May I ask the Prime Minister what business will be taken on Friday?

On Friday we shall take the Second Reading of the Merchant Shipping (Convention) Bill, the Government of the Soudan Loan Bill, Intermediate Education (Ireland) Bill, and the Osborne Estate Bill, and, if time permit, the Report stage of the British. Nationality and Status of Aliens Bill.

May I ask, on a point of Procedure, whether on the Order Paper in future it would be possible to describe such a Bill as "Local Government Provisional Order (No. 11) Bill," which is in the Paper to-day by a short title, in order that Members who have not compared the description with the statement in the Paper circulated every week, may have an indication on the Paper of the subject to which the Bill refers, which frequently, as in this particular case, is of a contentious character?

The title on the Order Paper must be the same as the short title on the Bill, and the nature of its contents can be easily ascertained. Perhaps the hon. Member has failed to observe that every Monday there is circulated a Paper which gives, in addition to the short titles of the Provisional Order Bills, the names of the localities dealt with in each one. If he will take notice of the Paper he will find out what the Bills are about.

The point of my question was that it might be for the convenience of Members to have that information on the Paper from day to day. It would not cause any great extra cost in the way of paper or printing. The Paper to which you refer is a lengthy one, and it is not always perused by Members.

The Paper contains the information for Members who require it. I have made inquiry as to the cost of carrying out the hon. Member's suggestion and I find that it would mean considerable expense, which I am not prepared to authorise without the authority of the House.

I beg to move, "That leave be given to introduce a Bill to amend the law relating to companies incorporated outside the United Kingdom."

The House will doubtless remember that under the Companies Consolidation Act, 1908, all companies which are incorporated in the United Kingdom, and all companies which are incorporated outside the United Kingdom, but which have places of business in this country, have to comply with certain regulations in the way of filing every year in Somerset House balance-sheets and reports as to the condition of the company, but, under our present law, a company which is incorporated outside the United Kingdom need not comply with any of these regulations. The difficulty up to now in obtaining any control over such a company has been that it has no place of business here, and that it has no director who can be sued by process of law in this country. I asked a question the other day of the President of the Board of Trade as to whether he would introduce legislation dealing with this important matter, and he replied that it presented difficulties and that he could not see his way to introduce legislation at present. Therefore, I venture to bring in this Bill, which, I think I can show clearly, will meet the case, and will force foreign companies who come to this country and raise large sums of money to comply with our law. A most flagrant case of the disadvantages of the present law has arisen quite recently. A company, called the American Marconi Company, was reconstructed about two years ago, and that reconstruction practically took place in this country. Mr. Godfrey Isaacs, giving evidence before the Marconi Company Committee, informed the Committee that he had been informed by the directors of the American Marconi Company that they could not raise a dollar in that country for the reconstruction of the American Marconi Company, and consequently the shares were floated on the Stock Exchange in this country in April, 1912.

The House will remember that a great gamble took place in these shares. Something well over £2,000,000 was raised in this country for the reconstruction of the American Marconi Company. The whole method of the flotation of the company was one which met with very strong disapproval from all quarters I think. At any rate, we know from the evidence of the broker of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, given before the Marconi Company Committee, that at the time of the flotation he told the secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he did not like the manner of the flotation of this company, and that he went on to say that the past history of the company, the method of flotation, and the panicky state of the market all affected his judgment, and caused him to advise the Chancellor of the Exchequer's secretary that the money was not well invested. These shares were floated here at a price of 65s. It will also be remembered that shares were placed privately, and among those who received them privately were Ministers who received them at a price of 40s. and sold them at a price of 63s. Those shares which were worth 65s. then, are now standing at something under 15s. I mention this point to show that very large sums of money were actually taken out of the pockets of investors in this country, and therefore if there ever was a case in which a company like that should be placed under our law that American Marconi Company is a very good case indeed. It will hardly be believed, but it is a fact, that the American Marconi Company directors introduced a resolution at the last annual general meeting of the company held in New Jersey, which had the effect of deleting Article 2 of the articles of association of the company. That article provided for the proper advisement of stockholders of the company as regards their financial position, and it also provided for due notice being given to stockholders as to the date of the annual general meeting. The directors of the company bring forward at their general meeting in New Jersey a resolution deleting that article and bringing in instead a provision which makes no mention whatever of the former provision that stockholders should be allowed to know the financial position of the company, and instead of that simply says that the annual general meeting is to be advertised in two papers in New Jersey and one in New York on three separate occasions, and that no other notice need be given to stockholders. I think that that is a most inequitable proceeding towards the English shareholders in this company.

A great many people have lost a great deal of money over this company. I have here a few letters which I have received with reference to this matter, and I would only just quote one short sentence from one gentleman in Ireland. He says:— they put their money. The difficulty, of course, has been to obtain a hold over foreign companies if they have no director over here or no office in which they carry on business. By this Bill, which I ask leave to bring in, it is made possible to sue a director of a foreign company if he is domiciled in this country, and in order to make it impossible to raise money here— this is the important part of the Bill—any contracts made while the company is in default—that is to say, has not complied with our law by filing balance sheets and reports, and having here a director or someone who can be sued by process of law in this country, are void, so that the company cannot sell or purchase shares or debentures because the contracts will be non-enforceable by law, in the same way as a gambling debt. That forces the company to comply with our law, because it will be impossible for them to raise money on the Stock Exchange of our country unless those who are handling those Shares are able to enforce their contracts. That is the practical effect of the Bill which I am now introducing, and I hope that it will not be opposed.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill to amend the Law relating to companies incorporated outside the United Kingdom, ordered to be brought in by Major Archer-Shee, Mr. Grant, Mr. Campion, Mr. Rupert Gwynne, and Mr. Dixon. Presented accordingly, and read the first time; to be read a second time upon Monday next, and to be printed.

The course of the discussion upon the Holt Committee's Report is an interesting commentary on the claim of the Postmaster-General that as the whole House had appointed the Holt Committee the whole House ought to accept the verdict of that Committee. That is not a doctrine which I am prepared to endorse. With three exceptions, the speeches made during the discussion were laden with criticism of the Report, and those three exceptions were the speeches of members of the Committee— the Chairman of the Committee (Mr. Holt), the Member for East Renfrewshire (Captain Gilmour), and the Member for St. Stephen's Green (Mr. Brady). Out of those three Members, only two of them can be regarded as representing at all an enthusiastic support of the Report. The hon. Member for St. Stephen's Green, himself a member of the Committee, said:— entirely of the claim that the document is beyond criticism, and that the findings of the Committee should be received without any alteration. These variations establish a strong case for the adoption of the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker), that a Committee should be appointed consisting of three persons—the Chief Industrial Commissioner, a representative of the Post Office, and a representative of the postal workers—to reconsider the awards of the Report as modified by the Postmaster-General. I do not wish to depreciate the work of the Committee in any way. Their task has been most laborious, and in discharging it they were most painstaking. They deserve much credit for their industry, and for the time which they devoted to the consideration of this important subject. If more appreciation has not been expressed in the Debate in this House, I think they will understand it is not because Members do not feel grateful, but because in the course of a. comparatively short Debate Members necessarily spoke chiefly on points of disagreement. They will have their reward in the dearly-bought knowledge that the task is one which any other nine Members of this House would equally have found of great difficulty, and would have produced a report inevitably open to a great deal of criticism. I think that no little credit is due to the Committee for the large number of workers raised to the establishment. The numbers in that respect have been increased from 4,606 to 7,500. I think they might have even gone further in that direction. I was very glad to hear the Assistant Postmaster-General say:— could there be a clear understanding of the problem without tabulated statements, showing not only rates of pay, but the earnings of the postal workers. That is a great deficiency in the Report. It is a deficiency which has been in great measure supplied by the Return showing the changes in wages in connection with the 1907 and 1913 Reports. Then the question arises, How can we possibly test the question of cost? That is a very important question. The Post Office says the Holt Committee's recommendations will ultimately cost £1,020,000. They have since raised it to £1,225,000, but that cost I anticipate will only come at a very remote date—twenty years or more. We are more concerned with the immediate cost, which was first stated at £526,000, and, after revision, raised to £640,000. When those concessions have been made by the Post Office the Postmaster-General will increase the amount by another £75,000. The total additions, therefore, represent something like Is. 4d. per week to the individual. It must not be too hastily assumed that this additional cost represents a benefit to the staff. I do not for a moment doubt the accuracy of the figures as regards the cost to the Post Office, but from the details supplied to me in answer to a question, it appears that of the £640,000, no less than £115,000—practically all the difference between the first and second estimate—represents the cost of changes in hours of duty. That is not an increase of money to the benefit of the postal servants at all, and it is not a contribution to the increased cost of living. It ought not, therefore, to be calculated as such. In the case of the engineering classes, of £78,210 of increased cost, only £25,590 appear to be additions to the wages of the permanent staff. Of other changes, accommodation for cycles, lavatory accommodation, and holidays for auxiliary postmen swell the total. Such additional items of cost form no contribution whatever towards the cost of living, and, if they are deducted, I understand that the benefit to the postal servants, instead of being an average of 1s. 4d. extra, would only be something like a shilling per week. We have no clear statement of what actual monetary increase the staff are getting, and we have no intelligible statement of the Post Office wages bill, and of the mass of details we have no bird's-eye view. I venture to say that neither the House nor the people can properly judge the real effect of the proposals.

We have heard a great deal about the excellent sentiment that public servants should not put pressure upon Members of Parliament and upon the Ministry in the House of Commons. That was enunciated by the Chairman of the Committee, and it was also expressed in a speech with which I felt great sympathy, the dignified speech made by the hon. and gallant Member for East Renfrewshire (Captain Gilmour). I think it would be more to the point to tell us something about the relation of wages to the total revenue and expenditure. Since 1908 the percentage of wages, whether to expenditure or profits, has gone down. In 1908 wages absorbed 51.83 per cent, of the total revenue, and in 1912–13 they absorbed 47.23 per cent. I think therefore that answers the argument that the increased wages would be a burden on the taxpayer. The taxpayer is getting a larger share out of the Post Office than formerly, and the Post Office workers are getting relatively less. There is one broad test to apply to the work of the Committee: What was its object? Its object was to remove legitimate grievances, and I venture to say, judged by that standard, it must be regarded as a failure. The conclusions of the Report are condemned by all classes of Post Office workers. They are condemned by postmen, by sorters, by telephonists, by telegraphists, by sub-postmasters, and by the engineering classes. Why is it that we have this universal chorus of condemnation? It is, I think, because their legitimate claim for a rise commensurate with the cost of living has not been met, and very much less has there been any recognition of the claim to a higher standard of living. Not only has it not been met, but the Report is almost derisory on the subject. It is provocative to say that the cost of living is now approximately at the level of 1884. Even if that statement were parenthetical, as the former Postmaster-General stated, it illustrates an unfortunate attitude of mind. The vision of cheap living never seems to leave the hon. Member for Hex-ham. He told us he had arrived at the conclusion that the Committee have shown a tendency to lean on the Department and to take the Departmental view, probably quite unconsciously. In the absence of expert knowledge the safest rule would have been the application of a general principle by which all classes should be tested. Although it is not the only consideration, I think this test should have been applied to every division of labour, namely, "What is the buying power of their wages now compared with the last revision?" Every housewife knows the difference without requiring to make application to the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade figures form the crux of the criticism which has been put forward by the postal workers. Since 1905 there has been a rise of 13.7 per cent., according to the Board of Trade, in standard commodities; and rents and retail prices, we are told, are up 11.3 per cent. The pay and emoluments of the postal workes are to be raised certainly not more than 4½per cent., and, perhaps, not more than 4 per cent. The Assistant Postmaster-General said that they must go on something definite, and so they sought the co-operation of the Board of Trade. It appears to me that they only sought it to ignore it, and they have not based their decisions upon the figures of the Board of Trade. That being so, I venture to suggest that the conclusions of the Holt Report are vitiated, because the rise in cost of living has not been met in the revision. There would, indeed, be actual reductions if the recommendations of the Committee had been adopted entirely. For example, there is a reduction in the allowance to skilled workmen within the telephone service when away from home. I am informed that 400 men in the telephone service have resigned, disgusted in this Government employment, and prefer to have employment in private firms. I do. not propose to dwell on the case of the unestablished men in the Engineering and Electric Light Department, who must either forfeit the 48-hours' week recommended by the Committee instead of 50½ hours' prior to the Report, or suffer an actual reduction of 4d. or 8d. per week. The hon. Member for Hexham said it was the intention of all members of the Committee that the men should not earn any less by the adoption of the 48 hours. I should like the Postmaster-General to tell us definitely and clearly whether he accepts that interpretation and view of the Committee, and whether it is his intention that the adoption of the 48-hours week should not involve any decrease in earnings.

Then there are many cases where there are no increases at all. In the Returns one frequently sees the phrase "no alteration." I understand 56,000 established servants get no immediate relief, and a great many non-established. The hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker) gave a number of instances of cases where there is no immediate benefit. In the Stores Department, London, among the unestablished porters there is "no alteration" against their name. It is impossible to follow what the effect of the hasty concession may be in that case. Women telegraphists and women counter clerks and telegraphists—London—get no increase They are not in any way affected by immediate wage concessions. Thousands get no increase. The hon. Member for Hexham said something to the effect that to raise women rateably with men would be illogical. It seems to me that the reverse is the case. The conditions which justify a rise for men, such as telegraphists and telephonists, surely justify a rise for women telegraphists and telephonists. Male counter clerks and telegraphists, London, get a rise, but the women do not. Where the women are not ignored they are treated in a most niggardly manner. For instance, charwomen in London are to get 5d. per hour, but only after five years at 4½. I am told that rate is lower than the allowance paid by the London County Council. Large numbers of postmen will get no increase at all. In London up to twenty-two years of age they get no rise. London telegraphists, those on maximum pay (over one-third) get no increase. Store porters and labourers receive wages which are cruelly inadequate. In the provinces the minimum was 21s.; it is now 22s. In the London Stores (store porters), the minimum wage for adult labour has been raised only to 26s., and it has been complained to me that the Department has the knack of making the minimum the maximum. It is possible for a man to serve twenty-five years or more and never reach the maximum. How can a man with a wife and family live comfortably and respectably in London on a wage of 26s. a week? He has to be a man of considerable intelligence; the work requires a large amount of skill; these servants have to deal with postmasters' requisitions; they have to be responsible for the work that they do, and it is to some extent of a technical character. In the Stores Department at Studd Street I am told that there are eighteen cases where there has been no rise for fifteen years. That shows the injustice of having no incremental stage. In the Stores Department no incremental stages are recommended; the men are left at the mercy of the Department. In the stores and factories men who have spent their lives in the service of the State are still unestablished. I find when I speak to men in the Stores Department that they have three main grievances: first, low wages; secondly, no incremental stages; and, thirdly, that they are unestablished. I would like to know whether the statement of the Assistant Postmaster-General that they are gradually doing away with non-established men will apply to these cases.

It has been stated that the Post Office pays lower wages than municipal bodies, and lower than those that it compels contractors to pay. The schedule published by the National Joint Committee of Postal and Telegraph Associations shows that the immediate gain per week per officer is about 1s. in the case of postmen, while telegraphists and counter clerks and telegraphists have much less on the average. These figures were published before the recent variations. The increase per officer in the case of telegraphists in the Central Telegraph Office is under 3d. per week. The increase to counter clerks and telegraphists outside the Central Telegraph Office is a fraction over 4d. per week. How can a rise of a few shillings a year in the case of telegraphists be justified as meeting the increased cost of living? It is stated in the National Joint Committee's Circular that the following is the result for London: Telegraphists, 37 per cent, at maximum get no increase whatever, although they have to bear the increased cost of living; 10 per cent, get no immediate increase; the remainder get increases of 2d., 6d., or 1s. If that is true, it is in itself sufficient to condemn the Report. Then there is the question of the transfer of work, about which one hears many complaints. The transfer of work may make the Report worse than valueless in some respects. It imperils the position of workers by endorsing and encouraging the transfer of work from better paid grades to lower paid grades. It sounds reasonable to say that the Postmaster-General must retain the power to reallocate. But if that is done, surely it is only fair that there should be an appeal to some Committee on the allocation of work and wages, with an impartial chairman? Otherwise it is simply an insidious way of reducing the scale of remuneration, as it practically enables the Postmaster-General to a very great extent to nullify the benefits of the Report.

I do not propose to repeat the arguments which have been used to the effect that the State ought to be a model employer. It is very difficult to compare the work of the Post Office with any other form of labour. The hon. Member for Hexham compared the rural postman with the agricultural labourer. I do not think that was a very happy comparison. If that is the ideal held at the Post Office, it is high time that there was a great change in that respect. Where comparisons can be made, as in the case of the cable companies, it is alleged that the Post Office does not show up well. Information was supplied; why was it not referred to in the Report? It was submitted, but it appears to have been ignored. We sometimes hear the argument that a great many people are ready to take places as Post Office workers. That argument would justify the claim that wages should be based, not upon the value of the work done, but upon the necessities of the worker. It is not an argument that can ever be used with any credit by a Government Department; it simply represents the economics of the sweat shop. The system of allowing abuses to accumulate for years and then appointing a party tribunal to make a revision is, m my opinion, entirely wrong. What happens? You have an accumulation of abuses; you appoint a tribunal; you clear things up. No sooner is that done than new abuses begin to accumulate, like a new debt on a church, and you have to appoint another Committee to go over the matter again, and so it goes on at short intervals. It is quite impossible for this House to deal satisfactorily with the details of the present dispute or of any other similar dispute. There ought to be some sort of permanent Committee or board of arbitration. I should like to see a permanent business tribunal to which grievances could be submitted, not after a period of years, but as they arise. I confess, however, that I do not like the proposal of my right hon. Friend the Member for Fulham (Mr. Hayes Fisher) that a Committee of this House, of twenty-one to thirty Members, should be appointed at the beginning of every Session, especially if the findings of that Committee have to be reviewed by this House. It would have the advantage, of course, of avoiding the accumulation of grievances, but it would not get rid of political pressure. I am afraid that, like all old Members of this House, my right hon. Friend does not realise the limitations of the House of Commons as a business Assembly. I confess that on this occasion I prefer the testimony of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh! "] Heaven forgive me for doing so, but on this occasion I do. It is quite the first time, so that it may be overlooked. About a year ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:—

It is understood that the split attendances of the London sorters have now been reduced to about 200. If they can be reduced to these small limits, why cannot they be abolished altogether? May I draw the attention of hon. Members to another matter, and that is the number of sorters who have to commence duty before six o'clock in the morning, mostly between four and five o'clock? That means that they have to get up at three or four o'clock and possibly earlier. That is a great hardship, and means a great loss of vitality. I am sure that the Assistant Postmaster-General, whom I see opposite, with all his energy would not care himself to have to get up at that time in order to fulfil the duties of his Department. There is a certain inrush of work between four and five in the morning, but in the foreign section the 4.45 a.m. attendance has been abolished for a later one, while in the General Post Office the 4.0 a.m. parcel office attendance has been abolished, and the 4.30 a.m. has been reduced to a negligible quantity. I should like to commend that to the sympathetic consideration of the Postmaster-General. It might possibly be found that all the attendances before six in the morning can be abolished. It seems only to be a question of organisation, and there appears to be no reason why the necessary arrangements should not be made without delay.

There is another point to which many postal servants attach a great deal of importance, and that is the question of the nightly rush in the London offices between five and eight o'clock. That might surely be mitigated by arrangement with the business firms who post large consignments of postal matter. Arrangements might be made to induce them to post their matter at more rational hours, so that it might be dealt with in the slacker period of the day, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., provided the necessary organisation is there to cope with it. It seems only to require a little organisation. Extended arrangements for collection might be made by the General Post Office, in addition to the present fixed collections. Packets would then get an earlier dispatch and the nightly rush would be mitigated. If a change of this sort could be made it would be greatly appreciated by the staff, who are not at all unmindful of the efforts which have been made by the Postmaster-General and others to lighten their task. I most earnestly commend these suggestions, which come from the postal workers themselves, to the sympathetic consideration of, the Postmaster-General.

The Report of the Holt Committee has been discussed with so much ability and at such length, and doubtless it will be so much more discussed to-day, that during the brief time I shall address the Committee I desire to say but a very few words about it. I am sorry, and I think many hon. Members must be, that it has not been possible to discuss the Holt Report separately, because I fear it can only create a certain amount of confusion if one—as I, for my part, shall be compelled to do—introduces other topics in the course of the discussion upon this Report. I must say to begin with that I cannot help feeling that, both in this House and outside, perhaps rather meagre appreciation has been shown of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Holt) and his colleagues. A good many of us in this House have excellent reason to know how hard and onerous the work of a Committee is, especially in the case of the Chairman, and, although we have criticised this Report in many minor points, I am confident that we all feel in our hearts that the hon. Member and his colleagues really have performed very diligently and very conscientiously a most important piece of public work. For my part, I cannot refrain from giving expression to my appreciation. At the same time I must dissociate myself very strongly from the doctrine that when this House sets up a Committee it is bound to act upon the Report of that Committee. That, if carried out to its logical conclusion, would mean that in legislation, as well as in matters of wages, the House would be bound to accept the recommendations of an influential Select Committee. Whatever other body might be set up, whether in this House or otherwise, it appears to me to be entirely impossible for the House of Commons to divest itself of its ultimate authority in this matter, whether as regards legislation or as regards wages. I have but very few words to say on the Holt Report, but it appears to me that this whole matter can hardly be left where it is. So far as I am able to judge, it really appears to be, especially in some cases, perhaps in a number of cases, that the Post Office is paying wages less than outside employers. I think it is undoubtedly the case that the pay of a good many women in the Post Office service is too low. The scheme of classification of the large towns is open to a good deal of criticism. I think that sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses—and this has been forcibly brought to my notice by examples within my own Constituency—often receive inadequate payment, particularly for the new insurance work. I think that as the basic reason for the appointment of the Holt Committee was the generally accepted serious rise in the cost of living, it is unfortunate that so many maxima have been left untouched either in money or as regards the date or period of services at which the arrangements come into operation.

4.0 P.M.

I think the difference of scale within the London area cannot possibly be justified in many cases. It appears that often the subsistence allowance for nights spent away from home is often hopelessly inadequate. What is the best step for the Government to take I do not feel competent to say. A very interesting suggestion was made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Islington. The suggestion has been made of a permanent Committee outside which would have regular and continuous knowledge of all the conditions of work, and would not have to get up that knowledge ad hoc on every separate occasion. I feel, however, that it is necessary that something should be done, and as the Postmaster-General and his predecessor have already reconsidered in a number of points the findings of the Holt Committee, and have modified them to the advantage of the postal servants, I very much hope my right hon. Friend will see his way to promise a further reconsideration of the views which have been expressed in this Debate. The only other point touched upon in the Holt Report that I desire to mention, is that the period of service in "K" Company should be allowed to count towards the pension period. The "K" Company, of course, is technically a military unit of the Royal Engineers employed in the Post Office in time of peace. I may perhaps claim to speak with some knowledge upon this matter, because the position of "K" Company came prominently before the consideration of the War Office Committee on Wireless Telegraphy, over which I presided. The "K" Company has to get supplied with operators by the Corps of Royal Engineers, no matter what may be the cost to other units. I am quoting textually the evidence of officers from the "K" Company. The operators pass into civilian employment in the Post Office on their discharge from the Army. The pay of "K" Company is made up by the Post Office to the level of civilian operators. The officer most competent to speak with authority said to my Committee—and although that Committee was confidential there is nothing confidential about this—" 'K' Company is a Post Office organisation working in Ireland.†" Therefore, in fact, "K" Company is a Post Office service, though it is an Army Service technically and in name. The Holt Committee recommend that the men's request that the time served there should count towards pension, and that is only just. If legislation is necessary to give effect to this recommendation I am certain that such legislation would be regarded as non-controversial.

May I ask my hon. Friend a question on this point? Did the witnesses tell him that the "K" Company was kept up for the benefit of the Army or the Post Office?

Of course that is rather a trying question to answer offhand.

I only want to know what evidence was given upon that point.

I think, in reply to my right hon. Friend, I might say the evidence which was given, and which I have quoted, as I have said, textually, went logically to point to the conclusion I venture to draw from it, namely, that "K" Company is a military unit technically and, of course, in time of war, would be a military unit pure and simple, but in time of peace it exists for the Post Office, and that the Corps of Royal Engineers have got to keep it up. And, furthermore, that the men, when they leave with a good character, pass automatically into the postal service, and I have no doubt that my right hon. Friend has in mind that while those men technically are in the Army and in the "K" Company their pay is made up by the Post Office to the level of civilian officers, I think these facts sufficiently answer my right hon. Friend's question. I ask leave now to speak very briefly upon two other aspects of this Vote. First of all I want to say a word on the Imperial wireless chain. Ten months have passed, I think, since the Marconi contract was ratified. The Postmaster-General tells us that certain sites had been acquired, although his predecessor told us these had been provisionally selected some time before the ratification of the contract, and the Postmaster-General added that masts were being erected, I understood from his speech that power plant and wireless plant—I do not know whether they have been designed—but I understood from, his speech that they were not yet approved and certainly were not approaching erection, yet we were told that the erection of these stations without a moment's delay was a matter of extreme Imperial urgency. I was quite clear at the time, and am clear now, that it was nothing of the sort, but at any rate we were told so, and I only wish to ask my right hon. Friend if he is satisfied that this rate of progress is all that is possible. I noted, as no doubt most of us did, with great satisfaction, my right hon. Friend's expression of regret that there was no competition possible with the Marconi Company. I think what he said on that subject must have given great satisfaction to everyone who has considered the matter. He ought not to have said less, and I do not think he could have said more. On behalf of other hon. Members of this House and myself and others outside, it is only fair to point out that this lack of competition is precisely what was foretold by almost all the critics of the Marconi Contract.

