I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £100.

I desire to comment on the administration of Part II. of the National Insurance Act under the Board of Trade. I am not opposed to Part II. of the Act, and my criticisms will be concerned only with its administration. The representatives of the Board of Trade here to-day will not deny that a large number of complaints in reference to that matter have reached the Department, and I am going to appeal to the Board to use its powers and influence to make the Act more acceptable than it is at present, and also to remove some of the hardships which are found to exist under the Act. I believe that some of the matters to which I shall refer could be dealt with by regulations. When a deputation waited upon the representatives of the Board of Trade while the Act was going through Committee, we were given to understand that so far as societies which made arrangements under Section 105 were concerned, they would, practically speaking, not be interfered with. We were fully aware that certain conditions would have to be complied with, but we were given to understand that the members of these societies would go on working under the same rules and regulations as before. It was made quite clear that all that a member of such a society would have to do, so far as reporting himself to the Labour Exchange was concerned, was to deposit his unemployment card there, and then he need not go near the Exchange again. Special reference was made to the fact that these associations had an unemployment book for their members to sign each day, and it was stated that that would be quite satisfactory to the Board of Trade. We were also given to understand that there would be very little, if any, interference with the payment of the benefit, and that the associations would be able to pay this benefit in the future as they had been doing in the past. There are certain complaints on that score, to which I will refer later on. Whilst there is undoubtedly considerable feeling with regard to the Act, amongst both employers and workmen, I believe that that feeling is wearing off. But if it is desired that that feeling should wear off, and that the Act should be more acceptable to the people directly affected by it, those responsible for its working must give their assistance to enable the Act to work more smoothly than it has done hitherto. If they do not something, instead of the feeling which has been excited dying out altogether, I believe that a spirit of hostility to the Act will be created, and the Board of Trade officials will find that there will be a great deal more difficulty in the future than at present in their administration of the Act. One of the complaints I have to make is as to the length of time—two or three days, or a week—unemployed workmen, who have deposited their unemployment cards at the Labour Exchanges, have to wait before they get them when they again obtain employment. It is almost impossible to get the cards right away to take to their new employer. Some employers refuse to allow a man to start till he can produce his unemployment card. Emergency cards, we may be told, can be obtained. In a well-managed trade association there is no need for an emergency card; the men have their own cards returned right away. That is a point in favour of allowing trade unions or associations that have made arrangements under the Act to work it so far as their own members are concerned. Then we find that in the payment of the benefits the Labour Exchange officials—managers or clerks—are extremely slow in notifying the secretary of the branch that the person is a member and that he is entitled to unemployment benefit. For the life of me I cannot see why it should take long. What I mean is this: For the first week a workman is not entitled, under the Act, to unemployment benefit. The Labour Exchange has a week to notify the fact of the unemployed workmen to his branch. Case after case has been sent to me where the unemployed workman has not been able to draw the unemployed benefit, not for one or two weeks, but in one instance for six weeks. I refer particularly to societies that have made arrangements under Section 105 of the Act. We say that the Board of Trade should take steps whereby the secretaries of branches that have made arrangements shall know within two or three days that a member is registered at the Labour Exchange, and is entitled to the benefit provided by the Act. The secretaries of the branches are nearly all men working during the day at their trade, and they do their secretarial work in the evening. If they knew earlier it would give them time to get at the books and so see that their unemployed member got his unemployment benefit, and for the time he is entitled to receive it. We do hope that some further arrangements will be made. We only ask that the managers or clerks of the Labour Exchanges should send prepared a postcard to the secretaries of the branches, and allow them to work the thing out for themselves.

In connection with registration at the Labour Exchange complaints have reached me—and I have conveyed several to the Board of Trade—that a man registering as unemployed has to give his age to the clerk or manager. I am told this is by regulation: it is not the Act. I do not see why a man should give his age. I am informed—and expect to be told—that the age is kept strictly confidential by the officials of the Labour Exchange, and I suppose the information is required for statistical purposes. But I am informed that the age has leaked out in some cases, quite unwittingly perhaps. The societies that have made arrangements I have referred to should be allowed some latitude in this matter. They know the ages of their members, and there is therefore no occasion whatever for the men to give them to youths of seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen who may not be always quite wise enough to keep their mouths closed outside the Labour Exchanges. If the Board of Trade have by Regulation made it compulsory for an unemployed person to give his age, the Board of Trade can alter it by Regulation. We may be told that it is a question of deciding whether an unemployed person is entitled owing to age to benefit, but it is well known that over seventeen years unemployed persons are entitled to benefit in certain trades, and it does not matter, so far as the Board of Trade is concerned, whether a man is ninety years of age so long as he is insured and working. He should not be placed in a position distasteful to him, to say the least of it. Men strongly object to it. I know several instances where members of my own society have foregone the benefit before they would—to use their own words—humble themselves to give their age to a Labour Exchange manager or clerk. This was not because they were old men, but because they objected to the principle of giving their age. If the Board of Trade requires the ages of the older workmen in the country for statistical purposes, or any other purpose, they can get them all under the Act from the Insurance Commissioners. I do not see that the question of giving the age, should be allowed, perhaps to deprive a man of benefit for which, in fact, he has paid. The workmen who are insured under Part II. of the Act have a perfect right to claim some voice and vote in the administration of the Act. I take it that it was for that that Section 105 was inserted: to give the workman the opportunity of having some say in the payment of the benefit for which he has partly paid. I could quote figures from the balance sheets of certain societies which are paying unemployment benefit of 10s. per week, and for a longer period than under the Act, and it is not costing them 2½d. per week. It is not a question of the ability of the societies that seek this further say, to manage the business: it is a question of mistrusting them. Those concerned have no confidence in the people who manage the unions, or, alternatively, there is a wish to magnify the importance of the Labour Exchanges. We claim we are entitled to the confidence of the Board of Trade in the administration of Part II. of the Act. There is also another important complaint. I know that under the Act an insured man dismissed for misconduct is not entitled to unemployment benefit for a certain period. I wonder whether those responsible for the administration of the Act have ever seriously considered what that may mean to a workman? The question was raised in Committee. Why I refer to it is that it seems to many who have worked the Act in the trade unions that the form sent to employers with the questions from the Act printed on it, and also at the bottom of it, the remarks that may be made in respect of the unemployed workmen, gives to employers—I do not say there are many of them, but there are some—and particularly to foremen, the opportunity of making that report and those remarks at the bottom of it, detrimental to these unemployed workmen. We say there is no reason whatever for any compulsion upon the Board of Trade to send out forms of this kind to the employers because a foreman may define something as misconduct which a Court of Law or a committee of employers or workmen would not define as misconduct; and the workman may not take the trouble to appeal for the sake of the 7s. per week. He will not be unemployed long enough to make an appeal to the Courts set up and he will let it go by default. But this establishes a precedent as far as that particular work is concerned, and if the foreman finds he has deprived one man against whom he may have a grudge, to use plain language, of a week's pay, he will adopt the same course with regard to other workmen whom he dislikes. I would like to give one or two instances where men who have been unemployed have been deprived of unemployed benefit because of this form being sent out to the employers. If the Board of Trade consider it is necessary to send this form to employers then they ought to supply workmen discharged with the same form. If they do not wish to do that and are not prepared to withdraw the form altogether then the workmen affected by the adverse report of the employer ought to get a copy of that report so that if there is anything in that report that is slanderous or libellous he may have his remedy in a Court of Law, even though he is only an unemployed workman. I appeal to the Board of Trade to withdraw this circular altogether. The workmen of the country are supposed to understand the Act—I do not say they do—but I think they should be supplied with the same facilities as the employers. The employés should be deemed to understand the Act just as well as the employers. I believe they understand it better than the workmen, and they should be left to send in their report to the Board of Trade on their own initiative, if a man is discharged for misconduct. That is all that is required. If the workman is discharged bonâ fide for misconduct there is no loss to the Insurance Act or to the fund, and if that is so the Board of Trade ought to recognise that the business in which they are engaged is the same as an ordinary manufacturer who has to make some allowance for bad debts, and not spend money finding out whether so and so is guilty of misconduct or not. They must trust the people.

We hear a great deal of talk sometimes of trust the people from the platforms of candidates of both parties in the State at election times, but we find whenever there is a possibility of tieing the people up by an Act of Parliament each party is prepared to do it. I hope the Board of Trade will carefully consider what is being done, and leave it to the employer if he thinks he has a good case for complaint against a workman, to make his complaint in his own way. If that course is taken it will lead to economy in the administration of the Act. You would save money in stamps, and if people are doing useless work—[HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"]—they should not be kept at it. The work is useless if it is not required. Some people seem to think it is giving employment merely to send certain men to dig holes and others to fill them in again. We do not consider that is useful work. Our object is to make this Act work smoothly, and with that in view I hope the Board of Trade will withdraw the forms. At Barrow-in-Furness, at Birkenhead, on the Clyde, on the Tyne, on the Humber, men are discharged in bodies of 100 or 200 or 300 on Friday nights or Saturdays. It is absolutely foolish as well-as waste of time and money to send forms to employers as to why these 200 or 300 men were discharged, because on Monday morning the whole of these men would be taken on in another shipyard, and probably on the following Monday would be taken back into their own employment, and it seems to me it is useless and wasteful of the Board of Trade in such circumstances to send out such circulars. Besides, it causes bad feeling and a spirit of hostility in the minds of the men, and that is a matter of some importance if you meant the Act to work smoothly. I am going to give one or two examples. In Birmingham a man was asked to go outside to work in the open air; he was not in good health, and told his foreman so; and the result was another man was sent. This was about the middle of December. The man went on working for about three weeks, and in the second week in January he registered as unemployed at the Labour Exchange. One of these forms was sent to his employer and the employer or his foreman said the man was discharged for misconduct. That, misconduct was refusing to go outside to work. If that man had been guilty of misconduct he ought to have been discharged the moment he refused to go outside, but he was not, and was kept on for another three weeks, and therefore if he had been guilty of misconduct his employer condoned his misconduct for that length of time. This man was told he would not be entitled to unemployment benefit for six weeks. On appeal he was only suspended for three weeks, but I contend this man was not guilty of misconduct at all, and my point is this man should not have had to appeal. Our point is that a man who refuses to go outside to work in the middle of winter in all kinds of weather, if he thinks it is going to injure his health, is justified, and that should not be termed misconduct. If the Government insist upon a policy of this kind they are going to provide more work for the doctors under Part I. of the Act. This man was suspended from unemployed benefit for three weeks. We say he was entitled to unemployed benefit after one week. In another case a man was working and was told off to carry heavy doors. He found them too heavy, and asked the job foreman for assistance. The job foreman sent him another man. They were going on with the work, and the working foreman went on the job and he found two men doing the work which he considered one man was able to do. The result was that one of the men was discharged and he was reported for misconduct because he left his employment to go and help a fellow workman to hang a heavy door. If these cases are allowed to pass without any resistance at all from the people directly concerned the benefits to the workmen will be nil. Therefore we ask that associations which are considered good enough to make arrangements with ought to have the power to decide whether these are cases of misconduct or not. We understood misconduct to mean such things as a man being drunk at his work, coming late, or spoiling a considerable amount of work. We claim that in cases like those to which I have referred the men are entitled to the benefits, and they are not cases which ought to be sent to the Board of Trade, the Court of Referees, or the Umpire. With regard to the men engaged in a trade dispute, under certain conditions these men are entitled to unemployment benefit. I know of a case in point of workmen engaged in a certain trade at Chesterfield, who gave notice about the 1st of January that they were going to cease employment in April unless better conditions were given to them, and almost immediately after the notice was handed in on behalf of the whole of the men one large employer of labour discharged the whole of his workmen, saying that he was not going to be dictated to as to what the wages or the hours of labour should be. Those discharged workmen signed at a Labour Exchange, thinking that they would be entitled to unemployment benefit, but the employer sent a report to the Labour Exchange, and it was decided that these men were engaged in a trade dispute. How could that be so when the notice had not expired? Those men were bonâ-fide unemployed, and ought to be entitled to unemployed benefit.

Was it not a lock-out?

You could not call it a lock-out. I am referring to the building industry. In all towns of any size each trade has a code of working rules, signed by both workmen and employers, and they generally provide for the giving of notice and the time it shall expire. It is generally understood that if notice is not given at the specified time it cannot be given until the following year.

Did the other employers discharge their workmen?

No, only this one employer. These men could not get their unemployment benefit. There is also the question of the inclusion and exclusion of certain kind of workmen in the building trade. On this question it would be far better if we could have a small Committee appointed to decide the classes of workmen which came within the provisions of the Act, instead of leaving the matter to the Umpire, who does not understand the technicalities of the trade. Anyone who will refer to the current monthly number of the "Board of Trade Journal" will find that painters who are engaged in painting automatic machines on railway stations are insured persons, but bricklayers engaged in repairing a culvert or a railway tunnel are not insured workmen. It seems to me that the latter are engaged more in the work of construction than the former. Some most conflicting and almost ridiculous decisions have been given by the Umpire, and some better means should be found of deciding whether workmen are insured persons under the Act or not. I suggest to the Board of Trade that all workmen earning their living with the tools of the trade in which they have served their time should be brought within the scope of the Act.

I rather think that would involve legislation.

The Umpire has power to bring every one of those men in, and therefore, I submit, that it does not require legislation.

I understood that the hon. Member suggested an alteration of the tribunal to decide these questions and that would require legislation.

I was suggesting that the Board of Trade should take some steps to bring in the whole of those men by an Order. This is a very important question affecting not only the working conditions, but the living conditions of a large number of men engaged in the scheduled trades. In my opinion it was the intention of the framers of the Act that associations should make such arrangements and really administer the Act. Sub-section (2) of Section 105 of the National Insurance Act provides:—

"(2) The council or other governing body of any association of workmen which has made such an arrangement as aforesaid shall be entitled to treat the contribution due from any of its members to the Unemployment Fund under this part of this Act, or any part thereof, as if such contributions formed part of the subscriptions payable by those members to the association, and, notwithstanding anything in the rules of the association to the contrary, may reduce the rates of subscription of those members accordingly."

I contend that it is taking away from the association the power to pay the benefits it had previously pledged itself to pay to its members. Some benefit is substituted from some other source, and, if an association made an arrangement with the Board of Trade to administer the Act, it meant that the seven shillings to be paid under Part II. of the Act should be paid by the society concerned. It also gives them the power to reduce the contributions of the member. That undoubtedly means, if the Board of Trade officials say that an unemployed workman is not entitled to benefit under the Act, that he is only going to get 2s. 4d. or 2s. 6d. over the 2s. 7d. per week provided by the Act, and that is quite contrary to the spirit of the Clause I have just read. Therefore, I say that where an association has made an arrangement with the Board of Trade the fullest possible power ought to be given to that association with regard to the administration of the Act. I was told, in reply to a question, that an association can pay the benefit provided by its own rules, but, if an association has been asked by an Act of Parliament to so alter its rules—I agree, to avail itself of the benefits provided by that Act—that it cannot pay the full rate of unemployment benefit promised by its rules, then the manner in which this Act is being carried out is not in accordance with the spirit of the Clause I have read.

Any workman who is an insured person is being punished, and punished harshly, if he cannot get the full unemployment benefit as provided by the rules of his society and by the Act of Parliament. Under this part of the Act a workman is not entitled to unemployment benefit for the first week. Take the case of a man earning £1 a week, and with two or three little ones; he is punished the first week. I agree it is by Act of Parliament and therefore legal. If at the end of the second week some complaint of misconduct is made against him, it is perhaps two or three or four weeks before he gets any benefit, and he may possibly not get any benefit at all. We say that the society which has accepted the terms provided by the Act ought to be the judge of whether a mart is entitled to unemployment benefit or not, and we hope the Board of Trade, with the object of making the Act popular and of more benefit to the workman and enabling him to retain his self respect, which some of us at any rate value just a little, will, if they wish the Act to work smoothly and to do exactly what we were told it was going to do, give careful consideration to the matters to which I have referred. I do not wish the Act withdrawn or killed; I wish to see it developed and made of benefit to a far larger number of workmen than it is at present. I hope the Board of Trade will take steps to modify or alter the Regulations so far as they possibly can.

I beg to second the Amendment. My hon. Friend mentioned that there were a large number of cases of men who were outside the Act and inside the Act in the course of a week's employment. That is a very great hardship on the workman not only in the sense that he never knows where he stands during the course of a week's employment, but because it operates to the detriment of some workmen and to the advantage of others. It has caused great friction in certain trades. During the course of my work in connection with my union I come across certain cabinet makers. There are cabinet makers engaged in the shipyard, on the interior work of houses, and others on wood-cutting machines. I have known cases where an employer desiring to contract outside the Act has refused to employ joiners on the ground that he would have to pay his proportion of the unemployment benefit. I have known some cases where shops have been closed to men on similar classes of work because they come inside the Act and where other men have been employed because technically they are outside the building trade. That is a point which might well be dealt with by the hon. Gentleman in the course of his reply. Let me recite other very peculiar cases indeed. Take a mill where men are manufacturing for joiners. It may happen that it may be a decorative firm doing cabinet-making pure and simple. You get a man for three hours doing work for the structure of a building, and probably for the next three or six hours he will be doing cabinet work. Therefore, for three hours he is inside the Act and for six hours he is outside the Act. That is a state of things which I submit might very well be taken into consideration by the Board of Trade. The remedy is a very simple one; all trades of that character should be brought within the scope of the Act. That would meet the difficulty all round.

Do you mean the whole of the employés concerned?

I mean the whole of the employés of the character I have mentioned.

All cabinet makers?

All cabinet makers and those engaged on wood-cutting machines should be brought within the scope of the Act, because for six months or perhaps nine months during the year they are engaged on work absolutely identical with that of men represented by my hon. Friend. There has developed inside the Exchanges in connection with this Act the vicious character note system which we have protested against for a large number of years. I used to be a member of the Executive of the Engineering Trades, and we used to confer with the employers in those trades for increases of wages and conditions of labour on the Tyne and Clyde. They used to have the character note system, and I remember on one occasion it became so obnoxious and led to such tyranny and victimisation that the whole body of men threatened to strike unless it was withdrawn. It was, as a matter of fact, withdrawn, but now we have it instituted inside the Labour Exchanges themselves. I have got particulars, for instance, of the fact that a clerk at the table has to determine the height of a man, his cleanliness, the character of his language — whether he can speak King's English correctly or not—and the style of dress he wears. They have to look at his shadow on the wall to gauge his height, and all that kind of thing. So far as we are concerned, the skilled workmen will positively refuse, upon any ground whatever, to have this obnoxious character note system introduced with regard to the employment of our men. We say that a man with his brains and the skill in his ten fingers has sufficient character for any employer. A deputation has waited upon the Board of Trade with regard to this matter, and I understand that the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Robertson), who represents the Board to-day, has indicated that with regard to skilled trades this character note system will be withdrawn. I do not ask him to consider the whole question in its application to clerks and agents, for instance, and particularly to casual workers inside the trades which are included in the scope of the Act.

Another point is a very distressing one, the fact that men have to wait for their unemployment benefit. I submit that when a man has to wait three weeks—I have known cases where he has waited a month, and my hon. Friend has mentioned a case of six weeks—it may be all very well for the first week, because, after all, the Act penalises a man to that extent, but to have to wait three or four or six weeks for unemployment benefit is a thing that ought not to be tolerated by the Board of Trade, and instructions ought to be given instantly in those cases. Another thing is the question of disqualification for unemployed benefit. Here is a typical case which came under my observation. We had some members of my union working for an employer. Trade was getting slack. In this case there was a workman and his father both working for the same firm. The father was getting on in years. He was about fifty years of age, and the son, seeing the "red light" ahead, thought that it would be better if he took his discharge, because, if he did not, he felt certain that his father would get his discharge. He did so, and that man was reported as being discharged through misconduct, and he was deprived of all unemployment benefit. I know that all those things cannot possibly come under the cognisance of the Board of Trade, but I think definite instructions should be given, and a certain discretion ought to be allowed to the managers of the Labour Exchanges in cases of this kind so that when, upon reasonable ground, they believe that men are entitled to unemployed benefit they should grant that benefit to them.

Did he appeal?

In this case the man did not trouble his head. He brought the thing to our attention, and we insisted upon his appealing, but he said he was not going to lower his dignity. It may be a stupid thing on the face of it, but the men have those feelings, and they will not follow what they consider to be an undignified course in those matters. Happily the man was fairly well expert, so that he was employed inside of a fortnight. This question of disqualification for unemployed benefit generally is a very dangerous thing. I do not believe that the employers are always responsible. I regret to say that a foreman who has come from the ranks of the workmen, who, in the majority of cases, adopts this system of victimisation without the knowledge of the employer. I think that power ought to be taken out of the hands of a man of that type, or, if you like, out of the hands of the employers. The best way is to deal with it on the lines suggested by my hon. Friend. After all, there ought to be no forms sent to the employers for the purpose of being filled up. The man himself knows what the penalties are when he desires to claim benefit under the Act. He knows what is a legal benefit. I think the unions themselves would take very good care that a man who is not entitled to claim is penalised by the rules of his union. These rules state that no man can receive unemployment benefit if he is discharged for misconduct or if he throws himself out of employment. You have the penalties contained in the rules of the trade unions to which the man belongs, and I agree with my hon. Friend that that is a certain guarantee that the man will be penalised, and that therefore this most obnoxious form ought to be withdrawn. Like my hon. Friend, I desire to see this Act developed. We are all desirous of seeing the Act working smothly, and, so far as I know the trade unions of this country, we are prepared to give all our spare time and experience to the Board of Trade to assist them to make the Act work smoothly. If they will adopt the practical suggestions which have been made this afternoon. I am certain that that result will be achieved.

I should like, also, to say a few words about the unemployment Section of the Act. I should like, first, to congratulate the hon. Gentleman who represents the Board of Trade (Mr. Robertson) upon the success which has attended up to the present the working of this Section of the Act. I think it is an amazing and astounding result to achieve so much as has been achieved during the last two months, and I am sure that the hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the reduction of the Vote will join with me in saying that, taking everything into consideration, taking all the difficulties of working such an enormous Act the Board of Trade is to be congratulated upon the result. At the same time there are, and there must be, many difficulties in the administration of the Act and I should just like to emphasise one or two points. First, I quite agree with what the Mover of the reduction said with regard to the difficulty of getting benefit. I happened to be spending the week-end at Worthing. I took a walk along the coast—fortunately I escaped with my life—as far as Angmering and I happened to meet there a working man who had been employed in putting up a bungalow. I got into conversation with him and he told me that a friend of his who lives there had to go three or four times to Worthing in order to get his book, because his employer would not take him on without it. That may be an exceptional case, but I have come across other cases where men cannot get either card or book, and as a result cannot get employment, and, as the man said in this case, "Who is to pay me for my lost time in getting to Worthing and back three or four times, and besides that it prevents me from looking for work, and that is a great hardship."

Everybody will agree that that is a hardship and I believe that there is a vast number of cases not quite so serious as that, but often really serious, in which a working man does not always understand what he ought to do or what is his position under the law, and is therefore put to an enormous amount of inconvenience, vexation and irritation. He does not know what to make of it. If he votes against the Government at the next election we cannot be at all surprised, because he says, "This Government has given us this Act which I cannot understand." I believe this Section of the Act is a very great benefit to that man, but he is under a disability in the administration of the Act. Those who are in high office administering the Act in London do not know all the difficulties, especially those small local difficulties, in out of the way places. I should also like to emphasise a point which is sometimes felt to be a real grievance by working men, and that is the question of the character note. Of course I understand that it may be necessary to have a form which the employer can fill up. I do not know that it would be possible to dispense altogether with that form, but if I agree that the form cannot be wholly dispensed with, then I must contend that the instructions which are given with the form should be very clear and very explicit. It should not be possible for an employer to report a man as having been dismissed for misconduct when it is not misconduct at all. It should be made necessary for the employer in all such cases to state exactly what, in his opinion, is the misconduct, and the cases that have been quoted this afternoon show quite clearly that a very large number of men suffer in consequence, I will not say of the ignorance or carelessness of the employer, but the carelessness or ignorance of someone in his employment. I agree that in all probability it is the foreman. I have known many cases where there is a shrewd suspicion that the foreman has a grudge against the man, and it is the foreman's evidence which is taken in all these cases. I do not know whether it is the foreman who actually fills up the form, but in all probability it is upon the report of the foreman that the form is filled up. I should very strongly support, if not the withdrawal of the form, at any rate more explicit instructions to the employer in all such cases.

I am not averse to the actual giving of the age. I do not think that is a very important point, and I hope that those who consider they have a grievance about the form will not object if the age is to be contained on it. I have no doubt the age is of value for statistical reasons. It is necessary to have the age upon the form in many cases, although, of course, not in all cases. I do not consider that is a point upon which the workman ought to lay very great stress. The only other point is the question of the part of trade unions in the administration of the Act. There, I think, a very good case has been made out. The trade unions have had very large experience in the administration of unemployed benefit. They have been in the habit of paying away in the shape of unemployed benefit over £500,000 a year, and it stands to reason that they know something about this question. They have been in the habit of discriminating between the man who is really unemployed and a man who has discharged himself, a man who is out of work for some cause which is not, strictly speaking, slackness of trade. The fact that the trade unions have done so well in the past does entitle them to the utmost confidence in the future, and I think it ought to be possible to allow the trade unions to pay the full benefit that they have been in the habit of paying in the past, and by a system of book-keeping between the Board of Trade and the trade unions to allow the trade unions to make the whole of the payment and to claim their share from the Board of Trade later on. That would simplify the working of the Act, and remove a grievance of trade unionists. It is really a very serious matter. I hope that even from the point of view of giving some sort of reward to trade unions for the magnificent work they have achieved in the past, the Board of Trade will see its way to carry out this simple amendment of administration.

There is one other point to which I wish to refer, that is the question of casual labour. It is well known that casual labourers in a large number of cases have not only to pay their own contributions, but also to pay the contribution of the employer. I have known hundreds of such cases. The labourer is asked to show his card, and unless he can show his card stamped up he is not accepted as a casual labourer at all. The foreman says, "I want someone whose card is stamped up." There are many ways of compelling a man, quite indirectly, to pay not only his own contributions, but the contribution of the employer. It falls very hard upon a casual labourer earning, perhaps, on the average through the year, only ten or twelve shillings per week. It is quite clear that by administration—for it is impossible to wait for any amendment of the Act—the Beard of Trade must somehow or other make it impossible for any employer or any foreman of an employer to demand that the man shall show a clear card—that is to say, that he shall stamp his own card and put on a fivepenny stamp. I understand that an arrangement has been made, with the consent of the Board of Trade, between the Labour Exchanges and some associations of employers in one or two towns by which the employers pay a certain lump sum to the Labour Exchange, leaving the Labour Exchange to make all arrangements for sending them casual labour. I do not know whether it is possible by administration to make it a general rule in every town in the country, wherever any amount of casual labour is required, that it shall be done through the Labour Exchange—either by the Labour Exchange on the spot or by some local Labour Exchange established in proximity to the work. For example, it might be carried out at the Albert and Victoria Docks. I think that on the whole the Board of Trade is to be very heartily congratulated on the work that has been accomplished, and I hope it will be able to accept some of the suggestions which have been thrown out to-day.

