It must be a matter of satisfaction to the whole House that to-day our deliberations can be continued free from the serious preoccupations of recent times, and that His Majesty's Government can give their full endeavour to legitimate business: that our criticisms and observations are free. I hope I am not alone in taking exception to the great tendency of past years, that has been particularly marked during the last few years, by which matters formerly left to the legislation of this House have been to an increasing degree left to the control of Departments. That has been partially done by legislation which enabled Departments to which the matters were left to to make Rules and Orders. We have had a very marked result in the authority which has been assumed by the Departments, and in the action which has been taken by the Board of Trade in connection with the safeguarding of industries. It may have been necessary to take special and exceptional measures to deal with the circumstances then existing, but, for the sake of argument, I take the Act passed in 1921 as an instance of the special methods. When it was introduced, the Prime Minister said it was very difficult to legislate in the dark, to bring in ad hoc legislation of that nature without being able to see what the repercussions might be. Since that time we have gained further experience. We have seen the directions in which the Safeguarding of Industries Act has been worked. Whatever good or whatever harm that Act may have done it has left us safeguarding. Whatever the original meaning attached to the safeguarding of the industries that were endangered by the War and by post-War conditions it has now come to mean little more than protection.

The greatest difficulty we had to meet after the War was the difficulty, a difficulty still with us to-day; of great unemployment caused throughout our manufacturing industries. It will be remembered that not very many years ago the present Prime Minister declared that the only way of dealing with the unemployment then existing was by introducing a protective system into this country. That suggestion was rejected. However, it was not very long afterwards that the Prime Minister was ready to take action, and declaring again he was not going to bring in a measure of Protection, said that whatever he did by way of relieving the difficulties of the country should be done by way of safeguarding. He declared that he had a mandate from the country to go in this way. On 17th December, in a Debate in this House, the right hon. Gentleman said:

It is not possible on the Resolution before the Committee to have a general debate on Protection. The Board of Trade have discretion as to the way the Safeguarding of Industries Act should be applied. If the hon. Gentleman confines himself to that he will be in order, but a general discussion on protection will not be in order.

I accept your ruling, Mr. Hope. I was only leading up to the manner in which the White Paper, with which I wish particularly to deal, was introduced in the House. However, I will keep my remarks within the limit by saying that the Safeguarding of Industries Act which was promised to get over the difficulty of combining a general tariff and a limited tariff, was, in fact, never introduced: instead of having legislation to deal with this very vital matter affecting the whole country and affecting the whole of our industry, the whole trade system of the country was based upon this White Paper No. 2327. It may be perhaps as well at this moment to give the points to which I refer—I will try to keep within the Safeguarding of Industries Act—for however this matter may be understood in this House, I am sure it is not understood outside.

This White Paper is not based on any Act of Parliament whatever, and the whole action which has been taken in regard to the system under which our industries work and our commerce has been carried on is not based on legislation by this House, but merely based on a White Paper issued by a Department.

Part I of the Safeguarding of Industries Act, dealing with key industries, expires, or would normally expire, on 1st October next, if it be not renewed. There are indications, however, that this part of the Act is likely to be renewed. Part II ( a ) of the Act still remains on the Statute Book, but has become dormant. Part II ( b ) has expired by the efflux of time, and Part II ( a ) has been replaced by the White Paper to which I have referred. As I have said, this White Paper is not based upon an Act of Parliament, but is the order of a department of the Government. On the 16th February, 1925, the President of the Board of Trade insisted that this White Paper laid down conditions which would have to be fulfilled before an industry could obtain assistance. When we come to deal with the White Paper, we shall see how very vague is the basis on which the committees appointed under that White Paper are expected to work, and that vagueness was, I am afraid, added to considerably by the action of the President of the Board of Trade himself when he said on the 11th June: most wide and open nature are to be given to the instructions contained in it. The White Paper is divided into two parts, one of them relating to the conditions under which industries may apply to the Board of Trade. When the Board of Trade has granted the Committee, there are instructions as to how the Committee are to deal with the application. What I wish to draw attention to is that from start to finish this paper is absolutely vague. There is nothing definite about it. Expressions are used which are open to the most conflicting constructions, and not only that, but we shall see that apart from the instructions to them laid down in this White Paper the Committees have been subject to influences from the President of the Board of Trade himself. An industry when applying to the Board of Trade has to follow a certain procedure. If the Board of Trade is satisfied that a prima facie case for an inquiry has been established, a committee is appointed and if the committee report that a duty ought to be imposed, the Board and the Treasury concur in the proposals. It is a sort of Box and Cox arrangement. If an industry goes to the Board of Trade and gets a committee appointed, the committee naturally think that all the conditions that it is necessary to fulfil have been fulfilled by the industry in its application to the Board of Trade, and, on the other hand, if the committee gives a finding the Board of Trade is able to refer to that finding and say that, because it has reported in that way, therefore, that must be the correct interpretation and the correct decision on the matters which have been submitted to it.