The most prominent rival of the Marconi Company, namely, the Goldschmidt system, has been bought by the Marconi Company, and we shall probably hear very little more of it in this country. Then the Telefunken Company, the other great world-wide wireless company, has an agreement with the Marconi Company not to compete with it here, and quite recently other agreements preventing competition have been entered into. It is, of course, an unfortunate situation, and it is growing worse month by month. As a matter of fact—not as a matter of opinion, but as a matter of fact—the Marconi Company is rapidly establishing a monopoly of wireless communication. Now I would point out that this is in no sense hostile criticism of the Marconi Company. That company is only doing precisely what any other commercial firm would desire to do if it could, namely, to get all the available business into its own hands. They are not doing it by patent rights. The Committee will doubtless remember there was a long discussion of the famous 7777 patent which we are told was quite sure to be renewed when it expired in April. So far from being renewed no application was made at all for its renewal, and it therefore lapsed; and the only patent which still remains is the Lodge patent 1897, and in the judgment of Mr. Justice Parker the use of that licence is to be given by the Marconi Company to any person who desires to employ it. The Marconi Company are accomplishing their monopoly, in the first place, by good and admirable work in wireless telegraphy—I never denied it—but also by the most skilful commercial and financial arrangements, and a monopoly of this kind cannot fail ultimately to be disastrous to the public interests. Now my right hon. Friend I dare say is probably thinking while I have been making those remarks, "what is the use of saying all this unless you are prepared to make some practical suggestion towards solution?" I will venture to make one suggestion.

The Postmaster-General rightly says has can do nothing so long as no other company will give him a demonstration. That, of course, is perfectly true, but the great difficulty in the way of demonstration is masts and aerial. It takes a long time to erect masts and to spread a network of aerial and earth wires, and it costs many thousands of pounds, and if a demonstration cannot be successful all this is immediately thrown away. But there are in this country already a number of first-rate aerials. There are a number of comparatively smaller ones belonging to the Post Office, and, of course, a number of first-rate ones of great size belonging to the Admiralty. My practical suggestion is, that the Postmaster-General should secure the use of one of those aerials for two or three hours in the middle of two or three successive nights. Then the company, willing to give a demonstration, would only have to erect a small but near the existing building, instal a transmitting apparatus, and then for two or three hours in the middle of two or three successive nights simply transfer the leading in wire to the new building, which would be only the work of a few minutes. Then any Navy station, for instance—at Gibraltar or Malta—could listen for the signals and furnish a report on them. This would entail no expense upon the authorities, it would involve no dislocation of traffic, because it could be arranged that during those two or three hours another station would reply to any signals and do any transmitting necessary during those few hours. I think the Navy would welcome such an interesting experiment, and I cannot see any practical argument against it. A demonstration could be had by such arrangements almost immediately if everybody was willing. It is, I take it, largely a want of masts and aerial which has prevented the Poulsen Company from demonstrating before now.

There is another way by which my right hon. Friend could secure a demonstration of the Poulsen system, but I cannot go into that as it is a matter of official secrecy, but if the right hon. Gentleman does not know the way to do it, I shall be glad to let him know the way later. I myself, for instance, know of a new system of which nothing has been publicly heard at present, but of which I have formed a very high opinion from seeing it at work in a laboratory. If my right hon. Friend will only arrange to lend an aerial, this inventor I have no doubt could give a demonstration with the 10 kw. set probably in a few weeks. The reply may be made that 10 kw. is a very small power compared with the 300 kw. of the Imperial chain. But supposing these 10 kw. resulted in securing satisfactory communication over 1,000 miles, say to Gibraltar or even to Malta, and supposing the experts reported that there was no electrical or mechanical reason why the 10 kw. should not be 50 or more, then, at any rate, the Postmaster-General would have something to go on. I make this suggestion for his careful consideration for what it is worth. It does not overcome the whole difficulty, of course, but it might materially contribute to its solution.

There is only one other point upon which I wish to speak, and upon this also I welcome very warmly what fell from my right hon. Friend, and what seemed to be in the nature of a most valuable forecast of his intention. I refer to his most important remarks concerning an inquiry into the organisation of the telegraph service, with a view, if possible, of making good the present loss to the Exchequer. This loss, amounting to £377,000 this year and aggregating £22,000,000 in forty years, is, I venture to submit, discreditable to us. I have given some attention to this matter recently, and I cannot help the conviction that this loss is, to a large extent, not necessary. It is due, to a considerable extent—of course, I cannot say to what extent—to the fact that we are still in many cases using old-fashioned methods for the transmission of telegrams. I have the best reason to know the very high technical skill and very hard work of the Post Office engineers. They are a very hard-worked—indeed, I may say an overworked—body of men. But I think we have all rather got into the way of accepting this huge annual loss on the telegraph service as something like a law of nature which has to be borne with because it cannot be altered. There is, for example, a very heavy loss on the leasing of newspaper wires, and the facts about this when we have them—and I believe my hon. and gallant Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General has promised to supply the figures:—will I think surprise most people. The-Postmaster-General spoke, by the way, of the loss on the sixpenny telegram. He said it cost elevenpence to transmit and deliver each telegram. But I take it that that elevenpence was an average figure, whereas sixpence for the telegram is not an average but the minimum figure. Possibly there is some misapprehension on this subject, because, of course, more than sixpence is paid for many telegrams.

I do not quite follow my hon. Friend on this point. Does he suggest that the loss which I have indicated as occurring on the sixpenny telegram was not fully set out, or does he-mean that I did not convey to the House a true statement of the loss incurred?

I should be very far from suggesting under any possible circumstances, that my right hon. Friend did not give a true account of anything. I am only asking whether there is not some misapprehension here. Possibly, the misapprehension is on my own part. But what I want to know is whether, when he said that it cost elevenpence to transmit and deliver a sixpenny telegram, I should be justified in pointing out that while elevenpence was the average cost, sixpence was only the minimum receipt, and if you average the cost of transmission and delivery, you ought also to average the receipt. It may, however, be that the misunderstanding is on my part. At any rate I will pass that matter over. We should like to know if a large part, and what part, of the loss on the telegraph service is due to the loss on Press telegrams. I may perhaps be allowed to give an illustration of what I mean, as figures of this kind may be novel to some of us. The Post Office leases to a news, paper three night wires for twelve hours, between 4.0 p.m. and 4.0 a.m. For each of those wires it receives £500 per year. That is a statutory arrangement under the Telegraph Act, 1868. With the wires the Post Office supplies the staff, two men at each end of each wire—that is to say, twelve men in all, and that staff costs the Post Office, I think I am right in saying, more than the whole amount the Post Office receives for this service. In addition to that, the Post Office has to pay for the maintenance of these long wires, which is a very heavy item, and the wires bear their share of the establishment charges of the Post Office. I should not be far wrong in saying that the loss to the Post Office on the leasing of these three wires is not less than £2,000 a year. In some cases, a newspaper, besides having these wires, is obliged to send a part of its news, during crowded times, through ordinary Post Office channels, paying as much as £1,000 a year for that. On that news service the Post Office also makes a considerable loss. To pursue my illustration, that newspaper instals a British high-speed printing telegraph. For this it needs but one wire. The Post Office thankfully allows it to cancel its statutory agreement under the Telegraph Act of 1868, and lets it another wire at considerably less than cost. The paper employs its own staff, not quite so many perhaps as would be employed on the other three wires, and it pays them £3 a week each—a very good wage. It needs to send nothing via the Post Office. The Post Office saves over £2,000 a year. The newspaper saves nearly as much, and it gets its news an hour earlier. The Post Office gets back three night wires—two of the leased wires, and one which it was using for sending matter which was handed in to be sent direct by the Post Office. It would be interesting to know what under these circumstances becomes of these three wires. I believe these facts to be correct, though they sound like a fairy tale; the figures are open to correction immediately, if they are inaccurate at any point. But it is one illustration of the very serious Post Office loss and how it may be avoided.

This high-speed printing method could be applied to ordinary telegraph work on busy circuits with similar results. Yet I do not think I should be wrong in saying that on many of the circuits the same methods of transmission are used to-day as were used forty-five years ago. Considerations such as these, supposing them to be subtantially accurate, as I believe they are, make the Postmaster-General's statement most welcome to all who have looked into the matter. For my part, I shall be very glad indeed if he will follow-that up by appointing some competent board, composed in part of Post Office officials and in part of outside experts, to inquire into the nature and causes of this-loss to the Exchequer. On this question of high-speed telegraphy, there is another small point I wish to mention. There is a Committee sitting under the able chairmanship of the Assistant Postmaster-General to inquire into the methods of high-speed telegraphy. Competition in this matter is very keen indeed and, moreover, it is international. Its international character places a British firm at a serious disadvantage, for this reason, that the British Post Office will instal any system, no matter what is the country of its origin, provided it proves itself to be the best system to accomplish the work in hand. That is undoubtedly the case, but France, for example, would not think of installing a system of this kind which was not a French system, and I am quite certain that no system which was not a German system would have the slightest chance of being adopted in Germany. Therefore, a British firm is excluded beforehand from many great fields of operation, and it is a matter almost of life and death to the British firm to convince the British Post Office that it has the best system. Now a British firm whose high-speed system is employed with perfect satisfaction by half a dozen of the greatest provincial, newspapers in this country and by the leading telegraph cable companies of the world, in presenting its invention and apparatus to the Committee presided over by the Assistant Postmaster-General, asked permission to demonstrate the working of that system by its own staff. That. does not seem to be a very extraordinary request. It was, however, refused. The British company desired, of course, to show what its apparatus was capable of doing under the best possible conditions. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend is aware of that refusal, but I venture to submit that, in the circumstances, it was unreasonable. It does not matter where the staff for the demonstration comes from. It might just as well come from Timbuctu as anywhere else. What really does matter is what the electrical and mechanical apparatus is capable of doing under the best conditions, and it seems to me that is what the Post Office ought to desire to find out. With that object in view, they ought to have welcomed the offer of a staff to be provided by the inventors for the purposes of the demonstration. It just enters my mind, but I take it I need not assure the Committee that, personally, I have not the remotest commercial or financial interest in any of these matters which I am now discussing. This refusal of the Post Office is really not quite fair to the British firm, and I appeal very strongly to my right hon. Friend to be good enough to reconsider that decision. The attitude of the Postmaster-General upon these matters on which I have ventured to address the Committee at some length, and which are in their nature scientific questions, will, I feel sure, have given us very great satisfaction, and I am quite certain his observations will be warmly welcomed by very wide circles outside this House.

I should like to associate myself with what has just fallen from the last speaker in asking the Postmaster-General to give his attention to this matter of the British high-speed printing telegraphy. It is a question upon which I have had a certain amount of correspondence which may not have yet come under the right hon. Gentleman's personal observation. I am afraid my technical knowledge is not sufficient to enable me to build the traditional oratorical bridge which is generally made between speech on opposite sides, and therefore I will ask the Committee, with an apology, to make an intellectual jump back to the Holt Committee's Report for a few moments. I do not think I can be accused of being one of those particularly interested in or easily moved by agitation among public servants for the betterment of their conditions. There are a great many reasons why one should not be too easily moved in that direction. With regard to the postal servants, within the last year or two I must say I think their agitation or movement, or whatever you like to call it, has been so constitutional, so considerate, and so reasonable, that I myself have been forced to the conclusion that one ought not to turn a deaf ear to it on theoretical grounds, but that one ought to give as far as one can their demand one's full and, if possible, one's favourable consideration. I cannot help noticing the attitude of His Majesty's Government in regard to the recent and almost eleventh-hoar concession— and, indeed, the very appointment of the Holt Committee and the Report of the Holt Committee show that in circles of authority it is felt that something is required to be done—that something is deficient, and that something must be done at once. I say this quite independent of party, because I think it might very likely have been done under another Government. Something ought to be done, unless the Government want to get the name of a hard taskmaster, or something worse. We all want to see the Government service a model service. Although we feel that the Holt Committee took an enormous amount of pains, yet some of its conclusions, if they are acted upon, will result in something very much like sweating a public Department.

I find myself quite at one with those who find it impossible, as has often been said in this Committee, to resist the cogency of the Board of Trade figures which were arrived at during the inquiry into the cost of living of the working classes, and which show that during recent years rents and prices have gone up no less than 11.3 per cent., to say nothing of the cost of clothing and the general higher standard of living which must be taken into consideration when this question of wages is being discussed. Considering the onerous nature of the extra duties put upon the Post Office by recent legislation, the inadequacy of the Holt Committee's recommendations become, to my mind at any rate, painfully apparent. Not only does the apparent increase of wages, rising from 4 per cent. to 7 per cent. in later years, fail altogether to meet the situation in rising income to the level of present expenditure, but it also delays the necessary increase and, so far as I understand, in the lower grades it will never be received by thousands of young men at the very age when that increase is most necessary. Perhaps I might just ask the Postmaster-General if, when he comes to reply, he will make a note of this phrase in his speech of 30th April, which, I think, requires a little explanation. He said:—

I can make it quite clear to the hon. Member in a sentence. We do not propose to take into consideration at all any reserve pay. It is a clear wage of 22s. per week overriding all other wages for men of that age.

That is most satisfactory, and I thank the right hon. Gentleman for taking this early opportunity of telling me. A pension, therefore, will not be considered as part of the income. My own Constituency in Croydon is hit very hard in two ways. The Board of Trade Return published last year unfortunately shows that Croydon has the unenviable reputation and distinction of having the highest cost of living in England outside of London, ninety-six being the index figure given. The borough of Croydon is what is called a "Class II. town," and, with the exception of Edinburgh, in all the "Class I. towns," on the highest provincial scale, living is cheaper than in Croydon, where rents are still rising, bringing the combined rents and prices up to or above the level of the outer zone of London, namely, to the index figure of ninety-seven. The Board of Trade, moreover, in the same Report, found that the total increase of living in Croydon to be 6 per cent. since 1905, so that the proportional increase of the average postman's wage of 25s. 11d. per week should be 1s. 7d. The Holt Report, however, only suggests Is. The necessary and proportional increase is already recognised by the local employers. The municipal employés get it, and bank clerks and others employed in Croydon get this regular and proper proportional increase to the cost of living. Unfortunately it is only the Government servants who do not get it.

The new scale for the outer zone of London, as I understand it, is 39s. inclusive of strikes. This extra increase will be received—this is the point I want to make to the Postmaster-General—in one part of my Constituency, in Norwood, where the rent figures are seventy-six, but not in another part of Croydon, where the rent figures are eighty-one. It is indeed very inequitable that under the new scale postmen in Norwood, which is London Division III., should get 5s. per week maximum more than postmen in Croydon, and that postmen in Norbury, another part of the same constituency, London Division II., should get 7s. more. The injustice is all the more apparent when we recognise that recently, owing to the rapid growth of the population, the headquarters of the surveyor of the South of England postal district, and the headquarters of the superintendent engineer of postal telegraphs and telephones for the same district are now established not in Norwood but in Croydon. I do not want Norbury or Norwood to get any less than the new scale gives them, but I do think that the postal servants in Croydon, considering the extra work put upon them by the Government, ought to have a living wage. Perhaps the Committee will allow me to develop that point by a single illustration, which will, I think, point out to the right hon. Gentleman how very obvious is this discrepancy. In a certain road in Croydon there are two postmen who three months ago were both employed in the Croydon post office. Two months ago one of them transferred to the Eastern Central District of London. Now one of them walks to the end of the road, boards a corporation tramcar, and travels to the Croydon Sorting Office, where he is employed at wages on a scale rising by annual increments to 30s., and then by triennial increments of Is. to 34s. per week. The other travels by the London County Council tramcar to London, E.C., where he is employed at wages rising by annual increments to 40s., and then by triennial increments of Is. to 43s. per week. In another case in a house in Alexandra Road there are two brothers, both postal clerks. One is employed in the South Western District of London on a scale rising to 65s., and the other in the Croydon office on a scale rising to 54s. per week. I am told that these examples could be multiplied many times.

I am sure the Committee, and the Postmaster-General most of all, will see that on scientific and economic grounds this absurd inequity wants removing. It is not enough to say that one part of the constituency is inside the London area and that another part is outside. That is itself an indefensible anomaly. Anyone who looks at the map showing the postal area of London must see that it is capricious, haphazard, and marvellously unscientific. Anyone who looks at it will see at once that it needs readjusting. The only equitable thing to do is to readjust it, and, if the Postmaster-General could find time to do so, it would be well worth readjusting the delimitations of the postal area en some intelligible and defensible basis, making it, let us say, coextend with the police wage area, which is fifteen miles from Charing Cross, or with the London County Council wage area, which is twenty miles from Charing Cross; or, if this is spreading the net too wide, then you might include all places within a twelve-mile radius. At present it is like a bit of jig-saw puzzle. It is indefensible and must lead to great inequalities. If the right hon. Gentleman could see his way to do this, it would satisfy a very large number of our postal servants, not only, I need hardly say, in Croydon, but all round the edge of London.

I venture to say that the Departmental witnesses who before the Holt Committee admitted that Croydon was not included in the London area because the agitation had not been strong enough were very unwise witnesses if they desired to serve their Department and the public well. I may tell the right hon. Gentleman that we are perfectly able to give him as strong an agitation as he wants. I seem to remember similar advice given in another question by a Postmaster-General. I am not sure that the advice to pitch your agitation hot and strong has been altogether satisfactory. Leaving that quite aside, I do submit that it is very wrong and very unfortunate that Departmental witnesses should have told my Constituents, who have behaved in the most constitutional way, that if they had pitched their agitation a little bit stronger they would have got inside the London area and have had their wages materially increased. I do hope that the Government will give special attention to these three points, namely, the readjustment of the London wages area, the necessity for a closer relationship between the necessary expenditure and the income of the postal servants, and will take care that in any rise the advantage shall be felt by all grades of the postal service, to which the public is under a great obligation, and, as the Post Office revenue shows, to whose upkeep the public have already very largely subscribed. I hope that these matters will not be lost sight of by the Postmaster-General, and that he will consider whether something cannot be done to rearrange at least the limits of the present London wages area.

Many of us, in an exceedingly difficult matter like this, find it difficult to come to a wise decision as to what should be done because the technicalities of the system are so great, and it is so difficult for any hon. Member, however much time he gives to the subject, really to master the question. I confess that one of the points that came out strongly as I heard the criticisms of the Holt Report was that one of the most pressing things to be done was to grant an adequate minimum wage to the lowest paid workers in the postal service. I am glad that the Postmaster-General has agreed to an overriding minimum wage, but I am sorry to have to appear ungenerous in this matter. Nevertheless, I cannot help feeling that the minimum he-has selected is fixed too low, and is not quite worthy of the great postal service. It will be within the knowledge of hon. Members that recently several decisions have been given by the Trades Board which was set up by the Government to deal with the question of low paid labour in certain trades. The decisions of the Trades Board are familiar to us all. In the chainmaking industry men who before the passing of that Act were getting an average wage of 16s. per week are now getting something between 22s. 6d. and 30s. Many men in the box industry who before the passing of the Act were getting 20s. a week or under are now getting 26s.; and I believe the latest award by the Trades Board dealing with the confectionery industry gives 26s. as the minimum wage for men engaged in that industry. In a large number of the smaller industries connected with that trade the men are getting at the present time between 18s. and 20s. a week, and I cannot help feeling that the Post Office in granting a minimum wage should have put the figure higher than 22s. I understand that of the 25,000 men who are going to gain by that increase of wages quite a considerable percentage work in urban areas, and for them I cannot think it is right that we should agree to a minimum wage of 22s. only. I am not surprised that when these figures with regard to the awards of the Trades Board become known up and down the country there arises a feeling that the figure has been fixed too low. The other day the Prime Minister, in speaking on the question of the minimum wage, and in putting before the country what the Government meant by it, said:— If these men are only going to get 22s. a week I think it will be found that they are not getting a wage which carries out the view so clearly expressed by the Prime Minister a few weeks ago. I am not sure that even in regard to rural areas that that wage is adequate, and I hope that in fixing the minimum for the rural areas the Government are not going to fix a wage which will be sufficient to pay the uneconomic rent which you so often find in rural areas to-day, but that they are going to fix a wage which will enable the postmen to pay an economic rent for houses in the rural areas. I believe it will be found by those who look into the question that if you are going to pay an economic rent in the country and allow for a family of three, that a minimum of at least 22s. 6d. will be required in the rural districts. I therefore hope that in some way the Government will look into this question of the right minimum to establish, and I think that when they look at the awards that have been made by the Trades Board they will find the suggestion they now make is hardly worthy of a great and prosperous Government Department like the Post Office.

I also hope that the Government will not look unfavourably on the suggestion which was made by the hon. Member for Graves-end (Sir G. Parker), and which, I think, was supported by an hon. Member from the Labour Benches, that even at this late hour some kind of arbitration board may be agreed upon to settle some of the outstanding differences. I think the suggestion to appoint a distinguished representative from the Board of Trade, a representative of the Post Office, and a representative of the Post Office staff seems at the moment to constitute a Commission that might rightly settle some of these outstanding points. I know the Postmaster-General may say, "Surely there ought to be some finality about this matter. We have had our Select Committee, and the postal servants are not satisfied with that. Afterwards the late Postmaster-General and the present Postmaster-General made certain concessions after the Report of the Select Committee, and the postal servants are not satisfied to-day; and now you are asking for this further body to discuss some of the outstanding difficulties." I am not surprised that there is this constant difficulty and unsettlement in regard to this matter. The point which has impressed me more than any other upon this question is that the present arrangement with regard to the settlement of Post Office wages is. thoroughly unsatisfactory. I cannot believe that the appointment of the Select Committee of 1909, followed by the appointment of another Select Committee in 1913, consisting of Members of real ability, and who with untiring industry and knowledge have gone into this question, is in the nature of the case a satisfactory way of dealing with the question of wages in any large Department. Those of us who have to deal with these questions in our ordinary commercial concerns know perfectly well that if we are going to satisfy our people we must get some of the ablest minds continuously at work on this question. I am perfectly certain that many of us who are connected with industrial concerns, if we asked the ablest body in this country once every five years to look into the question of our wages and deal with it, it would not satisfy our people, and there would be a large number of details which a body constituted like that could not possibly fix with knowledge, however able they were.

I am convinced that in some way there ought to be continuity in this matter, and I hope that the Government, if they recognise the natural limitations that there must be in settling wages by this method, will try and see whether there is not some way in which at the present time some of the outstanding points can be discussed and settled by some body judicial in its character. The hon. Member who spoke from the Labour Benches on this matter was perfectly candid and open in what he said. Speaking of the Post Office servants, I think he said that they would be willing to accept as final for the time being— [laughter]—hon. Members may laugh at that, but you cannot get finality in this matter, and it is unreasonable to expect that you can get it. No man engaged in industrial work expects to get finality in regard to his wages, and those who know the industrial conditions of this country at the present time are aware that if we are going to get the standard of comfort which we want in this country, wages will have to be increased very much above the standard which exists at the present time. Therefore I think if the Government in connection with any small judicial tribunal they were to set up, were able to get from the representatives of the Post Office a promise that they would abide by their decision for a certain term of years, it would be a, reasonable thing for the Government to do on the one hand and for the Post Office servants to do on the other hand. Just because I feel that the present system is unsatisfactory, and must in the nature of the case continue to be unsatisfactory, I should like to urge very strongly upon the Government to take into consideration very carefully indeed the question as to what is the right method to deal with this subject in the future. All this trouble we have had will not have been in vain, and we shall not object to it if we can get from the Government, or from some body that they might appoint to look into the question, some satisfactory method of dealing with the question of wages and conditions. This applies not only to the Post Office but to other Government Departments as well. At the moment we arc dealing only with the question of the Post Office, and I am sure that if the Government are going to satisfy, and really be fair as they desire to be to Post Office servants in the future, they will have to devise some better method than this system of Select Committees.

5.0 P.M.

I should like at once to associate myself with a very great deal of what has fallen from the hon. Member who has just sat down. It is perfectly clear that the present system of fixing Post Office servants wages cannot go on. The Committee over which the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Holt) presided with so much ability, and which sat for a long time, produced a Report which appears to have satisfied nobody. I think the suggestion made from the Labour Benches when this subject was last discussed—which I think was made first by the hon. Member for Gravesend in a speech with which I entirely associate myself—that a permanent tribunal should be appointed, composed of one representative of the Post Office, one representative of the Post Office servants, and perhaps an Industrial Commissioner of the Board of Trade, and always accessible, is one which commends itself to me, and I think will commend itself to most parties in this House. One thing is quite certain, namely, that the present system of settling postmen's wages by means of pressure put upon Members of Parliament cannot go on. Take the present occasion. There are many subjects which we desire to discuss on the Postmaster-General's annual state- ment, but we are unable to do so, because; of the large number of questions relating to wages which have been brought before us by our own constituents, with the result that we are forced to take up two days of Parliamentary time, which might have been devoted to amending the Home Rule Bill, or to matters of Imperial importance, in order to discuss these questions, which ought not to come before the House of Commons at all. They do come before it, because there is an infirmity in all of us to try and do the best for our own constituents. On behalf of the postal servants in my own Constituency, who have been in close touch with me during the last two years, I may say that I do not think they desire to exercise undue pressure, but they realise that the only way by which they can get their grievances remedied is by going to their own Members of Parliament, and, as politely as possible, insisting upon their grievances being brought before the House by him. I believe they are perfectly willing to give up the right of applying pressure through their Member on the Government. If a tribunal such as has been suggested on both sides of the Committee were agreed to, this matter, which is not a matter of party politics or a fit subject for discussion in the House of Commons, would be taken out of its hands and left to the decision of a body in which the postal servants would have confidence.

