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

The subject we are to discuss this morning is no new one to this House. For the last quarter of a century it has figured very prominently in the debates in this Assembly, either in the discussion of Bills or on the days of Supply. It started, I believe, by one or two small voices in the Labour party many years ago, and to-day it occupies the attention of the leading men of all parties. That is not surprising when we realise the magnitude of the problem. From pre-war days to the present time the numbers of the unemployed have increased, roughly from a quarter of a million to a million and a quarter, and that fact in itself would suggest that the figure is becoming a permanent one, so far as this country is concerned. It has grown steadily for the last few years, with very little fluctuation, and there is every prospect of the figure stabilising itself round the million and a quarter at which it stands to-day.

There may be one or two causes which bring us to the conclusion that we are facing what is more or less a permanent problem. I have been associated with the engineering industry for a number of years, and in my own short lifetime I have seen what might be described as a revolution in the methods of production and manufacture. We see used to-day in the engineering trade jigs and tools and gadgets which 20 years ago were little thought of. In my own time I have seen the advent of the automatic and semiautomatic machine, and by this increased use of machinery, production is multiplying rapidly, and, on the other side, the consumption of articles is not multiplying to the same degree. What applies to engineering applies also to textiles. Boots and clothes to-day are being manufactured at a much more rapid rate then they were a quarter of a century ago. The machine has come to oust labour, and with this increased use of machinery and this diminishing use of man-power we have the problem which confronts us here at home of increasing production and a comparatively stationary consumption.

When we look abroad we find that the exports of this country are down by 25 per cent. as compared with pre-war days. We find that nations hitherto our customers are not only manufacturing for themselves, but they are now our competitors in many important respects. Let me quote to the House a few figures which have come my way pertaining to the textile industry. We find that in 1913 the United States spindleage was 67·7 per cent. of the British, but by 1923 it had risen to 65·7 per cent. In India, in 1913, the spindleage was 11·9 per cent. of that of Great Britain, and in 1922 it had risen to 13 per cent. In Japan, in 1913–1923, the increase in spindleage had actually doubled, from 4 to 8 per cent., and in the same period in China it had increased from 1·8 to 4·5 per cent. What applies to the spindleage in the cotton textile industry applies with equal force to engineering, to the iron and steel industries, and to the general trades and industries of this country. We find that other countries to-day, instead of taking our goods in the quantities in which they took them previously, are themselves manufacturing to a greater extent to meet their own needs, and they are also competing in the neutral markets of the world. Hence we find that, with this increasing production and diminishing consumption, both at home and abroad, we are confronted more or less with a permanent unemployment problem in this country.

Now, for the first time, we are making an attempt to couple this great question of unemployment with a great policy of national and Empire development. We realise the great waste that takes place by a change of Government. I was here in the Parliament before last, and I heard the then Minister of Labour, Sir Montague Barlow, juggling with millions of pounds as though they were copper. When that Government went out, and the Labour party came in, we were given to understand, and I believe it is quite true, that the cupboard was absolutely bare, that there was no scheme of any kind or sort which the party might develop with a view to finding work for the unemployed. The party then proceeded with the electricity Question, and no sooner had the enquiry got under way than another change of Government took place. This means that there has been no continuity of policy, to meet this great question of unemployment, and the purpose we set out to establish in this Bill is that this question shall be, year by year, investigated and probed, and that schemes shall be prepared with the idea that whatever change of Government may take place, schemes of preparation to help the unemployed will go on for all time while the question is with us. For that reason we propose in this Bill to establish a comprehensive Committee of the Ministry, with the Minister of Labour as Chairman. It will include the Office of Works, which deals with the buildings with which we are so familiar, and extends to the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, so that their activities will not be confined to the United Kingdom.

This does not in any way create a new department. This is a committee to be responsible for pushing this question, for investigating the question, and the Departments which now carry out the work, if this Bill goes through, will still carry on with their duties. No one who heard the Minister of Labour a week ago could help realising that, from the point of view of dealing with this question, the Minister of Labour had neither power, money or authority, and, according to his statement, very little is likely to be done this year for the unemployed. I would suggest that the Minister of Labour is the high steward of insurance finance, and nothing more. We want in this Bill to give the Minister of Labour some status, and some power of dealing with the problem for which his Ministry was established, and for that reason we propose this comprehensive committee, with the Minister of Labour as chairman, and with the powers such as they possess, there is no department dealing with national development that is left untouched.

We have to-day 1,250,000 unemployed, and we have, at the same time, acres and acres of land undeveloped, with men willing to take work on the land, which is capable of producing much of the things we need, land certainly richer than the land of Holland, Denmark and Belgium. In spite of that, in the year 1923 we imported into this country foodstuffs alone to the value of £484,000,000. It is true we could not produce the whole of that ourselves, but much of it we could produce. In that year we imported grain and flour from our Dominions to the amount of 40·4 million sterling, and from foreign markets 56·2 million; meat, 40·6 million from the Dominions, and 84·7 millions from foreign countries; butter, 19 millions from the Dominions and 25·2 millions from foreign countries; sugar, 11 millions from the Dominions and 30·2 millions from foreign countries, those four items making a total of £307,000,000. We believe that if this matter were rightly tackled, useful work could be done, imports of this kind could be diminished, and the goods produced at home, finding useful and remunerative employment to the men now out of work. This principle, I think has already been established under the Land Settlement Act, on a very small scale I confess. The scheme that we propose is very largely based on the same principle.

Then, what has become of the report of the Royal Commission on Waterways? I understand this is the cheapest form of transport. Whether it is an economical proposition, I do not know, but under our Bill such matters could be fully investigated, and if there is anything of substance in that report it could be carried out. Our harassed engineering and harassed coal industries require help and investigation, and this is the power which, we believe, Parliament should have to deal with the problem that is before us. Nor do we propose to confine ourselves to Great Britain. Our craftsmen in increasing numbers are leaving these shores. Our skilled engineers are leaving England, not because they desire to do so. They are going to the United States, not because they desire to go there. In our own Colonies there is ample opportunity if they are developed in the way we think they can be. I have been reading a report of the East Africa Commission, signed by the present Undersecretary of State for the Colonies, by Major A. G. Church, a member of the Labour party, and by Mr. Frederick Linfield, a member of the Liberal party. No one, perhaps, would endorse all the Report, but perhaps I may be permitted to read to the House one sentence from chapter 13 of the Report:

Those dealing with this question must, of necessity, have the co-operation of the local authorities. Anyone who has been on a local authority for any length of time cannot but have been impressed by the large part that the local authority plays in meeting the needs of unemployment. Many of the problems, however, are beyond them, because many of the schemes which affect them are not entirely within their own province. Other authorities are jointly interested. It is proposed that where schemes of a joint character, such as the drainage of land, arterial roads, and things of that description are in question, the Department or body shall have the power to deal with these matters.

Just a word on the finance of the problem. The Bill speaks of £10,000,000. When, however, I tell the House that in the last six years no less a sum than £200,000,000 has been spent in one kind of benefit or another to meet this problem, hon. Members, I am sure, will not be surprised. I might, however, draw attention to this fact—that while £200,000,000 in six years is a large sum, it is still £150,000,000 less than we pay annually in interest on our War debt. I mention £10,000,000 because it has been suggested that it is a large sum. We believe that £10,000,000 is not adequate to meet the problem. But we consider that this Parliament might start with £10,000,000, and go steadily until it gets to £20,000,000. That is one of the reasons we came down to this figure, to leave a little room for expansion. It is proposed that if the sum allocated is not expended it shall not be taken back by the Treasury, because, after all, the problem is one which each year contributes to make, and it, therefore, would be unfair for the finance to come out of one particular year. We desire a system which goes on from year to year and produces its financial quota to meet the needs of the situation. For this reason we propose £10,000,000 per year. We suggest that if it is not used it shall remain in the fund for the time when the money will be called for.

This, then, is a very rough outline— perhaps a somewhat amateurish outline— of the Bill. Let me now say just a word or two as to what the Bill is not. The Bill does not propose to give men work to-morrow. That is not its object. Anyone who takes that line of argument is misrepresenting the object of the Bill. To meet this question any scheme that is to be of value must take months and months of preparation. I hope, therefore, no person will oppose the Bill on the ground that it does not give work to men now out of work either next week or the week after. The problem is one that has to be looked at very carefully. As a last word, I desire to say that this is a question which is becoming of greater and greater importance as time goes on, and what I have said this morning are not the. last words on the question. Much more can be said. Much more can be done. We do, however submit our Bill as one genuine attempt to cope, on a real, sound, businesslike basis, with a problem which is becoming more and more difficult. We have tried to meet this problem, not by any sort of universal panacea. We have tried to meet it on the ground that this scheme will give men useful work, that it will develop some portion of our country and our Empire, and that the nation, by the expenditure of this money, will get a remunerative return.

I beg to second the Motion.

We are actuated in this matter, I should like to explain to the House, and I think the words of my hon. Friend who has just sat down will bear out the statement that I am about to make, by no spirit of class in putting forward the proposals in the Bill. We are seeking to get outside the sphere of ordinary partisan politics. We are asking, not the Government of the day, but the House itself, all parties sitting here, to cooperate in an attempt to find the means of solving the difficulties under which a great proportion of our fellow countrymen are labouring at the present time. I hope that in view of the fact that I am not making a statement in a personal way, but making it on behalf of the party with which I am associated, that no one on the other side or anywhere else will assume otherwise than what has been stated in this connection.

I do not propose either to take up time in discussing the various points that arise, as my hon. Friend has already done so. He has told in plain simple language exactly what the Bill proposes. We are not foolish enough to imagine that it would not be possible for anybody with a critical mind to find holes in the Bill. But we are quite willing in the event of our getting the support of the House as a whole, to meet all possible and reasonable objections. We are more than anxious that this Bill should not be put upon the Statute Book and then claimed by any particular party as being their handiwork. We want it to be the work of Parliament itself. I propose to deal with one or two industries which, admittedly by all parties in the House and by individual Members, are in a very serious condition. I will not speak as an expert. I hope that experts on the other side will bear that in mind that I am not an expert. But I think every hon. Member on this side of the House agrees that if we are to deal with the root causes of unemployment we shall have to deal with the land. Our colleagues on the other side of the House have amongst them men who have very considerable knowledge of agriculture. They may take it from us, from me, that we, as a party, will be always willing to take a considerable amount of guidance from them on a question on which they have so very close and intimate knowledge.

I am going to quote from a nobleman who will be accepted, I am sure, as a very high authority on agriculture. Knowing that I had to take part in this debate to-day, I consulted the "Encyclopædia Britannica " last week for the purpose of finding out from the experts who write for that work the position of agriculture in the past. In the article on agriculture I find it stated that in the year 1851 there were 3,453,500 persons employed in the agricultural industry, agriculture being then the principal industry in this country. From the census returns of 1921 I find that there are only 1,318,263 persons now engaged in agriculture. Since the middle of the last century, no fewer than 2,155,237 persons have been compelled by one cause or another to leave that industry and find employment and the means of livelihood either in some other industry at home, or else abroad. We on this side of the House suggest, without entering into the matter in any spirit of political partisanship, that here is a subject in which there might be co-operation between all Members in the House. Instead of talking about the matter, we might really set ourselves to the task of attempting to find ways and means of getting people back to the land. It may be said, and I think it will be said, if not in this House at least in the country, that our land cannot produce sufficient for our maintenance. We are not going seriously to combat that argument, but we suggest that our land should be made to yield whatever it can produce to the full extent of its capacity.

In the same article I found the following figures as to the acreage of crops, taking cereals and pulse together. The total acreage of wheat, barley, oats, rye, beans and peas in the United Kingdom has fallen from 11,399,030 acres in 1875 to 8,333,770 acres in 1905, a loss of corn land, over the 30 years of 3,065,260 acres, or 27 per cent., while the population has largely increased. The area withdrawn from corn growing is not to be found under the heading of what are termed grass crops, or green crops, because the acreage used in the production of green crops has fallen from 5,057,029 acres in 1875 to 4,109,394 acres in 1905, a decrease of 947,635 acres, or 18·7 per cent. I put it to the House, and particularly to hon. Members on the other side, that that is a condition of things which ought not to be allowed any longer to exist. We ask Members on the other side to co-operate with us, and we promise that we will co-operate with them in endeavouring, to the best of our ability, to find means at least of utilising our full national resources. It will probably be said that we make bitter political attacks upon landowners and those who, up to the present time, have been in control of the land. I have already admitted that I am not an expert on agriculture, and I think few on this side of the House will claim to be experts in that industry, and I wish to point out that all the denunciations that we have used are as nothing compared to the denunciations made by gentlemen who are admittedly experts. I am going to quote some of the statements made, not with any desire to create friction or ill-feeling; but in case that kind of criticism is offered, I merely want to state in advance that the keenest and the ablest critcisms of the present system come not from the benches of the Labour party but from men who occupy high positions in this present Government.

I have here a quotation from a speech delivered by Lord Bledisloe who, I believe, is Under-Secretary for Agriculture in the present Ministry. It is a speech delivered as Chairman of the Agricultural Section of the British Association Congress at Hull in September, 1922. It will be admitted, I think, that he is an authority, and he is dealing here with a point to which I want to draw special attention, because the real motive of our Bill is to get the country, through Parliament, to accept the spirit of co-operation and co-ordination. He says: War, and during the War, a considerable amount of the trees in the woods of Scotland have been cut down, and no attempt has been made to replant them.

I understand that is another serious position of affairs, and if private owners are not prepared to take the necessary steps to deal with this problem, there is nothing for it except Parliament taking it up. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) referred to the position of the mining industry, but I would suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should not try to make the country believe that the mining industry is so bad as he makes out from the point of view of profits. The Miners' Organisation have not the power we intend it shall have, but so far as the mining section is concerned, it does some very useful work, and we get valuable information regarding the industry itself; in fact, every hon. Member can get a complete statement every quarter of the actual operations in the industry.

From that quarterly statement I find that the mining industry, so far as the owners are concerned, has been prosperous. I have the figures here and I will just give the result. During the years 1921, 1918, 1920, 1922 and 1923, I find the average profit in the mining industry was 2s. 3·6d. per ton, and I do not think that is a bad profit at all. I submit that all the figures supplied by the coal owners themselves are correct, and there is not much reason for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead prophesying so gloomily as he does. Speaking with some knowledge of the industry, I know that it could be made an exceedingly prosperous one, but not under the present system, for that is impossible. I would like to make it clear to the House that in this instance the labour costs have fallen very considerably during the course of the present century. Again I am going to quote from an admitted authority, the late Professor Jevons, who in a book written by him quotes from a letter written to the "Times" by Lord Joicey, who was at that time Sir James Joicey, in which he makes the statement that the labour costs in 1900 were 77·36 per cent. of the total income according to the returns published by the workmen; now the labour costs are 62 per cent., so that there has been a saving. In 1900 the labour costs were 22·64, and in 1923 the other costs amounted to 38 per cent., or an increase of 15 per cent. So that from that standpoint the employers have perhaps gained a great deal more than we have, and we have to depend upon the industry, not for products, but for wages. We are told, and I am going to accept the statement, that the mining industry, as at present carried on, is uneconomic and cannot be continued. The statements are correct which appear in the quarterly returns, and there must be a great deal of truth in them. Notwithstanding that the industry was in a very serious condition according to the employers, and the Press—and all journalists are experts on mining and everything else—I find that the profit per shift for 1924 amounted on the average in Britain to 11·27d. The employer got 11d. per shift worked whether he worked or not. I find there are only three districts over the average. There are 13 districts altogether; 3 are over the average, and 3 of them do not pay any profit at all. While the industry is languishing so far as the workers and employers are concerned, it is fairly remunerative to the landowners. I notice that the payment per individual workman in the mines to the royalty owners amounts over the whole of the British coalfields to 5d. per shift worked. In some areas, it is as high as 8d. per ton, whereas in others only 2d. is charged. We do not think that there should be any royalty at all, but under this Bill we propose to submit the whole question to the consideration of the House. We will endeavour to argue our case on sound and reasonable lines, and, if we are defeated, we shall accept the decision for the time being and later on try to get the majority to our way of thinking.

