This will be the first time for many years that the Committee will hold its annual Debate on Colonial affairs without the help of my precedessor, Mr. Arthur Creech Jones. I am sure that I shall be speaking, not only for myself, but for hon. Members on all sides of the Committee when I pay tribute to the devoted service he has rendered to the Colonial Territories and their peoples. He has set a high standard for all who follow him; and it will be my endeavour, to the best of my ability, to continue the work he was doing. I am sure we all regret also, the absence through illness of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley), who, over a long period, has also been a regular participant in this Debate. We all wish him a speedy recovery.

It is only four months since I was privileged to become Secretary of State for the Colonies; but, so interesting and absorbing is the work in this great office, that I feel I have spent almost as many years in the post. These crowded four months have brought to me a fuller realisation that it would be possible to bring to anyone outside of the immense responsibilities that are ours for the well-being of the Colonial Territories and their people.

The central aim and purpose of our Colonial policy has been made abundantly clear already; but, since this is the first occasion upon which I have to present this Annual Report, perhaps it is well to remind ourselves of it. That aim and purpose is to guide the Colonial Territories to responsible self-government within the Commonwealth, and, to that end, to assist them to the utmost of our capacity and resources to establish those economic and social conditions upon which alone self-government can be soundly based. That is our purpose, and it is also the test by which we must assess our work. The test is whether we are helping forward the Colonies and their peoples in the achievement of that purpose.

I now turn to review our work in the past year. The Committee will know that my Annual Report has been available for some time. In it the work of the year is dealt with in all its aspects and in very great detail. I very much regret that unfortunate delays in preparation and printing have prevented the publication before this Debate of a more detailed regional report on the East and Central African Territories, which I hope to present to the House before the end of this month. I also regret that the annual return of schemes made under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act is also not yet available to the House; but I will make it available as quickly as possible.

My object this afternoon will be to sketch the broad pattern which is implicit in these reports, and to comment on some of the main features that have marked this year's work. The field is so wide, the activities are so many—as those who have read the annual report will realise—that, even in providing a brief sketch for the Committee, a Secretary of State has to ask for indulgence. I hope I shall not overtax the patience of hon. Members who listen to me.

I turn first to consider economic developments in the Colonial Territories. On the economic side, our aim is to seek to build, in every one of the Territories, a stable economy by developing its agricultural, mineral or industrial resources, by improving methods of production, by safeguarding the natural wealth of the country and instilling "good husbandry" in all economic activities, and, most important, by diversifying those activities so that development is not lop-sided, and, consequently, dependent upon a few basic products.

The past year has shown how great a contribution the Colonial Territories can make to the economic life of the world, particularly in their dollar-earning and dollar-saving production. It is our aim to maintain the advantages which flow from this, in the interests alike of the Colonial Territories themselves, of the sterling area as a whole, and of the world. That means we must give every assistance to the Colonies to maintain and expand their production, which, in turn, means maintaining a high rate of exports to them. Fortunately, there has been a steady increase in the supply of both consumer and capital goods from sterling and soft-currency sources, and so the essentials of Colonial development are being increasingly provided.

But, whatever we do within the Colonial Territories, all will be in vain if stable markets are not assured for their products. It is vital to do all we can to protect the Colonies against those violent fluctuations in demand and price which, in the past, have had such disastrous effects upon their economic and social life. The agreement on sugar recently reached with the delegation from the British West Indies and British Guiana is an instance of our efforts to this end. My right hon. Friend, the Minister of Food, gave details of this to the House last Monday.

Up to the end of 1952, we are buying all the sugar that the Commonwealth and Colonial countries can sell to us. From 1953 to 1957, we have offered to buy from the West Indies a considerable part of their proposed exports, at prices which will ensure a reasonable remuneration to efficient producers. We have also promised to make a special examination of the position in 1953; and if consumption in this country then proves higher than has been estimated, we shall offer to increase, at least proportionately, the quantities to be purchased at the guaranteed price. I hope, and I am sure it is a hope in which all hon. Members will join, that these arrangements will open a new and happier chapter for all those Territories whose prosperity depends so largely upon the production of sugar.

The recovery during the year in the world demand for other staple commodities, such as rubber, tin and cocoa, has been very satisfactory, and has brought all-round benefit. I can say for these commodities too, that, in our activities in the international field, the importance to the Colonies of stable markets is always in the forefront of our thoughts.

Within the Territories themselves, there has been a great acceleration in bringing development plans into operation. This is emphasised by the increased rate of expenditure from Colonial Development and Welfare funds. A total of £12,900,000 was drawn from these funds by the Colonies in 1949–50, as compared with £6,450,000 in the previous year; and the estimated figure for 1950–51 is £19,500,000.

If the economic and social development of the Territories is to be maintained, we shall have to consider replenishing this source of help. I will not say more now on this subject, since, of course, the approval of Parliament will be sought for any proposals that may be made. I should like, however, to repeat the note of warning that is given in the Report that financial considerations are now becoming more of a limiting factor in colonial development than shortages of staff and equipment. Now that it is becoming possible to bring into play all the resources which the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, the London market and the internal efforts of the Colonial Governments make available, we shall have to watch very carefully in the future that development is properly balanced and that the pace is not forced to a point where unproductive development saddles the Colonial territories with future commitments which they will be unable to sustain.

The Annual Report sets out the progress which has been made in every field of economic activity, and I leave it to speak for itself as an impressive record of achievement. I would, however, draw special attention to the emphasis placed on rural development, through measures for soil cultivation, drainage and irrigation, and the improvement of peasant husbandry; and I would particularly draw attention to the thought that is now being given to the possibilities of group development in peasant agriculture.

During my recent visit to Malaya I was greatly interested to discuss with the High Commissioner the project which was then contemplated and which has now been announced for the establishment in Malaya of a Rural Development Authority whose object will be to inject the capital and techniques needed for raising the production and improving the standard of life of the backward rural areas. The Chairman of the Authority will be Dato Onn, whose prominent part in the Malayan political field will be well known to many Members, and many Members will have had the opportunity and privilege of meeting him. The aim of this Rural Development Authority will be not only to assist the primary producer to develop his economy but also, and equally important, to give him a larger share in the development of industry based on his product.

I would also refer to the basic importance of improved communications in colonial development. It is sometimes forgotten that in this we have in some areas just started from scratch, but throughout Africa large projects are in hand or planned for the improvement and expansion of existing railways, for road development and the improvement of ports. A major problem in communications is that of providing for the ever-increasing transport requirements of the rich territories in the centre of Africa which are remote from the sea. This problem is being tackled on an international basis. Preliminary transport conferences at Lisbon and Paris have paved the way for a full-scale conference to be held at Johannesburg next October, from which it is hoped a permanent organisation will emerge for the co-ordination of transport development in Africa.

Meantime, the problems arising from the pressure on the port of Beira have also been tackled. A satisfactory agreement has recently been made with the Portuguese Government to provide for the maintenance and development of that port. Other possible outlets are being explored, both on the East and the West Coasts; and, following on the preparatory survey of links between the Rhodesian and East African railways, a Colonial Development and Welfare grant has now been made for a detailed engineering survey of possible routes. This is now in hand, and it is hoped that the complementary economic survey will soon begin.

In this work of strengthening and diversifying the Colonial economies, the Colonial Development Corporation is proving itself an effective instrument. The Board has now approved 45 undertakings involving a capital commitment of nearly £25 million. These projects cover a wide range of activity; and, in accordance with the terms of the Act, the Corporation, in addition to undertaking a number of pioneer development schemes on its own responsibility, has lent money on debenture to established concerns, both private and public, for development projects, and has associated itself in such projects with both government and private enterprise.

As the Act envisaged, many of the schemes undertaken by the Corporation will involve a long period of basic development before substantial production is achieved. Indeed, well over a third of the Corporations investment is in long-term agricultural and forestry schemes of this kind, involving the bringing of new land into cultivation in remote areas. I believe that the Corporation is getting down to the job with the right balance between speed and caution. I hope that the Board's annual report will be available shortly, and I am sure that it will make interesting reading for Members of the Committee and the country generally.

Before leaving the subject of the economic field, I should like to pay tribute to the United States for the help which has been given to the Colonial Territories from the programmes operated by the Economic Co-operation Administration. The visits to Africa by prominent American experts in the field of agriculture, medicine and pest control have resulted in valuable appraisals of specific problems. We have also benefited to the extent of a million and a quarter dollars from the special fund established to meet the dollar equipment requirements of development projects in the overseas territories of the O.E.E.C. countries. Most of this is for heavy road building equipment.

I must say that we had hoped to obtain for the Colonial territories a much more substantial contribution than this relatively small part of the total fund, but its use is limited by the E.C.A. to plant and equipment which cannot be obtained elsewhere than in the United States. We and the other European countries concerned have found that with the increased production of our own capital equipment, there is now only a small and, indeed, a decreasing element in Colonial requirements which has got to be met from the United States. Talks have been started with the E.C.A. to see if means can be devised for freeing these funds for further stimulation of colonial development.

As hon. Members will be aware, the British Commonwealth Consultative Committee at Sydney last May recommended the inauguration of a Commonwealth technical assistance scheme for South-East Asia, in supplementation of what was already being done by the United Nations. In accordance with the Committee's recommendations, the British territories in the area—Malaya, Borneo and Sarawak—are participating in this work and are now preparing six-year development plans for consideration as part of the whole scheme by the Committee in the autumn.

I have just read P.E.P.'s valuable broadsheet on the economic needs of South Asia, and I commend it to hon. Members. How right they are when they say:

"There can be no real stability in the world as a whole without stability in every one of its main areas. Without prosperity in South Asia world prosperity will be precarious at the best. On the other hand, if there could be an increase of prosperity sufficient to allow every South Asian to buy from abroad a dollar's worth of goods a year it would create an annual demand for 500 million dollars' worth of goods from other parts of the world."

I think they are right. Prosperity, like peace, is indivisible, and I think our Annual Report shows that we are slowly but steadily building greater prosperity in the Colonial territories.

Would the right hon. Gentleman say from whose paper he quoted?

P.E.P. "Political and Economic Planning" is the name of the organisation.

On the question of international talks on rail transport, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned two capitals, namely Lisbon and Paris. May I ask whether he omitted Brussels because the Belgians have not been consulted in this matter?

No. The capitals named are the capitals where the preliminary conferences took place.

Is Belgium participating in the preliminary conversations?

Yes. So much for our economic aims and achievements. I think we all realise that a sound economy is an essential foundation for the social services and standards which the colonial people need and which it is our privilege, with them, to build up. I turn to what has been done and is being done to improve those standards.

In this field, the establishment of good industrial relations in the Colonial territories is a matter of supreme importance. I am concerned, as I know are all Members of the Committee, about some aspects of the present situation in this field of labour relations. What happened at Enugu, as revealed in the Fitzgerald Report, is a challenge to us all—to workers, to employers and Governments alike. I have set out my considered views on the Fitzgerald Report in my published Despatch to the Governor of the 22nd May. The Report and the Despatches will be laid before the Legislative Council in Nigeria in September. The Governor and I are anxious that the valuable constructive recommendations in the Report shall be considered and implemented as soon as it is possible and practicable. I should like to pay my tribute to the authors of the Report.

It is indeed of interest to note that one of the recommendations made by the Fitzgerald Report has been anticipated in that in the new constitution for Nigeria, which is now under consideration, there is a proposal to set up a Ministry of Labour with a responsible Minister at the head of the Department. As the Committee knows, I have asked four men of wide industrial experience to visit Nigeria and I am grateful to them for undertaking this task. I would appeal most earnestly to all concerned to give them their full cooperation in the very difficult task they have undertaken at our invitation.

We must all realise that strong and responsible trade unions are essential to good government and that in the Colonial Territories the trade unions can, and I believe will, play an important part in the evolution of their countries towards self-government. We must also remember—and I say this to all concerned in all the territories—that we can only build responsible trade unions when they are granted full recognition both by employers and by Governments alike.

We are encouraging and assisting the growth of trade unions throughout the Colonies. Today there are 1,000 trade unions with a total membership of over 600,000. Except for about 30 in the West Indies, all of these have come into existence since 1940 and those in the Far East are mostly only two or three years old. They are young and have many difficult problems to face, and they have to face them without the background of experience or the advantage of tradition. Their leaders, as I found when I met them and discussed their problems with them in Malaya and Singapore, are anxious for the guidance and training we can give them and here, as in so many other ways, the work of the Colonial Labour Departments is invaluable.

Labour officers, many of them with trade union experience in this country, are rendering a real service to the local unions in advising and training their members in trade union principles and practice. Selected leaders from the Colonies have come to this country on training courses organised by the T.U.C., who also have sponsored correspondence courses in conjunction with Ruskin College. I am very grateful to the T.U.C. for all the help they are giving us in this very important aspect of our work. There have also been excellent results from group training at a regional school for trade unionists in the West Indies.

It is encouraging to note that colonial trade unions are also taking their place in the international field. Representatives from 13 Colonial Territories attended a conference in London at the end of last year when the new International Confederation of Free Trade Unions was established, and two of the 13 representatives were elected to the executive of the Confederation. There was also a colonial representative on our delegation to the recent I.L.O. conference at Geneva.

We are anxious to see progressive labour legislation introduced into the Colonial Territories and recently considerable advances have been made, particularly in workmen's compensation, measures for industrial safety and in the provision of statutory wage-fixing machinery. The three month training courses, given in this country with the cooperation of the Ministry of Labour, provide practical experience for our colonial labour officers, who then have returned to their Colonies to administer such new schemes. These officers also derive advantage from the regional conferences at which they pool their experience and their knowledge.

In discussing this aspect of our work I repeat that good industrial relations are of supreme importance in every one of our Colonial Territories and, as an old trade unionist, I am anxious to assist in every way I can in the development of sound trade unions and the establishment of good industrial relations. I ask Members of the Committee to realise that if we can establish good, sound trade unions and good industrial relations that will be of immense importance in this transitional stage in our colonial affairs.

But decent and secure conditions in which to labour are only part of what a man needs for a good life. In addition, he needs to be strong and healthy and to have knowledge—two of the things which I have described in my Report to the House as basic requirements for effective self-government. I could spend many hours describing the advances which have been made towards these two goals, but I must not take up time which many hon. Members wish to use and I must curtail my references in this part, much as I regret it. I must content myself with a reference to the fifth chapter of my Report, dealing with social services, for I believe in that chapter there is on record at least a satisfactory and substantial response to the tremendous problems that face us in that field.

Over the past decade there have been striking improvements in the health of the Colonies. This is in great measure due to the effective control of malaria, and I could not omit mention of what I regard as a really wonderful achievement in which we can take great pride—the complete eradication of this disease from Cyprus and the protection now enjoyed from it by 95 per cent. of the people of British Guiana. That was only done in the last few years and it is a record of which one should be proud. Later this year an international conference on malaria will be held in East Africa which, we hope, will form plans for an attack on this disease on a continent-wide basis.

We are also determined that every modern method shall be brought to bear on the problem of tuberculosis, the incidence of which in the Colonies gives rise to very much concern. I now have a special consultant on tuberculosis and, with his assistance, plans have been made for a co-ordinated attack on the disease throughout the Colonial Territories. Of course, it poses social as well as medical problems, and social measures, such as the splendid work of the Singapore Improvement Trust, to improve housing conditions, which I saw for myself, are a vital part of this fight against T.B. I would also draw the attention of the Committee to the very good work going on in the field of medical research of which details are given in the sixth chapter of the Report.

In education, too, we have no mean record. It is a measure of our achievement to instance that Malaya now has 640,000 children at school compared with 240,000 10 years ago. There are now three full universities and four university colleges in the Colonies, all of which, except those in Malta and Hong Kong, have been brought into existence in the last three years. Already these university institutions are catering for more colonial students than there are attending university institutions in this country. They have also become centres of research as well as of teaching. They are taking a vigorous part in extra-mural activities and are giving a lead to adult education in their regions.

Technical education, which is also of very great importance, is going ahead. The main development in this field has been the creation of the three new regional colleges of art, science and technology in West Africa. Technical institutes have also been developed and also apprenticeship training courses. There are, too, a great number of extremely interesting experiments in what is described as mass education or community development.

The other day hon. Members were able to see a film, "Daybreak in Udi," which described this new development; and I hope hon. Members will possess themselves of a copy of a report of an extraordinarily interesting experiment in Northern Rhodesia following the production for that country of what is called a "saucepan radio," which is now being tested in other territories and holds out the prospect of a big development in broadcasting in those territories.

Now I should like to refer to Colonial students in this country. The British Council, with assistance from the Colonial Development and Welfare Board, now has responsibilities for their accommodation, for their hospitality and for their welfare. Our students from the Colonies are in good hands, I believe; but I should like to remind the men and women of Great Britain that they are not here only to acquire the knowledge and skills that we can give them, but also—and, perhaps, this is even more important—to learn our way of life and to become our friends. It is up to all of us—I should like to make this appeal—to help them, as we can, by asking them into our homes and to take part in our activities and recreations. Then they will become really our friends, and understand our way of life and all that it stands for in the world today. I would make this very earnest appeal. Within the short four months I have been at the Colonial Office I have come to know how important it is that they should be able to go back to their homes with real friends in this country.

It is against the background of economic and social progress which I have described today that the steady advances made in the political and constitutional field take on their proper significance.

In West Africa, the Report of the Coussey Committee has already become a part of history, and I would only remind hon. Members of the main features of its proposals, which have now been generally accepted. The new Executive Council in the Gold Coast will consist in the majority of African Ministers holding departmental responsibilities, and it will be the main instrument of policy. There will be a greatly enlarged Legislature composed almost entirely of members directly or indirectly elected by the people. Various select committees of the Legislative Council are now studying the detailed application of the agreed proposals, and it is hoped that all will be ready for the new Constitution to come into operation during next year.

In Nigeria, constitutional proposals put forward by the General Conference after a long series of consultations with representatives of the people at all levels in all the regions were considered by the Legislative Council last March. There is general agreement that there should be increased regional autonomy within a united Nigeria; that the regional legislatures should be made more representative; and that Nigerians should participate fully in shaping policy and directing executive action. To this end it is proposed that the Central Executive Council should be replaced by a Council of Ministers, consisting mainly of Nigerians, who will have departmental responsibilities, and that there should be executive councils similarly constituted in the regions, with members also responsible for departments of the regional governments.

Certain divergencies of view still remain to be reconciled. There has been much debate between the north, on the one hand, and the east and west, on the other, regarding the composition of the Central Legislature. The north claims membership equal to the east and west combined. A compromise suggestion for a bicameral legislature, with one House based on population and the other on equality of representation between the three regions, is now under discussion locally and will reach the Legislative Council later in the year. Then the difficult problem of allocating revenues between the federal and regional services is being tackled with the aid of an expert economist from this country, assisted by a Canadian with considerable experience of such problems, whose services have generously been made available to us by the Canadian Government.

In the West Indies a major event was the publication last March of the Report of the Standing Closer Association Committee, with its thoughtful proposals for a federation of the British West Indian territories. His Majesty's Government have commended this admirable report to the serious study of the West Indian peoples, and I await with great interest the outcome of the discussion which, I understand, will shortly take place on the report in all the West Indian Legislatures. One, that in Grenada, has already voted in favour of federation. It is for the West Indian peoples to decide whether and when they wish to proceed along the road recommended by the committee. The committee supported federation as the best means of achieving self-government within the Commonwealth for the West Indies, and it is our desire to help the peoples of the West Indies in every possible way towards that goal.

In our Colonial Territories the movement for political and constitutional advance never checks, never pauses. For example, in Trinidad the first general election under the new Constitution will be held in September. Then the Legislative Council will have a clear elected majority, and the Executive Council will also consist of a majority of members elected to it by the Legislature. In addition, the Governor will be empowered to appoint elected members of the Executive to take charge of Government departments as Ministers.

Then in Gibraltar there has been established for the first time a Legislative Council, with an unofficial majority, and it is expected to meet in the autumn. In Uganda an increase in African representation on the Legislature has been announced from four to eight, and in the representation of Asians and Europeans from three to four. In North Borneo plans for the establishment of Legislative and Executive Councils this year are in an advanced stage. Proposals made last year by the Governor of Hong Kong for amending the constitution of that Colony were under consideration by my predecessor at the time of the General Election. I have recently had an oppor- tunity to discuss those recommendations with the Governor personally, and I am now giving the matter further thought.

I would now say a few words about the Colonial Territories in East and Central Africa. The problem here is one which it is easy to state but most difficult to solve. The settlement of immigrant communities has done much for the economic development of those territories, but it also sets for all of us, both in Africa and here, a most difficult task of statesmanship in designing, and seeking to achieve, the right political evolution of this area. It has been said many times, but cannot be repeated too often, that our policy is to help the Africans to develop politically, socially and economically so that they can play their full part in the central government and in the local administration of their territories. It is also clear that the immigrant communities, some of whose families have lived there for generations, must now be regarded as belonging to those territories.

That is the background against which we have to consider this most difficult of the constitutional problems that confront us in our Colonial Territories. It is a problem to which I am giving most anxious thought. It is one which I am discussing with my advisers and with the Governors concerned. I hope also to arrange for my colleague, the Minister of State, to pay a visit to East Africa this summer. Meantime I would make an appeal, in which I hope all hon. Members will join, on this very difficult problem. I would beg everyone to realise that it is a problem that can be made infinitely more difficult of solution by ill-considered speech and action.

No survey of political development in the Colonies would be complete without at least a brief mention of the unspectacular but widespread and important progress throughout the Colonial Territories in the development of local government institutions. It is by adapting, expanding and modernising these agencies that we seek to foster that sense of social service, and to provide that training and experience in the handling of public affairs on which the effective operation of political institutions at the centre depends. If I could say a word to all those who are working with us in the development towards self-government in the Colonies— and I think every hon. Member would agree with me, speaking as I do as one with experience of local government and of trade unions—all those who before coming to this House have had experience of local government work know the great value of that experience in their work here. Similarly, experience of local government work will play an important part in the development of self-government in these Colonial territories.

So far I have been speaking about the work that is being done and I should now like to say a word or two, if I may, about the men who are doing it. It is useless to create self-governing institutions if, at the same time, local men and women are not being trained to carry on the administration of their countries, and it is our declared policy to bring local officers into the higher grades of the public service in our territories. We have already made considerable progress in some areas in this respect. In the West Indies, for example, many West Indians now hold senior posts; in Nigeria there are now 364 locally born officers in the senior service compared with 172 in 1948 and 26 in 1938; in Malaya and Singapore, too the numbers are increasing.

It is a principal aim of our policy to provide the educational facilities within the territories themselves, and also by scholarships and special training courses in this country, to enable Colonial men and women to qualify for posts of higher responsibility in the Government service. Now all Colonial Governments have scholarship schemes for this purpose, and £1 million has been allocated from Colonial Development and Welfare funds for the same object. Two-fifths of the colonial students at present in this country are assisted in this way, either by their local government or by Colonial Development and Welfare grants. People from the Colonies are also participating in the special training courses for cadets and serving officers in the Colonial Service; 79 locally domiciled officers are attending or have attended such courses this year, and represent about one-third of the total attendance.

But all these measures will not produce more than a proportion of the men and women needed for the higher posts in the Colonies, and there is no foreseeable decrease in the need for members of the Colonial Service recruited in this country and from other Commonwealth countries. Indeed, the demand for qualified men from outside the Colonial Territories continues to be greater than ever before. Although over 1,400 appointments were made in 1949, there were still over 1,100 unfilled vacancies at the end of the year. This year over 800 appointments have already been made, but the vacancies still stand at about 1,150. We are, however, in the middle of the year, and although I should not like to predict what success we shall have achieved at the end of it, I hope that we shall by then have substantially reduced the number of vacancies still to be filled. Indeed, it is pleasing to note that the rate of recruitment for many branches of the Service has been encouragingly higher so far this year than it was last year.

I should like to pay tribute to the work of the Colonial Service. Their tasks are changing as conditions change, but their responsibility becomes greater now than ever before, for in this transition stage their task calls for qualities of intelligence, tact and sympathy of a high order, and I can think of no more worth while job that a man can undertake today, and no field in which there is more to be done.

On this most important question, could the right hon. Gentleman say why he thinks there are still so many unfilled vacancies? It is so different from what it was after the First World War. Is it a question of salaries, or uncertainty, or what is it?

There are many things. First of all, there is full employment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Well, that is important. I do not want to detain the Committee on this point, but most important of all is the fact that it is taking us time to catch up with what was, after all, six years of arrears during the war.

There were the same arrears after the First World War.

I think it will be agreed that during this last war there was a greater proportion of our total population involved in all the efforts of the war than during the First World War.

There were fewer casualties this time.

I know; I agree. But this has been the experience not only of the Colonial Office; it has been the experience of all those who have to recruit people of high professional and technical qualifications. However, as I say, the situation is becoming better, and it looks very much better this year than it was last year.

If in my review this afternoon I have dwelt mainly on what we have achieved, I hope the Committee will not think it is because I am unmindful of our mistakes, our failings and our shortcomings. In this work I have observed, and now I know, that it is perhaps inevitable that our failures should be highlighted and that our constructive work becomes almost a "silent service." I hope therefore, that we may be allowed once a year, in these annual Debates, to speak up for ourselves and for the work we do, and to take pride in it.

In these days our minds are inevitably pre-occupied with Malaya and Hong Kong, both in the troubled areas of the world. On Malaya I have little to add to the statement I made in the House on 21st June, but I should like to say that the recruitment of the personnel needed, to which I referred in that statement, is proceeding satisfactorily; and that I am now discussing with the Malayan authorities how we shall give effect to the undertaking in regard to further financial assistance, which I also indicated in my statement.

I can confirm that I intend to introduce a Supplementary Estimate for whatever sum is finally decided. That will give the House an opportunity of discussing the situation. I can assure the Committee that progress against the Communists in Malaya has not been hampered by lack of funds, and that it is our intention in providing further assistance to pay full regard to the needs both of the emergency and of the social and economic development of Malaya.

I hope the Committee will agree that whilst, on balance, there is no room whatsoever for complacency anywhere about our territories and their problems, and whilst there are still very many difficult and, indeed, urgent problems to solve in all these territories, we are steadily and surely working towards the fulfilment of that central purpose of our policy—the guiding and the assisting of the peoples of the Colonies towards responsible self-government within the Commonwealth. I believe our Report of the last year's work shows that we are being faithful to that trust.

I must first congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on the comprehensive survey he has given us of much of the achievement that has been realised in colonial affairs. He covered a great deal of ground, most of it at a steady canter, occasionally at rather a breathless gallop, but all of it in the best traditions of one of the hill-ponies of his native land. It was agreeable to listen to him, and it is obvious to the Committee that already he is making immense efforts to get a grasp of an office which is as important and, indeed, as exacting as any in the whole hierarchy of Government.

I am grateful to him for the tribute which he paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley), who should have been speaking in my place this afternoon; I am only deputising for him for the moment. For seven years my right hon. Friend has spoken in these Debates, either from the Government side or from this side of the House, showing thereby a very agreeable continuity in colonial affairs. I am afraid that I cannot wish the right hon Gentleman as long a tenure of office as that, but I can say that I hope that so long as the life of the Government should happen to survive, he will, if he so desires it, continue to occupy this office and take the same interest, as he is clearly doing now, in its exacting tasks.

I think that I ought also to say a word about his predecessor. It is quite obvious that we cannot agree on all points on both sides of the Committee, but I think that we all understand the sincerity and integrity of purpose with which he pursued his objective, and I think that we also understand that he tried, so far as he could, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West to lift these colonial Debates out of, the ordinary arena of political warfare. For both these reasons, we should like to pay him a tribute.

I turn to our actual discussion. I begin by saying that I agree very much with the definition which heads this remarkable and very interesting Blue Book. I myself do not like Blue Books; I find them extremely difficult to read, as a general rule; but I did not find this one difficult to read because the range is so wide and many of the topics are so entertaining that, although I got a little tired after a time with the movements of His Majesty's junior Ministers who figure in it, I found that the tale was by no means difficult to follow.