I do not know whether the two hon. Members who moved and seconded the reduction propose to press it to a Division. I hope they will not, but, if they do, I am afraid I shall not be able to vote with them. In spite of that, I wish to associate myself with a great deal of what they said, and particularly to emphasise one point, the necessity of seeing that the claims for unemployment benefit are settled at the earliest possible moment. I have received representations from my Constituents in Edinburgh with regard to considerable delays in issuing the authorisation form, delays amounting in some cases to a month after the applications have been made. I do not desire—it is the last thing I should wish—to make any sort of attack upon the Labour Exchange in Edinburgh. I think it is doing magnificent service, and in any case I have not had the opportunity of referring these representations to it, or of hearing what they have to say on the matter. It is possible that great difficulties have been put in their way; if so, I hope the Board of Trade will see their way to remove those difficulties. I am sure they do realise that the great object of this Act is to tide over the bad times which sometimes affect those trades which specially suffer from seasonal fluctuations. The whole object of the Act may be defeated unless the assistance given is given quite soon, so that there shall be no progressive depletion of the resources of the family, of which we have seen such sad instances in times past. I hope the Board of Trade will do their best to quicken up the machinery and see that, the wheels run faster, in order that earlier payment of workmen shall be made.

I trust I may, with the permission of the House, accept the congratulations of the hon. Member for the Tottenham Division (Mr. Alden) as to the general success and the efficacy of the work done by the Department in respect of this Act. Perhaps I may explain to hon. Members below the Gangway that for some time past, at the desire of my right hon. Friend, I have dealt with the questions put in this House in regard to this part of the Act, and it is naturally his desire that I should deal with the case that is brought forward to-day. The hon. Member for the Westhoughton Division (Mr. Tyson Wilson) put the bulk of the case raised by the other speakers, and in replying to him I think I shall cover most of the ground. If I do not, I hope I shall be able to meet the criticisms made by other hon. Members. The first grievance put by the hon. Member was that trade unionists have to attend the Exchanges in connection with their own employment pay by way of showing that they remain unemployed.

I did not complain of the act of registering at the Labour Exchanges.

I understood that the hon. Member made it a grievance that they had to attend the Labour Exchanges while they were unemployed.

expressed dissent.

In that case there is no grievance at all. Others have made that objection, and I thought the hon. Member was endorsing it. Attendance at the Exchanges during the period of unemployment is really necessary to secure that the Exchanges generally shall put in the way of each workman the opportunities of employment that the Exchanges can offer. It is obvious that, although his own union can do much for him, the Exchanges may be able to do more in certain circumstances, and it is for the purpose of securing that he shall have offered to him whatever opportunities the Exchange can offer that he is asked to attend in that way. In respect of the other objection made on the score that union men should not have to do that, I may remind hon. Members that the Exchanges have sometimes been accused of preferring non-union to union labour. I think the charge is quite unfounded. I think it has arisen out of misunderstandings. It will be obvious to hon. Members that if union men are not to attend the Exchanges in the same way as non-union men while they are unemployed, the opportunities for employment will tend to be offered more to the non-union men than to the union men. That has been charged against Labour Exchanges as an evil—an evil, I am happy to say, that does not exist, but which would tend to exist if union men were not called upon to sign at the Exchanges as non-union men are. The hon. Member, in putting this and other objections, was good enough to say that the feeling against the Act, both on the part of employers and of men, such as there was, is largely wearing off. There have been very few signs of any preliminary feeling against the Act, save in so far as certain employers, for commercial reasons, would like to be out of the Act, because they have to pay something for the insurance of their men.

As regards the complaints made as to the working of the Act, they nearly always resolve themselves into demands to be brought within it. In very few cases do they take the form of demands to be kept out of it. That is, I think, sufficient testimony to the beneficence of the Act. As to the main grievance and difficulty brought forward to-day, the difficulty about in-and-out men, the demand always is that the men should be steadily in, and that we should widen the scope of the Act and take more men in. There is nothing in the nature of an organised demand to have any body of men kept outside it. That seems to be an admission on the part of the workers that the Act is beneficial. As regards its present operation, while the beginning of payments happily occurs in a period of good trade when the percentage of unemployment is not high, the unemployment which has arisen is mainly due to that in the building trade, which is seasonal at this period of the year. Up to 15th March a sum of over £100,000 had been paid in benefits, bearing out, I think, the congratulations of my hon. Friend the Member for the Tottenham Division. One objection that has been put before us is in regard to the difficulty of a man getting his unemployment card, and the refusal of some employers to take a man without his unemployment book, although he was supplied with a card. A number of these refusals of employers seem to have been made through misunderstanding, and in all cases where such refusals have taken place, the employers have been notified that the card will be taken as equally valid, so that they are perfectly free to employ the man. And, further, whereas in certain cases delay did occur owing to the cards having been sent up to the Divisional Office, that practice has been altered and the card is kept as ready as possible, as far as we have been able to arrange, for a prompt return at a moment's notice. No doubt further improvements by way of expedition will be made as the working of the Act pro- ceeds, and the machinery is brought into more perfect control.

As regards some of the complaints, I think there is a distinct misunderstanding on the part of several hon. Members who have spoken to-day. The hon. Member for the Westhoughton Division and my hon. Friends the Member for the Tottenham Division, and the hon. Member for South Edinburgh (Mr. Lyell) made complaints as to delay in the authorisation of the payment of benefits. The delay in all cases, as I understand it, is in respect of arrangements made with trade unions under Section 105, and the charge is not made of any delay in obtaining payment where the men claim directly. The rule in regard to that is that benefit should be paid on the first Friday after the first unemployed week. If there has been any delay in a few individual cases at the commencement of the working of the Act, that was solely owing to the difficulty of starting an entirely new department and procedure. The complaints made are, I understand, in regard to the authorisations in connection with agreements made under Clause 105. Hon. Members are quite mistaken in supposing that the unions concerned need wait for these authorisations before paying the money. They are not authorisations at all in that sense. The Act proposes that "there shall be repaid periodically to the association out of the unemployment fund such sum as appears to be" so and so. The provision of the Act is not for the authorisation of the benefit as soon as the benefit is due, but for periodical accounting as between the Labour Exchange Office and the union concerned. The very thing that the hon. Member (Mr. Alden) desired to be done is that which the office is endeavouring to do; and in so far as there has been delay in payment by those unions the misunderstanding is on their side. They are perfectly free to pay whatever they will and whatever they choose to arrange in the way of unemployment benefit to their members. What takes place as between them and the Labour Department afterwards is an accounting in respect of the refund that the unemployment fund makes.

Have not instructions been sent to the Labour Exchanges to notify the secretary of each association that the unemployed workman is a member, that he is unemployed, and that he is entitled to unemployment benefit and is it not a fact that a large number of the branches of the various associations have refused to pay until they have received some kind of certificate from the managers of the Labour Exchange?

If they have refused to pay it is their own error. They are perfectly free to pay out under their own rules and for their own purposes. The periodical accounting that takes place afterwards takes place in the terms of the Act, and the association need not in the least wait for it before paying the benefit.

It is not a question of whether they are entitled to pay the money, but whether they would be entitled to a refund if they paid it without an authorisation that the man was out of work.

When they know that a man is out of work they do not need any further hint in the matter. It is not strictly to be called an authorisation. If there has been a misunderstanding on the part of the trade unions there is no case for an alteration of the procedure of the Department. The hon. Member further objected to the demand to have a man's age stated when he is being registered as unemployed. He says workmen object to humbling themselves in that manner. The age is required for two reasons. For one thing, it is a means of identification. For instance, two workmen may have the same name. Age, though not absolutely decisive, is often a simple way of settling identity, and in that way the thing is useful; but as regards unemployment, so long as demands come in to the Exchanges for the labour of men of certain ages, so long as an employer says, "I want a man for a particular purpose, and he must be young and active"—in such a case, if the Exchange were to send a man considerably older than he wanted, he would indignantly and perhaps contumeliously send the man off, and would be disposed not to use the Labour Exchange in future. The question of age is a point of requisite information for the Labour Exchanges in that respect. I do not see very well how the business could be carried on without such information, and I am disposed to deprecate what is said as to the attitude of workmen—that it is a humbling of themselves to do what is done so constantly in the course of business arrangements by other people. If it were ever shown to the Department that a question on the subject was asked by any clerk in a discourteous manner that would be a very good ground for protest.

The hon. Gentleman said the employer may ask for a man of a certain age. As a matter of fact, is it not the custom of the clerks themselves at the Labour Exchanges, even though the employer does not mention age, to state the age of the man who is sent along?

It no doubt happens that in regard to most of the workmen who give their ages no use is ever made of the datum, but the datum has to be there in case use may need to be made of it. That is the explanation. There is no possible notion in the Labour Exchange in any way of injuring or affecting the man by taking note of his age. It is simply a necessary thing which has to be acted upon in certain cases.

Now we come to the difficult question of dealing with the very small number of cases of men dismissed for misconduct, and therefore disqualified for benefit. I have not been able to find out the exact number of cases so far, but I fancy I should not be far out if I said there were not more than a hundred cases in all. Still, these cases occur, and the Act is quite specific that in such cases the workman shall be disqualified from unemployment benefit. I need not defend that proposal in the Act. I remember that, when we discussed it in Committee, some hon. Members representing the trade unions defended it, and explained, as has been explained to-day, that their unions make similar stipulations, so there is no objection to the general principle that a man dismissed for misconduct shall be disqualified.

made an observation which was inaudible.

I do not know that that is so. I promise that this matter shall be very carefully inquired into. I do not know that there is any serious practical difference between the point of view of the union and the point of view of the Labour Exchange, or, let us say, of the Court of Referees or the Umpire, as to what really constitutes misconduct. We have had one or two cases given us. I do not pretend to pronounce upon them at all. But, on the face of them, they were cases where the man was described by the employer as dismissed for misconduct and the description was not really accurate. The Act, and the Regulations of the Board, expressly prescribe in such cases that the workman has the power to appeal. The hon. Member (Mr. Tyson Wilson) in one case of that kind complained that the Board of Trade officials accepted the statement of the employer and disqualified the man. But it is the duty of the Labour Exchange official to take the statement of the employer and give his decision primâ facie on that. If it seems to him that the employer's statement amounts to saying that the man was discharged for misconduct, then it is the duty of the Exchange officer to take that for the time being as settling the case. It was regarded as quite inexpedient that the Labour Exchange officials should be themselves judicial officers to examine evidence and go into disputed cases. That would be a great complication of their duty. They come merely to a primâ facie decision and they give a routine decision, and it is taken for granted, in making arrangements, that if any workman feels aggrieved at it being stated that he was dismissed for misconduct, if he is outside a union, he at once has his appeal to the Court of Referees, and if he is a member of a union, the union appeals to the Umpire; and if my recollection does not deceive me, that arrangement was made in concert with the labour representatives in Committee. It was understood to satisfy them, and the arrangement was put in that form to meet their wishes. I do not see very well how we can improve upon this machinery. We are told that some workmen regard it as a slight upon them to have the charge made. But if they will not take the trouble to appeal, what are you to do? We roust carry out the Act. The Act makes such a stipulation, and it is a stipulation that the trade unions themselves make, and this course that we take of sending a form to the employer, so far as I can well see, is the only way in which we could fulfil the stipulations of the Act. The Board of Trade has no other plan for ascertaining whether or not a man has been dismissed for misconduct. Where a man is in a trade union, we are told, there is no possibility of his coming on the fund improperly. That is to say, if he has been dismissed for misconduct, his union will know all about it and they will take very good care that he is not on the books.

Because they would have to pay more.

I am not saying for a moment that the unions are not perfectly careful to observe their own regulations, but that shows that they recognise that there are such cases. The demand made on the Board of Trade to-day is that we shall take for granted that the man's statement is perfectly accurate. I think it is hardly for us to pronounce that the method is either adequate or inadequate. Hon. Members will not dispute, as regards non-union men, that we are bound in fulfilment of the Act to take some means of finding out whether in a given case a man has been discharged for misconduct. The method we take is simply to send a form to the employer asking him if he has any comment to make. We do not invite any statement at all. In the great majority of cases no statement is made, and when the employer makes no statement against the man, he is held as qualified, save in very rare instances where a statement may be made from an outside source that the man was dismissed for misconduct. When no charge is made, the man is treated as entitled to unemployment benefit, and he is paid then and there. I do not see how we could dispense with the simple machinery of sending a form to the employer to permit him to make the statement that the man is discharged for misconduct in the few cases where it really happens.

The employer is aware of what is in the Act.

But I am afraid he is not always ready to take the trouble to save the State the undue payment of money. We can hardly make it a statutory obligation on the employer to notify the Labour Exchange when he has dismissed a man for misconduct. I think the real ground of complaint is the feeling that in this way—I have no doubt such cases occur—a foreman who has a spite against a workman may gratify that spite and cause the workman trouble. As against that we have provided the means of appeal. I know it has been suggested that, in addition to the Court of Referees and the Umpire, we should set up a third Court, which should deal with cases arising as between trade unions and the exchanges. I think the House would agree that to add yet another Court of Arbitration to the means of arbitration already provided would be to multiply the expense in an inexcusable way. It has been suggested by some trade unionists—that we might bring such cases before the Court of Referees. That is where a trade union man is said to have been dismissed for misconduct, and he denies it. But the trouble is that the wording of the Act gives the trade union power to appeal to the Umpire, and if we could—but I do not think we can—give a primary reference to the Court of Referees, the trade union would still have the power to go to the Umpire, and then we should try the case twice over, which I do not think hon. Members who make the complaint would really desire to have done. There is the feeling which has been expressed to-day that where an employer makes a statement against a workman in one of these forms the workman should receive a copy of the statement. But if an employer knows that in a particular case his answer on that form will be conveyed to the workman concerned, and that it may be made the basis of a libel action, the employer will not fill up the form at all. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why?"] Let me explain what is really done. In all cases a workman is told the substance of the charge which has been made against him. He can then go to the Court of Referees or the Umpire and state his case fully, and whatever case the employer has to make against him will also have to be made there. Therefore, all that is essential for the man to know is what will enable him to defend himself, and to make an appeal to the court where the information will come out. But if we were to give a statement of the charge made by the employer before the workman appeals, we should simply be depriving ourselves of the opportunity of getting any information from the employer in the matter. An employer who might have a perfectly clear case against a workman would say, "I am not going to run the risk of a libel action. If they cannot treat these documents as confidential, I will not send any information."

Hon. Members say, "Trust the people," and they also say, "Leave it to the employer." These positions are a little inconsistent. If you are going to leave it to the employer at all, you are not trusting the people, and if you are going to trust the people, you are not giving the employer the opportunity of filling up that form. Then, it is not a duty incumbent on the employer to fill up the form, and, therefore, we are limited to the middle course of sending the form to the employer to fill it up if he sees fit to do so. There may be something in what hon. Members have said about the quantity of stationery used. When there are dismissals on a large scale, there might be one form sent to an employer, so that he might make a statement in respect of the whole of the men who have been dismissed, but in the general case, I do not see how the extreme demand made by the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Tyson Wilson) can really be acceded to. As to cases in which men are to benefit because of being concerned in a trade dispute, the hon. Member referred to the Chesterfield case. That case is actually under discussion by the Umpire at this moment, and, therefore, I will not pronounce an opinion upon it. It may be, as the hon. Member argues, that there is a general possibility of difficulty arising in respect of the stipulation of the Act as to trade disputes. He will remember that the form of words in the Act was arrived at after very full discussion in Committee. That leads up to the question of the grievances put forward in connection with the decisions of the Umpire. Perhaps the House will permit me to say a word on behalf of the Umpire in this matter. I think it will be admitted that we have laid upon that gentleman a very trying task. I do not see how the task could have been made easier in the situation which was created by the first step in insurance against unemployment, for we have all along regarded the present Act as simply a first step.

Those by whom it was made a point that this was a first step in insurance against unemployment held that there should be an extension of the Act to cover all trades, but it was admitted by the most enthusiastic of them—I can remember no dissentient—that such a measure as this had better be started on a limited scale. It was really a very great experiment. No other scheme of the kind, so far as I am aware, existed. There had been semimunicipal and municipal undertakings in the way of insurance against unemployment, but a compulsory State scheme nowhere existed, and, therefore, we were making an experiment in regard to which we could not but be cautious. For these reasons the scope of the Act was carefully limited. The limitations are in the Sixth Schedule, and with respect to all those decisions of the Umpire some rather ungenerous criticisms have been made outside of this House. I would point out that the most competent legal mind could hardly hope to steer a course through the difficulties set up by these Schedules without some occasional variations in the decisions. I think no one would claim that, in view of the difficul- ties set up by the Schedules, he would be able to steer his way in giving 1,500 decisions so as never to have to revise some of them.

A practical man would have avoided some of them.

That is an easy remark to make. When we see the decision of an ordinary judge reversed by the Court of Appeal, it is possible to make such a remark, but practical men admit that variations are part of the lot of human fallibility, and I think that the number of cases in which the Umpire has had to make alterations is not great considering the difficulties. Moreover, let it be counted to him for righteousness that where he has been called upon to reverse his decision, he has given the fullest and fairest hearing, and that he has, in some cases, rectified or revised his decision in accordance with the appeal made. I do not know whether I could discuss the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Westhoughton as to the preferability in this matter of a small committee to the Umpire. I will just say that I do not think that the suggestion will recommend itself to those most concerned in the working of the Act. The work of the Umpire has only been going on for a short time and those concerned consider that a longer period of operation should be allowed to elapse before any suggestion is carried out. The change suggested by the hon. Member would involve a serious alteration in the machinery. But what can be argued, and what has been suggested, is that we might lessen the difficulties of the Umpire by extending the operation of the Act. I can assure hon. Members that that is what the Department would have liked to have done. Let me say that we perfectly foresaw the difficulties when we were defining the trades for the purpose of of the Schedules. We saw that the in and out line of demarcation would have to be tried. I cannot say that we have had quite experience enough to enable us to decide now upon the exact lines for the extension of the Act. But remember that even extension will not mean an end of the difficulties.

At an early stage I, myself, made an effort to master the minutiæ of the discriminations which would have to be made in regard to trades, and a very short time sufficed to satisfy me that the multitude of differentiæ in almost any one industry was such as to make the task of discrimination a very sufficient employment for anyone's mind, and that it was not work to be done by anyone over and above his other official duties. While by extending the Act we will get over some of the difficulties, we will still have those difficulties which arise out of line-drawing. They will occur when you widen the Act. If we do not decide to act just at once, will hon. Members give the Board of Trade credit for not being neglectful of the appeal made to us, or indifferent to the hardship to which reference has been made. We all recognise that it is a hardship for a man to be sometimes inside and sometimes outside. That is one of our strongest reasons for desiring to widen the operation of the Act. I hope hon. Members will not think me unsympathetic if I cannot now promise when, or indicate how, the widening will take place. Perhaps they will accept from me the assurance that it has always been intended to widen the Act as soon as that can safely be done. The hon. Member for East Leeds (Mr. O'Grady), besides reiterating the justifiable complaint in regard to in-and-out men, made a protest on the subject of what he called the character note. In regard to this matter, there has been a very great deal of misunderstanding, and I think hon. Members will be glad to have it cleared up. Let me say that there is no character note. The complaint is as to notification of character. It is simply a system by which a few letters of the alphabet AA, BB, and so on, are used for the purpose of taking down specific notes in regard to applicants, such notes to be used when applications for workers are made to Labour Exchanges for specially qualified persons.

5.0 P.M.

Let me roughly indicate what, the notes are. They are: whether a man is strong and tall, whether he is neatly clothed, whether he stammers, and so forth. There is no character question at all involved, and the purpose of taking these notes rapidly in that way is simply to secure that when applications are made to Labour Exchanges by employers for men to do certain tasks, they shall get them, and the officials of the Exchanges shall be prevented from sending workers on useless errands to employers who do not want them. Suppose an employer sent to a Labour Exchange and said, "I want men for a particular job; they must be tall and strong, and no others will suit." Well, the officials concerned will rapidly go over all the men on the register who would be eligible for that kind of work, and they will pick out the men who, if not tall and strong, are, at all events, not notably weak. If a man seems in ill-health, these letters are used for the purpose of avoiding the hardship of sending him to an employer who has specially asked for a tall and strong man. Occasionally an employer will say, "I want a man who knows the supervising of house-building work, who can discuss points in regard to the work with the man for whom it is being done. I want a man of address, a superior workman—well, not so much a superior workman, as a workman who can do that particular kind of work." A certain number of such cases are always occurring in the Labour Exchanges. But in regard to the great majority these notes never come into play at all. The bulk of the demands are for men to do a certain specified class of work—building, engineering, or carpentry work, as the case may be, where no special qualification is stated by the man who is asking the labour. There is no question of getting a character note. If it is a question of carpenters and bricklayers, that point as to character notes never comes into play at all. They are simply so many data which might have been used, but probably in ninety cases out of 100 there would be no occasion to use them. It is only sometimes in cases where special qualities in the workmen are asked for by the employer that the code comes into play. Surely it will not be said that it would be fair for the Labour Exchanges if an employer says he wants a tall strong man, to send a man without the least regard to whether he will get the post, or if he says, "I want a man to deal with my customers." that the Labour Exchanges should send a man who stammers badly. It would injure the efficiency of the Labour Exchanges themselves if they did not use such a labour saving and memory helping machine as that.

Supposing 200 boiler makers registered at the Labour Exchange on any one day, would the manager take these particulars?

Any clerk who knows his business and has got used to doing it can do it very easily and take down hundreds in the course of the day. If an order comes to a Labour Exchange for 200 or 300 men for any given job, no notice is taken of these notes. They simply are not used. They have been taken because they might be required. But in the case of demands for labour in bulk, which represents the majority of cases, no use is ever made of them.

That would be so in certain exchanges.

The suggestion is that in certain exchanges the demands for labour will always be general. That would be a very dangerous conclusion to come to, because in any exchange on any day a request may come in for some special qualification on the part of the workman. It is suggested that this machinery is not in the interests of the workmen. That is entirely a mistaken notion. The notes are taken in the interests of the workmen, and are never used in disparagement of the workmen or in any way derogatory to them. They are simply a labour saving device, and when hon. Members realise this they will agree with me that the epithets levelled at the system are entirely mistaken. There is only one other grievance which I have not dealt with and that is the statement that men have been waiting for benefit for three or four weeks. It is possible that that case may occur under Clause 105, but if any hon. Member knows of any case in which a man entitled to direct payment of unemployed benefit has experienced such delay, I shall be glad to deal with it. I am aware of none and it can only be by some unusual accident that any such thing has ever taken place. I trust that the effect of the Regulations of the Department has been to secure as prompt payment as possible of benefit. I hope that I have given such an explanation as will clear the difficulties which have been raised. Far from suggesting to hon. Members in respect of so new an institution as unemployment insurance that we can hope to have attained perfection of machinery or even got to a very ideal form of regulation in all cases, I trust that what I have said will satisfy them that the Department is most anxious to meet all reasonable claims and that they will admit that it has already done so to a certain extent with, I hope, some satisfaction to all concerned.

I wish to deal very briefly with the code and character notes. It cannot surely be necessary, and I would consider it an indignity in certain circumstances, in the case of boiler makers out of employment, to put down notes as to whether they stammer or not. An extension of this system would be really a dangerous thing. It is necessary to make some sort of classification. There is no use sending to an employer a man totally unfitted to do the work which the employer wants done. Everybody must admit that there must be some sort of broad classification to save a man the trouble of a fruitless journey after work and to save the employer the nuisance of having the wrong sort of man sent to him. But the moment you go beyond a rough classification you are getting into very dangerous ways. You are going to ticket and label a man by a clerk in the Labour Exchange, who is probably young enough to be a son of the man out of work, and to ticket him according to the fancy of the particular man in the Labour Exchange. That is a real danger to the liberty and self-respect of the man who, after all, only applies to the Labour Exchange for work, because he is unable to get any elsewhere. The Board of Trade will have to be very careful that it does not go beyond what must be admitted to be necessary into a realm where men may lose their liberty and find that they are actually under the thumb of a Jack in office. I do not say this offensively to those who are in charge of the Labour Exchanges, because I am quite sure that they do their work as well as they possibly can. But this is not the position into which to put a body of men if it is possible to avoid it.

With regard to delay in payments, I do not think that the hon. Member has really met the case. He said that it only occurred in the case of those associations under Section 105. First, take the payments direct, not through the trade unions at all. The hon. Member said that the rule was the payment should be made on the first Friday after the lapse of a full week of unemployment, but that might be nearly two weeks after the commencement of unemployment. Surely it cannot be necessary to fix only one day as payday. Why should Friday be fixed as payday? There would be less work at the Exchange if payments were spread over a week instead of being constantly one day. It would be much better if a man was entitled to come and claim payment, instead of being kept hanging on until a fixed date, which may be nearly two weeks after unemployment has begun, though it would average something less. I heard of a case the other day. I am not sure whether it was a case of direct payment or payment through an association. I believe it was direct payment. The hon. Gentleman, I think, has had particulars of the case as put to me, and from what investigations I could make into it by correspondence it seems correct, the man walked to the Labour Exchange over thirty times to try to get his unemployed pay. If the hon. Member has not had particulars of this I will see that he does get particulars, with the name of the man and his employer. I have already given him particulars of one case of considerable delay. I remember that the hon. Gentleman said that it was incidental to the commencement of the Act and not to press it, and I do not press it now, because I could quite imagine that at the commencement of the Act delays were inevitable. But they ought not to be inevitable now, and if this case to which I will refer the hon. Gentleman is at all typical then a great deal of unnecessary delay is in practice taking place. One of the causes of delay is that the Labour Exchange requires the production of the health insurance book—why I never could understand.

It is to make sure a man does not get it both ways.

