The Amendments standing on the Paper in the name of the hon. Member for North Somerset (Mr. King), I am afraid, cannot be entertained, because, this Bill is introduced on an Order of Committee of Ways and Means. Therefore the figures contained in the Bill must correspond to the Resolution passed in Ways and Means, and it is not competent for hon. Members to make them differ.

May I ask you, Sir, a question for our present and future guidance? The figure in the Bill is £664,265,560. I do not for a moment wish to prevent the Vote of Credit passed the day before yesterday from going into the Bill, but I do want to raise matters in connection with some of the other Votes, especially that for the Post Office, which are included in this Bill. Should I not be in order in moving that certain amounts which were voted in Supply should not be now passed, with a view to raising certain matters in connection with those Votes which have emerged since into the public knowledge which are material and should be discussed?

The hon. Member can discuss those matters on the Third Reading, as those Votes will be contained in the Bill, but the Bill must correspond to the Resolution and the Order upon which it was introduced.

Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

Clauses 2 ( Power for the Treasury to Borrow ) and 3 ( Short Title ) ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read the third time upon Monday next.

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

The main purpose of this Bill is to establish a Minister of Reconstruction who shall, in the words of the Bill, promote

"the work of organisation and development after the termination of the present War."

I do not desire, because this Bill is in the main a machinery Bill, to travel in detail over the very wide field of the subjects with which reconstruction is concerned. The field of work may be grouped in two divisions—first, the restoration of normal conditions in commerce and industry, and the development of trade in the light of experience gained during the War; and, secondly, the restoration of the normal life of persons affected by war conditions, and improvements in their condition which are largely suggested by war experience. Under the first head, the restoration of normal conditions, will be included such matters as commercial and industrial policy, the development of national and Imperial resources, the maintenance of new industries—such as the industry connected with optical glasses, to which reference has been made in this House, and the manufacture of gauges and matters of that kind, which are new industries almost created by the War—the supply of raw material, the conservation of coal, an inventory of the mineral resources of the Empire—

Are the Government running those themselves?

It includes the questions of the supplies of oils and fats, agricultural policy, shipping policy, and large questions of that kind. Under the second head of the restoration of persons to normal conditions, I should class the large subject of demobilisation with certain other matters, such as housing, education, the prolongation for a period of those special powers which have been taken for war purposes, and the expulsion and exclusion of aliens and matters of that kind. There are other fields of work which may be classed under one or under the other head, such as the relations between employers and employed, the employment of women, and food supply. The mere catalogue I have given of some only of the matters involved in reconstruction is sufficient to show how tremendous a field is open for inquiry and work for a Minister of this kind. Our enemies are certainly not neglecting this field of work. I was struck by an article which was published in a German paper, the "Deutsche Politik," of 2nd June, upon the question of reconstruction in Germany, and that article showed how much attention our enemies are giving to this same field of work. The writer says: vice-chairman. Those Committees worked through Sub-committees, and, in cooperation with the great Departments of State, and a good deal of progress was made, as hon. Members will gather from a list of the Sub-committees which either have reported or are about to report. There is, for instance, a Committee on commercial and industrial policy, of which Lord Balfour of Burleigh is chairman, which has already presented a very important interim report. There is a Committee on agricultural policy, another on Army demobilisation, another on acquisition of powers, a Committee on coal conservation, a Committee on enemy aliens, a Committee on forestry, a Committee on the relations between employers and employed which is known as the Whitley Committee, a Committee on women's employment, a Committee on the review of education, and others. This shows that a good deal of work has already been done. In connection with these Sub-Committees several other Departmental Committees have been at work, mainly appointed by the Board of Trade or the Ministry of Munitions, both of which Departments have been very closely concerned with after-war problems and the creation and encouragement of war industries during the War. In fact, a good deal of work has been done.

I do not pretend to travel over the whole field, but I think it has become evident to everyone who is concerned in this matter that the time has come for taking a further step and for setting up a Department specially concerned with this great business of reconstruction. The work at present is to some extent scattered among the different Departments and not fully co-ordinated. The questions which arise in one Department are often closely connected with questions which arise more properly in another Department of work, and they ought to be considered together and not in watertight compartments. For instance, take the case of housing. You cannot sever the great question of housing after the War from the question of the supply of timber and other materials. The two ought to be considered and dealt with together. Again, the question of the employment of ex-soldiers is closely connected with the wide question of industrial conditions. Again, the control of supplies after the War cannot, I think, be fully dealt with without having regard to the fact of the enormous supplies which are and will be at the end of the War in the hands of different Government Departments. Those supplies must be dealt with and distributed, and it is well that they should be dealt with by a Department having control of the whole matter, including the import of supplies. Again, there are the great Government munition factories, and the very valuable machinery contained in them. They and the machinery must be considered and dealt with, and perhaps to some extent distributed, and it is well that the Department which concerns itself with that matter should have knowledge of the requirements of the country in that connection. Lastly, I think it is very desirable that, now that these matters are recognised to be of such great importance, there should be a Minister directly responsible to Parliament in this connection, a Minister who shall frame and put forward schemes, and who shall be responsible to Parliament for an explanation of the proposals which are made. I think that constitutes a strong argument in favour of setting up a Ministry of Reconstruction.

The functions of the Minister will, of course, not be to any substantial extent executive functions. The Department will be mainly advisory. The Minister will appoint Committees, or take over existing Committees, and receive their reports. He will institute on his own initiative experiments in matters connected with his functions. He will frame schemes for after-war action, or for action with a view to conditions which will arise after the War, and submit them to the War Cabinet, and he will indicate the Department by which those schemes could best be carried out. He will certainly not act in opposition to or in competition with any other Department. He will have conferred upon him certain powers now vested in other Departments of State. His powers will be not exclusive. They will not shut out the action of other Departments. They will be concurrent and will be exercised in co-operation with the other Departments. In short, it will be his duty to assist the other Departments, to provide them with information and with proposals, and to help them to build a bridge which will safely carry us over from war to peace conditions. We hope that the staff required will not be a large one, but it must be a skilled staff for work of this kind. I have purposely made my outline of the main provisions of the Bill short, and I hope the House will give its sanction to the proposals now made. The Clauses are mostly modelled on those in the new Ministry's Act. We propose to give the Minister of Reconstruction the duty to consider and advise upon the problems which may arise after the termination of the present War, and for that purpose he will have power to make schemes and such other powers of other Departments as may be transferred to him by Order in Council. Then follow other Clauses, including one which gives power to the Minister and one Secretary to sit in Parliament. I cannot tell my hon. Friend (Mr. Hogge) definitely at present what will be done about the Secretary, but I understand the present intention is not to appoint a Secretary. The Minister will be able to deal with questions in this House.

Is not the appointment of a secretary provided for in the Bill?

It is proposed to take power to appoint one.

They will appoint one.

It is further provided that what we know as a Minister without portfolio may sit in this House without reelection. Those Ministers are the products of war conditions. There are at present two of them who are Members of this House; the right hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. Henderson), the right hon. and learned Member for Dublin University (Sir E. Carson). Both have been appointed to office without portfolio, and it is proposed that they shall receive a salary. The question has been not unnaturally raised whether by so doing they vacate their seats. That was an important question, and it has sufficient substance in it to make it very desirable to have the matter settled. I propose to set that question at rest by including in this Bill Clause 6, which provides that these Ministers shall not by reason of their appointment be deemed to have been or to be incapable of being elected to this House.

Is this a permanent enactment, or only an enactment owing to an emergency of the War?

It is carefully limited to the Ministers appointed before the passing of this Act, so that it can only affect the two Ministers whom I have mentioned.

Has not the right hon. Member for Barnard Castle been receiving a salary up till now.

I have no doubt he has been receiving a salary. The question of his right to sit is one which I do not think it is my duty to deal with now. The point has been naturally raised whether he is entitled to sit. I think it will be the wish of the whole House that the point shall be settled, and that these Ministers should not be put to the trouble of re-election.

I think no Member of the House will belittle the importance of the work of reconstruction. The tasks to be dealt with are vast and urgent, and it is necessary even now while the War is still raging that the best thoughts of many of the best minds in the country should devote themselves to the problems that will arise immediately peace is concluded. As the Home Secretary has said, the late Prime Minister appointed a Reconstruction Committee which, with its Sub-committees, has been actively at work for a long time. In the late Government many of us gave very many hours to the detailed consideration of some of the proposals to which the Home Secretary has referred. I confess to feeling some doubt whether the proper head for this work should be a Minister. A Minister is a person who should exercise executive functions. There are one or two ancient offices which are more or less sinecures, but which survive, and to which small executive functions are attached—the Lord Privy Seal has no executive function—but in the main the acceptance of ministerial office means an office held by a man who exercises executive authority. That, as the Home Secretary told us, is obviously impossible in the case of the Minister of Reconstruction. The task of reconstruction is as wide as the task of the Government itself, and indeed even wider, for it has to deal with many questions which must be dealt with by voluntary organisations outside the ambit of Departments of the Government. The right hon. Gentleman has told us that the Minister of Reconstruction is not to have any executive functions, but at the same time he has mentioned that he will have transferred to him certain powers which now belong to other Departments. He has not told us what those powers are. He has not even hinted at any specific power which is to be transferred from any Department of the new Ministry, and, for my own part, I am at a loss to know what particular functions now exercised by any Department are to be transferred to this new Ministry.

It is quite plain, if we examine the long list of important topics which the Home Secretary has given us, that these matters must be dealt with in practical executive function by the existing Departments of State. Take the question of demobilisation. How is the Minister of Reconstruction to carry into effect any Orders for demobilisation? Necessarily that must belong to the War Office. There is the control of the Imperial supply of raw material. Can it be imagined that the Minister of Reconstruction is to have executive officers as a branch of his Department dealing with the supply of cotton, wool, or oil from overseas? The right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the limitation of alien immigration. I wonder what the Home Office would say if the actual execution of any Orders for the control of alien immigration were to be transferred from the Home Office to the Ministry of Reconstruction. There are questions of housing, education, trade, shipping, agriculture, and the relation of employers and employed. How can any of these great matters which have been discussed by the Sub-committees of the Committee of Reconstruction be dealt with except through the Departments concerned—the Local Government Board, the Education Department, the Board of Trade, the Shipping Department, the Ministry of Labour, or any other Department to which they properly attach? The right hon. Gentleman has said so, and in saying that has he not really undermined the case for the creation of a Ministry of Reconstruction? Let us imagine the Minister of Reconstruction in office and a Member desiring to address a question on any of these topics. Has the question to be addressed to the Minister of Reconstruction? If, for example, supposing a Member wishes to know what steps are to be taken to act upon the exceedingly important Report—the most important, I think, of any that have so far reached us from the Reconstruction Committee—on the relations between employers and employed. It is the Report of a Committee presided over by our own Chairman of Committees. If some Member wishes to ask how far that Report has received favour from the organisations of employers and employed, ought he to address the question to the Minister of Reconstruction, on the ground that the Report is one issued by a Sub-committee of his Department and set up under the Orders of his Department, or ought it to be addressed to the Minister of Labour? I think if it is not addressed to the Minister of Labour that that Gentleman would have serious ground for complaint. He alone can tell what replies have been received by his Department, which has been the one in close touch with the organisations concerned and has the duty cast upon it of circulating the Report. Similarly, with every other case, and I am at a loss to know what question can ever be addressed to the Minister of Reconstruction, unless in reference to what topics are being discussed by his own Department. I am not sure that we shall not find that in effect this Ministry will not be a Ministry for Reconstruction but a Ministry for overlapping, and that every topic with which it deals will be in process of being dealt with simultaneously by one of the existing Departments of State. Undoubtedly you want someone to supply initiative in bringing these matters forward. You want someone to co-ordinate their consideration; someone with a secretariat and a staff; something in the nature of an intelligent Department to obtain information and suggest schemes.

made some remarks which were inaudible in the Reporters' Gallery.

I would suggest to the hon. Member (Mr. Hogge) that it would be much better if he would not make these continual comments, but would allow the right hon. Gentleman to state his argument. The hon. Member will have plenty of time to develop his own views later.

I am rather disposed to share the view of the Home Secretary that these are functions which rather belong to the Chairman of an advisory committee than to a person who so far has always been regarded as an executive officer, a Minister of State, but if a Minister is necessary is it essential, after all, to create yet another new office? I have pointed out previously in this House, when considering the great multiplication of offices which is now taking place, that it would have been more proper to combine many of these new functions with one of the sinecure offices already existing, such as the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, which does not provide a week's work for an able-bodied man, as I know, having had the privilege of holding that office, or that of the Lord Privy Seal, who need not necessarily be a peer any more than the First Lord of the Treasury or the First Lord of the Admiralty. These are offices which by a slight reorganisation can be combined, if it is thought necessary to attach a salary to this post of Chairman of the Reconstruction Committee. If, however, it is considered essential to create a new Ministry, why, in Heaven's name, should it be necessary for him to have an Undersecretary sitting in Parliament, for his functions in any case would be modest enough, and his Parliamentary functions would be so exceedingly exiguous that I think it would need a stronger defence then has yet been given before the House would sanction the creation, not of one more new Government post, but of two? When the three offices—because the new office which the late First Lord of the Admiralty the right hon. Member for Dublin University is now filling is an additional post in the Ministry—are filled the Members of this House who will also be members of the Government will number no fewer than sixty. I have made a careful analysis, with the help of the existing books of reference, to see how many Members of this House are and will be members of the Government, and that is the total which I reach. When last I spoke on this subject, about five months ago, I mentioned that if all the Members of this House who were also members of the Government were simultaneously to attend one of its sittings they would more than fill, not one Treasury Bench, but three benches opposite. With the additions that have since been made and that are now contemplated they would now, if on some State occasion they were to attend en masse, fill the whole of that block opposite with the exception of the back bench under the Gallery and four seats on the bench behind. There are in addition twenty-three peers who are members of the Government, including the Household appointments, and there are five Gentlemen who have not got any seat in either House who also are members of the Government.

What about Parliamentary Secretaries?

The total number of members of the Government is eighty-eight. I think that there are eleven or twelve Parliamentary Private Secretaries. Many of them, I am glad to think, take a very independent view of their position, and I do not think it would be fair to assimilate them with members of the Government; but the present total of the Ministry, so far as I am able to ascertain, is now eighty-eight members. Since the outbreak of war there have been, including the Reconstruction Department which it is now proposed to create, nine new Departments of State created, of which the late Government was responsible for two, the Ministry of Munitions and the Ministry of Blockade. The Ministry of Blockade did not involve any addition to the number of Ministers. There was no Under-Secretary appointed, and the Minister himself also discharged the functions, as he still does, of Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs. The late Government also decided that it was necessary to create a Ministry of Pensions, and that proposal has been carried into effect by the present Government. In addition to those three they have added six new Departments of State, and but for the action of the House of Commons they would have had power to add no fewer than seven additional Under-Secretaries to the existing Government, numbering eighty-eight. When the new Government was formed, though many of the functions of the Board of Trade were transferred to the new Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Shipping and the Ministry of Food, it was proposed to add a second Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Board of Trade. That was resisted by some of my colleagues and myself, and was clearly disapproved by the House. That proposal was dropped. It was also proposed to take power to appoint two Under-Secretaries to each of those new three Departments, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Shipping, and the Ministry of Food. In view of the attitude of the House of Commons an Amendment to the Bill was accepted, and that proposal was struck out of the new Ministry Bill.

But so watchful had we to be that late one night—I well remember it was near midnight—we found that a House of Lords Amendment had been slipped into the Ministry of Pensions Bill giving power to appoint an Under-Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions. That having been noticed by us we raised objection in the House, and the Government agreed to disagree with the Lords Amendment. Further power was taken to appoint two Under-Secretaries both in the War Office and the Foreign Office. That power exists, but has not yet been acted upon, in view, I have no doubt, of the strong opposition evinced in the House of Commons, but we have succeeded in reducing the possible number of the Ministries to eighty-eight, which we now have, from ninety-five, which they would have been if all the proposals of the Government had been accepted. The desire to attain a century is very laudable in a cricket club, but is not so admirable in the construction of a Ministry, and I would beg the Government to set some limit upon their appetite for the creation of new offices. There is in view of Members of the House of Commons a very interesting chart showing the decline in the value of the German mark. It would, perhaps, be well, also, to put up another chart showing to Members the great extension of the British Government. I would make a further suggestion. We all remember the interesting map published by the late Sir Charles Booth, showing the state of London by maps, in which the worst districts, inhabited by what he called the vicious and more criminal classes, were marked with black patches. I suggest that the Government should issue a map of London—I am not for a moment suggesting that the Government Departments are comparable to persons of that class—in which the various Government Departments, offices, temporary buildings and hotels, should also be marked with black patches, and I think that the public would regard such a map with the greatest interest and with amazement.

