§ 54. Mr. Turtonasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has studied the request received last May from the study group appointed by the 141W Kenya Minister of Agriculture for the Joan of an agricultural economist to advise on the agricultural situation in Kenya; and what reply he made to that request.
§ Mr. H. FraserThe request was not quite in these terms.
The study group, which had in fact been appointed by the previous Minister of Agriculture, had discussions with me in Kenya in May. The scheme they put forward would have involved Her Majesty's Government in underwriting, in one way or another, all the land in the Scheduled Areas; and they asked for a mission of economic experts to be sent from the United Kingdom to recommend a workable scheme on this general basis. I had to make clear that Her Majesty's Government could not entertain a scheme of this kind, and that we could not therefore agree to the request for a mission.