I should mention here that my right hon. Friend and I had intended to give a further Supply Day for the report, which should be due this month, of the Colonial Development Fund, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. If it is ready before the House rises for the summer Recess, we will gladly give a day to discussing it. If that is physically impossible, we should like to discuss it early in the autumn when we come back.

I begin by saying that I am in entire agreement with the opening quotation with which the right hon. Gentleman heads his general survey of the central purpose of our colonial policy. I do not propose to read it, because I am sure that everyone taking part in this Debate has read it already. I want only to say that I endorse it, and I also endorse all the five basic requirements which the right hon. Gentleman states there as being necessary for effective self-government. I think that I should like to add a sixth. The sixth would be, I suggest, that self-government is dependent on the transfer of power to the people and not only to a minority of the people concerned. That is a point which I should like to ask the Committee to examine.

I think that part of the purpose of this Debate must be to see how far we are making progress towards the idea that the right hon. Gentleman sets out, and whether we are on the right lines or not. I think the Committee would agree that the clamant minority in a Colony—that is, the clamant minority which is pressing for larger political powers at an early date—is not always representative of the larger and less vocal element that also lives there. Indeed, this minority sometimes claims to speak for millions from whom it differs in race or custom or religion. I am thinking, in particular, of the West African Colonies, where the views of the people on the coastal belt, for instance, do not necessarily represent those of larger populations in the interior, as the right hon. Gentleman showed just now by his reference to Nigeria and the difficulty he was having in adjusting rival demands there.

The truth is, I suppose, that through their earlier contacts with European nations the people on the coast have made greater progress in certain respects—whether we call it "progress" or whatever other word we may use—than have many others in the hinterland in developing a political conscience. Many of them have achieved a high degree of culture and intelligence, and when one meets them one can well understand their ambition to manage their own affairs; but there is a vast difference, I suggest, between managing their own affairs and managing the affairs of others from whom they are separated by a wide gulf, socially, racially and intellectually. Lord Hailey had some wise words to say about this. He said:

"The chief characteristic of the rule of dependencies in its classical form is that it involves the control by very few over very many. It is common ground that the objective in view is that the very many should eventually rule themselves. But it would be a misfortune if, in pursuance of this objective, the present few abdicated in favour of another group of very few less likely than themselves to defend the interests of the many and to devolve full authority upon them."

I mention that because I think that here is a problem that we have to consider. This is the kind of occasion on which we ought to consider it. I was, in that connection, a good deal perturbed by an article which I saw yesterday and which, I dare say, many other hon. Members saw, in the "Manchester Guardian" about conditions on the Gold Coast. I have a very great respect for the "Manchester Guardian" foreign correspondents or colonial correspondents, and I do not know any who are better. It is one of the deplorable results of the newsprint shortage that we do not get anything like the full reports that most of us would like to have of what is going on in our Colonial Territories and in other places abroad. I frequently read in the American newspapers of 20 or 30 pages things that we cannot find in the best informed of our own. The article in the "Manchester Guardian" gives an account of the general activities of the Convention Peoples' Party. It says:

"The C.P.P. mean to sweep the polls in the next elections, not because they desire the new Constitution to be tried out with a view to success, but because they plan to make it a complete failure by putting every possible obstruction in the machinery of government. They seem, however, to overlook the serious consequences which may thus arise if the Governor should find himself with a Cabinet of ex-convicts who refuse to co-operate with white officials and whose big block of representatives in the House of Assembly would out-vote every measure. Perhaps the crux of the matter has been best put by Dr. Danquah: 'We shall soon have to choose between white imperialism or a black dictatorship.'"

I do not know how accurate that appreciation is, but it is pretty serious when it is in a paper like the "Manchester Guardian," and if it is anywhere near the truth it is very disturbing. I can say, from what little I know of Dr. Danquah, that I find it surprising that he should be using terms of that kind. I should like to know what the Government feel about this situation, and whether they think that the quotation I have given represents the facts at all, and, if it does, whether there is any action they contemplate or consider should be taken. As we proceed, step by step, in framing the way that we all want to travel, I think that we must see what is progressing and what we really want to happen. If this is not an accurate account, or the Government have any comments to make upon it, it would be interesting to the Committee to hear them.

I am not comforted in the matter by some accounts that I have read of the elections which have taken place in parts of West Africa and the way in which they were conducted. For instance, there were the municipal elections at Accra. No doubt I ought to have known, but I did not know, that these are not conducted by ballot as they have been in the Sudan for some considerable time. The accounts that I have seen read very much like the 18th century hustings here, not excluding the fact that everyone seems to have enjoyed himself very much indeed. Whether that is exactly the purpose of the elections or not, I would not be so certain. These are things which I think we ought to examine.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the C.P.P. which he has mentioned, wrote a long memorandum against just that form of electing a government, and presented it to the committee now working under the Coussey Constitution? As far as I know, nothing was done, but the party took the strongest possible steps it could against this form of election.

I am not attacking any party. I am merely saying that I do not think this method of an 18th century election is an awfully good one, whichever party benefits. I do not know whether the C.P.P. expressed any views on the form of election, but I understand, at any rate, that they did very well out of it.

Since the hon. and learned Member has raised the matter, perhaps I might read this account from "West Africa" of what went on. When the voter came along, he was asked:

"What is your name? What is your house number? Is it down here? Ah, yes. Who are you voting for? Mr. Alema? Right. Next please."

That may be a good way of recording votes, but no one will suggest that it has anything to do with a secret ballot. I do not know to which party Mr. Alema belonged, but the point I am making is that this is not a good way to conduct an election to an authority to which we are to pass much more power than it has hitherto had.

That brings me to another point to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. These Colonies are going to be asked to increase the number of administrators from amongst themselves, which is a very good thing. I am wondering whether it will be possible for the Gold Coast, for example, to fill something like 1,000 vacancies in the senior services in the next 10 years. If not, then it is more than ever important that the British element in the services there should be accepted and should be working in a friendly way with those who are going to take their places.

This brings me to another point I want to raise, and which I hope will not be considered to be too controversial. It is in connection with the Press there. I read in both the reports, in the Report issued after the Enugu riots and also in the Gold Coast Report, comments about the attitude of the Press. Very strong words were used in the case of the Enugu riots. It was stated:

"We are forced to the conclusion that the major part of the Press of Nigeria disclosed a degree of irresponsibility which bodes no good for the people of the country, or for the furtherance of their political aims."

I have read many of these papers, which by our standards are not papers at all but more like broad-sheets. Frankly, they are filled with poisonous misrepresentation about His Majesty's Government, and the accounts of the Korea development are quite unbelievable—the "Daily Worker" is quite a long way behind. Here, again, there is a problem. I cannot suggest a solution to the right hon. Gentleman, but we should be conscious that the problem is there and is probably having pretty serious effects among the people who are not so used as we are to assess what is said about us in the Press. I presume that these accounts are carried round, as they used to be carried round by hawkers in this country 100 years ago, to small towns where they are read out, when possibly some of the language used is embellished.

There seems to be so little responsible information to put in balance against it. If there were some such information, the problem would not matter so much. Can nothing be done in the matter? [An HON. MEMBER: "There is the wireless."] Yes, but what is happening at present, as far as I can make out, is that bulletins are put out from the Government and there is also a certain amount of information given in an official gazette. No one really reads an official gazette, which is not normally the kind of document people want to read, although I believe that it was read in our case when my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) edited one. I am not suggesting any form of censorship, because I do not think that is a good thing, as we have to preserve the liberties of the Press.

We have to accept the fact that this is having pretty serious consequences. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would consider consulting the Empire Press Union, which, I understand, has been discussing this very matter at Ottawa, and perhaps sending one of his officers to assist in those discussions. It may be that he would like to fortify himself with the advice of a responsible commission. If no attention is paid to this matter, we may find in a year or two that the consequences are very great and not unrelated to things happening in other parts of the world.

I should like to make one or two observations about the record of the Colonial Service generally, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred. I do not think we need to be unduly apologetic about the achievements of our Colonial Service. I am not particularly influenced by the strident criticisms which are occasionally made at U.N.O., particularly as I notice that those who are most loud in their criticisms have an internal record by no means free from blemish. For the sake of those in the Service, we should make it plain from this Committee that they are doing their job extremely well, and in a fashion in which we have confidence, in the pursuit of the objective about which we are all agreed. This apologetic business can be carried too far.

There was a case which does not concern the administration of the present Government, a case long ago of a battalion of a famous African regiment who were asked to produce a regimental emblem. They produced the lion rampant, and the comment made from headquarters was that, in view of the tendencies of the times it would be perhaps better, on the whole, to have a lion couchant. Perhaps a lion couchant is more able to spring, although I do not think the need will arise. I do not think it is good advice. We should not get into that tone or temper in these matters. We have set ourselves an objective, and we should see it carried out. If people do not agree, then we must treat their criticisms on the basis of their value, after fairly assessing them.

I understand that the evidence about the Enugu riots is to be published, and I think it right that the Government should do that. Meanwhile, our sympathy goes out to the relatives of those who lost their lives. I agree that we have to look to the future, and the chief problem is the future of trade unionism in Nigeria and other Colonies where a similar state of affairs exists. For this reason, I welcome the decision to send out this small body of experts to study the question and advise what should be done. I think they have been well chosen, but there is one other matter, and that is the matter of the Press, to which the Commission referred.

I should like to say something about East and Central Africa, to which the right hon. Gentleman also referred. The position there is very different from that in West Africa. I like very much the words the right hon. Gentleman used about the situation there and the problems of statesmenship. We have to face the fact that for any period of time we can foresee European leadership and guidance will be essential. Whatever may be the final pattern of the constitution, there can be no question of eliminating those who have made their homes there, whatever their colour may be. That, I understand, was the right hon. Gentleman's position.

It is true that without Europeans that part of the world would never have made the vast strides it has. There are men alive today who can remember that part of Africa in the early '90's, when there were no roads, no railways, no currency, no commerce except in slaves; not even the wheel or plough. So it is fair to say that this achievement has been led by the whites. Indeed, the, former Secretary of State for the Colonies wrote exactly the same thing when he made this claim about them last year in these words:

"The presence and energy of Europeans has been and is an absolutely indispensable factor."

I need hardly say that I and my hon. Friends endorse those words.

I want for a moment to turn to the West Indies. I should like, in passing, to welcome the undertaking which His Majesty's Government have given recently to review the terms of the sugar contract with the West Indies. All of us are pleased that the delegation did not go home empty-handed, although they did not get everything that they asked for. The only pity about it is that the people of the West Indies will be left with the impression that this concession has been given only grudgingly and at the eleventh hour, and I am wondering whether it would not have been a bit better for the Government to have made up their minds a bit earlier to go some way to meet the delegation. However that may be, if the people of the West Indies can show the same determination in dealing with their political and economic affairs as the sugar delegation showed in their recent negotiations, it augurs pretty well for their future.

The document which was published early this year on the subject of federation seemed to us to be a statesmanlike one, and I believe there will be general agreement that federation is the most attractive course open to the West Indies. The day of small units is passing everywhere. They cannot hope to achieve, either in the political or economic field, as small and separate Colonies the same success as they should be able to achieve as a single entity. For example, one voice speaking for the West Indies on the sugar issue showed what can be done. Federation is bound to demand some sacrifices. I am glad to notice that the larger Colonies seem to be prepared to accept that for the sake of the weaker units.

At this moment the report is to be discussed by each of the local legislatures, and there we must leave it. While expressing the hope that a measure of agreement will be reached, we must be careful at the same time not to give the impression that federation is being imposed from Whitehall. We must let them move themselves towards it. It will not solve some of their problems, and it will not meet the fundamental economic problems, but it will make it much easier for them to be handled. If we press it on them too hard, some of the Colonies who think more easily in terms of London than the neighbouring islands will be turned away, and it will take some time to reach final agreement on the matter.

I do not propose to make more than a passing reference to our Eastern Colonies, partly for reasons of time and partly by force of circumstances. Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong figure today more appropriately in terms of our defence policy and foreign affairs. They all stand in the front line in the war against Communism in the East and it is unfortunately mainly in that context that we have to consider them. Their internal affairs are overshadowed, and staff and money which should be available for internal development has got to be diverted to other purposes.

I was glad to note in the Report and in the statement which the right hon. Gentleman made today that these internal services are none the less making some progress, because to raise the standards of life in those countries is essential if we are to build a sure defence against Communism. As I indicated when the Secretary of State made his statement last June, we believe there is a case for some financial help to Malaya, and we will, examine it very sympathetically when a Supplementary Estimate is presented. The Malayans have to bear a great deal, and nothing is more remarkable than the way in which under these conditions they have maintained and increased their output in 1949 compared with 1948. It is a remarkable fact.

I like the figures in the Blue Book which may not have been noticed by everybody, showing how completely loyal is the Malayan population, and the great mass of the Chinese, too. There were 430,000 Malayan volunteers, which is a pretty generous offer of service whichever way it is looked at. It is nearly as good as the Home Guard in the first days of the war. It is a wonderful response, and it is interesting to notice, too, that of the 1,592 bandits killed or captured, 93 per cent. were Chinese. It is only fair to add that most of the civilians killed were Chinese. Once the immediate emergency is over, our task in Malaya must be to maintain, to expand and to diversify her economy, paying particular attention to rice production.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the economy of too many of our Colonies is too narrowly dependent on one or two crops. A wider diversification would make for much greater strength. One question I should like to ask the right hon. Gentleman about that part of the world. I notice an expansion in the export of oil from Brunei and of timber from North Borneo. It will be interesting to know what steps are being taken to develop further the resources of these territories, particularly in respect of ports and communications, because there seems to be great possibilities of increased production, which will be of service to us all.

The right hon. Gentleman paid a well deserved tribute to the contribution which these Colonial Territories have made and are making to our balance of payments problem and to the rebuilding of our gold reserves. He is absolutely right to do that, but I am disappointed that neither in the Blue Book nor anywhere else have we been told the full amount, the make up and the extent of that contribution. We all know that it is very large, but none of us knows how much it is. I should have thought it was very desirable from the point of view of those territories themselves that they should know how much our improved balance of payments, how much our sterling and how much our increased gold reserves is due to what they have done.

The right hon. Gentleman set up a statistical department last year and that is a good thing. Would not this be a good subject for it to deal with? Let not the right hon. Gentleman be deterred by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There is no reason why the world should not know the details. There is no reason why the world should not know how much Malaya has done towards this problem, or Borneo or the West Coast African territories. It would greatly encourage the people to make their contribution and to create emulation and satisfaction, and also we would not get a false sense of complacency, which might otherwise bear upon us. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider that, and see whether he cannot give us those figures. It will not be a slur upon our own country's efforts to say that the chief factor in the improved gold reserves undoubtedly has been the rise in the volume and prices of exports of raw materials by the free territories with which we are dealing this afternoon. Undoubtedly American prosperity has helped that, and, no doubt, the unhappy tension of Korean affairs will also result in an increased demand for raw materials, but still we should like to see the picture in detail in order to see what has been done.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to staff. I do not want to carry that matter further except to make this suggestion to him. I think it possible in respect of the administrative staff particularly that some of his difficulties of recruitment may be due to uncertainty about the future. That does not apply to anyone on the engineering staff, who can transfer their knowledge to other countries, but it does apply to the administrative staff whose stock-in-trade, as it were, is knowledge of a particular country. It may be that in the light of that, and in the light of the policy which is being pursued, that pension rights should be increased. I do not know, but I think this is an aspect of the matter which the right hon. Gentleman should certainly keep in mind.

In conclusion, I want to say that in listening to the right hon. Gentleman I had a sense of how wide is this landscape and how impossible it is for any of us in the course of the time we can take in the Committee to do any more than touch it with a few broad strokes of the brush. However, in approaching this responsibility this afternoon we should all like to say two things definitely.

The first is addressed to the service over which the right hon. Gentleman presides. We want to tell these people that they have reason to be proud of their achievements in the past year and that they can be sure of our confidence in the still heavier tasks which lie ahead. Let the Committee make no mistake about this; these Far Eastern issues will have their reaction on every single part of the territories over which the right hon. Gentleman has to preside, and it is the officers whose work we are considering today who will have to bear the brunt of explanation, exposition and exhortation in relation to the propaganda which they will have to meet.

The right hon. Gentleman wants to spend more on propaganda and explanation. I think he should not hesitate to do it because we have to carry these people with us not merely by order but in their hearts and in their convictions, and to do that we must give them as much information as they get from other sources. That is the one thing we want to do, to give encouragement and help to the right hon. Gentleman's service.

The other thing is addressed to the peoples themselves, and it is that they have our deep friendship and good will. We hope that that message will go out to them from this Debate and that they will be encouraged to work with us for their own greater future happiness and, as I believe, for the future peace of the world.

I recently read the Annual Report of my right hon. Friend. Anyone who has read it must realise what an enormous amount of activity is going on at present in the Colonial Territories. In most of these territories in the past there was an almost entire absence of finance, and the pioneers who went out there built a few roads and put up a few houses in which to live and gradually built railways, but as a rule they had no general plan because plans did not need to be made. What they had to get first of all were the absolute necessities for carrying out any administration at all.

I am glad to say that funds have been very much increased and that the Colonial Office and the Colonial Territories are now working to overall plans. When one has an overall plan one gets twice as far with the same funds and same energy as one does when one is without an overall plan. I am glad to see that in these plans the Colonies are not depending entirely on aid from the British taxpayer. There are limits to what the British taxpayer can stand or will stand, and it is only right that these Colonies should incur loans, as they are doing, to build up the enormous funds which are required for their development.

I can assure my right hon. Friend from long experience that if the Colonies are made responsible for obtaining their own money and paying a very modest rate of interest for it, they will have more respect for the donors than if the money is ladled out from the British taxpayer as a free gift. My right hon. Friend suggested that more funds would be necessary because the Colonial Development Fund is rapidly being spent. I should not like to guess what funds will be required, but eventually they will have to be enormous. My right hon. Friend should allow the Colonies to raise these funds by loans, for they will appreciate the money better when they have to repay it and pay a slight interest charge on it.

In the last few years a new system has been evolved for developing the Colonies. Two huge Corporations with very large funds have been set up, the Food Corporation and the other Corporation. I consider it an enormous misfortune that the groundnuts scheme has miscarried to a large extent so far. That scheme was needed not only to provide oils and fats for the world but to keep parts of Africa from starvation. In spite of all that has been done, great areas in the Colonies are threatened with starvation today, and it is only by such schemes as these that the Colonies can be developed to provide the food and the exports of oil and such things which will enable them to buy food and other things from outside.

South-East Asia is one of the most prolific parts of the world, and that area is threatened with famine today. Owing to the breakdown in Burma the rice culti- vation of that great rice bowl has fallen roughly by half, and the same thing is happening in Indo-China, and the population of adjacent areas is threatened with famine. As far as our Colonies are concerned, my right hon. Friend has a colossal task ahead even to find food to keep the people alive. It is the same task as we had in the 50 years before we gave up our rule in India.

To enhance the difficulties, a new force has appeared. It really appeared a long time ago, but it has only recently come into prominence. It is the force of Communist imperialism. My right hon. Friend will find himself plagued at every hand's turn by the Communists in the Colonies, the Fifth Column of the Russian Politburo. They are posing as the champions of the coloured races. They are going to "liberate" their friends from the alleged tyranny of my right hon. Friend and when they have done so they are going to reduce them to the state of political serfs. Their propaganda is telling. They are flying the racial flag, which is a very inflammable flag in Colonial territories.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) that we have to combat this Communism somehow or other and that it will be a very difficult task. The general statement which I hear is that all we have to do to combat Communism is to give people enough to eat and drink and to raise their standard of living and then all will be well. I do not believe one word of that. Even if you do raise their standard of living, if they fall for this racial clamour they will become Communists all the same. We want to raise the standard of living as far as it can be done, but there must also be counter-propaganda and counter-instruction.

Because of the difficulties of language and the absence of communications and various other difficulties in the Colonies, I suggest that the chief means is the radio set. By setting radio sets up in public places and thus speaking to the people and telling them the truth at suitable times in the day a great deal can be done. In the House the other day I put a Question about a method which is being tried out in Southern Rhodesia where a very simple and cheap receiving set has been evolved. My right hon. Friend gave me an encouraging answer about the spread of the use of that simple radio set among the people. The two things must be worked together. By all means let us raise the standard of living, but we must also get at the minds of the people as well as their stomachs if we are to combat Communism.

My right hon. Friend is dealing with a population of about 65 million, most of whom are living on a subsistence level, in a terrible state of ignorance and bad health, suffering from malnutrition and various other diseases. The problem is colossal. I know my right hon. Friend well. I have a profound respect for him. I know that he is full of Welsh enthusiasm. He has a colossal task before him. He, the Government and other Governments have launched an enormous crusade to raise the standard of living, physically and mentally, of 65 million people. The French and the Belgians have a similar problem. It is one of the most colossal problems of our time.

Apart from the humanitarian aspects of it and the fact that the creation of wealth where it does not now exist will benefit not only the Colonies but us as well, it is important because it is part of the world struggle against Communism. Communism is cashing in on this colour question, and when my right hon. Friend is fighting disease, poverty and ignorance in the Colonies he is also fighting Communist imperialism.

My right hon. Friend did not mention population, but population is the economic problem of the Colonies. Let us face the facts and state the position. In nearly all the Colonies in the tropics the people, however poor, are able to double their population in 35 or 40 years. Anyone with experience of Indian administration knows of the problem created by the enormous increase in population during our rule from 150 million to over 400 million, and realises how difficult it was to cope with it by increasing the production of wealth comparably with the increase in the number of children who have to be educated, clothed and fed. These people sometimes produce children quicker than the Government or private individuals can produce wealth. The task is easier today when we have new means of producing wealth which we had not when we were ruling India. Modern science and machinery, the bulldozer and so on, are symbols of what can be done. I tell my right hon. Friend that it can be done, but it is a colossal task.

The other day I posed a question to which the Minister did not give me a satisfactory answer. Recently the Barbados Legislative Council set up a committee to consider this terrible problem of population and to devise means for meeting the enormous increase. I suggest to my right hon. Friend that, although these Colonies are not self-governing, the various legislatures should be asked to set up committees of the Council of Elected Members to face the problem, by having responsibility put upon them. I hope he will reconsider that suggestion because it is no use teaching these people to depend on the British taxpayer. They must be taught to face their own problems and rely on themselves.

Since the days when I served in the East the work of the Colonial Office has completely changed. In my day it interfered often in trivial matters of finance and administration and the Colonies had to send all sort of schemes home for approval. The course of events has forcibly changed that, and the Colonial Office today is largely a political office, dealing with administration only in so far as it has to approve of certain administrative acts because the Secretary of State for the Colonies is responsible to the House. That is an excellent change because it leaves the administrative job to the only men who can do it, the men on the spot, who have forgotten more about their Colonies than most people outside are ever able to learn. The thing is to supply them with competent administrators and technicians from this end and let them get on with the work subject to a general control by the Colonial Secretary.

We are all engaged in a wonderful experiment, in a generous and liberal policy in making the vast transfer of power which we have made in India, Burma and Ceylon. We do it with a full heart. We want these people to be independent and self-respecting and we want them to stand on their own feet economically. However, as my right hon. Friend has said, it is useless for these people to expect to be independent and to have responsible government while somebody outside finances the show. I suggest that whatever we do in this great crusade, unless we can overcome the lethargy of the mass of the native peoples concerned, we shall fail. Most of these people have a different philosophy of life from ours. Most of us strive to better ourselves, but a lot of these people do not want to work to do that. We must change their attitude towards life or we shall not succeed in this vast effort.

I said in this House two years ago that it is idle to imagine that Britain—which as regards its area would hardly be missed if it were taken out of vast Nigeria—can develop with its resources these enormous territories, provide social services for 65 million people, educate them, provide all the roads, railways and the rest. It cannot be done. I suggested then, and I suggest now, that the help must come from all the nations in U.N. Following the remarks of the right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington, I would prefer those nations who criticise our Colonial Government, which often is far superior to theirs, instead of criticism on matters of which they know little and of which they speak without any scruple, to put their hands in their pockets and put up the money to finance the enormous development required. Instead of leaving it to Britain and France and Belgium and President Truman's Fourth Point, I suggest that in the U.N. Assembly they be pressed to do this, because they will benefit from the development of these Colonies just as much as the rest of the world.

While it is not so common as it used to be, I often read denunciations of the men on the spot, especially in the Colonial Service and in the Civil Service of India. They were supposed to be the last word in bureacratic inefficiency, to carry blind spots in their eyes, and so on. I speak from experience of the administrative services in many Colonies when I say that we sent out from here some of the picked men of our race, and that no other country in the world has succeeded in sending out to our overseas ruling bureaucracies men of the integrity and ability of these people.

I speak, I think, for most of my party when I say that we thoroughly appreciate the work done in very trying circumstances by these people who bear the heat and burden of the day. We are behind them. I agree with the right hon. Member for Warwick and Leaming- ton that we must make them feel that they have our confidence. Their task now is even more difficult than it used to be. In the old days they went out to West Africa and died like flies. They do not do that today because of medical science. Things were frightfully rough physically in those days but the type of man who went out did not bother about physical inconveniences.

Things are better today in that respect, but the political environment now makes the work ten times more difficult. I remember these men in India and Ceylon and elsewhere being called diehard obscurantists who resisted all advances towards self-government, but the fact is that in the east in the past as in Nigeria and in other countries of Africa today, the natives said that their district officer was their father and their mother. These men are the pick of our race, and I strongly deprecate anyone who runs them down. We are all behind them in the formidable task lying ahead of helping to win this enormous crusade which my right hon. Friend is conducting.

I appreciate very much the privilege of addressing the Committee in this Debate, because I am always deeply interested in the colonies. I trust that the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. T. Reid) will not mind my not following him too closely in what he said. I think we all recognise his ability and his knowledge of the Colonial Service, and know that he speaks from very great experience. I share very much his deep concern about the possibility of the development of Communism amongst the African races. I have been shocked beyond measure by some of the serious examples which have come to my notice and I should like some time to tell the Colonial Secretary about them. It is amazing what development has taken place, particularly in East Africa, during the last year or two and the progress which some of the Communist efforts there have made.

Although my remarks are intended to apply to the Colonies generally, they are bound to relate specifically to East Africa, the Colony which I know so well. I visit it regularly at least three times a year and can, therefore, claim to speak with a little practical experience. In accordance with practice, I should at once declare what interests of mine would benefit from the adoption of any of the suggestions I might make during the Debate. I have considerable business interests in East Africa and I have also a farm there, but I trust that I, personally, will not benefit specifically from anything which I may now say.

I should like to refer to three points in the speech of the Colonial Secretary. He told us much about the possibilities of trade union development in the Colonies. All of us, I think, fully recognise the benefits that will follow from this kind of development, but I beg of the right hon. Gentleman not to overstress trade union development from the colonial point of view. Some Colonies are more developed and are more ready for trade union development than others, and I hope that considerations of this nature will be borne in mind as such developments are sponsored by the Colonial Office.

I should like to add my words of tribute to the work rendered by the Colonial Service, for whom I have the highest regard; they do an amazingly fine job. But I deplore the number of vacancies which exist in the Service. No doubt everything possible is being done by those concerned to try to fill these vacancies, but I feel that much more could be done in the way of publicity. I know from experience that when business vacancies in East Africa arise, one cannot cope with the applications which are received, literally, a thousand at a time. I may be wrong, but my firm belief is that not enough publicity is given to vacancies in the Service as they arise, and that there are very many people who would wish to take advantage of these opportunities if they became generally known.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the forthcoming visit by the Minister of State to East Africa. I, for one, with an interest in East Africa, welcome this further interest displayed by the Government in sending out a Minister who can see for himself the conditions on the spot. There is nothing better than frequent visits of this kind. I appeal, however, to the Colonial Secretary to see that his right hon. Friend does not go out to East Africa with preconceived ideas. On many occasions I have seen Ministers set out with fixed, determined views even before they reach the Colonies, and this can be a very serious matter. I trust that the Minister will, at least, listen seriously to the views that are put to him by the Colonies.