12.0 N.

The unfortunate picture, however, is that out of 13 districts 10 are uneconomic from the point of view that they do not reach the average in production for the country. Northumberland, Durham, Lancashire, Cumberland, the Forest of Dean, Bristol, and North and South Wales are considerably below the average in output, and we are told by the owners that unless they can get an output of one ton per person employed it will be impossible for them to carry on the industry. If that be true, it means that there would require to be such an addition in the output individually as is absolutely impossible, and we can only look forward to the prospect of this great industry going out of existence. There is no reason why the employers should be asked to go on working continually at a loss. None of us would do that either on this side or on that, and we are not asking the employers to do it. Clearly, the situation has developed to such an extent that they are no longer able to control it under present conditions, and we are asking that the co-ordinating principle as well as the cooperative principle should be applied and that the country as a whole should take note of the question and endeavour to find a solution. We have either to find a solution or the greatness of this country will very largely disappear. We need not worry ourselves about Empire growth and foreign competition if the mining industry is to go out of existence. I do not see any prospect other than that rightly suggested in this Bill for meeting the situation that exists in this as well as in the agriculture industrial from a national standpoint. If these areas which I have mentioned go out of production, then the remaining areas will not be able to produce sufficient coal to supply the needs of our own home markets, and instead of being an exporter we shall become an importer of coal. That is not a situation that can be lightly contemplated. We are seriously perturbed by these facts, not merely from the individual class standpoint, but from the standpoint of the well-being of the country, of which we are a part as much as anybody on the other side. We are not anxious to leave Britain to earn our livelihood. We prefer to live in the land of our fathers, and, when the day comes for us to depart this life, to be buried among our own ancestors. That is not an unreasonable hope and desire, and, so far as it is possible for Members on the other side to agree with us, I appeal to them to do so. The situation is very serious, judging from the report given to the House by the Minister of Labour. We do not suggest that he is responsible for the unemployment in the mining industry. The other day he made a statement that unemployment in this industry is largely responsible for the increase in the number of unemployed. He made the rather astounding statement that unemployment amongst miners had increased from 10,000 to 115,000 or 155,000.

At any rate, the increase was over 100,000.

That is a situation that will have to be met by something more than words. Action will have to be taken by all people interested in the well-being of the country to deal with it. There is a very large proportion of miners not receiving the unemployment benefit, whose names do not appear, and who are not included in the list. There is in operation at the present time a method with which I hope the Minister of Labour will deal. I know that he is making inquiries into the matter. The accident rate in the mining industry is very much higher than in any other industry. Almost half the total accidents that happen in the country occur in the mining industry. We have men no longer able to work because of accidents in the mines. The employers will not employ them though they are still able to work, and these men cannot get the benefit. This is a part of the problem with which we are asking the House to deal, not from any particular standpoint, but as a whole.

The last point which I want to make is one of some importance. Notwithstanding the fact that the figures supplied by the Ministry of Labour show a considerable decrease in the total number of persons unemployed, if you compare the various districts, you will find that the situation is not as pleasant as one would imagine from the total numbers given by the Minister of Labour in answer to various questions that have been addressed to him. I find that in England there has been a fairly large reduction of unemployment, but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland there has been an increase between the 26th January of the present year and the 27th April. In these four months, instead of the curve declining in these three countries, is has risen, and I suggest that it is likely to continue to rise unless some means are taken by Parliament along the lines mentioned in our Bill. But the most serious feature of the unemployment problem, to us on these benches, is the situation as it affects women and children. If one takes out the figures for women and juveniles for the 27th April of this year, one finds that 33 per cent., or nearly one-third, of the total persons unemployed are women and juveniles; and, curiously enough, in this connection England occupies a worse position than any other part of Britain. I suggest that the problem of putting boys out to work is a very serious problem, and one that cannot be dealt with under present conditions by private employers as effectively and as well from the national standpoint as by the nation itself. The problem as it affects women is even more serious, because there are social evils associated with this matter that I think every man who has any pretensions to concern for the real well-being of the people would do his very best to avoid. I do not want to enter into that aspect of the question; it ought to be quite clear to the mind of everyone here. If there is one person more than another for whom we should set ourselves to find work, it is the woman worker. She is the last who should be deprived of the means of satisfying her requirements by her own labour; or, if she cannot find work, we ought to make certain that her condition is not so reduced that she would be compelled to take other means of earning her livelihood.

I have, I am afraid, taken up much more time than I anticipated, but I felt that it would be wrong for me to do otherwise than follow the line set by my hon. Friend who moved the Bill, of dealing, not with one particular section of the community, but, as far as possible, with so many sections as to make it clear to the House what is the motive animating the Members of this party when we introduce a Measure of this sort. As my hon. Friend said, public opinion is moving very rapidly on this matter. I remember, long before I ever imagined I would become a Member of this House, an occasion when the late Keir Hardie raised the question of unemployment, and had no one to back him at all. Now we find we have strong competitors on the other side as to who is to find a solution for unemployment. Competition is of no use in this question; we think that co-operation is the means that ought to be employed, and we think that the whole question of the organisation of industry will require to be taken into consideration. In our Bill we are only proposing the machinery. It is not a perfect Bill, but neither could anyone on the other side produce a perfect Bill. We are not perfect men, nor are hon. Members opposite, but we at least can do our best to serve the interests of the country of which we are all members. I have pleasure in seconding the Bill, and I hope it will meet with the support of a majority in this House which will enable the machinery to be set in motion and something to be done.

This Bill has had the advantage of very temperate, forceful and persuasive advocacy from the Mover and the Seconder. In fact, I like their speeches better than I like their Bill. I wish they had prepared their speeches first, and then handed those speeches to the draftsman and asked him to prepare a Bill which was in accordance with them, because, if I may respectfully say so—and I say so after having read the Bill very carefully several times over— their Bill does not carry out the intention which they have expressed in their speeches. Their speeches, if I may respectfully say so, were admirable and quite suited to the demands of the occasion, but this Bill does not in the least carry out the intention which they set out. I should like to ask anyone who is here supporting the Bill to point out a single thing which can be done under this Bill and which could not be done under the Bills which have been referred to already. As far as I can see, it is simply making the Cabinet Committee on Unemployment statutory, but with this difference, that it leaves out the Treasury. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not on it—

indicated dissent.

If the hon. Member can point out where it is, I must have a different copy of the Bill.

It provides that the consent of the Treasury shall be required.

The consent of the Treasury, of course, you must get in any circumstances, but what I am pointing out is that the Committee dealing with the problem does not contain a representative of the Treasury, and it ought to. There has never been a Cabinet Committee on Unemployment that I know of from which the Treasury was omitted. I only point to that as a matter of detail; the criticism I make is that it is simply making a statutory body out of a Cabinet Committee and giving it power to act. I do not object to it because it is a novel principle, but because it is a vicious prin- ciple. The Cabinet Committees have the necessary elasticity with regard to powers, because their powers are practically unlimited as far as executive matters are concerned, and they have unlimited powers to recommend to Parliament the increase of those powers. The question of elasticity in regard to the constitution of such a body is also very important. You may have one Sub-Committee which is an admirable one for the examination of one purpose, and a very bad one for the examination of another. Take the case of a Minister without Portfolio. He is generally appointed because he has more time to attend to Committees of this kind. That is the new idea of the Minister without Portfolio, and it is a very good idea. One of the difficulties of a Cabinet Committee, as anyone knows who has been serving in a Cabinet, is that the work of a Minister's own Department is so heavy and so insistent that there is really no time to read up the necessary papers and suggestions and tables to enable him to master something which applies to another Department. That is not met by this proposal. There might be a Committee which was extra, outside the Cabinet, to co-ordinate, to investigate, to study and to survey, to sit permanently with a view to considering the whole problem of trade and employment and the development of the resources of this country—a permanent body to do nothing else—and then to recommend to the Cabinet; but the Cabinet is the only body that can really undertake the responsibility of making the kind of recommendations which it is possible to make for this purpose.

Let me appeal to the experience of my right hon. Friend. Is there anything they can do under this Bill for unemployment which their Cabinet Committee on unemployment could not have done? Not a thing. All that is done is that you give them a common seal for their decisions. The trouble was not that they had no common seal for their decisions, but that they had no decisions to which they could append a common seal. That is the difficulty. It is the difficulty of decision, and not of constituting a rigid board which has full force without reference to the Cabinet and which has only to go and get the sanction of the Treasury. That is not what is wanted. I will read a summary of the Act of 1909. It is simply a machinery to put into operation a series of Acts of Parliament for all of which I was responsible. What is there in this Act of Parliament which goes beyond the words of the 1909 Act with regard to road development? In the first part it gives power to the Treasury, on the recommendation of the Development Commission, to make advances for aiding and developing agriculture and rural industries by promoting scientific research in agriculture and agricultural education, co-operation, small holdings and other means, forestry, including the purchase and planting of land, reclamation and drainage of land, the general improvement of rural transport, including the making of light railways, the construction and improvement of harbours and inland navigations and the development and improvement of fisheries. Then in the second part of it there is full power, not merely to repair and widen old roads, but to construct new ones, with the right to acquire the land, as the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out, on both sides at the agricultural value. Is there anything in this Bill that goes beyond that? I should like someone who follows me to point it out.

The hon. Member apologised for the amount. On the contrary he need not be so modest. The Minister of Transport pointed out yesterday that under this very Act which they are amending £16,000,000 was given last year from the Treasury towards new roads and the widening of old ones and general repairs, and all to solve the problem of unemployment. Take the Housing Act of the late Government, or its predecessor, or the Government before that. It is infinitely more than £10,000,000. Take land settlement. My complaint is that first of all you are putting up a Board where everyone knows we have too many Boards already, and it is unnecessary. It is a rigid, inelastic one. It is the Cabinet that ought to take this thing in hand. It is right to have a body to advise them. The late Government had someone to advise them on electricity, and it would be folly for them not to call in advisers from outside. But they ought to be free to pick and choose their advisers according to what they think for the moment as to who would be best adapted for the purpose, adding here and taking away there. A man may be a very good adviser to-day and a very bad one next year. We had experience of that last year, and we have had a change for the better since then. We are all very good at advice, but when we have to operate we begin to realise the difficulties. [ Interruption. ] I certainly remember it. It is only a year ago. Therefore I do not think this is adequate to what was said by the Mover and Seconder. I agree with them that it is a serious situation. I agree with them that it requires something on a very considerable scale. This is the fifth year of unemployment and, compared with last year, there is an increase of 150,000, in spite of the fact that there has been a good deal of what I might call tightening. Someone told me the other day that 30,000 had been knocked off by some process that I do not propose to examine. If those had been added it would be an increase of 180,000 compared with last year.

No one could pretend who has his eye on the prospects that it is not a serious situation that has to be dealt with, and it is right that there should be a discussion of the subject in the House of Commons and proposals put forward, as this has been, in absolute good faith with a view to contributing to a solution. But there ought to be a very thorough survey of the whole situation. A time of unemployment has its great disadvantages, as everyone knows, but there is also an advantage It is just what a good strong firm would do which had adequate reserves. If trade were bad it would begin to look round and see whether it could not improve its machinery, so that by the time trade improved it could pick up with advantage, and resume its task with greater efficiency than it possibly could in a time of great business, when it could not. make changes. At present you have 1,250,000 men unemployed, the vast majority of them excellent workmen. There is always a certain number who are out of employment whatever the prosperity of the country may be, but these are about the best workmen in the whole land. They are there available and anxious to work. It is no use having great schemes of reconstruction when trade improves. You need then your reserves of labour in order to cope with the ordinary demands of industry, and the time for reconstruction, for re-equip- ment, for surveying the whole situation and seeing what are the defects and what can be done, is a time of this kind. There ought to be no common seals for Cabinet Committees, but there ought to be a body of that sort sitting permanently—and to that extent I am with the principle of the Bill —to survey the whole situation, so that first of all we should be able to compete for such trade as there is on better terms, and in the second place, when trade is restored, we should get our fair share of it.

But I have another objection to this mode of proceeding. I listened to the two hon. Members with very great care. There was not a single proposal they put forward in their speeches which could be dealt with in the slightest degree by £10,000,000. More than that, there was not one of them that did not involve great questions of principle, and great questions of principle must be decided by a Cabinet and not by a committee from which you exclude some of the most important members of the Cabinet, because they are to act without reference to the Cabinet. One of the difficulties with regard to roads is that you have £16,000,000 when you really ought to be doing it on an infinitely greater scale. You will not solve the housing problem in the great cities without constructing very considerable arterial roads on a much greater scale than we are doing at present. You cannot do that unless you put into operation the principle of the Development Act, 1909, and make the values which are created by these arterial roads subject to tribute for the purpose of extending them. That is a matter of principle, that is not a matter which a Committee with a common seal could settle. A common seal does not help them to settle that. The Cabinet Committee would examine it and place it before the Cabinet as a whole. That is the present system.

Both my hon. Friends devoted a good deal of attention, and rightly so, to the question of the land. That is vital. What happened in 1815? I am sorry to have to refer to this, but I am firmly convinced that this is at the very root of the problem of providing employment for our surplus population. There is one survey which I should like to see undertaken; it is a very difficult one to make, and that is a survey of the extent to which we can hope in future to provide employment for our people out of our export and foreign business. Are the Government quite convinced that in future, looking at what is going to happen, that we can depend to the same extent upon our foreign business as we have in the past? We have depended upon foreign trade more than any other country in the world. There is no country in the world that has, I will not say entirely, but to such an extent depended for the very life of its population upon trading with countries across the seas. It is a very perilous position to be in That is one of the questions that ought to be examined: the extent to which in future we can hope to depend for 100 per cent. employment upon our foreign trade. If we cannot, then we must look to our resources at home, and to our resources in the Empire, as my hon. Friend very well stated in his speech.

In 1815 there was a great displacement of population. The hon. Member who spoke last referred to that. It was inevitable, as the result of the cessation of the war conditions. You could not probably have kept the whole of that population on the land or have kept up, without exceptional prices, the yield which you had at that date. What was the result? The population finding a new development in the industrial areas flocked there. There was no vision and there was no pre-vision. There was no preparation. There was no thinking out of the problem. What was the result? The hideous industrial civilisation which sprang up at that date, from which we are suffering to this very hour. The people were huddled there, crowded into barracks which are still there. Some of the worst industrial conditions are in the mining villages, and they are largely attributable to the conditions which arose after the Napoleonic wars. We ought not to be in that position now. Is it not possible that it may be necessary in the survey to provide for the flow of the population which came from the land to the industrial areas to go back again very largely to the land?