Will the right hon. Gentleman also show in his chart the increase in the amount of work which has to be done?

Of course, there has been a vast increase in the work, and also a vast increase in the development of the functions of the different Departments.

Did not your Government create the most of them?

Indeed not. I have no doubt that there is a very considerable advance in the work of Government Offices and of functionaries, rendered necessary during the War. But I think that there is a widespread feeling in the House and in the country that the necessary limits have really been overpassed, and that the House will require to be somewhat more fully convinced than it is now that the offices under the Bill now before us are really essential in the national interests.

1.0 P.M.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend opposite has taken the view he does, because at the base of this Bill there is the idea that there is something to reconstruct. If you look at what is happening just now, surely it will be seen that we have to finish the War before we can think at all of reconstruction. If you are going to withdraw from the conduct of the War large bodies of men, and large numbers of officials of the various Departments, you will be doing the very thing which we are invited, day after day, to adjure from that Front Bench. It is perfectly obvious that before we can reconstruct we must have something to reconstruct. If this country is more tired of one thing than another, it is the prolonged interference by the Government in all those Departments of activity which used to characterise the life of this country. Instead of the people of this country wanting to be mollycoddled by Governments in the future, and particularly in the immediate future after the War, every business man who is concerned not only with his own enterprises, but with the enterprises of this country wants to be rid of every kind of Government interference. This proposal to set up a new Ministry, by whatever name you may call it, is obviously another attempt to have in the future further and continued Government interference with the activities of this country; and that is the main reason why I interrupted my right hon. Friend who was speaking. I dread this continued creation of Government appointments, because every one of them, as Members of this House know perfectly well, brings in its train hundreds of other officials. The experience of this House with regard to the duration of the War is that the Government Departments need to be combed out of all the able and fit men who ought to be fighting in the Army. There is not one Member of this House who could not put his finger, day after day, on building after building where there are far too many people doing far too little work. I could take any Minister on the Front Bench now to several Departments within 200 yards of this House, and could show them people who are supposed to be doing work, and I guarantee that they will be astounded at the kind of thing that proceeds. I could take my right hon. Friend round now to St. Ermin's Hotel where he would find a large number of officials waiting to place labour in different parts of the country; but before they can touch that work the Ministry of Labour, another Department, in the house of the Duke of Buccleuch, Whitehall, has got the (first handling of those people for whom work is to be found. There you have two sets of officials within 200 yards of each other, supposed to be dealing with the same class of men, at an interval of nine days. And so you could go on through every Department, where you could put your fingers on things of that kind. The strongest argument against this Bill is one which has been pressed by my right hon. Friend with regard to the creation of a further Ministry, but I need not elaborate that. I do not wish to detain the House at this stage of the Bill for long, but my main argument is that which I have urged, that what this country wants in future is liberty to get about its own business, liberty to build up again industries that have been broken down by Government interference during the War, and I am perfectly certain of this, that public opinion, the commercial opinion of this country, will not stand any further interference, beyond the period of the War, with their legitimate industry. This War has interfered far too much, and Government Departments have interfered far too much, with individuals. The greatness of this country has been built up by its brains and individual energy, and the sooner you let men use their brains and energies with complete liberty in their own enterprises, the greater will be the advantage and the better it will be for the country in the building up of a new future for it. I very much hope that my right hon. Friend will not content himself with a speech against the Bill, but that he will go into the Lobby with my right hon. Friend who has put down a Motion that the Bill be read a second time this day three months. I tell the Government quite frankly that if they have not got the brains in the different Departments to carry out the work which is contemplated, without the creation of a new Department, then the sooner those who are in the Departments go out to work the better.

I beg to move, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."

I do not wish to obstruct the Government in any way in the prosecution of the War, and I do not desire to take up any hostile attitude any more than my right hon. Friend or any of us. There are words in this Bill which I think make it easy for anybody who is a strong supporter of the Government to vote against the Bill. Those words are that the Bill is to do something after the termination of the War. We have been told that we should devote our full energies to the prosecution of the War, and here is a case in which a most complicated and difficult matter is brought before us by the Government, and we are asked to appoint machinery immediately to deal with all those great matters which my right hon. Friend mentioned, and nothing is to be done in connection with them until after the termination of the War. That ought to condemn the Bill, because we ought to put aside all those things for the present since the nation is concerned with the War. This country has an old-established method of looking into those matters that have to be dealt with. Whenever any matter becomes urgent, the old and constitutional way of dealing with it is that a Royal Commission is appointed to inquire and make recommendations. The Royal Commission conducts all its operations publicly. Any man in any part of the country can write to the Secretary, make suggestions, and get himself examined. Every proposal that he sends is looked into, and as the proceedings are public the people are educated with regard to the proposals. When the recommendations are made they are not a surprise to anybody, as public opinion is prepared for them. If a Royal Commission is considered too cumbersome, and that there-is no time for it, there is the alternative of a Parliamentary Committee, not a packed body, but a select Committee chosen by the Committee of Selection. That would also conduct its affairs in public, and public opinion would be brought along.

The procedure that is proposed is one which affects the position of Parliament and which tends to undermine its power. That is my reason for objecting to this Bill. I do not object to the purposes of the Bill, but I tell the Government I will give every opposition I can hereafter to every attempt to undermine the great functions of Parliament. This is a plain attempt of that kind. What did the right hon. Gentleman say about the Bill? He mentioned almost every great subject—agriculture, shipping, imports, everything—and this Ministry is to inquire into them all. How is it to inquire into them? It is to do so in secret. Who will know what it is doing? Nobody but the Prime Minister, and the whole thing will be built up in the darkness and obscurity that now surround all the actions of the Ministry. Suddenly a proposal will be forced upon us for which we will not be prepared and for which the country will not be prepared. I say that the thing has become a danger to the safety of the country at the present time. When I urge that the Second Reading of this Bill should be postponed for three months, it is only fair that I should suggest an alternative policy. The alternative policy is the old constitutional procedure carried on in the light of day, so that everybody will know what is going on, and the proposals, which will come before us in a year or two, will in that way be built up instead of by those wretched private bodies which everybody distrusts, and which I believe are most pernicious. I do ask the House to press their rights in this matter. We have been trying to get various inquiries made, and when we ask for Reports they are not laid before us. I ask, How can we discharge the important duties which our constituents place upon us if we are treated in this way? The only answer we get from the Government is that they are looking into this matter or into that. We have too many Ministers already. My right hon. Friend has mentioned a number of them. I am not satisfied with any one of those Ministers. I do not think they justify their existence. There is a Munitions Ministry, about which we hear a great deal of laudation, but there is great distrust in it in the country. It is supposed that it interfered with businesses instead of assisting them, and that the outlook would have been far greater if different arrangements had been suggested. I will say nothing about the Ministry of Blockade, because it is only the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs who has carried it on, and I must say has discharged the duties fairly well. The Ministry of Food is pursuing a very rocky road. There are two Ministries which seem to deal with matters covered by this Bill—that is, the Ministry of Labour and the Ministry of Pensions. Surely the recom- mendations of the Ministry of Labour are not confined to the period of the War, and must overlap largely in the field covered by this Bill. I also think that the recommendations of the Ministry of Pensions deal with the great work of reconstruction in the prevention of some of the dreadful sufferings which will fall on those people who have been injured in the War. We have eight new Ministries, and the country is not really satisfied with any of them, and we are making this rather striking addition to them to-day. I have said that this is an attack upon Parliament. The extent of that attack has been well illustrated by the figures given by my right hon. Friend. In nearly every Division the majority almost are paid members of the Ministry. I would appeal to the Government to consider Parliament in this matter, particularly as it is every day being put in a more difficult position. I appeal to Members of the House to protest against this, to realise the danger and waken up to it. There are many Members of the House who see the danger of accepting little offices of the Ministry and perhaps becoming Under-Secretaries to Ministers, and sacrificing for those slight temptations the magnificent position of an independent Member of this House who is sent here to give his opinion.

That really has nothing to do with the question before the House, which has nothing to do with the private secretaries to a Minister. The right hon. Gentleman must confine his attention to the subject under discussion.

Certainly. There is the question of particular Ministers who take part in Divisions. With all respect. I thought I was in order in putting that point of the good and independent character of the under-secretaries. As I understood it their independence was limited in accepting the position; therefore that strengthened the principle of official representatives in the House. That is the point I wanted to put, and it seems to me a fair argument, and not irrelevant to the subject. Perhaps I did exaggerate a little. One often does exaggerate things upon which one allows the mind to dwell. It has seemed to me for years that the growth of the Ministry was a serious danger to the authority of this House. I regard the House of Commons as the constitutional instrument for the Government of the country. [HON. MEMBERS: "Speak up."] I was saying that I regard the House of Commons as the constitutional instrument to aid in the government of the country, and the Ministry should be confined to a very small number. Mr. Gladstone, I think, felt that the Ministry should not exceed ten or eleven individuals, and perhaps six or seven under-secretaries, that is to say, not one-fourth of the number to which the present Ministry has swollen. I do think that the number is so vast that we ought certainly to hesitate before we make a considerable addition. However, that has been sufficiently put before the House, and I will now put what seems to me to be the strongest argument—the argument of expense. I took my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to task the other day for saying that it was not part of his business to try to save £100 here and £200 there. I quoted Mr. Gladstone against him. I must, however, say to-day that it is not a matter of one or two hundred pounds, but of many thousands of pounds; of thousands paid to individuals. We are appealing to the Government to consider the state of finances of the country. We are spending £8,000,000 a day, yet we come down here and spend time this afternoon in granting a salary of £5,000 a year.

Two thousand!

I think perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is confusing the appointments.

I am speaking on Clause 6 of the Bill which deals with the other Minister, and I thought I was quoting my right hon. and learned Friend correctly. We asked a question the other day, and we were told that the late First Lord of the Admiralty got a salary of £5,000 a year. If he were here, I would appeal to him not to take that salary at the present time. I think it requires a great deal of justification. I believe Ministers should rather consider whether, in the great emergency in regard to expenditure in which the country is placed, they ought not to abandon all salaries in excess of what the ordinary member of Parliament receives, instead of taking these new posts with great salaries attached. I believe the proposals of the Bill are very far-reaching and very untimely. They tend to upset the smooth working of our Parliamentary institutions, and committing Parliament to an expenditure from which the Government ought to shrink.

The proposals of the Government have been somewhat adversely criticised in the three speeches which have just been delivered. The late Home Secretary specially founded his argument against the Bill upon this tendency to the inflation of the Ministry, which, I suppose, would be probably held to carry with it the usual consequences of the depreciation of ministerial currency, or otherwise that the creation of the Ministry was the result of that. In these economic questions it is not always easy to decide between cause and effect. Notwithstanding there are many points on which I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington, and especially upon the question of publicity, that is to say, the necessity of taking the public into the confidence of the Government in these matters, I should find it very difficult not to support the Government in this Bill, because it marks a step forward in the great task which lies before the Government and the country—that of reconstruction. Up to the present we have had very little information indeed upon this important subject. For that reason I welcome very much the desire of the House and the country to consider further some of the matters which are involved. The question of reconstruction is far more important than the machinery which has been devised to deal with it. The machinery can be altered if we make up our minds what we want, and decide how we are going to get it. I believe, however, that in some ways the Home Secretary, in introducing this Bill, has been very unjust both to this Government and the late Government. We are now nearing the end of the third year of the War. I believe that during the last year and a half or two years a great deal has been done. Some of us are acquainted with the work of some of the various Committees. As to that of the Reconstruction Committee, that, I think, is a matter which will require more detail than has been given us. It is not enough for the country to know that a great deal of work has been done. We want, if possible, to know what conclusions have been arrived at, and what stage the Government has arrived at, because a great deal more will have to be done than has been done at the present time to enable any conclusions to be given effect to. More especially a great deal will have to be done to inform the public and educate them, so that they may accept such proposals as the Government decide to adopt. I myself can see no reason whatsoever for concealment in these matters.

There can only be two possible grounds for concealment. The one is that the publication of information at the present time might be of assistance to the enemies of this country and of the British Empire, and another may be that there might be delicate questions affecting our Allies which it would not be desirable to make public at the present time. But these things can, if need be, be dealt with in Secret Session. I should like to impress upon the Government that their desire should be in all these matters not to consider how little information they can give, but to determine to give all the information they possibly can. Nothing has impressed me more in this House than the difficulty which the private Member experiences in obtaining that information which is necessary for him to have if he has to make up his mind justly and properly on the great public questions upon which he has the responsibility of deciding. There seems to be, in connection with this question of reconstruction, a passion for concealment. As the House will remember, a few days ago, the Leader of the House, questioned upon this matter, said it had always been understood that these reconstruction matters ought to be treated as confidential. That struck me at once in this way: "By whom has it been understood?" I do not think it has been understood by the House. It must have been understood by the Government. I cannot see that that understanding is any reason whatsoever for the House accepting that position any longer.

I should like to remind the House that the first time I opened my lips here was to ask a question on this very subject of reconstruction. I asked rather a full question, and I received—as I thought then and think now—a very bald and a very evasive answer. I asked that we might be given the constitution of the Reconstruction Committee, the terms of reference, whether it related to our overseas Empire, and other matters of that sort. In reply I was given the names of the Committee. I was not given the terms of reference or any other information. I was told that the Committee had been constituted to consider the restoration of peace conditions. If that had been true, which it was not, the functions of that Committee were certainly not very valuable or very necessary. If it was merely to get back to where we were before the War, that is not, to my mind, the work of reconstruction. We want to get into a different position. We want to know how to alter the very numerous shortcomings of this country which existed, and which are now admitted. That this answer was not correct was shown by the fact that a fortnight afterwards, I think, in reply to another hon. Member, the terms of reference were given in answer to a question. The exact terms of reference might just as well have been given to me. I give this short history as an illustration of the attitude of the Civil Service generally towards private Members in this House who seek information. It is well known that in the majority of cases answers to questions by Members are framed by Civil servants, I passed on to Ministers, and read to the House. There are cases, of course, where Ministers themselves deal with questions; but I think the information is generally supplied to a busy man by his office, as must naturally be the case, and it is certainly not the habit of the Civil servant to give more information than he is obliged. The result is that Question Time has very largely degenerated into a game of hide-and-seek, played very skilfully between Civil servants and Ministers on the one hand, and Members of this House on the other, and I think those who play the game of hide generally win. There are exceptions, but they are rather rare. That is not a very desirable condition of affairs, and I hope that Ministers, on this subject, at any rate, will in future endeavour to reverse the position which I have described, and see that as much information is given as possible, and be frank with Members of this House and the country. I should like to add that, on the same day on which I asked my first question, I also asked for a list of the Committees which has been set up by the Government, and their terms of reference. That list was promised by the Leader of the House, but it is not yet available, and we are within a very short time now of the Summer Adjournment. Therefore, that list is not going to be of much use to Members of this House, even if we get it before the Adjournment, for some months to come.

To return to the substance of this question. I am most emphatic in the view that, as we were unprepared for war, do not let us be unprepared for peace, and on those grounds I should resist to the utmost of my power the attempt in the Amendment proposed by my right hon. Friend to shelve the question for three months. Even if this is not the best machinery to be set up by the Government for dealing with this question—and I hope it may be dealt with more in the light of day than it has been in the past—at any rate it is some machinery for dealing with it, and bad machinery is better than none. At all events, we shall have a Minister sitting in this House, and I am not so unsanguine as the late Home Secretary in thinking that this House will not by some means or another manage to extract some information from the right hon. Gentleman when we have him sitting here. At the present time all this reconstruction work is being dealt with by people who, I am afraid, the country at large regards as in many cases intelligent cranks. Some of them, no doubt, are men of high reputation and value, but the general impression in the country with regard to the people who are dealing with reconstruction at the present time—I am not referring to the committees they have set up, but to the Reconstruction Committee itself—is that the Committee lacks practical character and has too many academic and too few practical people connected with it.