The man has got to go to the employer to get the health insurance book and that may take some time. In big works it would take a considerable time before he gets it, and then he has to fill up the form and lodge it. Surely a day or two days' unemployed pay, or even the first week's unemployed pay, might be paid more promptly and then he could produce this health insurance book. The Board of Trade must take some risk in the matter, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred those men who require unemployed benefits, would not dream of trying to get the double benefit of sick and unemployed benefit, and the Labour Exchange might take what little risk there is. They have a very strong hold on that man. Suppose he has had 7s. unemployment pay which he ought not to have had, then, besides the fact that he is under severe penalty for having got a benefit under false pretences, it would be quite easy the next time he was entitled to unemployed pay to see that what he had improperly received was taken into account. I do not believe in the long run it would cost the fund a penny, but it may meantime do a great deal towards facilitating the prompt payment of unemployed pay. The hon. Member said that it was the trade unions' own fault if they did not pay the unemployed pay at once, because the provision in the Act was such that they could reclaim from the Board of Trade to make up what they had paid to individual members. Of course that is the intention of the Act, but I think the hon. Member who moved the reduction was quite right in drawing the attention of the representative of the Board of Trade to the matter. It is owing to the difficulty put in the way, I think by the administration, that that intention does not seem to have been carried out.

The danger that the trade union is under now is that, although it may have come to the conclusion that a man is entitled to unemployed pay and be willing to pay out its own fund, it is afraid that when it comes to the unemployment fund and claims in respect of that man, that the managers of that fund, the Board of Trade, may say, "That man was dismissed for misconduct; you ought not to have paid," or, "he has failed to report himself to the Labour Exchange on the 13th of this month and you cannot have it for that day, though he came on the 14th and 15th, and you may have it for those days. You cannot have it right through." If the Act is really to carry out the intention of its framers there must be some arrangement for co-operation with the trade unions so that the Board of Trade fund should follow the payments and accept the evidence which is satisfactory to members of the trade union in respect of their own fund, for the hon. Member will remember that the payment of the Board represents only part of the benefits paid by the trade unions, and that that was the protection in the Act that the trade union itself has always got to pay a proportion out of its own fund. I would now refer to one other matter, and that is the question of misconduct and the employers' reports on it. It is not a large question. The hon. Gentleman has already said, speaking as representative of the Board of Trade, there were only about one hundred cases.

I had not the exact figures, and that was an estimate.

I am quite content to take the estimate; he can say it is between one hundred and one thousand if he wishes. How many men are there insured and how many men have gone on the fund? What does it represent? It represents an infinitesimal proportion of the whole of those who are either insured or getting benefit. Is it necessary, with such a small gap to stop, that you should have all this elaborate machinery, and that you should ask the employers to make reports in respect of each man who leaves their employ? It seems to me that it would be quite sufficient if they were to indicate to the employers that in any gross instance of misconduct they were requested to inform the Labour Exchange of the reason of the dismissal of a particular man; but to make it a practice by leaving a blank in a form for the employer to fill up is to invite the employer to fill it up in every case, whether it is required or not. It seems to me here that you have not got a big gap to stop, that you are using an enormous amount of machinery to stop up a very small gap, and you are doing it at great expense to the country, at great inconvenience to the employers, and undoubtedly at some injustice to the employés.

I drew the hon. Gentleman's attention to a case, which was one out of a dozen already sent to me from various parts of the country. It was the case of a painter who spent a little time longer than his employer thought he ought in talking to a mate, and the employer dismissed him at the end of a day. The man went to the Labour Exchange, and he found that he had been reported for misconduct. Subsequently the man and his employer talked the matter over, and the employer wrote to me and said he very much regretted that his report had had the effect of preventing this man from getting unemployed benefit, and that he wanted to get rid of the report if he could. The answer which the representative of the Board of Trade gave me was that this man could have appealed. That is quite true, but there are not a great number of men who know how to go through all the machinery of appeal, and they do not, like going into what appears to them to be a court, where they are to be examined. They never know what sort of questions are going to be put to them, and in some cases they would rather put up with the loss of a little unemployment pay than put themselves into a position where they would have to answer a large number of questions. For another reason, this is relatively a smaller matter. If a man were an habitual shirker he would be very soon out of benefit, because he is only entitled to have one week's benefit for every five weeks' contributions. The amount of risk is limited in two ways, firstly by the percentage of cases likely to arise, and, secondly, the amount of benefit that a man would be able to obtain by cheating the fund would be very little indeed, even if he desired to do so. It seems to me that the machinery now in existence is much more clumsy than it need be. Then as regards the "In" and "Out" cases. It has been suggested that the case might be met by an extension of the Act, but an extension of the Act would only push its borders a little further along, and there would always be a borderline until you have made—if you ever do make it—unemployment insurance universal.

I said so.

I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I had not noticed that he said so. But there is one point in which we tried to make a qualification, that the workman himself should be the test of whether he was in an insured trade or not—that the occupation test should be that of the man and not that of the master, so that we should know that the man was always in an insured trade or always out of an insured trade, and that it should not have anything to do with the work carried on by the master. That has not been observed. I remember calling the hon. Gentleman's attention to some cases of men employed in the repairing of kilns; they were not in an insured trade and therefore were not insured. But if these men had been engaged in building kilns that would be an insured trade; yet, whether insured or uninsured, they were the same men in each case. If they happen to go in at one door they are insured, but if they go in at another door they are not to be insured. That is contrary to the intention of the Grand Committee upstairs, where we gave the decision that whatever the employer's business might happen to be, if the man himself carried on the work of an insured trade, then he was to be insured, we did that so as to limit as far as possible the in-and-out cases. I ask the hon. Gentleman to see whether something cannot be done towards looking at these cases more particularly in that light, the test being the man's own skill and the man's own employment. There was only one other suggestion, and, that was made by the hon. Member for Tottenham, who dealt with the difficulty of casual labour, a very real difficulty which has not yet been solved. Part of that difficulty, I believe, is due to a mistaken idea on the part of the employers that a man ought to have his card fully stamped or else he ought not to be employed. It does not always arise by mistake. It arises sometimes because an employer thinks that if a man has been regularly employed and his card is full he is likely to be a better workman than the man who perhaps has only had one week's employment marked on his card. As I understood the hon. Member for Tottenham, he thought that there should be some provision by which casual labour should only be engaged through Labour Exchanges, but I hope that the Board of Trade will dismiss that suggestion from their minds altogether. There are quite enough regulations and inspectors at the present moment governing the employment of men, and it would be the last stage in their degradation if any of their number was not allowed to do an odd hour's work unless he did it through a Labour Exchange, and it would be the last straw on the back of the unfortunate employer if he was not allowed to give that employment except through the Labour Exchange.

I should not have troubled to intervene in this Debate if it had not been for the reply made by the hon. Gentleman on behalf of the Board of Trade. It was the reply of a man with no knowledge—I mean no practical knowledge—of workmen's feelings upon these matters. I question whether there is a single man who has spent his time in a workshop who could possibly have made the speech which was delivered by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. I do not know that we ought to blame him for that; he has had his experience, and we have had ours; but at least it does show why on so many occasions the demands which we make are met with so little satisfaction to ourselves. I could not help smiling, and I should say many hon. Gentlemen could not help smiling at the hon. Gentleman's description of the task which the clerk at the Labour Exchange has to perform. He described the clerk having, so to speak, to size up the man and to take into consideration his various qualifications—which is a dangerous power to give to any one man, and I should say a dangerous power to give to even the hon. Gentleman himself. I know full well that many of the clerks and managers at the Labour Exchanges have not got the ability the hon. Gentleman himself possesses, and yet I would not even trust him with such a power. The clerk or manager at the Labour Exchange has, as it were, rapidly to consider and note the various qualifications of the applicant—whether he is good-looking or otherwise, or whether he is weak or strong. I was very much struck by one observation of the hon. Gentleman, that the clerk might not be so much studying the qualifications as noting the absence of them. For instance, a man of slight build might apply, and the clerk or manager might make the note that the man was inefficient, that he did not look strong, that he did not seem to have a capacity for hard work; he might note him under A, B, or C as a man inefficient or incapable of hard work. In thus rapidly summarising men's qualifications vast mistakes might be made to the detriment of applicants. I have had put into my hand a document which gives some idea of the way in which these inquiries at Labour Exchanges are made by the officials. I do not know how we can go on if we are to judge merely by looking at a man whether he is strong or weak.

Some men, for instance, look strong and yet frequently prove to be weak. I have taken Members of this House to be strong men, yet they have been often away either because of gout or influenza or something of that kind, and my judgment with regard to them was altogether wrong. I can quite believe that the clerk of the Labour Exchange who has had no experience either of men or of things would be liable to great error if he attempted to form summary judgments of a moan's qualifications. Take the question of eyesight, for instance. How could I in this House, simply by looking at an hon. Member, say whether or not his eyesight was good unless I happened to watch him particularly to see whether he scanned the Order Paper closely, or something of that sort. I think it will be conceded that such a summary method as that which has been indicated by the hon. Gentleman of endeavouring to ascertain the qualifications of an applicant is one which is likely to be attended with great mistakes, to the detriment of working men; and for my part I can quite understand that the working man, when he sees this sort of treatment meted out to him, feels very great resentment indeed. There are two or three points with which the hon. Gentleman dealt, or, to be more accurate, with which he failed to deal. All he could do was to skim around them. He valiantly approached each of them as if he were going to solve the problem, but ended only by going round them, and then proceeding to the next question. The question of pay was one of those matters. He failed altogether to appreciate the point we have tried to make, that it does not get us out of our difficulty at all to tell us that the union can pay and then demand repayment from the funds of the insurance afterwards, because there are always occasions of disputes to be taken into consideration.

I have had cases before me personally, and the only reason I made no noise about them was because of the argument put forward that experience of the working of the Act had been very short, and that we could not be tinkering at the measure with such a brief experience of it. All these questions which have been raised have been brought not only to my notice, but to the notice of many of us, and when secretaries delay claims for a longer time than is apparently necessary it is simply because of the doubt as to whether in certain cases payments will be honoured if they made them. I do think as trade unionists we ought to press that point inasmuch as we have had now many years' experience of distributing claims, and we have machinery for doing so which, although not elaborate and although simple, is quite sufficient for the purpose of determining whether a man has transgressed or not, or whether he should get his claim or should lose it. It must be remembered that those unions have to pay in those cases out of their own funds, so that they will see for their own sakes that only those who have legitimate claims shall receive payments, and correspondingly those who have claims upon the funds of the State Insurance should be granted payment. Let me emphasise also the difficulty and inconvenience of having a fixed day. The hon. Gentleman said that that day was usually the Friday following the lapse of a full week. I think that is a hard-and-fast rule. I do not know whether it is anything more than a question of administration, but if it is only that, then I suggest it ought to be reviewed. For instance, it might happen that a man entitled to payment on the Friday might get work in another place on the Thursday, and it would be exceedingly awkward for him not to have received the money or to have it sent on after him. I think there is very little to be gained by having a fixed day so long as the Act is complied with in regard to the lapsed week.

With regard to the form, or rather with regard to another matter, the hon. Gentleman said that the form filled up by the employer was not a character, but virtually, I submit, it does amount to a character owing to the opportunity it gives to that employer, and not so much perhaps to the employer as to some understrapper of a foreman who has probably two shillings per week more than the man he is judging, to blacken the workman's character. I am not speaking of what might be, as I happen to have been in the position of knowing not only one, but many cases of this description where a man has gone out of his way deliberately because of some little trivial matter to make it, as it was called, hot for the man who was leaving employment. I have even known of men being penalised because they left during an exceptionally busy period when the foreman was at his wits' end to get men. The man, having the chance of bettering himself, simply took another situation, and because he did so, the character he was given was that of a man who was untrustworthy as a workman, notwithstanding the fact that the foreman would have been only too pleased to have kept him on.

I think also that there seemed to be a total absence in the hon. Gentleman's remarks of any idea that the employer would take advantage of the Act unless he was specifically invited to do so. There, again, I want to tell him from my own experience what really does happen. In the case of the small employer, and in the case of a foreman of the large employer, to show him that they do this kind of thing on their own initiative and without any prompting whatever, I have had, in my capacity as secretary of a trade union, the facts concerning a man's dismissal laid before me with the object that the man should not get his donation. Then in my capacity as secretary I have many times received notes from foremen and small employers dealing with the causes under which certain men left their employment. The object was to prove to the society that those men had transgressed the rule and therefore were not entitled to donations. If they would do that in regard to the ordinary working of a trade union, what is to hinder them doing so as far as the administration of this State Act is concerned? I do think we are only inviting the employer to state his worst about a man. My opinion about a matter is this, that if the man's trangression is not sufficiently bad to make the employer feel it his duty to do this kind of thing, then the employer should not have the thing thrust under his very nose, and application made to him to complain about the man whether he wants to or not. So far as the form to employers is concerned, it does seem to me to be a very big fuss over a very little. If the hon. Gentleman who represents the Board of Trade is right, or anything near right, in saying that there are only one hundred cases of this kind, or if he doubled it and says two hundred, in which misconduct, has been alleged, or even proved, then it does seem to me to be a terrible waste of machinery and effort and of printers' ink, and all the rest of it, to pursue these few cases.

As to appeal, I quite agree with what has already been said, that the working man does not like appeals and a lot of fuss about these kind of things, and that he would far rather in many cases, especially if he finds employment a few days afterwards, allow the whole thing to drop rather than go on with that kind of thing. As to the question of who should be "out" and who should be "in," I agree that it is a very difficult matter to determine who is to be included within the working of the Unemployment Section of the Insurance Act, although some of the decisions given strike one as being anomalous. For instance, a man engaged in building a new road is held to be inside, while, if he is engaged in repairing an old road, he is held to be outside. One does not quite see the reason for those arbitrary divisions and distinctions, but I think the suggestion of the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Worthington-Evans) that the man's qualifications should be taken into account, if that is permissible, would get over many difficulties. Let me give an instance in my own trade of pattern making. In Somerset I came across a small firm making articles of silver and brass for Church work, crucifixes, ornamental work, and so on. They are outside the Act. If the moulder in that firm goes down to another little place a few miles further on, where there is an iron foundry doing work for the building trade, then he immediately comes inside the Act. The workman in this case may in the course of three or four years be travelling from one firm to the other, as one is busy and the other slack, and therefore would be in and out, according to whether he worked on silver or brass or on iron. If the main qualification as moulders had been taken into consideration, there would be no difficulty and they would occupy a well-defined position.

Let me say how very disappointed we are at what appeared to be, notwithstand- ing the words of the hon. Gentleman, the totally unsympathetic attitude he took up. It would be better if the Board of Trade would only try a little bit more, it seems to me, to look on the question from the standpoint of the men, for, after all, it is they that suffer. As I was listening to the hon. Gentleman's statements about the form, it appeared to me that it was the workman that was thought of last every time. For instance, we were told if they sent the form to the employer and did not maintain secrecy, that then the employer would do so-and-so, but there was no concern about how it was going to affect the men simply. That is not the spirit in which this Act ought to be worked. If it is going to obtain and secure that which, after all, is absolutely necessary to success, and that is the confidence of the working men, and especially of those who have gathered together in our great trade unions, that can only be obtained by a recognition on the part of those men that they have with them the sympathy of the Board of Trade, and not the Board of Trade for ever and always putting their interests last, whether it is railway matters or whatever it may be, and putting the interests of the employers always first, but they must have some intimation that the Board of Trade do think a little bit sometimes about the men's point of view.

I would like to say a word from the point of view of the taxpayer, who does not seem to have received much consideration in the Debate we have had this afternoon. My hon. Friend, the Member for Colchester (Mr. Worthington-Evans) suggested that the form, or rather the paragraph in the form, to employers regarding misconduct should be omitted, because, he remarked, there had only been a hundred such cases, or a very small number in which misconduct had been imputed by the employer, and I think the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, rather repeated that. There is, however, this point of view which seems to have escaped attention, and that is the workmen know this form is sent out, and that if they misconduct themselves, and if the employer puts that into the form, that they will not get the benefit of unemployment under the Insurance Act. Consequently that is a direct incentive that they should not misconduct themselves, and apparently it is an incentive which has worked well because there has been so few cases of misconduct sent to the Labour Exchanges. If that paragraph is left out, the workman would know that it would be extremely difficult to find out whether they had been unemployed because they had misconducted themselves, or merely because there was not sufficient work for them to do. Its omission would be a direct incentive to misconduct, instead of being as it is now a direct incentive to proper conduct. Therefore, I hope, the hon. Gentleman will insist on the form being maintained. I observe that the Labour Exchange and Insurance Buildings of Great Britain are put down for £90,000 and that the total Vote is £223,000, and last year it was £350,000. I should like to ask why such a very large sum is required? If the hon. Gentleman will refer to the statement which was made by the then President of the Board of Trade on the Second Reading of the Labour Exchanges Bill, he will find that on the 16th of June, 1909, the then President, who is now First Lord of the Admiralty, said:—

"As a great national system it will cost us in round figures something like £160,000 a year to administer, and with buildings the expense will, after the first year, rise to about £200,000 for the first ten years."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th June, 1909, col. 1041, Vol. VI.]

The right hon. Gentleman emphasised the point still more on the Financial Resolution. He then said:—

"I think that we have got to work gradually in the matter of permanent buildings. The proposals which I have submitted do not provide for building permanent premises for even the first Labour Exchanges. Until ten years have passed the new buildings will not be completed, and meantime the Exchanges will be housed in hired buildings."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd July, 1909, col. 749, Vol. VII.]

He went on to say that he did not wish to spend too much money. Later on he said:—

"Three or four first-class Exchanges will be erected each year until at the end of the ten years thirty or forty will be built. In that way the expenditure is spread over a long period. If he will look at the statement of annual expenditure, he will see that we so spread it as to avoid any undue expenditure in any one year. The slim of £210,000 is the highest amount we arrive at, then £200,000, until in the tenth year, with the economy in the erection of these buildings, you have a sum of £180,000."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd July, 1909, col. 755, Vol. VII.]

Not one of these statements has proved to be correct. We are asked now to provide £223,000, and last year we were asked to provide £350,000, whereas the largest sum in any of the ten years suggested by the right hon. Gentleman was £210,000, which was gradually to diminish to £180,000. But that is not all. I tried to raise this point last year, with probably the same result as has happened now. Every hon. Member behind the Government has quitted his place. So small is the desire to safeguard the interests of the taxpayers that the moment the question of the taxpayer is raised every hon. Member opposite leaves the House. Two hon. Members have now taken their places. [An HON. MEMBER: "How many are there on your side?"] We are a minority; but if we went to a Division, I think we should defeat the Government. If the Division were confined to those Members who had heard the Debate, I should not have the least fear as to the result. Last year there were, and probably again this year there are other items in connection with this matter concealed in other Votes. It is really a serious thing if a Minister makes statements on the faith of which money is voted and then expenditure is incurred out of all proportion to the statements of the Minister in charge of the particular Bill or Resolution. It may be said that the extra expenditure is due to the Insurance Act. This, however, is a question of buildings, and the buildings cannot be required to be so very much larger that the expenditure is increased by £200,000 to £350,000, as happened last year. I hope the Secretary for the Treasury will give me some explanation in order to allay my misgivings. Quite irrespective of whether or not Labour Exchanges have been a success, it is important that the Committee or the House, as the case may be, should have some consideration on the part of the Minister who asks them to advance the money required for any special Bill. In view of the fact that the expenditure on everything is increasing every year, and that we shall probably soon reach a total of £200,000,000–an expenditure sufficient to make Mr. Gladstone and the old Liberal party turn in their graves—I hone that the right hon. Gentleman, if he cannot give me a satisfactory answer to-day, will endeavour to provide that later on we shall have an opportunity in Committee of Supply of discussing this very important question.

As my right hon. Friend has to speak later on in the Debate, perhaps I may have the leave of the House to reply briefly to the point raised by the hon. Baronet. There may be an opportunity of discussing the question in fuller detail on the Estimates in Committee. It has certainly turned out that the original estimate of the cost of the Labour Exchanges has been considerably exceeded. This is due to the fact that the policy of the Labour Exchanges has been expanded. It was originally contemplated that Labour Exchanges should be set up only in the large towns. It was soon seen, however, that their efficacy would be unduly limited by that course being adhered to, and that if they were to do the good that was expected of them that limitation of plan would have to be departed from. This was seen before the Insurance Act was passed; but when unemployment insurance was being considered, it became still more evident that an extension of the original plan was inevitable. There are now 438 Exchanges at work, and the cost is in excess of what was originally expected. No one supposed at the outset that so many Exchanges would be required. We cannot put all the increase down to unemployment insurance, though that has entered into it. The real cause is that the policy has been expanded.

I should be glad if the Secretary to the Treasury could give us some idea of the cost of Labour Exchanges in the way of introducing employers and employed. Personally, before the State Labour Exchanges came in, I had a good deal of experience of voluntary Labour Exchanges, and directly the State Exchanges were instituted, I saw something of their working. At that time, they seemed to me to be very fair examples of the bad result of a Government Department taking over work which had previously been well done by voluntary effort. The expense of the Central Office seems very great indeed; the centralisation of officials is very large; and the efficiency of the work in the sub-offices seems to be of very doubtful value. As often happens, the expenses are not extravagant so far as concerns the payment of the men who really do the work of Exchanges. In reply to a question the other day, the President of the Board of Trade told me that 176 of the Exchanges were not under the control of managers at all. Managers, I understand, are entitled to a minimum salary of £150 a year. These 176 Exchanges are under the control of people whose salaries are a little over £2 a week. When it is remembered that these people have many hundreds of pounds passing through their hands week by week, and have other people to look after, it is not surprising that there should be various complaints as to the way in which the work is being done. I wish to exclude from my criticism the work connected with the juvenile Labour Exchanges, where, of course, voluntary effort has been availed of to a very large extent. I shall be glad to know how the cost of the Labour Exchanges works out.

I wish to call the attention of the House to certain grievances felt in the Customs and Excise service, owing to the amalgamation of the two branches. I bring the matter forward in no spirit of hostility to the Treasury. I understand that the grievances are distinctly felt, and I merely put before the House the case which has been put to me. The work of an Excise officer since the amalgamation is of an extremely varied character. It comprises not merely Excise work proper, but also a great deal of Inland Revenue work. I am informed that the head of the office now—in the provinces at any rate; it may be different in London—has to supervise such matters as Income Tax, the work of the distilleries and breweries, probate work, national insurance, old age pensions, and many of the valuation problems arising out of the Finance Act, 1910. I think it is clear that men who have been trained solely on the Customs side cannot have the technical knowledge necessary for an office of this kind. In fact, the right hon. Gentleman must be aware, from private representations, that there have been serious difficulties in certain offices. I am informed that that has now been recognised, and that, as far as can be done without injustice to individuals, greater discretion is being used in the appointment to the Excise Department of persons who have had no experience in the special kind of supervising work there necessary. I am told that an entirely new system is to be introduced, under which surveyors are to be appointed as the result of a competitive examination, and that all classes, outside and inside Customs men, and outside and inside Excise men, are to compete equally for these posts. I am told that the candidates will, in practice, be over forty years of age.

6.0 P.M.

This requires a little explanation. On the face of it, it has a distinctly celestial appearance. I believe it is the custom in the Chinese Empire, to fill high posts by competitive examinations, and that the mandarins, who enter the examination for the posts of governors of provinces, are sometimes over seventy years of age. At first sight, I suggest that a competitive examination for men over forty years of age is not a good thing in itself, and that the best official is not likely to come out most successfully in such an examination. In certain directions the peculiarity of passing examinations is that it requires much greater flexibility of mind than in getting experience of the practical work of administration. I would like to ask when this system is to come into vogue, because there seems to be a good deal of doubt and anxiety on that point. Apart from the more general consideration, there is one particular class that stands to be, so I am told, extremely hard hit by this change of system; that is, the second-class principal clerks in the former Excise service. Formerly these men looked forward confidently to getting surveyorships. Now it appears that, although it is true if they remain second-class principal clerks they will have an increase of increment as such, they will not be able to get surveyorships unless they are successful in a competitive examination. That is, at least, their fear. Possibly there may be some explanation that will put that matter right. But I also understand there is this peculiarity, that if they compete and fail they stand to lose their ordinary new income.

At present this class have a maximum of £320 per year. They may go in for these examinations. If they succeed and become surveyors, they will go to a maximum of £450. If they fail they will suffer. That is to say, they are invited to compete, and if they do compete and fail they will be in a worse position than if they did not compete at all. Surely that is no incentive to proper competition? That cannot be a right system. Unless I have been wholly misinformed of the facts, I do not think the right hon. Gentleman will be able to defend the position in view of the fact that this class of officer has a very unfortunate future to look forward to in connection with his chances of promotion. This is a matter which, I suggest, ought to be looked into at once. On the whole question of amalgamation, surely that can be confined to the lower grades? No doubt in the lower grades it is a good thing for a young man to acquire knowledge of all these different kinds of work, but after a time he should elect which branch he is going to follow, or possibly some authority should judge of his capability and settle for him which branch he shall follow. It is like general education up to a certain point. Obviously, if a man's capacities are more on the classical side it is no use cramming him with science, and if on the science side it is no use going on with classics. So mutatis mutandis it is the same in this case. May I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that it would be well to consider whether it is not possible to do without this competitive examination, and to pursue the policy of confining the amalgamation to the lower grades of the services?

I would like to ask the Financial Secretary to be good enough to explain an item in the Memorandum of £75,000, included in the arbitration expenses in connection with the purchase of the National Telephone Company's undertaking. It seems to me to be a very large item, and I would like some explanation as to haw it is made up. In conclusion I would like to back up the observations of the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London as to the supreme necessity of economy. We see an increase in the Civil Service Estimates of £4,000,000 odd, due mainly, I understand, to the Insurance Act. It would seem to make us, on whichever side of the House we sit, very critical of expenditure, particularly when we know how tight money is, how this stringency prevails all over the world, and how it is largely accentuated by any increase of expenditure.

I desire to call attention to one or two questions which seem to me obviously to arise. The first one I want to call attention to—

I understood the hon. Member was following on the same question. I think it will be for the convenience of the House that we should dispose of the present question, and then I will call upon the hon. Member. I think the hon. Member for Deptford desires to raise the same question as the hon. Member.

I desire to supplement the remarks made by the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London with regard to the Labour Exchanges.

Then perhaps the Financial Secretary to the Treasury had better reply first.

As to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry (Mr. D. Mason), I was not aware that he was going to raise it. I cannot give off-hand all the particulars of these matters, but I will have inquiries made, and perhaps my hon. Friend will put down a question, which I can answer, or will raise the subject in Debate on one or other of the opportunities afforded this week, when I shall be able to give him the information asked for. Of course, he recognises that this National Telephone matter has involved an unprecedented expenditure, and consequently the probability is that the expenses, both legal and arbitrational, have been larger than those dealing with a normal transaction of a similar nature. I do not think there has been such a case involving such detail and so much discrepancy between the claims made on behalf of the private company and claims admitted by the Government. As to the very moderate statement, if I may say so, made by the hon. Gentleman opposite, I do not think he wishes me at this stage of the history of the whole proceedings to go at any length into a defence of the policy of the amalgamation of the Customs and Excise. That policy was decided many years ago now. It was fully explained to the House and approved by both parties, I think, and especially approved by those who had had experience, such as some hon. Members opposite and some on this side had had of the working of the two services from internal knowledge of the work of the Inland Revenue. I cannot say for the moment that we can claim that it makes for economy, because we have had to safeguard the interests, so far as possible, of those who at present are in the two services. But I am quite sure it makes very enormously for the efficiency of the public service! I think ultimately it will make for economy in the public service. I have no doubt at all that that amalgamation is approved by all parties in the House and by those outside, and I believe by the servants in the two Departments when they have really had some experience of the work.

