I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

Hon. Members will see that the Clause provides that all local authorities charged with functions under this Act shall

"furnish to the Secretary of State such information as may be demanded by him for the purpose of assisting the preparation by His Majesty's Government of plans for any necessary transference of the civil population in the event of hostile attack from the air."

Hon. Members will also see, if they glance at the Amendments in my name to Clause 1, that I propose two consequential Amendments which would make effective the objects of the new Clause. The House will remember that during the Committee Debates great attention was given to the question of evacuation. Several Members in different parts of the House were obviously anxious lest we were not giving sufficient attention to the question of evacuation, or lest, even if we were giving sufficient attention to it, we had not effective powers in the Bill to see that evacuation was included in its proper place in the schemes of the local authorities. I gave an undertaking, having noticed the obvious anxiety of many hon. Members, that I would look into the question again to see whether the powers in the Bill were watertight in this respect. I said, in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) that I would see whether, apart from the question of these powers being watertight or not, it would not be wise, on general grounds, to make some allusion in the Bill to this very important question.

My further inquiries have gone to show, first, that the Bill is watertight, and that even without this new Clause, we could, under the regulations and under the existing Clauses of the Bill, insist on schemes of evacuation being included in the local schemes. Secondly, my investigations went to show that it would, on the whole, be wise to make specific reference to evacuation in order to remove doubts, even though those doubts were not justifiably founded, so that there could not be any uncertaintly in the minds of any of the local authorities concerned. Thirdly, it seemed to me, on further consideration, that it would be wise to make more specific a provision to which a good deal of attention was given in the Debate, namely, the provision for refugees, evacuated from one area to be introduced into another area. On that account, the proposed new Clause, first, lays upon local authorities the obligation to provide the Government with the necessary information about evacuation and, secondly, makes it clear that in their schemes they can provide for populations coming in from outside their own areas. It will be remembered that a great deal of attention was given to that point, and the longer the Debate went on the clearer it became that the problem of evacuation, if it is to be successfully dealt with, is a problem which far transcends the boundaries of this or that local authority. It has to be dealt with in bigger areas and, perhaps, in the case of London, which is the most difficult and urgent of all the cases concerned, we may find that it has to be dealt with by some central scheme. The House will, I think, agree when they consider the new Clause and the consequential Amendments that I have dealt effectively with the main point raised in the Committee Debate, and I hope I have succeeded in removing the anxieties of the hon. Members who were doubtful about the Bill in its original form.

I can say, finally, that we have this question of evacuation constantly and vividly before our minds. We realise as fully as any hon. Members, the need for evacuation schemes. We also realise the difficulties that are inherent in any such schemes. We already have provisional plans at our disposal. We now intend to carry those plans a great step further, but a necessary condition of doing so is to have local information from the various local authorities. That information we shall obtain under the new Clause. We shall see in the schemes and information sent in by the local authorities the exact scope of the problem and the application of particular measures to particular areas. We shall see what areas ought to be evacuated and where, in the event of evacuation, populations are to be transferred, and so on. We hope, as soon as the Bill becomes law, that there will be no delay in obtaining information of that kind. The central Government will then be able to deal centrally with the whole problem. Without the information which will be obtainable under this Clause, it will be difficult to be sure of getting all the data needed. Because we regard the question as very urgent and because we need such data, I hope the House will accept the new Clause. I also hope that I have succeeded in removing any anxiety which may have been in the minds of hon. Members during the Committee stage.

It will be agreed, I think, that the proposed new Clause is not only an admission that the sense of the House expressed in previous Debates was right, but also an admission of the usefulness of the criticisms which have been made, from this side of the House particularly, upon the proposed machinery of evacuation. The right hon. Gentleman said that the regulations and the Bill, as it stood, without this new Clause, would have been sufficient for putting into operation, fully and effectively, the machinery of evacuation. But I think hon. Members will agree that his subsequent remarks proved the necessity for a Clause of this character, and demonstrated the fact that the Bill, in its original form, was not adequate to deal with this question. The general question of evacuation will be discussed at greater length on the Third Reading, within the limits set by the procedure and the Rules of the House, but there is one point which I wish to make at this stage, and I make it by putting a presumption to the right hon. Gentleman. The proposed new Clause reads:

"for the purpose of assisting the preparation by His Majesty's Government of plans for any necessary transference of the civil population in the event of hostile attack from the air."

May we presume that the Government accept full responsibility for the evacua- tion plans in London and other cities, and not only responsibility for the plans in detail, but also financial responsibility, including responsibility for preliminary expenditure? That ought to be made clear. We want to know definitely whether this also is to be regarded as a sort of reserved subject. The necessity for this Clause and the words used by the right hon. Gentleman in presenting it justify the argument which has been advanced on several occasions that some centralised authority should be responsible for evacuation in general. During the Second Reading Debate the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Sandys) suggested the appointment of a director-general of air-raid precautions to take charge of an enlarged and reconstructed department. The hon. Member said:

"There would be somebody in charge in that case who possessed sufficient authority to take decisions without delay. …. A director-general at the head of an enlarged department would be in a position to get things done."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th November, 1937; col. 79, Vol. 329.]

What the right hon. Gentleman said in reference to the use by local authorities of the powers in the new Clause where it is a question of refugees from one place to another, points to the necessity for a sound central authority. This is not a question which can be handled by local authorities, even large authorities like the London County Council. It involves larger considerations of national policy, and of policy which affects other local authorities. For that reason the proposed Clause implies that the closest consideration should be given to the question of responsibility, and even if it is not a question of appointing a director-general, at least some specific statement should be made before the Third Reading as to the way in which the whole problem of evacuation is to be dealt with when the necessity arises. Even before the necessity arises I take it that we shall have to prepare plans. We shall have to consider plans, not only for the event of war, but for the possibility of the event of war. It is not a question, in London or anywhere else, of the complete evacuation of the whole population, any more than it is a question of the complete protection of the whole population from gas, of getting the whole population into gas-proof rooms, or making complete entrenchments, or anything of that kind. Evidently, all these things will have to be worked in together. It will be a matter of high policy and of taking a wide view of the problem as a whole. Therefore, I suggest that the implications of the proposed new Clause go rather further than hon. Members have realised, and perhaps even further than the right hon. Gentleman himself has realised. In any event, although there are other things which we shall say upon the question of evacuation at the proper time, we welcome this admission by the Government that the trenchant case made, particularly by the Opposition but also by other sections of the House, with regard to evacuation, has served an exceedingly useful purpose by convincing the Government that this new Clause was needed.

I think we must all welcome very sincerely the inclusion of this new Clause, but some of us are shocked by the admission, which is implicit in the text of the Clause, that plans have not already been made, and that the information necessary for those plans has not yet been acquired. The Home Secretary must be aware that the vulnerability of London is perhaps the weakest point in all our defences, and consequently it weakens the structure upon which our whole foreign policy rests. Of the various dangers that threaten London from air attack, perhaps the principal danger is that of the inevitable disorganisation and panic which are bound to accrue when a population of 7,500,000 people become a target for air attack. It is the fact of this huge agglomeration of people that makes this question of evacuation so imperative and so urgent. By most of the principal countries of Europe not merely has the question of preparing plans been envisaged, but those plans have been entirely worked out. We are deplorably behind the times. If this is an earnest of the vivid apprehension in the mind of the Home Secretary of the urgent necessity for this Clause we welcome it, but we hope that by welcoming it we shall not encourage any feeling that there is still time for dalliance. An enormous amount of information is essential in the preparation of these plans.

The most vital collection of information that must be sought is that relating to the possible division of the population, of London at all events, into approximately five categories. The first category consists of people who would be moved from London on mobilization by being called into their respective military units; the second, those who could be relied upon to remove themselves from the capital at the first threat of hostilities, or on the first day of mobilisation, and would find their own method of transport to places in the country: people, in other words, whose duties would not entail their presence in London; and the third would consist of people whose duties would involve their presence in London. For those three categories, evacuation would not be necessary; for the remaining two, it would be necessary. These two categories would consist of the families of those people serving in the Forces, who could, however, safely be evacuated to distant parts of the country, and the families of those people whose duties compelled them to remain and work in London, but which would need to be visited from time to time by the head of the family. These, consequently, should not be removed to a great distance from London, but should remain in the countryside not far away. In order to reach those places, of course, all questions of transport will have to be gone into; facts with regard to train accommodation and car accommodation not merely gone into, but co-ordinated with the military authorities, who themselves will have to consider, if they have not already done so, the requisitioning of trains and cars for their own purposes.

Whether this evacuation is to be compulsory or voluntary on the first day of mobilisation is still, I suppose, a question for the Government to decide, but not merely must plans be prepared, but in either event the people must know where they can obtain the vouchers which will entitle them to transport and billets. The question of billeting can only be dealt with by co-operation with the local authorities, who must be made responsible not merely for furnishing information of suitable billets, but for seeing that they are in proper condition, and that foodstuffs, sanitation and water supplies are available. These things have already been worked out in most of the great European countries. To most of us who have already seen so many of our friends sacrificed to the "Moloch of muddling through," there is no virtue at all in being content to abide by that very out-worn principle, which is nothing but the child of national self-complacency and mental inertia. I hope the celebrated "locusts" of lethargy and delay have not yet eaten away our security. The Home Secretary has not much time. He has about three months, I should think, for the skies to be sufficiently clear for the next bombing season to begin.

I do not think it is necessary to emphasise, more than has already been emphasised, the desire in all parts of the House that this question should receive urgent consideration by the Government, but there is a matter which I should like again to emphasise, and that is the question of dealing with very large numbers of children. I do not know if it is the intention of local authorities to keep schools open in the event of a national emergency. If so, the problem of providing shelter, not only in people's own homes, but in other places of occupation—which in the case of children will be schools—and of travelling to and fro, will become even more difficult for children than for adults. I would press the Home Secretary strongly to make preparations for moving a very large proportion of the children out of London. They can be accommodated in large buildings in the country districts which are relatively safe, but it is a matter which will need very careful arrangement beforehand. Possibly, they can go with their teachers. That is, of course, only one part of the whole problem of evacuation, which has been pressed upon the Home Secretary and the Government from all parts of the House—possibly more insistently by the supporters of the Government even than by the Opposition. We are glad, therefore, to see that the Home Secretary has put down this new Clause.

I do not know, however, whether I am in the same position as other Members of the House, but it seems to me that the actual wording of this Clause does not carry out the intention which the Home Secretary expressed in his speech. When hon. Members put down Amendments in Committee, in order to emphasise the necessity for local authorities to provide schemes of evacuation, we received from the Government Front Bench several answers. In the first place, the Under-Secretary stated that it was definitely the duty of local authorities. These are his words when he spoke on 16th November:

"It would be the duty of the local authorities of big centres of population in the provinces to consider this matter in connection with their own schemes."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th November, 1937; col. 295; Vol. 329.]

I take it, from the Home Secretary's speech, that that is still so, and that the local authorities have got to initiate these schemes; but in another part of what he said I gathered that the Government were going to consider the whole problem of evacuation and to prepare their own scheme. I am at a loss to know what the position is regarding the problem of evacuation, as between the local authorities and the Government. The Clause does not state that it is the business of the local authorities to include evacuation in the scheme which they are asked to submit to the Government. The Clause merely states, and states very clearly, that it is their business to supply the Secretary of State with information so that he may prepare a scheme of evacuation. Are we to understand that the whole policy of the Government is now changed by the Clause, and that the initiative is to come from the Government, and not the local authorities? We want to get this matter very clear, because even the marginal note of this Clause does not appear to coincide with the Clause itself. The marginal note states that it is the

"Duty of local authorities to assist arrangements for evacuation of civil population."

The Clause does not say that it is the duty of local authorities to assist the Secretary of State, but merely to provide him with information. Are they to provide transport and accommodation in the districts to which the population is moved? That particular point was the subject of a special query to the Home Secretary on the Committee stage. An hon. Member asked whether the general reply which the Home Secretary gave, that schemes of evacuation were to be a part of local schemes, covered the question of receiving refugees as well as sending them away, and the Home Secretary replied that that was a question which could not be dealt with under this Bill. These are his words:

"That would be outside the scope of a Bill dealing with local authorities, but we have it very much in mind that we can deal with it either by legislation before the emergency or in what is generally known as the 'Dora legislation' as soon as the emergency begins."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1937; col. 1475, Vol. 329.]

That answer was rather disquieting to some of us who are especially interested in this question of evacuation. It seemed to me, at any rate, that it was a matter which ought to be planned long before the emergency arises. We gather that this is rather the view of the Government and that plans are to be made now.

The hon. Member who has just spoken regretted that the plans were not further advanced than they appear to be, at any rate for London. I do not think we are at all clear as to the position, and I hope that we may have further enlightenment on this point. It is a matter of importance for the local authorities to know whether they are to initiate the schemes or whether the Government will do so, and for another reason, that one section of the population may have to be evacuated, and I hope will be evacuated in large numbers, namely, those people who are living in houses which cannot be gas-proofed. The hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Noel-Baker) estimated that the numbers of these people would be between 7,000,000 and 8,000,000.

If the intention of the Government is to deal with even a small proportion of those people it will not be necessary for the local authorities concerned to provide the other form of protection which has been indicated by Government spokesmen as another means of affording some protection, namely, shelters. Those who live in bad property, slum property, which cannot be properly or adequately gas-proofed are, we learn, to have provided for them by the local authorities shelters which can be made gas-proof and also splinter-proof and blast-proof. If large sections of these people who are living in overcrowded and dangerous houses are to be evacuated, obviously that will remove the burden from the local authority, to some extent, of providing such shelters, but it will place a very heavy burden on those local authorities who are to receive the evacuated population.

The hon. Member who spoke from the Front Opposition Bench raised the point as to how the finance of the evacuation is to be arranged. That is a point which I would strongly emphasise. If the Government are going to take the initiative in evacuation, are they going to remove the responsibility for providing accommodation, transport, and possibly the maintenance of children and women who cannot support themselves in the areas of the local authorities to which they are sent? Therefore, I would ask that we may have a little more definition on the question who is to initiate the policy, and who is to pay for it when it is carried out.

By this new Clause the Secretary of State is introducing a new feature into the framework of the Bill and a piece of machinery that will be outside the general machinery of the Act. Hitherto, the Bill has been put before us as a Bill for empowering and requiring local authorities to prepare schemes. The marginal note of Clause 1 says:

"Duty of certain local authorities to provide and submit air-raid precaution schemes."

When we come to Clause 3 (2), the Bill says:

"It shall be the duty of every local authority to discharge such functions as may be imposed on the authority by this Act or by any scheme in force thereunder."

The general understanding was, as explained on Second Reading and in the Committee stage, that the local authorities would be responsible not for the preparation and submission of the schemes, but for a very considerable part of the working of the schemes that had been approved by the Secretary of State. But when we get to evacuation, apparently a new principle is to be introduced. The local authority is to have no other part, according to the new Cause, in the preparation of a scheme than the submission of such information as is called for by the Secretary of State, and he is empowered to call for this information only from a very limited number of local authorities. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that only a very limited number of local authorities are charged with the duty of supplying the information, because the duty is limited to those local authorities charged with functions under the Act. They appear to be defined in Clause 1 (2) as county councils, county boroughs and certain selected non-county boroughs and county districts, which are allowed to prepare their own schemes, although normally the scheme would be prepared by a county council.

I gather that those are the only people who are charged with functions under the Act, although the local authorities who have power to levy a rate or a precept for a rate under the Rating and Valuation Act, 1925, may spend money. We may find ourselves in this peculiar position that some of these county district authorities who have been given permission to prepare a scheme, and are given powers under this Act to provide expenditure, may be preparing their own evacuation scheme quite independently of the Secretary of State, because during the past two years of delay the most extraordinary things have been happening in the case of some of these local authorities. They have gone on with their own schemes. I have met one or two chairmen of parish councils, and they think that it is part of their job to repel the air raider. They think that the most effective precaution against an air raid is to prevent the air raider getting through. I am not sure that the definition in the Act of the power of a local authority to spend money does not include the parish council, because they precept on the rating authority, the rural district council, for the collection of their rates under the Rating and Valuation Act, 1925.

I cannot think that the right hon. Gentleman wants to have these duties in the machinery of air-raid precautions on such entirely different lines from the general line that has been pursued. I agree that it is going to be a very difficult matter, especially if it is carried out according to the programme of the hon. and gallant Member for Wirral (Captain Graham). If the people who have their own cars are to be encouraged to go first and the people who have no cars of their own are to be put into a fourth category and have to wait until they have seen these other people go, and have seen their men folk join the Forces, or some of their men folk have been taken for other purposes, I am sure the chaos that some of us foresaw will be certain to result when these schemes have to be put into effect.

I did not mean categories of time.

Did the hon. and gallant Member mean an order of social precedence?

No, Sir, but simply the division of people to be dealt with into various types or classes, giving special consideration to each special type.

Then it was purely accidental on the part of the hon. and gallant Member when he got these people into the somewhat extraordinary order that he did.

It is a very minor point the hon. Member is raising. It is not a question of class consciousness on my part.

Perhaps it is a result of two or three hectic nights in Paris which the hon. and gallant Member and certain of his friends have recently spent, studying this problem in the midst of the other distractions which, we understand, are part of the night life of the French capital. At any rate, apart from the strictures that are ordinarily directed by hon. Members opposite to their Front Bench, it would appear from the hon. and gallant Member's speech that the programme he outlined is one that indicates that the Government have a great deal of work to do in this matter. I am sure that everyone on this side of the House will express their surprise with the hon. and gallant Member at finding that we are only now beginning to make a start. I am more concerned with the impingement on the whole matter of local government framework of the scheme as a whole.

I had imagined that it was the intention of the Government that these schemes should be as free from complication as possible, and I cannot understand how with great complications of machinery they are going to run the ordinary scheme of the Bill, as originally printed, with this part of the Bill, under which the local authorities have no share in the schemes, where the Government are going to prepare a scheme and where, so far as I can see in this Clause, the Minister takes no power to compel the local authorities to participate in carrying out the scheme when it is finally evolved. That proves what has been stated many times from this side of the House during the Second Reading and the Committee stage that if these schemes ever have to be brought into effect, they will never be brought into effect on the basis of local authority administration. They will be brought into effect on the basis of what was called D.O.R.A. legislation by the Under-Secretary during the Committee stage of the Bill. Then we shall get back, perhaps, to some form of unity on the whole matter. It would be as well, in view of the original framework of the Bill, to try so to frame the Clause as to make it an essential part of the framework of the Bill that any alterations that are to be made in the case of emergency may be as simple as possible, and that the whole thing may proceed on the basis of unity of command which, as far as I can see, cannot be preserved in the way that is provided by the new Clause.

I welcome the new Clause, which, I think, will commend itself to hon. Members generally. The hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) was anxious to show that the decision of the Secretary of State to introduce the new Clause was attributable to the efforts of his colleagues on the Opposition benches. I am sure that none of us wish to quarrel as to who shall get the credit for the new Clause. The Secretary of State has rightly pointed out that the Clause is unnecessary and that he has introduced it mainly in order to reassure hon. Members in all parts of the House that this matter of evacuation is present in his mind. I thought myself of putting down a Clause of this nature on the Committee stage, but having looked at Clauses 1 and 4 I was satisfied that the question was already adequately covered.

Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that this new Clause will definitely make the Bill more easily workable than it would otherwise have been. As I understand it, under Clause 4 it was possible for the Home Secretary to oblige local authorities to work in co-operation with one another, and that would no doubt have been the Clause which would have been applied in the case of evacuation schemes. But I think it would in practice have turned out to be extremely inconvenient if, for instance, you were evacuating people from London to an area quite remote from London, say in Wales or the West country, to have to ask the local authorities in London under Clause 4 to work in close co-operation with the authorities in some distant part of the country. This new Clause clearly indicates that the Government are going to take over the question of evacuation and to prepare the necessary plans centrally. For that reason I welcome it.