As my hon. Friend has referred to the proposal I made, may I be allowed to briefly explain what it was. There were two proposals: one that a Committee should be appointed to deal with the outstanding grievances which existed now consequent upon what is known as the Holt Committee's Report, which Committee was to be composed of the Chief Industrial Commissioner, a, representative of the Post Office, and a representative of the Postal servants. The other proposal was that there should be established a statutory Commission, permanent in its nature like that in Australia, which would have the power of co-opting from time to time, as was needed, representatives from the Post Office, representatives from the labour element, and other sources. I merely make this statement because there were two separate proposals.

I quite agree. I was speaking rather rapidly, and was generally stating what I read with care. I agree with my hon. Friend's statement. I should be inclined to agree with any proposal, short of a Committee of the House of Commons. I believe a Committee of the House of Commons to be the very worst tribunal that could possibly be suggested for dealing with the wages of Government servants. Any statutory Commission of the nature suggested by my hon. Friend would have my support, and I believe it would have the support of the great body of Post Office servants themselves. I am not going into the question of the rates of wages or of the cost of living, because there are two cases which I desire to put before the Committee. The first is a very short case, which has been referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon (Mr. Malcolm). This case has come to me from my own Constituency, and it is one of the matters which has deeply troubled them, and I am the only medium by which the postal servants in that large district round London can voice their complaints. The London area is a comparatively small area, but there are a large number of towns outside the existing London area, such as Barnet, Twickenham, and Croydon, all round the outskirts of London, and all of which are, in fact, part of London, where the cost of living is as great, yet there is an arbitrary line drawn across the road with the result that the postal servants on one side of the road get the London rate of wages, and those on the other side get the provincial rate of wages. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon referred to a remark made in evidence by one of the heads of the Post Office Department before the Holt Committee. He was asked what was going to be done in regard to the inclusion of Croydon in the London area, and he actually went as far as to say that it was a question of agitation. In other words, this head of the Post Office invited the Post Office servants to agitate, in order that they might be included in the London area. That is what the postal servants in Brentford, Twickenham, and places all round London have been doing in order to get what they consider their rights. It is not right that they should have to agitate, or that we should have to come here to agitate on their behalf.

The Government or some statutory Committee should revise the area of London, and say whether it is not essential that these outside areas should be included. The twelve-mile area, which has been suggested, is the area for London wages in the building trade, and a builder gets the same rate of wages at Twickenham as he does in the London area. Not so the Post Office servants. The London County Council wage area is twenty miles, that is to say, a workman working for the London County Council right outside this immediate district gets the same wages as would those in the central part. Not so the postal servants. The Metropolitan Police area extends for fifteen miles, and a policeman at that distance gets the London rate of wages. Not so-the postal servant. He feels badly treated when he sees men living in close contact with him getting the London rate of wage, while he gets the provincial rate of wage. Take the towns of Hanwell, Baling, and Chiswick, all of which are exactly the same in their area, exactly the same in their mode of life and the cost of rent, with the one exception that I am told that rent and the cost of living is a little higher outside the western boundary of the London area than it is inside. The hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Holt), who was the Chairman of the Committee, told this Committee that there was only one way of deciding the London area and the area of other large towns; that was by having something in the nature of a Boundaries Commission, on which both sides would be represented, in order to settle what the boundaries of a town are. The only way we can do that is to have regard to the particular circumstances of each town. The hon. Member did not suggest that in his Report.

Yes, I did.

The Report is a very voluminous one, and if the hon. Gentleman says that he did I accept his correction.

It was suggested as regards the provincial towns. It is quite correct that we failed to make that suggestion in terms with regard to London. The only way to settle fairly the boundaries of any town—this is not a problem affecting London particularly, it affects all—is to have an ad hoc Boundary Commission to settle what the boundary is as regards each town.

I was dealing with London, and apparently the hon. Member was dealing with provincial towns. May I take it now that he, as chairman of the Committee, thinks there ought to be a Boundary Commission in order to deal with this question?

Yes.

I am much obliged to the hon. Member. I hope the Postmaster-General will take note that the chairman of his Committee has now said that he agrees that there should be a Boundary Commission for London set up at once in order to determine how far the London area should go. That is in some senses an addition to the Report of the hon. Member and his Committee, and I trust that the Postmaster-General will, as soon as possible—it is a comparatively small matter—give effect to that suggestion and relieve the dissatisfaction which exists all round London. May I give one special instance. In the case of the town of Woolwich they claimed for some time to get inside the London area. What do you think was the objection of the Treasury? Not that Woolwich ought not to come postally within the London area, but that if it were included the War Office would have to give a higher lodging allowance to some of their men, and that if the Post Office paid more, the War Office would have to pay more. A vicious circle like that goes round the Treasury Bench. If it is right that Woolwich or Brentford should be included postally in the London area, let it be done, whether anybody else claims the right or not. There is one point with regard to the clerks as well as the postmen in these areas. I will only give the salaries they get at the present time. The postal clerks at Brentford get 40s. a week, Twickenham 50s., Kingstonon-Thames 54s., and Richmond 54s. In the London area, adjoining these very places, the salary is 65s. There is no possible reason why that inequality should occur in the conditions of the postal clerks as well as the postmen themselves. I am quite sure that the Postmaster-General and the Assistant Postmaster-General will deal with this inequality.

I want to deal as quickly as possible with the question of the transferred telephone staff. The Committee will remember that on more than one occasion I have put forward their claims that were met or attempted to be met by the late Postmaster-General. I am going to assume for the moment that the Postmaster-General did give an undertaking that those men and women who were transferred from the National Telephone Company's service to that of the State should not suffer in any way. The hon. Member for Hexham in his Report and in his speech gave us clearly to understand that in his opinion they did not suffer anything, that on the whole they were very lucky to be transferred and ought to be satisfied, but that they were kicking up a good deal of disturbance and did not deserve any consideration at the hands of Parliament. I am paraphrasing what the hon. Member said. I am going to give instances of loss. Nineteen thousand men and women were taken over from this private company into the service of the State on what I suggest was a. Parliamentary bargain or treaty between the Postmaster-General and myself and others as representing those telephone servants when the transfer took place in 1911. A vast number of complaints were submitted to the Postmaster-General last year. Sixteen hundred separate cases of individual hardship were submitted to him in June, 1913, and since then 400 more have been submitted, making 2,000 individual cases of personal hardship. They came from all over the country—from London, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, and all the large towns. The electrical staff complained of reduced annual increments, of reduced wage maxima, and of the reduction of overtime rates. The storekeepers also complained of reduced wage maxima. The male clerical staff had their maxima reduced; the contract staff had their maxima reduced; the draughtsmen had their maxima reduced; the female clerical staff the same, and nearly all of them complained of the reduction of their maxima and the alteration in the classification.

Out of those 2,000 cases, about 10 per cent. have been dealt with by the Post Office, and have been remedied. That leaves 90 per cent., or 1,900 dissatisfied people, who were members of the old staff and who expected that they would be taken over on as good or better terms. Out of the 2,000 people who actually put in separate and personal complaints, 1,900 inform me definitely that they are still dissatisfied and discontented, because they believe, rightly or wrongly—from my investigation I think many of them believe rightly—that they have been badly treated, and that the compact made in this House has not been carried out. The classification of towns is a very important question. There are many cases far worse than Carlisle. Blackburn has 1,445 subscribers to the telephone, Oldham has 1,346, Bolton has 1,495, and yet the maximum for telephone wages in Blackburn is 24s., and if you take towns with a small number of subscribers like Carlisle 416, Guildford:392, and Southend 479, the telephone operators there actually have a higher maximum than in these three Lancashire towns with nearly four times the number of telephones on their exchanges. That is clearly a point which wants alteration. The matter is so simple and so small that it only seems it needs an intelligent business man at the head of the Department to say this obviously must be put right and come to Parliament and get it put right accordingly.

With regard to the question of labourers' wages, the maximum labourer's wage today is 26s. in London and 21s., raised the other day to 22s., in the provinces. The old telephone company paid their provincial labourers 23s. Actually the State, having taken over this large business, is reducing from 23s. to 22s. the maximum for their labour. I quite admit that the individual man has not had his wages reduced, but the point is that these men are put into a class where the maximum is lower than that which they could get under the old telephone service. The skilled workman under the telephone service could proceed automatically to a higher wage per week than he gets at present. I have some actual names which I am prepared to submit to the Postmaster-General. There is one man at Newcastle, a storekeeper, at £2 3s. per week, one at Glasgow at £2 15s., one at London at £2 17s., and another at Liverpool with £2 15s. These men are in classes where they cannot get any higher maximum and yet, under the telephone company, all these men, including the one who is now getting 43s., could proceed automatically to a maximum of 60s. These men are cut off. Promotion is no good to a man who is in a class much below the maximum he is entitled to, or in a class where he himself is getting more than the maximum of that class and very likely more than the maximum of the class above him.

Promotion only means an increase of duties and responsibility with no increase of pay. That is very clearly seen if I take some female clerks who have been transferred from the telephone service. Here is one in Dublin who is getting a maximum to-day of 30s. The maximum of her class is 26s. She is working side by side with women who are doing the same work and getting under the Post Office 26s. There is no chance of increase for her unless she gets in a class where the maximum is beyond 20s. She is damnified in regard to that. There are many of these female telegraphists. Here is one at Brighton getting 40s., and she is in a class where the maximum is 26s. It will be a very long time before that girl has any possible chance of getting her maximum increased. There is another at Birmingham. The Postmaster-General has had all these details. They have been submitted to him time after time. These people are told that they have no personal case because they are getting the same salary that they got under the telephone company. That is true, but they are getting it in a class lower than that in which they have a right to expect to be. Their prestige, their position in the postal service, is that of a lower class, and we all know what it is to be put in a higher class, and one prefers, other things being equal, to be put in a higher class and to do more responsible work in order that there may be more opportunity of going forward in the postal service and getting a higher maximum. I want to refer to one case, which has been reported in the public Press, of a man who was prosecuted by the Post Office in March of this year for the embezzlement of 10s. He was a fairly skilled man. He was employed as a canvasser in order to get people to join the telephone service. He was a man whom we should call a commercial traveller. His wage, under the Post Office, was 20s. per week. In passing sentence the stipendiary magistrate at Bradford—I am quoting from the "Manchester Guardian," a newspaper which, I am sure, will be approved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at all events, and possibly by the Postmaster-General too—pointed out that the prisoner had committed a serious breach, and must be punished:—

There is one other point I must mention, that of the nightly allowance for men who are away travelling. There was a system under the old telephone company for experienced, skilled workmen, and others getting 4s. extra per night when they were away from their own homes. I am sure the Holt Committee would say that was perhaps too high a payment, but that is not my point. My point is that that is what they were getting, and what they were expecting to get the whole of the time they were in the service of the telephone company. Those were the terms of their engagement, and the terms on which they were transferred to the Post Office. Now the Holt Report is not only going to settle the question of payment for outside work for the postal servants, but also for those men who for years past have been enjoying this 4s., and I am told that there are 3,000 men on the electrical staff who come tinder this condition and who will lose 2s 6d. per night when they are sent out on construction work. It is no good for the Holt Committee to say that no one is damnified who was in the transferred telephone company. Here is a case. I am not at all sure from my reading of the Holt Report that the Committee meant it to apply to the transferred telephone staff, but the officials of the Post Office have apparently seized upon that section in the Report, and have issued an order reducing the night pay of these men belonging to the old telephone staff. I believe the Postmaster-General has a copy of the printed statement headed "Losses out of Transfer," which many members of the Committee have doubtless received. "It is perfectly clear that these men are not getting to-day what they were getting when they were in the telephone company. As one of the leaders of the trade union said to me only this morning, "What is wanted is a contented staff." I put it point blank to him, "Do you think that the present condition of telephone affairs under which we all suffer and the bad service that we are all getting has anything to do with the conditions of the staff?" He looked at me and said, "Not only do I think, I am sure that the discontent in the staff has a great deal to do with the bad service you are getting." If that is so, we who represent the commercial world are entitled to ask the Government to render their staff contented in order that they may deal with their work in the manner in which contented workmen deal with their work and take a pleasure in it instead of grinding out the least they can do because they are discontented with their employer, this great Government Service. Was there, or was there not, a contract, of Parliamentary titles as it were, between these National Telephone servants and the Post Office? I am going to submit that there was. In the Debate on the telephone transfer the Postmaster-General went very fully into the question of the postal servants' pay. He isaid:— the President of the Local Government Board, who was then Postmaster-General, ought to have sent a postal servant, a high officer, to the Committee to state that he did not believe that he said what he is reported to have said. He ought to stand by what is reported in the OFFICIAL REPORT in regard to these servants. When I asked:— taken over into the Government service. Time after time that appears both in my speeches and in his speeches. I merely desire to call the attention of the House to the pledge given by the Postmaster-General. When I pressed that some of the concessions might be embodied in an Amendment to the Bill itself—I had a large number of Amendments—the right hon. Gentleman urged that they should not be embodied in the Bill. He said:—

In considering the financial concessions recommended by the Holt Committee, it seems to me that not only are these concessions on the whole insufficient, but that they are of unduly small amount in the case of those female workers who constitute a large and increasing proportion of the Post Office employés. The principle I would submit to the Committee is the generally recognised one of equal pay for equal work as between men and women employed by the Post Office, or assuming the work not to be equal, I would like to put before the Committee the recommendation of the Majority Report of the Civil Service Commission. I quote what appears on page 107. The recommendation was this:— the attention of the House to some figures which appear on page 90. Take the case of sorting clerks and telegraphists. The figures are given for London and the provinces. I do not want to spend undue time, and I will take the case of male sorting clerks and telegraphists in the provinces and compare them with the female sorting clerks and telegraphists also in the provinces. If we take Class I., we find that the male clerks rise from 16s. a week at eighteen years of age by increments of 2s. until they reach a maximum of 58s. If we take the case of female sorting clerks and telegraphists, we find that they rise from 13s. at eighteen years of age, firstly by increments of 2s. and then Is. to a maximum of 36s. You will find the same general proportion in Classes II., III., IV., and V. I will take Class V. for the purpose of comparison, because it is the lowest. There, male sorting clerks and telegraphists begin at eighteen years of age at 14s. a week, and gradually work up by increments of 2s. to a maximum of 42s. Female sorting clerks and telegraphists in that class, starting at eighteen years of age, get 12s., and work up by increments until they reach 28s. The point I wish to make on these figures is this: Even assuming that the work of the male workers is more efficient than the work of the female workers, the difference in the maximum wage—which is the real test—of the female employés shows that they get less than two-thirds of what the males receive. In Class V. they get exactly two-thirds, namely, 28s. instead of 42s., and in other classes they get less than two-thirds. It seems to me that that shows an undue disparity, and that these figures are not in conformity with the principle laid down in the Civil Service Commission Report. I venture to bring that specially to the notice of the Postmaster-General.

There is another class in respect of whom I would like to say a word, namely, the female telephonists. That work is done, I understand, almost exclusively by women, and one of the results is that the standard of pay is extremely low—considerably below the lower scale to which I have just referred. In Class I., at the age of sixteen, these girls begin at 12s., and go up by increases of Is. and Is. 6d. until they reach the magnificent maximum of 26s.—considerably lower than the maximum to which I have just referred. Then in Class II. the maximum is 25s.; in Class III. the maximum is 24s.; and in Classes IV. and V. the maximum is 23s. I do submit that the maxima are far too low, especially considering the very tiring character of the telephonist's work. Everyone who knows the conditions and character of that work knows that it is a very nerve-racking kind of work, that the strain is very great, and that one of the effects of these low wages is that those who are so employed are unable to pay for satisfactory food. They do not feed themselves well. That leads to a general lowering of vitality, and there is no question that the proportion of sickness in those cases is far higher than it ought to be. I remember that a year ago I asked a question in regard to the figures in Glasgow, and I was very much surprised at the high proportion of those who receive leave for ill-health.

I have taken these classes, not as selected small classes, but because they are large and representative classes. If we take the country as a whole, sorting clerks, telegraphists and telephonists throughout the country number about 30,000. In Glasgow alone, of which I have the honour to represent one of the Divisions, the number is fully 1,700, and of these more than 900 are female employés. There is, of course, a fundamental distinction in Post Office wages between London and the provinces, and the London scale is very considerably higher than the provincial scale. I venture to think, particularly where large cities are concerned, that the difference is disproportionate in the case of a great many of the larger cities, because living is very nearly as high as in London, and rents are nearly as high as in London. In Glasgow, with a population of over 1,000,000—it is very far the largest centre which can be called a provincial centre— the amount and pressure of work in the post offices there is very great, and yet it is on the lower scale.

In Glasgow the general analogy for the treatment of provincial post offices is followed. I believe that the General Post Office there, that is the head office, is the only one in which men are employed at the counters, and yet a great deal of business, and probably more pressing business, is done at the Waterloo Street Post Office, which does an enormous amount of commercial and parcels work. At that office women are employed at the counter, and the same applies to the important offices at the Stock Exchange, Howard Street and Hope Street. I understand that the efficiency at these offices is very high, and particularly at Waterloo Street, in regard to which reports have been made that it is hardly capable of improvement. And yet the wages are not what they might be, and do not fairly correspond to the London wages. Another matter to which I should like to call attention is the question of the hours of duty. These are certainly very long in some cases. I understand it has been suggested that some of the financial concessions which have been made have been regulated on account of the shortening of hours. Looking through the Report it seems to me that the shortening of the hours of labour has been comparatively slight. Even if further financial concessions cannot be made, some concessions might be made by shortening the hours of labour of those who are very hard worked. That would probably repay itself in greater efficiency, and also in conditions of health among the persons concerned. The hon. and learned Member who has just spoken mentioned the case of the Telephone Company's staff. I would like to take this opportunity of putting in a word with reference to the staff which was taken over with the Glasgow Corporation Telephone system by the Post Office about 1906. That staff did not get quite such good terms on the whole as the staff of the National Telephone Company got. I believe that some representations have been made to the Postmaster-General, and it would be perhaps inappropriate for me to go into details now. But I would like to call the attention of the Postmaster-General to the matter and ask him whether he cannot do something to level up the position of those who have been taken over, so that those who were taken over six or seven years ago should have the benefit of being on the establishment. To some extent I am afraid that they suffered because their organisation had not the same power as the larger and more extensive organisation of the National Telephone Company. The National Telephone Company's employés were taken over afterwards, but I think that it would be only right to have those who were taken over from the Glasgow Corporation Telephone system placed in at least as good a position as the others who were taken over afterwards, and who had more power because of their larger numbers.

Some observations have been made with reference to the question of maintaining a continuous readjustment between the Post Office and its employés. I would like to add my voice to what has been said as to the undesirability of trying to meet the case merely from time to time when an agitation is started by the appointment of a sporadic Departmental Committee. It does seem to me very desirable that there should be something like a permanent body to maintain that readjustment continuously, and in such a way as to give satisfaction to the employés and so maintain those happy relations between employer and employé which contribute so largely to the success of any business, whether a State monopoly or not. I know that more or less technical objections have been raised on this ground: Are you going merely to have a consulting Committee? If so, they will have no power. Or, on the other hand, are you going to have a Committee that can in fact act? And, if you do, then the Treasury must be the predominant partner. I know both technical objections, but I am not inclined to attach very much weight to them. I would like to see the system started with some Committee, whether it had power or not. In all these arrangements you do not decide before setting up the Committee what its exact functions or powers are to be. The first thing is that the employer and the employés should be got into touch with one another. Until some body of some sort is set up, I doubt whether that will ever be the case. It used, by various employers of labour, to be feared that if they did anything of that sort in private business there would be continual pressure and mutual relations might be strained instead of being facilitated. But the experience of private firms has over and over again shown that far from that being the case there does arise a better mutual understanding, and relations work more harmoniously and more smoothly for both parties than they did before. Those arrangements have been made in a number of private businesses, and I think that the Post Office, as an employer of labour, would do well if it adopted the same course, and if that course is adopted I feel sure that grievances would never reach a very acute stage, and that the whole working of the Department, so far as its employés are concerned, would probably be more smooth and more satisfactory.

An interesting feature of the two days' Debate which we have had is that on the previous occasions the speakers on the other side of the House criticised the Holt Report, as we call it, tenderly, somewhat nervously, and with a little fear of treading upon the toes of the Postmaster-General. This afternoon speech after speech has been made in which hon. Members have shown that, whatever they believe, they certainly have not any longer any faith in the Holt Report as being final or conclusive, or indeed as marking even the final stage in the controversy between the Post Office and its employés. It has been most interesting to listen to the last few speeches which have been made, in which it is quite clear that a demand is made, not only from this side of the House, but from the other side, for a Committee to deal with the problem, and what we want to understand now is whether or not the Government is prepared, not merely once more to salve its conscience and suggest that the present difficulty can be got over by a temporary meeting between representatives of the Post Office and the men, but whether or not some statutory body will be set up, not merely with powers which, as the last speaker suggested, are to be arranged hereafter, and duties which are to be given to them at some later stage, but a statutory Commission, with certain powers and certain duties which would be satisfactory to the House as a whole at the present time, because we have spent a number of hours discussing this problem, and I think that the Committee are better able to decide whether or not the statutory Commission should be set up at the present time than they ever will be if delay is allowed to efface from their minds matters which are at present before them.

I desire to ask for a few moments how is it that the Report of the Holt Committee has failed so much to satisfy the larger body of this Committee when it has been brought to its attention? The reason why the Committee was originally appointed was undoubtedly because of the rise in the cost of living. There may have been other factors, but that was the primary and larger factor. All the Members who spoke on the last day when we discussed this Report paid their tribute to the industry and patience and grasp of detail, which have obviously characterised the Committee. I should like to pay that tribute too. The work that was necessary to produce a Report of something like 300 pages alone must have been very very great, and it is quite clear from the evidence taken and the recommendations made, that a great deal of industry was put into the work which the Committee had to do. But what is the Report of the Committee? It displaces the Hobhouse Report, but it is founded upon and incorporates the Hobhouse Report, and if you desire to understand what the working of the Post Office in future is to be, you have got to bear in mind the Hobhouse Report and the Holt Report; and when you have got those two in mind, then you have, at any rate, got the basis on which the employés of the Post Office work. I remember that Lord Macaulay, in one of his essays, in criticising "Lord Burleigh and His Times," says of that remarkable book that the "name was as long as an ordinary preface, and that the preface was as long as an ordinary book;" and speaking of the book itself, he gives its dimensions, and says that it would have been light reading in the clays of Methuselah, but that in modern days it made too large a demand upon the short lives of men. I think that this Report of 300 pages is rather in the nature of a volume of evidence, and if you add to this Report the Hobhouse Report as well, and say, "This is what the system of the Post Office is," have we not got something which needs a little, more boiling down, or a little more getting into shape before you can ask the 260,000 employés of the Post Office to say that they have got a good and sufficient rule based upon common sense with which they can be satisfied?

Because, on looking into these complaints that have been made I am bound to say that I found them very reasonable. I have heard one or two Members suggest that possibly it is a matter of political pressure on one side of the House or the other. I do not agree with that. I think that hon. Members would be able to decide as to whether it is mere political pressure or not, and also I think that it would be very unfair to representatives of the men to think that they were putting it forward in a spirit of political pressure. Those whom I have seen, and I have seen a great many, put forward their claims on very reasonable grounds, and were able to give convincing arguments that they had truth and justice at the bottom of them. On what is this agitation based? Of course the Postmaster-General gave us some figures on the last occasion which are supposed to create a sort of gasp of admiration on the part of those who hear them. For my part they leave me cold. All these figures—we know them so well— Post Office figures are always astronomical in their size with the millions and billions of letters that have been posted, and delivered, but we get outstanding really a very simple figure that everybody can understand, and that is, that the Post Office at the present makes a profit of £6,250,000 a year. It is rather less when the net is handed over, but that is a figure which can appeal to the mind of every single one of these 260,000 employés of the Post Office. And they also realise what has been done in the past, and can understand what is going to be done for them in the future. The Postmaster-General told us that in the last eight years a total increase of £1,090,000 had been made in the expenses incurred by the Post Office for its staff, and he told us, and we were supposed to be very grateful, that a total of £1,940,000 would be the result of the Holt Committee's Report. But we can understand the feeling when the question is asked: How long will it be before that figure is reached?

I did not say that at all. I said that that was the joint result of the two Committees.

