§ Mr. JOWETTasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department if he is aware that the Committee on Employment of Conscientious Objectors has declined to authorise Herbert Butter-field, work centre, Knutsford, to take employment in a retail fish shop, presumably on the ground that the business belongs to his father; and if, having regard to the fact that Butterfield's father and mother are both over seventy years of age and his father is a cripple, and having regard also to the further facts of the case, which are that the aged couple have two sons serving in France and have lost another son who was killed in action, and that three of the four sons thus accounted for were previously employed in the business, he will request the Committee to reconsider their decision?
§ Mr. BRACEThe Committee are only able to authorise men to take up employment, under the Rules relating to exceptional employment, on work of national importance, and they cannot regard the 1299W business of a retail fishmonger as one on which, in present circumstances, a healthy man of twenty-five ought to be employed. They regret that they are unable, in this connection, to take questions of domestic hardship into consideration. It is open to Butterfield to ask the Committee's authority to take up suitable work of real national importance.