Then there was the question of finance, which was raised by the hon. Member for West Islington. I agree with what he said. In evacuation schemes the burden of the expense will fall in the main, not on the authority whose people are to be evacuated, but on the authority in the area, to which they are sent. It is they who will have to make the arrangements for billeting, provisioning, victualling, water supplies, and so forth. It would, therefore, seem to be unfair to impose upon local authorities the cost of making arrangements for the populations of areas other than their own. Equally it would be extremely difficult to ask the local authorities of the area from which the people are to be evacuated to bear the burden of the expense without having any direct say in the arrangements. Therefore, it seems to be logical and convenient that the expenditure in this case, in regard to the whole question of evacuation, apart from the collection of information, which will be a minor factor, should be borne by the National Exchequer.

The hon. Member for West Islington supported the suggestion which I made, and which, I think, was made in a slightly different form by my hon. Friend the Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) in the Second Reading Debate, namely, that there should be a Director-General appointed to supervise and organise air-raid precautions. I agree with the hon. Member that, while the appointment of a Director-General and the enlargement of the Air-Raid Precautions Department are desirable from every point of view, it is more necessary in the case of evacuation than in any other matter. On the Second Reading and Committee stages doubts were expressed in all parts of the House as to whether the Government were fully alive to the importance of preparing plans for evacuation. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, by introducing this Clause and by his speech this afternoon, has given us some very material reassurances in this matter. Therefore, in common with other hon. Members, I warmly welcome the new Clause.

Like other hon. Members, I welcome this Clause, and I am very glad to know that the Home Secretary has expressed his agreement with the general view of the House on this matter, but I would like to point out, with regard to this question of evacuation in the case of air attack, that there are only two alternatives. One is to clear the area likely to be attacked as soon as possible of all the persons who do not actually need to be there while you are able to move them in their normal health and well-being, and the other is to leave them until they have been bombed and then remove them as casualties. There are not any other alternatives. If you leave a large number of people around an area near any docks, whether it be at Newcastle, Glasgow, or London, who do not need to be there, near to a point which is likely to be heavily bombed, you will have to move them after the bombing as casualties, and that will be not only more difficult and more complicated, but will also entail, apart from the humanity or rather the inhumanity of the business, very long treatment of those people and the establishment of very large numbers of hospitals for their treatment. When, therefore, the Home Secretary talked about the great difficulty and complexity of the problem, which I have tried to realise and which I hope I do realise, but which is so great that I am not quite sure whether I do, because it is really a tremendous problem, I would say that, however great the difficulty of evacuating people may be, it is better to evacuate them while they are well and can walk than when they have been bombed and have to be carried on stretchers.

I think the hon. Member for North Cumberland (Mr. W. Roberts) made a good suggestion about evacuating schools. There is an excellent institution in the education service—what are called "School Journeys." It would be a very good thing to send all the children at school on a school journey into some remote part of the country if hostilities should begin. It seems to me that the way in which the Home Secretary has drafted this Clause is the best way of doing it, if I may say so. I do not see how it could be done by individual local authorities themselves. If you think of the Greater London area, involving not only London itself, but Middlesex and all the Home Counties round and about, right down to the East Coast and the South Coast, and going up to Oxford, quite a long distance out—you have only to take an ordinary map of the Underground Railway to see how far you go out—nothing less than governmental authority can deal with that situation, otherwise you will have to improvise an authority of all the local bodies concerned, which would not have, of course, the same power behind it as the National Government have. It is, therefore, desirable and essential, in my opinion, that it should be done by the Government as such.

There is one point, however, to which I want to call attention in this connection. When 10,000 or 100,000 people are being moved, you cannot just move them casually, as the Home Secretary knows very well, into an area, but you have to be certain that the area to which they are to be moved has not only housing and water, but means of sanitation, because if you do not move them into an area where arrangements for ordinary living, especially water and sanitation, exist, you will then add to your troubles by enormous epidemics. If, for instance, you were to allow a flood of people to leave London at a time of crisis and flood down to the South Coast, to the seaside towns, then the sanitary systems of those towns would break down, and you would have epidemics on a very large scale. That is to be avoided, and that is another reason why the Government are the only authority which should deal with this question. I hope the Government will see to it that every area which may possibly be a point of attack will in fact be asked to give information with regard to methods and schemes of evacuation. As I read this Clause, it would not be the duty of any local authority to initiate such a scheme, and it would only be the duty of a local authority to assist in the preparation of such a scheme by His Majesty's Government when they had been asked to give that information. I hope there will be no doubt at all that all the authorities which might require to have evacuation schemes for the benefit of their population will be in fact asked by the Home Secretary.

For my part, I feel to a certain extent reassured by the course that the Debate has taken on this Bill and by the existence of this Clause, by which arrangements for evacuation of the civil population can be made. It is not only reassuring in itself, but it is, I think, reassuring as an indication that the Government are really getting down to the very serious consideration of the matters involved and are really facing the great gravity of the situation, which I confess, in the beginning of these Debates, was a matter about which I was not at all sure. I feel assured now that the matter will be grapled with, and I would say to hon. Members who say that they do these things so much better abroad, that at any rate this country has one inestimable advantage over any country abroad, and that is in our system of local Government, which provides for independent action by the local authorities and has a long tradition behind it, which, I believe, is without parallel anywhere else. I think that, by using that to the full and getting their co-operation, as I hope the Home Secretary will succeed in doing, we shall be able to put up a scheme such as will make this country, as far as is possible under the lamentable conditions of an air attack, a safe country, and I say that, not only from the standpoint of immediate safety, but because I consider that if that can be done, it will be an assurance of national safety in the sense that it will make attack very much less likely to occur.

This Clause seems to me to be the only possible Clause if effect is to be given to the wishes expressed in different parts of the House, and for this reason: Hon. Members have talked about evacuation as if it was a very easy and simple business. It is one of the most complicated things that can be done, and each local authority, unless it is to work through some central organisation, may complicate the position rather than relieve it. There is one personal example which I may give, of a very large city in the Midlands where this question was ventilated, largely on the Debates in this House on the Second Reading, and articles appeared in the newspapers suggesting that certain tunnels on the railway would form the most admirable shelters for large numbers of people who would be evacuated from that city in the event of an air raid. It may interest the House to know that, to take the seating accommodation of the whole of the rolling stock of every railway in this country, it is only a little over 3,500,000 seats. That means the rolling stock operating to the North of Scotland, in Wales, and in every part of the country. I hope, therefore, we shall not lead people outside this House to believe that the moment there is an air attack it will be possible to move large numbers of the population by rail, be- cause it is physically impossible, and we have no right in this House merely to give lip service to ideas unless we see some means of carrying them out.

It has been my business in connection with the railways to study this problem, not only here, but to study what has been done in Germany and France. I was astonished to hear an hon. Member declare that schemes in Germany and France deal with apparently the complete evacuation of the civil population. They do no such thing. It is clearly laid down in Germany, Italy and France that people living near strategic and tactical points, which will obviously be targets of enemy attack, shall be evacuated, because they rightly assume that such points as that will be the first objective of an enemy. Under the ordinary laws of humanity you should remove women, children and old people from these particular places. Is it not far more important to do that than to lead the whole population of a great city to think that they have all to flow out and choke up every means of communication and thereby prevent the very people who will be exposed to the greatest danger from being evacuated either by rail or by road?

If by any chance my hon. and gallant Friend is referring to my speech, as showing the position in categories, I was not referring to whole populations but only to certain people, when it was essentially possibly to move.

My hon. Friend did say something of the sort but he did not confine it to the evacuation of people living near strategic points, which, I want to emphasise, can be done only under central direction. It should be done in conjunction with local authorities, if there are dangerous zones from which you want to evacuate people. I should have thought that that was a fairly clear way of dealing with categories or classes or anything else, to evacuate those who are in the most dangerous positions. In Germany they do not encourage the population to go away from their own habitations, but deliberately instruct those who are engaged in factories, if they are not provided with shelters and anti-gas protection, to go to their homes as fast as they can. The German Government make no provision for whole evacuation from large cities because they recognise that the railways and the roads will be sub- jected to a very heavy attack and that the roads and railways will become targets. It will be the objective of the enemy to paralyse your railway communications as well as to paralyse communications by road.

Therefore, these matters must be taken into account by the Government, and it is only for the Government to say how, when and in what manner you should evacuate. The Clause of the Home Secretary makes it quite clear that any schemes which the local authority put up to prevent panic will be abetted by the central authority, but we must not encourage panic by making in this House speeches which will enable everybody to think that there will be the means of evacuation for very large numbers because that is not possible. It may be an unpopular thing to say in this House, but it is easy to paint rosy pictures. It is our business to tell the truth as we see it, and to say exactly what are the limitations.

One of the most urgent matters of which we have to think is the prevention of the choking of the means of communication in a time of emergency. I do not know whether the House realises the enormous tonnage which is now conveyed by coastwise shipping, but all that tonnage will suddenly be thrown upon the railways or the roads. There will be abnormal traffic going in all directions and it will mean a certain amount of disorganisation. We have in the railway personnel of this country a magnificent body of men who have never yet failed, but every man will be wanted if we are to keep the lines open. That can be done only if we have the assistance of the police and the local authorities. Hon. Gentlemen will remember perhaps that when they came home on leave during the Great War, when an air raid was going on in London, how suddenly the tubes became packed with people to such an extent that there might have been disaster. There would be a disaster in the event of gas attacks unless precautions were taken to prevent people taking shelter in places like the tubes. Therefore, in talking about evacuation we must not allow an expectation to be raised in the country which is not justifiable, and it is our business in our own constituencies or anywhere else, if there is a point of danger or one that is likely to be attacked, to see that the people who are in that position are placed in safety.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on the bench opposite who said that one of the greatest problems would be that provided by those who possess their own little motor cars. It will not matter if their motor cars are laid up and they have not licences. They will bring out their cars and will be the first lucky ones to get away. But all the roads will be congested, and unless the problem is dealt with by a central authority there will be complete confusion. Therefore, the Government have taken the only possible course open to them, and I believe that this evacuation can be carried out only with the assistance of local authorities and with the assistance of the Government. No doubt, under D.O.R.A. or some such regulation, all transportation will have to be very strictly nationalised and operated. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It will have to be done in that emergency. It is the only way in which it can be done, and obviously it cannot be done by local authorities alone.

Therefore, we should make it clear that, in dealing with the most dangerous positions, and recalling that the ports and harbours will be very heavily attacked and that all luxury traffic will have to be denied the use of the railways and the roads because there will not only be troops to move but munitions and food supplies, that we cannot afford, as our whole future may be at stake, to have communications blocked by unnecessary traffic. I welcome this Clause because I believe that, with the assistance of local authorities, we shall get order instead of chaos.

I merely rise because I happen to be a member of an air-raid precautions committee of a local authority, and I desire to know whether the Home Office or the Government have decided to abandon the Circular which was sent out in July, 1935, upon which local authorities of the country, even up to the present moment, have been working. In response to a question addressed to the Home Secretary last week I was informed that 150 or so local authorities had already prepared and sent in schemes to the Home Office based entirely on that Circular. According to the Circular the local authorities were the bodies authorised to prepare the whole of the necessary schemes. Do we understand that, in the matter of evacuation, they are to scrap such schemes, and that the Government themselves will undertake the full responsibility? In my judgment, many of the statements which have been made as to the impossibility of local authorities carrying out this work are not well founded. It will be quite impossible for the Government to do it without co-operating actively with the local authorities of the Kingdom, and particularly in the case of actual air raids.

If there are portions of the population to be removed, the local authorities must be depended upon to keep the thoroughfares open and to effect the necessary repairs, and, in the new areas, to see that water supply and so forth are carefully preserved and handled. If this is to be a joint scheme of co-operation between the local authority and the Government, with supreme command in the hands of the Government, then, I think, it will be workable, but are the local authorities to be advised from now that they can take no further part in their preparations? The authority of which I am a member has made very close and elaborate preparations for evacuation, and if, in fact, these preparations are no longer necessary, the local authorities ought to be apprised of the same forthwith.

I only want to say a few words on this subject because one or two speakers in the Committee stage have referred to some observations which I made upon the Second Reading of the Bill, particularly with regard to evacuation. I have always regarded the Bill as one which dealt almost entirely with the functions of local authorities. When the discussion arose upon evacuation, it seemed to me that it was going outside the intended scope of the local authorities in this matter, which, if it were practicable at all, was certainly one which ought to be taken in hand by the Government. In the course of the discussion I said that some of the suggestions made with regard to evacuation rather intimated that the local authority would be placed in the position to whisk away large portions of the population to spots of safety. We also assumed that the local authority or the Government were in a position to determine where these safe spots were to be found. From the very early stages of the consideration of air-raid precautions by local authorities, it has been an assumption that attacks would be in the nature of a surprise, and the local authorities have been told that they must make their preparations in anticipation of the fact that they would not have more than from one to four hours in which to work. Therefore, in preparing plans it must be largely upon the prevention of panic and the alleviation of suffering which might arise.

The proposal which has been put forward with regard to evacuation is a totally different proposition altogether. It first of all assumes that hostilities are likely to remain for some time. The preparations you are to make in that case will involve the placing of people not for a day, but for many days in districts far removed from their homes, and, as has rightly been pointed out, it will also necessitate the provision of sanitation, water and food supplies. That is obviously a duty which must fall upon the Government. I believe that this Clause is rightly drawn, at least in giving the Home Secretary the opportunity of calling upon local authorities to make a survey of their districts, to assist him as to the possibility of placing large or small numbers of persons in a particular area, and to state also whether there would be land, houses or buildings available where water supply and other things would be necessary.

As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) pointed out, it is not right that we in this House should lead people outside to believe that this Measure will provide safety for all and that there will be evacuation, and that food will be supplied. That is not what the Bill provides, it is not what the Government intend, and it is not what local authorities are to provide. It is intended that we should render the greatest assistance possible in the greatest emergency, but you cannot provide protection for all. If we are to assume that protection will be provided and that nobody will suffer, then we should be obliged to have precautions which go far beyond the financial possibilities of this or any other country. I am glad that this Clause has been introduced, but I want it to be understood that we have not arrived at a stage which provides absolute safety for all, and that the people will understand that even with the best possible arrangements it is not possible to guarantee the safety of everyone.

In view of the observations of one or two hon. Members during the last half hour I feel that I must say something on this matter. There are several views on the subject of evacuation. The hon. Member for Mitcham (Sir R. Meller) seems to suggest that unless you can promise safety for all it is not worth considering evacuation at all; at any rate that evacuation is not a major problem.

If the hon. Member will study what I said and do me the honour of reading the OFFICIAL REPORT, which he has had in his hands for several days, he will not again say that I ridicule the idea of evacuation. Indeed, I am sure he would say that he is exceedingly sorry that he has given such an extraordinary version of my observations.

Although I differ from my hon. Friend in this matter I have no desire to misrepresent anything he has said, but it will be within the recollection of hon. Members that in his speech he seemed to suggest that those who thought evacuation an important part of air-raid precautions were not looking at the realities of the situation. I put it no higher than that. Whatever he may have intended, that I think is the impression he gave to hon. Members. Some hon. Members say that because evacuation does not provide safety for all it is not one of the major aspects of air-raid precautions. Others suggest that evacuation is a kind of "general post" where you have everybody rushing in and out of cities daily and weekly, or perhaps at longer intervals. I fancy that the Secretary of State does not regard evacuation in anything like that light. He regards evacuation—and he is right—as being the means of reducing the intensity of population where attacks are likely to be made most frequently, and if that is not an intelligent proposition I cannot understand air-raid precautions at all. The hon. and gallant Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) suggested that because heavy responsibility would be placed on the shoulders of railway companies evacuation could not be carried out promptly and that, therefore, it was a matter which should not be regarded as of prime importance in air-raid precautions measures.

I believe that evacuation may take one, two or three weeks from certain target areas. As the war proceeds, if one can foresee at all what will happen, we shall have an increasing intensity of air raids, and unless we have complete mastery of the air those who remain in these target areas will suffer an increasing number of casualties, not necessarily an increasing proportion, because the population will have been thinned down. Although evacuation may take weeks surely it is not to be pooh-poohed for that reason. The hon. Member opposite suggested that my friend and I who had been in the French capital discussing these matters with some of the French authorities spent our evenings in discussing other things than air-raid precautions. I can assure him that that is not the case, and that we discussed this matter all the time that was available. Whatever may be said about evacuation, I can, without giving any secrets away, say that the French take a realistic attitude in regard to air warfare and have decided that of the 4,500,000 population in Paris, 2,500,000 will be evacuated in the first few weeks of war.

London is a similar target area to Paris, in so far as the inner circle of the Metropolis is concerned. Nobody would suggest that the suburbs of London need be evacuated, but I have always maintained, since I have had discussions with those interested in this problem abroad, that it will be essential to evacuate the population who need not remain in the centre of target cities. In common with other hon. Members I should be loth that the country should get the impression that evacuation is a complete solution of the problem of air raids and that all casualties will be avoided if we get early plans for evacuation, but I should be more disturbed if it went out to local authorities that this House did not think evacuation was one of the prime responsibilities of public authorities in time of war.

When the hon. Member refers to evacuation, does he for example refer to banks and Government offices, so far as London is concerned?

I am speaking geographically of the centre of London, and I cannot imagine that in the next war anybody will stay in the centre of London who is not considered essential by the Government. That is a matter which will have to be decided when the emergency arises. As I have said before, I hope the Government will have made plans for their own evacuation in the event of it being necessary. I hope sincerely that the Secretary of State will be able to assure the House that although some hon. Members have poured cold water on the proposal he regards it as of prime consequence.

I consider the Amendment as important because unless evacuation is properly prepared for and dealt with the whole of our air-raid precautions will break down. Evacuation is a central fact, and only if it is adequately dealt with can other air-raid precautions be effectively operated. I rise only because some hon. Members seem to have peculiar confusions in regard to the situation which is likely to arise. I heard one hon. Member talking about the situation in Germany and comparing the situation there with the situation here. Anyone whose mind is working along such lines cannot possibly understand this question. If a war should break out the great mechanised army of Germany will be rushed every day over the roads to the east and west, roads which have been prepared for a great mechanised army, and the civilian population will be in as great a danger from the German army as from a foreign army. They will take possession of the roads and these juggernauts will be driven continuously along them. Any of the unfortunate population which gets into these roads will be swept away by the Germany military authorities without any hesitation. The big problem for Germany in the event of war is to keep the roads clear for her army to go east and west.

In this country it is not a question of keeping the roads clear for great armies to pass to and fro, although there will be certain military movements. What we shall have to face is an extreme attempt to destroy the morale of the civilian population. There will be the most terrific effort to bomb the main centres of population. The lesson of the intensive submarine campaign should be learned by every one. It was carried out with the specific purpose of demoralising the civilian population of this country. This will be the main danger so far as this country is concerned. I come to the question of the necessity for preparing for evacuation. No one has had any experience of the problem; experience will have to be gained. Are we going to wait until war starts? Are we going to wait until the bombing planes come over? Is it not obvious that it would do no harm and might do a lot of good, if the Home Office invited the principal local authorities to work out in their own way small experimental schemes of evacuation, just as you have experiments going on in connection with the putting out of fires and rescue from gas attacks.

