certain kinds of labour are involved. The other labour not necessary to the finishing processes has been dispersed, except that some may have been absorbed in the finishing work. In either case that labour is no longer available to the Minister whenever she wants to set in motion or begin the foundations of a new programme. Any part which has been absorbed into the finishing processes has also been enlarging the amount of finished work at the expense of the more fundamental work of beginning to build.
Even the evidence given by the Ministry in the Report supports that statement. The Minister's representative talks about the competition of other kinds of work for the labour involved in building, and in one sentence he says that it is difficult for education to offer the same kind of inducement as other kinds of work competing for labour. Dr. Alexander, Secretary of the Association of Education Committees, says, on page 34 of the Report:
"It took from 1946 to 1949 to gear the machinery up to £70 million and therefore

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if you let it drop and then decide to set it in being again it will take you three years before you can get it started."
That is the price we have to pay for this policy of the Minister of stopping beginning work and concentrating all her energies on completing work. The Labour Government could have stopped just as completely and probably completed more quickly the work that has been done in 1952 had they followed the same policy.
Sir Sidney Marshall: How can the craftsmen engaged in building have been dispersed, as the hon. Gentleman suggests? Are not all schools built by contractors, who retain their staffs from job to job, and in that case how can the moratorium have interfered with the school-building programme?
Mr. Brook: Surely the hon. Member would agree that if, in my constituency, we began work in 1951–52 as the result of permits given in 1950–51, amounting to £241,000 and in the next year we were granted permits for only £50,000, all the labour engaged in the preparatory work of making roads, laying sewers, etc., would not be necessary on the lesser amount and would have to be absorbed somewhere else.
Sir S. Marshall: I am talking about building schools.
Mr. Brook: And I am talking about building schools, too. There is much more involved in the building of schools than merely building the walls. Dr. Alexander was quite right in saying that it would take a long time before we got the labour again for the kind of work involved.
We have been told by the Minister and other hon. Members today that the squeeze in our building for education does not end at the end of 1953. The Minister's policy is based on the idea that at the end of 1953 she will have solved her problem in regard to school places, whereas there is the further problem of making provision for the displacement of old schools and the enlargement of the number of classes which will involve pressure somewhere about 1957. My case is that the policy of the Minister of concentrating on the completing of schools and stopping off the beginning of
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new schools will inevitably mean that by 1957 she will be short of many places that she ought to have, and would have had if she had pursued a more enlightened policy.
8.29 p.m.
Mr. J. Enoch Powell: I am sorry that so much time has been spent in the course of this debate in the endeavour to assign blame as between different parties and Governments. Perhaps naturally, we in this House over-estimate the interest which is taken out of doors in our party disagreements. It is a matter of some piquancy to us to be able to score telling points one way or the other, but I believe that the country out of doors is seriously anxious not about party responsibility but about the present state and future of the schools, and that they are looking to this debate to provide answers and guidance upon a few simple questions.
This debate is, after all, a review of school-building over the 7½ years since the war ended. In conducting that review we have to bear in mind that two of the three people who have successively borne the responsibility are not only no longer in this House but are no longer here at all to answer for themselves. That fact also should, I would have thought, impose some restraint upon the way in which we handle the subject.
I do not believe that the public have any illusions about the length of time which is necessary for the implementation of the 1944 Act. I do not think that they expected miracles in the years immediately after the war or that they are expecting miracles now. I think they realise that three immediate problems have had to be tackled at once—the problem created by the raising of the school-leaving age, the problem created by the "bulge" or temporary increase in the birth rate, and the problem created by the extensive de-centralisation of population from our great towns, which has been going on since 1945 and which has called for school places in different areas from those where they were needed in former years.
All these three tasks have had to be met simultaneously, and out beyond there is the whole programme for the

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implementation of the 1944 Act outlined in the development plans, while behind it, as a backsheet, there is the condition of schools which we have inherited from decades and even centuries past. I do not think that that reality is seriously misunderstood by those in the country out of doors who are concerned about education. What they want to know, in the first place, is what is the trend. They want to know whether we are catching up with these difficulties or whether the difficulties are catching up with us, because if there is evidence that the production of school places is going on faster and faster, then whatever the difficulties of the present there is a reasonable prospect of their being dealt with in the course of time.
So I believe that the first thing the country wants to know is what is the trend in the production of school places. We may talk about capital investment in terms of pounds, of work commenced and work finished; but it is occupiable places which are the effective units for measuring progress in school-building and in the provision of educational accommodation.
Here is the progress in the provision of new school places since the war. I will not trouble the House with many figures and I have rounded these off for the convenience of the House; but these I would ask permission to read. In each case they are up to February of the year concerned. Up to February, 1947, the number was 40,000; to February, 1948, 80,000; to February, 1949, 180,000. That appears to be a big jump, but hon. Members will recollect that in that year the H.O.R.S.A. hut programme was in full swing, and most of the figures for that year represent these huts. The figure for 1950 was 90,000; for 1951, 130,000; for 1952, 160,000; for 1953, 220,000; and my right hon. Friend has informed the House today that her expectation for 1954 is 250,000
There, then, is a steady annual increase in the number of new school places provided. It is an increase which, so far from slowing down in the last two or three years, has, on the contrary, accelerated in that time. I am not concerned with who was responsible for approving the schools or building them, or what Government were in office. The fact is that there has been a steady expansion
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in the number of school places provided year by year and that expansion was most marked in the last year or two.
Now, we have evidence provided by the Committee's Report that to some extent that expansian was connected with a Government decision. I refer, as my right hon. Friend did, to the reply of the deputy county architect for Hertfordshire which will be found at Question 1408. He said:
"About a year ago the Ministry imposed the moratorium on starting dates. That was the best thing that could have happened to us. Our jobs were going slower and slower. The five men on the job dropped down to three or two. With the moratorium it went up to 10 or 12 and we got the schools finished …"
He goes on to say:
"I think if we tried to build more schools or faster we would reach saturation point."
There we have the evidence of a technical witness that, to some extent, the continued expansion in the provision of new school places in the last year and the present year is connected with an act of Government policy. I would also point out that that statement disposes of the idea that there is any question of school expansion having been sacrificed to the expansion of the housing programme, because this situation to which the deputy county architect of Hertfordshire refers was not when the annual output of houses was 300,000, as I am glad to see it is this year; it was when the output of houses was running below 200,000. Therefore, since we have been able to improve substantially upon the output of school places in 1952 and 1953 at the same time as we have been able to increase the output of houses by 50 per cent. per annum, there can be no question of the one part of the programme being sacrificed to the other.
Dr. King: I know the hon. Gentleman likes to be fair. He is quoting the evidence of Hertfordshire. Surely he knows that Hertfordshire is a unique case and that the figures for that county include semi-pre-fabricated schools. They have more schools on the stocks than they can deal with at the moment and their labour was transferred because the county were doing the whole job pretty well themselves. Most other authorities, on the other hand, are building different kinds of schools in different sorts of areas and in different conditions.
Mr. Powell: I noticed Question 851, and I find that exactly the same thing was true in Birmingham. The Birmingham chief education officer said:
"I very much doubt whether, if in fact the Ministry had felt able to allocate us a larger programme, we should have managed to get much more school work done."
That suggests to me that the same conditions obtain there.
This continued expansion, however, in the provision of new school places, not at the expense of or in any way interfered with by the expansion of the housing programme, would only be gratifying if we could be sure that we were not mortgaging the future. I would agree that if we were not starting work for completion in 1954–55 and in future years, the mere achievement of a temporary boom like the 1947 "Finish the houses" campaign would be no particular cause for congratulation. But the amount of educational building work which was in hand at the end of 1952 was almost the same as at the end of 1951.
Thus despite the accelerated completions, we had also got at the beginning of 1953 about as much new work in hand as ever. As we find, quarter by quarter in 1953, that the volume of work in hand remains steady, the country can have reasonable confidence that this is not a flash in the pan but that the steady expansion of new school places will continue, as indeed it has been doing since the end of the war.
The second great anxiety felt by the public is whether the old schools are being sacrificed to the new or, to put it more accurately, whether greater economy would be effected if the boundary between resources devoted to new schools and those devoted to old schools were shifted in favour of the old. In a debate on education we should never forget that the executive authorities are the local education authorities. My right hon. Friend is not an education authority. She is not a direct provider.
Mr. Moyle: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that under the 1944 Act the right hon. Lady has a duty to this House to see that everything is done by the administrative authorities to implement the provisions of that Act at the earliest possible opportunity?
Mr. Powell: I am well aware of the ultimate responsibility of my right hon. Friend for the provision of State education, but the fact remains—and I have always suspected that the sympathy and understanding for local government expressed by hon. Members opposite was no more than skin-deep—that in this matter executive authority and initiative rests with the local authorities. There has to be a partnership between the Ministry and the local authorities. We must not talk as though everything began and ended with the Ministry of Education. It would be much truer if we fell into the opposite mistake of thinking that everything began and ended with the local education authorities.
With that caveat in our minds, let us approach this question of the old schools. First, there is the problem of repair and maintenance. This is a matter which is the immediate responsibility of the local education authorities. It is for them to decide what estimate they will put in for repair and maintenance for any year. My right hon. Friend has informed the House that in no case has she refused or reduced an estimate for repair and maintenance put in by a local authority. In the Report, at Question 1739, we read that the Manchester authorities thought that they would have the money to decorate five schools internally and nine schools externally, but they say:
"Since then we have had a cut in the Estimates"—
That means that the city council have cut the estimates—
"and the only money we have for decoration will be for whitewashing lavatories in certain schools."
That decision was taken by the Manchester local authority.
Other local authorities have not been taking similar decisions. Since this is very largely a local authority matter, I have sought to inform myself of the situation in my own county borough. That is my excuse for mentioning one or two facts in regard to Wolverhampton, which is also a local education authority. In Wolverhampton we have steadily, year by year, maintained a repair and maintenance programme. The staff of painters which the Wolverhampton education authority maintains on its schools is three times what it was in 1939, which

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does not look as though they are finding it difficult or impossible to paint and maintain their schools externally. They are even maintaining a ground staff of 38, which is several times what it was in 1939.
Repair and maintenance, in the narrow sense of the term, is a matter for the local education authorities. It is a matter within their discretion. They are given this responsibility. They are elected by the local franchise in order that they may decide just this type of question, and it is not surprising that we should find variations in policies and results between one area and another. We must not be misled into thinking that an instance like that of Manchester, where special causes operate and a special policy is pursued, is either typical, or has any relation to the general investment or expenditure policy for education.
Mr. Hayman: The hon. Member referred to the direct labour staffs of Wolverhampton at the present time and in 1939. Can he say bow much work was put out to private contract in 1939 compared with the figure for today?
Mr. Powell: Both figures were supplied to me by the director of education in good faith. As he was supplying them in order to prove the point that the local authority were maintaining their painting and repair at a full scale, we must, I am sure, take them at their face value.
Turning to the question of improvements, we all realise that many of the older schools, particularly schools which have recently become controlled, are in urgent need of improvement. We have heard from my right hon. Friend about the sums of minor works money which are allocated to the different education authorities for this purpose and we have also heard that wherever a strong case is argued on particular grounds for an increase in the ordinary allocations, she makes no difficulty in granting it.
Here, again, I tested the effect of this policy on the experience of my own county borough. The annual minor works allowance of Wolverhampton is £14,500, which at first sight does not appear to be a very large figure, but it has, for example, enabled us within the last 12 months thoroughly to renew the open-air school which we maintain outside the county borough boundary. Taken
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from year to year, it is a figure which is enabling the local education authority to cope with the needs of improvement of the controlled and older schools.
I will give one example only, but one which enables us to get a better idea of scale in this matter. Last week I visited a school in my constituency which became controlled in the last three or four years and on which only £1,750 out of the minor works grant had been spent on improvements. The effect, combined with regular maintenance and painting of that school, was astonishing. From a school which had been regarded formerly as a slum school, it had become a school with a certain power of attraction in the neighbourhood, and I was told that more parents wanted to get their children accepted into the school than the plan for the county borough as a whole made possible. When we examine these figures of minor works we should bear in mind that a comparatively small investment of money on improvement of some older schools will make them tolerable places of instruction and prolong their effective life for many years.
Finally, I want to deal with what I think is the third anxiety—the anxiety which has been described by the term "gap," whether the phasing of new housing and the de-centralisation of population is seriously out of step with the phasing of the building of new schools. Here, again, we are perhaps fortunate in Wolverhampton in that the local education authority is the same as the housing authority, but there is, and has been in the past, no real impracticability in co-ordinating the housing programme with the programme of school-building.
I have in my hand an analysis, district by district throughout the county borough, of the number of houses with and without children and the date of birth of all the children. That is a survey of the borough which is renewed every year by the education authority. In combination with the monthly reports which the education department receives from the engineer's department, it enables the switch of school population from the old schools to the new schools to be coordinated with very little gap or overlap. So in fact the periods during which we had to ferry children by transport from their homes in the older areas to schools

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in the newer areas have never been longer than nine to 12 months. I am not dealing with the ferrying of children to special or denominational schools, which is a standing problem of a different kind. So I should say that where a housing authority and an education authority are both doing their job there has been nothing in the past to prevent the co-ordination within reasonable limits of house-building and of school-building.
I would, therefore, say that from this review of school-building in the seven and a half years since the war it emerges, first, that there has been a steady and sustained expansion in the provision of new places, that we are coping with the immediate problem of the bulge, the raising of the school-leaving age and the de-centralisation, and that we shall be in a year or two's time in a position to start out upon the implementation of the development plan. There is no grave cause for anxiety there.
As regards the position of the old schools, during this period when we have to provide every extra place we can, we are capable, given good will and given efficiency and co-operation on the part of the local education authorities, of maintaining, repairing, and, within reason, improving the existing schools. I think, therefore, that the message which should go out from this debate to those in the country who are anxious about the future of our schools is one, on the whole, of reassurance.
8.52 p.m.
Mr. Michael Stewart: I think that at the outset I ought to emphasise what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) about the debt we owe to my hon. Friend the Member for Lady wood (Mr. Yates) in this matter, and the debt, in my judgment, that not only the House but the country owes to him and those hon. Members in all parts of the House who sat on this Committee.
It was my good fortune to be a Member of a Sub-Committee of the Select Committee on Estimates last year under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood when we examined the facts concerned with prisons, and I can well imagine, from my memory of that experience last year, the patience, thoroughness and determination with which he must have carried his
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colleagues through the work that has resulted in this admirable and extremely significant Report.
I lay that amount of stress upon it not only because it describes graphically and brings home to the public mind certain important facts about education—that, perhaps, by itself may not be so great an achievement—but because I think it is true to say that the seriousness of the position—and it has been serious for very many years—was not known to people who had made nothing more than a superficial study of the problem. The Report has brought the truth home to the general public in a most striking manner. I believe that to be a valuable service; but beyond that the Report puts forward a number of important constructive proposals for dealing with that situation.
I was surprised, therefore, to find that the Minister of Education in her speech today treated the Report with such a remarkable lack of respect. She began her speech with a few pedantic criticisms of its drafting. When I had heard the rest of the presentation of the Government's case by the Minister and also by the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, I was bound to conclude that if the Government rather than the Committee had had the drafting of the Report there was no reason to suppose the drafting would have been any better, although it might very well have been a great deal longer.
The right hon. Lady had been speaking for 50 minutes, for a considerable part of that time on pedantic and trivial matters, making partisan points, before she came to the consideration of the recommendations of the Report. I want, therefore, to remind the House of certain matters referred to in the Report which have received only scant consideration from the right hon. Lady or from the hon. Gentleman who also spoke from the Government Front Bench.
In the first place, there is the calculation of the number of places. On the calculation made by the Ministry in 1950 of 1,150,000 places required by the end of this year, a judgment which, according to the evidence given in the Report has been adhered to over these three years, the right hon. Lady had very little to tell us. She used the phrase, "It has nothing to do with me." It is true that

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when it was first made she was not in office, but the Report comments very aptly on that when it says that, as an initial miscalculation, this figure might have been understood; but rigid adhesion to it over a period of three years was an error of judgment. During two of these three years, it was for the right hon. Lady to say whether she agreed or not with the Report that it was an error of judgment, and she says, "It has nothing to do with me."
There is another matter of the accuracy of the evidence given by the Ministry for which the right hon. Lady has very properly told us she is responsible. At one stage in the evidence on this question of the calculation of the number of places, the Sub-Committee were informed that the number of places was greater than the number of children who would be added to the school rolls during that period. If we compare the information given as to the number to be added to the school rolls during that period in the Minister's own Report, we come to the conclusion that this figure of 1,150,000 was far from being greater and is something like 200,000 less. It may be—one knows how it can happen when witnesses are giving evidence—that the exact wording of the question was not understood. It may be that not more than a verbal error or misunderstanding is involved here, but, on the face of it, it is a serious misunderstanding, and the right hon. Lady ought to have cleared it up.
There was a recommendation that the planning of school buildings by local authorities should in future be carried out on a three-year basis. The right hon. Lady, it is true, did reply to that, but very briefly—far more briefly than so important a consideration deserves. It would be a major change in our procedure and would mean reconsidering again how local, and indeed national, finance ought to be organised. It may be that if it were fully considered the balance of argument might be against it, but it was surely for the right hon. Lady to give more than two or three minutes' comment on an important proposal of that kind.
On the suggestion that the starting dates could be made earlier and that that would expedite the building of schools, the right hon. Lady gave us no reply at all, and dismissed the matter casually,
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saying that she did not think that the House would wish her to discuss glass and such matters, which included a number of interesting and important recommendations about design. I would not make these complaints if the right hon. Lady had been pressed for time. We had in all 100 minutes of Government oration, 75 from the Minister and 25 from the Scottish Office, and still there are these important points left unanswered or answered very casually indeed.
On the question of design the right hon. Lady, I think, did not mention at all the question of the desirability in practice of dispensing with the local by-laws. The representative of the Scottish Office did manage a sentence or two on that point and said that it was very difficult in Scotland. I think we would all have liked to have heard more on the pros and cons of pre-fabricated as against traditional building, and quite clearly a Member of the Government with the resources of the Department to draw on is in a position to discuss that matter in the House far more effectively than anyone on this side of the House or any back bencher on the other side. The question of glass is not as unimportant as the Minister supposed. It has been believed for some little while that there are great advantages in increasing the amount of glass in the wall space of schools. The Sub-Committee throws doubt on that assumption. It is a matter about which it would be useful to have a little more information, and here was an opportunity which might have been taken.
Nor did we hear very much about the possibilities of further consultation between local authorities and teachers. While we all accept the comment of the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, Southwest (Mr. Powell) that it is, after all, the local authority which bears the primary responsibility in education—it is a locally administered service—it is part of the Minister's duty to keep an eye on the country as a whole, and where there are matters that interest local authorities in general, such as the provision that they might make for consultation with their teachers about the planning of school buildings, it is part of the Minister's duty to provide the initiative and to be a focal point round which the local authorities can rally.
As usual, the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West gave us five

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minutes on the importance of looking at the matter from a national, rather than a party, point of view. Within a few minutes of that he was sneering at my hon. Friends for lack of regard for local government, at hon. Members who have a far more distinguished record of local government service than he has. But I am afraid that that is the usual conclusion to the hon. Gentleman's oration about the importance of not looking at things from a party point of view.
Not only did the right hon. Lady neglect certain important parts of the Report; there were also a number of questions addressed to her by my right hon. Friend which she left in the air. My right hon. Friend raised a difficult and complex point about the future of certain controlled schools, to which she made no reference. My right hon. Friend drew attention particularly to secondary schools in both old and new areas. The hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader Cooper) some time later assured the House that he was the first person to mention secondary schools in the debate. He was wrong on that, as he was on other points. My right hon. Friend had referred to secondary schools at some length, and again there was no reply from the right hon. Lady.
Nor did she answer, to the great regret of all of us who are interested, the question of how many schools there are of which it can be said that they have been conceived, planned, started and finished while she has been in office. We have heard a great deal about the number of schools which have been completed while she has been in office. The extraordinary thing is that, while she takes credit for completing them, she blames us for having started them.
I press these criticisms seriously. We have not had the Report or the subject treated with the seriousness that it deserves. We find that the Government, apparently, took offence at the Report and decided, judging by the terms of the Amendment, to talk about something else instead.
Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson: Is not one of the difficulties that the debate has taken place before the replies from the Department to the Report have been made public? That is not the usual practice.
Mr. Stewart: On the contrary, that gives the right hon. Lady an opportunity to reply in a form which will get a great deal more publicity than, I fear, is often accorded Ministerial replies to the comments of the Select Committee on Estimates. She has had an excellent opportunity and she has thrown it away. In the event, the Government have said, in effect, "We cannot be bothered with all these pernickety points about the amount of glass in the wall space of schools and whether we should arrange the starting dates in a more convenient manner. Let us leave all these dull topics to the technicians and civil servants and, instead, put down an Amendment where we can, by implication "
—because they have not the courage to do it in so many words—"throw into the scale some partisan comparison between this Government and the last Government." That is, in effect, what the Amendment does.
It is noticeable, and I commend it particularly to hon. Members on both sides of the House who signed the Report, that the Amendment does not include the phrase:
"That this House approves the Report."
If the Government had been prepared to do that and then to add a pat on the back for what they had done, we, in our generosity of heart, would have forgiven them. But they are not prepared to approve the Report, and they brush it aside with a patronising, purely platitudinous phrase to the effect that the Report had drawn attention to the importance of school-building, a fact which everybody knew in any case. The Amendment then goes on to point out that the Government found a serious educational situation, which is, by implication, an attack on the late Government, and suggests that we have confidence in the way the present Government are handling the situation.
In view of the terms of the Amendment, it is my duty to spend some time commenting on the achievements of the last Government and this Government. I do that not merely because the terms of the Amendment call for it but because it serves something much more than a partisan purpose. I believe, and I hope to show, that if we make the comparison that the Amendment invites us to make we shall be able to draw from both the record of the last Government and the

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record of the present Government certain important morals which will be applied to future action and will, therefore, be of national, and not merely party, advantage.
What does the Amendment say? It says that the Government found a serious educational situation. Were they really unaware that there was a serious educational situation? We had been fully aware of it and had not hidden it from the country. It was part of the extremely grave economic position which the country has faced ever since the end of the war and will continue to face for some time. The plain fact is that there are a great many things which need to be done, the total claims of which exceed our resources. Therefore, whatever part of the national economy or social service is looked at, it is not difficult to find a serious situation. Did it really need hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to get into office before they discovered what was apparent to any serious student of affairs, and indeed has been so for many years?
They say that they found that state of affairs on taking office. No one would have gathered from the tone of the right hon. Lady in the debate on education in the early spring of last year that she had found such a serious situation. She was claiming that she was maintaining the essential fabric of education. There was no suggestion that that essential fabric was in danger of collapse. Time and time again when she was criticised she repeated the phrase, "I am following the policy of my predecessor." If she found a serious educational situation, it has only been quite recently.
Let me make a comparison between this Government and the previous one. I shall try to make it impartially, but being human I cannot hope to be entirely successful. I will not, however, make it in any partisan spirit. I believe that criticism can be made of both Governments, and more important, morals can be drawn from the handling of the educational problem by both Governments.
First, what were the problems that faced the last Government? When they came into office development plans had got to be prepared by local authorities.
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They were starting completely from scratch. There was bound to be a certain fallow period during which little building could be done. Then the building industry itself had got to be built up again. That was because of the war. The Government also found that as far back as we have any history of public education in this country very little has been done about the design of buildings. There was a great deal of study to be made there, and they had to do their first work with pieces of design which were subsequently proved to be very far from economical and very far from the best.
They had also to provide a great and increasing supply of school teachers and to raise the school-leaving age, a decision which was right. On that I have no doubts whatever, and it was done despite the opposition of hon. Members like the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Ayr (Sir T. Moore), who, like other hon. Members opposite, has fired his shot and disappeared. At the time when we brought in the scheme for raising the school-leaving age the hon. and gallant Member was one of its opponents. Then, of course, there were so many other claims on the building industry and on national resources.
In the light of that, what were the Government's achievements? There was a steady rise in the number of school places provided per year from 30,000 up to 150,000 which was a fivefold increase, a rate of achievement making a total of 630,000 places provided during the tenure of office of that Government. This is the achievement which the right hon. Lady, in what I admit was one of the more heated moments of her speech, referred to as "practically nothing." She said that the late Government finished "practically nothing."
The resources put into educational building went up from some £15 million to some £90 million a year, a sixfold increase. The amount of work completed rose sevenfold from the necessarily small figure of £5 million to begin with to some £35 million in the last year of that Government's term of office. In all we got what Sir John Maud described as a programme without parallel in any country or in any time. If that is to be called exaggerated, it is a great deal nearer the truth than the right hon. Lady's phrase "practically nothing."

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During that time great improvements were made in design. As a result of the direct act of the last Government an architects' branch was formed in the Ministry of Education. That was a body of some 100 civil servants, which has been responsible for providing a great many more school places and saving the country a very great deal of money. I hope that will be borne in mind by people both in this House and elsewhere who imagine that sacking civil servants is the best way to effect economy.
As a result of that activity the cost per place in schools—and with no serious damage to the educational system—was cut down by 25 per cent. Under the right hon. Lady's administration the process of reducing the cost of places has gone on. We are all glad of it, but she has benefited from what we did. Just as she has been able to finish schools that we began, so she has been able to draw, not only on a fund of building, but on a fund of ideas that were started and which she said has made a notable contribution. We find in the evidence given before the Sub-Committee that two very valuable conferences were held in the autumn of 1951 on this question of design of schools. Although there have been several requests for further such conferences none has been held since. The right hon. Lady might have told us, if she had studied that part of the Report, whether she was thinking of holding another conference of that kind.
Then, of course, there were other expansions achieved in the field of education. There was the number of pupils pursuing technical education full-time, which has increased threefold, there was a fivefold increase in the number doing part-time technical education, a great expansion in the number of people going to the university, and so on. I could continue to catalogue the achievements for some time. Is it contended by these critics of the late Government that this programme was inadequate? One hon. Member has tried to suggest that. If the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South meant anything, it meant that. That cannot be squared with the suggestion made by other Government spokesmen that the fault of the previous Government was that they started too much.
On the point that the last Government started too much, the thing to notice is
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that in all the significant figures which one looks at of building work started or completed, or the number of school places provided, there is a steady growth year after year, and that if the policy was to be really valuable that growth had to be continued. It is true that a great deal was being started. It was important both to finish and to be able to go on starting at that rate to maintain the momentum of increase.
The morals, therefore, to be drawn from the record of the previous Government are that, if criticism can be made against them, it is that they did not give education a sufficient priority compared with the other claims on building labour and material. Had we done that, it might have been somewhat easier for our predecessors, had they had the will, to have dealt with what was admittedly a difficult situation. That and the great importance of good design are the morals that the nation learns from the former Government.
What has been the one original contribution to the matter by the present Government? The first thing upon which they decided, said the right hon. Lady last year, was a moratorium on starts. That has been her only original contribution to the problem. What has been its value? The right hon. Lady told us that she completed £3 million worth more of school-building work as a result of that moratorium. I find that a little difficult to square with the figures in the monthly digest of educational building work as a whole, but there may well be an explanation. From those figures, however, it would appear that the amount of educational building work started in the year to which the right hon. Lady refers was £20 million less. That was part of the price of finishing £3 million more of educational work.
Furthermore, the reason the right hon. Lady could complete more work was that the work had been started under a previous Administration. It is significant from the figures that at the end of 1951 the total work completed was just about the same as the total work that had been begun two years previously; there was that two years' gap. What we find, however, is that at the end of 1952, after the right hon. Lady's heroic achievement with the moratorium, the position is fundamentally the same; the amount of work finished at the end of 1952 was

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again just about the amount that had been begun by a date two years previously. The right hon. Lady had not to any appreciable extent caught up on the gap between starting and finishing.
The moratorium, therefore, did not justify itself, and it came as a rejection of the policy of a growing and expanding programme at a time when there was an ever-growing number of children to be dealt with, when in a country where there were more people at work more wealth of all kinds should, presumably, have been produced, but unfortunately that, apparently, was not the case, and when local authorities, architects and builders had all been geared to a higher production programme.
The evidence before the Sub-Committee showed that the effect of the moratorium was a setback and a discouragement to local authorities, architects, builders and, probably, to intending recruits to the teaching profession. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West suggested that in certain areas that might not have been so. My hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mr. D. Brook), however, told a very different story, and so could many other Members who have not had the opportunity to speak today.
In London we find that not only did the moratorium fall heavily in the first year in which it was imposed. London proved that it could build a great deal, and some that the Minister prevented it from building under the moratorium, and was so able to secure an improved allocation of £4·6 million in the following year. Now, however, we find that the Minister is at it again, and her latest action has been, where London has asked for £4,500,000, to approve a programme of only £3,250,000, thus delaying the production of 11,000 primary and 3,000 secondary places in an area which is already threatened by a deficit of some 10,000 places by the end of 1955 as a result of the moratorium.
Mr. Henry Brooke: To be fair—
Mr. Stewart: I have sat here and not interrupted during the whole of this debate. I will give way as much as the Minister did.
Mr. Peter Remnant rose—
Mr. Stewart: Certainly not to the hon. Member, who is paying no interest to the debate at all. I trust I may be pardoned for devoting that amount of attention to the affairs of the city in which I have lived most of my life when we have had so many other examples from other parts of the Kingdom during the afternoon.
The moral we draw from the handling of this matter by the present Government is the need for a fixity of purpose and not to have these jolts and jars in the programme. That means a grave decision on the whole question of what amount of resources should be devoted to education. It is true that the nation will perhaps read with some interest of a battle between the parties, but they will hope that out of it will come something of value.
I suggest that if we make a fair assessment, the late Government can be criticised, perhaps, on the grounds that, having started so much, it should have given a greater total amount of resources to education in order to see that what was started was finished a little more speedily. The present Government can be attacked in that it has done nothing to add to the impetus of educational building supplied by the late Government and has introduced a feeling of jolt and uncertainty by its only original contribution, which has been this moratorium. I do not believe that any criticism of the late Government is fair which does not pay tribute to its great achievements, and any recounting of the number of places finished by the present Government is not fair unless it takes account of the jolts provided in the programme.
We can draw the moral, and the methods by which we can act are suggested in the Report. We can give more attention than the right hon. Lady has given to the particular suggestion made about design and the proper application of money spent on minor works. We can consider whether there can be a more accurate calculation of the number of places where a three-year basis and improvement in the matter of starting dates will contribute materially to the solution of the problem. All those matters we can consider. I think that if we draw the moral from the Report and from the handling of this matter by the last Government and the present Government