It will be very much easier to obtain information in this House when we are able to ask questions direct of the Minister of the Department responsible for these matters. Up to now it has rather looked as if we had a Department of able gentlemen, or a committee of able gentlemen, who are busy preparing a set of nostrums which, when the time comes, they will expect the public to swallow whole. I am quite sure the public will do nothing of the sort. The public has learnt many lessons during this War, and one of them is certainly the lesson that they like to look before they leap. After three years the Government has told the country nothing whatsoever from a practical point of view of what has been done. We have merely been given general descriptions. There has been a Report of the Whitley Committee. There has been, I think, a short summary of the conclusions of the Balfour of Burleigh Committee on Imperial Preference, and, I think, one other. But we know—and I attach great importance to the remarks of the right hon. Member for Islington on this point—that the evidence before these Committees has not been given in public, and I know myself that there is most valuable evidence taken in private which is not accessible and which it would be most interesting for this House to have before it, even if some of it had to be expurgated. We can be quite certain that this work, if it is to be useful at all, must command the confidence of the people of this country. That confidence will not be secured by ignorance, and that confidence extended by the Government in this matter is the only way in which confidence can be obtained. It is undoubtedly true, I think, that next to the proper conduct of the War comes proper preparation for peace, and, therefore, I am not one of those who say that everything must be set aside until after the War, because you can never recover lost years.

I will give a small illustration. I understand that the cotton supply of this country is a subject of very urgent importance. The industries of Lancashire depend upon it. The demand in other countries for cotton has been extending very rapidly, particularly in the United States, and it is becoming more and more imperative that the possibilities for the production of cotton within the Empire should be developed to the utmost. It is known that within the Soudan, for instance, there are large areas in which cotton could be developed. Any small expenditure, or even substantial expenditure, that might be incurred now to lessen the period elapsing before any large extension of production can take place, as regards irrigation work or other initial developments necessary for the purpose should be incurred. Do not let us be frightened about it, but, confident of our power to win the War, let us prepare to reap the fruits of the War and not lose these all-important years of preparation. If satisfied that these things ought to be done, let us spend the money and do it at once, otherwise we shall be going through a period after the War when our working people will find that the market for their labour will be restricted for want of material. This is merely an illustration of some things that call for attention, and it is the duty of this House to see that they do not wait.

I hope that later in the day we shall receive from the Government some expression of opinion as to the views of the Government upon this matter of expenditure. I hoped to raise it on the Vote of Credit, but had not the opportunity, and I lay stress upon it in view of the exhortations which were addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer by the late Chancellor of the Exchequer even to cut down what he himself described as necessary expenditure for the War. That, of course, to me is a fatuous proposition, and I should regard it as almost equally fatuous to put off expenditure of which the value can be demonstrated, and which may make all the difference in the trying times to come. Then there are other matters on which I should like to be assured that something is being done. We have no knowledge as to what is being done as regards a census of machinery. I have no doubt a great deal has been done. Those of us who have taken the trouble to acquaint ourselves with some of these matters know that it is alleged by responsible people that in Germany the position, functions and capacity of every piece of machinery in the country is known, and, as far as humanly practicable, the uses to which it is to be put, immediately after the War, have been scheduled. It may or may not be true, but it would be much safer on our part to assume that it is true. Are we doing anything in this matter? The House and the public are anxious to be assured at the earliest possible moment that the transition period after the War is going to be properly safeguarded. That is one of the things upon which the people of this country will insist, and we should like an assurance upon that point. Then there is the very large question of the development of Empire resources and the development on lines which would enable the State to profit by them. Is that question being considered and seriously gone into? Has the possibility of the extension of that policy been considered and the lines upon which it could be advantageously extended. This is a matter which should not be left until after the War. There is another question that has often been raised in this House, and it is as to how far the Government have got in the consideration of the machinery overseas both in foreign countries and our own Empire in regard to the work of Trade Commissioners and Consuls. Are the schemes ready? These are all matters of considerable im- portance. I do not think it necessary to refer to domestic questions which we know have been engaging the attention of the Reconstruction Committee. There is, for instance, the question of the relations between Labour and Capital. All these matters should not be left to be dealt with in a hurry at the conclusion of the War, and we must be prepared. There are some questions which will not arise until after the War, such as alien emigration and the question of trading with aliens—

The hon. Member has taken the opportunity of this Bill to review all these topics, but I do not think this is the right opportunity to do it. The question is whether a Ministry is to be set up to consider these matters. That is the issue, and these particular questions are not the issue.

I thought it would be in order to tell the House what has been already done in the three years that have passed, and I was merely mentioning what is the position, and asking whether these questions are being dealt with seriously or whether they are going to be left to the new Ministry which the Government is now proposing. Of course I have no desire to overstep your ruling, Mr. Speaker, with a detailed discussion of those matters. I have only touched the fringe of those questions, but I wish to emphasise the very great importance of this question. These great questions should not be dealt with in a hole-and-corner way, and I think the Government would have been on stronger ground if they had come before the House and reviewed the position. I think they should let us know exactly where we stand when they make these changes in machinery. I hope this Bill will result in a complete change of method, and that in the future we are going to have light instead of darkness.

My last point illustrates one of the evils with which the Committee on Expenditure has just been set up to deal. The House is asked to agree to a new policy. In this case particularly I am not for a moment prepared to say that the cost of the Department which it is proposed to set up should determine the decison of the House of Commons, because whether it is cheap or expensive we must have adequate machinery; but while I say that, I also wish to emphasise that in any new policy brought before the House the element of cost is certainly information which should be available, and which the House should be aware of at the time it is asked to decide upon the policy All we have been told is what it is proposed to pay the head of the Department. Surely with our unhappy experience of the past of the cost of setting up some of these Departments it should have been possible for the Treasury to supply the House with some estimate of the total cost of the Department which it is now proposed to establish. Even a rough estimate would be better than none at all. I should like to draw attention to what I regard as a very important matter of principle. I think an estimate should be supplied, and I hope before the Debate concludes some idea of what this new Department is estimated to cost will be supplied. Our Civil servants who have been dealing with these matters should be able to form some very clear idea of the staff that will be required during the first year, and what the cost of providing buildings will be, and we ought to know how much per annum in the first year or two we may expect the scheme to cost. I hope the criticisms I have made will not be taken in the least as being in opposition to the Government, and I merely wish the Government to understand the attitude of hon. Members who desire to perform their duty to this House and the country, and who have not the advantage of sitting on the Treasury Bench which includes the very numerous members of our Government Departments.

I think this is a most disappointing Bill. If there is one subject which causes us an anxiety and worry it is as to what is to happen after the War to our industries, and to everything which has been disturbed by the War. This Bill makes no proposals for anything in a concrete form, and it is merely setting up something to make paper propositions. What it is proposed should be done is that there shall be some inquiry, some recommendation, and some scheme prepared upon what? There is no definition as to whether the reconstruction is to relate to science, art, education, medicine, or to anything else. It is a general reconstruction Bill, and one which is to be limited by the small sum of £2,000 to be paid to one officer, and such other sums as the Treasury may find themselves able to vote for other services. There is no suggestion here as to that which the manufacturers in the country were hoping might be produced, some Government Department which would undertake the testing, experimenting, and the dealing with proposals for the setting up after the War of new industries for which the machinery created during the War could be used. At the present time there are very many proposals which are in the minds of some people, but regarding which it is difficult to determine whether they could be practically carried out. If the schemes are to be prepared, and if only recommendations are to be made at the end of the War, we shall just be then about beginning to ask ourselves what may be done, instead of being in a position to determine how we are to do. This Bill, therefore, while it proposes only to inquire, and to prepare, and to recommend, has no suggestion in it that it is going to test, going to experiment, and going to investigate.

Why not?

Why not! Because you cannot make investigations unless you have something connected with the Bill which would allow you to spend a great deal more than is apparently contemplated to be spent in this Bill. The vast realm of our industries at the present time is in a state of chaos because it has been disturbed, necessarily and rightly disturbed, for the carrying out of the main necessity of munitions for war. Machinery has been introduced, which afterwards will not be needed for the particular purposes for which it is now employed. To suggest that we are going to have schemes only prepared, without their being tested or carried out, and that it is to be a Department that is to deal with these questions through one Minister, who is to have the right to go into other Departments and investigate, would look as though this Minister is to have a kind of roving commission over all the other Departments, instead of having a Department self-contained and capable of carrying out any investigations, and which, by reason of what it did carry out, would give confidence.

I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not want to misrepresent the Bill. It is not at all as he describes it. It would give full power to the Ministry to conduct experiments, make tests, and carry on work on its own account.

If it is so proposed to carry out experiments and make tests, that is precisely the point I wanted to make, but as the Bill is it suggests that the Ministry is to conduct inquiries, prepare schemes, make recommendations, and that this making of recommendations is for the purpose of organisation and development and not for the purpose of initiating. I want to see the proposals make in such a form as would mean not merely organisation but the initiation and carrying out of new industries, such as at the present time we are not carrying out. The manufacturers of this country at the present moment are seeking among themselves for opportunities to employ after the War a very large body of the people whom they have trained during the War for mechanical and other purposes and processes, and who have never been accustomed to them before. That which they need is to have the co-operation of a Department to enable them when the War is over to carry out the same processes, to manufacture something that has not been made before, by the people who have thus been trained during the War in processes of which they had had no experience. This Bill, I hoped, would have made some general reference to that, but there is only the bald statement that the Ministry is there for promoting organisation and development after the present War. I suggest that we want to be doing something during the War, and not that it is to be only after the War that these investigations are to be made. We have at the present time a large body of workers who will never return, when the War is over, to the original occupations in which they were engaged, and unless some like occupation is found for them in mechanical or other industrial departments we shall have a tremendous difficulty with these people, who have a distaste for the previous work in which they were engaged by reason of the new life and wages they have earned in mechanical operations in which they have been engaged during the War. The proposal to make recommendations, as the Bill will make people imagine it is but for the explanation of the Home Secretary, without testing, and promoting, and initiating that which is to be done after the War, would, therefore, be a very empty and idle kind of proposal to which to ask this House to consent.

The suggestion has been made that there might have been an estimate given as to what this Ministry is likely to cost. I hope they will never dream of putting any limit on what the Ministry can spend. To suggest that you are going to nave an estimate and that the Ministry cannot go beyond that sum without having to come to Parliament for more money will immediately limit the possibility of dealing with experiments, making tests, and carrying out investigations, because no one can possibily foretell what any of these investigations may cost. We have already set up, in connection with the Ministry of Munitions, a Department that deals with inventions connected with munitions. I suggest that that Department should be kept alive after this, not as a Department for dealing with inventions connected with munitions but with inventions connected with national industries, so that anything that is proposed and of which the manufacturer would not be disposed himself to make a test should be submitted to this National Inventions Department, and that they should carry out the tests exactly as they do at the present time in regard to munitions of war. There is an excellent body of men already in existence in Princes Street investigating problems solely concerned with the War, and it would be an immense pity that they should be turned adrift from what they are doing now instead of being available after the War to investigate inventions with regard to national industries. We want to foster new ideas, and to assist people who have new ideas and cannot see precisely the way in which they can be carried on. We want an Experimental Department, and if this Ministry is about to undertake the experimenting, as I gather it is, and if it is about to undertake the research, as I gather it is, then the sum it will need to spend will be a very vast sum. While we are spending millions a day on war, however, we should not hesitate to spend a million a year, if need be, in connection with the development of new industries. While it is suggested that there should be an estimate prepared as to what the Department is going to be saddled with, I hope very strongly that no attempt will be made to place any limit on the money that is to be available for the Department and the Ministry; neither should there be any limit to the investigations carried out, because of the innumerable resources at hand for the Ministry to tackle if they have the money and means of dealing with them.

I hope the House will agree with the Bill. The only fault I have to find is that it is not wide enough in its scope. The definition seems to me to be too small, and I think there will be a feeling of disappointment among those who have been looking forward to so much being done in connection with reconstruction when they read the words of the Bill without being able to read into them the explanation of the Home Secretary as to the work which the Department is to undertake, investigations, tests, and experiments, and not merely preparing schemes. I have made my criticism that it was a paper business, but if it is not to be a paper business, but a practical one, as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, then in Committee the Bill will have to be seriously amended in order to make it agree with the new definition that has been given. The whole of the country is looking forward with apprehension as to what may result to the industries of the country after the War, and to imagine that any body of men in this House should say, "We have got to wait three months before we look at this Bill again," is really playing with the trouble which is besetting us all, and is not seriously appreciating the difficulties our industries are in. Neither is it estimating some of the unrest which some of us who have been making inquiries round the country have found existing, not only in the minds of manufacturers, but in the minds of the workpeople of this country, as to what is to happen to them after the War, after they have left off making munitions. Therefore, to suggest that this Bill should be postponed for three months is trifling with people who are worried at the present time, and will cause more anxiety to men who are wondering whether after the War is over their occupation will not be gone, and to the men who are coming back from the War who are wondering as to whether when they come back there will be any work for them to do, unless some of these new industries are developed and some further work is forthcoming that did not exist when they themselves went away. I hope better counsels may prevail with the right hon. Gentleman who has moved that this Bill should be deferred, because it would be an appalling commentary upon the House of Commons, which is urging now and then that everything is being done by Ministers and nothing is being done by the House, to find a right hon. Gentleman who himself once occupied an office in the Government standing up to say, "We must wait a little longer, and while we are waiting the country is languishing.

I agree very much with what the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken has said with regard to the vagueness of the Bill, and that is particularly so in regard to Ireland. I speak from my experience in Ireland of previous Bills which have set up new Ministries. I particularly call to mind the position of the Food Controller. The Food Controller when his office was set up had no special directions as to carrying out his powers in Ireland. We have tried over and over again to get the promise carried out that we should have a Director of Food Control in Ireland. It has never come about, simply because when the Bill was passing through this House steps were not taken to insure that in Ireland the work of the Food Controller should be properly carried out. In this Bill there is also that failure. I see nothing in the Bill to assure us in Ireland that reconstruction will be carried out in Ireland and will not be confined to this country, and I say that particularly with regard to the development of munition making. In the case of Ireland, for some time after the War began we had very great difficulty in getting the Government to agree to starting munition factories. After great difficulty and delay we got several established, but it is of the greatest urgency that before the War comes to an end the position of these munition factories in Ireland should be secured. Engineering has been very backward in parts of the South and West of Ireland, but by the starting of these munition factories a chance has been given of developing engineering industries in those parts of Ireland.

2.0 P.M.

Now it is of the utmost importance, when this Bill is passed into law, that whoever is in charge of the work of reconstruction in Ireland shall see that these factories are properly equipped so that after the War is over they shall be carried on as engineering works suitable for the purposes of peace. That is especially so in regard to the munition factories at Cork, Galway, Waterford, and Dublin would be the greatest irony in the case of these munition factories if. under the scheme of reconstruction, they should all be competing for a particular form of enineering development. Before the War comes to an end spheres of influence should be arranged for these various factories, so that each should take up at the conclusion of the War definite engineering work instead of all of them perhaps competing for the same class of engineering work. That is particularly urgent because of the lamentable way in which the Government has failed properly to equip these factories. The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, who is an expert in these matters, would be surprised to learn that there is not one 2-inch automatic machine in the whole of Ireland. How is it possible to have reconstruction after the War ff these munition factories even now are not properly equipped with the best automatic machines. I do feel that in this Bill vagueness is a fatal blot, and I do support the hon. Member who has just spoken when he says that in Committee it should be put on the much more definite lines which the Home Secretary has indicated. If he means the Bill to be carried out much more definitely than the words in the Bill at present stand, I hope when we come to Committee stage that will be undertaken. I see no indication, either, in this Bill that the Ministry is anything more than a revising and recommending body. In the case of Ireland it is to my mind absolutely essential when this Bill comes into operation that at the very start a definite Department, or office of the Government in Ireland, corresponding to your Reconstruction Ministry here, should be fixed upon, and I see no better body than the Ministry of Munitions in Ireland for that purpose. I do not want to see vague powers handed over to some vague Department in Dublin Castle, but from the beginning I want to see the Ministry of Munitions in Dublin equipped with proper powers to carry out schemes of reconstruction, not merely at the end of the War, but before it has come to an end. I think that is of the utmost importance, and certainly when we come to the Committee stage I shall take steps to try to make the Bill much more definite in these respects.

