Before the right hon. Baronet, the Member for the City of London, moves his Amendment, I should like your ruling, Mr. Speaker, as to the Amendment which I put down to Sub-section (1)—to insert the words "red or white Bordeaux." The Amendment was on the Paper for some time, but I see this morning that it has disappeared.

We have already passed that point. The right hon. Member for the City of London is now moving a later Amendment.

May I say, before I move my Amendment, that the only really important Amendment would be to reject the Bill on Third Reading? I have not the slightest doubt that if a Vote by ballot be taken by the House on that issue the Bill will be rejected on Third Reading. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] However, I hope I shall have an opportunity of moving the rejection of the Bill on Third Reading and to give my reasons for so doing. I beg to move, in Sub-section (1) to leave out the word "eighteen" ["age of eighteen years"] and to insert instead thereof the word "seventeen."

We have got a long way beyond that point.

It is the Amendment which I was moving when the Debate was adjourned some days ago.

We have got beyond that point. The right hon. Baronet will see that by his Amendment on the Paper.

I beg your pardon. I beg to move, in Sub-section (1), to leave out the words where such liquor is sold, supplied, or purchased only for consumption at a meal to be consumed at the same time in such portion of the premises as is usually set apart for the service of meals, not being a bar as defined in section one hundred and twenty of the Children Act, 1908. The object of this Amendment is to allow a person to be supplied with certain liquors, but not spirits, without being obliged to eat something. This is a very good day on which to move such an Amendment, because it is clear that there are very few people but would not be glad to be able to obtain something to drink in the form of beer, porter, cider or Perry, without being obliged to eat a meal with it. I cannot understand why the promoters of the Bill should subject young persons under eighteen to the necessity of eating something in the form of a meal when they only desire to quench their thirst. People do not always want to eat when they drink. I saw the Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) in the bar of this House the other afternoon, when I happened to look in. I did not see her eating anything. Therefore, I conclude that she must have been drinking something. Take the case of some young persons, typists or clerks in the City, cycling along the country road on Saturday afternoon and arriving at an inn and desiring to obtain a drink.

Will the right hon. Baronet speak up. We want to listen to him, and we cannot hear a word.

I was saying that some young persons who work in the city might be cycling along a country road and arrive at an inn, where there is no incentive to get drunk, or to lose one's moral sense. One of these young persons may be eighteen years and one month of age, and the other seventeen years and eleven months. They might wish to have a glass of beer, cider or shandygaff. I suppose hon. Members know what shandy-gaff is? I do not know whether the Noble Lady understands it. The person who is eighteen years and one month of age could get off his bicycle and have a drink, but the person who is only seventeen years and eleven months of age would have to stay in the road or go inside and order something to eat with his drink. I suppose he would go inside and order something to eat, consume a bit of it and leave the rest, in order to get a drink. The Noble Lady (Viscountess Astor) recognises the force of my arguments. She is putting her hands to her ears, in order that she may not hear me, and be convinced by my arguments.

On a point of Order. Is it right for any hon. Member of this House to deliberately point to another hon. Member as the right hon. Baronet is doing? Is that a gentlemanly action? He claims to be a gentleman of the first water.

It is not an uncommon thing for a girl under 18 among the working classes to marry. Will you tell me that a girl is fit to marry, and yet not fit to know whether she should have a glass of beer or not? Therefore I content myself by moving the omission of these words, because, while I think their omission would improve the Bill, I am more anxious to have the Bill rejected on the Third Reading.

I beg to second the Amendment.

These words are really part of the so-called compromise which was come to in the Committee by the promoters of the Bill. Nothing shows the absurdity of this Bill so much as the results which may follow if these words remain in it. If a young person goes into a public-house or bar and orders beer, porter, cyder or perry he commits an offence for which, under a later Sub-section, he may be subject to a fine or, alternatively, to imprisonment if he does not at the same time order a meal to be consumed not in the bar, but in some other part of the house. If he goes in with bread and cheese in his pocket, and orders a glass of beer, he does not commit an offence, but if he has not bread and cheese or a sandwich or whatever the meal may be, he does commit an offence. No matter what the feeling for this Bill, it is unwise to allow legislation of this sort to go through. The young person is not obliged to order a meal. He has only got to consume a meal in the public-house, so if a boy or girl goes in with a biscuit in his pocket he is entitled to order, not one glass of beer under this Bill, but as many glasses as he likes, while if he does not have a meal or order a meal he commits an offence. We ought not to allow legislation under which it is possible for such anomalies to take place.

The different stages for the consideration of a Bill have been laid down as the result of experience of generations of our people for the purpose of thoroughly sifting every Clause and every word in the Bill. That is why our legislation, as a rule, has been carefully drafted, although we have some exceptions, and therefore the laws are respected by the people of this country. A great many of the United States have passed an enormous number of laws dealing with every conceivable subject, with the result that nobody pays any attention to them, because you reduce legislation to a farce, if you pass laws which are absurd, as is the wording of this particular Clause. I do not say that it is altogether the fault of the promoters. I have not been one of those in favour of this compromise. I think that the principae opponents of the Bill on my right and on my left are almost as responsible as the promoters of the Bill for altering the Bill in this way and making it so absurd. I disagree with the objects of the Bill, except as regards spirits, which I think a very excellent object. I think that the Bill is not bad altogether, but only in parts, but to alter the Bill by a proposal like this, which is ridiculous and was only accepted by the opponents because they know it makes the Bill ridiculous, is an abuse of parliamentary procedure. Legislation coming before us should be reasonably simple and at the same time in consonance with public opinion. If this Bill goes through, letting a person with a biscuit in his pocket get beer the result will be worse than negative; it will make the Bill ridiculous in the eyes of the public and do harm to the cause which the promoters have at heart. As regards spirits I think that we could have had a simple Bill.

Is the hon. Member discussing the Amendment or the Third Reading of the Bill?

In the case of an Amendment of such wide scope as this, it is difficult not to allude in some places to matters not strictly within the scope of the Amendment. I am trying to explain the reason for passing this Amendment. If these words stand part the result will be that the new law will be made ridiculous and do harm to the cause of real temperance. We are getting more temperate every day, thanks to the common sense of the people of the country, but this punitive legislation, which may be necessary in more backward countries than this, is calculated to harm the cause of temperance. I urge all hon. Members he are not biased in favour of this Bill, but simply want to have a reasonable, decent Bill, to support this Amendment.

I hope that the House will not accept the Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman who moved it simply desires to kill the Bill. The seconder of the Amendment was a member of the Committee. He delivered there a speech in the same terms, and even more elaborate, but the Committee did not take his view. As far as our party are concerned, we are unanimously in favour of the Bill as a whole. It is only fair to say that the compromise was a real one, for both sides gave principles away. The promoters of the Bill are very keen on some of the things that they were asked to give up. Opponents of the Bill were equally keen on other things. A fair compromise was reached as between both sides, and every view had an opportunity for expression in Committee. The progress of the Bill to-day may be delayed. The Mover and Seconder of the Amendment know perfectly well that they cannot kill the Bill. All that they are doing now is merely taking Government time. It is not true to say that if a private ballot were taken the Members of this House would reject the Bill. If a ballot of the country were taken, there would be no doubt of the result. We do not propose, as a Labour party, to take part in the general debate, and we are content to urge the Government to facilitate the passing of this Bill as speedily as possible.

I am in favour of this Amendment, but am not in the least opposed to the Bill. It seems to me that the Bill is one which is good for the rich and bad for the poor. It is the poor people who will go with a biscuit in their pocket and ask for a drink in a public-house. It is not the rich man who does that. He has his cellar. He can drink as much as he likes or carry it with him. The poor man cannot afford a cellar, and he is the man who is injured by this Bill. I have not the smallest desire to kill the Bill, but there are one or two Amendments which I think it would be good to ventilate and to get the opinion of the House upon. I shall go into the Lobby in support of the Amendment.

I do not think I shall press the Amendment to a Division, but I shall certainly divide against the Third Reading of the Bill. In reply to the speech of the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), I would point out that he was the Chairman of the Standing Committee, and I have nothing to do with the compromise reached in the Committee. I do not know whether the compromise was made in the interests of the promoters or of the opponents of the Bill. The Committee consisted of only about 60 Members, probably not more than 40 were ever in attendance. On Report we are entitled to express our opinions on the Bill. It is a new doctrine to me that hon. Gentlemen opposite are so solicitous of the time of the Government that they are anxious no one should talk. They have not carried out the principle during the present Session. Over and over again they have taken up the time of the Government. I presume that there is now to be a change. It is a most extraordinary doctrine that Members of the. House, on what is a most important matter dealing with the liberty of the subject, are not to move Amendments. If that is the doctrine of the Labour party, it is another reason why they should never get into power.

Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

The next Amendment on the Paper in the name of the hon. Baronet, the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury)—to leave out Sub-section (2)—is really part of the same proposal, the one cannot stand without the other.

That is not quite the case, but I do not know whether it would be worth while to move it. If you look at Sub-section (2), you will see that it practically repeats the whole of the first part of Sub-section (1), and that the only new part is at the end, where it says No person shall purchase or attempt to purchase any intoxicating liquor for consumption by a person under the age of 18 years in any such bar. The proper way would be to move out all the words except those words, but I do not propose to do it. This is only another instance of the absurdity of the Bill and of the bad drafting.

The next Amendment on the Paper, in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Finsbury (Sir M. Archer-Shee), to leave out Sub-section (3), would not make sense.

If you look at Sub-section (3) you will see that the result of leaving it out is that people would not be fined or imprisoned.

The Clause defines certain things which shall not be done, and if the Amendment were carried there would be no penalties prescribed.

I beg to move, at the end of Sub-section (3), to insert the words but nothing in this Act shall be deemed to reduce the amount of any fine or penalty which may be imposed under Section sixty-eight of The Licensing (Consolidation) Act, 1910, or Section fifty-nine of The Licensing (Scotland) Act, 1903, for any contravention of either of those Sections. There is an overlapping of the penalties under this Bill and under the Licensing (Consolidation) Act, 1910. This Amendment was submitted to those who were on the Standing Committee as parties to the compromise. It stands in my name and in that of the hon. and gallant Member for Norwood (Mr. Greaves-Lord) whose legal skill was of great assistance to us in the Standing Committee.

I beg to second the Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the Third time."

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

I should point out that the Noble Lady who introduced this Bill, and a number of those who supported the Bill, made certain statements in a previous Debate as to the effect of stimulants on people under a certain age. I wish to call the attention of the Noble Lady and of hon. Members who support the Bill to the speech made by the hon. Member for London University (Sir S. Russell-Wells) only a few days ago, in which he said that beer was a food and contained a certain quantity of nourishment and also that tea was a pure drug. [HON. MEMBERS: "Speak up!"] Therefore, the supporters of this Bill are endeavouring to prevent young people from getting what a medical authority declares to contain nourishment, and to make them take, instead, something which is, after all, merely a drug. I quote from the speech made by the Noble Lady on the Second Reading:— If alcohol is a bad stimulant for girl adolescence it is equally bad for boy adolescents. Sir James Crichton-Browne, a distinguished anti-prohibitionist, says 'It is during adolescence that the taste for alcohol declares itself. Then it is, when so many habits are formed, that a habit of some degree of dependence on alcohol may be contracted and it is a noteworthy fact that in nearly 90 per cent. of cases of confirmed inebriety the addiction to drink began between fifteen and twenty-five years of age. That is the danger period.'"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March, 1923; cols. 917–8, Vol. 161.] Let us see what Sir James Crichton-Browne really did say. [HON. MEMBERS: "Who is he?"] He is the gentleman whose opinion was quoted by the Noble Lady as one of the chief reasons in support of this Bill, and this is what he said in a letter to the "Morning Post": Sir, I quite agree with Lady Astor in her letter which appeared in your issue of the 17th inst., and which I have only just seen on my return from Scotland, that some folks have prohibition on the brain and I would go further, and say that that painful obsession sometimes impels its victims into ridiculous intolerance and self-assertion and may even betray them, when they ought to know better, into vulgar personalities. Only a prohibition-ridden brain can see any inconsistency, as Lady Astor does, in my objection to a general and forcible restraint on the consumption of a particular kind of food, at certain ages, with my recommendation of self-discipline and abstinence in regard to that particular kind of food for a season to a group of youths under special circumstances. Compulsion is one thing and free choice is quite another.

Speak up!

He says that the attempt to induce people to do the right thing is one thing, but compulsion by force of law is quite another. That is apparently the one thing about which the people who pretend to stand for freedom are really concerned. The letter proceeds: Lady Astor does not apparently realise that alcohol is a food and under some circumstances, a very valuable food, and she has not acquainted herself with recent researches on the subject. Her countryman, Professor Raymond Pearl, of the John Hopkins Hospital, has just demonstrated with guinea pigs and fowls that individuals which throughout life—adolescence included—receive daily doses of alcohol by inhalation were much longer lived than others not so treated.

Speak up!

Hon. Members should remember that this is a letter from au eminent man whose opinions were quoted by the Noble Lady in quite a wrong sense in the Second Reading Debate, and were then cheered by hon. Members opposite. They cannot now listen when the gentleman in question shows that the quotation was inapt and inaccurate. He writes: From 1569, family history records carefully collected in the vicinity of Baltimore, Professor Pearl concludes, that while heavy and steady drinking lowers the expectation of life, the moderate and occasional consumption Of alcohol has no such effect in either sex. How confirmatory is this of the conclusion of that eminent surgeon, the late Sir James Paget, as a result of life long experience, that the habitual use of alcohol is on the whole, and generally, beneficial. That is better than all the fulminations and cackle of foolish women. The letter continues: Lady Astor correctly interprets my attitude. I am out against her Bill even in its emasculated state. I retain the old British prejudice against any infringement of personal liberty and believe that vexatious restrictions are sure to prove futile and mischievous. She ascribes to me, however, absurdities which are the product of her own confused thinking, when she suggests that I would require the publican to make out the trade of each of his youthful customers. What I said was that for growing lads engaged in certain kinds of labour, a glass of beer may be beneficial, but my contention is that all growing lads, no matter what their occupation, when sober and well conducted, should be able to get that under reasonable conditions of time and place, when so 'dispoged.' It is Lady Astor who would demand superhuman discernment in the publican in gauging the age of suppliants for liquor. My age, to which Lady Astor so courteously refers, is surely—seeing I have never practised self-prohibition and drank beer regularly between the ages of 14 and 18—an argument against the policy she has espoused. As she treats my professional opinion contemptuously, I am rather surprised that she should have made use of it in the House of Commons to bolster up her silly Bill. The House of Commons has administered a quietus to prohibition, but not yet, I fear, to Lady Astor. So much for the Noble Lady's quotation of Sir James Crichton-Browne, a person whose opinion she says ought to be taken, as he deals with this matter on a scientific, spiritual, and moral basis. On the Second Reading of the Bill, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary was present on behalf of the Government, and said that he rather rogretted that his position in the Government compelled him to be present. He went on to say that he could make no promise on behalf of the Government of facilities for any further stages of the Bill, and he went into the Lobby against the Second Reading of the Bill. Now, to our astonishment, we find that the Government, notwithstanding what was said by my right hon. Friend, have succumbed to the charms of the sex which generally succeeds in influencing men, and, contrary to the statement of the Minister who was here in his place for the Government, they have given facilities for this Bill. Quite apart from this Bill, I want to suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury that, as the Government are starting on a career, which I hope will last for the full time, it is not right lot them to star private Member's Bills.

