asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware that owing to the air-raid signal on 6th September many people were late at their work; and whether he intends to introduce legislation to see that they are not penalised by loss of wages for such periods when their failure to work is due to circum stances outwith their control?

This question is under discussion in various industries, and I understand that in some cases agreed arrangements have already been made to meet the situation. There is no present intention of introducing special legislation.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will see that certain urgent reforms are introduced in workmen's compensation and that the maximum amount pay able is increased as soon as possible?

I agree with the view expressed by my predecessor in office, that it would not be right to attempt to legislate on the major issues, before the Royal Commission have completed their review of the problem, and I am in communication with the chairman of the Royal Commission on the question of their pursuing their inquiries, notwithstanding present difficulties.

Is not the Home Secretary aware of the report that was given in regard to nystagmus, silicosis and other diseases, by a Select Committee which was set up by the present Lord Privy Seal, who said that they were prepared to do something? Is he also aware that some people have been suffering for 10 years with nystagmus; and is it intended to do anything in those cases?

I do not think the position in that respect has changed since my right hon. Friend made a statement some time ago.

No, it has not changed, and we want it changed.

Is the right hon. Gentleman of the opinion that the Royal Commission on this very important problem should still function?

I have just indicated my opinion on that point.

asked the Home Secretary what protests he has received from North Queensferry following his refusal to supply bomb-proof shelters; and will he circulate to Members of the House the report of his Scottish representative on this area?

No protests have been received, either by the Home Office or by my regional adviser in Edinburgh, against the policy which has been adopted for providing air-raid shelter at North Queensferry. As the hon. Member is aware, the problem of providing shelter in this area was very closely investigated on the spot by the technical advisers of my Department and a comprehensive plan for dealing with it was drawn up and is now being put into operation. It would be contrary to practice and open to strong objection in principle, to publish a report made by a departmental officer for the information of his official superiors, but the conclusions which I reached after consideration of that report have been fully explained in a letter which I addressed to the hon. Member and, as I have already informed him, I have no objection to his publishing that letter.

Is the Minister not aware of the deep feeling which exists in North Queensferry on this matter at the moment; is he also aware that only a concrete shelter is in course of construction in the children's playground, and if he is not prepared to provide better facilities for protection in a place which could easily become a death trap, will he see that the school children, at any rate, are evacuated?

I was very anxious that the most rapid progress possible in the circumstances should be made in the provision of shelter in the area in accordance with the approved scheme. On the point about evacuation, I shall certainly consult with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland.

Is the Minister aware that there is no shelter there yet, although they are working at it and that the school is occupied by the military, and that therefore something should be done immediately for the children?

I will look into that.

asked the Lord Privy Seal, as representing the Minister of In formation whether he is aware that on 6th September sounds extinguishing Ger man and Italian broadcasts made these inaudible in this country; and whether any steps have been taken to jam such stations?

My Noble Friend has no information that German and Italian broadcasts were rendered inaudible on the date mentioned. No steps have been taken in this country to interfere with the transmission of any foreign broadcasting station.

asked the Prime Minister whether he will consider publishing a further White Paper dealing with Anglo-German relations to controvert some of the allegations made by the Ger man Government, including therein relevant documents covering the history thereof since the occupation of Prague?

I would refer the hon. Baronet to the Prime Minister's reply to the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White) yesterday.

Will the Prime Minister consider dating back the review of these matters so that we may know what all the relevant points are? Will the publication go back for some months instead of dealing merely with the events of the last few weeks?

I hope the documents in question will go back to the period desired by the hon. Baronet.

Is it possible that they might go back to the end of the Blue Book which was issued about two years ago containing an account of the negotiations with Germany up to that point?

I will certainly undertake to examine the point raised by the hon. Member, but I think that the arrangement at present in contemplation is as suggested by the hon. Baronet the Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris).

asked the Prime Minister whether he is able to make any statement about the position of Iraq in relation to the war?

The Treaty of Alliance between His Majesty's Government and the Iraqi Government lays down that if either of the parties becomes engaged in war, the other party will immediately come to his aid in the capacity of an ally The treaty further provides that the aid of the Iraqi Government will consist in furnishing to His Majesty's Government on Iraqi territory all facilities and assistance in their power, including the use of all means of communication. The Iraqi Government have made it clear that they are prepared to carry out their treaty obligations both in the letter and in the spirit. They have already severed relations with the German Government and have taken various measures of a precautionary kind which are regarded by His Majesty's Government as most satisfactory. I should like to take this opportunity of expressing the appreciation of His Majesty's Government for the loyal and friendly attitude of their ally.

asked the Prime Minister whether it is intended to set up a Ministry of Munitions or whether he is satisfied that the present arrangements will secure the best results?

The powers granted by Parliament in the Ministry of Supply Act are sufficiently wide to cover any development of the functions of the Ministry which may be required. The existing arrangements are working very satisfactorily and much expansion has already taken place.

asked the Prime Minister whether he is able to make any general statement as to military and aerial action in the West to counteract the German pressure on Poland in the East?

I would refer the hon. Member to the statement which I made yesterday to which I have at present nothing to add.

Is the Prime Minister able to give any further information about the bombing of military objectives in Germany?

asked the Prime Minister whether it is proposed at an early date to make a statement with regard to war aims; and whether, before doing so, he will consider the advisability of consulting the Opposition leaders in order that the policy, when declared shall represent the views of the House as a whole?

I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave yesterday in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for the Western Division of Leeds (Mr. V. Adams). As regards the last part of the question, while His Majesty's Government must take full responsibility for such a statement, it is my intention to maintain the close touch with the leaders of the Opposition which at present exists.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that our principal war aim at the moment is to defeat the enemy and that we should give all our attention to that?

(by Private Notice) asked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the official announcement issued yesterday from Herr Hitler's headquarters that German artillery, men and airmen have hitherto shown excessive consideration for open towns, hamlets and villages in Poland but that in future the German Air Force in co-operation with heavy artillery would take all suitable measures to make clear the useless-ness of resistance, and whether he has any statement to make?

Yes, Sir. His Majesty's Government have noted this announcement, which on the face of it is in flat contradiction of the German Chancellor's recent statement to the Reichstag, when he disclaimed any desire to make war on women and children. The restrictions we (like the French) have imposed upon the operations of our own Forces were based upon the condition of similar restraint being observed by our opponents and His Majesty's Government must of course hold themselves free, if such restraint is not in fact observed, to take such action as they may deem appropriate. But I wish to add that whatever be the lengths to which others may go, His Majesty's Government will never resort to the deliberate attack on women, children and other civilians for purposes of mere terrorism. In the meantime it must be remembered that our strategy and tactics must at all stages be governed by one consideration and one only, namely, the most effective prosecution of the war.

I will add that if action of the kind suggested in the German announcement is taken, it will inevitably further strengthen the resolve of ourselves and our Allies so to conduct our policy and so to prosecute the war as to ensure that the menace we are fighting (of which this may be another manifestation) is finally removed.

While appreciating the Prime Minister's answer, may I ask him whether the War Cabinet has constantly in mind the solemn obligation entered into in our Treaty of Alliance with Poland whereby we undertook to render to Poland all the support and assistance in our power?

Yes, Sir, certainly.

Does not the Prime Minister now recognise that this man in question is getting very desperate, and, as a matter of fact, in my opinion he will get more desperate later on?

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

During the First Reading, when I fully explained the objects, scope and machinery of this Bill, and when my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) asked the Government that consultation with the trade unions should be made statutory, it became clear that further consultations with the workers' and employers' organisations was desirable before Second Reading, in order that the suggestion, and any other points, might be fully discussed. I am glad to inform the House that these discussions have taken place, that they have been full, friendly, and co-operative, and that as a result certain agreed Amendments will be placed on the Order Paper to secure the fullest consultation at the beginning of and throughout the whole procedure under this Bill. These Amendments will also provide certain other agreed safeguards. I will explain their contents, not, of course, the details—those are for to-morrow—as briefly and as simply as I can. I think that that procedure will best serve the purposes of the House, and I am sure that if the House agrees on the Committee stage to insert those Amendments, they will quiet many fears and they will allay many suspicions which are natural to those whose experience of the last War, as the last Debate showed, is vivid.

The Amendments are designed and drafted in three main groups. The first group will provide that before making an order under the Act the Minister must refer it in draft to a committee appointed by him, consisting of a chairman and equal numbers of members representing respectively organisations of workers and organisations of employers which appear to him to be concerned, and that any report of the committee must be laid before the House with the order when made. Members will see that at the first stage the industrial organisations concerned will thus have full knowledge as to what is proposed and a statutory right to make their contribution to shaping the order and that the House will have the advantage of the knowledge contained in their report. We shall get the fullest publicity in this way and so avoid, what was so constant in the last War, unrest as the result of misunderstanding.

Is the House to give formal approval to the order?

Yes. The second group will safeguard the worker by providing, first, that consent to engagement or re-engagement must not be refused unless the Minister can notify to the worker concerned at the same time suitable alternative employment, and, secondly, that an employé can appeal to the court of referees if he says that suitable alternative employment was not offered to him. If the court of referees uphold him, consent is automatically given. These Amendments will also provide that if the court uphold the worker, they shall award him compensation according to regulations to be discussed with the Trades Union Congress and employers' organisations before they are made and laid before Parliament.

Will the court of referees be the court as at present constituted?

Certainly. The next group of Amendments will give statutory form to an undertaking which I gave on First Reading, and they will enable joint machinery of the trade unions and employers, whether existing now or set up hereafter, to be used for effecting engagements if duly approved and subject to approved conditions. I think the House will see at once that these Amendments will secure that no consent is required where this machinery is used and approved. I think we have a series of Amendments here which, when they are discussed in detail to-morrow, will show to the House that the main safeguards will be provided and that cooperation of those who are affected will be secured from the beginning and throughout the whole of the procedure. I think the long discussions between the First and Second Readings prove how sincere the Government are in seeking to avoid all misunderstandings and to make the arrangements clear.

Arising out of the First Reading Debate, I want to say two things. The first is that there is no question of the dilution of labour under this Bill, and the second is that neither is there any question of the leaving certificate which was adopted and abandoned in the last War. I want to say one other word to allay unnecessary fears in one direction. Fears have been expressed to me that the ordinary work of the registry offices concerned with supplying domestic staffs, clerks, and artistes in the entertainment industry will be affected. On this, I would say two things. First, the Act does not require that engagement should take place through any particular channel or agency. It does say that when engagements covered by an order are made they require the Minister's consent.

The second thing that I wish to say on that point is this: While the House will not expect me to forecast the precise working out and the scope of the orders before we consider the particular sections to which they apply. I want to make it clear that at first there is no intention of going beyond limited groups of highly skilled and vital workers. I think I am right in saying that the groups of domestic staffs, clerks and artists which I have mentioned are most unlikely to be the subject of orders. We want this Bill because we want an orderly and fully understood procedure to secure the guidance of labour to the vital national tasks. Let me make it clear again that the Bill will affect only a small number of highly skilled workers, and I am sure that it will with the Amendments I have outlined, prevent much of the suspicion and misunderstanding which arose in the last War. Workmen in the country should understand from the start that this Measure is not an automatic general measure of control. It provides for machinery for the making of particular orders, with consultations, to meet special needs. The workmen who are not the subject of a special order will remain unaffected.

I would ask the country to take a wide view not only of its tasks, but of the place which this Measure takes in carrying them out. By our attitude in these first days we have shown that we are anxious that British workmen and employers should have full confidence in the Government in industrial matters. The Government have full confidence in them and in their representative organisa- tions. We are sure that the industrial knowledge, ability and experience and the patriotism of our people will be a vital element in the struggle for victory. The Bill has reached this stage as the result of much detailed discussion and helpful constructive co-operation by the Trades Union Congress and the Employers' Federation, for which I—and I am speaking for the Government—am profoundly grateful. The discussions illustrate the spirit in which the Government intend to proceed on all matters connected wih the operaion of this Bill, and, I may add, in relation to all other questions affecting our industrial relations in the strenuous time that lies ahead of us in our determination to make a victorious effort to bring Nazism low.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what is the explanation of what was said in the last Debate to the effect that the Trades Union Congress had been consulted about this matter?

The explanation is that it was accurate. Difficulty and misunderstanding arose because the Trades Union Congress were at that time meeting at Bridlington. Telephone messages took place, and there was a certain amount of misunderstanding which has been cleared up.

All those who were present in the Debate last week will be glad that we decided on that occasion to postpone the Second Reading of this Bill. This House is entitled to be jealous of its service to the nation in this emergency, and if it permitted itself undue haste or precipitancy, or did work which would not bear examination, it would be very bad. We are starting upon a long career of struggle in which legislation and the use of legislation will play an important part. This Bill is not an ordinary piece of legislation, and the House sensed that last week when it made its appearance in circumstances which laid it open to doubt and suspicion in all parts of the House. The Title of the Bill itself is unfortunate. However, a Bill must have a title of some kind, and it is difficult to suggest an appropriate alternative. It is the principle of the Bill with which we are concerned. In the previous Debate it was truly reported that organised labour and those who represent the organised worker had been consulted, and it was stated in clear terms that they agreed with the principle of the Bill. That has been confirmed at the beginning of to-day' Debate.

There can be no doubt in the minds of those who have examined this legislation that the concessions announced by the Minister to-day are very important concessions indeed, and must bring much satisfaction to the minds of those who sit on this side of the House, and who are more directly responsible for their actions in Parliament than Members who may not have as intimate a contact with labour and its problems. I remember the difficulties of the last War when, through the four and a half years, I was in daily negotiation regarding wages, conditions of employment, transfer and housing accommodation. I gave evidence in the part of the country where I belong to the Industrial Unrest Commission, which was presided over by the late lamented member of my party who often stood at this Box. I refer to Mr. Vernon Hartshorn. He was chairman of the commission to inquire into the industrial unrest which had appeared in all parts of the country. I say without hesitation that one of the most painful sources of irritation at that time was the restrictions placed upon the movement and freedom of the labouring classes. I hope we have learned some of the lessons of the four-and-a-half years from 1914–18

I am sure the Minister is wise in giving attention without delay to this problem, not to the control of employment or to the regulation and regimentation of labour, but to seeing the need for a better organisation in this struggle in which we are involved. To-day we are making a departure in the interests of better organisation, but this organisation to be effective must be obtained by general consent. It is no use trying to pass a Bill through this House by a majority. The consent which has to be obtained in the larger field outside must first of all be obtained in the smaller circle of our Parliamentary life. There must be a plan. We cannot go on organising for the great task of the production of munitions, food and services of all kinds without a definite plan, a plan with many intricacies and complications, but a plan which will indicate to all the people of this country the general lines upon which we should proceed to maintain the country's daily existence and to provide against the horrible and wasteful expenditure of materials which war entails.

All that must be done according to a well-understood plan. There will be many elements of this plan. This Bill is one of the elements. We are now testing the efficiency of a nation freely organised against the more rigid system of the totalitarian States. We must win by superior efficiency. It is no use burking it. We do not win by mere weight of numbers; we must win by superior efficiency. This House is concerned with that, and no one is more concerned than the bulk of the people whom we claim to represent. They are the essence of industrial power. All our heavy industries must be fully manned and fully productive. The engineering and tool and instrument-making trades are vital to success, absolutely vital, and I hope the Minister of Labour will not lose sight of the essential need of finding suitable men and suitable conditions for the production of the essential materials. Agriculture cannot spare any of its workers. The food problem is a problem by itself, and agriculture will play an important part in our national activities in the next two or three years.

Transport and textile production will also be important, and the Minister of Labour, if he is to play a full part in this new work, must know how many men and women he will require for each of the various branches of our national life. He must get the right kind of workers and, let me warn the House, he must see that they are properly treated. That is vital. We cannot let the lot of the worker be subject to spasmodic bargaining, to a struggle and scramble between employers and workpeople. That cannot be tolerated. That would defeat in time any organisation which we set up. The Government must make up their mind in the very beginning of this new plan of organisation that the workpeople have the first claim, that they must be properly treated in every respect, and their comfort and their welfare must not be lost sight of for a minute. The lessons of 1914–1918 should be kept closely in mind by all of us.

The question of wages is not included in this Bill, but it is a vital question. We cannot have peace in industry, we shall never be able to retain men in industry, unless they are assured of the highest possible wages. Already one notices signs of increasing prices, and of the stabilisation of prices at higher levels, and we must see to it that wages correspond to those rises in price, so that the purchasing power of the people may be maintained. The Minister has a responsibility in that matter. His mind must be responsive and alert to all these things. He must keep in touch with the trade unions, who have a far greater knowledge—a massed knowledge, a cumulative knowledge—of conditions of employment than any other body. They are the only ones in this country who can speak authoritatively and effectively on behalf of the working class. The various trades all have their special problems, and for each of them special knowledge is required in order that we may be able to make the fullest use of them.

The Minister must have the control and the direction of labour to some extent, but I am glad to hear him say that it is not proposed that we shall embark upon a wholesale attempt to control employment. It is not necessary, and it would be folly if we tried it. No Government can achieve all that, but when there is a breakdown in the supply of labour and men have to be found for jobs, then assistance must be given. The Government cannot do all these things unaided, and there is no better way of proceeding than along the lines of the plan laid down, under which there will be consultation before anything is done. Before the Minister asks for an Order, before there is any suggestion of regulations, before anything is done to deal with the difficulty, the Minister will meet the representatives of organised labour, of the employers and of all people concerned and interested. They will go into consultation and will come to their decisions after a consideration of all the details involved. Then the Order will come before the House, with a report from the committee, so that the House will be just as well informed as the committee. Every Member will know the reasons upon which the Order is based and the scope of the Order.