There is in all cases like this, where you are engaged in amalgamation in connection with Government Departments, or indeed other Departments, a little difficulty and friction at the beginning. Each class which has had certain prospects before it thinks that those prospects are injured by the amalgamation with the other class. In connection with this particular amalgamation I have answered questions in the House put to me both from the Customs side and from the Excise side—questions suggesting that the Customs have got the better of the arrangement at the expense of the Excise, and questions suggesting that the Excise have got the better bargain at the expense of the Customs.

The explanation probably is that the right hon. Gentleman has not in his mind the cases that I have. My complaints are that men have to serve under chiefs who, through no fault of their own, are absolutely ignorant of that particular side of the work.

I would not like to express agreement with that statement without far more serious inquiry. I do not think it is the real explanation. I think the explanation is that you have to dovetail together two systems. We have done it with considerable advance in general of expenditure, and some creation of posts of a higher value to the posts which either side could have thought themselves entitled to be promoted to. On the other hand, of necessity that may have meant that each particular side may have thought it did lose posts, not quite so high in value but of higher value than at present that it would have had if there had been no amalgamation. That has been one of the difficulties about the class of officers who I believe do at present feel a grievance which has been voiced in this House, and which questions have been put about and answered. Their position is this: They have been given an advance in the maximum of their present position over what they had before the amalgamation when they were simply Excise officers. They have been given an opportunity of rising to a position very considerably better than any they had before amalgamation. On the other hand, they have been limited by the fact that Customs officers have also come in and limited their possibility of being appointed to positions of less value. I need hardly say that this sort of arrangement was not done without full consideration.

A Committee, under my predecessor, the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, has sat nearly two years, certainly for eighteen months, to consider how these two systems could be amalgamated, so that substantial justice should be done to every grade in both systems. Representatives of the various classes put their case fully before the Committee, which finally came to the conclusion and reported, and the Report was in the main accepted by the Government. The only difference was that the Government, as a matter of fact, provided more generous terms for the officers in question than the Committee recommended. The position of these officers at the beginning was that with salaries rising from £180 to £250 a year they had an opportunity of promotion to a fixed salary of £280 per year, with the further possibility of promotion to a salary of from £280 to £320. Now their maximum, instead of being £250, has been raised by £50 in all cases, and by £70 in the case of those who were in this position at the time of the amalgamation. Therefore, instead of being able to rise in their present position to a maximum of £250, they can now rise to a maximum of £320, which is an increase of £70.

Their complaint is that they lose the opportunity of getting surveyorships.

My first point is that if they do get into the higher grade they may have to compete in a general sense of the word with Customs officers, but the positions to which they can rise to as a result of that system of examination is better now than before that amalgamation, because while before amalgamation they could rise to £280 they can now rise to £320 and to £450.

If they failed, are their positions worsened?

No, I did not understand that. I did not understand that if they failed in being promoted to the higher places that they would lose the possibility of going to their maximum in the lower; that is a new point to me; I heard it put forward only this afternoon. But as to that and the need of a competitive examination—and I may say on that point I entirely agree in the general idea that a competitive examination as a sole test is unsatisfactory in itself for men over forty years of age and is not so essential as it may have been in earlier years—and also as to the alternative which was suggested, I promise hon. Gentlemen that I will make further inquiries, when I hope to be able to give more full information than I can now.

The first point to which I wish to call attention is the distribution of the Development Fund in Class 2–"Agricultural Education, Farm Institutes." I understand that the allocation of this money from the Development Fund is very strongly objected to by the county councils. The other day I had a notice sent me of a resolution passed on 5th March by the Wiltshire County Council in regard to this matter. That resolution is—

"That as the Development Commissioners propose to distribute the Grant-in-Aid of farm institutes work on the basis of the amount expended by each county council on additional work, that no Grant may be made to any county council unless its expenditure is increased, this council is strongly of opinion that the proposed method of distribution is inequitable and therefore unfair to the county councils that have been expending large sums out of the county funds upon agricultural education, and urges the Commissioners to distribute the money on a national basis which is in proportion to the amount expended by each county council on agricultural instruction."

It seems to me that the county council of Wiltshire was too modest in the statement it made, because I understand there is a sum of between £1,000,000 and £2,000,000 to the credit of this account, and therefore I ask, is it fair or reasonable to ask for any sort of test of expenditure by the local authorities before any Grant-in-Aid to agricultural education is given at all, but, if it is to be given on the basis set forth in that resolution, how would it work out in relation to Wiltshire and the two adjoining counties of Dorsetshire and Berkshire? Neither of these two spend anything like the sum that the county of Wilts spends. It spends something like £3,000 a year, and, estimating that the expenditure would be on a basis of £4,000 per county, all they would hope to get would be a moiety of what they spent above £3,000, whereas Berkshire which spent under £500 upon agricultural education heretofore would get instead over £1,700. That seems to me to be a wrong basis. I think we should adopt the principle that those counties that have been forward in the work should receive more, not less. Otherwise there is no inducement whatever to those counties and no advantage given to those counties that have been liberal in their expenditure in these matters the past. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture for not having given him notice that I was going to raise this matter. Still I am glad to find that he is in his place, and I hope he will be able to satisfy me upon this subject, and I hope he will not call for any contribution from the counties in this matter. It is a matter of national importance, and it is obviously proper that the Development Commissioners should undertake the whole burden at the present time.

The other points I wish to raise are in reference to the Mercantile Marine Department of the Board of Trade, and I should like to assure the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade that I am not going to bring forward any matter in a contentious spirit. I merely want to call attention to a few facts that come upon this Estimate, and I think the right hon. Gentleman will be perfectly competent to deal with them without any special reference to the permanent officials of the Department. The first point is in reference to Class 2 of the mercantile marine service—the question of ship's surveyors. I am glad to notice there is an increase in the number of shipping surveyors, nautical surveyors, and engineering surveyors. In the case of engineering surveyors, there are three more in the Estimates of 1913–14 than in the previous years. In the case of engineer surveyors there is an increase of four and in ship surveyors there is an increase of nine, and in the case of the nautical surveyors there is an increase of twelve, from fifteen to twenty-seven. But I still think, considering the immense interest concerned and the enormous volume of the trade of our mercantile shipping, that the number of surveyors is still inadequate, and I am quite sure that when we look at the minimum salaries for these positions, ship's surveyors and nautical surveyors of the second class, starting at only £200 a year, we cannot possibly expect to get a class of nautical surveyors with practical experience in sea-going ships which is necessary in respect to the work they have to perform, at a salary of £200 a year. It is not enough to command the men we really want for this work, which is so essential if the work of the mercantile marine is to be properly done. These surveyors of course are of enormous importance, and the number, as well as the quality of them, are equally important.

I find in the very next item, sanitary surveyors of the first and second class, there is no increase at all. I have several times asked questions in regard to the sanitation, air space, and ventilation, and things of that kind, alloted to the crews and officers on board ships, and I have been told in reply, which is perfectly true, that there is no medical or sanitary supervision during the construction of cargo ships at all. The question of air space for the crew is regulated simply by Board of Trade Regulation, and when the ships are being constructed the most that can be done is merely that measurements should be taken, and that the surveyors concerned should be satisfied that the Board of Trade Regulations as to the cubic space for the men are carried out. I notice that in the address to the Executive Council of the Chamber of Shipping on 12th September last that the President, Mr. T. Royden said:—

"The Board of Trade should have power to protect the seaman against imposition and to obtain for him conditions which are necessary for his comfort and wellbeing on the voyage,"

and a little further on he went on to say that they had a right to ask that the Board should do something in return in the way of the maintenance of discipline on board. It is very curious how these things appear from different points of view. It is the view of the President of the Executive Council of the Chamber of Shipping, that the Board of Trade have ample power to see that the men should be amply provided for, yet I find when I turn to the report made by the medical officers of various ports, who inspect these vessels after the mischief is done in most cases and not at the time when they are being constructed, they take a different view of the question altogether. Take the case of Dr. Herbert Jones, medical officer for Newport, Monmouthshire. He says:—

There is no question as to the inadequacy and obsoleteness of the health preserving regulations of the Board of Trade, which Department is entrusted with the housing of the sailors."

He also states:—

"The Board of trade officers who are responsible for the construction and supervision of vessels are not required to possess any knowledge of hygiene,"

and this was admitted by the President of the Board of Trade in replying to a question put by me. So we are forced to the conclusion that as these sanitary surveyors only number five, and there is no proposal to increase them that they simply have not time to make any inspection whatever of the ordinary merchant vessels, and that their inspection, owing to their inadequate numbers, are confined to the case of emigrant ships and to the accommodation of emigrants leaving these shores. We have the most minute regulations as to cubic space, sanitation, and so forth for people on shore, but we have no provision for adequate and proper inspection of our ships. I should like to read a report from Dr. Williams, medical officer of health for the Port of London, which says:—

"In smaller British vessels the crews have to provide and keep their food in their quarters,"

and this is an extract, using his exact words—

"until the Legislature takes some more practical interest in the welfare of seamen, pulmonary tuberculosis will continue to be a cause of much mortality among this class of men."

Dr. Williams also points out that whereas in the case of a common lodging-house, occupied day and night, an official cubic space of 400 cubic feet per head is prescribed; in the case of seamen seventy-two cubic feet is considered sufficient space. In June last the Port Sanitary Committee at Newport, Monmouthshire made a report which is even more drastic and certainly merits the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade. They adopted a resolution to the effect that they were strongly of opinion that it was full time something was done with a view to raising the standard of hygiene at sea, and that the conditions of living, storing of food, nuisances arising from foul contaminations, damp, dark, dirty, and ill-ventilated living spaces, foul sanitary arrangements, lack of opportunities for personal ablutions, faulty designs, and other matters must render the merchant service most unattractive to self-respecting individuals who could earn a living ashore, and call for early Government inquiry. In face of that resolution I cannot regard these Estimates as satisfactory. We still have this inadequate number of five sanitary surveyors. May I also point out that the officers' quarters are certainly not less important than those of the men seeing that upon the proper navigation of the ship for which they are responsible depends not only the health of the crew, but the safety of the whole of the crew and the cargo of the ship. Therefore the accommodation provided for officers ought to be more open to Board of Trade inspection quite apart from whether it is a merchant cargo ship, or a ship which is to carry passengers. In cargo ships it is often the case that the accommodation for the officers is so inadequate that two officers are put into one small cabin. Frequently they are placed in places which are most inconvenient in connection with the storage of the cargo, and often in noisy surroundings near to the seamen's quarters, or other parts of the ship where they experience bad smells both day and night. We had a report of the Manning Committee in 1896, which said most emphatically in recommendation No. 30 that

"a ship is in an unseaworthy state when she leaves port without sufficient officers or with her responsible officers unfitted for duty by reason of prolonged overwork."

In recommendation No. 31 it was laid down—

"that not less than two mates should be carried in any sailing ship of 1,000 or more tons under deck, clearing from a port in the United Kingdom. That steamers of 500 tons gross and over should have two mates, and of 2,000 tons gross three mates."

Nothing has been done in the intervening seventeen years to do away with the excessive overwork and long hours of these officers. The question of their housing and accommodation on board ship becomes very urgent. If men have to work frequently fifteen hours at a stretch and for over 100 hours a week, and are accommodated in such tiny places where the noise is incessant and the smell nuisance constant, then reform becomes more urgent. Up to the present we have never done anything to deal with the overwork caused by the two-watch system. I know it would not be in order for me to deal with that at any length, and I only mention it incidentally. I call attention to the fact that this year in the United States, on 28th February, an Act was passed by the Senate which provides, so far as their mercantile marine is concerned, in Section 2–

"That every such vessel of 1,000 tons and over propelled by machinery shall have in her service, and on board, three licensed mates who shall stand in three watches while such vessel is being navigated."

In Australia they have a similar provision in an Act which has passed through their Legislature, and if the hon. Gentleman cannot see his way to reduce this gross overwork of the officers in the merchant service, at least he might provide under his regulations and make provision for the same in the Estimates for increasing the supervision of the places in which the officers are asked to live during the few brief hours' rest they get at sea or in port. I cannot regard this part of the Estimates as satisfactory, and I am glad to have had this opportunity of referring to these matters. This is not a question particularly of the present Government, but it concerns all Governments, because these matters have never been dealt with up to the present time. Expert Committees have sat upon these matters and made recommendations which one would have thought it would have been impossible for any Government to ignore, but one party or the other has pigeon-holed these recommendations, and no attention is paid to them until there is a terrible disaster like the sinking of the "Titanic," and then we have an increase in the number of nautical surveyors. The number of sanitary surveyors, however, remains at five, and no proper provision has been made for the inspection of the accommodation provided for crews and officers. Then there is the kindred question of medical supervision. Owing to the representations of the Imperial Merchant Service Guild to the Board of Trade Departmental Committee, the following recommendations were made nearly twelve months ago:—

"Our attention has been called to the absence on board cargo vessels of any separate accommodation for members of the crew who fall ill or meet with accidents. We are of opinion that it would be very desirable that some suitable provision should be made on board all ocean-going cargo vessels for the separate and reserved accommodation of sick persons, and trust that the board will see fit to use its influence with shipowners in this direction."

That represents the total efforts of the Board of Trade in regard to these matters. Their attention is called to the absence of hospital accommodation on merchant ships generally and to the fact that, if there is an epidemic or cases of accident or illness, there is frequently no accommodation whatever for them and invariably no suitable place in which such cases can be treated, and not only do they not provide any adequate inspection by appointing more sanitary surveyors or medical officers, but when their attention is called to the matter they merely make the recommendation which I have read, which is perfectly optional on the part of the shipowners to carry out. At the close of last year, when I asked in how many cases this recommendation had been carried out, the President of the Board of Trade told me that it had been acted upon in ten cases only out of all the ships built since that recommendation had been made and in all the ships altered in their internal construction. That shows that the whole question of the sanitary and medical inspection of our ships, the provision that has been made in the way of accommodation for the health of the crew and officers and sickness, is inadequate and it is inadequately looked after. I sincerely hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to give the House some assurance that in future Estimates the Board of Trade intend to take this matter into their serious consideration, and make some provision during the coming year to show that this question, which is long overdue, is at last going to receive the attention of the marine department of the Board of Trade.

I hope the House will receive some information with regard to the quarters both of officers and men on board a certain proportion of our ships. The contrast between the more and the less luxurious portions of a ship is even more acute afloat than anything we see on shore, and whilst there has been an extraordinary extension of luxurious provision on our great passenger liners, I do not think there has been a corresponding advance in regard to the housing of the officers and crew on the part of a large section of our cargo boats. Undoubtedly on the cargo steamers considerable improvement has been made. I have lived myself with great comfort on board a cargo boat even of a comparatively small size. I am sure that on board a considerable portion of cargo boats, whatever improvement has been made recently, the accommodation for the officers and crew is not yet what it should be, and further steps should be taken to provide decent housing both for the officers and men. I mention the officers because I think that perhaps more has been done for the men. On many of the routes that are followed very often the officers for long periods have most harassing stretches of duty. I support what has been said by the hon. Member opposite with regard to the modifications required, although I think a great deal has been done already. Nevertheless things are not yet satisfactory, and I think this is a fair time for asking that these difficulties should be made good where they are found to exist in regard to the accommodation of officers and men. This is a fair time to ask for these changes because shipping has been flourishing of late, and I hope it will continue as a prosperous undertaking. It has paid extremely well, and therefore I think this is not an inappropriate moment to put in a claim that these ships which have not been properly fitted for both officers and men should undergo some closer scrutiny, and I hope we are within a reasonable measure of time when these deficiencies will be made good. It is obvious that the reconstruction of many of the older ships is a matter of the greatest difficulty, but for the reason I have given, I think the time has come when a further effort should be once more made to overcome some of the leeway which has to be made good.

My hon. Friend the Member for Devizes has directed his double-barrelled gun against some very varied game. The right hon. Gentleman opposite has supported his left barrel, and I desire to support the attack he has made by his right barrel. It is very inconvenient to pass so rapidly from one subject to another of a totally different character, but I should like to say a word in support of the protest which my hon. Friend has made with regard to the allocation of portions of the Development Fund for the purposes of agricultural education. The right hon. Gentleman has already had his attention drawn in this House to the fact that the more progressive local educational authorities are not at all satisfied with the system under which those who expended money, and in many cases large sums of money, upon agricultural education in the past, are those who are going to benefit least under the new system upon which the Development Grants are to be allotted to the various counties. My hon. Friend has instanced the case of Wiltshire, and I doubt if there is a stronger case in the country. Wiltshire is a poor county, almost wholly agricultural, and yet out of its small resources it has in a most progressive spirit for several years now allocated a very large sum, amounting to £3,000 a year, to those purposes of agricultural education that come under the heading of what has hitherto been known as "higher education." This system under which the Grants are to be given to new and additional work, and not to work that has been previously carried on by the various counties, does put a premium on the efforts of those counties that have been reactionary and have shown no progressive educational enterprise, and it has, on the other hand, caused disappointment, if not dismay, to those counties, such as Wiltshire, which have been progressive in such matters.

I do not know quite why the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Agriculture always appears on the Front Bench to reply to the criticisms which are directed against this manner of allocating the Development Fund. Surely the representative of the Treasury, as representing the Development Commissioners, ought himself to be here to explain why the Development Commissioners lay down this condition or a similar condition in respect of all the Grants that are made out of the Development Fund. We all know the very great difficulty under which local authorities carry on their work in consequence of the ever-increasing burden thrown upon the ratepayer's shoulder. It is not the right hon. Gentleman, I understand, who has himself laid down this condition, but it is the Development Commissioners. If I am wrong, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be good enough to enlighten me. It transpired at Question Time to-day that there is standing to the credit of the Development Commissioners a cash balance of £296,743, and an invested sum of £2,500,000. That means there is something like £2,750,000 of unexpended moneys standing to the credit of the Development Fund. Why are not these moneys being expended? Does it mean the right hon. Gentleman has been too modest in his applications for Grants to be made for the varying purposes of agricultural development? If that is so, I hone the right hon. Gentleman will use his utmost efforts and the greatest possible celerity in asking at once for £2,500,000 for the various purposes of his Department which are awaiting and urgently needing public money for their support and development. I might remind the right, hon. Gentleman that there are something like seven different purposes specified in the Act of 1909 of an agricultural character for which this money is available. There are certainly, at least, four of those purposes to which I am certain no portion of the Development Fund has yet been allocated.

There are many subjects in which the right hon. Gentleman himself is deeply interested which have either received no portion of this fund or a very trifling amount. For instance, what a magnificent nest egg that £2,500,000 would be to develop a system of credit banks throughout the country, and develop it on much sounder lines than anything which is likely to be done through the joint stock banks! There are other purposes to which portions of the fund might be applied to help the small holder. If some of those small industries which are so successfully carried on abroad were initiated and promoted by this money, such as beet-sugar cultivation, the cultivation of tobacco, or even the cultivation of flax, I am quite sure the small holder would benefit. These are types of industry which undoubtedly would undoubtedly benefit the small holder, and which for their initiation certainly some public money is required in order to develop them. I should like to ask why, with all this money which is apparently being hoarded by the Development Commissioners, it is necessary to force local educational authorities to put upon their unfortunate ratepayers an extra burden which they can ill afford to bear, especially in those cases, as in the case of Wiltshire, where they have been progressive in matters agricultural, and where, in the long run, they will bear a very much heavier burden than those less progressive counties which have expended little or no money. There are many counties to-day that, so far from making any drain on their ratepayers under the Education Act of 1902 for the purposes of higher education, have not even levied a single penny out of the twopence thereby authorised for that purpose. I am sure those are counties to which a smaller portion of this Development Grant might well be made, leaving a larger portion to be given to those who have rated themselves up to the hilt and thereby shown their interest in education, particularly agricultural education, instead of throwing the additional burden upon them which this projected scheme seems to involve.

I wish to call attention to the lack of hygienic conditions on merchant vessels. It is quite true that there are regulations of the Board of Trade which provide that ships shall be constructed with spaces of a certain cubic measurement, with the intention that there shall be sufficient breathing space in the quarters which are occupied by the officers and men, and no doubt the Board of Trade officers, as far as they can, endeavour to see and make sure that ships are built with the proper amount of cubic space, but I venture to say the amount of cubic space which is enacted by the Merchant Shipping Act is not the only consideration. There are other important points, such as where the sleeping accommodation is provided, and also how the ventilation is effected, which should be borne in mind. We all know that cubic space alone is of no use unless you have a proper and adequate change of air, and from what I can gather—and I have made inquiries from several quarters—the ventilation in many vessels is such that the air does not get changed sufficiently quick, and in other cases it is such that men are often subjected to cold draughts, which produce colds and sickness. I am also informed that in some ships cleanliness is not sufficiently enforced and that contagious diseases are apt to be caught from some infectious source, and especially is that the case with tuberculosis.

I have ventured to suggest to the Board of Trade that some definite plan should be made to show ship-builders the way in which they can best carry out hygienic conditions on ships. One suggestion, which may be a good one, is that instead of having what is called natural ventilation, there should be forced ventilation—a small cubic space really makes it obligatory—and not only forced ventilation, but that it should be ventilation of a form which can be heated or cooled according to the various climates to which a ship has to go. If these alterations, which would mean better health and happier conditions for the men, were carried into effect, the result would be beneficial to our merchant shipping service, beneficial to the men, and also economical, for my experience has shown me that it is true economy to have labour working under healthy conditions and false economy when the reverse is the case. Moderate and proper hours of labour, a due amount of work—not too much or to little—care for the workman in every way as regards his health and so forth, all these are really economical conditions and benefit the employer as they benefit the employed. That has been my experience, and I believe it to be a fact. I say that where the health of workmen working in large numbers is the first consideration, there the profits of the employer are the greatest. Therefore, I would now try to call attention to the great importance of this subject.

7.0 P.M.

We have heard that there are only five inspectors. I can hardly believe that there are so few. It would certainly seem to be inadequate, and it does seem a strange thing that they should have no sanitary knowledge. I happen to be the Member for that particular port—Newport—to which the hon. Member (Mr. Peto) called attention, where the medical officer, Dr. Howard Jones, has several times reported that the condition of the ships is not satisfactory from the point of view of health. I would suggest that, although the Board of Trade, according to law, cannot, I believe, enforce any particular method of ventilation, they can say there shall be a certain cubic space, and they have certain regulations to which shipowners must adhere. I would suggest they allow a museum to be formed of exhibits, showing the construction which is best calculated to produce healthy conditions into the British mercantile marine. It would be a voluntary exhibition. Anyone who had ideas on the subject could send models, and he Board itself, through its surveyors, could take notes of such merchant ships as were most perfect, and then allow shipbuilders and owners when they choose to come and see what had been done, so as to make them emulate one another to improve the conditions on the ship. I should also like to refer to the cases of frequent overwork on board those ships. I understand the Board of Trade have some powers with regard to that matter. I do not know how far they can be exercised. I am not sure of the class of men who are specially referred to. I have one instance of a cook on a ship who has sometimes far more work than a man can properly attend to if he is to cook the food for the men and be in reasonably good health himself. I trust I have made these suggestions in a most friendly spirit towards the Board of Trade and that they will give consideration, especially, to the idea which I have put forward that there should be a museum or an exhibition containing models of ships, or of those parts of ships, which would improve the construction in future to the great benefit both of employers and employés.

Perhaps it may be convenient to the House if I dispose at once of the points which have been raised bearing upon the Department of Agriculture. It is true, as the hon. Member for Wiltshire (Mr. C. Bathurst) has said, that the criticisms which he offered were connected more properly with the Development Commissioners than with the Board itself, but I can throw some light upon some of the transactions that have taken place between the Board of Agriculture and the Development Commissioners, and I trust that it will tend to reassure the hon Gentleman, and those who take an interest in agricultural questions, as to our anxiety to allow no portion of this fund to lie dormant so long as our needs are unsatisfied. In the first place it should be remembered the large amount of money which is available for the purposes of the Development Commissioners and the Road Board cannot be devoted entirely to British agriculture. There are other objects to which it can be devoted, and other countries which are entitled to a share. Scotland and Ireland have to get their share in the Grant as well as England, but so far as agriculture is concerned, at any rate we in England have been ahead both of the Irish and the Scotch in our demands upon the Development Commissioners. I published last year, for the information of the House, a statement of the advances from the Development Commissioners which have been sanctioned by the Treasury to be made to the Board of Agriculture up to the 31st March last. That statement can be now supplemented by a considerable list for the year 1912–13. Up to that time he had asked for and had received money for the improvement of light horse breeding, for agricultural research in a number of colleges and institutions, for Grants to colleges in aid of the extension of their advisory work and local investigation work, both of which are of great local value; also Grants for research scholarships, Grants to institutions in aid of scientific research and experiments, money for special investigations and researches in various subjects; and finally a big Grant for farm institutes, to which some reference has been made in the case of the county of Wiltshire. But besides these sums we have received money for fisheries, for the development of forestry, for surveys, and for agricultural co-operation; and in the year 1912–13 we have received sanction from the Treasury for a large sum of money for the aiding first of all of heavy horse breeding, then for advisory work with regard to stock breeding; and now we are negotiationg with the Development Commissioners for a large Grant in aid of the breeding of cattle, and I hope ultimately of pigs. We have received money in aid of the formation and administration of milk record societies. It is quite possible that there are a great many subjects which we have not yet touched. Some of these were mentioned by the Member for Wiltshire.

Can the right hon. Gentleman state the total he has received?

No, Sir, it would be very difficult to state the total we have received, for the simple reason that a great many of the schemes are not yet in full operation. We are only receiving the money in driblets—that is a necessity of the case. The whole of the local machinery and the national machinery must take some time to get into working order. I cannot state the full amount we have received up to date. As to the total amount sanctioned by the Development Commissioners, it will satisfy the hon. Gentleman and other Members who are more enthusiastic about agriculture than they are about a great many other subjects, to learn that agriculture has got the lion's share. We have got far more in our Department than in all the other Departments put to- gether, and it will be some satisfaction, I hope, to the hon. Member when I say that, although the spending of the money has been nothing like as rapid as I could wish to see, and although there are over £2,000,000 to the credit of the Development Commissioners at the present time, this money is not likely to lie there as an investment for a long time. The Commissioners are already pledged to spend large portions of it. How much money they have still unpledged I cannot say at the moment. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will find an opportunity to give notice to the representative of the Treasury on that point.

