This is an Estimate of the Ministry of Shipping for £100 but the Committee will realise that it is in fact asking for the approval of Parliament to an expenditure of £21,180,000 out of the Appropriations in Aid. This is a huge sum of money equal to more than one-tenth of the total annual income of this country before the War, and I find myself in a position of considerable difficulty. I cannot possibly hope to explain this Estimate, and the reason why there has been such a very large under-estimation of the expenditure as well as an under-estimation of the total receipts, without trespassing upon the time of the Committee to a considerable extent, but I am afraid if I do not do so I lay myself open to the charge that I have not adequately explained this Estimate. I will undertake to made my remarks as short as possible, although the task is somewhat difficult. As the Committee will see from the Estimate, I am asking the approval of Parliament to take the sum of £21,180,000 from Appropriations in Aid. The Committee will also see at the bottom of page 34 that in addition to these Appropriations in Aid available for the extra expenditure incurred during the recent financial year there is a further sum of £9,000,000 which could have been used from Appropriations in Aid had it been necessary but being surplus they are paid directly into the Exchequer. In addition there should be a further £15,000,000 as extra receipts in respect of recoveries from the Dominions and Allied Governments, and from the proceeds of the sale of ships. The Committee will see that the receipts have been largely under-estimated.

I want to make it quite clear that this additional expenditure is not required in connection with any fresh liabilities with one exception with which I will deal, but it is extra cost in settlement of old liabilities. In order to make clear the various subjects referred to in the White Paper I would like to explain why this large expenditure has been incurred during the past financial year. The first reason is that the residue of the outstanding liabilities of the Ministry have been very largely under-estimated and equally the receipts have been very largely under-estimated. Had I had an opportunity, which I did not, of speaking on the original Estimates I should have then said that the original Estimates must necessarily be highly conjectural. These liabilities were incurred as part of the world wide activities of the Ministry both during the war and after the war, and I use the word world-wide in its full sense. A little time ago I endeavoured to anticipate the criticism which would be raised on the extra expenditure being incurred by the Ministry by publishing a White Paper dealing with the work of the Ministry since the Armistice. I am not sure that all the members of the Committee have read that White Paper, but if they have they will see the activities of the Ministry. We have been responsible since the Armistice for the management of 647 ships, and we have either sold or returned those ships to their owners. I think I may remind the Committee that many of these liabilities to which I am alluding: are due to activities long before the Armistice, and in order that the Committee may have some recollection of the work of the Ministry I would remind hon. Members that up to the end of July last we have been responsible for the transport of 33,000,000 men. Since the formation of the Ministry in April, 1917, we have been responsible for the removal of 2,400,000 horses, 1,000,000 vehicles and 60,000,000 tons of stores, not including Navy coal. The second reason is that provision for running expenses and earnings was too little, as the Ministry remained responsible for operating the ships for longer periods than was anticipated when the original estimate was prepared, and generally expenses and earnings of past voyages were underestimated.

With regard to the difficulty of estimating the residue of liabilities, I should like to explain how the expenditure of the Ministry is incurred. It falls on the two main heads. Firstly under the head of the operation of ships, and secondly the building of ships. With regard to the operation of ships, the ships which have been operated under the direction of the Ministry have been of various classes, including Government-owned ships, prize ships, ex-enemy ships and requisitioned ships, some on gross charter and some on net. The bulk of these ships have been looked after by shipping firms who have acted as managers under the general direction of the Ministry. The managers themselves paid all disbursements either directly or through their agents all over the world, and collected all the freights. These managers rendered accounts to the Ministry, and paid over balances due to the Ministry and sometimes they were financed when necessary by advances. The shipping agents were sub-accountants to the managers and the managers were sub-accountants to the Ministry. There is great difficulty in bringing all these matters to account in any one financial year. The moment these accounts are received they all have to be classified and dealt with and recoveries made either from Government departments, from our Allies or the Dominions. When I tell the Committee that the total number of sub-accounting officers direct or indirect of the Ministry has probably exceeded 400; that over 38,000 accounts have been received, of which 6,500 still remain to be examined; and that we are still receiving them at at the rate of something like 2,000 per week, hon. Members will realise the difficulty in preparing estimates dealing with those liabilities. These figures exclude entirely the hundreds of thousands of claims which have been dealt with. They only relate to the quarterly accounts which are rendered by the Managers, voyage accounts and the quarterly accounts of Consuls, Transport Officers, Naval Yards and Naval Depots, and representatives of the Ministry of Shipping in various parts of the world. Necessarily the intervals which elapse between the date of the expenditure being actually incurred by the agents of the department and the date at which the accounts have reached the Ministry, have often and unavoidably been long. Apart from the normal intervals of periodical accounting and distance of the agent from the United Kingdom, there has been further the real difficulty possibly the greatest difficulty of all, arising from the depletion of the accounting staffs, not only in Government departments, but of those employed by shipping firms during the war which have led to large arrears of work in examining and rendering accounts. With regard to the second cause, the ship-building liabilities, these have presented rather less difficulty, but it was impossible to estimate closely, and some hundreds of accounts for final balances for ships, machinery and equipment had still to be received at the time the usual estimate was prepared. The increase which has taken place in the cost of labour and material made it impossible to estimate more closely the provision required. The difficulties with regard to estimating receipts applied also to expenditure. Practically all the expenditure incurred by the Ministry has been recoverable from the Allies and Dominions or from shipowners, except for two years, 1917–19, when we made no recovery from the War Office and the Admiralty but were responsible for the full service rendered to those Departments.

Then the Ministry was responsible for operating vessels longer than was originally anticipated. That does not mean there has been any extra expense to the Exchequer. On the contrary, as I shall show more fully later on, it has meant a gain as the earnings have ordinarily exceeded the running expenses. This point I will deal with more fully under Subhead G, where provision is made for the costs of running during the whole of 1920–21.

I come next to the only new cash expenditure there is in this supplementary estimate—the only cash expenditure which is not directly covered by corresponding credits: and that is for administration. There have been very considerable reductions of staff in the Ministry during the year. A vast volume of work has been involved in the process of liquidation and the continued running of ex-enemy vessels has made impracticable the whole of the reductions which was hoped for at the time the original estimate was submitted to Parliament.

I come now to the various sub-heads of the supplementary estimate, and I will take first Sub-head A, £54,500, which is required to meet the increased salaries of temporary employees, and the cost of substitution for male and female staff, and additional expenditure owing to the liquidation not proceeding as rapidly as was anticipated. There have also been the War Bonus awards to the temporary staff during the war and a charge for ex-service men, because at times a double staff has had to be kept on for about a month to enable these men to become acquainted with their work. Everything possible has been done to bring ex-service men into the Ministry and over 60 per cent. of those now employed in the Ministry are ex-service men. The number of the staff at the date of the Armistice was 3,500. In May, 1920, the headquarters staff numbered 1,115. The staff to-day at headquarters is 680. The out-ports staff at home and abroad in May, 1920, was 196; to-day it is 64. The total staff of 680 at headquarters at the present time is mainly in the finance branch, which numbers 423. That sounds a very large number indeed, but I may explain that there is real economy in maintaining it. The total cost of the accountancy staff is £8,810 per month, and the annual cost of the total staff on the present basis would be £147,962.

I have had made out by the Accounts Branch a record of recoveries of cash which has resulted from its work in the course of the preparation of the accounts, and of savings made by disallowances or negotiations. The average saving shown either under the head of recoveries and disallowances on the examination of accounts or the reductions effected by negotiations has been not less than £755,000 per month. There are some people both inside and outside this House who seem to think that because the Ministry of Shipping is going to close on the 31st of this month it is possible to discharge immediately the whole of the staff and to evacuate the buildings in St. James's Park. There could be no more false economy than that, and, indeed, it is absolutely impossible. If you do that, if you close the Ministry, if you do away with the whole of the finance branch of the Ministry, you are faced with two alternatives. One of the British Government repudiating its liabilities. That is obviously impossible. The other alternative you are faced with is the British Government accepting any account rendered against the Ministry of Shipping and paying it in full. That cannot be economy when an examination of the accounts has shown it possible to effect a gross saving of three-quarters of a million sterling a month. Therefore, I say that a careful examination on the work of the finance branch shows that it is a very wise expenditure of money, seeing that the expenditure is only £8,810 per month. The staff of the Ministry is always under constant review. At the beginning of every month my right hon. Friend and myself go through it with the heads of the Departments, and reductions are made wherever it is possible consistently with efficiency and economy.

The average cash turnover of the Ministry at the present time is, however, still about £3,500,000 to £4,000,000 a month, and it is only possible to make savings and effect economy in the Ministry if the work of liquidation of these vast amounts is done well. The cost of proper investigation of liabilities, both as to their nature and as to their amount, is repaid many times over in the savings which are thereby effected.

I have said something about the difficulties of ascertaining closely the outstanding liabilities of the Ministry and the corresponding sums to be credited, and this comes in particularly in regard to Sub-head G. Let me give the Committee an example of the difficulties of bringing moneys to account in any one financial year. We were responsible after the Armistice for the repatriation of all the Australian troops, and we sent them out in some 35 vessels. That was at a time when there was not the superabundance of tonnage that there is now, but a great shortage. These vessels went to Australia with troops and cargo. When they got there, they either loaded up with cargo and returned home direct, or they went to India with cargo from Australia, picked up more cargo in India, and brought home troops who had been waiting for a long time to come home. The accounts of all these voyages included expenses incurred at a number of ports, and could not possibly be completed and sent to the Ministry until some time after the completion of the round voyage. When they reached the Ministry they had all to be examined to ascertain the charges fairly recoverable against the Common-wealth Government for repatriation of their troops. Of those 35 vessels, the voyage accounts of only 17 have been received even yet. Then the numerous vessels used on services like this had to be reconditioned on completion of service and the charges apportioned according to the respective services on which they had been employed. The sum of £14,817,000 asked for under the Sub-head is divided up as follows. Firstly there is Supplementary sum of £589,000 on the hire of vessels. Then the running expenses of ex-enemy and other vessels have increased, from the original Estimate of £6,600,000, to £17,996,000. Another large item is on the repayment of organisation expenses under the Liner Requisition Scheme, the increase in which amounts to over £1,500,000; and there is another large item of nearly £1,500,000 in connection with total losses, which has only been brought to account during the financial year.

I have often promised in the House to give some sort of trading account of vessels which have been managed by the Ministry of Shipping, and I have had three accounts made out up to the most recent date possible. The trading account from the 1st April, 1918, to the 31st March, 1920, for the coastal ships managed by the Ministry, shows, after allowing for depreciation at 5 per cent., a total net profit for this period of £329,111 11s. 5d. On the ocean-going ships—the Government prize-detained ships, not ex-enemy vessels—there has been, from the 1st April, 1919, to the 31st March, 1920, after allowing for insurance at 8 per cent. and depreciation at 5 per cent., a balance of net profit of £872,782 15s. 11d. That is on an average monthly tonnage—it is impossible to give the actual number of vessels—of 103,000 gross tons, or 160,000 dead-weight tons. As regards ex-enemy vessels, from the time of the armistice until the 10th January, 1920, there was a balance payable to the Ministry, on the running of those vessels, amounting to £1,171,749. At the time of the Armistice we had no less than 647 of those Government ships under management. With the exception of prize-detained ships, 31 in number, they had all been disposed of by November, 1920, but of course the accounts in connection with them are still being dealt with in very large numbers. We took over the ex-enemy vessels on January 10th, 1920, and we had, in November, 1910, 300 of those vessels running. Since that date we have sold 163.

The addition under Sub-head H is largely in connection with our settlement with the United States Government in respect of services rendered during the war. The general over-all settlement with that Government is now approaching completion, but some matters, which it was originally intended to adjust on the exchange of tonnage basis, have been adjusted instead by cash payments, and provision is required accordingly. In connection with this matter the country owes a very deep debt of gratitude to Sir Ernest Raeburn, the son of the hon. Member for Dumbarton. I have received within the last few days a telegram pointing out that the settlement is now practically arrived at involving a total sum of something like £40,000,000, and on that the American Government will pay us a fairly large sum, in addition to over £20,000,000 which we have already received. We are very grateful indeed for the assistance we have received in that matter, not only from the British volunteers over there, but also from a large number of American citizens. With regard to Sub-head J, practically the whole of the additional amount asked for, namely, £783,000, is for fittings supplied to British transports used for the conveyance of American troops. The vessels in question were fitted in America by the United States transportation service, who alone were in a position to supply the fittings (life rafts and belts, hammocks, etc.). In some of these cases payments on account were made, generally by deduction from amounts provisionally charged to the United States War Department by the lines for conveyance of troops; but it has now been arranged that the War Department shall render a complete account, to be adjusted by direct payment. In the case of Sub-head K— £1,240,000 for purchase and building of vessels—£1,000,000 is for a payment to the Naval Prize Fund made to the Admiralty, who arranged for the distribution to the personnel of the Navy. This amount is a further advance in addition to £3,000,000 already paid by the Ministry to the Admiralty for this purpose on account of prize vessels which have been condemned as droits of the Crown and which have been run by the Ministry. These vessels are being sold and the proceeds will be credited to the Exchequer as extra receipts. Then with regard to the final account for the construction of vessels there is an additional sum also included in the £325,000 which will be paid in the next financial year. With regard to the ship building programme of the Ministry I might summarise the total result of the ship building effort of the Government during the War. These are the final accounts which will be presented and there is a sum of £184,000 to be included in the Estimates for this year. There were altogether 821 vessels ordered by the Shipping Controller in the United Kingdom and abroad and 279 of these were transferred to private owners for completion. There will be no financial gain or loss. 126 others were cancelled, involving an expenditure by way of compensation of £500,000. The remaining 416 vessels were completed to the order of the Controller. 23 of these were sunk and 15 were transferred to the Admiralty service as oilers, and the balance of 378 were sold to private owners in this country. A very difficult decision had to be taken at the time of the Armistice. The Government then owned this very large number of vessels. Freights were very high and there was a great shortage of tonnage and obviously there was a great temptation to continue running the vessels and bringing in a large balance to the credit of the Exchequer. The Shipping Controller, however, decided—and I believe the Committee will agree, apart from any other consideration, on the financial consideration alone, that it was a wise decision—that his first duty was to dispose of all these Government owned ships which were built entirely for the purposes of the War

Were they being run at a profit?