I am glad that the Minister has improved upon the Amendments which he so readily undertook to accept on the last occasion when we raised this matter. I hope the House will find it possible to give the Bill a Second Reading to-day, and then we can go on to the Committee stage to-morrow when there will be nothing to prevent the fullest examination of all the Amendments which the Minister has enumerated. Those Amendments provide for some quite novel and far-reaching concessions. I regard the proposal to consult the organised workers and to report to this House, to educate the House and the public in general regarding the conditions of employment before any change is made, as of tremendous value to the workers and to all those who have assumed responsibility for the conduct of industrial affairs over the next two or three years. I shall not deal with the Amendments. I listened to the Minister and I have a note of the Amendments, and I am sure that when they are fitted into the Bill they will make it a much better Bill than it was when it was presented to us last week. I am sure that nobody regrets the delay in the consideration of the Bill, and indeed, that the Minister must be glad of it, and glad of the suggestions made to him, and his readiness to meet us and accept Amendments satisfies me.

I want to make this final remark. I would say this to Members of the House —I am not speaking now to the Minister —Do not let anybody assume that it is safe to play tricks with labour now. It is only the workers of this country who can bring the country through. It is no use talking in terms of man-power, of sending men abroad to the various battlefields, of military strategy and all that kind of thing. The backbone of this struggle is the production of munitions. As has been exemplified in the battles which have taken place in the last few days, it is machines that win battles. It is by machines that the battles of the next year or two will be won. It is in the workshops of this country that England's prospect of victory lies and I would warn every Member of the House to regard it as his own special personal obligation to do everything he can to maintain a contented and a happy working class in this country in the next year or two. Already certain complaints have been reaching me. People have written to me, because of the part I played in last week's Debate. I have had reports from workpeople and from others in various parts of the country telling me that already employers are seeking to take advantage of war conditions in order to jeopardise considerably conditions of work. I have heard of employers putting up notices in the shops requiring men to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day.

Let me say to the House—and also to the Minister, who knows this as well as I do—that we cannot work our people at that pace. If we are asking for a breakdown, that is the way to get it. Men cannot maintain that pace. It will be very difficult indeed to maintain constant work under the strain of war conditions, with the black-out and everything else. I should like the Minister to declare, and every individual Member to carry with him the conviction, that things cannot be done in the way in which certain employers have already intimated that they would like them to be done. We must let our workpeople carry on under the best possible conditions. We must give them the chance of maintaining their homes under the best conditions. There should be no attempt to lower the purchasing power of the workers in any way. There must be no attempt to establish Hitlerism in the works and factories. I appeal to the Minister when he winds up the Debate to speak from the platform of this House to those who employ people, and to warn them that the Government will not tolerate the abuses which have already crept in some industries, but are determined that this time the workers shall have a square deal.

May I say at once that I hope that any lurking suspicion or fear that may be in the mind of the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) that any section of the community at this time is prepared and willing to play tricks with any other section may prove to be without foundation? If, on the other hand, there are people who are so misguided as to think that they can take advantage of that kind at a time of the nation's extremity I hope that it will be made clear to them—

They are trying it on now.

No, they are not.

I know that they are—

—that there must be no transactions of that kind. Let me pass from that to say that my hon. Friends, and I think the whole House, have heard with profound satisfaction from the Minister to-day that the series of Amendments which the Minister has expressed his willingness to accept, will result in this Bill passing through the House as an agreed Measure. It goes without saying that a Bill of this type, even with this limited purpose, must arouse very great apprehension and concern over the whole country. In my personal experience it did create a vast amount of misunderstanding. There were fears at first sight that it was a Bill for lowering wages in the production of armaments. There was a misapprehension, with regard to the engagement of labour, that many of the well-tried agencies which have been useful in the past in various industries were to be interfered with and, in fact, stopped. One is glad to know what I hope will emerge from this Debate that, on these grounds, there is no reason for suspicion. It is the duty of the House of Commons to be particularly vigilant about a Bill of this kind, and not merely to see that suspicions are allayed and apprehensions put to rest, but to show that there are no foundations in this Bill upon which practices of an unsatisfactory character can be built up.

It is well known to everybody in this country that industrial conscription, whether partial or general, is impossible and could not be introduced. On the other hand, I think there is general agreement that it is the duty of the Government in these days not merely to direct but to lead the efforts of every one of us, so that we can make, in our particular spheres, the maximum effort to win the right of living our lives in peace and of making our contribution to the welfare and progress of the community in which we live. I am glad that, as a result of the negotiations which have taken place, this is a Bill which may be regarded not as an infringement of our rights but as enabling us to co-operate in the common purpose which is in view.

I would like at this stage, because I do not see any other opportunity for doing so, to refer to two sentences which the Minister used upon the subject of aliens in the course of his speech when introducing the Bill. I should like a little more information as to the procedure for placing aliens. This is a matter of very great urgency indeed, and it is becoming all the more urgent because there is in the country a very considerable volume of highly-skilled refugee people of various types who are most anxious to make some contribution. That is the human aspect of the matter. Here are these people, who have been driven from Germany and elsewhere, and find their lives frustrated. They are in this country and are absolutely helpless and unable to do anything. I can conceive of no more pathetic sight in these days than a parade of Czech refugees voluntarily walking about the streets in military formation to show their anxiety to do something in these times.

The specific question that I should like to have answered—I do not know whether it will be possible for the Minister to do so—relates to the procedure to be followed. When these friendly aliens have been before the Lord Chancellor's tribunal, will they be entitled to go to the Employment Exchanges, or whatever agency may be appointed, in order that they may be put into the way of obtaining employment? I know the matter is difficult, yet I also know that people have been kept by trade union subscriptions at this time although they are standing idle. This is a matter which ought to be cleared up. There is another matter in this connection which makes it urgent, and it is that a large number, perhaps the majority, of these prospective workers are being kept by voluntary sources whose funds are becoming exhausted. The situation, therefore, is difficult, and it would be helpful if the Minister could give the House some indication of the procedure to be followed so that these people may be drawn as soon as possible into whatever occupations are best for them to devote their efforts on behalf of the country at this time, subject to the principle that their work shall be an addition to the common effort already being made.

I am puzzled by some of the things which I see in the Bill, and among them is the interpretation Clause. I see that advertisements may include,

"any notice, circular or other document."

I presume that there will be very careful collaboration with the Fighting Services—

The intention of that is quite clear. It will be very difficult to draw the line between ordinary communications and publications of the kind which we are trying to stop and which are blatant attempts at poaching. Hon. Members will see that people have already begun to do this. The problem is treated in this way so that we shall not get people taken away from their normal work—

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether he regards it as poaching for an employer to offer increased wages to workpeople to go and work for him in the same branch of the industry? He would not be taking workmen away from that branch of the industry into some other kind of work, but it would be a movement in the same industry on the part of workmen in order to obtain higher wages.

If the hon. Member will read my speech I think he will see the answer is quite clearly given there.

What was it?

The answer was that there is nothing in the Bill to prevent men going from one job of national importance into another job of national importance.

That is not an answer. Is an employer liable under the Bill if he sends out a document to a workman or a number of workmen offering higher wages if they will leave their employment and work for him?

The hon. Member will not expect me to give an answer at this Box now to a question of that kind without having seen the framework of the actual case.

This is a very important point, regarded from the angle at which we look at the matter. We regard the whole thing with suspicion. Is it a fact that if an employer, desiring to fulfil a larger bulk of orders and to divert labour from another employer in the same industry, offers inducements of improved conditions, higher wages, a bonus or anything of that sort, such action will make him liable under the Bill? Will the right hon. Gentleman answer that question?

I will reply to it later.

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his elucidation of this matter. This question of poaching is quite a sufficient reason for the Bill. It would be monstrous if a large number of comparatively small contractors whose work, though in small volume, laid the foundations of very much larger operations of essential work, were having their workers poached, pinched, or whatever the expression is.

Is it the hon. Member's view that if a man works for a small employer, and receives a comparatively low wage, another employer should not have the opportunity of taking him away by offering a higher wage?

Certainly that is not my opinion.

Then what do you mean?

I have said that if this had anything to do with the control of wages I would not support it.

That is what it does.

The whole purpose of this is to see that the energies of anybody who is employed shall not be misdirected. In the coming months, and it may be in the coming years, there will be a great deal of arduous, grim work to be done in the factories and munition works of this country. It is clear that that can be done only on the basis of the freest consultation and co-operation. It would not be tolerable if people were under constraint in regard to hours and wages and not, in the common phrase, getting a fair crack of the whip. If there were any feeling, as there was in the last War, that there was injustice, privilege or abuse, that would result in the disintegration of all our efforts. I believe that the Amendments that the right hon. Gentleman has incorporated in the Bill will justify us in passing it through this House as a Measure which will enable us to co-operate in making the best use of all labour.

I do not propose to enter into any imaginative flights as to the consequences of the application of this Bill. I have listened in this House many times to such prophecies about what a Bill could do in certain cases, and in only one or two instances have those contingencies which were imagined actually operated. I agree with what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell). I think the Minister will have to reply to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan), and I think the answer will have to be that the object of the Bill is to prevent poaching, that the object of the Bill is to prevent the general movement of labour, and that the object of the Bill is to prevent enticement by higher wages. If not, what is it for? Eventually, when you get down to it, that is the general purpose of the Bill.

I welcome the statement of the Minister that he has consulted with the organised employers and the organised operatives, through their national councils. It will be necessary for consultation of that sort to take place in regard to the application of the Measure. I do not know what some hon. Members may think, but trade unions and employers' organisations are not unimportant in their industries. We have such organisations in our industry, and 90 per cent. of what happens in the industry is carried out on lines which are mutually agreed. We get a number of people who slip through at times, and a number who are anxious to avoid responsibility. In the present situation we have people in various parts of the country who, as soon as they are dressed in a little brief authority, immediately assume that everybody else is under their control. That is a danger that will have to be taken into account. I would ask also that the Departments might have some consideration for those engaged in industry, and that they should not suddenly decide on a thing. I would appeal to Ministers now not to be stampeded by political pressure in this House or outside. The Departments ought not to put in requests that the industry concerned is not able to meet. When we hear of men being asked to work 80 to 90 hours a week, we should remember that it is a physical impossibility for men to continue working those hours, and if they cannot earn enough money without doing so they should be paid at higher rates.

We shall not withhold giving all the help we can. We are not in this war to lose it; we want to win the war; we do not want the system that we are opposing now to be triumphant, and whatever con- tribution we can make in the building industry will be made. But consideration should be given to our problems. There are many relatively wild parts of the country—I am not speaking about some of the nations which are represented here; I am speaking about parts of the country which are relatively uninhabited —and the recruitment of labour there will be very small indeed. Men will have to be taken far away from their homes in order to carry out works in those areas. It is not unreasonable to ask that if a man has to travel a long way to his work he shall be properly compensated. You should not object to providing him with decent sleeping accommodation. When he has to travel for miles standing up, and sometimes to walk for miles, when he has to get lodgings where usually he is not welcome, it is not unreasonable that a man should receive special rates of pay. Then, suppose a local employer or the Minister of Labour wants the man to continue working there and he has an opportunity to get work at home, there should be free opportunity for the man to move about unfettered. I cannot see why, provided that these problems are approached with understanding by the organisations responsible and by the Government, all these difficulties should not be overcome. All that we ask is that respectful attention should be paid to the opinions which are advanced on behalf of the workmen. If we are asking everybody else to play their parts, we should play our part also.

The impression left upon my mind, after having listened very carefully to the views expressed by the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks), is that he appreciates that this particular method cannot be considered entirely as an entity without consideration for other matters with which he is closely associated. I understand his views in regard to the industry that he so ably represents, and which he does so much to help to administer, but it will generally be agreed that the objects of this Bill, as they are stated by the Minister, are quite unexceptionable. Nobody in this House or elsewhere could have the slightest objection to the general principles that he lays down as being the genesis of this Measure, that is, the necessity for seeing that the very fullest use is made of the available labour to secure the production which is required in this national emergency. That clearly expresses the genesis of this Measure. I am a little afraid that the genesis of this Measure savours very much of the principle of compulsion, I will not say conscription, but there are certainly some strong inducements for men to go in certain directions that it is very much akin to compulsion. I am very much afraid that the genesis of that is to be found in the desire of the very large contractors and manufacturers who are in contract with the Government for the supply of their essential needs.

It is necessary to consider for one moment the circumstances in which these contracts are placed. It is the old custom of the Service Departments that they will not take the trouble to relate their requirements and their demands to the resources of production. In lieu of doing that they content themselves with the selection of a cetrain number of large contractors and manufacturers, and when these large contractors and manufacturers have placed their contracts they leave them to solve the problem, which is really a Government problem, of considering the means of production. Having done that, and having unloaded their own responsibility on to the manufacturers and other contracting bodies they then enter into contracts with them which do not leave any particular incentive with the manufacturer or the contractor either to economise in cost or in the use of labour. They are left free to offer all sorts of inducements to attempt to attract labour from far and wide. They offer travelling allowances, subsistence allowances, lodging allowances and unlimited overtime, and, by various devices of that kind, they attract the labour to their huge works. It is very soon found that that is no solution of their difficulty at all. They are unable to deliver the goods or complete the work within the prescribed time, and then they claim that the remedy for them is not to look to the better efficiency of their works and not to refrain from taking on further additional work in excess of their resources and contracts, but that it is to be found in obtaining more labour. More labour comes to them, and then you get into this vicious circle, that their jobs get over and the manufacturers get overcrowded, the costs pile up, contracts, instead of being speeded up, are delayed, labour unrest is caused. We very soon find ourselves in that vicious circle.

That is the genesis of this demand. It is the demand of the large manufacturers and contractors to have some very strong measure of inducement, amounting almost to compulsion, to get additional labour on to jobs for which they have contracted under these conditions. In the meantime all the smaller manufacturers and contractors are being practically starved out of existence. As they have no further use for their labour, gradually it drifts to these very large works and factories where these high inducements are offered. Let it not be thought for one moment that these large inducements and these large pay packets are to the advantage of the worker. I know that it is not so. A very large amount of that money goes in personal expenses, subsistence allowances and the maintenance of two organisations, and they are fleeced unmercifully in regard to their lodging and maintenance in the places to which they have been attracted. It can by no means be assumed that because the pay is high, or comparatively high, their economic position is improved.

It is most undesirable that this sort of thing should continue. I can understand the desire of the Service Departments to hand over this very troublesome problem of production to these manufacturers, but it is an extremely undesirable thing to do. To these particular difficulties and inducements in the conditions that already exist we now propose to add another. We propose now to put into the hands of someone, either the officials of the Government Departments or the military authorities this particular instrument which may be used to the very serious disadvantage of industry. This is the way it will work. Many of the smaller contractors and manufacturers will be gradually pushed out of existence. All of this labour will gradually dribble in thousands of little streamlets into this very large reservoir or pool, and the valves from that reservoir will be controlled by somebody, and the stream will be directed to huge servitude works or contracts.

That will be the position for some considerable time. The question of economy will be thrown to the four winds of heaven. Production will be delayed. Labour difficulties will arise and unrest will be created, and in the end, what is to happen? Suddenly these works will come to an end. Either the manufacturer will complete the supplies required, or where there are engineering or other works, these large constructional works will suddenly come to an end. What is to happen then? The men who have been attracted to these places by these inducements, and this poaching method to which the Minister referred, will wish to come back. To what are they to come back? The smaller factories and contractors have been starved out of existence, and there will be nothing whatever to which to come back. They will be derelict and thrown upon industry like so much scrap metal. I saw the disastrous result of this as a consequence of the last War in regard to the building industry, with the result that when we wanted the resources of the building industry for urgent housing schemes they had disappeared and were not available. Every organisation had been dried up and starved to death. I was at a particular place where, in a population of 80,000 people, one engineering firm alone —and I know the condition of the engineering industry well—reduced employment from 30,000 to 5,000 in the twinkling of an eye.

What is to become of the labour attracted to these large works by these inducements as is being done at the present time? It is thoroughly wrong and unsound to load, overload and servitude these large contractors with more and more orders and contracts under these most unsatisfactory conditions. Instead of a policy of that kind we should attempt to spread the work as far as it is possible—and it is possible to spread it very widely indeed—geographically and proportionately between manufacturer and contractor. In that particular way we should maintain the whole industrial organisation in such a state that, at the end of this period, industry could go on without the serious dislocation that had previously been experienced, and in the meantime production would be increased and labour unrest would cease if only the Treasury would appreciate the dire effects of these conditions of contract. If all these Service Departments would realise how they are standing in their own light in overloading a few contractors and manufacturers with orders far in excess of their means of production; if all concerned, under the aegis of the Minister of Labour, for whose activities in these matters I have no words of praise too high, would only secure the fullest co-operation with the trade unions for the purpose of getting the labour properly distributed, then, I think, we could do very much to avoid what, I fear, will be the tragedy of this Measure.

I am sorry that the hon. Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks) is not present, because I wanted to say a word or two about certain of his remarks. He said that in this House we hear a good deal that is conjecture and that often we are not right. I hold that the average Member of this House must be guided by his experience in the past. What has happened in the past? I would say to the Minister of Labour that as one who has some connection with a trade union I welcome consultation with the trade union movement, but I ask him to remember the experience of the last War and to look a stage ahead. The experience of the last War was that there were other people besides the trade union movement. The right hon. Gentleman has to watch and the trade union movement has to watch that they do not take steps that the men do not desire them to take. In my own city we set up a movement which at times swept the trade union movement out of the road. I do not think that that was good for the trade union movement; but the fact of the matter was that conditions forced such action. Trade union leaders, this House, and even the Trades Union Congress must never be allowed to take away the functions of Parliament. I say that deliberately. I feared that the consultations would result in a Bill being flung at us, and that we should be told that there had been an agreement entered into and that we mattered little. A Member of Parliament who sees and lives amongst his constituents has as valuable a contribution to make to this problem as any other section of the community. I say that about the unofficial movement, as we call it, but in reality, in strength, and in power in certain parts of the country, there is a real movement of that particular type.

Let me say something about this poaching of labour. There is no man whom I follow more closely than the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White) on many matters. The hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Sir J. Walker-Smith) I also follow closely because he, from an employer's point of view, has had great experience in the past in negotiations. But, boiled down, what does the argument of the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness mean? He has given us a lecture about what happened in the past to workmen who went to big employers. It is not for the hon. Member to decide whether a workman should go or should not. The workman knows as well as the hon. Member or I that these things happened, and if a workman is prepared to go to a particular job what right have we to step in and stop him? Stripped of all camouflage, the hon. Member's argument was that we had a right to stop workmen from doing what they wished to do.