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and the difficulties in which, with the best will in the world, both have been placed, we shall inevitably come to the conclusion that a greater priority out of the national income as a whole ought to go to education.
It is not enough to look at a more rapid provision of places today, because the number of children is growing rapidly. It is not any good running faster if the thing one is pursuing is also putting on speed at an even greater rate than oneself. When we consider, not only the task of keeping up with the natural increase in the number of children, but the problem of getting down the size of classes, dealing with the very grave matter of the provision of special schools for handicapped children, and many other matters one might mention, it is inevitable that we ought to devote a greater priority to education.
What is the difficulty about doing that from the point of view of the present Government? If they had done it they could have maintained the impetus we had imparted to the programme and taken credit for a large number of finished buildings. If the difficulty is one of finance, why have we had finance handed out in tax reliefs to well-off people with unearned incomes? That is the sort of thing a nation cannot afford if it is really concerned with its education.
If the difficulty is materials, then we need stricter control to see that those materials do not go on unnecessary building of any kind. Are we to be told that there is no real shortage of materials? If not, we could be building more schools today; if there is, we ought to consider more narrowly whether some of the buildings now going up could not be postponed to a more suitable date. If the difficulty is one of labour, there are 150,000 more people unemployed in this country today than there were two years ago, and nearly one-tenth of them—14,000—are in the building and contracting industry. If these are the difficulties, they could be surmounted.
We on this side of the House believe that if it is proved necessary, education should have a greater priority, even compared with other social services. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah!"] I say that, and I repeat it. If the necessity is shown, I
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believe that education should have a greater priority, even compared with the other social services, and I invite the Government—[An HON. MEMBER: "Which one?"] I use the plural, not the singular, and I say I would invite the Government to show whether this necessity has arisen.
What we have got at the moment, through the kind of Budget we have had, is more unemployment and relaxation, private luxury and enforced idleness. These are luxuries and wastage which the nation cannot afford. [An HON. MEMBER: "Abingdon."] The hon. Gentleman is content with what he thinks is an immediate party advantage; he should be prepared to attend a course of lectures by his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. These are the things that the nation cannot afford if we are to pay proper respect to the serious and important Report which has been produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood and hon. Gentlemen from both sides of the House. I ask hon. Members particularly if they approve this Report; if they do, we shall be happy to see them with us this evening.
9.28 p.m.
The Minister of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Harold Macmillan):My right hon. Friend the Minister of Education has made so comprehensive and so convincing a reply to her critics that she has left me very little to answer. During recent days she has been the victim throughout the country of a most cruel and bitter attack, but I think she has given today a triumphant vindication of her policy.
I have a suspicion that the purpose of those who promoted this controversy was not really confined to educational matters, or even to a pure love of education. I have had the impression from speeches made and articles written that it may not be my right hon. Friend who really has been the main subject of attack. I think I have detected a certain disposition to use the question of schools to belittle the housing record of the Government.
It is, of course, very annoying and very distressing to the Opposition, whose leaders declared categorically to the nation that it was impossible to build

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more than 200,000 houses in a year. It is still more annoying to find that 240,000 houses were built under the first year of "Tory misrule." This disappointment is even greater when we remember that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes), who was then Minister of Works, subsequently declared that he had always known that this number would be built in 1952. What a pity he did not confide it to my predecessor. It seems to have been a dark secret, but still he might have entrusted it to him. Perhaps the ex-Minister of Works was like one of those punters who can always confidently select the winner, but only after the race.
It must be still more irritating to see the figures rising month by month. I do not know what the final figure for 1953 will be, but if it should be a good one well on the target, a bulls-eye, or even an inner, will there be loud and prolonged applause from the party opposite? Will there be compliments and good wishes, perhaps a little token, to the Minister—a specially bound copy of "Challenge to Britain" or, better still, a year's subscription to the "Tribune"? Alas, I can expect nothing so gracious. Curiously enough, no sooner have we begun to prove that building on this scale can be done, than our critics turn round and say that it really ought not to be done.
I do not understand why the Opposition are so niggling and jealous over this. It is not I, my Parliamentary Secretary or my Department who have done this job. It is the master builders, the craftsmen, and the labourers in the building industry. It is they, helped by the local authorities, whether Conservative or Socialist controlled, and by private developers, large and small, who have joined in the spirit of the housing crusade. All we have done is to give them a chance, and, of course, to abolish the development charge. Now the accusation is that our success in the housing drive has been at the expense of other building. If it were true it would be an important, though not necessarily a decisive objection. [An HON. MEMBER: "Who said it?"] Oh, I know who said it. I have it here, I have no doubt about that. Just wait.
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Hon. Gentlemen opposite ought to read what their leaders say.
The homes of the people constitute the greatest and most compelling of all human needs. If we are to use that hateful word "priority," then home is priority No. 1. Nevertheless, this criticism, if it were true, would certainly diminish the credit of the house-building effort, and, therefore, it ought to be examined a little further—although I am bound to say that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education has really answered it in great detail.
I did observe that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen had some second thoughts about this whole affair. They may have suddenly begun to realise how precarious was their own position and how insecure their own record. Indeed, never were stones thrown so wildly from houses so completely constructed of glass. I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), who opened the debate, was quite conscious of this. I expected that he would make a much more slashing attack. There he was, billed for the role of the lion. I thought he would roar like a lion, but not at all. He roared
"as gently as any sucking dove … an'twere any nightingale."
The right hon. Gentleman told us, in his smoothest tones, how much he deprecated a display of party fisticuffs He wanted a calm, scientific bipartisan approach to the whole problem. Was that the approach of the Socialist journals, speakers, and candidates after the publication of this Report? Was this the approach on the platform or on the hustings? Not at all. What has happened is that the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends thought that they were on to a good thing. They had a good stick with which to beat the Government. Then, as so often before, they saw it turn into a boomerang. The right hon. Gentleman changed his tactics. He tried to slip out as quietly as he could. Having found that his cock would not fight, he belatedly turned into a conscientious objector to cockfighting.
I will do credit to the hon. Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates), who spoke, and who was Chairman of this Select Committee. He deprecated the political use of his Report. I think that perhaps he might have done a little deprecating a

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little earlier, for 200 Members of his party put down on the basis of the Report what amounted to a Motion of censure on the Government, but, when they saw that it would not go, like the Snark they just silently vanished away. But the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) had already rushed boldly into the controversy at the very beginning. He said at Skegness, in a naturally buoyant atmosphere—and he repeated what he said in Berkshire after assuming command there, but it did not go quite so well there—that I had stepped up house-building by cutting down on schools, factories and power stations. He said:
"In other words, Mr. 'Macmillan said, 'All you, stand back. Then it will look as if I am advancing. Any ass can build houses that way'."
The right hon. Gentleman contrasted this with the days of the Socialist Administration:
"When the Labour Party was in office there was a balanced housing programme."
But now that we have gazed in the crystal perhaps we had better look at the facts. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields rather denigrated figures or the use of figures. I am not in the least surprised. He said that he was against arithmetic, especially simple arithmetic. It may be a very reactionary view of mine, but I still believe that two and two make four.
Let us look at the figures—Neave, 22,986. [Laughter.] Whether one takes primary and secondary schools or whether one takes all educational buildings, including technical colleges and other work; in other words, whether one takes actual figures in terms of money, or figures of prices corrected to the end-1951 prices, which is really the fairest test, in all forms of the figures our record of work done is by every test higher than in any year of the previous Administration.
I said "work done" which is the only test, not work approved, planned or dreamed about in a Socialist Utopia. Our record in 1952, and what is expected for 1953, will be far above that achieved in those lean years before. If one takes all educational work and takes the corrected prices, their average for the five years—I leave out 1946, which I think it is fair to do—is £34,500,000. Our 1952 figure is £50 million. Our 1953
518
figure will be £54 million; and that is work done.
"Ah," they say, "but what about work started?" They all say that. Mr. Morgan Phillips said it, so they have to say it. It is "His Master's Voice." He says,"Do not bother about the work done; just think of all that we started." Of course, the Socialists do start a lot of things. They are wonderful starters. There were more hares started under Socialist rule than ever before in history. But none of them will ever get killed. Everything is begun and nothing is finished. They say, "Finish it? That is just a dull, pedestrian, unimaginative job; leave that to the Tories."
My right hon. Friend the Minister of Education has most convincingly explained why there was the need for the three months moratorium early in 1952—a moratorium, let it be repeated, not on building, not on ceasing the work, but upon the starts. It was absolutely necessary in order to finish what was building, for this so-called balanced building was hopelessly out of balance.
Like everything else that we took over, it was in a mess. Unless drastic steps had been taken, it would have got into a hopeless tangle. The starting date procedure was applied to those buildings. It is true that it was not applied to houses, because educational buildings or factories deal with a limited number of large projects, whereas houses deal with a very large number of quite small ones.
Take the next figure, with reference to factories. These are the figures for what the right hon. Gentleman described as next on the list of starved and hungry victims of the housing drive: 1950, £102 million, 1951, £113 million, 1952, £118 million—and that in spite of the steel shortage which caused us so much difficulty in 1952. The same was true of the power stations. There was, I admit, a 10 per cent. drop in the actual investment, but the production is running at an accelerating rate and the drop is solely due to the shortage of steel. The shortage of steel was the only reason.
Let us take the blitzed cities—not plans, not schemes, not vague promises, but work done. The figures for blitzed cities were: 1950, £2·3 million; 1951, £3·5 million; 1952, £4·6 million; 1953, £5·5 million. That last figure is the

519
one that I have agreed with the Treasury, but I shall be disappointed if we do not do better than that. We can always get a little more. These are not starts or plans or dreams or visions but work done, and that is the only test.
In the light of these figures, let me return to the accusation of the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale, who said that I had said, "All of you stand back, and then it will look as if I am advancing." That is what I am supposed to have said. Anyway, the right hon. Gentleman admits that I am advancing. The truth is that the others have advanced, too—houses, educational buildings, factories and blitzed cities. They have all gone forward together. Right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite may not like the form that this controversy has taken, but, after all, we did not begin it.
Let us take the right hon. Gentleman's own record and see who and what stood back for him. Let us take this best housing year on which he prides himself. I think it was 1948. It must have been 1948, because it was after the 1947 crisis and before the 1949 crisis. The 1951 crisis was still to come. Socialist chronology is very easy to remember—muddle every year, and a crisis every other. In 1948 he completed 227,000 permanent houses and 18,000 temporary houses in addition. What happened to the schools in that year?
Mr. Aneurin Bevan: How many?
Mr. Macmillan: There were 227,000 permanent houses and 18,000 temporary houses in addition.
Mr. Bevan: No. In the first instance, how many workers were engaged in war damage repairs? Secondly, the figure of family houses for that year is 267,000.
Mr. Macmillan: I am quite ready to give that point to the right hon. Member. The bigger they were the more my point is true. In the right hon. Gentleman's best year 227,000 permanent houses and 18,000 temporary houses were built, but what happened to the schools? In that year £24 million was spent on educational building and £16 million on primary and secondary schools. In a year when our housing figure is at least as big, as against £24 million spent on all educational
520
building we have spent £50 million, and as against £16 million spent on primary and secondary schools we have spent £36½ million. The comparison is the same. Who was standing back in 1948?
I am not unduly concerned with the right hon. Gentleman's accusations, because I am used to them, but I am a little surprised that the Leader of the Opposition fell into this trap. [HON. MEMBERS: "Which one?"] The nominal one. In his letter to the Berkshire candidate at the recent by-election he said that the Tories were sacrificing the education of the workers' children to their housing programme. Was this party fisticuffs, or was this the form of bipartisan deliberation which the right hon. Member for South Shields invited us to adopt? I can think of no more cruel accusation—if it were true—that could be made against anyone.
At this point I want to make some reference to a serious fallacy that underlies a great deal of this sort of planning which has become fashionable since the war.
Mr. Ross: The right hon. Gentleman is not a Solomon. He should hurry up.
Mr. Macmillan: The hon. Member had better go out if he cannot stand it. I am not at all surprised; it has been a very rough day for him.
I am not unfamiliar with the word "planning." I was a planner when it was a far less respectable occupation than it has now become. To me planning has always meant a broad policy, a general programme, and a strategic and not tactical operation. The potential output of an industry in terms of money is a good and useful guide, but we must not fall into the trap of thinking that because it is convenient to measure output—whether of men or materials—in terms of money, those men and materials can be moved about from place to place and project to project with the same ease that money can be passed from one Vote to another. Different forms of building require different forms of construction and materials. Factories and schools require considerable amounts of steel, but houses require only a little.
When one comes to the question of manpower one finds that there are regular large contractors who have both

521
specialised managements and workmen, who are carefully chosen and adapted to their particular jobs. It is an illusion to think that these can be switched about from day to day or month to month, like pawns in a game. The human material in this industry is not just a solid mass. There are firms and men who are suitable for house-building who could not be employed, for instance, in civil engineering or heavy work of that kind. There are some small firms who can and have joined in the housing drive in this or that village or town, without impinging upon the labour or materials required for large-scale factory or office building.
It is a different sort of job, and I am convinced that it is wrong to say that the development of one aspect of building necessarily impinges unfavourably on another. On the contrary, I have a feeling that if we can keep industry in an expanding and optimistic mood, with full order books and the sense of a great future before it, with a certainty of steady employment, and with good wages, sound incentive schemes, and good management, we can rely upon a rise in its total productivity and a rise in output of all kinds of building.
That is, in fact, what we have proved, over the whole field, by the confidence we have placed in the building industry, both masters and men. This can be proved because in school-building and house-building the period taken to complete has diminished. Houses take less time, fewer months per house. In the building industry as a whole, practically the same number of men—a few less—consumed 10 per cent. more materials—bricks and cement—in 1952 than they did in 1951, which is proof of increased productivity.
But the rise in productivity has not been achieved without much thought and effort, and I want to pay tribute, as I have done in the past, both in the House and outside, to my predecessor for the work which he did in preparing the way for the popular house both in the money and material stages. This is the house the first design of which he planned and which I called the People's House. The right hon. Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell) called it an inferior house, and the right hon. Member for Ebbw Vale called it a rabbit hutch. They mean much the same thing, but are different
522
ways of talking to suit the characteristics of the two right hon. Gentlemen. All I did was to perfect the house and popularise it. The local authorities took it up to such a degree that, whether Conservative controlled or Socialist controlled, 90 per cent. of them are building to this design by their free decision.
We have certainly built more houses by these methods and these designs without any sacrifice of standard and with complete conformity to the famous Dudley regulations. I am surprised that in the absence of the right hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Dalton) such a dastardly attack should be made upon his house.
In the same way my right hon. Friend the Minister of Education paid her tribute to her predecessors for the first beginning, under the brilliant architects at the Ministry. They have done wonderful work. She inherited the work already started and, in the same way, she perfected it and pushed forward with admirable determination and success. Those are the new types of school design, and by these means, by scientific and skilful design and new methods of building and by a strict financial control of the cost per school place, she has produced a result which is far more outstanding than expenditure in terms of money would suggest. In reality, she has made greater achievements than the mere money cost of it would show.
This is proved by the remarkable figures of school places provided in primary and secondary schools in the last five years. In the year to 1st February, 1950, the yearly average was 74,000. Next year, from 1950–51, it was 130,000. Next year it was 159,000, and in her first complete year of office it was 218,000. She tells me that she is confident that in the subsequent year that will amount to 250,000. More money spent on school places but more school places for the same corresponding amount of money—that seems to me to be real progress.
The attack which has been launched upon us has failed dismally, so dismally that the hon. Gentleman who wound up this great Motion of censure, as it was to have been a week or two ago, ended up by a speech entirely for the defence, defending his own party and his own Government's record. We know, of course, that great progress is being made

523
and that in the housing field and in the educational field there is a tremendous lot still to do. There are slum schools to be cleared away, but there are slum houses to be cleared away, too. They are the relics of six years of war, when no building could be done, when it was impossible to catch up with what had to be done.
It is a great difficulty for any Government left in charge of it, but it is also, I think, a great inspiration, and a Government may well be and should be stimulated and assisted by the Report of a Select Committee if it is made in the spirit in which I am convinced the hon. Gentleman the Member for Ladywood intended it to be—a useful, practical contribution to a difficult national problem. But if it is distorted, and thought to be a convenient instrument with which to attack the Government at a good political moment, then I think we are
entitled to throw back the accusation with contempt and with scorn.
The Government are ready to be judged and ask only to be judged, and are being judged, by their achievements. We do not shrink from that test at all. Sometimes it is in one part of the country and sometimes in another. Of the Government's programme for houses, schools, factories, for the clearance of bad old houses and the slum areas and of the bad old schools and the slum schools, of this programme we could say this, by the adaptation of a famous phrase: it has increased, it is increasing, it ought to increase further still. And with the resolute support of Parliament and people I am persuaded that we shall achieve our purpose.
Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
The House divided: Ayes, 263; Noes, 296.

Division No. 210.]

AYES

[9.58 p.m.

Acland, Sir Richard

Darling, George (Hillsborough)

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

Adams, Richard

Davies, Ernest (Enfield, E.)

Herbison, Miss M.

Albu, A. H.

Davies, Stephen (Merthyt)

Hewitson, Capt. M.

Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

do Freitas, Geoffrey

Hobson, C. R.

Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)

Deer, G.

Holman, P.

Anderson, Frank (Whitehaven)

Delargy, H. J.

Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)

Attlee, Rt. Hon. C. R.

Dodds, N. N.

Houghton, Douglas

Awbery, S. S.

Donnelly, D. L.

Hoy, J. H.

Bacon, Miss Alice

Driberg, T. E. N.

Hubbard, T. F.

Baird, J.

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

Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

Balfour, A.

Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)

Barnes, Rt. Hon. A. J.

Edelman, M.

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Bartley, P.

Edwards, John (Brighouse)

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Bellenger, Rt. Hon. F. J.

Edwards, Rt. Hon. Ness (Caerphilly)

Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)

Bence, C. R.

Edwards, W. J. (Stepney)

Irving, W. J. (Wood Green)

Benn, Hon. Wedgwood

Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

Isaacs, Rt. Hon. G. A

Beswick, F.

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

Janner, B.

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

Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

Bing, G. H. C.

Fernyhough, E.

Jegar, George (Code)

Blackburn, F.

Finch, H. J.

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

Blyton, W. R.

Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

Jenkins, R. H. (Steohford)

Boardman, H.

Follick, M.

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G.

Foot, M. M.

Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

Bowden, H. W.

Forman, J. C.

Jones, David (Hartlepool)

Bowles, F. G.

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

Brockway, A. F.

Freeman, John (Watford)

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Brook, Dryden (Halifax)

Freeman, Peter (Newport)

Jones, T. W. (Merioneth)

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Keenan, W.

Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)

Gibson, C. W.

Kenyon, C.

Brown, Thomas (Ince)

Glanville, James

Key, Rt. Hon. C. W.

Burton, Miss F. E.

Gordon-Walker, Rt. Hon. P. C.

King, Dr. H. M.

Butler, Herbert (Hackney, S.)

Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)

Kinlay, J.

Callaghan, L. J.

Grenfell, Rt. Hon. D. R.

Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Carmichael, J.

Grey, C. F.

Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

Castle, Mrs. B. A.

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Lever, Harold (Cheetham)

Champion, A. J.

Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Llanelly)

Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)

Chapman, W. D.

Griffiths, William (Exchange)

Lewis, Arthur

Chetwynd, G. R.

Hale, Leslie

Lindgren, G. S.

Clunie, J.

Hall, Rt. Hon. Glenvil (Colne Valley)

Logan, D. G.

Coldrick, W.

Hall, John T. (Gateshead, W.)

MacColl, J. E.

Collick, P. H.

Hamilton, W. W.

McGhee, H. G.

Corbet, Mrs. Freda

Hannan, W.

McGovern, J.

Craddook, George (Bradford, S.)

Hargreaves, A.

Mclnnes, J.

Crosland, C. A. R.

Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)

McKay, John (Wallsend)

Cullen, Mrs. A.

Hastings, S.

McLeavy, F.

Daines, P.

Hayman, F. H.

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

Healey, Denis (Leeds, S. E.)

McNeil, Rt. Hon. H

MacPherscn, Malcolm (Stirling)

Pryde, D. J.

Thomas, George (Cardiff)

Mainwaring, W. H.

Pursey, Cmdr, H.

Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

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

Rankin, John

Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

Mann, Mrs. Jean

Reeves, J.

Thomson, George (Dundee, E.)

Manuel, A. C.

Raid, Thomas (Swindon)

Thornton, E.

Marquand, Hi. Hon. H. A.

Reid, William (Camlachie)

Timmons, J.

Mason, Roy

Rhodes, H.

Tomney, F.

Mayhew, C. P.

Robens, Rt. Hon. A.

Turner-Samuels, M.

Mellish, R. J.

Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

Messer, Sir F.

Robinson, Kenneth (St. Paneras, N.)

Usborne, H. C.

Mikardo, Ian

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Viant, S. P.

Mitchison, G. R.

Ross, William

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

Monslow, W.

Royle, C.

Weitzman, D.

Moody, A. S.

Shackleton, E. A. A.

Wells, Percy (Faversham)

Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.

Shawcross, Rt. Hon. Sir Hartley

Wells, William (Walsall)

Morley, R.

Shinwell, Rt. Hon. E.

West, D. G.

Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

Short, E. W.

Wheatley, Rt. Hon. John

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

Shurmer, P. L. E.

Wheeldon, W. E.

Mort, D. L.

Silverman, Julius (Erdington)

White, Mrs. Eirene (E. Flint)

Moyle, A.

Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N. E.)

Mulley, F. W.

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.

Nally, W.

Skeffington, A. M.

Wigg, George

Neal, Harold (Bolsover)

Slater, Mrs. S. (Stoke-on-Trent)

Wilcock, Group Capt. C. A. B.

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

Slater, J. (Durham, Sedgefield)

Wilkins, W. A.

O'Brien, T.

Smith, Ellis (Stoke, S.)

Willey, F. T.

Oldfield, W. H.

Smith, Norman (Nottingham, S.)

Williams, David (Neath)

Oliver, G. H.

Snow, J. W.

Williams, Rev. Llywelyn (Abertillery)

Orbach, M.

Sorensen, R. W.

Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

Oswald, T.

Soskice, Rt. Hon. Sir Frank

Williams, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Don V'll'y)

Padley, W. E.

Sparks, J. A.

Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)

Paget, R. T.

Steele, T.

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

Paling, Rt. Hon. W. (Dearne Valley)

Stewart, Michael (Fulham, E.)

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

Paling, Will T. (Dewsbury)

Stokes, Rt. Hon. R. R.

Winterbottom, Ian (Nottingham, C.)

Palmer, A. M. F.

Strachey, Rt. Hon. J.

Winterbottom, Richard (Brightside)

Pargiter, G. A.

Strauss, Rt. Hon. George (Vauxhall)

Wcodburn, Rt. Hon. A.

Parker, J.

Stress, Dr. Barnett

Wyatt, W. L.

Paton, J.

Summerskiil, Rt. Hon. E.

Yates, V. F.

Peart, T. F.

Swingler, S. T.

Younger, Rt. Hon. K.

Popplewell, E.

Sylvester, G. O.

Price, Joseph (Westhoughton)

Taylor, Bernard (Mansfield)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

Taylor, John (West Lothian)

Mr. Pearson and Mr. Arthur Allen.

Proctor, W. T.

Thomas, David (Aberdare)

NOES

Aitken, W. T.

Burden, F. F. A.

Finlay, Graeme

Allan R. A. (Paddington, S.)

Butcher, Sir Herbert

Fisher, Nigel

Alport, C. J. M.

Butler, Rt. Hon. R. A. (Saffron Walden)

Fleetwood-Hesketh, R. F.

Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

Campbell, Sir David

Fletcher-Cooke, C.

Amory, Heathcoat (Tiverton)

Carr, Robert

Ford, Mrs. Patricia

Anstruther-Gray, Major, W. J.

Channon, H.

Fort, R.

Arbuthnot, John

Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

Foster, John

Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)

Clarke, Brig. Terence (Portsmouth, W.)

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

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

Clyde, Rt. Hon. J. L.

Fraser, Sir Ian (Morecambe & Lonsdale)

Astor, Hon. J. J.

Cole, Norman

Galbraith, Rt. Hon. T. D. (Pollok)

Baker, P. A. D.

Colegats, W. A.

Galbraith, T. G. D. (Hillhead)

Baldock, Lt.-Cmdr. J. M

Conant, Maj. R. J. E.

Gammans, L. D.

Baldwin, A. E.

Cooper, Sqn. Ldr. Albert

Garner-Evans, E. H.

Banks, Col. C.

Cooper-Key, E. M.

George, Rt. Hon. Maj. G. Lleyd

Barber, Anthony

Craddock, Beresford (Spelthorne)

Godber, J. B.

Barlow, Sir John

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

Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.

Baxter, A. B.

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Gough, C. F. H.

Beach, Maj. Hicks

Crouch, R. F.

Gower, H. R.

Beamish, Maj. Tufton

Crowder, Sir John (Finchley)

Graham, Sir Fergus

Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

Crowder, Petre (Ruislip—Northwood)

Gridley, Sir Arnold

Bell, Ronald (Bucks, S.)

Cuthbert, W. N.

Grimston, Hon. John (St. Albans)

Bennett, F. M. (Reading, N.)

Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westbury)

Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gosport)

Davidson, Viscountess

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Bennett, William (Woodside)

De la Bère, Sir Rupert

Harden, J. R. E.

Bavins, J. R. (Toxteth)

Deedes, W. F.

Hare, Hon. J. H.

Biroh, Nigel

Digby, S. Wingfield

Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.)

Bishop, F. P.

Dodds-Parker, A. D.

Harris, Reader (Heston)

Black, C. W.

Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

Boothby, Sir R. J. G.

Donner, Sir P. W.

Harvey, Air Cdre, A. V. (Macclesfield)

Boyd-Carpenter, J. A.

Doughty, C. J. A.

Harvey, Ian (Harrow, E.)

Boyle, Sir Edward

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord Malcolm

Harvie-Watt, Sir George

Braine, B. R.

Drayson, G. B.

Hay, John

Braithwaite, Sir Albert (Harrow, W.)

Drewe, Sir C.

Head, Rt. Hon. A. H.

Braithwaite, Lt.-Cdr. G. (Bristol, N. W.)

Dugdale, Rt. Hon. Sir T. (Richmond)

Heald, Sir Lionel

Bromley-Davenport, Lt.-Col. W. H.

Duncan, Capt. J. A. L.

Heath, Edward

Brooks, Henry (Hampstead)

Duthie, W. S.

Henderson, John (Cathcart)

Brooman-White, R. C.

Eccles, Rt. Hon. Sir D. M.

Higgs, J. M. C.

Browne, Jack (Govan)

Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Bullard, D. G.

Erroll, F. J.

Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.

Fell, A.

Hirst, Geoffrey

526

527

Holland-Martin, C. J.

Maitland, Comdr. J. F. W. (Horncastle)

Scott, R. Donald

Hollis, M. C.

Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

Holmes, Sir Stanley (Harwich)

Manningham-Buller, Sir R. E

Shepherd, William

Holt, A. F.

Markham, Major Sir Frank

Simon, J. E. S. (Middlesbrough, W.)

Hops, Lord John

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

Hopkinson, Rt. Hon. Henry

Marples, A. E.

Smithers, Sir Waldron (Orpington)

Hornby-Smith, Miss M. P

Marshall, Douglas (Bodmin)

Smyth, Brig. J. G. (Norwood)

Horobin, I. M.

Marshall, Sir Sidney (Sutton)

Snadden, W. McN.

Horsbrugh, Rt. Hon. Florence

Maude, Angus

Soames, Capt. C.

Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

Maud ling, R.

Spearman, A. C. M

Howard, Hon. Greville (St. Ives)

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

Speir, R. M.

Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

Medlicott, Brig. F.

Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W.)

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

Mellor, Sir John

Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)

Hurd, A. R.

Molson, A. H. E.

Stanley, Capt. Hon Richard

Hutchinson, Sir Geoffrey (Ilford, N.)

Moore, Lt.-Col. Sir Thomas

Stevens, G. P.

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

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

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

Hyde, Lt.-Col. H. M.

Mott-Radclyffe, C. E.

Stewart, Henderson (Fife, E.)

Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.

Jenkins, Robert (Dulwich)

Nicholls, Harmar

Storey, S.

Jennings, R.

Nicholson, Godfrey (Farnham)

Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)

Stuart, Rt. Hon. James (Moray)

Johnson, Howard (Kemptown)

Nield, Basil (Chester)

Summers, G. S.

Jones, A. (Hall Green)

Noble, Cmdr. A. H. P

Sutcliffe, Sir Harold

Joynson-Hicks, Hon. L. W

Nugent, G. R. H.

Taylor, Charles (Eastbourne)

Keeling, Sir Edward

Nutting, Anthony

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

Kerr, H. W.

Oakshott, H. D.

Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)

Lambert, Hon. G.

Odey, G. W.

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Lambton, Viscount

O'Neill, Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)

Thomas, P. J. M. (Conway)

Lancaster, Col. C. G

Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D

Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)

Law, Rt. Hon. R. K.

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Thorneycroft, Rt. Hn. Peter (Monmouth)

Leather, E. H. C.

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

Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian (Weston-super-Mare)

Tilney, John

Legh, Hon. Peter (Petersfield)

Osborne, C.

Touche, Sir Gordon

Lermox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Partridge, E.

Turner, H. F. L.

Lindsay, Martin

Peake, Rt. Hon. O

Turton, R. H.

Linetead, Sir H. N.

Perkins, W. R. D.

Tweedsmuir, Lady

Llewellyn, D. T.

Peyton, J. W. W.

Vane, W. M. F.

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

Pickthorn, K. W. M

Vaughan-Morgan, J. K

Lloyd, Mai. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

Vosper, D. F.

Lloyd, Rt. Hon. Selwyn (Wirral)

Pitman, I. J.

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

Lockwood. Lt.-Col. J. C.

Powell, J, Enoch

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)

Longden, Gilbert (Herts, S. W.)

Price, Henry (Lowisham, W.)

Walker-Smith, D. C.

Low, A. R. W.

Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.

Ward, Hon. George (Worcester)

Lucas, Sir Joceiyn (Portsmouth, S.)

Profumo, J. D.

Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

Lucas, P. B. (Brentford)

Raikes, Sir Victor

Watkinson, H. A.

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Rayner, Brig. R

Webbe, Sir H. (London & Westminster)

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. O.

Redmayne, M.

Wellwood, W.

McAdden, S. J.

Rees-Davies, W. R

Williams, Rt. Hon. Charles (Torquay)

MoCallum, Major D

Remnant, Hon. P.

Willliams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

MoCorqucdale, Rt. Hon. M. S

Renton, D. L. M.

Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)

Macdonald, Sir Peter

Roberts, Peter (Heeley)

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

Mackeson, Brig. H. R

Robertson, Sir David

Williams, R. Dudley (Exeter)

McKibbin, A. J.