At that moment they were being managed at a profit to the State, but if the Shipping Controller had not taken that decision, and was at the present moment still in possession of the ships, they would be like so many other ships, lying up, and would have been a loss to the nation.

Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman give us any estimate of the amount the Government would have lost if they had not sold those vessels?

I can only say that other nations who built ships during the War are totally unable to sell them at present, and I think when I give the figures which the ships have realised, the Committee will agree that it was a wise decision. The total cost of the 228 ships built in the United Kingdom was £36,481,000, and the selling price was £47,591,000. That gives a total profit on ships built in the United Kingdom of £11,110,000. There were 122 ships built outside the United Kingdom at every yard at which it was possible to build ships abroad. They were built at very high prices as compared with the prices paid in this country. Their cost was £26,884,000, and the selling price was £18,289,000, a total loss on ships built outside the United Kingdom of £8,595,000. That is the net profit on 378 ships built and sold, excluding any allowance for depreciation, of £2,515,000. But I think one is justified, in putting an account like this before the Committee, to take into consideration the depreciation which should be allowed on these ships. We had 311 of these ships running. Allow 5 per cent. depreciation and you get roughly a net profit not of £2,515,000 but £5,122,000. I could take the matter further by pointing out that there was undoubtedly a great saving by the fact that these ships were built and owned by the Government. Shipping was very short indeed. You could not possibly requisition any more British ships because the whole British Mercantile Marine was under requisition. We should have had to charter from neutrals at a very high rate, and that would have entailed an additional expenditure of £27,000,000, or practically 43 per cent. of the total cost of the 378 vessels which were built.

The next item is National Shipyards. I dealt with this question very exhaustively on the Estimates, and I have also replied to many questions. I do not propose to go into the whole question, but only to deal with the reason why this extra expenditure is required. I am not doing it because I do not want to. I am only desirous of saving the time of the Committee, and I shall be willing to reply to any questions which may be put to me.

I think the original Estimate has been already authorised, has it not? Therefore, it would not be in order to develop the whole question.

With regard to the Supplementary Estimate it was originally hoped to hand over the surplus plant and machinery at the shipyards to the Disposals Board early in the year. But as it was necessary to keep a staff at Beachley to deal with the completion of the housing schemes, sewage works and water works there, and also to run the power station, it was considered economical to combine this with the necessary reparation and maintenance work for disposal, including cost of loading up, etc., with sale. The Disposals Board actually conducted sales, and it has also been found advisable to purchase rather than reinstate more land than was originally anticipated. There is a provision of £142,000 divided into additional cost of work in connection with disposals, £30,000, purchase of land £12,000, and reinstatement of Portishead Dock £9,000, and that I am glad to say is finally completed, and the dock has been returned to the Bristol authority. There was an under-estimate of outstanding liabilities, particularly on account of freight, of stores and machinery on railways, of £80,000, and additional liabilities connected with housing, water and electric services, £11,000. On Sub-head L there is an additional sum of £21,000. That is an under-estimate of the claims to be received in respect of old liabilities. There have been no diversions of cargoes since early in 1919. These were only due then to congestion at the ports. Sub-head M, miscellaneous services, is due really to an under-estimate again chiefly on account of claims made by the Board of Trade for repayment of expenses in connection with the repatriation of coloured seamen after the War. It was essential that these coloured seamen should be repatriated. They served us extremely well during the War, and when the War was over there was no room for them in the ships, and they were only taking the places of British seamen. There were considerable troubles in many of the ports, and it was felt that it was the duty of the Government to repatriate the men to the West Coast, the West Indies, and Arabia, and the amount in the Estimate is for maintaining them pending the time when we could provide facilities for repatriation.

With respect to the Appropriations-in-Aid, the additional amounts brought to account correspond largely with the additional expenditure for which Parliamentary sanction is asked, but it does not follow that the credits are necessarily brought to account at the same time as the debits. For example, freight earned by a ship may be remitted in whole or part before the completion of the voyage and the remaining expenses of the voyage may be met by the manager out of advances received from the Ministry and brought to account later. The increase in the anticipated Appropriation-in-Aid is mainly due to larger receipts under the Liner Requisition Scheme to the amount of £11,000,000, additional earnings of ex-enemy ships £9,600,000, and increased amounts from miscellaneous receipts, sales, etc., £579,900. The bulk of the additional sums to be brought into account as extra receipts are recoveries from Allies, Dominions and the Trading Departments, £13,250,000, sales of ships £1,680,000, and sales of shipyards and materials 70,000. It was impossible to estimate the two former closely, as the amounts to be brought to account depended entirely on the time at which over-all settlements would be found practicable. Interest has been charged on balances outstanding due to the Ministry of Shipping. I have not dealt fully with the various items, it is not because I am not anxious to give the fullest possible information, but because I do not want to trespass too much on the time of the Committee.

The Committee owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for his lucid explanation. In view of the very satisfactory explanation excepting one or two points, I have no intention of proposing my motion to reduce the Vote. One thing that concerns us very much with regard to the administration of the Department, in view of the fact that it is proposed to close it on the 31st of this month, is that we should receive a very definite assurance that in transferring it to the Board of Trade, every possible effort will be made to reduce the expen- diture and the cost of the Department, and to close all outstanding accounts as soon as possible. I know a good deal of the Ministry. I have had something to do with it during the last four or five years, and I have found it always exceedingly difficult to get money out of them on claims that one has against them. I was pleased to hear that the Department are charging interest on balances outstanding. No doubt shipowners generally will bear that in mind, and ask for interest on outstanding balances so far as they are concerned. I know of some cases where claims were filed years ago, and they are still in process of negotiation. I do submit, with all due deference to the Department, that a little more expedition might be put into the matter in going into these accounts. It is a case of going from one Department to another and being continually held up, and there being ceaseless negotiations, which never take place in an ordinary business house. If a serious and deliberate attempt could be made to cut down the personnel as quickly as possible, and to put a time limit on the activities of the Department, we could get rid of these matters very much more quickly than the hon. Member suggested.

The cost of £12,000 a month going on for an indefinite period is a serious item, when there is practically no prospect of any revenue being derived for 1921–22 on the operations of the Department. The saving of £755,000 per month is a very nice item and in many cases it is due to the fact that the schemes for re-conditioning which have been put in have not been allowed, very much to the disgust of shipowners, and also to the detriment of their fleets. The hon. Member for Dumbarton (Sir W. Raeburn), will agree with me that sometimes a good deal more latitude should be used by the Department in regard to returning vessels to their owners after years of service in foreign parts. As shipowners we can get our accounts together in four or five months after the end of our financial year; it Is a very rare occasion that our accounts are not in within three or four months, and in preparing the estimates it ought to have been possible for the Department to have prepared some form of estimate for the amount of expenditure which they had to face for the operations of the steamers and the voyages in course of completion. It is all very well for the Ministry to act in this manner so far as the estimates are concerned, but if a business house did it we should be in a serious position, and we should never be able to present our balance sheet before twelve months after the completion of our financial year.

In regard to shipbuilding the estimate is true. Twelve months ago nobody contemplated that the increased cost of labour and material in regard to ships would be approximately anything up to 100 per cent. That has been the case, and I think the hon. Member's explanation in regard to that charge will be accepted without question by almost everybody in the Committee. There is one important matter which might well be taken into serious consideration. There are about 140 ex-German ships to be sold and it is a very serious matter that at this time when we have nearly 3,000,000 tons of British shipping tied up in British ports, that these ex-German ships should be thrown upon the market to be sold at prices much under present cost. It will be preferable that they should be laid up and taken care of, as in the case of other ships, instead of being thrown out for sale, with the result that we are getting cancellation of orders in our shipbuilding yards by the score. In January there were over 230 cancellations of shipbuilding orders, and in February there were something like 80 cancellations. The result will be very serious. We are going to have a complete cessation of shipbuilding work from September of this year, in all probability for eighteen months, or perhaps even longer. Facing, as we are, a great amount of unemployment in the country, I do not think the Government ought to aggravate the position by throwing more German ships on the market when the amount realised, probably, will not be more than £4,000,000 or £5,000,000, which, all said and done, would easily be used up among the employees of shipbuilding and engineering trades in doles. It is a matter I commend to the attention of the hon. Member. Some of my friends above the Gangway referred to the fact that shipowners had made big profits and that these ships were sold at a time when they were making profits, but I do not think anybody who knows anything about the activities of the Ministry is going to blame them for selling the ships when they did. They sold at the too of the market, and I believe the average price realised was anywhere between £22 and £25 per ton. To-day those same vessels could not be sold for £10 a ton, and in addition to that they would be involving the Government in expense on laying-up charges. It is perfectly true that the boats were sold at a high price to private operators who made profits, but, on the other hand, what profits were made were taxable and very largely came back to the Government through the Revenue Department.

I would like to ask a question about the shipyard programme. I see £240,000 is estimated for, I suppose, the completion of the shipyards which the Ministry saw fit to erect in the halcyon days of our friend, Sir Leo Chiozza Money. Can the Minister tell us if these yards, when completed, will be able to turn out ships, or if they will have to be scrapped, and if he thinks there is any possibility that they can be sold at a profit, or if we are going to build ships there if we cannot sell them, or, again, if any ships are being built there, and if it is proposed to build them and sell them if the yards are not sold? I think this opportunity should be taken of expressing our thanks to those gentlemen for whom no salaries are included in the administrative salaries. A large number of shipowners and other men gave their services to the country free of charge, and very little has been said of them. They have received a great deal of abuse at the hands of people like myself and others, but it is undoubtedly the fact that what they did was of inestimable value to the country, and I think the House should recognise it. Speaking on behalf of the shipowners, I say we are under a deep debt of obligation to the Minister in charge for his kindness and courtesy to us at all times, and I believe that the administration of the Department by himself and his chiefs has been eminently satisfactory.

I rise to ask only two questions, and may I join in what has been said already as to the satisfactory way in which the Minister has given information to the Committee upon this very complicated subject. My hon. Friend who has just spoken (Mr. Gould) referred to the 146 German ships which are still awaiting sale. There has been a rumour, it may be without foundation, that the Government propose to sell those back to the Germans. That, I think, would be an exceedingly unpopular thing to do. I am perfectly sure that the last thing this country would wish would be that they should be sold back to Germany. I do not know, I may be entirely misinformed, but it is a matter which I know is causing, some anxiety, and I should like an assurance on that point. I also join with the hon. Member who spoke last in saying that what is to be done with these ships is a serious problem. I represent a constituency which is largely interested in shipbuilding, and I am well aware of what my hon. Friend opposite has said as regards the grave anxiety as to what is to happen in the immediate future as regards shipbuilding. The other question I want to ask is whether the Minister can tell us whether all the claims for requisitioned ships have now been paid by the Ministry, and, if not, can he give us any indication as regards the number outstanding? There has been a good deal of delay, from my own personal knowledge, as regards a good many of these claims, and they are the claims of those to whom the money is due, and they are entitled to ask for a quick settlement. They are the quid pro quo for what they had to go through during the war, which was often a great blow to them in the conduct of their businesses.

