§ Colonel ASHLEYasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture if he can state what is to happen to the Women's Land Army; what steps are being taken to secure the services of the 5,000 additional workers which the director of the women's branch, Board of Agriculture, stated in Oxford on the 8th March were urgently required; whether the army is to be maintained on the land; and, if so, would he say what encouragement is to be given to that army, and how the training centres that have been established at considerable private expense from patriotic motives in order to train women in the most approved methods of agriculture, so to act not only as land workers but as instructresses, are to be utilised?
Sir ARTHUR BOSCAWENAt present the Women's Land Army is recruited for the period ending 31st October, 1919. To secure the services of the 5,000 additional workers the Employment Exchanges of the Ministry of Labour are being utilised, and the enrolment will be effected by the selection boards of the women's county committees in co-operation with these Exchanges. The present Land Army, with the 5,000 additional recruits, will be equipped, maintained, and organised in a manner similar to that which has obtained since its inception. A certain number of the private training centres which were generously offered to the Board during the War for the emergency short courses of training will be utilised this season, taking into consideration the particular training needed to meet the demand in the county in which these centres are situated. It has already been arranged that the preferential facilities offered to the ex-Service men for settling on the land should be extended, with safeguards, to the women of the Land Army.