My idea was not to lead them on the ice.

It is an arrogani assumption that the hon. Member knows better than the workman. The workman has as much brains as the hon. Member or myself. A man has a trade and knows what he is undertaking. Who is the hon. Member or who am I to tell such a man that he has not brains enough to understand the thing himself. The hon. Member says, "Don't let the man use his brains; I have superior knowledge and will prevent him from doing it." With all respect, I do not agree with the hon. Member. If there is anything wrong it is neither the workman nor the employer who is to blame. Who is to blame? The Government. Who is setting up these big amalgamations? Recall what is happening in Glasgow. The Rolls Royce Company have come there for the first time. I did not like to see the competition that was going on between one town and another to get that company. I thought there was going to be almost a war between the various rival towns and I refused to be a party to the competition. But the Rolls Royce Company have come to the outskirts of Glasgow. There they are building a factory with Government money and Government aid, to employ, I am told, a maximum of 15,000 and a minimum of 8,000 people. It will be a huge factory. Who is doing it? The Government. That factory has to be manned. Then comes the labour. But the hon. Member for Barrow-in-Furness comes along and says to workmen, "You are not to go there, although the Government have got the place." It is nonsense. The theory of this Bill is to stop a workman from leaving one place and going to another in order that his earnings may be increased.

Do not let it be thought that poaching goes on only in regard to wages. A man works now, say, in Dumbarton. He goes there from Glasgow, 15 miles away. Travelling is long and expensive. He went there first when Dumbarton was busy and Glasgow was slack. Then things become busy in Glasgow. Under this Bill the man is not to get leave to go to work near his home. If he does it may be called poaching by one firm from another. I worked under the last Munitions Act in the heart of the munitions industry. What happened? The Government tried a certain scheme which collapsed entirely. Now they are trying to modify that scheme. I see that the Minister of Labour shakes his head. As I see it, the Government are now trying to say that this poaching from the bigger firm should be stopped. That is a modification of the old Act. In the big cities I do not think the Bill will matter a jot. If the scheme proves to be irksome it will be swept away in 10 minutes, because when trade is booming either the trade union has to function or the men will create their own organisation. But the right hon. Gentleman is making a great mistake in rushing this Bill. However, if he wants it let him have it. I would have allowed things to go on.

The statements made about taking men from one place to another are a gross exaggeration to anyone who knows the engineering industry intimately. I would have allowed things to go as they are. The Bill is a method of interfering with a workman who wishes to move to some employment that will add not only directly to his wages, but indirectly, through the cost of less travel. In my experience I have found that the reason why a workman has left a job has been nine times out of 10 not on account of wages, but on account of the foreman or some other association with the job. I have worked at a place where the wages were high and I have left it to go to a place where the wages were lower, because the conditions of the new job were much better and where the tone of the shop was better. This is a Bill to stop poaching of workmen, if it can be proved to be poaching. It seems to me, however, that it is a trivial Measure and hardly worth while. In so far as certain conditions arise, the workmen will create their own machinery for dealing with it. As far as I am concerned, the Measure can go. The trade union movement has learned its lesson from the past, and I do not think that things will happen as in the past. I do, however, protest against what underlies the attitude of the Minister, the hon. Member for East Birkenhead and the hon. Member who spoke last. They want some kind of machinery to prevent the ordinary workman from having the right of ordinary movement, to which he is entitled.

The House will agree with a great deal of what the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) has said, but I see no justification for assuming that there is anything in the Bill that will restrict the freedom of the worker, if he can put up a good case. On the other hand, there has been recently a great deal of inconvenience and misery caused to workers who have moved without sufficient knowledge of the conditions; in the place to which they were going. I am sure we all feel that at this time there must be the utmost co-operation between the employers and the representatives of organised labour, which can only function sufficiently well if there is complete confidence between the two sides. We know that many of the labour leaders are fighting a rearguard action with the extreme element, who are doing all they can to undermine them.

There is one point to which I would draw attention, and that is in regard to the selection of inspectors. I do not think that anybody in this country particularly likes inspectors, but as it is essential to have them, a great deal of the smooth working of the Act will be due to the type of persons chosen. The inspectors will have great power, and it is right that they should have, but if they exercise those powers in a thoughtless way they will produce a great deal of trouble.

Another matter to which I should like to refer, and to which, I think, the Minister will be able to give a satisfactory reply, is that when circumstances exist which make it necessary for the regional commissioners to function in any area, I should like an assurance that they will not misuse their powers under the Act. It would be disastrous if any individual in a particular area tried to usurp the powers of the Act, which is using the normal machinery between the employers and the workmen. It is essential that in these times, when lighting restrictions and one thing or another make for ineffieciency in working, there should be a great deal of give and take and the closest possible collaboration. I feel sure that hon. Members opposite appreciate the fact that certain employers are trying to carry out their work efficiently, that they welcome this Bill and that they want to work in conjunction with the trades unions. It is only by such co-operation for meeting the difficulties inherent in the present situation that we shall be able to get through our troubles.

There is one further matter which is extremely pressing at the moment, and that is the standing down of large numbers of men from now on for the next three months while factories are being converted from peace-time to war-time use. This is a most serious problem, and one that is exercising the minds of a good many of us who have such workers living in our constituencies. I am faced with something between 3,000 and 4,000 workmen who will be stood down from their normal work while the factories where they are normally employed are transferred from peace to war purposes. It would be a disaster if these skilled men, who know how to handle the plant, are not available when the plant is ready for war purposes. The great problem is how they are to get through the next three months, what can be done to help them and to give them confidence that they are to have good and proper conditions, and how far such work as does offer may be spread out among the men who are temporarily standing down. In looking into these matters one realises that they can only be got over by the utmost good will between employers and workers.

We may see in this Bill the foundation of something which, I hope, will endure, not turning the House of Commons into a mere reflection of the Trades Union Congress, but making it possible to recognise in this House more fully than before the rights of the workers and the difficulties of the employers, so that we get on successfully by our combined efforts. If we can carry that feeling forward into the difficult days that are ahead of us we shall owe a great debt to the Minister of Labour and those who have collaborated with him in amending this Bill and making it a much better piece of legislation.

I shall not occupy the time of the House for many minutes, because a great deal of what I intended to say has already been said by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). I should like to ask the Minister to be as frank with the House as the hon. Member for East Woolwich (Mr. Hicks) was. The hon. Member for East Woolwich has, I regret, left the Chamber. I wish he would drop the habit of coming here to deliver Olympian addresses, and then leaving us. We are entitled to fuller collaboration than that with which he furnishes us. He said that the purpose of the Bill is to prevent inflated wages being paid. If that be so, it would be far better to call it a control of wages Bill than a control of labour Bill. Why are workers diverted from one works to another? It is usually because the works to which the workers transfer are more attractive. Why are they more attractive? Generally, because the conditions are better, or because the works are nearer to the homes of the men, or because the wages offered are higher, or because the employer is more agreeable. This mobility of labour which is being complained about is very largely the only effective leverage which the worker has not only in order to improve his wages, but to influence the kind of employer for whom he works.

The punishment for an employer who does not treat his workers properly is for him to be deprived of his workers, and the only way in which a body of workers can exercise any control at all over the conditions of their employment is by their being able to punish the employer with the possibility of being stripped of his labour. Therefore, immediately you render labour immobile by legislation of this kind you are making the employer more effective, giving him greater control over his workers and preventing the workers from improving their conditions. I was smiling rather cynically during the speech of the Minister. I remember what happened on a former occasion, when it was not a case of labour being too mobile but of labour being too rigid. We had a discussion about the rigidity of labour. The Employers' Federation issued a leaflet in which they attacked the whole insurance system of the country because it created such favourable conditions for labour that a workman could prefer to remain unemployed in some areas rather than go to other parts of the country where work was available. They said that the insurance conditions must be made less favourable in order to bring about the rigidity of labour. Now that labour is not rigid but unintelligibly mobile, it does not know where its best interests lie, and so we have a Bill to make labour more rigid. It helps the employer for labour to be as mobile as possible. Capital can be as mobile as it likes, but it is indiscreet for labour to be mobile in the same way. There is a lot of humbug and cant behind the whole of it. During the last 15 to 20 years the labour market has favoured the employer as against the worker, with the result that wages have been depressed all over the country and Great Britain has now fallen in the scale in regard to the standard of wages. Lots of countries are much better than we are at the present time.

I remember an answer given from the Government Bench some time ago, but we have slipped back since then, because men in the mining areas and skilled engineers have been taking far less in wages than some unskilled labour, because the labour market has favoured the employer as against the worker. But there was no legislation to render the employer less mobile. No hon. Member opposite said that the time had arrived to introduce legislation in order to create more favourable conditions for the worker. No, his immobility at that moment was regarded as a national asset. Now, when we are faced with the fact that the labour market is likely to favour the worker, we get a Bill in order that the worker may not exploit these circumstances to his advantage. It really is humbug to bring this Bill forward. Far better that the Bill was called exactly what it does.

I was very young when the last War started but I reached years of discretion very quickly. I remember that during the last War—the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) will confirm this—the Miners' Federation made an offer to the employers—Mr. Robert Smillie made the offer—that if the coalowners would guarantee that they would not raise the price of coal, they would not exploit the war emergency: the miners would not demand an increase of wages. That offer was turned down by the coalowners with the result that coal prices soared and the miners spent many anxious and unavailing struggles in trying to catch up with the increase in price. We had just about caught up with it when the War came to an end. We know from a statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer that at the present time the national emergency is being exploited by the employers. We have been told from the Government Bench that excessive profits have been made in Government contracts in industries everywhere as a result of the fact that the demand for capital is greater than the supply, and the employers have taken advantage of the circumstances. But when labour tries to do the same thing we have a Bill brought in to stop it. That is all labour is trying to do.

We should look upon the Bill a little more favourably if there were effective restrictions upon profiteering. I do not want to add strictures upon my own colleagues, but I would say to the trade unions that before they co-operated with this Bill they should have made that a condition of their co-operation, otherwise their co-operation with the Government will not receive the endorsement of their members. It will be impossible to honour the provisions of this Bill if excessive profits are being made by employers and the workers are at the same time being clamped down from having any increase in wages. It is not enough to receive the endorsement of the trade union machine if that endorsement is not spiritually endorsed by the members of the trade unions. I remember very vividly a circumstance in the year 1915. There was a stoppage in South Wales and we got a 171 ½ per cent. increase in wages. It was an unofficial stoppage. There had been some kind of gentleman's understanding, but it was broken in a year because conditions became so intolerable that shop steward movements were started, and from the bottom arose a movement which blew up the thin crust of agreement at the top.

We are not entitled, in my opinion, to give the Government these powers until there has been effective control over profiteering. It is not conducive to national unity, and does not create the wholesome atmosphere in the country. It brings us under suspicion if we agree to legislation of this sort which prevents labour from taking advantage of circumstances favourable to itself and, at the same time, permits employers all over the country to exploit the national emergency and make such huge profits that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has to put special measures or taxation upon them in his Budget. I think that the wisest thing the Minister can do is to withdraw the Bill because the effect of it is going to be very bad. Always in the history of this country when circumstances have favoured the under-dog, legislation has been brought forward to prevent him from taking advantage of it. The last occasion was just after the plague. I believe there is an incident about this in "Lorna Doone," where Jan Ridd is fined £10 for paying his labourer more money than the magistrates permit.

Now we are having the same kind of legislation again. In this Bill, the employers are told beforehand that if they pay higher wages than those agreed upon between the unions and the employers, it will be regarded as an inducement and will be a punishable offence. In this Bill, the Government are trying to put a ceiling to wages, but they are putting no ceiling to profits. Such unfair legislation will do more damage to the national morale than anything else that could be done. The Minister of Labour ought to withdraw the Bill until he is able to say that, if we are to make a great national effort, no one, be he employer or workman, will take advantage of the circumstances. This kind of unequal legislation, which leaves the employer free and ties the hands of the workman, is bound to create a very unpleasant atmosphere in the country.

One hon. Member opposite took exception to the statement made by an hon. Member on this side that some employers are already taking an undue advantage of the workers and somewhat reducing their standards of living. Only yesterday, I received from a constituent a letter informing me that the whole of the public employés of a council in the neighbourhood of London had been told that they were to do their eight and a-half hours ordinary work and then three and a-half hours extra work on air-raid precautions, with no extra pay. I mention this in order that the hon. Member opposite may appreciate some of the reasons why apprehension is already arising in the minds of the workers. When the Bill was introduced in the House, I felt that a large number of hon. Members opposite were unable to understand the reason we were offering opposition to the Bill. I agree that to an ordinary person reading the Bill, there does not appear to be a great deal in it, but those of us who had some experience of the last War know the dangers that arise.

During part of the last War, it happened to be my misfortune to sit repeatedly as assessor on the Munitions Tribunal at Caxton Hall. I think I can safely say that the majority of the complaints that were brought before that tribunal were of the following nature. Men and women refused to go to the factories at the stated time to start work and absented themselves for days on end because they were tied to an employer and subjected to the rule of a foreman or forewoman who was imposing tyrannical conditions on them. This had an adverse effect on the productive industry of the country. Again, it was not an uncommon thing to find that men and women refused to go to the factories to work because they were not satisfied with the wage they were receiving and were compelled to travel unduly long distances, but under the Munitions Act, they were forbidden to leave their employer and seek another one. In this Bill, enlightened trade unionists see those potentialities. We appreciate, and I want the House to appreciate, that if we are to win through, we can do so only by the good will of all concerned, and if there is any attempt, even by the leaders of the trade unions, to accept conditions that are irksome to the workers, the workers will do precisely as they did in 1915, 1916 and 1917—that is, form their own shop stewards movement and defy the conditions laid down by the trade unions.

Let us be careful. Let us not make a mistake. We find repeatedly that, in order to appease certain non-federated factories, concessions have to be made, and at this moment I would hazard a guess that the proposals for this Bill emanated from the federated employers. I have no doubt about that. I know quite well that when trade is busy the federated employers are always cursing the non-federated employers because of the advertisements they see in the newspapers offering a halfpenny or one penny more than the federated employers are prepared to give. The federated employers, and the Ministry of Labour, have to appreciate that the trade unions fix a minimum wage, but that that minimum wage is accepted by the federated employers as a maximum wage, and no matter what exceptional ability an employé has, he gets the same wage as others. The non-federated employer invariably says to a man with exceptional ability, "I will give you 2d. or 3d. an hour more." The man gets it, and is entitled to it.

Some of us feel that we want to persuade the Minister of the evils of the Bill and appeal to him to try to avoid the pitfalls, and at the same time we feel that we want to vote against the Bill. The Minister has already suggested that certain Amendments are to be offered. As the Bill stands at present, I shall vote solidly against it, even if I did so alone, because of the knowledge I have of the evils arising from such circumstances in the last War. But I am hoping that if the Minister is given the Bill, with the Amendments that have been mentioned, he will administer it, and see that his Department administers it, in a reasonable and tolerant spirit in order that we shall not have anything in the nature of a revolution inside the trade union movement. I will give the House an illustration of what has been happening. This is a Bill to control employment, but it could easily be termed a Bill to control wages. For that purpose, the Bill need not have been introduced, for the Minister could have resurrected the Statute of Labourers, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) referred. Precisely the same principles are embodied in this Bill, minus the Amendments. The Minister of Labour has already been controlling labour considerably during the last 12 months. What has been happening? I hope we are not to have this kind of control in the future. Men needed for the erection of huts at Newton Abbot have been sent from the north-east coast, while men who were unemployed in Devon have been sent to Cheshire and men have been sent from London to Cheshire, no regard whatever being given to the distance from their homes or the expenses incurred. If the Minister is going to control labour along those lines, we shall need to have a new Minister of Labour.

If I had had the powers under the Bill that is exactly what would not have happened.

The right hon. Gentleman's Department sent the men. I give this as a standing illustration of the ineptitude of the Ministry of Labour in spite of the advice of the London district office of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers. I hope it will not be repeated. [Interruption.] You have the power because you paid the men's railway fares and they went there under your direction. You had power to send them to Cheshire rather than to Devon. I stand by the statements that I have made. I have no reason to withdraw them. There is a feeling of apprehension in the minds of trade unionists throughout the country in respect of the Bill. We shall await the Amendments and we hope that, having been accepted by the representatives of the Trades Union Congress, they will be acceptable to the House, and will give a guarantee to trade unionists that nothing in the shape or form of conscription of labour is to be embodied in the Bill.

The views that I hold on this Measure have been admirably expressed by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) and the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan). As originally introduced, it was, in my judgment, and in that of the workers on the North-East Coast and in County Durham whom I have consulted upon it, undiluted industrial conscription. No one was more astonished than I was to learn that the Trades Union Congress had in principle agreed to it, but the word "principle," like the phrase "public interest," when used by the Government, requires some other definition than that which appears in the Oxford Dictionary or in common parlance. It is a singular comment upon the Minister's statement of this marvellous degree of agreement that he should have found it necessary to introduce new Amendments which will so whittle down the realities of the Measure. There are employers in Durham who have already taken advantage of the current belief in certain employing circles that they have control of labour already. A constituent of mine interviewed me at the week-end and told me that he had advised his employers, who were paying him £2 a week, that he was offered £3 to work in Civil Defence, and he was informed that he would be under penalties if he left his employment, as mining was a scheduled occupation. That sort of thing ought to be brought to a full stop, and it certainly indicates that protection is required.

I fail to see the necessity for the Measure. A magnificent illustration was given by the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the aristocrats of the trade union world, with a membership of 380,000, who have agreed to dilution. There are certain undertakings, but they were given prior to the last War when they assented to dilution. I believe the spirit of the industrial workers is so unanimous as to the necessity of defeating Nazism that the trade union movement would have given all the labour that the Minister requires without anything in the nature of compulsion. I am satisfied that if fair wages and proper conditions were established and there was an undertaking by the House that wages would rise in harmony with the cost of living, there would not be the slightest difficulty in obtaining skilled or unskilled labour in any direction and in any quantity that might be required.