There is no country in Europe with a soil like ours which has so small a proportion of people settled on the land. I am not speaking of Russia and the countries which are not highly developed, but I am speaking of Western Europe. There is no country in Western Europe which yields as little from the soil. We are paying £375,000,000 every year for produce which this country is capable of producing. I do not say that the whole of that produce, but a very large proportion of it, could be produced here, if you would only examine what is done in other countries, where the condition of the peasantry is very much better than it is in this country. Those are questions which you cannot settle by a Committee of the kind suggested: a rigid Committee with its common seal. You are not going to settle it with £10,000,000.

I was one of those who thought it was a mistake that the surplus of £100,000,000 that we had two years ago and the £50,000,000 which we had afterwards should have been put into the Sinking Fund. There is no business enterprise in this country that would have done that. They would have put it into reserve for developments, in order to strengthen, increase and improve their property, especially if they had difficulties to face. We ought to have done that. It would have made a very great difference. Take the question raised so effectively the other day, the question of afforestation. That is a question of vast moment in regard to the produce of this country and the exchanges of this country. We are spending £60,000,000 every year upon timber, a very considerable proportion of which could have been produced here. Take the question, if you like, of the extent to which industry should be subsidised. All these are questions of principle. I am all for co-ordinating efforts. It ought to be done, but I agree that it has not been done systematically.

What did you do when you were in office?

I do not mind answering that question, so long as it is not bullied at me. I did my best to keep you (Mr. Kirkwood) quiet, but I did not succeed. I will answer the question if the hon. Gentleman will allow me, but he must not interrupt me until I have answered it. If he will take the trouble to read the Bill which he is so noisily supporting, he will find that all the Bills which appear in it are Bills which I proposed and carried through this House. The £16,000,000 for unemployment, which is paid every year under the Road Board, is a result of a proposal which I put forward in 1909 and carried through, and afterwards extended in 1920–21. The Trade Facilities Act, which is only to be altered in respect of machinery, as my hon. Friend who moved the Second Reading of the Bill says, was also carried through by me in 1920–21. Every Bill which he himself only wants a little more machinery to carry out is a Bill which I proposed. I hope the hon. Member will have the decency to apologise, after his interruption.

If I get an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, I will reply to the right hon. Gentleman.

If I may respectfully say so, that seems to me a better way of doing it than by these ejaculations. As far as the principle of co-ordination of effort is concerned I am all for it, but I do hope that the House is not going to commit itself to making a Cabinet Committee a kind of a board, without reference to their colleagues—a rigid board, an unelastic board, a board upon which the Treasury is not represented, although millions of money are to be spent. I hope that we shall earnestly support the appeal made by the two hon. Members that the House shall take into consideration the further development of our national resources.

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, whilst recognising that in a time of widespread and acute industrial distress the provision of work by the State is within limits preferable to the payment of unemployment benefit, nevertheless declines to gives a Second Reading to a Bill which affords no real solution to the problem of unemployment, and which, by placing a new burden of £10,000,000 a year on the tax-papers of this country, will still further handicap our industrial revival."

I should like to emphasise what has been said by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), that both the Mover and Seconder of the Bill spoke with commendable moderation and are clearly trying their best to solve a national problem which is of interest to us all. At the same time, I cannot help feeling that the proposals which they advocate are not going to help us in the least. They clearly represent the reasoned judgment of the leaders on the other side. They represent the propositions that were put forward in the Election address of the late President of the Board of Trade in 1923. This, I suppose, is the rabbit which has at last emerged from the hat. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] A stale joke, I admit.

"Wretchedly stale!"

Not as stale as the rabbit.

Still it is the actual fact. This is the reasoned opinion of the party opposite, judging by the backers of the Bill. They propose to set up this Board. They hope by setting up this Board and endowing it with a certain sum of money, which I think is a very moderate sum, for what is £10,000,000, as the right hon. Gentleman opposite said, for the purposes for which this money is required—that they will be able to bring about a consistent and steady policy with regard to finding a solution for the unemployment problem. I think that the truth is very different from that. The very make-up of this Board, the way in which it is formed as a kind of Cabinet Committee, means that it must represent the party and the policy of the party in power for the time being. Therefore the policy will differ, and must differ, with the policy of the particular Government.

If the Board is brought into existence, you are only appointing a Board with a common seal—that is the only distinction between it and any other Cabinet Committee—which will carry out the policy of the Government of the day. It is clear that the policy of this Government and the policy of the late Labour Government or of any future Labour Government or even a Liberal Government will not be the same. We all hold our views on the remedy for unemployment. Some of us think that it can be cured one way and some another. I gather from the remarks of the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. D. Graham) that he thinks that if we were to nationalise the coal trade it would be a very sound proposition and that unemployment would immediately disappear from that industry I do not think so. I have always believed that the success or failure of an industry depends on the power of that industry to be self-supporting. I do not believe that you would solve the problem of unemployment in the mining industry by nationalising that industry. If you set up a Board and the policy of that Board is to be consistent it cannot be the Board proposed under this Bill. It must be the kind of a Board which is advocated or recommended by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down (Mr. Lloyd George). He has been responsible for the formation of a great number of Boards—more than he could mention now without thinking very deeply. All the Acts of Parliaments which are referred to in this Bill are his creations, and a great many of them have produced Boards. I could not gather from what he said to-day whether he is in favour of a new Board or not.

indicated dissent.

The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, so I dare say that he is not. I feel sure that no man on this side of the House is in favour of creating a new Board because we know that it is only a camouflage body to conceal the Minister of Labour, who is the representative of the Government in matters affecting unemployment. The Board will only be a costly addition to the numerous Boards existing. I am opposed to the creation of this new Board even for the purpose of camouflaging the Ministry of Labour. I do not think that it would carry out a consistent policy of finding means to prevent unemployment. It would merely be endowing unemployment with an additional £10,000,000 a year and this would be a rising figure. No Board would ever be content with £10,000,000. It would demand more and more money from the public purse. Increased expenditure would be the sole result of the passing of this Bill.

I do not want hon. Members opposite to suppose that I am in any way unaware of the existing conditions which prevail in some of our great industries. Nobody is, who knows anything about the industry in which I am most immediately concerned—the mining industry. I know what the condition of things is in the County Durham and in a good many other parts of the country and I am as desirous as any Member opposite of bringing about better conditions in that industry, but at the same time I do realise that we cannot do this simply by devoting money to unemployment funds or by setting aside a definite sum of money to be placed in the hands of a Board for the purpose of trying to find some means for the solution of unemployment when it comes. We have to bring about an improvement of trade on the lines advocated by the Prime Minister; it can only be done in that way. I am glad to see that the Miners' Federation yesterday came to the decision to go on trying to negotiate to bring about a better understanding between those engaged in the work. Peace in industry is the first thing required for restoring trade. We are, of course, face to face at present with a situation unexampled in a certain sense in the history of this country. It is due to the War. It is a matter of war conditions. When my hon. Friend opposite talked about shrinking markets all over the world and decreasing consumption I could not understand why he took such a gloomy view of the situation. We are face to face with a situation which is transient, but with all classes of the country pulling together and doing their best in the common interest I am certain that our trade will revive.

We have to recapture our foreign markets and to make new markets, and we can only do this by some means of mutual self-help. On this side of the House we are only too anxious to bring about that state of feeling. I have been a student of social and economic conditions in this country all my life. I must plead guilty to the fact that I was educated at Oxford. By some apparently such an education is now considered a misfortune. From my earliest days when I began to look into the history of my country I came to the conclusion that whatever was good enough for our fathers was not good enough for us. But as I have grown older I have learnt that it is the duty of statesmen to think more if the future than of the present. We have to be perfectly sure that the things we do now must be in the interests of those who come after us. I do not believe that if we act properly now our people should have to face always this unexampled state of unemployment. It is only in certain trades that conditions are so bad to-day. It is, I admit, in those trades that are the staple trades of the country. At the same time this country is very much alive, and I have a profound belief in the ability, energy and adaptability of our leaders of industry, and in the keenness, hardworking qualities and energy of our working-class population. I am certain that if we can get together the result will be a great improvement.

If it be true that we have reached in this country a stage where we can no longer support our population, then there is an opening for us all. When I hear hon. Members opposite talk about the hundreds of thousands of acres in this country that are ready to be developed, when I hear them saying that they wish the people to go back from the towns to the country, I agree most heartily, But I know that we are not likely to get our industrial population back to the country by offering them the land which is said to be available for cultivation. I wish that I thought we could do so. I do know, however, that all over the world there are vast tracts of country where our people can go, where they will live under the same rule as in this country, where they will speak the same language and meet the same kind of people. We can develop our Empire, and that is what we ought to do. That is why I regret so profoundly the attitude which I have found adopted in so many parts of the industrial community, and which was expressed only the other day in this House by an hon. Member who, in unmistakably earnest words, told us how bitterly he felt it was wrong that a man should be obliged, because he could not find work here, to go to the Colonies to find it.

There is no work there.

That is a matter of opinion. Work could be found there, if we knew how to develop it. One of the objects of this Bill is to develop our Empire. That is an object which we all have in view. I welcomed the words of the right hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Webb) in this House the other day —words which I and other hon. Members have used on platforms in the country. The right hon. Gentleman said that he wanted it to be just as possible, just as easy, and just as natural for a man to go from here to Australia or New Zealand as it is for a man to go from Cornwall to Durham, to find work. That is unanswerably right. If we cannot support ourselves in this country—I do not believe that we are unable to do so—if we cannot find occupation and food for our population here, we have the world to go to, and that is the form of development and emigration which I desire. There, again, we shall have the same objections raised to what I am saying now as were raised by some hon. Members opposite in the House the other day. Hon. Members say that they object to being forced to leave the country for economic causes. Probably many hon. Members opposite are students of history. I can think of no really great emigration in the past that has been due to any other causes. Some may go abroad for the sake of adventure, but the majority of people only leave their home because they can no longer find a living there. Most great migrations have been due to economic causes. We have the singular advantage of not having to go to the wilds, but to places where we can find our own countrymen, our own relations in many cases, and establish a new England and a greater England over the seas. I object to this Bill for the reasons which I have given. The Bill cannot possibly carry out the objects it has in view. It does not suggest anything that cannot be done under the existing system. It merely creates a new Board. I am not a bureaucrat. The right hon. Gentleman who has just left the House is a bureaucrat. He likes Boards; he has covered this country with Boards, and half our troubles to-day are due to the expensive machinery set up throughout the country. If we had a less costly administration, if we could reduce our Boards and Ministries and get back to the conditions before the War, we could in many ways help the present economic position better than by increasing our responsibilities.

I beg to Second the Amendment.

As I listened to the Seconder of the Motion for the Second Reading, I thought I had made a mistake, and that he was bringing in a Bill for the nationalisation of mines. I was hoping that he, with his knowledge, would give us the instances of co-operation between employers and employed in the mining industry that are to be found all over the country, with particular reference to the colliery at Vauxhall. I have given this subject of unemployment very long and careful consideration, and I have read this Bill. If I thought for a moment that there was the slightest possibility of relieving or preventing unemployment by this Bill, I should be supporting instead of opposing it. Very little has been said so far on the actual bearing of the Bill, and how it will help to solve the problem before us. I think it only right that the House should know a little about the Bill. As far as I can gather, it does not relieve the present unemployment crisis, but is a Bill to anticipate and prevent future unemployment. The wording of the Bill lends colour to that view. The Bill's supporters desire to maintain a level of employment. There is no definite and concrete suggestion in the Bill, and one would hardly expect it. But the Board which is constituted under the Bill is empowered to enforce suggestions from local authorities to put work in hand. All of this machinery is in operation today, and there is very little that is new in the Bill, except the Common Seal and the £10,000,000 of money. There is other money available, if the Cabinet Committee on unemployment decided to launch out in any other direction.

I recollect that in 1923 there was another Bill of this name. I went to the Vote Office to get a copy. It was not obtainable there, and I had to pay 6d. for it elsewhere. I have read this Bill and the 1923 Bill. I find that the Preambles of the two Bills are identical. Apart from that similarity, there is a very great difference between the two Bills. The Bill now before us is only half the size of the 1923 Bill. In a number of cases the words in the Clauses of both Bills are almost identical. The Bill of 1923 was undoubtedly a bad Bill. It had certain administrative features which are eliminated from the present Bill. The present Bill is exceedingly flabby and weak. Let us see what has been omitted from the 1923 Bill in the Bill now before us. The whole of Clause 5, which empowers compulsory order to use employment exchanges, has been left out; the transfer of powers to Board of Trade and Home Office has been taken out; the transfer of powers and statistical inquiry, taken out; transfer of powers as to emigration and immigration, taken out; certain provisions for the maintenance and training of unemployed persons, taken out; provision for dependants of unemployed persons taken out; local employment committees, taken out; council to prevent unemployment as for as practicable, taken out. Another thing that I understood was a principle plank in the Labour party platform, work or maintenance, is not in this Bill. Probably they have amended their views in the light of later experience.

In 1922, during the period when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was Prime Minister, the Second Reading of a similar Bill was moved by the hon. Member for Pontypool (Mr. T. Griffiths), and I can imagine his burning eloquence when he said that Bill would give an opportunity of "ushering in a new world," and that "Heaven and earth would look upon the work of the House in that Bill." It seems a very strange thing that those words were used in 1922, but when the Labour party came into office in 1924 they did not attempt to usher in this new world as one of their first Measures. As a matter of fact, they entirely forgot that Bill, and nothing was heard of it. Can it he that they had the-altruistic idea that they would like a Conservative Government to have the credit for this beneficent piece of legislation? It would have been a very fine effort on the part of the Labour party to have passed an Act of Parliament to prevent unemployment, but they quietly forgot about the proposal until it was resuscitated in this Bill. The truth of the matter is that during their nine months of office the Labour party gained considerable experience, which has caused a modification of their views on a number of these subjects.

There are many other differences between this Bill and the previous Bill which are noteworthy. In the 1923 Bill the Treasury was empowered to pay all the cost in excess of a penny rate, of finding work for the unemployed. In the present Bill the local authorities are forced to find the money for all work, and if they fail to do the work the board is entitled to carry out the work for them, and recover the money from the local authority through the civil law. A curious position would arise in Poplar if a provision of that sort existed. The board might decide that relief works should be started to take the form of erecting steel houses which could be let to people at economic rents.

You would have to find some land in Poplar first.

They might decide to pull down some of the slums which exist in Poplar. That would be a very commendable thing, and I am sure the Opposition would agree to it. Assuming they decided to pull down slums in Poplar—

Where would you put the people when you had pulled down the slums?

In the houses that would be put up in place of the slums.

How can you pull down the houses until you find somewhere for the people to go?

Send them up in aeroplanes until the new houses are ready.

That is a very wise suggestion. I am dealing with the principle of the Bill, and I only mentioned Poplar because I knew it would interest the hon. Member opposite. I wonder how the borough of Poplar would feel if they were forced to carry out work of this character?

We do not require to be forced.

If the local authority would not be forced, the Board themselves could carry out the work and charge Poplar with the cost, and yet I see the hon. Member for Poplar (Mr. March) supports this Bill.

Yes I do.