We do not even know what is an applicant industry. What is it that constitutes an industry? The worsted industry applied for a committee, although the trade union operatives of that industry opposed it most strongly. Are the operatives to be considered part of the industry or not? Then, too, what is "of substantial importance." In the case of gas mantles, the industry was found to be of national importance on the intervention of the President himself, who instructed the committee that the use of such mantles during the war enabled gas to be stripped of various constituents which are essential for the manufacture of explosives, and gas so stripped would be practically useless for lighting purposes without incandescent mantles. It is not so much the instruction that was given that one objects to, but what one does find very good ground for objecting to is that the committee should be set up with certain rules which it is supposed to follow, and then that it should be subjected to instructions given to it by the very person who has set it up.

Again, we come to that extraordinary word "abnormal," which has been the cause of very great difficulties—"abnormal importations." This is a really pivotal matter, because, as I understand it, unless abnormal importation be proved, the whole of the case must fall to the ground. The President himself said, on the 10th February, 1925: given rise naturally to the most conflicting decisions. What are "similar goods"? How can it be said that we can arrive at what are "similar goods," and what is "profitably manufactured"? What is to be the rate of profit allowed? Paragraph (4) says: in camera because it was supposed that trade secrets might be given away to trade competitors, and the result is that the general public is left entirely in ignorance of the grounds upon which the committee arrived at its decision. Under paragraph (7) the committee have to report you have before the committee the persons engaged in industries whose interests may be affected by the production of this particular article, the shopkeepers and the consumers and the taxpayers are left out, and they have no locus standi before the committee. Section III deals with the constitution of committees. I do not want to say a word against the gentlemen who have given their time and labour endeavouring to give decisions on the very difficult matters that have been placed before them, guided only by these very vague instructions; but I do ask this committee to consider whether it is right that the whole system of trade and commerce should be dealt with in this manner by irresponsible committees appointed by the Department, guided by no laws of procedure and bound by no rules of evidence.

Sometimes, as I have already pointed out, the evidence is taken in camera, and consequently the whole country is in ignorance of the actual evidence given. It has been said that at some of the meetings of the committees a shorthand note of the evidence was taken and published and the findings they have come to in some cases raise the laughter of the whole world. Incidentally I should like to show the ignorant manner in which some of these difficult and complicated questions have been approached and dealt with. I will quote very shortly one or two instances of the conflicting results that have been arrived at by the labours of the different committees. Take, for example, gas mantles. In this case abnormal importation was not proved and the committees' conclusion was based on other factors. In the case of gloves, if any hon. Member likes to look at the report, he will see how the imports were found to be abnormal by a calculation made of the retained imports on figures produced by the applicants which were subjected to no test at all. The committee that dealt with lace interpreted "similar goods" as being similar in appearance, but not similar in quality, whereas the committee which dealt with brooms and brushes decided in exactly the contrary sense, that is they said they must be similar in character, but not necessarily similar in appearance.

One unfortunate result of the working of these Committees in regard to the ques- tion of unfair competition has been connected with Germany. In one case we have seen that Germany is beginning to feel that the direction of legislation is being pointed against her, and the result of her world trade may be—I hope it will not—that it will have a very serious affect upon our trade in foreign markets. In regard to the paper bag trade there has-been a most extraordinary result. As a matter of fact the Federation of Paper Bag Manufacturers did not make an application to the Board of Trade, but it gave conditional evidence before the committee, and got a conditional judgment. There again the name of Germany was brought in, and although it was held that the German competition was not unfair, the committee held that the system adopted might be to the disadvantage of the producers in Great Britain.