We have heard a good deal about poaching. After all, there is only a limited amount of labour required in any particular area or in any particular industry. The fear that there is going to be some great exodus of labour from one area to another because of dazzling prizes held out by unscrupulous employers is, in my judgment, unjustifiable. I cannot recollect, except in very isolated cases, any such industrial difficulty during the last campaign. We are entitled to ask this question, which has been put to me by my constituents. Everyone knows that there will be an improvement in the return to capital. Certain shares are rising rapidly on the Stock Exchange. Is it unjust to ask that labour shall have some slight advantage if it gives its concentrated attention to the tasks the nation has delegated to it? It seems to me reasonable that that should be so. There is another question that we are entitled to ask. What of the mass of lowly-paid labour whose wages are on the poverty line? At this time of great expenditure and of necessity for improving the quality of labour, what is the Ministry of Labour going to do about that class? That is a query which I hope the Minister will answer.

With regard to courts of referees, there have been numerous cases of discontent in the County of Durham because there has not been a representative on a court of the trade to which the applicant before the court belonged. The Act states that the persons constituting these courts are to be called up from the panel and that members of a court need not necessarily belong to the trade which is under review. When a recent Measure was being considered in which this question arose, I endeavoured to secure the passage of a Clause stipulating that where possible a person belonging to a trade similar to that of the applicant should be on the court of referees. The Minister then resisted that proposal. Will he now with the great powers which he has stretch a point to deal with this grievance? Will he see that in the case of a mining district, for example, at least one member of the court of referees shall be a miner and that the same thing shall apply to engineering and other great trades? That is a reasonable request. If the Minister would assent to that proposition I can say that, as far as the County of Durham is concerned, he will remove an important cause of discontent among those who have to go before these courts.

We are advised that under this Measure trade union organisations and employers' organisations will be consulted. May I ask whether their advice will be taken by the Minister, and, if it is not taken, is there any remedy? I also desire to ask whether if consent to engagement or re-engagement is refused, the worker will be offered employment at his own trade? That is a reasonable request. There is a fear that alternative employment might be offered in some industry other than that to which the man is accustomed. I hope the Minister will make a mental note of these questions and deal with them, because they are very important, at all events in my constituency, and I am sure elsewhere. In reference particularly to mining, I have been asked to bring this point before the House. As the House may know, this form of labour, if it is to be stereotyped in the mines, is largely unskilled. It is a melancholy fact that a great deal of the labour to which a young man may have to serve a period of five or six years, from the age of 14 or 15 up to 20 or 21, is only unskilled labour at the end of the period. Will some effort be made by the Ministry to obviate that state of things by introducing some system of apprenticeship?

At present it is, I assure the Minister, a very great grievance that a young man who has done all that is humanly possible to learn pit practice and the application of safety first principles, and who attends night classes and endeavours to improve himself, may at the end of his so-called apprenticeship, at the age of 20 or 21, be dismissed from the mine without any remedy, without any compensation and without the promise of any alternative employment. Will that cease and will the Minister seriously consider creating a system of apprenticeship in mining just as there is in engineering and other trades? Road-making has recently been made a craft. Asphalting is a craft and apprentices to it work under stipulated conditions and have rights and privileges which are denied to young men in the mining industry, except in cases where the conditions are remarkably good.

May I repeat that, as far as my experience goes, industrial labour is burning with enthusiasm to see the end of Nazism on the Continent of Europe? The workers are willing to put forth their maximum effort in this struggle physically, mentally, and, if I may say so, spiritually. At the same time, they ask that the treatment which the Government are meting out to other sections of the community, which we may refer to broadly as the capitalist class, shall equally be meted out to labour. If this is done, I have not the slightest doubt as to the result of the great issue in which we are engaged.

I thank the Minister for giving me an opportunity of stating the views of my colleagues and myself on this Measure. A great deal of emergency legislation is being passed and with a lot of it we are in fundamental conflict. We are conscious that many of the problems which are inherent in the present situation are being absolutely neglected in this legislation. As regards this Bill we are fundamentally opposed to it, but the fact that there had been negotiations upon it between the Minister and the organised industrial movement, put us into this position, that if other Members of the House were willing to let it go, we did not feel inclined to challenge that decision. But during this Debate it has become apparent that Members above the Gangway are profoundly disturbed by this Measure. Indeed one hon. Member said he had not the slightest doubt that it was really industrial conscription. It may not be industrial conscription, but in our view it certainly prepares the way for industrial conscription, and the situation in which it will place the workpeople of this country is, to our minds, absolutely unfair and unjustified.

This is evidently a Bill promoted by the powerful organised employers of the country in view of the present situation. It will limit the rights and opportunities of workpeople in a very cruel way. During periods of slump the workpeople have always had to accept reductions of wages, but when the national situation puts them into a more powerful position, legislation of this kind is introduced to take from them the possibilities which would otherwise be presented to them under the operation of the law of supply and demand. When it is a case of slump hon. Members opposite and the Government say to the workers, "You must not interefere with an economic law." But in this Bill there is interference with what is regarded as an economic law, not to be interfered with in normal times. It may be said that things now are abnormal, but that is no reason why the workpeople should be put into an impossible position.

The Minister has stated that the Bill has not got any of those features of which we are so suspicious, but that it is largely a Bill to deal with poaching and will apply only to a very limited number of people, such as technical workers. We get so many assurances in connection with legislation in this House, but when we come to the experience afterwards, we find that it generally works out quite differently. Indeed, in the Unemployment Insurance Acts you have provision for the employ who leaves his employment without just cause, and the Court of Referees having to see that in that respect he is not unfairly treated, but everyone knows how that has operated and how employés working for employers who have made their conditions miserable are put into the position that they have practically got to go out of a job and then suffer the penalty of six weeks' disqualification. I am not in the least bit satisfied by the fact that the workman will have an appeal to the Court of Referees with regard to his position. Remember that there is a whole lot of people just now working in the country away from their homes, who were compelled to go long distances from their homes during the period of slump, and now, when there may be opportunities for them to get back home again with the prospect of more permanent employment than they have in the district to which they have gone, they will be debarred by the operation of this Measure from taking the chance of getting back to their wives and families. Those people have also been working during this period under very great economic difficulties, because they have had to pay for their lodgings in the district to which they have gone, and they have simply carried on because they were practically compelled to do so.

There is one thing that I notice in regard to this Bill. A man is not to be allowed to leave his employment. I do not want to put it too strongly, but, generally speaking, the mobility of labour is to be stopped, and the individual is to be tied to his employment. He may be with a bad employer, but he is tied up to that employer, and he is refused the opportunity of taking advantage of the situation and getting work in circumstances that would be much more comfortable to him.

indicated dissent.

The Minister shakes his head, but I am confident that this Bill will be passed, and that when it comes into operation I shall be proved to be very largely right in what I am saying in that respect. A man is not guaranteed employment with the employer; he is not guaran- teed his job. He works with an employer, and he may have the opportunity of going elsewhere where there is a prospect of longer employment, but he will be debarred by this Bill from taking advantage of the possibility of that other employment. We refuse to give him any guarantee of permanent employment. Unless the Minister is prepared to give us an assurance of permanent employment for the workpeople of the country, I myself and my colleagues are prepared to divide the House on this Bill. The fact that so many hon. Members above the Gangway have said that they would like to divide against the Bill has given us the encouragement to divide the House ourselves on this Measure, which is an attempt upon the liberties of the working people of the country, an attempt which may have the most far-reaching consequences.

I think the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen), would much prefer to be in this country than in some of the lands where employment may be guaranteed. When the hon. Member thinks over the implications of what he has just said, I believe he will think more kindly of this Measure and of those who, having surveyed the field of experience in 1914-18, have agreed that some method of orderly arrangement in order to get the maximum effort in this crisis is absolutely vital. The hon. Member for West Willesden (Mr. Viant) and other hon. Members have said that this Bill is brought in at the desire of the federated employers. Let any hon. Member who is now full of suspicion of this Measure do a very simple thing in the next week or two, in his leisure time, if he has any. Let him go into the Library of this House, take down from the shelves the reports of the Barnes Commission on the Forces of Industrial Unrest in War-time, issued in 1917, and read, not only the reports, but the evidence, and he will understand why the Government, having surveyed the difficulties of that time, have sought to proceed along this modest, but, I believe, effective way.

The hon. Member for West Willesden put his finger on another point and talked about non-federated employers who pay higher wages. I could not help reflecting over my experience during the last four years at the Ministry of Labour and about the number of non-federated employers, of whom I have heard, who pay less wages than the federated employers. I could not help thinking that the hon. Member was not doing a good service to those whom he serves by putting in too big a plea for the non-federated employer, for what is the reason for non-federation except unwillingness to bind the non-federated employer to the conditions agreed between the unions on the one hand and the federated employers on the other? Indeed, in the case of one new industry, that of road transport, I was able to persuade this House only just over a year ago to take action to compel those who did not observe the conditions to observe them. I think that, when the hon. Member reflects on that passage in his speech, he will see that that argument could be pressed very much to the detriment of organised labour.

The fact is that the case against this Bill is largely unreal. We are proposing a Measure to make, by consultation, orders applicable to certain employers and certain workmen, and it will probably be the fact, since the workers will be highly skilled, that their wages will be high, and, therefore, the argument put forward by the hon. Member about low wages does not arise. The fact is that any reflection on those very interesting reports from every one of the nine districts engaged in munition work in the last War shows that it is not to the permanent interest of labour to have feverish, spasmodic, particular advances by particular employers for their own purposes. The real interest both of the employers and of the country, and most of all of labour, is that the machinery between the unions and the employers should grow and strengthen, so that steady gains may be achieved, gains that will last.

And have prices controlled.

The hon. Member knows that the Prime Minister has made a statement about that and that there is a Ministry of Food which has great powers. I will ask to be excused from being diverted into a discussion on that issue now, for the Prime Minister has made plain that this matter is being dealt with.

The right hon. Gentleman has replied to me with regard to non-federated employers. My point was in respect to wages and not a defence of non-federated employers. I was referring to the manner in which the federated employers appeal to the Ministry in order that they might maintain a minimum wage which is accepted as a maximum.

I put the other side of the shield, namely, that the main reason for non-federation is reluctance to abide by agreed conditions. That is entirely against the best interests of the workers.

They are blackleg employers?

Certainly.

And you let them get away with it.

The hon. Member must not say that. We have done all we can in recent years to make fair protective agreements between employers and employed, and I have taken the view that in the last resort the State may have to step in. The hon. Member knows that it is easy to put up a particular case, but not so easy to find a full solution for the whole field of industry. There have been industries where we have taken action and that experience will stand us in good stead. The hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell) rightly pointed out the lessons of the last War, and I was impressed by the point put by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). Anyone rereading the evidence given at that time will know that one of the causes of the strength of the unofficial movement was the lack of some machinery of the kind provided in this Bill. "Orders which people did not understand were issued without consultation. It is because I realise the depth of the feeling that existed then and the fear of non-co-operation, that we have proceeded in this Bill along the lines proposed. Every Member will agree that the trade unions in 1939 have a greater weight in the collective machinery of industry than they have ever had. That is my answer to the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Adams). I share with the hon. Member for Gower the view that advantage ought not to be taken of the present conditions to depress wages or conditions. Indeed, the machinery of consultation between the organised responsible bodies concerned is the best way to see that, in the discussions between the two sides of the industry, safeguards of that kind are maintained and fair results achieved.

One or two of the points put in the Debate have seemed to me a little unreal. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow-in-Furness (Sir J. Walker-Smith) put the case of the large factory and the small, and the hon. Member for Gorbals put it in another way. There are two sides to this problem of production. For some kinds of production the large-scale unit is essential, while in other kinds of production it is not essential. If a small unit is suitable for the production of a particular thing it should be used, and it has been my policy for the last four years in this case to take the job to the man rather than the man to the job. I can assure my hon. Friend that he has my whole-hearted support, because that is the policy I have preached as Minister of Labour to my colleagues in the Service Departments from the beginning. He must know, however, representing as he does Barrow, that there are certain productions for war purposes that need large-scale production units. I assure him that we will not overlook the point that in this period of readjustment, when small units are losing their normal channels of production, they should get their chance to swing over to meet the necessities of the Ministry of Supply and the Air Ministry and that they are not shut out of the total view of the national needs for production. I found my hon. Friend's speech refreshing and powerful, and I did not find any contradiction between it and the point of view put by the hon. Member for Gorbals.

The hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. White) put a point about aliens. Leaving out the aliens who failed to pass the scrutiny of the Home Office, aliens fall broadly into two groups. The first consists of those who have been here for a number of years and are free to take any employment they can get. The second group consists of refugees who are subject to the provision that they do not enter employment. With regard to the litter group, it is proposed that they should now be allowed to take employment subject to the Minister's consent. That can be done apart from this Bill, but the Bill will aid me.

Will they have to go to the Employment Exchanges?

They will make application to the nearest exchange in the usual way. The question whether restrictions will be imposed in future with regard to their taking employment is under consideration, but it may turn out to be the case that for the time being no such restrictions are necessary. We shall have to weigh the evidence when we have analysed the large number of cases and do our best to get a solution that is fair to them and advantageous to the national effort.

I hope the Minister will not allow these aliens to take jobs when there are thousands of capable men over 45 years of age able to take them. I have same chaps in my division who have no work, and I do not want aliens to get jobs before them.

If the hon. Member will read my Second Reading speech he will see that I share his view. I laid down clearly that no action would be taken about aliens which would give them an advantage over the British worker. The British worker must, of course, come first in the national effort. I have answered the point about wages, and I would add a word about the mobility of labour. The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) was making, in his usual attractive way, what was really a debating point, because it is not the intention to make labour rigid at all.

Is it improper to make a debating point in the House of Commons?

I have made no such charge, but I would point out that there are debating points which are mere debating points and debating points which have a relation to the real problem we are discussing. The hon. Member asked for it. He laid down that it was the object of the Bill to make labour rigid. Nothing of the kind. One of the main purposes of the Bill will be to get mobility, to get the right labour for the right jobs, and so I have truly described that part of his speech as a debating point

. I think the House may be assured, after the discussions we have had, and with the machinery that is being set up, that this Bill cannot be, as the hon. Member for Camlachie described it, a Bill for industrial conscription. It has no relation whatever to industrial conscription.

If it had I should not be here moving the second Reading— [Interruption] —I would not—and certainly those who are co-operating in the drafting of the Orders and who ask to have their share in the statutory power would do no such thing. As we work the machinery I am confident that we shall avoid the troubles which caused so much industrial unrest in the last War. From the beginning we shall have the advantage that those who are really responsible, whether as employers or employés, or their organisations, will

I beg to move, in page 7, line 31, after "refuse," to insert:

"to take, or suspend the taking of, any proceedings on or in relation to."

This Amendment relates to Sub-section (3), which has been reviewed and we are prepared to put in the words which stand on the Paper, to make it clear that the Comptroller can suspend proceedings on an application of an enemy for a patent, or for the registration of a design or trade mark, without going to the length of refusing the application altogether.

I beg to move, in page 8, line 40, to leave out "or will be."

Hon. Members will see in Sub-section (1, a) the words:

" that the doing of the act within the time so limited was or will be prevented by a person's being on active service or by any other circumstances.''

We think it better, more convenient and satisfactory to determine this question —as to a person being prevented from doing the act in question by circumstances arising out of the war—only after the time for doing the act has expired, and not before it has been reached.

I beg to move, in page 9, line 21, to leave out from "proceeding," to "ceased," in line 22, and to insert "has."

This Amendment is of a drafting character, proposed purely in order to make it clear that the time for doing the act can be extended, notwithstanding that application for the extension is made after the non-performance of the act has caused the patent, registration or proceeding in question, to cease, or become void or invalid, or be treated as abandoned.

I beg to move, in page 4, line 8, at the end, to insert, "or is made with his consent."

This is a very small Amendment, which I hope the Government will be able to accept. Paragraph (d) provides for suspending or modifying certain of the statutes with regard to residence, and it adds a complete protection with regard to the individual holder that

"no such suspension or modification shall be made unless it is in the interests of the holder thereof."

My Amendment does not in any way impair that protection; but it gets over what I am told is sometimes a technical difficulty, that even where modification is reasonable, and even acceptable to the person or persons affected, it cannot be done without long delay and difficulty in the absence of a provision to enable these powers to be applied if the holder consents, even though it should be, technically and legally, against his interests.

I am not sure that these words are necessary, but I appreciate that the hon. Member the junior Burgess for Oxford University (Sir A. Salter) has cases in mind which he thinks might not be covered unless the words are inserted. They, clearly, would do no harm, and might do good. I would only say that if these words are inserted it should be clearly provided that the consent should be in writing and in proper form. With that proviso, I have no objection to the Amendment.

I beg to move, in page 6, line 4, after "College," to insert:

"or, if within fourteen days after it has been made the visitor has neither approved nor declined to approve it, by the Lord Chancellor."

I do not think it necessary to explain what are the functions of a visitor. It is sufficient to say that for the purposes of this temporary alteration of statutes, which is the main object of the Bill, the visitor's consent is necessary. Visitors are of various kinds. For instance, Lord Baldwin is a visitor of various colleges, and it might well happen that he would be out of England for a considerable period. Several bishops are visitors, and there might be vacancies owing to demises. There are hereditary visitors, and there might be, therefore, a case of an infant visitor. It is clear that there should be power to appoint deputies. The simplest method seems to me to be to provide that where a visitor is not available the Lord Chancellor should be able to give the necessary consent.

For the reasons given by my hon. Friend, I suggest that the Committee should agree to the Amendment.

I beg to move,

"That the Draft Order entitled the Ministry of Supply (Transfer of Powers) (No. 2) Order, 1939, presented to this House on 13th September, be approved."