This is the second private Member's Bill which has been starred by the Government, and I maintain that it is not right to do so except under very exceptional circumstances, as in the case of a Bill of which every single Member is in favour, and to which no man or woman has raised any objection. The effect is that the Government take advantage of the time at the disposal of private Members in order to advance their own Bills, and that is not right. I remember a distinguished Member of this House, not a Member of my party, Sir James Caldwell, a Member of the Liberal party, who once said to me: "Private Members' Bills are all bad, and our Bills, the Bills of my party, are the worst of the lot." He was a man of very great experience, a shrewd Scotsman, and I think he was right in what he said. It was necessary, in order that this particular Bill should become law, that the Government should star it and give it facilities. It could not otherwise have passed. One of the arguments which the Noble Lady advanced was that the hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Greaves-Lord) put down a question with regard to the number of boys and girls who were arrested for drunkenness, and she seemed to think that the answer to that question was in favour of her Bill, whereas it had exactly the contrary effect, because, in 1921, the last year for which figures were available, there had been a considerable decrease in the number of people arrested for drunkenness.

Let me point out the absolute absurdity of this Bill and the effect which it is going to have upon different classes. The rich man and the rich girl and boy will net suffer under the Bill. I do not know whether any hon. Member of this House is going to Lords. I have not been there for a good many years, but in the old days, when I regularly went there, I used to find there were luncheons served round the ground, and the general consumption in the way of things to drink on a hot day like this would probably be champagne cup, or something of that sort, and all the boys at Eton and Harrow had it, and enjoyed it. They are probably going to have it now, and I would not be surprised, if the Noble Lady had a tent there, if there was champagne-cup there for her friends. I have seen it in her house in St. James' Square. The result is that the young person of the poorer class, the class which hon. Members opposite claim to represent, cannot get anything of this sort. They cannot even get a humble glass of beer, at the price at which it has been sold of late, unless they carry it with them in their pockets, which would be a very uncomfortable thing to do on a day like thin, or unless they pay for something to eat, which is undoubtedly absurd and practically prohibitory of their obtaining that which they want.

That only bears out what all this sort of legislation does. Prohibitory legislation reacts against the working classes, and does not injure the richer classes. The children of the richer people have, and have with great advantage, everything which this Bill is going to prohibit. All that will be necessary will be for them, when they go for an excursion during summer weather, to arrange to be met by a servant with the liquor which they cannot obtain at a public-house or, rather at the village inn where they intended to stop, or they can take it in their motor car, or in their boat on the river, and they will not pay the slightest attention to this Bill. But the children of the working classes will be prohibited from having what is very often vitally necessary at the present moment. Take the young labourer in a hay field. It is very hard work in a hay field at the present moment, and there are many boys under 18, some of them strong and powerful men, perfectly able to do a good day's work in the hay field, but the Noble Lady will not let them have a glass of beer. It is too absurd. I do really beseech the House not to be led away by statements of teachers or women's societies. To what does it all come? "The Society for the Prevention of the Consumption of Liquor, which embraces every woman in your constituency, will vote against you at the next Election if you do not pass this Bill." Do not believe it for a moment! By the time the next Election comes, they will have forgotten all about it. There will be many more important matters to be considered, and if my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary had only hardened his heart, and not succumbed to the charms of the other sex, we should never have heard another word about this Bill, and nobody would have been any the worse. In those circumstances, I appeal to this House to reject the Bill, and pass to more sensible legislation.

12 N.

In the course of a maiden speech, I assure the House I do not intend to detain hon. Members more than a very few minutes, because I am well aware that this Bill has been fully dicussed both in this House on Second Reading and also in Committee. It is a Bill which, I believe, has at the present time the support of the bulk of ale people of this country, and one of the reasons for that is that a good deal of the sting has been taken out. The sting to which I refer is that the Bill as it comes from Committee renders the licensed victuallers much less liable to prosecution than it did in its original state. I should like to discuss one or two of the main principles which this Bill directly affects. I was very much interested during the Second Reading to listen to the speeches that were delivered. Anyone might have imagined, as the right hon. Baronet just said, that insobriety amongst the young people of this country was becoming a great evil. The right hon. Baronet has also just told us that figures show that drunkenness amongst the young people of this country is decreasing at the present time. That is an extremely satisfactory feature. The young people are, in fact, becoming more and more sober every year, and are becoming less dependent on the State for interference. I think that the great development of sports of all kinds has contributed a great deal in that direction. In no country in the world will you find as many playing-fields fully occupied on every half-holiday as you will in this country, and I think hon. Members will agree with me when I say that the training for sports of all kinds is synonymous with physical and mental fitness, and it is no doubt these two great characteristics of our race which have done so much towards building up our national character. What does this Bill enact? It will deprive, as the right hon. Baronet has said, any young man under 18 years of age of the opportunity of having his glass of beer in the barroom of licensed premises. Whatever work the young fellow may accomplish during the day, whether it be hard work in a mine, or in a shipyard, or in the harvest fields, he will not be able to go into a licensed house to pay for his drink, and consume it in the company of his fellow-workers. The young fellow who has been playing an arduous game of football during the afternoon will not be able to take such a perfectly harmless drink as a glass of shandy-gaff. I believe the Noble Lady knows what that is, and that it is not an American cocktail.

These examples I have given represent, I believe, the most objectionable features of this Bill. There are, as a matter of fact, two redeeming features in the Bill. The first is the fact that the Noble Lady who is responsible for this Measure has certainly impressed me, as I believe she has a large number of Members of this House, with her sincerity of purpose, and also-with her very large experience of the juvenile population of this country. The second redeeming feature is to be found, I believe, in the benefit that I hope a small section of the younger people of this country may derive. I refer to the orphans, the boys and girls who find themselves, unfortunately, without any parents, practically without home life, and it is that lack of home life that may eventually drive them into public-houses. If only on account of these younger people living in the world without parents, I feel I should be justified in supporting the Third Reading of this Measure. In my opinion, true temperance—the one thing, I believe, all hon. Members wish to see as much as possible—will never be brought about by State interference with the liberties of the people.

I ask the Noble Lady—and I hope she will enlighten us before we finish this Debate—if this Bill is to be the foundation stone of a new Statue of Liberty which is to be erected within the City of London, or if it is to be followed by other Bills of a similar kind, until the whole edifice is complete, and the unhappy people of this country find themselves in the heat of summer, and during the foggy darkness of winter, confronted with nothing more interesting than a glass, say, of ginger-pop or ice-cream and soda. I hope that the Noble Lady will tell us about that too.

A Noble Lord (Viscount Astor) in another place has already brought in a Bill further to amend the licensing law.

I am sorry to hear that that is so. I am rather tempted now to oppose this Bill, but out of consideration for the Noble Lady I will not. I am sure, however, the House would like an assurance from the Noble Lady that she does not intend to bring forward any further Measures of this kind. I am in favour of temperance. We all want to see it spread further in this country, but we want to see the work done by the various temperance organisations and by hon. Members and others at public meetings carrying out a reasonable propaganda and explaining to those who listen the evils of excessive drinking, and encouraging sport of all kinds. I am sure if the Noble Lady and those who are helping her will work along these lines, no one will give a more hearty support to the movement than I myself shall.

I wish to mark as clearly as I possibly can the distinction between a Measure of this kind, and what I reckon ought to be the only proper way of handling this question at all. This, of course, has nothing to do with prohibition. This, as has been said, is a licencing Bill, the question of simply taking part in the regulation of an iniquitous traffic. It is the concurrence in and the adoption of a system which, by all the arguments which have been employed, ought not to stand. I recollect on the occasion of the Second Reading that we heard the Noble Lady the Member for Plymouth (Viscountess Astor) speak in support of the case, although I was unable to obtain an opportunity of speaking at the time. The whole trend of the case submitted for the support of this Bill was that licensed places were a centre of contamination to young people, but on all the evidence submitted, the case of the young person under 18 years of age is given completely away by a simple rearrangement of the geographical position. You take such person, a friend, into another place in the same establishment and provided it is not a drinking bar and by arranging at the same time that he gets something in the way of food you regularise the position.

I do not wish to take up too much of the time of the House and I desire to be as brief as I can to put forward what I have to say, but I should like to state that Sir James Crichton-Browne failed to answer the case put before him in the "Forward" Journal. It is a most astounding feature of the case for the Bill, a central fact, that you have very nearly unanimity in this House of Commons. As the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London said there is a variation as to the position of the Government. They first of all said that they could not give any promise with regard to the Bill, then that they would give it their protection, then you have the expression from this side of the House of the leaders of both parties that they are willing to agree to the passing through of this Measure. That is the most important point that could be established in proof of the Bill's weakness. In spite of the anxiety of hon. Members on the other side about Measures of this kind I have no difficulty in stating that Measures like this constitute a safety valve for the continued existence of the liquor traffic. What have you got? An expression of delight and satisfaction by many of the organisations throughout the country and their backing in this House, from the very forces that are the backbone of the liquor traffic, and the power that controls the Government, that they are conceding this because they know that all parties in the House will thereby identify themselves with what is known as the temperance movement.

I submit that the propagation of such Measures is treachery to the great cause of the drunkard, his wife and family. Take the case before us that is embodied in the Bill. How is a man, given to handling the liquor behind the bar of the public-house with men and women present in numbers and confronted with the question of age, going to decide Perhaps some of those then present are excited by participation in the drink, and the barman or the publican are trying to get round to serve everybody. The Bill says that the man must not order liquor on behalf of his friend who is under age. But the customer is assumed to know exactly what is the age of his friend, of his companion. Would any hon. Members identified with the temperance movement ask their own guests at their own table their age under such circumstances as mentioned by the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London regarding the Noble Lady the Member for Plymouth, in regard to provision of intoxicants in their own home circle? Would they, I ask, discriminate between guests of different ages? They would never so insult their guests. You serve them indiscriminately, and why not? You are not agreed on the abolition of the liquor traffic. The Noble Lady the Member for Plymouth is totally opposed to anything in the nature of prohibition, as emphatically declared in her election address. It was said on the other side of the House that we must not have any legislation which is going to interfere with the liberty of the subject. What are you doing now? What right have you to interfere with a person of the age of 18 or under? Here we have one of the best proofs that we are doing the very thing that we ought not to do, for whenever you have anything in the way of a comic story or some comic interlude, as we had in this House the other week, it only throws a little light upon what lies behind it. Every hon. Member in any quarter of this House knows perfectly well that this is only playing with the subject. If there is no case against the liquor traffic why do you not give every man and every woman a chance of engaging in this business, and why should you confer this monopoly on a small section of the community. Why should you give to a limited number the chance of making huge profits by allowing greedy, selfish, cold-blooded people to exploit mankind.

You welcome the efforts which are now being made by the Noble Lady the Member for Plymouth because she is a valuable acquisition to you in this matter. She stands between you and the trade as a barrier to Prohibition, and you are able to shy that the Noble Lady is a leader of the temperance movement, and is doing a great work in the cause. On the other hand, she stands as a candidate for Plymouth and puts in black type in her election address. I am not in favour of prohibition. The Noble Lady as a private Member introducing a Bill had no chance of passing it until the Government took it up, and therefore I congratulate her upon her deep-seated and far-seeing wisdom, because there is now a fair hope of this Bill passing through this House. It did not matter to the Noble Lady how miserably ridiculous this Bill was made, and it is now hailed as an achievement for the temperance movement in the name of the Noble Lady the Member for Plymouth. This is no real progress towards the situation which has obtained in the United States, and it has no association with the position of America. America has arrived at the conclusion that, from every substantial point of view, whether you regard disease, health and everything else that we consider of any importance, it is necessary to cut this thing out like a cancerous growth. Do not associate that great movement in America with this ridiculous piece of humbug which ought never to have been introduced.

I rise to express the hope that the House will give this Bill a Third Reading. I want in a very few minutes to explain why I take up an attitude now which may appear inconsistent with a course which I adopted on the Second Reading. I opposed the Second Reading of this Bill in the main for two reasons. Firstly, because in my opinion it was absolutely ineffective to carry out the expressed objects of its promoters; and in the second place, because it neglected what is a very important principle in the administration of our law, namely, that a man should not be convicted unless he knows that he has committed an offence. Both those objections were removed from this Bill during the Committee stage.

The hon. and gallant Member for Southern Norfolk (Major Hay), who spoke a few minutes ago, seemed to be rather afraid and obsessed with the idea that this Measure was the foundation of a statue of Liberty. I should regard any idea of the foundation of a statue of Liberty within the three mile limit of these shores as a tragedy. This Bill as it stands now is, in my opinion, certainly a bulwark against a large portion of moderate opinion in this country going over to the side of prohibition. I say that because there is a large body of moderate opinion in this country which will never be perverted to prohibition so long as they see that reasonable reforms, in connection with the liquor traffic, receive attention at the hands of this House. In this matter I cannot speak for the trade. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Any hon. Member opposite who suggests by an interruption of that kind that I am speaking for the trade makes that suggestion with an entire disregard to what is in fact the truth, for I speak for no section of the trade.

I understand that there is a section of the trade who regard this Bill with discomfort, and think it should be opposed, but I think they are wrong, and I believe they would really be doing a good thing for the trade if they supported this Measure. First, this is a Measure which may be administered without the slightest risk of injustice to anyone engaged in the licensed trade. Secondly, it is, in my opinion, absolutely effective for the one purpose which it seeks to serve, and that is keeping young people out of the purely drinking part of licensed premises. I hope there may be a time when we shall not have a purely drinking part of licensed premises, when the whole of those premises will be constructed so that young people can go with their parents into any part of licensed premises; but so long as they are constructed as they are at the present time, I think it is a valuable thing that we should provide something to keep these young people out of that part of licensed premises.

While I should have liked to have seen this Bill limited entirely to spirits, I think, on the other hand, that those to whom we were opposed on the Second Reading, while they gave up a great many principles, at any rate obtained something which was very valuable in the interests of the young people of this country, when they got into this Bill provisions which do effectually keep young people out of the drinking part of licensed premises. As this Bill now stands, the two objections which I put in the forefront on the Second Reading have been removed, and it can never be used as a jumping off ground for any measure of prohibition. Under these circumstances, I hope the House will give this Bill a Third Reading practically with unanimity.

In regard to this Measure I wish to make two protests. My first protest is with regard to the action which the teachers' organisation has taken in this matter. I have been circularised repeatedly by teachers' organisations endeavouring to persuade me in forcible terms to vote for this Measure, and I think it will be a sad day for this country if those in the employ of the State or the ratepayers should be allowed to take an active part upon questions such as this. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh, oh!"] Hon. Members belonging to the Labour party disagree with that statement, but I repeat that I think it will be a most regrettable day for this country when those in the employ of the State or of the ratepayers are allowed to take sides on questions that come before this House, because I think it will do a great deal of harm. Officers in the Army or the Navy dc not take an active part in such questions, and I have never known the case of an officer either in the Army or the Navy supporting such Measures on public platforms whilst he is holding an active commission.