In the disturbed world in which we live today, the Colonies assume an even greater importance in our minds. I am strongly in favour of encouraging as many people as possible to go out to the Colonies and establish themselves there, because I believe that this would be for the benefit of everyone. I like to look upon the Colonies as one large British Isles, and I feel that the more our people are able to find the means to settle in the Colonies, the greater will be the contribution to the betterment of the world as a whole.

We must never forget that the people in the Colonies are our own people, our own kith and kin. I support my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) in stressing that in a Colony like East Africa, our own people, who have done so much out there, must have the complete support of the Government here, so that they know exactly where they stand. There must never be any misunderstanding or lack of appreciation of the way in which they, as pioneers, have developed the Colony to the benefit of all concerned. In a world in which people's minds are being easily poisoned with Communism, we have an opportunity in the Colonies to resist its progress by our own democratic principles. Above all, we hold the fidelity and the loyalty of the people of the Colonies by the continuance of wise British administration.

East Africa is a territory which requires still further consolidation and development. As the Colonial Secretary has said, considerable progress has undoubtedly been achieved—none of us denies that for a moment; but much more can be done, particularly in the provision and improvement of roads, docks, railways, telephones and communications generally. The right hon. Gentleman is, I am sure, well aware of this. I have always supported the idea, in principle, of the groundnut scheme. I know that that subject does not come within the measure of this Debate, but since the hon. Member for Swindon has referred to it, I want to confirm that I have always supported the general principle behind it. The unfortunate way in which things are going at present is, however, very disturbing to many of us who know a lot about this matter. My point is that if the Government, to date, have been prepared to spend£35 million on that one scheme, then how much more could have been done, with far less outlay, to benefit the whole of East African development, even of communications alone?

The development of communications is the responsibility of the Government, and it is entirely wrong that British companies should be expected to install their own. Their energies should be devoted instead to the advancement of their own interests. The development of the country as a whole is the task of the Government and not of the private enterprise interests who go out to the Colonies.

I turn now to the needs of agriculture, a matter which is certainly not restricted to East Africa. However, in East Africa, in particular, it is essential, as the Minister said, to guarantee stable markets for the future. The people, and farmers especially, have to contend not only with the hazards of agriculture, which are well known to farmers in this country, but with the additional hazards of the tropical areas. In order that they may put their best into their efforts, the farmers need to have assured markets for what they produce. The recent pig contract by the Ministry of Food with the farmers of East Africa is undoubtedly a step in the right direction and I am very thrilled to see this achievement being carried into effect.

The position of each Colony should be considered on its individual circumstances. By that I mean that proper regard must be paid to their economic viewpoint. Some Colonies, as we know, depend solely upon agriculture, and others upon sugar. We have to weigh up the pros and cons of the individual needs of each Colony. The circumstances of one Colony may merit more priority and help than another, but, after all, we are really all one family and working for one common cause. I suggest that the principle of the strong helping the weak must apply in colonial affairs. Therefore the agricultural side must be very much safeguarded, for undoubtedly in many Colonies, particularly in East Africa, it is the lifeblood of the people. It is the duty of the Government to provide the basic services and functions and not, as regrettably they have done in this country, to interfere with business. They should keep specifically to the things that support the business community and agriculture and not start interfering in something about which they know nothing. I know that will not appeal to hon. Members opposite, but we believe in the efficiency of private enterprise.

What is the hon. Member advocating?

I am advocating that Colonial Governments, supported by our Government here, should keep to the administering of roads and docks, and so on, and keep out of private enterprise ventures, with which they are not able to cope.

I gathered that the hon. Member was advocating national enterprise in place of private enterprise in the essential services, but in the same breath he said that national enterprise was inefficient. What does he mean?

When we nationalise a service we have to guarantee roads, telephones and everything else. That, in my opinion, is a Government function, but when they start butting in on something else and competing against private enterprise, they are doing the wrong thing and going beyond their bounds.

Will the hon. Member explain what he means by "something else"?

I could give many instances—groundnuts is one—where the Government themselves try to compete by putting up the money and making the position intolerable for private enterprise, while they have all the resources at their disposal. That does not lead to efficiency and cannot do so. I feel that the Government's task is to support business and agriculture and safeguard them from calamity.

An example I put before the Minister is the possibility which could easily befall many East African farmers through the threat of a swarm of locusts. I refer particularly to this danger as it affects East Africa. I do not suppose any hon. Member has not read of, even if he has not seen, the tremendously devastating effects of locust attacks. In my opinion, this is one of the things in which the Government can help. Action can be taken only on a governmental basis, as the farmer cannot go into the wilds of Africa and tackle the locusts himself. I trust that the Government will make a major effort to deal with the menace.

There are two aspects. The first is to destroy the menace itself and the second is to meet the effect when it occurs. In regard to the first aspect, a wonderful job has undoubtedly been done by the Desert Locust Survey. The Colonial Secretary told me on 5th July that

"teams have been at work destroying incipient swarms of locusts in the breeding areas to the north of British East Africa."

I think he would agree that even those great efforts have not, on the face of them, been entirely successful. He also said that

"recent reports indicate that the rate at which locusts are breeding is likely to demand a major campaign to destroy them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th July, 1950; Vol. 477, c. 23.]

I am sure the House will be satisfied that plans are being discussed with representatives of other countries concerned and with Dr. Uvarov, the Director of the Anti-Locust Research Centre. I trust that following these discussions the most urgent action will be taken, as the farmers must be assured that every safeguard is provided to see that their efforts are not destroyed by overnight attacks of locusts.

In the event of attacks occurring, the financial help should be provided to save farmers from complete ruin which an overnight attack can undoubtedly mean. Some scheme for contributions from the farmers could be devised on the lines of our war damage scheme. If the burden on the taxpayers is likely to be very heavy, I feel the farmers would contribute—[HON. MEMBERS: "Well done."] I think this is a serious matter, although it may be humorous to those who are ignorant about it. A farm can be destroyed overnight and that cannot be for the benefit of our country or of the territory concerned. Such a scheme can only be undertaken by a Government; no insurance company could undertake it and it is most unfair that it should be left to individuals. Just before the war some suggestions were put forward, and I hope our Gov- ernment will take the initiative with the Colonial Governments concerned in trying to devise a scheme to meet this terrible menace.

No country that is dependent on an agricultural community can also support its people without the backing of secondary industries. Such industries are essential to support the emigration to the Colonies of the people we need there, the mechanics, artisans and experienced men who are needed in the Colonies for development on sound, economic lines. In East Africa this is undoubtedly an urgent necessity, but to achieve it to the necessary extent and with the necessary speed, a closer link is needed between the Colony and this country. This subject, to my mind, is still not receiving enough serious attention.

One particular difficulty of which I have experience is that manufacturers of canned goods are looking to export markets, and particularly to the British Isles, for the development of their canneries, but they are hampered by uncertainty, especially when the Government is the controlling factor. I would instance the question of sugar, which is an essential ingredient in any cannery. It has risen in price twice in the last year, from 24 cents to 37 cents a pound. The small colonial producer has no chance of success unless he is protected against such catastrophic changes.

This can be achieved only by even closer understanding, and closer understanding can come only from closer association between Colonial Governments and our own Government. It is the duty of the Secretary of State to take the initiative in this respect. Signs of misunderstanding, unfortunately, occur frequently because many irresponsible voices are heard on colonial affairs. The Committee may have heard a statement on conditions in regard to the Suk tribe from an hon. Member opposite, which was aptly described as misleading and harmful by responsible East African people. I am referring to the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) and the reference he made to the Suk tribe.

The responsibility, of course, lies with the Colonial Office to foster a closer liaison between our people and the Colonial peoples in their problems. Matters of importance in mutual trade between the Colonies and this country should be closely co-ordinated. Regulations concerning imports into this country should likewise correspond with Colonial arrangements for export to this country. This is essential in order to avoid confusion which, unfortunately, is still taking place. Facilities for Customs drawback which are enjoyed in this country should also be available in the Colonies to assist exports there. In many respects, the Colonies are not brought into sufficient co-ordination with our own legislation. Fortunately they are at least still behind us in the level of taxation, and if we expect our people in the Colonies to go on and newcomers to go out there and develop those territories, I trust that the level of taxation will not be increased.

I conclude by stressing to the Secretary of State for the Colonies the view that we should give closer guidance to Colonial Governments on problems of industrial development, and give greater help in problems with which they have not the resources in those Colonies to deal.

I wish to limit my remarks to a more restricted field than previous speakers have done. Recently we had a commission of inquiry investigating matters in the Eastern Province of Nigeria. Some of us who are trade unionists were greatly disturbed by events in that part of the world, and we were rather surprised at the delay in publishing the commission's report. Many inquiries were made in this House about what was happening. Eventually, we got the report and we saw recorded there a very surprising account of events in that part of the world. Some substantial charges were made not only against some of the trade unionists there, but also against the Government. This matter has been made the subject of inquiry by the Secretary of State, and as we have subsequently seen there have been despatches between the Governor, Sir John Macpherson, whom some of us have had the pleasure of meeting, and whom we respect as a person, and the Secretary of State himself.

In the report, Colonial No. 256, reference is made in Part III to the Govern- ment of Nigeria. The Commission said—I am quoting from page 13:

"we cannot hold the Government altogether free from criticism. It must be borne in mind that, unlike the case in Britain, Trade Unionism in Nigeria was not of native growth. It was deliberately planted on the people by the British administration as part of the industrial system. … We fear that not all the technical departments were imbued with that faith and idealism"—

which was to be desired. A little further on it is stated:

"Few effective practical steps were taken to attune them to the new trends which called for a different approach."

While I must confess that I have not had the time to study the verbatim report of evidence an objective examination of the account contained in the report from which I have been quoting is somewhat disturbing.

We see here that there was apparently no call from the centre for expert advice. There was a Commissioner of Labour, but matters were largely left to officials on the spot. While something is being done by my right hon. Friend to put the matter on a proper basis we should like to hear more about what took place. We understand from what is taking place today that a Ministry of Labour is to be set up in Nigeria, but we are concerned not only with what happened in Enugu and other parts of Nigeria subsequently; we are concerned that there shall be a proper grip of the social problems in every Colony.

There was a good report—I say that since I had something to do some time ago in compiling it—on these administrative problems in the Colonies. It was published two years ago. I am referring to the First Report of the Select Committee on Estimates on Colonial Development. In that Report we made certain proposals. For example, in paragraph 45, we said that:

"A small permanent Organisation and Methods section should be established in the Colonial Office with the task of continuously studying and reporting on the technique of administration, Colony by Colony."

In their reply, the Colonial Office said:

"For reasons explained in evidence to the Committee it has seemed better to approach this problem in another way. The O and M Division of the Treasury has agreed to arrange a training course in O and M work for Colonial Service officers. The first course, which will last for three months, is due to be held in the spring of 1949."

I will not read the whole extract.

What is happening in Nigeria in respect of trade unionism seems to be happening in other parts of the Administration. When questions are asked about the Colonies, particularly about Nigeria, it is notable that there is an absence of reliable data. For example, does anyone know exactly how many people there are in Nigeria? Is there any kind of statistical department there which has a grip of those facts and figures which are necessary if the territory is to be properly developed? What is happening in Nigeria may, we are afraid, be happening in other parts of the colonial territories or Empire.

In short, are these matters based upon the experience which we have gained since the operation of the colonial development welfare schemes? Are these being co-ordinated and used in such a way, and is a formula being worked out which can be applied in each of the Colonies? It seemed to me, from my reading of the report of the trade union commission, that people who did not understand the subject were handling labour problems. Therefore, I want to be sure, as a trade unionist and as a well-wisher for the rightful development of the peoples in the Colonies, that people in the Colonial Office are getting a proper training in matters relating to trade unionism and social problems of every kind so that when these great difficulties arise, as they will from time to time, we shall not have to resort, except in cases of great extremity, to rifle fire which results in men being shot down, as happened in this unfortunate case.

I know that some people in the police service and other parts of the Administration were castigated and taken to task by the commission of inquiry, and the report was accepted by the Secretary of State. Certain proposals are made for sending out expert advisers, for the setting up of conciliation machinery and boards and arbitration tribunals. But is what happened in Enugu typical of what is happening in other parts of the colonial territories, or are we looking at this problem in the light of the revelations which were made in the case of Enugu and elsewhere?

It is not an easy problem, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Swindon (Mr. T. Reid), who said that we should listen to the men on the spot and give them the maximum of latitude. Their day to day experience must be something unique and special. But let us make quite sure that we are sending out not only people who have come from the secondary schools, from which they have passed into the universities, or who have come out of the Army, but some of the people who appreciate that we are living in days of progress and that new ideas are abroad, men who understand the basic problems of poverty, disease and ignorance and can talk to the people in the territories into which they go in terms of brotherhood and fellowship, and not with the idea of beating down the people there with a big stick.

I know that the best of our men who have gone out there are not like that, but I am afraid that the answers to these problems, which, in the case of Britain, have taken 100 or 150 years to develop, cannot be imposed in an academic way. There has to be a human sympathy about these matters which can only come from men who, born out of our own industry, can go out and help our brothers on the way.

I hope that the events as disclosed will not be glossed over. I hope we shall face up to the fact that certain mistakes were made. I am not going into the whole story, but attempts were made to remove explosives or whatever they were, and nobody actually knew the size of the job. An army of armed police stood around while the men were collecting and waiting to go down in the pit. These poor chaps wondered what it was ail about. They worked themselves up into a frenzy and the incident occurred in a very short time. Any observer will see that in places like Nigeria there are irresponsible elements abroad. In many places we are sitting on the safety valve. Unless an enlightened and informed approach is made we shall hear something more in other parts of the Empire.

I wish to be assured today of what the Select Committee said two years ago that we have sufficient evidence now on which we should be able to base a formula—not applicable as a facsimile to every territory but adapted to local circumstances, because there should be a measure of flexibility—in support of certain basic services technical training, health statistics, education and the rest of it. There should be these things available, and men properly trained and with proper social ideas available to implement them.

I wish to say a word about the relationship between Africans and Europeans in Africa, with special reference to the very great dangers which face the white civilisation in Africa generally, or at any rate in Africa south of Khartoum; and of the relationship between this country and South Africa in this matter. I wish to welcome the statement made by the Minister and the statement by my right hon. Friend from this side of the Committee emphasizing—

On a point of order. Would it be in order for the hon. Gentleman to discuss relations between this country and South Africa? Would not that be more appropriate on a day devoted to discussing the Dominions?

The point was made by the Minister, and echoed by my right hon. Friend, that the white man has rights in Africa. It is so important that this Parliament, so many of whose hon. Members have no experience of living in that country and who are so sympathetic, should not misunderstand and lead other people, and, through our Press and through the local vernacular Press, the Africans themselves, to misunderstand our position generally in Africa. As the Minister said, many of these white people in Africa have been there for many generations. In South Africa, for example—and I will submit to you, Sir Charles, if the point is raised, that this is only by way of illustration because of its effect upon Africa, for we can no more divide Africa and its problems than we can divide peace—in South Africa, for example, the white man is no more an immigrant than the Bantu themselves. It is neither the country of the one nor the other because both came there about the same time.

It is true to say that the Bantu in Africa owe to Europeans much of the very high degree of peace, security and nutrition they now enjoy. Europeans, not merely British Europeans, went out to this country, and after conquest and settlement applied some of the things that they knew, which these other people did not, and in doing so they rendered a great service. Their roots went down and they have become part of the people of that land. Our policy, therefore, should not be based upon a kind of academic trusteeship which regards the role of the white man solely as that of taking care for the time being.

The point I am coming to is this. The Minister appealed to us to be very careful in what we say. All of us, including the Minister himself, ought to be careful of what we say when we talk about transition periods and make speeches, especially when we speak as Ministers and say "We are aiming at self-government. We will push along and teach you fellows here"—in this Colony or that "to attain self government." The primitive man does not understand anything which is not to happen to him immediately. If, after exciting his interest in this matter, he says, "When is this going to be, baas? Is it tomorrow?," and we say, "Oh, it is a matter of history, we are working it out," he does not understand, but thinks we have broken faith. All of us, therefore, had better he careful in speaking about these matters because we are reported and misreported to a very large extent in the vernacular Press.

There is a particular misunderstanding about the native policy in South Africa which I think should be in our minds when we are considering our Colonial Empire in Africa. There are those in this House who are extremely unsympathetic to the policy of apartheid, as it is called. They do not understand that that is not a new policy of a particular party in South Africa, though it is a new name to us.

On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Gentleman to discuss the native policy? I ask for a Ruling, Mr. Touche.

The hon. Member cannot discuss the policy of the South African Government in particular. He can discuss. Africa. References to South Africa cannot be excluded entirely, but it is a matter of degree.

Thank you, Mr. Touche. I hope to be very careful in this matter and not to offend. The point I am endeavouring to make is that Great Britain should be extraordinarily careful in her colonial policy in Africa because a nation in our Commonwealth and equal in status with us, happens to reside at the bottom end of that area in South Africa and also has a native policy. The plea I would make is that His Majesty's Government here in Britain and the Government of South Africa, and the Government in Kenya, and all these other Governments which are either wholly independent, as is South Africa, or to a large extent independent as Kenya is, or even more so Southern Rhodesia, ought to consider their policies the one to the other, as well as all these different parts of Africa and nations interested in Africa.

Primitive people cannot be expected to understand that white men should behave in a different manner in one part from the way in which they behave in another part. If the South Africans themselves do not unite to study this matter and if we do not unite to study these matters with South Africa, Rhodesia and Kenya, then we are running the greatest possible risk of inflammation and threat to the whole of our Colonial Empire which, by a little forethought, might very easily be avoided. Freud said, in writing of the mind, something which I wish to adapt for my purpose when I say that there is in Africa both a conscious and a subconscious Africa. The conscious Africa is a very small percentage of most of the key intellects who have had good education either in a Colonial Office school or a missionary school, and who have perhaps come to England under private scholarships or Colonial Office scholarships. They have learned, as well as they can in the limited years at their disposal, something of our Western civilisation, our way of life and our methods of government.

They go back to their country and genuinely try to carry out what they have learned. They themselves are greatly frustrated by the conditions to which they return. We must not imagine that a civilisation like ours can be learned in one generation—in a few years—even by a few able men. Behind this conscious Africa, conscious of its political growth, and its coming nationhood—race conscious if you like—is a vast subconscious mind 100 or 1,000 times greater in numbers which is not in contact with the outside world to any extent. It does not read the vernacular Press and it is not in any sense ready for the kind of development which can only take place in a very long time.

It is supremely dangerous when Ministers and others appear to make promises which are completely unreal so far as the great mass of these people are concerned. I can perhaps illustrate my argument by finishing the point I was trying to make about South Africa when I was nearly called to order. It is not true that the policy of apartheid in South Africa is a new invention of a particular Government. It is the understanding of the problem and the way of considering the relationship between whites and Africans which has existed in South Africa for some 300 years. That must have its influence upon the territories which are north of South Africa and upon the way in which the Colony of Southern Rhodesia and the territories to the north which, for all I know, may soon be amalgamated with it—

On a point of order. The hon. Gentleman spoke as if I had raised objection to him talking about South Africa. That was not my purpose. I want to be sure that if I am fortunate enough to catch your eye and if I wish to refer to the policy in the Union, I shall not find myself out of order.

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman has been out of order so far, but he has been very near the borderline. I am sure that the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) will have the same treatment.

I wish to make the point that there is a problem for the white man to think about. We are the greatest Colonial Power in Africa and it is extremely unwise for us to misunderstand the policy of so important and so great a Power as South Africa in that Continent. We ought to consult with them at every stage.

I suspect that there are inhibitions in the Government about the setting up of what I call the Central Dominion—Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. I suspect that those inhibitions and doubts in the Government and the Colonial Office arise, to some extent, out of their view of South African policy. That is an example of the way in which understanding between us and South Africa is relevant to a Colonial Debate. My view is that if we are to wait for the setting up of a Central Dominion in Africa until all men of any colour in that Central Dominion can be treated equally in the economic and political field, we shall wait for ever or, at any rate, for such a long time that it will not interest any of us or our children.

It is incredible to anyone who has lived in these countries, or who has stayed there for more than a fleeting visit, to imagine that political equality can possibly be attained, understood or worked by the great majority of the Bantu people, particularly those south of the Zambezi. If all this development which could take place in Central Africa has to wait for that, then we shall waste a great number of our opportunities.

Do I take it that the hon. Gentleman feels that we ought to be sympathetic to the conception of a permanently inferior, subordinate and segregated Africa?

I never said anything of the sort. I think that Cecil Rhodes's doctrine that there should be equality for all civilised men was an extraordinarily good and workable proposition. It is one which the Colonial Office might well adopt or re-adopt. Indeed, to show that I am not so partial as all that to the Malan Government. I wish that they had—

The hon. Gentleman is really getting out of order in discussing the Government of South Africa.

I commend the doctrine of equality for all civilised men to the Minister for application or re-application in the Colonial Empire. It is a doctrine which bears examination. It gives all black men the feeling that there is no technical bar between them and others to the highest rights, including the right to vote, yet it admits a sufficiently small number of them to make the outvoting of the whites by the blacks impossible. [Laughter.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite who laugh only show their great ignorance. They show that they have not lived in these countries and that they do not understand the position.

There may come a time when we can lay down our trusteeship in some of these territories and hand the task over to the Bantu population, but such a time has not yet arrived and it will not arrive in our lifetime. I have lived in these lands. I was brought up in the country and I am a South African citizen, perhaps the only one in this House. It is not right to laugh at these points unless one has been there and had a look at the conditions.

The black man in Africa must continue to develop. He ought to be protected against exploitation and to have proper means of representation. In some instances, he should be represented through trade unions, but not always. One cannot even introduce organisations like trade unions among primitive people without extraordinary care, because the very benefits which the trade unions confer upon people who understand how to work them make them most dangerous in the hands of ignorant men. It is difficult enough for wise and skilled trade union leaders here in Britain, like the Foreign Secretary and Mr. Deakin, to control a few hundred dockers or a few hundred motor drivers at Smithfield. How much more difficult it is for a few Africans, without any tradition or history in this matter and with very little training, to undertake such a job.

I have the greatest admiration for our Colonial Service. They have a high sense of duty almost akin to that of priesthood. They show self-sacrifice. I only wish that some of those in high places in the Colonial Office in London had had personal experience of Africa at some period in their lives. I think that, before anyone becomes head of a department in the Colonial Office—I almost said before he becomes a Colonial Secretary—he ought to have some experience in living among these folk and seeing how charming, amiable, able and clever they are, but also of realising that, in very many respects, they are as children.

We have a great duty in Africa, but there is also a great warning. If we white people, and all the European people who are interested in Africa, do not watch out and consult together, we may, within a measurable time, find ourselves threatened with expulsion from Africa, and it will not be only the white people who would lose by that.

I hope the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir Ian Fraser) will forgive me if I do not follow him into the dangerous waters of racial policy in Africa. I do not wish to incur your dis- pleasure, Mr. Touche, to begin with, and, secondly, it is a very big question, and I want to talk about another matter altogether. I cannot help, however, referring to one point which the hon. Gentleman raised when he said that we must be particularly careful not to regard those who speak for native Africa as representing anything like a large body of opinion out there. The hon. Gentleman said that, in his opinion, these people have not developed, and we all agree that that is so, and that it will be a long time before it will be possible to hand over government to any of these Colonies out there.

On the other hand, what the hon. Gentleman said seemed to me very reminiscent of the kind of thing which I used to hear as a young man about what are now the self-governing Dominions of India and Pakistan, and, quite clearly, we can see now that that point of view was not a very helpful one. We have to help these people to develop so that they will follow along the lines of parliamentary government, with civic rights, in the establishment of which we have set an example to the world. No doubt, in time, they will do so.

This Debate on the administration of Colonial affairs gives us a chance to review our policy in Africa and Asia, and there is no theme which is more urgent. The war in Korea and the Communist domination of China are a challenge to the Colonial Powers to put their houses in order, and I feel strongly that military measures alone will not solve the problem. Communism has a certain natural attraction to native peoples who are still under foreign control, and, in those countries in South-East Asia which are still under foreign control, such as Malaya, in our case, there is an added responsibility for us to see that Communism does not spread there by raising the standard of living of the people. That is the only real remedy.

Some time ago, a conference took place at Sydney at which the Commonwealth nations were represented and which resulted in a proposal that ES million sterling—not a large sum, but quite useful to begin with—should be set aside for technical and economic development in Southern Asia. I understand that there is to be a further conference in Colombo, at which this proposal is to be further examined in detail and the allocations made, over a period of six years, of this sum of £8 million sterling.

I think it is very desirable that we should regard all the Colonies in South-East Asia as one in this matter—those for which we are responsible and those for which the French and Dutch are responsible—because in each of these Colonies the problem is exactly the same. I hope it will be possible for my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary to use this inter-Commonwealth effort to the full, especially with a view to seeing what can be done in Malaya towards raising the standard of living. I entirely agree with what my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, when he stated that the most important thing is to see that the Colony is not dependent too much for its economy on one or two raw materials.

As regards Africa, the point I really want to raise is this. In the Colonial Vote, there is a sum set aside for medical and welfare work. That is very good, but I fear one thing. The sort of welfare and medical work which is being done is going to aggravate the population problem. It sounds a dreadful thing to say, but it is actually true of both Africa and Asia. The more children we save from dying, the more the figures of the population will grow, resulting in even worse conditions, or, at least, conditions no better than they are now. That is the great problem. The situation today is that, in a large part of Africa, one African peasant produces enough food for two, and no more.

Last year, I represented the Parliamentary Scientific Committee at a conference, at Lake Success, of scientists who were considering the application of President Truman's Point Four to the Colonial territories. In his inaugural address, President Truman put forward the special point of offering American assistance for raising standards of living throughout the colonial areas. That is the reason why I have sought the opportunity of addressing the Committee today. At that conference, I had the opportunity of hearing the views of scientists from all over the world, not only our own scientists at the Colonial Office, but also French, Belgian and Dutch scientists, very able men who have great knowledge of these problems of food production, and particularly in Africa.

There are, in Africa, two areas of food production. One is the undeveloped area where there is a very sparse population, and it is in these areas that we find that groundnut schemes are being developed, and where one can also grow cotton and tobacco for the world market to try to help the world economy. In these areas, we are not up against the problem of dealing with native Africans, but, over a very large part of central Africa, we are up against that problem. The population there is very backward indeed, and we cannot introduce any new ideas without a great deal of care and education. Indeed, if one introduces a new crop, one finds in some places the witch doctor coming by night and pulling the plants out to exorcise the evil spirits.

In this area, we find that the problem is on an entirely different basis because there is a great native population. There is, however, as I heard suggested by the experts speaking at Lake Success, a way out. The best way to get the African to accept new methods of cultivation seems to be by utilising the tribal system. The African has cultivated groundnuts for generations, but he has used a very primitive system of rotation. He clears the forest and for three or four years grows bananas and maize, together with groundnuts, and then allows the land to revert again to forest for about 20 years. It is possible, by using the tribal system, to get a new and better form of cultivation introduced into this part of Africa. Seeing that the African has not a very strong sense of private property in regard to land, it would be quite possible to develop a communal, co-operative method of farming based on the tribal system.

I want to ask my right hon. Friend whether it is not possible to try experiments along those lines. Our agricultural experts, together with those of France and Belgium, might be able to work out something like this.

Can the hon. Gentleman tell us what geographical areas he is contemplating for these particular schemes?