1.0 P.M.

I recollect that towards the end of 1922 there was a great agitation up and down the country on behalf of the unemployed, and protest meetings were held everywhere, and in this House endeavours were made to prolong the sittings because the unemployed problem had not been solved, although Mr. Bonar Law's Government had only been a very short time in office. I dare say that to-day the number of unemployed is the same as it was at that time. Since then, however, the Labour party has gained some experience on the subject, and we do not find that they are burning to do the extravagant things which they formerly suggested. The truth is the present Bill is no more than a sham or a shell full of platitudinous generalities and undigested economics. It would be just as easy to promote a Bill for the prevention of poverty which would provide against fluctuations of the flow of money. This Bill to prevent unemployment deals almost entirely with an endeavour to prevent fluctuations in labour and has no recognition of the real facts or of the causes of the existing unemployment. Unemployment is directly caused through lack of work, and lack of work is caused by our trades and industries being unable to carry on because there is not the same number of purchasers for our goods. When we have dealt with the problem of improving our trade, that will prevent or relieve unemployment. Comparing the Bill of 1923 with the Bill of to-day the present Measure can only be described as a lifeless limb from the mutiliated body of a parent who has lain for two years in the political cemetery at Eccleston Square.

We have just listened to an extraordinary speech from the hon. Member for Newport (Mr. Clarry), finishing with a peroration which, I think, will become a classic and will be enshrined in a well-bound volume with the golden title "How not to say things." The best thing I can do for the hon. Member is to devote a few minutes to an explanation of the Bill, as apparently its meaning has escaped his eagle eye. What is the present position of affairs? I am not going to make a debating speech. If I wished to do so there is ample opportunity. The fact that "stability" has meant an enormously increased unemployment list today compared with the same time last year could easily be made a debating point. I could easily point out that instead of stability we have got senility, but that, of course, would be to enter into a political party discussion, and I have not the slightest intention nor the slightest desire to do so. The problem is too serious to be made a shuttlecock in party politics, and however I may be tempted to get a little of my own back, I must resist the temptation and try to deal with this subject as its gravity deserves.

At the present time the position is this. The Minister of Labour is apparently held responsible in this House for the policy of the Government so far as that policy is concerned with the taking of exceptional measures for the reduction of unemployment. The Minister of Labour has not power to initiate or carry out a single scheme. In fact in his own Department he has not even got the power to provide himself with proper premises for the work he has to do. Yet the House expects him to be responsible for dealing with the question of unemployment. This Bill sets out deliberately to provide a method of dealing with exceptional unemployment by which the Minister of Labour shall be directly responsible to the House for the policy and shall have some power, at any rate, in dealing with the question for which he is held responsible in this House. I think the House will agree that it is essential that there should be someone to whom the House can turn and say: "It is your business to deal with this matter. You have the power, and we must hold you responsible if your powers have not been exercised." It is with a view to providing a body that shall be directly responsible to Parliament, and that shall have distinctly defined functions, that this proposal has been made. We propose to group together the Departments that have the power to make and carry through schemes. We propose to give them powers which they do not now possess, and not only so, but to give them that without which powers are absolutely useless. We propose to give them funds to deal with in exceptional circumstances, so that they may provide work.

I notice that the hon. Member for Mossley (Mr. A. Hopkinson) has a pleasing smile upon his countenance. His position in this House is perfectly plain. He does not pretend that any methods of this kind are good at all. We understand that his policy is clear cut and distinct, and, whether we agree with it or not, he is always the same and never varies. But the majority of people in this House are inclined to take special steps to deal with special emergencies in special ways, and it is to the great majority of the House that I am now addressing myself. I have tried to give the reason why we believe that there ought to be this Board. The Minister of Labour should be at the head of it because he, in his Department, has to deal with the question of labour from more angles than any other Minister. His function as the head of the great insurance scheme alone is a factor that makes it peculiarly fitting that he should be the responsible head of any Department that is dealing with unemployment. His Employment Exchanges, his functions as a conciliator in trade disputes—these are things that entitle him, more than any other Minister, to come to the head of the new Board. What do we intend to be the powers of the Board? It has been contended during the Debate that the powers are not wide enough, but I think a careful reading of the Bill will relieve any anxiety on that score, because the power of dealing with expenditure in the United Kingdom, or in any part of the British Empire, or in any Dominion or Colony is wide enough in all conscience, and a power that gives the right to the Board to deal with the utilisation and development of land, of capital undertakings, of transport, mines, and electrical undertakings, is certainly not a power that is too strictly limited in any way.

It is the intention of the Bill gradually to build up a fund at the disposal of the Board that can be used quickly in times of emergency. The Government machine, as some of us have found out, moves very slowly indeed. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) spoke of Ministers having so much work to do that they could not find any time to deal with the work of this Board. Exactly; that is the position of affairs. Ministers have so much to do that there is no real co-ordination in schemes for the development of the country and for providing work, and this is an attempt to give them something to which they can devote their attention, and something for which Parliament can hold them responsible, because one of the duties of the Board will be to present an Annual Report to Parliament as to. the work that has been done, and then we can compare the work that has been done with the duties as laid down in the Bill. Nothing of that kind exists at the moment, and the fact that, after the seven months of office of the present Government, there is so much doubt as to what has been done is the clearest possible proof of the desirability of having an Annual Report, under any Government whatever, saying what has been done in a matter so important as unemployment.

The question of local authorities is one of importance. Assuming that there is a tremendously important road scheme, and you have, what is quite possible at the present time, one local authority blocking the whole scheme by its action, there needs to be somebody who can take hold of the case and, if necessary, see that the scheme is carried through, even if there be a recalcitrant authority in one part of the scheme's operation. I do not apologise for that Clause in any way. I think it is essential that in matters of national interest there should be a super-authority that can prevent any small authority from blocking a great national scheme. With regard to the money, the £10,000,000 has been said to be far too little for the purpose by the hon. and gallant Member who moved the rejection of the Bill on the ground that we could not afford to spend the £10,000,000.

I did not say that. I said that you would find it far too little for the purpose, and my suggestion was that you fixed upon a sum, which was not nearly enough to do anything. It might in the long run barely pay your Board!

I am certain now that the hon. and gallant Member has not read the Bill, for, if he had, he would know that the Board would not cost £10,000,000. My note certainly was that we were criticised because the amount was too small, and that the Amendment was that we could not afford to spend anything at all, but I do not want to get into any debating points. I simply want to point out what the intentions of the Bill are and what we desire to do. We had a criticism, and, if I may say so, a candid criticism, from the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, who demanded what we could do by this Bill that cannot be done under the powers that we have already. I think the best answer to that is that, if it be possible to do what we suggest under the powers that we already have, why has it not been done? That is the whole point. I think it has not been done, because there has not been the necessary co-ordination, and because there have not been any funds at the disposal of any Board of this kind, which at the same time can concentrate and co-ordinate work and have the power to enter into expenditure. I think it is evident that that is the reason why these things have not been done.

It is said that a great objection is that there is no Treasury representative on the Board. Frankly, I am not very much troubled, providing the Board has the funds at its disposal, whether there be or be not a Treasury representative. What I do object to is the dead hand of the Treasury resting on any proposal, and the decision resting with the Treasury as to what should be done or what should not be done. The Treasury, by tradition and by training, is entrusted with the task of seeing that Departments do not spend anything. This proposal is intended to give this Department the power of spending for the purpose of national development and for any useful scheme that can be produced. This, after all, is a Committee point. If in Committee anybody should desire to add a representative of the Treasury without interfering with the Board having the funds at its disposal, I do not think any great difficulty would be found in getting a representative of the Treasury placed on the Board.

Then we were told the Bill contained a vicious principle—vicious because it was, as it were, superseding the Cabinet. No Board of any kind can ever supersede the Cabinet. The Cabinet will always be master whatever Board you set up. It would be better, said the right hon. Gentleman, if some Minister, without portfolio, perhaps, undertook this work, but this Committee, after all, will consist of the most important members of the Cabinet, and I fail to see any vicious principle. We were told that members of the Cabinet were so overcrowded with work that they simply could not afford time to serve on a Board of this description. But what more time would be required than is needed by committees now set up, and the alternative of sending the whole matter to the Cabinet, which was what the right hon. Gentleman suggested, seems to me to be jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire, because if these Ministers have no time to devote to a Board which is dealing with subjects within the purview of their own Department, how is the whole Cabinet to find the time that these individuals cannot give? It seems to me that that criticism is not a very sound one to apply to the Bill.

We were told about the millions spent from the Road Fund. I have heard about this Road Fund before. The Road Fund, in reality, is not what I should call Treasury money at all. It is money collected from various road-users in order to spend on the roads that these road-users have destroyed. As a matter of fact, to make a virtue of spending Road Fund money on roads, and then to call it work for the reduction of unemployment, seems to me to be making a claim that is not at all justified. This money is definitely there for the purpose of making roads and repairing roads. It is definitely paid by road-users, because of the use they make of roads, and ought not to be considered for a moment as a reduction of unemployment, and we ought not to take a great deal of credit for using it for the purpose for which it was devised. I know the position so far as the official figures of unemployment are concerned. It was claimed that, as compared with this time last year, there was a, difference of about 180,000 on the wrong side, that is, the Government have succeeded by very careful, very intelligent, and very determined efforts, in increasing the number of unemployed. I know that that 180,000 is not correct. I know the figures are not comparable. But unemployment is much greater than at this time last year.

I do not want, as I say, to make debating points, and I do not want for a moment to accuse the Government of laxity or anything else. That can come in another time, When the Adjournment is moved. I only want to call attention to the fact that these figures are there, and it is no use our attempting to sit down and leave them as they are, in the hope that in some way, and by some stroke of good fortune, we shall get in the immediate future any great reduction. Whatever we do, I am afraid, unless there be more peace in the world, there will be a very considerable amount of unemployment in this country for some years to come. We were told by the right hon. Gentleman that this was the time for a real survey. We want the survey to be made. It is because we want this survey to be made that we put in the Clause that the Minister, on behalf of the Board, must present a report every year, so that the nation may know exactly where it stands. Precisely for the reason given by the right hon. Gentleman, we wish the Board to be entrusted with these powers. We are also told that we cannot any longer depend on foreign trade for 100 per cent. employment in this country. I know, and I have said repeatedly, from that side of the House, exactly what the right hon. Gentleman averred, that the only way in the present state of society to get employment in this country is by developing our foreign trade, and, of course, Empire trade. We all know that, but, in the meantime, you cannot let a million and a quarter people continually remain unemployed if there is a national development you can undertake which, at the same time, will enrich the country, and give these people wages instead of unemployment benefit.

If this Board were in existence, with the powers and the money we intend it should have, it could undertake the great scheme of electrical development that we were arranging, and which, in my opinion, would immensely enrich the country's possibilities, both industrial and agricultural, and, at the same time, give employment to a very large number of skilled men. At present there is a state almost of chaos. There is nobody to grip things together. There is nobody who can really be held responsible. There is nobody who can get ahead with the work, and, because we are very very anxious indeed that these things should be done, we have proposed machinery, which, we believe, will be far more effective for doing this than any machinery we now have. I am one of those who believe enormous developments are possible in the shape of afforestation, but, at the present time, there is nobody, really, whom the House can directly hold responsible. There are lands, particularly in Scotland, where every authority I know has said it is not only possible and practicable, but actually as a financial consideration sound, to plant trees. This Board would have the power to do it, and they would be responsible directly to Parliament under the terms of the Bill.

I rose for the purpose, not of making a debating speech at all, but of making a speech showing what were the intentions of the Bill. Frankly, what we desire to do is to set up a machine which will be known by Parliament, and to put the Labour Minister in a position in which he can be held responsible, because he will have the power and the funds to deal with any exceptional circumstances, so that, wherever possible, useful work can be found, instead of insurance benefit, and so that the development, not only of our own country, but of our Colonies may be secured. For the latter, I think we shall, at any rate, find support from the opposite benches. In our opinion it is just as essential to develop our Colonies, if that aids our people at home, as it is to develop this country, so we shall get the support of the hon. Members opposite. I ask them not to be carried away by any party considerations, but to treat this Bill as a serious proposal, intended, not on party lines at all, but intended seriously as a Measure which will help to prevent what undoubtedly has existed up to the present time—a kind of chaos in our arrangements, and a lack of initiative and energy in carrying out schemes which would not only enrich our country, but would keep our people where they ought to be kept, working for wages at their trades, and in a reasonable way, and not deteriorating. There is, in conclusion, no greater danger than the danger of idleness. It does not matter what position in society a man may be, idleness is a deteriorating factor. So far as we on these benches are concerned, we shall help in every possible way to provide work for every man of whatever class, and particularly for those who desire it, and are deteriorating more rapidly than they ought to do.

I venture to ask that kindly indulgence which the House extends to the new Member on his first taking part in its Debates. There is no question, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, which I think is more vital than the question which we have before us to-day. There is, I am positive, no question upon which all parties in this House are more deeply desirous, or determined, than upon this: finding the best solution, getting to the roots, of this great evil of unemployment. When I took up this Bill and noticed its title was "a Bill to make provision for the prevention of Unemployment," I had hopes that some great light would be thrown as to how this great difficulty was to be tackled. I made a close examination of the Bill. It left me with a feeling of disappointment. So far from being a Bill to prevent unemployment, the contents of the Bill are directed to finding further palliative measures to deal with unemployment, and to finding work for men in other industries which they cannot find in their own. I fear that this Bill has missed the whole fundamental root of the problem. I submit that the only real way to settle the unemployment evil in this country, the only way to restore employment, is by finding some means of increasing the prosperity of our great industries. If one might attempt to enumerate briefly what are the most important points required now to restore prosperity to industry, I think one might put them under the heads as follow.

First of all, there is the necessity of decreasing the burden of taxation on industry; of keeping the wheels of industry revolving instead of rusting; of obtaining orders for our goods and markets for the sale of those goods; and of reducing the cost of production. When I examined this Bill to see what I could find in its contents designed to deal with any one of the objects which I have outlined, I could not find one single suggestion in this Bill that attempted to deal with any of those particular points which go to the root of the whole problem— that is a solution of the unemployment question of the present day. Take the first point, that of decreasing the burden of taxation on industry. By this Bill it is suggested that an increased burden of £10,000,000 should be placed on the taxation of the country. I think the Mover of the Bill suggested that that amount was nothing like sufficient, and he expressed the feeling that if the Bill were passed that amount might shortly have to be increased. Instead of dealing with and restoring life into our industries and keeping the work going fully ahead, the Bill is a Measure to find work on unproductive instead of productive schemes. Take Clause 4, Sub-section (4). Note the remarkable power which is given to the Board over the local authorities. Where the latter cannot find a scheme of their own on which to put unemployed men the Board shall have the power to go down and put into practice a scheme of its own and then charge the whole cost of that scheme on the local authorities.

I can hardly conceive of a more autocratic suggestion or one which is more likely to lead to the waste of public funds. It has been said that it is always an easy matter to make destructive criticism on any Bill, and such really is out of place unless one can show some other way, some alternative suggestions which may perhaps be better suited to meet the difficulties which I have outlined. The proposals which we have heard included a suggestion that the proposed Board should survey the whole existing situation. I think that a closer survey of what is going on at the present moment might be of considerable advantage. I should like to ask the Minister of Labour if he is giving the closest possible attention to those schemes which have been suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carmarthen Boroughs (Sir Alfred Mond)? The idea of the right hon. Gentleman is on the right lines and for this reason: that it advocates increasing the output of our own industries. This Bill is a Bill really to find employment by putting skilled men on to unskilled work, by putting mechanics on to road-making, thereby incurring the inevitable result of gradually turning the skilled into unskilled workmen. His proposal, at any rate, to find work for skilled men at their own tasks, at which they are fully skilled, is to the point.