The second protest that I want to make is with regard to this type of legislation. I do not believe that we are going to become a better country by this fussy kind of Prussian restriction upon our liberty. Temperance is growing in the country owing to public opinion and to education. I cannot help thinking that to introduce Measures of this kind, where you are going to have all sorts of suspicions where liquor is sold, is not going to help that healthy reform in the habits of the people. The influence on the people of the country with regard to questions such as these comes down from leaders of public opinion and also from the classes. I can remember when, on coming down from the University, I joined an ordinary club in London, it was the habit of every gentleman to have two or three whiskies and sodas at 11 o'clock. You can now go into a club without seeing any of the upper classes drinking any liquor except with their meals. Hon. Gentlemen laugh, and I am perfectly willing to grant that in the House of Commons or anywhere else in days like these gentleman do take a tonic with, perhaps, something in it. I am, however, speaking of the general habits of the people, and everyone knows that I am right when I say that right through all sections of the community you find that public opinion is against the drunkard and the extreme drinker.

I therefore regret that this Measure was brought in, because I do not believe you are really going to help the young people of this country by preventing them from drinking a shandygaff when 17¾ years of age. You are simply going to excite their curiosity and increase their desire to consume these things when they become 18. I do not believe that in the end you are going to improve the moral of the country by trying to remove temptation. You are going to improve the moral of the country by teaching your people of resist temptation, and I hope that we are not going to have any more Measures of this description. I need not apply any adjectives to the Bill, because the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) has described it so fully and forceably. I can only say that it is a ridiculous Bill, and that I do not think it is worth anybody's while to go into the Lobby either for or against it.

I do not want to occupy the time of the House for more than a very few moments, and I hope that hon. Members opposite, by their interruptions, prolong what I hope will be a very short intervention in this Debate. This Bill, as it has come down from the Committee upstairs, is a very different Measure in every respect to the Bill which received Second Reading in this House at an earlier period in the Session. That Bill was one of the most flagrant, clumsy, and incomprehensible pieces of drafting that has ever been presented to this House. The first Clause of it had references, cross-references, and cross-references again to previous Acts, and it was almost impossible for those who are more or less expert in licensing legislation to make out exactly what was intended. It was perfectly impossible to administer. The only part of the Bill which was clear and definite and unmistakable was the penalty Clause with its very heavy penalties on those of the licensing trade who might not steer their way through the maze presented to them. Now, at any rate, the Bill says what it means, and bears on the face of it what it purports to do. I believe that the penalties and inflictions, which certain sections of the teetotal party are only to glad to inflict upon the holders of licences, are now not excessive, and that the licence holder has nothing greatly to fear in the administration of this Bill. For these reasons, I do not intend to offer any opposition to the Third Reading of the Bill.

I would like to add a very few remarks. We are told that this is an agreed Bill. Is that so? Will the hon. Member for Plymouth (Viscountess Astor), when she gets up to wind up the Debate, say that this Bill settles the question and that she and her supporters will be satisfied to leave it where it stands without alteration and amendment? I do not think that they will. If that be so, what becomes of the case that this is an agreed Bill? If that be so—and I want to learn—it is only agreed so far that the promoters will take this Bill as a step towards some further Measure which they have not at this stage revealed to the House. Then what becomes of the case that this is an agreed Bill? It is a Bill agreed for this Session only, and the question can be reopened at the first opportunity. If that be the case, then I have to say to those Members of the Committee who made this compromise and who have been induced to support the Bill by this compromise that it was an agreed Bill have been grossly deceived. The Bill is no longer an agreed Bill, but it is a stage in what is intended to be the progress to some end which has not been revealed.

The real objections to this Bill are the same as those to the whole class of licensing legislation which Parliament has been promoting during recent years. It is legislation of a fussy, interfering, and—I use the word without any offensive meaning—effeminate kind. There is a pathetic idea that the people in their habits, their lives, and their morals can be regulated by Act of Parliament. If only some Acts of Parliament can be got through, everything will be all right, and a great reform will be accomplished. The history of mankind gives no support or weight to any contention of that kind. There is another class of opinion which supports legislation of this kind, and I think we shall find that that class of opinion, so far as it is represented in this House, will give hearty support to this Bill. That is the Socialist, Bolshevist opinion which desires to put the whole of mankind and the women and children into a strait-waistcoat of regulations, beyond which they will trespass at their peril. That class of legislation is very much to be regretted. It is far better in all these social matters to rely upon the robust common sense—it is not too common nowadays; it is becoming more and more rare—and character of our people to examine into the bearing of these various problems and to decide for themselves what course they will take and how they will order their own lives and those of their families. For these reasons I do not propose to support the Third Reading of this Bill, but I do regret that the country should be troubled with legislation which is quite unnecessary and which will not bear any good fruit.

I have listened to the rambling eloquence of the right hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London (Sir F. Banbury), and it has led me to recall the text— Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life. I shall not attempt to answer the right hon. Baronet, because I know quite well that no argument of mine will change his mind. He has come to the time of life when he only changes to be born again. He is known throughout the country as one of our ablest obstructors, and if that be a good thing, then I take my hat off to him. I should like to answer the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Southern Norfolk (Major Hay). It was a charming speech, and I am sorry it was not longer. He asked me if I could not promise that those who are at the back of the Bill will rest satisfied with the Bill, and not bring in further legislation. I want the House to remember that this Bill is not my Bill. I was very proud to introduce it, but it is a Bill drawn up by the teachers of this country and backed by the vast majority of right-thinking people in the country. [ Laughter. ] Hon. Members opposite may laugh, but let them remember it is a private Member's Bill which passed its Second Reading with the largest majority obtained by any private Member's Bill in the House of Commons. It was not passed, as one hon. Member suggests, because of my eloquence—that is an easy way of explaining it—but it was passed because of the progressive thought of the people of this country and the determination certainly of the women, and, I think, also of the men, to protect, as far as possible, the children of the country. I would like to say to the hon. Member for Southern Norfolk that I can give no promise as to what the people interested in the children of the country are going to do.

When hon. Members speak of "Lady Astor imposing her will on a free country," do they really think I am as powerful as that? Why, it almost turns my head when I see how I am held up as one of those aliens who come over here to enforce their will on the people of England. I may be an alien to some interests, but I am not an alien to the will of the women and men of this country in dealing with the children's question. I would not like hon. Members to think that I desire in any way to assume sole responsibility for this Bill. I take no credit to myself for the Measure, because it was drawn up by a set of people who know far more about the child population of this country en masse than I do.

The hon. and gallant Member for Burton (Colonel Gretton) said this Bill was the first step to a changed Bill. I do not know whether he meant that we were going to try and change it in the House of Lords, but I do not think there would be any chance of getting the Bill passed into law if that were attempted. The promoters of the Bill are very sorry that the word "knowingly" has been taken out. We think it has weakened the Bill, but still the only chance of getting a private Member's Bill through the House of Commons is by taking it as an agreed Measure, and so we have had to get agreement as far as we could. I do not think there is any other point I need deal with except, perhaps, the fact that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) has given me a tremendous doing. I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House will realise that I get it both coming and going from all parties in the House. I am perfectly willing to take all that is coming to me, however, if I can do anything to help forward the general welfare of the children of the country.

I want to thank the Government for having given facilities for this Bill. After all, they were only listening to the voice of the great majority of the Members of the House of Commons, and certainly of the overwhelming majority of the people of the country. Still it was a very gracious act on the part of the Prime Minister to see at once what a popular Measure it is. He must have had pressure brought to bear upon him by certain Members of his party who live in constant terror of Prohibition. I would like to warn hon. Members, when they say that these vexatious restrictions are against the free working of a free people, that civilization is built up of vexatious restrictions. None of us are entirely free to do what we would like. For instance, every time I pass the pond in St. James Park I feel I would like to take a swim in it. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is dry."] I was speaking of when the water was in it I did not say I wanted to drink it, I said I wanted to swim in it. With regard to the fear of hon. Members of the imposition of vexatious restrictions, let me warn them that it is impossible, unless the country is behind us, to get Bills through this House. I would like to thank hon. Members of the Opposition for the splendid way in which they have helped to pass this Bill. When it is passed I think the whole House of Commons, with the exception perhaps of a few unreconstructed Members will be glad. The hon. and gallant Member for Finsbury (Lieut.-Colonel Sir M. Archer-Shee) of course does not agree with that, but we all know that his one object has been to destroy this Bill. I have known from the very first time that this Bill was introduced in the House of Commons that it could not be destroyed. You cannot destroy any legislation which is based on a real desire to help the children of the country.

I am much interested to hear the speech of the Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor). I want to say one or two words before the Bill goes through, as I suppose it will, having served on the Committee to which the Bill was referred. One thing that struck me was that the moment one was put on that Committee, one became the target for circulars of every description, from every sort of extraordinary organisation throughout the country, in reference to the Bill. I regarded that as quite intolerable There was one circular which was so disgraceful that the Chairman of the Committee raised it as a question of privilege on the Floor of this House, and I am only sorry that it was not carried even further. To come to the merits of the Bill, as it has now come down to the House, there are hardly two words of the original Bill left. It went up to the Committee as one Bill, and it is entirely owing to the opponents of the Bill that it has come down as a more or less workable Measure; but hardly two words in it are the same.

The great reason for which we have been asked to vote for the Bill is to prevent young people under 18 from getting a drink, but I am sure that hon. Members must now have realised that the Bill as it stands at the present moment does absolutely nothing to stop a young person under 18 from getting a drink. A young person under 18 can go into licensed premises and buy beer, cider, perry, stout, or anything they like, and all that they need do is simply to go outside the door and drink it in the street, and make pigs of themselves in the highways and byways if they want to do so. The only people who have any control over them are the police. Again—and here I am sure I shall have the sympathy of hon. Members opposite—the Bill does absolutely nothing to prevent the employment of juveniles under 18 in taprooms. If the professions were honest that it is quite wrong to have young people in a taproom, and all the rest of it, surely it would have been equally correct for the Bill to provide that young people should not be employed in taprooms. I say it is a very serious thing—[ Interruption ]—hon. Members opposite are now beginning to observe the various loopholes and leaks that there are in this Bill.

The Bill also, to my mind, has another grave defect. It creates a new offence for young people, and I think we should examine very carefully any legislation which produces a new offence for young people. The hon. and learned Member for Norwood (Mr. Greaves-Lord) said that the great thing about the Bill was that it would keep young people out of the purely drinking part of licensed premises. I have tried to show that it will do nothing of the sort. The hon. and learned Member said that it would be effective and could be administered with justice. I am sure, from what I have heard, even from supporters of the Bill, that they do not consider it in the least likely to be effective. Whether they consider it likely to be administered with justice or not I do not know; it rather depends upon the justices who are called upon to administer it, and I should be very sorry for anyone who was hauled up under the Bill and had to appear before the junior Member for Derby (Mr. C. Roberts). There is one other question about which I am still not quite clear. I should like to ask the Noble Lady (Viscountess Astor) Is this Bill a stepping-stone to Prohibition, or is it not?

I would only like to say that Prohibition has nothing to do with me. It depends on the people of this country. I have always said that the people of the country have a perfect right to vote for what they want. It does not depend on me, omnipotent though the hon. and gallant Member thinks I am.

What I want particularly to know is, will the Noble Lady, when a Measure for Prohibition is brought into this House, second our efforts to try to defeat it? My attitude towards this Bill is entirely determined by the fact that I regard it as a stepping-stone to Prohibition. I do not wish to oppose the Bill, but I do not intend to do anything to facilitate its passing. I think it is a thoroughly bad Bill. To be consistent, it should have dealt with consumption off the premises as well.

I desire to say a word or two on the Third Reading, especially because I have been accused, within the last few minutes, by the Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth, of wanting to wreck her Bill. It is quite true that I opposed the Bill in Committee, but I have said all along—on the Second Reading and, I think, on the first day of the proceedings in Committee—that, if the Bill dealt only with the question of spirits, I should be entirely in favour of it. I think the Bill, both as it stood first and as it has come down for Third Reading, is a thoroughly bad Bill. I believe it to be an absolute farce. I agree in this with the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) who, although he is at the opposite extreme to myself, is quite sincere, and impresses the House every time he speaks by his sincerity. The hon. Member is in favour of prohibition, but he says that this Bill is utterly absurd and a piece of hypocritical nonsense. The publicans all over the country do not care twopence about the Bill, because they know that, with the word "knowingly" included in it, they are quite safe. The only people who will be in the least incommoded will be the young men and women of 17 or thereabouts, who, on a hot day, will be unable to get their beer, or whatever they want, unless they have a biscuit in their pocket or something of that sort.

There is also the point that was alluded to by the Noble Lord the Member for South Battersea (Viscount Curzon), that a new criminal offence for young people is being created. Not content with our existing laws, we are manufacturing a new crime, and if some boy or girl of 17 goes into a public-house and asks for a glass of beer, and does not produce a biscuit or order some food, they may be run in and fined £1, or £2 for a second offence, or imprisoned. I think that is perfectly absurd. Another thing which think is absurd is that a father will not be able to take his own child to a restaurant, if this Bill becomes law, and give his daughter or son a glass of claret. The father, if he does that, will be committing an offence. I put down an Amendment in Committee to exempt claret, for, surely, there is no harm in a glass of claret. It is very often prescribed by doctors for young fast-growing people of 17 or thereabouts. Because I think the Bill is ridiculous, because I am quite sure that it is unworkable as a Bill really to promote temperance—I think, on the contrary, that it may encourage people to drink more than they ought when they have arrived at the age of 18—and because I think it is a fraud and a farce, I shall certainly vote against the Third Reading.

I do not want to give a silent vote on this Bill, because I have received an enormous number of communications in regard to the subject. I intend to vote against it, because I will have nothing to do with interfering with the rights and liberties of the people, unless I am satisfield that such a Measure is advisable. I say that this Bill is a libel on the young people of this country. I challenge the Noble Lady the Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth to produce any figures that have shown any increase during the last decade with regard to committals of people under 21 years of age in consequence of intoxication. What is the idea of this Bill? It is to import from another country the ideas that are prevalent in that other country. I wish here and now to congratulate the Noble Lady on one thing, because I do not believe that there are many people in this country who would have succeeded in getting such a large number of people to support this Measure; and why? Because of the enormous amount of propaganda that there has been, and the enormous amount of money that has been expended on that propaganda. That can only be done by those who happen to be in the fortunate position of being well furnished with this country's goods. I well remem-

ber a certain newspaper proprietor boasting that he could make anyone in this country eat whatever he liked. The consequence was that standard bread was eaten. He did it by his propaganda, because he had the sinews of war. I protest against the libel that has been put upon the young people of the country. I shall vote against the Bill, and I hope those who hold the same principles as myself will not be afraid to go into the Lobby, and will not be thinking of what is going to be the result at the next General Election. It would be much easier for me to vote for the Bill, but I am going to vote against it.

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

The House divided: Ayes, 257 Noes, 10.