Robinson, Roland (Blackpool, S.)

Wills, G.

Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)

Rodgers, John (Sevenoaks)

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Roper, Sir Harold

Wood, Hon. R.

Maclean, Fitzroy

Ropner, Col. Sir Leonard

York, C.

Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)

Russell, R. S.

MacLeod, John (Rose and Cromarty)

Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

MacMillan, Rt. Hon. Harold (Bromley)

Salter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur

Mr. Buchan-Hepburn and

Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)

Sandys, Rt. Hon. D

Mr. Kaberry.

Question put, and agreed to.

Proposed words there added.
Resolved,
"That this House welcomes the emphasis laid in the said Report on the importance of school-building and is confident that Her Majesty's Government has made and is continuing to make the best use of available resources in the interests of the children, in order to deal with the serious educational situation which they found on taking office."

ARMY AND AIR FORCE (ANNUAL) BILL
Considered in Committee.
[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]
Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

ARMY AND AIR FORCE (ANNUAL) BILL

  Clause 2.—(ARMY ACT AND AIR FORCE ACT TO BE IN FORCE FOSPECIFIEDTIME.)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
  10.10 p.m.
  Mr. Stephen Swingler: The Clause continues obsolescent Army and Air Force Acts in operation for a further 12 months. We have agreed not to put down any Amendments this year, so there will be no discussion on the Committee stage. However, I should like to ask the Secretary of State to tell us about the progress being made by the Select Committee which is considering the Acts and to give us an assurance that the situation which has occurred this year will not recur next year. Can the Secretary of State say when the reformed legislation can be produced?
  The Secretary of State for War (Mr. Antony Head): The Select Committee which was set up by the House—it has been meeting very frequently and has published a number of interim Reports—has one object, and one object only, to produce an up-to-date and efficient Army and Air Force Act at the earliest possible date. Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will agree that the Select Committee is attempting to discharge that task with an amount of co-operation which is giving me, at any rate, a matter of maximum satisfaction. It would be wrong for me, as I have nothing to do with the Committee, to make an exact forecast, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Committee wholeheartedly desires to finish the task as quickly and as efficiently as it can. It would not be right for me to go beyond that.
  Clause ordered to stand part of the Bill.
  Preamble agreed to.
  Bill reported, without Amendment; read the Third time, and passed.

Captain Waterhouse added to the Committee of Public Accounts.—[Sir Cedric Drewe.]

CANNED CORNED MEAT (PRICES)
10.15 p.m.
Mr. James Hudson: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Canned Corned Meat (Prices) (No. 2) Order, 1953 (SX, 1953, No. 815), dated 14th May, 1953, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th May, be annulled.
The Order to which I am objecting replaces another which has not operated for very long. It has a similar title. The first one became operative only as recently as March last. The present Order makes alterations in the terms of the earlier one in two important respects. The first is that it raises the maximum price of canned corned beef from 3s. to 4s. 1b., a considerable increase. Secondly, it specifies a schedule of the charges referring to tins of a smaller size instead of those of 6 1b., and so on, in weight in which corned beef was formerly packed. That has an important effect in the way the trade is distributing it.
The result is that the corned beef which was formerly extracted by butchers from 6 1b. tins and then carved and sold in butchers' shops is now to be packed in small luncheon size cartons and tins of as low a weight as three-quarters of a 1b. That appears to be part of the Ministry of Food plan of transferring from the butchers to the grocers a considerable part of this trade. It is in the grocers' shops that it is expected that the demand for most of the smaller size tins will be made.
The butchers, naturally, are up in arms about this proposal because, after all, the situation is not now different from what it was in 1940 when the arrangement was first made that they should have the canned corned meat trade in their hands. They received that undertaking then because of the great shortage of meat that then prevailed and corned beef was to be used to supplement the butchers' trade.

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I now submit that the situation that prevailed in 1940, although it is not as bad as it was then, is still very serious in regard to meat shortage and I propose to give some facts from sources that hon. Gentlemen usually accept as reliable sources, namely, from the Press. I will first give the quotation from the "Financial Times," made as recently as 29th May.
"As much as 2,300,000 tons of meat a year is needed in Britain to get her back to the prewar consumption. This year she will fall short of that figure by 500,000 tons."
A situation of that sort is not a good time for taking away what was admitted from the first to be a type of meat which enabled the butchers to meet their demands.
Not only the "Financial Times" took that view, but the "Daily Telegraph" said more recently, on 5th June this year:
"Meat supplies in 1953 are now estimated to be more than 1,850,000 tons. This compared with 1,783,000 in 1946."
Hon. Members opposite will not claim that there has been a wildly extravagant increase in the consumption of meat from those days of a Labour Government in 1946 to the figure that I have just given.
That is about the extent of the way that the Lord Woolton promise of more red meat and more variety of food has been met. In fact, there is very little change in the situation, as indicated by the figures I have quoted from the "Daily Telegraph," which, after my comparison that 2,160,000 tons is a little less than was quoted by the "Financial Times," went on to say that 2,160,000 tons was the pre-war figure. I therefore say to the Minister of Food that on the general figures he had no justification for this large increase in the price of canned corned beef.
There is another reason why the Minister was in no way justified. We have today been listening to complaints, not merely from this side of the House, but to complaints almost as strident—indeed, more strident as far as the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) was concerned—from the benches opposite about the type of meat that is now available in the butchers' shops. We have
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heard about scrag ends and big deliveries of very large meat which, when cut up, confront the butcher with the problem of chunks of fat that he finds it extremely difficult to purvey to the average housewife in search of a reasonable cut.
The butcher has on his hands today a considerable amount of meat, especially pork, which the housewife does not want. She might have had it if a reasonable bacon policy had been pursued from the beginning, but the housewife has not had that advantage, so she is faced with this pork, which she does not want. The housewife, therefore, looks round to get her supplies made up with beef, but the beef is not in the shops in sufficient quantity, despite all that Lord Woolton promised. Indeed, the beef shortage is far more serious than the shortage of any other kind of meat. That being so, the same problem exists as in 1940, when the butchers were guaranteed this privilege of being able to sell tinned corned beef.
I will not say anything more on behalf of the butchers. Speaking as a Co-operator, we have both butchers' and grocers' departments, and what we lose on the swings we gain on the roundabouts. I agree, however, that behind the issue of the shortage of meat and the possibility of making up the shortages by corned beef, the social problem still exists.
Why, then, this large increase in price of 1s. per 1b. on the 3s. that was already charged? I suspect that it is actuated by the Minister's desire to safeguard the cuts of meat that are not now being sold in the butchers' shops, which the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is responsible for supplying in the first case, and forcing purchasers, when they do not have money to spend on tinned corned beef, to buy the other cuts that they do not like because of their inferior quality. This is a guard to cover the Minister's mistakes of policy and it is built up at the expense of the housewife, who is already beginning to feel the pinch of the pressure in economic affairs and who finds it harder and harder to buy the meat that she needs for her family.
I will not weary the House with further quotations from the "Daily Telegraph."

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Still more recently than the quotations which I have read to the House, however, the "Daily Telegraph" has spoken about the fact that the butchers are not taking up the added ration that the Minister has prepared—and they are not taking it up because the price is getting too much for the people to afford. To take this very convenient form of meat which the butcher formerly supplied and to put the extra charge upon it is a thoroughly reprehensible policy. It is the more reprehensible because so many high-sounding promises were made on this question.
I do not think there is a more serious failure of the Government than their failure to live up to promises made on behalf of the party opposite by Lord Woolton and other leaders in such loud voices at the last Election. As we go on I believe that the people will become increasingly aware, even from newspapers which support the party opposite, of the obstacles put in their way by the actions of this Government.
10.25 p.m.
Mr. Frederick Willey: I beg to second the Motion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Hudson) has mentioned the quality of meat and I am sure that the Minister—whose attendance at our late-night discussion we welcome—would at once agree that at the moment there is a considerable amount of exceptionally poor quality Australian mutton on the market because there is a correlation between wool prices and Australian mutton. It is a fact, which no one denies in the trade, that there is far too much ancient Australian mutton on the market and far too much fat pork.
We do not object therefore to corned meat being released. What we object to is the price at which it is released. The general background about corned beef is that this Government, as did the last Government, have deliberately restricted the import of canned corned meat to this country. This interference with free trade may disturb some hon. Members opposite, but it has been done quite deliberately in favour of carcase meat. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman, last year, also restricted imports of meat products generally.
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In spite of the general ban on canned corned meat it has been allowed to come into the country for obvious reasons—to build up strategic stocks. This is no secret. It is clear from the trade returns, but presumably those trade stocks have to be turned over. Again, it is obvious to anyone who looks at the returns that it is the policy of the present Government to turn over the stocks every two years. That is obvious from the fact that we had practically no canned corned meat released last year. We are now turning over strategic stocks.
The Minister has told us that he is releasing 11,000 tons. That is not a very large amount. Before the war we consumed, on an average, about 50,000 tons a year. It is not very large in comparison with the canned corned meat released by the previous Government; we released 17,000 tons to 20,000 tons. The Minister has released a comparatively small amount of canned corned meat, but without any restrictions upon the way in which it is to be disposed.
That seems to us quite wrong. This is not a free market; this is a controlled release of a very limited amount of stocks which are held in the national interest and the Minister, rather than taking the trouble to see that it is fairly distributed, says that he could not care less. He does not even confine it to the butchers but says that, generally, butchers and grocers can distribute it as they will and those who can get it will get it.
I think that the main reason he has taken this step is that he realises that price will determine who now buys this canned corned meat, which was bought in the national interest. Before the war it was selling at about 1s. a 1b. When we were in office, for six and a half years, the price went up by 8d. Under this Government, in less than two years, it has gone up by 1s. 8d.
I have two questions to ask. When the Minister came into office this canned corned meat was selling at 2s. 4d. a 1b. It is now selling at 4s. The £ is worth much less than it was in November, 1951. Who does he think can afford to buy it? The second question is this. He has explained that the price has gone up because he has taken the subsidy off. But how much did he pay for it? What about all his boasting about businessmen

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going out to buy meat, if he has paid so much more to buy canned corned meat?
First, this reveals a startling inefficiency and incompetence, and, secondly it reveals a wanton disregard for the housewife. She is entitled to say that these are national stocks, and if, to maintain those stocks in decent condition, they have to be turned over, she is entitled to say, "Let us have fair shares." The Minister has again paid no regard to these considerations, and I hope that we will vote against this Order tonight to show that this sort of "couldn't-care-less attitude" is quite intolerable in present circumstances.
10.32 p.m.
Mr. Charles Royle: As this debate is honoured by the presence of the Minister himself, I am sure that he would be disappointed if one who has to declare an interest in this matter did not put one or two points to him for consideration. I want briefly to ask him some questions.
First—and this point has already been made strongly by my hon. Friends—I want to refer to the very excessive price of 4s. a 1b. for corned beef. When all is said and done, this is the same stuff that we used to call bully beef. My recollection carries me back to 1917 at Ypres, when we made a pathway of cans of bully beef up to our hut because of the bad weather—and I do not mean bully beef cans, but cans of bully beef. When I think of that stuff now being retailed to the consumers at 4s. a 1b. I am completely appalled.
During the war, if my memory serves me right—and I am sure it does on this occasion—it was retailed on the ration at 1s. 8d. a 1b. During the lifetime of the Labour Government it increased by 8d. to 2s. 4d., but in less than 18 months this Government has managed to get the price of bully beef up to 4s. a 1b. I suggest that it is a completely ridiculous price to ask consumers to pay for this type of meat.
My next point is this. The margin to the wholesaler in the schedule to this Order of 2s. a tin of 6 1b. is excessive. I suggest that the wholesaler, in comparison with the retailer, is getting far too much out of the distributive service
536
which he is giving. I should like to know how much the first-hand distributors pay the Ministry of Food for these kinds of corned beef. I should also like to know how much the Ministry pay for it from abroad, so that the people at the various stages—the first-hand distributor, then the wholesaler and then the retailer—shall get their profits.
My other criticism—and I think it is justified—concerns the method of distribution. There are far too many fingers in the distribution of this canned corn beef. The method chosen by the Minister increases the cost of distribution and provides rather more than adequate profits for very little service rendered. The method of distribution is failing to ensure equality of distribution.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. J. Hudson) referred to the fact that he was associated with the Co-operative movement, and that it did not matter whether the grocer's or the meat department sold this commodity. But it is a very important question. Had the Minister taken the step of issuing this canned corned beef through the meat trade channels, selling directly, as Minister of Food, to the retailers, he would have cut out various units of distribution, with their profits. Because he has failed to do that he is giving the meat to the consumers at a greatly enhanced price, and is giving only a quarter of a pound to each member of the population. He should have ensured that everybody had an opportunity of buying it—
Mr. Leslie Hale: And being able to afford it.
Mr. Royle: —and being able to afford it. If he had distributed it in the way I have suggested, on the registration basis, everyone would have had his fair share of what was available through that channel. As it is, many traders who were carrying the can during the war and serving this stuff on the ration—and who had no accounts with grocery wholesalers before the war—are now unable to obtain supplies. Only those traders who are in with the right people can get it. Had we handed it to the trade channels, on a registration basis, everybody would have had a fair share.
I suggest that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has made a tremendous mistake by choosing this method of distribu-

537
tion, but the most important aspect of the matter is price. The interruption of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) is a reminder, if one is necessary. In our industrial areas—and we know Lancashire particularly well—housewives, particularly those with families, are certainly not able to afford to buy meat at this price. I think of the meat ration of 2s. 4d., and of a family consisting of a father and mother, with four children. Does anyone suggest that a lower-paid worker with such a family can afford to spend 14s. a week on meat? It is ridiculous.
The action taken by the Minister is making the position considerably worse. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey), with others on this side of the House, will regard the matter so seriously that they will challenge the Minister to a Division on it.
10.40 p.m.
Mr. W. R. A. Hudson: It is not often that I intervene in a debate on Prayers which are moved from time to time by hon. Members opposite, because I realise that my right hon. and gallant Friend the Minister of Food and the Parliamentary Secretary are well able to answer for themselves. I do so very briefly tonight, however, because I want to say a word or two in reply to some of the suggestions put to us by the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. J. Hudson).
From time to time we notice that the movers of these Prayers speak from the theoretical and academic point of view, and not so much from the practical viewpoint. Last week, we had the hon. Member for Ealing, North, speaking of his connection with the Co-operative movement; and how practical is that connection I do not know. May I say that I have a practical connection with the business, and have no hesitation in declaring it.
I suppose that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) speaks from the practical point of view, because he had experience as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food in the last Government; but, so far as the hon. Gentleman is concerned, I think that on these occasions, he should know better. Speaking practically, I can say that the
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release of this canned corned beef in this way is extremely welcome to the public.
It has been suggested that the release of the 12 oz. tins in the way in which they are released is an action to divert trade from the butchers. That is what has been said tonight. It has been said that it will divert trade from the butcher to the grocer, but this has always been a grocer's trade, and I do not think it matters much; to me it means little, because I have an interest in both. But it is most certainly a grocer's item, and I am glad that the Minister has seen fit to release it in this way.
I would suggest that the reason the release is so popular is that it is well-known that during the days of the last Government, canned corned beef was held in reserve to supplement the fresh meat which that Government was unable to obtain. Now that we have the red meat in reasonably plentiful supply, we are able to release this corned beef; and the public regard it as very much better than some of the mixtures imported during 1951. As to the price, I would say that while 4s. a 1b. is not cheap, the public is taking it willingly. The amount released is being sold very rapidly, and I am glad to be able to support this Order.
10.44 p.m.
Mr. Leslie Hale: I should not have risen, but I think that the speech to which we have just listened from the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson) needs to have a reply. I do not know whether I am correct in saying that it was the hon. Member's maiden speech; I did not interrupt, but I can be as controversial as he was. The hon. Member said that the public agrees about this; I would ask him whether he suggests that the public is pleased?
Mr. W. R. A. Hudson: I said that the public was taking the canned corned beef which has been released, and that it is to the satisfaction of the public.
Mr. Hale: Then if it is to the satisfaction of the public, I would ask whether he cares to come with me to Oldham, where he can talk to the old age pensioners who are not only not able to buy this corned beef, but who cannot take up their bacon ration; who never have a

539
slice of ham. I will take him to the miserable homes in Oldham, where there are people living in dire destitution compared with the circumstances of a few years ago, and anyone who cares sufficiently knows that they were not very good even then. How can these old age pensioners buy ham at 8s. a 1b., corned beef at 4s.? Why is it that the butter ration is never taken up in many homes in Oldham, and why is the cheese ration, small as it is, often ignored?
What does the hon. Member know about all this? What does he care? He tells the House that the public is buying this corned beef very rapidly. Of course, some people are. I can buy a ham in any grocer's shop when I want one; I can go to any grocer's counter in the country and ask for very good bacon, and know that I shall get it—if I pay for it. Hon. Members opposite who are smiling know these facts to be true. This is rationing by the purse. It is a vicious system. It is the old system of diverting to the rich the best of the world's goods and depriving the poor of the necessaries of life.
I had not intended to intervene, and I should not have intervened if we had not heard that sort of speech which my hon. Friends and I used to read with shocked disgust in the poverty areas of Britain 30 years ago, before we knew this House at all. It had the same sort of placid content. There was the same sort of gratification that the expensive restaurants are now full of a great variety of food which the wealthy can buy and of which the poor are rapidly being deprived. I rise merely to record my protest against the vicious system of rationing by the purse which is causing hardship to those who deserve best from the community.
10.46 p.m.
Colonel Alan Gomme-Duncan: The Pharisee was one of the most nauseating characters in history, and when I saw the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), well-nourished and well looked after, giving vent—
Mr. Percy Shurmer: My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) said that he could afford to buy the corned beef or bacon.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: That is just what I inferred. Why interrupt?
Mr. Hale: The hon. and gallant Gentleman should take his hands out of his pockets when he is addressing the House.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: At least, they are in my own pockets. I do not want to deal with what the hon. Member has said, except to say that this artificial sympathy is rather overdone in his case. We all know many folk in our constituencies who have the greatest difficulty in making ends meet, but to say, automatically, that the old age pensioner cannot afford to live is nonsense.
Mr. Hale: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Gentleman will let me show him some.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: I have many in my own constituency.
Mr. Shurmer: They must be different from those in my constituency.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We are not discussing old age pensioners. We are discussing corned beef.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: I apologise, Mr. Speaker, for having been led away by the exhilarating speech that we have heard from the hon. Member for Oldham, West.
I was surprised to hear that the hon. Member for Salford, West (Mr. Royle) was a soldier in 1917—
Mr. Royle: Why be surprised?
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: Look at the hon. Member. He looks about 40.
Mr. Shurmer: He was in it at 14. He is a grandfather.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: My experience of the Loyal North Lancashire Regiment was that they were able at least to look after themselves, as many of the Scottish regiments were, and bully beef was of great importance to them. We want to look at this business of the bully beef Order. I call it bully beef because I like the name, just as the hon. Member does. Corned beef is a very respectable name perhaps, but all of us understand "bully beef." The Minister has made a good move in making it available.
Mr. Shurmer: To those who can afford to buy it.
Colonel Gomme-Duncan: That leaves more meat on the ration to be bought by those who cannot afford to buy bully beef. [Interruption.] It is something inherited from the Labour Government. [HON. MEMBERS:"Oh."] When the chorus from hon. Members opposite has finished, I will continue.
I think the Minister has taken the step to free this form of meat in order to release the general pressure on the meat supplies. The hon. Member for Salford, West will appreciate that if certain goods are taken off the ration and can be bought freely, that releases the pressure on the rationed food. That, I think, is the value of this Order. I am convinced that the Minister will make it clear that this is a worthwhile Order and therefore, in spite of the fact that the Loyal Regiment got most of the bully beef in those days, I am satisfied that the Minister has done a good job in making this corned beef available off the ration so that rationed meat will be available to those who are less well off. That is fair distribution.
10.51 p.m.
The Minister of Food (Major Lloyd George): Only a few minutes ago this was a quiet, not to say placid, debate. Then some heat was engendered by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), which gave him a certain amount of enjoyment. I do not complain; like his hon. Friends, he has had a depressing day, and if he can cheer himself up, I am very happy. I will come to the points he made a little later in my speech.
The principal points made have concerned price and the method of distribution. It is as well to bear in mind that before the war bully beef was predominantly a grocery line—and this has a bearing on the method of distribution we have adopted. Owing to the war and the difficulties of the meat position, bully beef—as I think we prefer to call it, for we recognise it better that way—had to play a part in the meat ration. When it became part of the meat ration, the only way to distribute it was through the butchers who distributed the remainder of the meat. This was in 1940. For about 12 years now, therefore, this commodity has been distributed through the butchers as the ordinary meat ration was distributed.
542
The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. J. Hudson) said the position then was not good—nor was it—and that it is better today. I agree with him wholeheartedly. Today, we are no longer in a position in which it is necessary to use any canned corned beef to supplement the ration.
From time to time we have to turn over the stocks of this corned beef, for obvious reasons, and, recently, I was advised that about 11,000 tons which had been in store for some time would have to be turned over. In the circumstances, it not being necessary to use this as the ordinary meat ration, it seemed right to me that it should be made freely available to those who wanted to purchase it outside the ration. With an adequate meat ration and ample supplies of other kinds of canned meats in the shops, and also cooked gammon freely available, there is every justification for releasing corned beef in competition with those other types of meat, thereby enabling those who appreciate this type of meat to obtain their requirements.
Mr. Thomas Steele: If they have the money.
Major Lloyd George: I will come to the question of money in a moment. There is a good deal of nonsense talked about money, too, and I will explain why I say that in a moment. The hon. Member would be very surprised if he knew where a lot of these canned meats were sold.
Because this corned meat was being issued in this way, and would compete with these other meats, it seemed right to me that it should be sold at the economic price, which was, in fact, the cost of replacing the 11,000 tons which we had released. With an ample, and subsidised, meat ration at the moment, there was no cause to choose one type of canned meat, the corned meat, and subsidise it to the general public. That is in line with the policy of the previous Administration, for in its trading accounts and balance sheets for 1946–47, it said:
"In the earlier part of 1946–47 the subsidies covered a wide range of foodstuffs, but the rising cost of imported and home-produced supplies later necessitated a contraction of the subsidy field, the subsidy being concentrated on the main basic foodstuffs."
We are only releasing a comparatively small quantity, and it would be unfair,

543
to put it mildly, to have in the shops subsidised canned meat competing with unsubsidised canned meat; in other words, we might be subsidising the Argentine product against Dominion and other suppliers. Therefore, it was released unsubsidised. A good deal of nonsense has been talked about the price.
Mr. John Edwards: Will the Minister say what the poundage subsidy is in relation to the increase?
Major Lloyd George: The subsidy is equal to roughly 8d. a 1b.
By the time this Motion has been debated there will be very little of this canned corned meat left. What will happen if this Prayer is carried I do not know. The consumers have had it, and enjoyed it. Let us not get too excited about the question of price. The price is 4s. a 1b. That includes the 8d. subsidy, and a margin for distribution. The price to the wholesaler is 3s. 6d., to the retailer 3s. 8d., and the retail price is 4s., with an allowance of 4d. for slicing. Let me compare that with what happened under the late Administration. Tongues, which are much more expensive, were normally 6s. 4d. a 1b., with a slicing allowance of 8d. Jellied pork was 4s. 7d. a 1b., with a slicing allowance of 5d. The hon. Member for Oldham, West got excited about old age pensioners in Oldham.
Mr. Hale: I did not get excited.
Major Lloyd George: All right. If the hon. Member prefers it, he was perfectly calm and normal. He said that old age pensioners in Oldham never buy tinned ham. I have never pretended that the lot of old age pensioners is an easy one. We have made it a little easier than it was under the previous Administration. The old age pensioner is better able to buy a slice of ham than he was under the late Administration, because we are not selling ham at 12s. a 1b. as the late Government did. We sold ham at 8s. per 1b.
Mr. Hale: I am sure that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman would not wish to misrepresent me. [HON. MEMBERS: "Ah."] If his hon. Friends wish to suggest that the right hon. and gallant
544
Gentleman wishes to misrepresent me, I cannot help it, but I was talking about the ham and bacon which the old age pensioner gets on the ration, not about the other kind of ham which he never has. When we were in power the ham on the ration was 1s. 8d. per 1b.
Major Lloyd George: My point is a perfectly simple one. It is no good hon. Gentlemen opposite complaining when the late Administration were prepared to sell ham at 12s. a 1b., which is 4s. more than we are selling it today. A great deal of nonsense is talked about prices by some people who ought to know better. There are cries of rationing by the purse. Was there ever a time when there was not rationing by the purse? If a man is a non-smoker and teetotaller he is entitled to spend some of his money buying something extra to eat. It all depends on the taste of the people. As I say, a lot of nonsense is talked about prices, and particularly is it nonsense when it comes from the late Administration, who were cheerfully prepared to sell ham at 12s. a 1b.
We come now to the method of distribution. I mentioned that before the war this trade was predominantly a grocery trade. I also said why, in 1940, it had to go to the butchers. That was because this corned meat was part of the ration. But when this was done it was clearly understood that when the opportunity arose this trade would be restored to its pre-war practice; in other words, the grocers would have it returned to them, not solely but along with the butchers. We have a better meat ration than we have had for some considerable time, and with no need to add corned beef to the ration, I considered it was only right that we should stick to the arrangement made in 1940 and return it to the grocers as well as to the butchers. It is quite natural that the butchers should complain about that. They are quite entitled to do so, but once distribution started we received no complaints from the trade or from the consumers.
May I sum up, briefly, the position? I repeat that we found it necessary to release some 11,000 tons of this commodity which had to be turned over in the ordinary normal way. With a better supply of carcase meat in prospect, with ample supplies of other canned meats

545
available to be sold in the shops at an unsubsidised price, it seemed to me that that was right to sell the canned corned beef off ration and unsubsidised. It was issued off the ration and made freely available at an economic price. To the best of my knowledge there has been a fair and widespread distribution throughout the country. There have been no consumer complaints whatever, so it is reasonable for us to assume that the operation has been successful and has been welcomed by the public, who appreciate the opportunity given them to buy what they want when they want it. I therefore invite the House to reject this Motion.
11.4 p.m.
Mr. John Edwards: We have listened to what the right hon. and gallant Gentleman has had to say with great care and attention. We hope that the absence of the Parliamentary Secretary does not mean that anything untoward has happened to him. I, personally, hope that he has not been depressed by his recent visit to the National Liberals in my constituency.
Major Lloyd George: My hon. Friend has gone to win another by-election for the Government.
Mr. Edwards: That remains to be seen.
I was disturbed by the intervention of the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson). I can understand him rallying to the defence of the Minister, but I would have expected him at some point to have said something other than the kind of thing that would flow naturally from those lips. We, as Members, represent many interests, and at no point did he seem aware that he represents his constituents at all.
Mr. W. R. A. Hudson: I should like to make it perfectly clear what I was trying
to do. I was speaking for the consumer, and, by reason of my contacts, I believe that he welcomes the release of corned beef at a price of 4s. a 1b.
Mr. Edwards: No one on this side has even remotely suggested that it was wrong to release the corned beef. We wished the amount could be more, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) gave the figures in previous years. What we are primarily complaining about is the price. The Minister told us that 8d. represents the loss of subsidy. Disregarding the subsidy element that means that the price of this product has gone up by 1s. a 1b. since the right hon and gallant Gentleman took over the Ministry.
I do not know what price he is paying for corned beef. It looks as though he is having to pay very much higher prices than we did in 1951, when I had something to do with buying some of the corned beef. But I would have expected that in this period the Government would so have improved their technique of negotiation, and have put all the private enterprise boys on the job, that we should be having corned beef not at 4s. a 1b. but even allowing for the subsidy, at no higher a price. Are right hon. and hon. Gentlemen really going to try to defend a 1s. 0d. increase in 18 months? That is the position.
It seems to us that the Minister is replacing planned distribution by a system of scrambling, and that these high prices necessarily mean not that all people can have corned beef, but that many who used to be able to have it will no longer find it possible to have it. For those reasons I would advise my Friends on this side to divide the House.
Question put,
The House divided: Ayes, 134;, Noes, 159.

Division No. 211.]

AYES

[11.8 p.m.

Allen, Arthur (Bosworth)

Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.

Ede, Rt. Hon. J. C.

Allen, Scholefield (Crewe)

Brown, Thomas (Iuce)

Edwards, Rt. Hon. John (Brighouse)

Anderson, Alexander (Motherwell)

Callaghan, L. J.

Evans, Albert (Islington, S. W.)

Awbery, S. S.

Carmichael, J.

Evans, Edward (Lowestoft)

Bence, C. R.

Coldrick, W.

Evans, Stanley (Wednesbury)

Benn, Hon. Wedgwood

Collick, P. H.

Fernyhough, E.

Beswick, F.

Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)

Fletcher, Eric (Islington, E.)

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

Dalton, Rt. Hon. H.

Fraser, Thomas (Hamilton)

Bing, G. H. C.

Davies. Stephen (Merthyr)

Gaitskell, Rt. Hon. H. T. N.

Blackburn, F.

de Freitas, Geoffrey

Gibson, C. W.

Bottomley, Rt. Hon. A. G

Deer, G.

Greenwood, Anthony (Rossendale)

Bowles, F. G.

Delargy, H. J.

Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)

Brockway, A. F.

Donnelly, D. L.

Hale, Leslie

Hannan, W.

Manuel, A. C.

Slater, Mrs. H. (Stoke-on-Trent)

Hargreaves, A.

Marquand, Rt. Hon. H. A.

Slater, J. (Durham, Sedgefield)

Harrison, J. (Nottingham, E.)

Mitchison, G. R.

Sorensen, R. W.

Hayman, F. H.

Monslow, W.

Sparks, J. A.

Healey, Denis (Leeds, S. E.)

Moody, A. S.

Steele, T.

Herbison, Miss M.

Morgan, Dr. H. B. W.

Sylvester, G. O.

Holman, P.

Morloy, R.

Taylor, John (West Lothian)

Holmes, Horace (Hemsworth)

Morris, Percy (Swansea, W.)

Thomas, David (Aberdare)

Hubbard, T. F.

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

Thomas, lorwerth (Rhondda, W.)

Hudson, James (Ealing, N.)

Mort, D. L.

Thomas, Ivor Owen (Wrekin)

Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)

Moyle, A.

Thornton, E.

Hynd, H. (Accrington)

Nally, W.

Timmons, J.

Jay, Rt. Hon. D. P. T.

Neat, Harold (Bolsover)

Ungoed-Thomas, Sir Lynn

Jeger, George (Goole)

Noel-Baker, Rt. Hon. P. J.

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

Jenkins, R. H. (Stechford)

Oswald, T.