The really serious criticism of both the hon. Member for Wiltshire (Mr. C. Bathurst) and the Member for Devizes (Mr. Peto) is that in the allocation of the Grant we have not taken into consideration sufficiently the performance of duties in the past by progressive counties. It is quite true that the county of Wiltshire has an excellent record with regard to agricultural instruction. I am not quite sure what the total spent by Wiltshire was last year, but in the year 1911–12 it was well over £3,000. The whole of that will not come out of the rates, but a large portion of it certainly will. The counties which have been referred to, such as Berkshire mid Dorset-shire, have spent much less than Wiltshire, and we have provided in the Farm Institute Grant for a strict differentiation between progressive counties like Wiltshire and a county like Dorset, which has done nothing like so much in the way of agricultural instruction within the last few years. In any new work which is undertaken in Dorset they will receive, under the farm Institute Grant, pound for pound as assistance, but in the new work by Wiltshire it will receive from the fund three pounds for every pound which is spent. That certainly shows that the Development Commissioners, having had this matter pressed upon them by the Board of Agriculture, have taken into account the previous work of the county in agricultural education. It is quite true that some of the backward counties have not been doing the amount of work which Wiltshire has dope in the past, but we cannot allow any claim upon the Development Commissioners' Grants for work which has been done in the past. Their fund was created with the special object of furthering development in the future. The Development Commissioners have not duty to sanction any Grant which does not provide for new work. It is not for me either to criticise or defend that position, but it is the condition under which they work, and the only thing I could do, and I believe I have done it with all the energy and persuasiveness which I could command, has been to press upon the Development Commissioners the view that the progressive counties should receive a much larger proportion of the Grant from the fund than those which have been non-progressive. I think that the difference between pound for pound and three pounds for one pound shows that the Development Commissioners have done something to recognise that claim.

Is it a fact that there is no Grant made except in respect of additional expenditure, no matter how much has been spent in the past by a county, and if that is so, is it not a fact that upon the pound for pound basis a county which has only spent £1,000 in the year will get £1,000 towards additional expenditure up to £3,000, whereas a county like Wiltshire which has been spending at the rate of £3,000 will get nothing except the three rounds for one pound on further expenditure?

That statement is not strictly accurate, because agricultural education is already aided to some extent out of the Technical Instruction Grant. I agree that the Technical Instruction Grants might be larger, but there is some assistance from that given towards the £3,000 which is spent by Wiltshire. It is quite true that a county which spends £1,000 upon new work will receive £1,000 upon that work even if it has been a non-progressive county. But if a county like Wiltshire which has been spending £3,000 in the past now spends £500 more it will receive £1,500. It is possible by comparison to make it what you will according as you may wish to show that it proves one thing or the other, but the fact remains that the money that will go to new work will be three times as much in the case of a progressive county as it would be in a non-progressive county, where it would only be pound to pound. That is the fullest, compensation which I could secure from the Commissioners in recognition of work which has been done in the past.

Would not that affect the poorer counties which have not spent so much as the richer counties although they may be more progressive? Will they both get the same in the future?

I should not like to compare them as poorer or richer counties. Some of the richest counties have not done so much in proportion as the poorer counties. I do not know that you can measure their progressiveness in this matter by their wealth.

Is there any proportion between their wealth and the amount they spend? What would be a large amount for a poor county would be a very small sum in the case of a rich county, and yet the poorer county might be the more progressive of the two.

I am differentiating in that case between pound for pound and three pounds for one pound, and the Board have also taken into consideration the rateable value of the county. We quite recognise that £3,000 spent by Wiltshire represents far more than £3,000 spent by Lancashire. That sum spent by Lancashire would not entitle Lancashire to a Grant on the three pound for one pound basis, whereas for the county of Wiltshire it does. To that extent we do make a difference. I regret that I cannot go into greater details with regard to these complicated financial transactions. I have not refreshed my memory with the calculations which I made when I went for a tour in these counties last summer. I am delighted to see that there are so many Members interested in the details of agricultural education and in the question of financial assistance to those counties, whether progressive or not.

I wish for a little further information with regard to the Labour Exchanges and insurance buildings. Reference has been made to a statement of the House, when the Labour Exchanges Bill was under discussion, to the effect that it was intended to erect twelve first-class Exchanges this year, until at the end of ten years we should have forty of these Exchanges. For myself I fail to find any of those first-class Exchanges in London, although there is great need for them everybody will admit. Anyone who will visit our Exchanges will find that a great deal of the business, so far as the working people are concerned, is done, not inside the buildings, but outside them. In other words, the accommodation provided for working people in these Exchanges is entirely inadequate. At the last meeting of the London Advisory Committee the matter was under consideration. Representations had been made to them as to the inadequacy of most of the Exchanges in London, and as a result of the discussion a resolution was passed urging the Board of Trade to give effect to the promise which had been made in this House by the then President of the Board of Trade.

I assume that the recommendation was forwarded in due course to the Board of Trade, and as a member of the Advisory Committee I am anxious to know what, if any, has been the result of the Board of Trade's consideration of the matter. The accommodation is absolutely unsuitable for the work that has to be transacted at these Exchanges. Since the Act came into force work of a considerable character has been thrown upon these Exchanges which to some extent was not contemplated when the Bill passed through this House. The officers have been called upon to do that work. The Exchanges are used to a threefold extent more than was the case three years ago, and with that necessity facing the Board of Trade I sincerely hope that in considering this recommendation from the Advisory Committee they will give it, not the customary official sympathetic consideration that is given to so many questions, but that they will take their share in endeavouring to redeem the promise made to this House by the President of the Board of Trade and forward some recommendation to the Treasury. I cannot submit the question to the Treasury, because there is no one here representing them, and perhaps it would not be in order, but I hope that when the Board of Trade do what I consider to be their duty in this matter, and when their recommendation does go forward to the Treasury, it will be treated by the Treasury in a broad and generous spirit. I am sure that if any hon. Member of this House were to visit some of our London Exchanges he would say without hesitation that the buildings provided are totally inadequate for the work. In fact, they are more like ordinary tradesmen's shops than Exchanges. Anyone who has had the privilege, like myself, of visiting certain cities and towns in Germany, and who have seen the splendid buildings erected there for this class of work, and who contrasts them with the buildings in which we have to do the work in this city, must feel that the contrast is so great that I, as an Englishman, feel ashamed of the buildings in which this important work has to be done. I hope the Board of Trade will give the best consideration possible to the recommendation forwarded to them by the Advisory Committee.

I desire to raise a point of considerable public importance and also of importance to several hon. Gentlemen who have taken part in the Debate this afternoon, namely, the construction and sanitation of ships. So far as I know recommendation No. 5 in Lord Mersey's Report on the "Titanic" disaster has not yet received very much attention from the Board of Trade. The recommendation is that—

"The Board of Trade should be empowered by the Legislature to require the production of the designs and specifications of all ships in their early stages."

It is not competent to raise that question in this Debate. If the Board of Trade require fresh power from the Legislature, that is clearly a question of legislation and not of administration. On Supply we can only discuss what is in their existing administrative power.

On Thursday last, before the Closure fell, I ventured to express regret that the Committee stage on Vote A was not allowed a longer time. I did that because I believed that if the Committee had been able to fully consider the position of our Army, it might have been possible to obtain support from both sides of the House for an increase in the establishment of our Army. I listened to the debate throughout, and I was particularly struck by the remarks which fell from the supporters of the Government as to their desire to increase in every possible way the efficiency of our Army. To-day it is impossible to make an alteration in the total number of men, but I should like to give a few reasons why I believe it would be to the advantages of our Army and of our country to add to our peace establishment. We know that the peace establishments of our Regular Army were lowered in the year 1904–5. That was done under a Unionist Government. I do not advance my arguments from a party point of view; I am trying to promote the efficiency of the Army. Those reductions were made at a period when it was found difficult to obtain the numbers we were then trying to enlist in our Army. Since then a considerable reduction has been made in the number of battalions, and that difficulty ought not still to exist. With this reduction in battalions it has become more than ever necesasry to have an increase in the establishment of the remaining battalions. It is unnecessary for me to point out to the House how much better a trained soldier is than a Reservist in the first six months after the Reservist is called up from the Reserve. We all know that the man who is in training is more likely to be of service on the immediate outbreak of war than a roan who has been away from the Colours, and who probably has become rusty, not only in his military capacity, but not having led an outdoor life he is unable to do the marching or fulfil any of the requirements of a soldier.

In the course of the debate on Thursday attention was directed to the had proportion of Reservists to trained soldiers in our Expeditionary Force. Knowing something, as I do from personal experience, of leading a company in war, and also of training a company in peace, I say it would be of great advantage to regimental officers if you enabled them to have a greater peace establishment, so that if our Army is called upon to fight, those officers, who Members in all parts of the House acknowledge are doing their best to increase their own efficiency, should have a fair chance to do their best and fulfil the duties we have cast upon them. Unless we do increase our peace establishments I maintain that we are giving them a very difficult task to perform when they start in a campaign. Under our present regulations it is possible that our Army may find itself expected to take its position in the fighting line ten days after mobilisation. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that we should have a very large body of trained soldiers and fewer Reservists in the Expeditionary Force. I am glad to see the Secretary of State for War has conic in, as I am glad to know that he has the same feelings in this connection. When I read his speech I welcomed certain words he spoke. They form only a short part of his speech, but they show that he, at any rate, is considering the question of increasing the number of trained soldiers and reducing the number of Reservists in our Expeditionary Force. His words were:—

"I have had several criticisms from hon. Gentlemen opposite, and from one hon. Gentleman on this side of the House, who say that in our Army—which should be the most efficient Army in the world, seeing that it is a small one—we do not have a sufficiently large proportion of men actually serving in the ranks, and that we rely to too large an extent upon Reservists to fill them up."

I do not wish to attach greater value to those words than the right hon. Gentleman meant. On that occasion he was speaking more directly of the Artillery, but if it is sound in regard to the Artillery, I urge that it is also sound as regards the Infantry. The right hon. Gentleman added:—

"I have not got so far as I could wish in that regard, but I have got some way."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 19th March, 1913, col. 1084–5.]

Under the present Army Estimates and under Vote A, I venture to say, as regards our Infantry, and as regards our Expeditionary Force as a whole, that we are considerably reducing the establishment of our Regular Army. I know the right hon. Gentleman has told us that there is a net decrease of 1,000 or 500, but if he will turn to Vote A, page 12, he will see that in our establishment there is a reduction of 2,800 over and above that 1,000. That 1,000 is taken from other branches of the Service, and the decrease in the establishment is not a question of 1,000, but of 3,800. That is a misfortune, and a thing that ought not to be, because, instead of decreasing the establishment of our regiments, we ought to increase it. I can only now, at this late stage, hope that the Secretary of State will consider the advisability of increasing these additional numbers, which he is reducing from 3,850 to 1,000. If he will do his utmost to see even this additional thousand is kept in the ranks this year it would be an advantage. He may ask me how that is to be done. I can only offer a suggestion, but I believe it could be done, and I believe it would be to the advantage of our Army if a certain number of men were allowed to prolong their service with the colours. You may say, if a man goes to the Reserve, he is costing less than if he stayed with the Colours. But there are a great number of men, who are not always our worst soldiers, who may find it difficult to remain in permanent employment in civil life, and I hope hon. Members below the Gangway opposite will support me when I say it would be to the advantage, not only of these men themselves, but of advantage to recruiting in the Army, if we allowed a certain number of men to serve for long service, and be able to give backing to our Expeditionary Force if it has to be sent abroad. One of the things that deters men from joining the Army is seeing so many old soldiers out of employment and not having a chance of continuing to serve in the Army as they are willing to do, simply because we do not look after them at all in their after life. This is wrong. It would be a great advantage to keep a certain number of trained soldiers longer with the Colours, and this could be done even under the Estimates as they are, although it could only be done to the extent of the additional thousand, which are now left, unless the right hon. Gentleman could reinsert the words "three thousand eight hundred and fifty" instead of a "thousand." But if he can only give us a thousand, and try the experiment of keeping these men with the Colours for this year, it would be a step in the right direction, and would show us what we can do and how many men would come forward to accept these terms.

We have, in this question of recruiting, a very difficult one to face, and when one knows that the Secretary of State has proposed to make it more easy for men to rise from the ranks I am only too glad to welcome the scheme, but I am doubtful as to the great number of men whom it will induce to join the Army. I should like to see more men coming forward, and it is only by giving them the possibility of making the Army their service through life that we shall be able largely to increase the number of recruits, and perhaps get men of greater stamina than we are now getting. I have been a regimental officer all my life, and I have never wished to take any other part than leading men. Many of us in the Army have always felt it was the finest part of the soldier's life to have touch with the actual men who joined. I have always had the interest of the men at heart, and wished to see them getting every advantage they could from the State compatible with what we can give them. It is unfair to our trained soldiers to expect them to go on our Expeditionary Force with a large number of Reservists that they have to take, and it is unfair to the Reservists to expect them to be fit to go without some preliminary training. Moreover, to benefit the men, we must keep our officers as efficient as we can, and on the question of pay we can no doubt do a certain amount to encourage our officers, and a great point with them is not to allow them to find themselves absolutely stuck for promotion. The proposal of increased pay only while the man is serving may make our officers hang longer to the Army than perhaps is altogether desirable. I only put this forward as a matter worthy of consideration, as I feel convinced that we do not want to make promotion slower than it is at present. I have no doubt it is a difficult matter, but I put it forward in all good faith, believing it desirable not to make promotion slower than it is at present.

With regard to the point of pay, the first criticism I would make on the scheme is that, if I am not mistaken, the increased pay of a captain is only given after a man has served as a captain for-three years, and his total service exceeds twelve years. That ought to be altered, and any man who is a captain, and has served twelve years, should get the increased pay, as it may often be in some regiments that a man may not get his company before twelve years, whereas in many regiments be may get it in as few as six or seven and may be drawing the pay directly he gets his twelve years' service, whereas a man who has got twelve years' service who has been in a regiment with slower promotion does not get his pay till after he has done fifteen years' service. It would not be a very great alteration and it would be an improvement in the scheme. The only other point I wish to draw attention to is with regard to the men who are going to be given a commission after three years' service. I hope and believe that it is not only in the future that men will be promoted from the ranks after three years' service. If this scheme is brought forward, and this extra money is voted to men who rise from the ranks, there may be non-commissioned officers at present in the ranks who will not be entitled to compete for these commissions, even though they may have as many as seven or eight years. It would be unfair for those who are now serving not to give them the same opportunity of taking advantage of this extra grant of money as those who are only going to join in the future. If that is the case it is a scheme which we should all welcome, and if we can only consider these two or three points it will be of advantage to our forces. I hope the matter of the peace establishment will be very carefully considered, as we all should wish that those men who come forward to serve in the Army and, if called upon to fight this country's battles should fight under the most favourable circumstances, so that victory can be assured, as far as is humanly possible, by the foresight of Members of the House.

I wish to say a few words of congratulation on the system of extra pay for officers, because it is a system which would encourage promotion from the ranks and make it possible for men to take commissions who are thoroughly fitted for it, and though it is quite true that all non-commissioned officers do not make good officers, many of them do. The hon. and gallant Gentleman may set his mind at ease as to the question of whether non-commissioned officers who are now serving will be eligible for these commissions, because there is no idea of keeping men out or in any way making it difficult for them. I think the idea is that they cannot be made into officers with less than three years' service. It is only a general minimum. That is quite clear from the Secretary of State's speech in Committee. Another thing I should like to speak about is the curious way people have of discussing the numbers which are available for home defence. When they strike men off from the Expeditionary Force because they are too young, those men are supposed to vanish into thin air, but instead of disappearing altogether they go to the Reserve battalion, and the men—boys, if you like to call them so—under twenty years of age who are not taken abroad with the Expeditionary Force are very good soldiers many of them, and are drafted into the Reserve battalion, and day by day they are growing into strong men, and are making the nucleus of the drafts as they are required month by month. Of course, in this way, by the draft of these men and by the draft of Reservists, who have to stay at home, the curious thing that no one seems to realise is that the Special Reserve battalion on mobilisation, instead of being 600 or 700 or 500 strong, should be more like 1,300 or 1,400. I know from the statistics of one or two battalions that there is a certain number of Reservists who cannot take foreign service, and they and the men who are not taken by the battalion as being too young are also drafted besides the men actually in the Reserve battalion. I do not think, in any case, there would be a Special Reserve battalion on mobilisation which would be under a thousand strong. Of course, it is quite true that some of these would be under the age of twenty. Surely the trained Regular soldiers under the age of twenty would be a good help in the defensive operations of the Territorials or anything of that kind. These would be real battalions. It is quite true that the Special Reserve would become on mobilisation feeding battalions. They would be home battalions, but in a few months they would be in the same position as the Regulars and equal to the Line soldiers. I do not think it is fair to suggest that these men have to be sent abroad at once, and that they will vanish into thin air, which is the general calculation made by some people in estimating the strength of the Army.

As to the change in the matter of pay, it is true that in certain regiments promoion is slow, and that is one of the difficulties of the Army. When you refer to the slowness of promotion I do not think it is quite fair to use that argument now, because there are more staff appointments and more promotions in the British Army at the present time than there has ever been in the past. Regimental promotion is not any faster than it used to be, but in the higher ranks there is more promotion than in years past. I believe that all through history there have never been so many posts to fill, and that is not because of spendthrift tendencies on the part of the War Office to make posts for men, but because extra men are wanted for highly technical purposes. For instance, in the Aviation Corps there are over 1,000 men. There are a great many more officers in that corps than there would be in a Line regiment of similar strength. In the same way there is a greater proportion of officers required in the Engineers and the Artillery nowadays than in days gone by. The staff, of course, is immensely more numerous than it was in the old days. I think it is hardly fair to take this moment in referring to the slowness of promotion. I congratulate the Secretary of State upon the increased pay to be given to officers. I think that it is the right way to encourage men to join the Army and to induce them to remain regimental officers.

I desire to call the attention of the House to the subject of military aviation. Before criticising the speech which the Secretary of State made last week, I would like to refer particularly to one or two points. As to engines for aeroplanes, I can cordially agree with him that for a long time past we have been deficient. I think there are only two English engines which have passed satisfactory tests. I am credibly informed that the makers of these engines, and the makers of aeroplanes, in this country have been starved before getting orders from the War Office. Up to the present time there has been no market for aeroplanes for ordinary civilians—Members of this House or the public outside—for purposes of pleasure. The only market is that provided by the Secretary of State for War. I desire to congratulate him on the proposal to give a prize of £1,000, or more, for British engines. But far more important than that is the promise he has given for large orders. It is impossible unless orders are promised for any engineers to start manufacturing aeroplanes and engines, because of the expensive plant which has to be laid down before even a single engine can be manufactured. I would like to make it quite clear that I have no interest, direct or indirect, financially or otherwise, in any firm of aeroplane makers. I think that it is advisable to say so at the outset of my remarks, because the right hon. Gentleman has not fulfilled the expectations held out a year ago in regard to British manufacturers.

We must buy a certain number of foreign aeroplanes, for improvements are being made in the construction of machines by France, Germany, and America, day by day, and it is important that we should have the best types. But in the event of war breaking out we shall have to rely on English manufacturers, and I am anxious that the policy of the War Office should be that our manufacturers should have a continuous supply of orders, so that their works can be kept going. I am afraid that during the past year they have been very largely starved. I think the whole industry has been starved by lack of orders from the Government. With regard to the management of the Royal Flying Corps at the Army Aircraft Factory, I cannot, on the information I have received, think that the machines, as to the matter of repairs, are cared for as well under Government control as under private control. The policy of France is not to have these very delicate instruments under the sole control of the Army Department, and instead of being repaired by ordinary French artificers, they are sent back to the makers. After a machine has done a certain number of miles, or a certain number of hours in the air, a representative of the maker is sent to overhaul and tune up the machine. I think much might be done in that way to limit the number of very serious accidents which take place, and which, I am bound to say, must take place for some years to come in connection with this new form of warfare.

As to the Monoplane Committee, I cannot help feeling that a great deal of delay has taken place. Some months ago the Secretary of State was frightened by the accidents which were taking place, and he issued an Order proprio motu, that no flying should take place in monoplanes. As the result of that Order, fourteen or fifteen new monoplanes were put back into the shed unused, and almost uncared for, while there were men who were ready and desirous to fly them, and who would have had to fly them in the event of war taking place. The Committee reported on 3rd December last, but no steps were taken in consequence of the Report. It was not made public until 4th February. During October, November, December, January, and February, these valuable monoplanes remained unused. The House will realise that with the small number of machines we have had, our officers and men should have had the opportunity of flying or practising upon really the best monoplanes the Army had. I do not know even yet whether the right hon. Gentleman has issued an Order that flying may take place upon these monoplanes. I believe they are still not being used for flying or practice by the officers of the Royal Flying Corps. It is rather interesting to notice that there are more monoplanes than biplanes flown in the French Army. I think the First Lord of the Admiralty has been giving his time and attention to monoplanes for the Navy. If they are too dangerous for the Army, I wonder the Secretary for War did not communicate with his colleague who is at the head of the Navy as to the risk in connection with monoplanes. The Navy have been flying their monoplanes, though the Army have not been allowed to do so.

The real gravamen of my complaint against the right hon. Gentleman is that he has not fulfilled the expectations which he held out to the House a year ago with regard to the Royal Flying Corps. On 4th March last year he said that the Army and Navy Flying Corns would be always on a war footing, and that the peace and war establishment would be the same. He told us then that this scheme involved the purchase of 131 aeroplanes. I wish to ask whether during the past six months the Aviation Service has been on a war footing, and whether he has purchased 131 aeroplanes during the past year? I am bound to say, in fairness to the right hon. Gentleman, that he did not pledge himself to purchase 131 during the year, but we were led to assume that a very large proportion of them would be purchased during the year. He told the country a few days ago at a public meeting that, admitting we started far behind, they would agree that our progress had been greater than that made in any country in any one year. Starting far behind has nothing to do with the party on this side of the House. Aviation has come into use during a period the present Government has been in office. Aeroplanes began to be employed during the time that Lord Haldane was Secretary of State for War, and if he started badly the responsibility is on the present Government. The right hon. Gentleman pledged himself that there should be three squadrons forming the Royal Flying Corps, that they should each fly twelve machines, and that there should be for each squadron six spare aeroplanes for casualties. Personally I should have thought, having regard to the enormous number of accidents, small or large, which must take place, that if these squadrons were to be kept up to a war footing, there should be a 100 per cent. instead of 50 per cent. of spare aeroplanes.

These three squadrons were to have eighteen machines, making fifty-four in all. These machines were to be kept on a war footing. I want to know from the right hon. Gentleman whether at any time during the past year these three squadrons have been on a war footing. I wish to know further whether the fifty-four aeroplanes are efficient, ready to go to war at any moment. You cannot say that the aircraft of the Army is on a war footing unless it is prepared to go to war at any moment. My information is that if war had broken out at any time during the past year, or even during the past three months, so far from these squadrons being on a war footing, there would not have been twenty-five efficient aeroplanes which the right hon. Gentleman could have sent to war. Possibly the right hon. Gentle-may may not agree with me as to what is meant by efficient. He told us last week that there were 101 aeroplanes in the Army. When my right hon. Friend asked if they were efficient, he replied "That depends upon what you mean by efficient." He fenced the question. May I tell the House what I regard as efficient? I would say that an aeroplane to be efficient must be as good as the bulk of those in the French Army. It must be capable of starting off at once, flying at a speed of at least 50 miles an hour, and able to rise in the air at least 3,000 feet. Anything short of that I do not consider efficient. An aeroplane may be efficient for the purposes of instruction; it may be good enough to use in a school-room for the practice of these young officers, but that is not a war footing. I think the right hon. Gentleman has confused, and he certainly has confused the House, between aeroplanes on a war footing and aeroplanes which the Royal Flying Corps possess for the purposes of instruction. I have questioned him from time to time as to the number of aeroplanes possessed by the Royal Army Flying Corps as recently as, I think, the 18th January and the 22nd January. The right hon. Gentleman gave me a very different figure from this figure of 101. If the right hon. Gentleman has got 101 efficient aeroplanes, I have nothing further to say. If they are efficient for war purposes, all the complaint I have made falls to the ground, and I shall be forced to acknowledge my fault and to say that the right hon. Gentleman has done far better than I thought he had done. But I do not think that those figures are consistent with the figures which he gave me in answer to questions in this House as recently as the 9th January.

8.0 P.M.

I asked him then whether he was aware that the French Army had bought over 400 aeroplanes during the past year, in addition to the 218 they possessed last year, and how many aeroplanes we had belonging to the Royal Flying Corps, Military Wing, and how many belonging to the Central Flying School, and how many could fly at a speed exceeding 60 miles an hour. The right hon. Gentleman answered that he had got no information as to the French Army. I should have thought he might have got information in regard to that; but let that go. These are the figures which he gave us on the 9th January. He repeated them on the 22nd January in reply to other questions by myself. He said that the Royal Flying Corps, Military Wing, possesses twenty-nine aeroplanes and the Central Flying School twenty-six. Of these, twenty-six and nineteen respectively are in flying order. That is scarcely two months ago, and he now tells the House that he has got 101 machines ready to fly. Where have the balance of the machines come from? He cannot tell us. In the boast which he made in a speech he said that he had got 101 of these machines. If seventy of them are school machines, let him say so. But in the whole of this paper squadron he told us two months ago that there were only twenty-six machines that could fly. Of these twenty-six machines I think I am right in saying that at least twelve were these monoplanes which were not then in flying order. I asked again the question only a few days ago with regard to particular machines. It is only by getting the exact details that we can find out whether we have got the machines which the right hon. Gentleman has rather boasted that we have.

I said so. I did not boast. Let us clear this away. I say we have got 101 aeroplanes. If the hon. Gentleman doubts me let him say that it is untrue.

That is exactly what I am trying to say inoffensively, that we have not got 101 effective aeroplanes. I say that from the information which I have been able to get, based very largely on his own figures—

I say on my full responsibility as a Minister that we have got 101 aeroplanes which we are flying. I understand the hon. Gentleman to say that that is not true. That is a very unusual statement to make. We certainly have got 101 aeroplanes.