1.0 P.M.

After the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff (Mr. Gould) I do not intend to say much. I had intended to say more before he spoke. I should have been very sorry indeed if the last note in regard to the Ministry of Shipping had been one of disappointment. However much we may have complained—and everybody often complained very much—of the hardships we sometimes had to endure, I believe at the bottom of our hearts we feel that we were well treated, and that the Ministry of Shipping was one of the best-managed concerns in the hands of the Government. Its difficulties are known only to those engaged in the business itself. I did not envy my Friend the Parliamentary Secretary having to explain the White Paper to a House which, without wishing to give any offence, I may say is not very well up in shipping matters. Even to a shipowner it presents insuperable difficulties in the effort to understand it. If one did not know what had actually gone on, one might have been inclined to think, "What kind of people must be at the head of this Department who come and ask for double the money they estimated would be required?" My hon. Friend has explained, and it is a very real explanation, that while there has been an enormous increase in the expenses, there has also been an enormous increase in the receipts. This is explainable almost in a word. All the vessels of the Liners were managed by the Lines themselves. Even the managers of the lines could not have given you an estimate likely to work out at all accurately, because coal was rising, wages were rising, port charges were rising, while at the same time freights were also rising. The repair bills and delays and all the chances which no man could reckon on utterly upset any calculation. Many of us experienced shipowners came to the conclusion that all you could do was to take this freight or that, or send your boat here or there, and be content to take the result, whatever it might be.

I would like to refer to something of which the right hon. Gentleman (Sir E. Carson) spoke. The delays in the final settlement with the Ministry have been rather provoking, but we must not blame the Ministry of Shipping for that. In the first place, in deference, I suppose, to the continued clamour for reduction of staff, the Ministry has really been understaffed for a long time, having regard to the work it has had to do. The more experienced officials and higher salaried clerks have left, and when I go back, as I often yet have to do, to the Ministry in St. James's Park, I hardly ever find the same clerk in charge of the same job. A total change seems to have taken place every now and then. The Ministry have paid off the higher officials and appointed others, and that has prevented the expedition which otherwise we would have got. When I hear the diatribes hurled at the Ministry for their extravagance and for keeping a large staff, I know that the very opposite is the case, for they have been rather stingy with their staff, and we have all suffered for it. Do not imagine that claims are paid as sent in. They are microscopically examined, and you are lucky if you manage to come to a compromise with a very great deal less than the sum to which you think you are entitled. As regards the sale of these ex-enemy ships, I have received a note of a meeting of the Chamber of Shipping to confer with Lord Inchcape this week on the question of the sale of the remaining enemy ships. This is a difficult question. I do not think it matters whether the Ministry makes up its mind to hold up these ships or not. They are tied up in many ports, even at places like Falmouth, which is not accustomed to housing laid-up ships. The ships are lying all over the country. I do not think it is the case that because these ships are in the market cancellations of shipbuilding orders are taking place. No mortal man in his senses would now give an order for a ship to be built. I am in the unfortunate position of having been extra sanguine a year ago, and I had a ship ordered. The value of it, instead of being £300,000 when I get her, will be about £100,000, for which I shall be glad to sell her. It is not the difference between £15 a ton for a German ship or £8 a ton which he may get her at which will influence a shipowner to cancel an order. The freight market has absolutely gone to pieces.

A great deal has been said about the hardship on our working men through cancellations. What is the experience of some of us who are having ships built? We are hemmed in on all hands by strikes and by quarrels about demarkation. The joiners' strike at the present moment is holding up a large Glasgow liner, the "Cameronia," and she has gone to Cherbourg to have her fitting completed. There is no encouragement to the shipowner, and it is the most natural thing in the world for him to say to the builder, "For what will you let me off?" Is there any man with a contract for a ship worth £500,000 who in the present state of things would not say to himself that if the builder would be content with a profit of even £50,000 he had better give the builder a cheque for that amount forthwith and cancel the contract? The builders are in great difficulties. They are faced with the high cost both of material and of labour and in many cases they would be only too glad to take a cheque from the shipowner as I have indicated. I do not believe that the cancellations of building orders have anything to do with the sale of the German ships. My hon. Friend spoke of the final result of the ship- building programme of the British Government. It was a great temptation to the Controller to go on running his vessels for the large profits that were being made two years ago. When my hon. Friend spoke of £3,000,000 as the total profit made from the ship-building programme, I wondered whether he had brought into the account the very considerable profits made on bringing some of these ships home from abroad before they were handed over to their buyers. That was a very handsome profit. One of the most astonishing things to me, after having been in the shipping trade for over forty years, was the fact that these vessels, which we all thought were being built in America at most fabulous prices and which we all expected would mean a fabulous loss, were got rid of at fabulous prices before the slump came. All that was a marvellous performance on the part of the man at the head of affairs. Remember that through it all Sir Joseph Maclay was often blamed for the course he was following, but he determined to get rid at the earliest possible moment of the State-ownership and the State control of shipping.

Reference has been made to delays and to the trouble in getting settlements. Anything in that regard you would have had magnified manifold if we had had shipping nationalised. We have had a little taste of what the nationalising of shipping means. Anyone who has come through what we have come through knows that we could not have had a better warning as to the sterilising and delaying effect of everything in connection with Government management. I look upon the Ministry of Shipping rather as shipping administered by shipowners. Now we are very near the end of it. The Board of Trade are to be the department with which we are to deal. A considerable staff will still have to be maintained to deal with various outstanding matters. A settlement has still to be made with the various Allies for whom we transported both troops and stores. The Committee will understand a father's pride in his son. I should like to say how grateful I feel to the Parliamentary Secretary for having so handsomely recognised my son's services. In that connection we have had brought very vividly before us the mischief that could have been done by too soon decontrolling or abolishing the Ministry. The difficulties that have had to be overcome with the United States no one knows but those who were concerned with them. My son is coming back to relieve me of the burden of my business, and I know he is coming at the earliest possible moment, but I do not grudge the extra time given because I believe it has been for the benefit of the country.

I have been connected with a good many Departments of the State during the war, and I was particularly brought into touch with this Ministry on account of the position which I occupied as President of the Chamber of Shipping, and I must acknowledge the great services rendered, not only by our own shipowner friends who left their businesses and took up their duties in London, but by the officials and the staff for the great courtesy and ability which they displayed. Many of them were brought into shipping as an entirely new experience, and whatever may be said about the Civil Servants—and much is said against them—I must say that I have found them a very capable set of men. You cannot expect men who knew nothing about one of the most intricate businesses of the country to have the same knowledge as those who have devoted their whole lives to it, and mistakes were made, and delays did take place, but all I can say is that this country has been wonderfully shielded from what might have been the case if these men had not had the ability they have shown. My hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary dealt with this matter in a very able way, for it is a very difficult sub-jest, and I have often asked him if it is not possible for him to get out some concise history of what the Ministry of Shipping has accomplished during its existence, and the net results in—s.d. when the whole thing is wound up. I am sure that when the record is shown, instead of this Ministry being found to be an expensive Ministry, it will be seen that it has been a source of more wealth brought into the British Exchequer than any other Department of State that has ever been run. Remember this too—and I hope this will come out—that you had your troops and your stores, and all the great paraphernalia of war carried at a ridiculously low rate, and if you had been dependent on foreign nations for the carriage of your men and stores, etc., I do not know what your debt of £8,000,000,000 would have been, but it would certainly have been swollen to a very great extent.

I should not like this Vote to pass without a word from this side of the Committee, particularly on the Shipping Controller himself, Sir Joseph Maclay, who has discharged a very difficult task with an ability and modesty which we all gratefully recognise, and I am also grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Parliamentary Secretary for the lucid statement he has made to the Committee of this rather complicated matter. I noticed that the expansive geniality of my hon. Friend who has just sat down (Sir W. Raeburn) was mainly directed to the staff of the Ministry, and I understood that he did not mind the staff of the Ministry being increased instead of decreased. That is a most extraordinary position to take up at a time when a dying Ministry is being wound up with a staff on the accountants' side of 300 or 400, costing £52,000 a year. I hope myself that that staff will be very speedily reduced.

I hope I have not made the wrong impression. I am not asking for a bigger staff now, but if we had had a bigger staff from a year after the Armistice until now we would have been better off, in my opinion.

With that I cannot agree. So far as my observation has been worth anything, the Ministry has had an ample staff, and if they had been fewer I think there would have been fewer references from one department to another. Compared with the way in which great accountancy firms run their business, it shows what is the effect of the State interfering with a delicate matter like running a great industrial undertaking. After the 31st of the present month, this Ministry will be officially defunct, but what remain of its efforts are going to be carried on under the Board of Trade. What I want to put to my hon. and gallant Friend is this—and I am certain I am expressing the views of the very large majority of the Committee—that that operation will not be used as a mere cloak for carrying on a lot of unnecessary official work. We must see that under the new phase the desire of the whole House that there should be the most swift reduction of staff and cutting down of expenditure is carried out in the most rapid manner possible consistently with efficient work. I suggest that after the 31st March they should do what is done in all business concerns, that they should advertise through the usual channels a time within which claims; must be put in, and state that after that time has expired claims will not be recognised. It is always done, as we know, in the winding up of estates, and if necessary, legislation might be passed, as it may be difficult to do with regard to claims from foreign Governments, but that is the way to wind up the thing in a business manner. As to what my hon. and gallant Friend has said about the saving that is being made as compared with the claims put in, we all know you can arrange figures anyhow. There is not the slightest doubt that a very large proportion of the claims are simply grotesque and that a lot of people are filling in all sorts of claims in the hope of getting something out of the Government. I am not differentiating shipowners from any other class of the community, but we all know that when you are dealing with the Government it seems to be thought that you can send in claims which I am certain would not be sent in in ordinary circumstances if it were a question of dealing with an ordinary commercial liquidator in any great centre of industry in this country. What I suggest to my hon. and gallant Friend is that he should not look with such satisfaction as he does on this item of claims, but that he should proceed on the lines of setting up a time-limit and really let the whole of the staff know that the House and the country mean that this Ministry not only shall officially die, but shall be practically wound up.

My objection is not so much to any detail of the Estimate, as it is a fundamental objection to the Ministry still going on, and I cannot help thinking that had the Minister of Shipping made determined efforts two years ago, immediately after the Armistice, to wind up the Ministry as soon as possible, a great deal more progress would have been made than has been made hitherto. That at the present time every effort is being made to wind up, I quite agree, but I think they have started a great deal too late and that had they taken time by the forelock, and started two years ago, we should already have been free from this Ministry. The account which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has given of the activities and the world-wide ramifications of trade which they have undertaken only shows that when once a Government department embarks in trade there is absolutely no hope. When once they start it appears to be impossible to pull them up, and there is no end to the various activities and ramifications which they undertake. As far as I can gather, may of these ships were handed over to agents to run on behalf of the Ministry. It seems to me that in itself would not lead to economical administration, for as far as I can make out there was no inducement held out to those agents to run ships as economically as they could have been run. At the same time I am not objecting to any of the items in this Estimate, and it is not my intention to vote against it. I am very glad to hear that at the end of this month the Ministry will come to an end, and, much, as we shall all miss the lucid and clear statements of the hon. and gallant Gentleman who introduced the Vote, I cannot help thinking that the Committee's loss will be the country's gain. If, as an hon. Friend says, the hon. and learned Gentleman is to have another office, then I wish him success in his new department.

I find that ex-enemy vessels are alluded to, so I presume that I shall be in order in making one or two comments with regard to them. It seems to me a great pity that those ships were not disposed of earlier. There is not the least doubt that the Ministry did a magnificent stroke of business in disposing of the vessels which they themselves had built, and, if the ex-enemy vessels had been disposed of at the time, a very large loss would have been avoided. Personally, I think the Clause which prohibited the sale of these vessels to any other than British nationals made the disposal of them unnecessarily difficult, and, much as I should deprecate and oppose the sale of them back to the Germans, I cannot help feeling that they could have been absorbed in foreign countries without causing that dislocation of the shipbuilding trade from which this country is at present suffering. Representing as I do a constituency with a considerable interest in shipbuilding, I know how serious is the slump at the present time and how serious is the unemployment which the lack of trade is causing. Of course, the time for selling these vessels has gone, and they cannot be disposed of now even for one-third of the price which they would have fetched nine months ago. It is a very regrettable thing that they were not got rid of at a time when it was possible to do so at a profit to the country. That is all the criticism that I have to make, but I should like to congratulate the hon. and gallant Gentleman on the extremely clear way in which he has dealt with this long and complicated subject.

It is always pleasant to take part in a discussion in which so many complimentary things are said about a Ministry, and I hope that it may be said of all the Ministries, though I very much doubt it so far as the Ministry of Transport is concerned. Still, it is pleasant to add from one's own personal experience to the praise bestowed on the hon. and gallant Gentleman who is in charge of these estimates. There is one point upon which I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) would agree with me. The Ministry of Shipping did absolutely in valueable work with regard to the transport services of the Admiralty during the war. Into that work the hon. and gallant Gentleman threw himself most heartily. Unless, however, some record and indeed some nucleus of staff be transferred from the Ministry of Shipping to the Admiralty, I am afraid that we shall suffer as we did before from considerable friction. It is no use mincing matters. There was considerable friction between the Mercantile Marine and the Royal Navy. All those who came across the transport service of the Royal Navy in Gallipoli and elsewhere realise that no one could have done more magnificent work than the naval officers and ratings detailed for that service, but it is perfectly obvious that executive officers are trained to fight warships, and know nothing about the mercantile marine. Not only do they dislike the task imposed upon them, but the Army suffers through their lack of knowledge I do submit that this Committee should put it on record that in any future operations in which by some ill chance this country may be engaged, we should ensure that the great knowledge of the Mercantile Marine is utilised for the transportation of the troops and stores of the Army. The moment that the Ministry of Shipping took over that task we got our stores promptly and we were able to get supplies as we wanted them. I know that that branch of the Ministry is to go back to the Admiralty, and I wish some recommendation could be made to the Cabinet Committee that in time of war the Mercantile Marine should have a great deal to say in that work. Another point which is of some importance is the question of the Mercantile Marine as a whole. It is, after all, in many ways the greatest industry which this country possesses. The efficiency of the Mercantile Marine means— —

The hon. and gallant Gentleman is getting rather wide of the Supplementary Estimate. To which item does the hon. and gallant Gentleman attach his remarks?