I beg to move to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof the words this House, being desirous of continuing the full measure of protection afforded to tenants by The Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest (Restrictions) Act, 1920, cannot assent to the Third Reading of a Bill which will deprive a very large number of tenants of all protection, will encourage landlords to exercise undue pressure upon their tenants by litigation and otherwise, and only continues the Law for a period within which there is no probability under the Government's housing policy of the shortage of housing accommodation being met. This is the third Bill dealing with the housing problem introduced by the Government since 1st January of this year. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Minister of Health in the position in which he finds himself. The last Government never appreciated the housing problem of this country, and although the Minister of Health has a great deal of knowledge and personal appreciation of the housing problem, I do not feel satisfied that the Government has any greater idea of the difficulties of our people in this connection than had the last Government. My comments on this Bill are, that it presumes a sufficiency of housing accommodation by 24th June, 1925—only 23 months hence—a presumption totally unjustified. I see one hon. Gentleman opposite shaking his head at that assertion. If that assertion is wrong, how comes it that the Government includes a Clause in the Measure to decontrol houses within the next two years, notwithstanding that there is no hope whatever that the housing conditions can have bettered to such an extent that the ordinary law of supply and demand will operate at that period? The Minister of Health in speaking on the Housing Bill said that there was a greater shortage of housing accommodation in this country now than there had been even since the War ended. The War ended five years ago, and although the last Government did a little to deal with the housing conditions, they failed ignominiously to deal with the problem or even to realise that it was so acute as it was, and as it still continues to be.

This Bill in regard to the housing accommodation available gives preference to the rich, because it contains a Clause that if a landlord purchased a house at a given date he can secure possession of that house, as soon as this Bill becomes law, without finding alternative accommodation. That is a gross travesty of the duty of the State which is to protect the weak against the strong. This Bill endows for the first time the practice of subletting, which will almost certainly be used as a means of benefiting the profiteer and the exploiter. It provides an opportunity for the unscrupulous landlord to enforce a bad lease on the tenant under fear of eviction, and it leaves the licensed victualler and his family in a more precarious position than hitherto. It throws on the tenant a greater responsibility than ever for keeping the house in repair, and that at the tenant's own expense. The Minister of Health knows the situation in Birmingham well, and he knows the housing conditions in that great city, which are only typical of the housing conditions throughout the country, and I am surprised that he has not dealt more vigorously and ruthlessly with the man who owns property and does not keep it in repair.

This Bill hands over to members of the rich man's family the power of eviction over the poorest tenant. When I stated the other day that it was possible for a man and his family to buy up a whole village if there was a sufficient number of sons, daughters and other relatives, the Minister twitted me by saying that my ideas were fantastic. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that the need for houses is so great in some parts of the country that this Bill will provide easy means whereby a man who has sufficient money to do it, and many of them have the will to do it, can buy property over the heads of poor people in order to satisfy the needs of his own family. The Bill lacks any provision for penalising the bad landlord, while it deals ruthlessly with the tenant who does not meet his obligations. The Labour party at no time, as is assumed in some quarters, has held the belief that every tenant is a saint and every landlord a sinner. There are bad tenants and bad landlords, good landlords and good tenants, and in passing any Measure this House must always have regard to those who are apt to break the law, whether they are tenants or landlords. This Bill fails to protect the hapless man and his family whose house rent forms part of his remuneration, and it still leaves him at the mercy of the employer landlord.

Some of us on this side had hoped that the power of the landlord—owners of property in which their workpeople lived would have been wiped out by this Measure, because we have always held it to be a bad principle that a man should have power over another man, not merely as his employer, but as his landlord as well. And though I am not a lawyer, I think that any man skilled in the technicalities of the law might find a loop-hole in this Measure in relation to the Truck Acts. This Measure transforms the County Courts of the land into bookkeeping and auditing offices for inept landlords. We had a short Measure presented in this House at the beginning of the year enabling landlords who had failed to issue correct notices of increases of rent to secure the rent what they ought to have received if their notices had been correctly made out. This Bill introduces and repeats that retrospection. I cannot see how the Government comes to deal so generously with the landlord who makes a mistake, so that the landlord is entitled under this Measure to claim hack-rent for two or three or even five years, simply because he was not adept enough to make out his notices correctly, while a shopkeeper who makes a mistake in a bill cannot come to a Court of law and claim the money which he ought to have received had he made out his Bill correctly.

Of course he can.

If a workman did not make out a correct account for his piecework, it would be useless for him to go to a Court of law and say that his employer five or ten years ago did not pay the correct amount of wages. His employer could go to the Court and argue successfully that the workman did not claim correctly and therefore was not entitled to the money. Here you have a provision whereby a landlord can go to the magistrates and say that he made an error in the notice to increase the rent, and ask the Court to compel the tenant to pay the money that the landlord ought to have received if he had not made the mistake.

No.

The hon. Gentleman is a lawyer and can correct me after I sit down. I feel sure that the Minister of Health will not share his view because the Clause reads in the way which I have indicated. The Bill is clear; it allows retrospection in the payment of arrears of rent, which, in my opinion, is a very bad principle. But it sanctions by law the practice of charging for workmen's furniture as part of the selling price of the house. I know that that sort of transaction was practised before this Bill was introduced, but that an Act should be passed legalising such transactions is beyond my comprehension. We on this side condemn that provision wholeheartedly. This Bill will throw a great deal of work on the Courts of Law, and I am unwilling that the Courts of Law should be used in a biased and prejudiced way in favour of landlords. If justice means anything it means that landlord and tenant are on equal terms in a Court of Law. There is no provision in this Measure which allows a tenant who has been overcharged in his rent to proceed to a County Court and claim the return of the money. It is only the landlord who is entitled to claim.

Then this Measure is a contradictory Measure. Part II, in effect, is in direct contradiction to Part I. Part I states that the law will continue to control certain houses until. June 1925, but Part II says in effect that if certain circumstances arise, when this Bill expires, then Part II will come to the aid of certain classes of people. And so I submit respectfully that the provisions of this Bill are contradictory. I do not know what may happen if we have a change of Government before 1925. It would be interesting then to see what will transpire to Part I and Part II of this Measure. This Bill ought to have a different title. It ought to be, in my view, called "a Bill to admit the continuance of control, with power to increase rents." I presume that this Measure is supposed to operate in connection with the Housing Bill of the Government. I would ask the Minister of Health what figures he may have in his possession to warrant him in thinking that our housing problem will be solved by the time Part I of this Bill expires?

I gather that up to the present, under the Housing Bill, applications have been made to the Minister of Health for sanction for schemes to build not more than 20,000 houses. The Ministry issued a Circular at the end of last April inviting local authorities, private builders, utility societies and co-operative societies to come to the aid of the State and the people and build houses under that Bill. It will be noted that applications for not more than 20,000 houses are included in the schemes submitted to the Ministry since 28th April. If this is the rate of progress which will be made by the Government in providing houses for the working classes we shall want control not up to 1925 but to 1945. At the present rate, we shall not have settled the housing problem for the next half century, because we are at present short to the extent of 750,000 houses for the working classes, and the Minister for Health is audacious enough to bring forward a Measure giving power to decontrol houses in less than two years. This Bill does not, I submit, meet the case in the least.

Then there is an assumption by many hon. Members opposite, including, I believe, the hon. Member for Woolwich, that if we decontrol old houses we shall force people to build new ones. I think that the Minister of Health, on more than one occasion, has adapted that assumption. What houses are to be decontrolled? Not 10 and 11 Downing Street. They are always controlled by the State, though the people living in them are, happily, controlled by the democracy. The assumption on the other side is that if you decontrol a man's house he will be compelled, by circumstances, to build a new home for himself. That is the assumption. I am entitled to collect the ideas of other people and to base an assumption what I think they mean.

Perhaps the hon. Member will quote the statement.

The hon. Member for Woolwich is very well versed in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and he will there find many assertions made by his Friends to justify this view. If that assumption is not correct, why decontrol houses at all? The idea of decontrol, I repeat, is to force the building of houses. We shall not meet the housing shortage merely by a grant from the State of £6 per annum per house. The man whose house will be decontrolled is not the man who can afford to build a new house. I admit that there may be a few cases of hardship because a man who has bought a house cannot get possession. But we are dealing not with individual cases of that kind. This Bill deals with at least 90 per cent. of the population of this country. The law of property is so settled in the minds of those who have ruled this country, and property holds so much sway and has so much power over the person, that it behoves the Opposition to see that the tenant is protected against the law of property. The £6 subsidy is very much like the acorn; there is a frightful interval between the acorn and the oak. The housing proposals of the Minister of Health will not mature for many years to come. Part I of this Measure ought to continue in operation at least until 1930, the date that we proposed.

Above all, this Bill is a golden key to the rack-renters and an open door to the unscrupulous estate agent. If the Minister of Health has read the newspapers recently, he must have already seen reports of social disorder, not only in Scotland, where strange things happen, but in South Wales, in the town of Abertillery. A mob collected to demonstrate because a shopkeeper tried to evict a tenant and his family in order that he might secure the house for his own possession.

This Bill falls short of the requirements of the day. I have been astonished that the Government could not deal with this problem by providing more houses. They can spend money in foreign lands with considerable ease. In Bagdad, for instance, the Government spent as much as £40,000 on a single house. But that, of course, is for the aristocracy, the Governor-General, the residence of the rich. If the Labour party came into power, it would alter the policy of the Government to this extent, that a great part of the money that is now spent on Imperial affairs would be spent on educating and housing our own people properly. Hon. Members demand vaccination to prevent the spread of smallpox. What is required above all in this country is not sticking plasters on wounds, but to go down to the root of the problem and to provide every family in the land with a decent cottage in which to live. Until that is done, controlled rents are absolutely necessary. I trust that the House will vote for the Amendment as a protest against the ineptitude of the Government in dealing with the housing problem, which is at the bottom of many of our social ills.

I beg to second the Amendment, not because I know anything about houses, for, unfortunately, I know more of the lack of houses. That is the difference between the mentality on the other side of the House and on this. Right hon. and hon. Members opposite know something about housing; we know something about the lack of housing. You can never know the shame and degradation that sear the souls of the people who live under the conditions that our people have to live under. You cannot understand that. This Bill does not touch it; at least it does not provide the means for a solution of the problem. As far as I have been able to understand the Bill, it merely provides more work for members of the legal profession. Real legislation should aim at simplifying the laws, but this Bill makes the law more complex. I would make a special appeal to the Minister of Health. When he made his statement in this House on introducing the Bill, I felt at times that he was more concerned, like some political Narcissus, in watching the reflection of his own splendid proportions in the pools of his political vanity and success. I appeal to him not to remember those things, but to remember the people outside.

We know, something about the lack of housing. The Under-Secretary of the Scottish Board of Health, a few days ago, pointed to the fact that there were thousands of houses empty in Scotland. I want to tell the House about some of the districts where we have more people than houses. In the town of Coatbridge, which is the Division I have the honour to represent, we have a total population of 42,459. There are 24.9 per cent. of the people who live with two to three persons per apartment in that town; there are 21.3 per cent. of the people who live with from three to four persons per apartment; and there are 25 per cent. of the people who live with more than four persons to each apartment. That gives you a total, in that town alone, of 71.5 per cent. of the people who live under overcrowded conditions. And no houses can be got. In the same Division we have the town of Airdrie with a population of 24,874, There 24.3 per cent. of the people live with from two to three persons per apartment; 17.3 per cent. live with three to four persons per apartment; and 22.9 per cent. with more than four persons per apartment. That is a total of 56.5 per cent. of the population of that town living under overcrowded conditions. There are the burghs of Lanarkshire—Motherwell, Wishaw, Hamilton, Rutherglen, and Lanark, the county town, which has the honour of being represented by the Under-Secretary of the Scottish Board of Health. It is my own district where was brought up. The Under-Secretary for the Scottish Board of Health knows, or ought to know, something of the conditions in the town of Lanark Itself. Out of a total population of 6,101 there are 40.8 per cent. living in overcrowded conditions. The county itself is divided into three wards, and the Middle Ward has probably produced more wealth during the past 100 years than all the rest of the country put together, iron, coal and steel being the principle products. The total population there is 214,426, and 22.8 per cent. of the people live with two or three persons per apartment; 19.6 per cent. live with three to four persons per apartment, and 26.6 per cent. live with more than four persons per apartment. That substantially bears out what I stated, that we know more than hon. Members opposite about the lack of housing, and we can speak with some experience and knowledge of the lack of housing when we find, in that ward alone, that 69 per cent. of the people are living in overcrowded conditions, while taking the whole of Lanarkshire, without including Glasgow, the percentage of overcrowding among the poplation is 64.8 per cent.

On a point of Order. Is this a Housing Bill or a Rent Restrictions Bill?

I must say the hon. Member has been given very considerable latitude, and he has made a speech which could be applied almost entirely to the Housing Bill. The two questions are very much mixed up together, and it is very difficult to divide them, but I suggest that the hon. Member should turn a little more nearly to the Bill now under discussion.

The design and intention of the Government in this Bill was to provide a transitional period, at the end of which there would be, in all likelihood, a sufficiency of houses for the people, bus even though you were to appeal to every local authority in the country from the day the Bill is passed, to provide houses for the people in sufficient numbers, that could not be done by the time control ends in 1925. The problem is too big to be tackled in that way. Overcrowding is always followed by a high infantile death rate, and again we know something about that. I do not propose to go into it, although were I to give some of the facts relating to it I am satisfied they would shock the House.

Impossible!

Well, I always feel that people can be touched.

It is all pretence.

If there is a humane sentiment left in people it can be touched. and when you know that over 114,000 of these infants' deaths occur every year, it makes one feel very sore especially when one knows that 114,000 women's hearts are broken as well. It is a most unholy and indefensible position which no Government can justify. The human factor, apart from the economic factor altogether, is the most important. If a sufficiency of decent houses were provided for the people, you would save in the cost of maintaining the public health and, in the long run, you would not only gain economically by lessened taxation, but you would increase the status of the people, which is most important of all, and send them along that broad way which we all want to travel, stealing fire from the altars of the gods to reinspire humanity to new and greater things. That should be the aim of the Government, but it is not the aim of the present Bill as far as I can see, because it merely provides more work for members of the legal profession and makes complexity more complex for the people outside who will not understand its subtleties. I wish to make a final appeal. One human gesture on the part of the Government and Parliament, on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, would mean more to the people than all the legal jugglery of which we have heard during the discussions on this Bill. If I could by any means so touch that secret something in all of us, which would send hon. Members through that door to-night burning with a sense of the degradation and shame which we feel, having come through what we have come through, I should be proud and happy to go home, feeling that I have justified my existence You cannot provide houses in this way. It is too big a problem. It must be tackled as a national problem and in a way entirely different to that in which it has been tackled hitherto. Due credit must be given to you. You have led us to the heights of the ages; you have given us a vision and you are bound now to provide that world, the desire for which you have created in our hearts, and this Bill will not do it. Moses-like, you have led us to the place from which we can see the land of promise, a land clothed with the verdure of comfort, a land bounded by the hills of happiness, a land watered by the streams of fellowship and goodwill, a land dowered and radiant with the glory and beauty of God. I appeal to you all to go into the Lobby against the Bill or, if you cannot go with us against the Bill, at least refrain from going against the side which we are taking on this question. We must have houses, and this is not the Bill which will provide them, and the problem cannot be treated in this way.