Do not let the right hon. Gentleman impute more than I have said. Throughout my speech I have tried not to be provocative. It is a matter of vast importance whether we have the machines or not. We may have 101 aeroplanes that can fly, and you might have 101 tom-tits that can fly, but that is no good for the purposes of the Army. What I am concerned about is, How many of these 101 are efficient for military purposes? The right hon. Gentleman told me about two months ago that he had only twenty-six on the military side that could fly. I do not care how many he has got in the schools for use or training. He could not use in war these machines after they had been buffeted about in the Army Flying Schools for months with beginners flying upon them and coming down crash upon them. He dare not send any miliary flying corps out to war with those machines. The right hon. Gentleman made a most extraordinary suggestion in his speech the other day. He said that though some of these machines are machines on which he would not let officers fly in times of peace, yet in times of war there were so many bullets, troubles, and other dangers going about that they might take an extra risk and fly on these machines. I do not think that he could really have meant what he said. Of these twenty-six machines which were in flying order, twelve are these monoplanes as to which I asked him whether they have been flown for over six months, and whether they have not got to be altered before they can be flown. Later, on the lath of this month, I asked him about them. He said:—

"I may state that all the machines referred to are in flying order, but they are not being flown pending some alterations in conformity with regulations of the Monoplane Committee."

How can a thing be in flying order if it is not being flown pending alterations? If a thing has got to be altered it is not in flying order. Everybody knows that there have been very serious foreign complications during the past six months and the past six weeks. Everybody knows that if war should break out it would be with absolute suddenness. How many of these 101 machines could the right hon. Gentleman send out with the Expeditionary Force or any other force? At the outside, twenty-five machines. The other day he sent one of these very squadrons which are on this Footing from Farnborough to Montrose. That squadron would be one of our first squadrons to send out with an Expeditionary Force. How many machines flew from Farnborough to Montrose? If you cannot send your first squadron fully equipped to fly to Montrose in time of peace, what is the good of telling the House of Commons that you have got 101 machines and can fly them? If you cannot get one squadron of eight or twelve machines to fly to Montrose they could not fly across the Channel.

The right hon. Gentleman must tell us with greater frankness what these machines can do. I asked him whether they could fly sixty-five miles an hour, and he said that it was not in the public interest that the House should know that. When did he begin to think that? I suggest that he began to think that when my questions, which I am afraid I rather showered upon him during the last three months, got a little too near the point, because only three months ago he was quite prepared to tell me how many machines we have got which could fly seventy miles an hour. Here is an answer which I got from him on 27th November. I asked him how many areoplanes which were effective in the sense of having a speed of seventy-five miles an hour were in the Royal Flying Corps. The right hon. Gentleman had not developed his theories of secrecy then. He said that there were five aeroplanes which can fly seventy miles an hour and fifteen more were on order which will be capable of similar speed, and that there were twenty-six trained military pilots capable of flying these very efficient machines. Every information which I asked for two months ago was given to me with regard to the speed of seventy miles an hour. He was very frank with me up to the time when I began to ask his colleague the First Lord of the Admiralty questions with regard to the naval side of aeroplanes. The First Lord of the Admiralty was rather, I will not say more clever, but more cautious than the right hon. Gentleman. He first developed this idea of secrecy. It was the First Lord of the Admiralty who said, "It is not, in the public interest to answer your questions on various points, and though the Secretary of State told you how many could fly at seventy miles an hour it is not in the public interest to tell you how many can fly at sixty-five miles an hour." I think that it is in the public interest and the interests of the country that we should know. If I ask the First Lord of the Admiralty how many "Dreadnoughts" he has got, and what is their speed, or how many torpedo boats he has got, this House is entitled to know. Otherwise we should not vote the Navy Estimates. If I want to know the velocity of a 13.5 inch gun or anything of the kind, I am entitled to get the information. Why am I not entitled to know how many effective aeroplanes we have got and the pace at which they can go?

This policy of secrecy has been set up almost entirely because of the fact that he has not got a sufficient number of effective aeroplanes to man these three existing squadrons. Beyond those squadrons the right hon. Gentleman seems to think that the aeroplanes are only for the Expeditionary Force. He referred once or twice to the Expeditionary Force the other night. In his Memorandum he told us that in addition to the Aeroplane Squadron which was formed last year, these three paper squadrons, the fifth and six squadrons are to be raised in 1913–14–I hope they will be a little more effective than the second, third and fourth—and he said:

"I looked forward confidently to the establishment on a firmer basis during 1913–14 of six out of the eight units required to complete our Expeditionary Force."

So that he admits that all this preparation, so far, is required for our Expeditionary Force. What of our Army Defence? If he is going to send these six squadrons with their eighteen aeroplanes each all at once with the Expeditionary Force, what is going to take place at home? What is going to defend our shores and do the scouting for the Army? The right hon. Gentleman has done away altogether with one branch of this question and that is the question of the large rigid airship. Who made the decision that Zeppelins were not needed at all in the British Army? Is it a Cabinet decision or a decision of the Committee for Imperial Defence, or a decision of the right hon. Gentleman's military advisers in the Royal Flying Corps, or his own decision? I do not know how far one is permitted to refer to what one knows of the views of officers in the Royal Flying Corps, but I do know at all events that some officers are very anxious that there should be Zeppelins in the Royal Flying Corps. I was asked the other day whether I advocated heavier than air or lighter than air craft. In the present position of affairs I advocate both. Nobody can know which is going to be the arm of the future, because they are both in the experimental stage. Still, one great nation pins its faith to airships, which can keep afloat for days and nights, which can spy out the whole of our naval and military preparations, which can take back information, which are equipped with wireless telegraphy, and which can carry twenty or thirty people on board. The right hon. Gentleman says, I will not have one.

The hon. Member is now entering on rather a wider subject than that which is under discussion. I may point out that the whole of this Debate is, strictly speaking, out of Order on the Report of this Vote, but owing to the circumstances under which Supply is being taken a wider discussion than usual is being allowed. I trust the hon. Member will keep strictly within the limits allowed, and confine his observations to purely Army aviation. I think perhaps I ought to add that the fact of this discussion having been allowed on this occasion this year should not in subsequent years be referred to as involving the right to enter upon a discussion such as that which is being allowed to-night.

I understood the ruling of Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Mr. Whitley) who preceded you, Sir, in the Chair, was that the discussion could be taken as widely as the right hon. Gentleman took it the other day. The Secretary of State for War did deal with this subject at considerable length, but, in deference to your views, Sir, I will not touch on the naval aspect of the subject, but will merely say that I think the Secretary for War has taken up the position far too quickly, front the Army point of view, that the Army are never to have Zeppelins. His contention was that small machines could be easily packed and sent abroad with the Expeditionary Force. He dealt with the Expeditionary Force and the Expeditionary Force alone, and, on the whole subject of airships, his point was that small machines could be easily packed and sent abroad with that force. I agree that a Zeppelin could not be sent abroad with the Expeditionary Force, but I think it is highly premature for the right hon. Gentleman, as responsible head of the Army, to say that the Army should not have an airship. These airships have only been in existence some few years, and yet he has decided that he will not have a Zeppelin and he will not have an airship at all; he will go without it. I think that is taking a very heavy responsibility, and a responsibility of a heavier kind as applied to airships than to aeroplanes. If the right hon. Gentleman gave an order for half a dozen big airships to-morrow he could not get them built in less than eighteen months, either in this country or any other.

It is rather a serious position to say that we are not to have one at all, not even for experimental purposes, and that he will cut off our Army from all developments in an arm which the greatest military nation in Europe considers to be in the right direction in aerial warfare. I do not want to particularise any nation, nor do I speak in any hostile spirit, but I would point out that the German authorities consider it necessary for Army purposes to have airships; and the cost of airships being so small as compared with the cost of our whole Army, the right hon. Gentleman in his Estimates could have taken enough to give us at least half a dozen, or even two or three airships for experimental purposes. The whole provision which the right hon. Gentleman makes is utterly inadequate to keep our country abreast of other foreign countries in regard to the development of aerial warfare. He has only taken half a million to spend, while France has taken £1,800,000, and Germany is spending considerably over a million on air services. We are to be left, so far as I can see, with nothing more definite than the six aeroplane squadrons, if we get them with sufficient aeroplanes. I do not see how the right hon. Gentleman is to get more out of the money he has allowed himself. I do not grudge the £200,000 for the Royal Aircraft Factory, but it is not enough. Very little is left for new machinery, and even if new machinery became out of date in six months, it ought to be prepared. We ought to have an Air Service, I will not say adequate, but bigegr in proportion to our Army than the Air Service of any foreign country, because of the very smallness of our Army. The right hon. Gentleman claimed with assurance that he was right when he said that because we had a small Army we only needed a small Air Department.

I did not say that. I gave the proportion, but I expressly disclaimed that it was the basis.

Why did the right hon. Gentleman draw a comparison at all? Surely the comparison should have been with what is needed for aerial warfare altogether. We have a very small Army on land, and we may need even a bigger Air Army in proportion than any foreign country. That is the basis I think to which he should have regard in framing his Estimates. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will believe that in dealing with his Estimates I am in no way reflecting on him. Though he is responsible for the Estimates he puts forward, one knows that he is guided very largely by technical advice. In regard to the 101 aeroplanes, I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give to this House an assurance as to the actual number of aeroplanes that can fly 50 miles an hour, and that are fit to go to war to-morrow morning.

The hon. and learned Gentleman who has just sat down, has pitched his speech in precisely the same key as the long procession of speeches to which I listened on Wednesday and Thursday. They are all alike, alarmist; they all hold England up as being helpless, paralysed, and not prepared for impending disaster. They tell us we have 185,000 men, but that that is not half enough, and they complain about the Territorials, and that the Reserves are an entire delusion, and one hon. and gallant Gentleman said the Artillery were utterly inadequate, and we are told that the rifle is not up to date, and the flying fleet, as we have just now heard, is largely a sham, and we are told that there is a shortage of horses, and that altogether we are in a bad plight, and that nothing is right. I am sure hon. Members opposite must have spent a miserable holiday with sleepless nights, or if they did sleep, they would dream of some modern Moltke descending on our defenceless shores; because I have no doubt the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr. Lee) will be quite equal to destroying His Majesty's Navy, as rapidly as on Thursday he destroyed the Army. I admit it is the duty of the Opposition to oppose, although on this subject they sometimes say, and I think wisely, that the question of the Army and the Navy ought to be kept aloof from party politics. At any rate Parliament is giving to His Majesty seventy or eighty millions of money for the defence of the Empire, and we representing the people, are taking it out of the pockets of our own constituents. Is it all badly spent? Is there no good got from it? For my part, I discount those criticisms by about 95 per cent.; because I remember when the Opposition themselves were responsible, the muddle which they made of the Army, and the revelation of absolute incompetence, with discredit of our military reputation when they plunged the country into war. The country will remember that, and, remembering it, will pass these Votes, and approve of the policy of my right hon. Friend the War Secretary.

I want to deal with the question put by the hon. Member for South Birmingham (Mr. Amery), on Thursday last, namely, what are all these men for, and do we want all of them. We shall have to feed them and clothe them, and house them, and of course, we take them away from productive work, and the men who pay for all this, will have to feed and clothe themselves and their families, and they can ill spare, out of their wages, the cost of maintaining soldiers. If I thought a standing Army was necessary for the country, I would hold my tongue, but I do not. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Monmouth (General Sir Ivor Herbert), in a very able speech on Thursday, said, that the real defence of this nation was in the Navy, and that if the Navy was able to defend our shores we did not require an Army to do it as well, but that if the Navy was overborne, why, then, the Army was equally unnecessary, because we should be starved out in a fortnight. I thought that was very interesting, coming from a military Gentleman of some eminence. I do not know why an hon. Member opposite laughs; perhaps he does not know that the hon. and gallant gentleman to whom I am referring is a soldier of some eminence, who deserves the honour of his fellow countrymen. I have no faith in standing armies; some of my colleagues have. I think the less of them the better. They are more or less a menace always to the liberties of the people.

What will those men be doing the next twelve months, the men provided by this Vote? I suppose they will march up and down the barrack yard in Birdcage Walk, and at all other barrack yards, and some of them may be sent out on punitive expeditions to kill a few natives, innocent natives perhaps, or they may be used for police duty at home to quell disturbance possibly arising out of labour disputes, and to trample on, and perhaps fire on, an unarmed and innocent crowd. That is about all we shall get for our money. I do not believe in foreign nations raiding our shores; I believe that is all nonsense. I do not believe anybody wants to raid them. A statesman and Member of the other House, with whom I used to sit on these benches, and who is a distinguished Member of the Unionist party, says that there are really no foreign nations; that we are all tied together by strong invisible threads. That I believe, and yet the cry of the benches opposite, day after day, and speech after speech, has been that we have not enough of these soldiers, and they are Oliver Twists crying for more, Yesterday, Mr. Garvin, the well-known policy maker of the Tory party, said, in the "Observer":—

"We spend £75,000,000 and we do not get security. … If we spent £80,000,000 we might gain security."

And he also said that the Government is risking the lives and property of the people of this country owing to a few cranks in Parliament who cry out about extravagance. I am one of those cranks, and my only complaint is that there are not enough of us. I do not believe the pacifists in the country are adequately represented in this House. Would anyone dream of saying that if and when the Estimates did rise to £80,000,000, Mr. Garvin and his school would not be carrying on the same alarmist nonsense and screaming for £85,000,000? Behind Mr. Garvin there is a greater man—I mean Lord Roberts, who wants to make us all soldiers, and thinks there is nothing like leather. I should like to associate myself with the observation of a Cabinet Minister, not now on the bench, who said that a country is in a bad way when statesmen are so weak as to allow soldiers, armament makers, or scaremongers to direct their policy. I desire to pay every homage to Lord Roberts as a soldier; I recognise that he has rendered immense service to his country in moments and in places of great danger. Now we are considering him as a statesman, and in the rôle of statesman I maintain that he is misleading his countrymen, and I felt it to be my duty even to warn my Constituents in that sense. He may disclaim as much as he likes that it is conscription, but his teaching and policy inevitably lead to conscription. That would be, in my judgment, a calamity for our country, a calamity not less but perhaps greater than Protection, which is the other great calamity which the party opposite dangles before the electors to wean them away from their allegiance to Liberalism. Can hon. Members tell me any other great calamities which the Tory party are offering besides conscription and Protection?

The hon. Member is now going very wide of the Motion before the House.

Is not a reference to impending conscription and to the writings of public men upon that subject within the scope of the Debate as it was interpreted on Wednesday and Thursday last?

I called the hon. Member to order, not for his reference to that topic, but for his references to the general policy of the Conservative party. Those are not in order on this Motion.

I beg your pardon for having transgressed. I have nothing more to say on the subject of Protection. I shudder when I think of the possibility of the flower of England's manhood being sent to what I think was once called "the vicious seed-bed of barrack life." I hope and believe that my fellow countrymen will resist that whoever offers it to them. They have tried it in Australia and New Zealand. I believe that their Defence Acts were hatched in Victoria Street, Westminster, probably with the assistance of the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Page Croft). Happily in both those countries it is a disastrous failure. The people there call them the "Black Statutes," and they have set up a Freedom League to oppose them. Their leading military supporter in the "Melbourne Argus" states:—

"Compulsion is failing perilously. Great numbers of boys are ignoring their duty. If disobedience becomes at all general, compulsory service will break down."

I hope it will. I am glad that it is breaking down. I believe it will be just as great a failure if it is ever tried in this country. The Army people are belittling the Navy; the Navy people are belittling the Army. My counsel would be to rely on neither, but on diplomacy, on a frank foreign policy, on open-handed friendship with the world. The Foreign Secretary of the great Western Republic said a day or two ago, and a proud boast it was, that that Republic stands erect whilst the Empires around are groaning beneath the weight of armaments. That is an enviable position. I hope and believe that England has no enemies. I am not like hon. Members opposite, constantly peering for some foreign foe. I believe that as long as England behaves herself among the nations she may and will be everybody's friend, and will continue to enjoy the friendship of every other nation.

As an old soldier, I will not follow the hon. Member opposite (Sir W. Byles) into his intricate argument about military matters. I have no doubt that he knows a great deal more about these questions than Lord Roberts, but I very much question whether the country will take that view when it reads his speech to-morrow morning. The Army Debate has already ranged over a very wide field, and I am somewhat reluctant to introduce fresh subjects, although they are certainly subjects of some importance. The mere fact that they are important shows how inadequate is the time originally allotted for the discussion of this very important branch of the defence of the Empire. I must, at all events, thank you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, as I am sure other Members would wish to do, for your courtesy in allowing considerable latitude for the Debate to-night. The matters I am anxious to bring before the House are certainly very divergent: first, the disposal of the troops in South Africa, and, secondly, the pay of officers. Shortly before the termination of last Session we were asked to vote £67,000 for bringing back a certain number of troops from South Africa. That was the inauguration of a new policy, or perhaps it would be more correct to say the continuance of an old policy, and a very excellent policy too, namely, that when a self-governing Dominion has become self-supporting as regards defence, we should, as a natural sequence, remove the troops from that country. That policy has been followed with great success in New Zealand, Australia, and Canada.

As regards South Africa, I admit that there are particular advantages in keeping troops there and also in bringing them back. South Africa is undoubtedly an extraordinarily healthy country. I have no hesitation in saying that the fighting condition of the troops there is 25 per cent. or 30 per cent. better than the fighting condition of the troops in any other part of the world. South Africa is also an extraordinarily good training ground. The grounds for training troops in extended order are becoming more and more limited, and South Africa is one of the few countries where you can at present train all three respective arms of the Service together. Moreover, and this perhaps is still more important, South Africa is an extraordinarily good strategic point. It is a point from which, with thoroughly trained troops, you could reinforce India or Egypt in the event of the Suez Canal being closed in time of war. The disadvantage about South Africa is that the maintenance of troops in that country is very expensive as compared with other countries. According to the Estimates, the number of troops in South Africa is about the same as the number in Egypt, but the cost is about £120,000 a year more. The present Estimates amount to about £660,000, and the whole of the upkeep of the large garrison there since the war has been borne by the taxpayers at home. I do not think that that is quite right. If the troops have to be kept there solely for strategic considerations, well and good; it is the bounden duty of the taxpayers here to maintain them. But if they are kept there for the benefit of South Africa, and I am perfectly certain that the Secretary of State has had considerable pressure brought to bear upon him to allow the troops to remain in South Africa, I think that the South African Union Government undoubtedly ought to pay, and to pay willingly, a certain amount of the upkeep of the troops there I want to know from the right hon. Gentleman whether or not he is going to continue that policy of withdrawing troops. I cannot find in this particular Estimate any allowance for the extra sea-passage of troops home. I think he ought to tell us what is going to be the policy pursued as regards South Africa. Whatever happens I sincerely hope, and every soldier will sincerely hope, that no power on earth will ever induce him to withdraw from the Cape Peninsula, where there is a large naval dock, one of the docks in the world where "Dreadnoughts" can be berthed.

It would be a most insane and most unwise policy to leave the defence of that dock, which might be of paramount importance in case of war, to be undertaken by other than Imperial troops. I have touched upon the want of contributions as regards military matters in relation to South Africa. Looking through general contributions from the other countries, I see that South Africa does not pay a single farthing, which is most remarkable considering that nearly all of our Colonies which subscribe to the upkeep of the Army or the troops in their own district have increased their subscriptions. For instance, an island like Mauritius has increased the amount of her payment by £1,000; Ceylon has increased her payment by £2,500; the Straits Settlements have increased theirs by £53,000; and South China has increased hers by £30,000, making a total altogether of £86,500. When you look at the original increase of the Estimates this year it amounts to £360,000. The general public have the impression that the whole of that £360,000 increase will fall upon their shoulders. Unless I am very much mistaken by these figures and by what appears in the rest of the Army Estimates, £86,000 of that is the extra subscriptions coming from the Colonies, and ought to be deducted from this £360,000.

I should like to refer to the other question that I referred to in my opening remarks, and that is the pay of the officer. I think I can thoroughly congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, and I feel perfectly certain that every hon. and gallant Member on this side will, as regards this statement concerning the advantage to be given to men promoted from the ranks to commissioned rank. Although I believe I am correct in saying that the right hon. Gentleman has never actually served in the Regular Army, I can congratulate him most heartily on having thoroughly interpreted the feeling of the officer of the Regular Army as regards his brother officer promoted from the ranks. The right hon. Gentleman very wisely entirely exploded the notion that there is any reluctance among the officers of the Army to receive into their midst as a friend and a comrade a man who has been promoted from the ranks. I myself served in a regiment where a man was promoted from the ranks from a battalion where it was rather a rare occurrence. From the very first he was made a friend of, and everything that possibly could be done was done for him. While I served in that regiment he was one of the most popular men in it. I hope we shall never again hear any complaint about the reluctance of the officers of the Army to receive the ranker. If there is one thing that the officer of the Army is above all other things it is that he is a gentleman throughout. Now, as to the increase of pay. The right hon. Gentleman has certainly made a beginning with an increase of pay for the officers. The amount is to be £136,000 a year. For years and years we have heard a great deal about the inadequate pay of the British officer. I regret to say that visionary promises have been thrown out by Secretaries of State for War on both sides. Considering the importance of the matter and the difficulty of getting officers, and officers of the right stamp, and of keeping them when you have got them, I feel that even this increase is all too inadequate. It is a very large matter to deal with, but to anyone interested in Army matters, and the defence of the country, it is of the utmost importance that you should be able to maintain your continuous supply of officers. At the present moment we are just and only just keeping our heads above water as regards officers. Considering the rate at which we have gone downhill in the last few years in respect to the numbers submitting themselves with examination for the Army, it will not be very long, I am afraid, before we shall find it even more and more difficult to obtain the class of men we wish for.

The right hon. Gentleman in his statement about the increase of officers' pay stated, I think, that the subaltern is to receive an increase of pay after six years. It is an admitted fact that for the first three years of their service, subalterns really are for all intents and purposes probationers. Perhaps when they join it is not so advisable to increase their pay. But I and many others would like to see a large sum, say a sum approaching £100,000, granted for disposal and distribution by the War Office or any Committee that might be set up to be given entirely to subaltern officers who qualify themselves in, we will say, making themselves efficient in French and German, or getting the distinguished certificate at Hythe, or distinguishing themselves in flying. It would be impossible to lay down any hard and fast sum from a Parliamentary point of view that they should receive for these different attainments, because flying necessarily would be very much more dangerous, and perhaps not so much sought after by officers as the other qualifications. But they would help the service, and would help the fighting capacity of the Army generally. We would have young fellows going in for, and perhaps receiving £40 or £50 a year, as an extra inducement to perfect themselves in these different qualifications. This would also benefit enormously the man promoted from the ranks, because I quite realise the fact that the man promoted from the ranks will be a man of very exceptional ability indeed, and therefore he will be the man who will also go still further to qualify himself in the various subjects I have mentioned.

As regards the captains and majors, I should naturally try to persuade the Government to give as much as ever possible to both, because the regimental officer, after all is said and done, is the man on whom really you have to depend above all others in war, by his leading of the troops that really will actually decide the battle. It is the regimental officer who is generally overlooked, not only at the time of war, but at the time of the distribution of honours. But at the same time I feel very strongly that the staff officer is a man of the utmost importance, and he has been entirely ignored in the right hon. Gentleman's statement as regards increase of pay. The ordinary officers of the Line regiment can be made out of the ordinary stuff that presents itself, but the staff officer is a very exceptional man indeed. The men making staff officers require very long training, and very often even when they receive that training men have not the aptitude for being staff officers.

Everyone will agree that as war becomes more scientific, and it is becoming more scientific every day, you require more and more staff officers. The staff officer now without any extra pay being granted to him has gone through great hardships and very often privations to qualify and get through the staff college. He has had to have expensive tutors, very often which he probably cannot afford very well, and that particular class of man is still in the prime of life, and there is an undoubted fear in the Army at the present moment that their is a drift and a steadily growing drift of staff officers and majors and senior captains from the ranks into civil life. A man reaching that age, which, as I say, is the prime of life, finds there is no opportunity of future advancement for him in the service, and he has to hunt about for some civil work, and we all know that civilians are keenly and anxiously looking forward for these men. It is a great danger to the Army that these very men—the men you ought to keep there if you want to have the Army properly staffed—are at the present moment going away into civil life. Therefore, I regret most deeply that the right hon. Gentleman has not been able to make any extra allowance for the past staff college men. I should say that a past staff college man is undoubtedly worth £100 a year extra to the country. There are not a great number of them. As a matter of fact there are only 664 such officers altogether. That is not a large amount, and if they had, up to the rank of Lieut.-Colonel, £100 a year extra and majors and lieutenants £50 a year extra, which I think would retain their services in the Army for the country, the sum total would only amount to £46,400 a year, and I am still of opinion that the non-effective and retiring allowance of Staff College men ought to be increased. The Staff College man who has a staff billet, as they say in the Army, is well paid. He does not require any extra allowance, but the men who have qualified themselves and held staff appointments all their lives may be incapacitated by sickness or illness and when they leave the Service they feel very deeply indeed, I think, that they have to retire upon exactly the same pay as a man who has just gone through his military service and has been able to pass his examination in the ordinary routine. I think that all Army men would be only too glad to see some extra pay and some extra small pension to past Staff College men. I hope and trust that the right hon. Gentleman therefore will go still further than he has gone as regards the pay of the Army, though at the same time I do not hesitate to congratulate him most sincerely upon the statement he has made.

There are two or three points which I would like to put before the Secretary of State for War, and which I think ought to be answered perhaps more definitely than they have been up to now. Before doing so, I should like to express some regret that the hon. Gentleman (Sir W. Byles) had not an opportunity of serving in His Majesty's Forces, and I think if he had he would have formed a very different opinion of British manhood and of the British Army to that which he has expressed in his speech. His reference to the great Republic was distinctly amusing, because that Republic has simply devoted to the payment of pensions for service during the Civil War more than is devoted to the pay of the British Army. I only refer to that speech because I think if it represents the views of the pacifist party nothing more unfortunate could happen than that that party should have any influence. We are dealing with facts up against which we find ourselves, and I think we may well shelve the views of the pacifist party as regards these specific points. I put down some questions with regard to the Artillery in respect to what reorganisation means and the saving of expenses or the possible reduction of guns. The question of establishment and the numbers available ought, I think, to be made clear. As regards the Infantry of the Regular battalions, as I understand, there are fifty-two in India, twenty-two elsewhere abroad, and seventy-four at home, making 148 battalions in all. There are seventy-four Special Reserve battalions, twenty-seven Extra Special Reserve battalions, altogether 249 battalions, and there are Reserves for all branches of the Service. The establishment of the Infantry battalions are for India 1,033 of all ranks, which amount to 52,700 men; in the Oversea Dominions the establishment is 932 for 20,500 men; at home the establishment is 891 and 65,900 men, the Special Reserve 703 and 52,000 men, and the Extra Special Reserve 604 establishment and 17,300 men. What I would like to know is what is the real strength, and I think these figures ought to be given to the House. I think these figures ought to be considered independently of the numbers in the National Reserve, because, after all, that is a mere registry of names. It may come to a great deal, and I think it will, but at present it is a mere registry. The Secretary of State for War has made what I would call a generous provision for it, and allowed the association to effect the registry and see what they can get.