Weitzman, D.

Johnson, James (Rugby)

Padley, W. E.

Wheatley, Rt. Hon. John

Johnston, Douglas (Paisley)

Paget, R. T.

Wheeldon, W. E.

Jones, David (Hartlepool)

Palmer, A. M. F.

White, Henry (Derbyshire, N. E.)

Jones, Frederick Elwyn (West Ham, S.)

Pargiter, G. A.

Whiteley, Rt. Hon. W.

Jones, Jack (Rotherham)

Pearson, A.

Wigg, George

Keenan, W.

Peart, T. F.

Wilkins, W. A

Kenyon, C.

Popplewell, E.

Willey, F. T.

King, Dr. H. M.

Price, Joseph T. (Westhougfiton)

Williams, David (Neath)

Lee, Frederick (Newton)

Price, Philips (Gloucestershire, W.)

Williams, Ronald (Wigan)

Lee, Miss Jennie (Cannock)

Proctor, W. T.

Williams, W. R. (Droylsden)

Lever, Leslie (Ardwick)

Rankin, John

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

Lewis, Arthur

Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)

Wilson, Rt. Hon. Harold (Huyton)

MacColl, J. E.

Ross, William

Wyatt, W. L.

McGhee, H. G.

Royle, C.

Yates, V. F.

Mclnnes, J.

Shacklelon, E. A. A.

MacMillan, M. K. (Western Isles)

Shurmer, P. L. E.

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)

Simmons, C. J. (Brierley Hill)

Mr. Bowden and

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

Skeffington, A. M.

Mr. Kenneth Robinson.

NOES

Allan R. A. (Paddington, S.)

Godber, J. B.

Morrison, John (Salisbury)

Alport, C. J. M.

Gomme-Duncan, Col. A.

Mott-Radclyffe, C. E.

Amery, Julian (Preston, N.)

Gough, C. F. H.

Nabarro, G. D. N.

Anstruther-Gray, Major W. J.

Gower, H. R.

Nicholls, Harmar

Arbuthnot, John

Graham, Sir Fergus

Nicolson, Nigel (Bournemouth, E.)

Ashton, H. (Chelmsford)

Grimston, Sir Robert (Westtoury)

Nield, Basil (Chester)

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

Hall, John (Wycombe)

Oakshott, H. D.

Baldwin, A. E.

Harden, J. R. E.

O'Neill, Phelim (Co. Antrim, N.)

Banks, Col. C.

Harrison, Col. J. H. (Eye)

Ormsby-Gore, Hon. W. D.

Barlow, Sir John

Heald, Sir Lionel

Orr, Capt. L. P. S.

Baxter, A. B.

Heath, Edward

Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian (Weston-super-Mare)

Beach, Maj. Hicks

Higgs, J. M. C.

Osborne, C.

Beamish Maj. Tufton

Hill, Mrs. E. (Wythenshawe)

Partridge E.

Bell, Philip (Bolton, E.)

Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Perkins, W. R. D.

Bennett, F. M. (Reading, N.)

Hirst, Geoffrey

Pilkington, Capt. R. A.

Birch, Nigel

Hornsby-Smith, Miss M. P.

Powell, J. Enoch

Bishop, F. P.

Howard, Gerald (Cambridgeshire)

Prior-Palmer, Brig. O. L.

Black, C. W.

Hudson, Sir Austin (Lewisham, N.)

Profumo, J. D.

Boothby, Sir R. J. G.

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

Raikes, Sir Victor

Boyle, Sir Edward

Hurd, A. R.

Rayner, Brig. R.

Braithwaite, Lt.-Cdr. G. (Bristol, N. W.)

Hutchinson, Sir Geoffrey (Ilford, N.)

Redmayne, M.

Brooke, Henry (Hampstead)

Hylton-Foster, H. B. H.

Remnant, Hon. P.

Brooman-White, R. C.

Johnson, Eric (Blackley)

Renton, D. L. M.

Browne, Jack (Govan)

Kerr, H. W.

Roberts, Peter (Healey)

Bullard, D. G.

Lambert, Hon. G.

Robinson, Roland (Blackpool, S.)

Burden, F. F. A.

Leather, E. H. C.

Roper, Sir Harold

Butcher, Sir Herbert

Legge-Bourke, Maj. E. A. H.

Russell, R. S.

Campbell, Sir David

Lennox-Boyd, Rt. Hon. A. T.

Ryder, Capt. R. E. D.

Carr, Robert

Llewellyn, D. T.

Salter, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur

Channon, H.

Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)

Scott, R. Donald

Clarke, Col. Ralph (East Grinstead)

Lockwood, Lt.-Col. J. C.

Scott-Miller, Cmdr. R.

Cole, Norman

Longden, Gilbert

Shepherd, William

Colegate, W. A.

Lucas, Sir Jocelyn (Portsmouth, S.)

Smithers, Peter (Winchester)

Conant, Maj. R. J. E

Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh

Spence, H. R. (Aberdeenshire, W.)

Cooper-Key, E. M.

McCallum, Major D.

Spens, Sir Patrick (Kensington, S.)

Craddock, Beresford (Spellhorne)

Macdonald, Sir Peter

Stanley, Capt. Hon Richard

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

Mackie, J. H. (Galloway)

Stoddart-Scott, Col. M.

Crosthwaite-Eyre, Col. O. E.

Maclay, Rt. Hon. John

Strauss, Henry (Norwich, S.)

Crouch, R. F.

Macleod, Rt. Hon. Iain (Enfield, W.)

Summers, G. S.

Darling, Sir William (Edinburgh, S.)

MacLeod, John (Ross and Cromarty)

Surcliffe, Sir Harold

Deedes, W. F.

Macpherson, Niall (Dumfries)

Taylor, William (Bradford, N.)

Donaldson, Cmdr. C. E. McA.

Maitland, Patrick (Lanark)

Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. P. L. (Hereford)

Dormer, Sir P. W.

Manningham-Buller, Sir R. E.

Thomas, Leslie (Canterbury)

Duncan, Capt. J. A. L

Markham, Major Sir Frank

Thompson, Lt.-Cdr. R. (Croydon, W.)

Fell, A.

Marlowe, A. A. H.

Thornton-Kemsley, Col. C. N.

Fisher, Nigel

Maude, Angus

Tilney, John

Fletcher-Cooke, C.

Maydon, Lt.-Comdr. S. L. C.

Turner, H. F. L.

Fraser, Hon. Hugh (Stone)

Mellor, Sir John

Turton, R. H.

George, Rt. Hon Maj. G. Lloyd

Molson, A. H. E.

Vosper, D. F.

548

549

Wakefield, Edward (Derbyshire, W.)

Williams, Gerald (Tonbridge)

Wood, Hon. R.

Wakefield, Sir Wavell (St. Marylebone)

Williams, Sir Herbert (Croydon, E.)

York, C.

Ward, Miss I. (Tynemouth)

Williams, Paul (Sunderland, S.)

Waterhouse, Capt. Rt. Hon. C.

Wills, G.

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Webbe, Sir H. (London & Westminster)

Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)

Sir Cedric Drewe and Mr. Kaberry.

Question put, and agreed to.

HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION, WEST CUMBERLAND
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Major Conant.]
11.16 p.m.
Mr. Frederick Peart: I wish tonight to concentrate on a matter which affects very much the area of West Cumberland. West Cumberland is a Development Area and before the war was a distressed area, with a very high incidence of unemployment. It also had a very inadequate hospital service. Tonight, I want to draw attention to the needs of the area and, through this Adjournment debate, to extract a promise from the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health that the needs of West Cumberland will be looked at again by the Minister and that he will give it a measure of priority.
First, I point out that the services are inadequate, as can be revealed by statistics. The figure for hospital beds for West Cumberland is 2·1 per 1,000 of the population, whereas for the whole of the hospital region, which covers the whole North-East and this Northwestern part of England, the figure is 5·6 per 1,000 and the national average is 6·7 beds. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will agree that the figures for West Cumberland are startling and indicate that the services are utterly inadequate.
A survey in 1944 of the North-Western area, which includes West Cumberland, revealed that the beds in that area are sub-standard. That means that only the acutely sick are accommodated in hospitals and patients have to leave the hospitals much too early. This has an effect on the general position. It imposes a terrific strain on hospital staffs of the area and a very heavy burden on management committees in the region. We all pay tribute—I am sure that the Minister of Health would—to the admirable work done by the hospital staffs and management committees in the area.
550
In my constituency, at Workington Infirmary there has been an attempt to improvise since the National Health Scheme came into operation and there has been a general attempt to remove some of the difficulties which can be seen from the figures I have quoted. Apart from these difficulties it, should also be remembered that the people of West Cumberland sometimes have to travel long distances to secure specialist treatment. Sometimes they have to travel to Carlisle, Manchester, Newcastle and even to Edinburgh. The specialist services as yet have not been sufficiently built up to provide that full service.
More than that, we have an industrial population, and, naturally, in a mining and steel community, and also in a community which is now supported by growing light industries, there is the whole question of accidents and orthopaedic cases which sometimes develop very much in industrial areas. Moreover, because of the increased population which we now have in the Development Areas, with men and women coming back to a former distressed area, the hospital services as such are completely inadequate.
What has been done? A regional board was set up. Its first act was to have a resident consultant service in the area and to improve the hospital facilities by developing Workington Infirmary. I have mentioned how, through improvisation, much accommodation has been increased, the services in the out-patient departments, for example, have greatly improved, and there is a general improvement all round. Secondly, they sought to acquire accommodation and to build a new hospital on a site at Whitehaven. I am not going into the history of that because I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will know the pre-war history when a site was acquired by the Whitehaven Hospital Management Committee.
The Cumberland County Council offered a grant. This was also supported by an offer from the Whitehaven Corporation. Indeed, the Special Area Commissioners at that time promised

551
£90,000 towards building costs of this new hospital. The war came. The scheme was thrown over, but later, after the war, it was revived by the regional board. The board hoped that there would be a new scheme and that in the first part of that scheme there would be, above all, the building of a tuberculosis block. Since then that scheme has been thrown over.
When the regional board heard that the scheme itself was to be delayed, it was decided because of the tuberculosis position, to adapt the hospital at Camerton. The Parliamentary Secretary knows that I have raised this matter on the Floor of the House with the Minister himself. Camerton Hospital was once a smallpox hospital, which became the property of the Cumberland County Council. During the war it was used to accommodate Civil Defence stores, and, later, stores for the school meals service.
In May, 1947, the Special Area Committee in West Cumberland approved the taking over of Camerton Hospital as a hospital for tuberculosis, and it was hoped that this hospital with adaptations would provide 80 beds for the area and that in the first stage at least we would have quickly 22 beds. What has happened? For defence purposes the Admiralty raised an objection, and the Minister has abandoned that scheme.
Personally, I think it is a tragedy. Literally thousands of pounds of good public money were spent in improving the hospital at Camerton, and altering fitments to provide an essential sanatorium for tuberculosis patients. The abandonment of that scheme focuses attention on the needs of West Cumberland. We are now hoping that the Minister will allow the West Cumberland Hospital Management Committee and the regional board to proceed with the scheme for new hospital accommodation. The failure to use Camerton means that we must now have new accommodation to meet a very urgent situation.
The local committee had a scheme to rehabilitate the Whitehaven Hospital, and money has been spent on improving the engineering side of that hospital. The regional board put forward a scheme to acquire extra beds by taking over the house "Oak Lea." That was refused by
552
the Ministry. They later put up a scheme to take over two more houses. Again the Minister would not sanction it. Because of the fact that they have had to revise the original pre-war scheme; because the Camerton scheme has been held up for reasons that have been given, and because the new, modified schemes suggested in the Whitehaven area—to acquire houses to improve hospital accommodation—have been rejected, I hope that the Minister will look at this question again. We require two important developments in the area: first, a speedy development of hospital accommodation at Workington Infirmary; and, secondly, a new hospital at Whitehaven.
The Minister has received a resolution from the West Cumberland Hospital Management Committee. That resolution stresses three main points. First, the failure of the Ministry to give approval for any work to be carried out in connection with the proposed new West Cumberland Hospital; secondly, the refusal of permission to acquire "Oak Lea"—in the Whitehaven part of the area—and then Sorbie and Gorlieston; and thirdly, the postponement, because of the drastic reduction in capital funds, of the scheme for the development of Workington Infirmary to about 150 beds. This scheme, as the Minister well knows, had been initiated only shortly after the appointed day.
The Ministry have had this resolution, and on 5th June this year the local committee had an official reply from the Minister of Health. We have had the usual ministerial reply. In a letter from the Ministry the Minister states that he fully recognises the urgent need to increase the area's hospital resources and very much regrets that he is not in a position to offer a hope that this will be possible, on a large scale, in the immediate future. Then the Minister gives further reasons why no new building can be started in West Cumberland—not this year, but in 1954 and 1955.
I am glad that the Minister regrets the abandonment of the Camerton proposal—as stated in the official letter of 5th June—but I beg the Parliamentary Secretary to recognise that the problem is really acute in West Cumberland. I am not overstating the case. I have quoted the resolution of the local management committee, which focuses atten-

553
tion on the needs of the area. I know that the 5th June letter seems to give the impression that the Minister has finally decided that nothing can be done, but in view of the fact that the Camerton scheme has been abandoned and the hospital bed accommodation in this part of the Newcastle region is the worst in the whole regional area and much below the national average, there is a strong case for some special action.
If the Minister is not disposed to give a favourable reply tonight I hope she will convey to her right hon. Friend the fact that we feel strongly on this matter. Perhaps the Minister will be prepared to look at it again. I would invite the Minister, or the Parliamentary Secretary, to come to West Cumberland to examine the situation there. I agree that much has been done. I have already stressed the magnificent work of the staffs, and the difficulty of the work of the various hospital management committees who have improvised here and there. But we feel that something should be done, and I beg the hon. Lady to give me a favourable reply; or, if not, at least to promise that she will convey to her right hon. Friend the Minister the urgency of the position in West Cumberland.
11.31 p.m.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman the Member for Workington (Mr. Peart) for the restraint with which he has put forward an extremely difficult problem tonight, and I do not hesitate to say that the situation in the area to which he refers is extremely difficult. At the outset, I would endorse fully what he has said about the magnificent work of the staffs in the limited accommodation there, and I agree with everything he says about the efforts made to deal with the situation.
May I again emphasise, however, that the money is allocated to the regional hospital boards. The regions, knowing particular localities, have themselves to decide their priorities within the allocations made, and it would be quite wrong if we, at the Ministry, kept vast sums back so that we might dispense them, perhaps through pressure by hon. Members in this House, without the local knowledge. That would nullify the responsible work
554
of the regional boards. The fact is that we have not sums of money tucked away from which we can make the special allocations for which he most eloquently pleads.
So far as the hon. Gentleman's figures are concerned, it is true that the West Cumberland Hospital Management Committee has only 259 general beds between Whitehaven and Workington and two small hospitals at Maryport and Cocker-mouth, but the Newcastle Regional Board regard the West Cumberland area as one of its first priorities. I agree with him that it has not been possible to go forward with the project for the Whitehaven Hospital which is a large project. That would take considerable capital moneys, which are not available in our present economic circumstances. So far as Camerton is concerned, I regret as much as he the difficulties which have arisen, but he is less than just in inferring that all blame lies with the Minister.
Mr. Peart: I never said that. I pleaded with the Minister to hold an inquiry on Camerton. I know local reasons why this scheme went forward and how, later, there were objections by the Admiralty. I did not lay the blame on the Minister; I wanted an inquiry. I will lay the blame on the Minister for not having an inquiry.
Miss Hornsby-Smith: The issue regarding Camerton is that there was a derelict smallpox hospital and the premises were not transferred as such to the National Health Service in 1948. They were still then outside our jurisdiction. The proposal was made by the county council to sell the premises to the Admiralty in 1947, under Section 165 of the Local Government Act, but, subsequently, the Admiralty abandoned the project. In 1950, the regional hospital board applied to purchase Camerton, in which, it was hoped, to provide 75 or 80 beds for tuberculosis cases.
It was mentioned in the architect's report that there was an ordnance store a quarter of a mile away, but no reference was made—this is where the initial error lies—at that time by the people who must have known—the local planning officers and others concerned with the whole planning and control of the area; it must have been within their knowledge—that the depot was, in fact, an ammunition dump subject to special precautions

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and special arrangements as a result of which buildings, and certainly a hospital, could not be put within a quarter of a mile range of it.
To cut the long story of Camerton short, when the matter was brought to the attention of my right hon. Friend in November, and it was pointed out to him how impossible it would be to have a hospital for tuberculosis patients, or, indeed, any other patients, within a quarter of a mile of an established ammunition dump, he very rapidly made his decision. In a matter of a fortnight he had met the appropriate officials in the Departments and had made his decision that the scheme must be dropped. There was no delay on the part of my right hon. Friend when this unfortunate—I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it could not have been more unfortunate—circumstance was brought to his notice. The delay ranges over the three years, during which the project has been under way but does not explain the particular reason, which was not brought to light earlier, why the site chosen was on the very edge of an ammunition dump.
As to the third proposal, that of the purchase of "Oak Lea," at Whitehaven, to provide accommodation for 16 beds, the regional hospital board did not feel that it could justify giving it absolute priority within its programme, as the 16 beds entailed a capital cost of £14,000. Although the hospital management committee suggested that it might make a grant to that sum from non-Exchequer moneys, it was not wholly a matter of the allocation of money by the regional hospital board; it was also a matter of its allocating the materials and labour at its disposal.
As to the two houses at Whitehaven, Sorbie and Gorlieston, here it was hoped to add 15 beds to the hospital, but, as the hon. Member knows, the Cumberland County Council simultaneously applied for permission for them to become an old persons' home, which is an equal need in the area. Negotiations for them to be an old persons' home were well advanced before the hospital management committee made application for the same premises. The decision went in favour of the county council, and the
556
premises were acquired for use as an old persons' home.
The regional hospital board has admitted that the area is one of its first priorities. It is proposing the conversion of a 26 bed convalescent hospital at Ellerbeck into a 34 bed T.B. hospital in view of the immediate and particular shortage of T.B. accommodation in the area. In its programme is also the conversion of Holmwood House to provide 40 T.B. beds at an estimated cost of £30,000.
The board cannot, at present, give a date for the expansion of the Workington Hospital, but it feels that it must try to go ahead with the extension to 150 beds as a priority in its programme and as a project which it views as a necessary part of the programme to provide additional beds in the area. There is a larger project at Whitehaven Hospital which will ultimately provide 300–500 beds. It is suggested that this should start with blocks, making 250 beds, but although this proposal is in the programme it cannot be included in the present capital allocations of the Ministry or the regional hospital board.
In certain circumstances, such as vast new mental homes, these projects are sometimes initially financed by the Ministry because they cover more than one regional board. That has been our priority this year. It is in the Sheffield region that the main capital allocation has been made for the first new hospital project since the National Health Service came into operation and it is in this area that a mental hospital is a crying need and a matter of great priority. I very much regret that it is not possible to give a date at present of when it will be possible to start this hospital. It is still in the programme of the regional board.
The Minister has gone into this problem in very great detail and has considered the difficulties of this area, and we are certainly not unsympathetic to the peculiar difficulties of the region; but it would be wrong for us to override in any way the regional hospital board, who are alive to the problem and who, I am confident, will devote as much of their resources as possible in the coming years to making up the leeway which it is acknowledged must be made up to

557
bring this area up to the general standard of the region.
I am sure that they will consider any proposals, large or small, which are put before them, which they genuinely feel can be given priority within their capital allocation, but the overall economic situation and the capital allocation at our disposal, and the allocation passed from us to the region, does not permit of the introduction this year or next year of the capital programmes which have been outlined by the region as the programmes which they hope ultimately to conclude. In as far as priority can be given to this area, it is being given. It is not a case in which the Minister can make a special allocation to the regional board but of the regional board deciding where the priorities lie within their area
558
and allocating the money at their disposal to those projects.
I thank the hon. Member, again, for the restraint with which he has raised this matter and I assure him that we admit the difficulties, that we have taken the matter up with the region and that we have no doubt that the region regard the hospital management committee area as one which must have priority in order to bring it up to the standard of the rest of the region. I hope that he will feel assured that the problems of his area are not suffering from any lack of sympathetic and fair consideration.
Adjourned accordingly at Eighteen Minutes to Twelve o'Clock.

  NORTHERN RHODESIA (TOBACCO GROWING)
  NORTHERN RHODESIA (TOBACCO GROWING)
WEST INDIES
  Inter-Island Shipping Service
  Inter-Island Shipping Service
  R.A.F. Airfields, Nassau (Purchase)
  R.A.F. Airfields, Nassau (Purchase)
  Air Photography
  Air Photography
POST OFFICE
  Commonwealth Telegraph Act (Regulations)
  Commonwealth Telegraph Act (Regulations)
  Television Reception, Hastings
  Television Reception, Hastings
ROYAL AIR FORCE
  Review (Expenditure)
  Review (Expenditure)
  Sick Airman (Notification to Mother)
  Sick Airman (Notification to Mother)
  LOW-FLYING U.S. AIRCRAFT, CARDIFF
  LOW-FLYING U.S. AIRCRAFT, CARDIFF
  KOREA (TRUCE TALKS)
  KOREA (TRUCE TALKS)
  SCOTLAND (RURAL ELECTRIFICATION EXPENDITURE)
  SCOTLAND (RURAL ELECTRIFICATION EXPENDITURE)
EDUCATION
  School Dental Service
  School Dental Service
  Teachers (Tuberculosis)
  Teachers (Tuberculosis)
  School Building, Blackley
  School Building, Blackley
  Graduate Teachers, Lincoln (Status)
  Graduate Teachers, Lincoln (Status)
MINISTRY OF FOOD
  Pigs (Weight Ranges)
  Pigs (Weight Ranges)
  Sheep (Maximum Weight)
  Sheep (Maximum Weight)
  COPPER AND COPPER-BASED ALLOYS (MONOPOLIES COMMISSION INVESTIGATION)
  COPPER AND COPPER-BASED ALLOYS (MONOPOLIES COMMISSION INVESTIGATION)
  AGRICULTURE (MARKETING SCHEMES)
  AGRICULTURE (MARKETING SCHEMES)
  GLASSHOUSES, KENT (COKE SUPPLIES)
  GLASSHOUSES, KENT (COKE SUPPLIES)
  PALACE OF WESTMINSTER (HEATING)
  PALACE OF WESTMINSTER (HEATING)
Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers

  THE BRITISH WEST INDIES
  2.36 p.m.
  THE EARL OF MANSFIELD THE EARL OF MANSFIELD rose to ask Her Majesty's Government, whether they are aware that the serious position in which the various islands of the British West Indies now find themselves, cannot be immediately relieved by the admittedly desirable inauguration of the British Caribbean Federation; whether it is realised that, if any improvement is to be forthcoming within a reasonable period, direct financial assistance by way of outright grants, especially in the case of Jamaica, will still be required, in addition to any loans that may be provided by the International Bank; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, in initiating this debate I think it would be as well for me to make clear from the beginning that it is not intended to consider the merits of the proposed Caribbean Federation, because I am starting on the assumption that that Federation is essentially a desirable thing, and that it is something which has already received almost universal approbation in those of the West Indies Colonies which have already accepted it, and of responsible opinion in this country. Such remarks as I have to make about federation, therefore, will be incidental to the rest of the subject.
  Now we have to face the fact that we have in the West Indies to-day, and have had for a long time past, a most unsatisfactory situation which is gradually becoming worse, a situation due to the fact that we have, in practically every island, a very large population with natural resources either insufficient to provide decent living for a considerable proportion of that population or else which have not, for various reasons, been yet fully developed, while at the same time there has been an amount of mis-development in the past which has resulted in a great deal of erosion and
  34
  consequent loss of invaluable agricultural land.
  Your Lordships will notice that I mention Jamaica especially. I do so for three reasons: first, because it is the one island of which I can speak with some personal knowledge; secondly, because it is by far the largest, and its problems are therefore easily the most weighty; and thirdly, because as the result of the initiative of the present Governor, Sir Hugh Foot, there already exists what I might describe as a blueprint in the Report called The Economic Development of Jamaica, produced by a Committee of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, who last year at the Governor's invitation made an exhaustive survey of the position of Jamaica. It is not my intention to inflict on your Lordships to-day more figures or more quotations than I can possibly help, but the line of thought to which I should like this debate to be directed can be canalised by one short quotation from the introduction of this Report. Alluding, of course, only to Jamaica, it runs as follows
  "Another reason why prod lotion must increase much more rapidly than population is that the percentage of unemployed must be reduced if Jamaica is lo develop a stable economic and political system. If Jamaica could afford to maintain the existing proportion of unemployment to the total labour force … then employment opportunities would have to be found in the next decade for only 100,000 to 110,000 people. If, on the other hand, the percentage of unemployed is reduced to 5 per cent., jobs would have to be created for, perhaps, 180,000 to 210,000 people. This would involve a total increase in employment of about 45 per cent."
  Mutatis mutandis, the same argument would apply in greater or less degree to all the other islands—or to practically all the other islands—of the Caribbean.
  Now it can be seen to be a very serious position that in order that the whole of the population of Jamaica should enjoy decent living conditions, employment would have to be increased by no less than 45 per cent. It is difficult to estimate exactly how much unemployment exists as there are no very reliable figures, but there is certainly a great deal of unemployment and, probably, even more under-employment. The result is that there is little money for any form of improved social services and that a great many of the people are living in conditions of malnutrition if not, in a certain number of cases, of semi-starvation.

  35
  That can be proved from the fact that there exists in Jamaica at certain seasons of the year an ailment known as vomiting sickness. This attacks nearly always, though not invariably, young children, and nearly always proves fatal; and it is noticeable that seldom, if ever, are children affected by this ailment other than those who come from the poorest homes and who live under the worst conditions. The actual causes of the disease are still obscure, but there seems a reasonable amount of probability that it is caused by the toxic effects of the juices of certain yams and other ground provisions which the inhabitants consume; at certain seasons of the year apparently the toxicity must be higher than at other seasons. But the fact that it is only the very poor that appear to suffer from this disease is proof of the amount of under-nourishment that exists.
  It may be asked, what about the Colonial Development Corporation? Let me say at once that I am in entire sympathy with the aims and objects of that body, and it is most unfortunate that a great deal of misapprehension and prejudice has been raised against the whole question of Colonial development by the ill-conceived and worse carried out groundnuts scheme. Had the thirty-odd million of pounds which were poured down the drain in that scheme been applied to the West Indies, conditions today would already be much better than they are. While approving of the objects of the Colonial Development Corporation, I would stress that even now that Corporation act rashly in some of their projects. I do not blame them for the failure of some of these. To take one instance: it is mentioned in the recently published Report and Accounts for 1952 that the Sittee cocoa project in British Honduras had been started to find out whether it was possible to start a cocoa industry in that part of the Caribbean. The attempt failed, but I do not think anybody is to be blamed. It was a laudable effort and one whose repetition in other places should be encouraged, even at the risk of failure. But in that same Colony there is also the British Honduras Fruit Company, which failed with considerably greater loss. On page 58 of this Report it is said:
  "This is now seen to have been a losing struggle from the outset and in fact one which should never have been attempted."
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  I think it is all too obvious that in many cases the Corporation have not taken or have not heeded expert local advice. A great deal of money has been wasted unnecessarily and a great deal of prejudice has been raised unnecessarily against such projects. The Colonial Development Corporation is not the body which should undertake a considerable number of these schemes. It is essential that there should be a wider outlook than can possibly be obtained through that body.
  In the Report The Economic Development of Jamaica, to which I have already alluded, the international Committee which investigated the island and its conditions brought forward certain pro-proposals. There was a ten-year plan for Jamaica involving the expenditure of approximately £34,500,000. Though a modified scheme of just under £28 million was also produced, the Committee hoped it would be possible to proceed with the larger scheme. I think it would be worth while to run briefly through the headings on which it was proposed to spend this sum because, although the Report applies solely to Jamaica, its general aspect would be reflected in most of the other Colonies. The first and greatest, of course, is the question of agricultural development, on which £9 million was proposed to be spent. There is no doubt that in most of the Colonies there exists a considerable amount of land which could be brought into cultivation, sometimes at considerable expense: the exception possibly would be Barbados, which, with its extremely dense population of some 1,400 to the square mile, has already cultivated practically every acre that could be cultivated. The Report envisages that the best future for Jamaica lies in the development of agriculture. From my own limited experience—and everyone speaking about Jamaica is bound to do so with trepidation in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Milverton—I agree with that and disagree with those who think that the Caribbean can benefit to a large extent by intensive industrialisation.
  The next heading is "Railways," but that applies only to Jamaica and Trinidad. Then come "harbours and airports." Airports are going to be very important, especially where the future of the smaller islands are concerned. Transport conditions throughout the whole of

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  the Caribbean are very bad indeed. It is extremely difficult—indeed, virtually impossible—to get from one island to another except by air, and even the air services are highly infrequent. Many of the islands have landing grounds which involve considerable risk, even in the finest weather, and on which no aeroplane of any great size can land. Transport is necessary, in view of the growing importance in the Caribbean of the tourist trade. That has probably been carried to its maximum development in the Bahamas, on which I am not really speaking to-day; but it is also increasing in importance in Jamaica, and it could have a considerable part to play in the development and prosperity of the other islands. It is no good building hotels—which are at present chiefly conspicuous by their absence—if there is going to be no way to get the tourists there. Most of the visitors come from the United States of America, but a good many come from various South American countries. Unless and until we get considerable development of landing grounds and decently equipped aerodromes in these islands, the tourist trade there is bound to lag behind what it should be.
  Land survey is most important, because the natural resources of most of the islands have never been fully explored. If your Lordships look at any handbook on Jamaica published up to a few years ago, you will see it stated that the island has no natural mineral resources of importance. To-day, of course, there is a large and still growing bauxite industry there, which is bringing a large revenue to the country and will play an increasingly important part for many years to come. There is no doubt that there are mineral resources throughout various of the territories, and there is, at least, a suspicion that in some of them there may be oil. If oil were found that would revolutionise their financial position, but it would still not go very far towards solving the question of unemployment. Even the bauxite industry in Jamaica, important as it is, does not afford a great amount of extra employment, although what it does produce is welcome and useful. The question of sugar factories is one into which I will not go now, as it is a purely Jamaican matter.
  Then there is the question of rural housing and of water supplies. These are
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  most important. Housing conditions throughout the Caribbean are, on the whole, lamentable—they might be described as shocking. We can never hope to get a really improved standard of living until a great deal has been done in that direction; but there is no money to carry out adequate improvements at the present time. Water supplies, again, are a major problem, because, heavy as is the rainfall in various of the islands, their geophysical nature is such that the water usually either runs off or percolates shortly after falling. The result is, for example, that in Jamaica—and this may surprise some of your Lordships—with its 4,400 square miles of territory, there exists only one natural lake or loch. The soil of the island being mainly on a porous limestone rock, the water goes straight through it as it falls to the ground, and there are, therefore, no natural lakes, but only ponds and other small sheets of water which have been created as dew-ponds or small reservoirs properly puddled or cemented.
  The problem of urban housing is probably more serious than that of rural housing, owing to congestion, and the fact that in so many towns the houses are not accompanied by the small pieces of ground on which the country dweller is able to grow at least a certain amount of hi; provisions. Education, which is put down as one of the largest items, is, of course, very important, although, to my reactionary mind, not so important as the provision of food and decent housing conditions. Health is also put down as involving a large sum. That, unfortunately, is another distinctly black spot. When I tell your Lordships that until recently, in a well run public hospital in Jamaica, there were three patients occupying every bed, you will see how serious is the health position Roughly, those are the headings which, as I say, apply in greater or lesser degree to the other islands as well.
  It is new necessary to consider what is to be done in the future to relieve this chronic unemployment, malnutrition and lack of social services. For myself, I can see no alternative, if there is to be a decent future for the people of these islands, than the continuance of large-scale grants from this country over a long period of time—some of it by loan, preferably interest-free, but a great deal of it by way of outright gift, because for