I thought the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken was one of those who supported a Parliament in Dublin. If that is so, it would seem tome his observations should be addressed to the Parliament in Dublin, and not to the Parliament here.

If the right hon. Gentleman will allow the Parliament in Dublin to start to-morrow, I shall certainly withdraw everything I have said.

I want to stop it. I do not know whether I can or cannot. The hon. Gentleman opposite (Sir Croydon Marks) seemed to be under the impression that the millenium would ensue as soon as there was another Government Department. I do not agree. I think this Bill is a great mistake. We have set up any quantity of Government Departments. I believe at the present moment we have ninety-one ministries, and I cannot say that with the exception of the Law Department of the Government, any of them have been a success. If I was under the impression that this was going to do good in the future, that would be a totally different thing, but it seems to me from our experience that it is very much more likely to do harm than good. I was sorry to hear the hon. Gentleman opposite, who has great commercial and business experience, talk about spending money on the work of this new Department, and insisting that the House of Commons should not in any way limit the money to be spent, as if there was money available from all sources for everything at the present moment, whereas as a matter of fact we are spending a great deal too much. What we want is not a new Department to spend more money, but a new Department to prevent the existing Departments spending as much as they do. That is essential if the country is to remain prosperous. We have not enough money to-day for all these extraordinary things, and we shall have less as the War goes on. There is one point in this Bill as to which I intend to move an Amendment when we come to Committee. It is to me a vital point, and a vital defect in the Bill. The Bill enables the new Minister to have powers given him by Orders in Council. That, being interpreted, means by the Prime Minister. That is to say, they are setting up a dictator, and we here, with all the experience we have had through the Defence of the Realm Act, are going again, unless this is altered in Committee, to make the mistake of giving vague and indefinite powers to the Prime Minister for the time being. If that is to be the general effect of Bills passed in Parliament, why not do away with the House of Commons altogether and say at once that the Government are the ablest and cleverest people that have ever existed in this country, and that we will give them full powers to do what they like both in financial and other matters. Then we need not come, because we should merely be a debating society. I object to being a debating society. I like the House of Commons to be the governing body of the country, and not a single individual Minister or a number of Ministers.

And to pass no Bills.

Well, not Bills which are unnnecessary. I quite admit that I should not object to a little interregnum. I have never concealed my opinion. I am afraid that I have an appointment at the present moment, or I should stay and vote against the Second Reading of the Bill.

I would like to join in the protest made by some hon. Members against the policy of secrecy which has so far been carried out by the Reconstruction Committee. Other Members have complained of the want of information as to the work of that Committee. I have twice asked the Leader of the House within the last few weeks questions regarding local government, to deal with which I understand, the Reconstruction Committee has appointed a Sub-committee. Something like a week ago I asked if the right hon. Gentleman would give the names of the members of that Sub-committee and the reference to it. He referred me to a written answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Mr. King), in which it was stated that the appointment, proposition, and terms of reference to the Sub-committees of the Reconstruction Committee were treated as confidential by the present Government as they were by the late Government. I put another question down this week, asking what possible reason there was why the names of the members of those Sub-committees and the terms of reference should not be made public, and whether, in view of the great interest in local government in this country the Prime Minister would state who were the members of the Subcommittees appointed to consider the question of local government after the War and the reference on which those Subcommittees were acting. I got practically the same answer. I was referred to the previous answer of my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset, and that is where the matter rests at present. As one who has taken a great deal of interest in one phase of local government in the great County of London, I cannot for the life of me understand why the Leader of the House should have given me that answer. I can quite understand that there may be some questions that are being considered by the Reconstruction Committee in regard to which it is highly desirable that the terms of reference should not be made public, but I cannot for the life of me understand why the names of any Subcommittees on this question of local government should not be made public.

Local government in this country is almost as important as membership of this House, and in many parts of the country, and particularly in London, there is a very great interest in these questions. I do not think that any information given on the question of local government would be of any use to the enemy. I am quite certain that those of us who have been connected with local government are only too willing and anxious to help the Government or to give them any information that will help them to come to any decision on new phases of local government that may arise after the War, but it is quite impossible for anybody to help either the Government or the Committee if we do not know the names of the Committees or the terms of reference. Everybody knows that there are at least two, if not more, different views as to how local government should be conducted. When you consider the population of the county of London and the different phases of local government with which it deals every Member will admit that all kinds of new questions are probably bound to arise after the War, and the Government ought to tell us what sections of opinion are represented on this particular Committee set up to deal with local government. Are they representative local government people? Do they represent the different phases of local government life I There have always been two big parties, so far as London local government is concerned, and on many of the local government bodies in London there has also been the Labour party. We are entitled to know if those parties are represented on this Committee. Therefore I join with other hon. Members in strongly protesting against this policy of secrecy which seems to have been followed by the Reconstruction Committee up to now, and which seems to surround their proceedings. I do not know whether the Minister in charge of the Bill could give us any promise or pledge that at any rate in the future we shall know the members of the Committees and the terms of reference, provided, that they do not give away any war secrets. Personally, I hope that, before this Debate is concluded, we shall have some authoritative statement that something is going to be done on this question.

Other Members have spoken about the cost of setting up new Ministries. Those who heard the Debate on the Vote of Credit the other day must be really alarmed at the expense of new Government Departments. We are gradually increasing the cost of the government of this country; it is growing by leaps and bounds. Until now there has been no particular Minister in charge of this Reconstruction Department. There has been a Committee which I believe has been conducted by the Cabinet or by members of the Cabinet. I understand that the Prime Minister was chairman, and that the present Secretary of State for India (Mr. Montagu) was vice-chairman. They have been able to do the work which we were given to understand to-day has been already done in this unofficial way. Where is the necessity now for setting up this new Ministry, with all this expense and all these offices? I understand that in the War Cabinet, as now constituted, there are at least four members, excluding the Prime Minister, who practically have no portfolios at all. They are receiving high salaries, and I certainly think that we ought to have some statement from the Government why some of those Ministers cannot take charge of the Department proposed by this Bill, instead of setting up a new Minister with a new salary and all the other expenses attached. I am quite convinced, from the Debate to which I listened the other day, that it has become necessary that we should stop spending the money we are now spending on Government Departments. I hope that before this Debate concludes we shall get some answer to the question whether some of the Ministers without portfolio could not quite well take charge of this Department and carry out the work dealt with in the Bill.

Of the making of new Ministries in these days there is no end. If anyone were so inquisitive or so impolite as to ask the Government to say what good is to come to the nation or to any considerable section of individuals inside the nation from the creation of some of those Ministries, I am afraid the Government would be hard put to it to find not merely a convincing reply, but even a plausible reply. Officialism, very often of a very bureaucratic character, has been much swollen and strengthened by recent, developments. The ever-growing number of Cabinet Ministers, both with and without portfolios, of Parliamentary Secretaries and Controllers and Under-Secretaries, all drawing salaries from the Government purse, is a distinct danger to Parliamentary government and to democratic institutions. We are extending that process by the creation of this Ministry and by the setting up of a sort of Controller of Reconstruction. I do not doubt that we shan soon hear that another hotel has been commandeered as a domiciliary edifice for the new Department, and that another large staff of officials has been duly installed. It has been asked why this work could not be done by those who already have but few duties, such as the Chancellor of the Duchy.

I am going to express my opinion quite frankly on the matter. I express the view—I give it for what it may be worth—that this office would not have been established at the present time but for questions of political expediency. It became necessary to effect certain changes in the Ministry of Munitions and also to increase the debating power of one front Ministerial Bench, which for many months has been at the lowest possible ebb and has involved a strain upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer which has almost reached breaking point; indeed, he has had to attempt the impossible. The Prime Minister, therefore, resolved to call in the imaginative and brilliant but rather wayward and erratic genius of Mr. Churchill. It was something of a gambler's throw, apparently based on the assumption that Mr. Churchill would either help to repair the broken fortunes of the Ministry or else secure for it a dramatic collapse. Having got so far, the question arose as to what should be done with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hoxton (Dr. Addison), then the Minister of Munitions. As Minister of Munitions he had been well-intentioned but rather weak. He did not understand the labour question, especially in its newer phases, and he was not very well advised. The mishandling of labour policy on the part of the Ministry of Munitions was the primary cause of a good deal of labour unrest and, on one occasion, took the country much nearer to the edge of an industrial precipice than is realised by most Members of this House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hoxton used to remind me of the Irish pilot who was boasting one day that he knew every hidden rock in the waters through which he was taking the ship, when just at that moment there was a terrific crash, and he said, too late: "There you are, there is one of them."

The Prime Minister was determined not to drop his Hoxton pilot. He owed many obligations to the right hon. Gentleman, who had been faithful among the faithless and who, in the far-off pre-war days of the Insurance Act, was almost the only doctor in the country who had a good word to say for that measure. How then to scrap him and reward him at the same time? Then there came to the aid of the Prime Minister his brilliant Celtic intuition. There were not enough Government Departments, so another must be created with the right hon. Gentleman at its head. Since the Prime Minister had already created every possible Ministry that could by any stretch of imagination be supposed to be associated with the problem of the War, the one thing to do was to create a further Ministry to deal with problems that would arise when the War was over. I have no doubt that I am a heretic, but I distrust profoundly these ill-digested, ill-considered inspirations of the Prime Minister, who persuades himself that he gets rid of difficulties by a gesture and who changes the whole recruiting system as he steps on board a railway train. He does not believe that the days of miracles are over, and he thinks that the walls will fall every time he sounds the trumpet, which is very frequently. There is no Member of this House who realises more clearly than I do the enormous gravity and importance of the problems that will arise at the close of the War. It is because they are so vital, so momentous, so tremendous, that I think it the height of folly to relegate them to a Department without executive authority with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hoxton at its head, in order merely that political expediencies may be accommodated. That is not the right way to deal with a problem of this kind.

The new Ministry will mark another advance in State bureaucracy. We have had during this War a great deal of very stupid and uninspired bureaucracy, which lives and moves and has its being in a world of its own, that is not a real world and that is not the world of the masses of the people outside, a kind of bureaucracy which believes that you can make the people happy by having them all numbered, that you can make people miserable by omitting to index them in some way, and that Whitehall, as represented by the staff of a commandeered hotel, knows far better what is good for the people than the people know what is good for themselves. That is the whole principle upon which the thing works. I believe profoundly in the need for economic and social reconstruction after the War, but that the experiments that are to come must come not from some secret Committee or some secret Department, but must spring from the experience and the life of the people, with the consent and approval of the people, and must be worked and governed by the people themselves. If that does not happen, you are not going to get reconstruction on the best possible lines. I am very glad that a protest has been made from various parts of the House to-day against the method which the Government has so far pursued on the question of reconstruction. So far the Government has faced these problems almost surreptitiously. There have been secret meetings of secret committees. I do not think we have ever been told how many Committees are at work on this matter, which of the many war problems they are exploring, who are the terms of the committees, what are the terms of reference, and in what way or for what reason these Committees are appointed. This House ought not to be kept in the dark in vital matters of this kind. Are Members of the House of Commons to be treated as if they were so many children? The House itself ought to exercise its authority to a far greater extent than it has done and say that this is not a matter for this or that secret Committee, but that this is a matter for the nation and for the House of Commons, as representing the nation on these fundamental questions.

If the after-war problems of reconstruction are to be handled on the lines on which they have been handled, it will result in nothing but over-centralised bureaucracy and bungling. Just as I hold that a price, both in lives and in treasure, has had to be paid for bungling during the War, so I hold that the price will have to be paid for stupidity and incompetence when the War is over. It is a point gained that we should have a Department presumably responsible to Parliament and a Minister who can be questioned on matters that affect the whole future of the realm. But as the main function of his Department would appear to be to consider and advise other Departments upon these great questions, and to conduct inquiries and make recommendations without Executive authority, it is very doubtful whether he will ever be in a position to make a definite and authoritative statement in this House upon any matter in regard to which he is questioned.

We are entitled to some further and more precise enlightenment as to the powers and functions of the new Department. The National Service Department was born as by magic in the mind of the Prime Minister. It occurred to him as a good idea, and, of course, the Prime Minister is far too busy to consider details of any sort, and, as a consequence, the National Service Department has proved an expensive white elephant to the country. Are we going to add to our interesting collection of white elephants by this new Department? Has the matter really been thought out with some degree of thoroughness and research? It is a vital matter. It is vital to the future of our people. Is this the best way in which to prepare for the new situation, whose tremendous consequences will be admitted by all? Is the new Ministry being set up because it is the best method of filling a gap, or because a displaced Minister has to be fixed up with another appointment? That is quite a straight issue so far as the Front Bench is concerned. The after-war problems cover an immense field. They touch every aspect of our national life. War is terrible in its destructive force, and there are still many people who do not realise that many of our social and economic arrangements have broken down under the stress and strain of the past three years, and that many other links will snap when the still fiercer economic strain following the War is applied to them. The effect of the War in many parts of our economic life has resembled the effect of dropping a number of bombs upon slum property. The question of rebuilding becomes urgent. There are great questions of agriculture, of the re-peopling under a juster system of land tenure of the countryside, questions of trade and of commerce, fiscal questions, education question, labour questions, questions of the relation between capital and labour, of the status of the workman, of the distribution of the nation's wealth.

In other words, there is undoubtedly involved a revolution in our national life. That revolution will come in any case, but it may come in very different ways and with very different manifestations and consequences. It may come as the result of far-sighted statesmanship and clear, unerring vision, of wise direction and guidance, with the knowledge and cooperation and consent of the people, in which case it will come possibly without serious dislocation, and there is no man of healthy and sane mind who does not appreciate the enormous advantages of that method of the change coming about. Gigantic changes must now come in any case, and woe betide us if, as a result of sloth, timidity, lack of imagination, or cringing to established interests, we do not provide new bottles for the new wine. Then will the changes come with violence and with social explosion and disturbance, the consequences of which are incalculable and not too pleasant to contemplate 1s the Government really alive to what is going on, to the issues of weal and woe which are now being shaped, and are we to understand that all this is going to be solved by relegating it to the Reconstruction Committee which you propose to create to make inquiries, to issue advice, to do its work, as the right hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) said, by Orders in Cooncil outside the control of this House, and to be under the control of a very amiable Minister of very average ability? I think the whole future is too serious to be played with in that way. What is to be the relation of the new Department to other Departments? Is it to be an advisory board? Is it to spend its days and nights giving good advice which no one is obliged to accept or to make any use of? If the new Department spent, for example, a month in drawing up a memorandum of agricultural reconstruction would the Board of Agriculture be obliged even to read the Report? The scope and functions of the new Department are certainly not clearly defined. What is wanted least of all in this matter is superficial window-dressing, or lulling the mind of the country into a sense of false security by persuading it that something is being done, whereas the Ministry set up under this Bill may really mean little and accomplish less. Has any headway been made, to take one illustration, with the big problem of demobilisation. Is the new Department going to tackle that, and if so, will it be in conjunction with other Departments and if so, with what Departments?

We really ought to have more information on the whole question before agreeing to the passing of this measure. Demobilisation in itself is a problem of the first magnitude, and unless there is the utmost foresight it will involve the most serious dislocation and social chaos. I can well understand that when the mind and heart of the nation are being held by the smoke and fire of the battlefield, and by all that is being endured there, they have little thought to give to what lies beyond. But indeed what lies beyond the War is a not unimportant part of the problems of the War, and what will the millions who are now fighting say if on their return they find that the economic life crumbles under their feet like a rotten floor, and that no clear or sustained thought has been given to after-war problems and conditions? I am afraid this Ministry will prove a pill to cure an earthquake. I am afraid it will create an entirely illusory sense of confidence. I am afraid the personnel will not prove equal to the task imposed upon it. I can easily understand the reluctance of the Government with regard to diverting attention from war problems to after-war problems, but it will be a grave calamity for this country if the end of the War finds not merely Government Departments unprepared but the mind of labour unprepared and the mind of the nation unprepared. More space should be given in the public Press to the wider problems of the future and the workpeople in the factories, in the mines, on the land, on the railways, ought to be encouraged to make suggestions out of their practical knowledge and experience, and in that all who have knowledge of trade and agriculture and social conditions should be invited to make their contribution to the common stock. Some of the ablest minds in the country should be wrestling with these great problems, and the remedies proposed must be in line with industrial progress, with an industry which has found a moral basis, and with the welfare and freedom of labour. I only wish that this Bill were a more promising and substantial contribution to that great and necessary work.