If I might illustrate the matter, and show where I think a Bill on better lines might have been suggested, I would call the attention of the House to what is a matter of common knowledge, to what occurred some weeks ago when we lost an order for five big ships which went over the sea. I have been informed on good authority that the building of one of those ships in this country would have found employment for 4,000 men for 12 months. For the sake of argument I will take a lower figure, and allow that such a ship would find employment for 2,000 men for 12 months. The Unemployment Insurance Fund would be depleted by £94,000 a year if those men were out of work, and, further, it would lose contributions from them amounting to £8,000 a year. That means that the Unemployment Insurance Fund is losing £102,000 a year in respect of this number of men who are out of employment, and who, if the order for one of those ships had been given in this country, would be in work. The funds of the Treasury have been drawn upon to find the money to pay benefits under the Unemployment Insurance Act. I do not know exactly what is the amount due to the Treasury at the present time, but it is a large figure. I suggest that if the Treasury had made a loan of £30,000 to the lowest British tenderer for the contract for one of these ships—the firm being in other ways a satisfactory firm—while the cost of keeping that contract in this country would have been £30,000 to the Treasury, on the other hand we should have saved £102,000. After the Unemployment Insurance Fund had repaid the loan of £30,000 from the Treasury, there would still have been a saving of £72,000, and at least 2,000 men would have been in work—not mending roads or breaking stones, but in work at which they are skilled, and keeping the machinery of our great industries revolving instead of rusting.

If that policy had been applied to five ships, the saving would have been, on the lines I have shown, in the neighbourhood of £360,000. Some proposals on those lines might be pursued, I think, and would not be found absolutely impracticable as a means of helping to cure unemployment. The present Bill adds to the burden of taxation; the lines which I have suggested would lighten the load of taxation. It is, at any rate, a sound financial proposition. I lay great stress on the importance of finding work for skilled men at their own crafts; and it would be the most satisfactory way of helping to keep them in this country at the time when there is a deplorable tendency, as mentioned by the seconder of the Bill, for our skilled workmen and mechanics to go Overseas looking for the work which they cannot find in this country. I know many objections will be raised to what I have suggested. One of the first will be that I am proposing a subsidy for industry. I venture to point out that under our present system in this country we are subsidising idleness; surely it is a sounder policy to subsidise industry, more especially when it can be done, as I think I have shown, with a saving of money instead of further expenditure.

It has been said that if once we started something of this sort, we should not be able to stop. I am going to suggest that it is obvious that where a contract which otherwise would have gone abroad is kept in this country by a grant from the Treasury, the profits on that contract must be strictly limited, and that any profits over and above that limit should accrue either to the Treasury or to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. That would mean that as soon as there was a revival of industry, this system would automatically come to an end. As his profits would be limited, the employer, as soon as he saw a chance of accepting orders without assistance, would desire to rid himself of that limit upon his profits, and the subsidising of the industry which had been rendered necessary in exceptional times would automatically cease. I have suggested this as a means of economy and of finding employment for men at their own work, instead of our skilled men being left to take employment on works run by local authorities, which may or may not be desirable. The Bill before the House fails, I think, to grapple with the real root of the evil, fails to deal with any of the great difficulties which are the obstacle to restoring prosperity to the great trades of our country, which alone will be a permanent remedy for unemployment. Everything else is merely a palliative. For the reasons I have given, I find myself unable to support the Bill before the House; and I wish to thank hon. Members for the way in which they have listened to me.

I find myself in complete agreement with the sentiments of the last hon. Member as to this being the most pressing problem before the country. The gravity of the problem is admitted, and the sufferings it entails are well known. The figures given as to the number of unemployed are staggering. But this is a question that has had the least attention in this House during this Parliament. It is true that on one or two occasions—on the adjournment of the House, and for a few hours at other times —we have discussed the matter, but the magnitude of the problem deserves the most earnest and serious consideration of the Government. The present Bill is not intended to solve the problem of unemployment. It is, as has already been explained, simply a palliative to deal with the fringe of the whole question, and an attempt to minimise the tragedy, for, after all, the unemployed problem is a tragedy.

We may be taunted with the observation, as we have been, that this Bill is not going to attempt to solve the real problem. If it does not, we are only in the same position as was the Minister of Labour last week. He attempted to justify the non-activity of the Government on this question on the ground that in the last election they did not give a promise to solve this problem. Even admitting that they did not give a promise, in asking for a mandate from the country they maintained that they were quite prepared to govern the cunotry. The increase in the figures of the unemployed, anywhere from 100,000 to 150,000 or 180,000 persons, is significant. Up to the present the Government, during the five months they have been in power, have refused to accept their responsibility, and have refused to provide, or make the necessary provisions for, obtaining work for a number of the unemployed. This Bill, if passed, would tend towards minimising the number of unemployed. I would like to give a little explanation with regard to the mining community. Mention has been made of the revival of our export trade, and it is a fact that South Wales has been dependent more or less, and perhaps more, upon export trade. The situation in the South Wales area at the present time is very distressing, because there you have large areas and whole villages which have become derelict. Not only the miners and their families but the business people, owners of property, and everybody in fact in those particular villages are suffering in consequence of this problem.

There is a clause in this Bill which refers to the setting up of a Board under this Bill which would have a kind of direct supervision of the conditions that obtain at present in the mining areas, and it would, after all, have a certain amount of responsibility. Naturally if it has got the right to subscribe money to assist these industries it follows that it will have the right of investigation as to whether the mining community or the industry has got the best organisation possible even under the present system. It will have to inquire where a stoppage is threatened as to the best means of keeping the collieries working instead of throwing out of employment 100 or perhaps 1,000 men. They could have an inquiry as to whether there is not some method that could be adopted to inquire into the alleged complaints of the owners that their collieries are not remunerative. Naturally this Board, in the event of having authority to subscribe funds towards a particular industry would have the power and inclination for investigating the real conditions before such stoppages took place.

Mention has been made of our foreign trade, and the fact that any alleviation of the unemployment problem depends to a large extent upon the revival of our foreign trade. So far as I can judge the situation, I do not anticipate that there is going to be a great deal of revival in our foreign trade, and certainly not to such an extent as would make this country entirely dependent as it has been in the past on our exports. What is the position of the mining industry? As a matter of fact the consumption of coal is less, and the world's consumption is less, in fact our own consumption is 50,000,000 tons less as compared with 1913. There are many competitive factors, such as oil and electricity, and this has a great bearing upon the consumption of coal. In the past we have been largely dependent on our machinery, and our scientific methods. The Empire has been expanding and new worlds have been discovered, and those causes have led to an expansion of our trade. The position to-day is that those who were formerly our customers are to-day our competitors. The circle of competition does not extend, but the number of competitors within that circle is increasing with the result that there is an intensity of competition. With regard to economy, it is suggested that a reduction in the cost of production is dependent upon a further reduction in wages. If that is so, then I am afraid the people who are looking for the restoration of prosperity in the coal industry by an increase in our foreign trade and a reduction of wages, will be doomed to disappointment.

What will happen? Take the case of the miners. Assume that the miners accept a general reduction. Let me take for a moment the position put forward by the coal owners that a reduction of wages and an increase in the hours will mean an increase in the amount of production and an increase in the trade. Would that put them in any better position, because naturally the same argument will apply equally to other countries? At once the workmen of European nations will be put into competition with us and this might bring about a lower and reduced standard of living. Therefore, I do not anticipate that there is much prospect of success with regard to a reduction in the number of unemployed. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) contended that this Bill in itself was not sufficient to warrant the contention put forward that it was going to reduce the number of the unemployed. When the right hon. Gentleman spoke last week he contented himself with the Measures introduced by himself and said they were not sufficient now. Even the present Government had a slavish adhesion to the coalition methods. Why did the right hon. Gentleman, when he had a majority in the Coalition Government assisted by the Members of the Liberty party, not attempt to divert trade into new channels and introduce methods and policies that would have had a more direct effect with regard to the solution of this problem than this Bill.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs gave a very vivid description of the consternation existing at present in rural and agricultural areas in consequence of the industrial depression. He said the agricultural areas had been depopulated, that the industrial areas had also suffered, and he condemned the particular system that had brought about the state of things of which he complained. Under this particular Bill there is an opportunity for the setting up of a Board to investigate the state of things in industrial areas. Let us assume for a moment that the argument is correct that there are more workmen in the mining industry than are really necessary. In the mining villages of South Wales you have thousands of men from the agricultural areas who were formerly working upon the land, who to-day are unemployed, and who would be very glad of an opportunity to get back to their native soil. There will be an opportunity when this particular Board is set up to investigate the possibility and probability of taking these people back, assuming they could be conveyed back. First of all, there must be a linking up of the rural and the industrial areas with respect to the development of electricity, the facilitating of transport for the conveying of the produce from the agricultural to the industrial areas, the linking up of which would alone save several millions. It would cheapen the cost of living by reducing the cost of the transport of commodities from the agricultural to the industrial areas.

Take another aspect with which this Bill would be able effectively to deal, and which would have a direct bearing upon the mining community. Afforestation has a very direct bearing upon the mining community, so far as pit wood is concerned. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs stated that we were spending £60,000,000 upon timber. Germany, pre-War, employed more men by millions on afforestation than we do. The amount of pit wood used in South Wales alone is sufficient to warrant very serious attention on the part of the Government or on the part of the Board under this Bill, and the consideration of its relation to the working expenses of the collieries alone. It is generally admitted that there is a world shortage of pit wood, and yet there is a tremendous demand for it. In 1923, 1,700,000 loads of timber were imported for spit wood purposes in South Wales alone. I think monthly 100,000 tons of pit wood are imported into Cardiff alone. In 12 years in South Wales there has been imported 26,000,000 loads of timber. We have thousands and thousands of acres of waste land in this country from North to South and from East to West that could be well utilised for afforestation. There is not only a need for it, but the need has been increased in consequence of the timber cut down during the War.

These are some of the questions and some of the aspects of the problem that have a direct bearing upon unemployment in the mining community with which this Board could very effectively deal. The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently said that it is time for economy in regard to the unemployment question. We have from time to time had committees established in order to deal with the questions of waste and economy. This is a question with which this committee could very effectively deal. We have in the 1,250,000 unemployed at the present time a large amount of productive energy going to waste, and if this energy could be brought into closer relation and contact with the requirements of this Bill then it would eliminate the waste of money in unemployment benefit and that money could be better utilised in the provision of work. Therefore, I think there is sufficient scope for this Board to be set up. Comparatively speaking, £10,000,000 is nothing, because, if the Board immediately set to work and take a general survey of the whole situation, it will be found that the monetary grant incorporated in this Bill would be very inadequate, and, if the Board having taken a general survey will bring an outline of its policy before this House, I am certain that the House will be prepared to grant even more than £10,000,000 in order to meet the requirements.

2.0 P.M.

I, like probably many other Members, desire first to congratulate the Mover and Seconder of this Bill upon the extremely dignified and non-party manner in which they have introduced it, and also perhaps to thank them for having given the House of Commons a further chance of considering this, the gravest of our national problems. A great deal has been said in the last fortnight about the gravity of the industrial situation. The speech we heard from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne), with all the figures that he presented to the House, did not fail to leave us with our minds very depressed. If these are the facts and this is the situation that the country has to face, then the more this subject is discussed in the House of Commons the better it will be for the country as a whole. I have listened to this Debate from start to finish with the exception of a few of the remarks of the late Minister of Labour (Mr. T. Shaw), but before giving my reasons for voting against this Measure I wish to congratulate the Members who have spoken, particularly those on this side of the House, upon the broad attitude which they have adopted towards this problem.

I must dissociate myself from the Mover of the Amendment (Lieut.-Colonel Headlam) who seemed to indicate that the best way of curing this evil was to leave it to cure itself. This is not the time when we can afford to indulge in laissez faire policy. I do not oppose this Bill on the ground of its being excessively audacious. This is the one time in our history when I think we are entitled to gamble. State credit should be drawn upon to its full limit. It is in that way that we may possibly solve our unemployment problem.

There are a few details in the Measure to which I will refer in a minute, but, broadly speaking, the speech delivered by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) has shown the House that there is no lack of desire on the part of Members on these benches to give the fullest possible support to any sensible and sound schemes for the reduction of unemployment. In his speech, he tried to indicate a wider policy, hoping that the time might come when the real root of this trouble might be discovered and a real national scheme developed for its solution. I heard a taunt from the last Member, and I heard it earlier from another hon. Member, as to why the right hon. Gentleman, when he was Prime Minister, did not cure these evils. I submit that their recollection must be very short if they do not remember those wonderful schemes that were outlined at that Box in the years 1918, 1919 and 1920, and which, if they had been pursued heartily, would, I think, have gone a long way to have made this country a better land for heroes to live in. Sums then could have been more easily found than to-day. But the House will remember the anti-waste campaign, moved in the most reckless and headstrong spirit by certain sections of the Press, which came along and undermined the great reconstruction scheme which the Prime Minister of that day was anxious to get the country to carry with him. There are times when you have to submit to forces which you cannot reason with, and that is one of the occasions on which great proposals gave way to waves of ill-digested opinion and,. I think, an attempt to gain temporary popularity.

I should now like to turn to the Bill itself, which, in my opinion, is the main subject of our Debate this afternoon, and not the causes of unemployment and their possible solution. The Bill seems to me to contemplate two things, which should be very clearly kept in mind by those who are going to give a decision upon it. First of all, it cannot be denied that it creates a new Ministry. It appoints a Board presided over by one Cabinet Minister, surrounded and entrenched with statutory powers, with power to act, if it feels inclined, in defiance of the Cabinet and of the Prime Minister who presides over it. That, to call a spade a spade, is the creation of a new Ministry, and must, I think, at once be regarded as completely unsuitable to our Constitution. It contemplates, further, that the present conditions of unemployment must be accepted as permanent. I am not a great optimist, but I am not so pessimistic as to be prepared to say that there is no cure for this dreadful problem, and that there is going to be no time when British trade will revive. I think the machinery exists to-day, in sufficient strength and to a sufficient extent, to undertake very much the kind of schemes that my Friends on the Labour Benches have suggested this Board should carry out, and I do not think it advisable or necessary to add to that machinery.

I submit, further, that, from the constitutional point of view, it would be extremely difficult for the House to impeach this Board. It is very easy to move a reduction of the salary of a Minister, because it is clearly known that the Cabinet stands or falls by the success or failure of that Vote, but from the Parliamentary point of view it would be very difficult, even on these annual occasions when the accounts are presented, for the House to show its dissatisfaction in a manner which would bring the Government down. I think it is far better to leave the entire responsibility for each individual Minister upon the Cabinet collectively as a whole. It is obviously, also, an aspersion not only on the Cabinet for failure within the last few years in this connection, but on the local authorities. I am not, I admit, very well versed in local government, but I think it is a little hasty to write down local authorities as not having made, in different parts of the country, tremendous efforts to solve these problems and produce schemes. Here and there it is probably true that they may be found not to have worked closely enough together, and that a little section of disputed territory has interfered with the forward movement of some great scheme, but such cases are not very frequent, and I submit that the local authorities deserve a great deal more credit than they have received during the past four years.