I have quoted these instances as shortly as I can, and without elaboration, in order to bring before the committee what is actually happening before these various committees. We find conflicting decisions and interpretations, and we have a very serious unsettling of our industries, and that is the inevitable result because we get, as the Prime Minister himself pointed out, a kind of gambling in trade, and you are appointing a committee to protect your own particular industry. One industry gets this protection, and another industry, equally well entitled to it, fails to get that protection. There have been 34 applications made to the committees of which 13 have been rejected, and up to the present nine have been granted. The grounds on which some of the industries get protection before the committees are very confusing to the ordinary public, and this must necessarily be so, because the evidence on which the public can form their own judgment is very limited. We see that the authority of Parliament has not been increased by handing over these matters of such vital importance to departmental committees, and another incidental result that we see is that our taxation, instead of being dealt with all in one Finance Bill at one time of the year, is brought in by piecemeal legislation from time to time. This makes it very difficult for the House to consider the whole question of taxation, as it should be considered, at one time.

I should like now to refer shortly to Part I of the Safeguarding of Industries Act. Another committee was appointed recently to look into the working of Part I of the Act. The present Prime Minister, when, as President of the Board of Trade, he introduced, in May, 1921, the Financial Resolution for the Safeguarding of Industries Act, said:

With regard to this part of the Safeguarding of Industries Act, I understand that, so long as it is on the Statute Book, the Board has no discretion in the matter. Unlike the ordinary requirements of the other part, this part, if it has to be renewed, would have to be renewed by legislation, and it appears to me, therefore, that the question is one which cannot be discussed in Committee of Supply.

May I not refer to the Report of the Board of Trade Committee?

Yes, I think so, but if the hon. Member is arguing as to whether it ought or ought not to be renewed, that is a purely legislative matter.

May I point out that the Committee of Ways and Means has already passed the Resolution upon which is founded the provision for continuing these duties in the Finance Bill, which is going to be introduced on Wednesday?

It is clearly a matter for the Finance Bill.

Shall we not be entitled in this Debate to raise the question of the policy of the President of the Board of Trade in deciding to include specific articles covered by Part I? It is the policy of the Department that we want to attack, rather than the actual Bill itself.

No; I think that legislation is required. Under Part II, the Board of Trade have a discretion as to whether they shall or shall not order the inquiry laid down in the procedure, and discussion on that would be in order, but in the other case it is purely a matter of legislation.

I accept your ruling, of course, but there are so many departmental committees of the Board of Trade that one more or less would seem to make no difference. I should like now to refer to two other Committees of the Board of Trade, and I do not think I shall be out of order in doing so. They are referred to in the Merchandise Marks Bill.

. I understand that those Committees have been set up.

It is proposed to set up two more committees.

I am afraid the hon. Member will have to wait for that Bill.

It has already received its Second Reading.

Yes, I was only going to refer to it as an illustra- tion of the number of committees which the Board of Trade has set up in pursuance of its present policy of government by Committees. I will conclude my remarks by simply saying that I hope what I have said with regard to the Committees set up under the White Paper will make the House hesitate, at this time of the day, and consider whether, in the case of a nation with the largest trade in the world, Committees of this sort can really be considered reasonable for dealing with matters which affect the whole population of the country, and whether it is not better to legislate openly in the House of Commons, and let the whole country know what we are doing in regard to any change in our fiscal system, rather than allowing such changes to be dealt with in some back room by irresponsible Committees set up by a Government Department.

I have very little to add to what has been said with such force and clearness by my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Sir R. Hamilton) about the particular Measure to which he has referred and the way in which it is administered by the Board of Trade. I would like to emphasise the importance of one point which my hon. Friend made, and that is that, before we come to any conclusions as to the working of this Act, we ought to be in possession of the evidence which has influenced the Committees in coming to their conclusions. Although we cannot discuss the merits of any legislation here, I think it is important that the considerations that have weighed with the committees in coming to their conclusions should be present to the mind of the House. We ought to know what the evidence is and what are the facts and the figures, and I cannot conceive why any part of this evidence should be suppressed. I can understand the delicacy of forcing trade witnesses to give evidence on matters which they regard as trade secrets. That, of course, is important. But there is one difference between this country and America, and I think it is rather in favour of America. It is that we have far more trade secrets than they have in America. They are far more open about what they are doing and the way in which they show their machinery and let the public into the secret of what they are doing. I remember, when the Census of Production Act was introduced, the difficulties one had in getting information of the most elementary character, because traders said, "You are forcing us to reveal our trade secrets." It was very ridiculous, and it has since been discovered that there was nothing in that, point, and that some of their rivals knew all about them already. In so far as these secrets are patented, they can be ascertained from the specifications, and in so far as they are not patented you may depend upon it that in some way or other they are discovered. Therefore, it is perfectly absurd that these facts and figures, which are such an element in inducing the committees to arrive at their decisions, should be withheld from the public. It is the public who have to judge, and it is the public who have to suffer if a mistake is made. I, therefore, would enforce as far as I can the contention of my hon. Friend on that subject.