I was attaching them to Items J and L.

Those items do not raise the general question of the efficiency of the Mercantile Marine. This is a purely Supplementary Vote and not the main Estimate for the year.

I apologise if I have transgressed, but there will be no further chance of mentioning this subject to the Ministry, and all I ask is that when the Board of Trade takes over what remains of the Ministry they will act as a sort of godfather to the Mercantile Marine. Lastly, there is this question about the very serious position of the shipyards, especially in Scotland. I heard only this morning that certain yards which were developed during the war at the request of the Ministry of Shipping will probably have to close down for nearly a whole year. I know that the President of the Board of Trade will do everything possible to alleviate the distress which will result from unemployment, but I would venture to suggest that the Ministry of Shipping might leave some information which would be useful, to show how trade could be dispersed throughout the country, and how by some conference with the shipbuilding industry and the shipowners we could show that these strikes, the joiners' strike especially, have brought about untold misery in a large number of districts. I can only conclude by saying that if the Ministry of Shipping has deserved all this credit it is entirely due to the patriotic work of all those engaged in it. It has been a model war Ministry, and it would have been a very good thing if other Ministries had copied it.

I wish to make one or two very brief observations, especially in regard to the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman, the Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) of a time limit for the lodging of claims. My hon. Friend argued that the Ministry of Shipping should have been wound up earlier. If he had had as much experience of shipping as I have had all my life long, and had known the very complicated nature of the questions which form the aftermath of the war, which have to be dealt with by the Ministry of Shipping he would not have made that suggestion. As a matter of fact the complication of some of these cases is more than can be easily described. It is not an average adjustment, but sometimes there are ramifications into two or three Governments. I know a case in which a ship was requisitioned by the Ministry of Shipping. That ship was then lent to a foreign government, and that foreign government lent the ship again to another foreign government The ship was torpedoed—not sunk, but very badly damaged in the Mediterranean—and now the question of settlement in regard to that particular ship has to go through three governments, and the complications are such as could not possibly have been settled or simplified in less time. They have not been dealt with yet fully. It is those kinds of questions that have made the winding up of the Ministry impossible at an earlier date.

I want to come to the suggestion of my right hon. Friend, that the application in any case which is under the consideration of the Ministry must be made by a certain date, and that the lodgment of the claim by any particular shipowner or company should be limited to a certain date to be fixed in the future. There is much to be said in favour of that suggestion, if it be adopted, and I cannot see any great harm in adopting it if sufficient notice is given. My right hon. Friend referred to what he believed to be the exaggerated claims lodged with the Ministry. In his private capacity he is a solicitor, practicing in one of the largest seaports in the country, and has a great deal to do with shipping and shipowners, so that he ought to know If he is right then these exaggerated claims would be more exaggerated if they had to be hurriedly deal with. If the Ministry accepts this suggestion, let them arrange for a sufficiently lengthy time to enable the persons concerned to formulate their claims in such a way that they shall not be exaggerated merely for the purpose of receiving a larger proportion. I should like to add a word to what has been said by so many speakers as to the manner in which this Ministry of Shipping has been conducted. It came into being in the great crisis of the War in regard to the transport of troops, munitions and food. It was a kind of branch of the Marine Department of the Board of Trade placed under the guidance of a man as practical in ship owning as he is modest in his manner in dealing with his business, and the administration under his care has been entirely successful. There are instances where fault could be found. How could that be otherwise in the stress of war and the haste in which the business had to be conducted? Taking the work of the Ministry on the whole it has been one of the most successful Ministries brought into being by the emergency of war and it is now being dismissed by this House in the happy circumstances of peace. I am sure that my hon. Friend who represents this Department in Parliament will at no distant date find himself representing some other and less moribund department. It is from that standpoint also that we have received his statement to-day and bid good-bye to his Ministry—I will not say with any sentimental regret—with a very full appreciation of the splendid work it has done.

I wish to ask one or two questions from the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but before doing so I wish to call the attention of the House to the difference there seems to be in the attitude to those interested in shipping to-day to the Ministry of Shipping to their attitude during its operation. They are now throwing bouquets to the Ministry of Shipping and personally I do not object because we on these benches consider it was necessary and that of all the Ministries it has most justified itself by its success. Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman tell us what is the average price per ton that has been received by the sale of those German ships and how it compares with the then existing market rate of newly built ships built to the order of various shipowners? I want to join with some of the hon. Members in this House on this question of selling German ships at the present time. I represent a constituency that is I think exceptional in that it depends almost entirely upon shipbuilding and marine engineering for the employment of the people who reside in that constituency. The whole river frontage is taken up by ship building yards and within that constituency there is a large number of marine engineering shops. During the General Election when it was stated that part of the indemnity was to be in German ships the local Coalition candidate repudiated the suggestion because he knew what would be the effect of an indemnity in German ships in that constituency which he was endeavouring to represent. But what was stated at the Election that part of the indemnity would be taken in German ships has now taken place. In the ship building yards in Govan, Partick and of the lower regions of the Clyde, represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Sir W. Raeburn), there are a large number of men unemployed, not owing to the joiners' strike, but to the cancellation of orders. Let me put in as aside about the joiners' strike that from the speeches of the hon. Members one would infer that all the blame rested with the joiners. These men are merely striking against a reduction of 12s. per week on their wages and I think any man is justified in trying to resist the lowering of his standard of living. That is the true situation in regard to the joiners' strike.

You should never have had the 12s.

The hon. Member is quite entitled to state his information in reply, but he understands that we must not diverge into discussion on the merits.

I did not intend to go into the merits of the joiners' strike, but I merely wished to put the joiners right in the eyes of the Press, as the statements of hon. Members of this Committee will be reported, and it would be unfair if the joiners were to be blamed when they are not to blame, but I do not wish to continue that subject any further. What I do suggest, however, to hon. Members is that the German shipping which has been taken might very well be held up for a time. The hon. Member for Dumbartonshire (Sir W. Raeburn) said he did not think that the sale of the German ships had very much to do with the cancellation of orders. I do not agree with him, I think it has a very great deal to do with it.

Not now.

Yes, if a number of shipowners see that these ships which are still for sale—149 I think the number is—if they see that they are suitable for their work and for the class of freight and passenger that they carry, if they think they can purchase those vessels at a lower rate or at the same rate as the market rate for shipping, then they will refrain from giving any orders to the shipbuilding yards. They will not ask the yards to build ships to their order and specification because, by buying these German ships, they can put them into service immediately as they are already afloat, whereas, by giving orders to the ship-building yards they may have to wait for several months or even a year before they get the ships. In the interests of the trade of this country, which is dislocated a very great deal, I think that those ships should be held over for a considerable time until the state of the market so far as shipping is concerned has been very largely modified and there is some possibility of a re-arrangement of trade in the ship-building and engineering departments of the country, so that the workers will not be thrown idle and will not be compelled to take the unemployment donation and to do no useful service to the community because of the sale of German ships and taken as part of the indemnity.

There are just one or two points with which I wish to deal, although the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend (Colonel Wilson) was very satisfactory indeed. The first point which I wish to raise is in regard to the surrendered German ships. I understand that suggestion have been made that the area of the purchases should be extended so as to include other persons than British nationals. I join in the appeal of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Duncairn (Sir E. Carson) not to allow the Germans themselves to buy back their ships. But when I have said that may I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that it would be very advisable, if our British nationals do not want to purchase these ships for our own purposes, to allow the Allies to purchase them.

They have done so.

I am, under the impression that they have not.

The hon. Baronet is quite correct. The sale of ex-enemy vessels is only open to British nationals. The sale of prize claims is open to the Allies and to neutrals.

I am very much obliged to my hon. and gallant Friend for his explanation. I was suggesting that it should be open to our Allies and especially to Prance to tender for the purchase of these ex-enemy vessels. The only other point to which I wish to refer is this. There is a note at the bottom of page 34 which says:

"In addition to Extra Receipts"—

which are the £21,000,000 which have already been taken for Appropriations-in-Aid—

"A Surplus under the head of Appropriations-in-Aid estimated at £9,000,000 will be surrendered to the Exchequer."

Is that sum of £9,000,000 a net sum, or will there be any deduction for certain outstanding claims?

That is a net sum, made up of a surplus Appropriations-in-Aid which will be surrendered to the Exchequer.

If that is so, then I presume that the money will be applied in repayment of debt. The sum is to be paid into the Exchequer, and I do not know for what else it could be used unless it were diverted to some other Vote. If it is to be used for reduction of debt, all well and good, but, inasmuch as the sum has arisen in connection with the hon. and gallant Gentleman's Department, I think it would be very desirable if that sum could be credited in some way to his Department, so as to show that he has made, so to speak, a profit, the effect of which would be, in fact, to reduce the expenditure of his Department.

I want to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman one or two questions with regard to the requisitioning and detention of some vessels during the coal strike of last year. I understand that when the coal strike occurred, the Ministry of Shipping requisitioned a large number of vessels, laden with coal, in the different harbours of the United Kingdom. Many of the ships which were not requisitioned, however, were detained, and I understand that the Ministry has taken the view that, while they are bound to compensate those shipowners for the ships requisitioned, they are under no legal liability to compensate in any way those shipowners whose ships were merely detained. It is, of course, quite impossible for me to enter now into the question of the legal aspect of the case, that is a question for the Court, but it seems to me that, even if the Courts hold that there is no legal liability on the Ministry to make good to those shipowners what they have lost as a result of the detention of their ships, there is a moral liability on the Ministry to make up to them what they have lost. In many cases these ships were detained for a week or ten days and that naturally involved in many cases a great loss to the shipowners, and I do hope that the Ministry will be able to take the whole case into consideration and, if they are not bound by law to give the owners something by way of compensation, at any rate, they may be able to give something by way of ex-gratia payment. If the owners have a moral right to compensation, then that moral right should be recognised. The Government, over and over again, have paid money where they were under no liability to do so by law, but they recognised that there was a moral liability, and they paid. Take the question of wheat, for example. In that case a payment was made to the farmers, and there does seem to me to be no difference between the case I have mentioned and that of the farmers. Many other instances of the same kind could be given, and I do hope that the Government will be able to look into that particular aspect of the question.

I have no intention of indulging in a funeral oration on the Ministry of Shipping, as so many hon. Members have already done. Their speeches must have had a somewhat depressing effect on my usually versatile and hon. and gallant Friend opposite. Representing, as I do, a part of the world which depends almost entirely on shipping supplies, I should like to offer my thanks to him for the courteous and useful service which he has rendered to us, and I should like especially to thank the head of the Ministry, who, I know, has rendered a great deal of very excellent service to those of us who live on the western coast of Scotland. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Sir W. Raeburn) made a very interesting suggestion that the history of the Ministry should be published, and its successes at the time of nationalisation. My hon. Friend is anxious that the time of nationalisation should not be forgotten by the country. If my hon. Friend would drop a hint into the ear of a neighbour of his, an hon. Member who sits for a neighbouring constituency, the hon. Member for Argyll (Sir W. Sutherland), who dealt with the exploits of the Coalition, that he should publish the exploits of the Ministry of Shipping, I do not think he would find that any false modesty on the part of the hon. Member would prevent him publishing it in a new edition of a book which nobody reads. It is surely possible to point a moral from the history of the Ministry of Shipping, and I think I am in order in doing so. The hon. Gentleman told us on the question of the coastal services that there is a profit of £325,000. Contrast this with the amount of money paid for those who use the railways. Scores of millions out of the taxpayers' pockets have subsidised the railway users of this country. The people who use the coastal services, on the other hand, have not only paid their way, but have made this large profit.

While it is quite true there has been a profit, it has been on the running of ex-enemy vessels used in the coastal trade. There has been no capital expenditure in regard to this.

I am merely referring to the fact that while the railway users have cost the country scores of millions those who use the coastal services have succeeded in paying their own way. I do not want to develop that moral, but I should like to point out to my hon. Friend that in the exercise of his functions in the Ministry of Shipping there is here a possible development of transport work which would not cost the country a single penny.

There is only one question which I want to put to the hon. Gentleman, and it arises under Sub-head A, the cost of the substitution of male for female labour. We all recognise the necessity that has arisen for finding employment for ex-Service men, and female labour must, of course, give way to such an emergency. I submit, however, that when a department is coming to an end, as this is, it is a waste of money to go to the cost of training men to replace women and affording them employment which will only engage their energies for, at the most, a few weeks. May I ask my hon. Friend what exact proportion of this £54,000 was expended in training men to replace women, and why this work was undertaken in view of the fact that the Department was coming to a close, and that it cannot effect any permanent alleviation of the unemployment problem? Apparently the only result of this expenditure of public money will be to employ men for a few weeks.