The House might ask, where is there sufficient stimulus, where is there sufficient driving power to get out of the Cabinet or the local authorities the assistance in these matters that they can give? Day after day, on Vote after Vote, the Government are pressed to economise. Day after day hon. Members in this House press upon the Government the necessity for solving, if it is possibly within their power, the unemployment problem which is drawing upon them at the rate of £60,000,000 or £70,000,000 a year; and equally the ratepayers are pressing the local authorities to do what they can to help in the same direction. Therefore, I do not think that further stimulus is needed. To prove that the local authorities have done a great deal, I would remind the House that during the last five years the powers conferred on the Government under the Housing and Land Settlement Acts have hardly ever had to be used, which, I think, is a tribute to the energy and efficiency of these local bodies.

I do resent a little the attitude that is taken up by the Labour party towards the local authorities in a further connection. They are disinclined, as it seems to me, to admit that local authorities must know local problems best. I would rather not take the initiative away from them and plant it in the hands of a central body, but would rather, if possible, do the reverse. I believe that local knowledge is vital in the solving of the local problem. In Clause 2 of the Bill there is an indication that this Board is to work with similar bodies in the Colonies. That opens up an immense subject, and one which, I hope, at a later date will receive very full consideration, but I do not think that the House will be brought to believe that this Board is the right kind of body to discuss inter-Imperial schemes. Inter - Imperial schemes, which, I hope, before we are much older, will have proved to be the solution of our troubles of to-day, must, I think, remain between the Governments of the Dominions and the Central Government of this country as a whole.

What about the Crown Colonies?

That is a subdivision of the same subject. In that case, I think, there is less disadvantage in a Crown Colony being in touch with, perhaps, a slightly less important body than the Cabinet as a whole, but I think the principle is that the main burden of responsibility must rest upon the Cabinet presided over by the Prime Minister. When we do get to the point where these negotiations between ourselves and the Dominions and Crown Colonies can take a definite and useful form, an Imperial Conference should be summoned as soon as possible, and the difficulties which are now raised should be laid before the Colonies and some scheme by which they will benefit as well as ourselves adumbrated and laid before the country. I have nothing further to say, except that I am surprised that any Cabinet Minister or ex-Cabinet Minister can possibly support this proposed change in the Constitution. Most Cabinet Ministers hope some day to be Prime Ministers, and I cannot conceive of a Prime Minister looking with any satisfaction upon a little group of his own Ministers entrenched with statutory powers and having the right either to raise money or do anything else without his sanction.

We have heard a great many speeches in this House to-day, but there are certain Clauses of this Bill which, as far as I can see, have not been referred to at all in the course of any speech that has yet been made. The Bill, to my mind, divides itself roughly into three parts. In the first place, there is the part dealing with the central Government; in the second place, there is the part dealing with local authorities; and, thirdly, and most important, there is the part dealing with finance. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Bristol (Captain Guest) has very rightly pointed out that you cannot devolve Cabinet responsibility without very serious consequences to the Government of the day itself. It is suggested in Clause 3 of this Bill that the Board which it is proposed to set up should long as the question of unemployment and the solution of the unemployment problem is dealt with on party lines, as it is likely to be for at any rate our lifetime.

There is another point which I think should not be overlooked. There are a great many people on the other side of the House who are under the curious impression that the State itself can really foresee unemployment. Even if all trade was nationalised, which it is not, even in this country or in the world at large, the State could not foresee unemployment, because it cannot foresee supply and demand. It cannot foresee a failure in the cotton crop or the sugar crop or anything of that kind, and therefore it is only to a very limited extent that it can make provision beforehand for unemployment. As a matter of fact the amount of money which is expended, quite rightly, by the Unemployment Grants Committee—which, by the way, as far as I can make out, does not appear to be included in Clause 2 as one of the powers to be taken over by the Committee—or by the Development and Roads Improvement Fund Acts are only a drop in the ocean compared with our total trade. Our total export trade is something like £770,000,000. That, I believe, is only about one-third or a quarter of our total internal trade. When you propose a scheme to add another £10,000,000 to the £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 which have already been expended, it is not going to solve the unemployment problem. There are, of course, a certain number of people, partly, I think, the product of the War, who believe that you can solve anything by calling for a return. The more returns are called for the happier they arc. I do not think it is confined to what I might describe as the Civil Service mind. I have a very high respect for the Civil Service but there are some men in the Civil Service, partly men who have largely obtained their experience during the War, who are distinctly of that opinion, and there are also some gentlemen of that opinion in this House. At any rate there is one, I believe, on the Front Bench opposite. I have never believed that the compilation of statistics solves any problem at all. It merely provides you with information, and the tendency of all boards, such as the one to be created under this Bill, is that they merely become a machine for turning out more statistics which no one ever has time to read and no one ever bothers to study. Nevertheless they delight the hearts of some people who believe that that is the only solution of all the problems that exist in this world.

To turn to the second question, the treatment of local authorities, it has been pointed out that under the Bill the Board has power to compel a local authority to carry out expenditure which will fall upon the rates without the local authority being given any option in the matter at all. There are two points to remember in that regard. One is that, as far as I can see, there is nothing in the Bill to say who is to be the judge as to whether the local authority should be compelled to do that work and whether it is fair to make them do it in view of the state of unemployment in the locality. If the local authority fails to prepare schemes, there is nothing to say they are only to prepare schemes if unemployment is bad. Supposing unemployment happens not to be particularly bad, but nevertheless they are told to prepare schemes, and because they are backward or lazy or busy about some other question they do not prepare schemes. Are they then to find themselves compelled to carry out some work which the central bureaucratic Board wishes them to do, quite regardless of whether the state of unemployment in their district happens to justify it or not? It might quite easily happen that that might be the case under the provisions of the Bill. Then where unemployment is worst and where you propose to throw an additional burden on the local authorities is also the place where in most cases the rates are highest, and the incidence of the rates bears far more heavily on industry in many cases than the incidence of general taxation. I do not see how you are going to help that locality by adding to the burden of the rates, as you are going to do under the Clauses in this Bill.

Finally, we come to the financial Clauses. I am under the impression that no private Member may introduce a Bill containing proposals for fresh taxation unless he can persuade the Government of the day to propose the Financial Resolution that is necessary before the Bill can make further progress. I presume, therefore, that this Bill could not make any further progress even if it passed the Second Reading. But under Sub-section (3) of Clause 5 the Board may from time to time invest any moneys standing to the credit of National Employment and Development Fund in any securities in which trustees are authorised by law to invest trust funds. That, to my mind, is the most important Clause in the whole Bill. I think the House ought to realise that, under that Clause, this Board, which will, at any rate, be able to begin with a sum of £10,000,000 a year, which it need not spend, can invest any of the money in any trustee security. What is a trustee security? The railways in this country are trustee securities. The Government have investments in one or two very large industrial undertakings. They have investments in the Suez Canal, in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and in British Dyestuffs. They had in 1921 investments in a larger number of industries, but I think they have realised most of those investments at a loss. If you are once going to establish the principle that the Government may invest money in trustee securities you are immediately going to open the door to several very dangerous things. To begin with, you are going to open the door to the possibility of pressure being brought to bear on the Government to amend the Trustee Acts so as to embrace certain other industries which are in need of Government assistance. You are thus going to make it possible for the party opposite, if they come into power, to use this Bill, if it passes now, as a means of nationalising industry. There is nothing to prevent them subsequently passing another Bill increasing the £10,000,000 to £30,000,000, £40,000,000 or £50,000,000, which, being a Money Bill, would automatically become law without any possibility of opposition in another place. They could by amending the Trustee Act, or even without its being necessary to amend the Trustee Act, largely invest money in the railways of this country, and in the mining industry, for instance—which the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. D. Graham) more or less foreshadowed in supporting the Second Reading of the Bill—and eventually obtain control of those industries by means of State money. I am rather inclined to think that possibly that idea was at the back of the minds of some of the hon. Members who drew up and intro- duced this Bill. If so, I congratulate them on a very careful piece of camouflage.

This is not going to solve the unemployment problem, because industry itself and the country itself would have to bear the burden of that State interference and the State purchase of these various undertakings. I look upon the Bill as a piece of window dressing, very similar to the Bill which was introduced last Friday, and very similar to the proposals which were made by the party opposite during the Debate on unemployment last Thursday. The proposal last Friday was designed to try to make some of the people in this country think that the party opposite are bitterly opposed to profiteering in the building industry. This Bill is trying to make people think that the Labour party have suddenly found a new solution for the unemployment problem. The proposal last Thursday was one of those periodical gestures which hon. Members opposite make to their friends in Russia. All these proposals are pure pieces of window dressing, which ought not to deceive any thinking man or woman. This Bill would not assist in the very slightest degree in anybody getting a better chance of obtaining employment that they would have at present under the existing laws and methods which are imposed in this country. For that reason, I hope that the House will reject the Bill

I would not have intervened in this Debate but for the fact, as you know, Mr. Speaker, that an attack was made on the Bill by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). You have very kindly granted me an opportunity of replying to the right hon. Gentleman. I intimated to the right hon. Gentleman that I was going to reply to him, and I also informed him of the time. Since then, the right hon. Gentleman has written me a letter in which he apologises for not being able to be present to hear my reply. [ Laughter. ] I had better read the letter, seeing that some of the Tory back-benchers, outsiders, who should never have been inside, are amused. that is you, Sir—

In 1913, when we fought the election, the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs went out into the world and proclaimed that, if he was sent back to Parliament he, who had won the War, would win a great peace. The battle-cry then was, "Send us back, that we may win the great peace, and we will make this a land fit for heroes to live in." Does he think that we forget these things? Some people may forget them, but we will not. We will keep the wounds of our people fresh, so that the right hon. Gentleman will never again hoodwink our people. Incidentally, he promised at that time that rents would not be increased. Rents were increased under his dispensation.

On a point of Order. Is it permissible for an hon. Member on this Bill to make a personal attack against the right hon. Gentleman on the question of rent?

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was claiming that all the power under this Bill was based on what he did or recommended. I suppose that that may be considered to explain the relevance of the hon. Member's remark.

There wore other things for which he was responsible, not only increasing rents, which meant starvation and death to thousands of the people whom I represent, the working classes, but he introduced Geddes with his economy axe, which cut down the education of the working-class children and the feeding of infants. I submit to him that that is the line which I am going to take in making my speech. The Geddes axe cut down the feeding of children. He deflated the currency of this country and caused all the unemployment. These are the lines on which I would go.

All that I can say is that it will have to be an opportunity presenting a much wider scope than is afforded by the present Bill.

I rely on the generosity of the House, which I know is invariably extended to those who for the first time venture to address it, as I am doing to-day. I am not going at this juncture to enter into the quarrel between the last speaker and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). I can safely leave it to the right hon. Gentleman, when he desires, to make a reply, but I am concerned to-day with the question which we have under discussion, the question of dealing with unemployment. I consider it the most important question with which we can be called upon to deal, and I welcome this opportunity, and perhaps the only thing which I do regret is that this House should deal with this important question in tabloid form and in homeopathic doses. I consider it sufficiently important to warrant a longer time being given to its consideration, because it is the most important question with which we can be called on to deal.

Coming to the Bill before us, I must support the Amendment because I am not in favour of the introduction of some new-fangled ideas which have been rightly described as window dressing. We want something tangible provided at once. We cannot afford to wait. We have 1,250,000 of our people unemployed, and we are told that the numbers are still growing, and this six years after the Armistice. I desire to place before the House the views of a business man. The constituency which did me the honour to send me here, I assure you, did not send me here for my beauty. They sent me here for the express purpose of trying to solve this great question of unemployment, and I appeal to the indulgence of the House while I mention some of the matters which I consider must be at once attended to before we can hope for that improvement which is so vitally necessary. We have been cold, and it is the truth, that we are a nation of manufacturers. Napoleon called us a nation of shopkeepers as a gibe, but it is as true to-day as when he made it. We are a nation of manufacturers and shopkeepers because we have to depend entirely upon the sale abroad of commodities which we manufacture in exchange for the food which we have to import.

Let us examine what that means. We have to manufacture cheaply to command a ready purchase and sale for the commodities which we do manufacture. If they happen to be high in price we lose business. I will say this, that, given fair conditions, in every part of the world wherever any commodities which we manufacture may be in request, preference is always given to the British article, because it denotes honesty of workmanship. But the conditions must be favourable. At the present moment, unfortunately, the cost of production is much too high. We are taxed to breaking point, which, of course, entails extra cost in the production. What many people think outside I am prepared to say in the House. We must study ourselves first. In reference to the debts that are due to us by our Allies, however friendly these Allies may be, they should be made to pay at least the interest. We have borne their sufferings for a time, but now we have arrived at such a stage that we must look to ourselves and to the welfare of our own people. As I have said, we find ourselves taxed to breaking point, and we cannot cope with the competition with which we meet abroad.

I think that a great deal of the responsibility lies with our friends opposite, and I am glad that the right hon. Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) and the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) are now advising their friends to drop this business of ca' canny, and to throw their backs into their work. But that is not enough. I should like to find more supporters for that great and necessary principle, and I hope that more will be found. But what I desire to see established now is that this propaganda should be as prevalent, and expressed at every street corner as widely, as was the policy of ca' canny when that stunt was first suggested and advocated. There is a great need for something tangible to be done, and so long ago as March, 1923, I advocated a certain scheme for the benefit of the working people to find them employment. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Carmarthen (Sir A. Mond) is not here. I explained that scheme, which proposes to give grants-in-aid. I had the honour of propounding that scheme in 1923 to my electorate, and to my surprise I find that all which I expressed and advocated was exactly similar to that which the right hon. Gentleman has advocated. Perhaps the House will pardon me if I just read a few extracts, and I will leave the matter entirely to the judgment of this House. This is a pamphlet which I sent to my electorate in 1923—"My Remedy for Unemployment."

"The Scheme in Detail

I am against the reduction of wages. Heaven knows they are low enough! I believe that the solution must be looked for in other directions. Here are my suggestions in detail:

A Grant-in-Aid should be given by the Government to an employer who finds work at the standard rate of wages for a man, woman, youth or girl who would otherwise be unemployed, over and above the number of workpeople he now employs.

The amount of the Grant-in-Aid would be equivalent to the sum that each of the people thus found work for would have otherwise received by way of the unemployment 'dole.'

In order to qualify for the Grant-in-Aid the employer must engage the additional workpeople through the Labour Exchange.

A definite date would be fixed for the scheme to commence. Arrangements antecedent to that time would not count for Grants-in-Aid.

The Grant-in-Aid would, of course, terminate when the employment terminated.

All trades would be entitled to this benefit.

The administration of the scheme could be carried on by the same Labour Exchange staffs where would be apportioned the amount due to employers complying with the conditions.

I suggest that the scheme should be tried for, say, a period of 12 months."

Here is an illustration of how my plan will work in practice:

"An English shipbuilding firm's tender for the construction of a vessel is £10,000 more than that of a foreign competitor favoured by the rate of exchange, etc. As matters stand he loses the job, and is unable to find work for 1,000 men who would otherwise have been engaged, and they are compelled to draw the dole. Under my plan he would receive a Grant-in-Aid of, say, £1,000 per week, for employing these, men at trade union rates, which would enable him to reduce his price and obtain the contract."