As regards the question of officers, what has to be shown is that the aid which has been given will bring forward candidates from the ranks in sufficient numbers, and that those officers from the ranks will be properly distributed. I doubt, after full consideration, whether the promised aid is sufficient. The amount is £150, but why has that amount been fixed. The amount will vary from something below £150, up to £300, according to the regiment. I think it ought to be possible to make promotion from the ranks in the Cavalry, but with £150 it cannot be done. Does the War Office intend to make sure that in future it will not be obligatory to go to certain tailors, or will it be possible to obtain the uniform from Government Stores? That would make the whole difference. In any case I do not think the outfit allowance ought to be £150 for all regiments, and the officer, whether promoted from the ranks or otherwise, ought to be able to get his uniform at a reasonable rate. There is no army better dressed or more cheaply clothed than the German Army. Of course, I am not advocating an outfit allowance of £300, but unless you take the necessary precautions you will have to give £300 for certain regiments. I want to know if the increase of pay to lieutenants for six years' service is to include three years' service in the ranks, and will the rates of pay be the same throughout the whole of the Army? Will rankers, or others serving, who desire promotion, be made absolutely free in respect of messing and regimental rates? Unless a man can order what he likes at the mess, or unless messing expenses are greatly reduced, the cost will be more than the officer promoted from the ranks will be able to meet.

That raises the question of whether the allowances will be adequate, because, to break up the mess would be an immense change, and one in my opinion, to be deprecated. In the battalion in which I served occasionally, we had messes and no messes, and I attach enormous weight to the preservation of the system of messes. I think the allowances will have to be larger if we are really to get officers in any number from the ranks, as we should do, and as I think we must do, not only to make up our deficiencies in the officers' corps, but to encourage recruiting, and bring in the right kind of men who wish to work their way up. There is the question of the scale of retiring pay for officers who have been promoted from the ranks. I think those points form the crux of the whole question, and unless they are met your recruiting will not be popular. I do not think the £50 scholarships are a sufficient substitute for a system like that for a French college for non-commissioned officers. We have to meet the same problem that the French had to meet, and I think it would be well to pay full attention to the system which the French have found successful. As to the pay on promotion, officers from the ranks get 5s. 3d per day, or£1 16s. 9d. per week. After three years' service they get 6s. 6d. per day, or £2 5s. 6d. per week, and after six years' service they get 9s. per day, or three guineas per week. At least their expenses would be £1 8s. messing, 2s. 6d. subscriptions, and 2s. 6d. for the servants, and that amounts to £1 13s. That leaves a balance of 3s. 9d. for clothing, uniform, recreation, travelling, and amusements. No man could live upon that, and there would be a constantly increasing debt, until the 9s. per day was reached, or until there was promotion.

As a rule the life of those who become competent officers from the ranks has been a hard one, and so has the life of a great many officers who come into the Army through Sandhurst, and who have had no supplementary allowance. I have heard it described by one who has gone through the mill, and he says these unfortunate officers have had to hold on until their clothes were worn out, and when they could not get any more they had to go. That is not a condition which would bring success to the new system, from which I for one hope so much. Another point which ought to be considered is the percentage of selected warrant and senior non-commissioned officers to be given the rank of captain on promotion. I know that this has been done in war, but that it will be a novelty in time of peace, and it will have advantages in certain cases. I understand non-commissioned officers and men are to have at least three years in the ranks before nomination to a commission. A very important point arises with regard to selection. Nomination would naturally be made by the officer in command, but the selection will be all important, because there must be no suspicion of favouritism or jobbery, and it will be necessary to have an independent Board of Selection. Nomination is simple enough, but selection is quite different. Then, as regards the retiring allowances, I have some examples by me showing service in the ranks and with commission counting from twenty to twenty-seven years of retired pay. Under the old regulations there was the same retiring allowance for all—£200 a year—but now it is £250 in certain cases. In those cases only half service in the ranks is counted along with commissioned service, and the commission must be held for ten years before the service in the ranks, or in warrant rank counts in making up the necessary twenty years. There are some awkward comparisons which could be made under that regulation. I think the provisions, as we have heard them so far, are not adequate for the object, and, if they were made so, it would be an immense stimulus to efficiency and to recruiting in filling up the deficiencies in the commissioned ranks.

There are one of two specific points I would put briefly with regard to the Second Line. I will not refer to ranges, because I think the urgency of dealing with them is being recognised. The urgency has not yet been recognised—and will not be generally recognised by the War Office until there is some provision made—for allowances for the second week of camp, and out-of-pocket expenses for musketry and drill. I am quite aware that as regards the business system of the association the War Office has taken a general interest in the matter, and, in perfecting that system of business, I believe much good will be done, but nothing that will be done in that way can obviate the need to consider whether some additional attractions cannot be given to keep men in camp for the second week's training, and to meet the out-of-pocket expenses for musketry and drill. I think, too, some encouragement might be devised or some recognition given to employers who are of real assistance in giving them leave for camp. There might very well be some recognition of the services of officials and leading men on the association. It cannot be said that the Honours Lists in our day are not on a sufficiently generous scale, and, at a time when knights are made in squadrons and other honours are given in proportion, and when perhaps the most honourable position of all is to remain unadorned, it might be possible, as the honours are going round, to give some proportion of them to those who have done so much to create the Second Line of defence, because they, after all, are persons who never, or at least very seldom, appear in these very long lists. I have seen very few names of those with whom most of us are familiar in connection with the Territorial movement in the Honours List.

I am certain that, as regards the general efficiency of that force, something will have to be done in giving bounties for efficiency in training and in musketry, and I am also satisfied that provision will have to be made for the physical training of youths. After all, the Scout movement shows how the interest of boys is excited by appealing to their patriotism and by giving scope for their physical energies. It would be a great matter to know that the Secretary of State for War would co-operate with the Minister for Education in any way that he could to that end. It would be well enough if the Second Line was not left so entirely to the energies of the Secretary of State for War. I have not noticed that many Ministers, except the Secretary of State for War of his day, have really given a helping hand to the movement. Those of us who are really keen for voluntary service, and who intend to abide by it, and to make it a success, are all bound to do all we can, through zeal, through time, or through money, to fill up the Second Line and render it thoroughly efficient. I have heard it said sometimes that perhaps a very full call is being made upon the voluntary spirit. I have heard it said by a distinguished secretary of an association who is all for voluntary service, that the voluntary spirit is being crushed rather than fostered through the great demands made on its altruistic patriotism. We have an extraordinary list when you come to think of how the voluntary spirit is being evoked. There is the Territorial Force, the Territorial Force Reserve, the Territorial Technical Reserve, the Territorial Voluntary Aid Detachments, the Cadet Corps, the Officers' Training Corps, and so on. The Government must meet the claims for necessary allowances under these heads as well as the claim with respect to promotion from the ranks, which is a matter which applies equally to the First and Second Line of Defence. I have put forward the heads under which the existing or contemplated allowances will, I think, have to be reconsidered. The total sum involved is not a very great one, but I think it will make all the difference as regards the completion of that provision for defence which the Government itself holds necessary, and in holding it necessary I warmly support them.

We have a Committee sitting and inquiring into the whole question of the Special Reserve, and I should like to thank the Under-Secretary for all the interest he has taken in that Committee. I have great hopes that, though the task of the Committee may be a very long one, we shall get some favourable results from it. There is just one point rather outside the scope of the Committee which I should like to mention, and that is with regard to Special Reserve of the Brigade of Guards. The officers of the Special Reserve of the Brigade of Guards may not join over the age of thirty-five, and I am assured that there are a great many captains who would gladly join the Special Reserve of the Brigade of Guards if the age were extended to forty. The Under-Secretary has already received a paper from me with regard to what is called the reorganisation of the Essex and Suffolk Garrison Artillery of the Territorial Force. We have done pretty well in Suffolk, where the Territorial Force, particularly with regard to the Artillery, stands up to strength. There is an establishment of five companies, one at Felixstowe, two at Harwich, and two at Ipswich, and they are up to strength at the present moment. Under the reorganisation scheme the five companies are to be reduced to two. If the five companies are to be reduced I suggest that they should be reduced to three, one at Harwich, one at Felixstowe, and one at Ipswich. At the present moment Felixstowe is over strength. It has been so successful that it had to refuse twenty-five men after the annual recruiting week. The company at Felixstowe is to be reduced to half a company and the half is to be sent to Harwich on mobilisation. The proposed company at Ipswich is to be sent twelve miles to Felixstowe in order to mobilise there. When you have got Felixstowe over strength, why should not you leave the company there and allow the men to mobilise at the place where they live? The Secretary for War has said that the Territorial Force is doing very well, but it is still 16 per cent. under strength. This reorganisation will leave these particular companies 30 per cent. short of their present establishment. The numbers at present at Harwich and Felixstowe are nine officers and 174 non-commissioned officers and men. Under the reorganisation scheme there will be six officers and 120 men, a reduction of three officers and fifty-four men. At Ipswich there are four officers and 136 non-commissioned officers and men. In future there will only be six officers and 120 men, a reduction of sixteen. We have heard a great deal from the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down about the call of patriotism and voluntary service and how far it will get the number of men we want, but where you have got all the men you require, where you have them up to the establishment and over establishment, I think it will be very hard upon those parts of the country which have done their duty if their establishment is reduced. I referred just now to the fact that there was a recruiting week at Felixstowe last year. If you do away with that company in the future, what will happen with regard to Territorial enlistment in that district? Felixstowe is a town which is constantly increasing in population, and if you do away with this company and bring it down to half a company and send the other half to Harwich, in a very few years interest will flag and instead of full strength you would have a very few men in Felixstowe, and when you call again for men from Felixstowe, to start possibly an Infantry battalion, you would find no response. I hope the Secretary of State for War and the Under-Secretary for War, who is, in a way, the godfather of the Territorials, will take these points into consideration and that if they are going to reduce the five companies by reorganisation they will reorganise them not from five to two but from five to three and retain the company at Felixstowe. I leave the matter in their hands with the earnest hope that they will see that it is to the best advantage of the Territorial Force that this fine set of men shall not be dispensed with.

I should like to put some questions to the Secretary of State for War. In the Memorandum which has been issued he states that—

"economies have been effected by the reduction of the garrison in South Africa, and by other means; but these have been swallowed up by the steady growth of the Pension Votes, the continued rise in the price of commodities of almost every kind, and a large but unavoidable increase in the charge for clothing."

I hope the hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken will excuse me if I do not refer to his remarks, but I trust he will not be disappointed in his desire to strengthen the Territorials. I believe the men would be forthcoming for the force, and if they are forthcoming he surely will rejoice if they come voluntarily rather than by coercion. The particular question which I wish to ask the Secretary of State is, Will he explain to the House what the amount of these economies is? He states that economies have been effected by the reduction of the garrison in South Africa. All of us must rejoice that it has at last been brought about. Many of us on this side have hoped for it, and now that it is done I think we may congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having seen fit to bring about the reduction. I saw a statement in the "Economist" newspaper that these economics amounted to £519,000. The increase in the Estimates amounts to £360,000. I think it has been pointed out by some of the authorities on this question that if you have a reduction abroad you are entitled to a corresponding reduction in the units at home, and some go so far as to double the amount and to argue that we ought to have something like £1,000,000 available.

May I answer my hon. Friend at once. The figure of £519,000 is one which I do not understand in the least. It is a very small saving, amounting to less than one-tenth of that sum.

That is precisely what I wanted to elicit, and that was my object in giving the figure. I hope he will give us the exact figure a little later. If we know the number of soldiers who are being brought home we will be able to judge of the accuracy of the figures. I do submit that when he states right off, as he does, that these economies have been swallowed up by the steady growth of pensions and the rise in the price of commodities, which occurs in more than one paragraph, he does not by any means account for the saving from the considerable reduction of the garrison in South Africa. If he will give us the number of troops brought home, then the experts may calculate what ought to have been saved by that reduction. The hon. Member for Brentford (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Fareham (Mr. A. Lee), in his speech the other day, referred to the question of the increase in the number of aeroplanes, and really, as one listened to them, one wondered what would satisfy them or hon. Members opposite. Will they state the number of aeroplanes they would like? Will they ever be satisfied? I am afraid it is impossible for us to satisfy them. I do not pretend to be a military expert; I have no idea what is the requisite number, but I venture to suggest that we are not a Continental Power and that we have not a frontier like France or Germany. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Fareham practically abolished the British Navy. He told us, in most lurid language, that a fleet of aeroplanes would come from the Continent, and drop bombs upon us, and reduce us to a parlous condition. I hope that on Thursday next, when we are discussing the future increase in the Navy, we will find him suggesting that it is rather a waste of capital and a mistake to overdo expenditure in that direction, as we have developed this wonderful system of aeroplanes, which will make the Navy useless. One must have a limit to one's ideas in regard to the matter. Is the right hon. Gentleman ever to be pleased or satisfied with anything done on this side of the House? If we had 500 aeroplanes he would probably want 1,000. Surely hon. Members can offer some definite suggestion. I venture to hope that they will show us how we can get along with a fewer number of aeroplanes, or else spend less on naval armaments. I agree with my right hon. Friend (Mr. Munro-Ferguson) as to the speech of the hon. Member for Salford on his animadversion on Army life. I have always paid my tribute to the British Army. We know that in the past the brilliant victories of great soldiers have done a great deal for this country, but surely we can try to reduce our Estimates and bring about a state of affairs which will enable us to get along with a smaller expenditure. Are we to pursue the same course in our debates in regard to aeroplanes as we formerly pursued in regard to "Dreadnoughts"? Is there no end to this continual criticism of our expenditure, or is the only policy of the hon. Members opposite a policy of despair? No one suggests that you should abolish the Navy and the Army, but can we not agree upon some system whereby we may reduce these Estimates? The hon. Member (Mr. Lee) laughs. I am perfectly serious. Can he offer no suggestion by which we may be able to relieve this country and the world generally of this enormous burden? That does not necessarily mean that we are in favour of abolishing both Services to-morrow, Perhaps the hon. Member will offer a suggestion of a practical character, either by means of international arbitration, or improving our relations with other Powers. I am sure that if he offered some suggestion to that effect, it would be responded to from this side. I hope the Secretary for War will be able to give an answer to my questions, for I believe some considerable economy may be brought about. I regret exceedingly that this economy has been swallowed up in other directions. I hope we may look forward to some cessation of this enormous expenditure, either on the Army or on the Navy, and I ask hon. Members opposite if it is not possible to find some way whereby we can make some progress against this ever increasing expenditure, and unite to bring about a cessation of what has been well described by the Prime Minister as sterilising expenditure.

I was about to apologise, and I really do still apologise to my hon. and gallant Friends, for intervening in this Debate, but I am slow to make that apology after listening to the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down, because a more useless waste of the time of the House I have seldom witnessed. He repeated the same questions over and over again, when he knew perfectly well that Members whose interest is deep in this subject, and who are experts upon it, of which he himself gave no sign, are anxious to speak. I rise solely to speak upon one point, and the right hon. Gentleman will admit that I have some claim to speak as an expert on that point. He knows that I have during the whole course of its existence acted as Chairman of the Qualifying Board in the War Office. That has given me an opportunity of judging the position, as it now exists, with regard to the officers of the British Army, and I have some knowledge of it as the representative of two universities, who are both agreed that they not only might, but ought, to contribute to the officering of the British Army, but can only do so under fair conditions. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having for the first time begun the attempt to put the pay of the British officer on something like a business footing. I am afraid I cannot go much further than that. He is entitled to the praise of having been the first Minister of War who really tackled the subject in earnest. I welcome the beginning, and I am certain he will get strong support. It is a tardy recognition of the fact that we have for long been working upon old-fashioned ideas which are utterly unsuited to the new system. When we abolished the purchase system it virtually became inevitable that we should change the system with regard to the pay of our officers. The Army is no longer to be the appanage of the rich; it must be open to every subject of this Empire. It is of no use the House shutting its eyes to the fact that up to the present time we have been officering the British Army practically gratuitously and without pay.

I fully admit the room and the admirable opportunity there is for promotion from the ranks. There are plenty of men in our race who begin in the position of ordinary soldiers in the ranks, who in that position prove their great power of leading men, and are worthy of being raised to such responsibility. I am also glad that the right hon. Gentleman has helped the initial stages, which are so hard for men promoted from the ranks, by increasing the outfit pay and their ordinary daily pay. We all know that there are dangers in that system. As has already been pointed out, it may be transformed into a system whereby those who have had ample opportunities for entering the Army as officers in the ordinary way sink down to this as an easier means of entrance. I am not sure that it is quite so easy as the Financial Secretary said to guard against this by examinations for promotion. I have had a great deal to do with examinations, and I am not confident about examinations for promotion.

The hon. Gentleman is under a wrong impression. I said that we did guard against that danger by means of the Secretary of State's nomination and not by means of examination. The Secretary of State can select each year those candidates he desires, and he can then eliminate the undesirable ones.

I think I am right in saying that the hon. Member referred to pro- motion examinations as a certain guarantee. I am not very fond of promotion by examination in the Army. I do not see any other great profession where a man has to go through examination before he gets promotion. It is not the case with the Home Civil Service, it is not the case with the Indian Civil Service, and it is not the case with the ordinary positions of life. The man gets promoted because he shows himself to be efficient, and you must trust to that for your promotion. Do let us have an end to these continual examinations that make life a burden. I would also point out to the right hon. Gentleman that, good as promotion from the ranks is, useful as it is, and much as I welcome it, it cannot, of course, transform the whole condition of the British Army. I have looked through the Returns which the right hon. Gentleman laid before us the other day, and I find that in about twenty-eight years there were 2,100 men promoted from the ranks, including quartermasters. Taking that number, that means seventy-five in a year out of a total of about 11,000 or 12,000 officers. That is not a very large number, and it will not leaven the whole of the officers of the British Army.

But when we have got past this point of promotion from the ranks, there is something more to be considered. If you wish to attract the proper men into the Army—men of energy, men of ambition, men of ability—you must open to them the ordinary motives which decide a young man of that character and of that class in the choice of his career. You must make it worth his while to enter the Army.

The Army, as the Secretary for War knows, has plenty of attractions. It arouses enthusiasm, it stirs the imagination, it quickens the blood, and it attracts young men of the right sort. No man will join the Army out of lust of gaining money. You must offer him the ordinary inducements that are necessary in the eyes of common sense. You must make him feel sure that after a hard apprenticeship, after a tough struggle, he will, if he proves himself efficient, after a certain number of years, gain a living wage that will enable him to marry and bring up a family. That is not the case at the present time, and the right hon. Gentleman knows it. A parent, even of limited means, will try hard to struggle and give his son, even at a heavy cost to himself, the support that is necessary in the early years of his military career; but he will not do so if there is not an adequate prospect for his son in the Army. Very few professional parents are in a position to say that they can permanently provide their sons throughout life with an adequate addition to the Army pay which will enable them to live. Parents will make sacrifices, and the right sort of man will strive however great may be the hardships, to attain the end he has in view, but he must see a competency after a fair number of years offered to him. On this point I would offer one word of advice to the right hon. Gentleman. I am quite ready to give all possible assistance to special cases in the early stages of their military career, and I am very glad that in the case of the promoted rankers the Secretary for War is prepared to offer what he calls Secretary of State scholarships. That is a very good thing, but I would offer other scholarships for special merit. But do let the right hon. Gentleman beware of the danger, the fatal mistake of coddling up this profession by making its early stages too easy. I have had plenty of dealings with the teaching profession throughout my career, and I say that nothing has injured the teaching profession so much as this, that you take the apprenticed teacher from his parent's hands when he is fourteen or fifteen years of age and the parent and the apprenticed teacher knows that in all the years afterwards he is supported by the State. What is the consequence of that action upon the profession? Undoubtedly what follows is that the profession is underpaid in the later stages.

If you make the early stages of the subaltern artificially easy, if you take the responsibility off the parent, and make it too easy for the young man entering upon his profession, then you will inevitably reduce the pay in the later stages, and lower the market value of that profession. I would, therefore, beg the right hon. Gentleman not to commit any such mistake as this. I would ask him to remember that a parent who sends his son to the Bar, into the medical profession, or into any of the great professions, has to make himself responsible for greater or, at any rate, as much expenditure as a parent who sends his son into the Army. He is ready to do that, but he must have the bait held out to him which is held out in these other civil professions—the bait of a living wage. How are we to measure the needs of the addition that is necessary to the pay of officers? I am not going to be afraid of suggesting a much larger figure than that which the right hon. Gentleman has put down. Everyone knows, as an ordinary matter of worldly wisdom, that no man is wise or prudent to join the Army as an officer unless he can reckon upon a private and independent income of at least £150 or £200 a year. The right hon. Gentleman accepts that view. If not, I would like him to make that admission. I maintain that that is the measure of the need of what should be added to the pay of officers.

It is no use comparing the British Army with foreign armies, and the pay of the British officer with the pay of officers in those foreign armies. The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the officer in the foreign army, particularly the German and the French Armies, are paid in many ways that the officer in the English Army does not experience. They have immunities; they have privileges; they have honours; they have a position in society which is not granted to the officer in the British Army. Everything is made easy for the officer in the German or the French Army. What is the case in regard to the officers in the British Army? The office for which the right hon. Gentleman is responsible, instead of helping the British officer, seems to use a perfectly diabolical ingenuity in making his lot as uncomfortable as possible. I am not exaggerating in the slightest degree. For instance, will the right hon. Gentleman not say that the housing of married officers at Aldershot is a crying disgrace to the War Office? It is impossible for the married officer at Aldershot to obtain a house to accommodate himself and his family at anything but a ruinous rent, and many of these officers have to house their families in lodgings in London, while they themselves are serving at Aldershot. That is a disgrace to the War Office. I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will use his best efforts to remove it. It is a state of things that would not be tolerated for one moment either in the German or the French army. It is errors of that sort that make the position of the British officer so much less desirable than that of the French or German officer. I only ask that the right hon. Gentleman would not confine his generosity, much as I thank him for it, to £150,000, but to a sum which will give to officers of ten or twelve years' standing a substantial increase in their pay, and which will raise them to something approaching the position of men in other professions. I put it at something like 5,000 men at £200, which would cost £1,000,000. The country would have worth for the money, and it would meet in a large measure what it is necessary to meet—the anomaly which has existed far too long, and which now calls for redress if you are to establish your Army on a proper business footing, namely, that your officers are not paid at a rate on which it is possible for them to support themselves, and that they are assumed to be men of private means.

With regard to aviation, I will only say that I think we are entitled to a definite answer from the Secretary of State for War as to the exact number of efficient machines we have ready for war. As to that part of the right hon. Gentleman's speech last week, in which he referred to the Territorial Force, I regret that I have not had the opportunity of saying a word or two upon it before now. I wish particularly to refer to the right hon. Gentleman's statement where he was trying to convince us that the Territorial Force, although below strength, could easily be filled up by drawing on other heterogeneous forces which he brought to the notice of many of us, I am afraid, for the first time. He said that there were 105,000 men who had left the Territorial Force since its formation, and that we could rely on a very large number of them to fill up the 16 per cent. below strength at the present time. He was very emphatic about that. He said:—

"We know that the whole of them, practically, because they have said so, are anxious to rejoin on the declaration of war or even in time of imminent national danger."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th March, 1913, col. 1088.]

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has any right to say that, because there is no possible check that has yet been applied which can give any proof that it is a fact. I have since I was permitted by age to be a member of the Volunteer Force, and afterwards the Territorial Force, taken a very great interest in the working of these forces, and I really think the right hon. Gentleman takes far too much for granted when he says that practically the whole of these men will be ready to come forward to fill the gaps in time of war. He carried the comparison further and compared these Reserves, which are no Reserves at all—for they have never definitely said that they would come forward—with the Reserves of the Bulgarian Army. He said that the Bulgarians, instead of having to fill up a 16 per cent. deficiency, filled up something like 80 per cent. Why did the right hon. Gentleman introduce that comparison if he did not mean it to blind the eyes of this House to the true facts of the question in relation to the shortage of Territorial troops? I say that to compare 105,000 men who have made no definite arrangement to reinforce the Territorial Force in time of war with the Bulgarian Reserves, who are compelled to come in in time of war, is to make a comparison which is not justified, and the right hon. Gentleman must be driven to an extreme limit if he has to fall back upon arguments of that kind to convince the country that the Territorial Force need not be worried as to numbers.

10.0 P.M.

The right hon. Gentleman went on tell us of various other forces we could rely upon in time of stress to fill up the ranks. He mentioned the National Reserve. He was too modest. Why not mention the Chelsea Pensioners and the Boy Scouts? The right hon. Gentleman himself is a skilled tactician and thoroughly understands this question. No one in this House believes that it would be possible to bring the Chelsea Pensioners or the Boy Scouts into the Territorial Force and place them against trained troops. I think a great proof that the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor have failed in their work is that the right hon. Gentleman is driven to rely on arguments such as these, because he knows perfectly well that if war were suddenly to break out you cannot by introducing rifle companies into the Territorial Force make that force efficient in six months. You will not make the force efficient if you bring in men who have no training whatever, and who have had no military practice except in the finding of a range in a miniature rifle shooting hall. When we come to the question of filling up the gaps, we must agree with the right hon. Gentleman when he said that all is not well with our Army. If that is so, I say that your Estimates are insufficient and that it is high time to make some drastic change by which all will be well with our Army. I do not think there are many Members who agree with the hon. Member for Salford (Sir W. Byles), who tells us that we must not threaten Continental military Powers. I do not think anyone will deny that our Army has greater work to perform than any other Army, although we do not wish to see our Army of the same dimensions as those of Continental Powers. We have 28,000 miles of land frontier—four times as much as any other Power in the world. We know perfectly well that we cannot rely entirely on the Navy. Those days have gone by. A naval Power cannot, without an army, crush a Continental army, because modern invention has so improved communication that you can no longer destroy a commercial nation on the seas. We must recognise that if we are to have any voice whatever in the counsels of Europe we must have an adequate Expeditionary Force to maintain the balance of power on the one hand, and if we are to maintain peace, on the other hand, we must have a greater home defence army to fill up the gaps in that Expeditionary Force when it leaves these shores.