But those are not the questions I wanted specially to address to the right hon. Gentleman. I should like to know from him first of all, whether the judgment he gave the House a fortnight or three weeks ago about the trade position has been in any degree modified by the figures for April. When he made that very illuminating survey of the situation, he had not the April figures in mind. For instance, he pointed out that, whereas a year or two ago the percentage we have regained of our export trade was something like 75 per cent., at the end of the first three months of the year we had actually regained 82 per cent. of our trade. I do not know how he arrived at those figures. Probably he was thinking of volume and not value.

Yes, everything was brought down to the proper denominator.

And probably upon that basis 82 per cent. was a very fair calculation. But since then the figures are very much worse. I should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman has made any computation taking the four months, whether he can explain why the month of April was so bad, and whether he can extract some measure of hope out of the facts in his possession which will encourage the public, which stands sadly in need of encouragement. I should also like to know what is the position of the Census of Production. Owing to the War, we were unable to have our decennial valuation return. Last year the President of the Board of Trade inaugurated a fresh Census under the Act that I carried in 1906. I should like to know whether the Board of Trade can issue some preliminary figures, because I have not been able to find two experts to agree as to what has happened with regard to British trade at all. We have recovered anything from 75 to 82 per cent. of our export trade, which means that on the whole we are certainly 20 per cent. down as far as foreign trade is concerned. Then we are told that is more than made up by the increase in our production in the home market. It is, therefore, very important that we should know exactly what the position is, whether production as a whole is stationary, whether it has increased or diminished, in what respect it has decreased, where it has been depressed and where it has appreciated. I can well understand that with a gigantic task like that of tabulating the whole of the returns of the census of production the right hon. Gentleman could not give us a full report for a very long time to come, but could he not give us something like a kind of preliminary report, something like the census authorities of the Ministry of Health and the Registrar-General give with regard to the census of population—something that will give aggregate figures, at any rate which will give the country some kind of idea of what is happening with regard to production.

The next question I should like to ask is how is the inquiry getting on. There was an inquiry into British trade set lip in 1924. We have already had two reports, both very valuable, but neither bringing us up to what we really want to know. There is a mass of information of a very valuble but inconclusive character. I am not complaining, because they themselves up to the present have not reached their conclusions, and they are simply giving from time to time provisional opinions with regard to two or three matters of the greatest importance when you want to form conclusions. One would like to know whether there is any hope of the inquiry being brought to a termination, and of our receiving the report at an early date because there are a great many very disquieting features still in the outlook, and if they are able to dispel these clouds, if they are able to point out that they are purely temporary and provisional, and that things are gradually improving, giving good ground for hope in the future, that would be very encouraging to British industry. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to inform us, first of all, when he is likely to give us the first preliminary report under the census of production, when we are likely to get the report of the committee appointed to inquire into the whole position of British industry, and if he has modified his estimates to any extent in consequence of the returns for April.

I welcome the questions that have been put by the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken, and I hope we shall get some information on those points. It must be in the mind of many hon. Members that as the result of the happenings of the last fortnight, this Department must be, I suppose, above all others, the one most likely to have to come to the House for supplementary Estimates. It will be time to criticise those Estimates when they are presented, but perhaps one might say a word or two about the work that is likely to be the subject of a supplementary Estimate in advance. Perhaps I have had in the last fortnight or so, amidst all my other anxieties, as much to do with the people who have been working in the right hon. Gentleman's Department on special emergency food work as any hon. Member, and probably more. While one regretted the grave circumstances which led to the necessity for putting into operation any food emergency measures, I want in fairness to say that, so far as my experience went, the help that was given by the Department was careful, courteous, and impartial, and it was appreciated by many of us who had to busy ourselves extensively with what was, after all, our prime function of feeding the people for whom we were responsible. We will deal with the supplementary Estimates when they come, but it is only fair, on a day like this, to make that acknowledgment.