Mainly the Congo, but other areas as well.

But the Congo is not a British Colony.

I know it is not. My point is that here is a case of co-operation between the British, the French, and the Belgians.

Would the hon. Gentleman specify what areas of sparse populations he is thinking of inside our Colonial Empire?

I am thinking not of sparse populations, but of large populations. The point I wish to emphasise is that it would be quite possible for us, the French and the Belgians to put our heads together to see how we could raise the standard of agricultural production in these areas of native African population. I suggest, in this connection, that we should take the opportunity offered to us by President Truman's Point Four. The Americans have already begun to do a certain amount of work there.

I see that in the Estimates a sum of a few thousand pounds is devoted to geological surveys. Before one can really know what can be done with a large part of Central Africa, it is necessary to have a geological survey, and that can now best be done from the air. I hope it will be possible to get American help, because we have not a sufficient number of geologists to carry out a widespread geological survey of Central Africa. If that is done, we shall be able to take at least the first step towards the objective I have indicated.

The second thing is the eradication of the tsetse fly which still dominates a very large area of Africa. I understand that United States scientists have been making a survey, and I hope that in co-operation with them we can work along those lines. Further, the African native is very backward in what one might call his animal husbandry. The problem is not an easy one. To provide the African native with animals which can produce milk and meat like those in this continent, we must produce new types. Experiments have shown that it is no use taking cattle from Europe and setting them down in Africa. They cannot stand the climate.

What is wrong with the Zebu?

Experiments are being made of crossing the Zebu with the Guernsey. When I was at Beltsville research station, near Washington, last August, I learned that they were doing this. There, again, is something in which, I hope, we can co-operate with our friends in the United States. I suggest that in this matter the right hon. Gentleman consults with experts.

Does not my hon. Friend feel that he ought to pay some tribute to the work already being done on these lines in Northern Nigeria where they breed the Sokoto goat for Morocco leather, and where the control of rinderpest is taking place? He should at least pay tribute to what is being done by ourselves.

I will certainly do that, and I am sorry that I did not do so. I hope the Committee will not object to my making these suggestions. They were subjects which we discussed at the conference I attended. I know that some of our experts are working on these problems, but a great deal more can and must be done.

Although we cannot discuss the groundnut scheme in this Debate, the lesson of that scheme up to the present shows that we must make adequate surveys before launching out on a large scale. As I have already said, groundnuts have been grown in Africa for generations past, but only under very primitive methods of rotation. We must find out much more about the nature of the soil, and the possibility of water retention in the soil before we can launch out on any large scheme. But there is no doubt that a great deal can be done. The growing of groundnuts and the extension of cotton and tobacco growing in these areas are absolutely vital.

I hope, therefore, that in the remarks I have made I have struck a new line. I suggest that these are ideas which can be followed further, as a means by which the population of Africa can be enabled to produce enough food to keep themselves in a decent state of living. If the welfare and medical work which is going on lowers the death-rate of children we shall be faced, increasingly, with the problem of raising food production. If we are to avoid political unrest and difficulties of that kind, this is the fundamental problem which must be tackled by all colonial countries.

I usually enjoy the speeches of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Philips Price), but I found it difficult to follow him today, partly because he was largely inaudible on these benches. I hope that, in future, he will not use the expression "native people." That is an expression which is much resented. There are plenty of other expressions he could use. The other point, on which I should like to challenge him, is the suggestion that economic help alone can stop Communism.

I hope that when the hon. Member challenges my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West, about this description of the Africans, he will also deal with the expression "primitive peoples" used on the benches opposite.

That expression is quite different. There is no suggestion of patronage about it. It is a well known scientific expression.

I never suggested that economic help alone would stop Communism. I said "together with military measures."

That must have been one of the bits I missed. When the suggestion was made that more economic help should be given in order to break Communism, the hon. Friends of the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West, cheered. Let me develop the point, because there are many other hon. Gentlemen who believe it. Although it is our aim and objective to raise the standard of living, do not let us delude ourselves that we can prevent the spread of Communism in Asia or elsewhere merely by giving economic help. For one thing, we have not the economic help to give, and events of the past few days in Korea have shown that a bowl of rice cannot stop a Russian tank; and South Korea, helped by America in the past five years, was unable to resist armoured divisions. Whatever we are able to do in South-East Asia, or anywhere else, in the way of economic help will not, by itself, prevent the spread of Communism.

It is a very serious state of affairs that we cannot get enough men in the Colonial Service, and it is not for the reason which the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies gave—full employment in this country.

That was not the only reason I gave.

No, but it is a reason that came very glibly from the lips of the right hon. Gentleman. There is something else as well—I do not know whether it is pay, conditions of work, or uncertainty. Certainly, in the case of the administrative service, men who have no technical qualification behind them should have a guarantee that, if for any reason whatever, such as because of self-government, their careers are terminated in the Colonial Service, there is a niche for them in the Service here. I started my life in the administrative service of the Colonies, but if I had a son I would not let him follow me. I might make him a doctor or an engineer.

Under the National Health Service?

The right hon. Gentleman might also consider the question of pensions. There are many colonial pensioners today who have not been able to acquire a home in this country, as the home civil servants have been able to do, and have not enough to live on.

What interests those of us who have taken part in Colonial Debates for years is the way in which, as time has gone on, the differences between the two sides of this Committee and the House have decreased.

Increased.

Perhaps in the mind of the hon. Member, but not in the minds of his hon. Friends. There have been differences, perhaps, about our methods, but not about our aims. It does not make very much difference now to the development of the Colonies what political party is in power in this country. In the constitutional field, in the last 10 years, the greatest single advance ever made was when my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley), whose absence we all deplore, was Secretary of State for the Colonies. That was when he granted a constitution to Jamaica, with full adult suffrage, without any bars of colour, race or education. All subsequent advances have been based very much on that.

In the economic world we find the curious inversion, as so often occurs in British political life, that the Colonial Welfare and Development Fund, which has an element of charity in the good sense about it, was brought in by the Coalition Government, which was very largely Conservative, whereas what we might call the "hard-boiled" way of deal- ing with economics—the Colonial Development Corporation—was brought in by friends of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister. It was rightly brought in, for both have their place. It does not matter, either, who is in political power with regard to agricultural and medical research services. The mosquito has never heard of Transport House, or of the Conservative Central Office.

Perhaps the greatest progress recorded in this Report is the spectacular advance in medicine. One reads, for instance, that in Singapore the death rate is the same as in this country; and in the West Indies the expectation of life has gone up by 15 years since 1920. I can remember the tropics when one's servant at the same time as he put down the cruet put down the quinine bottle. Happily, those days are over for ever.

There are two points on the economic side of the Report. One was referred to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden). It is that more credit should be given, possibly not by the Secretary of State but by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to the extent to which our economic position in this country in the past six months has improved, not because of what we have done, but because of the increased prices obtained for colonial products. The dollar price of rubber—not the sterling price—has risen by nearly 30 per cent. in the last year. I hope most of us know, by this time, that Malaya last year earned us more American dollars than the total exports of the United Kingdom put together. Let us realise—and we ought to tell our constituents—that, if we lost Malaya, we should have to do without our breakfast in this country. If people realised that, they might give due credit to what has been done by the Colonial Office and the people of the Colonies.

In view of that, wilt the hon. Member agree that the amount of money given under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act is a small price to pay for the great advance we have had?

Yes, and I was very glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman say he would not hesitate to come and ask for more, and I hope he will get the support of all of us. While there may be no political bias in this Report, I believe that what it says on page one may have an unfortunate effect. It refers to the Colonial Development Welfare Act and its fund to supplement local resources, and to the Colonial Development Corporation and its authority to borrow from the Treasury for projects, and goes on:

"It is mainly through these two instruments (that is, the Colonial Welfare and Development Fund and the Colonial Development Corporation) and through continuing guidance in the art of Government and administration, that the Colonial peoples are being helped to achieve self-government by their own efforts."

I agree there; but it is unfortunate that there is not the slightest reference there, and hardly any reference elsewhere, to private enterprise. I do not mean private enterprise in what I call the bogey sense in which hon. Gentlemen opposite so often talk about it. I mean in the general sense. After all, we have private enterprise in the Colonies by the Colonial peoples themselves. We hope, too, that the Americans will help us with many more developments. Do not let us be too churlish in admitting the extent to which private enterprise in its best sense has helped with the development of the Colonies in the past and its necessity in the future.

I want to say a word about the Press, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington referred. I ask any hon. Member who may have any doubts on the subject to read the West African Press for about a month. They are not newspapers at all. There is no news in them. It is just scurrilous abuse of the administration, of the Government and of the Colonial Office here. All of us should be reluctant to interfere with the freedom of the Press, but I think something has got to be done about this, and I believe the best way to do it would be to appoint a Royal Commission to go out and have a look. The last Parliament did not hesitate to appoint a Royal Commission to look into the Press here. Let us have a Royal Commission to look into the Press of the Colonies.

I should like to say a word about trade unionism, because I am worried about its development in the Colonies. Nobody can pretend that trade unionism has been a success in the Colonies. Merely because trade unions in this country have been honestly run, merely because they sprang, in the first instance, from a great sense of idealism, it does not mean that that system can be transplanted to the Colonies without any alteration. There are two dangers to trade unionism which this country has fortunately largely avoided. First, it may become very quickly dominated by the Communists, and that is exactly what happened in Malaya. The second danger is that trade unionism may be run by a bunch of racketeers who start the unions not for the benefit of their members but for the benefit of themselves. That danger has occurred in Nigeria. Where the Government have got over those two difficulties, we find what is happening in Malaya today—namely, that no one joins the trade unions.

The figures the right hon. Gentleman gave the other day were most revealing. In the Federation of Malaya only 5 per cent. of the people eligible to join the trade unions had, in fact, done so. In Singapore it was not very much better. I suggest that the Government should not look at this matter from behind blinkers. Trade unionism is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. There is no magic in a man calling himself a trade unionist. The object of trade unionism is to see that labour is protected from exploitation. If I might remind hon. Members opposite, the worst form of exploitation in the Colonial Empire is from their own people, not from the outside employer. One can generally keep an eye on him. It is exploitation from the local employer of labour which has to be watched. It may be that trade unionism on the British model is not suitable to the Colonies at all. I think this is a particularly appropriate responsibility for a Labour Government. During their term of office, without any prejudices at all, they should carry out an investigation into labour relations throughout the whole of the Colonial Empire.

I want to say a word about constitutional progress and defence. This Report has quite a lot to say about constitutions and also about economics, but I fear that in the dangerous world in which we live today, and in the even more dangerous world to which we are doomed to live for the next two or three years, these matters, important though they may be, will have very little relevance. It is not much good talking about ballot boxes if a country is going to be over-run by Communism. When the right hon. Gentleman went to Malaya he discovered that for every person who was interested in ballots about a thousand were interested in bullets.

With regard to defence, it is a very sad commentary that today the total Defence Forces of the whole of the Colonial Empire could not between them stop the North Korean army. It is not much good saying that the home country is responsible for defence. It is, but can we fulfil it? Although it is not strictly the responsibility of the right hon. Gentleman, except in an oblique sort of way, I feel that he has the responsibility of making the Cabinet realise that the Colonies cannot defend themselves. What a thousand pities it is that we have not built up a great Colonial Army in the last five years.

In conclusion, I want to refer to the wider question of the defence of the Commonwealth as a whole. Up to now we have given the Colonial peoples to understand, more by implication than by statement, that self-government had no strings attached to it whatsoever and that it implied the unchallengeable, right to leave the Commonwealth, whatever might have been the effect not only on themselves but on the Commonwealth as a whole. Today factors of security must be in our minds, and I was glad to hear the right hon. Gentleman, in his reference to Malaya, make it quite clear that in his mind self-government meant self-government within the Commonwealth. He has taken exactly the same attitude with regard to Cyprus, and in the recent declaration with regard to the plebiscite. It says in the Report:

"Since there was no question of any change in the sovereignty of the Island the issue on which the people of Cyprus were being asked to exercise a choice did not in fact exist."

We should have no hesitation in saying that. The Americans have not in Hawaii, Porto Rico, in the bases in the British West Indies, the Panama Canal, and now in the Caroline Islands. We ought not to hesitate to say that some things are, for the time being, anyway, undiscussable subjects.

There is another reason for this. If we want the moderate elements in the Colonies to co-operate with us, we shall not get that co-operation if we let the impression grow up that we are about to leave the Colonies. The right hon. Gentleman himself made it quite clear—I think after his visit to Malaya—that almost everybody said one thing to him: "We are not worried about constitutions. We are not worried about trade unions. What we want to know is, are you going to get out?"

I hope the hon. Gentleman is not saying that nobody discussed these other things with me, such as trade unions. A large number of people did.

I should not like to say anybody did, but I think the right hon. Gentleman will agree that the impression he gave the Committee was that nearly everybody who addressed him while he was was there wanted to know whether we were going to stay in the country. If they know that we are, they will co-operate with us. If we are not, they will have to make the best terms they can with the Communists.

I only want to get it clear. The hon. Gentleman seems—if I am wrong I will withdraw at once—seems to be misrepresenting what I said. What I said has no relation to what he is saying now.

I should not like to misrepresent the right hon. Gentleman. Let me put it in these words. I do not think I am misrepresenting him when I say that the enormous percentage of people in Malaya were anxious to know whether the British were going to leave Malaya or not. What the percentage was, I do not know. However, that was the impression I got from what the right hon. Gentleman said—and not only from what he said but from the local Press, also.

We are today reading a Report which very largely deals with our successes, and we are all proud of them; but do not let us forget that we have had our failures. To my mind, the largest single failure in the British Colonial Empire is that we have very largely failed to carry the intellectuals with us. To that type of man the British connection has always been regarded, I am afraid, as something temporary, and, to a certain extent, it seemed to them to imply a status of inferiority. Our success or failure surely depends on our creating such a state of affairs as this, that a man from West Africa can get up and say, "I am a British subject," and mean the same thing and with the same pride as we when we say it ourselves. The King cannot have first-class and second-class subjects.

I think there are many reasons for this failure, perhaps. Perhaps it was colour consciousness both here and in the Colonies. I am glad to hear of what the right hon. Gentleman is doing for the colonial students here in London. There is no more important job today than to see that these young men and women who come over here should see the best of our way of life. They will not see the best of our British way of life at the wrong end of Tottenham Court Road. It may be the system of education itself. If we are going to see the British Empire continue, we must take account of our failures as well as our successes. One of the reasons, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington pointed out, is that we have given undue weight, I think, to the town dweller who could talk, while forgetting the peasant who did not know how to express his case.

Someone has said that the British had three Empires and that we are now making our fourth. What I think we have to learn today is that, as a result of Communism becoming a world force, as a result of the heady wine of nationalism, as a result of all the upheavals that have taken place in the world, the old ideas may no longer suffice; whether it be in the making of constitutions, the growth of trade unions, or the relations of the Colonies with each other, in defence and other things, I hope we shall never lack the courage to break new ground if and when it is necessary.

I think that all of us were glad to hear from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) that this is not the only occasion on which we shall be discussing this extremely wide and important problem of Colonial affairs. There has been a certain amount of adverse comment on this side of the Committee, and also among people concerned about Colonial affairs outside this Chamber, that this Debate on Colonial Affairs, the choice of the day for it lying with the Opposition, has now, I think for the fourth—I am certain that it is for the third and I think it is for the fourth—year in succession come on a day when many hon. Members have social duties elsewhere.

On this occasion it is not a Royal Command; but it has happened in previous years; and it may seem an unfortunate coincidence that the subject of Colonial affairs should, year after year, come up at a time when hon. Members have other preoccupations, and when some of them have their wives with them who also demand a little attention. It creates a slightly unfortunate impression among some of our Colonial friends.

It is pure coincidence. We did avoid the Garden Party day on purpose. This day was fixed some time ago. We did not fix it on purpose to conflict with anything else.

I am very glad that it did not come on the day of the Garden Party this year, but it has happened in previous years that this Debate has coincided with social occasions. Today, we have not a Royal Command, but we have an invitation from Mr. Speaker and his lady that many of us regard as being next only to a Royal Command.

In the few remarks I can make in the time which I intend to take up, I would take as my text a sentence in paragraph 56 of the Report, which says:

"In the ultimate issue the Commonwealth must stand or fall by the way its people feel about each other."

I should like to emphasise the point already made by my right hon. Friend and by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Gammans), that we have a special and a most urgent duty towards the colonial students who are in this country. We have at present some 4,000 students, of whom approximately 1,500 are on public scholarships; the others are private students. That is a large number. They are here mostly for a very short period; some for one, some for two, and some for three years. The urgency of the problem is this: that when they return to their own countries, they will, of course, be regarded in some sense as leaders, and if they should go back feeling that they have in any way been treated in an unfriendly or unfair way in this country they will be potential disturbers of the peace out there—I do not mean in any sense of violence, but in the political and social climate out there.

I believe that many Members of this Committee will have read that interesting report of the National Union of Students which they undertook, in Manchester, on the conditions in which overseas students live. I very much hope that the National Union of Students will continue the work which they have started in Manchester, and extend their inquiries to other university centres, not only because I think it is a very important thing to focus attention on this problem of the social conditions in which students live, but also so that some misapprehensions in the minds of the overseas students themselves may be cleared up.

Some of the grievances which they have are not, in fact, necessarily peculiar to them, but apply to other students as well, and it is extremely important that they should not feel, every time they have some little slight, that it is necessarily based on race prejudice. For example, the Report speaks of the difficult question of lodgings and private landladies, and makes it clear, that difficulties in obtaining such lodgings in Manchester were not always due to racial prejudice. My right hon. Friend may be interested to know that certain landladies were quite prepared to take coloured students, but would not have Polish or Welsh students on any account.

I think there may be some advantage both ways if we throw a little more light on to these student problems in this country. I am glad to say that, from such inquiries as I have made, the change of responsibility from the Colonial Office to the British Council for the immediate administration of student welfare seems on the whole to be a success. As far as I can learn, there have been definite improvements. I am extremely glad to know that in London the new university hostel is to have a proportion of our own students living with the overseas students, some of whom will themselves ultimately, we hope, be joining the Colonial Service. They will therefore have an opportunity here in this country of making friends with many of the African and other people with whom they may later work.

There is another aspect I should like to stress, if I may. I do not, as a rule, make feminist remarks, but I strongly feel that we must pay considerable attention to the education of women, because I am certain that some at least of the social difficulties—and they are considerable—in the Colonial territories are due to the fact that we are educating the men and changing their mental outlook in many ways, sometimes very rapidly, while the women are not always keeping up with them.

I understand that in, for example, West Africa, the Gold Coast Government are now encouraging the wives of scholarship holders in this country to come to this country for a time so that at least they will have some personal knowledge of conditions here, and will be able to be much better companions for their husbands when they return home. I know that that cannot always be done, for family reasons, but I think it is an important consideration, partly for this reason: that whatever we do in this country—and it is of the most supreme and urgent importance, and the responsibility of every one of us here—it is also very important to consider the social conditions these students may expect when they return home.

The hon. Member for Hornsey said, very truly, that we have failed, by and large, to capture the allegiance, loyalty and faith of the educated classes in the overseas territories. That is surely largely because of social conditions, and I should like to give just one illustration. Last week, I was discussing the problems of colonial education with a member of the staff of one of our British universities, who, last year, visited a part of West Africa and wished to discuss problems with his own former students—students who were themselves graduates of a British university. He said that his European host would not invite these students to his home; this man was not able to meet them at the club, where there was no room set apart for entertaining African visitors; he could not take them to the hotel; and in order to discuss problems with his own students he had to walk up and down the street. We cannot expect loyalty, faith and allegiance when educated people, graduates of universities, return home to those conditions.

When I was discussing further the social contacts between Europeans and Africans my friend said, "There is among the younger generation, in particular, a considerable desire to increase social contacts with Africans, but you must remember that on both sides one of the difficulties is the women." As I have said, the African women are not always educated up to the standards of their husbands. In addition, the wives of our young colonial officers go out there not necessarily because they feel they have any mission in the Colonies, and I am certain that a good deal of the social difficulties which arise is due to the attitude of the wives of colonial administrators.

Now I know that is not an easy problem to tackle. These appointments to the Colonial Service are not joint appointments, and I suppose we have no right to demand that the wives of colonial administrators should undergo training themselves. But, in so far as anything can be done unofficially, and not too obtrusively, I think it is most important that it should be done, because we have not much time to lose in this matter. We are bringing more and more students to this country, and consequently more and more are returning to their own territories feeling that they have social rights as well as the right to exercise their intellectual powers, but they are being frustrated in that regard.

I hope that we shall not only do our duty on this very important question of colonial student welfare in this country, but that we shall impress upon all our administrators, and indirectly upon their wives too, that these people are educated people, that they are products of our own universities, and that they should be treated as such in their own territories.

There are just two points made by the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) that I should like to take up. The first is the question of the day chosen for this Debate. I am bound to say, knowing the Colonial Empire and the British Empire fairly intimately, that it has always been a surprise to me that we were allotted only one day to debate this most important subject. Being a new Member I do not know much about how these things are arranged, but if the Opposition give up one Supply Day I should have thought it might have been possible for the Government to give another day of their time, because we are discussing the Colonial Empire, which is one of the most important problems of British administration today, and which will increase in importance. I hope that perhaps in future we may have more time allotted.

With regard to the hon. Lady's suggestion about the wives of officials, I can assure her that the wives of officials in the Colonial territories have enough to do in looking after their husbands, who lead a very strenuous life in their work. It is very difficult for wives, particularly, to take part in social activities as suggested by the hon. Lady. It may well be desirable, but there are very great difficulties. I sincerely hope that there will not be created the impression that the majority of the wives of colonial officers have any objection to such social activities. The real difficulty is that they really do not have the time.

rose—

I cannot give way because I want to be very brief, and to talk as quickly as I can, devoting all my remarks to East Africa only.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey touched on a most important problem, and as far as East Africa is concerned I feel that it is the most important problem facing us today—the lack of administrative officers. I find that most disturbing. I think that every hon. Member who knows and has seen at close quarters the Colonial Service will agree that these officers are a first-class body of men. The principal administrative officer is the district commissioner, assisted by the young assistant district commissioner. There are not nearly enough of those officers, or, indeed, of the most senior officers, the provincial commissioners, in East Africa. That has been the situation for a long time. What is the result? I feel very strongly that the fact that there are not enough of those officers going about the territory is one of the main reasons why there is so much unrest in East Africa, and, indeed, in other parts of the Colonial Empire. I stress most strongly to the Secretary of State hat everything must be done to bring up to strength, and even to increase, the quota of administrative officers. In my view, that is the most important factor in.he whole administration.

Next in importance in East Africa are agricultural officers, and then the veterinary officers, and I shall say why when I leave the administrative side and come to economic development. In my view that is the order in which we should concentrate on these matters. First and most important are the administrative officers. Give them the most attractive terms of service possible because they are the Key pin to the whole scheme of things in East Africa. Next there are the agricultural officers and then the veterinary officers. I do not decry the need for scientific and technical officers. These are undoubtedly necessary, but they cannot perform their work properly unless the administration is working smoothly, and we can only get that by choosing men of the highest calibre, as we have done in the past, and by making the service properly attractive. I believe that we can get them in the very near future, and I suggest that that should be done as quickly as possible.

I turn to the economic development of East Africa. In my view, from six years' experience in that territory, in business covering a very wide field. I am strongly of the opinion that economic development must primarily be agriculture. That, I believe, is the whole basis of the economy of that territory. Believing that, I am rather surprised to find that there is very little mention made in the report of a most important subject. It is only mentioned briefly in paragraph 250, namely, the important question of soil erosion. That is one of the great problems that faces not only East Africa, but the whole of the African continent.

It may interest hon. Members to learn of a very small experience of his tremendous menace which came under my own notice. One of my activities was in connection with the ginning of cotton, and one of my ginneries was in the North-East province of Uganda. When I first went there, in 1931, the manager of that ginnery had his bungalow in the compound and a very nice garden. In 1937, when I was on the point of leaving, that garden had completely disappeared. The desert had crept around it. I was absolutely staggered, as I think anyone would be. There we have this very grave and tremendous problem of soil erosion. I hope that we can obtain an assurance from the Secretary of State that particular attention is being paid to this most important question.

I was interested to read in the Report that experiments were being made with fertilisers. That is an ancillary problem and these experiments would help with the major problem of soil erosion. There has not been, in my view, nearly enough experimental work done with fertilisers in East Africa. I think that is one of the most important matters connected with agricultural economy.

May I give one example from my own experience? Apart from cotton ginning, I was growing tea, rubber, coffee and also tobacco, and the manager of the plantation carried out a most interesting experiment with fertilisers and its effect on tobacco growing. We put down a blank experimental plot and three other plots with various types of balanced fertilisers obtained in conjunction with the research department of a very important firm in this country. From one plot with a special balanced fertiliser we obtained no less than three crops of tobacco a year as against one from another fertilised plot and only half a crop from the blank plot which had not been treated with fertiliser. That is a small experiment, but one which I regard as of great significance, and an example of the importance of developing fertilisation by artificial means.

I do not propose to talk about the groundnut scheme at the moment. I am hoping that at some later date that may be fully discussed in the House. But there are other crops upon which that money could well have been spent to help not only the European growers, but also the African growers. In East Africa, tea is a most important product, grown mostly by European planters and by some of the great companies in the country. There is also the question of African crops grown by the Africans themselves. Groundnuts are by no means a new crop in Uganda for the Africans have been growing them there for a long time and know a lot about them. That is why, in my opinion, if we are to start a new crop it should be mainly from African growing with scientific officers helping them in research and experiment to adapt the best methods of cultivation.

May I ask for information? It may be that the Secretary of State will not be able to give it to me quickly because I have not given him notice of the question, but if he thinks that it is important enough, and he cannot get the information today, perhaps he will let me have it later. I would like to make a point with regard to the principal industry in Uganda, namely, cotton. The Report states that the cotton crop for 1948–49 was 380,000 bales. This year, owing to the drought, there will be a substantial loss, and the crop will probably be round about 300,000 bales of 400 lbs. each. This is not a very great advance, because 16 years ago the crop of Uganda cotton was roughly in the region of 300,000 bales, and that seems to indicate that there has not been enough concentration on this most important crop, in fact, the most important crop in Uganda at the present moment.

I read with surprise that last year's crop of something like 380,000 bales had been sold to the Raw Cotton Commission and also to the Government of India. I would like to have seen all that cotton coming to Liverpool, because it is quite suitable cotton being between American middlings and Egyptian. Surely, in these days, every ounce of material which we can get for the textile industry should have gone to our own textile industry and not to India, where, I presume, it is an unrequited export.

Before leaving the question of the cotton industry, may I say that I was delighted to learn from the Under-Secretary the other day, in answer to a Question of mine, that the price stabilisation fund stands at just over £7 million sterling? When the cotton pool for East Africa was formed in 1934—and, incidentally, I know a good deal about it, because I played a leading part in its formation—its purpose was to build up a fund from the cotton prices and cotton ginning to help in the welfare of the Africans themselves.

The Under-Secretary has said—and I was very glad to hear it—that the Africans in Uganda had started their own ginnery, and I understood him to say that part of this money was to be used for that purpose. I am delighted to hear that that experiment is being tried, and I hope that it will be properly supervised because the Africans in Uganda have tried, from time to time, to do their own ginning and have lost a tremendous amount of money. I hope, therefore, that the experiment will be carefully watched by the agricultural department of the territory or by the Administration. It is a very important experiment, and I hope that it will meet with great success.

May I interrupt the hon. Member?

I do not want to exceed my time.

I only wanted to say that I am in touch with these Africans, and that they will very greatly welcome technical aid and assistance.