6.0 P.M.

I am obliged to the hon. Member. I ought to have made that quite clear, if I did not. It is quite clear that that is the result of the figures, and there can be no dispute about it. In regard to the Hobhouse Report, the immediate result was that it added £450,000 to the expenses of the Post Office, and it was supposed that it would ultimately involve an increase of £690,000. The Hobhouse Committee's Report was really superseded by the Holt Report, the result of which was an increase of £640,000, with an ultimate increase of £1,250,000. Taking these two Reports together, that means an immediate increase coming to £1,090,000, and an ultimate increase, taking the two Reports together, of £1,940,000. I am told by those who are competent to make the calculation that it will be some twenty years before this total expenditure of £1,940,000 is reached, and, therefore, I am quite certain that many a Postmaster-General will have come and gone by that time; and if we look back and see how many Commissions there have been in the past dozen years or so, I think a good many more Commissions, unless you do something else, will have come and gone before ever the total outlay of £1,940,000 is reached. Therefore, I think these figures leave us quite cold as to the future promises of the Postmaster-General. Let us see whether or not under the Holt Report there is going to be an immediate increase of £640,000.

For my part, and I believe other hon. Members hold the same opinion, I think the sum of £640,000 can be and ought to be dissected. I understand that about £120,000 of it is involved in the rearrangement of office work, the shortening of hours, and so forth—that is to say, no part of it goes to what was the original purpose of the Commission, namely, to see whether or not the increased demand could be given to men who are suffering from higher prices. I understand that the Holt Commission originally advised that the meal relief could be taken away, but the meal relief is not to be taken away, and the amount in respect of not taking away the meal relief is about £110,000, and so the Postmaster-General takes credit for the fact that he has not taken away what he had allowed before, because he has not taken away what he might have done if he had followed the Holt Report. He therefore puts down the credit of expenditure £110,000. That does not appeal to anybody who looks at this matter from the point of view of common sense, and so we reduce this figure of £640,000 very considerably. Let us take another test. Certain figures are given as to increases for sorting clerks and telegraphists. Their number, I believe, 21,335, and the increased cost about £85,120, an increase per man 1s. 6.23d. What are the facts? Only 6,000 clerks will get an increase at all, and their increase will be two shillings, but, as to the rest, there will be no immediate increase—that is to say, 15,000 of the total number will be left without any increase to enable them to meet the extra cost of living. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Islington (Mr. Touche) said, there are 5,000 men who will get no increase at all. If we go back to the Report, we see it states that "a new factor has arisen," namely, the increased cost of living, and if we ask whether or not that demand has been met at all, the answer is that it has not.

There is a very large number of employés whose reasonable complaints or whose reasonable demands are in no sense palliated by the proposals of this Report, Another argument is put forward. It is said that if you have an increase when prices are high, you must also have a decrease when prices go down. I believe there have been decreases. I am told that in 1888 there was a decrease in consequence of prices having gone down; but, at any rate, it is no argument for men living in the present day to tell them, that you will not give them anything to meet, the present burden, and that if the situation improves and there is a decrease in prices there must be a corresponding decrease in wages. That is really no argument based on common sense, and it does not appeal to the logic of those who are suffering from the existing difficulty. Nay more, to be told, "Well, after all, the prices are much the same as they were in 1884," is no comfort to anybody, because they are not living in the year 1884, and the postal employés who are at present in a difficulty are not in the least comforted by being told that if they had been born thirty years earlier they would have experienced the same circumstances as we have at the present time. Are these the sort of arguments which will appeal to the postal workers, and can you be surprised that the employés of the Post Office are not satisfied? For mark you, it is not in the higher grades that this difficulty arises. The difficulty is felt a great deal more among the lower paid employés than it is among the higher paid, and it is the former class which, so far as I can judge, get the least prospect of relief. But there is another test which is applied. Take the system in these two Reports, under which you find the wages based on zones, and units and scales. Those units of work, as I understand, depend very largely on the class of work which is transacted by any particular post office. Supposing that there is a great deal of money order work done in a particular post office the wages paid in that office are higher.

What happens? You get the case which was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, who pointed out the inequality which exists between Birkenhead and Liverpool. In the case of two postal servants living in the same house at Birkenhead, one might be employed at Liverpool and the other in Birkenhead. The one employed at Liverpool gets better wages than the one employed at Birkenhead, though they both live in the same house at Birkenhead. The hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Holt) gave an answer which he supposed to be quite sufficient, and it was accepted by the Committee generally, with approving laughter. He said this:—

Let me give another illustration. As I understand, with regard to the lodging and subsistence allowance, it is an allowance made to men withdrawn from their headquarters. There is now a tendency to say that when a man works a considerable time or a few weeks away from his home the place where he is working shall be regarded as his headquarters, and that he shall have no lodging or subsistence allowance. A man cannot move his home about rapidly from one place to another, and I submit that he will suffer a real grievance unless you give him an allowance which will meet his difficulty when he is at a place which you may call a home, but which is not the home which he made for himself and where his family dwell. There is another matter. They cut off the foreman's allowance. If a foreman has got a certain standard of wage, then he is not to be entitled to any increase for being foreman, although he may have a number of men under him. What he objects to is this: He is doing the work which he did on the original terms of his employment, and which justified his receiving that allowance, and it is no good attempting to say, "You have already received a particular sum," because he feels that he is entitled to get the extra pay for the extra work. One more illustration. You have in the country districts a number of duties which it is claimed by the Post Office they must have the right to impose upon the different grades of employés. I understand that. But when you get outdoor men employed, and when you have indoor work being paid at a higher scale, it is not unnatural that the outdoor men should feel that they ought to be paid the value which their particular class of work is entitled to receive. But they do not receive it, and the result is that the outdoor men feel that they are being put to do work for which they ought to be paid and for which they do not receive any adequate remuneration.

A number of other criticisms have been made on both sides of the House in regard to the unfairness with which the recommendations of the Committee work. Let me add one more criticism. Take the auxiliary postmen; they are referred to in the Report as auxiliary postmen, of whom there are large numbers. There are, I think, 14,000 persons who are employed for less than three hours per day and receive an allowance of 4d. or 4½d. per hour for the delivery and collection of letters. An increase of a farthing is recommended, and the Report says:— work short hours. That is true, but they have responsible work during that time, and if you are going to ask for honesty and freedom from temptation, which you naturally do demand from all those 14,000 men, I question whether or not the Post Office are making them free from temptation even by increasing their wages by a farthing an hour. To my mind, to look at that statement in the Holt Committee recommendations is to justify all the criticisms that have been made about it, and to show once and for all that that sort of suggestion and proposal cannot finally stand. That is what the men think themselves. They feel that they have grievances as to which the Committee was appointed and that those have not been met. You can deal with large bodies of men in two or three different ways. You can either refuse to incur the additional expense of paying them any increase of wages or you may grant an increase of wages and allow the extra cost at once;, but of all the bad methods to adopt it is to act as though you intended to grant an increase and then to defer the increase so as to make it merely tantalising, or whittle it away by a number of harassing restrictions. I have taken a good deal of trouble to find out whether the conclusions are right or wrong. I have followed the speeches on both sides, and I am bound to say, if I am wrong, a good number of Members are equally wrong, because I have seen the material they have used and the deductions they have drawn, which are exactly the same as I have drawn. What has been done is that in this case there is an appearance of spending £640,000 at once and £1,940,000 at the end of a number of years, while at the same time along with these apparent benefits you have a large number of restrictions, limitations, exceptions, alterations, and so on, which, to a very large extent, eliminate the possibility of present increases and present satisfaction.

If the increase of prices has occurred, and if there has been a rise in the cost of living, and the standard of living, and if that is the real factor of the situation which has got to be dealt with, then it should be dealt with at once. You cannot ask the large bulk of the Post Office employés merely to be satisfied with some new scale which does not give any immediate increase and which only gives a promise which perhaps they may live to see hereafter falsified. As to the Report itself wherever increases are given they are only given to new entrants. The persons who have been employed for a, long time, those who are now at the age of thirty-eight and upwards get no increase at all and still have to work away on the basis of the Hobhouse Report. In the case of the Tweedmouth Report the increase was given, I think, at once. It was made retrospective, and the terms of employment were improved at once in the case of those who had already done a considerable number of years service. In the case of the Holt Report that is not so, and only new entrants will benefit. If that is so then, of course, a large number of persons of the age of thirty-eight and upwards, and who undoubtedly are some of the best men employed in the Post Office, feel that their difficulties and their appeal have not been met. From both sides of the House criticism has been offered upon this Report which really makes it quite impossible that the Postmaster-General would ever be able to put it into real force. It would be quite impossible with the criticisms on his own side of the House to go back to the employés and say, "Here is the Committee's Report, and by that we will abide. Here are the recommendations, and we are going to stand by them." The criticisms already offered are quite sufficient to prevent that.

What is the Postmaster-General going to do? If he is going to say, "Oh, well, we will get a little Committee together of two or three, and see whether we cannot meet the Post Office employés and talk it over and see whether something can be done," then I venture to say that he will court disaster. He has had abundant opportunity of seeing the men and knowing what they want. We have all of us read scores of pages of this Report, and if we do not have some more final proposition than that then I am quite certain it will not be satisfactory to a large number of Members in this House. What we do need is something like a statutory Commission oi1 body which we can be promised now this evening, definitely, with definite work to do and definite limitations. I do not say that those need be drawn out in detail, but we do want some definite promise on those lines, sketched out and told to us to-night. Unless we get that, I hope that my hon. Friend will press his Amendment to a Division in order that we may record what I believe is the feeling on both sides of the House, that this Holt Report has not reached, I will not say finality, for I agree with the hon. Member for York that you cannot have finality in these matters, but has not a stage been reached in the difficulties which naturally arise and which exist at the present time, when a conclusion can be called for as to which both sides could be satisfied for at any rate a considerable period to come.

This Debate has, not, unnaturally, indeed inevitably, brought about a chorus of criticisms. I am afraid I shall have to add a small contribution to those criticisms. In doing so I would like to add my thanks to the thanks expressed by other Members to the Chairman of the Holt Committee for the work which he undertook on our behalf, and, I think, we must all admit with very considerable success. It was a very difficult work, but on the whole we must feel that the Committee has given us a Report that is of great value. But that does not mean that the Report is perfect, and we could not expect that all the recommendations made by the Committee would be satisfactory. I would like to add my voice to the request just made to the Postmaster-General that he should not content himself by sheltering himself behind this Report. I believe nothing could be more disastrous to the public service generally than for the Post Office to take upon itself to say, "We refuse even to consider suggestions made after full knowledge of the Report by outside persons by the staff and by Members of this House, because it has been considered (and considered, I have no doubt, perfectly honestly and fully) by the Committee." This is a great opportunity which will not recur. We have the question of the remuneration of the Post Office servants before us in complete form at the present moment, and it is now for us to do our utmost to settle any differences. I cannot help thinking, if the Post Office attempts to meet and to comply with some of the requests, many of which we have listened to to-day, and which seem to be justifiable, then they will have done a great deal to avoid what must otherwise be sooner or later a conflict between ourselves and the staff. At the present moment I think we must all agree that the Post Office staff has behaved with admirable restraint, and that they deserve consideration of the most just and, indeed, of the most generous kind.

I cannot help realising, notwithstanding the Report of the Holt Committee, that there is a very considerable feeling of complaint amongst the staff. The first cause of that undoubtedly is due to the fact that they have been under the impression that the Committee would consider the question in their wages from the point of wages of the increased cost of living. I know what the Chairman of the Committee has replied, and there is a great deal in what he said, that the reference to the Committee did not admit of his giving that question undue prominence in the consideration of the case. At the same time I cannot help realising that at the time when the Committee was appointed it was clearly stated, both by the Postmaster-General and by the Prime Minister, that that particular consideration, at any rate, was in the minds of the Government at that moment. On 28th September, 1911, the Postmaster-General said, in a discussion with the National Joint Committee:— fore, I think we are justified each one of us in putting before the Government, as was done on the last day and to-day, the particular points which appear to us to be the points which deserve some further consideration.

There are two or three points which have been brought before my notice specially in connection with the employment of the staff in London, with which in particular I naturally am concerned. The first is as to the methods of dealing with the wages of male telegraphists, of whom there are about 2,000 in London. Those are men who, as far as I understand, have to qualify to a very large extent. They have to possess skill, experience, and knowledge of a special character. They have received hardly any increase under the recommendations of the Holt Committee. What is worse, they have received no increase—except a certain section—upon the conditions of pay given to them prior to the Hobhouse Revision, that is to say, in 1908. For instance, a. man of twenty-five received 37s. before 1908, and now he is to receive only 6d. a week more—a very small addition indeed, as everyone will realise. As regards the maximum, the maximum of 65s. is maintained, the only improvement being that it can be reached at the age of thirty-six, instead of thirty-seven. I cannot help feeling that it would be wise to recognise this as a just complaint. Although it may be well not to increase the. maximum, there ought at any rate to be a larger increase in the earlier wages. This contention is justified by the fact, in regard to which we have had no satisfactory answer, that for similar work under the cable companies much better conditions prevail than in the Post Office. With regard to women telegraphists there is an even clearer case. Women telegraphists, and in fact almost all the women in the Post Office, receive no increase whatsoever under this arrangement.

All of them?

I think there are one or two instances of more highly paid women who will receive some increase, but the ordinary rank and file are left exactly as they were. My hon. Friend the Member for the Tradeston Division of Glasgow (Mr. Dundas White) has dealt with that question, therefore I will not weary the Committee by dwelling upon it. further. But I think it is a matter for consideration on the part of the Govern- ment whether they ought not to recognise that the same reasons which have justified an increase, small though it is in the wages of the male staff, also justify an increase in the wages of the women. There are 6,000 women telegraphists who receive no increase whatsoever. They will continue to earn money in the earlier years at the rate of 2s. a week less than men. That difference between men and women increases very rapidly. A woman when she is thirty will earn 14s. a week less than a man, and when she is thirty-four the difference will be £1. I hold the view, which I know is not shared by a great many Members, and there are many cogent arguments against it, that where the work is equal it ought to receive equal pay.

The work is not equal.

I would challenge that. In many cases the work of a woman is of equal value to the State with the work of a man. There are no doubt cases where a man's superior physical strength renders him somewhat more useful than a woman. Nevertheless the work that a woman gives to the State is, I contend, in a great majority of cases, equal in value to that of a man.

The women are employed only during selected hours of the day. They work, roughly speaking, only between the hours of eight in the morning and eight in the evening. Everybody will agree that that is perfectly right. The result is that men have to do the whole of the night work, and to work till the small hours of the morning. We could not work the Post Office with women instead of men. One of the complaints of the men was that the employment of women gave them a worse share of the bad hours.

I do not deny that there are strong arguments in support of the hon. Member's proposition in reference to certain classes of employés. But I was rather struck by one passage—I have not got it with me—where it was undoubtedly stated that in the ordinary course the work of a woman was as valuable to the State as the work of a man. Those are not the exact words; I should like to have time to turn up the exact quotation. The staff themselves put forward the contention that the work was of an equal character, and ought to be paid for at the same rate. But suppose we grant that it is not equal, you cannot justify such an enormous disparity between men's wages and women's wages on the ground of their respective values to the State; you must justify it on other grounds altogether.

Another important point in regard to the work in London is the principle of giving different wages in different districts. For many years the principle applied in regard to postmen has been that those who work in the central districts should be paid more than those who work in the outer districts. There are three zones in London. In the central zone postmen receive 42s., in the inner zone up to 41s., and in the outer zone up to 39s. The only justification for these differences that I have been able to discover, either in the evidence or in the Report, is that there is a difference in the charge for rent. Information was given to the Committee as to the difference in rents in the various zones, but it is not sufficient to account for the difference in the pay. The figures given show that for a house of four rooms in the central zone the average rent was 7s. and in the outer zone 6s. For a house of five rooms the average rental in the central zone was 8s. 6d. and in the outer zone 7s. 6d. But you are paying wages that differ to the extent of 4s. Certainly a difference of 4s. per week cannot be justified by any evidence that the rental varies to a greater extent than 1s. I know London fairly well, and I do not believe that in the outer areas anything is much cheaper than in the centre. It is suggested that food is cheaper, but I doubt very much whether that is so. As a matter of fact, there is really no justification for these variations in wages in the different parts of London. The case of the police has been quoted. It is proved that there is a differentiation there, but that is the only example. I personally have had a good deal to do with the question of wages of workmen and employés under the London County Council. It has never been suggested there that wages should vary according to the district in which the men worked. We have had to deal with teachers in schools, employés connected with the main drainage, parks, and so forth; they have all received payment on the same scale.

What is more, the Post Office itself does the same thing. As far as I understand, it is only in regard to the postmen that this zone system of wages holds good. Telegraphists, telephonists, sorters, porters, clerks, and the factories staffs, even down to the charwomen, are all paid at the same rate wherever they work or live. The zone rule creates such absurdities that if you look into the details of cases on the boundary line you will see that there is no logic in it at all. As a matter of fact, postmen and others can live where they like at a distance from the place where they work, and the idea that the place of work or the place where they live should have anything to do with the scale of pay in this respect is ludicrous. I know quite well it will be asked, "What boundary will you have?" as there must be some boundary. My own view is that if you want a boundary it is better to take an absolutely artificial one, such as those taken by the building and other trades—a circle a certain distance from London, wide enough to include all people living under what may be properly called urban conditions—eitherurbanorsuburban. These, I think, are justifiable complaints which might be perfectly well met. If they were met a great deal would be done to calm the dissatisfied feeling which undoubtedly exists in the Post Office. One other matter to which I wish to refer has no connection with the question of wages, but it is one to which I hope the Postmaster-General will refer in his reply. It is the question of certain second-class Post Office engineers. In 1911 a revision took place affecting the staff employed as second-class engineers. That revision resulted in 147 engineers being placed in a position in which they were termed redundant, which, I understand, meant that they were not to be allowed to profit by promotion at any future time. There were great complaints on that occasion from the staff affected, to whom, I believe, there vision came as a great surprise. In 1912 an Advisory Board was appointed to consider the question. That body recommended that a certain number of these men should be removed from the position of redundancy and placed in a position in which they could be properly promoted according to their merits. In accordance with their recommendation the Post Office selected forty-four out of the number recommended by the Board, and these were reinstated in their original positions. The remaining 103, however, were left. Since then the matter has been raised on several occasions by question and answer in the House, and from what I have been able to gather the question has been left in a very unsatisfactory condition. Some of these men have been promoted; nine or ten more have been reinstated. But there have been brought in men from the universities, who, I understand, have been admitted by the Post Office not to be absolutely satisfactory. Men from the National Telephone Company have also been given precedence over the men left out in 1911.

I would ask the Postmaster-General whether he can make a statement to-night telling us what really is the position as regards these men. If they are absolutely unsuitable for promotion, let us and them understand it. If they are suitable for promotion, let us know why it is that they have been treated in a way which, according to their story—and we can only speak from what we are told—is very unjust. I hope the Postmaster-General will deal with this question before the Debate closes. There are other points which I will not raise at the present moment, because I well realise that other hon. Members have points which they desire to put forward. I do trust, however, that after a Debate like this, which has shown us so many criticisms of a justifiable character, that the Postmaster-General will say that he is prepared to further consider the questions which have been raised by the Holt Report, and so endeavour to allay the feeling of dissatisfaction which undoubtedly exists, and which, if allowed to continue, will probably assume proportions that we may find it difficult to deal with satisfactorily.

What we must consider whenever we discuss the question of the revision of the wages of the postal telegraph servants, or, indeed, of any other wage-earners, is the increased cost of living. It is not disputed that in the years 1905–13 the average increase in the cost of living—in which, of course, is included food and rent—was 11.3 per cent. for the whole country. In point of fact we know that the average increase in wages recommended by this Report is only 4½ per cent.—a very serious disparity! There are some places, indeed, where the increase in the cost of living is a good deal more than 11.3. For instance, take the city of York itself, the increase is 13 per cent. In a case like that the disparity in the increase in the cost of living and in the increase of wages is still more striking. The difficulty we have to face is that the Holt Report did not make the increases correspond more than they do with the increased cost of living, and that difficulty is most strikingly illustrated in the case of the underpaid or lower paid class of wage-earners. No doubt, to a certain extent, that has been met by the concession of the Postmaster-General in establishing what is called the overriding wage. I doubt if he has gone quite far enough. Certainly that particular concession has nothing whatever to do with remedying certain specific, and as I think, some well-founded causes of complaint. It may be asked, Can the country afford a greater increase than has been given by the whole Commitee? That is not, I think, a question that very much affects the Members of the present Government when they are considering alterations in their policy. But if we have to consider that question, let me give to the House two figures—I am not quite sure whether or not they have been given before—as showing the profits of the Post Office for the years 1905 and 1913. In the year 1905 the profits of the Post Office, in round figures, were £3,900,000. In 1913 those profits were £5,500,000—an increase of £1,600,000. I think, therefore, it is fair to say that, taking into account the actual profits and the increased profits, the country might afford to give these men a little more.

I heard with satisfaction the speech of my hon. colleague in the representation of York (Mr. Rowntree) this afternoon. I find myself in the somewhat unusual but agreeable position of agreeing substantially with what he said. Unfortunately, we have had so little time during recent years for the discussion of social subjects on which we are more likely to agree than on topics of more acute political difference, that we have had fewer opportunities of agreeing than I should like to see occur. May I just, very shortly, draw the attention of the House to two or three specific grievances which I think deserve the attention of the Postmaster-General. One is the position as regards provincial postmen. Provincial postmen in Provincial Classes I., II., and III. have had their maxima raised by Is. per week, whereas in London and in Provincial Classes IV. and V. the maxima has been raised by 2s. per week. No explanation that I am aware of has been given for this difference. That is not all, because, as a matter of fact, in the case of many postmen, especially those in Classes II. and III., even this increase of 1s. perweek in the maxima is not a real increase, but purely nominal. The truth is that about 1908 the maxima was actually reduced, and the effect of the Holt Committee in this respect is only to restore the maxima of the pre-1908 figures. I would suggest for the consideration of the Postmaster-General that the maxima in all these cases should be increased by 2s., as in the case of London, Provincial Classes IV. and V. As regards the attainment of this maxima there are many at present in the postal service who will have to wait much longer to attain it than new entrants. The reason for that is that the increment is not yearly but triennial. That grievance might be remedied in one of two ways. I suggest to the Postmaster-General that he might be able to adopt one or other method, one being that the existing postmen should be placed upon the same wages scale that they would have reached had the recommendation of the Holt Committee always been in force. The other way would be this: that the existing postmen, instead of receiving triennial increments of 1s., after having reached 30s., should receive annual increments of 1s. Either of these ways would remove what appears at any rate to be a well-founded complaint.

As regards the auxiliary postmen, for some reason which I have not heard so far explained, it is only in the case of one class of these, that is the lowest paid of them all, that any increase at all has been given. It is quite true that as regards overtime and holidays, they have had some little benefit. With that one exception, that one particular class of auxiliary postmen have got no cash benefit at all. When you consider what has been the past history of these men, I think they have some case. In London there has been no increase, so I am informed, since the year 1891 in the rate per hour at which they are paid. Even in the provinces the only increase since 1891 in the rate per hour at which the auxiliary postmen are paid has been a ½d. per hour. When I, on the last occasion this matter was debated, asked the Postmaster-General, by way of interruption, what benefit these auxiliary postmen received from the overriding wage he was not able to give me an immediate answer. Perhaps he will be good enough, in the course of his reply this evening, to tell the Committee what benefit the auxiliary postmen will receive from that concession.

There are two other specific cases that I want to mention—the one is the case of the telephone staff, and the other is the case of the transferred telephone staff. In the case of the telephone staff my information is that their rate of wages is below the scale which was generally accepted, and acted upon, by the old National Telephone Company. If that is so one would like to know what is the reason for the present position. If a private company can pay a certain wage to its employés, surely the Government are able to pay at least as good a wage! I shall, therefore, be glad to know whether it is a fact that their wages are at a less rate than was the case with the old Telephone Company, and, if so, what is the reason for it? In respect of the staff of the old Telephone Company who have been transferred my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford made what appeared to me to be a very strong case. He pointed out certain pledges which have been given in this House by the predecessor in office of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. A solemn Parliamentary pledge was given that the position of these transferred members of the staff of the old company should not in any way be prejudiced as compared with their old position. I believe it is admitted now on both sides of the House that in the case of, at any rate, a considerable number of this transferred staff their position is worse. I think we ought to be told why that is so. I do not want now to go into the figures, but there are two facts which strike me as very significant. The one is that something like 400 members of the telephone staff have left the service of the Government in order to get better conditions of employment elsewhere. The other fact is—I think it was stated by the right hon. Gentleman himself—that it is now practically impossible, and, if not impossible, at any rate difficult, for the Post Office to get a sufficient supply of skilled men in their telephone department. If that is so, what is the reason for it? Surely the only reason can be that these men get better paid employment elsewhere. That, if true, is not to the credit of the Department.

Before I sit down I want to say one word upon the larger question which has been raised, namely, how this question of adjusting wages and conditions of employment is to be settled in the future. Everyone, I think, will agree that the House of Commons is not a satisfactory judicial tribunal in which to settle such complicated questions as those of wages. It is, to my mind, perfectly impossible in the course of Debate, either from one side of the House or the other, even to get accurately the facts on which a decision is to be based. Still less is it possible, if you get the facts, to adjust the conditons so as to give satisfaction. Personally, therefore, I, as many others in the House, think it is absolutely necessary that we should get some more satisfactory way to settle these questions, either on the one hand in a sporadically appointed Committee of the House, or on the other hand for the House itself to appoint a Committee which may be called upon to revise the decisions of an outside Committee. I hope the Postmaster-General, before this Debate closes, will be able to inform the House that the Government have some settled policy in this matter for the future; that he will be able to tell us that he will recommend some form of permanent body before whom these questions can come, not in sporadically or isolated cases from time to time, but as and when they arise—a body which will sit permanently and which will on the one hand command the confidence of the employés, and on the other hand of the Members of the House of Commons, who are bound to-consider the public purse. In that way the friction which has existed in the past, and which I think we all desire to see removed, may be satisfactorily deal with.