The Essential Commodities Reserves Act, 1938, dealt with three things: fertilisers, food and petroleum. Fertilisers have been transferred to the Minister of Supply, food has been transferred to the Minister of Food, and it will be for the convenience and simplification of Government business if the only remaining item under the heading of essential commodities is transferred to the Minister of Supply. This Order has nothing to do with the distribution or control of the use of petroleum.

Before we pass this Order, to which we offer no special objections, I should like to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman. As I understand, the powers in the Essential Commodities Reserves Act relating to control are to pass from the Board of Trade to the right hon. Gentleman's Department. So far as actual production of petroleum in this country is concerned, I would like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman's Department is to be responsible in future. I understand that in regard to distribution he is not responsible. What is to happen in regard to production? If it is to pass to his Department we should like to know whether he proposes to stimulate production. If it is to remain, as at present, under the control of the Secretary for Mines, it is quite a different matter.

It remains where it is. Question put, and agreed to.

We have during the past few days seen the most remarkable movement of the civil population ever recorded in history, and it is desirable that the House should now have some opportunity of reviewing the circumstances in which the movement took place and the conditions that have been created in the areas that have been evacuated and in the districts to which the priority classes have gone. I think that the House and the country can congratulate themselves upon the general success of the movement, but it cannot be expected that so large a number of people as this could be removed, in circumstances which were very largely voluntary, without there being some misfits and some misadventures. I do not want to spend time in examining individual cases which can properly be adjusted best by the exercise of a little tact and discrimination in the districts where the difficulties have arisen.

There are, however, a few general observations which it would be desirable to make. I have seen in the Press and have heard at various meetings high praise of the work of the teachers who were concerned in that evacuation, and when I say that I accept that praise on behalf of my profession I can only add that they have lived up to what I expected of them. But as one who saw something of evacuation and reception, I would like, both as an administrator and as a teacher, to pay my highest tribute to all the other people who were engaged with evacuation, and especially those people who were connected with transport. I saw children being evacuated from Surrey on Sunday, 3rd September, on my way home from the House. At that time the transport people, both road transport and rail transport, had had three days of this work, and quite frankly I was amazed at the sympathy, tact and consideration shown by men who were obviously tired after hours of duty in handling children and mothers and ensuring their safety. To see a London Passenger Transport conductor chasing a group of children with three different packets of food that had been left behind in the omnibus, and the care that he took to make quite sure that these parcels of food got to their appropriate owners, was an indication of the spirit that was behind everyone who had been associated with this movement. I am in a position that few people are in; I am a member of an administrative body which is both an evacuating and a receiving authority, and I have, therefore, had to give consideration from a practical point of view to the thing at both ends.

As far as I can see, on the whole the movement of the school children and their reception in the areas have been a far greater success than we could have hoped. There are some causes for complaint. That is admitted. There was one farmer who, on being offered three girls, said, I am not taking girls. I will have one big boy because he can work on the farm." I am quite sure that nobody is going to defend that attitude. These children are not sent out to be drudges in the homes or on the farms to which they have been evacuated. I have no doubt that they will be quite prepared, when approached in a proper way, to do the ordinary things that fall to the lot of any member of a community, but these children are not sent out to save wages, either as domestic servants or as workers in any other capacity. I want to make it quite plain that I believe that the instance I have given is one of the exceptional cases, but I want also to make it clear that I am sure no one is going to defend anyone who attempts to exploit these children.

There are difficulties with regard to the provision of school places for children. They have been sent into districts where, on the whole, the school accommodation is not the best in the country; they have gone to villages where the schools are in- adequate and ill-ventilated, which one would not have justified as places in which schools may have to be worked under the two-shift system. A good modern school, well-ventilated and lighted, probably suffers very little by being used by one group of children from 8 to 12 o'clock, and by another group of children from 12.30 to 4.30, but some of the village schools require a very considerable amount of replenishment of fresh air before the second group of children are introduced, after they have been used for four hours by another group. I am sure that the Board of Education, in conjunction with the local education authorities, will have these difficulties in mind. I was very gratified by the circular issued by the Board of Education with regard to the opportunities for education that will be afforded in the conditions in the countryside. I am certain that the teaching profession will endeavour to carry out the wishes of the President of the Board of Education and to see that the new environment of the children is made the background for an education that must be both realistic and interesting to them in their new circumstances.

I come to a very different problem—the problem of the evacuated mother with young children, and of the expectant mother. I was myself always sceptical of the ability to carry through what was called in the early days by the Ministries "the mixed bag proposal." It is very difficult—and I say this in the presence of the Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) and my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Miss Wilkinson) —on occasion to persuade two women to carry on their domestic duties in the same room. [Interruption.] It may be difficult for two men to carry on their office duties in the same room. But there are human problems involved here that require a very great amount of personal consideration and a spirit of give-and-take if we are to achieve anything like success. I suggest to the Minister that, as soon as possible, he should endeavour to relieve the cottages and the other homes of this difficulty as far as it is possible, and I hope that hon. Members will not think that I am trying to apportion any blame between the evacuated or the receiving population. There may be occasions on which there are faults on both sides, and other occasions on which the circumstances may have been too great for human endurance to face. I hope that these people—the expectant mothers and the mothers with young children—will, as far as possible, be billeted in large empty houses on the hostel principle, or that the camps will be used for them in the first place. I am sure that this will be the best way of easing the present situation.

One has heard amusing instances here. There is an hon. Member of this House who has a daughter, a school teacher, and she has had two billets so far. In the first she was told, "I am so disappointed to have you, because I expected to have one of these mothers, who would have been useful in the kitchen." In the second billet she was told: "I am so glad to have you, because you are so much less trouble than an expectant mother." In all these matters there are problems of human adjustment that represent a new problem that this country has to solve, and I believe that in the main both sides are endeavouring to solve it. I would, however, point out that just as country people do not always understand town people, so town people do not always understand country people. I heard of one good lady in a village—the accent ought to be on the word "good"—who seriously reproved a mother for lamenting that there were no "pictures" in the village. I think it was also the same woman who complained that paraffin lamps were not safe. These are problems that would be very largely avoided if we could put the women who have been evacuated into the larger empty houses, on the hostel principle, or into the camps.

There are problems of finance also. There is an extraordinary financial problem in the fact that if a mother has a child of school age with her the householder gets 3s. in respect of that child, but if the child goes next door and ceases to be a child in charge of the mother, the householder gets half a guinea. [Hon. Members: "8s. 6d.!"] I am endeavouring to give the official information as far as I have it, and I believe it is half a guinea. [Hon. Members: "For the first child "!] Whether it is half a guinea or 8s. 6d. there is a difference, and the word is going round in some areas that if civil servants are billeted there will be a guinea, and for a land girl the payment will be 15s. To put those figures side by side with 5s. and 3s. will in the very near future, if further evacuations of the other classes I have indicated take place, cause very considerable difficulties and jealousies in the various villages.

One further point. It seems to me to be futile to billet children in a house where the housewife regularly goes out to work, whether in a factory or outside domestic employment. The fact that not as many children have gone out as was expected, ought to enable us to at this stage to make some readjustment of that part of the problem. The billeting authorities, in the main, were urban and rural district councils. They were faced at very short notice with a very big task, and on the whole they rose to it manfully. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Hackney (Mr. H. Morrison) told me of a case that came to his knowledge, in his responsible position in connection with the London County Council. A certain vicar told the village policeman to put the children on the train and send them back to Paddington. To the astonishment of my right hon. Friend, who is only used to dealing with the Metropolitan Police, that village constable took his orders from the vicar. I hope that in that particular case the chief constable has had his attention drawn to the fact that the police in his area are not under ecclesiastical orders at the moment, and that steps will be taken in any future evacuation to avoid any contretemps of that kind.

There were some local authorities who professed not to know that they had compulsory powers, and there were a few who, knowing they had them, declined to use the powers against certain persons. I am sure that everyone in this House will say that as far as billeting is concerned, where a district has to accept persons to be billeted, whether they are children, mothers, soldiers or civil servants, the law has to be enforced without regard to distinctions of class or anything else. The common obligation that has been placed on the district must be fairly administered by the billeting authority. There is an appeal committee to which any aggrieved person may go, and the members of that committee should be regarded as the proper persons to settle all questions of dispute.

I hope that if my words can reach any parents outside this House, I may be allowed to beg of them to leave their children where they are in the reception areas. As one who has had some experience in the past of being responsible for children away from their homes, I urge that as far as possible parents should do nothing to create a feeling of home sickness. I hope the parents will realise that in the great majority of cases the persons who have received the children are honestly trying to do their best for them. There is a story in today's "Schoolmaster" of some boys who were billeted in a village. The good man of the house and his wife produced halma, ludo, snakes and ladders and the other games which their children had used. After playing with these games for three quarters of an hour one of the boys said, "These are Cissies' games. Haven't you got a pack of cards." The man produced a pack of cards and after a couple of hours he had to borrow his train fare for the next day. Having had experience of cockney boys, I can well believe that that is true.

The people have done their very best in most cases to make the children feel at home, and needlessly to upset them is neither in the national interest nor in the interest of the children. I do, how-ever, want to put in a plea for one particular case. I hope that where a doctor says that it would be an advantage to a child in circumstances of illness or otherwise that the parent should see the child, and where the parent cannot afford it—I hope the means test, if any, will not be too severe—free railway vouchers should be given so that the parents can in those circumstances see the child. I am sure that that would do a great deal towards easing the minds of many parents in this matter.

There have been cases reported to me, as I anticipated there would be, where difficulties with regard to sanitation and water supply are giving concern to the local authorities. I feel sure that the Minister of Health will endeavour to keep in touch with such local authorities and give them all the assistance and advice that is possible. There are various problems relating to finance, especially in regard to some women and children who have gone out. These cases are very urgent, and I hope they will receive the sympathetic consideration of those in whose hands they lie.

There is one final point which more concerns the Board of Education than the Ministry of Health, although both are concerned in it. Owing to the fact that the receiving authorities were in the main not education authorities very little regard has been paid in some areas to keeping schools together when they were evacuated. I have had a case brought to my notice of a secondary school that is spread over seven or eight villages, and I have also the case of quite a small school in Surrey, from which fewer than 100 children were taken, which has been spread between three parishes in Berks and Buckinghamshire—I do not think I am giving information to the enemy and I hope the Minister of Information will not be too hard upon me—the village of Sunninghill, in Berkshire, Burnham in Buckinghamshire and Dorney in Buckinghamshire, three most delightful villages any one of which could have accommodated all the children. There will have to be some reshuffling of the children to put that matter right. It is desirable that as far as possible school units should be restored. I know the difficulties which confronted the billeting authorities when they had these children placed upon their hands and had to find places for them. It was essential that they should be placed in billets as soon as possible, and I hope that any adjustments which have to be made will be made at as early a date as is possible.

I want to say on behalf of my hon. Friends that we desire to express our thanks to all those who have had anything to do with this great movement of the population. We know that it has imposed discomforts on some people in the receiving areas. We thank them for the spirit with which these discomforts have been borne. May I repeat something which was said by the Minister of Health, that in the weeks that lie ahead of us none of us knows whether he may not be evacuated from some place which at the moment appears to be quite safe. We have to meet perils which are common perils in the spirit of national unity which has been so largely exemplified, and I sincerely hope that no people who have been evacuated will unnecessarily come back. I hope that where discomforts exist which can be removed, the earliest opportunity will be taken of removing them, because I am sure that there is a desire on the part of the receiving as well as the evacuation areas that this measure shall be one which will enable people to enjoy in as much safety as they can the life which lies ahead during the next few months. It may be that within the next few weeks detailed criticisms may have to be made. This evening I have tried not to elaborate criticisims which appear to me to be merely petty. I believe that the discomforts, I will not call them inefficiencies, which are being experienced at the moment, have been reduced to the minimum by the co-operation of all concerned, and I sincerely hope that that co-operation will continue and that the Minister will live up to the spirit of Circular 1871, which I welcome, so that we may be able to congratulate ourselves when the whole business is over upon having carried through this gigantic movement with the minimum of friction and the maximum of advantage.

Last week I gave notice to the Secretary of State for Scotland that in the case of a particular evacuation, if the matter was not satisfactorily dealt with I should raise it on the Adjournment of the House. Yesterday I pressed the Prime Minister for an opportunity of discussing evacuation, and after I had done so I got a letter from the Secretary of State in which the particular case I put before him was dealt with and an assurance given to me that everything had been made right. If I had had the letter before I put the question, possibly I should not have raised the matter and the question of evacuation would not have been discussed in the House this week. At the same time I think that probably hon. Members will agree that it is just as well we should have an opportunity of discussing this question. We have to remember that there is to be a second move, there are to be further evacuations, and it is only right that we should profit from our experience of the first movement.

I do not raise this question in any petty or carping spirit. I think that the movement of the hundreds and thousands of women and children has been a colossal achievement, a tremendous operation, carried through without any previous experience. Like everybody else I pay my tribute to the teachers and to the people in the reception areas, and also to the mothers. At the same time I do not think we should blind ourselves to the fact that there had been very many big mistakes. I should like the Secretary of State for Scotland to tell us what is the percentage of those who have come back from the reception areas. I am told that it is about 50 per cent., and if that is the case then, evidently, there is something profoundly wrong which has to be dealt with. We must see that in any succeeding movement these mistakes do not occur again.

The case which was brought to my notice occurred at Inverary, where 150 women and children were put into a hall. There had been expectation by the billeting committee that they would be able to get huts, but they were not able to get huts and no prospect of getting them, and instead of the billeting committee intimating to the education authority that they would have to reduce the number they decided to use the hall. Those 150 women and children were put in a miserable, cold hall. The bedding that was provided consisted simply of sacks of straw and a lot of dirty mattresses, with a broad arrow on them, that had been obtained from the gaol. There was something wrong with the state of mind which conceived that those arrangements were suitable ones. In the neighbourhood there is the residence of the Duke of Argyll, a residence having ever so many bedrooms. I understand there was the power of compulsion in existence. That castle was practically uninhabited, having in it only the Duke and his staff. There were all those bedrooms available, but instead of taking the castle and putting the people into it and using those bedrooms, they were put into that hall in the most degrading conditions. There were only two lavatories in the hall. In the Secretary's letter, it was stated that it was contemplated this was only a makeshift arrangement until billets could be found up country; but I was told by a member of the Glasgow education authority that he had been informed that it was contemplated that in the permanent arrangement there would be 70 in that hall. I think it shows a shocking state of mind for anybody to conceive that there should be 70 people in such a hall, which has only two lavatories

With regard to the Inverary case, I want to say that the people generally were kind and anxious to be as helpful as possible.[Interruption.] There was far less sympathy and help from the castle than from the poorest members of the community. Ultimately the Duke did take a few children and made provision for them in the basement of the castle. That is very discreditable in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. On the other hand, many of the local people were worried and anxious about what had occurred and were ready to help. There were some condemned houses that had been shut up for possibly a year. They got the keys of those houses and opened them, and many of the mothers who had been sent to this place with their children set about washing the dirty floors and cleaning up the condemned houses which had been uninhabited so long. Anybody knows the condition in which a house gets after it has been uninhabited for a period of months or a year or so. Some of the local people, teachers and so on, went round the houses in the locality and made a collection of the kind that is made in connection with jumble sales, of which many hon. Members, I suppose, have had experience in the course of their political life. They collected a chair here, an old bed somewhere else, and I think somebody gave an old carpet.

The condemned houses were put into a sort of semi-habitable condition; but the conditions in the other place were so bad that afterwards the people who had been put into the condemned houses said that they would rather stay there. Having some misgivings as to future movements, they were prepared to stay in those houses. The secretary's letter indicated that those people were unwilling afterwards to leave the houses and go to the billets that had been arranged for them, because their first experience had been so bad. Some of the people in the district were as kind as they could be. The Episcopal minister there took in two teachers, but he took up the carpet from the room which he gave to them. The spirit of some of the people in the district certainly was not very good. I am told by the Minister that billets have been arranged, but I would suggest to him that in future the authority responsible for billeting in the district to which the people are to be sent should have an officer examine each billet and take account of the people who are to go to that billet.

In another town in Scotland, when the evacuees arrived at a hall the local people came and looked them over, and somebody said, "I will take those two children there." A friend of mine described it as being like a slave market in the old days. They looked round and said, "I will take those two there," or "I will take those three here." I suggest to the Minister that under the next scheme the people who are sending the evacuees out should, in conjunction with the billeting officer, have the billet examined—

And the children.

—and see that the billet is a satisfactory one for the people who are to be put there. The hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) says that he thinks it is only fair that there should be an examination of the children. I have noticed that in the Scottish Press there has been a great deal of correspondence about dirty children and dirty people, and all that sort of thing. As a Member of Parliament, I have travelled about the country a great deal, and I make bold to say that the people in Glasgow are as decent, clean and respectable people as one finds in any country town or in any other part of the country. I believe there has been a tremendous amount of exaggeration in connection with this matter. I do not know why the hon. Lady opposite should carry on as she does when I try to say something in connection with this scheme in order to try to prevent in future such things as happened at Inverary.

The authority responsible for evacuating children should see that they are properly provided for when they go. I suggested to the Secretary for Scotland that these children have to take certain clothing with them and a lot of them would not be able to provide it and the teachers would find themselves in very difficult conditions with the children becoming ill without proper clothing, and I suggested that each party should have clothes provided. I give the right hon. Gentleman credit that it was done. So far as Inverary is concerned, a certain amount of boots and clothing was provided, but I believe the Government have failed in that they did not see beforehand that the children were provided with suitable underclothing and a proper rig-out. I have heard of people who burnt the children's clothes because they were so bad, but those who sent them could not help it. Many of them are the children of unemployed people and, if they did not get a proper rig-out, it could not be helped. I know of one case in which an inspection of the children's parcels was suggested, and, when one was opened, it was found that there was not a change of underclothing and the child was told to tell his parents that he had none. That was a ridiculous thing for the teacher to say to the child.