That far-reaching changes will come is certain. The whole world is in the melting pot. In many directions it may already be said that all things have passed away and all things become new. Many minds profoundly influenced by the experiences of the past three years, grown less doctrinaire in their views, are searching for some co-ordinating principle, for some reconciling idea, for some measure of agreement on fundamental issues. Just as the great fire of London altered drastically the social life of the City, so what has happened in this War has changed the whole face of Europe and changed the face of the world. Wise men will try to rediscover many things with which they believed themselves to be quite familiar before the War. So fax as the workers are concerned, the reconstruction will be far-reaching. They will ask not only for better conditions, but for a finer texture and quality of life. They will not be satisfied to be the gleaners in the harvest fields of life. They will not be content to sweat and drudge and die in order that the spoils of the poor may accumulate in the homes of the rich. They ask for improved status. They ask to be real partners in the work and life of the nation. Will the Reconstruction Ministry find the answer to these problems and provide for all the possibility, not only of material wealth, but of intellectual and moral attainment? One thing is quite certain: if the rulers cannot or will not grant what is fair and just, the workers will reach out their hands and help themselves.

I had not intended to follow the hon. Member, although I was extremely interested in his well-thought-out speech. It does seem to me that his reasons pointing out the vastness of the problems that we have to face in the future are really reasons why it is essential to set up something in the form of a Department. Personally, I do not attach a great deal to the word "Ministry," but there must be some authority that is going to collate all the evidence which all these great brains have been working upon for very many months in order that there may be some authority which can bring these various suggestions and these various Departments together. Therefore, I hope to be able to support the Second Reading of this Bill. With regard to the criticism of the late Home Secretary, I think it does not become this House too much to try to pretend that the old staff that were running the country in peace time can run this colossal War. Perhaps sometimes criticism is a little too free. I think that the great fault of the twenty-two was that they were too much obsessed with their own Department or obsessed with the War work that they did nothing and did not look ahead to the questions that were to come. When the hon. Member for Newington criticised the War Cabinet and suggested that one of the members of the War Cabinet could take over the work of reconstruction after the War, I think he was on wrong ground. It is imperative that the War Cabinet should keep its whole mind concentrated from day to day on the changing phases of the War, and should think practically of nothing else. Whether there ought to be another Cabinet—this may shock some of my economist Friends—to consider all these vast questions of social reconstruction is another matter. I think that in regard to this particular question it is impossible to suggest that we can go any further without having some centralising authority which is going to gather together all the fruits of this preliminary work and see how the scheme can be carried out. I should like to associate myself with the hon. Baronet for one of the Divisions of Cornwall, when he urged that power for experiments must be included in this Bill before the House gives its assent to a Second Reading, so as to make it perfectly clear that this new Ministry is to have the power to carry out experiments. I would like to disassociate myself from the remarks of the right hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury), who seems to me to have once more forgotten that this War is taking place. He takes up the point of view that these things ought not to be considered. He would like to have a lapse. Unless we are going to get a thought-out plan and to have machinery set up to carry out those things that are necessary we are going to be caught unprepared, and we shall have the grave and terrible prospects in this country which were suggested by my hon. Friend (Mr. Anderson), because we have not had the wisdom to think out a plan. I think we ought to hear something more about the secrecy of these Committees. Is there some terrible monstrosity who is sitting on one of these Committees? Is there somebody of whom the Government is ashamed? We do not want to encourage the idea that there is an unseen hand which is at work, but if there is some somebody with a German name or with German aspirations, for goodness sake let us know it. The Gov- ernment had much better not hide the fact, but trot their monstrosity out and let the country see what they have been doing.

I think it is important that we should consider the actual appointment of the new Minister of Reconstruction. I have nothing to say against the right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Addison). He is, as we have been told, a most amiable man with a charming expression, and I believe that everybody who knows him likes his immensely. I do not want to make any personal attack upon him as an individual, but in the middle of this War, when this vicious wheel of Front Bench co-operation is going round and directly one man falls another discreditable individual is taken up on the wheels and brought out. I think we are carrying it too far when the Home Secretary comes down here and inserts Clause 6, which not only covers the sins of the past, but which provides that the new Minister of Reconstruction will not have to say what are his views on reconstruction. It is important that we ought to put the biggest man we can find in the whole Empire, outside the War Cabinet, in charge of this reconstruction. The right hon. Gentleman under this Bill has not to seek re-election. I hope the Home Secretary will reconsider this point. After all, it is a very little thing to consider, the convenience of two or three men. Though I do not want to see them worried, big things are hanging on this question, and the country has a right to ask the right hon. Gentleman, "What are your views on national reconstruction before we put this great question in your hands?" I do not know whether or not the right hon. Gentleman was considered a success as the Minister of Munitions by the Government, but if he was considered a success, why in Heaven's name was he removed from that office? Do not we all know, those of us who know what munitions really mean, that if he was a success there, the whole fate of the War depended upon his remaining there, because we wanted a successful man at the Ministry of Munitions. If he was considered to be not wholly a success, why put him in charge of the whole national rebuilding of that great and happier England which I, equally with my hon. Friend (Mr. Anderson), want to see rising out of the devastation and misery of this war? I should like to ask the Home Secretary if he can give us an assurance that he is not going to press this Bill through the Committee stage to-day.

I can give that assurance.

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I shall certainly support the Second Reading of the Bill. Otherwise I should have felt constrained to vote against it until we had a little more information. I think the right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Addison) even now ought to face the electors. I am not going to introduce controversial arguments, but there are two very great questions which I think the House will agree with me are vital if the War is to be a victory—the relations between capital and labour and the principles of the Paris Resolution. They are the two great questions which are absolutely going to affect the whole of our position. Can it be said later that the Minister of Munitions was a great success in understanding the problems between capital and labour? Everybody knows that, broadly speaking, the House of Commons has under two administrations been practically unanimous, so far as I know, on the broad principles of the Paris Resolutions, as introduced by the late Prime Minister. So far as is known, the new Minister of Reconstruction has never given his views on this subject one way or the other. Two Governments have adhered to these principles. It is only right that the electors of Hoxton and the people of this country should know quite plainly whether the right hon. Gentleman stands for a reconstruction policy on national lines, or whether he is prepared to treat our enemies precisely as they were treated before the War. I will not put it any further. It is merely another indication of why the right hon. Gentleman should face his electors. I do hope that the right hon. Gentleman will bear this question in mind. We want above everything else that the King s Government during the War should have the confidence of the people. There have been things recently which have not conduced to that end. There is all this unfortunate discussion with regard to Mesopotamia, the Dardanelles, and one thing and another, deplorable things to bring up in the middle of the War, but we must keep the confidence of the Government among the people of the country, and the Government will not be helping that course if they permit the Minister who is going to build up the future of the Empire, who is going to collate the evidence and make the arrangements, merely to pass from one Department—from which he may have been pushed, for all we know—into this. Department without being able to give his constituents any ideas as to what his views are, or without allowing the House to know what are his views upon reconstruction.

The hon. and gallant Member who has just spoken seems to be willing that these immense problems of reconstruction should be inquired into on the condition that the Minister who is going to inquire into them should be, according to his standards, sound in judgment. I am not quite certain whether it is required that the Minister of Reconstruction, before beginning his inquiries, should subscribe to tests as to the decisions and actions at which he is ultimately going to arrive. I should have thought that if you were going to inquire into those problems the first thing you would do is to get the best brains that you can discover and to leave them unfettered to take the advice of all experts, and then leave them free to submit to those who are already shackled by preconceived opinion the results at which they arrive. But I think that the House is in agreement with the Government so far as this goes. We all agree that there are immense problems to solve, and that it is very desirable to have the best brains to solve them. What we are not agreed on, what we are not sure about, is that this is really the best machinery for arriving at that result. I think that that is shown by some of the suggestions which have been made. For instance, the hon. Member for Warwickshire has suggested that one of these problems which the Minister of Reconstruction should deal with is cotton growing in the Soudan. How on earth is the present Minister of Reconstruction going to institute independent inquiry upon that? Clearly he must go to, I suppose, the Board of Trade, or the Commercial Department of the Foreign Office, and find out what has already been done. He suggested, and I am not quite sure that I would not agree with it, all events to some extent, that it would be desirable to have an inquiry in our Colonies and Protectorates into the development of their resources on behalf of those Colonies and Protectorates themselves. How is the Minister for Reconstruction going to deal with that? How can you pass by the Colonial Office, which has set out to investigate problems of this kind? In fact, can the Minister of Reconstruction do anything more to stimulate, perhaps co-ordinate, and see that some of the Departments are going to do what they already ought to be doing at the present moment? That, I imagine, is the limit of what he can do.

It does seem to me that the Government is falling into its old routine, whenever it has a difficulty, of just appointing a new Minister, with an Assistant-Secretary in this House, and instructing him to build up a new Department. I really do not think that for these problems a Department of this kind is at all the best way of tackling the problem. The Minister of Reconstruction, unlike some of the other Ministers who have been appointed, is apparently a permanent institution. In the previous Act appointing Ministers several of them, it was explicitly stated, were temporary. There is nothing of this kind here. I imagine that ultimately the Minister of Reconstruction will disappear. It may not be within twelve months after the War, but in two or three years perhaps what is it going to evolve into? When the work of demobilisation and its immediate duties are done, is it going to be a sort of Ministry of skilled intelligence, making inquiries for any Government or Government Department that requires them? Clause 6 allows certain Ministers to be appointed without portfolio and to sit in Parliament without an election. I presume that the implication is that in future any Ministers appointed without portfolio will have to seek re-election.

At a salary.

We have already added three Ministers without portfolios at salaries of £5,000 a year, and though I dare say there may be a case in the middle of a war for increasing staff, yet the tendency to increase staff extravagantly and inordinately has been very visible indeed, and I think that the House ought to insist on some limit on the appointment of these Ministers without portfolio, who are really paid out of war money, because I suppose that we are paying for them out of Votes of Credit. I was very glad to hear the Home Secretary say that he did not mean to appoint an Under-Secretary at the present time, but is there any justification for taking powers for appointing an Under-Secretary? It may be desirable to have a Minister to co-ordinate and to assist other Departments. I can understand an Under-Secretary being appointed if he is required to represent a great Department in another place. I cannot quite see the necessity of these Under-Secretaries. Is it supposed that the Minister of Reconstruction is to have a status given him by having subordinates and an assistant Under-Secretary? Really the limit in the number of Under-Secretaries must now have been reached. Already we have appointed seven new Ministers with salaries of £2,000 a year and eight new Ministers at £1,200 a year. I see no particular reason for having these Under-Secretaries. It would appear that in this matter, wherever you are going to make an appointment involving one salary, you are also going to make an appointment involving two salaries, and I really do not know what an Under-Secretary is going to do. The country looks with a good deal of disquiet at the example which these Ministries set up, for it is not merely the appointment of two new Ministers, with salaries and the equipments of a Department, but there is a certain spirit of extravagance in the country which ought to be arrested. It has gone much too far. People are beginning to say, "We are spending £8,000,000 a day, and what does it matter, a few hundred thousands more or less?" Directly that sort of spirit gets abroad you have absolutely no limit to extravagance in the country. I think it is well worth while that matters of detail should be closely looked into, because it is only in that way that you can successfully effect economy. Once let the spirit of extravagance get hold of the country and it will land us into further millions of unnecessary expenditure. There is another Ministry coming along, the Ministry of Health, which I should be very glad to see appointed, but it seems to me in that case that it will not mean the creation of a new Department, but simply the reorganisation and improvement of existing machinery. But matters in regard to that Ministry are not yet settled. I do not know whether we are to have another shower of Under-Secretaries, but I hope not, and I would reinforce my appeal to the Government by saying that there should be rather more attention to economy, not only in details but in the larger aspects of expenditure, and perhaps on the Committee stage of the Bill it may be found possible to accept the two or three points of detail to which I have alluded.

3.0 P.M.

This Bill is one of the most important that could possibly be introduced to the House, and I must say that I was rather surprised at the inadequacy of the Home Secretary's speech. I was really surprised that a Minister of the Crown should come down to the House, at a time when the whole country is burningly anxious to know what is going to be done with regard to reconstruction after the War, and give us just a few heads, a few selections, connected with economics and other matters of that kind, and then ask us to give a blank cheque to the Government to do what they like when they have appointed a Ministry of Construction. That is not treating the House of Commons in a proper way, and I think we are entitled to expect a little better treatment from the Government on a subject of such very great interest and importance. How vital the interest is perhaps the Government does not know, but I can assure them that in any circle of business men at the present time they would find what is the strength of their feeling and their views on problems of reconstruction, and how they should be handled. My right hon. Friend the late Prime Minister appointed a Committee of Reconstruction which consisted of Cabinet Ministers, who had full acquaintance with all that concerned their great Departments, and, as my right hon. Friend knows, the result was the placing of a plan or scheme before the Reconstruction Committee. When the late Government went out that Reconstruction Committee went out with it, and the present Prime Minister appointed another Reconstruction Committee. With regard to the present Reconstruction Committee we do not think that the members of it are representative, nor do we like the general views they entertain on the subject. The present Reconstruction Committee has its staff and its secretaries, but it is not at all comparable to the organisation of a great Department of State. I do not see from the speech of the right hon. Gentleman how the deficiency is at all likely to be made up by the constitution of a Ministry which will perhaps take several hotels, will require the appointment of staffs, and will also need a staff to make expert investigation. of questions that cover every Department of the State, every subject of human interest. There is not a single question of economics or politics that does not come into the different subjects to be considered, and you must have your experts to collect the views of the Board of Trade or the views of the Home Office, and, without that, this new Ministry would just be a little body housed in hotels, and issuing interesting memoranda, but really not doing any sufficient work. The late Prime Minister, when he appointed his Reconstruction Committee, appointed a Sub-committee of which I had the honour to be a member, under Lord Balfour of Burleigh. When the late Government came in, the Committee of Lord Balfour of Burleigh being a Sub-committee of the Committee of Reconstruction of the Cabinet came to an end, and at the present moment we are uncertain as to the position which we occupy. In the former state of affairs we had to report to what was practically the executive Government of the country, but under the existing regime I do not know what the situation is. We may possibly have to report direct to the Prime Minister, but if that be so, all I can say that at least there will be some resignation on the Committee. A body of men of that kind would not allow themselves to be overhauled by a body of the sort proposed.

What is to be the system of organisation to be set up. I, personally, am wholly against allowing this Bill to go through unless we have a scheme of organisation of the Department. There is a scheme, let us say, of reconstruction under consideration, and before that scheme is proceeded with the persons concerned are expected to set out in due order the methods by which they propose to organise it. I could give many examples of that. I do think that before we proceed further with the Bill we are entitled to ask from the Government an indication as to what particular scheme of organisation it is designed to make. That is not really a difficult thing if they know their minds and I do not suggest they do not. If the thing has been thought out it is not at all a difficult thing to circulate in the form of a White Paper a little memorandum describing in business terms what precisely they intend to do by way of organisation, I mean in organising at the present moment the Department, not in organising reconstruction. What is to be the relation of this Department to the other Depart- ments. At the present time in some subjects there is considerable difficulty in what we may call overlapping between the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade. Some of those subjects concern reconstruction. What is going to be the function of the new Ministry as to those subjects in regard to the Foreign Office and the Board of Trade? Unless the thing is done in a business-like way the only result of the formation of this new Ministry will be to introduce fresh points of friction to those which already exist. The result will be delay in carrying out the problems of reconstruction instead of rapidity and success. With regard to what my right hon. and learned Friend said just now about the preparation which Germany is making, I really would ask him seriously does he think that the German Government would have said, let us reconstruct society to its foundations and let us give a pleasant gentleman whom it is proposed to make Minister a blank cheque. I know my right hon. and learned Friend would not say that. The Germans really do not do that sort of thing, they make the most magnificent preparations, they have these questions organised from many different points of view.

