§ Mr. Sorensenasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether it is now the intention of His Majesty's Government more precisely to implement assurances and intentions respecting Colonial development by drawing up a plan of political, educational and economic expansion, to be applied immediately at the end of the war?
§ Colonel StanleyI do not believe that it is possible for a comprehensive and detailed plan for Colonial development to be drawn up centrally by His Majesty's Government in London. The primary duty of planning in detail the development of each Colony must rest upon the territorial authorities, who alone are able to take into account the particular circumstances of each locality. The function of His Majesty's Government is to lay down a general policy and to help to create the conditions in which it can be implemented by furnishing advice, encouragement, finance and personnel to those responsible for planning and execution in the Colonies themselves. The broad policy of the Government was announced in Command Paper 6175 in 1940, and Colonial Governments 251W were asked in a despatch dated 30th April, 1940, to formulate development programmes. Since then progress in planning has varied from Colony to Colony. In some, planning has been held up by the necessary preoccupations of fighting and winning the war. In others planning of all kinds has been going forward as rapidly and as extensively as war conditions have permitted.
In the West Indies, for example, notable progress both in planning and in achievement has been made, and is recorded in a report by the Comptroller for Development and Welfare which will be published at an early date.
I am fully alive to the importance of planning for the future and I am anxious, as soon as circumstances permit, to urge a quickening of the pace in those territories in which the exigencies of the war have retarded progress.