It has been said that we on these Benches have no technical knowledge of shipping, but we are Members of the House and what we do understand is that this Department came into existence to meet a great national emergency. Shipping had absolutely failed to supply the great needs of the nation. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] We were brought into great straits due to the lack of control of shipping. [Hon. MEMBERS: "No."]

This is not the time to discuss the merits of the establishment of the Ministry or its dissolution. All we are discussing now is the Supplementary Estimate, and the hon. Member so far has only referred to the establishment of the Ministry.

What I should like to know is, what was the cost to the nation during the period of control?

That is not the question before the Committee.

2.0 P.M.

I only wish to say that if there had not been control we should not have had that deficit in the sale of these ships, which suggests that there is absolutely no business ability or sincerity in the Ministry. If it is a bad bargain to the State it ought likewise to be a bad bargain to those who are anxious to buy them.

I will deal in the first place with one or two of the minor questions which have arisen before I come to the principal questions of staff and of ex-enemy vessels. On the question raised by the hon. Member for Harrow (Mr. Mosley) as to the substitution of ex-Service men for female labour, this was done in accordance with the recommendations of Lord Lytton's Committee, and several of these ex-Service men included in the 60 per cent.—as a matter of fact it is over 60 per cent.—have been employed in the Ministry, some since 1918, some since 1919, and some since 1920. Although it is the intention of the Ministry to reduce the staff as rapidly as possible, these men have now been trained in accountancy work and will continue for at any rate a short time. I do not think that we should have been justified in ignoring the just demands of ex-Service men and to say that we could not take them because the Ministry will be coming to an end. The hon. Member for Central Aberdeen (Major M. Wood) raised the question of payment by the State for ships which were detained during the coal strike. It is quite true that during that period it was essential in the national interest that coal should be kept in our own harbours. Ships with coal cargoes were, if not actually detained, refused clearance. Many representations have been made to me and to my right hon. Friend, the Shipping Controller, on this subject. We took what appeared to us the right course of regarding it as a legal question as to the liability of the Ministry in this particular respect. Undoubtedly with regard to ships which had been actually requisitioned there was a legal liability to pay at the rates of requisition, and we have accepted that liability. With regard to ships not requisitioned but detained in harbours, we are advised that no legal liability rests upon the Ministry. I previously consulted the Law Officers of the Crown in view of the representations made to me by my hon. Friend and from other sources, only three days ago we put up another representation to the Law Officers to ask whether any consideration regarding further legal liability would rest on the Ministry with regard to certain ships which had received definite instructions to keep their fires damped. We have not yet re- ceived any answer from the Law Officers, and I am afraid I am not able to go any further into that question at present.

What about the possibility of an ex-gratiâ payment?

It is very difficult, in the question of an ex-gratiâ payment, to differentiate between one case and another. As there is a very large number of ships involved, if we once started the idea that it was possible to get some ex-gratiâ payment, investigations into the various demands made for similar payments would be enormous, and I fear the result would be more unsatisfactory than the present position.

With regard to the staff of the Ministry, my right hon. Friend the Member for Peebles said he trusted that when the work of the Ministry was transferred to the Board of Trade this would not be used as a cloak for carrying on the large staff of the Ministry of Shipping. No one has been more anxious for the last two years to bring the activities of the Ministry of Shipping to an end than the Shipping Controller, and only the staff necessary for finishing the liquidation of the Ministry will be transferred. Already the staff of the Ministry of Shipping has been gradually reduced and will be much more reduced during the coming year. The hon. Member for Cardiff (Mr. Gould) said there had been delays in getting payments, and that he himself had had some cases in which there had been delays in accounts being attended to. I should like to remind the hon. Member that our principal difficulty is in getting the accounts from the shipowners. At present there are over 800 accounts outstanding, and until we get them they cannot be classified, and they cannot be passed for payment. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Peebles said that we should have a time limit, but if you had a time limit in regard to accounts due from the Ministry it would also have to apply to those due to the Ministry, and in this case the Ministry would lose.

The question of the ex-enemy ships has been raised by several hon. Members. It was raised in the House the other day by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), and it was answered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There seems to be some misunderstanding about this question. The hon. Member for Hull (Colonel Lambert Ward) asked why we did not sell these ships when we sold the standard ships. The answer to that question is that they were not available for sale until last October, as it had not up to that time been decided who should have the ships. The sale of these ex-enemy ships is under the Reparation Commission, and they are being sold on behalf of the Reparation Commission by Lord Inchape. I have already given the fullest answer with regard to the sale of the ships. After all, the total number of ex-enemy ships that have or will be delivered are only about a quarter of the total losses of the British Mercantile Marine during the War and less than one year's building in British yards. They were surrendered under the Treaty of Versailles on the time and line basis, and allocated to the different Allied countries in accordance with the percentage of losses of those countries during the War. I do not think anyone will suggest that the Germans should have been allowed to keep those ships. They sent to the bottom during the war the finest ships in the British Mercantile Marine, and it is only just and fair that they should replace those ships as far as they possibly can. Let me remind those hon. Members who seem to think that we get no advantage through having these ships that all this was existing tonnage, and whether it had remained under German or neutral flags it was tonnage which would have been competing with British tonnage. The great advantage to us is that this tonnage is now sailing under the British flag with British crews. What is the alternative to selling these ships? It has been suggested that they might be laid up, but it costs money to lay up ships.

Why is it impossible?

Because of the cost. I have been asked a question about the selling price of these ships. My answer is that these ships vary, and they are of every class and age. We had one ship which was built in 1872, and others were brand new ships, some of them not even completed. They included passenger ships, sailing ships, and training ships, and any average that is taken must be misleading. The average price works out at about £11 per ton. The real facts are that at the present cost of building ships, and the price of material and the cost of labour, it does not pay anyone to build on the time and line basis As hon. Members know, shipbuilding contracts have been cancelled not only by British shipowners but by foreign shipowners. It is not because they are able to buy cheap German ships; it is because, if they pay the present prices for new ships, they are only asking for the quickest possible passage to the Bankruptcy Court. It is impossible to run ships profitably at the prices now charged for building them. The other day, on the occasion of the launch of the "Vandyck," in Messrs. Workman, Clark's yard, Messrs. Lamport and Holt, the purchasers, said they would not be able to place another order with Workman, Clark and Co. until the cost of material and labour had fallen. That is the main reason for the cancellation of contracts at the present time, and not that there is a superabundance of tonnage all over the world. One speaker asked whether it was proposed to sell ex-German ships back to Germany. That is really a question for the Reparations Commission to decide, and not for the Government. The Reparations Commission of course represents all the Allies. It is a fact that the sale of ex-German ships has not been very successful of late, and the whole position is going to be placed before the Council of the Chamber of Shipping early next week. The views so strongly expressed by hon. Members shall be conveyed to the Reparations Commission and the Shipping Controller—the view especially that none of these ships shall be sold back to Germany.

Many Members of the Committee have been very good in expressing their thanks for the services rendered by the Ministry of Shipping, and all the officials connected with that Ministry appreciate the kind sentiments expressed so freely this afternoon in the course of this debate. This is the last time anyone will stand at this box to represent the Ministry of Shipping. May I say this? I had no idea of the excellence of our Civil Service until I went to a Government department and I cannot pay too high a compliment to the Civil servants, who have rendered us most valuable service under most difficult circumstances. Although working in cooperation with the shipowners they have also had to work against them. The whole life knowledge of the shipowners has been in competition with the Civil servants of this country, and yet those Civil servants have held their own, especially in the Accountants Branch of the Ministry. At the time of the Armistice, eighty well-known shipowners were at the Ministry giving their services entirely to the country. We still retain the services of a good many of these gentlemen, and I wish to pay the highest possible tribute to their patriotism. They have given up the whole of their business time in order to serve the country. I will only mention one gentleman who has had charge of the Management Branch—Sir Ernest Glover—who has been there for six or seven years, helping on the very difficult questions of ship management. If the Ministry has met with any success it is really due to the Civil servants and these gentlemen, who so patriotically and unselfishly have given their time to their country.

Question put, and agreed to.

Perhaps if I, say now a few words on this Vote it may make it more easy for hon. Members to join in the discussion which will follow. More than a generation has elapsed since any complete re-organisation and classification has been effected within the Civil Service. Attempts have been made from time to time to meet different anomalies that have arisen, but there has been no complete re-organisation in that time until this effort at the end of 1919. The matter would certainly have been taken in hand long before this had the War not intervened. It could easily be seen that having regard to the enormous growth of work in Government Departments, both in volume and in complexity throughout the last thirty or forty years, a condition would arise, which the measures we have taken are meant to meet. We found that work of the same kind was being done in Departments by men who belonged to different grades and there was the anomaly of men sitting side by side and doing the same work on different scales of pay. —the surest source of friction that exists. You had also, with the growth of time, differences of allotment of work and classification in different offices, and that led, in its turn, to an increasing difficulty in arranging scales of pay over different grades, so that they might be applicable and fair to members serving in different departments. The War, of course, added very largely to the number of offices and of civil servants, and to the multiplicity of their duties, and it became more than ever essential, both for the sake of new entrants into the Service and of those who were already in the Service, that we should so grade the whole Service that everyone might be getting the proper remuneration suited to the work that he was doing, and that there might be such uniformity of service throughout all the departments that two objects might be attained—firstly, facility of transfer between departments, and, secondly, the application of the same salary for the same work.

When prices began to rise so steeply during the War, appeals were made from two of the largest grades in the Service for advances in pay, and that brought the whole matter to a head, because, if that request had been conceded in the terms in which it was made, we should have been faced immediately by the trouble that would have been caused by the existing discrepancies of which I have spoken More than that, a great difficulty in the Civil Service, and one common to all the trades of the Kingdom, was this: it seemed to us impossible to lay down, either during the War or now, what would be a fair basic rate that might hold good both now and for some years to come; and, frankly, we gave up that question. So far as basic rates of pay go—and these are all that are affected by this vote—they are all on the pre-War basis, or on such a basis as would have been arrived at had the re-grading been considered before the War. I do not want to go into the detailed figures of these innumerable classes of public servants, because that would only cause confusion, but I will refer to the basic figure of a very large class in receipt of a low rate of pay, namely, the ordinary typists. The ordinary typist, before the War, received a salary of 20s., rising to 32s., and under the new scale the rate is 22s., rising to 36s. No one in this Committee would call that a living wage, and I think that, even before the War, if these salaries had been considered that is a concession which might well have been granted. So far as putting Civil Service salaries on to the basis of a living wage to-day is concerned, that has been effected solely by the bonus. It is, doubtless, a matter of opinion whether that bonus is too low, or too high, or just right, and that question, no doubt, will be discussed next Friday on the Bonus Estimate. We are dealing to-day with this re-sorting or assimilation of the Civil Service into grades according to the work that they do. This reorganisation, which has involved an immense amount of work on the part of the Re-organisation Committee of the Whitley Council, is a striking instance of what can be effected under the Whitley system, when the whole Service is throwing itself with energy and keenness inter making that Service a more efficient machine for the conduct of the country's business; and I am sure that this rearrangement will make the work of the Service as a whole, throughout all the grades concerned, much more efficient, because it will remove a source of friction which has been growing in recent years, and which has grown to such an extent as seriously to imperil the prosperity of the Service as a whole. I notice that some of my hon. Friends are going to move reductions of this Vote. I have no idea what is the ground of their complaint, but I hope that when they place it before the Committee I may be able to meet it.

Is this £275,000 to be an annual increase?

Yes. This is the total extra expense of this re-organisation, and in the forthcoming year it will appear in the substantive Estimate.

I beg to move, that the Vote be reduced by £100.

I do not move this reduction on the ground that the right Hon. Gentleman has not good reason for arranging for this assimilation and re-grading in the Civil Service. Everything that he has said seems to me personally to be very fair and moderate. My ground for moving this reduction is that the re-grading, so far as it has been undertaken down to date, has been almost exclusively in favour of the men on the permanent establishment of the Civil Service, to the exclusion of the permanent women employed on the establishment. So far as the economy side of this question is concerned, there are other members of the Committee who are more competent than myself to deal with it, and all I shall say on the question of economy is that these figures are exceedingly vague. There is nothing to show, in these gross figures, how many men or women are going to participate in this increase, what classes are going to benefit, and what proportion are left out from benefit under the system of assimilation. I leave the economy side of the question, however, to other hon. Members, particularly to my hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. G. Locker-Lampson), who has made a special study of it. My Amendment is really in the interests of the very large number of women who are on the permanent establishment of these Departments; and when I say that, I hope that no hon. Member will imagine for a moment that on this question there is any clashing or competition of interests between them and ex-Service men, because the temporary provisional employés in the Civil Service are, to the best of my belief, not affected by this Vote. The report of the Joint Committee of the Whitley Council, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, recommended in express terms that the women of the Civil Service should be given full, ample and generous opportunities for promotion and for appointments in the Civil Service on exactly the same terms as men; and it is also put forward quite definitely in the Report that, in the four classes into which the Civil Service is to be re-graded, women who are doing the work of the higher grades should have the right of transfer to those grades on assimilation. Those grades are called the executive group, the administrative group, the clerical group, and the writing assistant group, and the complaint which at present is felt by practically all the women in the employ of the Civil Service Departments is that although a great many of them are doing the work carried on by the highest class of men employed in the Civil Service, down to date in the process of the assimilation practically not one single woman has been regraded in the executive class, and not one in the administrative class, and although they be performing duties absolutely interchangeable with the duties preformed by men, they have all been put into one of the two lower grades, the clerical and the writing assistants.