  39
  some considerable time there can be no expectation that any of these remedial measures will produce a revenue which will be sufficient to provide a sinking fund for the repayment of loans, and it might, indeed, prove insufficient even for the provision of interest. Furthermore, it would be most unfortunate if the new Caribbean Federation were to start off under the necessity of borrowing, either as an entity or on behalf of its individual members, large sums of money, as this would inevitably be a millstone round the neck of the Governments concerned, and would undoubtedly delay their advance.
  Having thus posed the problem, I propose to put forward briefly what I conceive to be—I will not say the solution, but at least the most promising way of tackling it. I would suggest that Her Majesty's Government should make up their mind to spend, during the next twenty or twenty-five years, say, a sum which I will call provisionally £100 million. That sum should be divided up into a series of five-yearly budgets, of approximately equal dimensions—I think it would be a great mistake to try to work on a yearly budget, because it will be difficult to see how long many of the schemes will take to be initiated or completed. Then, I think, this fund should be administered by a specially created body. It may be asked why that body should not be the new Federal Government. My reply is, first, that the money is to be provided by the British taxpayer, and the British taxpayer, through his representatives, should therefore control, to a large extent, the application of that money.
  Secondly, one has to admit that it may be difficult for the new Federation to resist the pressure politics that will undoubtedly arise if all this money were put at its disposal. It might well be that some of the smaller units would not get their fair share. One of the factors which for some years will make the operation of both the Federal Government of the Caribbean and all its individual units somewhat difficult is the fact that in Jamaica there has not yet arisen a sufficiently numerous body of public men of the right stamp. Unfortunately, there, as elsewhere, the introduction of democracy has been accompanied by the rise of the demagogue, and unless and
  40
  until a larger number of really responsible people are prepared to take up public work and stand for their various legislatures, and are able to persuade the electors to return them, and to reject the specious inducements dangled before them by the demagogue, it will not be a very satisfactory medium to which to distribute large quantities of money without control from this country.
  THE PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF MUNSTER): May I interrupt the noble Earl for one moment? He mentioned the figure of £100 million. Is he suggesting that the whole of that sum should be spent in Jamaica, or that it should be put at the disposal of a Federal Government which is not yet in being to spend over the Islands generally?
  THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Neither. The sum of £100 million, which is purely a token sum—I cannot conceive of its being less: it might well be more—would be placed at the disposal of a new body to be set up on which there would be representatives of the Federal Government and which would consult the individual members of the Federation. But any sum suggested would be for the benefit of the whole area, and not for Jamaica alone.
  The first step to be taken after the setting up of such a body would not he to appoint a Commission to inquire into the position of the various islands—that position is quite well known already—but to find out from the Government or responsible officials in each island what they consider would be the minimum desirable and the maximum possible programme of development within, say, the next ten or twenty years. Then an allocation would have to be made, in order of priorities, to each area for that purpose. Admittedly, it is going to be very difficult. Admittedly, each island or territory would lay claim to a much larger share than it could hope to receive. An independent body would be required to control the funds, in order to ensure that, on the one hand, there was fair shares in the allocation and, on the other, to see fair play for the taxpayer producing the money, which must not be wasted or spent in projects which, although they might be useful from a short term point

  41
  of view, would not bring any lasting benefits. At the same time, I think it is essential that the not unnatural reluctance of British Guiana and British Honduras should be overcome, so that at least a steady trickle of migration from the over-crowded Caribbean Islands to those mainland territories should begin.
  As I have said, I do not wish to weary your Lordships with more figures than are necessary, but the importance of immigration will be realised from the fact that the density of population to the square mile in Jamaica, for example, is probably round about 320; in Trinidad rather more; in Granada over 600; Barbados, 1,300,and that only in one island is it under 200 per square miles; whereas in the 8,600 square miles of British Honduras the density is only a little over 7 people per square mile, and in the 83,000 square miles of British Guiana not much more than 5. There exists, particularly in British Guiana, a large amount of ground which is capable, at no very considerable expense, of being brought into first-class production. Up to now, the two mainland territories have been afraid that a stream of immigration would swamp the existing population and add to their own unemployment troubles. There ought not to be unemployment troubles there at all—they are due only to the fact that development has not been along the best lines. But if there is to be any proper future for the Caribbean Islands, some outlet for this enormous surplus of population will have to be found; and it is hard to think of any other outlet than those mainland territories.
  I read recently that an American scientist has said he expected the population of the world to double in seventy years. That of Jamaica has increased two and a half times in the last sixty years, and it has to be realised that the benefits of improved social services and medical and health conditions, which will reduce infant and maternal mortality, will intensify this problem of over-population. I was speaking recently to a delegate from ore of the smaller islands who was here for the Coronation. I asked him, "What, in your opinion, is going to be the remedy, in the case of your own island, for your admitted unemployment and over-population?" He said, "We must emigrate or explode"; and there
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  can be no doubt that unless some form of outlet is found for at least a proportion of the annual increase, that explosion is bound to come—and not many years hence. A friend of mine who knows as much about agriculture in the Caribbean as any man alive recently expressed the view that, given the proper development, Jamaica could carry comfortably a population approaching twice its present volume. Although he knows far more about the subject than I do, look upon that as a rather optimistic view. But even taking it at its face value, when that doubling of the population has been achieved, within a generation we shill be faced with the fact that the whole of the natural resources have been used up, so that this explosion will again be an imminent menace. Therefore, from both directions, from the point of view of emigration and from the point of view of the development of the territories themselves, I submit to your Lordships that it is absolutely vital that some early step should be taken to have a long-term plan which will put off, at least for a generation or more, the very serious danger in which the whole Caribbean area finds itself to-day.
  I have spoken long enough, and I will conclude with a couple of obiter dicta. The first is that it must not be assumed from what I have said that I regard this as being entirely a one-sited problem. The islands themselves and their population must deserve and earn what I propose they should have. We have to persuade a considerable number of people in that region that they have to work rather harder than they are inclined to do. The climate is certainly one which induces a disinclination for hard work, and it has further to be borne in mind, as I have said already, that a large proportion of people are already suffering from malnutrition and must not be blamed for the fact that they do not show the same enthusiasm for bard manual labour as one would like. At the same time, the islands and their people must show themselves worthy and competent before this country can agree to continue to pour out the large amounts of money which are necessary.
  Lastly, there is one point about Jamaica which is very important; that is, the question of racial relations. There, once and for all, the fallacy is being destroyed

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  that it is impossible for black and white, and colours in between, to live peaceably together. There is virtually no colour bar in Jamaica. I myself, I am glad to say, have there friends of every shade of colour, from the purest African downwards. That absence of the colour bar shows that, given good will on both sides, and given the fact that there is complete racial political equality, there is no reason whatever why a colour bar should exist in any country. I am not, of course, suggesting that complete racial equality is possible, or desirable, everywhere for a long time to come: but I do say that it proves without a doubt that these people of African and European origin, to say nothing of Asians can, given the proper conditions, live together in peace and friendship. I wholeheartedly recommend consideration of these racial conditions in Jamaica to those who seem to think it impossible for black and white to live together as friends. Most particularly do I recommend it for the consideration of one Daniel Malan. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
  3.11 p.m.
  THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, and I think your Lordships will all agree, that this is not an occasion for a debate on the case for federation of British territories in the Caribbean. There are two good reasons for this. The noble Earl's Motion is rather narrowly drafted: it is concerned only with one aspect of the federation problem and with some of the economic and financial implications of this step. Moreover—this is a second reason—the Government seem, happily, to realise that the White Paper recording the decisions of the April Conference on Federation is just as unintelligible, in its present form, as a glaring example of legislation by reference. They therefore intend—and we are grateful to them for this intention—to publish another paper setting out the Federal plan proposed in the S.C.A. Committee's Report, as well as the amendments to this plan agreed on at the London Conference. On behalf of the Opposition in your Lordships' House, I may say that we hope the Government will find time for a debate on this important constitutional advance in the West
  44
  Indies as soon as the document in question has been publisher and your Lordships have had time to digest its contents. It is interesting to recall that the noble Earl, Lord Halifax, in a report which he made in the 1920's after a tour of the West Indies, spoke of support for federation. Moreover, I am sure that there are a number of your Lordships with experience of the West Indies who would wish to take part in such a debate.
  With regard to the recent Conference in London I would say just this: that I am sure we are all delighted that the representatives of the West Indian territories were able to agree about the broad outlines of the federal plan. We should also wish to pay our tribute to their statesmanship and wisdom in not allowing differences of opinion between the territories to wreck agreement about this important step forward. Everyone hopes that federation, if approved by the Territorial Legislatures, will lead in due course to the establishment of a new self-governing member of our Commonwealth in the Caribbean. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, said that the poverty of the West Indian Islands will not be relieved by federation, and he went on to suggest other remedies.
  THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: Not directly relieved.
  THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: I accept what the noble Earl says: that federation will not directly relieve poverty, and that other measures, which he went on to mention, are desirable. I think we shall all agree with the proposition that political federation will not, in fact, alleviate the poverty of the Caribbean area. I do not think that anyone expects federation to perform anything in the nature of an economic miracle. It is common knowledge, as the noble Earl emphasised, that the main cause of poverty in the West Indies is the pressure of a rapidly-growing population on very limited resources; and no constitutional change, however desirable in itself, will affect the causes of that unfortunate rapid increase in the local population. Nor, indeed, will it stimulate production of those foods and minerals on which the prosperity of the territories depend. On the other hand, there is little reason to doubt the view expressed in the S.C.A.C.'s Report, that federation offers

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  more favourable political conditions than those at present obtaining in the West Indies for economic progress and stability. I am glad to note that the noble Earl agrees with the Report in that important expression of opinion. It would also help the area to become more self-reliant, and to depend less and less, as time goes on, on financial assistance from the United Kingdom.
  The second part of the Motion deals with the continuing need of the West Indian territories after federation, if federation is adopted, for financial support from the United Kingdom during the early years of the new constitutional set-up. The noble Earl talked particularly about Jamaica, though I am sure he will agree that there are many other territories which are even more poverty-stricken and more afflicted by underemployment and the low development of social services than the island of Jamaica, and that they will require financial support more urgently than Jamaica. I think everyone will agree with the noble Earl that such support, in one way or another, will be indispensable at least for, a time. I believe that this fact as fully recognised by Her Majesty's Government. I was very glad to note the assurance given by the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs on this subject at the April Conference and recorded in the White Paper.
  There are, of course, two ways in which money from this country will continue to be raised for the benefit of the West Indies and spent there. They will still receive a share of any fund made available by Parliament for development and welfare in the Colonies. May I express the hope that Her Majesty's Government, in dispensing this fund in the future, will not reduce the amounts from the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund? It would be nice to think that the amounts will be increased, but the anxiety of many of us is that a cut may be made for the sake of economy. We have just been informed that legislation will be introduced next year to extend the Fund for a further period beyond 1956, but we do not know what the new level of expenditure will be. I am sure that any reduction in the general level would be a false economy. The West Indies would be particularly hard hit, because of the poverty and backwardness of many
  46
  of the islands, to which the noble Earl alluded, and of which many of your Lordships with experience of the islands will be aware. I very much hope that the Government will bear this consideration in mind before they decide about the terms of the Bill, and particularly about its financial proposals.
  The second way in which we can continue to spend the British taxpayer's money in the West Indies is by grants to cover the deficits of the poorest territories. I was glad to see that the Government have agreed to continue their Treasury grants during the first ten years after federation. There is nothing to preclude, in addition to the giving of these monies, any special Payments to meet emergencies, such as the hurricane which struck Jamaica a short while ago, and other emergencies of this kind, which are always possible in the hurricane season in the West Indies.
  It is particularly satisfactory, I feel, that future grants from the Treasury will take the form of a block grant to the Federal Government, and not, as at present, of a payment to the Government of a particular territory that fails to balance its expenditure. This will put an end to the system of Treasury control, which is heartily disliked in the Colonies. At a meeting of the Governors of the West Indian territories which I attended in 1949, there was unanimous agreement of all the territories there represented that a block grant to the central Government, if federation was established, would be greatly preferable to the present method of annual grants by the Treasury to territories in deficit.
  There are two reasons for this new technique. The external control of the United Kingdom Government, through the Treasury, had been sharply criticised, particularly by the (officials of these territories; and, moreover, it tended to deprive the territories of the financial incentive required to increase their production and balance their budgets. I feel that it is extremely satisfactory that these proposals in the White Paper for direct financial assistance during the interim period after federation have been approved by the representatives of the West Indian territories. It is far more important that they should approve those proposals than that we should. I cannot

  47
  help thinking that, if our offer had been thought to be in any way mean or stingy, these West Indian representatives would certainly have said so—and said so loudly; it would have been reported in the Press in the West Indies to that effect. Therefore, I cannot altogether agree with the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, that we ought to make available a very much larger sum of money. I think he mentioned a fund of £100 million. Surely, this is far too large a sum to be within the bounds of practical politics when the whole of our Colonial development and welfare is at the rate of £12 million a year. That is why, of the whole of the Colonies, we cannot single out the West Indies for help on that scale. It would be unfair to the British taxpayer. I do not wish to take any words from the mouth of the noble Earl, Lord Munster, and he will forgive me if I have anticipated what may be part of his reply to the comments of the noble Earl opposite.
  I believe that the grants we shall make from this country to the Federal Government in the West Indies will do much more good than the grants which are made to the territorial Governments there, because they will be free, in the eyes of the local inhabitants, from the taint of Treasury control. I am very glad that the Government have decided to make this new arrangement, from the technical point of view, in the administration of British funds in the West Indies. That is all I have to say on the subject, except to emphasise that we should be glad if the Government would consider providing time at an early date for a general debate on federation in the West Indies.
  3.24 p.m.
  LORD MILVERTON: My Lords, in rising to make a brief contribution to this debate, I should like to begin by a slight reference to the wording of the Motion and the almost provocative irrelevance, if I may use those words, of the two words "admittedly desirable" in the first half. It reads:
  "To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are aware that the serious position in which the various islands of the British West Indies now find themselves, cannot be relieved by the admittedly desirable inauguration of the British Caribbean Federation."
  THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: May I interrupt the noble Lord: he has left out the word "immediately."
  LORD MILVERTON: I am sorry I left out that word, but, in any case, my comment would not be varied by "immediately relieved," because I take it that this debate is not intended to consider the merits or demerits of federation. Whether federation is desirable or not would be an issue which would only cloud the financial question on which we are endavouring to concentrate. I, personally, am in favour, in principle, of federation, but I am very conscious of the difficulties that it will have to face. I should imagine that the reply to Her Majesty's Government to this question would be a simple affirmative. So far as I know, federation has never been put forward by anybody as a cure-all for the economic difficulties of many of the West Indian territories, and I think the most that can be expected of it at the beginning is to create a climate of co-operation, and to foster the growth of inter-island trade which at the present moment amounts to little more than 5 per cent. of the foreign trade of the British West Indies. In any case, a total population of 3½ million and a generally low income level is not a very promising prospective market, until you have improved the local standards of production and, thereby, the incomes of the population. Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of federation will be to enable the British West Indies to speak with a louder and more independent voice when economic questions arise in which they are concerned. However, I do not want to be led astray into discussing the merits or otherwise of federation.
  To pass to the second question which has been asked in this Motion, it reads:
  "whether it is realised that, if any improvement is to be forthcoming within a reasonable period, direct financial assistance by way of outright grants, especially in the case of Jamaica, will still be required, in addition to any loans that may be provided by the International Bank."
  I want to make a few brief comments on the need for such financial assistance, and the far greater need for getting financial assistance into its proper administrative perspective. I was rather shocked at the suggestion of the noble Earl who moved this Motion that so large a sum as £100 million should be made available and,

  49
  apparently, that some outside body should have the controlling of its administration because of the difficulty of finding locally men of adequate capacity to manage it. I suggest, as an administrator, that if any permanent good is to be done to Jamaica or to any other of the islands, it must be done through the people of that territory and by them, and all assistance that we can give to be effective must be directed to that main aim. In relation to Jamaica, I do not feel so pessimistic about the existence in that island of an adequate amount of local ability to deal with any of the proposals for amelioration of conditions there.
  The recent Mission of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development issued an extremely valuable Report, to which the noble Earl referred. It gave the greatest emphasis of all to various aspects of the question of improving the productive capacity of Jamaica. It dealt with soil conservation and rehabilitation, afforestation and pasture development, irrigation and land reclamation, rural housing and water supplies, and especially the utilisation of underground water supplies. It dealt with all those subjects and it went into the question of marketing. Finally, having reviewed all the needs of the island in this way in a most able manner, it said that in regard to any help given to Jamaica there was a great need to have, if possible, a single agency in control. I would venture to agree with that, because "too many cooks spoil the broth" in administration as in everything else, and all of these things—which there is no time to go into now—require to be integrated if a single scheme for the amelioration of a people's condition is to be successful.
  One of the points to be remembered and which should stop us from lightly spending or suggesting the expenditure of too much money, is the question of whether or not it is possible to achieve a great increase in the industries in Jamaica. One has to consider the high transport costs, the high capital costs, the lack of necessary skill, the fact that when related to productive capacity the labour costs are distinctly high, and that there is grave need for education of labour in responsibility. The tourist industry has been mentioned. When I was in Jamaica recently, I heard a person, eminently qualified to
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  speak, say that while it was at present worth £4 million a year, it could, in ten years, by enterprising development, easily be increased to £20 million. Social services are also of the greatest importance, because if you want to increase the productivity of the people in Jamaica you must give them education of the right sort. The matter was summed up in a few words by the Mission, when they said:
  "Conditions conducive to economic and political progress can be achieved, in a democratic system, only if the franchise is exercised by an informed citizenry, whose members realise from experience that their own economic well-being, as individuals, is linked with the prosperity of their country."
  The scheme which the Mission outlined is surely big enough and ambitious enough for Jamaica. Summing it up, it involves borrowing about £22 million, which would mean a substantial addition to the gross public debt which now stands at about £14 million. But even a public debt of £36 million would represent only 24 per cent. of the national income anticipated by 1962 under the programme which this Mission put forward. They were a very competent body of men, and they said they anticipated no difficulty in servicing such a loan. They estimated that between £6 million and £8 million could be obtained in Jamaica by local borrowing, and that these amounts would be supplemented by private investment. They mentioned that on their calculations the net output to-day of goods and services, and so forth, in Jamaica, was about £85 million, and they estimated that under their plan it would rise to £150 million in 1962.
  They dealt then with the amount of unemployment in Jamaica, and with the point that within the next ten years covered by that plan 100,000 to 120,000 extra people would have to be found work. If the proportion of unemployed is to be reduced from its present level of 18 to 20 per cent. to 5 per cent., it means that 180,000 or 210.000 people have to be found work. The only other hope is that of emigration or a limitation of population growth. The hopes of emigration have been diminished by the fact that the two mainland territories, British Honduras and British Guiana, have refused to join the Federation, and they are the territories where there is plenty of spare

  51
  land. The Mission emphasised that vocational and technical education are extremely important, and that it would be useless without sufficient enterprise, energy and capacity for organisation and co-operation locally, to attempt any of these improvements. After all, confidence can be created and maintained only if the people of Jamaica show a determination to lift themselves by their own efforts, and everything that we can do should be directed to helping them in that direction.
  I do not think any permanent improvement in conditions there could be obtained purely by the application of finance. There are far more important things than finance. Jamaica can support its population in conditions of economic and political stability only if a far-sighted, imaginative programme is vigorously presented and is understood, supported willingly and managed by the people of Jamaica. Whatever one is tempted to say about industry, the wealth of Jamaica lies in its soil. Apart from the beauty of the land and its equable climate, it has some of the most wonderful soil in the world, and in spite of the almost reckless way in which that land has been abused for many generations now and the spread of soil erosion, it is still not too late to deal with these conditions. But the only people who can deal with them are the Jamaicans themselves. We can provide or help them to obtain the education, we can help them with necessary financial aid, but the actual work of salvation must be their own.
  Reference has been made to assistance under the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund. Very rightly and reasonably, the Mission assumed that assistance at the present level would be continued over the next ten years, and in the estimates which they have given in their Report they have reckoned that over these ten years Jamaica will receive about £5 million in Colonial development and welfare funds—nothing like the suggested sum of £100 million and I suggest that £5 million will probably be quite adequate for that purpose. Presumably we desire neither to bribe nor to pauperise the people of Jamaica or of the other islands, but to help them to acquire the skill, the knowledge, and the determination bred of knowledge, to help themselves.
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  I should like to say one final word in relation to the attitude of Her Majesty's Government. Leaving aside any ideas of grandiose financial aid, the application of sympathetic consideration to some of the circumstances of Jamaica might be of great value. We had a debate last year in this House on the Pioneer Industry Act in Jamaica and the nullification of its effects in relation to British companies by the action of the British Treasury. All the benefits which were offered by the Jamaican Government to those pioneer industries in Jamaica were neutralised by the fact that any company whose headquarters were in England and who benefited by this encouragement from the Jamaica Government had merely to pay so much more to the British Treasury in income tax and were allowed so much less set-off against it. I suggest that by remedying such ills as those Her Majesty's Government could show practical sympathy to these Colonies in their desire to help themselves in the encouragement of new industries. Apart from that, we all want to see that Jamaica and the other Colonies receive all the reasonable assistance that can be given to them to help them attain a higher standard of production, and, thereby, a better standard of living.
  3.40 p.m.
  THE EARL OF AIRLIE: My Lords, I hope that I am not one who, because he has visited a country once or twice, thinks he can constitute himself an authority upon the place. When I find myself in the company of such distinguished people as the noble Lord who has just been speaking and who, as your Lordships know, governed the island of Jamaica with the greatest distinction for five years, naturally I speak with the greatest humility. I can speak of Jamaica only because I have connections there in relation to sugar interests. I sit on the board of a company which owns sugar plantations there, and I have paid several visits to the island—the last one during last winter. I was able to stay on our sugar plantation for about five weeks, and to get a slightly closer picture of local conditions, such as they are, than I had had formerly. I am bound to admit that they are not good, and that they constitute a serious problem.
  The problems are well known. Your Lordships have had them reiterated many

  53
  times, and they cannot be reiterated too often. The island of Jamaica, is your Lordships know, works under a system of seasonal employment. There are the difficulties, of which you have heard, of over-population, poor housing and malnutrition, especially so far as the children are concerned. In dealing with the question of over-population, I would not propose that you should necessarily try to force birth control on the people; you just cannot do that. But there are long-term policies which could help to mitigate these evils. In this connection, one thinks of improved social services, and, above all, of the provision of electric light. I do not wish to go into crude details, but it is obvious that if you have a lot of dark houses, with nothing very much for anyone to do outside them, the natural tendency is to go inside; and the natural result is children. I hope that I may be forgiven for putting it that way. That is one of the problems; and like the other problems it is one which cannot be dealt with by ignoring it. Several suggestions have been made by the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, in the course of his speech. Whether they are constructive or not, I am not sufficiently cognisant of all the facts to know. But at any rate they are suggestions, and we want all the suggestions we can get if we are going to deal with this very knotty problem.
  Last winter, when I was in Jamaica, I ran into an American friend whom I have known for a long time. We are very close friends, and we do not mind saying things to each other, about each other and about our respective countries. We like each other very much, and, therefore, if we speak with frankness about our respective countries we do not part afterwards with "squibs" in our hearts. My American friend said, "I hope that your good country,"—yes, he said "your good country"—"is not going to run away from this problem, as perhaps you have done in the case of other problems in the past." I am afraid that that comment rang a bell in my heart, and I must admit that I thought over what he had said very seriously and at length. I believe it is possible that the Americans might be prepared to help us, for the very reason that Jamaica occupies a very important place in the defensive scheme of the free world.
  54
  In my humble opinion, too much stress is being laid out there on tourism. There is a rebate in taxation for hotels in order to encourage tourists. Now tourism is a very healthy thing in its own way, but I think it would be very mach healthier to help develop agriculture and undeveloped land which we know is there, and to assist in places where I know the Government are already trying to help in the production of rice—which is a crop produced out of the season when sugar is produced. Tourism—and one says this with the best will in the world—is apt to raise the cost of living, more especially when the spenders who visit the West Indies have the dollar, and the rate of exchange is in their favour. I should prefer to see the money spent on the production of food which, after all, is the vital key commodity in the world today. The world is going to starve unless steps are taken to increase the production of food. We have to do all we can to stimulate the production of food every- where. I believe that it is within the bounds of possibility that something could be done in the West Indies in the matter of increasing the numbers of cattle. Cattle could, I think, be produced on some of these islands, and with the utilisation of refrigeration by air the supply to other countries of beef—which is so badly needed at the present time—could be increased.
  I am going to suggest that we ought to ask ourselves this question. Are we in this country searching our consciences a little more closely on these matters? Take the matter of the Kikuyu, or that of the Mau Mau. Could some of those troubles have been avoided if we had dealt with the problems earlier? I do not know. Maybe I am wrong, but I have the feeling that we do not face up to these things in time. Could we even have avoided the loss of India or Southern Ireland? Again I say, I do not know. But I think we have a habit of running away from things and then finding that it is too late. And are we (this is a subject which is very near my heart and it is one which presents us with a very imminent problem) running dangerously near to ignoring the Scottish problem? All these things have the same root. I ask again, Are we ignoring difficulties until it is too late?
  3.47 p.m.
  VISCOUNT BRIDGEMAN: My Lords, I hope the House will forgive me if I do not follow the speeches of those noble Lords who have already spoken, and who have dealt with this subject on broad lines, because I am rising to deal only with one much smaller point—namely, the effect of taxation on investment in Jamaica. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel—he is not in the Chamber at the moment—mentioned that there were two ways of providing money for the West Indies. I am sure he would agree that there is a third way, and in fact the traditional way—that of private investment. The more private investment goes into that or any other country overseas, the less the Exchequer will be troubled to find grants.
  There is one point about private investment in this country on which, I think, the noble Lord. Lord Milverton, touched at the end of his remarks, and that is the incidence of United Kingdom taxation on investments made in the West Indies. In at least two countries of the West Indies, Trinidad and Jamaica, there are in operation tax arrangements whereby if an industry is considered by the Government to be essential to the country, or of some great value to the country, profits arising to that industry are not taxed for a certain number of years. That is all right, of course, if the money to invest in that industry is found from the territories themselves, but if it is desired that the City of London, or some such place, should participate in the investment in the West Indies, then immediately the whole of these arrangements, made in order to increase the productivity of that industry, are stultified because, under United Kingdom tax laws, tax is demanded from a company domiciled in this country, and has to be paid, irrespective of what the laws are in Jamaica or Trinidad. That is a point which has been brought to the notice of the Royal Commission on Taxation of Profits and Income in this country. I rather think it was brought to the notice of that Commission at the instance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. Therefore, when the Finance Bill appeared in another place, it was a little disappointing to see that no reference was made to any steps to tackle this problem. My noble friend who is to reply knows that
  56
  I do not expect him to give an answer to this point, but I hope he will bring it once again to the notice of his right honourable friend, and that we may take it that this important matter has not been lost but has "gone before."
  3.50 p.m.
  THE EARL OF MUNSTER: My Lords, I hope that in replying to the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, I shall not delay the House long, because there are two other important Motions on the Order Paper on which a number of noble Lords wish to speak. I hope the noble Earl will forgive me if I say that I thought his speech on the future of Jamaica was one of the most pessimistic utterances I have heard for a long time. The position is by no means so bad as he would lead your Lordships to believe. I shall endeavour to show what successive Governments have done over a period of years to assist the economy, not only of Jamaica, but of the other islands and mainland territories in the Caribbean area.
  Obviously, the brief answer to the noble Lord's question is in the affirmative. So far as I am aware, no one has suggested that the formation of a West Indian Federation would automatically solve all the economic problems of the British territories throughout the Caribbean area, though I believe most of us are in agreement that this certainly would be a step in the right direction and in time must become of increasing value to these Colonies. I do not wish this afternoon to be drawn into referring in any way to the recent Federal Conference in London. A White Paper containing a scheme will be published simultaneously in this country and in the West Indies, and if any debate is desired after the publication of that document, it can be arranged through the usual channels.
  The noble Earl was correct in his assumption that the economic conditions which prevail throughout the whole of the West Indies, including the mainland territories of British Guiana and British Honduras, have been a matter of concern to successive Governments in this country for many years past. I hope to show that much has been done to remedy and improve the position. Nevertheless, I am ready to agree that much remains to