I believe that this parsimony on the part of the Government is one feature of the scheme which has made it ever so much less successful than it might have been. Many of the people are coming back, and I believe that much of the trouble that has occurred has arisen from the fact that a lot of the children had not got the things they should have when going to stay in a strange home. [Interruption.] The Noble Lady shakes her head. I know that she is omniscient but the experience of people that I have met is that that is the case. Possibly the Noble Lady is so mean that she is afraid of money being spent on these children. Anyhow, it is quite apparent that there are many hundreds of thousands whose parents could not give them the things they should have had. A lot of the trouble that has arisen is due to the fact that the Government was not prepared to spend the necessary money to see that the children were properly provided for. I believe the scheme would have been ever so much more successful if the Government had provided those things.

There has been a lot of comment on the condition of the children. [An Hon Member: "It is true."] If it is true, it is a very bitter comment on the Department of Health. It means that the Department has failed, and the local authority has to take its responsibility and share in the blame. I believe that the people in the reception areas are kind to the evacuees. We are all very much alike, and, if people take others into their homes, it creates discomfort for them and it means that they are showing a spirit of generosity. It may be said that they are being paid, but it is not a profitable speculation for the people in the reception areas. They are not wanting it on that basis. They have done it out of a sense of responsibility and duty to others. [Interruption.] The intolerable cheap sneers of the Noble Lady show the same sort of spirit as is shown in Inverary by the Duke of Argyll, which was responsible for so much of the trouble. It was quite apparent to people who went there that the feudal lordship puts people in such terror that they were afraid to do things because it would not be liked by the Castle.

Friends have told me how kindly their children have been treated and how well they are getting on. The spirit on the part of many of the people has been admirable, but the large percentage coming back shows that there is something fundamentally wrong, and I believe one thing is that there has not been sufficient care taken by the Government to provide the material things for the children and the necessary medical supervision and assistance. At Inverary, when they were put into the hall, the children had to go about a mile and a half for their clothes. I should like to pay a tribute to the man who looked after the catering. There was nothing but the highest praise for that man, who will probably lose a lot of money because of the way in which he sought to cater for the children and put himself at a great disadvantage because of the circumstances in which they found themselves. In any future evacuation it is not sufficient to say that each should have a change of underclothing, a pair of house shoes, an overcoat and so on. They should be provided for those who cannot provide them themselves. The parents of a family of four are told to provide four new pairs of boots. It simply cannot be done. They have not the income. There is provision under the Education Act, but it does not work out that way. If provision had been made for these things to be obtained many difficulties would have been avoided. I hope the Minister will see that each authority evacuating children will appoint a responsible official to examine all the billets and see that they are appropriate.

I would also ask what are the functions of the liaison officer? Dr. Biggar was the liaison officer at Inverary and when there was this general dismay among the people when they were brought into the hall, I gather that his attitude of mind was that it was wartime and that you could not expect what you would have in peace-time. It seemed to me that such a state of mind showed that he certainly was not a person who ought to have been acting as liaison officer, and one would like to know what are the exact duties of these officers. Do not let us here delude ourselves. A very great work has been carried out. I admit all that. But it is also known to us that great numbers have gone back and will have to be evacuted again possibly, in the future, from cities like Glasgow. We have to make sure that we realise the mistakes that have been made, so that in future, after all the trouble of evacuation has been taken, we shall not have a recurrence of what happened on this occasion. I am glad that the Minister has made inquiries and has given an assurance with regard to Inverary. I hope we shall also have an assurance that the Government in future will see that the children are provided with the proper clothing, boots and shoes, for the district to which they are going, and that care will be taken to prevent anything like this happening again.

The House must be grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) for raising this question and for the way in which he has raised it. He was right, of course, in saying that nothing of this kind had ever been attempted before in this country. We have not any precedents to look back upon; we have no records which we can search, no past mistakes from which we can learn. It is, of course, easy to criticise, and the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) allowed himself to indulge in some criticism from the point of view of the people whom I like to call the guests. I hope that in anything I say, my criticisms, for I intend to make criticisms, will be designed to be helpful. I think we ought not to congratulate ourselves that the task is finished. As the hon. Member for Camlachie says, the trek back to the towns has already begun, and as long as there are no air raids on the big cities—and we must all hope that that will be as long as the war shall last—this trek back to the cities will continue. We have to be prepared for it.

I think one mistake has been that in some cases we have placed the evacuees too near the cities from which they have been sent. Just as it is unwise to send a boy to a boarding school which is too near his own home, so it is unwise to send evacuees to places within a bus ride of the cities which they have left. The temptation to return is too great. Even if they are only making a return in order to pick up some extra garments or to see how the old man is getting on, still it is costing money which they can ill afford, and it has an unsettling effect upon them. If it is unsettling to the evacuees, it has also disadvantages which were felt by many people in my constituency this past week-end, when our Kincardineshire roads were full of motor cars bearing Dundee registration numbers, packed to overflowing with people who had come "for a hurl," as we say in Scotland, to see their friends in the country, an invasion which caused a raid on the larders of a great many people.

There is an advantage in occasional visits from close relatives which outweighs the disadvantages, for it does enable those who have been left in the cities to see that their friends are being well looked after and cared for, as I believe to be the case in the great majority of instances. Moreover, it enables evacuees to endure the very real hardship of separation from those whom they have left behind. It was said to my wife in my presence last Sunday, by a women whose children she had been looking after," It was hard for us last week to stand at our work not knowing where our bairns were, but now that I have seen them I can go back to my work with an easy mind," and I am glad to say that she added "and a grateful heart." It is so important, I think, to encourage the evacuees to remain where they are by mitigating the hardships of separation that I think it would be worth the Government's while to arrange for cheap fares for fathers and mothers to visit their children or for husbands to visit their wives at stated intervals during the period of separation. I think a gesture of that kind would be appreciated, and it might help to solve a very real problem which we may have to face, the problem of the trek back to the cities.

I now come to an aspect of this matter which is as distressing as it is distasteful. I have received a good deal of correspondence from my constituency, which I know to be true, because I know the people who have sent it, and in many cases I have looked into the matter personally. I had a letter yesterday from someone who was a Member of this House, and who wrote to me and conveyed to me, at the request of the rector of an Episcopal church in my constituency, a complaint that children who had been sent from Glasgow had been sent in a verminous condition.

It is a terrible shame, this kind of thing, hurling things across in innuendoes. If the hon. Member is going to quote from a man, let us have the name of the man, and let us know who the children are. Do not let us have innuendoes flung across. You are taking the fathers to fight, yet you come here and make the most villainous, slanderous statements against their children. [Hon. Members: "Order."] I do not care about your "Order." I am not going to have my children slandered, and you will have to listen to me. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order."] I am not having the children whom I represent slandered, not even by an officer. They are as good as yours, and I am not having them slandered in a superior tone. They are my folk, and I know them, and they are the only folk that ever I knew.

I hope the hon. Member will control himself.

Why not speak to the hon. Member who is slandering my folk? They are the only folk that ever I knew, the folk I was born among, and if he is to be allowed to slander them—

The hon. Member must allow the Debate to continue in an orderly manner.

The last thing I want to do is to slander any children. If the hon. Member for Gorbals knew me better he would know that that is not what I want to do at all. This is a social problem which the House ought to face. I do not make accusations against the children. How can they help it?

Then you are complaining about the parents.

I am not slandering the parents or the children. I am stating plain facts which this House has to recognise. This report which I have received from the rector of an Episcopal church—

What is his name?

—says that these children are in a verminous condition and suffering in some cases from impetigo, and that in some cases bedding and mattresses have had to be destroyed. He makes the suggestion that if such children are to be included in evacuation, steps should be taken to place them in camps or communal billets.

Do not let them come near yours.

I have another letter from a doctor who is a justice of the peace, and who writes on behalf of many people in his district. He says that the children and their mothers arrived in his district mostly in a very filthy and verminous condition and that many were very inadequately clad. Their habits were indescribable, and many cases had come to his notice where carpets, mattresses and bedding had had to be completely destroyed owing to the primitive habits of these evacuees. He also suggests a communal system of billeting and adds:

"I know everyone will be only too glad to help in the running of communal kitchens and dormitories."

This is not a pleasant matter for anyone to raise in this House.

It is the product of the capitalist system.

It is time they knew the condition of the places from which these people come. We have been telling them for years.

I believe these are things that we can rectify. I have been asked by mothers from the evacuation areas to see that their children are not allowed to go with others in that kind of condition. It is important that when we get on to the stage of further infiltration from the cities, the medical officers and sanitary inspectors should see that people of this kind are sent out in a clean condition, or, if not, sent into some sort of communal billets.

Another point I want to make is about the food allowances. It is true, I am afraid—and I hope the hon. Member for Gorbals will not dispute this statement, for I have investigated it—that where people are sent to a village and make their own arrangements for feeding these children there have been cases in which the money has not all been spent on food for the children. There have been far too many in a district I know going up and down the village shops asking for red wine, a concoction which we know better under the name of "red biddy." I have met cases where the children have been deprived of food for that reason. I suggest that, where the hosts can report to medical officers that that sort of thing is happening and that these cases can be proved, instead of giving these people money they ought to be given coupons exchangeable for essential foodstuffs so that the children do not go short of food. Properly run this scheme can be of the greatest secondary advantage to everybody in the country. The hon. Member for South Shields said that country people did not always understand town people and that town people did not always understand country people. That is true. To overcome prejudice is not easy, but to get to know the other person is the first step, and it is half the battle.

I represent a constituency which is a reception area and not an evacuation area. I have in my hand a report, which reached me this morning from my constituency, signed by six of the billeting officers in a part of my county drawing attention to what has happened in that particular area. I know each of those billeting officers personally. One of them is the second master at the county schools in that area, and the others are headmasters of five village schools. The account is a perfectly fair one, but it describes what happened in that one area. Similar things have happened in other areas. I should like to place before the House the position of the receiving areas. We have heard the evacuation side from the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) and from the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen), but there is another side. I think it is most important that the evacuation authorities should use a certain amount of discretion, and certainly use a great deal of care, as to the areas into which they send their evacuated population.

The evacuation areas have no say as to where the children should go. That is entirely the responsibility of the Government.

I did, in fact, mean this to apply to the Government. There has been a great deal of lack of forethought and care in selecting the areas to which people are sent. In my view it is ridiculous, impossible, to send people from Liverpool, for instance, into the far end of south Carnarvon. Aberdaron, a little village on the point of the Lleyn peninsula, is a beautiful village, but there are not many people who have been accustomed to town life who can put up for more than a week or a fortnight with a place like that. There are no public houses there—well, only two very ordinary, quiet country public houses, more in the nature of small hotels than anything else. There is no place of entertainment. On 4th September 424 mothers and children from the Edgehill district of Liverpool were sent there. What has happened? In the whole of the area there are not more than 50 left—I am not quite sure of the exact figure. The others have returned. Who, I wonder, is responsible for this state of affairs?

The children of school age belonging to these mothers have been sent to Wrexham. The mothers were told that they also were to be evacuated to the Wrexham district. The train stopped on the way, and the mothers got out, but then found they were not going to Wrexham. Eventually they were told to get back into the train and were taken a journey of 120 miles—in a non-corridor train. Who was responsible for that? I have a great deal of sympathy with these mothers and the condition in which they arrived, but at the same time the story is all in favour of the evacuees.

There is a tremendous lot to be said for the quiet country people in villages, such as we have in Carnarvonshire, who have received people speaking a completely different language and with customs and habits entirely different from those of the people living in those villages. A good many of these women visitors, when they were asked what they were going to do, said that they did not want to stay in those areas because there were no public houses. I do not say that this is the main reason, but I do not agree with what the hon. Member for Camlachie or the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) says. These are facts.

Does not the hon. and gallant Member accept my statements as facts? Each of us speaks as he knows.

Nobody is stone blind but he who will not see. The hon. Member said that he was brought up in a certain area. I was brought up among the people myself. I am one of them and I am not ashamed of it. I have every sympathy for them, but I do not want to hear things thrown to other Members of this House as though they knew nothing about the condition of the poor.

We do not say that.

I was brought up in almost the poorest household one could imagine. I do not think it is a disgrace. I am proud of it and proud to acknowledge the people from whom I sprang; but let us face the truth.

Let us have it.

Would the hon. Member like me to read the document?

"Read it"; and "No!"

Why not?

I do not want to read it. I was going to hand it over to the Minister, but I will read it—and I know all these men myself. On Tuesday I saw the clerk of the rural district council and I was present in Carnarvon when a large number of these people arrived. It is no good saying that everything was perfect or that the fault is in the areas to which they have been evacuated. This is what he said:

"From a health point of view we have the following observations to make:

The majority of these evacuees "—

the majority, note—

"were not in a fit state of cleanliness to be received in any clean home."

I do not want to go on and read this document on the Floor of the House, but the hon. Member has challenged me. Here is another statement:

"In some cases, as a result of their filthy habits, every scrap of bedding, clothing, and even blinds and curtains had to be destroyed. The district nurse who visited these cases in the Aberdaron district can testify to their filthy habits and verminous condition."

Here are a few typical cases. They say:

"(a) This case is pathetic. The poor woman, the householder, is nearly brokenhearted amongst the ruins of her home. The room which one woman and her two children had occupied for only two nights is dreadful and no words can describe to you the terrible state of the whole room. Every scrap of bedding, clothing, and even blinds and curtains had to be burnt immediately. It was really horrifying to set eyes on the scene.

(b)Two other cases are reported, both having been visited; everything had to be burnt.

(c)In plain words, the bedroom "— had been used as a latrine.

This has happened not merely throughout the whole of my constituency, but in places like Colwyn Bay, Anglesey, Montgomery and Cardigan—everywhere along that coast. We are told that the children needed clothes. I was present myself at the time of their arrival, and the people in that area gave them the warmest welcome, prepared food for them when they arrived, and lent their cars to take them to their billets. There was one case of refusal. A woman was fined £25 because she refused to take a verminous woman into her house. I know her, and I can sympathise with her.

I am expressing what is the general feeling of that area. We wish to do all we can. The people there have bought new clothes and boots for the children. They have clothed them completely. They have had no benefit whatever from the amount allowed. It is hard that there is no compensation, so far as I know, for the losses endured by the people in those districts as a result of lack of care and attention on the part of the medical authorities in the City of Liverpool before these people were sent. I hope that some action will be taken. I saw a lovely little girl put on one side on arrival in Carnarvon. She complained of a sore throat. She had been sent, and she was suffering from scarlet fever. There have been cases of diphtheria and mumps sent to those districts, where there were none present before. There has been bad management somewhere. If these women have to be evacuated again, I hope that care will be taken to send them to places where they are likely to be comfortable, and that they are not sent among people with whom they have no sympathy, whom they cannot understand, who are entirely different from them, who speak a different language, have different habits, and have different thoughts. We all want this movement to be carried out successfully, but let the Ministry try to arrange some better method than they have at present.

It might be for the convenience of the House if I spend a few moments answering the questions that have been put, particularly in relation to Scotland. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health will deal with the subject more generally when he winds up. Perhaps the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) and the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will forgive me if I do not follow them except to re-echo their hope that in this immense effort that we are making we shall be successful. A very large number of people have been evacuated smoothly, from the point of view of their removal and their immediate reception. That, at least, will be recognised as a very great achievement, and as proof of our determination to let nothing stop us in this great effort. But I recognise that after the initial move some difficulties did arise and were bound to arise. It is impossible to conceive that it could have been otherwise. Let us now take the opportunity of sorting out the difficulties and learning from the experience we have gained, and not try to find the worst, and to see the worst, but rather to make the best of the situation that we have to face.

Let me deal with the specific case in Inverary to which the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) referred. Perhaps I need not say much because I wrote to the hon. Member and explained the circumstances. In that beautiful Highland town the estimate of numbers to be received went wrong. The County Council of Argyll had estimated for 150 more than, in fact, they were able to take. Owing to a misunderstanding they thought that certain accommodation was available which was not available. Temporary arrangements —and I was assured that they were only intended to be temporary—were made for the children. I do not say that they were the most comfortable arrangements; I have told the hon. Member that all these children now have found other billets. To mention one case, a mansion house further down the Loch has been taken over and helpers installed, and I believe that the children will be comfortable there. I would not like it to go out that the people of Inverary and of Argyll are less willing than other people in the country to do their part in receiving children. I do not think that the hon. Member would say that.

No, not for one minute. The people were very kind.

In the movement, in the case of Scotland, of 175,000 children I, as Secretary of State, have only heard of this specific instance of difficulty of this kind and apparent hardship for the evacuated persons owing to misunderstanding taking place, and I think that that is really rather remarkable. I do not say there were not other cases. Most grumbles come speedily to me as Secretary of State. I have heard many grumbles and difficulties of several kinds, but I have heard of only this one specific case of apparent hardship to evacuated persons. It was brought first to my notice actually by the hon. Member for Mary-hill (Mr. Davidson) in whose division, I believe, the school particularly affected is situated. The hon. Member for Camlachie wrote to me as well, and as soon as I heard of the matter I put investigations in hand, and if in any other cases investigation proves that matters can be improved, I will do my best to improve them.

I will give hon. Members figures to show the proportion of movements in Scotland. Of the total of 175,000 persons evacuated, the children numbered 135,000, and mothers 24,000. The unaccompanied children numbered 50,000 and the children who went with their mothers were rather more than 84,000, which is rather a higher proportion, I think, than in the case of England and Wales. The rest of the figure of 175,000 is made up with teachers and helpers, expectant mothers, blind adults and children from special schools. The hon. Member for Camlachie asked whether I could tell him how many have gone back. I cannot do that without calling for a special return. I cannot give him such a figure, and I would not like to hazard a figure which might be quoted as official. It has been stated in some parts that it is as much as 50 per cent. but I am sure that is quite an exaggerated figure. I am looking at this matter and trying to get more accurate information on the subject. In some districts very few indeed have gone back; in other districts mothers have tended to go back and leave some of their elder children behind. It is not always because there is something terribly wrong perhaps that they have gone back. It may be in some cases the natural instinct of a woman to say, "I would like to go back and look after my husband." A number of wives may have gone back to look after their husbands.

You can take it from me, they need looking after.