7.0 P.M.

I do notpropose to discuss in any way whatever the details of the wages or the conditions of employment in the Postal Service, nor do I propose to discuss the recommendations of the Holt Report, nor to consider whether a particular class of employé ought to have more or whether they have sufficient. I refrain from doing so because I do not feel competent to discuss these matters, and I have the strongest impression that hundreds of other Members are no more competent to do so than I am. We are not competent to deal with these questions, and the point I wish to press upon the House and the Government is the one referred to in the concluding remarks of the hon. Member for York, and that is that the time has come when the House and the Government should make up their minds that these questions should be got rid of out of this Assembly, and that we should appoint some other body to deal with them. I say we are not competent to deal with these matters. We all know what this discussion means and what the result of it will be. It is largely electioneering; it is largely vote-catching; it is largely brought about by pressure. I am not blaming those who bring the pressure to bear; I am not complain- ing that the Post Office officials come to Members and bring pressure to bear upon them. It is their only remedy at the present time; it is the only way they can deal with it, but we ought to provide another tribunal. We ought to get rid of this log-rolling, and we ought to get rid of this pressure. We have ex parte statements by hon. Members who know the facts.

I was very much amused to hear the hon. Member for York state that in these exceptional circumstances he found himself in agreement with his colleague in the representation of York. I cannot help thinking that one knows the reason. It is not satisfactory, and it is very serious indeed that when the number of employés of the Government are increasing in the country that we should have large numbers of electors giving their votes at an important crisis not upon national issues, not upon the great questions before the nations, but purely upon the conditions and terms of their own employment. And they will so give their votes and you must not blame them if they so give their votes in these conditions, if this is to be the tribunal which is to settle the conditions under which they work. It is unavoidable and it is inevitable; you cannot blame them, but you ought to provide proper conditions that will render this pressure impossible by providing some other tribunal to decide these matters. And I do not think it should be confined to the Post Office employés. Is there any more humiliating spectacle in this House than to find on certain occasions Members for other constituencies where Government employés are in force putting forward representations which I do not think they feel very confident in putting forward. It is owing to the pressure of their constituents, and therefore they are bound to do it. It would be far more satisfactory to set up some sort of an independent tribunal outside, and if all parties in this House would once make up their minds that there must be an end of this state of things in this House then we would get a tribunal that could make these enquiries.

We are all anxious that the Government should be model employers. We are all anxious that the wages and payments made should be satisfactory and sufficient; but no private business and no Government Department, employing large numbers of persons, can be satisfactorily car- ried on either in the matter of discipline or ordinary business arrangement if we have continually appeals made to the House of Commons by those dependent upon the vote of their constituents. It is a serious danger. We ought to have some arrangement come to. I do not suggest what would be the best arrangement. If the Government see their way to make a suggestion I hope they may do so; of not, rather than appoint any more Committees, though I respect very much the work done by those Committees, to enquire into details of wages let them appoint a Select Committee to make recommendations as to the best tribunal to arrange these matters unless they have a clear plan of their own. What we want is some permanent tribunal, some permanent Commission to which these things could be referred. We want a representative tribunal that will command the confidence of all concerned, and with that a determination on the part of all classes in this House to abide by the decisions arrived at, instead of having these matters constantly brought up in this House.

The right hon. Gentleman rarely intervenes in our Debates without adding some useful knowledge, but I am bound to say I do not think we ever heard a stranger tale than that just related by the right hon. Gentleman. He tells us his one desire is that grave questions at stake in the government of the country should be the consideration for all parties at elections, and that party cries should not be referred to, and that the whole political situation should not degenerate as it has done. This is the right hon. Gentleman who was returned to this House on the fraudulent cry of Chinese labour; the right hon. Gentleman who, with his party, was returned on the fraudulent cry of a big and a little loaf. Here we had a temperance advocate trying to get the Government out of their difficulties. I have sat through the whole of the Debate during the two days that this subject has been discussed in Committee and there has not been a single Member in any portion of the House who has got up to justify the action of the Government in regard to the Holt Report or to give a promise of his support in the action that we have taken.

And the hon. Member for Paisley.

The hon. Member will have his opportunity later on if he wishes to speak. We are anxious to know what the Government are going to do in regard to the position of their employés in the Post Office. We want to know whether the statement put forward by the President of the Local Government Board, when he was at the Post Office, that it was a Cabinet decision, and that the Government had closed the door definitely on granting any further concessions to the demands of the postal employés is the decision to-day. I understand that a deputation went to the present Postmaster-General as regards these Post Office grievances, and that he told them he absolutely declined to discuss with them this question of an increase of wages. I, like other speakers who have taken part in this discussion to-day, feel that the whole House owes a debt of gratitude to the Gentlemen who formed the Holt Committee for the very arduous and thankless task they undertook and carried on for a considerable period, but I am bound to say, when I heard the speech of the Chairman of Committee, I cannot say I gathered any sympathetic tone in his utterances which could give any consolation to the employés whose case we are considering. He compared the postmen with the agricultural labourer, but the postman-has responsibilities entirely different when compared with the simple duties of the agricultural labourer. When we came to ask him whether he did not think it was a question for consideration in these days, when deciding as regards the wages paid, to make some inquiry as to the rent the postal employés had to pay for the houses in which they live, the hon. Gentleman, to use his own words, said, "Such an inquiry would be an unwarrantable interference by the Post Office with the liberty of their servants." He put forward an excuse of that character at this time of day!

I do not suppose there is a single employer of labour, who is a humane and decent man, when fixing the wages of his employés, who does not take into account the rents they have to pay. Is the hon. Member aware that the Post Office at the present time have made this unwarrantable interference with their servants, and that they do know "where their servants live, and actually trace every single postal employé, because not one of them can leave their houses even for a weekend holiday without the sanction of the Post Office? We are told it is a cant phrase that the Government should be an ideal and model employer of labour. I do not care whether it is a cant phrase or not, I believe it, and I have consistently, whatever side of the House I sat on, voted against every Government that has not followed the rule of being an ideal employer of labour. The Government may claim that these postmen are not entitled to withdraw their labour or indulge in the same measures of pressure as workmen in other employments. If that claim is to hold good, surely there is equal responsibility on the Government to see that there is no. just cause for complaint on the part of the employés under their care. The hon. Member for Hexham said, "He did not see why Government employés should have exceptional treatment." I do not think a single speaker who took part in these discussions claimed exceptional treatment for these employés. What they ask is, that the same measure of justice should be dealt out to them as is dealt out in similar employments, whether Government employment or private employment. The hon. Member for Hexham said, "He was quite unable to mention any similar class of work compared with the work done by postal employés." A similar class of work was produced from the cable companies and the telegraphists, but the Committee declined to take their testimony. I am going to quote another case of a semi-governmental kind. I will take the case of the teachers employed in education work. I take as an instance North Berkshire the county in which I live, and I ask the Postmaster-General to consider the two classes on all fours, namely, the uncertificated teacher in some of the schools, and the sorting clerks and telegraphists in the third and fourth classes. In the county of North Berkshire in some of the districts—I am not alluding to towns like Reading and Windsor where a higher salary is paid—what do I find? I am not taking the skilled teacher who has a record of high accomplishments, but I am taking the uncertificated teacher, and what is the comparison? The uncertificated teacher works less hours and has greater leisure. The clerk under the Post Office in Class V. at the age of nineteen receives £46 19s. a year, while the uncertificated school teacher at the same age receives £60 a year. Now I come to twenty years of age, and I find that the clerk in the Post Office receives £52 3s. 4d. and the uncertificated teacher gets £62 10s. At the age of twenty-one the Post Office clerk receives £57 7s. 8d. and the uncertifi- cated teacher receives £65. And so it goes on up to the ages of twenty-six and twenty-seven years, and it is only when you reach the age of forty and fifty that these men get anything which is comparable to the class of pay received by the teachers.

Will the right hon. Gentleman who is responsible for this say that he can really expect contentment, or expect these employés in the Post Office in these districts to think they are fairly treated when individuals with no better qualifications doing public work like education are given salaries so largely superior to the salaries which they earn? I said just now that there is a special obligation upon the Government and the State as employers if they are demanding certain conditions from their workmen, that they should look after their conditions of employment. Have the employés a real grievance? I do not think that is in dispute. No one denies that the cost of living has gone up, or that the standard of living has gone up. No one denies that there is greater bustle and stir, and the work of these offices is far more exacting to-day than when the present rates of pay were settled in the year 1880. Since that date the cost of living has gone up to the tune of 11.4, and it is idle to expect that the individuals whose ratio of salaries were fixed under those conditions can be satisfied with what was thought sufficient twenty-five years ago when the conditions were entirely different. I am entirely in sympathy with the Post Office people in this matter. When they see in this country the degree of wealth that exists, when they see Budgets for £200,000,000, "when they see a concern in which they are employed making a profit of £6,000,000 a year, I think they are quite justified in coming forward and demanding that they are entitled to some greater share than they are now getting of the profit made in that concern.

How has the Government met this question? It is the responsibility of the Government and not of the Holt Committee, because they have adopted the Holt Committee's Report and the Government are now in the dock in this matter. It is no use trying to shelve the responsibility on to the Holt Committee. The Government have put these recommendations into force on their own authority, and what have they done? They suggest that there shall be an increase in the wages of several classes of employés of sums which vary from £1,000,000 to £1,750,000. There is this remarkable fact, however, that this is all a thing in the air and in the distance, and that this large amount of money will not be expended for fifteen or twenty years. The complaint made is not for fifteen or twenty years hence, but it is that the grievance of these men should be dealt with to-day. The cost of living has increased, and must be met. There has been a rise in rents owing to additional taxation, and this burden has fallen upon these people. I will take specifically the case of the city of which I have the honour to represent. In Worcester the women get not a fraction and the men under twenty-five receive 6d. a week extra on reaching that age, and nothing before. The juniors may get an increase of two shillings a week after fifteen years, but they do not get it now when they require it to meet the increased cost of living and expenses. How is that going to satisfy them? Many of the complainers will never live to receive any advantage whatsoever, and the hope which is held out to them is undoubtedly a sham and a mockery, because it is no relief at all from the position in which they now find themselves.

Take the question of classification. Surely it is time that the system of classification was changed and something more reasonable and common-sense like substituted for it. One can quite understand that in great cities like London, Manchester, and Glasgow, different conditions may prevail to the ordinary provincial towns, but it is perfectly absurd to ask these people to believe that in towns where the population is the same, and where the cost of living and the rent is about the same, to agree that there should be a higher rate of pay in some of those towns, and that the other should be put into a lower class and in an inferior position. I will take for example the cities of Gloucester and Worcester. Each of them has over 500 units of employés. As a matter of fact Gloucester has something like 800 units. Gloucester is put into the second class and Worcester into the third class. The work in both cases is practically the same and the responsibility is the same. The only difference may be that in the city where there are 800 units employed the individuals there may be kept on continually upon the same class of work, while in the place where there is a lesser number they may have to change their work. For example, I should doubt very much that in a place where there are 800 employés a man would have to do counter work one day and telegraph work another day and the ordinary postal service another day, but in the place with the lesser units of 500 they often have these other duties put upon them, and if that is so, surely it constitutes a claim for increased pay and not for putting them on reduced pay!

The cost of living at Worcester is 12 per cent., while the cost of living at Gloucester is 11.3 per cent. Taking the rent and prices combined, the figures work out at 96 at Worcester as compared with SI at Gloucester. Will the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom I am pleased to see in his place, and whom I know sympathises with these people—I give him full credit for real and genuine sympathy with the humbler classes of the community—will he or any right hon. Gentleman opposite for one moment contend that an individual who is working in Worcester under these conditions can be a loyal and contented worker for the Government and not feel that he is working under an injustice, and that he should be put on the same level as those employed at Gloucester doing the same kind of work? I will take another class. Consider for a moment the position of sorting clerks and telegraphists who were dealt with under the Stanley revision. These people entered into the employment of the Post Office under the distinct understanding that as no classification existed in those days they were all engaged upon a 50s. maxima. When the Stanley Report was made these men were taken out and put into a different class, but several places like Worcester, Gloucester, Crewe, and Burton were left out, and what happened1? Those individuals who had reached the maximum were allowed to retain it, but those individuals who entered the service under the understanding that they were to get a maxima of 50s. were all reduced to 48s. as the maxima, and everyone in this class is specifically left out of any remedy under the Holt Committee's Report as adopted by the Government. Surely that cannot be right These men entered the service under the distinct understanding that they were to go on to the maxima of 50s., and even tinder the new consideration of this question nothing at all is to be done to improve their position.

Under the Holt Report adopted by the Government the provincial offices maxima is increased by 2s. There are five classes getting this maximum. Since the Stanley Report Worcester has suffered a reduction in the case of twenty-seven out of a staff of forty sorting clerks and telegraphists, who get absolutely nothing, and it will take seven years for the men on the 48s. scale to get the maxima. This grievance is not confined to the towns I have mentioned, but it applies to all Class III A. offices throughout the country. If that is so, it does not require a Committee to inquire. All that is required is for the Post Office to be generous and honest to the people in its employment. If there is not going to be a special class set up for these men, surely they ought to be placed in the position they were in before the Stanley Report was passed, or else they should be placed in Class II., which would entitle them to reach the maximum of 52s. By doing this the cost will not be great, and you will be remedying a grievance in the minds of these men, and you will only be doing what would be done in any first-class employment throughout the country, in which no such conditions as you have imposed would be tolerated for one moment.

I often think that the position of the auxiliary postman is simply tragic. The Government do not carry out hardly anywhere their own regulations with regard to auxiliary postmen. They are not supposed to take on auxiliary postmen unless they have got some other definite and regular employment, but we know perfectly well that there is hardly a constituency in the country in which there are not auxiliary postmen who have no regular and permanent employment, and who frequently throughout the year are dependent solely upon the miserable pittance they are able to earn from the Government for auxiliary postmen's work. That is a scandal, and that scandal ought to be terminated. As long as these people are earning this entirely inadequate wage, you are subjecting them to a temptation to which you as a Government of a rich country have no business to subject them. You have no business to put these men on this work because they are poor, because they have no organisation, and because they have not the skilled trade unions behind them to see that they are not left, as they are, an eyesore to their country and a disgrace to this Parliament. I do hope that the right hon. Gentleman will see his way to do something forthwith for the auxiliary postmen, to see as far as possible that only men are appointed who are in employment, and, if they have to get men who have no other employment to do this work, that they are at all events given a living wage.

The hon. Member who last spoke suggested that the Government were endeavouring to shelter themselves behind the Holt Committee. I have not been able to detect any such intention on their part, but, as a member of that much abused Committee, I intend to offer a few observations in defence of the Report which they have presented. There are two questions before the Committee at the present time. One is the Holt Report, and the other is whether there ought to have been a Holt Report or not. I would prefer not to say much at the present moment with regard to whether there should be any alternative method of holding any inquiry into wages, but, speaking solely for myself, and quite apart from the position I held on the Holt Committee, I should look entirely with favour for the future upon any form of Conciliation Committee, or Advisory Committee which would relieve the House of Commons of the very difficult, awkward, and almost impossible discussion we are having at the present moment. Member after Member has got up and explained that this question is so large and so complicated that it is impossible for him or for the House of Commons to understand it. That is the very reason the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee to go into the whole matter, where political pressure did not come in, where there was no question of constituencies, and where witnesses were examined and both sides of the questions heard. It is quite obvious from the speeches we have beard that Members who have spoken in this Debate are in many cases relying—I do not blame them or those who have given them the information—upon information given to them by postal servants who are affected by this Report.

I wish to deal as briefly as possible with the main criticisms of the Report. The first is a trivial one. It is that the Committee were too young and too inexperienced. I think I may dismiss that by saying that the average age of the Committee was the excellent figure of 48i years, and I am glad to think that they were not too deeply steeped in the Parliamentary tra- dition and procedure, and that they looked at this thing from a fresh and I hope from a business point of view. The second is a serious criticism, and it has run through every speech that has been delivered. I fully recognise the importance of meeting it. The criticism is that while the cost of living has been shown to have advanced between 1905 and 1914 by 11.3 per cent., as taken from the Board of Trade figures, the Holt Report, though admitting and stating that, only gives an immediate in crease of 4½ per cent., rising ultimately up to 7 per cent. In the first place I would like to point out that it is obviously unfair to average the increase which has been given by the Holt Report over every class, over every wage, and over every kind of salary. It has been pointed out that certain sections have received no increases at all, and it has also been pointed out that those are the higher grade sections. My hon. Friend for one of the London Divisions referred to the Central Telegraphists It is admitted that no increase was given to those who went up to 65s., except a new allowance increase of 5s. 6d. on the top of the 65s., with a further allowance in recognition of continuous service and efficiency. All those are matters of which the House of Commons inevitably cannot have intimate knowledge, and in regard to which it cannot be in a position to decide as a Committee which has spent two years over the examination of the details of the question. To take 4½ per cent, as an average is not a very fair way of stating the position. I accept, however, for the sake of argument, the figure of 4½ per cent, increase over the average wages throughout the whole Service.

The Report states that they took into. consideration that the increase in the cost of living from 1905 to 1914 was 11.3 per cent., but they took all the facts into consideration. Some hon. Members seem to think that the way the work should be conducted would be to take 11.3 as the increase in the cost of living, put it roughly at 10 per cent., and then increase everyone's wages by 10 per cent. You would not want a House of Commons Committee for that. You would merely want a calculating machine. The Committee had to take all the facts into consideration, and they had to take into consideration the fact that during the period 1905–14, represented by that increase in the wages of postal servants as the result of the Hobhouse Committee. The Hobhouse increases were put into operation in the first instance in 1908, and they resulted in increases of pay at a cost to the State of about £430,000. The figure is given in the Command Paper issued a few days ago. Since then it has been working its way out towards its ultimate sum of another £600,000 Those two figures together, as the result of the Hobhouse Committee, certainly equal by now the amount given by the Holt Committee in increases. You are bound to take the figures now as compared with the wages received in 1905. It must, therefore, be perfectly clear, though I may not have made it so, that the increase over all wages is not 4½per cent., but 9 per cent, as compared with the increased cost of living of 11.3 per cent.

Is it not a fact that the cost of living greatly increased down to 1905, and did not the recommendations of the Hobhouse Committee cover the increase down to 19051 Is my hon. Friend entitled to count that over again since 1905?

My hon. Friend is perfectly entitled to raise that point of criticism. I foresaw it, and in order to guard myself against having been under the appearance of offering the Committee anything in the way of an unfair figure, I have looked carefully at the question of prices from 1900, going back five years, to 1914; and I find, speaking from memory, chat the increase in the retail prices in London from 1900 to 1914 is about 13 per cent., and the increase in the wholesale prices throughout the country for the three main articles is, I believe, something like 16½ or 17 per cent.

It is very unfair of me perhaps to interrupt my hon. Friend again, but may I ask him if prices have not been rising ever since 1896–7, and, if the fall in prices up to that date were not taken into consideration in fixing the wages paid at that time?

If one once begins to dispute about the dates it will lead one into a very difficult and debatable question. It seems to me perfectly reasonable, if in 1905 the postal servant was in receipt of, say, a wage of 25s. or 30s., and the cost of living at that particular moment was a certain figure, if the argument is used that from that date to now the cost of living has gone up by 11 per cent., and if the charge is made that the Holt Committee did not observe all the facts, and only gave him an increase of 4| per cent., to consider as a matter of practical experi- ence how much money he was receiving at one date, and how much at the other, and what was the cost of his food and of his articles at one date, and what was the cost of them at the other date. I do not attempt to debate statistics of a financial character with my hon. Friend, but I do think the statement which I have made is one which in practical experience does affect the situation. I think it has perhaps been forgotten by some speakers in this Debate that a worker outside the postal service has all the anxiety whether or not he will continue in his employment, whether or not he will receive an increase in wages, and whether or not he will have more coming in as his family expenses go up. None of these things operate in most of the principal classes in the Post Office. It seems to me that the anxiety of a man in other walks of life as to the prospect of tine future is a very serious matter affecting his position. All that anxiety is taken from him when he enters upon a scale which is steadily going up. I would remind the Committee, whatever may be said about the time when the scale results in the maximum, that time is very much shorter, and comes very much nearer than before, although I quite agree that the new entrant is in a superior position compared with a man on the list, but at the same time the man on the list does come on to the scale and will receive the maximum recommended by the Holt Committee so many years sooner than by the previous arrangement.

There is one other point I desire to mention, and it is with regard to the minimum wage. It was put before the Committee by the hon. Member for York, who suggested that he was very grateful, as indeed all hon. Members are, to the Postmaster-General for having arranged that men of twenty-three years of age shall not receive less than 22s. a week. The effect of that being done would, I agree, appear to reflect somewhat seriously on the Holt Committee. It looks as if we had been very remiss in not having noticed that so many men were on such a very low rate of wages. I have made careful inquiry, and I think hon. Members will be interested to learn how the number of 25,000 men, affected by this concession, is made up. Only 3,125 are on full time. Four hundred and fifty-two are postmen, and but fifty of these are established postmen. They occupy established posts in Class V. offices in the provinces, and for one year only are on a wage of 21s. 6d. The balance of these 25,000 men are part-time officials, and a large number are auxiliary postmen, the class for which so much sympathy has been expressed in the course of this Debate. I do not know whether the Government, in making this concession, acted on the hint or suggestion in the Holt Report that they should be careful to see that an adequate or reasonable income is received by all sections, but at any rate they have dealt with the matter in a thoroughly generous spirit, and have not taken into account pensions or other earnings in other trades and occupations. Auxiliary postmen to the number of 12,972 are to receive this concession from the State, and will be put on a wage at the rate of 22s. a week irrespective of their other earnings. Nine thousand five hundred of these are men who are occupied in delivering letters for a short time only during the day. Whatever may be said against the auxiliary system and the method of employing auxiliary postmen, it should be remembered that these men are supposed, in the main, to be earning money in other ways, although there may be one or two very sad exceptions. Now, at any rate, all auxiliary postmen of the age of twenty-three will be on this rate of 22s.

Will the lion. Gentleman give the figures as to how many auxiliary postmen there are who are not in any regular employment, and how many there are employed altogether? I was told the case was exactly the contrary to what he has suggested.

I think the hon Member will recognise that that question could be more adequately replied to by the Post-master-General. I am only referring to the fact that this concession will apply very largely to auxiliary postmen. I will ask the Committee to consider what was the task placed upon the Holt Committee. They had to consider and examine an enormous number of claims put before them, some reasonable and some very preposterous, but involving in the aggregate a total increase of pay to the extent of about £10,000,000 per annum. They had to sift the reasonable from the unreasonable, and to deal with every matter in the spirit which they set forth in their Report, a spirit which, I ask the Committee to accept from me, was one of sympathy and an earnest desire to see that fairness was done to every section of the staff. The compliment which has been paid to the Committee seems rather of a doubtful character. It has been suggested we were a set of industrious persons presided over by a Chairman of considerable ability, but that our actions were excessively stupid, that our conclusions were harsh, and that our Report is worthless. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] It is further suggested that some other form of inquiry should be immediately set up to take the place of the Select Committee. Personally, I do not feel offended at these criticisms, although as far as they may be taken as reflecting on our intelligence, or on the fairness of the Report, I do, on behalf of the Committee, wish to enter a protest.

I should like to make an appeal to the-Postmaster-General with regard to a matter on which I think sufficient stress has not been laid, and which I think might be put a little more forcibly by those responsible to the postal staff, instead of amusing themselves by writing abusive accounts of the members of the Committee. It is true that the operation of the scales recommended must of necessity, owing to the Treasury system in regard to the application of increments, be painfully delayed. To meet that very difficult situation, especially with regard to those who most need the increase, the late Postmaster-General did concede an immediate increase of Is.— not interfering at all with the operation of the scales at a future date—to those whose wages in the provinces were under 30s. and in London under 35s. Speaking for myself, personally, and without the authority of any member of the Committee, I would urge very strongly on the Postmaster-General that he should take into his very serious consideration whether the scope of that concession is sufficient, and whether the amount suggested is large enough, although I do not at the same time wish it to be supposed that I think the scales recommended are either unfair or inadequate. It was for those who were on. the lowest rates of wages that the Committee endeavoured to secure an increase, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consider whether he cannot make some further concession of immediate increment to those classes in order to meet their necessities in regard to the-cost of living. I ask the Postmaster-General to take that matter into his serious consideration. I do it on my own account, and I do not suggest it as in any way affecting the view that an immense amount of good has been effected by this Committee of the House of Commons.