I know them from my contacts with the Africans there. I used to discuss this problem with them from time to time, and I hope—I have always advocated this—that they will get supervision because the cotton ginning end is a very tricky business. It is not so tricky now on the selling side, because there is no hedging, because the Liverpool Cotton Exchange has been foolishly shut down. I hope that every opportunity will be given for the Africans to make a success of their own ginning.

The second field of advance for African economy lies in its mineral wealth. I confess that I am in slight disagreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Frederic Harris), here. He was in favour of the development of secondary industries, whereas I am doubtful whether any secondary industries would be really prosperous in East Africa. There was a suggestion at one time of having a textile spinning and weaving industry, but the real trouble about the development of secondary industries is the small local market. I doubt whether any secondary industry would be a great success for that reason.

I come now to the social and constitutional question. There has been a tremendous amount of work done by Government officials, by the mercantile community and by missionaries of all denominations, on the social side. I believe that that work should be allowed to continue and should be encouraged, and that any work done by the Government should supplement the excellent voluntary work that is done by these people. I stress that the social and constitutional development of East Africa can only follow strong and sound economic development. That is the right way to tackle this most important problem. It would be wrong to allow the East Africans to be led to think that they will have self-government in a very short time. That would not only be wrong but quite dishonest. We should make it very clear that the aim of the British Government is to bring the Africans along with us in a real partnership. That is the right way to develop constitutional progress.

In passing, may I say that although it is true that the Secretary of State stressed the importance of being very careful in what was said about the important question of immigrants, he rather disturbed me in what he said? I hope it will be made plain that the British people, the Government officials, the missionaries and the mercantile community have made a great contribution in that part of the world, and that there must be no question of going back and looking upon the British settler, who, in Kenya, has now reached the second or third generation, as an immigrant. I was very disturbed at the tone of the Secretary of State's mention of this very important point.

The real way to social and constitutional development in East Africa is through the old but wise expression "hasten slowly." I regard the Africans as a very great people. They are kindly, lovable and possess a great sense of humour. Above all, they are loyal to the British people. I will give one example which is rather interesting. If one talks to the older Africans in Tanganyika territory who were under the rule of Germany years ago and ask them what they feel about the British people and the Germans, they always refer to the Germans as "Bwana Boche" and to British rule as "Bwana King George." When one asks whether they would rather be under Bwana Boche or Bwana King George, they always reply, "Bwana King George." When asked why, they say, "Because Bwana King George is kind and just." That is the greatest tribute that can be paid by these great people to the people of this country for the work we have done and, I hope, shall continue to do.

The enemies of democracy and of this country have had a very good afternoon if they care to use the speeches which have come from Members opposite, from which I do not exempt the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. G. B. Craddock), who has just spoken. His ideas about the Colonial Empire are conditioned, of course, by his experience there. Members opposite always seem to assume that any Member who speaks on this side knows nothing at all about Africa, has not been there, and ought to be very careful in what he says lest he tends to disturb the respectful blacks who pull their forelock and say "Yes, Bwana."

I listened with interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) who quoted Freud. He need not have gone back so far. He need only have gone back to Hitler. His gospel was that of the herrenvolk. The hon. Member does not need to worry about Freud. The same race theory was put forward, although not in the same crude way, by the hon. Member for Spelthorne.

Is the hon. Member suggesting that I am taking the line that Hitler would have taken in regard to the African people?

Of course.

Then I will not make any comment.

What the hon. Member does not understand, and what the Tory Party do not understand, is that the difference between the philosophy of one class born to rule and the rest to serve, and the philosophy of one race born to rule and the rest to serve, is the difference between 11½d. and 1s. When the hon. Member talks about the "Bwana" business, he is talking about the master race attitude towards a subordinate people.

The hon. Member is entirely wrong. "Bwana" is a courtesy term, the same as if I met the hon. Member outside I would call him "Mr." That is a courtesy which I have always been brought up to respect.

The hon. Member for Spelthorne knows perfectly well the circumstances in which the white settler lives, and that when the black boy calls the white man "Bwana" it is not just a mark of respect. I know what happens to the black boy if he does not call the white man "Bwana," and I know what happens in India if the Indian did not call the white man "Sahib." I have seen it happen many times. I have been in Kenya and Uganda, as well as in India.

The speeches we have heard this afternoon were extremely interesting, and I hope my hon. Friend, when he replies, will repudiate the conception of colonial administration which has been put forward, and specifically the ideas which were put forward by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser), because I am quite certain that we have no future at all in looking after our colonial peoples if we do not repudiate specifically the ideas which are being played around with in South Africa, and which are dependent upon the permanent domination of the white race over coloured people.

I remember perfectly well the words of the hon. Member for Spelthorne. He hoped that the day of self-government for these Colonial people was a long way off. Those are not the sentiments of the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley). He was Secretary of State for the Colonies away back in 1943, and I have paid my tribute to the sincerity of the right hon. Gentleman, when, on behalf of the Conservative Party, he honestly and genuinely meant to lead the backward people along the road to self-government. The opening words in this Report are not the words which were first uttered by a Socialist Colonial Secretary.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West, is not here, may I say that I am sure he would feel that he would not wish to receive a tribute at the expense of misrepresentation of my hon. Friends.

I do not wish to qualify what I have got to say by anything which the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) might say, and I am not paying a tribute to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bristol, West, because I think he wants it. He does not want it. He is my political opponent and I would destroy him if I could. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hitler."] Of course I would destroy him politically. I pay him that tribute, because I believe that during his period as Colonial Secretary he laid the foundations upon which Mr. Creech Jones built. I would go on and say that I hope it will not be long before he is well enough to be back again in the House.

And be Colonial Secretary.

If the right hon. Member for Bristol, West, is Colonial Secretary and he puts forward a policy similar to that enunciated from the benches opposite this afternoon, then the end of the British Commonwealth of Nations is not very far off, because if it is thought that the African can be held in permanent subjection on the basis of the philosophy put forward by the hon. Member for Spelthorne, and the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale, or indeed on the philosophy of the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. F. Harris), hon. Members opposite are making a great mistake, and they are completely out of touch with the forces working in a modern world.

I entirely agree that one has to be cautious when one is talking or starting off on schemes which are either a political or economic experiment, but we have got to keep our eye on the goal of self-government, and not only that, but translate words into deeds. As my hon. Friend the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) said earlier, one of the great tragedies of British administration is that while we seem to have a flair for arousing and retaining the confidence of people who are just emerging from ignorance, and people who have made their first impact on modern civilisation, there is something missing when we come to tackle the more difficult, more complex, problem of handling and guiding people along the last road, which leads to self-government and Dominion status.

I hold the view that if the Labour Government in the last five years had done nothing for the people of this country and had not secured speedy and easy demobilisation, history would say that it succeeded beyond the wildest of dreams of those who support it by bringing India freely inside the British Commonwealth of Nations. That may well be a decisive factor in world peace. I speak with the utmost sincerity when I say that I genuinely regret some of the sentiments which have been put forward from the benches opposite today.

I am very sorry that the right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) is not here, because I should like to say a word about his comments on the extremist Press in West Africa. A year ago in the Colonial Debate I tried to point out that the Ziks of this world fulfilled a very useful function. It is perfectly true that their newspapers are not the usual newspaper standard which we expect. They become a little boring if they are the only source of news. They are scurrilous broadsheets, but I should not want to repress them.

I reminded the House a year ago that anyone who looked at West Africa in 1945 must have thought that if trouble was going to come it would come in Nigeria. It rather looked as if in the Gold Coast the post-war transition would be carried through easily, and its economy was sufficiently sound to expect that. It had an able governor in Sir Alan Burns, who enjoyed the confidence of the people, and it was possible that a scheme for constitutional reform would be put through. But the lid first blew off in the Gold Coast, and not in Nigeria.

I think the reason that happened was because Zik came to this country with the money he collected from his tour around Nigeria and in so doing acted as a safety valve. He certainly let off steam before he came here and when he got back to Nigeria, but by letting off steam he gave the people an opportunity of saying what they felt. They thought that Zik was going to put things right when he came to this country. There were great hopes from the results of the deputation which he led. The fact that he spent £10,000 which had been collected from the people out there was a matter between the subscribers and Dr. Zik, but I believe that he fulfilled a use- ful political function, and if there had been some Ziks at that stage a couple of years ago in the Gold Coast, we might have avoided the trouble which ultimately came.

I regret very much that the Governor has put the Opposition into prison. I think it is deplorable that Nkrunah and his associates are now in prison. The right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington asked questions on that subject and he wondered why it was that Dr. Danquah, who in 1945 was regarded as a rather dangerous person, is now thought to be a Right-wing reactionary. That fact is due to the aptitude of the Governor and his advisers for managing to create a situation where there is nothing to the Left of Dr. Danquah because Nkrunah and his friends are behind iron bars.

Does my hon. Friend think that the attacks made by "West African Pilot" can be looked upon as vapourings?

Yes. The "West African Pilot" is produced for a public in just the same way as the "Daily Graphic" is produced for a public in this country. If I were asked to choose between the "West African Pilot" and the "Daily Graphic" I would choose the "Pilot." They are both produced for an empty-headed section of the community, and indeed, whilst such sections exist, somebody like Dr. Zik or Lord Kemsley or Lord Camrose will come along and turn out the appropriate kind of paper that those people want.

It is highly dangerous to walk about suppressing or even thinking of suppressing papers of this kind, because they do a job in a democracy. That is the rôle which a newspaper or, indeed, a politician plays. The reason the Hitlers, the Mussolinis and the Stalins of this world must have a secret police force is that there is no opposition Press and there are no opposition political parties and they do not know what is going on, and in order to find out they have to employ a police intelligence service.

We ought to treat Nkrunah and Zik as responsible people; not that we shall get much change out of them, because they never will be responsible. For Heaven's sake let the Secretary of State for the Colonies think twice before he considers shutting down the Press or putting people like Nkrunah and Zik in the "jug," because he will have to let them out. We had to let Nehru out of the "jug" before we got a settlement in India. Before we can settle anything in the Gold Coast, Nkrunah must come out of the "jug." I recommend that policy to the Secretary of State and the Governor.

Did my hon. Friend say "out of the jug" or "out of the jungle"?

I said "out of the jug." Perhaps my hon. Friend has led such a secluded life that he does not know what "the jug "is. Mr. Nkrunah and his associates know what "the jug" is; they are in it at the moment. The quicker the Secretary of State gets them out, the better it will be for the Gold Coast. There is no certainty that when they come out they will stop out, but I hope that my right hon. Friend will realise that the whole of the opposition is in prison.

I want to say a word or two about the Enugu Report. I am not lost in admiration of the report or of the Secretary of State's reaction to it. In some ways the report is not awfully well informed, I regret to say, and the Secretary of State is also not awfully well informed. For example, the report makes a point about the failure to enlist the services of the Ngwo Clan Council. The extraordinary thing is that the Secretary of State thinks the same. That is really quite surprising. I can understand a Commission going out to sit in Enugu not knowing about the relative importance of the clan council but the Secretary of State, with his staff of advisers, ought to know the set-up around Enugu.

After all, Enugu is not only the place of the wild men of the mines. A few miles away is Udi where Mr. Chadwick earned the confidence of the local folk and did a great community service which is an example not only to the rest of our Colonies but also to the rest of the world. The Ngwo Clan Council is quite a small and irresponsible body. It consists of only a few hundred people none of whom, or very few of whom, were miners working in the pits. They counted for nothing locally. Their political influence was about nil, and the idea that the situation would have been more amenable if the Resident had gone along and consulted the Ngwo Clan Council seems to be a piece of nonsense.

After all, that is only a minor point compared with the far wider issue of the unfortunate shooting of November last which cost a number of lives, which all hon. Members regret. It was due to a backlog of ill-feeling which had existed in that area right back to 1915. The immediate incident which led to this situation was connected with the removal of explosives; not the actual removal but failure to take ordinary measures to ensure that the explosives were removed with the utmost dispatch and in a way which could not be interfered with. The history of that operation is a perfect example of how an operation of that kind should not be carried out. But having said that, it is my belief that there would have been no loss of life, no trouble and maybe no strike at all if the Government at Lagos and the Government at home had done something about building up confidence on the part of the workers, not only in Enugu but also in other parts of the Colony.

But what happened in fact? A spot of bother occurred, and it was said, "Let us send out a labour officer." When the labour officer got out there he found that he was required to do almost anything except the job he was sent out to do, and the result has been that labour relations in Enugu and around the mine were left in the hands of the mine manager. I am prepared to believe that he is an excellent technical man and that he has done a first-class job, but having read the Report and also having taken the trouble to read some of the evidence, I say that that man should never have been allowed to handle any human beings. He had not the flair—this is not being unkind to him—for handling other human beings. Certainly he does not seem to have taken the trouble to understand that there were very special labour relations problems in Enugu. Therefore, this lack of goodwill which had existed for 30 years reached boiling point.

Of course, it is true that there was an utterly dishonest labour leader. Mr. Ojiyi was a crook. That is true, but that is the way in West Africa. The members of the miners' union made no provision at all for the upkeep of Mr. Ojiyi and his family, so Mr. Ojiyi, in accordance with the good old West African tradition, made the provision himself. He did rather well out of it. It is no good calling him names. I am prepared to believe that he was a very good labour leader and a very good trade union official. He got all he could for his men and he also got all he could for himself. It is no good the Opposition saying that this is an argument for going slow in the development of trade unionism. What we have to do is to throw up a breed of men who are sufficiently honest and disinterested to want to serve their fellows and not do what Mr. Ojiyi did.

That brings me to another point about which I feel strongly. We cannot get healthy labour relations, effective trade unions, political advance and economic advance in Africa unless we tackle the problem of education. Africa is full of the graveyards of young men who went out there in a hurry. Africa will not be hurried; it will come along at its own pace. The measurement of the speed of the advance is in terms of educational advance. The Opposition are critical about some of the things that we have done or have not done, but they left us one legacy. In Sierra Leone they left us 95 per cent. illiteracy. In vast areas of Nigeria and the Gold Coast it is 100 per cent. If we cannot hurry forward as fast as we should have wished along the road to self-government the fault is not here it is the result of the years of misrule when the party opposite did nothing about it.

We have to move very quickly because Africa is beginning to move a little quicker than it moved in the past. Africans value education. They may not value it for the reasons we do. Africa may not want education for the purpose of increased cultural activities; they may want it in terms of a better job; but that is not wholly a bad thing. However, I am sure that the starting-off point is not only the tackling of the youngsters; we have also to tackle the parents.

In this country the trade union movement and the labour movement grew out of a virile adult education movement. I remember well a conversation I had with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary who talked to me about a report on adult education published at the end of the First World War and presented to Lord Addison in the Ministry of Reconstruction. The Secretary was my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Arthur Greenwood). The Foreign Secretary said that when he went to the Ministry of Labour he based his policy upon what that report contained. It said that if you wanted to get a democratic adult society you had to throw the whole of your weight behind a vigorous adult education movement.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies said some nice things about what is being done in the field of adult education in West Africa. I am not so happy about the situation there. In 1945 a number of my hon. Friends and myself tried to draw up a scheme which would be useful. I am not at all sure that the two university colleges, particularly the one at Ibadan, have a concept of adult education which would commend itself to the more experienced of my hon. Friends on this side of the Committee who have been practitioners in that field. I do not think there is an understanding of what we have done in this country during the last 100 years, nor is there the imagination to use that experience and apply it to West African needs. I am not so silly as to think that we can pick up a thing in this country, dump it down in Africa, and just hope for it to work. Indeed, any hon. Member who thinks that possible should go to the Library and read the evidence of the Fitzgerald Commission and learn of the experience there of Whitley Councils.

Whitleyism in this country did a great job and was a useful piece of machinery which we would not be without, but it failed completely in West Africa and in Enugu, and if one picks up the product of adult education experience, such as the tutorial class or the extension lectures as used by the older universities in this country and try those out in the Gambia or the Gold Coast, they will fail. The guiding principle must be that which has pushed the Labour Movement along over the years, the fact that individuals have a life to live and that we should all count equally one with another. We reject lock, stock and barrel, the conceptions put from the benches opposite this afternoon. We do not believe in the superiority of one race or class. It is the job of the Labour Government to go on pushing as hard as it can along the road to self-government, but that can only be done by free citizens freely playing their part in working for the better world they want.

This has been a wide Debate and it is difficult to try to follow many of the lines of thought opened up, but I propose to try to follow the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg) and talk about West Africa, in particular Nigeria.

I think it was my right hon. Friend who referred to the desire of the predecessor of the Secretary of State for the Colonies—and no doubt it is now his as well—that so far as possible these Colonial Debates should not be the occasion for too much party controversy. The hon. Member for Dudley, as I am sure he will realise, is not the least provocative Member of this House and therefore one has to exercise considerable self-restraint in not pursuing some of the themes he opened up. However I certainly believe that in dealing with the matters under discussion we should not be animated by any feeling of race superiority, but purely with the desire to do the best for all concerned. The observations I shall put forward will not be palatable to the hon. Gentleman, but they will be put forward for those reasons.

First, a word or two about the Enugu inquiry and the Fitzgerald Report. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) is here, but we would all pay tribute to him for the great physical endurance which he showed. I saw him in hospital in Enugu in conditions of considerable suffering, attempting to go on with the work of that Commission. He had a very bad time indeed from the health point of view, yet he stuck to his job and it is only fair to him that that should be said of his work in this connection.

I am a little doubtful, however, about the wisdom of the width of some of the statements in this kind of report. So far as the Aiken Watson Report on the Gold Coast was concerned, that dealt adequately with the actual disorders, but when it got on to political and constitutional grounds it made certain observations which were a little short of laughable, and it required the Coussey Report, which was produced by a Committee solely of Africans, really to put the Aiken Watson Report right.

The most striking thing about that all-African Report was its insistence upon a sound system of local government being an essential condition precedent to sound democratic government. I am perfectly certain that which one of my hon. Friends said about hastening slowly is very much in point there. Unless we can construct a sound system of local government it will be difficult to get anything such as we recognise as a democracy functioning in any of the West African countries. It would be a tragedy if in the Gold Coast a small group of extremists were able to sabotage the substantial advances at present being put into force by the Government in that territory. With regard to the Enugu Report, paragraphs 15 to 20 of Part III which deal with political trends in Nigeria contain some general observations couched in debatable terms. Without going into them, I do not accept some of the things which appear in that part of the Report.

With some of the things which the hon. Gentleman has said I agree. Surprising and mortifying though it may be to him, I think that on certain matters—which I do not want to specify for good reasons—he said things which are very near the truth. But until one has had an opportunity of studying all the evidence, it is better not to go too much into the actual facts of that sad business. However, I want to say a word about one gentleman who has not been mentioned, Senior Superintendent Philip. He, of course, was not a police officer stationed in Enugu but came in from outside, from Onitsha, to do his best in all the circumstances. Paragraph 119 of the Report reads rather strangely, particularly the comment about waiting until a definite physical act of obstruction had taken place before taking any preventive action. I do not think that finding is in accordance with the evidence or with some of the findings of fact in the Report itself. It shows a curious lack of reality, but I suspend judgment until there has been an opportunity to study the evidence in full.

However, it should be said now, because this is the first Debate there has been upon this matter, in fairness to this police officer and to other police officers, that I suspect a very much worse disaster would have happened if the order to fire had not been given.

rose—

I propose to finish the sentence. I believe that the relatively small force of police would have been over-run and that hundreds of lives might have been lost before order was restored. It is my own opinion that justice has not been done to this officer, and we must be careful not to make him a scapegoat. I thought the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Edward Davies) spoke in temperate terms of his position. He was placed in an exceedingly difficult position with a hard decision to make. I am not satisfied with the findings of the Commission on this matter and I hope there will be another opportunity, when hon. Members have had an opportunity of studying the full evidence, to debate the matter.

The evidence has been available in the Library for the last few weeks.

Has the hon. and learned Member read the evidence? The evidence shows quite clearly two things. The first is that nobody was armed at all the policeman was mistaken in that view; and secondly, the next day all the explosives were removed, without any loss of life whatsoever, by an unarmed party.

I have not read the evidence in full. I have read certain portions. I do not at all agree with what the hon. Member has just said. As he will know, when one is discussing a considerable mass of evidence, various people come to different conclusions about it. In this case there is no court of appeal which can sift the evidence and arrive at the true facts. I disagree with the points the hon. Member has put forward and I am simply—because this is the first time there has been an opportunity of doing so—entering my personal caveat that I do not accept the findings upon this matter. I think that should be said in fairness to this officer, and I hope that there will be an opportunity of debating the matter fully at a later stage.

The next matter to which I wish to refer is economic development. I shall not follow my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North (Mr. F. Harris) who went into the appropriate fields of public and private enterprise, but I think that not sufficient importance has been paid to—and I hope that this is the right phrase—the logistics of transportation. The railways, harbours and roads are really inadequate to carry this new increase in traffic which is being built up. The resources of the Government and of the Colonial Development Corporation should be put into the improvement of communications, and the rest of the job left to private traders. There is the example of Takoradi Harbour on the Gold Coast. There a £2½ million scheme is being put into operation which, when completed, will only just enable the harbour to carry the traffic already available. It will not be completed for two or three years, so that it will already be behind the times when it is completed. There was another alternative £7 million scheme put forward to build a new harbour alongside the present one, which was rejected; and that is the sort of matter which I feel offers appropriate scope for Government action.

So far as the railways are concerned, I was told that the allocations for, I think it was the month of December last year, were 18,000 tons and the applications were 75,000 tons. It is no use developing up-country if the communications of the country just will not take the increased traffic. That applies particularly to groundnuts in Nigeria. We know the difficulties—

rose—

With respect to hon. Members, I know that a great many of my hon. Friends want to speak and I think we shall get on with greater speed if I do not give way. We are agreed that in Nigeria there was the difficulty of transporting the groundnut crop. I heard when I was there that the agriculturists had very high hopes of enormously increasing the output of groundnuts in Northern Nigeria, but if the railways cannot carry the increased crop it is like putting the cart before the horse, if I may use that term. I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to the transportation problem, including harbours, railways and roads.

With regard to what I think are more controversial matters—though that does not appear to be accepted—that is, political and constitutional issues, I thought when I was in Nigeria that there was a feeling of grave disquiet. I thought the atmosphere out there was not very happy and that the unhappiness was most marked among those whom I would describe as moderate Africans—[HON. MEMBERS: "Tory Africans."] I hear the usual comment, "Tory Africans," but I am trying to be fair about this. I do not believe that those to whom I was introduced were solely Tory Africans or that the people responsible did not introduce me to a fair cross-section of African opinion. I will prove that in a moment or two. There were doubts whether they were ready for Western democracy in its fullest form. It was said of one side that either we ought to stay and govern firmly or else it would be better to go.

Another comment was, "Why do you let this small group of extremists dominate the situation?" There was a feeling that we had lost interest; that we were defeatists about retaining our connection with West Africa, and that we were about to make a quick departure in the same way as we had gone from India or Burma. I think it is vital that we should disprove that attitude of mind. We must not allow a small group of extremists to poison the relations between Britain and the Nigerian peoples. I say "peoples" advisedly, because the right hon. Gentleman knows there is no such thing as a Nigerian people. It is a concatenation of a considerable number of different peoples.

How are we to deal with this disquiet? I suggest that the first matter to be dealt with is the apparent success of extremism. There is a great feeling that if the extremists shout loud enough they get something. If a time-time has been fixed for constitutional advance and if the extremists agitate enough, they will get the Government to go back on the time-table laid down. I think it is very important that any time schedule for constitutional development should be adhered to.

Then we come to the Press. The hon. Member spoke of a safety valve and about blowing off steam. I saw the editor of an extremist newspaper in one town in Nigeria, and I had a long conversation with him. He was an extremely pleasant and amiable person. We talked over the whole matter of self-government and the rest of it; Dominion status, the gradual formation of adequate local government and the process along that road. His actual complaint really came down to the non-co-operative attitude of certain very junior British officials. The very next day in his paper was something which was a direct incitement to bloodshed.

He was talking of the year 1950 and he said it would be a year of freedom, or it would be a year of bloodshed, and so on, in very much more grandiloquent terms. To people who are primitive—I do not use the word in any offensive sense—who have not had a thousand years of constitutional development, let us put it that way—language of this sort is highly disturbing. It is not blowing off steam, it is an incitement to bloodshed and that sort of writing, appearing in almost every African newspaper, leads to incidents such as at Enugo.

The hon. and learned Member must realise that the circulation of those newspapers is very limited indeed, and that there is a very high percentage of illiteracy, so that clearly their influence must be limited. If they are suppressed, which I understand is the view of the hon. and learned Member and some of his hon. Friends, then all that would be achieved would be the driving of this dangerous force underground.

So long as we are on common ground that that sort of thing is not desirable, I say that the Government must take some action. It is very difficult problem to know what the correct action is, but I think there must be some sort of control. I agree that we do not want to abolish the Press or to suspend all the newspapers, but I think there must be some means of controlling language which is likely to lead to bloodshed.

The point about trade unionism has already been well made and I will not deal with it at all, but there is an almost pathetic belief that trade unionism will solve all the problems. I was told by one experienced employer, who was not in private service, that he had been trying to build up trade unionism in his organisation. During the three years he had been dealing with them he had had three different sets of trade union officials. He got the thing going and organised a system of joint negotiation and discussion, and gradually trained the officials. Then at the end of the year, they were turned out by their fellows for not being sufficiently extremist. He had to start with another lot, and so it would go on. That is what is happening. I welcome very much the sending of this Commission and I hope that they will have some constructive proposals to make. It is foolish to think that the situation is satisfactory.

It is necessary for us to have are statement of our principles. The restatement should be on these lines. We will not be hustled out of our responsibilities. We have as much right to guide the constitutional development there as any little group of West Africans, because we have produced law and order and we have spent great sums of money and great resources in human lives, and we are the only defence against anarchy, civil war and Communism

Therefore, we should say, with the approval of 95 per cent. of the people there, that we will stay in Nigeria to preserve the peace and to help and guide West Africans to an increasing share in the management of their own affairs within the framework of the Empire. There is nothing patronising in that. It has taken us 700 years with our Parliamentary institutions to get where we are today, and we are by no means perfect. I do not think that there is any conflict of interest because, without European help, both administrative, technical and financial, Nigeria would collapse. There is scope for every technical and professional man which Nigeria can produce and for every one we can afford to send out there. There is no conflict of interest at all. There is ample opportunity for all, both African and European.

I ask hon. Gentlemen to consider the figures of African students given by Mr. Frank Samuel in a recent speech. Of private students now studying in the United Kingdom, 182 are studying law; 170, medicine, and 37, engineering. Of Government students, nine are studying law; 32, medicine; and 45 engineering. I am a lawyer, but I am certain that that ratio of private students is not in the best interests of Nigeria. Therefore I suggest that in this task, on terms of equality and co-operation, we should go forward with all Africans of good will to produce what one hopes will be a very fine country and a very fine civilisation. It will be a tragedy if our relations are bedevilled by a small group of vociferous extremists.

It is almost a shock for me to be called upon to speak when I see so many experts on this side who are anxious to address the Committee. There are two points which I wish to discuss. The first concerns planning, particularly in Africa and especially in that part and in those latitudes which have been termed earlier today the central dominion or, as some people call it in much more picturesque language, Capricornia. We have heard about these astronomical sums which are to be invested—£120 million under the C.D.N. Acts, £110 million by C.D.C. and £55 million by O.F.C. I ask hon. Members to look at paragraph 279 of the Report which stresses the need for research and survey in the Empire. If we are to avoid South Sea Bubbles in future we must study with care that paragraph of the Report, because it is disturbing.

The ancients had a saying

ex Africa aliquid semper novi,

and Africa is still a dark Continent which does need much survey. There is a great need for good topographical maps. I have attempted in the fast few days to find information about soil and geological surveys in this part of the world. It surprises me to find that Northern Rhodesia exports something like £29 million worth of ore and base metals and has not yet had a geological survey. Above all, we need surveys badly before we start investing money on a large scale.