Surely it is possible for the principal local authorities to gain experience in evacuation to places which are considered safe, and as to the ways and means of getting the necessary food and water supplies to these people quickly. They could experiment now and get some understanding of the problem and how it can be overcome. No greater problem will face the people of this country once war breaks out. Surely no hon. Member is going to suggest that we should train men to act as volunteers to put out fires and render aid in the case of gas attack, and not face the greatest and most difficult problem that will confront us, that of evacuation, and make no preparations and no experiments with regard to it. Is it not possible to start in the immediate future some small experiment in connection with the evacuation of London in order to see what are the difficulties? As a result of such experiments, we could attempt to get a grasp of the difficulties, so that when the emergency came, we should not be taken unawares, but would understand the difficulties and be prepared to deal with them. I suggest that the Amendment is inadequate. I think there should be an Amendment advising the principal local authorities, in areas where there are great masses of population, to begin now to prepare small schemes of evacuation and experiment with them.

I shut my ears to no suggestion, from whatever quarter it may come, and during the Debate I have tried as much as any hon. Member to learn anything that is useful. I feel that this is an uncharted problem of immense complexity, and I should be the last person in the world to say that we have said the last word as to how to deal with the difficulties. We have to take into account the experience of other countries, although I will say in passing that I agree with the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) as to the danger of generalising too much upon what is suitable in different conditions from our own. That is one of the troubles about the whole of this problem. There is a great variety of conditions, different in one country from what they are in another, and different in one town and in one area from what they are in another town or another area.

I suggest to the hon. Member for West Fife that there is nothing in our Amendment that will not make possible experiments in the future, if we think it wise to make them. Indeed, I think it would be more difficult to make experiments without this new Clause than it would be if the new Clause were passed. I would also point out to the hon. Member, in relation to his remarks about small experiments, that one of the troubles with evacuation is that small experiments may teach us very little. It seems to me that the essence of the problem is its magnitude, namely, great bodies of men, women and children, it may be hundreds of thousands of them, crowding on the railways, on the roads, on all means of communication. Although I do not wish to dogmatise on the point, I can conceive that an experiment on a small scale would teach us no very useful lessons.

It seems to me that there have been three questions raised by hon. Members in the course of the Debate. The first question was, Who is responsible for the new Clause? Was it hon. Members on the benches opposite, was it my hon. Friends behind me, or was it the Government Bench? Let me say at once that I am quite indifferent about the source of the Amendment. I am very anxious in connection with this Bill, and still more when the Bill gets on to the Statute Book, that any claims of this or that section should vanish into the distance, and that we should regard it as a House of Commons Bill, passed through the House with a general measure of support from all parties, and that any credit that may arise as to this or that part of it should be shared by the whole House, as an Assembly, rather than by any particular party.

Two questions were asked by the hon. Members for West Islington (Mr. Montague) and North Islington (Dr. Guest) who bring to the matter expert knowledge. They asked, first of all, whether I could make some further statement as to whether or not the machine of the Air-Raid Precautions Department would be adequate to deal with all of these difficult problems. With the hon. Members' permission, I will say a word or two on that subject in the Third Reading Debate. The hon. Members' other question, which was also asked by one or two other hon. Members, was, Who is to pay for these schemes of evacuation? That question leads me inevitably to the further question, asked in the first place by the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede), as to whether, under the new Clause, we were introducing some new principle into the Bill, and whether we were not taking over from the local authorities duties which it had originally been intended should be carried out by them. We must clearly draw a distinction between peace time and war time as far as the expense is concerned. During peace time, before the emergency, the expense in connection with evacuation, urgent and important though the question of evacuation is, will be very small. The aspect will be the preparation of schemes, and I imagine that that will involve quite small sums of money. Any expenditure incurred under that heading would, of course, receive the appropriate grants. Any expenditure that we might make separately, as Government expenditure, would be met out of our general powers to make Defence expenditure of that kind.

As to the duties, the hon. Member for South Shields was right up to a point, for the Clause does introduce a certain new element, but to a very limited degree. It introduces a new element in so far as it enables the Government, under the Bill, to deal with the co-ordination of these evacuation schemes. The reason for that is that we found earlier in the Bill that inevitably, when dealing with evacuation schemes, there must be a central authority to co-ordinate. Nothing more than that is intended by this Clause. I think I can entirely reassure the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. D. Adams) when I say that we intend that the local authorities should draw up their schemes and that those schemes should be based, as far as possible, upon local administration, but that the Government should come in as the co-ordinating body to deal with the kind of questions raised by the hon. Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest), namely, questions concerning the transference of population some considerable distance. Apart from that, the Clause introduces no new element into the Bill. It makes that small addition to the powers of the central authority without which no evacuation plans could be drawn up.

Before my right hon. Friend leaves the financial aspect, will he make clear what are his intentions? Does he mean that local authorities into whose areas people will be evacuated, that is to say, local authorities which will have to make preparations for the laying on of water supplies and so on, will have to incur expenditure which will not be paid 100 per cent. by the Exchequer?

No, Sir. We shall have to treat the question as I expect we shall have to treat the question of base hospitals, and it will not be a local charge. When the emergency has come upon us, when war has started, that expenditure, I feel sure, will have to be borne separately.

The right hon. Gentleman has said that the preliminary expenditure will be small, and from that I gather that the expenditure will be divided by the local authorities. When the emergency comes, there will arise the question of big Government schemes for the transfer of population. But has the right hon. Gentleman considered the possibility that there will be involved some preliminary work causing heavy expenditure? I have in mind at the moment one definite piece of work, the desirability which might arise for huge camps, with tents, and so on. That ought not to be left until the emergency, but to be done beforehand.

I think the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) will see, on closer consideration, that that is the type of question on which we cannot give a definite opinion until we have the local schemes. In the particular case which he mentioned, that of camps, he will realise, on further consideration, that many local difficulties are raised by it. Can one be sure that the sites of the camps will be, at some uncertain date in the future, comparatively safe, and so on? It is that sort of difficulty which we must take into account when we have the local schemes. Without the local knowledge and the advice of the local authorities, we cannot say here and now what exactly will be the preparations under any particular scheme.

May we take it that before the emergency, the local authority into whose area people may be evacuated will not be asked to shoulder any great burden?

Certainly, that is our present opinion. I give the House an undertaking that these proposals are concrete only to the extent of our knowledge as at present. If a new situation arises in future which changes the whole picture, I give the House an undertaking that we will meet the local authorities again and discuss the question in view of the new conditions. As at present advised, we take the view that the expenditure involved by the local authorities will be very small. The first step is the preparation of the schemes.

I would not like to conclude without saying once again that my colleagues and I regard this as one of the most important questions connected with air-raid precautions. We realise the difficulties, but none the less we shall do our best to surmount them. I feel certain that we shall be in a much better position to gauge the difficulties and to come to wise conclusions as to how to deal with them when we have the survey to be made by the local authorities and the proposals which they make on the subject. I hope the House will agree that, far from being what I think one of my hon. Friends described as the locusts of apathy and inertia, we have this question very much in mind. I realise there is still much to be done in connection with it, and as far as I am concerned, the sooner it is done, the better I shall be pleased.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 11, at the end, to insert:

"provided always that no scheme shall be approved by the Secretary of State unless it contains satisfactory provisions for the enrolment of volunteer personnel necessary to carry out the scheme."

I am moving to insert these words in the hope that the House may be given a little further information about the manner in which the volunteer personnel will be enrolled and dealt with. The matter was raised during the Committee stage in certain of its aspects and the Under-Secretary gave some information, but I do not think it was very complete. He informed the Committee that the authority for the enlistment of volunteers is the local authority acting in accordance with one or other of the alternative schemes suggested by the Home Office. As far as I can discover, the schemes suggested by the Home Office refer not so much to the enrolment of volunteers and the conditions under which they will serve as to the manner in which they will be controlled, that is to say, whether by the chief constable or some other officer of the local authority. He said, further, that it will be for the local authorities to make their own recruiting schemes, assisted, where possible and desirable, by any national assistance that can be given.

If some 300,000 or 400,000 volunteers are likely to be required, including air-raid wardens, auxiliary firemen, special constables, and so on, the House ought to interest itself in the kind of contract into which these volunteers will enter if, indeed, they are to enter into any contract at all. The House ought also to interest itself in the question whether there should be uniformity of practice throughout the country in dealing with the volunteers. There is also the question of expenses, which is cognate to the matter. It would be difficult if one local authority made certain provisions with regard to the expenses of the volunteer personnel and another authority made quite different provisions. I have taken some trouble to discover what is happening in the country, because it occurred to me that if you ask for volunteers and a number come forward you need something more than merely their word that they desire to volunteer. There is a question of the obligations into which they are entering.

Suppose a local authority appealed for a thousand men, and a thousand men came along and said they desired to be air-raid wardens, and the local authority said, "Splendid, we will take your names," will nothing more than that be done? If nothing more is to be done, how can the local authority rely on these volunteers turning up to perform the duties when they are to be performed? Will there be anything in the nature of a contract in the obligations into which they will enter? I have here the only form I have been able to get. It is in use in the area of one local authority and is headed "Local Air-Raid Precautions." It has to be signed at the bottom by the volunteer and sent to the air-raid precautions committee. The form says:

"I hereby offer my services in connection with the local air-raid precautions."

As far as I can discover, that is the beginning and the end of the matter. The applicant signs at the bottom, there is no further obligation, and the local authority has no more hold on his services than this mere form. He has to fill up a number of questions such as his name, postal address, nearest telephone number, whether his home is illuminated with electricity, whether he can smell well, and whether he has good hearing. There is a rather more important question about the service offered, and there is a note saying:

"Wherever possible volunteers will be detailed for the service offered,"

and such services are mentioned as street warden, special constable, decontaminating squad, and so on. Another question that interested me was:

"Are you prepared to undergo a special course of anti-gas training? It is not anticipated that volunteers will be involved in any expense in connection with this training."

It is not very encouraging to the volunteer to be told that it is not anticipated that he will be involved in any expense. I would like to be assured that not only will he not be involved in expense, but that his expenses will be paid. The last question is:

"Are you a reservist of any of His Majesty's Forces? Are you serving to-day in any Territorial Regiment or voluntary organisation?"

Whether this question is asked for the sake of information, or whether the volunteer is asked in order that those who are members of such forces shall be excluded from the volunteers, I do not know. However admirable in intention that form may be, it is not adequate for the purpose, and I would like to ask my right hon. Friend whether the nature of the form has been indicated by the Home Office or whether it has been devised by the local authorities. Is it the intention of the Home Office to indicate to the local authorities what sort of form of enrolment should be offered to volunteers, or do the Home Office propose to devise an enrolment form and require the local authorities to use it?

I have raised these points because I feel that until they are settled and until we are clear on many of them, we are not likely to get the volunteers in the numbers or of the kind that are required. I would emphasise the point I made with regard to expenses, for it is cognate to the whole matter of enrolment. Will the local authorities be informed by the Home Office of the nature of the expenses of the volunteers that will be met? The Home Secretary in the last Debate gave the Committee a complete assurance that the necessary expenses of volunteers would be eligible for grant, but I would like to ask whether those necessary expenses will be the same in the case of all local authorities, and, in order that they may be, will the uniformity be secured by instructions from the Home Office?

I beg to second the Amendment.

It strikes me as important that those who enlist for these services should on the outbreak of war be immediately able to take their places without there being any other call upon their services. I cannot help thinking that there should be certain disqualifications for these services as well as qualifications, particularly in regard to young men who ought to be members of the fighting services. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) said on the Committee stage that it was undesirable that these services should provide funk-holes, and the House will agree. It is undesirable that people should be content as I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would not have been content if he had been a young man, to act as auxiliary firemen at the age of 25 or even as air-raid wardens at the age of 30 if they are fit and strong men and ought to be taking some part under military discipline in the armed forces of the Crown.

Does the hon. Gentleman really think that the services in the street during an air raid will be safer than with the military forces of the Crown? Surely the safer place will be the front-line trench?

It depends where it is. In the East End of London that may be so, but I doubt whether it would be so in Liverpool. Allowance should be made for that. Another category which is even more important is that of the skilled workers. I raised that point on the Committee stage and got a rather unsatisfactory reply. The Under-Secretary said that no doubt the local authorities would judge very well whom to select. He added that in the case of men who had important work to do each air-raid post had attached to it a number of men who could go on at different times, and that there would undoubtedly be provision for people who were at work to go on in their own time. I cannot help thinking that the Under-Secretary did not give full consideration to the actual duties of a skilled craftsman in, say, an engineering works supplying munitions in time of war. If the air-raid post is to have a 24-hour day, so is the munitions factory, and the skilled worker will not have any spare time of his own. His whole energy will go to the supply of munitions.

It may be said that it should be left to the local authorities. I am not satisfied that, unless the local authorities provide the Secretary of State with something like a general register of their personnel for these services, they will apply a sort of test whether or not a man is more wanted on munitions production than for air-raid precaution services. I would like to have a satisfactory reply to that. To give an example; not many years ago, one of the searchlight units for the London air defences was found to be manned entirely from the technical personnel of a company which, in time of war, would immediately withdraw all of them for the whole-time production of an important form of munitions. They were being trained at the time by the War Office for a duty which they could not carry out in time of war. If that can happen in the Army, as it did happen less than four years ago, I cannot help thinking that it might happen if the local authorities are left too much on their own.

I doubt whether the Under-Secretary would admit that the local authority in Birmingham was any less efficient than are the local authorities in the Metropolis. It seems to me vitally important that there should be some sort of a national register, and particularly important that the local authorities should know that the recruits which they have trained, and for whose training they and the Government have paid, should be eligible for the services for which they are trained and not be immediately required for the fighting Forces of the Crown on the outbreak of war.

I have no idea what attitude the Home Secretary will adopt to this Amendment, but I should have thought that it was an unnecessary one. It is easy to say that we should lay down all manner of regulations and have a register but for how long will that register remain effective? I have experience of a constituency in which there are 5,000 removals every year, and if we were to make a register this month and allocate people to these duties that register would begin to be out of date in a month's time.

Would not that difficulty apply equally to the local authorities?

These difficulties will apply to local authorities. I take it that the Amendment asks that the Home Secretary shall not give his consent to any scheme submitted by a local authority unless there are provisions in it to make sure that those who have volunteered shall be bound in some way to carry out their obligations, and I am endeavouring to show some of the difficulties which will arise if anything of this kind is attempted.

Is there any difficulty about the special constables? They enter into a contract; and the Territorials also enter into a contract.

This is a much bigger task than recruiting special constables. I want to give my conception of how this scheme will work out, irrespective of any kind of compulsion. The people who will carry out the work required will, generally, be doing work very similar to the work they do ordinarily. For example, the staff of the borough engineer or the county engineer, who ordinarily earn their living by making and preparing roads, will be called upon to repair roads. Other members of the borough engineer's staff will be called upon to form squads who will be responsible for shoring-up buildings and doing other work upon damaged buildings. Those who will form the decontamination squad will not be clerks, musicians, football players or people taken haphazard from the community, but will be the staff of the cleansing superintendent who are already municipal employés and will be familiar with the work they will be expected to undertake.

As to first aid, obviously the sensible thing to do will be to enrol those who have enrolled in a similar capacity and are already doing that work day after day, not for war but in connection with ambulance units and voluntary organisations associated with the hospitals in a district. The local doctors and nurses could be enrolled for that particular work. In the case of bombs striking gas or water mains or electricity cables, the people who will be called upon to repair them will not be people like Members of Parliament, but employés of the water and electricity companies, all of whom will have been organised and have had special training. That is how I visualise the scheme working. We have now narrowed things down till we get to the fire wardens who will assist in putting out the multitudes of small fires which the Home Secretary has some apprehension may be started in a future war. For that work it would be preferable to have persons with some knowledge of fire fighting, probably retired firemen. There is a very large number of retired firemen, retired at a comparatively early age, who would, no doubt, be willing to undertake the work.

And so we should go on until, as it seems to me, the only service for which we should have to make a general call on the ordinary people would be that of the street wardens. It would be their business to give a certain amount of instruction to people in air-raid precautions, in making their rooms gas-proof, rendering first-aid generally, and acting as fatherly advisers to the street. The warden would be, generally, the best known person in the street, the kind of person to whom the street usually looks for a lead. They would be the sort of people who are always ready to volunteer, and not people such as some hon. Members have in their minds who might try to sneak into this duty in order to escape some more dangerous work. I do not think that the air-raid precautions committees or the local authorities will have a great deal of difficulty in finding the personnel and getting people who will loyally carry out the work.

The really logical outcome of the Amendment would be for us to impose some form of conscription on the people, and if the House wants to make this scheme a first-class failure that is the best way to do it. Whatever may be said of people in other countries, it is notorious that in this country if you want to get something not done—to use an Irishism—you order people to do it. If you ask them to do it I think there is every likelihood that they will volunteer. If the local authorities have to impose some legal and binding agreement upon a person who has volunteered to do something it can only be for a short period, say for three months. Then the undertaking will have to be revised and the person allowed an opportunity of contracting out, because of the dozen and one things that happen to people, such as their occupation taking them away from one district to another. If they have undertaken an obligation to perform a certain duty they may find in three months' time that it is almost impossible to carry it out. It seems to me that the Home Secretary has all the powers which are necessary in this Bill, and that to introduce this Amendment and to lay some form of compulsion upon people who have volunteered will rather retard the Bill and mitigate against its success.

I am glad that my hon. Friend has put down this Amendment, because, whether it can be accepted or not, it raises a point of immense importance in practice. Personally, I think the enrolment of the volunteers will develop into something more permanent. This scheme, if it is properly started, will grow on the same lines as did the old Volunteers, to which I once belonged, and which developed into the Territorial Army. I believe there will have to be some sort of permanent hold over these volunteers, so that there is certainty that they will come when called upon. That will involve chosing them in the way which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Crossley), that is to say that we must not choose men who have other work to do either as Territorials or as men in charge of electricity or water supplies. But I think this scheme implies more than that; it implies a definite engagement, and I should like to see these men enrolled for a period of three years, on the lines of the Territorial Army, to come up when called upon, and I should add that they must be paid when they are called up. I tried to put down an Amendment to raise that point, but all my Parliamentary experience did not enable me to compose one which was in order.

I am certain, that this essential work cannot be done on the basis of the very shadowy obligation which my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) read out. A man might sign such an obligation and, for various reasons, might find that the demands of his family or his business overruled the document he had signed, and he might pot be there on the day. We must know that the people who are on the list will be there when required; but if they are called up they will want to live, and as they cannot find their own expenses there is every reason for paying them. Let not the House forget, also, that these volunteers will be doing some extremely dangerous work. I am not sure whether, if I had to choose between being a warden of an air-raid scheme or being in the trenches, I would not be in the trenches. I think I should, because I feel it would be far less dangerous. Therefore, I submit to my right hon. Friend that he should see that this scheme is started on the right lines and should let it grow into something more permanent.

There is a second point about the enrolment of the personnel. I hope it will be decided that the air-raid precautions officers really have complete control. In a scheme of which I have seen the details the air-raid precautions officer was to be appointed by the town council, but the wardens were to be appointed by the police. Then you have all the varied public services which will be affected by air raids: roads, water, gas, and electric light, all under different departments.

If it is laid down by the Home Office that the air-raid protection officer is to be in supreme control, you must give him power to enforce that control. He will want to know such things as that he can get ambulances easily when they are wanted, especially in the areas of large local authorities such as the London County Council. He will want to know whether the roads can be cleared. As things are now, he will be compelled in many ways to call upon the services of other bodies which he has no power to command. I think the Government have quite rightly put such officers in supreme control, in the areas of district councils. That being so, I beg the Government to make sure, if the schemes go forward, that the air-raid protection officer has the power to enforce them.

The Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) has opened up a wide and important subject, which is whether all these services can be carried out in war time by volunteer or compulsory service.

I should not use the expression "volunteer or compulsory service." The Territorials are volunteers, but when they are called up they must obey the call. Special constables are somewhat similarly placed. I should prefer to say "contractual service," or service with no contract at all.

