91. Mr. H. D. Hughesasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the amount spent on research into oilseed cultivation in West Africa, and the Colonial Empire, in 1938 and the latest available year.
Mr. Creech JonesPrior to the first Colonial Development Act, such research was financed directly by the local governments and figures for 1938 are therefore not readily available. For the same reason, I cannot give complete figures for total expenditure at the present time from both local and imperial funds. Colonial Development and Welfare schemes including a research grant of over £152,000 were however made in 1946 to extend the work of the Oil Palm Research Station at Benin (Nigeria) over a three-year period. There are no comparable Colonial Development and Welfare schemes in other Colonies but interesting investigations are being carried out by several local governments, and the Colonial Products Research Council is sponsoring several researches into the use of Colonial-produced vegetable oils.