  57
  be done in the future. I think it is worth remembering that whatever development plans may be envisaged by any organisation, they almost all involve capital or recurrent expenditure. It is obvious that every new project requires capital expenditure and that some of the available resources have to be used to improve the conditions of the people generally within the area by schemes which will not show any immediate economic return. The major resources must be used for schemes which will result in greater and more efficient production. I think noble Lords on all sides will agree that that is one of the most important elements of the whole of this problem.
  It is not the slightest use setting up new projects, however desirable and however necessary they may be, if they are going to cause merely an additional recurrent expenditure for the territories, which in many cases—I think I would be bold enough to say, in most cases—they could not possibly meet. It is true that immediately after the war revenue in practically all the territories was buoyant, but that phase is definitely passing, and there are heavy calls on all Governments for ordinary social purposes, which must necessarily limit the amount to be spared to finance any new capital projects. If we are endeavouring to form new schemes at a vast expenditure of money, it is important to remember that the recent Commonwealth Economic Conference placed strong emphasis on development projects which are likely to improve the balance of payments, and that, important factor has to be taken ink into account when we are planning any development whatsoever in the Colonial territories.
  Let me now give the House some figures of all that has happened in recent years. Here I am in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Milverton: I do not think it is wholly a question of money, but naturally he will agree with me that money is vital in getting some of these projects into operation. Since 1945 the West Indian Governments have borrowed £14 million on the London market. During the same period the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund has provided £23 million, arid the Colonial Development Corporation projects in the Caribbean area have cost some £7 million. There have been grants
  58
  in aid of administration during the same period of £2 million, and to meet the burden of reconstruction after natural disasters Her Majesty's Government have given grants amounting to £4 million and loans of £1,500,000. In addition to all this, a considerable sum of money has been provided by private investment. I venture to think that this is no mean achievement.
  In the course of his opening remarks, the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, mentioned the Mission from the International Bank which visited Jamaica last year and drew up a plan for the future development of the island over a period of ten years. The noble Earl reminded your Lordships of much that was contained in that Report and therefore I need not refer to it again. The Mission suggested that the Government of Jamaica should spend £34 million on improvements and projects which were enumerated in their Report. Of that sum, £22,500,000 was to be borrowed, £16 million from overseas and the remainder internally. All the recommendations which were contained in the Mission's Report have been accepted by the Jamaican Government and borrowing began last year, when the Government of Jamaica raised a sum of £3,500,000 on the London market. In passing, I should like to remind the House again that the Colonial Secretary recently stated in another place—and I made a similar announcement in your Lordships' House—that Her Majesty's Government intend to continue the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts after their expiration in 1956. But, obviously, before I can give the House any indication of the sum of money which will be required in future years it is necessary that we first receive the replies from Colonial Governments to the inquiries that we have made.
  Undoubtedly a system of grants will operate in the future, as in the past, although, unfortunately, there must always be a limit to the sum of money which can be provided by the people of this country. Sympathetic as I am towards the suggestion of the noble Earl that a sum of £100 million should be provided in a short period of time, I could not in any circumstances commit Her Majesty's Government, with all their other responsibilities and obligations, to accepting a figure of that nature. As the noble Earl

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  well knows, there are only three ways in which sufficient funds can be obtained by any of the Governments in the Caribbean area. First, there is, obviously, borrowing on the open market, which includes the London market, as well as the International Bank; secondly, there are the contributions which will be received from local revenues; and thirdly, there are the grants which will be maintained under Colonial development and welfare. Here let me remind your Lordships that it was only last week that I informed the House, in reply to the noble Viscount, Lord Hall, that the expenditure under Colonial development and welfare had been running at the rate of £15 million a year and might well increase to a figure of £18 million before the final expiration of that Act.
  I think it was agreed by noble Lords who have taken part in the discussion this afternoon that the economy of the West Indies must always remain primarily agricultural; and it was further agreed, I believe, that sugar is still the greatest single contributor to their wealth, although efforts must be made—and, in fact, have been made—to develop other export crops. Bananas and cocoa are now being grown in many of the territories out there, and great success has attended the production of rice in British Guiana. Throughout all these areas, and in Jamaica as well, there are many controlled land schemes which have been tried out, and assistance is given by the Government to farmers to improve their yields in all important crops. At the same time, instruction is given to the holders of those lands not only to maintain the fertility of their soil but also to endeavour, to the best of their advantage, on that expert advice, to deal with the difficulties caused by erosion. In regard to that matter, let me say at once to the noble Earl that the Farm Improvement Scheme in Jamaica, with which he must be familiar, immediately comes to one's mind. Further afield, in British Guiana, there are substantial forest reserves which are now being exploited on a sustained yield basis; and I have been informed that the export of timber from that country will considerably increase in the years that lie ahead and when the new firm comes into full production. At the same time, while British Guiana is
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  the second largest producer of bauxite in the world, the output of bauxite in Jamaica may well rival that of British Guiana in a few years' time.
  Over a period of some years, every encouragement has been given by the Governments in the Caribbean area, and by Her Majesty's Government at home, to develop secondary industries, provided that in the long run those industries prove to be of economic value and use. Encouragement has taken a variety of forms, and I need mention only three; that is, income tax relief, accelerated depreciation allowances and customs concessions. Here let me say at once that I will certainly convey to my right honourable friend the observations of the noble Viscount, Lord Bridgman, and the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, on the question of taxation. I hope that they will not ask me to commit myself on that matter at the present time.
  What are these new industries which have been started, and which are now operating throughout these territories? There are cement, soap, margarine, beer, textiles, fruit-canning, matches and bottles. Those are the industries which immediately come to my mind, and they provide, not perhaps a tremendous source of employment but at least a source of some employment to the people in these territories. In Jamaica an Industrial Development Corporation has recently been set up, and an area of Kingston, as no doubt the noble Earl well knows, has now been scheduled as an industrial area. There is, in addition, the Report of the Mission of Industrialists from this country who a short time ago visited Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and British Guiana. That Report will be published at any time now, and it contains many recommendations on industries which that Mission thought might well be established in the territory.
  I turn next to the question raised by the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, and mentioned also by the noble Lord, Lord Milverton—namely, that of migration. Over a period of time now, a number of suggestions have been made for schemes of organised migration as a means of helping to develop those undeveloped areas and to relieve the population in the over-populated territories. The Evans Commission of some years ago inquired into the future prospects for immigrants

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  into British Guiana and into British Honduras. Although I must frankly admit that the prospects are not bright, one of their proposals, that of improving drainage and irrigation for the growing of rice in British Guiana, has begun; but this scheme so far as we can see at the present time, can give work only to the increasing population in British Guiana itself. I am not sure that there is all that spare land which the noble Lord, Lord Milverton, mentioned in British Guiana. I would not in any sense place hopes too high on the fact that in the interior of that vast country there is the possibility of employing many thousands—indeed, many hundreds of thousands—of additional hands, who would, of course, come into the country from other British territories in the area.
  The noble Earl well knows that the future development of the West Indies is constantly being studied, not only by the local Government on the spot but also by Her Majesty's Government at home, by the Colonial Development Corporation, and by the Colonial Development and Welfare Organisation, who themselves give considerable technical assistance and advice to the local Government. I would not for one moment hide from your Lordships the fact that many of the problems which confront us are indeed serious, and some of them are to a great extent pressing. But I do not believe that there is any easy and quick way in which we can solve all the problems. In practically every field the solutions are known and are being actively pursued, and there are many difficulties which have to be overcome before we can bring into active operation the results of all the investigations and experiments which we have made.
  There were many other questions raised this afternoon, some of which I must deal with before I conclude. The noble Earl, Lord Airlie, and the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, dealt with the increase of the population in those territories. That is a matter of concern, not only to Her Majesty's Government but, I hope, to the local Governments as well. It is unfortunate that this increase in the population is well ahead of what the territories can economically maintain. Recent medical discoveries have undoubtedly reduced the death rate and, therefore, the population has automatically increased. But I would not dispute what has been
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  said: that this is a matter which must give concern to the West Indian Governments who, in the course of time, may well have to tackle it on their own behalf.
  It was said also that, useful as the tourist trade may be to these territories in the West Indies, it is not really a sound basis upon which to build their economy. There, again, I should have no objection to that sentiment. It is necessary to have a tourist industry, but it is impossible for any one territory to rely for its wealth, benefit and health merely on its being able to encourage tourists into its territory. There was also the question of water schemes. There are a number of schemes in Jamaica which have been financed half by grants from the Colonial development and welfare funds and half from a local fund. I am told that new schemes are being begun as old schemes are completed; but here, again, there is some difficulty, because, quite apart from expense, all these schemes require special equipment and skilled engineers, and the latter are not available in each of those territories.
  As regards housing in Jamaica, I am prepared to admit that things are very difficult, but conditions have vastly improved in recent years. An interesting development is now occurring in that island and in other islands throughout the Caribbean area where, due to limited money and other resources, the local Governments have tried out the principle of self-help, under which the people who are going to live in new houses are required to contribute to their construction, particularly with their labour. The scheme which I have seen in operation myself has certainly had some success, and it may well be that other territories will follow the example which has been set by those islands. I do not think I need try to respond to all the queries and questions which arose in the course of the discussion. What I have endeavoured to do is to give the House a statement of all that has occurred in the area since 1945. I am prepared to agree that much remains to be done in the future; but let us not forget the much which we have done in the past.
  4.15 p.m.
  THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, in view of the two important debates that are to follow, my reply will

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  be brief and almost entirely confined to the removal of one or two misconceptions. In the first place, I did not suggest that the figure of £100 million should be entirely grants; I said it should be grants and loans. Secondly, is such a figure very extravagant when for Jamaica alone £34½ million over a period of ten years has been accepted without question? Development must go on far beyond ten years, and, with that needed for the remaining ten years, it is not unnatural to suppose that the total for the twenty years could amount to £50 million. Surely if Jamaica, with a population of less than half that of the Caribbean area, gets £50 million, then the other portion of the Caribbean, with a rather larger population, could equally expect to be granted another £50 million, in view of its comparable position. Therefore, although the grant of £100 million may be outside practical politics, it is not outside practical ideals. Then, I did not suggest that a completely outside body should "administer" the funds to be put at the disposal of various Governments; what I did say was that an outside body should "allocate" those funds in order to avoid in the Federal Government the terrific fight which will ensue between various units who are trying to get their fair share or more than their fair share.
  The noble Earl, Lord Munster, said he doubted whether there was much land of high quality available in British Guiana. The population to-day in British Guiana is only some seven per square mile, while that of Jamaica is over 300 per square mile. If you could get in British Guiana one-tenth of the density of the population of Jamaica, you would have a population approaching 2,500,000souls. That, I suggest, is by no means an aim that one should not attempt to realise, although I do not suggest that it could be brought about solely by immigration. The noble Earl, Lord Munster, said I gave a very pessimistic picture. The figures that I have stated and the quotations I have made are not my own; they come from official publications and from the Report of the International Bank. I do not think one can be considered an alarmist when one points out that it is all too evident that the population of Jamaica and the other Caribbean islands is likely to double within a generation, and that in spite of
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  the fact that in many of the islands acute over-population already exists. I feel that no Government here has yet fully realised the seriousness of the problem. While I appreciate all that the present Government have done, are doing and propose to do, I still feel that these remedies are by no means adequate to the situation. With those remarks, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
  Motion for Papers, by leave, with-drawn.

  DERELICT LAND AND AGRICULTURE
  4.18 p.m.
  EARL WINTERTON EARL WINTERTON rose to call attention to methods for the utilisation of derelict land suitable for producing crops and timber in the Southern counties of England; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I understand that ten of your Lordships desire to take part in the debate either on my Motion or on that of my noble friend Lord Albemarle, which will follow it, and which deals with an analogous subject. Therefore I propose to curtail the observations which I had intended to make, and I must ask your Lordships to excuse me if my speech appears in somewhat tabloid form. That is not to say that I object to the time taken up by the previous Motion which, as a matter of fact, fits in rather well with the Motion which I am moving to your Lordships' House. Indeed, in the course of the discussion on the previous Motion my noble friend Lord Airlie—who is not in the House at the moment—made the observation that in the British Commonwealth in general the question of food was the most important question of all.
  I was rather amused to read in bed this morning, with my early morning tea, an observation by Sir Don Bradman in the columns of the Daily Mail about the Test Match, in which he said that this was "drama almost beyond endurance." On the same page was a picture of Mr. Watson who, I frankly admit, is a very fine cricketer. I happened to be able to see him yesterday at Lord's. The article said that he had "saved old England." It is difficult to get the people of Australia, or of Britain, to attach more importance to food production than to the Test Matches. If I may be excused a

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  feeble pun, it is a real "test" for the future of the people of the British Commonwealth whether in the next: twenty or thirty years we shall be able to produce in that Commonwealth, in the Colonies, and in these Islands sufficient food to feed the people of the Commonwealth, and especially to feed the people of these overcrowded islands. Though it would be out of order, even under the lenient rules of your Lordships' House, for me to refer to the position in Australia, those of your Lordships who are familiar with Australia will be aware that the situation there with regard to the food supply keeping pace with the population is by no means a satisfactory one and is a source of considerable concern to many Australians.
  I shall not venture to address your Lordships on the question of agriculture in general, because this House is, perhaps, unique among the Second Chambers of the world in having a greater number of genuine experts on the subject of agriculture than any similar Chamfer. I shall confine myself to a particular aspect of the subject—not the productivity and progress of British agriculture and forestry in general, but to one particular aspect. My Motion is concerned solely with what has been done in a small way, and with what could be done in a much bigger way, in one particular part of England—an area comprising Weald land and the downland country of West Surrey and East and West Sussex and part of Kent—to bring derelict and unused land into use for tillage and productive forestry.
  Three years ago I initiated in another place a debate on a similar Motion to that which I am moving this afternoon I asserted then that more land could be seen on a rail or road journey of about forty miles west or south of London which could grow food, but which does not do so in any form, than would be seen in 400 miles of a similar journey across the Channel. The then Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Tom Williams, admitted in his reply that my statement was in general true, although he said there were reasons for this state of affairs. There is a most extraordinary contrast, as any of your Lordships who have made the journey will be aware, between the intensity of cultivation in Western Germany, France, Belgium or Holland and that in Southern England. That is not to make any reflection upon the farming methods in
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  Southern England; it is probably true that the actual productivity per acre of land in cultivation in Southern England is as great as, if not greater than, anywhere on the Continent. But I am speaking of the land which is not used. If I may be allowed to mention an autobiographical detail, I have some reason to know this land because I think I must have been one of the few members of the other place during my forty-seven years of service there who, partly in the course of my Yeomanry service and partly in the course of fox-hunting, entered almost every field and every wood in my somewhat large constituency. In my lifetime I have hunted with between thirty and forty packs; I believe that I have hunted with every pack in the Midlands except one, and with other; in the South and North, and I know something of how this land of England is comprised.
  It is found on railway embankments, on the road verges, in the area under review. For reasons into which I have not time to go to-day, most of the roads in this part of the country have very wide verges. The width of some of them is equal to two or three times the length of a cricket pitch. The commons are remote from centres of population, away from villages, and they are little used, or not used at all, for recreational purposes. They were once grazed by commoners' cattle and sheep; now they are overgrown with gorse, thorns or bracken. On our downland—chalk hills—a quantity of land once close graced by sheep has, since the depression of the 1880's, deteriorated into scrub. Much has been done since 1939 to reclaim such land, but much more remains to be done. In the Weald, there, are many instances of individual fields on existing farms which, since the depression of the 1880's, have similarly degenerated into scrub and thorns The Weald—I am speaking of East and West Sussex, part of Surrey and part of Kent—is not only a natural forest, it is a natural breeding ground for quicks and thorns and gorse. It is a fact that if you leave a field for four years without cutting or grazing it, at the end there is enough gorse and thorns to find a fox in. There are derelict woodlands of standard wood or Underwood, or a mixture, where standard timber has been cut or under-wood has become worthless from neglect, or a mixture of both.
  I can quickly dispose of the first two categories of unused land. In almost all European countries, railway embankments are used to grow vegetables or grain or to produce grass for hay. You can see that all over the Continent. But the minimum of British railway embankments are so used. In almost all the European countries, cattle, sheep and goats are tethered on the road verges, or looked after by small children. If the reply by the Minister to this point is that our educational system forbids the latter process, and our system of agriculture, as well as our dislike of goats as milk or cheese producers, prevents tethering, my reply in turn would be, "All right, be it so. I do not wish to dispute with the many experts in this House on this matter, but it weakens the very proper protest of the agricultural industry against the constant drain of British land away from British agriculture for the purposes of making aerodromes, widening roads, building houses and factories, if the land which could be grazed is not." I am supported in this by many Continental farmers and land owners. They cannot understand why we should leave so much of this land unused. They say they could not afford to do it in their countries, and that Britain must be very well off to be able to do it.
  The case of the commons is a much more difficult one. I should like first to give some figures which I think are rather remarkable. Within eight miles of where I live, on the borders of Sussex and Surrey, there are roughly 780 acres of various commons, little if at all, differing in soil texture from the farms bordering on them, of which only two are partially grazed on about thirty acres. Only two of these commons are near villages, with cricket grounds on them. Yet the 700 acres of this area now not used were once closely grazed by the commoners. They are covered with grass, thorns, and bracken.
  Whilst I am on figures, I should like to give your Lordships some figures on another aspect of the subject. Here is an extract, which is a very alarming one, as I think the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, will agree, from the official survey report of the East Sussex Development Plan:
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  "Sussex, as a whole, is the most wooded county in England, yet the quality of woodlands in East Sussex, at least, has been allowed to decline sharply in the past twenty-five years until vast tracts have become devastated and uneconomic.
  "In a recent census of woodlands exceeding five acres, carried out by the Forestry Commission, it was found that of 78,203 acres of woodland only 19,709 acres (about a quarter) fall into the highly valuable high forest category. In the rest of Great Britain the proportion is about a half.
  "More than half the total acreage—45,867—is of simple coppice. … A further 4,402 acres have been devastated by having the best trees picked out. … Some 4,000 acres are just scrub land."
  The authors of the survey report comment that 16 per cent. of the woodland area in East Sussex is at present useless from an economic point of view. Much of this land, they say, has produced good timber in the past, and could do so again; but at present it is derelict. They suggest that 20,000 acres, including some of simple coppice, could be replanted to form economic units. My comment on those observations is this. No doubt the same considerations would apply to West Sussex, where I live. Advances have been made in modern times in afforestation, through the agency of the Forestry Commission, and there are at the present moment individuals like the noble Viscount, Lord Cowdray, and others, who have some of the best forestry estates in both West and East Sussex; but there are some very bad ones as well.
  I will return to the question of commons. I have some tentative suggestions to make, without, I hope, any dogmatism. First of all, I think the law relating to commons should be brought up to date. The relationship between the Lord of the Manor, the commoners, in the true sense of the term, the local authorities and the public, are in some respects indeterminate, and much of the law on the subject is mediæval and quite unsuited to modern conditions. I think that commons near large centres of population should be designated as solely for recreational purposes, as many are, and have been so made by special Acts of Parliament in the past. On commons near villages, sufficient space for cricket, football and recreational purposes should be protected from grazing and the incursion of motor trippers and others from outside. Parts of such commons, and all commons remote from large and small

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  centres of population, should be put to their proper and original use of grazing, wherever local farmers are prepared to use them.
  I think the local agricultural executive committees should have power to clear scrub from the commons and to put down permanent ley, after, perhaps, a clearance cereal crop, and fence temporarily portions of the common in turn, leaving the public free to wander over the rest at will. Local farmers, other than commoners, who would probably resent any such charge for grazing rights, which they regard as their traditional rights, could be found to recoup the agricultural executive committees by payment for grazing rights. There should be grids on the roads to carry light and heavy traffic and to prevent stock from straying. A local inquiry under the Ministry of Agriculture should be held before any such plan came into operation, to hear objections. If the Minister decided to make a scheme the local highway authority would, by the plan which I advocate, have to conform and erect grids. There would have to be warning signs by night and day. Motoring organisations would, of course, object, but they would have to be sharply told that the production of food in this country was at least as important as the motoring and automobile industry.
  Next, I should like to come to the question of individual fields in the Weald and portions of downland which reverted to scrub in the 'eighties and 'nineties, and later. Most of them reverted to scrub in the bad days of the 1880's, following the year of the agricultural depression in 1879. Much admirable clearance has already been done in the area in question and some notable efforts have been made over hundreds of acres by land owners, yeomen and tenant farmers alike. Two friends of mine, one a land owner and the other a yeoman farmer, both of whose families have lived in Sussex between 400 and 500 years, have done notable work in West Sussex, but large areas remain to be cleared. I think the agricultural executive committees should be asked to press farmers to use Government grants for the purpose, and the delicate question arises whether compulsory power should not be imposed by law for this clearance work. I understand
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  that at present it is not possible, for reasons into which I have not time to go, to compel farmers to clear fields on their farms which were once agricultural land, if they have not borne crops during the last fifty years.
  If I may interpolate one remark here, I think the Minister of Agriculture should actively fight people who have been designated in a speech in another place as "pretty-pretties." They are people who comprise within their ranks many "old women," of both sexes, who scream shrilly or write letters to The Times whenever a hill growing gorse, thorn, heather or bracken is cleared to allow cereal production, beef production or modern forestry. These enemies of land production have not even the merit of possessing the artistic perception which they claim to have. They think that a well-cultivated hillside, bearing good crops of conifers which are a joy to behold, must necessarily be uglier than one covered with useless gorse or heather. If we as a nation were really land-conscious, and had not lost the art of satire, which I am glad to see is being brought back by Punch,we should long ago have designated these people as they should have been. We should describe them as enemies of humanity and friends of scarcity: people who try to prevent the land of England from producing the food and timber that it could.
  My last category concerns derelict woodland. In the area in question, despite public and private forestry schemes, there are still enormous areas of derelict woodland, ruining into thousands of acres. This is partly due to circumstances which are peculiar to the south of England. In the years of the agricultural depression—not that to which I referred after 1879, but the one after the Napoleonic War—the prices for agricultural produce were low and there was a great demand for what I would call coppice crops: hazel, ash, and other things, especially hazel for making hoops for barrels. Large areas in the Weald which had hitherto carried foodstuffs were planted with trees—for instance, in the parish in which I live there is twice the area of woodland that there was 120 years ago. There is no longer the demand for underwood that there used to be; and in addition much of the land has been denuded of timber, so it ought

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  to be reclaimed. The reason why more has not been done is that the owners, or many of them, are too poor, or too apathetic, to replant or to bulldoze their land into agricultural land.
  In regard to the Forestry Commission, I do not think the Minister would deny (though I believe no official statement has been made on the subject) that the Commission have such huge commitments on land which they already own in various parts of England, or which they have leased, to be able to contemplate compulsory acquisition on a large scale, perhaps for ten or fifteen years, in these huge areas of woodland. Perhaps I ought not to give your Lordships the origin of my information because it comes from official sources in an indirect way. Much of this land could, with the aid of various Government grants, be profitably turned into farmland by bulldozing, gyro-tilling and drainage.
  I must apologise for having failed to notify the noble Lords that I would bring their names into the debate; I quite forgot to do so; but I should like to pay a tribute to the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and the noble Earl, Lord De La Warr, for what they have done in their respective properties in East Sussex and West Hampshire. Before there was any question of a grant, they reduced the scrub on certain land and turned that land into profitable farmland. That was done before there was any grant; and to-day a great deal of such land can be turned into farmland.
  I understand the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, is going to take part in this debate. He warned me that he would want to ask me what the statistics were, or rather what the accounting would be, for such conversion. It is difficult to give more than a general reply. Wealden land where I come from is generally worth £40 an acre, and, under favourable conditions, allowing for the Government grant, it should be possible to convert that land into agricultural land for about £10 less than that capital value. Therefore, it would leave you with a capital profit of £10 on the transaction. There are two farms in the neighbourhood in which I live, and there are no doubt others in other parts of the area to which I have referred, where this has been done.
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  I should like to quote a paragraph which appeared in a local publication about a farm at Charleshurst, Plaistow. The Minister of Food, Major Lloyd George, went there at my invitation last October and, as this paragraph states:
  "saw a 37 acre holding, owned and farmed by Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Baker, on which about £15,000 worth of food is being produced yearly from land which six years ago was virgin forest. When the Bakers took over the land there was no through road, no house or buildings, and the land produced virtually nothing. To-day every acre is in full cultivation and the holding carries 10,000 poultry and produces up to 300 bacon pigs yearly."
  That land is not particularly good land; it is land on which there had been a certain amount of timber and poor coppice wood; but that is what that land has done and what I believe could be done in other parts.
  My respectful suggestion to my noble friend the Minister is that the Ministry should in every way stimulate this process, which could mean scores of new farms in the Weald. There should be investigation into and dissemination of knowledge about the cheapest way of conversion For instance, the old-fashioned method of bulldozing is not satisfactory because it leaves, in the case of underwood, "stubs" as they are called in Sussex, "stools" as they are called elsewhere—a certain amount of under-roots in the ground which make it difficult to plough afterwards with an ordinary plough; but there is now a new method by which an implement is attached behind the bulldozer and pulls out those roots.
  I would ask for the support of your Lordships on this point, especially those of you who occupy, as so many of your Lordships do, a very important position in the agricultural world. There should be a simple process by which the Ministry of Agriculture, and not other Departments, should alone have the power to authorise a pioneer farmer anxious to make a farm out of a wood to erect his house and buildings. That would prevent his being enmeshed in the octopus-like red tape plentifully supplied by town and country planning authorities, local housing authorities and the Ministry of Health. Your Lordships who are landlords cannot fail to know what that octopus is like. I had a painful example not long ago, and but for the help of several of your Lordships in the Government I should not have got permission to

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  build the cottages I am now building after a long agitation.
  I should like to end on this note. We have had debates in your Lordships' House on points analogous to the one contained in my Motion, about marginal land in Wales, Scotland and elsewhere; and, if I may say so in parenthesis, highly instructive and interesting debates they have been. Criticisms or comments have been made to the effect that it is at least doubtful whether the efforts and time and money, both public and private, spent in the rehabilitation of such land would not be used to better effect in raising the productivity of farms in more favoured districts. I have not sufficient knowledge on the matter to expres an opinion, nor is it anything to do with my particular Motion. I wish, however, most earnestly to impress upon your Lordships that the situation in the districts covered by my Motion is an entirely different one. Here, there is no case of land of dubious quality above a certain sea level being contrasted with rich lowland and vale farms. All the categories of unused land to which my speech and Motion refer and which probably comprise 20,000 acres in West and East Sussex—sufficient land to supply on a basis of the usual acreage in the area, anything from 80 to a 100 farms, assuming it was all clear and given to cultivation—liesalongside land of the same soil texture which is being put to good use. Is it right, in a densely populated island which needs to produce every ton of food it can, and in a world suffering from lack of sufficient food in so many lands, leading to so much misery and malnutrition, not to use every acre that we can for production? The dictates alike of self-interest, humanity and, indeed, Christianity seem to me to supply an emphatic "No" to that question. I beg to move for Papers.
  THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD CARRINGTON): My Lords, with the noble Earl's permission and with your Lordships' permission, I wonder whether it would not be more convenient if I answered the noble Earl's speech at the conclusion of the more general debate on the Motion to be moved by the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle. If the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, would withdraw his Motion now, he would still have the
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  opportunity of making any remarks after I have made my speech on the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle.
  EARL WINTERTON: My Lords, with your Lordships' permission, I gladly fall in with that suggestion. I formally beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
  Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
  4.48 p.m.
  THE EARL OF ALEEMARLE THE EARL OF ALEEMARLE rose to call attention to the loss of agricultural land yearly, and to measures which could be taken to make good such loss; and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I rise to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. We have all enjoyed the remarks of my noble friend, Lord Winterton, which he has just delivered in his unrivalled manner and which form an admirable prelude to the line that. I hope the debate will take. He knows better than anybody what the countryman feels, and we shall certainly hope that some of his remarks on the points to which he has drawn attention will not fall on deaf ears. I have felt great hesitation in addressing your Lordships for the first: time, and I should never have ventured to do, so except on the subject of the dwindling world sources of food supply, which has on various occasions been cogently placed before your Lordships by, among others, the noble Viscount, Lord Bruce of Melbourne, and the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Orr.
  I should perhaps declare my interest, as an owner of some marshes, and that I happen to be chairman of a county council coast protection committee. The yearly loss of land suitable for husbandry has given rise to so many sets of figures being pressed upon our notice that we are in danger of being made dizzy by them. I think it will suffice of we take note of tendencies—as, for instance, that 2¾million acres fewer are at the farmers' disposal than was the case in 1887. Again, the yearly loss between the wars seems to be agreed at about 24,000 acres, while during the last five or six years the annual loss stands at 50,000 acres, and demands of all kinds of development, including the re-housing of half the population during the next twenty years, are expected to be of the order of 100,000 acres a year. From these figures it is evident that food acreage is very much

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  a wasting asset. One does not have to be the managing director of a quarry or a gravel winning company, who finds his reserves beginning to show exhaustion, to decide what one should do. The first thing is to set on foot a prospecting campaign to disclose fresh reserves of basic material. We cannot continue giving lip service to the idea that we must increase food production, and yet continue to take good agricultural land for other uses at this rate. Concurrently with this diminishing food plot, there is an acceleration of the world's birth statistics—70,000 extra mouths to feed each new day. This rate greatly outstrips the growth of new food production. The figure and statement were given a fortnight ago in Rome by the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation.
  I will say just one word now, about loss and gain of land around our coasts. Over a period we have lost over one million acres, but over the same period this loss is offset by a gain of about the same amount on our West and South-West coasts. I should like to know if it is possible to say whether, by embankments or other means, such accretion has been made into serviceable land. Let me now give two instances of the rate of destruction on our East coast by the sea. In 1838, at Overstrand, the sea was distant 220 yards from the present undermined coast road—an average attrition of nearly two yards a year. That is vouched for by an old tithe map and parchments. In our own times, on a Suffolk shore the northward return of the tide, and the periodic surges which are caused by wind velocity, have rubbed off the projecting land known as Covehithe Cliffs, between the years 1925 and 1953 (for which measurements have been taken), so that the land owner has lost a farm at the rate of 30 feet a year and a set of farm buildings. My Lords, we have suffered these losses in the past. It is clear that we can no longer continue to deplore them, but must now decide upon action. This Victorian attitude of laisser faire we must now outgrow.
  I wish next to advert to various classes of misused or disused land, to each of which I would attach a question—and I hope the noble Lord who is to reply will be able to answer them. First, can we
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  afford so low a density of housing as formerly? The Dutch are notably pinched for space: enormous programmes of modern flats have recently been carried out there. May we not be forced to recast our ideas and our preferences as to flats? Can we afford single-storey schools, or such wide verges as are seen along trunk roads—the cause of many unprofitable hours spent in their maintenance? Many a losing battle has been fought over the requirements of the Services. They must exercise somewhere, of course—but where? Surely the last place where an R.A.F. bombing school should remain based is the southern shore of the Wash, possessing silt soil now ripe for embankment—the richest soil in England.
  Then I would ask: Are the Government willing to offer grants to the authorities who are now trying to free what used to be first-class arable or grass farms from the superimposed slag heaps and other industrial waste? Are businesses which now hold land surplus to their requirements to be allowed to leave these acres idle? Should they not accept direction from officers of the National Advisory Agricultural Service? Has the Minister of Housing and Local Government power so that he can insist on the "in-filling"(a horrible new term, now often used) of unbuilt on spaces in towns, before he will sanction the acquisition of slices of neighbouring rural areas for dormitories? In the case of catchment areas for town water supplies, has the Minister power to direct that stock must be allowed to graze, provided they are fenced off from streams which they might contaminate? When development plans are all in the possession of the Minister concerned with planning, will he consider himself accountable for the land that has to be allotted for public uses, so that he can tell the farming community how much agricultural land the Government find they can spare for food production? If the foregoing comprises most categories of land for which Ministers are willing to seek powers, in order to preserve land capable of use for producing food, may we not expect to achieve some reduction of those yearly figures of loss which I gave earlier?
  Before I turn to the search for further areas which could be developed for agriculture, I would pay my humble tribute