Possibly that was the idea underlying the hon. Gentleman's suggestion, but let the House not be under any illusion. Any hon. Member who had experience of the last War can hardly imagine that, if the crisis arises, these civilian services can be carried out efficiently without some compulsory system. Whatever happens in peace time, I shall be surprised, if this country is involved in war, bearing in mind all that that means, if we can get an organisation running efficiently without compulsory service. The matters on which the hon. Gentleman wants information, such as, payment of expenses and the guidance of the Home Office, can be safely left to the Under-Secretary of State in his reply. I do not think we need go any further than that at the moment. I would have preferred an entirely different Bill, with an entirely different organisation to that envisaged in this Bill; nevertheless, rightly or wrongly, the Government have said that this matter is primarily for the local authorities. If it is to be left to the local authorities we should allow them to train as many volunteers as they can, under whatever contractual circumstances you like.

It is true that some of those people will move from one area to another as the years go on, but that will result in the creation of what I might term a short-service civilian army in peace time. The more people you can train in that voluntary civilian service the better, and if they cannot be used in one area they cart be used in another. When the day does come that you really want this service, I think this Measure will go by the board in one night, and that we shall have to adopt an entirely different system. I support the hon. Member for Huddersfield in his request for information about the payment of expenses, and I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will be able to give a definite assurance when he replies that people who volunteer for these services should be recompensed out of pocket expenses. I do not think it matters what forms they sign; the principal thing is whether they will volunteer for the service or not.

The interesting feature of this Debate has been the absence of party spirit and the readiness to agree or disagree with the proposals upon their merits. I rather disagree with my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ripon (Major Hills) because I think there is a danger in accepting his idea and having a sort of fixed force for three years. Volunteers should carry out any obligations they undertake, but if they move their households, it might be detrimental to the force and discourage volunteers. In regard to air-raid precautions, it is true, as was stated by the hon. Member for North Tottenham (Mr. R. C. Morrison), that many of the key men will be the engineers and men in charge of water works. We recognise that, but in the event of war there might be compulsory service. There would also be an enormous demand for the practical men for munition and other work. I do not think that local authorities could resist that demand. Good young men in key positions would be the first to volunteer for service overseas—if you wanted an overseas service. It is therefore very important that local authorities should train men to replace the engineers who are in charge of water works and so on. There ought to be some sort of general scheme by which men in key positions under local authorities can train volunteers, who would perhaps be retired and aged men, or somebody who could take over the work if necessary.

Another point arises out of the undesirability that men of fighting age should be air wardens, and so on. It is obviously an advantage if the men above fighting age are enlisted in or are required to help those services. They will not be taken away, and they would be of great assistance to the services. I saw in a newspaper that the British Legion have been invited to offer their services, and had agreed to do so. It means that we shall have the assistance of a very large body of men who served in the last War but who are much too old to serve in the next. We ought not to underrate the value of those men. Local authorities should try to get ex-servicemen to become air wardens or, as the hon. Member for North Tottenham suggested, street wardens.

The psychological value of such men would be very great. If an air raid came, the ex-service men would feel that they had to put a brave face on it and say: "We had far worse things than this in 1914." They would calm the public. We ought to take advantage of the services of the great body of ex-service men, because of the psychological value of men who have had experience of bombing. I hope that the Under-Secretary will inform us when he replies that he has been in touch with local authorities and that they will encourage ex-service men to assist in this work.

I have listened with very great interest to this Debate on the enrolment of personnel, and to the efforts of hon. Members to tell local authorities exactly how the personnel of the volunteer forces is to be composed. This proposal will, in my opinion, stultify the efforts of local authorities in submitting schemes. The Bill is already bad because it does not cover many points which we desire to see covered, but the Amendment would make it materially worse. The Amendment proposes that no scheme should be approved by the Secretary of State unless it contained satisfactory provisions for the enrolment of volunteer personnel. Surely the House will agree that local authorities have an intimate knowledge of what is needed in their areas and should know exactly what is required for the local defence. Surely they are more qualified to submit schemes covering every point than the Secretary of State will be to say that unless they can tabulate satisfactory proof of having sufficient volunteers locally to carry out their schemes, those schemes will not even be considered. To place that onus upon the local authorities will provent them from submitting schemes for the defence of their areas.

Much play has been made about ex-service men who, we are told, did this and suffered that during the last War, but they had not to meet during the last War circumstances like those which face us to-day, such as the bombardment of the civilian population. They experienced bombing of military objectives in places where every defensive method was used. We cannot say definitely what will happen, and it is not right that the Secretary of State should be asked to approve the principle that because a man is an ex-service man and was in an area which was bombed during the War, he is more capable and more to be desired than a civilian who has gone through the air-raid precaution tests of the local authority and has qualified for his job. I trust that the Amendment will be rejected by the Home Secretary so that local authorities may be free to submit schemes with confidence.

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Mabane) for moving the Amendment, not, I am afraid, because I wish to accept it, but because it has given rise to an interesting discussion which enables me to say something more about this aspect of the matter. The hon. Member made an observation at an earlier stage about the method of organisation of air-raid wardens, for example, and with regard to recruitment. Recommendations have been made by the Home Office on those subjects. Perhaps I can say something about the circumstances of service. It is the case that, in regard to the circumstances and conditions of service, as well as in regard to other aspects of the recruitment of these volunteers, the Home Office have been making recommendations to local authorities. I hold in my hand at the moment a Memorandum on Emergency Fire Brigade Organisation, containing at page 24 an Appendix, No. 7, which is continued by a further Appendix on page 25, and which deals in considerable detail with various matters connected with the circumstances of the enrolment of fire wardens. There is another memorandum on air-raid wardens, but it deals with the enrolment of air-raid wardens in rather less detail because their duties are not so specialised.

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the matter of fire services, could he indicate the nature of the enrolment suggested for the auxiliary firemen?

I do not want to go into great detail on the subject, but I think it will probably satisfy my hon. Friend, without wearying the House, if I mention that it deals with such subjects as medical examination, training, the undertaking of service, enrolment, uniform, equipment and so on. Perhaps it will be best, before I come to details regarding the question, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Crossley), of the type of men who would normally be engaged on these services, if I deal for a moment with the question of expenses, because I think that that is a very important point. My right hon. Friend has already said that the legitimate expenses of air-raid wardens will rank for grant, and I think the House will agree that that is satisfactory, but I can give the hon. Member for Huddersfield the further assurance that we shall be prepared to assist the local authorities in this matter with certain model rules in regard to it. We must, however, in a matter of this kind make, allowance for local circumstances, which may differ—for example, with regard to the necessity for transportation and so on.

I come now to the very important question that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford with regard to the type of men who should be recruited into these services. I agree with him as to the great importance of this question. I would assure him at once that at the Home Office we are in close touch with the recruiting authorities of the various departments with regard to these matters, and are not making, and will not make, any recommendations with which they disagree. In that connection the hon. Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest) raised a relevant point. It is important that we should all realise that service in some of these organisations in time of war is going to be serious service, and that must be borne in mind in making a proper compromise between the needs of the various services. Our detailed recommendations to the local authorities differ slightly in the cases of air-raid wardens and of fire wardens, the age being rather lower for fire wardens, because clearly their work will be of an extremely active kind.

What does the hon. Gentleman mean when he says that the service is to be serious service? The question has been raised several times, and it has often been suggested that it might be necessary to have some kind of military law. The answer given to that suggestion is that this service is totally voluntary, but it seems to me, from what the hon. Gentleman has said, that it is to be something more than voluntary.

I am sorry if the hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. I may have been using too vague words. What I meant was that it would be wrong to think that the service performed by air-raid wardens or by fire wardens, in comparison with that of members of the active Defence Services, would not be a very serious affair. When I spoke of its being serious service, I meant that it was obviously going to be, in many respects, dangerous and very important work.

With discipline?

The question of discipline was dealt with quite clearly on the Second Reading, when I said that the service was to be on a purely voluntary basis. There is no question of military law at present. Obviously a war-time organisation has to be considered on a different basis. What we recommend with regard to air-raid wardens is that no one should be enrolled who is a member of the Territorial Army or of the Auxiliary Air Force, or who is liable to recall as a reservist to the Defence Forces, or who has undertaken to join the police force or a fire brigade for emergency service. I may add, with regard to a point that was raised earlier in these Debates, that men likely to be occupying key positions in industry or business, who could less be spared from their work in time of emergency, should not be expected to be available for regular duty. I think that that is not inconsistent with the assurance I gave, and which I believe was regarded as satisfactory.

With regard to the question of age, would my hon. Friend give the House the assurance which has been asked for at different times, that the Government will seriously consider the advisability of raising the age, not for fire wardens, but for air-raid wardens?

We are considering these matters in consultation with the manpower organisation and the recruiting authorities of the Defence Services but I am not in a position to give an undertaking about it except that all these matters will be considered. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ripon (Major Hills) raised an interesting point as to whether the basis of this organisation ought to cease to be voluntary, or rather, ought to be voluntary on rather a different basis, such, for example, as that of the Territorial Army; and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Thornbury (Captain Gunston) and others were inclined to think there were disadvantages in that course. I think my right hon. and gallant Friend himself said the last word on this matter for the time being when he said that these are early days in regard to organisation. I do not believe that any of us can be quite certain as to the lines on which the organisation may develop in the future. I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Thornbury that we very much appreciate the effort that has been made by the British Legion, and the Home Office have communicated with the local authorities pointing out that this great ex-service organisation has offered assistance, and asking them to keep in touch with the local branches if they so desire.

That brings me to the important point of registration, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford. The hon. Member for North Tottenham (Mr. R. C. Morrison) thought there would not be any great advantage from registration, and points out the difficulties of shifting population and so on; but I would remind him of the fact, which I think hon. Members will appreciate, that we have to deal with questions of registration in connection with a different kind of organisation, and, although there are difficulties, we are constantly making efforts, all in our different ways, to overcome them. Nobody suggests that the ordinary work of, for example, registration in connection with political organisation need not continue because of the fact that there are considerable difficulties owing to removals and so on. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford that registration is important. It is important that the local authorities and the Home Office should know who are the volunteers, so that, if necessary, a check may be made as to whether or not they are in some of the prohibited categories—

I am afraid I must have expressed myself very badly. I am not opposed to registration. What I was pointing out was that it is rather difficult to impose what would in effect be compulsory service upon a man who does not know where he will be in a month's time.

I apologise if I misunderstood the hon. Member. I agree with what he said, but I do not think it was at all in the mind of the hon. Member for Huddersfield in putting down the Amendment to suggest anything in the nature of a compulsory organisation. We have power under Section 284 of the Local Government Act, 1933, to ask every local authority to make such reports and returns and to give such information with regard to their functions as the Secretary of State may require. I am advised that that provision gives us in any case ample power to ask for this information, and, indeed, we propose to ask for it. Perhaps, after the explanation I have given, the hon. Member may be prepared to withdraw his Amendment.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 9, line 14, at the end, to insert:

"Provided that any small burgh affected shall be taken into consultation in the apportionment and allocation of any such expenditure and, in default of agreement, such small burgh shall have the right of appeal to the Secretary of State whose decision shall be final."

I move this proviso for the purpose of clearing up a point which was raised during the Committee stage, and which the Secretary of State promised to look into, as to the relationship between the counties and the small burghs so far as the allocation of expenditure for air-raid precaution schemes is concerned. In Scotland the 31 county councils, including the joint counties of Perth and Kinross and of Moray and Nairn, and the 20 large burghs, will be directly responsible for the preparation of air-raid precaution schemes, but inside those 31 county council areas there are small burghs which of themselves have local government rights. These small burghs vary in number in the respective counties from one in the County of Caithness to 24 in the County of Fife. There is a fear in the minds of many of the administrators of these small burghs that, because the preparation of schemes is left to the county council, although it was made clear in Committee that the county councils were compelled to consult with the small burghs in the preparation of their schemes, the power still remains with the county councils to allocate the expense in regard to the area of a county adjoining a small burgh in which a scheme is prepared, with special application to that particular area. We claim, and it is the opinion of many small burghs, that this power of allocation of expense is left entirely in the hands of the county councils.

Some of these small burghs may have schemes imposed upon them which may involve them in serious expense. Burghs like, for instance, Grangemouth, which may have docks in their area, may be called upon by the county council to agree to schemes which not only cover precautions for the docks and the small burgh itself, but for a surrounding area of the county, and there is a fear that, unless there is some tribunal to which the small burghs can appeal—we suggest that in this case it should be the Secretary of State for Scotland—there is a genuine fear, which I hope will be dispelled in the course of this discussion, that the county may allocate far too large a proportion of the expenditure to the small burghs, with no right of appeal beyond the county council itself.

I mentioned in Committee one case where excessive expense may be incurred by small burghs in making or agreeing to schemes which may cover a county area. Let me give another case. The counties of Fife and West Lothian may desire to make a scheme which might cover not only burghs but very large areas of the counties and they might allocate an unfair share of the expense upon the burghs. The Amendment that we moved in Committee sought for consultation in the preparation of the scheme, and we accepted the assurance that Clause 1 provides adequately so far as consultation in the preparation of the scheme is concerned, but we still have doubt as to the fair and equitable allocation of the expense as between a county and the small burghs. Unless we can have an assurance that no scheme will be passed unless it make a fair provision in connection with the allocation of expense, we are bound to push this to a Division. If we can have an assurance that the matter has been looked into by the Solicitor-General and the Secretary of State and that provision is made in the Bill, which I cannot see at present, so that no scheme will be approved without a fair allocation of the expense as between the county and the burgh, we may not press it to a Division.

I think I can give an explanation which will satisfy the hon. Member's fears. In general, schemes are made for the county and the expense is borne by the county as a whole, including the small burghs. But there are cases where a scheme affects a particular locality only. That locality may either be a burgh standing by itself, or a burgh with a sur- rounding landward area, and provision is made for those two possibilities. If the scheme affects only a burgh itself, of course, the direction will be that the burgh bears the expense. I do not imagine that the hon. Member is seriously concerned about that possibility. The other is that there may have to be drawn an area outside the burgh which has to be included with the burgh—an area responsible for bearing the expense. Once the area has been delimited, there is no question about the allocation of expense. That is done automatically in the terms of the 1929 Act according to rateable value. If the burgh has twice the rateable value of the landward area that is included within it, the burgh pays £2 for every £1 paid by the landward area. The only point, as far as I can see, on which the hon. Member desires assurance is the question of how the boundary of the special area is to be fixed. On that matter the county council is bound, when preparing the scheme delimiting the area, to consult the burgh—not merely the members of the town council who are on the county council, but the town council itself—and therefore the town council knows what is going on and, if it objects to the proposal, it can make its representations and, if those representations are not made effective by the county council, it can go direct to the Secretary of State.

In the event of a small burgh objecting to the suggested provision made by the county council they will not only have the right of protesting to the county council, but can go beyond the county council and make their representations to the Secretary of State?

Yes. Under Clause 3 it is provided that "the Secretary of State may approve with or without modifications any scheme, etc." The Secretary of State must, of course, in making up his mind pay attention to any representations that are made to him by any person interested. Whether he will give effect to those representations is, of course, another matter. It is not difficult for the town council of a small burgh to obtain access to the Secretary of State and make its views known. The views of any small burgh which thinks it has been unfairly treated in the preparation of a scheme will undoubtedly be considered by the Secretary of State under Clause 3. I trust that that assurance is satisfactory.

On the assurance which has been given, and which is now on record, I have much pleasure in asking leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 11, line 1, to leave out "statutory," and to insert "public."

This and the next Amendment are to provide that public utility undertakings which do not happen to be operating under statutory powers shall be in the same position in this regard as those which have statutory powers.

I beg to move, in page 11, line 29, to leave out Sub-section (12), and to insert:

"(12) The duties imposed by sub-section (2) of section one of this Act on the councils of counties shall in the cases of the counties of—

(a) Perth and Kinross; and

(b) Moray and Nairn

be discharged by the joint county council and any reference in this Act (except in subsection (3) of section one as applied by this section) to a county or the council thereof shall include a reference to a combined county and a joint council."

In two cases in Scotland there are joint county councils and it is necessary to make special provision for them. This Amendment is accordingly proposed in order to define the position of the joint county councils and the separate county councils for the several counties.

I am sure the Amendment will be much appreciated, particularly by the wee county of Kinross and by Moray and Nairn, where there is not always the greatest friendship between the two wee counties. I am sure that Kinross will very much appreciate the concession that has been granted and the fair play that has been handed out to the wee counties.

We are now drawing to the end of what, I think, everyone who has followed the Debates will agree has been an extremely useful discussion. We have had a series of speeches from every part of the House filled with interesting suggestions, to all of which we undertake to give attention. I think what has most marked the Debates has been the general desire to make this an effective Bill and to ensure that, when it has passed, our air-raid precautions will be of such a kind as greatly to minimise the calamities and catastrophies inherent in a war under modern conditions. It is worth noting that this, the smallest and newest of the Defence Services, has been subjected to a series of more continuous discussions than any of the older Services. We have had three or four days of intensive consideration of these measures of air-raid precautions and I say, as Home Secretary, that, so far from deprecating the continuous attention that has been given to these difficult problems, I have welcomed these three days of discussion, partly for the suggestions that have been made, but also because I think for the first time these Debates have concentrated public attention in a manner in which it has never been concentrated before upon these very urgent problems.

It seems to me that two main conclusions have emerged from these discussions. First of all, I think we have all been driven to admit that, supposing we were involved in the terrible calamity of war, no air-raid precautions, on however great a scale, can ensure the population of this or any other highly industrialised European country complete immunity. The most that we can do is to minimise the catastrophe, lessen the loss of life and ensure the continuance of the services without which the country cannot exist. The second conclusion to which we have all been inevitably driven is the fact that we cannot concentrate on passive defence a disproportionate amount of money and man-power. air-raid precautions must take their proper place in the general scheme of Defence finance and Defence preparation. If we look abroad at the experience of other countries, we shall see that both in Germany and France this attempt is being made to hold the balance between active and passive defence. If air-raid precautions are out of scale, a tremendous financial burden will be placed upon the country, and, what is much more serious, setting aside the gravity of the financial burden, will be excessive concentration on purely defensive measures and the creation of a dangerous bias in the national mind towards passive protection rather than vigorous attack.

That is not a cynical and militarist doctrine. It is sound common sense. The best defence for London is a strong vigorous Air Force capable of tying down the enemy's air force to local defence. We have tried to make our plans upon this balanced basis. Our plans are not theoretical. They are founded upon actual schemes. As the House has heard, we have already received schemes from a large number of local authorities, and the plans that we are proposing under this Bill are founded upon schemes we have already received. When our plans are carried out, I believe we shall have gone far to achieve our object of stopping panic and ensuring the continuance of the essential services. But let no one think that our plans are necessarily the final word, or that we regard ourselves as in any way infallible in the proposals which we are making under this Bill. We shall gather experience in this new field as we proceed. Particularly shall we gather experience when we receive the schemes of the local authorities founded upon local knowledge.

We shall gather experience when we make further and more intensive investigation into those two very difficult problems which have filled so large a place in our discussions—the problem of shelters, and the problem of evacuation. Upon neither of those difficult questions are our minds rigid. We wish to approach both of them as practical men determined to make the best possible preparations in the circumstances, and to make use of all the experience, whether it be experience abroad or scientific practical experience in this country, that is available for us. We are determined, also, to make much greater use as soon as this Bill has reached the Statute Book, of actual experiments. Hitherto, until our relations with the local authorities were settled, it was very difficult to make extensive experiments in many parts of the country. It is true that we have had what are known as "black-outs" in some areas. They have given us much useful experience. They have shown us, in particular, the weak spots in our schemes. As soon as this Bill becomes law, and as soon as active co-operation has been started between the local authorities and ourselves, we intend to have experiments of this kind upon a much bigger scale, and in many more areas than have been possible in the past.