I rise to support the Motion of the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker), that the salary of the Postmaster-General be reduced by £100, because I want to press upon him and upon the Government the intense dissatisfaction which is felt by many Members of the House of Commons with regard to their action towards the Post Office employés. It is generally recognised that the Post Office is one of the best managed businesses to be found in any part of the world. In order to manage a business properly it is necessary to obtain the very best labour, be it mechanical or manual, and to pay a fair wage for the labour. While it is right for the ordinary employer to get labour at the wage of the day, I would suggest that the Government has an extra duty to perform, and that is to safeguard the welfare of the people they employ. No one will assert it is good for a country that men should be employed at a wage on which they cannot properly live. The Report which has been under discussion to-night is recognised by all of us to be an extremely businesslike document, dealing with the question from a business standpoint. But there are matters in it which we cannot approve. The hon. Member who spoke last enlightened us to a certain extent about the 25,000 men who are going to get the extra 2s. He did not enlighten us on the fact that although the cost of living has gone up by 11.3 per cent., the advance in wages only represents 4.5 per cent.

I tried to do so.

He did tell us that the advance had not been given to all the classes, but this we do know, that the wage paid to-day does not enable the Post Office servant to buy as many articles as he could ten years ago, and surely it is the duty of the Government to pay sufficient to the wage earner to enable him not only to provide for to-day, but to put by something for a rainy day.

He gets a very large pension.

Yes, if he lives to enjoy it. A great many do not.

He does not need to provide anything for old age if he is entitled to a pension.

I think hon. Members will agree that in view of increase in the cost of living proper wages are not paid. I am not prepared to discuss in this House questions of classification or matters of that sort. I agree with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Gravesend that an independent Committee should be set up to include the Chief Industrial Commissioner, representing the Board of Trade, and a representative of the Post Office employés to deal with all these matters, not to interfere with questions of discipline, but to act as a sort of Court of Appeal in wage questions, and in the event of any proposal by the Department to change a classification or a refusal to change it. It should be a body thoroughly conversant with wages paid to other people, and with full knowledge of such matters as the cost of living. I hope the Government will see their way to take some such step as this, and thus allay the existing feeling of dissatisfaction among postal employés.

8.0 P.M.

Scarcely any hon. Member who has spoken on this question has referred to the terms of reference to the Committee. Indeed, these have been altogether ignored. While listening to the Debate this afternoon it struck me very forcibly that if it could have been taken two years ago the terms of reference would have been very much wider than they actually were. I would like hon. Members to carefully study those terms. When the Committee first met we discussed them. Some of us thought that the assistants employed by scale-pay sub-postmasters could be brought within their terms, but we made inquiries and found that this class of semi-Post Office employé did not come within the terms of reference. Therefore those terms cannot be said to have been very wide after all; otherwise we should have been enabled to deal with the employés of sub-postmasters who, it is admitted, are scandalously underpaid. Under these circumstances I hope the Committee will bear in mind the terms of reference. I was rather sorry the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Fulham (Mr. Hayes Fisher) referred in rather slighting terms to the Committee. I do not think he referred to its "youthfulness" as individuals, but rather to its youthfulness in connection with Parliament. I am more inclined to think now than I was three weeks ago that a long term in Parliament-does not qualify a man to deal with questions of wages or labour, but that the longer he is in Parliament the less he is qualified to deal with such questions.[HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] From the knowledge of the subject exhibited by some hon. Members. The Chairman of the Committee said that the proceedings of the Committee were harmonious. I quite agree with him, but there was a wide divergence of views as to what ought to be done in connection with the Post Office servants. Some of us thought that the recommendations might have gone a good deal further than they did. We had continually in front of us the bogey of the Treasury. In my opinion, an official air prevailed in the Committee room during the whole of the sittings which should not have been there at all. We should have been entirely free from any official interference, except as far as the obtaining of information was concerned. I quite agree with many of the views expressed in connection with the status of the Post Office employés, and I quite agree that the conditions of service ought to be better than they are. Before sitting down I will suggest one or two improvements which I think ought to be made in the service, but before doing so, I may say that when we were discussing the terms of reference and wanted to make them wider, we were told that the Bradford Committee, which sat in connection with the same subject, had exceeded its terms of reference and that the Bradford Report was entirely ignored by the House of Commons and the Department. I refer to that to show that there was a disposition to keep us within certain lines in dealing with the questions we were appointed to consider.

We are told that official recognition is going to be limited by the recommendation of the Committee. Personally, it was not my intention that official recognition or the power of societies connected with the Post Office should be in any way-limited, but rather that we should expedite the methods of dealing with appeals and complaints of Post Office servants. On the question of promotion, we took a large amount of evidence. It was alleged that favouritism was shown in the appointment of certain officers. We could not prove that. It is absolutely imposible to prove that favouritism is shown if the man who makes the appointment denies that it was shown. Personally, I am inclined to think that unconsciously favouritism was and is shown at the present time in the appointment of officers to certain posts. One of the recommendations made by the Committee was that the amount of casual labour employed in the Post Office should be limited by increasing the number of the staff on the establishment. I believe that if these recommendations were carried out the number of casual workers in the Post Office would be considerably reduced. In connection with postmen, the period they are asked to wait before they reach their maximum has been considerably reduced. That is so much to the good, but I should like to see the postmen reach their maximum considerably earlier than they do at the present time under the recommendations of the Committee. I do not see why a man should have to wait until he is thirty-eight or forty years of age before he reaches the maximum he can earn as a postman. Some effort ought to be made to reduce the waiting period. In connection with the postmen the Department would have been well advised had they given a special increment of Is. or 2s. immediately after the recommendation of the Committee were made. That would, to some extent, have met the increased cost of living. As regards the cost of living, the evidence submitted to us was rather contradictory. I have been curious enough to look through some of the evidence, and I find that one witness was asked by the Chairman—at Question 11601:— should like to point out in support of the statement made by the hon. Member for the Morley Division (Mr. France), that the Committee did recommend increases during that period of life in which the increases are of most benefit to the person receiving the wage, but, at the same time, I think the increments ought to be larger. It might be well to extend the system of Teaching the maximum by yearly increments to the Postmaster-General and the Assistant Postmaster-General. The salary of the Postmaster-General might commence at £1,000 and be increased to £2,000 by yearly increments of £1. Then, perhaps, he might have more sympathy with the staff than he has at the present time. At any rate, I hope that the Department will, either now or in the near future, consider the advisability of more rapidly increasing the wages of all the staff until they reach the maximum at an earlier age than they do at present. One witness said that if a man reached the maximum at an earlier age he would stagnate younger. Personally, I would rather stagnate at a maximum wage at an early age than in old age.

In regard to telegraphists, I have had some information given to me which shows clearly that the interpretation put upon the recommendations of the Committee has resulted in a gain to the Department. I am told that in one case that under the old conditions the individual had an increase of 2s. 6d., but that under the new arrangements made as a result of the interpretation put by the Department on the recommendations, that the increase is only 2s. for this particular year, therefore, the full wage for this year would be less than it would have been under the old conditions. I am told that the saving to the Department, if this practice is carried out throughout the whole of the system, would be something like £6,000 a year. I hope it is not true, and that the Department is not taking such a mean and narrow view of the recommendations of the Committee. As to the recommendations for the reduction of hours, I am told that in certain instances, when it suits the Department, or where they can economise, where men previously to the recommendations of the Committee were on a weekly wage, and where the hours of labour have been reduced from 52½ to 48 per week, that some ingenious individual in connection with the Post Office discovered that by putting those men on an hourly rate it would save money to the Post Office and the weekly wage was reduced. That is an unfair way of interpreting the recommendations of the Committee. If that is the policy of the Department in connection with the whole of the recommendations of the Committee, they are sowing seeds of further discontent and grievance.

Perhaps I may be allowed to interrupt my hon. Friend to say that the Postmaster-General is mow in treaty with the Treasury in connection with that question.

Am I to understand that if the Treasury view with favour the application of the Postmaster-General, that the payment of the increased wage will be retrospective?

That I cannot say.

It ought to be, because I am certain that I am expressing the view of every Member of the Committee when I say that it was not the intention of a single member of the Committee that any individual in the Post Office should have his wages reduced. It is a mean way of interpreting the recommendations of the Committee, and it is going to cause trouble, and the Department are sowing seeds of discontent which will result in a demand for another Select Committee or something of the kind at a very early date. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that a contented staff is of some value to a Department. Every employer of labour recognises that to have a contented staff working for the firm is a great asset in the business.

I can assure my hon. Friend that the present Postmaster-General will do precisely as his predecessor did—that is to say, he will give the most liberal and generous interpretation to the views laid down by the Committee.

My information is that they are not giving a generous interpretation. They seem to have several experts engaged in devising means whereby the recommendations of the Committee may be evaded. I hope that is not true, but that is what I am informed. In connection with postmasters and the classification of officers, I am going to express my own opinion, and I am not certain whether other members of the Committee will agree with me. In my opinion the recommendations of the Committee were not made with the object to enabling the Department to reduce the classification of any particular office. We recognise that a classification took place some time ago under the Hobhouse Report whereby certain offices were reduced, and we believed that the offices which were reduced ought not to have been reduced. And we believe that any regrading or classification of offices must be upwards and not downwards. That is the view which I hold and which I believe is held by other members of the Committee. I raised the question of reclassification in the Committee with regard to Preston and Bolton. I took two towns the conditions of which I knew perfectly well. Bolton, which is a much larger town than Preston, with 60,000 or 70,000 more inhabitants, is in Class III., while Preston is in Class II. And I find by answers to questions about a month ago that in Bolton the number of postal orders and money orders dealt with in a month was 33,514, whilst in Preston the number was 31,071, or 2,443 fewer than in Bolton. I find also that in Bolton the registered letters were 3,698, while in Preston registered letters and parcels together only amounted to 4,987. In telegrams there were forwarded and received in Bolton 17,470, and in Preston 13,331, or 4,139 fewer. Still Bolton is in a class where the telegraphist gets 4s. per week less maximum wage than in Preston. Classification of that kind is certain to breed discontent in the Post Office. There is no doubt whatever about that. Classification also applies to postmen. The sub-offices around Bolton are in a lower grade than they ought to be on account of Bolton being in a lower grade than Preston. But it was not the intention of the Committee to degrade Preston to Bolton, but to raise Bolton to the Preston classification. That is the view1 that the Committee had in mind when making these recommendations. I am fully aware that in Preston they do a great deal of what is called transfer work. I understand it is a sort of clearing house for telegrams for the North, but that has really not been given as a reason why the Preston office should be in a class higher than the Bolton office.

In connection with the Engineering and Stores Department, complaints have reached me in connection with the un-established workmen. There are men who receive a higher wage on account of their greater general knowledge of what is required in connection with the work of the Post Office in the Construction Department—a higher wage than the maximum fixed by the Department. These men, in my opinion, when they are called upon to act as foremen, if they are receiving a wage of 2s. or 3s. a week higher than the maximum on account of their special knowledge of the work, are entitled to the 3s. or 5s. a week for acting as foreman, in addition to the higher maximum they are receiving as more expert workmen, with better general knowledge, than the other workmen employed; and, therefore, I hope the Department when they ask a man to act as foreman, if his wages are 40s. or 42s., will give the allowance which the Committee recommended to be made to men who are acting as foremen. That is only fair. A man should not be taken advantage of on account of special knowledge. We made certain recommendations with regard to men in the Stores and Engineering Department, who are on the establishment, and are paid a weekly wage. We said that they should have an increment of Is. 6d. per week. For unestablished workmen, doing exactly the same kind of work, in London the minimum is 6½d. per hour, rising to 8½d. We do not say anything whatever about a yearly or an hourly increment, but the intention was that these men, who are not established, and who are receiving an hourly rate of wage, should have their wages advanced in the same proportion as men who are on a weekly wage. They should not be started at 6½d. or 7d. per hour minimum and remain at the minimum. We mean, as the years go by, that they should get an increment in the same way as the men on the establishment get their increment. I hope that will be borne in mind by the Department.

I should like to say a word or two with, regard to the arguments used by the hon. Gentleman (Sir G. Parker) when he advocated a Committee. When the Committee was sitting I suggested that one way of dealing with the many grievances that arise in the Post Office would be the appointment of a Committee, composed of two members of the staff and two members of the Department, with a chairman appointed by the Board of Trade. This seemed to meet with the approval of the Committee on the day I made the suggestion, but at the next meeting of the Committee, when the matter was brought forward again, we were told by the chairman that he did not think he ought to recommend the appointment of a Committee of this kind because it was going to interfere with the prerogative of the Postmaster-General. If I were the Postmaster-General I should welcome a Commitee which in any way relieved me of the duty of dealing with grievances which arose in connection with my Department. I suggested the Committee with a view to its adjusting the differences of opinion between the Department and the staff, arid if some Committee of the kind was agreed to by the Department, they would find that it would not interfere in any shape or form with the powers or the prerogative of the Postmaster-General, but would rather tend to the smooth working of his Department, and I hope the Department will agree to the setting up of a Committee which will tend to make the work go smoother and better than it has done in the course of past years.

I should like to say a word also in connection with the women employed in the Post Office. I think if these women are doing work of equal value to that of men they ought to be paid at the same rate. One reason given by the Department for not paying them at the same rate is that these women drop out, but at the same time the Department gets rid of the responsibility of paying pensions and other obligations that they are under to the men, and therefore, where the women are doing work of equal value they ought to have the same rate of pay. In my opinion, Members of the House of Commons, generally speaking, are not the best qualified men to deal with the wages question. They are a great deal better off than the ordinary working man, and it is nearly impossible for them to put themselves in the place of men who are receiving a low rate of wages. That being so, I think a Committee of practical men would be able to deal with these matters a great deal better than a Committee of this House. Some of the evidence from the Department was not very enlightening. I have no hesitation in saying that. But we sifted the evidence as best we could, and we endeavoured to hold the scales evenly balanced. I believe the great failing of the Committee was that the various members could not place themselves in the position of the class they were dealing with.

I tried to induce the Committee, first of all, to make one district of London, so far as the Post Office was concerned. I could not see why we should have three districts for postmen and the rest of the staff. Having failed in that, I tried to get two districts instead of one, but I failed in that also. I do submit that London for all purposes should be made one district. The cost of living and other things is not. such as to warrant London being divided into three districts. I venture to say that, whatever radius you may take for a district, you will have the same anomalies and difficulties arising when you have a line dividing urban districts outside of London. At the same time, I think an extremely good case can be made for making London into one district. I have received sufficient information with respect to grievances of postmen which would keep the Committee for two hours if I were to state them. I should like to say a word in conclusion as to sub-postmaster salaries. In my opinion many of these gentlemen are extremely badly paid. I have in my Division a gentleman who has the control of some seventeen individuals at his office, and his salary is £140 a year. I think in a case like that a sub-postmaster, who has to keep up a certain appearance, ought to be paid at a higher rate. I have received another complaint in connection with a gentleman who was at Seaham Harbour, and who was living in postal premises. The usual reduction was made for rent—14 per cent, of the salary. He was compelled to remove from these Post Office premises at a month's notice, and he could not get a suitable house. As a matter of fact, impossible to get a He was compelled to at £35 a year which He applied to the Post Office for the 14 per cent, which he had been paying for the Post Office premises to meet the rent he was paying, and they absolutely refused to consider his request. I think it was a reasonable request, and ought to have been met fairly by the Department. The Department refused to make a grant of any kind at all. He removed twice within two or three months, and the only recompense he got from the Department was the cost of removing his furniture from Durham to Lancashire. I think in a case like this the Department might deal more generously with sub-postmasters and members of the postal staff when they are compelled to remove.

Somehow or other the Post Office has, it seems to me since I have taken an interest in these matters, gone the wrong way to work to satisfy the staff under its control, and I do hope that the result of this discussion will be the appointment of a Committee to deal with the grievances of the men and, if necessary, to interpret the recommendations of the Holt Committee. In connection with the question of interpretation I think it was understood that if any difference of opinion arose between the Department and the staff as to the meaning of any of the recommendations the whole of the Committee would be consulted, and it has surprised me that neither side has made any approach whatever to the Holt Committee. Failing that being done, I do hope that the Postmaster-General will appoint a Committee to deal with the whole of the questions which arise in connection with the work of the Post Office.

The hon. Member has spoken of the good intentions of the Committee. I would remind him that the road to a certain place is said to be paved with good intentions. I really commiserate with the Committee that, after all their toil and trouble, their Report does not, at all events, give any considerable amount of satisfaction. It has been surprising to me, as a Member of Parliament, that we have received so many lengthy and weighty documents from nearly every class in the postal service complaining of this and that grievance, and altogether expressing great dissatisfaction with the Report of the Holt Committee. I am extremely sorry for the House and the Committee for the situation in which they are placed. I am sorry for my hon. Friend "the Assistant Postmaster-General, who is at the present moment the sole occupant of the Treasury Bench. I myself had the privilege of being in the House with him some years ago. I well remember how he would have delighted in an occasion like this. With what force and violence he would have attacked the Government, and denounced them for not granting the concessions applied for in connection with this Department! The attitude of my hon. Friend reminds me of the poacher who has become gamekeeper. However much we may sympathise with him individually, I really have not much sympathy with the Government, because they brought all this trouble upon themselves. What is the real reason for this dissatisfaction in the postal service? The Post Office is a money-making machine for the Government. It is a profit-making concern, and it is right and proper that the Government, if they take charge of the machinery of the postal business, should make a profit to the community. At the same time, as has been pointed out by speaker after speaker, it is incumbent upon the Government to treat their servants as model employers. In this discussion we have had repeated again and again what are the real facts of the case. I am going to quote from a speech made by the hon. Member for Gravesend. He said that in 1905 the wages of postal servants in relation to the total revenue was 48 per cent. In 1913 it was 47.23 per cent., while the profits advanced from nearly £4,000,000 to nearly £6,000,000. That shows that you are not paying the postal servants so much in 1913 as you did in 1905 in relation to the total revenue. That really is the whole grievance and the whole case. The cost of living has very much increased. There is a dispute as to whether it is 11 per cent, or 13 per cent., or even 16 per cent.

The recommendations of the Holt Committee have been put down as showing an increase of 4.7. One Member said it was 9 per cent. The employés claim that it should be considerably more. The truth is that the Government are not behaving properly as model employers to great classes of postal servants. I think 36,000 are receiving no increment at all. This is the cause of the dissatisfaction with the Report of the Committee, and with the action of the Government. The Postmaster-General in his speech said practically that the postal staff asked for the appointment of a Select Committee. He quoted the Chairman of the National Joint Committee of Postal Servants in 1911, who asked for a Select Committee of the House of Commons. The Postmaster-General granted that Committee. But the trouble has arisen for the Government, owing to the fact that having granted the Committee they are not prepared to stand by the recommendations of the Committee. The hon. Member who spoke last, said that the House of Common's Committee was not a proper tribunal to judge questions of wages. If the Postmaster-General after his great experience in this House remembers what has been the history of previous Committees then I wonder that he should have given the preference to this particular form of Committee.

What has been the history of all these Committees one after another? First of all, there was Sir Edward Bradford's Committee. The Assistant Postmaster-General knows perfectly well how the Report of that Committee was attacked on both sides of the House. Then there was the Hobhouse Committee. Again considerable dissatisfaction was expressed with the Report, not only by postal servants, but also by Members of this House. Then we have the Report of the Holt Committee. I do not think that, except the Members themselves, and even some of them very doubtfully, have we heard anybody in this House stand up and speak well of that Report. To my mind the question boils itself down to this, that we must give some other form of tribunal in order to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Among the many complaints that have been made I would like to point to one made by the telephone staff taken over by the Post Office. They make a very grave accusation of breach of faith. They were taken over on terms that if conditions of service were not to be made harder or their prospects jeopadised. They complain that that bargain has not been carried out. I was very much interested in a document received from ex-servants of the National Telephone Company. They point out that the company paid a very big royalty to the State at the same time making a considerable profit, and that the position of the servants of the National Telephone Company was superior to that of the person employed by the Post Office. Those are remarkable facts. Then, again, we have had denunciations of the grading of the various postmen in London. That, again, is a legitimate cause of complaint in modern conditions. It is a matter into which the Postmaster-General ought to go very carefully so as, if possible, to get rid of the grievance altogether. The real question is that there must be some different tribunal appointed for dealing with these matters.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend has indicated the sort of tribunal of which he would approve: an industrial Commissioner—appointed, I suppose, by the Board of Trade—a member of the Post Office staff, and a member representing the postal servants. That may be perfectly right for some future time, but not at the present moment. I do not think that it would be sufficiently large in number to deal with the particular purpose which the hon. Member had in view when he proposed it. However that may be for future occasions—and I quite agree that something of the sort must be done in view of the breakdown of these various Parliamentary Committees which have already been appointed—that does not meet the requirements of the moment. The postal servants have been very patient. They had great hopes of the results of the appointment of this Committee, and they. have been greatly disappointed. They are now looking about expectantly. It-seems to me that, when we are told that men will have to wait twenty years before they will get any advantage out of this Report, they might just as well whistle while they wait, for any good they are going to get. The Government have certainly got sufficient information in the Report of the Hobhouse Committee and this Committee, and in the advice of their officers, and the opinions expressed by hon. Members in this House. Why should they not now already act and: grant these increases which are so justly demanded? I hope that they are not going to run away behind another Committee-which will take ages to report. They themselves deliberately adopted as the best method of meeting these grievances the appointment of a Committee of the House of Commons. Having done that, I do think that they ought to adopt more generously than they have done the recommendations of the Committee. I do not think that they ought to run away now and-appoint some other Committee. The grievances of the Post Office servants are very genuine in many cases, and there is considerable dissatisfaction. The only way for the Government to meet that fairly and squarely is to deal with the-matter themselves, and announce to the House of Commons at the earliest possible-moment what their decision is upon this-grave and pressing question.

I think that we have listened to a very interesting Debate on a question of the greatest importance. Whether we agree with the Report of the-Committee or not we all owe them a debt of gratitude for the work which they have done and the information which they have got together, sifted for us, and placed at our disposal. I quite agree that there is a great deal of the Report which we cannot accept as meeting the whole difficulties of the case, but I do not think that ought for a moment cause us to reflect on the good work which they did at the request of the House. I do not think that on either side of the House there was any keen competition among Members to get on this Committee One of the things we have to congratulate ourselves upon is that we have had the recommendations discussed by two Mem- bers of the Committee, and that we have had a further statement by the Chairman of the Committee with regard to a question that was put to him. This broadens to a very large extent what was in the minds of the Committee when they made their Report, and it should be, I think, instructive to the Government as to what are the desires of the Committee as well as the desires of the House. From the strong statement which was made by the Chairman of the Committee the Member for Hexham (Mr. Holt), he realised apparently that the present arrangement with regard to boundaries does not suit the requirements of the present day, and that it was necessary to have a Boundary Committee. I hope that will sink deep into the minds of the Postmaster-General and the Assistant Postmaster-General. Those of us who were not members of the Committee have to consider this subject with due regard to local conditions. Many of us who have sat here for a great number of years recollect not only the Hobhouse Committee but the Tweedmouth Commission, and we have been familiar over a long period of years with the difficulties that arise in connection with these questions.

We have the Chairman's admission that something should be done with reference to the question of boundaries, and we have the frank admission of another Member of the Committee who suggested that there should be an immediate rise of wages among the lower classes of employés. I think that is another matter which, seeing that it has been investigated for two years, ought to be attended to by the representatives of the Post Office. Then we had a very able speech from the hon Member for Westhoughton (Mr. T. W. Wilson), who was listened to with the keenest satisfaction. He has entered devotedly and thoroughly into the work of the Committee. In regard to the question of the maximum, I submit that it is a subject that is out of date at the present time. It has been before the men for too long a period, and something will have to be done. They are told that they are to receive something for good conduct, but they are left in the lower grades, and it is long before they can get anything like adequate remuneration or even an increase. The circumstances are such as show the necessity for an immediate increase among the lowly paid grades of postal employés. I wish to call attention to the fact—I do not believe that Parliamentary representatives of the Post Office would be concerned in it.—that some of the officials at the Post Office are trying to ride through certain arrangements or suggestions of the Committee by reducing expenditure in some trivial and small manner. Possibly some of these gentlemen fancy that they will get a certain amount of kudos for themselves, and they never mind what happens to the great bulk of the men. I do hope that the Postmaster-General will have that matter thoroughly looked into, and at once stop anything like that taking place—if it is taking place—and that the Treasury will listen to the representations made by the right hon. Gentleman in that direction. With regard to the question of classification—I do not propose to go into the question of increased living and other points which have been thoroughly threshed out —we have to realise that to many it is something like a Chinese puzzle. The more you study the five grades and the more you see that system applied under the conditions which obtain, the more near to the ridiculous does it appear to reach. It is a system which might have suited the country in years gone by, but with the development of population, even in agricultural districts, and with the huge urban councils that have come into existence, the rural phases of life have largely disappeared. Other influences are now abroad, and even in some of the agricultural areas the urban councils and the large populations exercise an influence which is deeply felt in those areas.