I do not think I am making an unreasonable request of my right hon. and learned Friend, when I ask that before the Committee stage he should circulate a statement as to the general principles upon which it is proposed to organise this new Ministry. I thought my right hon. Friend (Mr. Samuel) put his finger on one of the weakest points of the whole scheme. If we want anything at the present time it is rapidity and action. We have over a hundred Committees at the present time, and this new Ministry will have to appoint a fresh one. I feel quite certain we do not want any more Committees. We have all had to do with a great many of them, and it becomes a little tiresome to receive, morning after morning, piles of memoranda not constructed on any general principle of policy, but ranging at large over all kinds of interesting and important questions. I think myself that those memoranda will provide most admirable objects for a museum in a hundred years' time taken out of the archives of the present day. It is not a useful method of procedure. We want to know where we are going and what is going to be done, and unless we get to something really like business in the organisation of the Ministry I do not feel that it will do good. I agree with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Christchurch (General Croft) that we do want a Ministry, we do want somebody, a Minister or somebody whose business it is to devote attention to the problems which should be carefully selected. You do not want to give to anybody the power to range at large over all subjects. You want to review the activities of your present Departments, and see what they can do, and you want to give them that additional help which may be necessary towards the solution of the problems which arise.

As far as I know the work of some Departments, the one great difficulty in carrying out schemes of reconstruction arises, and here I do not want to introduce any controversial element, from a deficiency of knowledge as to what the policy of the Government is. Supposing you were dealing with problems of demobilisation and employment after the War, it really is an extraordinarily difficult thing, let us say for the Ministry of Labour to draw up schemes for dealing with employers of labour unless they can tell the employers a good many things those employers desire to know. You do not want to go into details, but you do want to sketch out the general lines of the constructive policy on which you have agreed. I do not for a moment say what that policy should be, but the scheme you draw up must be sufficiently agreed upon by the Government of the day and expressed to enable the different Departments concerned and the different Committees concerned to draw up something like a well arranged scheme for reorganisation. We have not got that at present. I am extremely sorry my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House could not see his way to give any reply to the suggestions I made on that subject the other day. I think it is desirable we should know where we are. I do not myself wish to oppose the Second Reading, I wish the Government to get on in their proposals of organisation. What I feel about it is this, as we are situated at present the scheme brought forward by the Government is too sketchy, it is not thought out. I do not blame my right hon. and learned Friend for that in any way, but I feel sure he will confirm that the whole scheme of reorganisation is not really up to the point at which it is desirable it should be. I do most earnestly ask, for the sake of removing friction from the House and getting on, that without going into detail the Government should issue some White Paper or memorandum sketching in general terms what it is proposed that this new Department should do. What are to be its proper functions and relations towards other Departments? I myself think you really want executive action at the present time, and I am most anxious to get on with the solution of these problems. Germany in this matter has made great progress, and we at present have made practically none. We are likely to find ourselves at the end of the War without having come to a national decision upon points which lie at the very root of our future.

I am very anxious indeed to support the Second Reading of this Bill. I feel that a Minister of Reconstruction ought to have been appointed many months ago. Unless we take action quickly we shall wake up some morning to find that thousands and thousands of our men are being demobilised with no work for them to do so that they will have to stand idle or perhaps emigrate. I think that the sooner we decide on some plan to get the machinery ready to find work for our men the better it will be for us. There are, however, one or two points in this Bill that I should like some little explanation about from the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford said a few minutes ago that this Committee was to be a Committee for consultation with Ministers, but not for action. If I read the Bill correctly it seems to me that the Minister has the power conferred upon him of taking away from many of the heads of our big Departments some of their powers. I read in Clause (2) that he shall

"have such powers and duties of any Government Department or authority … as that His Majesty may, by Order in Council, authorise the Minister to exercise or perform concurrently with, or in consultation with, the Government Department or authority concerned."

I should like to ask the Home Secretary whether the new Minister can tell the President of the Board of Trade that he has decided that certain things that have hitherto been looked after by the Board of Trade are to be done in this or that fashion, and whether or not the President of the Board of Trade will have to reply: "Oh, yes; I am quite ready to do that if you think that it is the right course?" If, on the other hand, it is merely a case of advising the heads of the different Departments that they have not to do this, I am quite prepared to vote for the Second Reading of the Bill.

The last two speakers, the hon. Member for Hereford, and the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, have both drawn attention to the fact that, although this Bill is quite a small Bill, it is the beginning of a very considerable advance, and may make for a very considerable amount of expense, and—I cannot help thinking—a good deal of trouble in the future. It is brought in on a Friday afternoon with a sort of general impression that it is a very small matter, and that it is rather a pity for anyone to give any trouble to the Government by opposing it; that it ought to pass through without discussion, or perhaps not without discussion, but, at all events, without seriously inconveniencing the Government, and that it is simply another of their well-meaning—I quite acknowledge that—attempts to improve the condition of the people, and to carry on their business. I honestly think, however, that the proposal to establish this Ministry is a very grave one. I think the objections to it are so many, and so great, that it is really difficult to know where you are to begin. There is, first of all, the difficulty of expense which is necessarily incurred by the establishment of the Ministry. There is, secondly, the very serious objection to the increase in the number of ministers and their departments. There is, thirdly, the question of what this Ministry is going to do, what its effect will be on the industrial life of the country, and what the effect of its organisation will be at the present time upon what is one of the most important of matters, namely, the prosecution of the War. There is also the effect that it will have on the minds of individual men who are now occupied with carrying on the War and in providing the sinews of war in the shape of money and material. I should like very shortly to deal with these three questions.

The question of the actual expense of the Ministry itself really is a very small one. There is just a Minister at £2,000 a year, a few clerks, and a certain number of hotels and houses. These, in themselves, are not a serious matter except from one point of view. At the present time everybody ought to economise. Economy is very much a matter of example and fashion. If the Government, whenever they are in any difficulty, immediately take a new house, buy a new Turkey carpet and an armchair, and establish a few clerks, that does not tend to make the people of the country, rich and poor, the more able to realise the necessity for economy. That, however, is really a very small matter. The real expense is very much greater. When you have established this Ministry, the very first step is for them to find some justification for their existence. What they practically do is this: the Minister sits down and thinks of something that ought to be done, or some inquiry that ought to be made, or that they can make, and he and his clerks issue a circular. They print, it may be, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or two or three millions of these, and send them out all round the country. In the days before the War that did not matter, because most people when they received these circulars put them into their waste-paper basket and they were heard no more about. Now, however, you have the Defence of the Realm Act. When that circular has been sent out and gone into the waste-paper basket, a second circular is sent out drawing attention to the Defence of the Realm Act and intimating that if no reply is received it may be followed by a fine of £100 or six months' imprisonment. The meaning of that is that once you establish a Ministry of this sort numbers of people from one end of the country to the other will be occupied in answering questions and giving information. Anyone who goes about the country and knows what is happening in real business knows that what I am saying is not quite a negligible matter—it is a real serious inconvenience and annoyance. When everyone is short of clerks and working many extra hours, hours of time are taken up in answering questions and finding out figures for Government Departments.

Hear, hear!

After all, the question of expense is not the most serious matter, but the increase of the number of Ministers and Ministries is a very serious matter. In this particular Bill it acts in two ways: There is not only this Ministry of Reconstruction, there is also the increase in the number of Ministries and new Departments. We have had many troubles and difficulties in this country in this War. Many of them were beyond our control. I think, however, that when history comes to be written, and when we come to consider what portion of our institutions is weakest, we shall come to the conclusion that the increase in the number of Ministers during the twenty or thirty years before the War was perhaps, upon the whole, the most serious injury done to this country during that time. The old English system of government which carried us through the troubles of the eighteenth century was not a Cabinet—and by a Cabinet I mean what you will find described in the "Encyclopædia Britannica"—but what are called Cabinet Ministers—that is to say, a Committee consisting of the heads of the great Government Departments, and that consisted of seven or eight or nine or ten men—and does so still! That was probably, and is still, to my mind, the best system of government that any country in the world has ever invented. Everyone who knows the history of Governments, or who has followed the mistakes, blunders, and difficulties in this and other wars, knows that one of the greatest difficulties is the difficulty of keeping the Departments together. All despotic countries, like Russia was, like Louis XIV., have suffered from it and have been ruined. We established the principle of having this country governed by a Cabinet which consisted of the heads of the different great Departments of the State. That gave us the best arrangement that it was possible humanly to get for co-ordinating them together. That plan broke down in consequence of the very thing which this Bill proposes to continue to increase, namely, the increase in the number of Ministers, until it became so large that it ceased to be a Committee and became a sort of public meeting.

What you want to do is to diminish the number of Ministers, and not increase them. You have now established—and in this Bill you are taking powers to make permanent, the plan of having an inner Cabinet consisting of Ministers with no Department at all. That is practically a dictatorship of five or six men which no country I know of has ever had except the Romans under the Decemvir, and the Roman plan under the Decemvir was made so unpopular that it was never tried again for between 2,000 and 3,000 years. We are trying now, owing to the difficulty into which we have been put, by a policy of which this Bill is the exemplification, and, so to speak, the full completion, to-get a number of Ministers out of all proportion to what is reasonable, or who can possibly arrange together to govern the country. I do ask the Government, and I ask the country, to consider that question carefully, and to consider how very undesirable is this constant increase in the number of Ministers. There is another reason. The proper arrangement, as I have said, is a Cabinet which is responsible for the business of the country. You cannot have a proper Cabinet if all internal business is divided into a series of different Departments. You always had in the old days Ministers responsible for foreign affairs and Ministers responsible for Home affairs. If you have these five or six, ten or a dozen Ministers, each managing some little Department of Home affairs, you may get into the difficulty that you may have no man who can get a general grasp of Home business. My own view is we shall find, if we wish to improve the government of this country, that the proper way is to go back to the old arrangement of having Ministry at the Board of Trade and at the Home Office; let them have their own Departments dealing with each question, and let them have permanent officials as heads, because for many of these questions a good permanent official is a better head than the Parliamentary or political person who is appointed to manage one of those Ministries.

The third objection I have to this Bill is as to what the Ministry is going to do when it is established. There is some difficulty about saying anything as to that after the last two speeches, because both speakers are obviously Gentlemen who have given very much thought to the matter, and they both stated quite definitely that they were unable to understand from the terms of the Bill what the Ministry was going to do, and they asked for further information on the matter. There is a very great objection to this Bill, and it is this: It is called the Ministry of Reconstruction. That is to say, it is a Ministry which is to deal with the state of affairs in this country, industrially and otherwise, after the War. First of all, we have not finished the War, and the question of how long it takes before it finishes, how it ends, and how we end it, is of far more importance, and will have far greater effect upon what you are to do after the War, than any other question. It seems to me that any arrangement you may make now, any opinions you may form, will almost certainly be wrong. The one thing certain about this War which applies to almost every war is that it is the unexpected which happens, and, as a matter of fact, arrangements that you make now will far more likely be troublesome and difficult, and hinder you when the War is over, than be of any assistance to you whatever. As I have said, the cost is not great, and I do not think that is a real, grave objection to the Bill; but there is a grave objection to the Bill, and it is this: There is one perfectly distinct understanding in the minds of men in this country, employers and employed, and that is that everything which has been done and agreed to for the purposes of the War shall be cleared off when the War is over, and that a man who has agreed to certain conditions of employment, or whatever it may be, although he did not like them, when the War is over, as he has agreed to them for motives of patriotism, he should be put back in the same position he was in before.

You may say what you like about this Ministry of Reconstruction, but we all know that there are many arrangements which, in the minds of many men, were objectionable from the point of view of the industrial position of this country, and I cannot help being afraid—and I believe many working men will think the same as I do—that one of the objects of this Ministry of Reconstruction is to find reasons and ways and means whereby you can practically wriggle out of that undertaking which has been given, and which ought to be carried out clearly and definitely. I know that is not the intention for a moment of any member of the Government, but what I do say is that I think it will be thought by many people in this country, and that it will lead to very considerable discontent and unrest in the minds of the working men in this country. Therefore, for that reason, I hope the right hon. Member who has objected to this Bill will press his Amendment to a Division, and I shall be very glad indeed to see this House make up its mind to put a stop to this constant increase in Departments, for these three reasons: First, because they are a constant increase of expense; secondly, because they seriously injure the good government of the country by in- creasing the number of temporary Parliamentary officials, instead of good permanent officials, who would manage that business very much better; and, thirdly, because I think that at the present time, at the commencement of dealing with what you are to do after the War, it is undesirable and unnecessary, it will lead to industrial unrest, and, as a matter of fact, will defeat the object for which it is intended. I should like to say one thing more with regard to matters after the War, and that is this: I think if you read the history of countries you will find there have been many countries which, after wars, have recovered freely and quickly, and have been very prosperous, and there have been many countries which have dragged on in difficulty, trouble, danger and unrest. Nineteen times out of twenty the countries that did well were the countries that trusted to the individual energy and good sense of their peoples, and did not interfere with them, and the countries that had troubles and difficulties were the countries whose Governments were always interfering with private individuals and trying to show them the proper way to manage their own affairs, which they themselves knew very much better, and could conduct with very much greater success.

I must say that the more I see of this Bill, the more I dislike it. When I read the Bill I thought it was pretty bad. When I heard the Home Secretary's explanation I was quite certain it was very bad. When I heard the hon. Member for Tamworth defend the Bill, I was convinced it was one of the worst Bills ever introduced before Parliament. So far as I understand this Bill it is a Bill to establish a Ministry whose duty it shall be to interfere with everything, and to give advice to other people as to how they are to interfere with things. The hon. Member for Tamworth gave us a sketch of what ought to be done, from which I gather that the duty of this Ministry is to try and establish in this country, as near as can be at one and the same time, a system of State Socialism and universal development of desert places.

I dealt with the position of the Government with regard to this matter. I expressed no views myself at all.

I do not think I am representing the hon. Member unfairly. One of the duties of this Ministry is to set in action the cultivation of cotton in the Soudan. That is one of the instances he gave, and that is what I venture to describe as cultivating desert places.

All I have to say is that I strongly object to anything of the sort. I agree with what has been said that what we want after the War is that Government Departments should shut up and leave private persons to conduct their own business in their own way, a method which is more likely to be in the interests of the public than the perpetual interference of the Government. The Home Secretary uttered a most ominous phrase. He said this new Ministry was going to consider and make recommendations in regard to the prolongation of the special powers which the Government have got to enable them to conduct the War. May I point out that that would apply to the Defence of the Realm Act, and if there is the slightest chance of any Minister being given powers like that after the War, then I am entirely against his appointment. What is really wanted is that all those persons who are now engaged in the Army shall as soon as possible be allowed to go back to the occupations they were compelled to desert, and be permitted to carry on the useful occupation of earning their own living in their own way. The object of this Bill is to establish something of the nature of what we have always derided in Prussia, where you see the word "verboten" displayed all over the place, and where they tell you what to do and what not to do. If we want a Minister to do this work, if we are to have an official who is going to advise the rest of the community and the Departments as to the manner in which they should carry on their business, I suggest that my right hon. Friend below me was quite right in saying that this duty ought to be performed by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

I am glad to see the right hon. Gentleman who occupies that position on the Treasury Bench, and I may say that there is no member of the Ministry for whom I have a greater respect, and I am glad to be able to say to his face what I should otherwise have had to say behind his back. I do not think in the present state of public finance it is justifiable that any person should occupy the position of Chancellor of the Duchy without performing duties over and above those attached to the office. If we are to have a new Ministry and new duties are to be undertaken, my right hon. Friend (Sir F. Cawley) is the man who ought to undertake them, and he would be a very much better Minister of Reconstruction and would be likely to do the work more satisfactorily than any other member of the Government I know. I would much rather see the duties put into my right hon. Friend's hands, without any additional expense, than pay one of his colleagues £2,000 a year to perform those duties. It is most improper that we should have a new Minister to perform duties when we know that there is in existence another office which could perform them, and a right hon. Gentleman filling that office who could perform them exceedingly well. There is a Clause which prescribes the establishment of the Minister of Reconstruction, but this Bill might be more appropriately described as a Bill for the reconstruction of the Ministry. That is the very genesis of this Bill. For reasons which are fairly notorious, it has been found necessary to remove certain Ministers from positions, and consequently it is necessary to have a new First Lord of the Admiralty and a new Minister of Munitions, and this Bill is really to let those two occupants of those two positions down easily. That is the principal object of this Bill, and it is why it has been brought in. It is all part of the plan on which this Government is formed, because they are a body of gentlemen who have no common principles whatever. They represent every shade of political opinion from Toryism to Socialism, and they are bound together by nothing whatever except—[An HON. MEMBER: "Patriotism!"]—a very good word, and if he will take Dr. Johnson's definition of it we shall be all right. My right hon. Friend told us how many Ministers there were.