Establishments are woefully inadequate. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Philips Price), talked about geologists. I think that we only have about 110 in the overseas geological department, of whom very few are experienced. That applies for all overseas work in New Guinea, the West Indies and in Africa especially.

Would the hon. Gentleman allow me to emphasise his point, if that is not impertinent? Is he aware that the Government are employing American geologists and surveyors to carry out this work, and that that has its dangers?

My next point has been made for me. I hope that with help from President Truman's "Fourth Point" and E.C.A. we shall recover from this lack of geologists in our colonial possessions.

Before I became a Member of this House I studied the debates carefully and I read some most nonsensical claims made for the future of Central Africa. I read accounts of Detroits and Pittsburghs in the Zambesi Valley. I am awed by these terrifying statements. We all know that Sir Miles Thomas discovered a 30-ft. coal seam at Wankie; but Uganda. Kenya, Tanganyika. Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia are deficient in coal, iron ore and oil, which are essential for all industrial development. For example, Northern Rhodesia mines something like 147 tons of iron ore annually, which is worth about £74.

I turn to agriculture, in the same context. We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West, about the possibilities of developing these large areas of Central Africa for pastoral farming and the production of food. We were told last year that there were 4,500,000 square miles suitable for agricultural development. We were told of the use of antrycide the new drug, to deal with the tsetse fly. Without quoting ecologists and others. I would point out that in many parts the tsetse fly is a balance in nature. If we were to clear or to over-graze many of these places we should upset the balance of nature as it has been upset in Kenya by the Masai. We would find ourselves creating dongas and there would be all the evidence of large-scale erosion, the beginnings of dust bowls and the creation of desert conditions like those in the Middle West of the United States.

Before I leave this geographical dissertation, I believe that there is beginning a long-term change of climate in Central Africa. I think that the Zambesi Valley is coming into a period of desiccation in the same way that in Northern Europe we are coming into a period of milder climate. The glaciers are retreating from the coastal belts of Greenland and North Norway. I suggest that we are entering a period of desiccation in this part of Africa. The water table is sinking. I have kith and kin in Nyasaland and other parts of Africa, and I am told that the water table is sinking not merely in Kenya and in the table lands east of the Great Lakes, but in other parts also. I always try to point that out when people talk to me about these terrific developments being possible, and about this area becoming a vast milch cow which will supply these islands and their 50 million people with food and other materials.

The hon. Gentleman is making a most interesting point, which I am sure is fully appreciated by the Committee. I would ask him whether he does not think, from his own knowledge, that one of the reasons for the reduction in rainfall in Central Africa is the destruction of the forests there, rather than any cycle of the weather?

I would agree with what the hon. Gentleman has said, but I could also talk of 19th century imperialism and the exploitation of the Empire. There is a lot that we could say about the development of the Empire in the last 100 years, but it is true to say that deforestation was followed by erosion of all kinds.

May I close on this note? I have talked about material things; let me now talk about people. We cannot change people as we can change things, but the impact of the white man in Africa has led to disruption of all kinds and a sense of restlessness among the native people. These people are pressing forward, and their emancipation is implicit in history—the same thing is happening in monsoon Asia now—and, sooner or later, we shall have to give them self-government. We are faced with the classical dilemma of all capitalist colonial Powers. We have democracy here and we give these people civil liberties, which, as we were told earlier, they sometimes abuse with their scurrilous broadsheets in West Africa. But, when we refuse even legitimate requests, we cause suspicion in their minds, and their leaders go to their masses and create distrust of the white people.

Many of these claims are legitimate claims. May I give two examples where, in education alone, the native peoples are showing glaring contrasts? Let us take Northern Rhodesia, where something like £29 million worth of metals are produced annually. There is, I believe, a potential school population of 320,000. They have one secondary school with some 70 youngsters entering it, and only five finish their course in the fifth form. There is an enormous demand and enormous scope for serving these people.

There is the same thing in Nigeria. The Northern province of Nigeria has a population of something like 18 million people, and we have founded there recently a university college. I am told that to date there is only one university graduate in the whole of Northern Nigeria. That is shocking, but that is the position, and it shows that there is a legitimate demand being put forward by these people.

My last word is this. We went into Africa a long time ago. We made the most of this situation. It is our job to solve it. While I am saying that we must not shirk our difficulties and obligations, and that we must do all we can to help, I say, on the other hand, that this task will mainly rest on the black peoples themselves. I would be much happier if some black people, some of our coloured cousins, in Nigeria and elsewhere, would turn their backs on the glittering prizes of law and commerce, and even, I would say, upon the tinsel show of politics, too, and would dedicate themselves to the service of their fellow-men.

Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will welcome the speech of the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson), who recently joined us in this House, and I hope that, possibly, the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), who always seems to take the opportunity to produce extra controversy in our discussions, will read the speech of the hon. Member for Rugby and take note of the constructive suggestions which he made.

I would like to stress a point raised by the hon. Member for Swindon (Mr. T. Reid), who was supported by the hon. Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Philips Price), on the question of overpopulation, and to suggest to the Colonial Secretary that he should look into the suggestion that, somehow or another, the problem should be brought more clearly before the peoples of those territories.

However much we may increase economic and political development, it can never overtake, at the present rate, the growing population of these territor- ies or alter the basic fact that they are not producing enough food for themselves at the present time. If, in the next 20 years, the populations of these territories are to be doubled or trebled, heaven alone knows where the food is coming from. It is interesting to hear some people say that such and such a territory will have to import food from outside, but where are the exporting areas of the world today? Where will they be in another 30 or 40 years' time?

This question of over-population is one of the most fundamental, in which the Colonial Secretary might do a great service by putting these facts before the various territories. I think that some of the visitors who came here from the West Indies in the last month or so were thinking very hard about these food problems. They are some of the greatest sufferers, and I think they would benefit by such help as the right hon. Gentleman could give them.

This brings me to the first point I wish to make, which is, to ask the Secretary of State whether he can give, as time goes on, a bit more information about what is happening on some of these international commissions, such as the South Pacific Commission and the Caribbean Commission. A lot of work has been done and a lot of energy expended on these commissions, and I think that the point has now been reached when we can see along what lines there can be useful co-operation. With great respect to those concerned, I think there have been a lot of people from other parts of the world who have taken this opportunity of inquiring into and attempting to disrupt a lot of the good work done by this country.

We have reached the point where, despite the propaganda which has gone on against this country, a good deal of constructive work has been done. We have reached the point where we can check up on the activities of these commissions, cut them down in some respects, and develop them in others. I believe, as some of my hon. Friends have pointed out, that the Colonial Office has changed quite a lot in the last 10 years or so, and that there is great scope for development on the scientific research side of the Colonial Office and for the application of that central research infor- mation to the various territories overseas. All can be linked on to these commissions.

It is obvious that there are always two tendencies in the political difficulties which face us—the centralising one, and the decentralising one. As far as centralisation is concerned, more and more of our defence affairs are being determined internationally. In Korea, for instance, the decision was taken so quickly centrally that it might be said that in defence we are sharing our sovereignty with other nations. As the world gets smaller through modern science these great issues of defence are becoming more centralised.

At the same time, there is the wish, not only in the Colonial Empire, but even among Scotsmen and Welshmen, to take a greater part in their own affairs and to get various details away from us here in Westminster. Speaking as an Englishman, I am delighted to see these activities taken away from us if that is thought better, so that we may have more time for these centralised issues which affect us so much. I believe that the Colonial Secretary can do a great deal by encouraging these territories overseas to group themselves regionally. I have mentioned this point before in these debates. Regional grouping should be encouraged, not only from the point of view of our own territories, but from the point of view of the United Nations and general cooperation in the commissions which I have already mentioned.

With regard to Capricornian Africa, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Rugby, I know that the Colonial Office have done much work in connection with transportation, health, and so forth. It is also high time to have a look at the area of the Congo Basin Treaty. It is in these regional groupings that a lot of work can be done in future. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) pointed out, people visiting this country from the West Indies felt that they were much stronger in coming as a West Indian group and not as representatives of their territories. As he also pointed out, we do not wish to force any federation or union, from this country, upon those territories.

I believe it will be, in their continued interest for five or six large groupings to be developed in the world each under the aegis, maybe, of a governor-general who would carry out some of the functions of the Secretary of State—who would always remain ultimately responsible—closer to the sphere of action in which policy decisions here in Westminster would be put into effect.

I think that those who have studied these affairs will support the Secretary of State in pointing out the immense responsibility of the Secretary of State for the Colonies in this country. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bristol. West (Mr. Stanley) pointed out, when the right hon. Gentleman addressed this House for the first time as Secretary of State for the Colonies, many of us believe his office is the most important office under the Crown. When one remembers that it covers 42 territories and 65 million people, including all Departments of State, and that something like 60 to 70 per cent. of the dollar earnings of this country come from Colonial territories, one realises the vast importance to this country of the areas with which the Secretary of State for the Colonies is concerned.

Finally, I should like to support the remark which the Secretary of State made about stable markets. I believe that another most useful task his Office could do is to make proper market surveys to see what are overall needs of production in these territories overseas. It is high time, too, that the Government made more clear to private enterprise the sphere of public responsibility and the sphere of private responsibility in the field of economic development. Until this is clear, we will not get proper help from the Americans under President Truman's Point Four, or in any other way.

These market surveys, linked up with the definition by the Secretary of State of where the relative spheres of private enterprise and Government activity lie, would lead to that bound forward in financial development which, in his own Report, he says is lacking at the moment.

I am sure that all of us not only appreciated the opening statement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies in this Debate, but also the constructive proposals put forward by several hon. Members, including those by my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson). I am sure that the Committee extends to him its appreciation of an excellent and exemplary speech, particularly because of its precision and brevity. While the Secretary of State, obviously, had a very great task in trying to compress, within less than an hour, the whole of the Colonial territories for which we are responsible, it is even more difficult for minor Members of this House to try to say all they would wish to say in approximately 10 minutes.

We could deal with the philosophical, political or economic aspects, or take some particular territory or problem, or deal with points put forward by hon. Members on the other side of the Committee, and even sometimes by hon. Members on our own side. But I will confine myself to three brief references. The first concerns a remark made by an hon. Member opposite in the earlier part of the Debate. He said we were now spending a good deal of money on colonial development part of which was "charity," though he did not use that word in a repugnant sense. I asked him a question, the full point of which he did not seize. Therefore, may I emphasise it as one of the three points in my intermission?

It has already been implied, in the speech of the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Dodds-Parker), when he said that about 70 per cent. of our dollar earnings come from the Colonies. Therefore, the less we talk about "charity" with regard to those Colonies the better. In other words, we give back to the Colonies only a small proportion of their economic resources which we are using for our purpose. There is a long way between that and what we ought to do in regard to our so-called colonial possessions.

It was I who made the remark to which the hon. Gentleman refers. If he will look at the OFFICIAL REPORT tomorrow he will see that I made it clear that I meant charity in the good sense and in no offensive sense.

I said that; I said the hon. Gentleman did not use the word in a repugnant sense. I think that is a fair paraphrase of what the hon. Gentleman said. I was not trying to quote him in any offensive way.

I was merely trying to point out that although we are glad that we are spending a certain amount of money in the colonial areas we are, in fact, only paying back a small portion of what we have secured from them. I go further than that in this connection, and say that I entirely agree with the other Members who have urged that we should seek co-operation between ourselves and our colonial brethren. But I would submit that it must be co-operation on the basis of equal status and the recognition that however backward economically or politically some of our friends may be in the colonial areas, nevertheless, what we are aiming at is a free and not an, enforced co-operation.

We all recognise that the various Colonial areas are in various stages of development and of social and other kinds of evolution, but that does not alter the fact that in an increasing number of these areas the demand is being made by colonial peoples that even if full democracy cannot as yet be established in our territories and, therefore, a minority must govern, there is no reason why the minority should not be a colonial minority rather than a white one. I cannot see any answer to that. It is up to us to persuade our friends to recognise that the advantages they will secure by continuous association with us are advantages which we shall not impose upon them, and that we wish to co-operate with them in an atmosphere of equal respect and of fraternal relationship.

As to the encouragement of real co-partnership between ourselves and the colonial peoples, I must say that I am disappointed that the colonial development that has taken place in the last few years under the auspices of the Colonial Development Corporation has given us little evidence of that real fundamental cooperation to which some tribute has been paid today. It is interesting to realise that on the Colonial Development Corporation and on the subsidiary bodies, of which I think there are five, there is only one indigenous representative, and he from the West Indies. I cannot believe that there are no other colonial peoples—so-called native peoples, although I do not like the term. In the whole of the colonial area there is only one such person whom we can select to sit on the Colonial Development Corporation in co-operation with people appointed from this island.

On further examination we discover that it is laid down in the original Act that those on the Colonial Development Corporation must be persons of experience, or, to quote the actual words,

"shall be appointed by the Secretary of State from amongst persons appearing to him to be qualified as having had experience of, and having shown capacity in, matters relating to primary production … and in making such appointments the Secretary of State shall have particular regard to the need for securing that adequate experience of those matters obtained in Colonial territories is at the disposal of the Corporation."

In other words, the Act lays down that the directors of the Corporation—the Chairman and the Deputy-Chairman—shall be appointed from those who have had real experience of colonial work, have lived there and have had some years of experience there. Yet we find that possibly only two who completely fit into that category.

I come to my next point. I should like to elaborate it in more detail, but I cannot do so. The committees which are envisaged as necessary to be set up within a short time, and whose task it would be to pay particular attention to the needs and interests of the people in the locality, have, in fact, never been set up. I asked a Question about this and the answer was entirely unsatisfactory. I should like to hear from the Secretary of State, or whoever is to reply, why those Committees, which were deliberately proposed by the Act two-and-a-half or more years ago, have never yet seen the light of day.

Another point—is it not true that nearly all of those who are controlling the Colonial Development Corporation at present are drawn from big business? I am not saying that they may have not had great industrial experience and I am not trying to denigrate their services or their sincerity, but if we are to prove, by deed as well as by word, our desire to be associated in equality with our colonial brethren, I see no reason why we should not make it perfectly clear by appointing far more people than we have so far on to the Development Corporation who have had real experience of colonial life and, in fact, belong to the Colonies. I wish I could have spent more time developing that point, but the time is not available.

My last point concerns events at Enugu. I am sorry that more has not been said about it. Psychologically, I think we all agree that it was a disaster from the standpoint of the confidence we had been trying to nourish between ourselves and not only the Nigerians but others as well. That being so, I would simply express my appreciation of the fact that at this time labour experts are going out to Nigeria who may be able to improve the trade unionism of that district and re-establish confidence.

It may be true that trade unionism in the Colonial areas is not the same as trade unionism here. It may be true that it is more difficult to get some Colonial people to appreciate all that is meant by trade unionism. It is equally true that trade unionism may be dangerous, but so is everything else and, after all, it is we who go into the Colonial world, and having disturbed the traditional policy and economy of the African people for good or ill and we cannot say. "You are going into the industrial sphere; you are being employed in mines and other concerns; but trade unions are not good for you." I submit that one has to recognise that, for good or ill, trade unions represent the only means in the industrial sphere by which industrial and other workers can not only defend themselves but develop a sense of industrial responsibility.

I cannot understand why it is that, locally, more regard was not paid in the Enugu area to the disastrous position of the finances of the trade union. It was a registered trade union and there should have been regular audits of the accounts. That was not done and it reflects upon someone somewhere. If the audit had taken place it may well have been that things would not have got into that mess and that the unfortunate gentleman who was the secretary would have been, if not exposed, at least recognised as what he actually was.

I pay tribute to the Commission for its impartial work. I do not agree with what was said by one hon. Member opposite, but I should like to know why it is that in spite of the very severe criticism made of certain people in the administration, apparently nothing more has been done. I am not a vindictive person and I do not want to be vindictive, but I suggest that, if there were these severe strictures by an impartial inquiry, something more should have been done than merely leaving it there. After all, someone is responsible and something should be done to make it quite clear that persons have not just perpetrated this error and got away with it.

I conclude after having spoken for just over 10 minutes, which is a fair compression of a much longer speech which I could have made. I congratulate the new Seceretary of State on the work he has done and I hope he will continue to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor and, in a spirit of honest and true co-operation, help to remove the tragic tensions and suspicions which exist in many parts of the Colonies. Out of that we may get that real spirit of fraternity which at last will make the Commonwealth a reality.

I am very glad to have an opportunity of speaking in a Colonial Debate. [HON. MEMBERS: "We want to, also."] I have tried very hard all day to behave myself in as gentlemanly a way as I possibly could, despite all the remarks I have heard round about me and on the other side of the Committee with which I disagree. I want to concentrate on one particular part of the world, namely, the West Indies, which I happen to know; and whose people I know, amongst whom I was born and lived for the first 17 years of my life. I learned to love those people, and I have often told them personally that I regard them as my people, and I have always fought for their advancement, politically, economically and socially.

Far from agreeing with many of the things that have been said by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, I can say that from the point of view of the West Indies, the British Government—any British Government—have no cause whatever to feel any sense of shame for the work they have done there since the abolition of slavery—and in spite of capitalistic exploitation. There is much more that could be done, but both sides of the Committee have produced very fine Colonial Secretaries. I am very sorry that the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley), is not here today, because, personally, I have always found him the most courteous, the most patient, the most painstaking Colonial Secretary I have ever come into contact with in the whole course of my Parliamentary career.

What about the present one?

Surely my hon. Friend can let me pay a tribute to an opponent without interrupting me. I know about my right hon. Friend. I have told him what I think of him privately, and he knows what I think of him.

Let us take some examples of what we have done. I take some pride in the nursing services in the West Indies, for instance. West Indian girls have become trained nurses and do excellent, useful work. I gave the Colonial Office some advice about the nursing and health services, and I must say that my right hon. Friend's predecessors—not his immediate predecessor, but his predecessors in Labour Governments—did take up the idea, and now we have done a very fine piece of work for nursing and the health services for the West Indian population. We have these West Indian girls as missionaries, so to speak, carrying forward new ideas of public health and medical work into the Colonies. That is a very fine piece of work. It is a very fine piece of social welfare work.

I come to a point where I think we have failed. At the present time, when colonial development is proceeding at such a rapid rate, whenever there is a conflict of ideas—and rather materialistic ideas are being spread about the world—I hope the British Government will do something especially to reduce the amount of capitalistic exploitation in the West Indies. The West Indians are a fine people capable of great intellectual development, as they have proved. They take their scholarships; they come here; they do brilliant work; they go back and do brilliant work; they go into the Services, they go into the professions, they do a great—I wish the hon. Member would keep quiet and let me speak. I do not like an accompaniment behind me when I am speaking.

On a point of order. Would my hon. Friend specify to whom he is referring? There is no interjecting going on immediately behind him.

I want to get on. I do not want to specify anyone. I can see the hon. Member afterwards and tell him, and I can tell him quite plainly, too.

As to financial exploitation, especially with regard to the plantations and sugar estates, the Americans are now coming into the Leeward Islands, and they are not recognising trade unionism. They are coming in with new ideas of social and racial discrimination and the colour bar, and saying: "Whatever the British Government may say, whether or not they recognise these organisations in this British Colony, we as owners of this plantation"—foreigners, if you like, in a British Colony—"are not going to accept that, and will have nothing to do with these organisations. "The Colonial Secretary should make a firm statement to the effect that these foreign owners of British lands and plantations in these Colonies must obey the British laws of the Colonies. One of the aspects of social welfare is the recognition of trade unionisms, and these foreign firms must follow the rules that British and local planters have to follow.

On this question of financial exploitation, I come to my favourite topic, the St. Kitts Sugar Factory Company. For nearly 20 years they have been paying an annual dividend on their original capital of 1,000 per cent. I make this statement now because I have been challenged in a report by a Conservative appointed by one of my right hon. Friend's predecessors. To think that a Labour Government should have appointed a well-known Conservative to a position of this kind, knowing his intolerant views! But they did it, and in this report he tries to ridicule me, saying that what I said about this factory being the quintessence of Satanic finance is quite out of place and absurd, using financial jargon to try to disprove my statements. I say again that either that company should alter its policy or be nationalised, as it would be if it were here under certain conditions: nationalisation for us, but not for them.

I beg the Colonial Secretary to look at this problem again, to see whether they cannot do more for this poor Colony where disease is rampant—not only venereal disease, which the foreigners brought in, and which they cannot help, but malaria and tuberculosis; all these are rampant. I am in constant touch with the doctors there, and I am going out there in January, at the request of the British Medical Association, to take part in a Caribbean medical conference—provided it takes place during the Christmas Recess, so it rather depends on the Chief Whip.

In spite of what our opponents may say, I ask my right hon. Friend to remember that when they first started in this Colony the wages of the labourers were 1s. a day, and even now the wages of a labourer do not amount to more than £60 to £70 per annum, on which they have to keep their children.

That reminds me of the first incident I remember in my life when I was a small boy in the Colony. I saw the pathetic scene when, two hours before a black woman delivered her tenth baby she was cast out of her home by the white man who owned it, and I remember her black husband saying to this man: "Massa, you no believe in God." That has stuck in my mind for all these years.—"Massa, you no believe in God." I still remember the sight of this white Christian doing this unchristian act. In spite of all the good Governors and good civil servants, in spite of all the native-trained and native-developed men who have done governmental work, not supremely good, but at least moderately well, considering their limitations at the time, with a great desire to do good under very distressing conditions, that remark has stuck in my mind and has remained one of the guiding lights of my life.

I ask the Colonial Secretary to carry on with his good work, to continue with such work as that of the nursing service, which is really excellent, and to build up a really fine medical service. Let him take care that there is not that desperate exploitation by British financiers and speculators in the City of London. Let him prevent monopolies of sugar factories who combine sugar estates in a syndicated group, thus controlling the sugar of the whole island, and the Americans coming in and not recognising the trade unions of the island. I ask the Colonial Secretary to do something to try to reform the conditions among the people whom I respect and love, and for whom I desire to do something.

The hon. Member for Warrington (Dr. Morgan) has early associations with the West Indies, and, indeed, enjoys many of those engaging qualities which have always endeared people from the Caribbean to Members on all sides of the Committee. I also imagine that he has Welsh associations, and in this he certainly shares a common background with the new Secretary of State. I should like to welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his most important office and to wish him every success in his tenure of it. All that we have known of the right hon. Gentleman in past years makes us confident that he will bring great industry and great integrity to problems which will demand both those qualities to the full.

In welcoming the right hon. Gentleman, it is no reflection on him to say that I believe that Members on both sides of the Committee regret the departure of his predecessor. It is rather strange that the right hon. Gentleman the late Secretary of State, although he held office for three years five months, actually held it longer than any other Secretary of State since 1924, and that is a rather sinister commentary on Colonial Office administration. It is no reflection on the right hon. Gentleman to say that we regret the departure of his predecessor, but it is, I think, ironical that his predecessor who had made a study of the Colonies and who while engaged in the task of educating many people in the Colonies, enjoyed a great deal of education himself, is no longer a Member of Parliament, while his Under-Secretary, who so often did what no one in the House wants—except perhaps the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg): turn Colonial Debates into political demonstrations, is still, although clothed in the ermine of another place, a Member of Parliament.

In any Colonial Debate at this time, everyone's thoughts must go first to Malaya. No Debate on the Colonies can have any reality until we have settled the war in Malaya. I was very glad that the right hon. Gentleman did not use the words "bandits" or even "guerillas" but quite openly called our enemies in Malaya the Communists which they undoubtedly are. We wish every success, I believe on both sides of the Committee, to all who are fighting this menace, and to Sir Harold Briggs, on whose shoulders, as director of operations, the greatest responsibility must fall. We would like, too, through this Committee, as I am sure would be the common wish on both sides, to give our good wishes to the people in Malaya who are fighting that battle with us.

We have lately had the pleasure of a visit here of the Sultans of Pahang and Perak and Johore, and we would like to thank them and their people, and all the people of Malaya, for all that they are doing—the hundreds of thousands of Malays who are joining with us in fighting this menace, and the large number of Chinese whose only fear is that if Great Britain shows weakness they may be left to the mercy of the Communists. To these people we would like an emphatic assurance to go out that we have no intention in this country of withdrawing from our permanent partnership with the people of Malaya.

As to Hong Kong, the one area of order and security in China, an entirely British creation, we rejoice that its trade, its university, and its connection with the Mother Country are all alike flourishing today.

My right hon. Friend drew attention, in regard to Malayan trade, to the strange fact that in the Blue Book, which has provided most of the material for this Debate, there is no reference to the great contribution made by the Colonies in helping to close the dollar gap, a contribution which has always been important and has become still more important since devaluation. Nor did the Chancellor of the Exchequer make any reference to this when claiming, as a Government achievement, the large improvement in our position in regard to gold and dollar balances. The truth is that Malaya, while fighting a real war, is at the same time doing more than any other part of the Empire to win the dollar war for us as well.

Malaya and the other Colonies are making a three-fold contribution. Not only are they supplying large quantities of much-needed raw materials to America, raw materials which will always be needed unless the Great American industrial machine is to close down, but they are also limiting their own imports of dollar goods, a gesture which many people in this country rarely realise. In addition, in cotton and tobacco, in particular, the Empire is also providing alternative sources of supply to dollar goods.

I should like, on this question on Empire trade to which I shall briefly return, to make some reference to the problems and difficulties of the West Indian sugar Colonies. The right hon. Gentleman spoke eloquently about these Colonies, but I do not think the Government can claim to have been very happy in their handling of the problem. There have been one or two maladroit actions in this matter, but I have no doubt that their heart is in the right place and that they also wish to help these Colonies with which our fortunes have been largely involved since the 16th Century. The Minister of Food did make honourable amends for a statement about the failure of the West Indies to carry out their obligations. He recognised on second thoughts that that was wholly unjustified.

The delegation, which has now largely returned to the West Indies, conducted their negotiations with skill and behaved with great dignity under difficult circumstances. This augers well for the future of that part of the world. We cannot but realise that the time may come when Imperial Preference will once more be of vital concern to the Caribbean. When our own supplies increase, or, the world supplies of sugar increase elsewhere, they may well find themselves in difficulty. The Committee cannot forget the agreements entered into at Geneva and Havana, under which we have in part tied our hands and prevented ourselves from giving aid to these Colonies which may one day be desperately in need of it.

I should like to ask the Minister a question of which, I am afraid, I have forgotten to give him notice. If he cannot give me an assurance now, I should be grateful if he would take an early opportunity to do so. Before the House reassembles in October the International Conference on Trade and Industry will have taken place at Torquay. At the present moment, the undertaking which prevents us from giving further preference in our Colonies can be renounced at 60 days' notice. There is a motion on the agenda of the Conference to extend this agreement to three years. I hope that the Government will do nothing to pledge us to such an undertaking without first securing the authority of Parliament for such an action.

It is the usual convention that all parties are bound by treaties entered into by the Government of the day. However, in view of the very narrow margin that separates the parties and in view of the widespread doubt and uncertainty in the minds of Members on both sides of the Committee, I do not think it wrong to say that no future Government of another complexion could feel themselves obliged to continue an agreement of that kind if it had been carried through without Parliament having an opportunity of expressing its own views.

In regard to the great problem of federation, on which my right hon. Friend spoke earlier this afternoon, obviously that is the eventual solution of one aspect of the problem of the Caribbean, but as has been pointed out from both sides of the Committee, the impetus must now come from the Colonies themselves. We cannot forget that to many of them the United Kingdom is nearer in spirit than the other Colonies in the Caribbean, and perhaps it is not realised that it is about 1,000 miles from Jamaica to Trinidad. Trinidad is suggested as the capital of the new Federation, and not the least of the difficulties involved is that a large number of people, who up to now have given good local service in the government of their own territories, would find it quite impossible to travel distances of that kind. These things have got to be weighed in the balance.