It does seem to me that we are not recognising the absolute failure in numbers and efficiency of the Territorial Force at the present time. I am not speaking against the men, with whom I have served. We have been doing what we ought to have been doing, while the authors of this scheme have been doing nothing whatever, with the exception of Lord Haldane and the present Secretary of State for War, to make it a success in the country. The Members of the Government, with the exception of those connected with the War Office, have not been going around outside and advising their countrymen to join us. I have searched very carefully the speeches of all the hon. Gentlemen opposite, and all they have done is to criticise us as to proposing an alternative. [An HON. MEMBER: "Will you provide one?"] I have produced three schemes, if the hon. Member will do me the honour of reading them. It should be recognised that this is not a party question at all. I have advocated them, not because they will win votes—we know perfectly well that they will not—but because we believe that peace can best be maintained by having this a really effective force. I may very briefly point out exactly what I refer to with regard to the numbers of the force. It will be remembered that when Lord Haldane laid down his Territorial scheme in this House on the first occasion, when I had the pleasure of hearing him from the Strangers' Gallery, he then told us that it was absolutely essential that we should have an establishment of 315,000. That was the minimum upon which we could rely with safety. That minimum has not been reached, and I quite agree with the Secretary of State for War when he tells us that all is not well with our military affairs. I think that that obviously must be so, because otherwise he would be in conflict with his previous chief.

The Territorial Force and the Special Reserve are below the established strength at the present time by 80,000 men. That is a very big number, and a very small Army, compared with the other armies of the world. In addition, the Special Reserve has practically become nothing but a recruiting ground for the Regular Army. The great complaint one finds in all the Special Reserve battalions throughout the country is that the men not only do not join in sufficient numbers for the present strength, but directly they have joined they pass on to the Regular Army. The consequence is that when that Special Reserve comes up there will be very few old soldiers and a very large number of boys in the ranks. The result is that we find that in stamina and physique the Special Reserve is undoubtedly inferior to the old Militia, though, of course, the six months' training will produce better recruits than we had in the old days. Passing from that, we find that the Territorials fail in strength and training, and are inadequately disciplined. I remember the speech made by the hon. and gallant Member for Monmouthshire, and when I refer to inadequate discipline I do not mean that these men are insubordinate, but that they have not the discipline to go under fire in the field. Lord Haldane recognised at the time that the Territorial Army is not disciplined to go under fire at present, but the right hon. Gentleman places his chief faith in the question of numbers, and it is with regard to these that I wish to say one word. The Territorial Force is something like 60,000 men short at the present time. It is between 50,000 and 60,000. About the middle of April a very large proportion of the present force is going. Therefore the force will be between 60,000 and 70,000 short in a few weeks' time. We may take it at 60,000. I should say that that is so from the returns which I have seen of men who are going. They may be more lucky in other battalions.

The attendance in camp last year, out of a total establishment of 310,000, was only 161,000, who were present for the whole fifteen days. Sixty-seven thousand were present for eight days. The result was that at the end of the week, after you had got your men to a certain state of efficiency, you suddenly began with an entirely new battalion, and the men who had gone on to a certain extent had to be kept back until the new men were brought on and trained up. It would be far better to make them fulfil their training compulsorily, or else have a compulsory week and expose the thing, because the present system is a bad one. Out of the total establishment of 310,000 we have 80,000 men in the Territorial Army either nonexistent or untrained. Last year out of the number who were trained, I do not think it is unreasonable to say that there are something like 50,000 who are certainly unfitted to take the field. If you took this total of 130,000, it leaves in your Territorial Force only 180,000 who would be prepared to take part in the defence of their country. Out of this, a large proportion it is perfectly safe to say, 50,000, are totally inadequately trained with respect to musketry? If you leave alone the question of the inadequacy of the musketry, we have only got 180,000 effective men. Can anybody suggest that even a large proportion of that number could really be concentrated to meet a raid at any particular time? You have got to leave a large number of troops in Scotland—we do not know where a raid is likely to come—and you have got to leave a large number in Ireland, because, at any time, there might be trouble in Ireland, and you will have to withdraw your Regular service in Ireland for your Expeditionary Force, and perhaps at the same time, you will have to defend your dockyards, your arsenals and lines of communication, and railway bridges. The right hon. Gentleman is well aware that out of his 180,000 effective Territorials, I am not exaggerating when I say that he will be very lucky if he can get 100,000 of his men to go comfortably to meet a raid within a short time.

If that be the case, suppose a raid were possible of 70,000 trained troops—and it cannot be denied that it is—it would be a wicked gamble to oppose 70,000 trained troops to 100,000 Territorials. One has only got to read military history; one has only got to follow what Stonewall Jackson did in the War of Secession with a very small number of troops, not very much more highly trained than the troops opposed to him, to realise how almost essential it is to do everything in our power to keep this Territorial Army, which will not be fit to manœuvre in the field under fire, as far as possible behind earthworks, and how essential it will be for us to have, at any rate, as large a number as possible, to oppose forces of trained soldiers. I believe it to be absolutely imperative that the trained Expeditionary Force in this country should be at least 250,000, if it is going to have any effect at all, but I do believe that the time has come when we want to have not a very highly trained Reserve, but a large Reserve in this country. Lord Haldane, I believe, originally desired to raise 900,000 men. That is what we desire to do, and we believe this that without any great expense at all, the Territorial skeleton being a good one, the idea being perfectly sound, those who are preventing the universal adoption of that service, which, to those who have tried it, is a pleasure and a recreation, those who try to obscure the issue with some political purpose, in order to prevent the extension to the Territorial Army of the universal principle, are doing a great harm to the country, and I believe that they do not recognise that if they were carrying out the idea, they would not be interfering with a man's profession, and would not be interfering with his work. I do hope that this House will consider—I admit it may not satisfy all Regular soldiers—the universal application of the present Territorial idea. I believe it would be no hardship to the men of this country, and, if you did that, you could free your Expeditionary Force and your Navy in time of trouble, so that they need not worry about these shores; you would have a sufficiently large Territorial Army to resist a raid of 70,000 or even 100,000, and at the same time it would be so large that the best men could volunteer and fill the wastage in your Expeditionary Force. I believe that if the right hon. Gentleman will consider the further application of a splendid idea in a universal respect it will meet with the approval of men of all parties in this country.

I only wish to put one question to the right hon. Gentleman, and it rather concerns the subject raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Croft), in regard to the figures of 105,000 ex-Territorials, who, the right hon. Gentleman said, would rejoin on mobilisation, or, to speak more correctly, who he hoped would rejoin on mobilisation. What I want to find out from the right hon. Gentleman is whether he spoke from knowledge of the facts and figures, or whether he only spoke from faith. Unlike others perhaps greater than myself, I am unwilling to enter into a definition of what faith really is, but I cannot make out myself, nor can I satisfy myself, what are the figures on which he founded that statement. Let me take his figures. Of the 105,000 who might rejoin, I personally, from information furnished to me, would strike out 30 per cent. or 35 per cent. of men who have never completed the four years' training. I go further, and I would deduct those men, whom some may perhaps describe as rotters, or whom I would describe as social failures in the Territorial Force, who have been got rid of for one mistake or another. I should further take away men who have died—I do not think even the right hon. Gentleman would dispute death—or who, if they have not died, have emigrated. Then there come the class of men, of whom perhaps I am one, who are too old to serve their country. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Those were not included in the right hon. Gentleman's statement. In short, when you have deducted those classes I have mentioned, I am not far out in saying that 10,000 men at the outside—even if the right hon. Gentleman's faith was amply fulfilled, and all these other men were glad to flock to the Colours—would be a very liberal estimate, instead of 105,000. At all events, I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman will give us what figures he can in support of the statement he has made. Like many other private Members who speak on the Army, and always end by proposing that a draft should be made on the Treasury, I would suggest that a bonus of £5 should be given to every Territorial who completes four years' service, and a bonus of £4 on the completion of four years in the Territorial Reserve. That would be, at all events, some incitement to men to join this force which the right hon. Gentleman thinks is so large, but which I think would be so very small. These are questions which I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider, but I wish him more especially to direct his attention to the figures.

The Secretary of State for War said, when he produced the Estimates last year, there were only twelve officers out of fourteen officers and 182 men who could fly, and that they had then seventeen aeroplanes. I think that shows how disgracefully the Government, neglected the art of flying. We surely know now the danger to which we are exposed in consequence. This year, the right hon. Gentleman said, we have 123 flying officers, of whom fifty-five had passed the highest test, and there are only eight men out of 600. The right hon. Gentleman said we had 101 aeroplanes in possession of the War Office capable of flying as far as he could decide. That does not sound to me as if the right hon. Gentleman really knows whether those aeroplanes can fly or not. I am given to understand, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will tell—

If I have time.

The time is not my fault. I am going as quickly as ever I can. I am given to understand that a great many of those aeroplanes do not belong to the War Office at all, but that an officer was sent round to the flying schools to find out how many machines the War Office could have a call on if they were wanted, and that those were counted in the 101.

No, no.

I am only asking the right hon. Gentleman was that the case. There are 120 aeroplanes owned by private people in France on which the French Government have got a call, more than we have over here. Was it the case that some of the Army aeroplanes were rendered incapable of being used because they were not looked after? The right hon. Gentleman did say something about it, but he did not tell us whether it was true or not. Of those 101 aeroplanes which the right hon. Gentleman believes to be capable of flying, some are not fast enough to be any good in war and others are very useful in war, but they are too dangerous to use in peace. That is the right hon. Gentleman's own account. In other words, some are like rather fat, underbred hunters, which may be able to rise at their fences but can only go about as fast as you could kick a hat backwards. Others can get along fairly, but are so groggy on the legs that they tumble down on the flat and break the rider's neck—not altogether a cheery look-out in the stress of modern war. The right hon. Gentleman said that we have got the best aeroplane in the world, and that several of them are of a type superior to any owned by any other country, and yet he told us that if anyone tried to find out what foreign countries were doing about aviation, he would find himself immediately confronted with a blank wall. He cannot possibly know how good the aeroplanes of other countries are. His assertion that we have got the best aeroplane in the world is guesswork and bluff. Apparently the right hon. Gentleman does not even know the number of aeroplanes which are possessed by Germany—all he does is to quote the "Morning Post," and he said 150. I am only quoting what the right hon. Gentleman said. The French Government are, I believe, understood to possess 500 of their own, besides 120 private aeroplanes, on which the French Government have got a call. Does the right hon. Gentleman think it likely that Germany has only 150 and France from 500 to 620? Does he think that in Germany some of their aeroplanes are too slow for war and others too dangerous for peace? So much has the art of flying been neglected by the Government that, although the Secretary for War tells us, without apparent justification, that we have the best aeroplanes in the world, yet we cannot make them because our engines are inferior to those of foreign Powers. This is entirely the fault of the Government, because they gave the makers of engines no encouragement. They are now going to do so by offering a prize. We are all behindhand. That ought to have been done at least three or four years ago, and would have been done if the Government cared as much about the national safety as they do about catching votes. The right hon. Gentleman said that we have no large dirigible balloons of the Zeppelin type, and that we are not going to have any. The Government are deliberately declining to build any of these "Dreadnoughts" of the air, although the right hon. Gentleman admitted that they were possessed by many other countries. He said to us: "What about the safety of this country from invasion by hostile aircraft? What about a large number of airships of great size, which might come over here from a hostile country, and the fear that the whole of our stores of explosives might be blown up?" Those are the right hon. Gentleman's own words. He admitted that Germany had five military airships of a rigid type and of large size, capable of being used at night and of carrying and discharging high explosives op to our docks, ships, magazines, and stores. We know that Germany has more than five big airships—probably, with privately owned ones, more than double that number, and that she can build them more quickly and easily than we can. We cannot do it because the Government have neglected to build these great "Dreadnoughts" of the air. Let me ask the Secretary of State for War what state we should be in if there was a crisis of the kind that we had lately, and if the enemy began the war by sending a dozen of these Zeppelins over here at night to discharge tons of high explosives on our arsenals and big towns? The right hon. Gentleman put forward as an argument in our favour that no Power would be so foolish as to put all its eggs into one basket—

Is the hon. Member entitled to read his speech?

The hon. Member is doubtless aware that there is a rule against reading speeches.

I am trying to get on as quickly as possible; and I have a good many quotations here. I have seen hon. Member's opposite with very full notes and a box to put them in. The right hon. Gentleman told us that no Power was so foolish as to put all its eggs into one basket, and that we had not made that mistake either. I submit that is not true. Every other nation, as he said, has got numbers of airships of large size, and we have none, and we are not going to have any. Our basket has no eggs in it at all. For the defence of the country all our eggs are in the aeroplane basket. There are not very many of them, and some of them, for war purposes, are about as rotten as election eggs. The right hon. Gentleman explained that although he did not claim to know the number of the aeroplanes in Germany, that in proportion to the number of German soldiers, we have four times as many aeroplanes as Germany. That argument is perfectly childish. I might just as well say that Germany has more warships than we have because we have a larger number of sailors. We are admittedly inferior in the number of aeroplanes, and we cannot make them because we cannot make the engines. We have no large dirigibles at all for home defence, nor even any little balloons in boxes. The War Secretary explained that our two or three little jack-in-the-box dirigible balloons are better than any other kind of portable airship owned by other nations. I cannot see how he has got through the blank wall that foreign countries oppose to us to prevent us finding out what they are doing. There is our little balloon which, it is stated, can go 45 miles an hour. My information, from a man who at all events has been in one of them, is that they can only go that fast when they have got a very high wind behind them. Before I give way to the right hon. Gentleman I should like to be assured that there will be another opportunity for discussing the points I wish to raise.

I must acknowledge the courtesy of the hon. Gentleman opposite for sitting down so promptly, and I can assure him that anything that lies in my power I will do to enable him to finish his speech on another occasion, or to add any remarks to it. Of course, the matter rests with Mr. Speaker or the Chairman, as the case may be, when we come to discuss Vote 1, which, by an arrangement to which the Prime Minister assented, will be an occasion when we can discuss these larger questions which we are discussing, and to which the hon. Gentleman was addressing himself when with great consideration he was good enough to sit down. I was anxious if I could to reply to-night to several points which have been raised by hon. Members in all parts of the House, who naturally wish for an immediate reply if it can be given. I am the more anxious to do it because in almost every case the points raised have been non-controversial points—certainly always non-party points—presented to the House in a non-controversial spirit, which again I would venture with great respect to the House to asknowledge most gratefully. With two exceptions we have continued this Debate on the Army in a spirit which I confess I have never seen before. It does seem to be a fact that the party in Army matters has been forgotten. The first thing which we more than welcome is the assistance that the right hon. Gentleman the senior Member for the City is going to give in the work of the Imperial Defence Committee. It is an entirely new departure, though it has been in contemplation to keep that Committee outside party. It is all a symptom of a new spirit that we must as far as possible acknowledge.

The Army, like the question of foreign affairs, is one on which we cannot divide ourselves on altogether party lines. There are some special points which have been raised on which I must reply, and the first is with regard to the proportion of serving soldiers. The hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Stafford (Sir T. Courtenay Warner) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Leith Burghs (Mr. Munro-Ferguson) drew attention to the total numbers. It is quite true, in my judgment, since I was appealed to, and I know in the judgment of every soldier, the more men you can have serving with the Colours, other things being equal, the better, but other things, of course, are not equal. In the first place, by getting a larger number of Reservists the average age of our units is increased. I cannot go into the whole question of the relative values of units brought up to war strength and units like those mentioned as serving in South Africa and compare their relative merits. There is no unanimity of opinion upon that. Some soldiers set great store by having men rather older than the average men in our Army recruited as it is to-day. There is no doubt that in the case of the Artillery, which is the most technical of the three branches, there is a very real and special advantage in having a large proportion of men serving in the ranks and a smaller proportion of Reservists. I do not claim the step we have taken this year goes far enough, but it is a step in that direction, and I believe the right direction; but if you carry it further, not only with regard to the Cavalry, which is a small matter, but with regard to the Infantry, you would be brought up against the question of maintaining the Cardwell system. I am not going into the whole Cardwell system, which is the system under which we have worked, and which has proved so useful, not only for our overseas garrisons, but in a great and increasing degree in recent years for the Expeditionary Force it has been very real, efficient, and valuable. That our Expeditionary Force has improved enormously I am glad to think everyone on this side of the House is agreed. I can only say to both my hon. Friends that I accept the thesis that in the Artillery force you should have a greater proportion of men serving. We have done something, and if we have not gone further it is because of further difficulties with regard to the maintenance of an adequate Reserve. Unless you are going to change the system under which we work, which manifestly now is not the time to do the thing, is to perfect what we have got. Questions have been asked with regard to numbers. Some hon. Members asked, "How comes it that you say you will only be 500 short. Other hon. Members make out it will be 3,800 or 2,800 plus the Royal Flying Corps. The explanation is a technical one, but not at all difficult. It is that we have not taken the same number of men as in previous years, because we do not find it necessary. To make it quite clear I will say this: If under our system of voluntary enlistment we obtain the number of men we require, as I hope the numbers under Vote A will be 500 less than the year past, not 3,800 or 2,800, but 500, and if I am asked why there should be 500 reduction, the reason is what I gave the other day, that as we get rid of the Special Service Section of the Royal Artillery, we do not require the large number of men hitherto engaged in training. With regard to the general structure of the Army I can make no claim to have made any appreciable change with regard to numbers.

The next point is in regard to the number of aeroplanes. I must confess that I have been a little puzzled by the attitude of one or two hon. Gentlemen who feel themselves unable to accept a plain statement. I do not in the least complain, but it seems to me to be a little unusual. When an hon. Member says something is so, somebody else may say, "I do not believe it," but it is, of course, very discourteous. I do not, however, complain. Now we have got a little further, because the hon. Member for Brentford (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) has been good enough to give us a definition of what he calls an efficient aeroplane or one efficient for war. It is very difficult to define an aeroplane efficient for war. You can make it one of high speed or low speed, facility for landing, etc., and he has taken a figure which he says he will take for the purpose of this Debate, and he will call a machine efficient for war that will fly fifty miles an hour, rise to 3,000 ft., and continue to fly at fifty miles an hour at that height. I have got on to our experts on the telephone since the hon. Member spoke, and I can tell the House that, making every allowance and with a determination to understate rather than overstate, we are in possession of over eighty aeroplanes which come up to that standard. My belief is that on the hon. Member's statement the number would be about eighty-seven, but in order to be on the safe side I say it is over eighty. And so we may clear away that suspicion which I regret has come into this Debate, because there need be no suspicion about it.

We were working up to secure over 150 by the 31st May. We have had great difficulties owing to delays. I impute no blame to the manufacturers, because in a new industry in all countries there always must be delays, especially to secure safety. Delay has been delay caused in the manufacture of the suitable stays, because we found some kind of stays were dangerous. This comes out by accidents, and we have had scientific investigation at the Royal Laboratory at Kew. Consequently we have had to go to our manufacturer and say, "You cannot make the stays up to your specification because it will not be safe." That has happened very often and has been the cause of delay. Working on the programme laid down the position is that by next Monday we shall have added a further number of twenty-six, all of which will be far above the standard laid down by the hon. Member for Brentford; and in the course of the following eight weeks a further twenty-one will be added, if the deliveries are made as expected. I hope after this statement we shall have no further disputes. I want to be quite frank with the House. If we get the deliveries we shall have to-day week 127, of which at least 110 will come up to the hon. Gentleman's standard, and by the 31st of May we shall have 148, and possibly the number may be accelerated, of which at least 130 will come up to his standard. I do not wish to argue whether that is wholly adequate or inadequate to our needs, but the people who have been concerned in this difficult business of aeronautics have worked very hard indeed to make so enormous an increase in personnel and material as from 12 to 123, an increase of over 900 per cent.—all men who can fly and the great majority of them very expert flyers—and from 17 to 101, and within a few weeks more to 148. To have made so great an advance with so few mistakes reflects great credit, not on me, but on those who work under me.

There was a further addition to my suggestion, and that was that they should be ready to start for war within a reasonable time.

Oh, yes; these eighty are ready to go and will fly at 50 miles an hour, and will continue to fly at 50 miles an hour at 3,000 feet.

May I ask whether the whole 101 aeroplanes are absolutely owned by the Government?

I believe they have been paid for. I hope we have got them safe. We certainly have got to pay for them, whether the money has been actually handed over or not. If we get delivery, we shall have 127 by this day week and 148 by 31st May; and we have now in possession 101, unless there have been two delivered during the holidays. Speaking for the Army and for the whole of my expert advisers, in spite of all that has been said, we have no intention now, whatever we may have in the future, of getting a Zeppelin. All my expert advisers agree that for the Army, for its Expeditionary Force, to get a Zeppelin and pay for it would be a much more foolish proceeding than to take the money and throw it into the sea. Anyone who has studied the question of rigid balloons knows it is impossible to manage them unless you have a shed in which they can go. You may be able to moor them for a time, but the danger of having them destroyed in a storm is such that it, would not be worth while to take them with an Expeditionary Force. No nation, and certainly not ours, would be well advised to have one without a shed. It may be said, "Why do other nations have them? Are the Germans and the French all fools to have the rigid balloon?" No, of course not, because they are two great nations, with a coterminious frontier, along which they can dot their sheds, and, if so dotted, it is quite conceivable they are going to be of value in war. They have a fair prospect of success in being able to rise from their sheds to manœuvre, not over the battlefield, because no doubt they would be destroyed there by the vertical guns, but at such a distance that they could well see the main movements of the enemy, or, at any rate, the great flanking movements which make the difference between success and defeat, and then return to their sheds. A great number of them might be destroyed—we all know what happened to a Zeppelin the other day—but they would have a fair prospect of success. You could not, however, with an expeditionary force, put up a shed in a moment. You would have to build it, which is a very long business, and by the time you had done that the war might be over. That is a thing which none of my expert advisers would ever advise me to do, and I certainly have no intention of doing it. Some great change may take place in the aeronautical world which may make it possible for the Expeditionary Force to use one of these Zeppelins. When that day comes we shall be prepared to take the necessary action. As to the part of the Territorial Force, and the 105,000 men to which the right hon. Gentleman opposite specially directed himself, as did also an hon. Friend, if they will do me the honour to look at what I said they will see that I specifically said, not once but twice, that I was not dealing with the question of efficiency—that was another matter—but with the question of numbers alone. I repeat, so far as the numbers alone are concerned, that the 16 per cent. shortage is not the serious part of the problem of our national forces. Not only is that my opinion, but I am advised by my advisers that that is not the serious thing. The 105,000 men are not those who have left for the various causes enumerated by the hon. and gallant Gentlemen, or who have left this world, it is an estimate formed by experts of those who would leave the force on the expiration of the period of engagement. If you deducted Volunteers as well as Territorials the number would be larger.

Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that I made a wrong calculation?

You must have arrived at it by an estimate. We have very expert mathematicians in the War Office who can calculate almost everything, and it is remarkable how often even these prophesies are fulfilled, because they have to make very careful computations, not only of matters of this kind, but of what will happen from year to year. It is really remarkable how frequently in that case they are proved to be absolutely right. The same people have made this estimate, and I believe they are right. I believe there can be no doubt about this 16 per cent., and in this I am supported by the chairmen of county associations whom I have had the opportunity of consulting in the matter. The presidents of county associations and the commanding officers and other persons who have discussed the matter with me at great length are all agreed, and they impressed it upon me at the time that I was making further provision for the National Reserve, that it was really unnecessary to make this further provision for the purpose of filling up the War establishment of the Territorials because these men would undoubtedly provide the necessary number. With regard to the problem of invasion, I will not speak on that to-night, not because of the want of time, but because it would be more convenient to deal with it on the day when the Prime Minister will himself speak on the whole question both of the Army and the Navy. It is a naval problem even more than a military one, and he will discuss the matter as a whole, and also the Sub-Committee of Imperial Defence, to which I have referred, and which will have proceeded further in its labours. In the opinion of my advisers, the danger of an overwhelming force striking us a blow at the heart and paralysing us is a danger which is not a danger that we need fear. The question of raids we will deal with, of course, when the whole question is discussed at another time, but I repeat that if we regarded such a blow at our heart, which would bring the national life to a standstill and rob us of our liberties, as a likely contingency, there is no step that we would not ask the country to take in order to avert such a danger.

I do regret one thing, and one thing only, in this Debate, that one or two hon. Gentlemen—I think there were two—were so ungenerous as to attack distinguished soldiers who serve upon the Army Council to-day. It is very unusual to make those attacks. It is much better to attack the man who is responsible here. But, since the question has been raised, although it is unusual to offer a eulogy of any one in the service of the Crown, I feel bound to say this: That for various reasons the present First Military Member of the Army Council, Sir John French, has rendered quite exceptional services to the State, and is now capable of rendering them. Not only did he command our forces in the field with signal success, not only did he earn the compliments of the whole Army, and of the whole Empire—because men from all parts served with him—but he earned the respect and esteem of his enemies. Now that our enemies have become our friends he is enabled to take a comprehensive survey of the whole of the military problems of the Empire; and if, as I hope and believe, we took a long step forward in the course of the last few months towards securing that Imperial co-operation in land warfare between all parts of the Empire, which is the ideal that all of us, even the most peaceful men, hope for, then I say unhesitatingly that the men who come to write the history of these times, with a knowledge of all that has taken place, will say that it has been due in a large and exceptional measure to Sir John French. I must say in regard to several points raised that I have made a note of all the points that have been raised. With regard to the increase in the officers' pay, I hope that not only this House, but the whole country, will take note of the fact that every single speaker, not only on this side and the Labour Benches, but hon. Gentlemen opposite, and some belonging to the most exclusive regiments, have joined in one unanimous statement that so far from it being the wish of the Army to prevent men rising from the ranks, the British Army as a whole, the officers as well, welcome it. I think it is indeed a satisfactory thing that that unanimous testimony should have been paid to the principle that we welcome ability in the British Army from wherever it may come. With regard to the withdrawals from South Africa, it is impossible to state the exact amount of the savings, because they will be found in many Votes. The savings have not become effective because the necessary cost of clothing, etc., will swallow up the initial savings made.

What is the number of forces withdrawn?

I could not give the exact numbers off-hand. There is Artillery and Cavalry. That I will deal with in the memorandum I will send to my hon. friend. With regard to making South Africa pay, which the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggested, of course Ceylon and Mauritius would pay more and on a totally different footing. I do not think that is a proposition we could make. South Africa, I am sure, is quite willing to pay according to her needs.

The right hon. Gentleman has left me a minute in which first to pay from my heart a tribute to the services rendered by the distinguished soldiers at the War Office; and, secondly, to say that the whole tenor of this Debate and of the right hon. Gentleman's speech shows that the work of the Committee has only been begun, that it has begun well, that when it is resumed after the general Debate it will be advantageous to focus this discussion on the points of officers, aeronautics, and the general sufficiency of our land forces.

It being Eleven of the clock, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order of the House of 17th March, to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.