Further than this, we agree that, in collaboration with the local authorities, we have to make further investigation into the very important question raised just now by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Crossley)—the question of volunteers. That question, as he obviously realised, is tied up generally with the much bigger and more comprehensive question of man-power generally. There, again, I hope that the meetings which I have had with the associations of local authorities—and I have met them many times in the last few months—are going to continue, and that we shall be able to discuss with them just such a question as voluntary recruitment, upon which local views are essential. If we are to have schemes that will work in the localities, many of them differing in important respects from others, it will be necessary to have that active co-operation that we so much desire between the local authorities and the central Government.

I come now to the very important question of the organisation of the central Government. Hitherto, I admit we have been working with a small and necessarily improvised organisation. I pay my tribute to the work that our officials have carried out under very difficult conditions during the last two years. The conditions, difficult in a new work of this kind in any case, were bound to be much more difficult as long as the financial relations between the Government and the local authorities were not settled. When this Bill has been passed into law we shall have taken the first necessary step towards active co-operation between the local authorities and the central Government, and the time has come for greatly strengthening the air-raid precautions organisation at the Home Office. Very reluctantly I was driven to the conclu- sion that air-raid precautions must be a Home Office responsibility. I was very anxious not to undertake this very difficult responsibility, and I confess to the House that I looked round to find some other Department to which I could transfer these very onerous obligations. I am giving away no confidence when I say that we had an investigation into the question and came to the conclusion that, of necessity, the Home Secretary must be responsible—that it must be a civil Department responsible for a civil work of this kind. It could not very well be the Ministry of Health for this reason, that two of the principal duties are connected with the police and the fire brigade administration, both already under the Home Office. So reluctantly I was driven to the view that it must be a Home Office responsibility.

Though it is a Home Office responsibility, I am completely convinced that the Air-Raid Precautions Department, so different from the other sections of the Home Office administration, must be organised upon distinctive fines. It seems to me, always accepting the fact that it is to be a civil department and not a military department, that it must, none the less, be organised upon what I should describe generally as a service basis. By that, I mean there must be a distinction between staff duties and administrative duties. Hon. Members will recall the history of the Service Departments, and that it has always been a necessary stage in their development—Lord Haldane did it in his great reforms at the War Office—to make this distinction between the staff work, or planning, and the administrative details of the organisation. That being so, I propose to differentiate between those two sides of air-raid precautions organisation and, as far as the staff side is concerned, to make Wing-Commander Hodsoll, who has done so much valuable work in the last few years, Chief of what I would call the Air-Raid Precautions Staff with the post of Inspector-General. That will show that this work will be staff work. It will also include the very necessary and urgent work of advising the local authorities up and down the country about their schemes. A further and equally important work which has already begun, not unsatisfactorily, is the work of research in this new and uncharted field. So much for the staff side of the organisation.

I come now to the administrative side. There, again, I think that with the great body of new work that is bound to fall on the Department in the near future, it is essential to strengthen the administrative side of the Department. I am glad to say that I have been able to arrange—and all these arrangements have been made with the full approval of the Secretary of State for Scotland—that Mr. Eady, Secretary of the Unemployment Assistance Board and one of the most competent organisers in Whitehall, will come to the Home Office with the post of Deputy Under-Secretary of State and devote his full time to supervising the administrative side of the air-raid precautions work. Incidentally, as a result of these two big changes at the top, there will have to be a number of smaller changes and extensions in the office itself. I have given this information to the House because it will show that I am just as fully alive to the need of a strong department and an intelligent well-instructed staff in this work as any hon. Member. I believe it will be found that when, in the next few weeks, this organisation gets working, we shall be able to tackle many of these very difficult problems that we have been discussing for three days much more effectively than, with the best will in the world, and with the loyal service we have received from our officials in the last two years, has been possible in the past.

With regard to this civilian administration appointment that the right hon. Gentleman proposes in the Home Office, can that be done without legislation?

Yes, certainly. It is always possible for any Department to increase its staff.

I hope that these discussions have made it also clear to hon. Members, even though they may criticise this or that part of the Bill, that this is not a sham Bill, that it is a very necessary step in making our air-raid precautions much more effective, and that it is a step without which we could not make the progress that we all desire. I make that observation because I have seen it suggested, not so much here, but in certain sections of the Press, that this is a Bill of no account. That is not the case, and I suggest it is doing an ill-service to our system of Defence to suggest that it is. The result of such a suggestion may well be to discourage local authorities and private citizens from taking the part that we wish them to take in this essential work of Defence. I would ask hon. Members to be patient, and I think that they will see that when we get our new organisation into full blast we shall be able to meet many of the criticisms that have been made in this Debate, and to remove many of the doubts that are obviously in some hon. Member's minds.

Let us pass the Bill to-night; let us, however, mark the fact that what we are forced to do seems to run counter to most of the ideals, and most of the chief movements and tendencies, of civilised life. City life has been developed after generations of progress, and here, in 1937, we are making provision for setting the clock back thousands of years, and making men, women and children disperse over the country into the most remote districts, and to abandon all the amenities and necessities of civilised life. For generations we have been developing the public services of the country: light, water, gas and so on; and in later years we have been, as part of this development, in order that the population shall be better and more cheaply served, concentrating these services into fewer hands and fewer localities. There is the example that occurs, perhaps, to every hon. Member, of electricity and the grid. Again, the provisions of a Bill of this kind, necessary as it is, run counter to everything we have been doing in that line. Lastly, here, in recent years, we have been striving to give rural districts a good lighting system. Under the provisions we are now considering we are talking about black-outs and the removal of lighting altogether for a time in many parts of the country. If I wanted a further example still, I would say, look at clothing. For generations we have been developing more rational clothes. Under the provisions of this Bill we are making arrangements for dressing people up in gas-masks and gas-proof suits that make them look as if they were monsters out of the dark ages.

These facts do genuinely depress me, as I believe they depress every hon. Member in the House. They are so depressing, so fantastic in face of the conditions of the modern world, that I cannot believe they are going to persist. At any rate, I can assure the House that this Government will lose no opportunity of removing the conditions that make these provisions inevitable, and while we will lose no opportunity of trying to re-introduce sanity into the world, we must resolutely go on with this programme, distasteful as it is, and leave no doubt in the world that we are determined to make our system of Defence effective, and, as part of that system, this third line of defence air-raid precautions.

The main principles of this Measure, to the end of which we have practically come, are agreed. A great amount of discussion has taken place during the three days, and many criticisms have been forthcoming, but I think all those criticisms have been of a constructive character, designed to improve air-raid defence. That includes the criticism of even the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher), in his speech this afternoon, although I must confess that his speech rather puzzled me, because I always understood that it was one of the first principles of Communism that capitalist wars must be taken advantage of to initiate the proletarian revolution. If that were the case, I am afraid matters would be somewhat complicated. I am sure the hon. Member does not mind sometimes having his leg pulled, even when he is not here.

Because the Measure is one of agreement in the House, I am rather sorry that the Home Secretary, in a sentence or two, introduced another question that cannot be developed on the Third Reading of this Bill, but which certainly raises some high questions of policy on national Defence in general. He referred to the fact that it was necessary that a Bill of this kind should be passed in order to deal with air-raid precautions. He said that the question was a much bigger one than that, and had to do with a defence of which the first principle was offence, and that it was the duty of the State to localise the incidence of warfare to the countries attacking us. That is all very well; but if that means an explanation of why it is that we are building such a large proportion of bombing planes as compared with defence planes, I am afraid that, if we were able to follow the right hon. Gentleman on that, there would be some other opinions expressed which would involve a discussion on national policy. We are not prepared to admit that it is the business of this country to bomb, as quickly as possible, and before another country can do the same to us, as many women and children as we can. I leave that, because this Bill is a matter of Defence, and the kind of defence that every one would agree with.

So far as the changes announced in staff and administration are concerned, it is hardly possible, without further consideration, to deal with the suggestions that have been made and with the announcement in itself. It strikes me, however, that it hardly meets the case, and I am inclined to think the proposals will not meet the views of the hon. Member for West Norwood (Mr. Sandys), who, I think, first raised the question of unified control in respect of air-raid precautions. We have had a big discussion, a helpful discussion, I think it has been agreed, and there is no reason why we should not pass very soon to other business before the House. But this is a question largely of regulation and experiment, and I cannot forbear just to refer to three of the questions that have been discussed—matters that I have myself raised in earlier parts of the Debate, and which have been answered hardly to my satisfaction.

Take the question of tubes. I am not at all satisfied with the reply of the Under-Secretary, to the effect that it is agreed by technical people who understand the subject that the tubes are out of the question as a means of refuge during an air raid. It has been mentioned that that view is not accepted in either Germany or France, and that both Berlin and Paris are counting upon the tubes. I believe that is the case: I am open to correction; but certainly one of the two countries, possibly Germany, is extending the tubes in order partially to provide such a measure of refuge as might be provided in London. It is put forward by the Under-Secretary that it is impossible to use the tubes, because the stations cannot be made gas-proof or proof against high explosive bombs, that you have the incipient panic everywhere, and that there is also the question of ventilation. I said, when I referred to the subject on the Committee stage, that those are surely problems for technical experts to deal with, and to find some solution. I am not sure that it is beyond the power of people who know the problem of defence and gas offence, and the problems of ventilation in the tubes of Greater London, to find means of making the tubes thoroughly effective for those who can use them.

If we are to avoid panic, we shall require to organise well beforehand. Nobody supposes that the whole population of London can go down the tubes, nor can the whole population take cover in any other kind of refuges that may be put up, nor can they all be sheltered by any other methods that may be used. These measures will have to be partial according to the area and the particular object which is required through those measures. Large numbers of people could be organised beforehand for this purpose, just as we can organise anything else. It is the height of folly to leave unused scores of miles of underground tubes which are proof against the type of high explosive bomb that would be used, apart from the dock areas and other objectives of that character. Although I am not an authority on technical details, it is a matter of common sense which would appeal to the man in the street that there ought to be some way of utilising the tubes in order to get over some of the difficulties that have been enumerated.

As far as black-outs are concerned, the Home Secretary referred to the experiments that have been made, notably in Kent and Essex. I followed the extensive reports of those experiments in the "Times," and perhaps it might be a matter of interest if I asked the Under-Secretary whether there is anything in the suggestion made in the "Times" that it might be that black-outs are ineffective, because aeroplanes could use magnesium flares which would penetrate the darkness and light up the whole countryside. That is a matter of interest which the Under-Secretary might take up. Then there is the question of transport. One hon. and gallant Member suggested that there would be different types of and segregations of people to be dealt with. I acquit him, as he assured us that he had no snobbish or class distinction ideas about the matter. I would, however, ask the hon. and gallant Member whether he imagines that under conditions of air raids the people who possess means of conveyance, such as motor cars, will be able to fly from London immediately, without any question. Does he imagine that that is going to happen?

I very much hope that before the actual emergency arises effective plans to enable people to leave will be in operation, and that they will be able to do so.

There are many people who have means of conveyance at their disposal, and who possess more of the amenities of life than the people in the dock areas, who think that they will be able to get out quite easily and quickly. Well beforehand the Government must make plans for dealing with transport, and every kind of transport, including the railways and private motor cars, must automatically come into national service. If that is understood, we shall be satisfied in that regard.

There is one further point. When I made reference to buckets, spades and gummed paper the Under-Secretary seemed to think that I was making fun. I was making fun, and many people have made fun of these proposals. But I do not want it to be thought that I am not prepared to agree that in some circumstances there might be some advantage in measures of that kind. My view was, and still is, that to regard such measures as a very serious contribution to the problem of immunity from gas attacks is quite outside the question. Let me put a suggestion to the Under-Secretary. There was one experience during the War which it might be worth while recalling. In the front line we had our usual dug-outs, and after gas had been first used the entrances to those dug-outs were covered over with blankets. If I remember rightly the blankets were soaked in some kind of chemical preparation that had a chemical effect upon the gas. We called it "hypo," whatever that means. At any rate, it was a method of chemical saturation of blankets which were put over the openings to the dug-outs, and they were very effective.

It seems to me remarkable that after 20 years, and with all the experience of the War and the advance of modern science, we have not evolved some chemical method of making rooms gas-proof which could be used in the way I have suggested. I am inclined to think that it should be possible to use the blanket technique for the purpose of the gas-proof rooms, rather than the stupid idea of gummed paper and the rest of it, or even cellophane window-glass. It would be better if we could provide people with blankets and chemicals in which they could saturate the blankets and put them over the doors and windows. If the blankets were put up from the inside, it would reduce the danger from smashed glass. Seeing that it is necessary to go in and out of a room, one does not want to seal up the room, and there ought to be some method of de-gassing rooms by means of chemically saturated blankets upon the same principles that were applied effectively during the War not only against localised gas bombs, but against the much more difficult problem of other forms of gas.

It would be unfortunate if it got out that the hon. Member was discouraging the use of paper to a great extent. He surely realises that gummed paper has been extraordinarily effective in Madrid during the last 18 months, and that idea is supported by the highest scientific authorities.

The hon. Member will recollect that during the War when we used the blankets there were no doors to the dug-outs.

It is true that we had no door, but if the blankets were effective without a door there is no reason why the importance of the door in a room should not be a relative proposition. With regard to Madrid, there has not been any effective gas raid upon Madrid. Therefore, there is no comparison. I merely put forward the suggestion, and perhaps the Under-Secretary will take it up, because it might be a more effective way of dealing with gas attack than the paper method. If the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) had been here when I spoke on the subject before, he would have noted that it was not so much the discouragement of the paper method that I suggested, but my reference was to the fact that when you have congested families, with a number of children, and you are faced with the problem of providing a single gas-proof room in a double-roomed house, you cannot expect that rolls of paper should be kept in readiness perhaps for months or years on the shelves ready for use, together with the instruments handy. When you are dealing with a position where every function of life from birth to death takes place in a single room or in one or two rooms, the problem is difficult. That was the burden of my criticism in regard to the paper method.

Let me say a few final words in regard to the latter part of the Home Secretary's speech. He spoke of the terrible fact that we are to-day passing a Bill of this kind at this stage of human civilisation. I believe the right hon. Gentleman is thoroughly sincere. Every emphasis he placed upon his words proves that he personally abhors the idea of war and the necessity for our doing what we are at the present time to prevent war being as bad as it might be in London. One can only agree with him about the insanity of the human race, and one wonders whether it might not be the case of the planetary cycle over again, barbarism to primitive civilisation, primitive civilisation to kingship, kingship to democracy, democracy to dictatorship and then back again from dictatorship to barbarism. But I have hopes that there is some principle in the universe greater than that. I believe that there is something which will prove, in effective measure, an urge to progress in humanity. I have faith in the goodness of humanity at heart. With all the bad signs of human character that are displayed, I believe that when it comes to the final issue, the good will triumph over the bad, and that we shall be able to reach out to finer and more beautiful horizons of human civilisation than we have ever known.

The Home Secretary said that we must not discourage local and private people from taking their full share in this new line of Defence. I should like to put this question to him. If private people put up gas-proof or bomb-proof shelters, will their assessment be raised locally and under Schedule A for Income Tax purposes? On this subject I addressed a question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer recently. I asked

"whether he will take steps to secure that private persons putting up gas-proof or bomb-proof shelters, which will involve considerable capital expenditure, will not have their assessment increased by the local authority or their Schedule A assessment increased?"

The reply I received was:

"Assessment for the purposes both of rating and of Income Tax Schedule A is, under the statutory provisions relating thereto, a matter entrusted to the appropriate assessing authorities—in the case of rates the local assessment committee, in the case of Income Tax the local bodies of general Commissioners of Income Tax subject to the prescribed right of appeal in either case—and my hon. and gallant Friend will appreciate that no Minister is empowered to interfere with their discretion in the matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th November, 1936; cols. 1389–90, Vol. 329.]

It seems to me that the local authorities ought to have some power to disallow any increase. Therefore, I put this question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to-day:

"whether he will take early legislative steps to empower the local assessment committee for rates and the local bodies of General Commissioners of Income Tax to disallow any increase of their assessment by the local authority or under Schedule A to those private persons who put up gas-proof or bomb-proof shelters which may have involved considerable capital expenditure?"

The answer that I received was:

"The suggestion of my hon. and gallant Friend would involve great complications. Where the capital outlay involves no increase in annual value, the assessment would be unaffected. But if an owner increases the letting value of his property by such outlay, the ordinary rules of assessment would apply."

I take it that the Home Secretary wants as many gas and bomb-proof shelters put up as possible. Can he not consult with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and see whether something cannot be done with a view to disallowing any increases in local assessments and under Schedule A? There are many people in my constituency who are very concerned about this. They were bombed in the War, at Waltham Cross and elsewhere, and I think a good many of them would put up shelters if their assessments were not increased, but if their local assessments under Schedule A are increased, I feel certain that a large number of people will not put up these shelters. Therefore, I ask the Home Secretary whether he will look into that matter.

I appreciate the inference from the speech of the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague), from the Opposition Front Bench, that his colleagues and himself do not propose to oppose this Bill on the Third Reading. They felt it necessary to move certain Amendments and to press them to a Division, but I am sure it will be thoroughly appreciated by all hon. Members who take this matter of air-raid precautions seriously that there is to be no Division on this occasion. I feel that we ought to express our thanks and congratulations both to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and to the Under-Secretary of State for the very courteous way in which they have replied to the many political and technical questions which have been raised throughout the discussions on this Bill from all parts of the House, and as one of those Members who stressed the point that the status of the Air-Raid Precautions Department in the Home Office could appropriately be raised, I would like to say how grateful I am to the Secretary of State for the announcement which he has just made to the House. It is too early to say whether or not this will satisfy all demands, but I think hon. Members in all parts of the House will agree that if you can separate planning from routine administration, you have made a first-class decision, and that is what the Secretary of State has done in his reorganisation of the Department. I am particularly delighted to know that he has appointed Wing-Commander Hodsoll to high office in the new organisation, because the House and the country are under a real debt to him for our having forged ahead as far as we have done with these precautions, when there has been so much indifference and lethargy in the House—we must frankly say—and more particularly still in the country.

We are going to present, as I hope without much interference from another place, this Bill to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and let us say, quite frankly, that the success of the Bill will largely depend upon the way in which the powers which we have given to him are utilised. The Bill will not save the people, as far as they may be saved, from hostile air attack unless it is wisely administered, both centrally and by the local authorities. Therefore, while many of us who have for many months been studying the particular problems of air-raid dangers and air-raid precautions have felt that in certain respects we were lagging behind that which we ought to have achieved in air-raid precautions in this country, yet we feel now that there is a renewed determination, on the part both of the Government and of the local authorities, to get something moving quickly.

But there is—and I want to be quite frank on this point—one point where I feel that we are very far away from thinking on parallel lines with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and that is on the question of shelters. As I understand his point of view, it is that it is useless to endeavour to protect ourselves against explosive bombs because vast depths of ferro-concrete—I remember my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence mentioning figures of 20 and 30 feet thickness of concrete—are required in order to protect one against the direct results of a hit by the largest bombs. On that basis they have said they do not propose to recommend that the country should protect itself against the explosive bomb. On the other hand, they have proposed what is known as the shelter room or the gas proof room, armoured in various ways, by different materials, but chiefly, as has been observed, by paper, cellophane, possibly some sandbags in front of the window, and wet blankets. That room, in a gas attack, without any explosive bombs, may serve a useful purpose, but I think it should be realised that an enemy will always consider what form of precautions we have taken, and if a country has protected itself well against gas but not very well against explosive bombs, it will shower explosive bombs—20 lb., 50 lb., or 100 lb. bombs—down on our cities, hoping to blast the houses down and thus permit the ingress of the gas into the rooms. Therefore, I would say that we cannot proceed on any single line in this matter, and what I hope my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will be able to tell us is this, that in the reorganised department there will be a new investigation into this question of the importance of the shelter.

