asked the Home Secretary if he is willing to consider the question of introducing legislation making compulsory the setting up of welfare departments in all factories and workshops employing over 50 workpeople?

I fully appreciate the value of welfare departments, and consider it very desirable that in all large works there should be a special officer or department dealing with welfare questions. The usefulness, however, of a wel- fare organisation must to a large degree depend on the spirit in which it is created and worked, and a welfare department which owed its establishment, not to the employer's desire to secure the best possible conditions for his workers, but to legal compulsion, could not be expected to meet with the same success.