None the less, there are dangers ahead if there is not federation and if some nations there achieve almost complete independence within the Empire before federation has been accomplished. I feel that this great problem is right outside party politics, and any action taken by the Government to smooth the way for a free decision by the Colonies themselves will have the fullest support of His Majesty's Opposition.

I should like to say a word in regard to constitutional development. I was glad that the right hon. Gentleman began his speech by talking about economic development. I can assure hon. Members on the other side of the Committee, who may be suspicious of the motives of the Opposition, that when we stress the need for economic development we are not hoping to postpone inevitable political decisions, but it is because we realise that without economic independence any self-government within the Empire becomes not only an illusion but a positive danger. So we try to stress first of all the need for economic independence.

I was rather alarmed when the right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his speech, used this phrase:

"The movement of political and constitutional advance never pauses and never halts."

I do not know of any country in the world where the art of self-government has been successfully achieved where advance has never paused and has never halted, even in those countries where for generations the whole nation has been composed mainly of one race. I was a little alarmed at the phrase he used. The rest of his speech, however, did not give any indication that that was what the Government really means to follow.

In regard to political development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) welcomed the whole of the Blue Book, but in particular the first paragraph of the first part, which stresses the prerequisites of self-government, which were five in number. He added another, that when power was handed over it should be to the country as a whole and not to a small unrepresentative oligarchy. In regard to those prerequisites, the Committee cannot forget that if they had been demanded when the Burma Bill was before the House of Commons, it would not have been hurried through as it was.

I should like to mention on this issue of self-government the position of three African Colonies where the problem is very complex. Reference has been made to the Gold Coast and the Commission sent out from this country after the lamentable riots of a year or so ago. Reference was made to the Report of the first Commission, the Watson Commission, which took the opportunity of going far beyond its actual terms of reference, and indeed attacked the whole conception of chieftainship in Africa. It ridiculed the suggestion that the African chiefs have a useful function to fulfil under new constitutional forms. It was left, strongly enough—but it was a very good thing that it should happen this way—to a commission composed entirely of Africans, led by Mr. Justice Coussy, in a Report which was rightly called in another place a declaration of faith, to affirm that there is still a considerable role for the best qualities of chieftainship in the Gold Coast and a big part for the chiefs to play in the future constitution.

Indeed, it would be surprising if this were not so. The British have been in Africa for only 50 years, and the tribal system is far older than that. Indeed, in the Gold Coast itself the requisite which we and the Committee as a whole demand, that power should be handed over to the people as a whole, finds signal need when we think of the Ashanti and the people of the Northern territory who are desiring today to build up a barrier between Accra and themselves behind which they can live the life to which they are accustomed with the advantages which Britain has brought in her train.

In regard to Sierra Leone also, it is vitally important that in any future constitution the 150,000 people in Freetown and the neighbourhood should not be allowed to dominate or outweigh the two million people in the Protectorate who look to us for aid. So often it is the district officer from this country in territories like that Protectorate who knows more of what is passing in the people's minds than the urban dwellers on the coast whose roots are very different and whose interests are very often completely opposed. In the case of Nigeria, though the Report rather skates over the complications, we all know that there was a threat of dissociation from Nigeria itself by the Northern district unless they are granted parity with the Eastern and Western regions. After all, Nigeria has only been a country since 1914; it was two countries before that.

In all these tasks it is our belief that there is a paramount duty for Great Britain to fulfil. Of course, we could clear out, if we felt like that and were that sort of people, and try to play a purely trading role and turn tropical Africa, or the East and West coasts of Africa, into other Liberias so accurately called oligarchies and unhappy hybrids. But that is not the British rôle and we have no intention of doing that, and we will not be hurried into any action of that kind by agitation from within or agitation from without.

Our duty demands a faith in ourselves, and we have that faith, though I must confess that it is scarcely aided or proved when, as we understand, recently in Tanganyika 311 sorts of associations and individuals were asked semi-officially what form the new constitution ought to take. The Africans of Tanganyika might well be surprised when they heard this and begin to doubt our instinct for government. For it remains true—this applies whatever party is in power and however many changes may happen in the world—that of all races, as has been said, the African values leadership most. We have heard so often and we know so well from people who have spent their lives there that principles, however lofty are no substitute for direct personal contact, and it is our task to provide that contact to bridge the gulf between the man the African knows and trusts and the principle of which that man is the dimly understood living embodiment. Certainly in Tanganyika, of which I know something, the people most trusted by the Africans are those who say that a firm declaration that Britain intends to stay in Tanganyika and make this a permanent partnership is the best thing for the Africans themselves.

What a small proportion of our population are maintaining our honour and standing in the world. Leaving out Kenya, with its large European population, there are only 25,000 Europeans, most of them British, in the whole of the British tropical African Empire—one to every 1,600 Africans. This is a significant fact and it is one which the House in all the security of London today can ponder with pride.

And if there are those who think they are friends of the Africans and believe that the departure of the British will mean a golden age for the humblest people in Africa, I would commend them to have a look at Albert Schweitzer's book "On the Edge of the Primaeval Forest" with its picture of what can happen to generations of hard work by irresponsibility and ignorance largely born of the climate and disease for which they cannot be blamed but which are factors that have to be taken into account if we are to justify our position as a conscientious power.

We feel that if only half the effort now put by the younger people in Africa into political effort could be put into improving their economic and social conditions, what a continent we jointly could build up. It has been pointed out already in this Debate that of the African students, West Africans in particular, there are as private students five times as many lawyers as there are engineers but, on the other side, there are five times as many engineers as there are lawyers holding Government scholarships from West Africa, which shows that the Government are fully conscious of the problems we have to face.

As to the great problem of recruitment for the Colonial Service, the fact that so many people want to go to Africa into private business, and so few into administration, calls for renewed thought on the part of the Government and cannot be dismissed as the consequence of full employment at home. Indeed, in some ways the figures today are worse than they were last year, though in others there is an improvement.

But, of course, when we talk about what we can do in Africa and the sort of people we want in Africa, we are assuming that we have our best people still to send. No one would want to send second-rate people from this country to carry on the heritage of the past, but the history of our association with Africa and other parts of the Empire is studded with great names and that entitles this Committee to ignore some of the petty criticisms that has been made from time to time.

If I might mention two names—it is a little invidious but they both came in recently for a certain amount of public notice—one was that of the Bishop of Central Tanganyika who died only a few weeks ago and of whom one man in Africa quoted the old saying, "The white man in Africa with education and no religion is like firewood for hell," and then went on to show something of what Dr. Wynn-Jones had done in Central Tanganyika with the coming of a great industrial scheme into Africa disturbing the beliefs and views of centuries of African life.

Those are the sort of people who are upholding our authority and influence in the world. In a different field I would like to comment—no doubt all those interested in Malaya have already noticed this—that Mr. Ridley, who is 94 this year, has just received the Linnean Medal for 1950. It was he who, nearly 60 years ago, as Director of the Botanical Gardens in Singapore, first acclimatised rubber throughout Malaya, and can be said today to be the man who is doing more than anyone else to help us close the dollar gap.

Now the task which we can jointly do is one of immense importance, its problem is increasing every day. The great rice problem cannot escape the notice of the Government. Some six to seven million tons of rice used to be the annual export of the rice exporting countries. This year it is expected to be two million. The population of Africa is growing far faster than their ability to feed themselves, and anybody who regards Africa as something that can be tapped without regard to an increase in production is wholly ignorant of the problem. If they think, for example, that the future lies in the Nigerian coalfields and that this will settle all their problems they should realise that if the production of coal in Nigeria, important as it is, were quadrupled, it would only equal four days' production in the coalfields of the United Kingdom.

And while this is happening, while the population is increasing, the Budget in Africa has gone up since 1938 by 500 per cent. What will happen if world prices collapse, or if alternative sources of supply are found, or American stockpiling ends? The answer must be in increased production in Africa itself, and this can come about only by the partnership of the European, the Asiatic and the African. We are thankful to feel that there are people in Africa today who are making this quite plain and who understand the responsibilities that are theirs.

I do not wish to keep the right hon. Gentleman from his answer to this Debate, but I think he will agree that something of value has emerged from all this discussion. There is so little about which we disagree. In the chaos of the world as it is today, events will affect the British way of life more than any other. As Pericles is once quoted to have said:

"We have more at stake than those who have no such inheritance as ours."

We have certain disagreements over Imperial policy with the Government, but they are trivial compared with the measure of agreement in the colonial sphere. We like them, believe that the future destiny of the British Colonies is self-government within and not outside the British Empire. We believe that nothing else can be contemplated in the world as it is today. But, subject to this, we are in favour of the fullest extension of self-government. In this task we have to carry the people with us.

It may be necessary to make a new approach to the problem of propaganda. It would be futile to suggest that the papers in West Africa, for example, must always be treated as if they were serious and reputable pamphlets or newspapers. It may be that a new approach to the law of sedition or the law of libel may be necessary. Whatever the Government think necessary in that field we would certainly support, but we must carry the bulk of the people with us.

In this task we have many of the most excellent of our fellow citizens on whom to depend; and the world as a whole, not least America, is beginning to realise the contribution which the British Colonial Empire can make both materially and morally. We associate ourselves today with the message of goodwill to the Colonial Service and to the Ministers who are for the moment in charge of that great Department.

It has almost become a truism to say that while Colonial Debates are not always as well attended as they might be, they do reach an exceedingly high standard and this one is no exception. I think everyone will agree that from hon. Members on both sides of the Committee we have had contributions which were thoughtful and constructive.

I would add my humble tribute to both those people who have been mentioned by previous speakers. Of the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Stanley) I would say that if there must be such a thing as a Conservative Colonial Secretary—and it seems that, due to our Constitution, possibly there may have to be from time to time—I cannot think of a better one than the right hon. Member, for whom I have the greatest possible respect.

Of Mr. Arthur Creech Jones, who was until recently the Colonial Secretary, I would say this, which is the highest tribute I can pay. I came to this office in a quiet way, having taken an interest in colonial affairs from time to time, and having had ideas of my own of what ought or ought not to be done. Time and again I thought "This is something which should be done, let us go ahead with this." And time and again I found it had been done by the right hon. Gentleman. He had carried on in his quiet and unassuming way, which often made people think he was not doing as much as he really was; but he accomplished what was little short of a revolution during his tenure of office.

The speeches have been divided into three categories, and I should like to divide my reply into three categories—political, social and economic. Naturally, some hon. Members have touched on all three. I should like to deal first with the political category. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) dealt with the question of the colonial Press. He raised a difficult point of very great importance. It is true, as the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd) said, that we can exaggerate the importance of some of these publications. Some of them are of an almost ludicrous character. Whatever we may say about our own Press, its exaggerations and its extraordinary stories, they cannot compare with some of the articles which appear in the colonial Press. I was informed today that in one colonial paper there was a headline in large type which said:

"Woman gives birth to seven foot snake."

That was a piece of information which was apparently vouchsafed to the people of the Colony, and which they had to believe. Even our strangest and lowest newspapers do not do that.

It is the firm belief of His Majesty's Government, and of the Governments of all colonial territories, that the solution of this difficulty does not, in the long run, lie in repressive laws or in any form of Press control. We must avoid that somehow. These measures are distasteful to any of us who are concerned with the welfare of our Colonies, just as they would be distasteful to anybody concerned with the welfare of this country. Subject to that, we must ensure that mischief of an irreparable nature is not done by these various organs of the Press.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington also spoke about elections in the Gold Coast. He referred to the statement which had been made by the C.P.P., that they did not intend to take part in government and that they intended rather to do their best to break it up. I can only say that it is impossible to say anything about this until they should come into power. I hope they will realise that if they do such a thing as to try to break up the Government they will do untold harm, not so much to this country as to their own country. I hope that, if they should get responsibility, or when they get it, it will be brought home to them, and they will realise that that is not the way to carry on any Government.

Our information about the elections is somewhat contrary to that of the right hon. Gentleman. There may have been exceptions here and there, in the somewhat strange cases such as the right hon. Gentleman described. But, on the whole, the elections were conducted in an orderly manner and, by and large, the ballot was secret in spite of the possible exceptions about which the right hon. Gentleman may have heard. I am glad to reassure him on that point. That is our information, such as it is.

I turn now to the social problems in the Colonies. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mr. Edward Davies) made a most helpful speech on the subject, and he and the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Gammans) and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Sorensen), all referred to the trade union conditions, with particular reference to the unfortunate events which took place at Enugu. We agree emphatically with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North, that there should be no whitewashing and that we must ensure that such conditions obtain throughout all our Colonies that events like those at Enugu can never occur again. That is not just a pious generalisation. We are, in fact, taking steps to that end.

Since the war, efforts have been made to build up labour departments in most Colonies. For example, most Colonial Governments have introduced a fair wages clause. That is something which did not exist in the years before the war. In 1947, Mr. Creech Jones sent a circular to all Colonial Governments briefing them on every aspect of wage-fixing machinery in the United Kingdom, so that they could understand how to carry out negotiations. Since 1945, particular attention has been drawn to the training of trade unionists, so that we hope to find them acting with as great a sense of responsibility as do the leaders of the great trade unions here. So much for the trade unions and the problems connected with Enugu.

The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) made what was, in the middle of an otherwise excellent Debate, a most unfortunate contribution. I am afraid that I must use very strong language about it. It was reactionary and harmful, and I do not think it was representative of the hon. Member's own party. I would only reaffirm that racial discrimination does not play any part in the colonial policy of the Government. It never has done.

Would the right hon. Gentleman allow me to say, in view of his considerable charges against me, that I am not aware that I made any racial discrimination whatever? I indicated the facts, as I see them, but made no racial discrimination.

I do not want to get involved in discussion of Governments outside the Colonial Empire, but I only say that the hon. Gentleman did, I gather, say that he was in favour of what is known as the principle of apartheid, and that is a principle of which the Government, so far as the Colonial Empire is concerned, are not in favour.

These are very important charges which the right hon. Gentleman has made against me. I did not say that I was in favour of it. I only said it was applied on the Continent of Africa, and should be taken into account by any sensible Government.

I am very glad to know that the hon. Gentleman is not in favour of it and I would gladly withdraw, but, so far as I heard—and I shall be interested to read his speech tomorrow—it was definitely in favour of what I could only call racial discrimination, and totally out of keeping with all the speeches made by his hon. Friends.

Was the right hon. Gentleman here?

Of course I was here, and I say that that speech was totally out of keeping with the speeches of the hon. Member's hon. Friends.

rose—

I have not got much time; I cannot give way. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire asks if I was in the Chamber; I certainly was, though not at the time when the hon. Lady the Member for Flint, East (Mrs. White) made her speech, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told me it was an excellent speech and that I had missed a great deal by not hearing it. I cannot reply to it as fully as I would have liked to do, except to say that there is now an assistant in the department dealing with the education of women, and that that assistant is a woman. That is a relatively new appointment in the Colonial Office.

I pass now to the economic side. A number of hon. Members dealt with this matter very fully. My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Philips Price) made a very powerful speech in which he dealt with the operation of pilot schemes designed to set up farms in which colonial peoples could take part, maybe, in small groups, in what the Russians call collective farming. These are, in fact, being set up and are meeting with considerable success. We are trying pilot schemes of one kind or another in different forms of agriculture, and we intend to extend them as rapidly as possible.

My hon. Friend also mentioned, as did the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. J. Johnson) the question of geological surveys. That is a matter of very great importance indeed, but I am sorry to say that there have been in the past relatively few geologists engaged on this work. I am not trying to make a party point, but it was the fact that there were not many geologists, and we are now trying to expand the geological service, which is still far behind the geological service in this country, that of America or any other highly developed country.

We have done all we can to enlist the American geologists. The Americans have offered the help of their geologists, but we have had some difficulty in securing the number we need. Those difficulties are being overcome, and we are gradually obtaining the services of American geologists to add to the number of our own geological staff. I hope, therefore, that this important work can be continued.

The right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington spoke particularly about locust control.

I have not even thought about it.

I am sorry; I should have said the hon. Member for Croydon, North (Mr. Frederic Harris). But if the right hon. Gentleman has not thought about it, I will now tell him about it. As the Committee is aware, the desert locust survey has been working out a number of plans for dealing with locust control in the areas northwards of East Africa. Dr. Uvurov, who is the director of the Locust Research Committee, is now in Nairobi to attend a conference which will consider what steps can be taken to meet this serious threat.

Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that it appears to have got out of control again?

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman means that the scheme has got out of control, or whether the locusts have got out of control. The scheme is, in fact controlling the locusts.

That is unfortunate.

The right hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington—I know I am right this time—dealt particularly with, and asked me particularly to reply to, the question of the development of North Borneo and Brunei. There has been very considerable development there. There is a 10-year plan which includes the development of roads, port facilities, and, what I know everyone will recognise as being of vital importance, rice production by mechanical means. It includes also the development of health and educational services. The sum of £7,500,000 will be spent on those three services, and the money will be raised by taxation, loans and grant. Therefore, I think that the right hon. Gentleman can be reassured that considerable development is taking place in that part of the world.

The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. G. B. Craddock) and also my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby—in what, if I may be allowed to say so, was an exceptionally fine speech—dealt among other things with the subject of soil erosion in East Africa. I can only say that I have myself read a very remarkable book. "The Road to Survival," which dealt with soil erosion all over the world. I am as fully seized with that problem as any amateur can be, and I hope to learn more about it in East Africa, and to see what can possibly be done to prevent what is a very serious menace, not only to the British Colonial Empire, but to large parts of the world.

A number of hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire, referred to the dollar problem and to the great contribution now being made by the Colonial Empire to the earning and saving of dollars. I do not think it is always recognised just how great that contribution is. There are two different aspects; the one is the earning, and the other is the saving. With regard to the earning, there are, of course, the well-known examples of rubber and tin from Malaya and cocoa from the Gold Coast. But there are also a number of smaller dollar earners which do not receive much publicity, but which, in their own way, contribute a great deal.

For instance, there is the arrowroot produced in St. Vincent which, I think I am right in saying, satisfies the whole of the supply of the United States. Then there are canned fruits, preserved ginger, and Turkish tobacco from Northern Rhodesia, kyanite from Kenya, salt from the West Indies and asbestos from Cyprus. Each is doing its part in producing something or other to help in the dollar crisis. Not only that, they are each—what is of just as great importance—dollar savers. For example, there is sugar in the West Indies, coffee in Northern Rhodesia, cotton in Uganda and Nigeria, to say nothing of large quantities of oils and fats, hides and skins. All these contribute enormously to our ability to switch from dollar imports to imports from the sterling area.

It is, of course, very interesting to hear about dollar earners, but I asked whether the Government could let us have figures of the contributions which each of the Crown territories made to dollar earning. They would be very interesting to the Committee, and encouraging to the Colonies themselves.

That is a point for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has the overall survey of our dollar position. I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman, if he wishes, can take an opportunity of asking the Chancellor whether he is willing that such an overall figure should be given.

The Colonial Empire, in short, is doing an immense amount of valuable work in helping to solve the dollar problem. I have dealt with the political, social and economic points that have been raised by various Members. It is a very big task upon which we are now engaged. The whole Colonial Empire is, in fact, engaged on what is nothing more or less than a major economic revolution. It is slow; perhaps it is very slow sometimes, but it is profound. It may not show much this year; but in 30 or 40 years, maybe even before that, we may find such countries as Uganda, Malaya, and Nigeria, to mention only three, as highly industrialised even as Australia is today. It is not past the bounds of possibility—and that in addition to their very great agricultural development, and to their increasing development of minerals.

It is vital that this development should take place in an orderly manner, and that it should not be the old scrambles of early capitalist development in this country. It is vital that it should bring prosperity and happiness to the native populations, to the inhabitants who built it, and not poverty and degradation, as happened very often before.

Our aim—and I am not ashamed to say it—is to help to build up social democracy in our Colonies as we are building it up here. Our aim is to see that the people of Nyasaland, of St. Lucia and Fiji—to mention three about as far apart as they well could be—have the same opportunity as we have to live full lives, to see that their children can go to schools, and that their houses are not hovels to live in. Our aim is to see that in all these developments, social, political and economic, they themselves shall play an ever-increasing part, and that they themselves should do it without distinction of race.

That is our aim. It cannot be achieved overnight. Indeed, I think it is the aim of a very large number of people on both sides of this Committee. It will take years, it may even take a decade, but we intend to achieve it. It is the task to which we have set our hand, and we are determined not to look back until that task has been carried out.

Is it proposed to publish the report of the Colonial De- velopment Corporation in time for there to be a debate before we adjourn? Many hon. Members have deliberately kept off this subject in the hope that it would be so.

I, too, have refrained from dealing with this for the same reason. The report is to come out shortly. Whether there can be a Debate on it is a matter to be settled through the usual channels. The report will be out very shortly indeed, in time for there to be a debate if a suitable date is chosen.

I beg to move,

"That the Draft National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) (Colliery Workers Supplementary Scheme) Amendment Order, 1950, a copy of which was laid before this House on 15th June, be approved."

Briefly I would remind the House that the Industrial Injuries Act gives the right to any representative body of insured persons and their employers to submit to the Minister for approval a scheme for supplementing their benefits under the Act, provided that no part of the fund required for the scheme is derived from moneys provided by Parliament. The only such scheme in operation at present is the colliery workers' scheme which came into operation on 2nd August, 1948.

Under the scheme injury benefit, disablement benefit and death benefit, which are paid under the Industrial Injuries Act as a result of accidents at work or industrial diseases, are supplemented from a special fund formed by contributions from the National Coal Board and the colliery workers. The scheme itself is administered by a national committee representing both sides of the industry. The Board and my right hon. Friend the Minister of National Insurance act as paying agents.

As a result of experience of the working of the scheme during the past nearly two years some slight amendments have been thought desirable and it is for these that I am asking the approval of the House tonight. The amendments relate to four matters which I will briefly put before the House. First, when industrial disablement pensioners have to go into hospital as a result of their accident or disease their disablement benefit is increased under the Act to the 100 per cent rate whilst they are in hospital. It is now proposed that in those circumstances the colliery workers' supplement should also be raised in proportion. This, I may say was the original intention of the national committee responsible for the scheme, and the amendment will achieve that intention.

Secondly, at present the scheme provides for payment of the supplementary benefits to be made by my right hon. Friend the Minister as agent, except when the beneficiary is in insurable employment or during short spells of unemployment when payment is made by the National Coal Board. The amending Order which is before the House tonight provides more elasticity in the accounting procedure and enables any supplementary benefit payable by the Minister to be paid by the Board and vice versa. I would emphasise at this point that the money paid comes from the scheme's own fund and not from the Industrial Injuries Fund.

Thirdly, while the beneficiary is in insurable employment, his supplementary benefit, after the first three months, may depend upon his pre-accident earnings. Hitherto the minimum rate for the purpose of the scheme has been £5 15s a week for underground workers and £5 a week for surface workers. Paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule of the Order now before the House adds a list of rates for juvenile workers and females. Fourthly, the last Amendment in the First Schedule slightly extends the classes of securities in which the National Committee may invest money forming part of the fund established by the scheme. The preceding Amendment in the same Schedule will enable the national committee to retain any security notwithstanding that since the investment was made it has ceased to be an authorised security.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the additional cost of the Amendments of this Order is estimated at less than £10,000 a year and can be met out of the existing rates of contribution under the scheme without extra cost to the industry.

I do not think it is necessary that we should say much upon this Order tonight for, as the hon. Member has explained, it is only an amending Order dealing with four specific points. I do not think it should be necessary for us to debate it at any length. We debated the original Order bringing in the scheme on a night, two years ago, which was almost equally hot and in a debate in which some heat was engendered. I do not think it will be necessary to engender it again this evening.

There are a few points, however, to which I desire to draw the attention of the House and which I desire to make. The first point is with regard to the form of this Order. I suggest that it is not at all easy for any one picking up this Order, with its long list of amendments set out in the First Schedule and long list of additional provisions set out in the Second Schedule, to see precisely what is the effect of this amending Order, or at least to determine that without a very great expenditure of time. On more than one occasion recently the Attorney-General has stressed in this House the need for consolidating our Statute law. I think there is, too, a great need for the consolidation of regulations where those regulations create a scheme which is intended to be permanent in its operation.

I would suggest to the hon. Gentleman that, if further amendments have to be made to the scheme, opportunity should be taken to consolidate all the Orders relating to the scheme in one Order so that a person can take it, study it, and find it all there. This scheme, after all, affects a large number of people who are not lawyers and who will find it even more difficult than will lawyers to work out these different Orders. If that cannot be done, however, if it is impossible to have a consolidating regulation of that sort, I suggest that at least we might adopt the practice which has been adopted in some Bills of setting out in a Third Schedule the whole scheme as amended. That is a very convenient practice for every one and I am sure it would facilitate the work of hon. Members if it could be followed in relation to Orders of this character. That is the first point I wish to make; I do not think it is an unimportant point and I hope that when the hon. Gentleman replies or when the right hon. Lady speaks, if she is to speak on this—that he will say that full consideration will be given to that point and an endeavour made to meet it in the future.

This, as the hon. Gentleman has said, is the only scheme so far made under Section 83 of the National Insurance Act. That section was included in the Act largely as a result of pressure from this side of the House. Members may remember that a new Clause was tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North (Mr. Peak e) largely to the effect of Section 83. I mention that because I want to make it quite clear that we on this side of the House are not opposed to proper contributory supplementary schemes. Indeed, we recognize the necessity for them. It is, I think, somewhat sad to think back over these last two years and recall that, in spite of what was said in 1948 when this particular scheme was being introduced, no further scheme for any other industry has been approved by the Minister of National Insurance.

Of course, the risks of injury and accident vary in every industry. I am sure we all hope that the risks in the mining industry will continuously grow less. However, when an injury is suffered—when a leg is lost—the need may be the same irrespective of the industry in which the man was engaged. When a death occurs in an industry the need of the widow may be the same whether the man was employed in the coal mines, on the railways, or in any other industry: and the need for supplementary schemes was recognised when the Act was passed.

This Amendment which the Order makes, so far as it increases benefits, is, I recognise, very limited, but all the same desirable. I should like to make it clear that we do not object at all to that Amendment, but it must be recognised that one result of this supplementary scheme is to create some disparity in respect of payment for injuries. The scheme itself results in considerably increased injury benefits for those who suffer some loss in that industry. A railway man losing a leg while shunting will get less than the surface worker at the mines because of the supplementary scheme.

I mention that because I think it does emphasise the desirability of further supplementary schemes, and I do hope that when the right hon. Lady replies—if she does reply—she will be able to tell us that what was said by the Government in 1948, as to this being the first scheme to be introduced, will be carried out, and that we shall soon have an opportunity of considering proper contributory schemes for supplementary benefits in relation to other nationalised industries in addition to this relating to the coal industry

Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that it is the trade unions who put forward schemes, and that it is the Minister who puts them into operation? He said that the Minister is responsible for other schemes

I will deal with that point. I was very careful not to attack—I do not want to attack—the trade unions and I made no attack on the Minister. What I am seeking to emphasise is the desirability of other supplementary schemes, which we considered were desirable when the Act was Passed.

It may be—I do not know—that the hon. Gentleman may know more than I do, and that more of these schemes have been proposed by both sides of other industries. Of course, they cannot come before this House until they have received the approval of the Minister. It may be—I do not know—that the Minister has on some occasions not given approval but whether the Minister has given approval or not, all I am suggesting is that, although no statutory power is conferred upon the Minister of initiating such schemes, at least the Minister might perhaps give a hint that such schemes would be favourably regarded.

I should like to offer my congratulations to the Minister, to the National Coal Board and to the Miners' Union upon being the first to have a special scheme for augmenting disability pensions, and also upon the modest improvements in the scheme which are contained in this Order. Reference to the table of wages indicates that the scheme continues to include a wage test, and this I very deeply regret, not oil any political ground—that is not what is in my mind—but because a very genuine attempt was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North (Mr. Peake), in which I was associated with him, to try to remove from the method of paying compensation for industrial injuries any test by means.