That point comes out particularly with regard to two of the Departments referred to in the schedule. They are the Public Trustee, where £20,000 are to be expended, and the Post Office, where £157,800 are to be expended. It is a fact that all the benefit of this provision which the Committee is asked to make goes exclusively to men employed in those Departments. So far as the Post Office is concerned, in which there are something like 3,000 women employés, the first and second class women clerks have been assimilated into the lower clerical grade with a maximum pay of £180 only, whereas second division men who are doing precisely the same work in the same Department have been assimilated into the executive grade carrying a maximum of £400—an increased maximum to men of £100. If this report of the Joint Committee is really to be faithfully acted upon by the Government and by Parliament it must inevitably follow that the women who do the same work should be given the same pay. That is the recommendation of the Committee, and that has been the practice more or less of the Civil Service Department down to date. Under this assimilation scheme the benefit goes entirely to the men to the exclusion of the women. That seems to me to be a most unfortunate state of affairs. A great many questions have been put to Ministers in charge of these different Departments during the last week or so on this particular point. The answer has been given every time, "This regrading is only tentative. Do not criticise it yet. In the end we may do justice to all." But here to-day apparently it is now crystallised down to the established fact that the women are excluded from being ranked as executive or administrative officers. As the right hon. Gentleman truly said, there is no more direct cause of friction than for an individual to know that he is performing exactly the same work and undertaking exactly the same responsibilities as some other and that he receives a mere fraction of the pay that the other person receives. In these circumstances it is no wonder that there is very great feeling indeed among the Federation of Women Civil Servants, who think they have been exceedingly hardly dealt with. It is not only a question of pay but also of status, because it is an extraordinarily evil thing for State servants to feel that they are deprived of a natural and proper recognition of the labours they are performing. Moreover, so long as you have these disabilities imposed upon women as a class it follows most naturally that there will be no inducement to bright, energetic and talented young women to take up the Civil Service if they feel they are to be deprived of the result of good work given wholeheartedly and industriously to the service of the State.

I think the difficulty to which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has called attention probably arises out of something to which I object fundamentally. The speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Baldwin) gave a short history of the growth of trade union principles in the Civil Service and the attempts of the Government to go further than this principle. I object to that altogether. Is it necessary, as my right hon. Friend seemed to think, that at least once in a generation the whole Civil Service should be reorganised? Is it the case that the Civil Service in the past has been so defective and so deficient as to call for that necessity for reorganisation which my right hon. Friend seemed to think urgently called for. He said before the war the question that is now being dealt with was raised by a very large body of the Civil servants. I have nothing whatever to say against trade union work. I do not profess to be a judge and I know that they have many objects which they would carry out. I am not objecting or criticising the action of hon. Members opposite because I say that the introduction of trade union principles into the Civil Service is a fatal error which instead of being encouraged should be discouraged by the Government. What did my right hon. Friend mean by saying we must get in the Civil Service a basic rate of pay? I hate those phrases. They mean nothing at all. Does he mean to say that you are going to turn the Civil Service into a vast mass who may be measured exactly, paid according to a certain rate without the least consideration of what each individual man is, what his worth is, what his power to make himself useful is, and what the discretion and responsibility you place upon him is? The right hon. Gentleman says we must provide for an interchange of civil servants between the different Departments. They ought to be machines that can turn to anything. Do you think there is nothing in the individuality of a Department, in the experience they have gained, in the power of working together, in the esprit de corps of a department and in its pride in its own work? You want to move them about like pawns on a board, and tell them to take up a different work altogether.

If my right hon. Friend is speaking of the Civil Service now, he is speaking of a Civil Service animated by a totally different feeling from what it was while I knew it. We were proud of our Departments. Those men did not care a bit about basic rates of pay. Let every woman, like every man, be paid according to her work and not according to her grade, as under the standard system that you are going to establish. I suppose the Civil Servants are to have a certain minimum wage and a certain maximum wage and a right to strike if they are not paid at that rate. Let the right hon. Gentleman remember that the Civil Service is something that has served the country well in the past, and I beg him to keep these considerations out of it. There has been amongst a large class of Civil servants discontent from time immemorial. When I was at the head of a department I have many memories of officials in the lower grades who thought they were better than I or any of the officers above them, because in some minute details there were certain things which they thought they could do a good deal better than any of us; but I do not think, with all modesty, that on the whole any one of these clerks were worth as much to the State as I was. All these men thought that they ought to be paid on a basic scale, and that they were bound to rise to a certain amount. They all thought they were doing just as good work as the people above them. The idea of men sitting together and all doing the same work is quite wrong. No two men in an office ever did the same work. A man does the work for which he is fit. What is the use of two clerks saying that they are exactly the same? I knew that one could be trusted in any emergency, that I could trust his commonsense and his judgment, but I knew that the other man, although I could not find fault with him, had no commonsense, and no judgment, and no initiative. Is it surprising that when I wished to promote to the advantage of the office for which I was responsible, that I selected one man, and paid him not on a basic scale, but told him that he could go up to a higher place, and I said to the other very decent person who wanted to be put on a basic scale, "You remain where you are."

What is the effect of all this talk about a basic scale? The right hon. Gentleman confesses that pressure was brought to bear by a large class. That means a large class which does the routine mechanical work of a department. Does he think that he can put all offices on the same scale? Take the case of a typist, a man who types letters. Is the man who transcribes letters in the Foreign Office to be put on the same level as the person who types letters in the ordinary routine of an office? We know how much we have to trust the clerk in the Foreign Office. We know how by the slightest breach of honour he might do his country a great amount of injury. Can we put on the same basic scale the man who is copying letters about statistics in some minute department of the Board of Trade and the man who is copying letters from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs? With respect to administration, the work is not the same. Are there not certain offices in which the administrative and executive work calls for peculiar faculties and qualifications? Take the Board of Education. It is perfectly certain that a man at the head of a department of the Board of Education must have education and scholarship sufficient to deal on equal terms with the highest education authorities throughout the country. If he cannot do that he is not fit to be at the head of an education department. He must know their language, and be accustomed to deal with them, and he must have a number of assistants under him who also require high qualifications. There are other offices where no such qualifications are necessary. There are other departments in which a man requires initiative, discernment, business skill and boldness. You must not select your man and pay him according to some basic system or scale, but you must get the best man and take care when you have him that you pay him what he is worth, and not according to some fixed standard. I dislike these scales and assimilations, and these mechanical ways of treating Civil servants. Let my right hon. Friend and the Government beware—if I have an opportunity I shall take the question further next Friday—lest they strike at the very foundations of the Civil Service—let them beware that they do not act as chroniclers of the advent of a new spirit into that service, and that they do not by their action promote the growth of trade unionism in the Civil Service, which will have fatal results for the service and the country.

My hon. Friend (Lieut.-Colonel Hurst) has raised an important point, and my right hon. Friend (Sir H. Craik) has raised another point, and no doubt the Government will reply to them. I want to go more into the financial side of the question. I think this is the least satisfactory of the Supplementary Estimates we have had before us up till now. I do not get up to make this speech in order to detain the Committee or the right hon. Gentlemen on a Saturday afternoon, but, so far as I can see, this reorganisation of the Civil Service is simply a device for increasing salaries all round, and not only increasing salaries all round, but giving those increased salaries in addition to the war bonus which has been given on account of the increased cost of living. The Financial Secretary said that this scheme of re-organisation is based on the Report of a Whitley Council. I have no objection to the Civil Service being re-organised, but I do object to this being made an excuse for an enormous vote of money at such a time as this in increase of salaries. The Whitley Council which dealt with this question was entirely composed of present and past Civil Servants. The interim Report of the Committee says:— £300,000 has been made up by savings in the various departments. Therefore, this assimilation is actually costing in salaries £575,000. If the Civil Service is to be re-organised, a real effort ought to be made to retrench instead of increasing expenditure, but it is quite clear from this preliminary report that the intention was to increase the expenditure. On Page 3 it says: their expenditure by the amount of the increase. It is quite clear that they had not done it, because the right hon. Gentleman comes down here to-day and asks for an annual increase of £275,000. In the present state of our finances this is the wrong time to come to the House to ask for so large an increase in salaries over and above the war bonus, because this has nothing to do with the cost of living; it is merely a reorganisation scheme that means an increase in the salaries of all Civil servants over and above the bonus. This scheme is retrospective. It is not £275,000 for the next year, and so on, because in the Report issued by the Court of Arbitration it distinctly lays down:— higher paid officials, and that the people who do not benefit at all or practically not at all are the people on very low wages. In one of the departments, the Supreme Court of Judicature, they are asking £1,400 for the scheme of assimilation, and that means that every single person has gone up by £2 per head, but there are 158 attendants in that particular department who, I think, do not come under the scheme at all, and, therefore I should very much like to know whether it is not a fact that this scheme of assimilation has not almost exclusively benefited those Civil servants who were originally earning a considerable amount of salary. That is all I have to say on this particular Vote, but I feel that it is the least satisfactory of all the Supplementary Estimates which have been submitted.

I do not think that at this time we ought to be asked to increase these salaries. The incomes of all of us have gone down during the War, unless we happen to have been war profiteers. My income certainly is very much less than it was, and the same statement applies to nearly every Member sitting in this House. We should, of course, all like our incomes to be increased, but this is not the time to increase in a general and wholesale way, merely in the name of reorganisation, the salaries of all these Civil servants.

I wish first of all to support what was said by the hon. Member for Moss Side (Lieut.-Colonel Hurst) with regard to the status of women and the injustice of their present position. I cannot see how it can possibly lead either to efficiency or that satisfaction amongst Civil servants which is one of the most important factors making for efficiency if the position is allowed to continue that women who have, compared with men, passed with equal merit the competitive examinations which entitle them to be Civil servants, women who are working alongside men and are controlling more important blocks of the different departments than men, should receive a smaller salary than those men. Further than that, in the assimilation which has taken place, it seems to have happened that women who have passed in a higher class are being assimilated into a lower division than men who have passed in an equal degree of merit. That is a state of affairs which really cannot continue, and I would urge the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to see that the injustice is remedied. With regard to what was said by my right hon. Friend (Sir H. Craik) on the development of trade unionism of the Civil Service, he reminds me of a vessel of State which has rendered very great service now swinging comfortably at anchor while the tide is flowing by. There is no doubt we have all moved very far since the days when he was m the Civil Service. Reference has been made to the recognition and the proper recognition on the part of the Government that Civil Servants are as much entitled as any other body to unite within reasonable limits for the presentation of what they think to be joint injustices. The old ideas of the individual claim and all that sort of attitude have long gone past. I want to associate myself with what the last speaker said about assimilation. I agree that assimilation is desirable, and I am certain that under normal conditions the sums asked for would not be criticised; but I would impress upon the Government that just as great private undertakings and just as private individuals in their expenditure have to adjust themselves to the conditions of the time, so the Government ought to do so. This is setting a bad example. I believe that if the situation were put fairly to the Civil Servants they would agree, at any rate they would be very unreasonable if they did not do so. What was the date of the particular Report to which reference is made? I believe that was issued over a year ago.

Last summer.

What were the conditions then? Did anyone then anticipate that there would be this crash in the financial position of the country? I agree that at that time private undertakings were making great increases of salary all round, and if we were going to put ourselves back to those times I suppose this House would not be nearly as critical as it is to-day. Granting the desirability of similation for the sake of argument, I would ask is it necessary? That is the way we should look at the question. Has a case been made that it is vitally necessary to grant these increases now? Cannot we manage as we are for another year? I know it is a very difficult thing to talk about Civil servants in this way. Sometimes, when I discuss these matters from the business but not unsympathetic point of view, I get abusive letters, and resolutions couched in lurid terms are sent to me for what are called my attacks on the Civil Service. I am not attacking Civil servants at all. I am simply trying to discharge a public duty, and I am not going to be deterred for one moment by any number of resolutions or because of what might happen in my own constituency or anywhere else as a result of my attitude. Taking this as an example of many other Votes and Estimates which are still to come before us, I say that it and they are based on a condition of things which does not any longer exist. They are based upon the conditions of a year ago. The time has come when the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and his colleagues should see that before any more of these Votes are laid before us, the Government take the basis that the ordinary citizen has to take in framing expenditure and cut their coat according to their cloth.