I am sure the House has heard with much interest and sympathy the speech of the hon. Member who has just addressed it. With the exception of perhaps two statements in that speech, it will receive practically general assent. I do not think it can be said there is any party in the House, which does not deplore the present housing situation and desire a remedy. We only differ as to the method in which it should be clone. When the hon. Member, however, appeals to us to vote for the Amendment which has been moved with such skill and Parliamentary ability by the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies), has he considered what is going to follow? I confess I was surprised to find the Labour party, as the official Opposition, putting down a Motion for the rejection of this Bill. Surely they must be unacquainted with the present position of affairs and with what would happen, were this Amendment to be carried. The Seconder of the Amendment asked us to go into the Lobby with him. I do not see how anyone can go into the Lobby with him, because he must be aware that at the end of this month, on 31st July, the Rent Restrictions Act of 1920 comes to an end, and that means that all the protection given by that Act to the tenants of this country ceases. If we carry this Amendment, it simply means that every tenant in this country will be left with no protection at all. [An HON. MEMBER: You would have to do something then!"] The answer is, as the Mover of the Amendment knows very well, that, apart from the will, it would be a physical Impossibility to pass another complicated Rent Restrictions Bill between now and 31st July. What, then, have we to do?

You could get an Order in Council, as you did during the War.

The hon. Member should know that you cannot have Orders in Council unless you have some Act of Parliament which authorises them to be issued, and, therefore, I put it to hon. Members opposite that no doubt they may desire to make their protest against the provisions of this Bill, but that it should go forth that the Labour party are officially committed to end all protection is, I think, open to very severe criticism. Having made that observation, I want to turn to the terms of the Amendment which has been moved by the hon. Member for Westhoughton, but about which he has said very little. He desires the House to assent to continuing the full measure of protection afforded to tenants by the Increase of Rent and Mortgage Interest Restrictions Act, 1920. I take it from that, that he desires the 1920 Act to remain on the Statute Book in full force, but that is a very extraordinary thing, coming from the party opposite, because I remember that when the Act of 1920 was passing through this House the people who objected the most to it were the hon. Members opposite. Yet, according to the Amendment that has been moved to-day, tenants apparently have a full measure of protection afforded to them by that Act. I remember that a very able and talented Member of the Labour party, the hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham), moved the rejection of that Bill, and I also remember that another hon. Member belonging to the party opposite, the hon. Member for Smethwick (Mr. J. Davison), who seconded that Motion in very energetic terms, described the Bill, which apparently the Labour party now think so highly of, as the most iniquitous Measure ever introduced by any political party. Now we are apparently asked by this Amendment to maintain the Act which was the most iniquitous Measure ever introduced into this House. I also remember very well that there was a Division on that Amendment of the Labour party, but it is only fair to say that it was a very empty Division, and if hon. Members like to look at the Division lists, they will see that there were more Labour Members out of the Lobby, and not voting, than there were in the Lobby on that occasion.

If I may say so in all good humour and good temper, I rather think this Amendment is something like that which was moved in reference to the 1920 Act Obviously, we must have another Rent Restrictions Act, and obviously we must continue protection to tenants. Where we differ, very likely, is on the question of whether or not there shall be introduced at this time any measure of partial decontrol. That, I think, is the real issue that has divided the House. Hon. Members opposite desire to continue the absolute control offered by the 1920 Act until 1930, and the great division of opinion on the subject is that we, on this side, and, I think, hon. Members on the benches opposite below the Gangway, think it is desirable in the general interests of the country that, if possible, a measure of partial decontrol should be put into effect as soon as possible. Hon. Members of the Labour party want control continued until 1930. I cannot understand why 1930 should be a more wonderful year than 1931 or 1929. The obvious position is this, that until there is a sufficient number of houses in this country being built, partial decontrol cannot be put into operation. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Health has put forward a figure two years hence. It is a figure at which we must aim, but I do not think my right hon. Friend for a moment would say that if the position was as it is to-day, Part II of this Bill could be put into operation. There is a virtue, however, in putting in a fairly early date, because hon. Members who have studied this question at any rate will agree with me in this, that the real answer to all Rent Restrictions Bills and Acts is more houses.

That is the real way to solve the rent restriction problem, and how are you going to do it? I would like a concrete plan. I have listened with great attention to the hon. Member for West-houghton on more than one occasion, but I have never heard him put forward what could be called a practical alternative plan. I read the other day, with great interest, the official programme of the Labour party, as it was presented before their recent very important congress, and I looked up to see what was their practical plan for housing, how housing was going to be put right if the Labour party came into power. I think I am correct in restating their position in these words: They said that each local authority must, within three years, build sufficient houses in its area to satisfy the needs of every member of the community. There was this addition, that, so far as the money was concerned, none of it was to come from the rates, but all of it was to be found by the State. I think hon. Members opposite will do me the justice to admit that that is a fair statement, almost word for word, as to their practical plan.

Will the hon. Member send me a copy of that statement?

Certainly. I am reminded that there was one further thing that was said, and that was that, as regards the rent of the houses, attention was not to be paid to the particular character of the house built, but to the income and capacity to pay of the people who occupied it. Those were the three main, practical suggestions of the Labour party in regard to housing. Every local authority must build sufficient houses in their particular area within three years. The date was fixed almost as strictly as the 1930 date which we are discussing to-day. How can that be a practical possibility? How are you going to compel every local authority to do that? If a local authority say they want to help the Labour party in their programme, are you in turn going to arm the local authority with power to compel the workmen in their district to build these houses? When my hon. Friend opposite says that 750,000 houses are required to be built in this country, and they are to be built within three years, I wonder where the people in the building trade, in the first place, are to come from to do it. That brings me to this point, avoiding phrases and all that kind of thing, which we can all use, when you come to hard facts, there is no real, practical alternative—though, perhaps, we could put in other matters of detail—but there is no real, practical alternative to the present plan.

Therefore, this Bill says that, till 1925, the present methods of control are to go on, broadly speaking, and, after that, gradual decontrol. I say, as I have said before, I shall be no party to gradual decontrol if there are not sufficient houses to justify it, but I do want to see the vicious circle broken, because, disguise it as you will, so long as there are statutory restrictions against houses, it is not the builder so much whom you are affecting, as people who finance the builders. Those are the people upon whom you have to keep your eye all the time. You have to think of the people who found money in the days gone by for builders, in order to erect the houses. A very large proportion of that money was not found by what you may call the great capitalists of the country. It was found by a very large number of what, for need of a better term, we call the working-classes. It was found by the building societies and by the trade unions. I should like very much some time to calculate the amount invested in house property by the trade unions; it would be a very surprising figure. I say we have got to get back all these people to lend money for the building of houses, and, in general terms, I believe you will not do it if people think there is to be constant interference. They would sooner put their money into other forms of investment.

It is for those broad reasons that I support this Bill. I confess, with regard to Part II, in many respects the proposals there are dangerous. I do not want to prophesy, but I venture to think these will be many more opportunities given to this House to discuss all the methods suggested in Part II. I am glad, at any rate, that one more opportunity for parliamentary discussion has been secured by my right hon. Friend agreeing that before setting up any machinery in connection with Committees there shall be a full Parliamentary discussion. For these reasons I broadly support the principles of the Bill, believing there is no practical alternative, and also believing that if I voted for the Amendment this afternoon, it would deprive the tenants of this country of all the protection which they are now enjoying.

2.0 P.M.

Since the present Parliament commenced its activities, Bills of one kind and another have been introduced, but no Bill, I think, has been introduced or discussed in this House which will affect so many people as the Bill under discussion. Of course, there are a certain number of people who own and live in their own houses, but, for the most part, the adult population of this country is divided into those who have houses to let and those who live in houses let by others. Although a large number of Measures are on the list, the course of which we watch from week to week, this Measure affects more closely than the others the ordinary daily life of the people. I know there are very many households where those who are living under the present housing conditions watch with a great deal of anxiety the passing of this Bill. I do not approach the question of this Bill as some Members do. I do not think it is possible in real life to divide the community into the grasping landlord and the suffering tenant. I think that, as a matter of fact, if we attempted so to divide the community, we should not be able to make the classification which corresponds to the actual facts, Having had some experience, in a provincial town, in trying to help, at inadequate remuneration, landlords and tenants out of their difficulties, I have generally found that human nature is pretty much the same whether a man owns the house or occupies it, and I have sometimes found that if a house is let to a tenant, and he lets to a sub-tenant, while the tenant complains that the landlord is beating him with whips you often find he beats his own sub-tenant with scorpions.

Approaching this Bill as being, I think, an honest attempt on the part of the Government to deal with a great difficulty, I want to make, first of all, the criticism that it was very uncourageous action on their part to give us this Measure by reference. We have heard from the hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood) again and again of the small owner—and there are many who have got one, two, or three houses—and as soon as he sees in the papers that this Bill is passed, and received the Royal Assent, he will purchase the Act of Parliament, and I hope his Member will not be in the vicinity at the time he reads it, and be asked to explain, for instance, what Section 6 means.

In Committee upstairs the right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill promised that the Bill would not finally be left in this form, but that he would reconstruct it, and bring in the 1920 Act, as amended by this Act, and I hope that promise remains good.

I had not the advantage of hearing what was said in Committee upstairs, but it is a grievous thing that the tenants and the small landlords should be given an Act of Parliament which, without professional assistance, it is quite impossible for them to understand. What is more, it is not merely that the tenant will not be able to construe it, but there are great differences among lawyers themselves, and some of those differences will have to be dealt with in a higher Court. Not only have we to take this Bill and the Act of 1920, but it is suggested we have to read with it the Rent Restrictions (Notices of Increase) Act. It will be a sort of jig-saw puzzle, and I think the Government will deserve blame, because, in passing a Measure of this kind, they have not given us something that can be understood without legal assistance. Reference was made by an hon. Member on this side to the necessity of legal assistance. This Bill will drive anyone who has anything at stake to secure such assistance. I do not think the lawyers of the House can object to that, but it is preposterous that a Bill intended to be understood by ordinary people should not be so framed that it can be understood by them.

I have been startled by some of the Clauses. I do not know how many times I read Clause 6, for instance. I certainly have read it many times, and I am not quite sure I understand it now. It deals with the power given to sub-tenants. I read it over slowly, and then I read it over quickly. I heard a very distinguished poet in this country, Mr. Walter De La Mare, speaking at a school function, and he said he had sat down to read a very strong philosophical article written by a highbrow. He concluded that it would need all his mental powers. He read the first paragraph very slowly, and could understand nothing of it. He read it again deliberately and slowly. He could make less than nothing of it. Then a thought came to him. He read it fast. As he read it fast a light began to break. It is quite impossible to understand what Clause 6 means unless you read it fast. Curses not only loud but deep, and particularly curses on the part of County Court Judges, will be heard in the land over this matter. Some remarks already have been made, in fact very scathing remarks, as to legislators responsible for the Act of 1920. I prophesy without any hesitancy whatever that what has been said about the Act of 1920 will be little compared with what will be said about this Measure, and particularly when those concerned come to deal with Clause 6. I am bound to say that, as I read it, I began to be afraid that there was some signs of brain softening, and I was very comforted to know that some more distinguished members of the profession than I had had the same difficulty.

I want particularly to refer to Clause 3 which, if it goes through in its present form—and there is no prospect of altering it now—would bring about the most serious disturbance so far as the law is concerned that deals with houses. I do not know what may be the intentions of the Noble Lord the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health, but there will be occasion before very long for an amending Bill. Take, for instance, Clause 3, Sub-section (1, f ), where it states that a certain paragraph shall be substituted for paragraph (iv.) in the principal Act. I think I can in a few Minutes explain how this matter appears to me and appears to others whom I have consulted. In the principal Act of 1920 a distinction was drawn between the old landlords and the new landlords. In the old Act, the legislators of that time said that no one who wants to obtain a house for his own occupation, of which he is the owner, shall be able to get it unless he can give alternative accommodation, except if he was the owner before a certain date it will not be necessary for him to prove alternative accommodation. It also said that all the landlord, who had bought after that date, had to do when he came into Court was to say that it would cause greater hardship to him if his application was refused than it would cause to the tenant. That was a very great advantage. When solicitors advised landlords, upon this matter they put that question first of all to the landlord. "When did you become the owner" If his answer was that he become owner before 30th September, 1917, they knew he had a reasonable chance of getting the tenant out. If otherwise, they advised that nothing less than a dynamite bomb or an earthquake would have the desired effect. It was there we had a passage fair to the landlord, because the Government said: If a man comes along with this Act in force and buys a house, he buys it with his eyes open. In buying an occupied house he knew that he was giving probably £100, 1150, or £200 less than he would have to give if it were unoccupied. That was based upon a very wise principle. They said we will try to give the advantage to those who owned the house in the earlier years and if a man cares now to come along and buy trouble, and if he cares to buy a house in which there is a sitting tenant he has no right to assume that the legislature will come to his assistance. Therefore a date was given, and the owner before that time had the advantage when it came into Court. Now it is put the other way about. The Clause of the Act of 1920 has been struck out and another Clause has been put in. Let me read it— Where the dwelling-house is reasonably required by the landlord for occupation as a residence for himself or for any son or daughter of his over 18 years of age, and where the landlord or the husband or wife of the landlord did not become the landlord before the thirtieth day of June, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, the Court is satisfied that greater hardship would be caused by refusing to grant an Order or judgment for possession than by granting it. The word "before" is used instead of the word "after" in the previous Act of Parliament. In the previous Act of Parliament the advantage which Parliament intended to give was given to the earlier owner. Now this advantage, and a very important advantage, is given only to those who have bought since 1922. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] The Noble Lord opposite may disagree but I would ask him to turn to the Act of 1920. In Clause 5 of that Act there is a paragraph which reads: The existence of alternative accommodation shall not be a condition of an order or judgment on any of the grounds specified. Then it goes on to give the grounds. These were that the disadvantage of having to prove alternate accommodation was dispensed with in this Clause which is now to be struck out where the landlord became the landlord before 30th September, 1917. Then it was necessary only to prove hardship. How can it be possible to read this other Measure as being in substitution of that? If we take the words in their ordinary meaning: Where the dwelling-house is reasonably required … where the landlord or the husband or the wife of the landlord did not become the landlord before the thirtieth of June nineteen hundred and twenty-two. I submit that the only construction of that Clause is that the advantage of not having to prove alternative accommodation goes only to those owners who became owners since 30th June, 1922. The Noble Lord shakes his head. I have had an opportunity of talking this matter over with those who had daily experience of this Bill. My experience lately has been very limited. I have been occupied here instead of elsewhere. But I have discussed this Clause with those who have daily experience of the interpretation of this Bill, and the view that I have expressed is the view they hold. I am sorry that I have spoken after the hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood) rather than before. He is qualified to speak upon this matter. I shall be very much more reassured with what he says, seeing he has had experience in the daily interpretation of the Bill, than by others who in their several offices may have been called on to deal with this question for the first time. If the ordinary meaning of these words are to be accepted, they are exactly the opposite of what is in the Act of 1920.