I do not want to say too much about what we saw when we were over in Paris a few days ago, because it is not entirely a parallel case, but I think I ought to tell the House this, that the French authorities have come to the conclusion that it is worth while protecting oneself against the small and the medium sized explosive bomb. They have expended in the City of Paris to date only £1,500,000 for this purpose, yet they have underground shelters for the control of Paris—

That is the total expenditure.

I understand that the sum expended other than for this purpose is very small, and the Under-Secretary of State knows very well that they have not spent any money on gas masks, because they are stating that that should be, at any rate for the moment, an individual form of precaution and that the people can buy them in the shops, though I am certain that hon. Members opposite would say that that was not within the reach of the bulk of the population, and may be they are right on that point. Substantially, the French authorities have spent £1,500,000 on shelters, and these shelters embrace all the necessities for continuing to operate the community in a time of war. That is what is so important about a scheme of shelters. They have a shelter for the central police authority; they have a shelter which will enable them in every borough to handle between 100 and 200 cases brought in from the houses or streets, whether wounded, asphyxiated, or gassed. They hope to pass through these underground clearing hospitals about 50 people an hour. They have, in addition, public shelters, as I think the hon. Member on the front Bench opposite indicated, on the underground railways. In one of those which we saw some 4,000 to 6,000 people could go down, and there would be there a complete air-filtration plant and numbers of gas doors to prevent gas going through. I agree with him that we must not be too sure that the tubes of London may not be a much more valuable refuge than has been stated sometimes from the Government front Bench.

Then there is the very important point of shelters in the homes.

Does the hon. Member suggest that the London tubes or the Paris Metro, are any protection against 1,000 lb. explosive bombs?

Most emphatically. Where you have a railway station near the surface, of course it is no more protection than any ordinary cellar, but many of these stations are 50 and 100 feet below the surface, and they are most definitely 100 per cent. proof against a direct hit by any known projectile. That coincides both with the French and the British—

Does that take into consideration the possibility of gas mains near by being hit by an explosive bomb?

You have to take risks, obviously, in every case, but that is the type of objection to the use of the tubes in London which has suggested a policy of not using the tubes. I dissent from that view. If you have a tube station where you have a large gas main or a large sewer which might in any circumstance get punctured and flow into the tube, you will prefer not to use that station, but the policy need not be based on the most difficult case. Let us have an open mind and say that certain stations cannot be utilised for this purpose and others can. I fear that we have rather proceeded so far in London on the basis that it is all too difficult and that therefore we must do nothing. It is my very earnest plea that the Under-Secretary of State will tell us that this matter will be looked into afresh by this new organisation.

Now I will speak of shelters in the home, which, after all, is a most important point. The French authorities take the view that the danger when we stay in our homes is that through blasts of explosive bombs in the streets or through direct hits our homes will tumble down on us. For that reason they have made a most careful investigation of all the cellars in the city of Paris, and they have found that some 27,000 are suitable for air-raid precaution shelters, some with stiffening of the ceiling of the shelter by putting in steel beams, others simply by shoring it up with wood, but 27,000 shelters are satisfactory to protect the people therein against damage if the building falls down upon the shelter, and those 27,000 shelters will house 1,750,000 people. When the House realises that they are only proposing to leave in Paris 1,250,000 people, the others having been called up for service or evacuated, it will see that the French authorities, for a very small sum of money, have gone a long way to solve the problem of the shelter in the home.

But in this country I believe that one of the problems that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has to face most seriously undoubtedly is the question of protection in the factories. The Federation of British Industries have been incessantly urging him for the last six months to state his intentions in this matter. We shall have approximately 10,000,000 people spending a large part of the day and, during wartime, of the night at these factories which will be recognised as legitimate targets for the enemy. What are we as a country doing to protect our workers? Let us put aside for the moment the workers' point of view and look at it purely from the point of view of national strength in war. These workers will be required to maintain the Army in the field, the Navy on the sea and the Air Force in the air. Is it not imperative, therefore, that we should have a well-organised plan for protecting these workers in the event of hostile attack while they are working at these legitimate target points?

The Government have to realise, although there may be some responsibility on the part of the employer to protect his workpeople, and that it may be wisdom on the part of the employés to make their own contribution, particularly let it be borne in mind that, during a time of war, all factories manufacturing for the Services will be virtually State-controlled. Why, therefore, should shareholders of these companies in times of peace make provision out of their earnings for services to protect the workers in time of war, when the factories will, for all intents and purposes, belong to the State, and not to them? I know that a large number of hon. Members in this House feel with the Federation of British Industries that this is a matter which brooks no further delay. New factories are going up weekly and monthly without any provision whatsoever for the protection of the workers.

Building construction is another very important point. France is not a dictatorial country, yet she is demanding that, in every new building, the roof shall be at a certain angle, so that the thermite incendiary bombs are much more likely to glance off the roof than to go through, as would be likely if the roof were at a small angle. They are insisting in all houses upon ferro-concrete floors which, again, will not only protect the people in the house, but will greatly reduce the fire peril to the community, because the wooden floors of houses are full of potential danger.

The last point I want to make is on the question of communications. I have heard it stated that our air-raid precautions in time of war will largely depend upon runners—men carrying messages from one point to another asking that such and such a thing may be done. The French take an entirely different view, and they have put down at a depth that has rendered them 100 per cent. proof against the largest bomb inter-connecting telephones between all the essential service points in time of war. Therefore, the motto that one ought to adopt in a large city such as London, Birmingham or Manchester is either to get out by means of evacuation, or get under by means of a shelter. I do not think that it is legitimate for the Government to recommend that people in these target areas—and I stress this point—should remain above ground while an air raid is in progress. Lastly, let us remember that we have constantly been told of the increase in the speed of aircraft. In the last War it was 100 miles per hour, last year it was 200 miles per hour, this year it is 300 miles per hour and next year it will certainly be 400 miles per hour. This increase in speed all means that we have ourselves less time in which to get things done. I do, therefore, pray that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will bear in mind the time factor every day while he has this terrible responsibility on his shoulders of making these air-raid precautions effective.

As usual, my remarks on this particular question will be very brief. Unlike the hon. Gentleman the Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds), I do not intend to go over all the questions which we have been discussing for the last few days, and I sincerely hope that the Under-Secretary will not yield to the temptation of making his Second Reading speech all over again. I want to deal with one or two new points which were raised by the Secretary of State for the Home Department. I would like to know, when the Under-Secretary replies to this Debate, exactly whom the Inspector-General will control. I understand that under the schemes that are now in operation in Scotland, England and Wales, we are to have regional inspectors appointed, and I want to know whether the Inspector-General will have control over the decisions of the regional inspec- tors, and whether his control will extend to plans submitted by local authorities from all over the country?

At first I was rather dismayed at the intimation of the Home Secretary of this semi-military organisation that is being set up, and I would like some reassurance from the Under-Secretary that local authorities in their decisions and submission of schemes—because, as the Home Secretary has stated, they know all about the character of the local circumstances—will retain full powers, or will they be under the control of the Inspector-General or his staff, whoever his staff may be? With regard to the transfer from the Unemployment Assistance Board of Mr. Eady, which the Home Secretary mentioned, hon. Members on this side of the House will look upon that transfer with mixed feelings. One important point which, I think, the Under-Secretary will agree I have stressed during the Debate, has to do with the question of communications. I have continually stressed the fact that in the circumstances of any future air raid Scotland will have to be the supply base for practically the rest of the country, and I should like to know whether, with regard to the functions of regional inspectors and of the Inspector-General, the schemes of local authorities in Scotland will receive the consideration that they will deserve.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) and the Home Secretary agreed that we were now facing an issue which has been caused by the folly of humanity. I do not accept that statement from the Government Front Bench or from my own. The majority of the people of the world to-day desire peace, they do not wish to have to take these precautions against air raids, and it is not the folly of humanity, but the folly of governments, capitalist governments of to-day which has made these preparations for war necessary. Many of my hon. Friends will agree that it is capitalist governments, and our own in particular, which cannot be excluded from the responsibility for a state of affairs that has caused this Bill to be introduced.

There are one or two things that I want to say on the Third Reading of the Bill. I agree with the Home Secretary that it is a dreary subject. We hope that these precautions will never be required, but I hope that now the Bill is to be passed we shall go ahead with the precautions much faster in the next two years than has been the case in the last two years. Anyone who has watched recent events in Spain and China must feel that there is a great deal which can be done to mitigate the lot of the civilian population in time of war. The Home Secretary said he felt confident that the Bill would greatly minimise the effects on the civil population. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman in that statement. It is a Bill which gives considerable powers, and under which a considerable amount of protection, in so far as protection can be given, will be given to the civil population. If the ideas of the hon. Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) regarding shelters were carried out there would be, I believe, a considerable measure of protection for the civil population, but the cost of such a scheme would be enormous. I listened with considerable dismay to the Home Secretary when he said that only a small proportion of the money must be spent on passive defence and a far greater amount on the strategic view that the best defence is attack.

I am not suggesting that vast sums of money should be spent. I am suggesting that sufficient money should be spent at target points, and if that is borne in mind—the French have done this in Paris at a cost of £1,500,000—hon. Members will not run away with the idea that protection at target points is going to cost hundreds of millions of pounds. It is nothing of the sort.

I take the view of the Home Secretary, that a policy of shelters to protect the population would cost an enormous sum of money. Airmen although they may direct their attacks on targets, are interfered with by other planes and anti-aircraft guns, and, as in the last War, there will be a tendency for them to unload their bombs wherever they may be. In those circumstances, if you are going to protect the population, you will have to protect them everywhere. The Under-Secretary made some remarks on the Second Reading and I want to ask what precisely he was proposing when he said that the Government's policy was to provide with shelters those people who cannot make shelters in their own homes. He went on to say:

"In regard also to those caught in the streets, it would be the duty of the local authority to provide shelters, and I am able to say that the Home Office would approve for the purposes of grant the expense in which a local authority would be involved in regard to the construction of public shelters in congested areas where the houses are not suited to be used as shelters."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th November, 1937; col. 294, Vol. 329.]

Later on he said that there would have to be shelters for people where they work. You really will have to protect the people at three places, in their homes, or nearby if their homes are not suitable, you will have to protect them en route to their work, and at their work. You will have to protect them in the centre as well as in the places outside. Let me put this specific question to the Under-Secretary. What degree of protection is he intending to give by the shelters? Are they to be shelters which are gas-proof? Does he hope with sandbags and other reinforcements to make them splinter-and glass-proof? We have discussed the question whether they can be made proof against high explosives, and we know that to attempt that is an almost impossible task, but it is possible to make these shelters adequately safe against smaller bombs and blasts from bombs at a distance. I hope the Under-Secretary will give us a little more information on that point. As to what really can be done under the Bill, if I am able to judge from the amount of money to be spent, it will not be very much really to safeguard the population against the ill effects of air raids. I do not think it is unfair to say that the action which will be carried out under the Bill will be 90 per cent. in connection with mopping up the mess after an air raid has taken place, to 10 per cent. in actually preventing the loss of life, damage and casualities from glass and splinters.

One thing is certain and that is the kind of situation which will face a city after an air raid. That is a very necessary part of the precautions, and I do not under-estimate its importance, but unless very much greater sums are spent on evacuation and shelters, I think it will be false for the country to think that the provision that will probably be made under the Bill will save life to any very large extent. Nevertheless, we are glad to see this step in the right direction. In conclusion, I believe that the success of the precautions to be carried out under the Bill will depend upon the amount of local co-operation which the Government receive. I believe the public is very willing to co-operate. People are very interested in this matter and are anxious to be convinced that the Government's proposals will be really effective and that a real attempt will be made to protect them. If people were convinced of that, they would co-operate in this work wholeheartedly.

We have almost reached the end of our deliberations on this Bill, the discussions of which have been very interesting. May I say to the hon. Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) that not a single Amendment has been moved from this side or a single word spoken for the purpose of obstruction? Hon. Members on this side have made every possible effort to improve the Bill, and it is the earnest desire of my hon. Friends and of the administrative authorities that the Bill should be made as easy of administration as possible, and as successful as possible in the object for which it is being placed on the Statute Book.

Nevertheless, we still have our misgivings as to the financial burden that is being placed on the shoulders of the local authorities. It is true that those misgivings have been partly met by Clause 9, which says that before the expiration of a period of three years from the passing of the Bill, the Secretary of State shall again consult with the local authorities for the purpose of discussing with them the financial burdens imposed upon them by the Bill. However, our misgivings are only partly met, because we feel that the whole burden of dealing with what is national business ought to be borne by the State rather than any financial obligation be placed upon the shoulders of the local authorities. But we have to take the Bill as it is, and is far as the Scottish local authorities are concerned, I can say, on their behalf, that they will give that active cooperation for which the Home Secretary has pleaded and will do everything in their power to minimise, at least, any of the horrors of war that might unfortunately come to our native land.

Fire was one of the first discoveries of man, and he tried to utilise it for the benefit and progress of mankind. It is a tragedy that to-night we should be discussing the last piece of progress made by mankind, in which fire is to be used for the destruction of humanity. We have to make our preparation and defence against the misuse of something which ought to have been only an advantage to mankind, but which, through abuse, has become a menace to civilisation. It is a shocking reflection on the intelligence, sanity, mentality, and spiritual development of mankind that to-day we should be discussing how to save ourselves from the savagery of war; but the world being what it is and not as we will it, we cannot avoid these preparations.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) that we must give full credit to the Home Secretary in his desire for peace. We believe that he is as anxious as we are that there should be peace, but we also believe that the policy which he and hon. Members opposite pursue makes the possibility of war still nearer. While giving the right hon. Gentleman full credit in his desire for peace, hon. Members on this side of the House, just as much as hon. Members opposite, must look at the world as it is and not as we would will it. Consequently, we have to pass legislation for the purpose of minimising as much as possible the horrors of aerial warfare if it should come to our native land. But while we are prepared to co-operate, and while the Scottish local authorities are prepared to give their active co-operation, we on this side shall continue to work earnestly and sincerely for the time when it will be possible to wipe war from the midst of so-called civilised nations, and allow every nation, including our own, to make that progress which peace alone will allow mankind to make.

I wish to raise one question which, although I shall be brief, I submit is of considerable concern to certain local authorities. It is a question which I was prevented by the Rules of Order from raising on the Report stage. Under the Bill, the councils of boroughs and urban districts have the right, subject to the approval of the Home Secretary, after consultation with the county councils, to present their own schemes instead of being incorporated in the general county schemes. I believe many urban councils desire to take advantage of that, and it would be a great pity if any obstruction were unnecessarily placed in their path. Some of them are very apprehensive that, under the Bill as it stands at present, they will be compelled, if they prepare and administer their own schemes, to pay the cost for not only their own schemes, but also, through the county precept, for the cost of the county schemes, if the general county rate includes provision for air-raid precaution schemes. There is in existence a number of cases in which the smaller local authorities have to bear a similar double liability. They consider that expenditure on air-raid precautions should be treated as expenditure for special county purposes, and levied only on those districts which directly benefit from such expenditure. It is true that in Clause 1, Sub-section (7), provision is made that:

"An air-raid precaution scheme prepared and submitted by a county council may make provision as to what expenditure, if any, under the scheme is to be dealt with as expenditure for special county purposes."

The word used is "may," and I suggest that a provision of that sort should in this case not be permissive, but mandatory. I find in the Bill no safeguard which would prevent the council of a borough or an urban district having to pay twice over. These councils desire very earnestly to have some assurance that that will not be the case. I think that unless they get that assurance the intention of the Bill will be defeated, and those councils will be discouraged from preparing their own schemes. I hope that when the Under-Secretary of State replies he will give an assurance that in another place some Amendment will be introduced giving effect to what I suggest is the real intention of the Bill.

I rise to plead with the Home Secretary to give his confidence fully to the local authorities, working with the local police, police auxiliaries, and volunteers. The type of local authorities are as varied as the flowers in May and I am anxious that the Home Secretary should consider the special position of the East Coast. I saw a few years of this sort of thing in the last War as an ex-policeman, an active special constable and an administrator. I am anxious that the Home Secretary should deal with the local authorities in the question of air-raid precautions and in doing so I want him to realise that he has a different type of local authority to deal with in the North of England than he has in the South, and that the discipline that will apply to the South will not apply to the North. The police are an institution in this country, and are first looked to by the civil population when there is any trouble. I remember when we first had special constables nobody took any notice of them. The public much preferred the uniformed policemen of whom they were proud, and on whom they looked with confidence in time of danger. One uniformed policeman was equal to 50 special constables. I was one of them and used to look out for Zeppelins with a hooked stick, and when they dropped bombs I dropped my stick.

I am anxious that on the east coast the Home Secretary should give us as much local autonomy as possible. In Sunderland we have already had consultations with Durham County because the east coast during the War was attacked almost nightly. If we are to have evacuation of the towns on the coast, we shall have to keep in touch not only with the central office in London but with the county council authorities. I hope that the Home Secretary will put his foot down on the suggestion of an hon. Member opposite that people who could should evacuate London in their own cars. People who have the privilege of owning their own cars should not be allowed to escape from danger and leave other people behind, and if they tried to do so I hope that the police would not let them get very far. I hope that there will be conditions laid down so that people will know when it is time for everybody to rush to their posts, and that no privilege will be accorded to any one class.

It is not a question of giving a privilege, but simply a matter of national convenience and safety.

A man who has a car should not be allowed to get more easily away from the danger zone than other people.

There has been a good deal of misunderstanding about this point, and I would like to ask the hon. Member whether it is not clear that if a million people in London have cars and are encouraged to use them, the public transport can be utilised by those who have not? If the cars are not allowed to be used, it will take twice as long to evacuate the people, and the casualties will be much more serious.

If ever there were a time of real Socialism, it is in war time. There should be no favourites anywhere. The hon. Member has put the point that if you can get a million people out of London in their own cars, there will be more accommodation for people in the public transport. You will find, however, that there will be more jealousy at a time like that if there is any privilege than at any other time, and the people will not allow Tom to escape while John is left behind. I feel from experience that once the authorities, through the police, attempt to get people out of the danger zone by methods of privilege, the whole system of discipline will be smashed. I hope that the Home Secretary will stand firm in this matter and will act for the nation, and not for the privileges of the West End.

It is not a question of privilege, but of convenience.

I do not want the hon. Member's class left any more than mine, but if one class is privileged to get away it will destroy the discipline that the Home Secretary will try to enforce through the police. It will cause bitterness and envy such as will not allow the privileged ones to get out of the city. I remember that in the last War even the military made mistakes that the civil authority had to correct. We were under a lieutenant-general in the north, and the police were under him in the sense that they had to do the actual practical work. I remember one night a colonel and a major drove from Cramlington to Sunderland with the lights of their car ablaze against the orders of the superior authorities. The police tried to stop them, and because they were dressed in military uniform they objected to being stopped by a common Bobby. The police could not catch them at one corner but got them at another, and one of the common Bobbies jumped on to the officer's car and drove them to the police station, which was the right thing to do. They demanded to see the chief officer, who happened to be sitting in the room in mufti. The colonel began to rave about the common Bobby taking him to the police station. The chief constable said, "You had better drop that complaint about his being a common Bobby, for I was once a common Bobby and am now chief constable." The colonel then complained about being driven in to the police station like a felon, and the chief constable pointed out that it was because he had not obeyed the orders of his superior officer. "If," he said, "you are going against the orders that I have to carry out you will go into the police cell." He then made the colonel and the major cover up the lights of their car and apologise to the common policeman. When that story got abroad it did more to help the police in carrying out their duties to the benefit of us all than anything I have known. If the Home Secretary carries out these air-raid precautions under the civilian authorities through the police, the confidence of the public will be gained far more than if they are carried out through the military.