I wish to support the appeal of the last speaker on the subject of assimilation as far as it affects women clerks in the Civil Service. I want quite shortly to recall the postion to the Committee. In February of last year the Whitley Council of the Civil Service reported in favour of revised scales of pay, which in all the higher grades of the service differentiated against women. That Report was made in February, 1920. Only three women sat on that Committee on the staff side, and only one woman on the official side, and so there were only four women out of a membership of something like 20. As soon as that report was published it excited strong opposition. It was published in February last year, and in May I raised the question myself in the House, and a Debate took place on a Motion that I moved that women in the service of the Crown ought to receive equal opportunity and equal pay. The whole of that Debate was based on the Whitley Report, which formed the material of the speeches of those in favour of the Motion and of the reply of my right hon. Friend on the Treasury Bench. The House passed a Resolution in favour of equal pay and equal opportunity without a division, but the Government entirely disregarded that Resolution, and in the Assimilation Report they have all through put women on lower scales of pay than men. I do ask the Committee what is the use of our passing Resolutions in this House if the Government disregard them? It has been absolutely and entirely made a dead letter, and it might as well never have been passed, because not the slightest attention has been paid to it. That is my first point.

The second point is this. When the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was passed it was provided that Regulations admitting women to the Civil Service should be by Order in Council, and it was arranged with the Leader of the House last November, in reply to a question by the hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare), that those Regulations should be discussed in the House and be subject to amendment. The Regulations were not placed on the Table until last January, and obviously there will be no opportunity of discussing them until after Easter, and in the interval, before the House has got an opportunity of coming to a decision in the matter, the whole position is being compromised and the whole service is being reconstructed on the basis of the inferiority of women, for women doing the same work, who have the same qualifications, who are equally valuable to the State, are being given pay very substantially less than men. How can that fail to create the greatest resentment among the women civil servants? They feel strongly that they have been tricked. They have got in their favour the unopposed decision of the House last May, they have got a promise of a further discussion on the same topic before the regulations come into force, and between these two dates they find that the whole situation is being affected to their disadvantage, and that when we come to discuss the regulations they will be told that the matter is settled, and that the Civil Service cannot now be reconstructed. It is not fair treatment to the women. The right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury knows that the service is profoundly discontented.

I have innumerable letters giving me cases of women who claim, not only they have got lower pay for the same work as men, but that in regrading their position is further compromised, for artificial grades are made for women alone, in which they are put in a permanently worse position than men. I do not know whether those charges are true or not, but they are made so generally that a primâ facie case to my mind exists. You will never get content unless you have some system that the women can understand as well as the men, and as long as it is the mere ipse dixit of somebody to say the exact difference between a woman's salary and a man's, until you get back to the simple test of merit and worth, you cannot get content. I know my right hon. Friend is sincerely anxious to have a contented and efficient public service, and I am certain that he knows that the discontent is very deep and widespread, and that it is bound to be so, and I appeal to him to hold up all these changes in innumerable cases until we have had our debate. The result of that is not known. The House has once voted in favour of equality; it may confirm that vote, or it may not, but until it is dissented from surely it holds the field, and surely women who see that the House of Commons has passed a resolution in favour of the principle of equality and who see at the same time that the Government have disregarded that can hardly be blamed if they treat Parliament with something like contempt. It is a very big question, for it goes to the whole root of the common work of men and women in the service. I want to see this great service of the Crown with both men and women contributing each according to their ability, and we shall not get that until we have a fair start for each and the test men and women recruited, but in any event do not now prejudice the whole position. Give the women a fair chance, and until the House has definitely said that its considered judgment is that a woman who is equally efficient with a man should, just because she is a woman, be paid a lower rate, you have no sort of right to pay her a lower rate.

I listened with no great surprise to the speech of the right hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir H. Craik), I have a recollection of a speech that he made the last time the Supplementary Estimates were before the Committee, and I have a difficulty in reconciling my mind as to why he has arrived at the decision at which he has arrived. He seems to have been a very valuable servant to the State while in the Civil Service, but he seems to think that since he left the Service all the virtue has gone out of it. He has a very great fear of trade unions entering into the ranks of the Civil Service, but I think it is true to say that the trade unions have already entered into the Civil Service. One of the chief reasons that has happened is because the State has not met its obligations to these people in the years that have gone by. Even the right hon. Gentleman himself told us that during his period in the service, notwithstanding all his abilities, he could have complained of injustices that were done to him. The cause of complaint has evidently gone on until it has arrived at maturity. Hence we have the discontent to which the hon. and gallant Member for Durham (Major Hills) has referred. The hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. G. Locker-Lampson) went on the anti-waste tack. I do not know whether he is a member of the league or not. I am not in one way, though I am a sort of honorary member in another. I have had four stripes put down to me, and probably I shall get another this afternoon.

The hon. Member, in a particularly nicely-reasoned speech, said that his income had gone down compared with what it was before the war and that the incomes of a good many other people, probably everybody except war profiteers, had gone down. I do not think there are any in this House; at least there was no response when he spoke. Surely that is not an argument why we should prevent these people in our service having a chance of a proper standard of wage. It is not an argument that they should not have the bonus. We want to realise that these people prior to the war had not what we may call a proper standard of life. Consequently, as employers, we are trying to improve upon that, and the State at any rate ought to be prepared to pay those it employs a reasonable and living wage. In all the debates that take place with regard to the Civil Service, the servants are praised to the highest possible point. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Shipping in his peroration this afternoon praised them and said that because of their valuable services his Department had been a success. We seem to think that the chief function of Parliament so far as our own servants are concerned is to lavish praise upon them, but when it comes to paying for the services they render we are not so ready to respond to the appeal. I want to ask the Financial Secretary to the Treasury a question. When he was speaking about regrading the different classes he said that he was not going into details. I would like to ask if there is included in this Vote any sum for the regrading of the Clerks to Inspectors of Taxes. These grades came before the National Whitley Council in 1920, and a recommendation was made that there should be regrading in that branch of the service. Twelve months have elapsed, and, although a sort of temporary scheme was submitted, which I am led to believe that a large majority, if not all, of these clerks were prepared to accept—

They do not come in this Vote at all, but I think the hon. Member would be in order in raising the matter on the next Vote.

Seeing that the Financial Secretary has ruled me out of order, although you, Sir, have not, I may take it that I am out of order, and I will not, therefore, pursue the matter until we get to the next Vote. In conclusion, I want to appeal to the House, when considering matters of this kind, to realise that however desirable it may be to cut down expenditure, and we are all desirous of doing so where it can be done, we ought not to be content to give effect to our views on economy by cutting down the salaries of those who can least afford to have them cut down.

I should like to ask whether these figures do not appear more alarming than in fact they are. There are twenty-two items, and a great deal more than half come under the heading of the Post Office. I think I am right in saying that the Post Office is a revenue producing Department. Therefore, the fact of there being an additional charge on the Post Office does not mean that it is an increased burden on the taxpayers, except, of course, that it might be argued that if the Post Office employes were paid less there would be a greater profit. I am bound to say that in the old days there was no body of men more under-paid than those in the Post Office. Therefore, as the State ought really to show some example as a good employer, I certainly think we ought to be careful before we criticise expenditure under the heading of the Post Office, which, after all, amounts to £157,800 out of a total of £275,000. I suppose the same would apply more or less to the Public Trustee. I only rose really to point out these two facts, because otherwise it might seem to the superficial observer that £275,000 was a very large increase if it meant adding to the salaries of highly paid officials. I should like to associate myself with the appeal made on behalf of the women. We have reached a time when something definite ought to be said from the Treasury Bench. We have no details here, but the country requires an explanation, and I hope before we adjourn this afternoon that we shall have that information.

I did not quite understand what the hon. Member who has just spoken meant when he said that, because this sum of £157,800 was for the Post Office, we should not lose the money on that head. As the Post Office is losing money at the present moment and as the Government will be spending more money under this head, we shall therefore, whether it be under the head of the Post Office or any other.

May I correct my hon. Friend? What I meant to say was that the officials employed in the Post Office were the worst paid men in the Crown Services, and therefore we ought to be very critical before we condemn this Vote.

I took what the hon. Member said in the wrong way, but, all the same, as regards the Civil Service, including the Post Office, we have before us a very large item which must mean a great increase in the salaries of the Civil Service. On another occasion we shall have to consider another Supplementary Estimate under the heading of "War Bonuses," under which the Civil servants will get a very large increase, owing to the high cost of living, on their present salaries. I see no reason why, if that War Bonus is right and necessary to meet the high cost of living, we should, at the same time, increase their salaries, as we appear to be going to do under this Vote. It is very difficult, as one hon. Member has said, to criticise these Votes, because if we do criticise them we are always told that we are saying bad things about the Civil Service. I for one have never done so and anything I say is purely against the expenditure and not against the efficiency of the Civil Service, of which I think very highly in every way, but in my opinion, the Civil servant is in a very privileged position. His position cannot be compared to that of the ordinary man of business outside or a man in business employ. That man is not going to have a pension for one thing. The position of a man in business employ is temporary in the meaning that if he is not satisfactory he will get the sack, and, in that way, his position is entirely different to that of the man in the Civil Service, who is in a perfectly safe position, and cannot get the sack. He is in the Civil Service and he cannot be got rid of, and he can also look forward to spending the rest of his days on a very good pension. Therefore, he cannot be compared with the man of business outside, who may be earning more but who has to look forward to those days when he will retire, and who has to save enough money to keep himself and his family in comfort. As I have said, the Civil Servant has a pension, and I do not think that comparison, which I have often heard from the Treasury Bench, is a right one.

My principal point, and one on which I think most of the Committee will agree with me, is that this is a very bad time to bring forward such an arrangement. I am not going to criticise whether the arrangement is good or bad, because I do not know enough concerning it to do so, but to my mind the fact that it is going to cost such an enormously increased sum entirely condemns it. It is an absolutely bad time to bring forward such an Estimate. It is going to cost the State a large sum of money more on to the already large expenditure of the Government. The arrangement may be good, on that point I have nothing to say, but I do repeat that it is a very bad time to bring it forward, and the Government in bringing it forward will increase the already overwhelming burden of the taxpayer. Again, from the point of view of the falling cost of living, this arrangement is bad. At the present time the cost of living is falling, and in some trades—I think in a great number—wages are starting to fall at the same time. What an extremely bad example it will be to the trades and industries of this country whose wages are coming down to see the Government bringing in an Estimate to increase the salaries of the Civil Service. Wages must come down with the cost of living if industries are to survive, and it is an appalling example to the wage earners and to the labouring, classes to see people in high positions of State having their salaries increased, while, at the same time, the wage-earners are being compelled to have their wages reduced. I should like to add my protest to what has been said already against the Government bringing in an Estimate for this large sum of money at this critical time in our nation's finance.

I want just to deal with one point made by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury as the reason for this Assimilation Scheme. He spoke of the recent changes in officials between different departments. I hope that the purpose of this Assimilation Scheme will not be carried too far, because I think there are very great dangers in the proposal to interchange officials between different departments. I would like to take just one instance, the Ministry of Pensions. No doubt, as time goes on, we shall have the officials of War Pension Committees as well as of the regions, Ministry officials, and I think it would be a very great disadvantage to the State if they were introduced into that Service officials from other departments, who have no experience at all of the very specialised work which is involved in the Ministry of Pensions. Therefore, I think that the reason which has been given for this Assimilation Scheme, which is to facilitate the transfer of the officials from one department to another, merely because they belong to a certain grade or a certain seniority, is open to objection. The main objections to be advanced is that you have not got incentive, but you have standardisation. You have got no enterprise, and that does not result in efficiency. If you are going to have a huge elaborate system in which makes no difference whether a man has special knowledge of one Service or not, and where the only thing that matters is what particular grade he has reached in the Service, and if he can then be put into any department where special knowledge is required of which he has none, solely because he belongs to a certain grade, I think that will result in considerable inefficiency in the working of Government Departments. There is, I think, enough inefficiency at present without increasing it. We have had instances of the decrease in efficiency which has resulted in the replacement of women in the paid Service even by ex-Service men, a thing that we are all in sympathy with, but we see the difficulties which have arisen through new men having to be brought into departments where a special knowledge is required. I hope that if the result of these assimilation schemes is going to be that we are going to have officials constantly changing from one department to another, it will not be carried any further. I should like to support the speech of the hon. Member for the Moss Side of Manchester (Lieut.-Colonel Hurst). The Government, as the hon. Member for Durham pointed out, have not treated the women fairly in this matter. I remember reading with some surprise the election address of the Coalition candidate during the Penistone election, and there he invited the public to vote for him as a supporter of the Government which had passed the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act. I think we remember the history of that Act, and how it was hurriedly substituted in the Lords for a Bill which really would have given equality to the sexes in the matter of voting, and it was really a way for the Government to get out of their pledges to give equality of treatment to women. We have an instance in this matter, given by the hon. Member for Durham, of a vote passed in this House that where a women was doing the same class of work as a man she should receive the same pay—for the same service rendered the same pay—and that has been departed from in this assimilation scheme. If the hon. Member goes to a division on this matter I shall support him on that ground alone.