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  to the success which the hill farming and stock-rearing Acts have achieved, for which an appropriation of £22 million was stipulated. Of that sum, I understand that £9 million has been disbursed in grants on marginal land improvement, and I feel that, in common fairness, a comparable sum should be found for the reclamation of better lands which will produce higher output—I am referring to the insufficiently drained valleys, to estuaries and harbours. It is my hope that the Minister of Agriculture will send out teams of soil surveyors to sample these areas. Where these samples are promising, schemes of embankment may well prove an economic proposition. I need not remind your Lordships that some of the richest bearing soils of England are found at these levels.
  It may well be that in certain estuaries and creeks, no longer traversed by barge traffic, the entry of sea water could be regulated by locks set in a barrier at the mouth, or at a distance from it, to exclude the higher tides which at present drown these potentially good lands. A reinforcing argument for this is the economies that could be made on river wall maintenance, so saving a headache for the river boards who cannot now obtain sufficient funds on their restricted precept-money to ensure ample safety of the banks. I know what I am talking about. The other day £25,000 had to be cut off the budget of the local river board with which I am concerned, because they had not got the money, and they had to make economies of £25,000 on maintenance. An East Coast estuary, on the average, has between 25 and 60 miles of river walls. No Government grant is available for their maintenance. It is capital works which attract grants.
  Returning to these suggested harriers. I would point out that they could also carry roads across river mouths and thereby greatly shorten communications. Naturally, I am thinking of my own county when I make that remark; I am not familiar with conditions in other counties. I am well aware that if the measures which I advocate were taken, there would be an outcry from fishermen and wildfowlers, as indeed there was in the 17th century over the matter of draining the Fens. In the reins of James I and Charles I projects in this connection, which had been set on foot
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  by adventurous spirits, were withstood by all sorts of people who did not like new ways, and in the troublous times preceding the Civil War the commoners and the fenmen saw their opportunity to break down sluices and undo the good done by these adventurers. It was left to Oliver Cromwell to foster and favour the Act that completed the work of drainage. The foreshore and land over which the tides move are Crown property, vested in the Crown Lands Commissioners, and not within the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture. The Board of Trade, I understand, have jurisdiction in certain respects, as have the Ministry of Transport in regard to keeping open channels of navigation. Perhaps there is thus an obstacle to the action which I am suggesting should be undertaken by the Ministry of Agriculture, for there appears to be a plethora of Ministries concerned. It seems that the Government may have to consider and decide how to enable the Minister of Agriculture to make a start with schemes of reclamation. When the Minister of Agriculture is empowered to proceed, perhaps he will offer grants to private reclamation schemes, in order to show that he will back and encourage frontagers who are willing to adventure their resources in this direction.
  Finally, to recur once more to the loss of land on our coasts by attrition by waves, I would point out that security there from is bound up with the care of the foreshore, doctoring it with groynes, thereby widening and flattening the beach. In my submission it is these foreshores and these beaches that the guardians of Crown rights should take over, for no one else will have the money needed for more or less frequent series of groynes, which are the best builders of safety. This soft eastern edge of England needs continuous inspection and an integrated plan throughout its length. Problems vary with each stretch of beach, but the minds which direct must be in liaison with one another; techniques must be pooled; lessons learned from experience, and applied. This unity must be imposed by the Government as the senior partner and chief paymaster. This friable coast needs comprehensive attention. It should be dressed n a one-piece suit, not a tattered garment through which unprotected cliffs and shore are seen to remain

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  vulnerable. The aggregate of coast protection authorities have not the financial scope, nor the staffs to cope with these technical and large contracts. Most of these authorities are necessarily self-centred and largely occupied with their tourist attractions, their bungalows and their camp sites, and sometimes with schemes which they will need to link up with river board action; that means dealing with two Ministers—two Ministers for the sea and the coast.
  In short, it would seem better to have a master plan under one Minister—after consultation with the local coast protection authorities, of course. Often after storm damage action has been delayed too long. Wind and waves wait for no one. Often action taken by a promenade-owning authority has remitted a legacy of beach damage to its poorer rural neighbour further down the coast. In such cases, wise overall direction would appreciate that the two authorities were, so to speak, not a matched pair, and that they would be better bracketed together for purposes of a joint scheme. We read that in the times of the Romans, to check the incursions of the Saxons it was found necessary to appoint a Count of the Saxon Shore. In our day, to keep the sea out of the same coasts it is considered that one commander is not enough, but that it is necessary to have at least two Ministers for the job. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
  5.7 p.m.
  THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I hope it will not be thought presumptuous of me, so much his junior in years, to congratulate the noble Earl on his most interesting maiden speech. The noble Earl listens to our debates very regularly. It is perhaps even more meritorious to listen than to speak. I know that we are all delighted that he has taken the plunge and, in view of his long experience of this matter in East Anglia, we hope that he will contribute again to our agricultural debates. We are also grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, for drawing attention to some glaring examples of the wastage of our soil at the present time. May I, before going further, thank the noble Earl for furnishing the Opposition with a copy of his notes. It was a most unusual step,
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  but a very welcome one, and one which is perhaps typical of the total lack of Party spirit which prevails in this House when dealing with matters of agricultural policy.
  Derelict land, with which the noble Earl was largely concerned—clear-felled, scrub or heath—is perhaps the worst example of this wastage of land and food production. Another example to which the noble Earl referred at some considerable length results, I think, in even greater loss of food or timber. I refer to the present misuse of common land. I maintain—and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, will take my plea into consideration—that it would be extremely valuable, both for forestry and for agriculture, if there were made a fresh survey of the common land in the country. A survey was made a long time ago, but it is now completely out of date. If we had an up-to-date survey we should at least know the amount of land still available as common land, how much of it is properly managed and reasonably productive, and the different uses to which that land is being put. I should be greatly surprised to find that more than a small fraction of our common land was being used to the best advantage at the present time. After all, the villagers who graze their stock on the neighbouring common lack the capital required to improve the quality of the grass which a land owner or a farmer may be able to afford. Again, villagers who use the common usually have not enough livestock or sufficient skill in animal husbandry to take full advantage of the available pasture or rough grazing.
  It is difficult to know what the remedy is. The noble Earl, Lord Winterton, suggested one. I do not believe that half measures will be sufficient. I think the Government will have to ask Parliament for powers to acquire land that has been wasted in this way, compensating the commoners, of course, for their loss of rights and providing access wherever that is practicable and desirable. If this were done, it would then be possible for the public authorities to lease the commons to farmers or land owners or, where the soil is too poor for crops or grass, to the Forestry Commission for the planting of timber. In this way we should get more livestock and we should

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  add to our scanty supplies of home-grown timber. I do not see how we can get what we want by voluntary agreement. We have gone as far as we can along that line, and I think the Government must now take firm action and ask for compulsory powers to use in cases where this kind of land has been grossly neglected over a long period of time.
  In his Motion the noble Earl is mainly concerned with the rehabilitation of derelict land is the southern half of the country. I do not think he over-estimated the magnitude of the problem. We all want this problem solved, as keenly as he does, but I very much wonder whether we have envisaged the scale of the problem or the magnitude of the remedy which will be required if the problem is to be solved. I think we must have a much larger capital investment in agriculture. Briefly, that is the only answer to under-production. At present, in my view, agriculture is not receiving a sufficiently high priority in the capital investment programme. This is a matter for the Government to decide. Of course, the capital needed for the rehabilitation of large areas of marginal and derelict land would be far beyond the means of the ordinary farmer and land owner, and I think it would be unreasonable for them to accept the risk.
  If I may draw attention to the statement of policy on agriculture that has been published recently by the Party to which I adhere, I would point out that we have said in that statement that:
  "Reclamation schemes will be operated as public enterprises, with farmers as tenants."
  We are convinced that there is a great deal of land (I am not quoting row, but broadly this is the, proposal) in Wales and in the Scottish Highlands, as well as in Southern England, that could produce more food if more money were spent on it. Only the State can find sufficient money for the conversion of large areas of marsh land, arid heath and bracken-covered hillsides into fertile farms. We believe that home food production could be greatly increased by Government-sponsored schemes of irrigation, drainage, and ploughing up and re-seeding of derelict land. It is for schemes of these types that we maintain a much greater volume of capital is required.
  Perhaps I may be allowed to give two examples of the sort of reclamation
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  schemes that we have in mind. In the valleys of the Test. Avon and Itchen there are about 10,000 acres of waterlogged but potentially fertile land. By dredging these rivers, and by the use of other measures for preventing floods, this land could be made available for crops and livestock. The river boards, however, lack the resources and the powers for this work at the present time and, therefore, have failed to put this land into full production. Here is my second example. In Somerset there is an area of 150,000 acres of potentially good land which is largely wasted because no serious attempt has been made to dispose of the water which drains into the central plain from the surrounding hills. Here again, a comprehensive drainage scheme is needed for the whole area. This would be a very big operation, and money would have to be provided by the State. My short point here is this. It is now part of the official policy of the Labour Party to increase capital investment in agriculture by the reclamation of marginal and derelict land. I hope that noble Lords opposite will be prepared to borrow this item of our policy. We should be highly honoured and favoured if they were to do so. Unless this is done, I do not believe that we shall see a substantial increase in production from this type of land. The present system, to which I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, will refer, of providing grants to farmers on marginal land or under livestock-rearing schemes, is far too gentle a stimulus to make much impact on production.
  Now, may I say a word about the forestry side of the noble Earl's Motion? I think it is no less important than his references to agriculture. I will be as brief as I can, because many noble Lords with great knowledge of agriculture want to take part in this debate, which unfortunately began rather late; so I will cut down what I had intended to say. The Forestry Act of 1951 has now been in operation for two years, and most owners who are either managing their woods privately under approved schemes or are willing to part with their land to the Forestry Commission have already done so. Therefore, there is a growing shortage of plantable land that can be acquired on a voluntary basis, and this shortage of land for planting will ultimately result in an acute shortage of

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  home-grown timber unless more derelict or unplanted private woodlands are secured by the Forestry Commission. The only way in which this unplanted land can be acquired, failing the agreement of the owner, is by using the power of compulsory purchase which is incorporated in the Forestry Act, but that power has not been used except in a small way for adjusting boundaries. I hope the Government will consider this matter very carefully. I hope they will think seriously about the desirability of using compulsion where persuasion has not been successful, before we are faced by an inevitable timber shortage. It must be done in time, otherwise the woods will not be planted and the timber will not be mature when we want it.
  That is a general statement which I should like to amplify by examples from the area with which the noble Earl was dealing—the southern counties. In no part of the country is compulsory purchase more clearly needed than in some of the counties in the South and South-East, to which the noble Earl referred. May I give one or two figures, as few as I can? Only 2·6 per cent. of the private woodlands in the South-Eastern Conservancy of the Forestry Commission are either dedicated or managed according to the approved plan. It follows that 97·4 per cent. of the private woodlands in this area are not fully productive, and this includes about 70,000 acres of completely derelict woodland, clear felled or scrub, or whatever it may be, where the trees have been felled at any time since the First World War and where there is still no prospect of replanting. It should be noted that in none of the other four conservancies into which the country is divided is less than 10 per cent. of private woodlands fully productive, so that there is only one-fifth in full production in the South-East, as compared with the worst performances in other parts of the country.
  Of course, the reason for this bad record in the Home Counties is that these properties have so often been required for reasons not connected with agriculture or forestry—for sporting reasons and so on. Although it may be exceptional for land owners not to exercise a sense of responsibility, if this sense of responsibility is not shown then it becomes all the more necessary for the
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  Government to step in and secure the national interest in good forestry which cannot be secured in any other way. I hope that one of the results of this debate may be that people will become more aware of the dangerous situation into which we are drifting, owing to the fact that such areas of plantable land are being left derelict and unused because owners cannot afford to plant, or do not wish to part with them, at the present moment.
  5.20 p.m.
  LORD CRANWORTH: My Lords, I am pleased to intervene in this debate for a few moments, if only for the purpose of congratulating my old friend the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle. It is good to see that in the later years of his middle age—at all events, he is a mere chicken compared to me—he has at last come forward to address us. I am sure your Lordships will agree with me when I express the hope that, now that he has once tasted meat, he will regale us on many future occasions, because I am sure we have all greatly appreciated what he has had to say.
  This is not the first time that this subject has been debated in your Lordships' House nor do I expect it will be the last; and it has been debated not only here but in many places. I have read, as have no doubt many of your Lordships, articles by great authorities, and listened to some notable speeches on this point by that great man and practical agriculturist Sir James Turner. He repeats his point again and again. He draws attention to the fact that we are an over-populated island, that we cannot feed ourselves, and that our agricultural land is going down in quantity. But, more important, he brings forward the point that the exportable surplus of food is getting scarcer, and that in Asia and in North and South America there are no longer large surpluses, because the population of those areas is increasing even faster than our own, and they are demanding (and why should they not?) a higher standard of living and more food. If all those things are true, it is a serious state of affairs with which we are faced. Yet it seems to me sometimes that we take it very lightly.
  Having read those articles and listened to those speeches, I still do not know what is our annual loss of agricultural

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  land. I heard a new figure today which interested me. The figure which was given to me originally, and which I used to quote, was 60,000 acres a year. That is a convenient figure to quote, because one can go on to say that it represents about 100 square miles a year which sounds a good deal more impressive than when you mention it in acres. Then, feeling that that was too large, I came down to 50,000 acres a year, and I endeavoured to get some authoritative information on the subject. But the most authoritative information I could get was the statement by the Minister of Agriculture in February of last year, when he said in another place that during the last sixteen years the average loss of agricultural land had been 45,000 acres. He went on to say, however—which I did not quite understand—that during the last six years, owing to land being restored to agriculture, the average loss was only 13,000 acres a year: and that, of course, is a more manageable figure.
  We have already heard to-day some of the causes for this loss of agricultural land. To go through them briefly, there is housing, which probably accounts for the greater part; there are reservoirs; the Forestry Commission take some—and although we all know how exceptionally important it is to grow full quantities of timber, may be even more important to grow enough food to feed ourselves; there is opencast mining of coal and ironstone. Then there are the Ministry of Supply and the war Departments; the educational authorities, with their demand for more and more playing fields; and the Ministry of Transport, demanding bigger and wider roads on which people can go faster and faster and kill more and more of their fellow men. All those Government Departments are what we may call land-grabbing Departments; they grab agricultural land, nearly always for the best of causes, and use it for their own purposes. The only land-saving Department is the Ministry of Agriculture, which has to fight them one by one and often has to fight a conglomeration of them, because they have a habit of backing each other up. I was interested last week to hear a weighty speech by the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, on satellite towns. He upbraided the Ministry of Agriculture for the vexatious and trivial objections which they made to the taking of land for towns, and he
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  earnestly appealed to them that they should not stand in he way, but should allow each of these towns to have all the land they required, where and when they required it. The poor Ministry of Agriculture have to do their best. We have heard of the various people who have taken this land.
  I was glad to hear the noble Earl who moved this Motion refer to one other thing—namely, nature, who, when put to it, has shown that she can do in a few hours more in the way of food destruction than the people of this country are able to do in as many years. I yield to no one in admiration of what the Government did after the great catastrophe during the winter, in the way of alleviating suffering, restoring damage and paying out compensation. But, like the noble Earl, I am bound to say that I feel a certain doubt as to the long-term policy that is now being adopted. For my sins—and they are many—I was chairman of a catchment board, and I know of no more frustrating job than that. We had a very good board and a good engineer, and we knew our dykes, ditches, sea walls and sea defences as well as they could be known. We knew what had to be done; we knew the danger, and what would happen if it was not done. But we could not do it. We were frustrated, first, because we had nothing like enough money to do what we wanted to do and we had no means of getting more and, furthermore, we not only did not get the co-operation of other bodies, but often suffered their enmity and opposition. No doubt the new river boards, stronger bodies with more resources, will do much better than we did. Nevertheless, I feel sure that some of the river boards will find the same frustration, and will not have enough money.
  I would recall to your Lordships that towards the end of the Second World War a resolution which had been agreed to by every major agricultural body in England was sent to the Ministry. It was to the effect that sea walls and sea defences should be a national charge. I believe I seconded that resolution, and I see no reason to go back on that opinion, which I still hold. After all, to those of us who live on the East Coast the sea is just as much an enemy as a national enemy. She wages unceasing war. Sometimes it is only what might be called

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  patrol action. She gains a trench or two here, and occasionally we get a trench or two back. But this year she made a prolonged onslaught and took away hundreds of thousands of acres at an estimated cost of £50 million. I feel very strongly that we should eventually see that these sea walls and sea defences are a national charge.
  In the same way, if this emergency is as great as we are led to believe by the highest authorities, surely this is a national matter rather than a sectional one. Those of your Lordships who work, as many of you do, on local government committees, county councils, planning committees and urban and rural district councils, know, as I know, that not one week-day during the year goes by without some demand being made on our agricultural land. And, what is more, they are highly defensible demands: they are all for things that are needed. They are all for things that one would support were it not for the other overriding conditions. When the demand comes forward, shall we say, for a new playing field, the members of the education committee, without a doubt, will support it, as will quite likely the majority of the council before whom it comes.
  I feel that the time is ripe when this matter should be considered on a national basis. I should like to see a plan or survey covering all the land we must lose during the next ten years (we must lose some land every year, though we might lose a great deal less than we are losing now) and indicating how we are to replace that land. Several ideas have been put before us to-day, but, broadly speaking, the replacement must come from utilising land which is not at present being used, such as land taken from the sea, marginal land and things like that. The other method is to step up production on the land we have. I feel that the noble Earl has reintroduced a matter of really grave importance on which a big decision will have to be taken sooner or later; and, for my part, I support the noble Earl in thinking the sooner the better.
  5.34 p.m.
  LORD WISE: My Lords, I wish to deal essentially with the first Motion on the Order Paper, as moved by the noble Earl, Lord Winterton. Before I come to that, I should like to make one or two
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  remarks of a local character from this side of the House, with regard to what the two noble Lords from the other side, who come from Norfolk and Suffolk, have said about the catastrophe which has overtaken East Anglia during the last few months. I have no doubt that those remarks will have been heard with interest by, at any rate, one noble Lord who sits on the other side of the House and who is interested at this particular moment in what is likely to happen in the future in regard to sea erosion and protection. Interested as I am in protection from the sea in my own area, I could not put the case better than, or as well as, the noble Lord, Lord Cranworth, has just done. On two recent occasions we in the Fenland country have suffered greatly from flooding, and it is a little ironical that, in that area of country which is so productive, so well farmed and so well used by the agriculturist, we are always at the risk of the elements and the tides. All I wish to say about it—because I do not want to state our own case, which is already known—is that I hope that, whatever happens in the future, sufficient money will be forthcoming from the Government, not only to safeguard agriculture for the generations of the future but to safeguard that very fine area of land for the national purposes of food production.
  The noble Earl, Lord Winterton, referred to a problem in the southern counties, but the problem which he has in mind is not peculiar to the southern counties; it is common to us all. I wish to impress upon the Government that greater steps should be taken to put this matter right. I hate to think that the non-cultivation of land, the waste of good farming land, is nobody's business at present. It surely must be somebody's business. It is the business of all of us to see that our lands are properly cultivated, stocked and cropped. The noble Earl, Lord Winterton, made mention of a rail journey. We have all made rail journeys, and we all look at the farming lands on either side—it is the customary procedure. I believe that a rail journey can be taken through any part of this country, and acres and acres of badly cultivated land can be seen. I think I am right when I say that we are taking steps forward in cleaning our arable land and

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  growing better cereal crops; we are taking steps forward in regard to stock rearing and the like; but there are thousands of acres of pasture land which need attention at the moment.
  Only this morning I saw a herd of cattle in a pasture field, nearly the whole of which was covered with scrub. On the other side, I saw another pasture field which was half covered by thistles, nettles and such like. That is the type of land which I think we should try to tackle and put right. Perhaps some are 100 per cent. all right, but there are probably very few farms where there is not an acre or two of land such as that to which I refer, which could not be better treated, which could not be cleaned and made to carry a greater head of stocks. I do not want to deal with large areas, because I think those are areas which may have to be tackled by the Government as a whole; I am thinking in terms of these fields, some small and some larger, on individual farms. We should try to devise some ways and means whereby we can help the occupiers of these lands not merely to window-dress but to bring these fields back into profitable cultivation. I know that it is a matter of money; I know that there are certain Government grants which help; and many of your Lordships were present at a debate some two or three months ago when I referred to the Elyeden enterprise. The noble Earl, Lord Iveagh, happened to be here and he intervened in the debate and said, "It is all right: I have made a wonderful experiment; but the whole thing turns on money, more money, and still more money."
  Now, my Lords, it is quite impossible, in these times at any rate, for the individual occupier of land, whether he is a tenant or an owner occupier, to pour a lot of money into reclaiming land which possibly should never have fallen sown, whether to had turf, bushes or what-not. Therefore the Government should, if possible, step in and make some sort of financial contribution in the way of a loan or of cheaper money than we are able to obtain at the present time, to the occupiers of land under the control or, if you will, the direction of the agricultural committees. I am all in favour of doing it by mutual arrangement, rather than by force; I am all in favour of the
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  agricultural executive committees surveying this land, meeting the occupiers, and so on, in order to make arrangements whereby the land can be put right. But I want to ask the Government, if they possibly can, to give aid to British agriculture in this direction. I am quite sure that the occupiers of land will respond very readily if only they have the means whereby they can bring this land back into productive cultivation once again.
  At this hour, when so many noble Lords wish to speak, I do not wish to make any further points. I was anxious to deal with the matter which was raised by the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, with regard to individual fields. He dealt with the commons and the roadside wastes, and also the railway embankments and the rest; but I think our concern is to make full use of the land which now requires attention. In conclusion, I would say that in the Fen country, where land is valuable, uncultivated land is hardly existent. People in the Fens cultivate the land they know the value of it; and one can often find, even in the ditches, apple or other fruit trees growing, and potatoes growing right up to the edge of the banks. I want to try to persuade the agricultural community as a whole to make use of their land in the same way as these people in the Fen country do.
  5.46 p.m.
  VISCOUNT HUDSON: My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Cranworth, has said, this subject of agriculture has been the theme of debates in your Lordships' House on many occasions; but the question that worries me is whether, as a result of all these debates, we are "any forrarder." The history of the loss of agricultural land is, very briefly, as follows. In the inter-war years we lost a certain amount; during the war we lost a very great deal, largely because of the requirements of the Services, which we were unable to prevent; and after the war, I think it is fair to say, very largely as the result of the work of Professor Stamp, among others, many people in the country began to realise the danger that faced us and the extent of our loss of agricultural land. But, unfortunately, that has not prevented in The Minister of Agriculture was placed, theoretically, through the reforms that we made during the war, and afterward; in the 1947 Act, in a more powerful position—theoretically, at all events, as I say; but in fact

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  I think he would be the first to admit that he has been very largely defeated in detail. I think probably the time has come when the suggestion put forward by Lord Cranworth is worthy of serious consideration—that is, whether we cannot get some national machinery which would make a general survey and determine, over a sufficiently long period of years to be worth while, how much land can, in fact, be afforded by agriculture to other pressing needs.
  I think there is a danger in suggesting that, by some means, if you lose 10,000 acres of land from somewhere you can restore the position by reclaiming another 10,000 somewhere else. That is not the case in the great majority of instances. What is being taken by these various authorities is the best land—land that is absolutely irreplaceable; land, for example, around London. I quoted the other day the remaining horticultural land close to London for the production of vegetables for the people there. It is no good saying that that could be made good by reclaiming 10,000 or, if you like, 50,000 acres in the hill land of Scotland. It cannot: that land has gone, and gone forever. What we need, therefore, is some body with power to say to these great Corporations, "You are not going to take this particular land; you have got to have alternative land of less agricultural value." I think a different outlook is required, probably, on the part of the public.
  I was shocked to read in the papers, last week I think, that the Chairman of the London County Council announced quite calmly that London would require more houses for 311,000 families. He seemed quite satisfied—I hope I am not being unfair to him—that that statement by itself entitled him to send his minions travelling round London to take any land to build houses for this number, irrespective of the value to agriculture of the land concerned. I quoted in the debate last week a case of the acquisition of market-gardening land in Slough. There is another case at Rainham. I quoted a year ago a case in the Black Country, when by the expenditure of a certain amount of money, with the addition of modern machinery, slag heaps, pit dumps and derelict buildings could have been reclaimed. If that had been done, it
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  would have served the double purpose of beautifying the towns and removing blots from the landscape, and providing enough housing land for the next ten years, without the need to go into agricultural land around Warwickshire.
  I suggest to my noble friend that he should see whether he cannot get the Minister of Agriculture to set up some general survey; and, above all, get the agreement of his colleagues, because it is perfectly clear he is fighting to-day a lone battle. Apart from the handicap of not being in the Cabinet, he is exposed to attack from half a dozen different Ministries—the three Service Ministries, the Ministry of Supply, the Board of Trade and a whole lot more. The only body we have saved is the Forestry Commission. Before the war the Forestry Commision was one of the greatest sinners. I remember being shown with pride by the chairman at that time the excellent agricultural land that he had bought at a knock-out price and which he was planting with trees. One of the things that gave me the greatest pleasure during the war was when I took 600 acres of land that he had planted four or five years previously and ploughed it up, and the committee obtained a good crop of wheat from it. That is an example of the sort of land the Commission took in the past when the Minister of Agriculture had no veto. Now things are slightly better, because the Forestry Commission is under the Ministry of Agriculture and it should be possible to arrange for a proper division of land into land for planting and land for sheep farming in the hills.
  The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Wise, both seem to visualise some future when, if ever they got back into power, they would be able to use an unlimited amount of public money for the reclamation of land. Believe me, a fairly long experience has shown that the provision of money is not the most important thing. If I wanted to be controversial and take up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Wise, raised about land on either side of the railways, I would ask him why when his Party was in office and the railways were nationalised, nothing was done. The fact of the matter is that for the most part railways in this country were built up valleys, and the creation of embankments interfered

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  with normal drainage. Through the effluxion of time the land has sunk, and the inverts to the culverts which were meant originally to provide exits for the water on either side have now become higher than the surrounding land. The cost of remedying this state of affairs would be simply fantastic. My experience during the war showed me that it was certain that the cost of putting the rush-covered fields on either side into a proper condition would far exceed the productive value of the land when it had been done.
  LORD WISE: I think the noble Viscount has misunderstood me. I was not referring to the pieces of land, half water and half rush, on either side of the railways, the reasons for which I know. I was referring to farm land which was in occupation and in use, and which was not as clear as it might be.
  VISCOUNT HUDSON: I am sorry if I misinterpreted the noble Lord. He talked about the railways and what he had seen, and I assumed that he was referring to the acres of land one sees whenever one takes a journey by train.
  The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the vast areas of land that could be reclaimed. I beg leave to doubt whether, however much you spent, you could do it, and whether the return would be commensurate with the expenditure. So far as the Sussex Weald is concerned, I am reasonably certain that if he offered the land to the Forestry Commission to be replanted the Forestry Commission would say, "Thank you very much, but we will not take it, because it would be wholly uneconomical." On the other hand, there is much to be said for the view put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Winterton, that a good deal of this land could be reclaimed for agriculture because it is fundamentally good, strong land. The only question that arises is economics. He quoted a figure of £33. I am not qualified to say whether it is correct or not, but it is quite clear that the test is whether the cost of bulldozing the land is greater than its ultimate value for agriculture. If it is lower it is worth it; if it is higher it is not. I should say it would be very much better that such money as we can afford, which is definitely limited, should be spent on product on, though I do not believe in production for its own sake,
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  or that production irrespective of cost is worth while. No doubt we could produce bananas in this country if we were prepared to spend the money, but it would be completely uneconomic.
  EARL WINTERTON: I think the noble Viscount is really criticising what I said. I never suggested for a moment that it should be done if it were not economic. I said there should be an investigation. Since the war there have been great improvements in the turning over of land, and all I ask for is an investigation. It has been done, and I hope the noble Viscount will not give the impression that we cannot afford to turn good land into agricultural land.
  VISCOUNT HUDSON: I still say it depends on economics, but I do not think there is any difference of opinion between us. There are some cases where it could be done, and some where it could not. We want to look into these questions, particularly the question of marginal land; and my own personal opinion is that a good deal of money spent to-day on marginal land is in the long run fundamentally unprofitable. The same amount of money and energy devoted to these schemes for so-called marginal land, if applied to arable land already in existence and under cultivation in the lowland areas of this country, would produce very much greater returns in the national economy.
  5.59 p.m.
  LORD AILWYN: My Lords, in rising to support the Motion I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Albemarle on his long and eargerly-awaited emergence from a state of innocent, demure maidenhood to fully-fledged maturity. I think noble Lords will agree that he has taken the hurdle with singular grace and charm, and think he will feel that his speech was well rewarding. I should not ordinarily venture to align myself with the very formidable phalanx of agricultural experts that are always, as to-day, available in your Lordships' House, but it so happens that loss of agricultural, land is occurring on my own doorstep, and in the circumstances I think it right that public expression should be given to the matter.
  Being somewhat closely involved, I should perhaps declare an interest, even though not quite in the usually accepted