Let us deal with some of the practical effects of this classification. I naturally take the district with which I am best acquainted. The west side of London has been dealt with, but the south-east of London is that portion to which I desire to refer. It is a large portion which was left out of the Hobhouse Committee's Report, although it is within the county council area. You have included Woolwich, and you have raised the standard there to the London rate, because, you say, the necessity for it exists. With regard to the conditions under which the men have to live, anyone who knows the south-east part of London is aware of the conditions in Eltham and Sidcup. In Sidcup, the people are further away from a cheap local market to which they can go for their food stuffs, while the people of Eltham and Woolwich have easy access to a cheaper market. I have here the expenditure of a man earning 25s. per week. The rents at Sidcup are about 8s. 6d. or 9s. per week. I have investigated the expenditure of a workman with 25s. a week, and he puts rent down at 8s. 6d.; meat (5lbs.), 4s. 7d.; bread and flour, 2s.; vegetables, Is.; insurance, Is. 6d.; and 4s. for other requisites of the household—making a total of £1 1s. 7d. Can you for one moment think that, with a rate of wage so low, you could apply a classification such as this to a place like Sidcup? I want the same condition of things to apply in Sidcup as applies in Woolwich and Eltham. In regard to the question of the 12 mile radius, I would ask the Postmaster-General to make application to the President of the Local Government Board as to what takes place at Dartford, where the rents are high owing to the increase of population and the limited house accommodation. I want that the whole question of the boundaries should be looked into. Under the Hobhouse Committee's Report, the boundaries were extended in the western suburbs of London to right outside the county council area. I admit that it included some populous places. The south-east of London was not included, although in the county council area, but that has now been done. The only satisfactory way to get over this difficulty is to get rid of the idea that you can deal with it by drawing hard and fast lines, and to set up a Boundary Commission. It may be said that I have over exaggerated the difficulty with regard to the outer ring, but the Chairman of the Committee in his speech on 30th April said:— I do not know that it meets the whole of the difficulty. I hope the matter will be carried further and non-established men made established as far as possible, and also in the case of auxiliary postmen. The auxiliary principle can only be considered a rough and ready way of dealing with Post Office work. It may be necessary in some sparsely populated areas, but it ought not to be carried on at all where you have a large population. I do plead that the people of all those grades have put their case before the Holt Committee, and that something may be done. It is our duty and our responsibility to see that they are fairly paid, and especially that the lower-grade persons get an absolutely living wage, and unless we do that we are not doing our duty to the community. In the case of a Department like the Post Office, which, roughly, is making some six millions per year, you will have two classes of the community that will want to have something out of it. First of all, there is the desire of the people who contribute for the service to get a reduction in the cost of things supplied by the Department; and then, as long as you have not a thoroughly well-paid staff, you will have them demanding that their case should be considered, and that they should receive the fair remuneration to which they are entitled. I most earnestly hope that the solution of this problem will not be the setting up of another Committee similar to that which has just sat. The members of that Committee have certainly done their work, according to their lights, thoroughly well, and given us a Report, whether we agree with the details or not, which has provided us with a mass of information, and caused us all to go further into particulars with regard to the condition of the staff. I hope the solution will be that the Postmaster-General will bring power to bear on the Treasury, so that some permanent body may be established to deal thoroughly and efficiently with this great problem.

9.0 P.M.

I think the members of this Committee would be glad to know what the hon. Member who has just spoken means by saying that the Holt Committee acted "according to their lights." I suppose the Committee acted according to the Reference that was sent to them, and I do not suppose anybody in this House is prepared to blame them for having come to the conclusions to which they came, having regard to the fact that like all Committees entrusted with matters of a sort which involve expenditure, they had the never-failing Treasury behind them to restrict their recommendations and activities. I do not think the House, certainly since I have been acquainted with it for some eight years, has ever had the spectacle which this Debate has presented, because it seems to me that with the exception of the members of the Committee, the Chairman, and the hon. Member for Morley (Mr. France), and, of course, the Postmaster-General the criticism has all been the one way. I suppose we have never had such a consensus of opinion before in advocating the claims which have been put before us in an individual capacity, and I trust most of us have been able to put them also in a collective capacity. According to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Spen Valley (Sir T. Whittaker), it is purely votes that has actuated us in making these appeals to the Postmaster-General. I longed to have the opportunity of following him, because I would have referred him directly to one of his chiefs in the Government and to his Ipswich speech, and if ever votes were applied for directly and unblushingly, it was on that occasion. I do not think, therefore, that there is any complaint to be made because we, having had representations made to us on matters which are so obvious on the face of them as inflicting injustice upon a very large number of servants of the State, recognise our individual responsibility so as to advocate those claims in this House. We are hunting for votes, forsooth, according to the Member for Spen Valley ! That speech reminded me of some celebrated characters in Dickens, which I will not further particularise, and one of whom was a temperance reformer in his own way.

There are some matters which have not yet been dealt with and which I wish to direct the attention of the Postmaster-General. There is one which I propose to deal with because it does show that the Department is somewhat out of touch with the great number of employés, and that is what is known as the "risk allowance" of counter clerks. May I make this statement, that the salaries of counter clerks, whether male or female, have not been appreciably increased or increased at all by this Report. Consider for a moment the enormous additional duties that have been put upon those counter clerks. I am told that whereas there were formerly fourteen varieties of ordinary postage stamps sold over the counter in the Post Office, since the passing of the Insurance Act there have been twenty-one varieties of insurance stamps, so that there has been an increase of 150 per cent, in the varieties of stamps, but there has been no increased remuneration for those who have to vend them. The question of risk allowance is a somewhat serious one, and the Postmaster-General would do well to deal with it. It was originally a mere allowance of so much per week to cover losses by giving wrong change and matters of that sort, which the counter clerk had to make up himself. The Tweedmouth Committee recommended the abolition of the risk allowance, but those who were in receipt of the allowance were allowed to retain it. The Hothouse Committee recommended that losses should be made up to the extent of 10 per cent, of the wages of the clerks in question. The Holt Committee reduced the amount to 5 per cent. The position now is that, although from the point of view of monetary recoupment the clerk is better off, it puts each and every one of these clerks, when a claim-is made, under the suspicion that they themselves have put the money into their pockets, seeing that they have to bear so-small a proportion of the loss. I am told that this class of public servants desire to-have that ground of suspicion removed, to be put back into the position that they were in before the Tweedmouth Committee's recommendation, and that they themselves should have a deduction from their wages of the amount which they used to pay towards making good these losses —a substantial amount for them, and at the same time such an amount as would prevent their being open to the suspicion-of making claims for money which they had purposely lost, or said they had lost.

Then there is the old question of the delimitation of areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford made a strong appeal on behalf of the men in that division. He said that he was outside the London area. But Ealing is a part of the-Paddington postal district. It has been urged, unsuccessfully, that Ealing itself was entitled to be a postal district. She now works under Paddington, and for the life of me I cannot see why postal servants working in that section of the western postal district should be worse off than those who work in Paddington. They have probably to deliver a larger number of letters, because in districts largely occupied by the poorer classes the amount of correspondence is appreciably less than in districts where large sections of the working middle class reside. I cannot understand why there should be this differentiation between districts. I have here the Post Office circular to its employés dated 3rd April, 1914, and, as showing how ludicrous the classification is, it contains this notice,:— Department can afford to give the go-by to the conclusions of the Committee in three cases, I see "no reason why they should not do so in relation to an area, where admittedly hardships arise to postal servants in consequence of the increased cost of rent and living. There are questions like the weekly half holiday, the auxiliary postman, and the meal reliefs, upon which the Holt Committee reported in definite terms. The Postmaster-General has felt himself bound in the interval which has taken place to ignore the findings of the Committee, and to come to his own conclusion. Already it has been pointed out how inconsistent it is to restrict the area, having in view the public service, the area of the police, of the county council for their workmen, and for others. There are many more things to which I should like to call attention. I should like to point out that in the increased wages of the sorters which are recommended by this Report, the position of the old servant is made worse. The new servants do get a minimum of 40s. after nineteen years service, whereas the old servants after nineteen years service find themselves only in possession of 30s. per week, and they must wait for a further nine years—that is twenty-eight—before they are able to get to the maximum of 40s. That I regard, and I am sure any impartial critic would also do so, as a very unfair thing indeed. We should, so far as we possibly can, treat our old servants on a better footing than the new. In this case an obvious injustice is being done.

In the collection and delivery of letters, Division II., suburban postmen have to wait three years for each shilling. This means really only 4d. per week. Let me here say that I resent the suggestion that any one of us is moved by any other motive than that of doing justice to a class of public servants, who by their onerous and responsible work ought to be paid at a better rate than has hitherto been found to be practicable. I need not remind the House that in many municipalities resolutions have been passed that the men. should be paid not less than 30s. per week. Is the State in relation to a big service like the Post Office, which has admittedly made a large profit—approximately of £6,000,000 during the past year—going to pay on a less scale than that of road-sweepers, with their 30s. per week? It ought not to be possible to say that any one of these servants are worse off, even taking into consideration the continuity of work and the prospect of a pension, than are the servants of the municipalities who perform the very necessary but completely unskilled and irresponsible labour of cleansing the public streets! I do hope that the result of this Debate will be an appreciable increase in the wages of this deserving class of men. Though I perfectly agree that the House of Commons is not the proper tribunal and not the place where these matters ought to be ventilated, as we have been doing to-night, it is at present the only means, so far as I know, whereby we can bring pressure to bear upon the Government to deal with these matters. I hope that this occasion will never be repeated, but that the experience of the Government during this Session will enable them to devise some plan whereby justice can be done without which being necessary to bring matters of this kind before the House.

I rise to intervene in this Debate, because, as I hope, hon. Members will recognise that we on this side of the House and in this corner of the House are specially interested in the general problem which has been raised by this two-days' Debate. Whatever the Holt Committee has reported, or whatever it may not have reported, it has raised a problem that this House will have to face more and more in the days to come than it has done in the days that are gone—that is what machinery ought to be created to settle the wages paid and conditions of labour observed in Government employment. This is not merely a question of the Post Office. This is a general question. Wherever Governments have employed labour to any considerable extent we have found those Governments experimenting in the problem that this Committee has been discussing for two days. I think there is a general consensus of opinion in the House that to settle these questions either by Commissions or by Committees is not the best method. We have heard speeches from the other side, both on the last occasion and on this, with every word of which I agree. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are in opposition. When certain hon. Members during the last two hours have talked about the criminality of those responsible for the conditions that now exist in the Post Office, one is very much tempted—and I confess I yield to the temptation—to remind them that it was their representative, when they were on this side of the House, who, when the postal servants were making demands no greater than the demands which are now being made, characterised them as "blood-suckers." The turn of the wheel of fortune determines the speeches that hon. Members-make. However, the question is very-much bigger than that: it ought to be-settled quite apart from party recriminations either on one side or the other.

Are we satisfied, in view of the inevitability of a substantial increase in the near future to Government employés, that we have discovered the best means of settling, these problems? Candidly, I confess that I am not in the least satisfied. I do not know how many hon. Members have been on Committees or Commissions that have had to deal with matters such as those with which the Holt Committee has had to deal. Where you have got an accumulation of grievances, not on one point, but on an enormous number of points, postponed month after month and year after year, pigeon-holed and pigeon-holed, dealt with in a sort of temporary way without a firm grasp of the underlying principle, but simply to allay for the time being the agitation, at last they accumulate such a tremendous force that something has to be done, and has to be done in a hurry. You then appoint your Committee. What I want to say is that under those circumstances you give your Committee an absolutely impossible task. I can very well remember, with a considerable amount of liveliness, the great difficulty that was experienced on all sides of the House to get this Committee set up.

If we go on dealing with Post Office grievances in the future in the way that we have done in the past, I say that when the time comes for setting up another Select Committee, the difficulties of getting men to sit and serve on that Committee after this Debate will be enormously increased. Therefore, the first essential is shortly this—and I hope my right hon. Friend, the Postmaster-General, who is responsible for one of the large employing Departments will agree to this proposition which I want to lay down—it is very much against the best interests of the country, and not quite fair to the House of Commons itself to allow grievances to accumulate until strikes are prevalent, or until agitation becomes hot and furious, and until unreasonable pressure is brought to bear on us. I hope that proposition will be assented to by all sides of the House. If it is assented to the conclusion is inevitable that something must be done by Government Departments on precisely the same lines as private employers in respect to these grievances. If a grievance is ventilated in a workshop—it is not in a Government workshop—the ordinary operation is that there are certain organisations, there are meetings, there are conferences, and the grievance is made definite. It is put down on paper, and within twenty-four hours it is in process of being dealt with. There is not a single one of us who employ labour as private individuals, who would think for a moment of allowing our work people to harbour grievances for two years or five years or ten years, and then imagine that the efficiency of our staff is going to be what it should be while these grievances are wrangling in its heart. It cannot be done, and no employer would think so. And any Government Department I am perfectly sure will not and ought not, if we ask them to take steps such as are taken by every enlightened employer carrying on business to get grievances settled, regard that expression and desire upon our part as anything, even in the nature of a vote of censure or a complaint as to the way in which they are doing their business.

As far as the Holt Report is concerned, as I said, I think we gave this Committee an impossible task. It has reported; it has taken an enormous mass of evidence. I am on a Commission at the present moment, which in some respects is similar to the Holt Committee, and when you come with the greatest desire in the world to listen to all sides, when you start as it were by emptying your mind of all previous knowledge of complaints and grievances, when you present, so to speak, a white sheet of paper upon which the most skilful advocate can write his will, and that will ultimately becomes yours when you are overwhelmed with a mass of detail about pensions, about leave, about holidays, about grading, about wages, and about classification, and the thousand-and-one things I have not mentioned at all, no member of that Committee, and that Committee itself as a whole, ought to take up the position that when it has done its best in its Report to lay down general principles and to illustrate its general principles by certain definite propositions, that it would not be advisable after the Report had been delivered and its work done, that that Report should, so to speak, be handed to a small Committee of experts in order to make it far more definite, far more practical, and in order to make it touch the point, so to speak, more accurately than any Committee, however able its general character, could possibly do in its Report. I therefore think it would be very advisable that the Holt Committee Report should be taken as a sort of basis.

I have not joined in the censure for the reasons I have given. I do not agree with some of its recommendations or with a good many of its recommendations, nevertheless I think the House ought to be fair to its Committees. Otherwise, in view of the thankless task so often given to Members of this House, it will have an exceedingly bad effect upon the personnel of these Committees, and will hamper the honest administration of this country very seriously. Therefore I think we cannot but desire to start with absolute fairness, so far as the Holt Committee is concerned, and I would take this Report as a sort of basis. It has been confessed, not only by those who have had information from outside, as we have all had, but also by members of the Committee itself, and I think by the Chairman, upon whose shoulders a great weight of the responsibility has fallen, and whose task no Member of this House has envied, who have made certain representations on the position generally. My hon. Friend the Member for Morley this afternoon made a very important representation as to the f position, and my hon. Friend the Member for the West Houghton Division made several. Others, Members of the Committee, who spoke in the previous Debate, also made recommendations, made suggestions, and gave us, to a certain extent, a new interpretation of the intentions of the Committee in making certain proposals. Well, surely my right hon. Friend must see that even now that the Report is before us there is a considerable margin of what might be called debatable and uncertain ground, and that that debatable and uncertain ground might be handed over to a small Committee in order to make it more definite and in order to carry out the intentions of the Holt Committee, and perhaps to amend them slightly or substantially in view of the circumstances which have arisen since, and of the few experiments that have been made since the Report was issued.

The hon. Member who preceded me gave three cases where he says—I am not aware of them, but I am sure they are right—the Postmaster-General had overrated the recommendations of the Holt Report. My first and general consideration is that as a piece of practical business the task that my hon. Friend was given was nearly impossible, that when he and his colleagues had done their best and given us this Report, it is eminently advisable that this Report should be handed over to what I might call an expert Committee for the purpose of sharpening it and filling up certain interstices and making it as workable in its proposal from the practical point of view as it possibly can be made. There is another point. I think this Debate shows that on the essential question of wages opinion is very much divided. Opinion outside, I think one may say without any offensiveness, is very crude upon this question of wages. Certain things that have been handed to us cannot really be supported by anybody who has studied the forces that go to make wages satisfactory or unsatisfactory. For instance, is there any hon. Member of this House who would seriously pretend that wages should rise or fall by no other consideration but the rise or fall of prices? No one would do so. Price, of course, is an element, and a very big element, but to say that it is the only element is absolutely absurd. It lands you, for instance, in this dilemma: If you say the cost of living has gone up by 15 per cent. in the last ten years and if it goes down 10 per cent. in the next ten years therefore wages during the last ten years ought to have gone up at the rate of 15 per cent., and ought to have gone down in the next ten years at the rate of 10 per cent. You cannot do that. Even if that were a sound theory, it would be so far divorced from the practical that it would be an absurd proposal to bring forward as the only proposal for the determination of wages. My hon. Friend and his Committee have taken that into account, and they have made certain proposals in that respect. These proposals have not been accepted as satisfactory by the staff in particular. On both sides of the House, and also on the part of members of the Committee, opinions have been expressed which throw a certain amount of new light upon the process through which the Committee went in fixing that figure. Surely it is in the interests of everybody, and the whole of the Committee itself, the staff, and the Postmaster-General, and, above all, in the interests of this House, that this matter should be sent to a small expert Committee in order to consider what changes are necessary in wages, in order that wages might correspond to the necessities of the situation in view of the recent increase in the cost of living. I beg the Committee, and, above all, the responsible officers, not to land us into the difficulty of creating a condition of things which will inevitably lead to the appointment of another Select Committee in order to settle this question. That would be supreme folly of the worst character, and unless something is done to settle this matter now in the way suggested, which I support, that is to send it to a Committee, we are bound in the course of a year or two to be faced with another great pressure and agitation outside and inside this House, and that worst of all expedient for settling the problem, another Select Committee, whose Report would be subjected to criticisms similar to those to which we have been listening. Let us create and set up some Committee which will carry with it the confidence of the Departments and the employés, and let it present a Report to the Postmaster-General. Another consideration is this: I think, as a matter of fact, this question ought to be dealt with generally. We have also to face the fact that in the Post Office and in every Government service, as in every private service, every day and every month and every year brings its grievances and cause of agitation, and if the Post Office or any other Government Department which employs large staffs are going to obviate this sort of critical agitation, it must have some sort of machinery for dealing with these questions and points of agitation as they arise.

What sort of Committee does the hon. Member suggest?

I am coming to that point. Those are the four considerations I bring before the Committee in this connection. I do not join in the censure which has been passed on the Holt Committee, and I do not make my suggestion in any censorial frame of mind. The question is what are you going to do? First of all, there is the question of wages, and secondly, certain matters of detail like classification and various other points which have been mentioned, and which are fresh in the minds of the Committee. Those ought to be dealt with at once. Whatever Committee we set up should be a Committee which either itself should be permanent or, at any rate, it should report to the Postmaster-General and to this House as to what it thinks a permanent Committee should be. Whatever this Committee is going to be it ought to have a very large share of the features of the Wages Board. It should not be exactly a Wages Board, but the idea of the Wages Board should determine the constitution and the size of the Committee. The employer should be represented on the one side, and the employé on the other side, the Post Office being the employer and the postal staff the employés. I do not think the Committee suggested by the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker) would meet the case, because it would be too small, and you would not get your Wages Board idea sufficiently emphasised in a Committee of three. If the postal service is going to be justly dealt with, their representative must be consulted. Those of us who have had experience on these Committees must have come to the conclusion that when one side is represented by one man, however able and wideawake he may be, he never can fully represent his side, and there must always be two.

Therefore my proposal is that the Committee which should be set up should have two from each side. I do not know that I would be very much surprised if the Treasury were willing to allow this Committee to go with their representative, seeing that public money is involved. I would therefore suggest that the Committee should be one of five. First of all, the Board of Trade should supply the chairman. Secondly, the Treasury and the Post Office should be represented as the employer; then the employés should be represented by two, and that makes a committee of five on the model of the Wages Board with an independent chairman. Its first task should be to deal with the two sections of the problems I have already mentioned in my speech, and then as soon as those are settled, and they should be settled at once, it either should recommend that it should be continued for the more general and permanent and steady work, or it should give us a report on the whole question. I do not know that I can contribute anything further to this Debate, which I have listened to very carefully on both days. It seems to me that some hon. Members get up and say that this Committee is not competent to consider these questions. They say that in two or three sentences, and then for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and sometimes longer, they go on considering those very questions themselves. I think what is really wanted is something of a more general character than that. The occasion, undoubtedly, is the Holt Report, but this Committee will not be doing its duty if it does not seize this opportunity of settling the general question of the machinery which ought to be created to determine the wages and labour conditions of Government employés, and it is in order to make this point clear that I have troubled the Committee with these remarks.

We have discussed practically for two days the Report of the Holt Committee. Nearly half of my own speech in the first day's discussion was occupied by it, and every speech to-day, except that of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Sir H. Norman), and one other speech, was confined to the same topic. Let me join in what was said by a great number of hon. Members on both sides of the House in commendation of the labours, of the careful and exacting inquiry, made by the Members of that Committee, and let me especially join with hon. Members in tendering my thanks to the Chairman of that Committee for the patience with which he examined the whole of this most difficult and extensive question. I was very glad indeed to hear what was said by my hon. Friend, who has just sat down, upon that same subject, because I think the whole House is indebted to the hon. Member for the Hexham Division for the pains at which he has been to render to this House a full account of all the difficulties involved in this question, and for the care with which he examined them. I tried to emphasise the other day the fact that this Committee was not set up by the Government as a Government. It was set up by the House of Commons. The Members of the Committee were representatives of the various parties in the House, and the Committee reported, not as the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Goulding) imagined, to the Government, but to the House of Commons as such. I think it is very important that the House, in considering the Report of the Committee, should bear that fact in mind. It was not a Government Committee, it was not influenced by any representation of the Government, and it did not report to the Government. It was a freely created Committee of the House of Commons. When the Report was presented to the House, the executive officer of this House to take cognisance of it was naturally the Postmaster - General. Both my predecessor and myself gave to the recommendations of the Committee the most careful attention we could, and I would just mention that whatever benefits it may have given to the staff, the Postmaster-General of the day increased those benefits, and whatever disadvantages it may have imposed upon the staff in the increase of hours or the reduction of meal reliefs, those disadvantages were minimised to the advantage of the staff.

It has been said in the course of the Debate, that because the Government did not adhere to the exact text of the Report, but departed from it in certain respects, that, therefore, the Government did not really accept it as a sacrosanct document. That is an argument which I am free to accept; but, whatever view the Postmaster-General and the Government have taken of the Report, the House has claimed, and properly claimed, and fully exercised its claim to examine and criticise in detail all the recommendations of the Committee. I am bound to say that from all sides of the House to-day, and on the last occasion when we discussed this topic, there has certainly come a chorus of criticism of the Report of the Committee. There have been suggestions from every quarter for an enlargement of the recommendations of the Committee, and with those enlargements must necessarily come calls upon the public purse which my right hon. Friend (Mr. Lloyd George) will have to meet. When he meets them, he will be urged to be chary of expenditure and to be still more chary of taxation. We cannot, I think, as Members of the House, apart from any position we hold as Members of the Government, disregard this chorus of criticism which has come from every hand, and, that being so, I do not propose this evening to go into all the details which have been raised upon this point and upon that by various Members of the House, because, as the House will see in a moment, if I did so I should stultify the position which I row propose to take up on behalf of the Government.

A very interesting speech was made in a very thin House by my right hon. Friend the Member for the Spen Valley (Sir T. Whittaker), a most interesting speech which must have gone home to the hearts and minds of a great number of Members of this House. The proposition he then put forward was echoed by that Member of the City of York who sits upon this side of the House (Mr. Rowntree) and by my hon. Friend who has just sat down (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald). He made a practical suggestion which we have thought it our duty to accept in the firm belief that the proposal will, on the one hand, satisfy the desires of the staff of the Post Office, and on the other hand will relieve hon. Members from that electoral pressure about which so much has been said in the course of the Debate on both sides of the House. What was the suggestion? It has been put into somewhat more concrete shape so far as one part of it is concerned by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and who, if he will allow me to say so, contributed to this discussion the most interesting speech which I have heard.

He is a "bonnet" to the Government.

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means. I am not concerned to defend my hon. Friend. [An HON. MEMBER: "He is defending you!"] He is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. [An HON. MEMBER: "And of the Government!"] What was the proposal put forward by my hon. Friend behind me? It was that the Report of the Holt Committee should be examined in detail by an expert Committee consisting not of Members of this House, but of representatives of the various Government Departments concerned, joined by an equal number of the representatives of the staff, with an impartial arbitrator, appointed by the Board of Trade, as chairman. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcester made use of an expression which I think perhaps on reflection he would not use.

It is the usual thing.

I did not quite catch the expression. Perhaps the hon. Member would repeat it, so that I might hear it.

I said that the Leader of the Labour party was, as usual, a "bonnet" to the Government.

I absolutely deny that. If I said that the hon. Member was a liar, I should be called to order.

It is what the Postal Conference said at Edinburgh about the hon. Member.

The hon. Member, as usual, uses his imagination instead of his knowledge. If the hon. Member had read what the Postal Conference said at Edinburgh, he would have found that they said nothing of the kind.

It was at Belfast, not at Edinburgh.