I would like to say one word of warning to the various societies which exist and that are constantly passing resolutions and sending them to Members. It is somewhat difficult within the limits of parliamentary procedure to give a vote, for a certain purpose without that purpose being open to misconstruction. I am all in favour of a man receiving a proper wage, and the civil servants having bonuses varying with the cost of living. That is a matter with which I am in entire agreement, but a vote like this, where a motion is made for a reduction for the specific purpose of protesting against women not receiving the equal treatment that was promised to them, has nothing to do with the merits of the Vote as far as the bonus is concerned. These associations outside ought carefully to consider the reasons involved in every vote before they draw a hasty conclusion.

I spent four years on the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, and if it taught me nothing else, it taught me that these questions of grading in the Civil Service are very complicated. On that account I hesitate to criticise the administration of my right hon. Friend, particularly as I understand the Establishment Department of the Treasury has done really excellent work in grappling with this very difficult staff question. At the same time I should like him to give the Committee some further information about the position of women under this Vote. Certainly it seems to me that both the women and the House of Commons have been badly treated in this matter. It is not a question of women as against ex-Service men. That does not come into it at all. It is simply a question whether women, having once been admitted into the Civil Service, should receive the same pay for the same work as men. The House, about a year ago last May, had a debate on this subject raised by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Durham. The occasion of that debate was the publication of the Whitley Report upon grading. The women strongly objected, rightly or wrongly, to that Report. They considered that they were being unfairly treated. My hon. and gallant Friend put down a Resolution and moved it on a Tuesday evening in a full House. He put the women's case before the House, and the House agreed unanimously that he had proved his case, and the recommendations of the Whitley Commission were unfair to these women Civil Servants. What has since happened? That resolution has been entirely ignored by the Treasury. It might never have been passed. The Treasury, if I understand rightly, have gone back to the recommendation of the Whitley Commission which were repudiated unanimously by this House, and have based the recommendations upon them, with the result that we have this Vote before us this afternoon. In view of that I do think that a case has been made out which shows, first of all, that the women have been very shabbily treated and secondly that the unanimous decision of the House has been entirely ignored, and on that account, much as I appreciate the administration of my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, I hope that before we give him this Vote he can give us a detailed explanation that will satisfy the criticisms that are made. It seems to me that the debate in its present position has established a case that both the women and the House of Commons have been very badly treated.

There is one point I want to emphasise, and that is that this increase of £275,000 for the salaries of Civil servants has been incurred under the terms of a Treasury Minute dated the 27th December, 1920, that is, at a moment when the official figures demon-started that a very substantial decrease in the cost of living has taken place. All these people have long enjoyed a War bonus to meet the cost of living in an epoch of very high prices. Directly the cost of living begins to decline, instead of the War bonus being reduced, which would be the logical sequence, another large increase to the amount of £275,000 is proposed under this Supplementary Estimate. It is, as I believe my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. G. Locker Lampson) has said, the higher grades that benefit by this arrangement. I do protest against this increase to the salaries of the Civil servants at the moment the cost of living is showing a substantial decrease. It has long been a principle of this Government that the only class of the community who are sheltered from the economic stringency which to-day is universal, is the class which has the spending of the public money which results in that stringency. That in itself is surely an immoral principle, that people who are principally responsible for the present condition should be the very last to feel the effect. When the cost of living begins to decline, and the Government comes forward at that moment with a suggestion for raising the salaries of Civil servants, over and above the existing War bonus, I feel there is no course open to me but to vote against it.

I see a Vote here for the Post Office for £157,800. Would the right hon. Gentleman explain in detail of what items that £157,800 is likely to be composed, or rather does it arise from the general increase of salaries in particular grades, or does it arise from persons being, promoted to superior grades carrying a higher salary?

I will endeavour to answer as briefly as I can the various, points which have arisen in this very interesting discussion. First, I will reply to my hon. and gallant Friend who moved the original reduction of the Vote. The present position with regard to the assimilation of women is, I am informed, as follows: Typing assistants, typists and shorthand-typists have all received assimilation terms to the number of 2,500, but I think what caused my hon. Friend to raise this question in an acute form is that there is a class of women clerks numbering about 4,000. Their position is this: Literally they have got assimilation terms, but they have been associated with the clerical staff for the time being. The reason, much as I regret it, is that this whole matter of re-organisation, as the hon. Baronet the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) knows, is a most complicated one, and those who are engaged in it have not yet been able to state the number of posts that will be open in the higher grade to the women clerks. I am afraid it may yet be a little time before this can be settled. When it is settled, and the re-grading is completed, all those who may be graded upward will get full terms from the original dates. This will be done without any prejudice.

With regard to the wider question raised by the hon. Member for Durham, I remember very well that evening a year ago, and the position of Daniel in the lions' den, or of Athanasius against the world, was comfortable compared with that in which I found myself. We hope shortly to have an opportunity of discussing this matter, when the House will be able to give its reasoned verdict. I am as anxious as my hon. Friend that the House should have the fullest opportunity of recording its decision on points that he and I know are most important, and I trust that opportunity may arise very shortly after Easter. It was promised by the Leader of the House that a date would be given to discuss the Order in Council, and I am endeavouring, in consultation with the Chair, to find a date for discussion. The right hon. Member for Peebles (Sir D. Maclean) said: "Cannot you postpone these changes?" I am afraid we cannot, because the need of putting these gradings of the departments on to a permanent footing is very pressing, and we believe that the sooner it is done the sooner we shall gain in economy.

I will deal at a little greater length with the important points raised by a number of hon. Members who followed the lead of the hon. Member for Wood Green (Mr. G. Locker-Lampson). It was interesting to know that, as a matter of fact, no members of the official side on the Whitley Council are personally interested at all in this re-grading. The number of people who are affected by it is in the neighbourhood of 20,000. Without exception, they are in receipt of a less income—considering salary without bonus—than £500 a year, and by far the greater number of them are in receipt of less than £250 a year. They are really classed at the bottom of the Civil Service as far as remuneration goes, and when I have told the Committee that it will say that this plea that we should cut down their salaries rather than raise them is really one that we cannot be asked to accept. It is a matter of the very greatest importance to these classes to have a fixed rate of salary, a rate that will hold good for many years to come, and will remain unaffected by the fall of the war bonus corresponding with the fall in the cost of living. So that if the War Bonus should disappear, and we should get back to the pre-war cost of living, they would have the rates properly due to their place in the Civil Service.

4.0 P.M.

The hon. Member for Thanet (Mr. E. Harmsworth) made a point I have heard raised several times in this House before, and which never carries conviction to my mind. He says that the rates of pay—which, of course, means only permanent rates like these—should come down, or, at any rate, should not go up, because wages are coming down. But my point in reply to that argument is that wages in other employments have been steadily rising ever since the war, and even if they have begun to come down, they are still far above the prewar standard. Now the rates under discussion are very nearly what they were before the war. If you could average out the increase, it would be seen to be very small, and, in most cases where men get the increase, it is gained by their being put in a class where the work which they are doing warrants the rate of pay applicable to that class. I do not know that there are any points I have failed to deal with, but I would remind the Committee that I caused to be circulated a few days ago a fairly complete report on this matter of assimilation, in which the Committee can find the various figures of the various grades and the suggestions made. I did that knowing how complicated the subject was, so that those who are interested might have an opportunity of studying it.

I will say one thing more. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and myself are primarily responsible for all matters connected with the remuneration of the Civil Service, and in our position we stand midway between the Civil Service on the one hand and the House of Commons and the taxpayers on the other. The task primarily laid upon us and on the Government is to see that the Civil Service works smoothly and efficiently, and is paid a fair wage for the service that it renders. Our duty to the taxpayer is to see that we pay no more wage than is fair. We endeavour to the best of our ability to carry out that double function. If we fail, this House will not hesitate to show us that it feels we have done wrong. The responsibility is ours, and we submit ourselves in full confidence to the judgment of our fellow Members.

Will the right hon. Gentleman be able to give us any information with regard to the footnote which relates to £300,000 further payments in respect of assimilation? I understand this sum is being met from savings anticipated. It would be interesting to know how that £300,000 is to be distributed amongst all these departments, which are to receive £275,000, which, of course, is less than the £300,000 mentioned.

The two sums must be added together. The hon. Gentleman will find exactly the same footnote in regard to War Bonus. The hon. Baronet will be familiar from his experience with the fact that extra expenditure is always met as far as possible from savings, and it is only when the expenditure exceeds the savings that Supplementary Esti- mates are necessary. The hon. Baronet will see how the total sums are divisible by noting what the staffs are in the various Departments. If my hon. Friend wishes for any further detailed information, I shall be glad to give it to him.

After what the right hon. Gentleman has said with regard to safeguarding the interests of women Civil Servants, I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Original Question put, and agreed to.

It was understood, indeed the Noble Lord (Lord E. Talbot) said deliberately on Friday that nothing more than the nine votes asked for would be taken on that day and Saturday, and we thereupon agreed to his proposal. I do not think we have extended our criticisms too much, but there was no understanding that Report of Supply should be taken.

If a request be made, of course we will not take these Reports. I had intended to take them either yesterday or to-day, but if objection be taken, I will not press them.

A great many hon. Members are absent, and I feel quite sure they are absent because they did not understand that the Report stage was going to be taken.

Motion made, and Question "That the debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.—[ Lord E. Talbot. ]

Debate to be resumed upon Monday next [14th March].

Second Resolution to be considered upon Monday next.

I wished to ask the Secretary of State for India a question, and I am sorry he is not present. I wanted to know why he has not carried out his undertaking, given last year, that when the Government of India Act came into force a fresh Committee would be appointed? The House will recollect that the Montagu-Chelmsford Report laid it down that the House of Commons should be asked to appoint a Select Committee on Indian affairs at the beginning of each Session and it then went on to say that there would then soon grow up a body of men in Parliament who would take a continuous and well-informed interest in Indian questions. The point I wish to bring to the right hon. Gentleman's notice—and I am glad to see he has now come in—is that it is impossible for a body of well-informed men to ever grow up in this House if the same Committee is to be appointed year after year. I raised this question last year and I think it my duty to raise it again now, because twelve months ago the Secretary of State, in reply to me, distinctly stated that the Committee would only continue in existence until the Government of India Act was working, and when that Act did come into operation another Committee would be appointed. The Government of India Act is now in operation, and I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether the time has not come when he should fulfil his undertaking to appoint a fresh Committee and not re-appoint the original members of it? This is the third year that the same original members have been appointed to this Committee. Great and difficult questions will arise this year in connection with the Government of Burma. The right hon. Gentleman knows quite well that there are great diversities of opinion on this subject between himself and the Government of India, and he is introducing a Bill into this House in opposition to the wishes and will of the Government of India. It is not fair that these original six men should be appointed, five of whom are absolutely pledged, by their speeches in the second reading Debate, to vote in favour of his Bill. These men were appointed again last year when the Government of India Bill was passed. The same question arises this year, except that, while last year the divergence of opinion was between the governments of the Provinces and the right hon. Gentleman, this year it is between the Government of India and the right hon. Gentleman. Under the recommendations of the Montagu-Chelmsford Report, and also under the undertaking given by the right hon. Gentleman himself last year, as soon as the Government of India Bill came into force an entirely fresh Committee was to be appointed. The right hon. Gentleman ought to fulfil that undertaking, and not continue the same men on the Committee who are already, as one may say, promised to support his opinion as against that of the Government. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to say for what reason he is continuing the appointment of these men for a third year, against the Montagu-Chelmsford Report and against his undertaking of last year. I know that he has added five men to the Committee, but I think that an entirely new Committee should be appointed.

I really do not see how I have broken any undertaking. This is an entirely new Committee for a different purpose and composed of a different number of men. It is the Committee which was recommended in the Montagu-Chelmsford Report—a recommendation which was endorsed and modified by the Joint Select Committee of last year. That Joint Select Committee was appointed for a particular Bill. This Committee is appointed to advise the House on Indian affairs generally, and it is proposed that it shall be a Sessional Committee. If the hon. Baronet says that any Member who has ever taken part in the discussion of Indian affairs upstairs on a Committee is ipso facto disqualified from serving on this Sessional Committee, I think it would be a very bad argument to use to the House of Commons. There are many men on this Committee who have not served on the last Committee, and there are many who did serve on the last Committee but who by no means take the same view necessarily on the Burma Bill. When we are inviting the House to make a choice as to the Members appointed, those who have served the House on the previous Committee are, surely, not to be disqualified from serving on the new Committee that is appointed.

Question put, and agreed to.

Committee accordingly nominated of Mr. Acland, Sir Thomas Bennett, Sir Henry Craik, Major Glyn, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, Sir J. D. Rees, Mr. Spoor, Sir Charles Towns- hend, Colonel Wedgwood, and Lieut.-Commander Hilton Young.

ORDERED, that the Committee have power to send for persons, papers, and records.

Ordered, that Five be the quorum.—[ Colonel Gibbs. ]

Message to the Lords to acquaint them therewith.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.