One of my hon. Friends raised the question of ventilating the tubes. I would soon get over that if I were a member of the city authorities. If London looks like being defeated by the ventilation of a few tubes, it had better send to the north or to Wales to get some colliery manager to do it. He would soon blow you out of the tubes. When these colliery managers can ventilate collieries 900 yards deep for several miles and supply air for millions of mice, hundreds of horses and thousands of men, with only one shaft for the down draught and another for the up draught, they will be able to supply sufficient air for the tubes of London. We do not agree with everything that is in this Bill, but now that we are to have this scheme I feel that the majority of the House will agree that it is our duty to accept it and to work it. Whatever we may think about war—and I am sure there is not a man in the House with any sanity who does not agree that war ought to be done away with—we must realise that we shall have to face the possibility of it whether we like it or not. My experience during the four years of the late War was that it was the spirit of comradeship which helped the women and children to get over the difficulties of fear. Imagine them coming along to anybody like me to shelter them, but that is what they did, because they felt that when there was trouble we had better all meet it together, and that sort of companionship sometimes meant a shelter which was more to them than would have been a gas shelter. We hope that the Home Secretary will not allow himself to be dragged into taking action through the military or naval authorities. Let whatever has to be done be done by the civil power, and then I feel sure that, whatever we may have to face, we shall manage to take action to protect ourselves.

I feel sure that we were all delighted with the forthright and sincere speech to which we have just listened. I have not had the experiences of my hon. Friends who come from the East Coast, and I rise to put a question about the other side of the country. I have previously addressed a question to the Home Secretary about the position of the towns in my constituency. The local authorities have met in conference and have discussed air-raid precautions, and I am sure they are prepared to co-operate in every way, but I should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman is putting the initiative on the local authorities in every case, or whether the new department which he intends to set up will take the initiative. My constituency lies within a radius of 8 or 10 miles of a Royal arsenal which is now being constructed, and that makes it different from other areas in the country, and the local authorities feel very much perturbed as to the precautions which they will have to take in such circumstances. We are 170 miles from London, and that makes us to some extent less exposed to attack than London, but the construction of that arsenal will make us a target for any potential enemy, and I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman, through the new Director-General—whose name we have not yet heard—will take that area into special consideration.

It is for that reason that I should like to know whether the local authorities have to take the initiative in air-raid precautions, or whether the Director-General will immediately apprise them of the plans which must be prepared, first, for evacuation. Are the people in the neighbourhood of that arsenal to go to the mining valleys within 8 or 10 miles of the arsenal itself, or what is to be done? At the moment there is just one fire brigade for the whole of that area. Has that depressed area to carry the whole of the financial liability for these air-raid precautions—or up to the percentage contained in the Bill—or will such an area have special consideration, especially as it will be involved in a danger which has been created by the Government itself in placing the arsenal there?

In conclusion, I would say that I am not accepting literally the language of the speech either of my hon. Friend on the front bench or of the right hon. Gentleman himself. I agree with what was said from the back benches. I do-not believe that war is attributable to the depravity of human nature. I do not believe we have wars because mankind is insane. I believe that war is due to a philosophy, the philosophy which is dominating the economics of this world. I believe that the moment we change that philosophy of acquisitiveness through the world all mankind will be prepared to cooperate, and that the moment we destroy economic discord we shall have universal concord.

I want the Home Secretary—and I am pleased to see that the Minister of Health has also come on to the Treasury bench—to consider in connection with air raids what ought to be done about the burning muck stacks which are to be found up and down the country. We had some experience of them during the last war. There was a muck stack on fire only 400 yards from my home, and the enemy airmen missed it by about 200 yards only. There are 84 muck stacks burning day and night in Yorkshire, and they will be a great target in air raids. Any enemy bomber who comes over Yorkshire will see where they are and where to drop his bombs. I promised that I would not speak for more than five minutes, and I have not spoken more than a minute and a half.

I should like, first, to say that the whole House will have heard with great pleasure the declaration made by the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk (Mr. Westwood), on behalf of the Opposition, strongly appealing for the cooperation of local authorities in working this scheme after the Bill has been passed. It is important that the country, and, indeed, other countries, should appreciate that though there was a division upon the financial principles underlying the Bill nevertheless this House and the country are united in a desire to get on with the work in as practical a manner as possible. The hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. E. J. Williams) raised a point about the position of his own district, and wanted to know whether, as regards the submission of schemes by local authorities, there would be any change as a result of the reorganisation announced this afternoon by my right hon. Friend. There is no change as a result of that reorganisation. The position remains the same, and it is for the local authorities themselves to submit the schemes and for the Home Office to advise on the technical questions.

Local authorities will want the help of our technical experts in submitting schemes which are adapted to their local circumstances. In reply to the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. G. Griffiths), who raised the question of muck-stacks, I should like to see what proposals are made by the local authorities in the areas concerned before dealing with the problem. We shall give them due consideration when the schemes come up for approval by the Secretary of State. I think that is also a partial answer to the hon. Member for Durham (Mr. Ritson) when he was quite rightly insistent that much regard should be given to local circumstances and that local authorities should be able to take the circumstances of their areas into full consideration. It is our desire that all these problems should be settled between the Department and the local authorities by agreement and consultation.

I think the House was very interested in his reminiscence about what the policeman did to the colonel. I am in a position to tell him that the man in blue has not lost his spirit in these matters because an incident very much bearing upon this point occurred during a "black out" in the district of the Commander-in-Chief at the Nore only a few weeks ago. Cars were supposed to dim their lights. A policeman found that a car was proceed- ing along a road without its lights dimmed. He stopped it and learned, without the occupants being aware of it, that it contained the Commander-in-Chief and the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. The House will be pleased to learn that the policeman insisted at once upon the lights being dimmed and that the Commander-in-Chief and the Assistant Under-Secretary of State were only too pleased to obey the command.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recommend the promotion of the policeman.

That story shows the spirit in which the regulations are carried out. It is the desire of the House and certainly the desire of the Government that in these grave matters everybody should be treated on an equality. I come at once to the question raised by the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) about our recommendations with regard to gas-proof rooms, which he suggested were not a serious contribution to the problem of gas. He gave the instance of the blanket that was doused with hypo in the days of the War when he was in a dug-out, and he suggested that we should recommend it. As a matter of fact, we do recommend the blanket, and I have a handbook here dealing with the matter. The modern view, however, is that the blanket should not be doused with hypo, because research has indicated that the chemical, which is, I suppose hyposulphite of some kind, gives no more protection than mere dousing with water. We recommend it not as a first protection but as a second. My hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Thornbury (Captain Gunston) made the very good point that in the days of the dug-out you had no door and had to make-use of a blanket, but where you have a door why should you not make use of it? It is a good point, because when you have a door you need merely to cover the chinks. In the same way, as long as you have a window, why not use it? While the window is intact it is a gasproof surface, so why not take advantage of it?

There are other things which, on the surface, seem ridiculous but which have been proved by experiment to be of service. If you paste on strips of paper they have quite an extraordinary effect in mak- ing window panes resistant to the effects of blast from high explosive bombs. Why should you not make use of these things when they are available in the house? By all means, as was suggested, keep a blanket and water in reserve so that these means are at hand.

It is probably not the desire of the House that I should go in great detail into all the individual points which have been raised. I might say in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Sir J. Mellor) that we appreciate his points and that we are looking into them with a view possibly to moving Amendments in another place. My hon. Friend the Member for Duddeston (Mr. Simmonds) raised an important question of principle. The best I can do is to state to the House what is our present view of what I may call shelter policy. The greatest measure of dispersal possible must be obtained. That is one of the great watchwords in air-raid precautions. I think every hon. Member with experience of this matter will agree as to its importance.

Within the towns or outside?

I do not want to go into details, but I think, as a matter of fact, that it applies in both cases. Wherever possible, people should take shelter either in their homes or in their factories and business premises. Public shelters must be provided in all built-up areas for people who may be unavoidably caught in the streets. I think it follows that the number of public shelters which ought to be provided in different parts of the town will depend to a considerable extent upon the normal population in the street at important times. Shelters may have to be provided in areas where, for whatever reason, people are unable to make provision for shelters themselves in their homes.

The hon. Member for North Cumberland (Mr. W. Roberts) asked me to give him information on the standard of protection to be sought in the selection and construction of shelters. In our view they should be gas-proof and should, as a minimum, provide protection against blast and splinters. (The alternative that I am envisaging is trenches, which many experts consider the best form of protection.) If they are located in buildings, they must be strong enough to withstand the collapse of the building, if it is damaged. In the selection of shelters, wherever possible the buildings will be selected which are sufficiently stout in construction to withstand the ordinary general purpose bomb before it reaches the bottom. In the case of bombs with instantaneous fuses this may not be very difficult. It will be more difficult in the case of bombs fitted with delayed-action fuses.

A handbook dealing with shelters is at present in course of active preparation. I can tell hon. Members that in it definite standards of protection will be laid down. I can give hon. Members the assurance that we shall very carefully consider, in the light of the remarks which have been made this afternoon, the standards which ought to be laid down in that handbook before it is issued. There is also to be a survey under the scheme of possible accommodation for shelters in various localities. Preliminary investigations have been made, for example, in Liverpool and Birkenhead.

The second great watchword of air-raid precaution is improvisation. It will be for the local authorities to make surveys of the buildings in their district in order to see whether or not suitable existing buildings can be adapted. Railway arches or the cellars are what we have in mind for this purpose. For example, I understand that in the City, in a recent investigation, 4½ acres of cellars were recently inspected under warehouses close to Moorgate and in Bethnal Green large underground vaults which were used during the last War to provide shelter for 3,000 or 4,000 people. It will be for the local authorities to go very carefully into these problems in making their surveys.

I come now to the very important question of air-raid precautions in factories, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Duddeston, by the hon. and gallant Member for Hertford (Sir M. Sueter) and by one or two other hon. Members. I ought to say, first, that the Government take the view that in regard to air-raid precautions there is a duty and an obligation upon everyone to take suitable precautions—the individual householder, the owner of a factory or business premises, the local authority, and the Government itself. We expect factory owners and owners of business premises to consider this matter and to take suitable precautions for the protection of their workpeople in regard to air-raid risks. I think the House would like to know what has been happening in this matter up to the present. In the first place, the Air-Raid Precautions Department have been in touch with the Federation of British Industries and with chambers of commerce in all parts of the country, and I can say at once that we very much appreciate the co-operation we have received from these bodies in the dissemination of our views on this matter. We have also prepared a handbook which gives detailed technical advice with regard to air-raid precautions in factories having regard to all the various circumstances, technical and otherwise, which may exist in different kinds of factories. Experts of the Department have paid visits to 500 specially important factories to give advice on the question on the spot, and in a considerable number of factories steps have already been taken in this matter, though I will not go into details this evening, because I do not think the House will require it. Some factories have already complete schemes, with first-aid apparatus, decontamination squads and rescue squads, together with air-raid precautions exercises in which everyone in the factory takes up air-raid stations. As regards new factories—

Does my hon. Friend really mean to say that, apart from precautions which cost little or nothing, factories are embarking on necessary schemes of protection which cost money, without the support of the Government?

Yes, Sir; it is a fact that in a number of factories a considerable amount of money has been spent on this matter.

Are the inspectors concentrating on pit-head shafts, winding engine houses, and things of that kind?

I would not say that they are concentrating on them, but if the hon. Member would like to make any representations with regard to factories of that kind, we will consider them very carefully. We have been trying to deal first with the most important aspects of this matter from the air-raid precautions point of view.

May I emphasise the importance of pit shafts? The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that at all hours of the day and night men are in the pit; the pit is never free of men. The shafts are near to the pit heaps, which in many cases are blazing furnaces. In view of the fact that a considerable number of men, often the whole complement of men, may be in the pit, and of the fact that the pit heap is close to the shaft, I want to emphasise the importance of first protecting the pit shaft, and, what is equally important, of dealing with the blazing heap.

We all appreciate the importance of these points, and I have just been able to ascertain that a special investigation by the Mines Department from the point of view of air-raid precautions is being made at the present time. As regards new factories, the Air-Raid Precautions Department are prepared to advise anyone engaged in the construction of a new factory in regard to the air-raid precautions aspect of the building. We have an architectural expert in the Department, and are also in touch with architectural firms with a view to disseminating technical knowledge on these matters through that channel. We are also asking the local authorities to do all they can to disseminate knowledge on this question among those who are undertaking new construction in their areas. Of course, the schemes will contain provisions for instruction and advice to the public, and it may be that the procedure of passing plans under the building by-laws will play a part in this kind of work.

I come now to an aspect of the question on which I hope the House will bear with me for a few moments. We appreciate, of course, the importance of the Government giving an example in regard to this matter, and very considerable steps are now being taken in the Government Departments to introduce air-raid precautionary measures. Arrangements are being made to organise first-aid parties and decontamination squads in all Departments, and a 50 per cent. reserve is also being trained. Members of first-aid parties will receive training from the Red Cross and the St. John Ambulance Brigade. As regards anti-gas measures, about 50 instructors drawn from the various Departments have been trained at the Falfield Anti-Gas School. Eighty instructors trained in the same manner have also been supplied to the Post Office, and it is hoped that by the end of the year there will be over 130 instructors in the Post Office alone. The Office of Works are constructing seven gas chambers in various Government buildings in the London area, so that all the staff who wish to go through a gas chamber during the course of this training will have the opportunity of doing so.

With regard to the question of structural precautions, an extensive structural survey of existing Government buildings is being made, and the most suitable accommodation will be earmarked for refuges in which the staff would be collected on receipt of an air-raid warning. A fire survey is in progress, and the necessary additional fire-fighting equipment will be installed. Structural precautions against air attack will be considered in the case of all new Government buildings. Rather special consideration is being given to the case of the new Whitehall building, and it may be of interest to give some account of what is being done in that regard. It is proposed to construct a roof of solid concrete, to arrest small incendiary bombs and offer some resistance to the penetration of high explosive bombs generally. The floors will be of solid concrete, and will offer further resistance to bombs which penetrate the roof. The second floor below the roof will be a strongly reinforced floor, capable of regaining débris if the top floors collapse. A strongly reinforced floor is to be provided on the ground floor level, to provide protection for the staff collected in the emergency refuge accommodation in the basement. The building will be divided into 16 sections by solid cross walls extending from the foundations to the top of the building. These walls will not only stiffen the building against the effects of external explosion, but will limit the effects of internal explosion and the spread of fire. Other precautions include adequate provision for emergency lighting, ventilation, and exits. Air-raid precautions are also being considered for the Palace of Westminster.

Are any special precautions being taken so far as railways are concerned? Raiding aeroplanes generally follow a canal or railway track, and an arsenal that is being built in Lancashire is very close to an important junction.

Of course, we appreciate that point, but my right hon. Friend has explained that it is quite outside the Bill and falls to be dealt with in regard to public utilities, about which he has promised an early statement. That brings me to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hertford (Sir M. Sueter), who raised an important matter in regard to the question of Income Tax allowances on expenses in connection with business firms and factories. This is a matter that is covered by the provisions of the Income Tax law. Expenditure of a capital nature is not admissible as an expense in computing a trader's profits for Income Tax purposes, but where the expenditure is of a revenue nature it will, generally speaking, be allowable as an expense. It appears, therefore, that items of expenditure on air-raid precautions in respect of which traders would obtain relief from Income Tax would not cover the whole field of necessary expenditure, but the Government are considering what it is practicable to do by way of special measures to meet the situation.

The hon. Gentleman has not answered two questions which I put, first of all with regard to the appointment of this Chief General Inspector. I have a note saying that regional inspectors have to be appointed for Scotland, England and Wales, and I asked the Under-Secretary to indicate whether the Chief Inspector will be in control of the regional inspectors in Scotland and will he have schemes submitted—

The hon. Member must not make a speech.

I was merely asking a question.

The hon. Member has put his question. He must not elaborate it.

It will normally be one of the duties of the Inspector-General to be in control of the regional inspectors of the country. The position in Scotland will be discussed with the Secretary of State for Scotland and the reorganisation that my right hon. Friend indicated does not in the least detract from its essentially civilian character.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 21, after "arrangements," to insert,

"to the satisfaction of the Minister of Health."

We were rather surprised to find that the hon. Gentleman had taken out these words, which are in the principal Act, and we have put the Amendment down in order to find out whether any circumstance has occurred recently to justify these powers being taken from the Ministry of Health and being left entirely to the local authorities. In the previous Debate we had a large number of instances of the variety of treatment meted out to blind persons. Some of the county councils administering the Act pay from 22s. to 26s. per week. Surely the Minister ought to retain as much power as possible to have uniformity maintained throughout the country. If it is left to local authorities to administer the Act in any way they think fit, the disparity that now obtains will tend to be aggravated rather than remedied.

The Bill has met with a certain amount of criticism on the ground that it is not perhaps bold enough in certain directions, and we have framed this Amendment entirely from the angle of improving the Bill. We feel that, if it is accepted, though a small Amendment, it may have very important repercussions. We are rather surprised to find that while in the 1920 Act it is laid down that the various schemes for the welfare of the blind which local authorities must develop and operate must have the sanction of the Minister, that is left out of this Bill. I would be the last to depreciate the wonderful work that local authorities are doing, but there are local authorities and local authorities, and sometimes they are not too keen to carry out an Act in the spirit and intention which animated the House when it passed it, and the functions entrusted to local authorities are very important. If their schemes are first to have the sanction of the Minister, it will make for uniformity in administration, and I am sure that is what the House desires. We believe the Amendment will improve the Bill, and will be of great value to the blind.

It was made plain during the Second Reading Debate that there are certain anomalies connected with the administration of the Blind Persons Act. This Amendment would give the Minister an opportunity of securing some degree of uniformity in the administration of that Act, and most people who have any knowledge of the subject agree that it is a matter which ought to receive attention. The position at present is that county and county borough councils are empowered to draw up schemes and to make declarations, taking out of the Poor Law any blind persons who have hitherto been receiving Poor Law relief and giving them the benefit of the Blind Persons Act. This Bill proposes to effect an improvement by providing that in future all such schemes must take the blind people out of the Poor Law, but that does not alter the fact that of 146 local authorities 61 have made such a declaration, 44 have made no declaration but have domiciliary assistance schemes, while 41 have no schemes and have made no declaration.

The result is that all over the country we have such a variety of arrangements by local authorities as to cause glaring anomalies. For instance the scheme in Hastings provides 22s. a week for the blind person, while that in London provides 27s. 6d. If we do not wish to consider cases of authorities which are separated by too great a distance geographically, there are three authorities in Lincoln, those of Kesteven, Holland and Lindsey, which have different schemes in operation within that comparatively narrow boundary. All the Amendment seeks to provide is that when a local authority draws up a scheme, that scheme shall be put into operation only when the Minister is satisfied that it meets the needs of the blind community. The Minister should have some regard to the fact that we on this side are showing a certain amount of faith in him. We are suggesting that if the matter is left to him, everything will be all right. At one time I did hold that view but I have been rather disillusioned of late. My faith in the right hon. Gentleman has been weakened, and my hopes, if not quite shattered, have been almost so. But I trust that in this instance he will see that there is nothing unreasonable in our request and accept this Amendment.

I am much indebted to the hon. Gentleman for his concluding observations, to the effect that he has still some lingering faith in me. I thought he was about to express the hope that I would soon be succeeded as Minister by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Greenwood), and that it was upon that basis that he was commending the Amendment. I do not think the Committee need have any difficulty about this matter. This aspect of local government has been dealt with in successive Measures passed by Parliament in recent years. There is always difficulty as to how far there should be complete discretion in the work of the local authorities and how far there should be interference or supervision by the Minister. The matter was considered in connection with the Local Government Act of 1929, and it was decided, subject to certain safeguards, that we should where possible give a much larger measure of discretion to local authorities in the administration of certain schemes in respect of which grants were made.