The proposal made by my hon. Friend behind me is very interesting, because it is almost exactly similar to one made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. A. Chamberlain) so far back as the year 1895 and expresses views which he reiterated in 1909. Therefore, whatever view hon. Gentlemen opposite may have taken of the proposals of my hon. Friend, it cannot be said that they are confined to one side of the House, or that they are not generally representative of the views of the House. What was the proposal? It was that a small expert Committee composed of persons outside the House, and because they are outside the House free from that electoral pressure which has been the subject of so much censure in all quarters of the House, to examine this Report, and the issues raised upon it in the course of the Debate we have had upon it, and to report to the Government their views upon the criticisms which have been offered. The hon. Member who has just sat down made use of a phrase with which I think we can all agree. He said there could be nothing so harmful to the country as to permit the accumulation of grievances until they had reached such a point that the only alternative for those who suffered from those grievances, real or imaginary, was the withdrawal of their labour by means of what is called a strike. That is a proposition we can support on both sides. If it is undesirable in ordinary industrial life, how much more undesirable is it amongst servants of the State? It brings them to the brink of a precipice, over which if they plunge they bring not only disaster upon themselves, but consequences to the public which all must deplore. We propose to accept the views of my hon. Friend.

They are our views.

I take it that there can be no objection to our accepting those views, because it happens that they may have been endorsed by two or three hon. Members opposite.

I introduced the question into Debate, and I would like to ask—

Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to make my statement.

The right hon. Gentleman knows I shall not have a chance of reply.

I listened to the hon. Gentleman for nearly an hour, and perhaps he will now permit me to make my statement.

Why will you not let me ask a question?

We propose to set up a Committee of the kind I have indicated, to consider such issues on the Holt Report as have been raised in the Debate during these two days, and to report to us whether or not any further adjustments of their proposals, beyond those already made by the Government, are necessary or desirable.

And when are they to report—after a General Election?

10.0 P.M.

If the Report suggests any advance of wages, the staff, who will have two representatives upon it, will desire that that advance shall be given as soon as possible, and the Committee may be trusted to report at the earliest possible moment. It is quite evident that the question cannot rest there. By the position which we have taken up this evening we are raising a much wider issue. We cannot deal with the employés of the Post Office as hon. Gentlemen opposite desire they should be dealt with—and it is always well to remember that—without also dealing with other employés of the State. We cannot have one system for postmen and sorters, and not have the same system for employés of the Admiralty, the War Office, and the Board of Trade. You have, therefore, to consider the whole relationship of the State towards its employés, and you must put them all on a level in this respect. [An HON. MEMBER: "Disfranchise the lot." Other HON. MEMBERS: "Who said that?"] That is the contribution from the other side of the House towards this Debate, and I have no doubt it represents the true wishes of many hon. Gentlemen who sit over there.

That is a gross misrepresentation, and you have no business to say it.

There are claims put forward by large numbers of people in this country for the nationalisation of our railways, and of many other services, and there are also claims for the municipalisation, and eventually the nationalisation, still of other services. Therefore, the employment by the State of a large number of people, great as that number is now, is almost certain to grow in the future, and may assume very large and even formidable proportions. You, therefore, must take into consideration, not merely the present, but the future condition of those employés and their relation towards the House of Commons, which, as representing the people, employs them. I made a reference to a statement by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester (Mr. Chamberlain), whom I am sorry not to see in his place, because, speaking in a Debate in 1909, he made exactly the same proposals to this House as we are making-to-day. The House will pardon me if I read a sentence from his speech:—

"So impressed was I with this matter when we were in office that I made a proposal across the Floor of the House that if we could carry with its the general goodwill of the House, we would be glad to appoint a Committee, not to go into Post Office grievances, but to enquire whether a tribunal could not be formed which would relieve hon. Members from direct and immediate responsibility for these matters—a tribunal in which public opinion would have confidence, and to which the Civil servants could give a moraladhesion."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th April, 1909, col. 232, Vol. IV.]

My right hon. Friend never suggested putting members of the staff on the Committee.

Here, again, I think I am right in drawing attention to the expression of opinion which comes from the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir F. Ban-bury), who is, no doubt, the representative of many Members of his party. [OPPOSITION MEMBERS: "No!" and an HON. MEMBER: "They do not know where they are!"] At all events, if he does not voice their opinions, he controls their movements. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] So far I agree with my hon. Friends behind me and with the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. Here, to a certain extent, I part company with them all. This Committee we are setting up for the purpose of inquiring into the Report of the Holt Committee is not necessarily the best one for investigating the larger and wider issues which will be raised in connection with all Government Departments. It is quite possible that a Committee of the sort which I have agreed to, admirably qualified by training and experience to go into matters of detail, are not necessarily the best men to grapple with the larger problem which must be raised when we take into consideration all the departments and all the servants employed by the State. Therefore, while we accept the principle that some body must be set up in order to deal with the. larger issues—and we propose to set up such a body at the earliest possible moment—I do not wish to pledge myself, on behalf of the Government, as to whether that body should take the form of a Royal Commission, or a Select Committee of this House, or a Hybrid Committee of both Houses.

Or a Statutory Commission?

Or a Statutory Commission. I do not in any way pledge myself to any one form of those means of inquiring into the subject which have been recommended to us from that side of the House and this. But what I do say on behalf of the Government, is that at the earliest possible moment we will set up some such body which shall inquire as to what should be the future relations of the-State with its employés, both as to remuneration and the conditions of labour. [An HON. MEMBER: "For all Departments?"] First of all the Committee, or Commission, must inquire and must report, and upon that report action will be taken.

Will the House be given an opportunity to discuss the form of the main body you propose to establish?

At this present moment I do not pledge myself to the kind of Commission or Committee we propose to set up. It is always perfectly easy for this House to get an opportunity of debating a question of that sort. What we do commit ourselves to is that there shall be enquiry as to whether there shall be some authority standing between this House as the servants of the State to consider their conditions and their pay, and I think that ought to meet the wishes of hon. Members. We are not in the least blind to the serious step we are taking in this matter. We take it partly to free hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]

To save your skin, that is all!

It is difficult to reconcile that view with the others expressed by the hon. Member's friends. We take it partly to free you from that political pressure which you declare to be intolerable, and to which you have yielded, and equally to ensure a competent and impartial tribunal to deal with those most difficult questions. We cannot release the House of Commons, if we wished to do so, from its ultimate responsibility for those questions, but that responsibility should not be weighted by the pressure which has been mentioned in all quarters of the House—[An HON. MEMBER: "To which you are yielding!"]—of which you complain, and of which hon. Members on this side of the House have complained, which is neither good for the Members of this House nor for the electors who bring that pressure to bear upon them.

The right hon. Gentleman has just stated that the political pressure to which Members of this House have been exposed was admitted to be intolerable. I may, therefore, say that so far as I am personally concerned I have had no representation whatever from any of my Constituents on this subject, and I speak simply because I feel, in one or two respects at any rate, that the grievances with which we are concerned to-day are very genuine. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned just now that the question which is now raised is one which would apply equally to other Government Departments, such as the Admiralty, but in one respect we have before us a question which is not applicable to other Government Departments, because it is one in which the former servants of a public company which has been transferred to a Government Department have claimed that promises definitely made to them on that transfer have not been carried into effect. The question to which I wish to draw attention was raised earlier in the Debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford (Mr. Joynson-Hicks), that is the question of the grievances of the servants of the National Telephone Company. I do not think I need quote rerbatim the words which were used by the then Postmaster-General at the time of the transfer, but it is generally admitted that those men were promised that under no circumstances would they, after the transfer, be in a worse position than they were before. The Postmaster-General on more than one occasion stated very clearly that he did not confine himself only to a statement that their wages would not be lower than they were under the company, but he said the conditions generally would not be worse than those under which they worked under the company.

The claim put forward by these men is that that promise has not been carried into effect. It is true that the Holt Committee in summarising the evidence put before them on this subject, did report that this grievance appeared to be ill-founded, but I think that can be shown to be not a just verdict on the evidence which was brought before them. The question was whether or not these men as a whole did suffer by the transfer. Incidentally it is an interesting fact that these telephone servants should be placed in a worse position now than they were when serving under a private company in view of two other facts, first, that the telephone service is not as good as it used to be under the company, and secondly, that the financial results are not as good as they were under the company. The grievance under which these men seem to be suffering and which appears to be very well founded, is that certain allowances which they received when working for the company have been either withdrawn or materially reduced.

The subsistence allowances, for instance, of skilled workmen in Classes I. and II. have apparently been reduced from a maximum of 4s. per day to a maximum of 1s. 6d. per day. The result to the workmen is that in Class I. the workmen who were getting £2 a week in wages and is still getting the same, when employed beyond a certain distance from home, were able to get the maximum subsistence allowance of 4s. per night, making a total, with his £2 wages, of £3 8s. per week. Under existing conditions that same man only gets, as a maximum allowance, 1s. 3d. per night, making per week 8s. 9d., and therefore earning only £2 8s. 9d. against £3 8s., a net loss weekly of 19s. 3d. That is obviously a change in the position of that class of man which is a very serious one for him. The second class of men who appear to be hardly dealt with as regards allowances are the young men who are earning wages of only 17s. per week. This class of men apparently used to get a subsistence allowance of 6d. per day for five days, and that enabled him as a maximum to earn 19s. 6d. per week, whereas now all subsistence allowances have been abolished and he is only able to earn his wages of 17s.

There is another class of man who apparently has some considerable cause of complaint, and that is the line construction foremen. These men used to receive time and a quarter, time and a half, and double time for overtime work. These overtime payments have been abolished with the result that these foremen suffer a loss of 7s. 2d. in one case and 9s. 3d. in another per week. It seems to me that although it is true to say that the rate of wages paid to these various classes of men have been maintained at the rate which they did receive under the telephone company, it is perfectly just to say that the promise which was held out by the then Postmaster-General as to the difference in the position of the men before and after the transfer has not been fully carried out, and let it be remembered that the transfer was sanctioned after strong remonstrance on this point and I believe on the understanding that that agreement would be fully carried out. It is true that the Holt Committee reported that these men had no grievance of which to complain.

There is only one other point to which I should like to refer, because it seems to me to be a grievance of very considerable moment, and it is one on which the Holt Committee reported in favour of the men. It is the case of what is called the "K" company of the Royal Engineers. These men apparently during the time of their military service do purely Post Office work of the same nature as is done in the Post Office, and, so far as I can understand from the Report, the time which they serve in that company counts for all purposes as Post Office time, except in regard to the question of pension. It is pointed out in section 86 of the Report that the men in question, while serving in "K" Company, are employed in Post Office work, and that the time served in that company is counted by the Post Office for purposes of pay and increment, but that these officers suffer a loss in regard to pension. If that is the case, it seems to me that there is no reason why, if their services are counted for other purposes as Post Office work, it should not be counted for the purpose of pension. In section 90 the Committee recommend—

The speech of the Postmaster-General relieves me of the necessity of dealing with a number of grievances which have been laid before me by the considerable staff of postal servants dwelling within my Constituency. The temptation to go into these matters is a great one, but I am hoping that the Committee which the Postmaster-General may set up under the stimulus of the general opinion of this House may be able to deal thoroughly with these questions, and that ultimately a Committee of some kind will be set up, fully independent of this House, to act as referees with respect to differences which the postal servants may have with their employers on the multitudinous arrangements that exist naturally within the bounds of so large a staff. Those difficulties, therefore, we may hope will be met along those lines. I am glad that the first statement of the Postmaster-General was somewhat modified, somewhat softened later on, when he decided evidently as the gravity of the whole question drew upon him—[An HON. MEMBER: "Specific gravity!"] I only wish that the gravity of the question would grow upon some hon. Members opposite—to go into the whole question and to bring the Government to deal with it as affecting all their employés. But there is one point for the moment laid aside to which I must call attention. We have been grinding away for two days almost entirely at the Holt Report and the common grievances of the staff, and, therefore, this question has been laid aside under pressure of consideration of the larger questions. But my Post Office Constituents have to-day a very real injustice to complain of in their employment.

About two years ago it was decided to make an alteration in the movements of a certain postal sorting van that had for years travelled between Stafford and Aberystwyth. As to the wisdom of the General Post Office, and its advisers in altering the journey of this van, the Post Office employés of Stafford have nothing whatever to say. They recognise that the first duty of the Post Office must be to the population generally whom it sets out to serve, and that the public convenience must override personal considerations. But these men claim that they ought to be damaged by that alteration as little as possible. I brought this matter in the course of a long correspondence before the Post Office, and at last on the 19th March this year I put a question in the customary way. The answer I got was not candid. It did not elicit a tithe of the facts. It said that the only persons to be injured by the withdrawal or alteration of this service were eight men, and that the total of their loss was between £12 and £13. I am told by the men themselves that they have enjoyed this extra service and its remuneration for some years, and that it has brought fifty-six of them an average of £15 a year added to their income, and however much that may be exaggerated by the natural disposition of a workman to magnify his gains and diminish his loss, you have no right to deprive that small body of men of some hundreds of pounds—from £850 roughly, down to the smallest sum which a more correct review of the loss might fix. It is no answer to my Constituents to be told that the public service alone must be considered here. Indeed, the Post Office do not altogether take that line, because they said in the answer which was given to me, and in correspondence afterwards, that these men would have an opportunity of transferring to another office where an advantage similar to that which they had lost would be given.

The only offer made was one made to some five or six men, and the acceptance of it would have involved the loss of twenty years seniority. So bad was the offer made that every one of the men refused it. All they ask is that the Post Office might grant that this matter should be looked into, fairly, candidly, and generously. The staff do not ask that the public convenience should be brushed aside for the sake even of fifty-six men, but they say that no cast-iron rule ought to be forced upon them to their detriment, and that this emolument which they have enjoyed for a considerable number of years, ought not to be suddenly torn away from them, and be told that their only consolation is that they will have to lose it.

The moving and pathetic case stated by the hon. Member for Stafford (Sir Walter Essex), who spoke of fifty-six employés of the Post Office in his Constituency, will scarcely suffice to cause the House to forget the important and epoch-making, although very short speech, of the Postmaster-General. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken towards the end of the Debate, and he has taken on this occasion the same place as his subordinate the hon. and gallant Member (Captain Norton) took upon the former occasion. It is worth while—I think it would interest the hon Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) if he were present—to compare the utterance of the right hon. Gentleman with that of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who spoke, like the Postmaster-General, for the Department of the Post Office. What did the right hon. Gentleman say to-night? He said, and he repeated it, so that there might be no mistake as to what he meant, "The decision taken this evening." Taken under what circumstances? Under the circumstances indicated from the Labour party benches. But I shall show before I sit down that again the Labour party are not only acting as a party for the Government, but are the means of betraying the very interests which they are supposed to represent. What is the decision to be taken to-night? It is that there shall be a new Committee, a broad and wide Committee that will deal with the whole question of Government and Government employés, that will settle finally, and definitely and ultimately the great socialist question of the employment of individuals by the community, and the relation electorally of those individuals to the Government of the day. This Committee is to be the tribunal that is to review the Report of the Committee which is under consideration at the present moment. The new Committee is to report, I do not know whether to the Postmaster-General alone, or to the Government at large, upon the whole question of the relation of the Government employés to the Government. That is the decision taken to-night. What was the decision, on the 30th April. Let me read from the speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Captain Norton) whom I see in his place on the Treasury Bench. It was in reply to my hon. Friend beside me (Sir G. Parker), who was refused by the Postmaster-General the ordinary courtesy of permission to ask a question that every Minister allows to the Mover of the Amendment which is under debate. The Assistant Postmaster-General said:—

"In face of that we are asked by the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir G. Parker) to form an outside Committee of a certain character. Is there any probability that a Committee would give greater satisfaction than a Committee inside the House. On this point my right hon. Friend has already quoted the spokesman of the officials, who stated distinctly that they wished to have a Committee of this House. Therefore I cannot see that any of the suggested Committees would have a better result."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th April, 1914, col. 1992.]

What is the object of all this? I think I can find the object of it, by going back a couple of hours or so in the Debate. The right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster-General referred to the short but very important speech of the right hon. Member for the Spen Valley (Sir T. Whittaker), who lectured the House at large. We were all on both sides according to him, and even hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway being moved, and being influenced and being subjected to Parliamentary and electoral pressure to which the representatives of the people ought not to submit. "On no account," said the right hon. Member for Spen Valley, "should there be promises of any kind made by Members who will seek election again, of reward of monetary advantage to those in the employment of the State, who would have votes to give." A high standard of electoral purity, as clear as crystal and as pure as the water which the right hon. Gentleman advocates in another connection. And sitting below the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley was the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I thought to myself, and I wish he were here now, how appropriate it is indeed to hear statements from a right hon. Member of this House that no terms of reward to any person of money to influence votes or electioneering should be made, and I wanted to know, only I dare not interrupt, why the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley had not gone down to Ipswich and made that speech on the night the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his speech. That speech of the right hon. Member for Spen Valley was the beginning of the change. That was the commencement of the decision which has been taken to-night, and the beginning of the change between the speeches and views of the right hon. Gentleman the Postmaster-General and his assistant. The House finds itself in the position of offering to the postal servants, not an immediate redress of their grievances, but a further postponement, and for how long—until they have considered; perhaps until after the next General Election. The difference betwen the proposal and decision taken to-night and between the proposal of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend is perfectly easy to understand and perfectly clear, and I put it to hon. Members opposite as to how far they will be able to justify themselves afterwards when they vote, as they will vote, I know, in support of this Government whatever the objects be they vote for, and let them clearly understand the difference that divides those in the two Lobbies in the coming Division. My hon. Friend proposed that there should be immediately set up a judicial Committee capable of dealing with all these questions within the limits of the recommendations of the Select Committee so far as they may be modified or authorised by this House—a judicial Committee similar in constitution, number, functions, and power to the Railway Commission, to settle questions of wages and employment, and, above all, to give immediate relief to the grievances of the postal servants. That is the proposition underlying the Motion for reduction; that is the proposition that will be supported by every Member who follows the hon. Member for Gravesend into the Lobby. What is the proposal that will be supported by those who follow the Government Whips? It is a proposal for delay, for procrastination, for hanging up this question for an indefinite time, until the very electioneering pressure of which complaint has been made shall have been relieved, not by a just settlement, such as a judicial Committee would secure, but by the process of time, and the Government find themselves extricated from the difficulty and the danger from which they are now endeavouring to escape.

I rise to express my regret that the Postmaster-General should have thought it necessary to describe the postal servants' agitation as "intolerable pressure." I think that those words are unjust to the staff for which the right hon. Gentleman is responsible in this House. After all, the postal servants of this country are a hard-working people. In my opinion, they are not only hard-working, but badly paid, and I do not think it becomes the Postmaster-General to describe as "intolerable pressure" an agitation which has been conducted upon such proper and constitutional lines as this agitation has been.

My recollection of what I said is "pressure which was described by Members on both sides of the House as intolerable."

No one on this side has described it as intolerable.

Of course, I accept the right hon. Gentleman's explanation. But I have followed the Debate very closely. I sat through the whole of the first day without meals, in the endeavour to secure an opportunity to speak, and I have sat through the greater part of this day also. Therefore I can testify that, so far as speeches in this House are concerned, there were no references to "intolerable pressure." Hence my hon. Friend must have produced that phrase from the depths of his own imagination. [An HON. MEMBER: "The Member for Spen Valley!"] I accept that correction. That is the exception which proves the rule. With regard to the setting up of a small Committee to correct the work of the Select Committee, to whose labours I should like, in common with all other Members, to pay a tribute, while I regret the delay that will necessarily occur, it is only fair to point out that we are merely carrying out a suggestion, or the emendation of a suggestion, made by the postal servants themselves to this House. I do not, therefore, think it becomes hon. Members opposite to complain of the Committee on that score. Having said that, I am bound to add that I do not think any of these Committees were necessary. What is more, the Holt Committee was not necessary. On the Continent of Europe several nations in the last few years have found it possible to acquaint themselves with the rise in the cost of living, as, for example, the German Government. They have paid their Civil servants an extra remuneration accordingly. That could have been done quite easily by the Post Office, and we might have been spared what the right hon. Member calls an "intolerable pressure," which he has brought upon himself, or what the Post Office has brought upon themselves by not taking the very sensible course which has been taken by other Governments.

After all, these are minor matters. I come to the main thing which I rose to say, and that is this: A very peculiar proposition has been sprung upon this House for the first time. Arising out of a Debate of a most confused character we have suddenly sprung upon Parliament a suggestion that Parliament should no longer assume complete responsibility in regard to the payment of Civil servants, and that we should elect some body in a form not described, with the name not even given, which is to stand between us and our Civil servants in order to save us from the intolerable pressure to which I have alluded. This may, or may not, be a good proposition, but, in my opinion, there needs to be very serious debate in detail by this House before any such body is set up. We cannot, it seems to me, afford to come to a decision under which it can be made possible for a Minister of the Crown to rise in this House and to cast the responsibility for the bad or under-payment of Civil servants upon some body that has been very vaguely described to us. There is, of course, something to be said for the proposition, but I beg His Majesty's Government to give us the fullest opportunity for debating the proposition before it is carried into effect. It is only fair to say that my right hon. Friend said something to that effect. I am afraid it was rather in vague terms. I rise to make quite sure, and to take the earliest opportunity of claiming for this House a continuance of its being the final court of appeal in these particular matters. Even if we establish a minimum wage system, surely this House would not resign the right to decide, for example, the physio- logical minimum wage. In regard to anybody such as that suggested which may be set up, I hope the Government will give the House the fullest opportunity of considering it in form and in substance.

Mr. Holt.

I desire to say only two words. [HON. MEMBERS: "Order!" and "Holt!"] I think we are entitled to ask the Government whether this decision which they have come to is a matter of policy or a matter of tactics, because the Committee finds itself in a very peculiar position. Two whole Parliamentary days have been taken up in discussing—[HON. MEMBERS: "Holt!" "Holt!"] I do not think that there has been much speaking from this Bench. [HON. MEMBERS: "There has been from the back Benches."] We have had a Debate for two whole Parliamentary days. At the end of the discussion the Government put forward a totally new proposition upon which the House is asked to vote without having debated it at all. The proposition is one of very far-reaching importance, concerning not only the Post Office, but the whole matter or treatment of Government servants. The House has not been treated fairly. I cannot believe that any responsible Government would treat the House of Commons in that manner unless under pressure which they dare not resist. It is a fact perfectly obvious that the feeling of the House is against the Government, and that the Government dare not face the vote of the House. The Government have made a proposal which they dare not put to the House of Commons. They have run away from their own proposal, and I wish them joy of the Divisions.

I only want to trespass on the time of the Committee—

On a point of Order. Has not the hon. Member spoken already in this Debate?

In Committee an hon. Member can speak as often as called upon by the Chair.

On a point of Order. I wish to draw your attention, Mr. Maclean, to this. As the hon. Member has been called upon, I do not wish to interfere with his opportunity of again speaking, but when I endeavoured to ask the Postmaster-General a question he refused to give way.

I only want to trespass on the time of the Committee for a few minutes, and there will still be an opportunity for the hon. Member if he wishes to make a speech afterwards. Hon. Members opposite must not forget that the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Goulding) made two pretty long speeches. What I wish to say to the Committee is that the decision of the Government to appoint a special Committee to investigate the recommendations of the Select Committee is not one to which the Select Committee takes any exception. We are quite satisfied that our recommendations are good and sound, and we are very glad they should be investigated by any Committee provided they do so with impartiality; but it is a very different thing that the recommendations of the Committee should be criticised on the basis of ex-parte statements and criticised for purely party purposes and criticised from a point of view and in a manner entirely alien to the principles of hon. Members who deliver these criticisms, which would not be put forward by them except as some means of embarrassing the Government. I had a very good opportunity of addressing the Committee in the Debate that took place about a month ago, and I do not intend to enter into any general discussion at all now. I rose simply with the object of saying the Select Committee will not consider themselves in any way aggrieved by the decision of this Committee to-night.

I apologise for intervening in a Debate which I have not heard, but I heard the whole of the Debate the other day, and took part in it myself. What is demanded on this side of the House, and what is wanted in this case, is not inquiry, but action on the part of the Government, This new Committee is a mere excuse for delay. The Committee reported in favour of immediate action. We are told that Gentlemen on this side of the House are animated by party motives. A more untrue statement never was made. I am not going to delay the Committee in coming to a decision, but, if I wished, I could put statements before the Committee now, for the second time, from my own Constituents that would convince any impartial hearer that the time for action has come, and that there is no excuse on the part of the Government for the new Committee they propose now.

As I introduced this Motion, I wish to point out that one of the proposals I made was to set up a temporary Committee to deal with the conclusions of the Holt Committee, but that was opposed both by the representatives of the Holt Committee and the Government itself, and it was declared to be impossible that questions of this sort should be placed in the hands of a Committee outside this House. My other proposal was that since the position was that hon. Members of this House are constantly and naturally under pressure from postal servants who choose, as they have a right to do and should do under present circumstances, to bring pressure to bear, the Government should adopt the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamber-lan) in 1905, that there should be set up a Statutory Commission to deal with these questions generally. Is that the proposal of the Government? [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] The proposal is that a temporary Committee shall be set up which may or may not advise the Government that it shall become a permanent Committee. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] If that is not so why does the right hon. Gentleman repudiate the proposal which I make, and accept that which the hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) makes, if it

is the same proposal. The Government at the last moment found that Members on all sides of the House regarded the situation as an impossible one, and they upheld and supported the appeals of the Postal servants, and, if the Postmaster-General had held to the decision which was made on 30th April, they would have been defeated if we had gone into the Division Lobby. I propose to go into the Division Lobby on the main Question, and that is that something permanent shall be done to relieve the House of Commons of the present pressure.

I wish to ask whether another day will be allocated for the consideration of the Scotch aspect of this question—

rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put," but the Deputy-Chairman withheld his assent, and declined then to put that question.