But is that not really what this Bill is aiming at? Does this Bill serve any other purpose except the squaring of additional Members of this House? We have a large number of hon. Members already on the Treasury Bench. We have a large number of Parliamentary private secretaries who can hardly be regarded as entirely unpaid, because there is such a strong presumption that they will get to a paid situation on the Treasury Bench, and that expectation is so good that it may always be regarded as a valuable property. In addition, we have a new feature which most unfortunately has been introduced since the outbreak of war, of allowing the active service Members to return to this House. This enables the Gov- ernment to bring back just as many hon. Members as they think sufficient to take part in a Division. This is a serious matter when we reflect that of the total number of Members of Parliament not less than one-half of them are receiving some form of public salary over and above the salary allotted to them as Members of this House. There is one good thing about the Bill, and that is Clause 6, which makes certain that what has been done in the past is illegal. No one can study that Clause without realising that that is the confession. With that Clause in the Bill it will be impossible to repeat the same illegality in the future. I do not know whether what is proposed is a complete indemnity or whether proceedings may be taken against the Gentlemen who have been sitting and voting when they ought not to vote, but I presume the Law Officers have been careful to see that this is a complete indemnity. If the Government is going to try and conduct every sphere of human activity under its control it will be impossible to conduct the business of the House, and there is no means by which this House could do its duty with regard to the management of national affairs if the Government propose to take the whole range of human activities under its control. Nevertheless, this Bill is aiming more and more at depriving the private individual of that freedom which has always been the great boast of our civilisation, and is trying to get things more and more under the control of the Government. For these reasons, I shall certainly support my right hon. Friend if he goes to a Division, and I trust he may be successful.

I should like to say a word or two with regard to two speeches we have recently had. The hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. C. Roberts) said, what has been said before, in a partial approval of this Bill, that there are many problems to solve. What I want to suggest is that these problems would literally be half, or more than half, solved if the Government allowed the public and the House to know definitely that they had an absolutely clear economic and social policy. What makes these problems loom so much, and what makes them so difficult of solution is, as has been pointed out by one hon. Member this afternoon, that business men throughout the country do not really know what the Government mean by what they, at as rare intervals as possible, say as to their real economic policy for after the War. That brings me to the point of the hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. Anderson). He said he was convinced, speaking of the social unrest in the country, that what was required in the matter of these various social problems—all bound up in the category of matters which the Home Secretary told us will come under the Reconstruction scheme—is clear-cut statesmanship, clear-cut principle, and clear-cut policy with regard to these things. I am sure he is right, though not, perhaps, exactly in the way that he means. All the evidence that reaches me, in correspondence and conversations with people in all classes of society, shows quite clearly, and I think hon. Members must have come to the same conclusion. that the country as a whole is not convinced that the Government are really fighting this War and mean to solve all the after-war problems in accordance with a great national policy which they can understand and appreciate. That makes it very important to consider who is the person to be appointed as First Minister of Reconstruction. I do not want to deal with it in any more personal manner than any other hon. Member who has alluded to it, but I do absolutely agree that it is a post of such enormous importance, if the Minister of Reconstruction is to be given anything more than a general brief to meddle in the affairs of other Ministers who really control other Departments, that you ought to have the man with the widest knowledge of trade, and widest, knowledge of labour problems, and the widest knowledge of Imperial problems you can possibly find in the country.

I ask the Home Secretary, in view of what he has been reminded of, that we are promised yet another Minister, the Minister of Health, whether he is quite sure that in the shuffle they have not drawn out the wrong name, and is not the right hon. Member for Hoxton (Dr. Addison) intended to be Minister of Health, and some hon. Gentleman, with some knowledge of Imperial affairs, with some knowledge of trade and industry, and somebody who has had some connection with those things, destined to fill this place? It matters enormously in considering the Second Reading of this Bill who this Gentleman is, because the Bill says that the purposes for which the Minister is appointed are to institute and conduct such inquiries, and prepare such schemes, and make such recommendations as he thinks fit. It all comes down to the personality of the man appointed, and therefore if we are rightly informed that this is, in the humorous words of the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Holt), a Bill to reconstruct the Minister, I think, in the circumstances, I cannot honestly vote for its Second Reading. It is not as though we had any paucity of people in this country who could not have fulfilled the most useful function of taking charge of and co-ordinating all the inquiries that are being made into the problems to which the Home Secretary has alluded. The hon. Member for Hereford is not here, but if he was I should say the same thing. Hon. Members in all parts of the House know that for at least twenty years he has done nothing else than precisely this work which the Minister of Reconstruction is going to do. He has studied the trade and industry of every part of the Empire, he has conducted inquiries into the special needs of almost every trade and industry in this country, he is saturated with knowledge, and is a mine of information which I believe is infinitely more reliable and exhaustive than that of any Government Department. It makes all the difference to my view of the Bill. If there were really an indication that the Government had, so to speak, burned their boats and come out with a national policy, that in appointing this Minister they had really considered who was the person who could best serve the country, and if there were not so much flagrant evidence that it was merely a reshuffle in which these Government appointments have been made, and that we are on a Friday afternoon building up, as it were, a home for a Minister who has created discontent, there would be something to be said for it.

I only want to say one other word with regard to what the Home Secretary said in relation to shipping. He mentioned that these shipping problems are among those which will be considered and inquired into, and that schemes in regard to them will be recommended to the proper Department of the State. That matter brings up a very wide question indeed. I only want to allude to it in a sentence, but last week we had a very definite statement from the German Chancellor which dealt, among other things, with this question of shipping, and it is of vital moment before the new Minister starts with his inquiries and the making of schemes that he should know what the Government mean to do with regard to our mercantile marine after the War. We know what Germany is going to do with regard to hers. She is going to make a gift of £75,000,000, so that she will have a subsidised mercantile marine capable of running any other shipping off any of the trade routes of the world, provided they have equal advantages at our ports and coaling stations all over the world. That is what I think, as part of her policy, she means by the freedom of the seas. Are the Government going to meet that and prepare schemes within those limits and to be equally limited with regard to all questions relating to trade within the Empire and the trade of our Allies? I do not think we have been told anything like enough of the details, but of that I do not complain much. I do not, however, know what are the orders which will be given to the new Minister when he starts his career. I do not know whether he is going to be directed with any policy, as to the social policy bound up with all his inquiries, the economic, the Imperial, or the national policy, and until we have that clearly from the Government I say it is premature altogether not only to set up a Ministry, but that it is wasting the time of the people in considering these problems. The problems will be impossible to solve without a clear-cut policy. The absence of that clear-cut policy makes most of the problems difficult, and the Government, I can assure them, are losing the confidence of the working people of this country, because they do not believe the Government really have a national policy, or that they mean to make England better worth living in after the War and to keep the British Empire for the subjects of the British Empire in all parts of the Dominions. In these circumstances, if there is a Division on the Second Reading of this Bill, I must vote against the Government, mainly because I do not think it is any good setting up this Ministry with a roving commission to inquire and report. I do not think it will do anything. I think it will increase the circumlocution and the friction, and will not be conducive to progress in any of these problems. Above all, I must vote against it because there is not a clear-cut policy to be a guide to the late Minister of Munitions, and I cannot imagine a Minister more in need of a clear-cut policy to guide him than the right hon. Gentleman.

I had hoped that my part in this Debate would be to listen, but it may be convenient that a word or two, and only a word or two, further should be said from this Bench. This Bill is due to the desire—or, I should rather say, to the determination—that we shall not be as ill-prepared for peace as we were for war. The Bill has been criticised in the course of the afternoon in two ways. It has been the subject of general criticism, and. secondly, of particular criticism. The general criticism, which began with the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Cleveland (Mr. Samuel), takes the form of saying that there are already too many Ministers, and here is a proposal to add a new one. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman, in a humorous moment, seemed to look forward to a gloomy future when every Member of Parliament, in this House or another, would be, not merely potentially, but actually a Minister of the Crown. Most of the new Ministers, as the House is perfectly well aware, are emergency Ministers created for the purpose and the period of the War, and the mere number of Ministers already appointed is not in the smallest degree relevant to the question whether a Minister of Reconstruction is required. But it is pleasant to know, as the right hon. Gentleman established, that, as the British Government expands, the German mark contracts.

I pass from that, general criticism to the criticism which has been directed against the particular proposal. The contention is that it is not necessary that a Minister of Reconstruction should be appointed. I confess I heard with astonishment from Members of this House of no little experience the proposition, sometimes clearly expressed, sometimes undoubtedly involved, that it is not necessary, it is not politic, to approach problems which must arise out of the War until the War has been brought to an end. I venture to suggest that that is a grotesque proposition. Let the House place itself in imagination at some date, say one month, after the termination of the War. Could anything be more imprudent or more foolish, in the light of our past experience, than that at that time we should find ourselves unprepared for the enormous problems which will then undoubtedly have to be grappled with? Against that suggestion I set the statements which have been made in all quarters of the House in will be problems of enormous gravity, amazing variety and great difficulty, which will have to be dealt with. The sooner we grapple with these problems the better; the sooner we begin to take as long a view as we can the better; and the sooner we place in proper hands the right machinery to work and carry out the task the more prudently shall we be acting. What then is the question? It is no more than this—is this the right machinery? I have listened to see whether in the course of the Debate some better plan, some acceptable alternative would be suggested for dealing with the enormous and grave problems to be considered. What are the alternatives that have been suggested? The right hon. Gentleman suggested a Royal Commission and yet in another part of his speech he deplored the cost of this Ministry. Another Member suggested a Select Committee and the hon. Member below the Gangway, the Member for Attercliffe (Mr. Anderson) said that in his opinion this Ministry was not necessary because what did arise after the War must spring from the life and experience of the people. It may well be that the lessons of the future should spring from the life and experience of the people, but it will be no automatic creation, and deliberate and careful steps will have to be taken in order to secure that that experience is placed at the disposal of the country.

4.0 P.M.

There appears to be some misapprehension as to the nature and scope of the new Minister's duties, and in order to answer a question, which has been asked again and again, sometimes I cannot help thinking with too little sincerity, might I adopt the simple, obvious, and therefore unusual course, of looking at the words of the Bill itself. The powers and duties of the Minister of Reconstruction are provided for in Section 2, Clause 2 of this measure, and it is there laid down, and I should have thought in words comparatively free from ambiguity, at least for an Act of Parliament, that "it shall be the duty of the Minister of Reconstruction to consider and advise upon the problems which may arise after the termination of the present War and for the purposes aforesaid to institute and conduct such inquiries, prepare such schemes and make such recommendations as he thinks fit." What is the kind of work which is by these words sought to be entrusted to him? I am not going to take up the time nor indeed is this quite the occasion to explore the work of this new Ministry as a whole the course of this Debate that there But let me indicate by reference to specific examples the kind of task with which the new Ministry will have to deal. There is the question of commercial and industrial policy, there is the question of agricultural policy, there are the problems of Army demobilisation, the question of coal conservation, the whole complex problems of the relations between employers and employed, there are specific matters connected with women's employment, matters connected with education, the teaching of science, the electrical trades, engineering, shipping and shipbuilding, and the supply of food. I mention these simply as examples of the type of subject matter which the Minister of Reconstruction will have to deal with. How will he have to deal with them? May I for the purpose of answering that question take one particular example? Take a problem with which every Member of this House is seriously concerned—the demobilisation of the Army. A complaint has been made from more than one quarter that there has been too little publicity as to the nature of the investigation that has been made, and as to the individuals who constitute the various committees. I venture to think that criticism is illfounded. The Government have made a point of publishing that which can usefully and properly be published at this time. One must remember that whatever is published and read here is read elsewhere for the information of another country, and it is an important question to determine within what limits either the nature of the problem or the evidence relating to the problem can properly and prudently be made public. I take this example of the Sub-committee for the demobilisation of the Army. That Committee, in addition to various representatives of the public holding no special office, contains representatives of the Labour Department, because labour questions are involved, representatives of the Treasury, because financial questions are involved, representatives of the War Office, of the Committee of Imperial Defence, and representatives of shipping, because upon the shipping industry an enormous burden will be thrown. What happens? Each one of those Departments, approaching the problem from its own point of view and within limits proper to the Department, makes a report or draws up a memorandum. Every separate Department approaches the matter in that way, and what is needed is a co-ordinating mind, not specially attached to the work or to the traditions of any one of the Departments concerned, but a comprehensive co-ordinating mind, a fresh mind, and at the same time an authoritative mind, that will bring together the several contributions of the various specialised Departments, and out of that complicated material arrive at—what? Something that then and there upon the authority of the Minister must be done? No; but at a timely and well-considered recommendation.

Is not that being done now?

It is undoubtedly to some extent being done now, but the hope which is connected with this measure is that under a Minister of Reconstruction the work will be yet more thoroughly done. It was part of the criticism of one of my hon. Friends opposite that this Minister was not to have executive power. I should have thought, with respect, that was a very important fact in his favour. He is not to have executive power. What he is to be able to do is to make recommendations, and as a Minister he will have access to the War Cabinet. Where, as is so often the case in these matters, it is desirable that action should be taken without delay, there will be a ready means of communication with the Minister who has all the threads in his hands, and the War Cabinet will then initiate, it may be, a proposal for immediate legislation. My submission is that this scheme, a modest scheme, a simple scheme, is an important contribution to the task of dealing with the great problems that must arise after the War. No one suggests that it is by itself complete. Nobody suggests that it covers the whole ground. But so far as the fundamentally important work of stimulating, of advising, and of co-ordinating the work of the several Departments is concerned, the Bill in my submission makes an important new departure. It is well to remember, and I am sure that the House appreciates the fact, that these problems with which the Minister of Reconstruction will have to deal are not as a rule problems of one Department alone. It is certainly not the case that the Minister is desired or intended to say to the head of a Department—the President of the Board of Trade was mentioned as an example—"This kind of work has been done in one way hitherto. We require that it shall be done in another way." Nothing is further from the contemplation of the Government than that. It rarely happens that these problems are connected with one Department alone. They are inter-Departmental. They are problems in which many Departments are concerned, and, apart from the work of initiation, apart from the work of stimulating and starting new points for consideration, apart altogether from these immensely important tasks, there is the great work of co-ordinating and bringing together the work which is done by the respective Departmental heads. They have to think of the present. The new Minister will think of the period that is to follow peace.

May I add a word or two upon specific points which were raised in the course of the discussion. We were asked, for example, whether this was to be, as so many of the new Ministries are, a temporary Ministry. I agree, with respect, that that is a most reasonable suggestion. It is a matter which will be carefully considered between now and the Committee stage of the Bill—I mean the question whether there should not be contained in the Bill clear words which will indicate the temporary character of the appointment. An hon. and learned Friend of mine below the Gangway raised the point upon the second part of Subsection (1) of Clause 2 whether the powers and duties which were contemplated were not powers and duties that went far beyond the opening words of the Clause. I think that if he will be good enough to look at the Clause again he will see that those powers and duties are limited by the words, hon. Members who did not scruple to say—I presume in a mood of jest—that the sole object of this Bill was to make provision for the time being for the fortunes of an individual politician. An hon. Member of this House who is capable of believing that is capable of believing anything, and I say no more upon it. With regard to my right hon. Friend himself I am not going to pronounce a eulogium upon him, but the Government is fortunate indeed, when this important office for the first time needs to be filled up, in being able to invite to the discharge of its duties a gentleman of the patience, the information, the character, and the scientific training and experience of my right hon. Friend (Dr. Addison).