The objection to such a test is that it places a handicap or an inhibition upon the disabled person encouraging him to consider whether it is really worth while doing his best and working as hard as he can, because the more he does the less he gets. Since incentive to overcome a handicap is tremendously important—even more important with handicapped people than with others—I think it is a mistake in any disability scheme to have a scaling off which has the effect of making a person think twice before he goes out and overcomes the tremendous difficulties of getting a job and staying in the job with his disability. Because the scheme does not amend that but rather confirms it, I regret it.

I have only one other point. I am glad that the Minister is taking wider powers of investment for the National Committee. It would indeed be unfortunate for the Miners' Disability Fund were they compelled to invest in Government securities alone. I am glad that they are able to buy preference stock and ordinary stock, and that a test of profitability is not merely allowable but advised, so that the men who manage this National Committee may choose good stocks in private companies which have paid dividends for 10 years or more. I am glad that they should have the wise common sense to regard such investments as good ones for such funds.

For my part I support this Order. I agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northants, South (Mr. Manningham-Buller). Further schemes of this kind, which will continue to raise levels of compensations that are paid to persons who are disabled in industry, and thus raise levels generally in this field, will always receive my warm support, and, so far as I at any rate am concerned, a warm welcome.

The Parliamentary Secretary has explained this Order very clearly, and I am sure the whole House welcomed it. The point I wish to make is a special one. I am very conscious of the fact that it is very difficult to criticise in any way an Order which has been so fully agreed between the parties, but, all the same, I think this is a point that might be worth while bearing in mind for any future amendments to this particular Order, and also as regards future Orders of this type.

It may be that I am wrong in my interpretation of this Order, and, if so, I hope that the Minister will tell me that I am wrong. In the case of an accident to a child or a young person, the courts, in awarding damages, generally take into account the expectation of life of that person. I understand that under this Order the benefit to be paid to a juvenile who is injured is to be related to his earnings at the time of the injury. Is it then the case that if a juvenile is so injured as to carry an injury through life, or possibly be disabled through life, he is always to receive benefit related to his earnings as a juvenile? If that is so, it seems to me that that is a defect in the scheme.

He has, after all, been injured in the course of working in the mines, just like anybody of adult age, and it seems to me that it is wrong that a miner who is a juvenile should be less well treated merely because the injury happened to occur before he reached adult age. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will deal with this point, and, indeed, I hope that it will be considered in the future. I feel that it is more than likely that Members of this House will at some time receive representations from those who may have received injuries when they were being paid as juveniles, and yet have to carry that injury through life, and who, nevertheless, will only receive benefit in relation to their juvenile pay. I hope that I have made this point plain. It does seem to me to be one of considerable substance, and I hope that it will receive the consideration of the Minister.

It is, I think, an interesting commentary on the declining bitterness in this field that the hon. and learned Member for Northants, South (Mr. Manningham-Buller), put forward a very similar thesis to the one which he advanced on the main Regulations when they were adopted two years ago, when he was threatened, if I remember rightly, with being thrown into the river for what he said. I think that the House will agree with what he put forward tonight—that the essential factor is not the craft that the person is employed in, or the industry, but the need of the family. It is that which we must have in mind when we consider these Regulations.

May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary two brief questions? The first has been covered already, but I should like to know what other schemes, if any, are in train and are before his Ministry for approval. Secondly, he mentioned the figure of £10,000 as the cost of these amendments. May I ask him: £10,000 in relation to what sum? In other words, since this scheme came in we are paying roughly five-sixths of the cost as taxpayers. May we know what the cost of the scheme so far has been?

May I express gratitude on behalf of my right hon. Friend and myself for the great welcome that has been given to this Order which makes decided improvements so far as the disabled are concerned. Two main points were suggested—important points—by hon. Gentlemen opposite. The first was in regard to the consolidation of these Orders and the form in which they are presented. All I can say on that is that this point has been mentioned on many occasions in this House, and due note will no doubt be taken of it. On the other point, regarding the disadvantage to other workers in other industries which have not supplementary schemes, that is a responsibility, as I pointed out in my speech, resting upon the shoulders of the insured persons and their employers.

May I say, on behalf of my right hon. Friend, that she will welcome any industrial workers and their employers submitting supplementary schemes for her approval under the Industrial Injuries Act? It is the case that at least 50 per cent. of the accidents that take place occur in the mining industry. That is the reason, I believe, why the National Coal Board and the colliery workers, represented by the National Union of Mineworkers, were so quick in taking advantage of Section 83 of the Industrial Injuries Act to bring forward a supplementary scheme.

Can we be told whether or not the Minister has refused to approve a scheme?

I would point out that we are discussing only what is contained in this Order and not what might have happened in the case of other industries.

As far as I know, no other schemes have been submitted. The hon. Member for Dumfries (Mr. N. Macpherson) raised an important point. I think he was confusing the supplementary scheme with the Act itself. The main point of the Act is to get away from the old Workman's Compensation Act, where compensation payments were related to earnings. Under this Act compensation payments to juveniles and adults are related to the degree of disability, which is assessed by the medical hoards. The hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain MacLeod) made the same point as the hon. and learned Member for Northants, South, by asking whether any other supplementary schemes have been submitted. As I have said, so far as I know none have been submitted. In conclusion, I would repeat that we will welcome any supplementary scheme that may be presented.

Surely the purpose of the supplementary payment is to bring the total payment up to a certain level. That being so, the basic payment forms only part of the payment. This Order relates payments specifically to earnings, and in that way differs from industrial insurance.

The hon. Member has already spoken.

I was only asking a question.

The answer is that under the supplementary scheme we are discussing during the first three months, there is entitlement to supplementary payment. After that period of time, the supplementary payments have relation to pre-accident and post-accident earnings.

Can I have an answer to my question?

I have not the full assessment of the costs, but I will try to find out and let the hon. Member know.

I beg to move,

"That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, praying that the Regulations, dated 24th May, 1950, entitled the National Insurance (Classification) Amendment (No. 3) Regulations, 1950 (S.I., 1950, No. 830), a copy of which was laid before this House on 24th May, he annulled."

I want to raise a fairly narrow point in connection with these Regulations, but one which I think is not on that account necessarily unimportant. If paragraph 3 (5) of the Regulations is read in connection with paragraph 45 of the basic Regulations, it will be noticed that both have relation to persons employed on supervising, preparing or serving school meals in day schools under local education authorities. Provided these persons are employed for less than eight hours a week or at a weekly wage of less than £1 respectively, then they come out of class I of insured persons and fall into class II—that is, self-employed persons—or into class III—non-employed persons.

The consequence of these Regulations and the basic Regulations taken together is, therefore, that a local authority can, by re-organising its schedule for the service of school meals, increasing the staff and correspondingly lowering the hours of work which each member employed for the purpose does a week, effect a very substantial saving, since they do not then have to pay the 3s. 3d. employers' contribution in respect of class I insured workers.

I am not denying that this is a very beneficial provision from the point of view of the local authority, and that in the case of the vast majority of persons employed in this way it is not a serious hardship. That was in the minds of the National Insurance Advisory Committee, to which these draft Regulations, according to the Statute, had to be submitted. In their report upon these draft Regulations, the Advisory Committee very rightly said that:

"This work is undertaken mainly by married women who do not usually pay contributions, or by single women, most of whom are not dependent on the work for their main source of income."

There is, however—and this is the point to which I want to draw the attention of the right hon. Lady—a small minority of persons employed on this service who are very hardly affected by these Regulations taken in conjunction with the basic Regulations. They are either widows or single women who have no other source of income than this job which they have undertaken. For example, they may be widows with children attending school, who have no further time for more hours of employment per week, or they may be single women with duties at home, to whom this is a method of supplementing what small income they have.

They are placed in a very serious position. In the case of a supervisor, by falling into class II of insured persons, they have to pay 5s. 1d. per week out of their earnings and they lose the unemployment benefit to which class I is entitled. In the case of servers and preparers of meals, they have to pay 3s. 8d. out of the reduced earnings and they lose both their unemployment and sickness benefit. It is perfectly true that the right hon. Lady may properly point out that they have an alternative, to claim exception on the grounds that their total income is less than £104 per annum but in that case they forfeit the whole or a considerable part of their pension benefits.

I hope that the Minister will be able to make some suggestion on the way in which the small minority affected by these Regulations can be assisted. I have it in mind, and I venture to throw it out as a suggestion, that the Minister of Education might think fit to circularise local education authorities, drawing their attention to this point and asking them to make special arrangements in these minority cases. I know that in my own constituency, when the effect of the Regulations was pointed out, such an arrangement was made, although only six or eight out of a total of 150 were affected. That was why I have put down this Motion, and I hope that the right hon. Lady will be able to give us some assistance.

I beg to second the Motion.

After our false start last week, when my hon. Friend and I were facing the wrong way when the tapes went up, we have finally succeeded in bringing this under-sized nag before the right hon. Lady. I have nothing to add to what my hon. Friend has said, except this: this proposal was not in the preliminary draft that went to the National Insurance Advisory Committee and if one looks at the Report, one sees that representations were made to them. I should like to know, if possible, who made these representations, and whether it was the local authorities. If so, we must be careful that the other side put by my hon. Friend is not forgotten. There is an obvious financial advantage to local authorities in not having to pay their share of the contribution for pensions for these people. Perhaps the Minister will let us know that. I agree it is only a tiny minority who are affected, but we thought it right to bring this matter before the House to see if we could protect the rights of this minority in time coming.

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell), who moved this Prayer, rightly said this was a narrow point, but I want to assure him that, though it is of no great substance, I am only too happy to answer any Prayer made against our regulations if hon. Members feel that even a small minority might feel aggrieved. I think I shall be able to prove to the hon. Gentlemen that if this Prayer is granted, we shall find that the great majority of workers who serve school meals will suffer a sense of grievance, because we shall leave the anomalous position which obtains now and they will feel that we have allowed that to persist. If I can prove that to the hon. Gentlemen, I think they will agree with me that I have to consider the happiness of the greatest number. If there are a few women who feel that they lose by this Regulation when it is operating, we have always to bear in mind the fact that there are many thousands more who would welcome its operation.

I think that the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West is under some misapprehension about how this Regulation came into being. He will recall that under the original classification regulation there were two relevant provisions dealing with part-time workers of this kind. The hon. Gentleman, is talking about the part-time workers who are employed in connection with school meals and who, so long as they were earning less than 20s. a week were excluded from class I. Then there was another part-time worker, the worker engaged in cleaning or domestic work. Such worker was excluded from Part 1 so long as she worked for not more than eight hours a week.

I want the hon. Gentleman to realise that the people whose position is the occasion for this Prayer are the school meal supervisors who obtained more than 20s. a week. They are on a part-time basis, and when that limit of 20s. a week was fixed we were not aware of the fact that some local authorities were paying £1 1s. 3d. That is the position. Other local authorities in different parts of the country are paying something like 18s. or 19s., but there are a few who are paying £1 1s. 3d. We have introduced this new Regulation to assimilate the position of these supervisors to that of the domestic workers and so remove the anomaly created by certain authorities paying 1s. 3d. more than the limit laid down in the original Regulation.

The right hon. Lady will agree, I think, that in the case of the supervisors the dividing line is not 20s. but eight hours employment a week. It is a minor point.

I was asked by the seconder of the Prayer about the source of our information. I agree that a local authority informed the National Insurance Advisory Committee, which is the committee which advises me on these matters, that this anomaly did exist. The National Insurance Advisory Committee considered the matter and came to the conclusion that the time had come to remove the anomaly in the interest of the great majority.

It has been suggested by the mover of the Prayer that local authorities who are very much interested in this matter could, by rearranging hours of work, save money. But does the hon. Member realise that if this allegation is correct the local authorities could have rearranged their work under the old scheme and so have avoided paying class I contributions. I think that is rather a serious allegation in view of the fact that most people know the local authority which gave the information to the National Insurance Advisory Committee, and I think the hon. Gentleman ought to give me the evidence which he has of making that assertion. But I think he will agree with me that if there was a local authority anxious to save the small amount which could have been saved in this way it could have done so before.

Now we come to the numbers involved. I think that the mover and the seconder of the Prayer presented their case fairly. They agree that the numbers are very small. In the first place, who wants to work about eight hours a week serving school meals? Generally this work attracts married women and widows because they have a certain amount of time to spare. A married woman can opt out of insurance altogether and can benefit from her husband's insurance. So that all the married women doing this work need not be considered. Then there are the widows getting benefit under the present scheme; they can opt out if they wish.

Then we come to the spinsters. The hon. Gentleman said that this was hard luck on the spinsters who serve school meals if they have no other source of income. But surely they do not take up work like that as their only means, because they cannot maintain themselves on it. A spinster who takes up this work must have some other source of income. If she is living with her parents she is doing this work for pocket money, for a little extra money to add to what, no doubt, her parents give her.

So if we eliminate these different classes, we come to a small number of people who must suffer. Therefore, I wish the hon. Gentlemen would reflect upon this matter in the light of what I have said. If this Regulation is not allowed to operate, then we shall find the great majority of women in this category of work suffering from a sense of grievance. Therefore I ask them in the circumstances to withdraw the Prayer.

Before I ask leave to withdraw the Motion, Mr. Speaker, may I answer one or two points made by the right hon. Lady? She referred to my observation about the local education authorities saving money as an "allegation." I certainly did not mean it as such. If, by a re-arrangement of the school meals service, £3,000 can be legitimately saved, I do not think anyone would blame a local education authority for taking that course. I know of one case, and I think there are others, where such an arrangement has fairly recently taken place.

The right hon. Lady pointed out that widows—one of the minorities affected—could opt out of the scheme. Of course they can, but by so opting out they lose entirely, or partly, their pension rights. My hon. Friends and I have not any intention of pressing this Motion but, although alive to the interest of the great majority we, on our side, would like the right hon. Lady to think once again to see whether there is not any way in which the position of the very small minority can be taken account of by administrative means. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

On 26th June I addressed a Question to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply concerning the distribution of new cars in this country. The Minister in reply said to me:

"I agree with my hon. Friend; I believe that there has been a measure of abuse in this matter, though I think it has been considerably exaggerated."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th June, 1950; Vol. 476, c. 1883.]

And in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates), he further added that where there are advertisements of these almost new cars for sale as second-hand cars, they are rarely to be obtained when the customer comes along to the shop.

That Question and answer created for me a volume of correspondence from people in all parts of the country, and it is quite clear that there are unpleasant practices in connection with the distribution of new cars. In a period of scarcity everyone appreciates that he must take his place in the queue, but when people have an idea that there are queue-dodgers who are able to get to the head of the queue, and have as many as three or four new cars, whilst they are still waiting to obtain one car, a sense of social injustice is created which damages the system of distribution itself.

I will quote a letter from Birmingham. I do not know whether it is from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood who has taken an active part in this matter. The letter says:

"I can at this moment walk round the corner of the road and buy a car, 1949 Ford Anglia, for £200 above the cost when new."

And from my own constituency I have received a letter from a man who says that his grievance is that he feels he is not having a square deal when he can see certain doctors who have had as many as three new cars during the past two years.

Perhaps the best letter I received came from Scotland. With one exception, where the writer is not so polite as he might be about the Minister—and I will not read that part—this is an extremely fair letter. One garage alone, he says, about 20 miles from his home, has sold about 30 of these new cars in the last few months. Immediately the covenant of one car ends it is on the market; and, what I think is significant, is that 80 per cent. of these sales were of cars of English registration.

"You can inform Mr. Strauss,"

the letter goes on,

"that if he buys a copy of the 'Autocar' he will see hundreds of 1949 cars for sale. When cars are so scarce they should be put on points."

That is his suggestion, not mine, because if I raised it I might be outside the rules of order. This correspondent speaks of his sister's inability to obtain a car at all, and here is a case where any hon. Member could justify an appeal for this lady to obtain a car; but she could have one of these almost new cars if she paid almost double the price of a new car.

That is the injustice of which I complain tonight. People who can afford it can obtain an almost new car at an inflated price. The price, of course, is always inflated in these cases. The present system of distribution means that an allocation is given to the dealers and distributors on a percentage basis fixed on the number of cars sold in 1938–1939, and the authorised dealers also make an allocation to casual traders who have no contract with the manufacturers. They draw up a list of those who have ordered a car. The trade is No. 1, and there is a medical priority for doctors and midwives. We all appreciate the needs in these cases, although uphappily it is true that there are doctors who have exploited the privilege of their priority, getting three or four new cars and making a profit. When one sells one's last new car one gets the next for nothing, having made sufficient profit on the others at a period when there is an unnatural priority for some people over others.

Then comes the question of the private car. There is nothing stopping the anti-social or selfish person from putting down his name for four different makes of car. The lists are drawn up separately for all the different makes and in this way some people are obtaining four brand new cars in a short time whereas the waiting period for the average citizen is about four years before getting a car at all.

The number of hon. Members who have come to me since they knew that I had obtained this Adjournment and would raise this matter saying they have waited for a car for three or four years, ought to disabuse the minds of the public that hon. Members of this House have any priority whatsoever; because there is a mistaken idea about this in the correspondence which comes to us. I can give the registration numbers of cars con-concerned, the names of the persons, and of the dealers connected with the sale of a number of new cars in the past few years. But I make certain suggestions.

There are men who have been approached as soon as a covenant runs out with the offer of being given a brand new car without paying a penny. The dealer, for his part, is pleased because he makes £200 or £300 profit on selling a second-hand car. The customer is pleased because he has a brand new car himself. The only person who is not pleased is the poor fellow who cannot break into the ring to get a car to carry on his business or his livelihood whatever it may be. Trade journals are advertising cars even before the covenant has expired. If payments have not been kept up, the car is taken and the trade is making a profit in this instance.

My suggestion is that the Minister of Supply might use his influence with the trade, and ask the trade if they will require dealers and distributors to give lists with the names and addresses of people who have ordered new cars. Those who have ordered cars can be notified direct from the distributors when their cars go to the dealer, and the dealer, as has happened in some instances, should publish a full list in their shops of people waiting for cars, with their places in the queue, and should strike off the names at the end of the month as cars are delivered to people. This would give a new sense of confidence.

The trade are blaming the export drive, I believe, for their present difficulties. I wish there could be more cars on the home market although I am grateful for the contribution that the motor industry is making to the dollar drive. There can be no excuse if there were only half a dozen cars on the market for dishonesty in the methods of distribution. The present shabby system of supply is placing a premium on dishonesty, and I earnestly hope my right hon. Friend will appeal to the trade to deal with this matter.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), for having raised this important question. When he raised it originally I also put a question to the Minister and called his attention to the very large numbers of 1949 models which were being advertised. Like my hon. Friend, I have had several communications about this matter. One of my constituents wrote to me at the time I put the question and said:

"I have saved all my life to get a car. I put my name down on the rota of a Birmingham agency on 1st June, 1947. I have made several inquiries personally and by letter."

He then goes on to send me a communication from the firm, also a firm in my constituency, that they were very sorry to think they could not do anything about it, whilst the very car he was asking for was being advertised in the Birmingham Press by the very same firm, and more than one 1949 model was also advertised at an enhanced price. I had a letter only this morning from a constituent which said:

"As an ex-Service man, who at the end of the war was on active service in the Mediterranean, I was unable to place an order for a new car until my return to this country at the end of 1947. By this time all the waiting lists for new cars were filled up and although I have now had a new car on order for three years, the dealer with whom I placed the order is of the opinion I will be extremely lucky if I get it before another three years has elapsed."

I want to call my hon. Friend's attention to the very large number of cars which are being advertised, even in the London "Evening News" tonight. I see advertisements for Austin A.40's, 1949 models—which according to the up-to-date price list is £505—being sold at £875. In the "Birmingham Mail" last night there were several advertisements for, among others, the A.40 Devon saloon for £875, which is £375 in excess of the list price for a new car.

I think it is an absolute disgrace that this kind of racket should continue. I am informed that these Austion A.40's are being manufactured by the Austin Motor Company as fast as it is possible to meet the overseas demand, and in present conditions it would be probably 10 years before people could get one. How comes it, then, that 1949 A.40's are being advertised, not only in London but in Norwich and in other parts of the country? I ask my hon. Friend to consider this matter. I am sure from correspondence that I have that prospective buyers would feel that there was a greater sense of justice and fairness if the covenant period were extended beyond one year. I would not suggest three years; I think that is perhaps too much; but I think it should be extended to a period of two years. [HON. MEMBERS: "Three."] Well, three then. Many think that is a reasonable period. In any case, I think it is eminently reasonable that there should be a two-year period.

Could not my hon. Friend suggest to the trade that some such arrangement should be arrived at in the public interest? I think that at the moment these people are living almost in a "spiv" car dealers' paradise. It is our job and our duty in this House of Commons to take every possible step we can, and to suggest to the Minister that, in consultation with the trade, this very serious racket should be ended and a more reasonable arrangement come to in the interest of the community.

It is very refreshing to have such a testimony paid from Members opposite to the efficiency of price maintenance organisations. I was attacked the other Friday when I was trying to defend them. Hon. Members opposite now suggest what a marvellous thing the covenant system is, and I hope they realise that that is done by a price maintenance organisation. The hon. Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) says the only fault is that it is not extended so that there is more of it. I should just like to put that on record, because this is purely a volun- tary arrangement made by the industry itself. Of course, I sympathise with every word said tonight. My life is made a misery, as is that of anybody else who knows anything of the motor industry, by people I meet coming to me and asking whether I can help them get a car.

I shall not take more than a few minutes because I do not want to rob the Parliamentary Secretary of the opportunity of telling us how this is to be done. I am certain the industry would like to know whether he has got any sugestions. The Ministry have tried once, remember. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. G. Thomas), knows that the Ministry of Transport tried to do this; they tried to issue permits, and had 100,000 applications; they could not open them; they could not deal with them, and so they said to the industry, "Please do it yourselves. We are beaten." I know, because I applied and I was told that I could have a car. I went through the motions, but I could not have the one I wanted and I was told I should have to have something else. In the meantime the firm to whom I applied said it was all right; they got the permit and I had the car. Weeks afterwards the Ministry of Transport told me I could not have one. I am not blaming the Minister; he could not do it himself; he had to rely on the staff and the staff could not do it. I pity the Ministry of Supply if they begin to try to allocate cars.

I do not want them to.

Or to get any scheme out. Let hon. Members not blame the export drive. The industry is sending 75 per cent. of its output abroad. That means that at present there is something like one million cars on order, while there are 100,000 allocated to the home market. The covenant system is a voluntary arrangement to prevent a buyer getting a new car, and then getting rid of it immediately. The whole problem is a very difficult one for the trade, but after all, it is something which occurs in all cases where things are in scarce supply. Why not go for the people who sell houses at £3,000 and £4,000? It is impossible for any ministry or organisation to find a perfect system in a world of such shortages. The industry does its best, and the Parliamentary Secretary will perhaps tell us what the Ministry propose to do in the future.

If the hon. Member for Edgbaston (Sir P. Bennett) had not sat down, but had prevented me from having time to reply, neither I nor the House would have complained, because he is as much responsible as I am for the subject under discussion. I hope I shall not be ruled out of order if I start by making it plain that the Ministry of Supply have no control, or power of control, over the distribution of cars in the home market at present. Nevertheless, we have been in close consultation from time to time with the trade. The leaders of the trade have been, on the whole, most co-operative in acting in accordance with our suggestions, and it is right that I should inform the House of our views.

I must start on the assumption that the ratio of motorcars that go for export and motorcars for the home market is as it is. We cannot argue that tonight, although, no doubt, it is a suitable subject for debate another time. In those circumstances I would add this: a further limiting factor, not on distribution on the home market, but on the total output of cars, is the shortage of sheet steel; and it is fair to the industry that that should be made plain. At present we are obtaining every ton of sheet steel we can find anywhere in the world, and not until the middle of next year, when the new mills in South Wales come into production, shall we have an easier position. When we do, whether the allocation of motorcars to the home market increases sufficiently to solve this problem will depend on many things; but it would be reasonable to express the cautious hope that by the latter part of next year, when sheet steel is sufficiently plentiful to enable the motorcar industry to obtain full production, we ought to have circumstances in which this problem is far more likely to disappear than it is today.

The complaint about the distribution amounts to three charges. First, that the people who need cars most are not necessarily getting them; secondly, the wrong people are getting them; and thirdly, in some cases, some people are repeatedly getting post-war models by turning in the ones they have at present. Without discussing the question of whether the Government ought, or ought not, to attempt to impose a statutory control, which in any case would be out of order on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House, the arguments about centralised control apply equally whether imposed by the Government or by the industry.

As the hon. Member for Edgbaston has quite rightly said, the complexity of achieving control in individual cases, either by Statute or with the co-operation of the industry, is so great as. I think, to rule it out of consideration as a practical proposal. At the present moment a very limited priority is being given by the trade to doctors and midwives. The trade—and in this I am in full agreement—are against extending that priority to other classes. If you open the door wider you will quickly get a state of affairs in which the whole allocation of cars on the home market is sucked into the priority classes—classes, mark you, not necessarily discriminating between individual needs—and the damage done and the hardship caused might well be greater than that which exists now. The task of establishing priorities all over the country as between individuals is really an impossible thing to do centrally. I cannot imagine what the cost would be if anybody attempted to do it.

We have weighed all this carefully in the balance, and we have come to the conclusion that there is no better way of distributing motorcars on the home market than by leaving the final discretion as to individual distribution in the hands of the local dealer, who at least is in the position of having a good deal of local knowledge—which cannot possibly be available to any kind of central register—about the choice between one individual and another, very likely in the same class of user.

Now as to the question, which both my hon. Friends raised, about the cars which are quickly sold as soon as they are outside the covenant period. I am not satisfied, on the information which I have at present, that the abuses of the covenant, or the number of sales which take place immediately after the covenant period, are as great as has been suggested. As regards the covenant itself, the British Motor Trade Association has been vigilant in watching for breaches, and has taken legal action successfully on a number of occasions. At the beginning of this year my Department wrote to the Association and suggested that, in view of the relatively small number of cars coming on to the home market this year, there might be grounds for extending the period of the covenant, as the hon. Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) suggested, from one year to two years. The Association carried out a market research survey as to what was happening to these cars at the end of the covenant period.

I have studied that survey. It is admittedly incomplete, for various technical reasons that I have not time to go into—the sample was not of such a nature as to make the figures infallible—but such as it is, the figures showed that within 15 months of the signing of the covenant not more than 2 per cent. were being turned in. Let us accept that the figures are not quite accurate, and that the real figures may be a little higher, and let us accept that as you extend the survey further from the signing of the covenant, the figure will be greater. It will still be obvious that this is not the national scandal that has been alleged.

We have asked the Association to keep this matter under review, and they are now extending their survey to a period up to two years after the signing of the covenant. We will see what figures and what results they get. I am bound to say that in my opinion it would be advisable if they accepted the suggestion that has been made by us, and is now made in the House by my hon. Friend. I know they are considering it. I do not think that in terms of actual numbers the difference it will make will he very great, but I do think it will go some way towards giving the public greater confidence than it has at the moment about the effectiveness of the distribution scheme.

Let me end by saying that the essential difficulty of this problem is that the number of cars coming on to the home market is insufficient to satisfy the public, however these cars are distributed. I do not believe that the difficulties and abuses of the present scheme are as serious as is sometimes suggested, though I recognise that the situation is extremely irksome. No system of distribution in the present circumstances could remove the dissatisfaction, and having given all the consideration that I can to it, I am doubtful whether any system, however cumbersome or costly, would be a substantial improvement on the present one. I hope those people who have waited for years for cars will at least realise that their deprivation is of direct assistance to the country in achieving a favourable balance of payments. I also hope, and I hope it will go out as the general expectation of this House that all dealers—not only most of them—will realise that they are in this respect for the present the trustees of the public interest.