I would ask hon. Members not to trust simply to what is said on this occasion by the Front Bench, but to look at this Clause and to remember that here is a Clause taking the place of one in the 1920 Act, and to ask themselves whether the construction I have put upon this Clause is one which is likely to put by other people. Again, I would venture into the realm of prophecy, and say that before long the Clause will be the subject of consideration in the Courts; that before long Judges in the County Court and elsewhere will comment upon the difficulty of getting clear language to bring about what is the evident intention of the House. I have drawn attention to what I believe to be an important matter which deals with the owner. There are in every provincial town in the country hundreds of owners who are waiting simply for the passing of this Bill. Some have already gone to the Court and lost their case, because they had to prove alternative accommodation. The Judge has very often expressed sympathy with them. They have had to wait until a new Bill comes in; until the new Bill passes. I cannot speak of London, but there will be thousands of cases—I am not putting it too strongly—throughout the country where, within a few weeks of the passing of this Bill, there will be the first steps taken towards litigation, or else there will be conference between landlords and tenants to see what, under the new conditions, is to be done. Seeing that this is the one thing to which attention will be drawn, and seeing that it affects thousands of cases, I think it is essential that it should be made quite clear. If the hon. Gentleman representing the Government will show me that my reading of the Clause is wrong, and that my hon. Friends who have advised me are wrong, I express the hope that it may be possible in another place to put down what is the clear Intention in such a way that it may be understood by those outside this House. I have made a very honest effort to understand the Bill and I have placed the construction upon it which I have expressed, but if it means something else to the Noble Lord in charge of this Measure, I think that very fact shows the necessity of putting in such words as will make it clear to those who will have to administer it.

There can be no justification for giving to the tenant, who may already have charged all he can to the under-tenant of the house, the opportunity of going round and putting 5 per cent. on each of them for himself. Seeing this Bill was intended as a temporary Measure, I think it is unfortunate that the Government should attempt to commit the House to the proposal to have reference committees. I am quite prepared to consider the question of rent Courts, and any machinery that would lessen the legal expense to which the poor tenant will be put. I am not prepared, however, to support this ambiguous proposal and this uncertain suggestion, certain only in this, that it will put on the tenant, not merely the expenses of the Court, but the expenses of the committee as well. I listened to what was said by the hon. Member who moved the rejection of this Measure, and I agree with many of his criticisms against this Bill. I am not, however, prepared to vote against the Third Reading, because I think we should be left in a position of serious difficulty if we failed to carry this Measure into law.

I am sure that those responsible for this Bill will come in for a good deal of criticism. It has been said that in one of the cities of ancient times it was the custom for the proposer of a new law to appear with a rope round his neck, so that if the community find afterwards that they do not approve of his Measure, they can pull the rope and deal with him in that way. Whilst congratulations may be given to the Minister of Health to-day for his work in connection with this Measure, I think we ought to wait a few months, and then I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that, instead of all these congratulations there will be very serious criticisms by many people, and he will be really astonished to find what this Measure does in its practical working.

I am loth to intervene in discussions upon Bills dealing with the question of rent, but at this stags I do wish to make a few comments, more particularly upon the general lines of the Government policy. This Measure shows up the very admirable and very skilled statemanship of the governing class in this country. It is also remarkable for the successful way with which, under a cloak of sympathy and much talk about good intentions, it succeeds in covering up the very astute, and if I may use the term without being out of order, the very unscrupulous attitude of the Government.

Brutal attitude!

I am sorry on this occasion for the forlorn and pathetic figure who ordinarily stands at that Box putting forward the policy of the Government in respect to rent and housing. I know the right hon. Gentleman means well. His own personal record in municipal life has been admirable so far as housing is concerned. He also has to his account a reputation inherited from a great past of municipal service rendered by his father, and for that very reason partly his own reputation, and partly the paternal reputation is of the greatest assistance to hon. Members opposite in giving them an appearance of having an interest in social reform.

Unfortunately, for the right hon. Gentleman and for the reputation of the family to which he belongs, he is only given a minor position in the Government, and while he may get, tributes to-day for the attempts he is making, I believe perfectly honestly, to deal with this problem, the very fact that he can get no money from the Treasury to carry through anything like a thorough going scheme of social reconstruction means that he himself, and those forces in politics for which he stands which are now going into decline, will in the course of the next few months, or at the most in the course of the next 18 months, stand hopelessly and finally discredited. I am of the opinion that during the recent reconstruction of the Ministry the right hon. Gentleman was put in his present position in order that the influences for which he stands in political life may be finally liquidated.

Why does the Government toy with this great problem in this way? Why do they show so small a desire to do what one would think would be the pride of the Tory party? It is amusing to me that the people responsible for the political campaign of the party opposite, who always claim to stand for the home and the guardianship of the hearth, the maintenance of true religion, private morality, and the authority of the family, should be so singularly inept as to be unable to and money for the purpose of giving a decent home life to the people of this country. They are singularly shallow in that they cannot see the wonderful political capital that they are giving to hon. Members on this side of the House, not merely to the Labour party and the Liberal party, but also to the Communists. Why is it that the Government have so little money to spare for this purpose? If we cast our eyes back over the history of the 19th Century we see the Conservative party claiming to be essentially the party which, in the past, has stood for social reform; whereas the Liberal party has stood for barren and empty political legislation. How is it that the heirs of Disraeli and the descendants of Chamberlain—

As there is only a limited time for the discussion of this Bill, ought not speakers to be confined strictly to what is in the Bill on its Third Reading to-day?

I think the hon. Member is trying to confine himself to the Bill.

I am trying, as I think it right to do on Third Reading, to confine myself to the general principle. Why is there so little money to-day, whereas there was so much money available in the 'forties and the 'seventies? There is no money available to-day for houses, because the governing class to-day no longer requires, as it did prior to the Imperialist period, to obtain its wealth and to acquire its income from the exploitation of the population at home alone. They are to-day able to derive their abstract income from the whole of capitalist exploitation. If they do not get wealth here at home, there are the toiling millions of India, there are the toiling millions of China, and there are the toiling millions of other parts of the world.

I must ask the hon. Member to confine himself to the Bill which deals with rent restrictions. He must not discuss conditions in China, India and other parts of the world.

Unfortunately, this Rent Bill is part of a very deep and farseeing policy. They are economising because it is no longer necessary to pamper the population at home. They desire to make home life in Lanarkshire, in Birmingham, and in the great industrial cities of this country less pleasant than home life on the Canadian prairie and in Australia. They desire by a negative policy with respect to housing to encourage the young men and the young women who have hopes some day of marrying not to stay at home, but to go out to Canada where they may be put upon the land which the Canadian Pacific Railway is desiring to sell, and to Australia and New Zealand where they may be put upon the land owned by the Australian and New Zealand land companies, whose shareholders and directors I see many a time sitting on the benches opposite. Their negative policy towards housing is definitely calculated for the purpose of assisting that emigration campaign which is going to be the chief plank in their programme next year.

We have had statements made as to the lawyers. It is not so much the lawyers who have decorated the front Liberal Benches in the past and who are now relegated to the back benches; it is not so much those lawyers who seek to make their money in commercial cases prior to getting a cheap ride on an elephant in India. It is those people skilled in real property law, in the administration of the land laws, and in all questions affecting mortgages, who are going to profit by this legislation. There is a class still more important. After all, a lawyer is only a hireling. The most important class is the mortgage holder. and everything that this Government does, whether it concerns agricultural credits or housing credits, or whether it is concerned to diminish the supply of houses, is done to encourage private enterprise to come in, establish a business, and spend money, knowing, before it does it, that private enterprise has an inadequate amount of money with which to do it, and that private enterprise must come cap in hand to the three golden balls. Private enterprise must supplement its savings, if not with the money of the money lender, with the money of the banks, the insurance companies, and the investment houses. That is what is inherent in the policy of this Bill.

I was particularly interested in the point which was dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Foot). I have taken an opportunity in the last few days of bringing it to the notice of the Minister, as I cannot help feeling almost certain that, if some mistake has not been made, some wrong wording has crept into the Bill which will give rise to great differences of opinion as to what is the intention of those who have drafted it. The hon. Member did not appear to me to go quite far enough. There is a further point in connection with Clause 6. Under Part I of the Bill, as it is at present drafted, up to 1925 any person may sell his house, and the purchaser, who becomes thereby the owner, can, under certain conditions as to alternative accommodation and otherwise, obtain possession. The strange thing is that under Part II after 1925 he cannot do that, but will have to go to the Court to ascertain whether it was in their opinion fair that he should get an order. The Court may not give such an order, and may, in fact, decrease the rent or otherwise alter the tenancy.

It must be perfectly evident to anyone accustomed to this housing problem that the principal difficulty in the ordinary sale and purchase of houses at the present time is this question of control. Consequently, if up to 1925 the buyer of a house feels that he can get control by purchase and can turn the tenant out, provided that there is other accommodation available, he will be encouraged to buy. After 1925, these very facilities are taken from him. I do not think that can be the intention of the Government, and it is a matter which they would be well advised to look into between now and the proceedings in another place. On the Report stage, I wished to move an Amendment dealing with this point, and suggesting that after 1925 a sale properly put through, and provided that the tenant had three months' notice, should counteract the effect of the Clause. Mr. Speaker, in his discretion, did not call that Amendment, and, therefore, nothing was done. I do not question that, but it is a point which the Government should carefully look into. The speech of the hon. Member makes it unnecessary for me to deal with the first part. I am glad to see him return, because I was greatly interested in his speech, as it dealt with a point which I think wants clearing up. There is this difference between the period up to 1925 and after 1925, which I feel confident the Government could not, and did not, intend should operate in that way.

As regards the Bill as a whole, I have listened with great interest to the speeches we have had from the other side, but I do not propose to follow hon. Gentlemen into the reasons which they have given against the Measure. Everyone knows that we want houses. It is a simple thing to get up and say that the Government should provide them, but no one suggests how it can be done except by the use of national money, which is to be given to a certain class of people. I do not desire at this very late stage to enter into arguments of that kind. No doubt there may be something to be said in their favour, but the point to-day is this, that if this Bill passes the whole position in the country will be in a state of chaos. Tenants will not know where they are, and the carrying of this Amendment would prevent another Bill being introduced. There are, of course, parts of this Bill of which I do not approve, but this is one of the most difficult questions Parliament has been called upon to deal with. It is so easy to say that the Government should do something. After all, the Government are ourselves, and whatever is done has to be paid for from our pockets. On the whole, I think I may congratulate the advisers of the Government on having produced a Bill which makes it possible to carry out a system of partial decontrol. I should have much preferred if the Government had fixed a date for effective decontrol. I am afraid that this Bill will raise considerable legal difficulties. It will prove very difficult to interpret it. It is extraordinarily difficult for the Government to produce a Bill which would be easier and simpler and which people could understand. I am afraid the public will not be able to understand this Measure, but, at any rate, by it a certain amount of hardship will be got rid of, and a period is laid down during which decontrol can be brought about slowly. I think it is the only possible Measure, under the circumstances, and I cannot conceive that any set of men would vote for the Amendment.

I agree with the observations of the last speaker. This Bill does present very great difficulties to those who will have to administer it, and I suggest it would present far fewer difficulties had the Minister for Health and the Noble Lord who assists him, been more ready to accept suggestion that were made on this side of the House. To-day we have had a further' insight into a point which I myself raised on the Report stage. The right hon. Gentleman, in introducing this Bill said the object was to alter the date at which alternative accommodation was necessary to be offered in order to secure possession of the house. That is quite intelligible. We all know that under the old Act landlords, who were entitled to be privileged, were very hard hit by a system which was intended to be made applicable only to those who became landlords with their eyes open to the true situation. The old Act clearly provided that alternative accommodation should only be insisted upon in the case of landlords who acquired the property after a given date, but this Bill, by means of its clumsy wording, says that those persons who became landlords anterior to June, 1922, are not privileged, while those who became landlords after that date are to be made privileged

No.

It is no use for the hon. and gallant Gentleman to assert that it is not so. Let us take the Bill and read it. It is, I admit, a bit of a puzzle to me. It is agreed, is it not, that what is desired to be done is to privilege the earlier landlord and to hit the later one. That is agreed. It is also agreed that the way to hit him is by requiring compliance with the conditions as to alternative accommodation. Now if the hon. and gallant Member will be good enough to look at the words of the Bill, I do not think he will contradict what I have said. If he will look at Clause 3, Sub-section (1, b ) he will see that we are dealing with a house required by the landlord for his own occupation, etc., and it is laid down that it is necessary for him to satisfy the Court that there is alternative accommodation. That is clear. Is it not equally clear that there is no period mentioned at all? It is a general Clause. If the hon. and gallant. Member will look at the paragraph ( f ) of the same Sub-section, he will see that there an exception is carved out of the general rule and that alternative accommodation has not to be found. What is it that is carved out? It is that where the landlord, or husband, etc., did not become the landlord before June, 1922—and not to become the landlord before June, 1922, is to become the landlord after June, 1922—he is removed from the Clause which says that he must find alternative accommodation. The person who becomes a landlord after that date, in lieu of finding alternative accommodation, has merely to show that greater hardship would be caused by refusing the order for possession.

The original Bill said that you had to find alternative accommodation except in certain cases. This paragraph ( f ) says that you do not have to find alternative accommodation in certain cases. The first is where the dwelling-house is reasonably required by the landlord for occupation as a residence for himself or his son or daughter, and the second is where the landlord or the wife of the landlord did not become the landlord before the 30th June, 1922, and the Court is satisfied that greater hardship would be caused by refusing to grant an order or judgment for possession than by granting it. In the first case, if he became a landlord—

If they are separate cases, what is the reason for the word "and"?

It says: and, where the landlord or the husband or wife of the landlord did not become … the Court is satisfied that greater hardship would be caused. There are two sets of cases. It may be that further clarification is necessary, but this is the statement. Here are two sets of cases in which alternative accommodation is not required, the first being that in which the house is required for personal occupation, and in which the landlord became the landlord prior to the 30th June, 1922. If he became the landlord after the 30th June, 1922, and requires the house for personal occupation, he will still not be required to provide alternative accommodation, but he is required to show the Court that greater hardship would be caused by a refusal to grant the order than by granting it.

I am not going to delay the House upon a legal controversy with the hon. and gallant. Gentleman, but I really think I ought to say one word more, because he is still suffering, if he will forgive me for saying so, from a little mental cloudiness. We are told that the Section in the principal Act goes, and that this Clause 3 is substituted. We have, therefore, to look at Clause 3, and it is impossible to deny that it says generally, "You, landlords, cannot acquire possession until you find alternative accommodation"; and it is equally clear that paragraph ( f ) creates an exception to the general rule that the landlord has to find alternative accommodation. All that we have to do is to convert that exception into the terms of the Act, and when you read the terms of the Act you will find that the exception to finding alternative accommodation runs in favour of the landlord who has not acquired the premises before June, 1922, and, therefore, in favour of the landlord who has acquired the premises after June, 1922.

I do not want to enter into a controversy on the matter, because the hon. Member is learned in the law, as I am not, and has had infinitely more experience than I have in the Courts, but that is the opinion of advisers whom I have consulted and who have great experience of the matter. If the hon. and learned Member is really accurate, then, naturally, I defer to what he says, but I do say that this is the opinion, not merely of myself, but of people whom I have consulted and who have infinitely greater legal learning than I have.

Has the hon. and gallant Gentleman consulted the Law Officers?