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  sense. Seventeen years ago, I was looking for a small property, secluded and rural. I found it, a Georgian house with twenty acres set down in the middle of some of the best agricultural land in East Anglia. With the exception of one cottage and two farms a quarter of a mile distant, there was no house nearer than half a mile away on the approach road to the neighbouring county borough. A field road, bordered by hedges and crops, was the only approach: a perfect example of peaceful, rustic serenity, security and productivity. In so far as it was possible to guess, and in the opinion of those best qualified to judge at the time, any tentacles thrown out by the town in question would be on the far side of the town, where there were hundreds of acres of rough heath land, useless for any purpose other than for building and, moreover, in the direction of existing factories and their possible extensions. The agricultural land and I felt pretty secure.
  In 1944, the local authorities decided to build a vast new housing estate. Did they go to the rough ground, the rough unproductive ground to the east, land calling aloud to be put to its one useful purpose—building—but valueless for anything else? No; they turned covetous eyes on the agricultural land to the southwest of the town of which I have spoken. A compulsory purchase order was made in 1948; it was objected to by those who owned and farmed the good land. Their objection was strongly supported by the National Farmers' Union. The usual dreary procedure followed: a public inquiry by a Ministry of Health Inspector; objections ruthlessly overruled; the compulsory purchase order confirmed by the Ministry of Health; and, to-day, complete obliteration of what was first-class agricultural land, and a scene of utter desolution, as the bulldozers lacerate the good earth, uproot the trees, flatten the hedgerows and prepare to build. I quite realise that in many parts of the country this sort of vandalism is unavoidable: discrimination is impossible; there are no alternatives to despoiling the land. But here is a case where alternatives existed but were callously ignored, and what I cannot understand is how the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Food can have allowed such a crime to be perpetrated against the countryside. It is the enormous stupidity of it all that stag-
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  gers one. It is "like a great monster eating its own flesh," as one newspaper put it.
  The example I have mentioned, a mere 300 acres out of the 50,000 acres that we are told is being lost annually, is, of course, no responsibility whatever of Her Majesty's present Government. The enormity was perpetrated long before they assumed power. All one can do is to express the hope that the most urgent attention is being paid at the present time to preventing a recurrence of such melancholy and suicidal actions. I hope, now that the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, has emerged from purdah, we shall hear from him frequently in defence of the land he knows and loves so well.
  6.5 p.m.
  LORD MELCHETT: My Lords, at this late hour I want to restrict my contribution to one aspect of the subject of the Motion. I have listened with great interest to the arguments which have been put forward to restrict the use of farm land for other types of development, and I must say I cannot raise quite such enthusiasm as most of your Lordships have for that cause. I base that view entirely on the fact that we are not making proper use of the land which is at the moment available to agriculture; nor, I am afraid, for the same reason, can I raise such enthusiasm for the cause of bringing into cultivation commons, marginal land and other types of land which have been mentioned. I believe also that fairly good economy in the use of land is being exercised on the part of the Government, and that the machinery for examining each of the requests for taking land for the purposes of other types of development really works quite well.
  Whenever you want to take a piece of land it always seems to become the most valuable land, the one field that grows more than any other in the district. Of course, there must be cases where good land has been taken and where other sites might have done. We are a highly industrialised country, and, if we are going to remain competitive in the world markets, we have not only to renew and modernise existing industries but constantly to develop new processes and new projects. Obvious examples are the big oil refineries, the big chemical works that have been built for production of

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  artificial fibres, and the power stations and other similar projects which have been undertaken since the war, nearly all of which demand some using up of land which was formerly available to agriculture. We have to face the fact that there will be this continued loss of land; but, in saying that, I do not want to give the impression that there is any reason for not exercising the greatest economy in the use of land. It is essential that the people who are planning building works and such-like projects should, so far as possible, think in terms of remodelling the existing built-up areas, pulling down obsolete buildings and rebuilding within the bounds of existing towns rather than encroaching further upon an ever-diminishing area of agricultural land.
  If I may turn to the aspect of the replacement or the making good of the loss of land, I would suggest that the, way in which we can quite easily make good the loss is by increasing production from the land which is at present being farmed, and thereby make up for the loss of food production we are suffering through the reduction in acreage. The point which stands out above all is that the potential increase of production from our existing acreage is so enormous that the loss of land for other purposes really falls into relative insignificance. There is the often quoted example of grassland. Your Lordships have heard it referred to in many debates in this House in the last two or three years. There are 17½ million acres of grassland in this country, and conservative estimates have suggested that production could be increased by 25 per cent. without any great difficulty. That is equivalent to about 4 million tons of grain which, at to-day's import prices, is worth about £100 million a year. While these vast, untapped sources of production are left, I do not see why one should get too concerned about the loss of land, which I believe is put at somewhere around 50,000 acres per annum. In making that observation I am rather more concerned with the fact that we should produce more from the acres that are left than that we should play down the importance of conserving the land. But I feel that in regard to that aspect of the problem the possibilities of increasing production are much greater than is the need to worry about the acres which are being stolen from the farmer.
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  As I see it, the whole problem is to decide how much importance we attach to food production in this country. What value do we set on the use of land for farming as compared with its use for other purposes? If we view the whole economy, the amount of capital investment which the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to, the amount of resources which we are setting aside for agriculture is really at a very low figure. About 4 per cent. of the total annual investment at the present time is directed into agriculture. Our target of eventual production on the present programme is, in my opinion, very low; and although the rate of increase in production may well be up to the programme, it is also very small.
  I know that we have had a number of production subsidies and other measures which have secured increases in livestock and in other directions during the last few years, but there still seems to be a lack of overall policy as to how much food we intend to produce in this country and for how much we, are going to rely on imports. We must remember that food which is imported has to be paid for by the export of goods abroad and their sale at a profit. Anyone who is concerned in business, in manufacturing or exporting, cannot fail at the present time to be somewhat apprehensive of the rise again of the industrial power of both Germany and Japan. In parallel with that, this afternoon, during the debate on an earlier Motion, we heard from the noble Earl, Lord Airlie, of the tremendous increase in population in the West Indies. There is the same problem all over the world. The noble Earl, Lord Airlie, said that the world is going to starve. It is not an exaggeration to sly that a great deal of the world is starving now, and it is merely a matter of how long people are going to continue starving or how many more people are going to starve as populations grow and food production falls behind. I think that the great need to decide on a long-term plan and decide how much of our effort and resources we are going to devote to the increase of food production here as part of a general economic plan, over-shadows all the other problems which face us.
  I am probably one of the youngest Members of your Lordships' House and I more or less grew up during the last war. From all I have heard, listening

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  to my elders and betters talking, and from what I have read of the events which led up to the last war, the point which impresses me most is the fact that had we faced up early enough to the rearming of Germany and to the problem of preparing ourselves, the whole catastrophe might well have been avoided, or at least might not have been so disastrous. I have a feeling now that the same sort of conditions are working in relation to this appalling problem of food and the readjusting of the economy of this country. One gets a feeling that everyone agrees; people will listen to the argument and agree that something ought to be done. But it is almost impossible actually to get a major and complete readjustment of outlook in order to re-shape the pattern of our economy in the next fifteen or maybe twenty years. It appears impossible to get a new outlook brought into the broad policy of government. I only hope that we wake up to the realities of the post-war world and take the necessary steps before it is too late.
  6.16 p.m.
  LORD MERTHYR: My Lords, I must first apologise to the noble Earl who opened this debate because I was not here when he spoke, which I very much regret. But I should like to take up and discuss very briefly three points which have been mentioned this evening. In the first place, there is the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, when he asked why something more could not be done to reclaim land in some of our tidal estuaries. My Lords, if nothing can be done in the Wash on the Dutch plan and model—and yet I believe a little is being and has been done—surely something could be done in the lesser of our estuaries. The noble Earl discussed those on the East coast. Naturally, we can deal only with those that we know, but I should like to suggest that some of the estuaries on the West coast of this country could be, in part at least, reclaimed from the sea.
  On the West coast there is a large range of tide, the consequence of which is normally, I believe, to leave an enormous expanse of sand and mud at low water and very poor harbours. I feel that in some of these places, with the expenditure, I must admit, of a considerable amount of money, much good could
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  be done in more ways than one; and I believe that such expenditure would pay dividends. In some of these estuaries the mouth of the river is not very wide, and I feel that a dam of no great length put across the mouth could enclose a vast area of land which could be turned into agricultural land. Indeed. I feel that the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, could kill two birds with one stone, because he could have on this reclaimed agricultural land all his wonderful agricultural implements, and in the channels of the river which he would have deepened he could have his fishing boats plying up and down, thereby adding to the prosperity of the fishing trade, in which we all know he has just as much interest as agriculture. I find it fascinating to look at a large-scale map and to think what could be done in that direction if the money, the energy and the enterprise were available. I am bound to confess that I do not see why they should not be available.
  Next, may I refer to a point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, when he dealt with common land. This is a controversial subject, but I agree with the noble Earl that it is one that simply must be tackled. I can conceive of no more inefficient way of cultivating land than when it is done under rights of common. No doubt there are excellent reasons why this method was right centuries ago; I can think of no reason why it should be right now, and, subject to a reservation which I must make in a moment, I think there is an urgent call for a complete review and revision of the law on common land. Of course this must be said: that there are vast differences between conditions in one part of the country and those in another. I am referring particularly to the value of commons for recreation purposes—for what, I think, the law calls "air and exercise." That is a most important point, and it must be borne in mind. With a common in or near London that point becomes of very great importance. It might be—and I think it would be—that in some cases of that kind agricultural interests would have to be subordinated to the interests of the large masses of townspeople, who would be deprived by agricultural interests of their "air and exercise." On the other hand, in other and more distant parts of the country, there are commons to which that does

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  not apply to any appreciable extent. There are commons which are nothing less than a disgrace, and to which the public would never dream of going for "air and exercise," in any event. Who is responsible for this state of affairs? No doubt it would be pleaded that the law in its present state does not allow improvements to be made. I cannot help feeling that in some of these places, in distant parts of the country, the agricultural executive committees should tackle this problem. So I would support a plea for review and revision of the state of the law respecting our commons, provided always that proper facilities remain, in the shape of public footpaths and other such matters, to preserve the rights of recreation for large numbers of people. I believe that the two things could be done, and that they are not incompatible.
  Finally, I should like to say a few words about forestry. For long I have thought that there should be closer links between agriculture and forestry. We have, at the top, the same Minister responsible for both, but when you go down the scale of offices you find that they separate; and when you get down to county level—if I am correct—you find that the county agricultural executive committees are in no way responsible for forestry. If that is correct—and I shall be delighted to be put right if I am wrong—then I think that certain of those committees should have at least one member who is responsible for forestry in the county. Something has been done in this direction, I admit, The most noticeable amount of waste land, in the shape of felled woodland which has never been replanted for a great many years, is being tackled to a small extent—though I think on rather too small a scale.
  I should like to refer for a moment to what I believe is called—at any rate in my part of the world—the Llandovery project. Briefly, it is this. Officers of the Forestry Commission select an area on the map, comb it most carefully and thoroughly to see whether there are not in that area many small bits of land which ought to be put to a better use. Then, if there is no other more appropriate use than forestry, they go to the owner and say very politely, in effect, "Will you plant this lard, or shall we?" I think that is an excellent idea, and I hope that it will be pursued and extended to other
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  parts of the country. I think that is the right way to go about tackling this problem, and the right way to deal with these areas of felled woodland about which nothing whatever is being done. If it is right that the county authorities can go to a farmer and say, "If you do not farm this land you will have to go, and let someone else do it, "why is it not also right for the Forestry Commission to go to an owner of felled woodland and say, "If you do not plant this land, you must let someone else do it. "I do not follow why here should be this difference between the two classes. I agree with all those who have said that in some cases farmland has been taken for trees, and that, in other cases, land which ought to be covered with trees has been taken for agriculture. There is fault on both sides, and if one man was responsible at a lower level, I believe that there would be less fault on both sides. So I would appeal for closer liaison work between those responsible for farming and those responsible for forestry, the result of which, I hope, would be that, in the years to come, there would be far fewer of these small bits of land—some of them far too steep to be used for farming—covered with bracken and gorse which, though they may look very pretty to the artist, are an eyesore to the practical agriculturist.
  6.28 p.m.
  LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I am glad, as I am sure all your Lordships are, that the noble Earl, Lord Winterton and the noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, should have introduced these two Motions for discussion this afternoon, and I should like respectfully to join with all those of your Lordships who have congratulated Lord Albemarle on his speech. If one has to make a maiden speech—and I know how disagreeable a task it is—I can think of no better subject on which to make it than this; and may I add that I cannot remember a maiden speech on the subject better made. I think it is right that your Lordships should concern yourselves with the problem of losses of agricultural land, and what can be done to make good these losses. This afternoon's debate has ranged over a good many different aspects of the problem, and I will do my best—I hope at not undue length—to say something about each of these in turn.

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  I think, from what has been said, that probably the greatest concern expressed by everyone is with regard to the loss of agricultural land for purposes of development: houses, factories, airfields, schools and the like. I realise, as everyone must, that we cannot grow the food we need unless we see that enough land is preserved on which to grow it. Moreover, I know as well as most people—and a good deal better than some—how a farmer feels when he has to give up some of his land for development. It is exasperating to him, and, in many cases, more than that—it may mean some serious difficulty in his farm economy. It ought to happen as seldom as possible. I would only ask those who have shown their concern about this problem to face it squarely, and to accept at the start that we cannot stop development. There are, so far as I know, no exact figures to show how many acres of land are used each year for development, but the most frequently quoted estimate—we have had it this afternoon—is one of about 50,000 acres a year. I do not suppose that that is very far from the mark—though I do not think it includes the requirements of land for the three Services. Development at about this rate has been going on for a good many years, but it seems reasonable to suppose that it will not continue at that pace indefinitely. But, even assuming that the rate of development will fall off later, I think it would be unwise to expect that we should lose much less than 2,000,000 acres over the next sixty years. So, obviously, there is no room for complacency about it. It is against this background that the Government approach the whole problem of preserving our farm land, especially the good land.
  By far the greatest demand on our land comes from housing—housing and everything that goes with it. This makes by far the biggest single demand—up to about 70 per cent. of the total. Mining and mineral extraction take about 15 per cent., industrial development 10 per cent., and miscellaneous items 5 per cent. This is rather a rough and ready division, and it is important to remember that a good deal of the land taken for surface mineral works is later restored to agriculture. But that is the size of the problem we have to face. If, as I have said,
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  we accept that we cannot stop this kind of development, it remains to be decided what we can do to minimise the loss.
  As I see it, the functions of the Government, and of the Minister of Agriculture in particular, are threefold. First, we need to see that, wherever possible, development takes place on land which is agriculturally less valuable. We must do all we can to save the good agricultural land. Secondly, we must ensure that those who develop land do not use it wastefully or extravagantly, and that each development is planned so as to interfere as little as possible with the work of food production on neighbouring farms. Thirdly, we need to do all we can to make good the losses by encouraging the reclamation of land which is not at present being used for agriculture, and by achieving a higher production from the agricultural land which is left.
  The Ministry of Agriculture are consulted on all proposals to take farmland for development. Such proposals are resisted unless we are satisfied that there is for the particular development no alternative site that could reasonably be used with less interference with food production. I may say that our views and recommendations carry a great deal of weight, and no decision is reached without the most careful consideration of the whole matter. We rely on this investigation of each and every proposal as it comes along to achieve the object of cutting the loss of agricultural land to a minimum.
  Beyond this the Government are constantly encouraging and warning developers to pay the greatest possible attention to the imperative need for conserving farmland. I should like to give your Lordships two examples of what has been done in this direction. The Ministry of Housing and Local Government, in a circular issued last August to local authorities, urged them to select poorer land in preference to good land for housing, even if it involved higher development costs. Clearly, at what stage the additional cost might make the choice of an alternative site uneconomic must depend on the circumstances of the particular case; but, generally speaking, housing authorities should be prepared to incur some extra cost where that would enable them to keep off good land. That is the

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  Government's advice to them. Also the Minister of Housing, in a foreword to his Department's publication, The Density of Residential Areas, pointed out that in the past an unnecessary amount of land had too often been used for creating residential areas. Close and compact development saved land and every acre was important.
  I think the procedure for consultation with the Ministry of Agriculture on all proposals for development is, on the whole, working well. The system has its successes from the agricultural point of view, but I suppose it is in the nature of things that we should hear very little about the successes and a great deal about cases where good agricultural land is lost. I was horrified to hear the story which the noble Lord, Lord Ailwyn, told earlier on this afternoon. Naturally, I do not know the details, but if he will be good enough to send me them, I shall be glad to look into this and see why clearance was given for this piece of land. As I have said, our policy must be, and can only be, to strike the right balance between competing demands; and we will certainly be very ready to study any suggestions that might be made to lessen still further the effect of development on our food-producing land.
  One of the suggestions made This afternoon has been that we should have some kind of land budget—nobody called it that, but I think that is what it amounted to. The suggestion is that some central authority should each year decide how much land should be used for housing, schools, roads and various other forms of development. On the face of it this is an attractive suggestion, but it raises all kinds of difficulties. To make the budget effective, we should need to introduce a system for licensing land use in addition to the existing control of development, and a great deal of work would have to be done in keeping the necessary records and issuing the necessary licences to various authorities and individuals. Then again, we could not have a land budget in terms of acreage alone. If we did, an acre in the middle of Dartmoor would count the same as an acre of fertile market garden land in the Fens—and nobody would disapprove of that more than the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson. We should have to take account of the actual or potential food producing capacity of
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  each parcel of land required for development and, of course, this would add very considerably to the complications of the scheme. I am sure that a scheme of this kind would mean a great deal of work and form filling, and in the end would probably be ineffective in reducing the rate of loss of agricultural land.
  The noble Earl, Lord Albemarle, has discussed another very interesting aspect of this problem. He spoke about losses of land through flooding from the sea and through coast erosion, and about the possibilities of reclaiming land from the sea. So far as protection of agricultural land from inundation or erosion is concerned, the lane drainage and coast protection authorities between them have the power to do protective works. They are set up as local authorities where initiative rests with local people, who are regarded as the best judges of the needs of their areas. There is, of course, a good liaison between the authorities and the Ministers concerned, and it is a feature of our public life that a great deal is achieved by this sort of co-operation, which, nevertheless, is a far cry from Government direction. Crown ownership of the foreshore relates, broadly, only to the areas between ordinary high and low water marks, and I do not think that this Crown ownership hinders the activities of land drainage authorities, coast protection authorities or would-be reclaimers of land from the sea.
  My noble friend Lord Albemarle seemed to think that the division of responsibilities among these authorities was unsatisfactory. My noble friend Lord Waverley and his Committee have been specially asked—I quote the terms of reference:
  "to review the lessons to be learned from the disaster"—
  that is the flood disaster—
  "and the administrative and financial responsibilities of the various bodies concerned in providing and maintaining the sea defences and replacing them in the event of damage; … and to make recommendations."
  My noble friend would rightly ask why we had bothered to give him this task, if we were going on to alter the arrangements without waiting for his Committee's advice.
  My noble friend Lord Albemarle also referred to the idea of barring the mouths of estuaries, so as to reduce the amount

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  of work which has to be done on river banks. Work of this kind naturally interferes with the public right of navigation and, therefore, cannot be carried out without regard to these rights, which apply to all the public for all purposes. The authority of Parliament is needed before any work can be done that interferes with these rights. It is true that the recent Coastal Flooding (Emergency Provisions) Act gives certain river boards power, with the approval of the Ministers of Agriculture and Transport, to construct dams in creeks for the purposes of emergency work; but this is only for emergency work, and I do not think it would cover large-scale, long-term schemes. In any case, even under this Act, public advertisement is required, and any objections have to be considered jointly by the Ministers of Agriculture and Fisheries and of Transport. Each proposal for barring an estuary mouth would have to be considered separately on its merits, and would probably require a Private Bill to be passed through Parliament, with all the resultant complications and time which would be spent on it.
  This work of reclaiming land from the sea is, as my noble friend has pointed out, one of the ways in which we can make good losses of land, but we ought to remember that the scone of this work is limited. There are, I believe, about 45,000 acres of saltines round the coast of England and Wales, and in practice much of this land is not suitable for reclamation. Often it is not yet ready, either because the deposit of silt is not deep enough or, perhaps, because the necessary works would be uneconomic, owing to the size or shape of the areas of land, or for some other reason. It is only the areas where building up has taken place and vegetation has become established that can be reclaimed. My Department have estimated that the area with genuine possibilities for reclamation over the next ten to twenty years is not likely to be more than 15,000 acres.
  As I have said, not only is the area of reclaimable land distinctly limited, but reclamation must also be a gradual and continuous process, depending on the way in which silt is building up the seashore and bearing vegetation. The
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  amount of capital to be invested is relatively high per acre, and consists not only of the cost of the embankment enclosing the area, but also the cost of draining the reclaimed land. At present, Government grants on the usual scale—which are normally 50 per cent.—are available for the drainage of the land, and expert advice is also given on technical problems that may arise. So far this has proved sufficient to lead to quite a number of schemes on the Wash and elsewhere. In the light of this debate and what has been said, we shall, of course, give further consideration to the ways of off-setting the unavoidable loss of land for development, and we shall be very ready to examine whether any land ripe for reclamation from the sea is being left through lack of the necessary capital.
  My noble friend Lord Winterton has spoken this afternoon of a third way of tackling this problem of land losses; that is to say, reclaiming derelict land that can be used for producing crops or timber. I must say that I agreed with almost everything that he said. No one can deny that, in spite of the considerable amount of reclamation that has gone on in the past, there is still a great deal of land lying idle that could be made more productive. The chief obstacle to the reclamation of much of this land is, of course, the difficulty of finding the necessary money, labour and equipment to do the work. The Government are already doing a great deal to help in this direction, and we intend to go on helping.
  May I remind your Lordships of some of the things we are doing and some of the schemes that are in operation? It should be well known, for instance, that grants of £5 and £10 per acre can be had for ploughing up grassland and sowing it to approved crops. The higher rate of grant of £10 per acre is specially useful to help finance reclamation. It applies to land which has been continually under grass since before the war and which is usually expensive to deal with. The definition of grassland is liberally interpreted, and grants can be had for ploughing old scrub, infested grassland and derelict woodland, provided there is some natural grass. Then there are the lime and fertiliser subsidies, and field drainage and water supply grants, all of which are still available.

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  But the scheme most directly concerned with reclamation is the Marginal Production Scheme. My noble friend suggested that we might stimulate farmers to use this scheme. The amount of money that, as a result of the last Annual Review, we can spend on the scheme, has been increased by £560,000 in England and Wales. I am sorry that no noble Lord in the debate noticed that, or mentioned it. It means that now, in 1953–54, we shall have a total of £1,220,000 to spend on the Marginal Production Scheme. That, I feel, should prove of great assistance. So far about 40 per cent. of the assistance approved under this scheme has been for the reclamation of derelict land. Since my noble friend's Motion is about the Southern counties, he might be interested to know that in those counties the, greater part of the grant available is used for this purpose—rather more than 40 per cent. A grant like this of up to half the cost of the work is well worth taking advantage of, and I am glad to say that a great many farmers have done so. In the Southern counties—by which I mean Dorset, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey and Sussex—nearly 8,400 acres have already been reclaimed, at a cost to the Exchequer of £83,000 in marginal production grants alone, and schemes have been approved since then relating to about another 7,000 acres.
  The cost of reclaiming varies greatly from area to area, according to the nature of the land, the density of growth and other factors which are obvious. Much of the land is poor from the agricultural point of view, and costs have to be carefully investigated to decide whether the ultimate value of the land when it is reclaimed will justify the expense. I do not think there was any difference of opinion between my noble friend Lord Winterton and my noble friend Lord Hudson, but certainly we agree with both of them on this matter. Several noble Lards have mentioned the need to get more food produced from common land. A certain amount of common land was brought into production by the use of emergency powers granted during the war, and my right honourable friend the Minister of Agriculture has said that he intends to keep this land in production as long as he has the power. There is a good deal of
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  rough grazing on common land but, as has been said, owing to the difficulties of controlling the stocking of land of this kind and improving the grazing, the land is probably not as productive as it could be. It is possible to regulate or enclose commons under the Commons Act, 1876, at the initiative of the commoners, but the procedure is cumbersome and lengthy, and it involves a Parliamentary stage. An Amendment to the existing law would involve complicated legislation, and at the present time I am afraid there is no prospect of Parliamentary time being found for it in the foreseeable future.
  THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: Before the noble Lord leaves the question of common land, would he say whether he will ask his right honourable friend to look into the desirability of making a survey of common land as the first stage before legislation is even considered?
  LORD CARRINGTON: Yes, I most certainly will discuss that point with my right honourable friend. As regards afforestation and reafforestation, the Forestry Commission are making steady progress. As your Lordships know, they now have the power to make the issue of a felling licence conditional on restocking the felled area, but they have no power to compel owners to restock woodland felled before the Act of 1951 was passed. Neither can they compel owners to afforest bare land. However, they can and do offer incentives for work of this kind in the shape of grants for planting (£14 per acre) and initial maintenance for owners who are prepared to dedicate their woods to the permanent production of timber, while owners of small areas of woodland are offered planting grants subject to subsequent maintenance but without the obligation to dedicate. Here I should just like to take up a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in his remarks. He quoted some figures arid said, I believe, that only 2½7 per cent. of the woodlands in the Southern province had been dedicated. He drew from that the inference that they were very bad, and that, therefore 97 per cent. were bad woods Just because a woodland is not dedicated does no: necessarily mean that it is bad. There are a great many woodlands which are not dedicated but which are managed very well and are producing excellent timber. I am sure the noble

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  Earl did not mean that, but I should just like to correct him on that point. The Commission's conservancy officers are also available to give free advice on forestry matters.
  As a guide to the amount of progress that has been made since October, 1946, I may say that the Commission estimate that in the Southern area, which is different from the agricultural Southern area—it consists of Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex, Berkshire and Hampshire—5,650 acres of private woodlands have been planted or replanted. Also, since that date the Government have acquired a plantable area of 13,000 acres, and have planted or replanted 11,200 acres. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, in his speech, said that he thought the amount of land which the Forestry Commission were acquiring was too little, and that they should make much more drastic use of their compulsory powers. I think I can say that the Forestry Commission themselves are concerned about the amount of land that they are acquiring and that they are thinking of ways and means of overcoming this difficulty. Perhaps one of the reasons is that the amount of money they offer to private owners is rather small at the present time, and it may be that they will think of that in the investigation they are carrying out into the ways and means of helping things along. But I do not really like the idea of the drastic, widespread use of compulsory powers. Certainly on the occasions on which they have been used in the past—and I feel sure the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will remember them—it has led to considerable complications. I think there is plenty of room in this country for both forestry and agriculture to prosper side by side. I know of several places, particularly in the North of England, where forestry has been of great service to agriculture. In one particular case, on a good sheep run, the Forestry Commission have planted trees in strategic places which serve as shelter belts, and which everybody up there agrees will, in time, increase the agricultural production from that area. There is close collaboration between officers of the Commission and of the Ministry of Agriculture before any land is devoted to forestry, and since the Forestry Commissioners do not themselves hold land,
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  which is vested in the Minister of Agriculture, he (the Minister), after considering the needs of food production and forestry, can decide whether areas are to be put at the Commissioners' disposal.
  My noble friend Lord Hudson mentioned derelict land in the Black Country on which he thought houses could be built. I looked into this point, as he kindly gave me notice that he would raise it, and I am told that since 1945 good progress has been made in the Black Country, and that at least one-third of the land which was derelict in 1945 has now been restored. I hope that the noble Viscount will be pleased with that result. The noble Viscount also mentioned again this afternoon, as he did last week, the question of some horticultural land, first-class market garden land, somewhere near Slough, which was taken for development. I have been unable to trace any clearance recently given by Department to any land in the Slough area, except at Langley. I do not know whether it was Langley to which my noble friend was referring, but if so, the clearance was given in 1947, and the responsibility, if any, should rest with the noble Earl opposite. But if the noble Viscount, Lord Hudson, will tell me where the land is, I will most certainly look into the matter and let him know the explanation.
  I do not suppose that I have answered all the questions which have been put to me, but if I have not I will read through the debate and write to the noble Lords concerned. May I say this in conclusion. The Government believe that somehow or other the effects of these inevitable losses of our agricultural land should be made good. I have mentioned some of the ways in which we are tackling the problem—the Hill Farming and Livestock Rearing Acts, the development of the marginal production scheme, and so on. I assure your Lordships that we are by no means complacent about what we have been able to achieve so far, and we are continuing to seek out ways and means of securing a greater production from the land which is left to offset the losses of land which we have had to release for housing, schools and other forms of development. I hope that having heard what I have had to say, my noble friend, Lord Albemarle, will withdraw his Motion.
  6.53 p.m.
  EARL WINTERTON: My Lords, I lost the right of replying to my own Motion owing to the fact that, for technical reasons, I withdrew it, and so I just rise to make two observations only. My main purpose in rising is to congratulate my noble friend of fifty-six year' standing, Lord Albemarle, on his maiden speech, and to say, I think on behalf of all your Lordships, that we have had a most admirable speech from the Under-Secretary who has dealt so fully with all the points raised. Secondly, I should be the last to deny that a great deal has been done by the Government to encourage us, especially in the south of England, where the particular conditions apply, to put land back to its proper use—land that had reverted from its use as farmland into scrubland. I have taken full advantage of the grant, and I saw a field of mine which was being turned from scrubland into wheat land two years ago, and it was doing very well.
  I wish to take up a point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I entirely agree with him that there should be a survey of the commons of England. I am a little disturbed to learn that it is not possible to bring forward legislation, because the former Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Williams, in a debate which we had in another place about three years ago, admitted that the whole question of common land needed the most urgent attention. He did not say that the then Government were prepared to bring in a Bill to amend it, but he said that it was under consideration. I hope that before the end of this Parliament it may be possible to do something about it. My third point is this. I feel that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, possibly inadvertently did not do justice to the woodland owners in the south of England—and here I agree entirely with my noble friend the Minister. For good reasons, many of us have not dedicated our woodlands there, and have not got them officially under advice. But we do in fact—and I know that other noble Lords and land owners, besides myself, are in this position—obtain advice from the Forestry Commission. So I do not think that the picture which the noble Earl painted was an altogether fair one. I should like to express my gratitude to the Government for the reply which they have given.
  6.56 p.m.
  THE EARL OF ALBEMARLE: My Lords, before I thank the noble Lord who has answered for the Government, I feel I should first thank noble Lords who came here to give their contributions to this debate, which has been an extremely interesting one. Also, on the personal side, I wish to thank my noble friends for being blind to my faults and congratulating me on my speech, which I am sure I do not deserve. As to the Government's reply, am aware that the Parliamentary Secretary has taken the greatest interest in this debate and a great deal of trouble, for which I thank him. Although we are well aware of how much the Government have done in hill farming schemes and in other respects, I was not impressed by the way the suggestions I attempted to make have been answered. I do not think it discloses any new thought in the Government. I do not think we are any nearer to a long-term plan. I do not think any steps have been taken bringing us to the brink of decisions to show that that is coming along. I am not satisfied. The noble Lord was short of time and he did not deal with my argument of why so many authorities are required. No doubt he will be kind enough to accord me a minute at some time and will show me where I am wrong.
  I was not impressed by the statement that, because it is the old-fashioned duty of the Minister of Transport—of course it is—to keep open channels of communication, it was net thought possible for him to review cases where barge traffic is no longer using estuaries. The noble Lord did not mention that, but I should have thought it would be worth the while of the Minister of Transport to show that there may be instances where he is willing to dispense with the hard and fast attitude he has taken up. Therefore, while thanking the Parliamentary Secretary for his kindness, and although I am not altogether satisfied, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
  Motion for Papers, by leave, with-drawn.

  HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES
  Third Report made, and to be printed.
  House adjourned at seven o'clock