I am opposed to this Bill on several grounds. First of all, because I think really the outside public are every day coming more strongly to this view, that the multiplication of paid offices in this House is becoming a public danger. The other day in a very important division, in which undoubtedly the public of this country took an intense interest and in which the majority for the Government was not very decisive, I myself told in the Government Lobby, and, being a very old Member of the House, and remembering the well-founded jealousies of the House in these matters, handed down to us by the wisdom of a long succession of ancestors, I declare that I do not think there were fewer than sixty paid Members passing through the Lobby. That really amounts to a serious blow at the independence of this House. If the Government can count in any critical Division on sixty salaried votes it is reaching the size of a national danger to the prestige and the position of this House. Therefore, I think the Government in proposing to appoint two new salaried officials in this House would require to establish a much stronger case than has been established either by the Home Secretary or the Solicitor-General. The speech of the Solicitor-General greatly increased my difficulty about this Bill, because he undertook to give an explanation, which the Home Secretary, far more astute and with more experience of Parliamentary warfare, abstained from doing, of the activities of this new Ministry. His explanation, to my mind, shows that the new Minister may really prove to be in many respects highly mischievous. I am not now referring to the personality of the new Minister. What was my amazement to hear the Solicitor-General, in the long list of duties with which he detained the House, point to two, which were to stimulate and initiate projects for the reform of education and of agriculture. We all thought one of the best things that this new Government did was to place at the head of agriculture and education in this country two of the best men who could be got in Great Britain, and we were all congratulating ourselves. I took part in a rather hot Debate when the Minister for Agriculture was appointed, and I drew attention to the fact that in my opinion the powers given to the Food Controller were calculated to seriously impede and perhaps dangerously obstruct the work of the Minister for Agriculture. I was not listened to. The Minister for Agriculture himself said he was quite confident he could overrule the Food Controller whenever they came into conflict. Three weeks did not pass before the Food Controller overruled the Minister for Agriculture in the most disastrous and mischievous way, and for weeks the all-important and vital work of the Minister of Agriculture in this country was held up, obstructed, and almost brought to naught by the collision between the two Ministers. Now, after months of struggle, some kind of a modus virendi has been set up between the Food Controller and the Ministry for Agriculture, when I believe the friction has to a large extent died down, the unfortunate Minister for Agriculture is going to have another Minister set up over him and the friction will commence all over again, and he is going to be stimulated and controlled. I should like very much to hear what the Minister for Agriculture would have to say on the matter. Surely anyone who heard the most hopeful speech I have listened to for twenty years from the new Minister for Education will admit that he does not want to be stimulated and controlled and co-ordinated by the new Minister. When I was struggling in vain against the institution of the National Service Department anybody who said a word against National Service was set down as a pro-German. They nearly jumped down my throat when I suggested that National Service would not be a tremendous success. Every dead wall in the country was covered with placards proclaiming the wonders that were to be performed by National Service. We have spent about £200,000 on it, and it has done nothing. Perhaps it is one of the great problems which the new Minister will take up—how to provide decent burial for the National Service Department. I said then, and I say now, that one of the greatest dangers to this country at the present time is bureaucracy run mad. A kind of obsession has taken possession of those who control the government of this country. They think that by multiplying Departments, with Ministers and enormous staffs of officials, many of whom have little or nothing to do—at any rate, nothing useful to do—that they are going to solve all the troubles of these times.

I do not believe that the necessity for this new Ministry has been made out by the Government, and I deplore in the strongest possible way this system of Ministers marching down to the House of Commons and multiplying officials, with great salaries, without feeling, apparently, that it is incumbent upon the Minister who makes such proposals to make out an overwhelming need before he calls upon the House of Commons to multiply these positions. I am not going to criticise the personality of the new Minister. I have known him for a long time and I know he is a very able man. I have great personal regard and respect for him. I have heard him dealing with most difficult problems with admirable temper and great ability. I was immensely struck by the speech of the hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Peto), which appeared to me to be absolutely unanswerable. He pointed out that we should have a new Minister of Health. There could be an overwhelming case for a Ministry of Health. Those of us who took part in the long discussions on the Criminal Law Amendment Bill and the cognate questions arising there from saw the dire necessity for the health of this country of something being done in the way of a Ministry of Health. If there is to be a Ministry of Health set up, why on earth did you not keep the right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Addison) for that Ministry? He would be an ideal man for the Minister of Health, and there is no more important office in the whole country or one more urgently needed. The Ministry of Health ought to have been set up long ago to deal not only with the problems after the War, but which have arisen during the War. It would have been far more rational, if you are to set up new Ministries, to commence with a Ministry of Health and put the right hon. Member for Hoxton at the head of that Ministry, a position for which he would be eminently qualified. He is a man of great distinction, but I do not see on what ground he is chosen for the position of Minister of Reconstruction. So far as I know he has no particular gift in the way of agriculture or trade or the various problems that arise, such as the relations between labour and capital. Therefore, I do not know why the Government should think that he is specially qualified for this position.

Another reason for which I am very strongly opposed to this Bill is on account of Clause 6. It proposes to carry a further stage the new system of government which we should have some opportunity of debating. The position in this country is that we do not know what is governing the country or how the Government works. Clause 6 proposes an extension of the system, which I consider a great abuse, of governing the country by men who have no portfolios and no Department. We have now got a Cabinet—I do not know whether I am justified in calling it a Cabinet, but it is a kind of arrangement of Ministers who are regarded as super-Ministers, like super-"Dreadnoughts" in the Navy, and are supposed to be relieved of all Departmental work in order to apply their mighty minds all the time to the problems of the War. That is exactly, as anybody with experience of government could have foretold at the start, what they do not do, and are not allowed to do. We know perfectly well—these things leak out—that the War Cabinet is continually called together to debate, and has long sessions debating, things quite foreign to the conduct of the War. I remember a famous occasion, when there was the terrific crisis about the price of potatoes, on which the War Cabinet was called together specially and had a long sitting to decide the price of potatoes, and it was considered a great triumph for the War Cabinet when it came to a decision to take prompt action to reverse the muddle which had been created by the Food Controller, who had brought about a perfect famine in the potato market. Many other oases of the kind have been debated by the War Cabinet. Why? Because, according to all the information which I have been able to obtain, the various Departments are subordinate to the War Cabinet, and they cannot take any decision of importance without referring it to the War Cabinet. That shows the absurdity of this system. What recommended this system to the House was that it was said that these men's minds would be freed from details of administration, so that they would be obliged to think of nothing but the War. Unless you start, as has been suggested in the course of this Debate, another Cabinet which would be charged with all the questions of internal administration, such an ideal is absolutely unobtainable. And, of course, this system has resulted in ever constant friction and a total upset of the ordinary ideas for responsibility on which the government of this country has always been supposed to rest.

There is one particular point on Clause 6 which is very serious. One of the objects of Clause 6 is to provide means for bringing the late Lord of the Admiralty into the War Cabinet. That raises a very serious question for us. When the former First Lord of the Admiralty was at the Admiralty he presumably had nothing to-do with the Government of Ireland. As a Member of the War Cabinet he is directly concerned with it [An HON. MEMBER: "No!"] He is, because I know it. That is one of the things that we complain of. The Government of Ireland continually raises questions of the greatest possible urgency, and from my own knowledge—and it is in the knowledge of everybody—it is common talk that the War Cabinet have had to hold several long sittings to discuss questions of Irish Government. Nobody knows who is governor of Ireland at this present moment—no one. Ultimately the questions which arise will become still more urgent and will be referred to the War Cabinet, and in the course of permutations and combinations, the First Lord of the Admiralty, who was, I had supposed, divorced from the Government of Ireland within the Admiralty, has now become an effective portion of the Government of Ireland. On that ground alone, I must go into the Division Lobby against the Bill. I warn the Government that they have done an extremely ill-gauged thing, which may raise before long a controversy as to the First Lord of the Admiralty taking part in the Government of Ireland. These matters are being watched all over the world, and already from Sydney we have a reference to them. Over the whole world the affairs of Ireland are now being watched, from Russia to San Francisco, and throughout Canada and Australia, and if anything goes wrong in that country the Government will be charged with having called the First Lord of the Admiralty into conference to govern that unfortunate and unhappy country. [An HON. MEMBER: "Happy country!"] That depends on the view of the hon. Member. I do not think it is particularly happy, but it will be seen whether I am right or wrong in my view. I warn the House and the Government that if any troubles arise, and if the Government embark upon new and severe measures in Ireland, the state of things there, already bad enough, will be intensely enhanced by the fact that it synchronises with the transference of the First Lord of the Admiralty from the Admiralty to a position where he will take an active part in the government of Ireland.

I am glad to have the opportunity, before going into the Lobby against the Government in this matter, to give some reasons why I am doing so. In the first place, I think the introduction of this Bill at this moment, and the way in which it has been done, shows a certain lack of tact on the part of the Government, and shows no appreciation either of the temper of this House or the temper of the people. Several hon. Members have raised the great question of the relation of capital to labour, which it is thought will be solved under this Bill, but there are even more important things in this country than the relation of capital to labour, and that is the relation of this House to the public. The people of this country are not at all satisfied with the way the Government are running the country, and you add to their dissatisfaction by creating more jobs. The very word "jobs" stinks in the nostrils of the people, and I think that to create jobs without real justification, as hon. Members this afternoon have pointed out, is an unfortunate proceeding. That is a most unfortunate proceeding. What is more unfortunate is the selection of the Prime Minister in this matter. We are all agreed that in the reconstruction of this country the one question is the working man. The men who have fought and bled for you will in future be in the voting majority and they are awakened up and more intelligent. Yet for this particular purpose of dealing with the labour of the country, we have chosen the one man who has proved himself incapable of understanding or dealing with any of the labour problems. Much as one appreciates the hon. Member for Hoxton (Dr. Addison), surely the question of Woolwich only a few weeks ago goes to prove that he is utterly out of touch with labour. They have no confidence in his administration, and no belief in his sincerity so far as they are concerned. I say it is very unfortunate that that selection should have taken place. Further, if it is a question of affection between Ministers, it is unfortunate that the country should have to pay for it. A father may have very great affection for his son, but it stops short at putting the son in to mismanage his business. Surely any kind of affection between members of the Front Bench should stop short at placing each other in positions of great national trust and responsibility. So far as adding to the Government at the present minute in the Lobby, the Government could merely move the Closure on their own without any other Members of the House or within a few days will be able to do so. At present their vote is over 160 on a count. I would ask where it is going to end. Is every Member going to be eventually offered a job. If so, I presume that we will go on to old age and the country will be represented again. It is not reasonable to assume that we are going into the Lobby to vote money out of our own pockets when we have taken all precautions we reasonably can in moving legislative measures to enable us to vote it. More particularly do I take exception to Clause 5. That is not only introducing a Bill against the interests of the House and the country, but absolutely refusing the only constitutional way by which people can have an opportunity of expressing their opinions. It will mean that the hon. Member will be able to go on with his duties of the office without one of his constituents having an opportunity or possibly people outside of questioning him on the various matters concerned. In my brief and little experience Bills are introduced without any explanation. The Government come down and say take it or leave it, and anybody who criticises it is presumably playing the German game. Surely it is time that the people who go into the Lobbies should stop here and listen to the Debate, even if you had to chain them to their seats. My view is that a Member has the right to vote for or against unless he knows what he is voting for. [An HON. MEMBER: "You would have to be chained pretty often!"] No doubt; but I do not vote very often. Perhaps the Home Secretary will tell us whether there is any means by which his views are communicated to and approved by the vast majority of the Members who are most probably sleeping in the smoking rooms.

Those observations do not arise on the Bill. I would ask the hon. Member to devote himself to that.

I shall endeavour to do so. My reference was to the fact that, although all the speeches except two this afternoon have been absolutely opposed to the Second Reading, yet I have no doubt hon. Members Will not vote against it. One other point: I presume it will be possible in Committee to move to delete Clause 5? The Home Secretary should take counsel before the Committee stage to discover, seeing we are all more or less anxious not to do anything to hinder reconstruction after the War, if Clause 5 can be dealt with in the way I have suggested, for it is very desirable that this work should not be done by incapable people. I should be glad if the Government in their wisdom found a person more capable of taking up this vast tack of reconstruction; more in sympathy with labour which is so deeply and closely bound up with the reconstruction in the country, one who has greater experience of the grievances and problems that are likely to arise—if such a man could be found I should certainly be in favour of the Second Reading of the Bill being postponed. There is, indeed, a far more important matter that we ought to be discussing to-day. One of the reasons that I took exception to this question coming before the House to-day here and now was that if we had an afternoon to spare it would have been better employed in helping the progress of the Reform Bill through this House, so that it might at least be possible for the people to express their opinion—they cannot do it under the circumstances—instead of occupying time with a measure of this description, which I have heard—perilaps wrongly—described as a Bill which forms something in the nature of a Brock's benefit for one or two Ministers.

I do not intend to try to talk the Bill out, so if there is any anxiety on the part of the Whips on that point I beg to reassure them. There is one aspect of the Bill which strikes me as very significant, and which has not been sufficiently treated in Debate. I mean the question of the secrecy of the amount of work already accomplished in connection with the reconstruction schemes. So far as we understand for over two years past reconstruction has been considered by the best minds in the Government, with a Committee, with the Prime Minister, at any rate during recent months, as its chairman. We have had one or two small Reports on various parts of reconstruction schemes presented to us, and we have had from the Home Secretary to-day an enumeration of a number of other subjects which have been considered, but he did not tell us whether the Government had arrived at any conclusions on these points. He gave us no indication of the amount of work that has been done. He gave us no idea as to whether it was the intention, upon these reconstruction schemes, to advise great changes in the law and practice of our social system. We are, as a matter of fact, in the dark as to how much reconstruction work has been done. A very great deal may have been done. On the other hand, the field may only have been mapped out in outline. I do hope that before this Bill passes away from this House we shall be told a little more as to what amount of work there is before the Minister of Reconstruction and how soon the results of the reconstruction work already done will be laid before this House and the public.

These are only a few of the questions. I should like to address in real seriousness to the Home Secretary and to the Government, and for the reason that a number of us are in fear that, when the War comes to an end, instead of being able to say, "Now let us, as quickly as possible, consider how we are to start afresh," we shall be told, "Oh, for months past there has been a reconstruction scheme in connection with labour, horticulture, town-planning," or dozens of other questions I might mention. The Government might say, "We have considered that long ago in secret. For years we have had pigeonholed schemes," and we might find at the end of the War that we are to be governed by a bureaucracy upon schemes we have never heard of before, that have been brought out and considered and decided in secret by secret persons of whose personality we never knew, on evidence quite secret, the witnesses giving that evidence being quite unknown to us. By giving this Reconstruction Ministry too much power we may be establishing for ourselves an iron scheme or cage into which we shall be invited to step, in which we shall be shackled with the bonds set up by a Reconstruction Committee sitting in secret. I say this advisedly, because last Monday week I put a question to the Prime Minister which was answered after two days' delay. It was a question so simple that I believe I could have answered it myself without much consideration. The question was: faults of the preceding Government. Serious as I say this is, the method of treating the whole thing as if it were something so secret that there must not be a mere whisper or a word as to whether there was a Reconstruction Committee on local government is absurd, useless, and causes suspicion. It is causing the length of my speech, too. The work that they are doing in reconstruction is now indefinitely being put too much upon the men who are already hard worked. This Local Government Reconstruction Committee is under the presidency of the right hon. Gentleman the Deputy-Chairman of Committees of this House. He is always in his place when important Bills are going through, and he is very much over-worked. He is also Chairman of the Appeal Tribunal which sits for several days a week upstairs, and what does it mean to put him as Chairman of the Reconstruction Committee on Local Government. It means that either that Committee is only going to mark time or only partially take up its duties. I will only conclude by saying that the secrecy with which the work is being done and the results which have been arrived at are not satisfactory. That must be changed, and if we are going to have a Minister of Reconstruction he must not be afraid of taking the House of Commons into his confidence and getting advice and support by openly stating his objects and methods; and in this way he will secure that public opinion and Parliament is behind him. Only on these lines will reconstruction schemes come to anything.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the question."

The House divided: Ayes, 92; Noes, 30.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for

Monday next.—[ Sir G. Cave. ]

Can this Bill be taken after five o'clock?

Not if the hon. Gentleman objects.

I object.

Second Reading deferred until Monday next.

I object.

May I appeal to my hon. Friend to withdraw his objection? May I point out that it is only through my having blocked this Bill yesterday that it appears on the Paper to-day? I have taken the opportunity of perusing it, and all that it does is to enable police constables to get allowances immediately, and under those circumstances I am sure he will withdraw his opposition.

May I add my appeal to that of the hon. Member? The only purpose of the Bill is to give constables an. allowance. Their allowance is lower if they joined the Army earlier than if they joined it late.

In order that the Government may know how to treat my hon. Friend I accede at once to his request.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time," put, and agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Resolved, "That this House will immediately resolve itself into Committee on the Bill."—[ Mr. J. Hope. ]

Bill accordingly considered in Committee, and reported, without Amendment; read the third time, and passed.

The remaining Orders were read and postponed.

Whereupon Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to Standing Order No. 3.

Adjourned at Three minutes after Five o'clock till Monday next.