Perhaps that accounts for it. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will bear with me, I will go further, and point out that this somewhat aggressive obtuseness to suggestions from this side has not been confined to this one point, and I am now going to mention another point where they have been equally wrong. Clause 6 of the Bill is, as I understand it, a Clause which says, "Show me now a tenant who has sub-tenants, and I say that, just for that reason, that tenant can be loaded to the extent of 10 per cent. Show me the landlord that has a tenant who has sub-tenants, and I say to him that, just for that reason, he can load the tenant with one-half of 10 per cent. in respect of every sub-tenant." That is the effect of the Clause. It is an extraordinary Clause. I asked, not the hon. and gallant Gentleman, not the Noble Lord the Parliamentary Secretary, but the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health, "What is the purpose of that?" and the answer I got was this: "Because the landlord is to be subjected to his premises being ill-used by sub-tenants in whose choice he had no say, and, therefore, it is right that he should get some compensation for that risk which is imposed upon him." I replied, "That is logical, but what are you doing? Instead of giving the 10 per cent. to the landlord, the owner of the premises who has to bear the risk, you are, curiously, giving the 10 per cent. to the tenant who creates the risk." I could not understand that. Then the ground was shifted, and we were told, "Oh, but the real reason is this: You will observe that, if a tenant sub-lets the lot, the house is decontrolled; but if he sub-lets everything except a portion that he retains for himself, so far from the place being decontrolled, the tenant can load the sub-tenant, and the landlord can load the tenant." I ask, "Why is this?" and the answer was: "The reason is that in that way you enable the fullest accommodation to be obtained "; and I at once say, "Is not that placing a premium on overcrowding?" The answer was, "Not at all."

I again ask, on the Third Reading, is it compatible with the most fundamental knowledge, by the greatest simpleton, of human nature, to say that, in proportion as you screw yourself into a corner, and in proportion as you cut up into the greater number of pieces the remaining space, in the like proportion you can add on 10 per cent. in the case of the landlord, and 5 per cent. in the case of the tenant? If that is not giving a premium on overcrowding I do not know what it is. Then we come to the hon. Baronet the Member for Dumbarton (Sir W. Raeburn), who brings in his nice, innocent-looking Amendment, and the right hon. Gentleman turns round and, with a suave smile, says, "I am going to accept that if the hon. Baronet will make a slight alteration." When my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Pringle) said, "But we want to hear something more about this." and we had a Debate, it turned out that the alleged justification for this addition to Clause 6, to the effect that the landlord could call upon the tenant to give him, the landlord, particulars of all the sub-tenancies that the tenant had, and the amount of their rents, and that if the tenant neglected to do so he was subjected to penal consequences, was this: "Oh, you see, how is the poor landlord to know how many 5 per cents. he is to get if he does not first find out exactly how many 10 per cents. the tenant is getting?" Quite true; but the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon) stood up and said, "I am a little puzzled. I do not really know how you are going to serve the purpose in view by getting these particulars, because it seems to me that, if you want the particulars from the tenant in order to know the figure upon which you are to calculate your 10 per cent. and your 5 per cent., you want the correct figure." Of course we do; but are you going to calculate the 10 per cent. and the 5 per cent. upon the profiteering rent that the sub-tenant is paying? "No, not at all." What are you going to calculate it upon? "We are going to calculate it upon the lawful apportionment of the rent." "Then," said the right hon. Gentleman, "what is the use, under penal consequences, of saying to the tenant, 'You must give me figures as the basis of a calculation'?" The Noble Lord gave an answer that is as incorrect as what we have heard about alternative accommodation. He said, "There is a great deal of force in the right hon. Gentleman's point as regards the existing Act, because under the existing Act the landlord could never apply for apportionment, and under the new Bill he will be able to, and therefore the figures which would be supplied under the old Act could only be profiteering figures because the apportionment figures would not have been found out." Both propositions are in fact inaccurate, and if they both were in fact accurate they together do not form the basis of the explanation he has given. It is not a fact that under the existing Act only the subtenant can apply for apportionment. Under the existing Act either party can apply for apportionment.

Hear, hear—either the tenant or the sub-tenant.

Or the landlord.

No.

The Noble Lord ought to know more about the Bill than an unfortunate hireling, as I have been called. May I draw his attention to Section 12 (3) of the old Act? Where for the purpose of determining the standard rent or rateable value of any dwelling-house to which this Act applies, it is necessary to apportion the rent at the date in relation to which the standard rent is to be fixed, or the rateable value of the property in which that dwelling-house is comprised, the county court may, on application by either party, make such apportionment. The Noble Lord now, with quick ingenuity, tells me there are three parties, landlord, tenant and sub-tenant, and "either party" means tenant or subtenant. Is that the point? Is the Noble Lord aware that in the interpretation of the Section tenant and sub-tenant become, for the purpose of the phraseology of the Act, tenant and the one party and "other party' there means either the landlord, without any enlargement, or tenant, enlarged into tenant or subtenant?

Hear, hear!

You said "no."

3.0 P.M.

The two parties who will have a right, under the Section the hon. Member has read, to apply to the Court are the landlord and the tenant of a dwelling-house the rent of which is to be apportioned. But the landlord, in the case of a dwelling-house which is part of a dwelling-house, is the tenant, and the tenant of that dwelling-house is the subtenant, and the landlord of the whole dwelling-house does not enter into it at all.

Where in an Act of Parliament you go out of your way to employ a word which has its ordinary grammatical meaning, and give it a special meaning, henceforth in interpreting that Act you have to read that word with that special meaning, and this Act has gone out of its way to say the word "tenant" shall have the special meaning of tenant and sub-tenant. Therefore, when we find that apportionment may be asked for by either party, one is the landlord, and the other is the tenant or sub-tenant. Does the Noble Lord see that? The persons who are responsible for the Bill, including the Noble Lord, are very complacent just now. They are giving a sort of sigh of relief and saying, "Our work is nobly done, and now this Bill starts off on its two years' march." I can make a prophecy. That two years' march will be a march to the Caudine Forks, where this Act will be beaten upon incessantly by every Judge in the land with perpetual batteries of caustic commentary on its bad draftsmanship.

My objection to the Bill—and I believe it is shared by all my colleagues of the Liberal party—can be summarised on two main features. First, it is a Bill of decontrol masquerading as a control Bill. Its very first operation will be to decontrol 100 houses now reckoned as controlled houses, and its succeeding operations will be that every house which from the hour it becomes law falls into possession becomes a decontrolled house, and they have arranged a machinery facilitating to the utmost degree the falling into possession of houses. It would have been bad enough if they merely took the Clauses of the old Act, under which the landlord could recover possession, and said: "Where before he could recover possession, we now will enable him, not only to recover possession, but to free the house." It would have meant an attack by landlords upon these recovered possession provisions 10 times as great as in the past, because now they have something to gain by it. But it goes infinitely further, with language so drawn that I can truthfully say invitation lurks in every line to the landlord to be guilty of evasion and dishonest conduct in getting rid of his tenant.

I said on the Second Reading that while the Bill was given forth to the country as a prolongation of control, and it was in one sense an extension of it, they had so carefully punched holes in the extended part that the leakage will well nigh exhaust it. At the end of two years we are to have brought into operation this system of Rent Courts. They do not trouble me in the least. In two years' time two things will have happened: No. 1. The whole country will have awakened to the fact that the problem towards which this Bill is a contribution is more acute than at this moment. The next thing they will be up against is the proximity of a General Election, and so far from our being troubled about bringing into operation the Second Part of the Bill, our attention will be directed to bringing in another First Part, which then will be shaped in the more mellowing outlines that the approaching General Election is likely to suggest. I could understand the Government saying: "We made a mistake by the initiation of this method of legislation in 1915, interfering with the flow of natural laws. We admit the mistake, and we will correct it now." That would have been honest. It might have lost them votes, but it would have gained them respect. At the Mitcham bye-election they flew a kite, and suggested that they were going to do that, but when the kite began to flutter in the breeze, and when the tail got to where the head ought to be, and the head to where the tail ought to he, they said: "Oh, no, we will get over it in another way. We will do good by stealth, and we will blush to find it fame. We will say to the country: 'We are giving you continued control for two years, and afterwards conditionally for five.' "Then they say to their supporters: "Do not mind. We have so arranged it that really it will be decontrol." That may be expedient, but I suggest to the Government that it is not straightforward. It would have been far better to have been straight in the matter. To tell me that the policy of 1915 was a sound policy and that the conditions today merit no change of that policy is a matter that I entirely fail to understand. The policy in 1915 was initiated because there was a shortage of houses and because there was widespread poverty. I am told that the normal house require ment is 70,000, and that for the last two years the normal building was 50,000. Therefore, how does an additional 40,000 diminish the house shortage?

I hope that in my small way, without splitting an infinitive. I have done something which, through not being a split infinitive, will not arouse the attention of the right hon. Gentleman, but will show to hon. Members that I, and hon. Members of my party, have honestly and conscientiously tried to understand this difficulty and to make a contribution towards solving the problem.

As one who has sat through the Debates on this Bill, I wish to make a few observations. One thing which must have impressed Members of the Government is the extreme diversity of experience in regard to housing in different parts of the country and the extreme difficulty of covering in legislation all the varieties of relation between landlord and tenant. We have had dinned' into our ears too much the Scottish aspect of the question and too little of the English aspect, and I propose to reserve my remark to the English aspect because it is one which deserves quite as much attention as the Scottish and has not perhaps received so much. If we could pursuade some of the Scottish Members to visit the poorer boroughs in England they would be surprised to find who were the landlords of the small property inhabited by the poorer of the working classes. It is fair to say that practically all those landlords are of the working classes themselves, and so even if there was a division in this House and the country as between the supposed rich landlord and the poor tenant that division does not apply substantially to the bulk of the cases in the poorer boroughs.

I cannot help feeling that, as time goes on, and as this complication of control continues, the burden of injustice, if any injustice is caused, will be rather on the landlord than on the tenant in relation to this Bill. It is only too clear how intensely intricate the legal questions raised by such legislation must be, and if nothing else were needed to illustrate the objectionable nature of any control of private property by the State, the devastating arguments between the various lawyers in the House are enough to show that this is not the kind of legislation to be encouraged. Instead of applying ourselves to real constructive legislation, we are inclined to tackle legislation which is a survival from the War, and all the time and energy which we devote to other legislation might be very much better devoted to more actively constructive legislation for actually providing increased accommodation.

There is no good to be done, I am sure, with a background of controlled houses. That background is a discouragement to any increased provision of houses, and I should have liked to ask the last speaker whether he really does desire to continue control indefinitely until the last man who could say that he wanted a house has been provided with a house. I believe that the right policy is the earliest possible decontrol of houses, and I am not afraid to support the element of decontrol which undoubtedly is in this Bill. On the contrary I am willing to support it, and I believe that the Bill will do justice to the working-class landlords who are anxious to secure the houses which they have built for their own families or for themselves. The Bill does not in any way reduce or increase the number of houses available. Every house will continue to be occupied and every house will probably be occupied by very much the same class of occupier. But the position will be gradually straightened out. I look forward to the further legislation which we have been promised, dealing with the clearance of slum areas. That will do much more than anything that has been done hitherto to find living accommodation for the very poor classes for whom practically nothing has been done by any of the Bills that have come before us.

The Labour party propose to vote against the Third Reading of this Bill for the reasons given in the Amendment. Several Members on the other side of the House have expresssd surprise that we should take this course The hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood) asked, did we not understand that the Rent Restrictions Act would cease at the end of this month? Another hon. Gentleman asked, did we not realise the chaos that would result. It is true that if we defeated the Government there would be political chaos and there are reverberations from results of that kind? But what could technically happen if this Bill were defeated? Already, once this year, hon. Members opposite have voted to continue the Rent Restrictions Act, taking one day to debate it. There is no reason why the Rent Restrictions Act should not be continued for one year, two years, five years, 10 years or as long as was necessary if this Bill failed. Therefore, there is very little in that point, The next thing that the hon. Member for West Woolwich said with regard to our party was that we had objected to the Act of 1920, and did we want to perpetuate it? Let us see what the situation is. Nobody is in love with the system of rent restriction. It is a clumsy expedient to meet a social crisis. What is happening is that the particular social crisis which it is meant to meet is becoming perpetual. There is a shortage of houses which is just as aggravated as ever. Our people, impoverished by high prices, unemployment and low wages, require more than ever the defence of the Rent Restrictions Act. What we feel on this side of the House—it is almost the only thing that we have before our eyes—is that if there is decontrol, whether on a large scale or on a small scale, it means the increase, and probably the doubling, of the rent of every decontrolled house. That is what we see and that is why we are afraid of decontrol. That is why we dislike this very small Bill. I admit that it is a smaller Bill than the one which the Government originally intended. quire more than ever the defence of the They were almost wedded to complete decontrol, but there were two or three by-elections which forbade the banns. Now we have this mean and bastard brat, but it has enough decontrol in its lineaments to remind us of the old liaison. Let us see what our objections are to the two parts of the Bill. We object to decontrol in detail. If wholesale decontrol was defeated in the country in the elections because it was going to increase or double the rents, a fortiori partial decontrol is going to increase the rents of the decontrolled houses.

That is the inducement which is held out before all landlords—that they can get their houses decontrolled. That is the incentive to the landlords, of which we are afraid. Of course they are going to get higher rents. Landlords are human. We do not make an indictment against the class, but they see ahead of them the opportunities which this Bill affords. They see that if they get their tenants out, necessarily there will be an enormous increase of their rents. In these circumstances the bulk of the landlords will do anything to get possession of their houses. On the other side the Minister says that the landlords are all reasonable men. Again I must refer the right hon. Gentleman to the experiences which many of us have had in large towns of the reasonableness of landlords. What we have found since the passing of the 1920 Act is that the landlords take the most they can under that Act and take it not very scrupulously. The other day I cited the case of Newcastle—which is by no means exceptional—and I cite it again, because I have actual and literal knowledge of what I am talking about. In three wards of that city, rents were put up, not only the legal 40 per cent., but 50, 60 and 70 per cent. over many of the streets. The tenants got some expert assistance, not actually legal assistance, and they recovered in the last year more than £3,000 from the landlords in those three wards. They were being swindled so absolutely that not one single landlord took a case into the Court against them, and some of the landlords had to stand out of their rent for 13 weeks, so much had they taken by this process of widespread extortion. That is the position with which we are faced—that the great mass of the poor people in our large towns know the way in which they are going to be treated. These people will not accept the standard of the right hon. Gentleman that the landlords are going to be reasonable all round, because they know that the landlords have not been reasonable. As I say, I make no indictment of the landlords in Newcastle or anywhere else, but hon. Members must understand the atmosphere which has been created. The minds of the people are influenced by the idea that this new law will give the landlord new opportunities of litigation against them in order to secure the higher rent which will follow decontrol.

If there is to be any alteration in the 1920 Act, the tenant should have more, and not less, protection. He should have more protection against the levying of extra rent on the ground of repairs. It is said there are going to be legal protections against the landlord levying this rent and not making the repairs, but it is a mockery to tell the poor to litigate in their scores of thousands. To mention Newcastle again—and the same thing occurs in other towns—there are 1,100 houses in that city officially declared by the corporation to be incapable of being made habitable, yet, on nearly all of these houses the people are paying the extra rent. You may say they have legal redress. These poor people in the slums of our country do not know how to go and get legal redress, and what I said the other day is the real truth. If the landlords are to continue with this right of levying extra rent for repairs, they ought to do the repairs first.