The hon. Member will recognise that I am not making any contentious observation. I am stating what I believe to be the fact in a number of cases. In general, I would say that there have been many fewer difficulties in the case of unaccompanied children than in the case of accompanied children. I noted with interest the suggestion of the hon. Member for South Shields as to the best way to deal with the accompanied children and the mothers. I can speak from my Scottish experience, and I repeat that, generally speaking, unaccompanied children have settled down much better than the mothers. I have myself visited some of the reception areas. I visited some areas in Lanarkshire, where I found that the children were settling down contentedly and well. One of my hon. Friends said that it was a mistake to send children to reception areas too near their homes. I would not like to generalise on that, but certainly in regard to some of the cases I visited in Lanarkshire the Glasgow children had settled down very contentedly. It may be, as the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) said, that people coming from a town and going to a remote part of the country, which is very unfamiliar to them, find it difficult to settle down. But the areas that I visited were scattered mining areas which had taken people in from Glasgow and they had settled down contentedly, though they were very near their homes. I do not say that some of the mothers had not gone back, but I was very pleased, on the whole, with what I saw there. I think it is therefore difficult to generalise on the question.

The question of medical inspection has been raised and stressed. I should like to believe that none of the stories was true about children arriving who were not clean, but I am afraid the evidence is that there were a number of such cases. There have been exaggerations. From some of the statements I have heard and some of the reports that one has read, one might almost have thought that no child had left any evacuation district in a clean condition.

It is just nonsense.

It is just nonsense. At the same time, there is solid evidence, and I say it with the sense of responsibility which my office carries, that there were a great many cases where that was not so, and where, on account of vermin and infection, much was left to be desired in regard to inspection. Having said that, I want to give an undertaking, speaking for Scotland. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health will underline the undertaking in his own way later on. The undertaking refers to both of us. Except in what I would call crash conditions, by which I mean in the event of serious air raids and burnings, when we should all do our very best in the circumstances to help people who had to be evacuated; except in such conditions, every possible step will be taken to ensure that no child will be transferred to a billet in a verminous condition. I am making arrangements with the local authorities in the sending areas—we have sent out a circular already—that they will take every possible step to have an efficient inspection and efficient treatment, if treatment be necessary, before any further move. If it becomes necessary for considerations of safety—I am not speaking of crash conditions, but the ordinary movement that we are trying still to carry out, by what I might call infiltration— to remove a child who is not free from infection or disease, I am anxious to make arrangements for the reception of such a child into an institution or other place where for the time being it can be properly attended to. That may not be a very easy thing to arrange, but I am certain that that is the way to go about it.

In making these remarks, I am casting no reflection on the parents of the children, or the children themselves, but I am merely stating facts. The hard facts are that we have had billeted in the homes of many of our people a number of people whose condition, perhaps through no fault of their own—and on the proper occasion I could speak about the housing conditions of some parts of Scotland—makes them difficult to accommodate. We are anxious to do all we can to mitigate the difficulties, but do not let us exaggerate them; let us try to meet them.

What I have said about our future efforts will, I hope, give the House the assurance that we intend to make every possible effort to see that the children are properly cared for and inspected, and that in the necessary cases they will be sent to places where they can be properly attended. We propose that in any further movements we should transfer only unaccompanied children, and we propose to do this rather by way of infiltration to places where they can be comfortably accommodated in the country. We have been taking a registration during the last few days. It will go on until to-morrow night in Scotland, but the figures I have do not show that there is an enormous number who want to go out. The figures are relatively small. Between 11th and 13th September there were in Scotland about 10,000 names given in; 3,000 in Edinburgh, rather over 5,000 in Glasgow, and the rest in Dundee, Rosyth and Clydebank. To-morrow may show a few more, but that figure of 10,000 is one with which we can easily cope and for which I am sure we can find accommodation in the reception areas.

I have confined myself principally to Scotland, although I have made one or two general observations which show that my right hon. Friend and I are working closely together. I am also charged with educational problems in Scotland, and I am glad to say that in many of the reception areas the schools have now reopened, and it is having good effect on the children in those areas. There may have been some difficulties and in some cases double shifts, but the difficulties are not insuperable, and they will not be insuperable.

I should like to refer to rather a different matter. I promised the hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. McGovern) to refer to a question he asked me last night but to which I was unable to reply because I did not speak. His question refers to public gatherings. He asked me whether there was any general ban placed by the Government on the holding of meetings. As far as the Government's powers in this matter are concerned, the hon. Member is no doubt aware that under the Defence Regulations the Secretary of State has power to prohibit the holding of a meeting where he is satisfied that it would be likely to cause serious public disorder or promote disaffection. That power has not yet been exercised, and there is no question of a general prohibition of meetings at which Members of Parliament wish to address their constituents in the ordinary way. Of course, the magistrates have certain responsibilities to discharge in addition, and they have certain discretion in discharging them. I am confident that that discretion will be wisely used.

There is one question I should like to ask the Secretary of State. In Scotland, some children have been taken a very long distance from Edinburgh to the region of Inverness. If the evacuation continues for a considerable time, the parents of these children would like to have an opportunity of visiting their children. Some of the parents are far too poor to pay the railway fare for the whole of that distance. I should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman would say whether the matter of assisting parents in such cases, either by free railway journeys or by assisting in the payment of the fare, will be given consideration.

When the right hon. Gentleman replies to that question perhaps he will be good enough to deal with a further point. There is some doubt in the minds of people about the costs involved. Could he issue publicly, for the guidance of people, some clear statement of what the costs are and who is expected to pay them?

I think it would be better if at the end of the Debate my right hon. Friend dealt with the general question put by the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). As to the point raised by the right hon. Member for East Edinburgh (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence), while that is a matter which affects Scotland, it also affects England, and I think it would have to be considered as a whole. I can say no more to-night than that I will take note of it.

I think that the Debate so far has concentrated rather too much on certain questions of vermin and so forth which may have been unknown to many hon. Members, but which are certainly not unknown to the medical profession. Anyone who will take the trouble to read the reports of school medical officers of such towns as Glasgow, London, Edinburgh—in fact, any town in this country—will find that unfortunately there is always a proportion of children who are verminous.

Nobody denies it.

Not only in the towns, but in the country as well.

I agree. Therefore, there is nothing unusual about discovering that a number of the children who go into the country areas from the towns are actually infested with vermin. I do not believe there is more than the usual number. I may say that beginning on Sunday last, I made an inspection, as detailed as I could, of the conditions in certain reception areas—in Essex, a fairly detailed inquiry, and other inquiries in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Worcestershire and Kent—and in all cases the answer was very much the same. It was the answer which has already been conveyed to the House by different hon. Members who have spoken—that is to say, that as far as the unaccompanied school children are concerned, on the whole the evacuation has been an outstanding success. I must say that when the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) mentioned that a number of children had travelled 120 miles in a non-corridor train, I was sorry that that should be the fact, but in view of the fact that we are trying to move 3,500,000 people from the towns into the country to save their lives in time of emergency, if that is the worst hardship they have to endure, I do not think it is very serious. One must not exaggerate. It has been a tremendous transport and organising achievement, an achievement which is, as far as I know, unparalleled.

There have been all kinds of difficulties in the reception areas that I have mentioned. I want to deal with the question which has been raised by one or two Members of rooms being fouled by people using them as latrines. I have had a good deal of experience in very poor districts in the East End of London, in South Wales and also in Southwark and other parts of South London, and I have never known that particular thing happen in people's own homes. I have heard accounts of this not only from Scotland. I have heard one from an extremely responsible observer, a Fellow of an Oxford College, and an exactly similar account from a builder, a responsible man, in an Essex village, and I have heard it elsewhere. It seems to me that the explanation may have been a psychological disturbance due to the evacuation from the towns and people going into country areas, where the latrine arrangements are entirely different from those in towns, and the people not understanding and so misbehaving themselves in that way. It is very unfortunate that it should have happened, but it appears to me that these are abnormal cases which will be rectified as soon as people get to understand the usages that prevail in country districts. 7 do not think it can be held as a general accusation against any class of the population and I am sure it was not meant to be made in that way.

But, while it is agreed that the arrangements for school children have been good, it is also agreed everywhere I went that having adult women in the houses with other women will not do. They must have separate arrangements made. In fact, in a little Essex village where I am living at present people are discussing whether they can make separate kitchens. It is a very complicated matter and it is leading to a number of women going back to London. I do not think, from inquiries that I have made, that it is anything like 50 per cent. There may be, in special areas where there have been unfortunate conditions, a large proportion of a little group, but it is much more likely to be 5 per cent. than 50. It is impossible to give any definite figure. I asked for definite figures from the people I was interviewing and they were unable to give them to me.

There are, however, some other problems of a more far-reaching character which have not yet been mentioned. For instance, in Essex, which is partly an evacuating area—the town parts—and partly a reception area, the children are distributed over 17 different villages, and there are children taking various kinds of higher education dumped down in villages where there are no facilities for that kind of education. Those are matters which will, of course, have to be rearranged. Then there is a further difficulty with regard to feeding. The different scales of payment for mothers with children and for unaccompanied children are bound to cause very great dissatisfaction. There is no reason why a child with its mother should be paid for at one rate and, if it is in a different house, should be paid for twice as much. That must be corrected in some way.

I am rather sorry that this Debate has occurred at such an early date after evacuation has taken place, because there has hardly been time to get the reports, but, as it has occurred, I should like to take the opportunity of saying that we ought to aim at giving every child from the town districts not only a good diet but the optimum diet necessary for its development. The children of the nation are its most important asset and we have an unprecedented opportunity now of dealing with those children under country conditions, where they can grow strong and well. With a little intelligence and organisation, we can see to it that they get, not only ordinary good diet but the optimum diet laid down by the medical authorities consulted by the Government. Under the conditions of evacuation, this would cost little if anything more than the Government are now paying.

I was glad to see that the Minister in the circular sent to local authorities referred, in particular, to this question of feeding, and suggested the importance of a mid-day communal meal. I hope that suggestion will be carried out. From inquiries I have made I am sure that if the mid-day communal meal is made of general application, it will have to be paid for by deduction from the billeting allowance. It should not be a voluntary arrangement, because then some people would not be willing to make that arrangement, while other people would, and you would thus fall between two stools. In fact that has already occurred in many districts where arrangements for a communal meal have not been made because many of the villagers were not willing, on account of money difficulties. If a certain amount could be deducted from the allowance for each child for billeting and food allowance, that could be applied to the payment for a midday meal and would make it possible for that meal to be constituted so as to make it, along with the breakfast and tea meals which the children get, the optimum diet which they require. I carried out a feeding experiment on those lines many years ago and found that it was possible to concentrate the major nutritive foods in the mid-day meal, allowing also for the food which the children got at the beginning and the end of the day. It would be much easier to do this under the conditions of living in the country districts than it was in the case of the experiment which I have in mind, which was in the town.

Then with regard to boots and clothes. I speak as a Member for a London district which has been evacuated and also as a resident in a small Essex village to which children have been sent. There are some children billeted in the house in which I live. I know about this thing, as I think the Minister of Health also knows about it, from personal experience. The question of boots and clothes is very important and I suggest that the boots and clothes should be provided through the school authority and paid for by the parents in instalments. This will become even more important as soon as the weather becomes wet. I have still another suggestion to offer. In many parts of the country there are school gardens used for growing flowers and so on. It would be a good thing if every village school set out to have its own allotment and to grow food for next year. There is no reason why enough potatoes and vegetables generally should not be grown in a school garden to supply the needs of children next year. In that way the children would learn something practical about agriculture and it would be an extremely valuable work.

As regards education it will be very difficult, in present circumstances, to keep up the standard of education. Schools have been split up so that you have the junior teacher in one place and the head mistress in another, so far apart that they cannot keep in touch with each other. Very great care will have to be taken in order to keep up the standard of education. I want to point out also what a very large amount of work this is going to throw on the teachers. Everything should be done to relieve the teachers of unnecessary work. I think it is quite right—and I know, because I have had talks with leaders of the teachers' organisations on this matter—that we should ask the teachers to do a good deal more in this time of crisis than they normally do, and I believe that, generally speaking, they are quite willing to do it, but I think it would be advisable, if we could, to help them by providing means by which some of the very heavy work which they have to do would be lightened.

In that respect I believe that nothing would lighten their work more than a very large extension of broadcasting in the schools. The B.B.C. put out an extremely good schools programme, and they are now I visited them yesterday at their new headquarters and discussed it with the schools department there— ready to put out very much more extensive schools programmes of an extremely good quality, specially adapted, as it were, to make the country come alive to the town child. They can do that if the schools have radio sets to receive the programmes. At the present time I believe that something like 20,000 schools only in the country as a whole have radio sets. In the county of Essex very few schools have them, and I think the Minister might consider whether he should not himself make an appeal to well-intentioned people of all kinds in the different villages and in the country areas to give radio sets to the schools in order that this excellent broadcasting for schools may be given attention. I will not refer further to the problem of the mother with the child under five and the expectant mother, except to say one thing, and I put it in the form of a definite statement, subject, of course, to challenge, but I do not think the Minister will disagree. I am quite convinced that the problem of the mother with the child under five and the expectant mother will not be solved unless they are put either into large hostels, as one hon. Friend says, or into camps, and I believe that the sooner we get on with the organisation of that, the sooner we shall be ready to meet the situation.

May I say a last word, which I hope may be taken as a word of warning, to people from towns who have gone to the country and who are now coming back because up to the present there has been no danger in the towns? I believe that it would be the gravest mistake in the world for more people to come back from the country now than have already come back. I regret profoundly that people have come back. If they have to remove at some future time in a hurry, it may be extremely difficult. It is not because anybody is afraid of danger, it is not because we think women are less able than others to face danger, but because we think it is a wrong use of human life to have women and young children in a town which is liable to be bombed. For the sake, not only of themselves, but of the nation, they ought to be as far as possible away from the danger if they can get away, and if any words of mine can have effect, I do appeal to all mothers with young children not to come back from the country if they are already there, to take advantage of any arrangements which the Government may make to go to the country while things are quiet, and to stay away for a period in order to see what may come. I cannot believe that we have passed through the crisis of danger in this war. I hope that people will remember that this great evacuation scheme will fail if people, of their own volition, filter back from the country into the towns and, therefore, give us all the problem to do over again, under conditions which may be infinitely less favourable than they are at the present time.

As evacuation is now two weeks old to-day, it is perhaps possible to see some of its defects and to be able to draw deductions from them objectively, and perhaps it may be best to say a word or two about one's own experience. In Oxfordshire we made arrangements on the first day of evacuation to receive 800 children, on the second day to receive 800, and on the third day an odd lot of mothers and children. That was confirmed by telephone on the day of evacuation. The first day we received 900 children late in the evening. They were satisfactorily dealt with. On the second day, although a like number of children were expected, 900 mothers and children arrived late in the evening in a small rural area. No adequate provision had been made for them. Despite that, everybody turned out and worked magnificently. I think that one of the reasons for the difficulties that have since arisen is the fact that not enough workers came down on the trains who were able to cope with the people and knew the type of people with whom they were dealing. As many hon. Members have stated, I have heard no complaints about school children. We have had a great many of them in Oxfordshire. Some of them may have been verminous. I do not know about that, but there have been no complaints and everywhere a great effort has been made to look after them suitably.

There is a difference of opinion with regard to mothers with children. A very unsatisfactory state of affairs has arisen, and I am told by the local billeting officer in Oxfordshire that already 50 per cent. of the mothers with children have returned to London. Undoubtedly, if air raids start in the near future a great many of these people will want to return to the country. It will be impossible to expect the rural householder who has already had experience of some of these people to take them again. I would, therefore, urge, as many hon. Members have already done, that some form of hostels or hutments should be prepared ready for these mothers when that moment should arrive. Every effort should be made to persuade those who have returned to London to part with their children on a nursery school basis. I would like to say a word about nursery schools because I have one in my own house at the moment. The children came down and settled in, and they have been completely happy. The hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) mentioned the uneasiness of mothers about their children, and I should like to state one example. A few days after the children had arrived a mother turned up, having cycled all the way from London to see her child. It had taken two days for her to get there. She expressed great satisfaction at what she saw, and said, "I wish other mothers and fathers could see the surroundings in which these children are, and it would completely satisfy them." I agree with the hon. Member for South Shields that if it is possible for mothers to arrange to see their children where the distances are not too great it should be encouraged.

But how are we going to deal with the children between one and five who have returned with their mothers to London, or else are still in London and the other big cities? I say we should deal with them on a nursery school basis, that if possible large centres should be established, and that it should be made known to parents either now or when air raids start that children will be received in those areas. As many nursery school teachers as possible should be assembled and then drafts of 30, 40 or 50 children should be sent into the country. I know there is one difficulty, that, unfortunately, there are very few nursery school teachers available. Therefore, it may be necessary to do something else along these lines. To persuade householders to take small nurseries of four or five children into their homes, with an older person to look after them, and then establish in each area a day nursery school to which these four or five children from individual houses should go. I think it might be possible to work out some arrangement of that sort. What I would emphasise is that the Minister ought to do everything he can to persuade mothers in the big cities to allow their children to go into the country on the basis of being looked after on nursery school lines.

I have always been a believer in the nursery school system of education, but since I got to know more about it and the part it has played in this evacuation scheme I have become a far more ardent believer in it than ever before. I believe it is an answer to a great many problems that we have been talking about tonight arising in homes which perhaps have not had the chance to teach children habits which they should form when they are very young. Perhaps out of this war it may be possible that at least some good shall come by bringing to the attention of a great many hundreds of thousands of people the necessity for more and larger nursery schools.

I was sent by the local authority of which I am a member into the areas to which children from our area were sent. I was accompanied by my wife, who happens to be the deputy mayor, and was deputising for the mayor, and by the director of education. We travelled into areas as far away as Rutland, and came back through Kettering, Rushden and many of the villages round there in Bedfordshire. The thing that struck me particularly was that the children are almost entirely happy. Almost every one of the school children I met was happy, and the other children were too, but the mothers are unhappy, very unhappy indeed—not in all cases, but in many cases. I do not know how many have returned, and I should not like even to guess, but when it is said that 50 per cent. have probably returned I think that is a high estimate, very much exaggerated. I do not think that anything like that number is returning and I certainly hope that nothing like it will return.