That is merely an instance which, perhaps, shows the truth of the axiom that great minds think alike. I sent this information to the right hon. Member for Carmarthen and enclosed my pamphlet, on 26th March of this year, and I have never even received an acknowledgment of my letter. I can dismiss that now and proceed with what I deem to be absolutely necessary to provide employment. We hear a lot of the wonderful advance in our standard, in our exchange, and so forth, and, of course, it is of great value to the banking fraternity, but practically speaking to the commercial world it is a great hindrance, because our business and our trade depend upon peoples who have depreciated exchanges, and they find it the greatest difficulty to buy from us when their exchanges are demoralised and ours is standing high. That is certainly one of the things that are causing a lack of business. Another consideration relates to the great trusts that we have in Lancashire—the Calico Printers' Association, the Bleachers' Association, the Brad ford Dyers' Association. The policy that they pursue is to employ their workpeople, or most of them, for only three days per week, in order to keep up prices —I am saying this advisedly—and then put the workmen on the dole for the rest of the week. I contend that that is a great hindrance to the business of Lancashire. I have heard it stated as a fact that, owing to the great competition, Italy is getting the business from us. I made it my business to go and investigate on the spot, and to my great surprise and consternation I found that the Lancashire manufacturers could ship their grey cloth to Italy, pay for packing, insurance and freight of every kind, have the processes done there, ship it back with the cost of insurance and freight again, and still save from 15 per cent. to 25 per cent. That is one of the most important reasons why there is such stagnation of trade in Lancashire.

There are many other causes that are contributory to our present straits. We ought to unite for the one purpose of trying to remedy our troubles. The Bill before us has no aims of that kind. I will content myself now with expressing the hope that something will be done to brighten business in all parts of the kingdom. I am confident that, given the opportunity, we can reassert ourselves, and that we shall be as prosperous in the near future as we have been in the past. We have to recognise that we cannot longer trade on past glories. There is competition from every part of the world and we must cope with it. We can do so successfully if we realise where our duty lies. I hope that business will soon revive, and that prosperity will again crown our efforts.

There is one matter in which I am sure that I voice the deep regret of every Member of the House, and that is in saying that I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was not here this afternoon to hear the hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood). If we may judge from the hon. Member's preliminary canter, we should have had a most interesting time. I only trust that, although I am a somewhat hard-worked man, I may find time to be present when the hon. Member actually encounters the right hon. Gentleman. I will certainly do my best to be present.

There was a small point, that was interesting from our point of view, in the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and it was also rather characteristic of him. After he had criticised the Bill he rode in a speedy and gallant sort of way, in his imagination, over many of our troubles of the present day, with a wide horizon in front of him and over large stretches of country. And then he came up against two considerations. "Shall we," he asked, "ever be able to look for 100 per cent. of employment in our foreign trade? Must we not tend to develop our trade at home, and our Imperial trade? There is no soil in Europe like British soil. Must not we develop British soil and British agriculture?" I might have been listening to the speech which rumour says that the right hon. Gentleman cogitated on the steamer on returning from Canada, when he was about to enter on a tariff reform campaign. Then, as is so natural, just when he came up to the point, he started aside like a startled fawn and evaded the point on which we thought he was going to speak.

May I now come to the Bill? It is significant to note its supporters. There is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Seaham (Mr. Webb), who was President of the Board of Trade, the former Solicitor-General, the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health and the former Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I do not know if the hon. Gentleman the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. A. Greenwood) is going to speak, but, if so, may I ask that hon. Gentleman whether we may take it that this Bill is an authoritative expression of the view of the Opposition? I will gladly stand aside, if he thinks fit to give an answer now. I have in mind a speech made by the leader of the Opposition only a week ago. Will the Leader of the Opposition and the rest of the responsible Opposition say if we may take it that this is their Bill and represents their policy as a united Opposition. It would be interesting to know whether the Leader of the Opposition and his colleagues are really taking responsibility for this Bill. I put it to them as a serious question and, considering the names on the back of the Bill, I think we have a right to an answer. It is illuminating to notice that up to the present we have had no speech on behalf of the Bill from any of the ex-Ministers whose names are attached to it. The former President of the Board of Trade has flitted into the Debate for 15 minutes, like some migratory bird which had taken in the House of Commons, in its passage, and then flitted out again.

What about the present President of the Board of Trade?

I must ask the hon. Member to explain the point of that interpolation.

Has not he as much right to be here as the ex-President?

Is the name of the present President of the Board of Trade attached to the Bill? The name of the ex-President is on the Bill and that is the reason for asking why he has only flitted in and flitted out again. One may attach more significance still to the fact that the late Financial Secretary to the Treasury has not put in an appearance at all. One would imagine, when he had given the authority of his signature to this proposal for a Board—which is the gist of the Bill—that he would have been here to-day.

May I be permitted to say that the right hon. Gentleman to whom the Minister refers is to-day in Edinburgh and is unable to be here? [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"]

3.0 P.M.

I do not know now long ago it is since the Ballot, as a result of which this Bill has been taken to-day, but it is a most important Bill, the finance of it is particularly important, and it bears all these signatures, including that of the late Financial Secretary. I do not wish to be unfair to the right hon. Gentleman, but I think we should at any rate hear from the Opposition what is his opinion, and that of the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and what is the opinion of the Opposition as a whole as to the financial aspects of this Measure. That, at least, we are entitled to demand. I wondered whether there was not some hidden hand, some sinister influence, behind this Bill. I am driven to believe that the former Minister of Labour, whose name is not on the back of the Bill, inspired it, and that when its putative parents were absent he came forward to defend what was really his own offspring. Look at what the former Minister of Labour said. There was a most interesting passage in this speech to this effect: "Now at last the Minister of Labour is going to have some power. Formerly he was but a puppet; he could not do anything himself, and he was always turned down by the dead hand of the Treasury, which put its blighting influence on any productive suggestions he made. Up to now he could do nothing at all, but after this Bill there will be a different state of affairs and he will be able to take action on his own account." Indeed, when I look at the Bill I can see there may indeed be a different state of affairs, if it is ever carried out. It looks like the setting up of a little local Soviet with the Minister of Labour as its commissar and with the minimum of interference, if any, from the central Soviet in Moscow. But is not that absolutely inconsistent with what the right hon. Gentleman said two or three minutes afterwards when he affirmed once again the principle of Cabinet responsibility? The two propositions are contradictory. You cannot have it both ways under this Bill. You cannot say first of all that there is going to be Cabinet responsibility and that the omission of the Financial Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer from the Committee is only a small thing which can be set right in Committee and then, in the next breath, say "At last the Minister of Labour is to come into his own and to have his own powers. He will no longer be the whipping-boy for the Cabinet." You cannot ride both horses at the same time.

A little time ago I made a quotation from the official organ of the Labour party in Barrow and it was said by some that I had not recognised that the statement in that paper was a joke. I came to the conclusion that my sense of humour might be rudimentary. So I take this Bill to be a joke and if my sense of humour is again at fault I apologise, but I can only say that there is much to warrant that attitude in several parts of the Bill. Take the question of finance. I can assure hon. Members opposite that I have read the Bill from cover to cover with considerable care. We find in Sub-sections (1) and (2) of Clause 5 a sum of £10,000,000 per annum out of the growing produce of the Consolidated Fund placed at the disposal of the Board which it is proposed to set up. That money is not to be voted by Parliament, but is paid yearly by Statute and is to be entirely outside the control of Parliament. That answers one of the difficulties which the right hon. Gentleman had in mind. To begin with it is the worst finance in the world to have a lot of different hoards, just as a magpie may make a hoard of one kind here and a hoard of another kind there, to be drawn on for different purposes. That is the reason which the right hon. Gentleman did not see why the sum mentioned in the Bill may be too small at one moment and too large at another. The proposal is contrary to the principles upon which the whole finance of this country is based and when we get away from that basis it is never easy to get back. It has always been a matter for regret and criticism when we have got away from it and difficulty has always resulted. What is wanted is to have a central fund and in the good time you can reduce debt and in the bad time, if need be, you can incur more debt and do it all from one central fund which can pay as much or as little money as is wanted. To set up these little water-tight compartments, these magpie hoards, is the most absurd way of dealing with national finance, and one which always meets with trouble in the long run. Not only does the Bill do this, but it puts the finance of the scheme entirely outside of Parliamentary control. Everything that this Bill does is, as far as it is humanly possible, to put it outside the power of Parliament to criticise. I do not know whether or not it was the intention of the authors of the Bill, but it is the result of their drafting, whoever was responsible for it. There is a report to Parliament in the Bill, but what is done by the Soviet does not come before the Estimates Committee. It would be free of all criticism by the Estimates Committee, and it would be free of all criticism by the Public Accounts Committee. I have examined this point carefully. Moreover it is not at all sure whether you could have a Treasury audit.

Is it quite true that it would be free from consideration by the Estimates Committee, if all expenditure comes before that Committee?

All expenditure that is borne on the Votes, but, you see, this expenditure is carefully excluded, and every provision is made that it shall not be borne on the Votes. It is for that reason that It is exempt from being brought before the Estimates Committee and the Public Accounts Committee. And, if the hon. Member will believe me—I have taken as careful opinion upon this as I can—no one could put a hypothetical case to Mr. Speaker beforehand, but it is very doubtful whether, if this Bill were passed, even if you could take £100 off the salary of the Minister of Labour—a thing which both the right hon. Gentleman and I, each in his season, would bitterly resent—it would be in order to criticise the way in which the funds of this Board were administered, so far is it put outside of Parliamentary control. Then, I ask the sponsors of this Bill: Are they proud of this great democratic Measure? Are they proud, in a Bill of this kind, as the representatives of the democratic party, of reducing the democratic control to such a minimum that you could put a magnifying glass over it and hardly find a vestige of it remaining there at all?

I have another Clause of this Bill to touch upon, and that is Clause 4, which deals with the duties of the local authorities. The right hon. Gentleman who supported this Bill said he could not bear any local authority having the power to stand in the way of a great national scheme, but that is not the difficulty here at all. He accused other people of not reading the Bill carefully enough, but what he should have read himself was Sub-section (4) of Clause 4, and he would have found that that was not the difficulty. If he would read his own Bill once again, he would find that it is not the case of a local authority standing against a big national scheme—I agree that we do not want that done—but it is the case of a local scheme to be prepared by the local authority itself; which is not a national scheme. You have in this Board a body, not subject to the Estimates Committee, not subject to the Public Accounts Committee, in regard to which it is doubtful if its accounts could be subjected to audit, with the Minister of Labour, or his nominee, alone able to put his seal to the work of the Board, and doubtful whether it could be criticised by Parliament. This body is to be remote from democratic control, is to be able to ride rough-shod over every municipality in the country, and carry out work, in spite of the opinion of the big municipalities, popularly elected, and then, to make the thing complete, they take off the limitation on rates that is imposed on the work of municipalities for ordinary purposes. In those circumstances, it would seem to me that once more the democratic principle would be finally abolished by the party opposite if they brought this Bill into activity. There is only one thing, it has occurred to me, that might be contemplated, but if I am mistaken, perhaps I shall be corrected by the party opposite. The first Sub-section of Clause 2 says:

Is Russia part of the British Dominions?

Just to think that the sponsor has not read his own Bill carefully enough! May I read the words of this Clause? As yet, I quite agree, the Russian territory is not part of the British Dominions. I only wondered last year whether we were going to become part of the Russian Dominions.

The right hon. Gentleman mentioned a £40,000,000 loan to Russia. Will he say where those figures appear?

Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can tell us exactly what the figure was that was mentioned. The Clause reads:

"The Board shall have power to make advances out of the funds at their disposal to be expended either in the United Kingdom.…."

If you were to make a loan to Russia, or anywhere else, to be expended in the United Kingdom, it would be amply covered by that Clause. Therefore, I ask myself—and it is a perfectly legitimate question—whether this was any part of the method?

You know it is not true.

What the hon. Member forgets is that his leader, the Leader of the Opposition, a week ago, took me to task with regard to Russia. The conversion of the Leader of the Opposition, in August of last year, was so sudden and so complete, as I read, on the statements of a late Member of the party opposite. I do not know whether he carried the late Chancellor of the Exchequer with him in his conversion, but he himself became from an opponent, an ardent supporter. What I am sometimes afraid of is, whether the zeal of the new proselyte is equalled by the stability of his new cult. I asked myself, when I was treated to his criticism a week ago, what his sentiments—if I knew them —and I do not know them—what his sentiments would be outside this House, and in private, and whether there would be that ardent wish to further Russian trade in this country, which we are led to imagine by his public sentiments. I do not wish to pursue this subject further. It is, I think, at any rate, fair to ask whether they themselves are so satisfied that their ardent believer in a Russian loan will be so constant in his belief that they could trust him to support a loan consistently, whether the wind blows hot or cold.

I would only conclude with regard to the Bill and say that so far as I can see, having read it carefully through—and here I join with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs—it does nothing except to reaffirm what we have already got, putting in as many additional disadvantages as the wit of man can naturally contrive. There is just this: It has kinship with the same right hon. Gentleman who himself was a bit of a sinner in old days in setting up new offices, new committees, and the rest of it. I always thought he had at the back of his mind the idea that, in place of action, if you only set up a new body of some kind, the country will think you are taking action. The fact is, that this Bill, if passed into law, will be one of the most monumental instances of what I should call goose-step statesmanship, statesmanship in which there is all motion but no advance. For that reason, I am definitely opposed to it.

I imagine that most Members on this side of the House will feel a sense of disappointment at the levity to which we have just listened. It is not many days ago since I heard a statement made by an hon. Gentleman opposite that whatever came from the other side of the House was always regarded by hon. Members on this side of the House as wrong. If with their longer training they cannot teach us any better manners than those we have seen I am sorry. It appears to me, however, that nothing that ever emanates from this side of the House is treated on its merits. To-day we have been treated to a number of speeches from hon. Gentlemen opposite which betrayed an utter ignorance of the purpose of the Bill. The Minister of Labour has tried to draw a number of red herrings across the trail. He has invented a Russian loan. We never proposed a Russian loan. We proposed a guarantee. [ Laughter. ] I merely wish to put the right hon. Gentleman right about his facts.

Are you still willing to guarantee the loan?

The right hon. Gentleman has been dealing in a spirit of levity with the proposals of this Bill. He asked whether this Bill should be regarded as an authoritative expression of the views of the opposition. He examined in detail the names of those who are backing the Bill. It is a private Member's Bill, and we can put on the back of such a Bill what names we choose. I object to any kind of cross-examination about that. [ Laughter. ] But I stand here to say that this Bill is the expression of the views of the party on these benches, and hon. and right hon. Gentlemen can take such comfort as they like from that confession, which I make with some pride.

May I be quite sure about this—I answered an interpolation from the hon. Gentleman and also from another hon. Member—are we to understand that it is the authoritative expression of the views of the party opposite.

The right hon. Gentleman will find proof of that in the Division Lobby. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer!"] That is the answer. There is no other answer known to this Assembly than the Division Lobby. We were treated this morning to an interesting speech by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) which, though he did not intend it, was a speech in support of this Bill. It was a speech in favour of coordination. It is true that he said, about a thousand times, that the Board proposed in the Bill was rigid and inelastic, qualities of which we should not accuse the right hon. Gentleman, and he made a little fun about the common seal. The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that a body of this sort, like other companies bodies that have to deal with money, must have a common seal. It was a merely frivolous statement on a most serious subject.