I come to the second part of the Bill, which is less immediately cruel, but it is more ultimately disastrous. There is to be decontrol beginning in 1925, unless we pass another Act. What are we going to do, I wonder. Is this merely a disingenuous postponement, or is it not? There is not a man in this House who does not know that the houses are not going to be ready by that time. Of course, they are not. However successful the housing schemes were, the situation would be in all its essence the same two years hence, as it is now. There is going to be no real difference. There may be greater hopes, but that is all. Then what is going to be done? You are just going through the same process again. Why did you not accept our Amendment and postpone it at least till 1930? You might as well have done that. I suppose there is a hope that you may then be strong enough to adopt the principle which some hon. Members opposite want at once—decontrol, and take all the risks. There are some who still want that, if only the elections would not go too much against, them. All I can say is that, if and when there is decontrol under anything like the present conditions, there is going to be very serious trouble in this country. A new situation has been created, and surely hon. Members opposite can understand. True, housing has been very bad in the past; true, millions of our people have lived under terrible housing conditions in the past; true, they have even had to suffer, when they have been living under these conditions, tremendous rises of rent, which they have not been able to resist, at different times.

All that is true enough, but what have you got now? For six or eight years the people have had legal means of avoiding economic exactions. They have become accustomed to legal protection against their landlords, and you are never going back from that. You are only going back from it under one of two conditions—first of all, that protection is no longer needed. It will be no longer needed if there are enough houses, but there is no prospect at all of that, and therefore two or three years hence, whenever this comes up for revision, there will be exactly the same conditions as now, except that the people will have become more accustomed to this legal protection. Why do not the Government, who are out for the defence of property as it is, begin to think ahead and wonder how they are going to deal with this problem, which is going to be precisely the same when they meet it two years hence, if they are still there? They might think of other expedients, because they will have to think about them. I suspect they will have to begin to think about Rent Courts, but, at any rate, all that we have to do is to oppose them at the present time, to oppose this policy of doing nothing, of leaving things as they are, except to make them just a little worse. We want to maintain the Rent Restrictions Act as it is, if we cannot improve it, not to make it worse, as you are making it worse. That is the reason why we are voting against your Bill. We regard the Rent Restriction Act as a clumsy raft, to save our people from submergence, and we want them to have that raft until they can reach their own land.

Whatever may be thought about the provisions of this Bill, no one can say it has not been amply discussed in the course of its passage in various stages through this House, and that is as it should be. This is a Measure which is going to touch, in their most vital interests, the great majority of the people of this country, and, particularly, the great majority of the poorer classes. Therefore, it is right and proper that every provision in it should be examined with the most scrupulous care, in order that all legitimate interests may be protected, and that, in circumstances which make it almost impossible to avoid some hardships, and even some injustices, no particular section of the community should receive undue advantage at the expense of the rest. At first sight, the interests which are at stake appear to be absolutely conflicting. The three primary necessities of life are food, shelter and clothing, although I do not know that everyone would insist quite so much on clothing in weather like this. But, in the face of all the circumstances, the tenants find themselves deprived of that freedom of choice which they have been accustomed to enjoy in the past in the purchase of the necessaries of life, and, indeed, most of its luxuries also. The restriction arises out of circumstances which are beyond the control of Government—circumstances which were created, or, at least, largely aggravated by the aftermath of war, and which have resulted in a shortage of houses, which amounts practically to a famine. In such circumstances as that, nobody can be surprised that tenants clamour for protection against a situation which would expose them completely to the mercy of the landlords.

On the other hand, what is the position of the landlord? For eight years now they have been subjected by law to limitations which have not been imposed upon any other class of property. They have had to share the burdens of increased taxation, of increased cost of living, of increased cost of maintenance, but they have not been permitted to increase their rents, except to a certain very limited extent, and they have not been able to get possession of their own property, even when they require it for their own occupation. On their side, too, then, one cannot be surprised if they ardently desire to see the total abolition—the prompt and speedy abolition—of all these hampering restrictions upon them. But although it seems difficult to think of any deadlock more complete than that I have just described, I think, if you take a longer view, it will not appear that the interests of tenants and landlords are quite so remote as might at first sight appear. If you could give back to the tenant his own freedom of choice in houses, he would have the best possible protection against the exactions of a callous or oppressive landlord. He simply changed his house as now he can change his shop if he is not satisfied with the service he gets. I do not think there will be any difference of opinion in this House upon that point. The real difference that divides us is: What is the best method of restoring to the tenant his freedom of choice. Hon. Members opposite believe that if you continue until 1930 the provisions of the existing Act of 1920 by that time sufficient houses will be built to allow decontrol. We on this side believe that as long as you continue these restrictions you will never get houses. [An HON. MEMBER: "Then why not decontrol now?"] Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to continue my argument—that, as I say, is the whole basis of the difference between us.

I am not going to argue the question again as to whether the imposition of these restrictions is the most powerful deterrent you could have to building. The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies) stated our arguments as they appeared to him. He thereby revealed his total inability to understand our case. He represented us as saying that to decontrol houses would mean that the man left would necessarily be forced to build a house for himself. That is a most grotesque travesty of our argument. We have argued it over and over again. We shall never get over the fact that, whether right or wrong, a man will not put his money into an investment which gives small returns and doubtful security. An hon. Member asked: "Why not decontrol now?" Whilst this Bill does something to increase returns it does not in itself do very much to increase security, because though it does for the moment control and restrict, not for two years, but for seven years, and possibly shorter if circumstances allow, the confidence of investors, destroyed and kept under by control, once having gone, cannot come back in a moment. If we were to cease control tomorrow, even then an appreciable time would have to elapse before investors would be satisfied that the situation was stable enough once again to safely resume their investment in property as they used to do. Therefore I protest that confidence is not going to be recovered at once, whether we have this Bill or not. There will be two minor issues in this matter of confidence. The first will arise in 1925. Hon. Members opposite have really expressed the view that when 1925 comes, instead of passing Part II of the Act, it will be necessary for the Government of the day to introduce a new bill prolonging Part I. I do not know what Government may be in power in 1925, but I would say this, that if any Government then in power prolongs Part I of the Act by a new Bill, they would deal a fatal blow at the confidence of investors, and they will, once and for all, make impossible a resumption of house building by private builders. I feel confident that will not happen. My hon. Friends opposite have continually spoken as if in 1925 all control was coming to an end. They have deliberately ignored the existence of. Part II of this Bill. Part II is a provision which is inserted in the Bill to make it possible for Part I to come to an end. It provides a sort of step between the full measure of control that is provided by the present Act and the final cessation of control when Part II comes to an end. It gives to the sitting tenants protection in 1925 against exorbitant increases of rent and against the whim or desire of a landlord to turn them out of their houses. It is the existence of these forms of protection in Part II which gives me the confidence that in 1925 the Government of the day will not feel themselves forced to prolong Part I, but will be able to rely upon the working of Part II. The second critical time will come just before 1930. As time goes on and as the date for the expiry of the second Part of the Act draws near it is clear that it will be possible in 1930 finally to get rid of the last remnants of control and then we may conclude that the feeling of security and confidence amongst investors will have slowly grown up and be finally established and the building of houses supported by the finance of private investors will once more come into operation.

The official Opposition have put down their Amendment for the rejection of this Measure in the form of a reasoned Amendment, and I take this opportunity of congratulating them upon the growing moderation of their views. When hon. Members opposite originally supported the rejection of the Housing Bill, they had seven reasons, but on this Measure they have come down three. The Mover of this Amendment did not confine himself to these three reasons, but he roamed at will over the whole range of the Clauses of the Bill. I hope I shall not be considered captious if I still complain of the quality of the objections put forward. But even these three reasons will not stand close examination, and I would like to consider each of them in turn. The first reason is that this Bill will deprive a very large number of tenants of all protection. Where on earth does the hon. Member for Westhoughton find that in the Bill? To which Clause in the Bill does he refer?

Clause 2.

Let us see what Clause 2 does. It says that certain houses will come out of control when the landlord comes into possession but if the landlord comes into possession it means that there is no tenant. Can the hon. Member name another Clause which has that effect?

I am not to be drawn on this occasion.

The Amendment declares that this Bill will deprive a very large number of tenants of all protection, and when the hon. Member is asked to name the Clauses which have that effect he is dumb and says he is not going to be drawn. I have demonstrated that Clause 2 will not bear out his description. It is not a matter of opinion; it is a matter of fact. How can you say that it deprives the tenant of protection when there is no tenant. If that be the measure of the reasoning power of the Labour party, I am afraid that they have still a good deal to learn before they sit on this side of the House. I would like, in this connection, to say something about Clause 3, in spite of the fact that the hon. Member has not ventured to name Clause 3 as one which withdraws protection from the tenant. Some criticism has been made upon Clause 3 by a number of hon. Members this afternoon, and, particularly, its wording has been criticised with great severity by the pastmaster of draftsmanship, the hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Harney).

You should answer him before you make a joke.

There is no excuse for not understanding this Clause on the part of anybody who sat through all the discussions in Committee, because hon. Members who did must be familiar, not only with the Bill, but with the Act which it amends. Of course, those who are not members of Committees and people in the country do not generally take the trouble to go very deeply into the provisions of a Measure of this kind. Some hon. Members have fallen into a number of errors because they have read the Bill but have not read the Act. It may be because I have had to spend so much time on the subject; but I am inclined to ask, like the child in the nursery rhyme, Do you really wonder, Jane, When it seems to me so plain?

I wish to remind the right hon. Gentleman that he admitted on the Report stage that it would have to be made right in the House of Lords.

I did nothing of the kind. I do not know what the hon. Member refers to. I offered an Amendment on the Report stage which I thought, perhaps, would make it clearer to those who did not wish to take the trouble to understand it, but the hon. Member would not have the Amendment.

You withdrew it and said that you would make it right in the House of Lords.

I withdrew it because the hon. Member was not satisfied with it. Let me say, again, what is the meaning of the particular paragraph which has been criticised. It is apparently thought by some hon. Members—I think the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Foot) was one who put the point—that under the Bill as it now stands some preference has been given to the person who became the landlord after 30th June, 1922.

So it is.

If hon. Members will carefully read the Bill, in conjunction with the Act, they will see that whether a person became the landlord before or after 30th June, 1922, if he requires the house for his own occupation or for the occupation of a son or a daughter over 18 years of age, he does not have to provide alternative accommodation. What he does have to do is to get an order of the Court for possession, and the Court will not give that order unless it is satisfied that it is just and reasonable to do so. The only difference between a per son who became the landlord before 30th June, 1922, and one who became the landlord after 30th June, 1922, is that in the latter case he has also to prove that greater hardship will be caused to him by refusing the order, than will be caused to the tenant by giving it.

The previous Clause, which was struck out, specifically states that alternative accommodation is not to be provided. If the right hon. Gentleman will turn to the principal Act, he will see that the paragraph now proposed to be struck out specifically declares that.

The hon. Member is really mistaken. The paragraph is not to be struck out, but alternative accommodation in certain cases is no longer to be required. It is provided that the words "existence of alternative accommodation" shall not be a condition of the order or judgment. We have a new paragraph in place of paragraph (iv)—it is paragraph ( f )—and I cannot follow what the hon. Member means when he says the provision in the Act has been struck out which says that no alternative accommodation should be provided in these cases.

In the old Act there were certain provisions under which alternative accommodation was not necessary to be provided. The Clause which is now put in in lieu of the former one will also, I submit, be subject to the provision that alternative accommodation is not necessary.

That is what I have been saying.

The Courts will decide.

I fail to understand the hon. Member's difficulty.

It is obvious.

I cannot see that any alternative accommodation would be required in the case mentioned by the hon. Member.

Has the opinion of the Lau Officers been taken?

I do not think in this particular case we required their opinion. It is perfectly plain.

Where are the Law Officers?

I should like to repeat the undertaking I gave in Committee upstairs that when this Bill becomes law I will have the Act of 1920 reprinted and the Amendments made in it by this Bill substituted for the wording of that Act. I think that will be a great convenience to the general public. The second reason given by the hon. Member is that the Bill will encourage landlords to exercise undue pressure upon their tenants by litigation or otherwise. Where does the hon. Member find that in the Bill? If you take Clause 2 of the Bill you will find that where a landlord comes into possession of his house by reason of the fact that the tenant is in arrears with his rent, that is not to be a reason for taking the house out of control. Therefore, any inducement or incentive to the landlord to put undue pressure on his tenant is removed by the express provision of this Bill. When I find it suggested that this alleged encouragement to the landlord is a reason for rejecting the Bill, I feel inclined to ask whether the present Act has not encouraged tenants to abuse the security given to them by sub-letting at exorbitant rents, leading to deterioration of the house, without permission given by the landlord.

When I come to the last reason, it is that the Bill only continues control for a period within which there is no probability, under the Government's housing policy, of the shortage of housing accommodation being met. The hon. Member for Central Newcastle (Mr. Trevelyan), who spoke last, followed the example of other hon. Members on that side of the House in speaking as if the Bill came to an end in 1925. I have already dealt with that point. I would now remind the House that, in the opinion of the Labour party, by 1930 there will be sufficient housing accommodation to make any further control unnecessary. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no!"] I take it that that is so, because, first of all, no Amendment has been moved, either in Committee or on Report, prolonging the period of control beyond the year 1930. The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies) said in Committee that 1930 was the year that the Labour party desired. A colleague of the hon. Member opposite in the representation of Newcastle said that he was prepared to accept 1928 as a reasonable compromise; and the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Shinwell) expressly said, on Report, that he believed that by that time, that is to say, by 1930, we should have in this country a sufficient supply of houses for the working classes. It is true that he made some qualification to that by saying: if the Government are prepared to apply the powers they possess in other directions as far as the price of building materials is concerned."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th July, 1923; col. 1039, Vol. 166.] Quite so. But it is for the Labour party if they do not think we are applying those powers, to criticise us and to take what steps they think fit to make us do so. On the assumption, however, that we are going to apply those powers, if they be necessary, the hon. Member for Linlithgow, who, I suppose, is as well entitled to speak for the Labour party as anyone, expresses the belief that by 1930 we shall have sufficient housing accommodation in the country. I do not commit myself to that view. What I do point out is that 1930 is the date actually put down in the Bill for the final expiry of control, and that therefore it seems altogether inconsistent and illogical to make a ground for opposing the Bill the fact that it does not impose control beyond 1930.

Whatever may be thought of the Bill in this House, I do not think anyone can deny that in the country generally it has been recognised as an honest attempt to hold the balance fairly between the various interests concerned. Perhaps there is no provision in it that commands the approval of everybody, but on the other hand I think everyone can find something in it of which they can approve. For my part, and in that sort of temperament which never expects too much, and which only really begins to get uncomfortable when criticism is silent, I look forward with equanimity to the Division we are now about to take, and

with confidence to the future, which will be the only true test of the value of the Bill.

rose —

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put, but Mr. Speaker withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question."

There are just two minutes, and I wish to say this, that the right hon. Gentleman has totally failed to meet the gravamen of the case, which has been put in the Debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Foot) and by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Harney). A case was put in regard to the matter of alternative accommodation on the legal interpretation of these words, and I wish to point out—[HON. MEMBERS: "Divide, divide!"]

rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."

Question put accordingly, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 212; Noes, 111.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

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

Adjourned at Ten Minutes after Four o'Clock till Monday next (16th July).