What are the problems that we discussed with the mothers and the difficulties in which the mothers found themselves? We met mothers—some of them stopped us in the street because they knew us—and they told us of their difficulties and why they were being forced to go back, although they did not desire to do so. One mother said to me:

"My case is typical of several that I know. I came down here with my husband in work, and he would have been able to send me money week by week. I was here only a couple of days when I received a letter from him that he had been thrown out of work and that hundreds of others like himself were in the same position. He is now quite unable to send me any money at all, because he must pay the rent, because of the labour exchange. He feels that he must pay the rent or otherwise he would be put out there. I am told that I have to go to the labour exchange, but there is no labour exchange here within miles of me and I can't get to it at all, but I have heard of people who have gone there, and this is their experience. The officer said to them:

' If your husband is out of work and signing, he is getting an allowance for you, and therefore, he must send to you that allowance that he is getting in Waltham-stow or any other area, and send it to you here so that you can live.' "

Said this mother to me:

"But suppose he does that. It is not possible to pay the rent at home and for me to live down here on the allowance that is given by the labour exchange. It is quite impossible for us to live in those circumstances. I am very happy in the home in which I am here, but I am compelled to go back to my husband because neither of us can afford to live and keep out of debt, and feed ourselves reasonably well."

That is one of the problems, and it will have to be dealt with. It will right itself ultimately when all these men have secured, as I believe they will, other employment, but the position is in the meantime driving very many mothers back into the areas from which they came.

I went into Rutland, and I want to pay the highest possible tribute to everybody in the areas to which children from my area went. I found in every case the very greatest kindness to both mothers and children. There were unsatisfactory cases, but they were very small in number in comparison with the number which had been evacuated. Here is the position in Rutland. We interviewed the chairman of the county council and the medical officer. I did not see the medical officer myself, but he was interviewed. I saw the director of education also. They said:

" We should like to provide for your mothers all the services that you provide for them in Walthamstow, but we cannot possibly do it. We have not such services here and we never have had. We have no equipment with which to give them the facilities that they have had in Walthamstow."

We said:

" These mothers have been in the habit of getting free milk and of being able to get cheap milk. They cannot get it down here, and they want to know the reason why."

We have a contract which has run for many years for dried milk and other foods that have to be supplied to young children, and we supply to those children, and to the mothers for the children, dried milk, fresh milk and foods that they generally require, at primary or cost price. When they do as they did in Walthamstow, go into a shop and ask for some of these foods, they find it is impossible to pay for them. There was an experience in which a child of 12 years of age wanted repairs to his boots. The mother said:

" I sent the boots to be repaired and I was charged 3s. 6d. I cannot possibly live and pay the high cost of repairs and all the other expenses in an area like this."

That is one of the greatest difficulties that we have and I hope that the House and the Minister will consider it. If it is not considered and improved I am certain that you will not only have the 50 per cent. that has been referred to, but a very much higher percentage of our people, coming back into the towns again. There is the question of the family where there are school children and a mother with a young baby, or perhaps an expectant mother, billeted in the same house. Take the case where there is a child under school age and, in the same house, two other children of school age. The occupier of the house is getting 5s. for the mother, 3s. for the child under school age, and 3s. also for the other children. That mother knows of other places close by where people could get 10s. 6d. and 8s. for those two children. I know that in the one case the children have to be fed and in the other case they have not, but there is no relation between the two scales. Unless some better system is created you will have mothers going back by thousands to the places whence they came.

We went to see why they were coming back and to prevent them from doing so if we could, and we succeeded very well. We may have broken the regulations of the Minister; if so, I hope the Minister will forget what I am going to say. We have in Walthamstow a very good nursing service system. We sent the nurses to Rutland, as a present to the Rutland authority in return for the kind service they are providing for our children. We also sent down a midwife, because they have no such services in Rutland as we have. We are also sending this week a dental clinic, almost completely equipped, and the equipment for those nurses and the midwife to use. In Oakham a penny rate brings in £60, and over the whole county it brings in £2,000. We get far more than that in Walthamstow; and, of course, the authorities in Rutland are unable to provide the services that we should like to see given to our children. I think the Minister might advise larger local authorities to transfer their services where they can be effectively used for the children. And please pay some attention to the question of children who are over school age and children who are under school age in regard to billeting arrangements.

I believe I was the first Member in this House to sugest billeting of children when the question of evacuation arose. There has been a good deal of talk about camps, hostels and that kind of thing. I saw one house in the area where I went in which the owner had not lived for a long time, and he wrote to say that we could have the servants' quarters and use them for the children. There are scores of houses empty. If you look at the "Times," the "Telegraph," "Country Life" and papers of that sort you will see advertisements of beautiful houses for sale. Why not buy them? They have been up for sale in some cases for quite a long time.

Prices ought to be tumbling down by now, and it would be advisable to consider the possibility of buying some of these houses in these areas where mothers could be accommodated under some kind of social arrangement, so that they could keep their own privacy and have some system of communal living that would enable them to dine together.

There is another instance of a serious mistake being made. The children went away in charge of teachers, and there was a responsible person available in every case, but the mothers were handed over by one area to another and nobody was in charge of them. I met many London County Council mothers seeking somebody to whom to put their grievances and to obtain a remedy. I met women from Walthamstow in exactly the same position. They wanted some one to whom to tell their grievances so that they might get them remedied. They went to teachers, who said that while they were willing to do what they could, they had no authority, as they were sent to look after the school children. I went, with the authority of my local authority, to the reception area, and in company with the Director of Education, instructed a teacher, in places where there were mothers about, to look after the mothers and to forget the school children for the time being. These teachers were told that their job was to look after the mothers and to report to the authority from which they came. They were told that, where grievances could be remedied locally, they should be referred to the local officers and others concerned. If it could be arranged for somebody to look after mothers in the same way as the children are looked after, and to act as a sort of liaison officer between the sending and the receiving authority, somebody who would be kindly and considerate towards the mothers, I believe that it would do an immense amount of good.

I express the hope that has already been expressed by many people, that those who have gone away and are in reasonably good circumstances will stay away. I believe that by£and£by they will be very glad to do so, but we must make the conditions somewhat better than they are at present. We should remedy the mistakes which have been made. I do not believe that there have been many mistakes considering the magnitude of the problem. I am sure that if a little time is given, and there is kindliness, consideration and toleration among all the people concerned, this thing will right itself. I would ask the Minister and the Government to be generous in their treatment of mothers, if they desire them to remain away. They should encourage them to do so by making their conditions tolerable and assuring them that while they are in the country their husbands at home are getting on reasonably well.

I am sure that we all welcome the last words uttered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for West Walthamstow (Mr. McEntee) appealing for a little consideration and toleration. I should like to pay a tribute to the speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman the Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest) for bringing this Debate back to a sense of proportion, and for his most constructive suggestion, which, I hope, will be taken to heart. It looked as though we were going to develop into a state of assertion and contradiction between hon. Members. May I assure the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) and the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) that if we make any statement in regard to these children and their condition it is not that we desire to cast any reflection upon them. It is rather out of a sincere depth of pity that such things should exist.

From the statements made it seemed as if, generally speaking, the majority of them were verminous. That is not so. There are certain cases. I should like to say that we have never said one word against the people in the reception areas. It is always assumed that we were slandering and criticising them. We have nothing but admiration and respect for the kindliness of the people.

But hon. Members have slandered the people who have been evacuated.

I am glad that I gave way to the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen). I do not think there has been any exaggeration. The fact is that attention will always be directed to something that is wrong, and one outstanding case will be repeated from mouth to mouth. Unfortunately, these facts do exist, but hon. Members opposite, I am sure, will recognise that we have nothing but sympathy for these people. I was glad to hear the Secretary of State for Scotland and to learn that steps will be taken in future to avoid the difficulties that have arisen. More especially before the children are evacuated, there should be medical inspection. I have in mind one instance where a child arrived in my county suffering from diphtheria. That is a very serious thing and ought not to have been allowed.

Is it not a serious thing for the child to be sent away from home with diphtheria?

Certainly. It is not only a serious matter for the children in the area to which the child was sent, but a serious matter for the child that has to travel when suffering from such a disease. It is also a serious matter for the mother who is left at home and may get a wire or some other message saying that her child is down with diphtheria, and perhaps she has not the wherewithal to enable her to travel. These things ought to be and can be avoided, except where some cataclysm comes and we have to evacuate wholesale. Another case where there was danger, was that of a child sent to Welshpool. On arrival it had to be taken immediately to a hospital and operated upon for appendicitis. I hope that as far as possible these things will be avoided in future.

I want now to come to other matters with respect to the future of the children. It is no good simply going over the past. Most of the children who have been evacuated have come from town areas where the conditions of life, the school life etc. are entirely different from the conditions in the districts to which they have been sent. Their food has been different. I was only able to go down for a few hours on Saturday night and Sunday morning to my own county and there they were saying, with sorrow, that the food to which they were accustomed and which they gave to these children, when they arrived, the children refused to eat; they were not accustomed to it. Apparently, they were accustomed to tinned foods, or it might be fish and chips, and when they were given soups, lamb, potatoes and beans, they refused them. Some of the mites thought that the beans were little black potatoes, seeing them for the first time, and they rejected them as something which they ought not to eat. That shows the difference between the way in which they have been brought up and the circumstances in which they now find themselves.

More care will have to be exercised, More medical inspection will be wanted. I was glad to hear the hon. Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest) suggest that there ought to be a mid-day meal. I and others were responsible for a very long inquiry into housing conditions in Wales and the conditions that cause tuberculosis. In particular we called attention to under-nourishment and to the great value of a mid-day meal for children. These little children may have been having a mid-day meal in the towns, they may have been attending school where a mid-day meal is provided, but no such provision is made in my county at the present time. The children have been accustomed to take sandwiches and a bottle of milk with them. They have suffered and are still suffering, but it is going to be fatal to children who have come from the towns to have to undergo such circumstances. I hope that the meal question will be attended to and not left to the local authorities. I hope there will be some direction and assistance from the Government where assistance is needed. The hon. Member for West Walthamstow mentioned the difference in rateable value and he gave a figure of £2,000 as being produced by a Id. rate. That is wealth untold to some of our counties. It is more than three times that of my own county, and I could mention four counties which together do not get much more than £2,000 from Id. rate. How are they to provide for the influx of these children and to provide the meals which are necessary for their health?

The other important matter is that of shoes. The children from the towns are used to walking along the pavement; they have not got far to go and do not get wet. Their little shoes will do, but in the countryside they will need to have strong, heavy boots with nails. The little shoes which they wear are called slippers by the children of the countryside. If they are going to be out in the fields the soles will soon be off, and if they have to go through the winter I hesitate to think what will be the effect upon them. There might be an epidemic which could be avoided with a little expense, and if expense has to be borne then the State should bear it. We are bearing a tremendous expenditure at the moment, but the State could not bear a better expenditure than that which will protect the health of these children who are the future generation. It is extraordinary that out of this cataclysm some good may come. For the first time in 100 years the little children of this country are being turned with their faces away from the horrid industrial districts towards the countryside. They will get a very warm welcome, the warmest hearts, every attention will be given to them, and I hope that they will bear the memory with them, and that there will be a drift back from the towns to the beautiful countryside.

Like the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) I also serve on an authority which covers an evacuation area and a reception area. During the last 10 days I have taken upon my self not only to see evacuees off from the station and by omnibus, but I have also visited the villages in North Essex to which they have gone. That being so, I can perhaps speak with a certain amount of experience. Much of what has been said in the Debate about other parts of the British Isles applies also to my county. It may be a long way to In-verary, but it is not very far from my constituency of West Leyton to the villages in Northern Essex to which most of the children and mothers from my constituency have gone. It is quite useless to try to blame one section of the population, as though the country folk were all sinners, and the townsfolk all saints, or vice versa. There are difficulties in every section of the community, and I think we should approach the question in a social and humanistic spirit, recognising that this great evacuation of hundreds of thousands of human beings has been a colossal task. As far as the evacuation itself is concerned, it has gone off very well, but as far as the reception is concerned, there are still very great and serious difficulties indeed. I was very glad to receive from the Ministry of Health Circular 1871. I wish that it had been sent out before. Perhaps that was impossible owing to the exigencies of the moment, but if only it had been sent out before the evacuation took place, I think that many of the difficulties would have been avoided or overcome.

This evacuation scheme has revealed that basically the problem of living together is a huge psychological problem. There are, of course, economic problems, but basically it is a psychological problem, and that is why we should be hesitant about laying blame here or there. There have been occasions when there have been serious human faults that could have been overcome with a little more human kindness, a little more insight, or indeed a little more charity. I know full well, for instance, that in some of the villages I have visited, sometimes the evacuees have been to blame and sometimes the people in the places where they have had to be billeted have been to blame. I know of one case in which a woman intended to return to Leyton because, although she was living in a very fine house, much more spacious than any house in which she had lived before, she did not like the way in which the butler looked at her.

That is reason enough.

The Noble Lady knows more about butlers than I do. Perhaps she also is frightened of her own butler, although I do not suppose she is frightened of anybody. However, that may appear a trivial matter, but really it is not so trivial. After all, one has to realise that although these working-class women may have been living in small and poor homes, they have been used to controlling those homes. They have had their own domestic and social happiness; they have arranged their own affairs in their own way; they have known the local institutions, desirable or otherwise; they have got into the habit of living in their own world. After all, a home is much more important to a woman than it is to a man. Then they are taken from their home and pushed into another little home, or it may be a large house, and naturally they feel like fishes out of water; and, try as they may, within 24 hours a strange homesickness comes over them. They have not always the necessary background which some alleged more cultural people possess. They find that habits to which they have been accus- tomed cannot be pursued and even that work which they want to do cannot be done. I dare say that many women in large houses, for instance, would be much happier if only they could have some work to do, and that also obtains in smaller houses.

That being so, we should appreciate that whether women have gone into big homes or three-roomed cottages, there are psychological problems, and it is useless to try to place the blame here or there. They are human problems which we have to try to solve. One thing that is essential is that you should recognise that we are dealing not merely with a mass but with human beings each of whom has her own idiosyncrasies and characteristics. In all our plans and schemes for a new society we tend, perhaps, to overlook that fact, and it is essential that we should recognise it in this instance or, whatever our sincere desires, they will not reach fulfilment. We want to remove from the mothers who have gone into these reception areas any idea that we have shoved them out in the countryside and left them there like some dump. Some have that impression. Last week I met several women sitting in the fields and I talked with them. They said that in that weather it was very nice, but one said, "What am I to do? My hostess told me immediately I had had my breakfast that she could not have me in her house as it was too small and I must clear out. I have been sitting in the cemetery and sitting here, but I am wondering when I am going to bath my baby."

Stories have been told which each one of us could multiply indefinitely. We should appreciate that in some of these cases the best women in the world, whether the owners of little cottages or wealthier owners of large houses, or evacuated mothers, are finding a real difficulty in trying to adjust themselves to a new environment. I hope to go round the villages again and keep in constant touch with them. I believe all Members should try to keep in touch with their constituents, not merely politically but because we have a duty as human beings to other human beings. I hope I shall get my petrol ration increased in consequence. Perhaps the Minister of Health will take that into consideration. I will use it only for that purpose, if he will drop a hint in the right direction. One could spend a great deal of time detailing a host of problems that one has come across in the course of one's human investigations. I dare say we shall have an opportunity of taking these problems, and perhaps suggesting solutions, to the Minister of Health and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education.

Whether the war is going to last three years or much less, as we all fervently hope, it will be monstrous to suggest that either the children or the mothers are to be pushed out into the countryside, sometimes miles away, and then be told they will not see their children and their husbands for months and months to come. That in itself has aroused a large number of real human difficulties. Think of the menfolk who may be serving and may come back on leave and perhaps find their wives miles away and their children scattered. What is going to happen in those circumstances? I strongly support the plea that special transport facilities shall be organised to enable fathers to visit their children and husbands their wives, and perhaps on occasion wives to visit their children in some other part of the country. I suggest that provision should be made for communal centres wherever practicable. I saw at Dunmow a disused post office taken over and roughly adapted for the use of the women in the locality. I do not know who was responsible for initiating it, but I compliment him sincerely. At the same time, this rather derelict building, festooned with cobwebs and smelling musty and fusty, with 20 or 30 wailing children, was hardly the place for women to get out of the pouring rain. I suggest that there should be a drive towards the establishment of communal centres, attractively fitted out, in which mothers could rest with their children, and so relieve the burden on the hostesses and also have opportunities to meet their kindred and friends from their own districts.

Much remains to be done in the provision of social services. Many of these women have been used to relatively adequate social services in their own areas and miss them in the rural areas. That gap ought to be filled. My hon. Friend the Member for West Walthamstow (Mr. McEntee) suggested that some large houses should be rented. I go further and say they should be commandeered, at least for the period of the war. In the national interest we are commandeering human lives. Surely if there are large houses vacant in the country, or boarding-houses and hotels vacant along the sea-coast, they should be taken over by the nation for the nation's mothers and children and fitted up properly for the use of those who are bearing very heavy burdens at the present time. I, as the representative of West Leyton and my colleagues in that district, do not want it to appear that we have lost contact with the people who have gone away. Technically our responsibility is ended, but morally our responsibility remains. As a county councillor I recognise that in many of the reception areas co-ordination and co-operation are needed and I would urge the consideration and co-operation are needed and I would urge the consideration of a scheme by which the evacuating authorities and the authorities in the reception areas and the county council should collaborate, so that financial and other responsibilities could be shared and the highest results achieved.

In that way a great deal more could be done and unnecessary friction avoided. We do not want to set the country folk against the town folk. They are the same people, they belong to the same country and they share the same burdens. We want, if we can, to gain something of real value for our country out of this terrible tribulation. There are difficulties and sorrows almost indescribable at the present time and perhaps more are to follow, but, at least, let us resolve that something will be gained from it all for the coming generation. I believe that on the lines I have just indicated we can approach a solution of this problem.