What is the case of the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour? As I understand it, it is that there are already powers to deal with this question. There is a Cabinet Committee on unemployment. This House is not officially aware of the existence of a Cabinet Committee on unemployment. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said a Cabinet Committee could do all that this Bill would do. The answer to that is that it has not done it. The right hon. Gentleman said the £10,000,000 was not enough. We will accept his criticism, if he likes. We are not pinned down to the amount of money. We are asking that there should be a body, an entity, with power, with authority, with responsibility to this House, a body that to-day does not exist. If the House would give more than £10,000,000 a year, there would be no objection from this side of the House. It is suggested that the present machinery is enough. Let me take the memory of hon. Members back six years. In 1919 the Water Power Resources Committee reported. It recommended, amongst other things, that there should be appointed a Technical Commission to investigate the possibilities and the desirability of a Severn barrage scheme. There was the machinery of the Cabinet Committee; there, indeed, was the Cabinet in all its glory. For five years nothing was done. Why? Because it was nobody's particular business to see that it was done.

Because the engineers turned it down.

Not at all. This Commission said: When we were in office we rummaged the cupboard, but we found it was as bare as it could be in regard to any practical proposals for dealing with the unemployment problem, simply because it had been nobody's business to prepare these schemes and bring them to the point at which they could be put into operation when the national interest required them. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon said the machinery is already there, but the single ease which I have quoted proves that the machinery is not there. Our view is that the present method of dealing with unemployment spasmodically by haphazard and hand-to-mouth measures is not the proper way to deal with a problem which is driving the happiness out of the lives of a large number of people.

Our proposal is a simple, common-sense, businesslike one. You have to-day —I do not want to press this parallel too far—a Committee of Imperial Defence. It is a permanent Committee, but we need a Committee of national defence to deal with perils as great as any which we may expect from foreign powers. We believe that the difficulties we are in to-day might have been surmounted if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon when he was Prime Minister had had such machinery as we suggest under this Bill, and to-day electrical developments and other developments still in the realm of desire and ideals would have been actually at work, but they are not at work because every Cabinet has its other responsibilities and cares, and there has been no special permanent body constantly considering these questions and devoting itself to what is the greatest of our modern problems.

We think that the problem of unemployment is so grave and so urgent that a body of this kind is needed. The speeches of hon. Members opposite have been directed purely to the present situation. Let us reduce taxation. Let us cure unemployment, they say, by curing unemployment, namely, by increasing trade. That does not help us in the least bit. Of course, to increase trade is to cure unemployment, but the question is how you are going to do it. The question is one which is permanent. Even if this grave period is successfully overcome the time will come in a few years when we shall be plunged into a similar trade depression, and, when that time comes, this country will be as unprepared as it is to-day, unless from now onwards there is a body with definite responsibilities as well as definite powers to deal with this problem both when it is there, and when it is not there, and to prepare for the time when it may come upon us. That is all that we are asking. It has always been left to a period of trade depression to prepare and put into operation schemes for dealing with trade depression, and yet we have had the admission of the Minister of Labour that you cannot do it successfully. It takes months and perhaps years, he says, to bring a scheme on a large scale to the point of fruition.

We are asking that, just as you have your Committee of Imperial Defence as a permanent body, and just as now I understand you are to have your permanent Committee of Research into Imperial problems, so you should have a permanent body dealing with the grave national problem of unemployment. That is our suggestion. We are told that it will not do anything. At least, it cannot do less than is done by the present haphazard Cabinet Committee that deals with unemployment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. T. Shaw) was perfectly right. You can have your Cabinet Committee on unemployment, and you may develop schemes, but the Treasury may say there is no money for them. We believe that this question is so important that the nation, through its representatives here, should, in its wisdom, set aside money each year and devote it for the purposes for which it is intended without the pettifogging interference of the Treasury on matters of detail. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour, speaking as the mouthpiece of the Treasury, has condemned this method of dealing with the problem as bad. In fact, he said it was the worst possible finance in the world. "We must deal with the national revenue as one large sum. We must not earmark and specialise it for certain purposes." If we knew how much we could devote to unemployment each year, we could deal with it in the ordinary way by means of annual estimates, but the point about unemployment is that it is a problem which comes to us periodically. There is a cycle of, say, ten years, and we are not dealing with annual expenditure, but with preparations for a period of ten years; and the work of this Committee ought not to be held up while estimates are being made as to whether in this year it is to be £500,000 or £5,000,000, and the approval of the Treasury is sought. The Committee ought to know, when it has considered and decided upon schemes, that they may be put into operation at any time. This is an annual premium on the part of the nation against a contingent liability— unemployment.

This is not a new principle. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that it is a principle that was accepted a generation ago in India in the case of the Indian Famine Insurance Fund, and I believe I am right in saying that there are similar funds in other parts of the world, where, out of national resources, a sum is allocated each year, and, if it is not spent, it is placed to account against the time when it may be needed. In fact, the Indian Famine Fund is a closer analogy than it may appear to be, because its business is not merely to deal with famine, but to prevent famine, and it can from year to year devote such of its income as it chooses to schemes of irrigation with the object of preventing famine. The purpose of the Fund which we suggest is similar, and, until you have such a Fund, I believe there is no way of dealing with this problem on a comprehensive scale. We have tried in this Bill to link up the idea, of trade depression with the idea of national development.

It has been said to-day that this is a party question. If that is the view of hon. Members, so be it. We may say we believe that Socialism is the remedy. Hon. Members opposite may believe that Protection is the remedy. I believe that unemployment is one of the vicious results of the existing system. But I say that, in the position in which we are to-day as an Opposition, we have got, as practical men, to rule out that Socialistic theory for the time being. Bight hon. Gentlemen opposite have likewise been obliged to rule out Protection. Is there not any common ground on which we can stand? I do not wish to make any debating point, I do not wish to make any party capital, out of it; I would give everything I possess to know that any step proposed by any party would give work to 1,000 men to-day. All we are concerned about is to make a suggestion which will command general support. Is not a policy of the development of the nation's resources one on which all parties in this House can combine? Is it not true that this country has been prodigal of its resources, neglectful of its asset? Is it not true to-day that we are living in a land of folly? Everyone knows it is true. There is no Member in this House to-day who would venture to say that we are utilising our whole national resources as they ought to be utilised. Everyone knows that that is not the case. Is it not desirable that we should equip the Government of the day with power, authority, resources and responsibility to this House year by year, for carrying on that important work of national development?

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said that this time of depression was the time when we should survey our national resources. That is nonsense; that is the difficulty in which we are to-day. The time to survey your national resources and to prepare for the future is during times of normal trade. At a time when unemployment is in the back of the minds of the Cabinet, why should it worry about unemployment? It is not a pressing evil. We think there ought to be someone who is thinking about it, and who has got to face the House of Commons on it year by year and show the steps that are being taken to prepare for it. That is a perfectly reasonable suggestion and, I would say, a perfectly sensible suggestion. But this work of survey, of study and preparation, this work of the preliminary stages of employment, ought to be taken in good times and not left to the bad times. We have two fundamental key industries. They are power and transport. Is this country proud of its power system and its transport system? Is not this the very time when the country should be equipping itself with the most efficient system of power and transport that it can possibly bring into existence in order to be prepared to face the days of rising trade? As the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs said, that work will not be done in the hurry and bustle of a trade boom or in periods of normal trade. It is pre-eminently a work that ought to have been carried out at present and would have been carried out if the then Prime Minister, in 1919, had had at his elbow a body such as this, annually reporting to Parliament, with the Minister of Labour standing up to justify the work of preparation which has been done by this Employment and Development Board.

There are other industries. It is not merely a question of power and transport. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, whose point was I think effectively dealt with by the Minister of Labour, referred to the land. It is perfectly true that we are not using the land to 50 per cent. of its possibilities. Whose business is it? It is no one's business to deal with the big question of developing that which is one of our most fundamental and important national resources. I would go so far as to say one of the difficulties that face us to-day is the inefficiency of our privately controlled industries. The fact that they are trying to carry on with out-of-date, inefficient machinery, with old-fashioned methods, the fact that they are afraid to scrap old methods is one of the reasons why we are finding it difficult to keep our heads above water. I can imagine a body of the description that we desire to have, which would lead this country to have in its mind the importance of developing our resources and improving our efficiency. We have heard of schemes for subsidising shipbuilding. What is wrong about our shipping is that it is 20 years out of date. The real danger is that stricken Germany is to-day developing a new mercantile marine which in 10 years' time will run our mercantile marine off the seas, not because we have inferior sailors but just because its mercantile marine will be efficient and up-to-date and utilising the resources of modern science, and because our shipping trade will be overladen with old, worn out, inefficient, slow ships which ought to be scrapped. We want a new attitude of mind towards this question and unless the Government of the day is prepared for a Board of this kind to give a lead to national development, to the fullest utilisation of our national resources, to the scrapping of what is inefficient and out of date, private enterprise, with all its vaunted initiative, will remain lagging behind what it ought to be. Criticism has been made of our proposals with regard to local authorities. We wish to see harnessed to this work of national development, not merely the State, not merely our big staple industries, but the local authorities. If a local authority within whose area there are infinite possibilities of development is reactionary and recalcitrant, is it right that the State should permit that to exist? The right hon. Gentleman spoke about the overriding power of the State. The State is there to override when the national interest demands it.

What we wish to see is not a policy of coercing local authorities, but a policy of ensuring that such local authorities as do not take their part in this work of national development shall have that development done for them. I was glad that the Minister of Labour agreed that where there are joint schemes of local authorities, with regard to water supply, electricity or roads, no single authority shall stand in the way. This Bill would help him. He has not that power to-day. He knows, as well as I know, that schemes that would have employed thousands of men have been held up for months because of some single local authority. Is the Government prepared to say that that shall continue? At least, we have dealt with that problem in this Bill. We have said that in the ease of a joint scheme of local authorities, no single authority shall be allowed to hold up what the majority of local authorities and this national Board think to be desirable in the national interest. That is really the basis of our scheme.

The right hon. Gentleman regards this Bill as a joke. Does he regard the problem as a joke. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Then, if the right hon. Gentleman does not regard the problem as a joke, I resent his regarding as a joke the sincere attempt of any party in this House to deal with it. I have a right to ask whether His Majesty's Government has any alternative?

I say, quite definitely, in answer to the hon. Member, that the present Unemployment Committee of the Cabinet, such as there was in the last Government and the Government before that, can do all this work, as exactly and effectively, and even more, than the body which the hon. Member proposes to set up. Having given him that direct answer, I should be glad if he could give me a similarly direct answer to my previous question as to whether this Bill is on the authority of the party for which he speaks.

I am very glad to declare again that this is on the authority of our party. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that we are going to run away from this Bill, he is making a great mistake. I am glad to have his answer. What is his answer? That things are to go on as they are. If that is the alternative, the right hon. Gentleman is welcome to it from the point of view of his own reputation, but it is doing little for the masses of people who to-day are unemployed. We have tried ever since the War this system of a Cabinet Committee on Unemployment. There are Members on these benches who have been members of such a Committee, there are Members on the benches below the Gangway on this side of the House and on the benches opposite who have been members of such a Committee. There has been a Committee of that kind for five years, yet to-day we have 1,250,000 people unemployed.

The truth is that, if we go on with the present lack of co-ordination and the present feeling of panic that something must be done, a little scheme here and a little scheme there, the situation five years from now will be as bad as it is to-day. The justification for our proposal is that, after five years of unemployment, we are in the position in which we are to-day. I ask hon. Members opposite to put aside their party prejudices if they can, and consider this. Suppose that in 1919 there had been a body of this kind, constantly in (session, with its responsibilities to Parliament, with £10,000,000 a year as a minimum, or an increased amount so far as this side is concerned, would the unemployment situation to-day have been as serious as it is? It would not. The right hon. Gentleman and the Minister of Transport, and other Members of the Government, are attaching importance to electrical schemes which will come to us in the fullness of time. If these schemes had been thought out from the point of view of employment in 1919, they would have been working fully to-day. If we go on with the system of Cabinet Committees, five years from now we shall be just as far from restoring our trade as we are to-day. We are trying under this Bill to be perfectly reasonable, to put aside our own prejudices, and to present a proposal which we hoped might have got the support of the majority of Members of this House. If they can show us how this Bill can be improved, we will improve it, but this Bill has not been treated with the seriousness which we believe it deserves.

There have been no arguments of a serious kind put up against it. There have been arguments put up in favour of our having more money, and that we accept, but there have been no arguments put up which have influenced any Member on this side. [ Laughter. ] Hon. Members opposite may think that that is amusing, but if it comes to a question of unemployed men there are no people in this House more ready to help than Members on this side, and if there are any proposals from any quarter which would reduce the number of unemployed in a year from now by 100,000 or 50,000 men, Members on this side of the House would support it. But I do regret to see that the Bill, which we regard as a sincere and honest attempt to deal with this problem, has been treated with a levity which is shameful in view of the situation with which we are faced. I would venture to appeal to hon. Members and ask them to try for a moment to set aside their political prejudices, and to believe that even from Members of this party some good may come, and to be willing to co-operate with us in dealing with this problem by supporting and improving this Bill in order that, whatever may come in the future, at least this Parliament will have shown a determination to deal with the problem as a great national question on national and non-party lines.

On this question it seems to me we have three things before us. We have the Bill which has been submitted, the speeches which have been made in its favour, and the real situation. In other words, a great deal that has been said in favour of the Bill might equally well have been said in favour of the various institutions that we have at the present time. I listened with great interest to the speech of the last speaker. It is extremely difficult for ordinary people to grasp how this Bill is going to mend matters. Everyone in this House feels equally deeply, I am certain, on the question of unemployment; we are all equally anxious to deal with the problem. But we realise, or many of us realise, that unemployment is only a symptom of the disease. The real trouble lies deeper, in the present economic conditions. There are those who suggest that the remedy is revolution of one kind or another—social, economic or fiscal—none of which is likely to appeal to the majority at the present time. We have been sent to this Parliament to avoid revolutions, to make good what we have now. That is what we have to face in connection with the trade situation. The cost of production is one of our difficulties, and it is a difficulty that we have to face. No one can doubt that this country to-day can produce more than it could ever produce before. Nor is there any question that the capacity to distribute is as good as it has ever been. The difficulty lies in the fact that there is not the market to consume what we produce. There are other obvious reasons for some of our troubles. Other countries have developed industries which were our own before, and they are producing articles at a much lower price than that at which we can produce them. We have in employment to-day as least as many as we had before the War. That is a fact which is frequently overlooked, and it is an answer to those who talk about our unemployment being the fault of the capitalist system. We have to-day quite as many, or rather more, in employment, than we had before the War, but we have this surplus of population at the same time. All these problems have to be faced. Revolutions and fancy ideas are not what we are accustomed to—

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

Question, "That the Question be now put," put, and agreed to.

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

The House divided: Ayes, 118; Noes, 216.

Question proposed, "That those words be there added." Debate arising,

And it being after Four of the Clock, the Debate stood adjourned.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

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

Adjourned at Nine Minutes after Four o'Clock, until Monday next (25th May).