Accordingly, both in the Midwives Act and in the recent Public Health Act of 1936 in relation to the treatment of tuberculosis, it was decided to give local authorities discretion in matters of this kind, with the very effective safeguard that the responsible Minister should have power, if local authorities were not carrying out their duties satisfactorily, to reduce the assistance which was being given to them by the State. I suppose that is the most effective weapon that could be employed. In this case we are simply following a precedent which has been repeatedly approved by Parliament and to which I do not think any exception has been taken in recent years. We endeavour to give the local authorities, in their day-to-day administration, an adequate measure of discretion. At the same time, if any important differences were shown between the administration in one area and that in another, the Minister could deal with the matter by saying that where a local authority did not take proper action, he would reduce the measure of Government assistance which was being given to that authority. That principle has been accepted by successive Governments of different political complexions, as a general basis and has, I think, worked fairly well on the whole. I hope, therefore, that the hon. Gentleman will not feel it necessary to press the Amendment. I can assure the Committee that there is an adequate safeguard in the effective weapon which is in the hands of the Minister and to which I have already referred.

I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman's explanation is not very satisfactory. I do not like these references to a larger measure of discretion for local authorities, because it means larger opportunities for evasion of their duties by reactionary authorities. The whole trend of our local government legislation has been to put greater obligations on local authorities, and to see that those obligations are fulfilled. What the right hon. Gentleman says, in effect, is that if the behaviour of a local authority becomes so scandalous as to compel him to exercise such a power, he can reduce the grant which that authority receives from the State. But that is not what we are asking for in this case. We ask that local authorities shall prepare schemes and that the right hon. Gentleman shall be a party to those schemes, and that he shall approve of them. That is an entirely different matter from his proposal, safeguards or no safeguards. If he is anxious to safeguard the interests of the blind, why should he not keep the power of approving schemes which was conferred upon him by the principal Act. Then there would be an obligation on him to see that these schemes are carried out, but now it appears we are giving the local authorities so much discretion that the right hon. Gentleman does not care a brass farthing about them, until in some case a local authority's treatment of the question becomes a scandal. Then he fines that local authority by withholding so much of its grant. That is no alternative to the proposals we put down in the Amendment.

I thought the Minister would see the reasonableness of our case. To come and tell us that other Acts of Parliament, including the Public Health Act, 1936, allow discretion does not meet our point. It is very rarely that a Minister of the Crown gives up powers that he has enjoyed. They generally look forward to increasing them, and our view is that it would be reasonable in these circum-

I beg to move, in page 2, line 2, to leave out "may," and to insert "shall."

This Amendment is for the purpose of providing that the council shall do certain things, and that it shall not be left to their discretion. The Minister admits in the Bill that where councils were allowed to exercise complete freedom, the provision has not proved altogether a success. The introduction of this Bill is an illustration of the fact that because the county and county borough councils have not done the things that they ought to have done, it is necessary to introduce legislation to make them do those things. I would refer the Committee to Subsection (2). The Bill no longer says that a local authority can draw up a scheme and that it may relieve the dependants of blind people other than by way of poor relief, but it says that they shall do what is provided in the Bill. In view of a further Amendment on the Order Paper, I suggest that to make the Bill effective the word "shall" should be substituted for "may," so that we can have the intention of the Minister carried into effect by those entrusted with the task.

The Amendment has been moved under a misapprehension. The object laid down in the Clause is, first, that it shall be the duty of the council of any county or county borough to make arrangements for promoting the welfare of blind persons. That duty is specifically imposed upon them. The word "may" is used only as a sort of sign post as to what exactly the council shall do in pursuance of the duty which is imposed upon them. It is not an exhaustive definition, but has simply been inserted in order to put beyond doubt the fact that the arrangements which the councils must make shall include—[HON. MEMBERS: "It says 'may'."]—the provision and maintenance or the making of contributions towards the provision and maintenance of workshops, etc. The proper reading of the Clause is that it imposes a definite duty upon the councils, and then it says that the things which such a council may do in the performance of that duty shall be so and so. In other words, there is a definite duty imposed upon the council in regard to promoting arrangements for the welfare of the blind, and the rest of the Clause is inserted to put beyond doubt the fact that those arrangements include provision for the maintenance of workshops and contributions towards maintenance, etc. The Minister of Health has ample power to inspect the councils' services under the Blind Persons Act, to make recommendations for improvement and to withhold, where necessary, the block grant. Inasmuch as definite duties are laid upon the councils, the substitution of the word "shall" for the word "may" is not necessary.

The Minister's language is hopeless. The word "shall" in this connection governs the particular thing that the council may do. Anyone who has a certificate for English in an elementary school will admit that there are certain things that a council may do and may not do. There are certain things which in this Bill are permitted, which they shall do if they decide to do them. The Amendment insists that they shall do these things, and that it shall not be left to their discretion. If the Amendment were carried it would mean that the local authorities must do these things.

Perhaps I have not explained myself sufficiently. What the Clause does is to make it compulsory as a duty upon the councils to make arrangements for promoting the welfare of the blind, and the rest of the Clause indicates the measures by which that shall be done. To make it obligatory upon councils in certain areas to make arrangements for the provision or maintenance of workshops would be out of the question. The hon. Member knows that we could not put that as a definite obligation upon certain parts of the country, because there would not be a sufficient number of blind persons for whom work- shop provision should be provided. So far as the duty of making provisions for the welfare of the blind is concerned it is laid down that it shall be done, and the rest of the Clause indicates the method by which it shall be carried out.

The right hon. Gentleman is going from bad to worse. If he had accepted our Amendment making it a duty on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to approve all schemes, he might have put in many of these services for the assistance of blind persons. He has not made the position clear. It is true that the Bill says that it shall be the duty of the council of every county or county borough to make arrangements for promoting the welfare of blind persons, and then the Clause goes on to say that in performance of those duties they are empowered, if they so choose, to make provision for contribution towards the provision and maintenance of workshops, etc. I do not understand legal language. Lawyers may argue about the difference between "may" and "shall," but I have never been able to understand their point. The Bill says clearly that there is a duty on the local authorities to provide for the blind, and it says that in carrying out their duties the councils may, if they care, because they will be empowered by Parliament, do this and that. Our case is that for the welfare of the blind these services should be provided.

Surely the right hon. Gentleman does not suggest that it should be made obligatory on all local authorities to make provision of workshops, hostels, homes, and so on?

We claim that if there is to be adequate provision for the blind, there should be available for all blind persons workshops, hostels, homes, and so on as an essential part of that provision. What the right hon. Gentleman is saying is this, "I am going to wash my hands of my responsibilities in this matter. No schemes in future are to be approved by me; I am going to trust to the local authorities." For 17 years, under the principal Act, local authorities have not come up to the scratch, and now that the right hon. Gentleman has diminished his own powers, instead of compelling them to do the job properly and leaving it to their discretion as to how it is to be done, he does not even prescribe the kind of care which is regarded as necessary in the interests of blind persons.

I think he is making a mistake in this matter. He is putting off one responsibility after another. He has cast the local authorities back on their own responsibility because he has powers of inspection, but a Minister who is not prepared to be courageous enough to approve schemes is not going to use his powers of inspection to any serious effect with the local authorities. I had hoped the right hon. Gentleman would have been reasonable to-night, and I am sorry that we cannot accept his explanation on this Amendment. I do not want to keep taking the Committee to a Division, but I am afraid we must again vote on this issue.

I think the whole thing turns on the word "or." When my right hon. Friend, in his skilful way, read the Clause, he left out the word "or." I agree that with some county authorities there might not be enough blind people to justify the provision of a hostel or a home, but I am not blaming the right hon. Gentleman. We know that draftsmen are only human, and the drafting of Clauses is always a very difficult matter. The trouble is that the last words in the first paragraph of Sub-section (1), in lines 8, 9, and 10, rather suggest that the alternative method for a council is to do nothing at all. It says:

"and any other things the doing of which appears to the council to be desirable."

If the council desides that it is undesirable to do anything, you may have a local authority shirking its responsibility completely or handing it over to some private company. I think the right hon. Gentleman might make it clear that it is the intention of the Bill that every local authority ought to do its duty.

I would like to respond to that statement. I think myself there is no difficulty or doubt about this matter. I have gone into it very carefully with the draftsman, and I am advised that the opening part of the Clause, that "it shall be the duty of the council," puts the matter beyond doubt. I would like to assure the hon. Gentleman that, so far as the administration of the matter is concerned, I have ample powers to deal with the matter as I think in the most effective way with the local authorities, namely, with the financial weapon, and I can assure him that if there is any doubt in his mind, and if there was any suggestion that any of the local authorities were not in fact carrying out the duty imposed by this Clause in one way or another, I would immediately either send down an inspector or order a local inquiry, and it the local authority was not carrying out its duty, I would deal with it with what in fact is the most effective weapon which a Minister of Health can have, and that is the financial weapon.

As long as I have the power of saying to a local authority, "You shall do this," that might in the end mean only an application to the court for a mandamus, and the Committee knows that very often that is a futile procedure. The great power which a Minister would have, which I hope he would never have to exercise in connection with this Clause, would be to say, "If you do not carry out your obligations under the Clause, you will not have your proper financial assistance given to you by the Government." My own experience over a good many years is that that is the most effectual weapon that a Minister can have, and that is the weapon which is given to him here. I can assure the Committee, because we all feel the same about the blind people, that if there was any case of that kind, not only I but, I am sure, any successor of mine would unhesitatingly use the very effective power of finance.

I am not at all convinced by the last speech of the Minister, because it appears to me that the real way to deal with this matter is to accept the Amendment, and I cannot understand the hesitancy of the right hon. Gentleman in accepting it. It is evident from what has been said in the Committee that there are varying opinions as to what the Clause means. If the Minister sends down an inspector to a district, the local authority there may say that they are carrying out their duty, and if necessary, if the inspector interferes with them, the local authority may go into court to prove that they are doing their duty. The local authority, for example, might give a treat once a year for blind people and say that in that way they were carrying out the duty imposed upon them by the Clause. The Minister has pointed out that each of the things mentioned here is not obligatory on the local authority. He said, for example, that in certain cases they would not set up workshops, that you could not expect them to do it, and so he himself admits that each of these things is simply part of a programme of which the local authority may accept one or two items.

indicated dissent.

The Minister need not shake his head to my statement in that respect, because he nodded his head in approval before.

That depends on whether in fact they have carried out their duties under this Clause, because if he does not think so, he can withhold payment.

Where does the Minister get this idea that he has this godlike authority in connection with the matter? I know there have been such statements in this House repeatedly in connection with legislation, and afterwards we have found that the Minister was simply talking out of his hat and that he had not any such powers at all.

Section 104 of the Local Government Act, 1925.

Will the right hon. Gentleman read it out to the House?

No, I will not.

If he will look again at that Section of the Local Government Act he will find that it does not apply to this particular case at all, and I challenge the right hon. Gentleman to show how it gives him power under this Measure. It is preposterous for the Minister to get up and make such a statement without giving the words and showing how they apply. This is simply another case in which the Minister is trying to mislead the Committee, and I do not think that it is worthy of him, however characteristic it may be, to try to mislead the Committee in this way. The Minister may think that he has these powers and he may quote this Section of the Act, but if the word "shall" is put in instead of the word "may" there will be no doubt about it. The powers will be there, and the local authority will know what duties are really being imposed upon them.

I would ask the Minister not to be so obstinate in pursuing this policy. I believe that a great deal of his previous success has been due to his art of conciliation, but since he became involved in these birth-control statistics there seems to be some obstruction in his mentality which is making him far less efficient and capable than previously. The instance that I have given and the way in which the local authorities have so often in the past shied at carrying out duties imposed upon them by this House because it might mean something additional on the rates, are the real reasons why there should be no doubt about the matter whatever. I hope that the Minister will reconsider the position, and, if he does not accept the position, that the Committee will go into the Lobby and try to get for the blind people what obviously Members on all sides of the Committee intend that they should have.

On this side of the Committee as well as in the mind of the Minister there seems to be some dubiety as to the real meaning of the Clause. The Minister claims to have power under some other Act, but it is the present Bill with which we are dealing. As I understand the meaning of the word "shall," it is mandatory, and "may" is permissive. If the right hon. Gentleman says that it may not be necessary in certain county areas to do the things done under the Clause, surely, he can meet us on the Report stage of the Bill by saying "shall where necessary." That would get over the whole difficulty. "May" is a permissive thing. Somebody will decide whether it is necessary to have workshops or to do all the things within the Clause or not. It would set the mind of every well-wisher of the blind at rest to know the real intention of the Government, and, if there is a desire to meet the wishes and the sentiments of the people for whom the Bill is intended, the Minister might well give us the words "shall where necessary."

It was not possible for me to be here to move the Amendment which I have put down and I apologise for being absent, but perhaps I may explain the circumstances in which this Amendment and other Amendments were put down. When the Bill was introduced, I asked the representatives of the blind in Wolverhampton whether they had any Amendments which they desired to see incorporated in the Bill, and these proposals were the result. These people, while they are the best in the world, are simple folk, and when they see the word "may" they think it means "may." They may be quite wrong. No doubt they are entirely misinformed, but they would be more satisfied if instead of being referred to some other Act of Parliament which they do not understand the plain English word "shall" was put in. I hope the right hon. Gentleman, in view of the feeling of the Committee, will agree to accept the Amendment.

I know blind shops which have been subsidised by the county council in the past and I should like to know whether they will come under the direct control of the county council in the future. If they do not and they are to be subsidised—

That point arises on the next Amendment which deals with contributions towards maintenance.

I want something definite from the Minister on the point.

That is a point upon which the Minister ought not to give an answer on this Amendment. If the hon. Member raises it on the next Amendment it will be in order.

I understand that if the word "may" is interpreted as meaning "shall" these county authorities will have the obligation of taking over these blind shops.

The point of the hon. Member is whether they shall make a contribution. That is raised on the next Amendment.

Is it the word "may" or the word "shall"?

The word is "may." The first part of the Clause imposes on the council the duty that they shall make arrangements for promoting the welfare of the blind and the rest of the Clause indicates the way in which they may perform this duty.

Are we to understand that the Minister has power to penalise an authority which is not doing its duty? How is he to know whether a council is or is not doing its duty?

By inspection and inquiry.

Will the Minister tell us how it is, if he has these powers to compel local authorities to carry out their duties in this matter, there are some 40 authorities which have not prepared schemes under the 1920 Act?

In that particular case local authorities were given discretion. Under the Clause we are discussing it is mandatory upon them to make arrangements for the welfare of the blind, and the rest of the Clause is the method by which they may carry that out. I shall have full power under the Local Government Act, 1929.

If a number of authorities have not for 17 years exercised their powers and they are not to be required to fulfil certain definite obligations, what likelihood is there of their carrying out these powers which they may not use, and which they are not required to use?

Is it not the case that it is still within the discretion of the local authority to decide upon the way in which it will do something for the benefit of the blind? For example, one local authority may say that it cannot run a workshop for the blind, but that it will exercise its discretion and do something else. Consequently, when it is discretionary on the part of a local authority to choose the particular method by which it will take care of the blind, how can the Minister say that he has power to interfere with the discretion given to the local authorities in that respect?

The answer is very simple. One could not impose, under the Bill, the duty upon all local authorities to provide workshops for the blind. What is absolutely obligatory upon them is their duty to make provision for the welfare of the blind, and this Clause indicates methods by which that can be done. It is true that under our system of local Government a great measure of discretion as to how that duty should be fulfilled is left to the local authorities. That is our democratic system. But it is also left to the Minister to see that the duty imposed upon the local authorities is adequately fulfilled by one method or another. The Minister does that either by means of a local inquiry or by sending his inspectors to look into any complaint that is made. I may observe that instances have been given to-night in that respect. If I get a complaint that adequate provision is not being made for the welfare of the blind, I will either send down an inspector or order a local inquiry. If in any case it is found that the local authority is not carrying out its duties, the Minister has the most effective weapon, which is to withhold financial assistance until the local authority does its duty. That is the only effective weapon which we have in a democracy for dealing with local authorities who do not carry out their duties. A mandatory power, although it may in fact be laid down in an Act of Parliament, is a very useless weapon when one tries to impose it. The best weapon is the one that resides in the Local Government Act.

The Minister still admits that there is that discretion. The duty is laid upon the local authorities to do something to provide for the welfare of the blind. For instance, if a local authority decides that its way of providing for the welfare of the blind shall be to give an annual treat for the blind in its area, that is within its discretion. The Minister must admit that that is the case. The local authorities have, in the first place, to provide for the welfare of the blind. Having decided the method by which they will do so, it is within the power of the Minister to see that they carry out that method satisfactorily. It is within their discretion to choose the method, and all that will be within the power of the Minister will be, in the particular case to which I have referred, to see whether they run the tea-fight successfully or not.

indicated dissent.

The right hon. Gentleman does not agree, but he admitted that the discretion was given to the local authority. He said that it was a great prin- ciple of democracy to give this discretion to the local authorities to choose the means by which they will provide for the welfare of the blind in their localities. I hope the Committee will be seized of the fact that the Minister accepts that statement. The local authority will have full right to decide the method of providing for the welfare of the blind. In one area the local authority may decide that the blind people are comfortably off because of the general conditions, or because of a bequest that was left by Mr. A. or Mr. B. in the past; and that all that is necessary to be done for them is a little social gathering once a year. All the power that the Minister is taking is to send an inspector down to see that the social is carried out all right and that a sufficient number of buns are given to each of the blind persons. I do not think that is what the Minister intends, but that is what he is doing in the Bill if the word "may" is allowed to remain. He has to take precautions against the fact that in many parts of the country there are reactionary local authorities and authorities which are so afraid of a halfpenny on the rates that they will not carry out this duty in the way in which Parliament intends it to be carried out. I hope that the local authorities will be put into the position that they must take material steps to provide for the welfare of the blind.

May I suggest that, whatever the desire of the Committee may be, this Amendment would make the Bill ridiculous? We are being invited to compel local authorities to initiate certain schemes, such as workshops and hostels, in areas where they would be unnecessary. "The welfare of the blind" surely does not indicate that it is the provision of free meals or of buns, as the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) suggests; but if we insert the word "shall" it will surely demand the institution of certain machinery for alleviating the lot of the blind which in many parts of the country would be impossible.

In order to understand what the Minister was advising us, I have taken the trouble to look up Section 104 of the Local Government Act, 1929. I cannot follow from reading it how he thinks his position will be stronger in future than it is at present. If his position in future is not going to be stronger than it is now, I do not see the relevance of bringing Section 104 into discussion. It says:

"The Minister may reduce the grant payable in respect of any year under this Part of this Act to any council by such amount as he thinks just, if—

(a) he is satisfied, either upon representations made to him by any association or other body of persons experienced or interested in matters relating to public health or without any such representations that the council have failed to achieve or maintain a reasonable standard of efficiency and progress in the discharge of their functions relating to public health services."

and so on. It is news to me that the functions we are discussing are compulsory. These functions are matters about which a council may exercise permissive powers, and at the moment they can all do these things within their discretion. The Minister's position under Section 104 will not be improved in the slightest by the form of words suggested. He could now descend upon any local authorities whom he regards as being in default,

"regard being had to the standards maintained in other areas whose financial resources and other relevant circumstances are substantially similar, and that the health or welfare of the inhabitants of the area of the council or some of them has been or is likely to be thereby endangered."

He has all those powers at the moment. Has he exercised the power in respect of blind persons? Has he carried out the provision:

"Provided that, whenever the Minister makes such a reduction, he shall make and cause to be laid before Parliament a report stating the amount of the reduction, and the reasons therefor."

Is it likely, if this remains permissive, that he will be in any stronger position than now?

In regard to what the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) said, I really do not think he can have