4.0 P.M.

In regard to the general Vote, I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there are many things still giving us grave cause for anxiety in the trade out-look, and I think we have to come up against the fact that we depend upon our export trade perhaps more than upon anything else. I am reminded that the Prime Minister, at Knowsley, in July of last year, said:

Four months.

I am taking the first three months, because I have had more time to examine them. I only saw the other figures in the "Board of Trade Journal" this morning. Taking the first three months, whereas our exports for 1925 amounted to £208,000,000 those in the present year have amounted only to £189,000,000. There is not such a marked difference in prices between those two periods and 1924, and the figures are not at all encouraging. Moreover, the same tendency is reflected if one looks at the balance of trade during the past two years. In 1924, the surplus of imports over exports was £324,000,000, and in 1925 it was £385,000,000. That also is a very serious factor to take into account. I noticed— I think in one of the January numbers of the "Board of Trade Journal"—a reference to the balance available for oversea investment, and I think the figure given there for 1924 was something like £63,000,000.

indicated dissent.

I am quoting the "Board of Trade Journal." I know the hon. Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise) is an expert in these matters, but he must forgive me if I rely upon those with whom I worked for some, months in an official capacity, and whose authority I respect. They give the figure for 1924 as £63,000,000, and as having been reduced in 1925 to £28,000,000. These figures give us cumulative cause for anxiety in that they all point the same way, that trade is not improving in spite of the publication of different figures with regard to unemployment. These figures of the Board of Trade do not seem to me to justify the optimism which some people feel when they read the figures published by the Minister of Labour. I have read from time to time the speeches of the President of the Board of Trade in this country on these matters, and I have selected a couple of statements from these speeches. He will remember saying this at Middles brough in September:

"The Government ought to act to the full within the limits where Government action is useful. The job of the Government is to try both in what it did and no less in what it left undone to create conditions under which industry could best thrive and compete."

Perhaps one of the burdens of our criticism will be that it is not merely what the President has done, but what he has left undone which has contributed to the failure to secure that trade recovery which so many of us desire. For example, speaking on a later date in the Debate on the Safeguarding Duties, he said:

"What has been exercising my mind is how to correct the enormously increasing adverse balance of trade."

He will remember these words I am sure:

"How can we export more than we are exporting at the present time?"

He will forgive my saying so, but there does not seem to have been very much result from the exercise of his mind since that particular Debate. What has happened with regard to the Board of Trade policy in connection with safeguarding? I wonder if the President will tell us that the considered policy of safeguarding is assisting the development of export trade. I shall be very interested to hear what he has to say about that. I know he has information available to himself which is hardly available to us, but, so far as we can judge from cold print, the figures which are supplied to us by the Board of Trade in the White Papers and in the Board of Trade Journals show that, so far from assisting export trade, the operation of the Safeguarding Duties has actually interfered with export trade. My reading of the trade results since the Safeguarding policy was adopted, leads me to this conclusion: That the export trade in touring cars and cabs has been materially retarded and the re-export trade seriously damaged; that the re-export trade in clocks has been damaged; that the export trade and re-export trade in watches has been damaged; in the case of cutlery, that the export trade in knives, scissors, and razors in all cases has been damaged, although I admit that in that case we have not had a very long period in which to form a judgment; in the case of lace, the duty in which has been operating for a considerable period, that the export and re-export trade has been very seriously damaged indeed. We were informed a few days ago that the "British Gazette" was the official organ of the Government, so that I suppose any utterances from that organ about trade will carry great authority. [ Interruption. ] You cannot have it both ways. If the "British Gazette" was the authoritative organ of the Government during the past fortnight, we must give due weight to it, and this is what it says:

"Employment in the lace industry has become very bad indeed."

I think the President will not desire to dispute that fact. There is complete evidence from the trade returns concerning lace that the position has grown very much worse since the imposition of the duty than was the case before.

What about the Tiverton lace factory?

I shall be very interested presently to listen to what the hon. and gallant Member has to say about that.

There were 55 per cent. unemployed in June, and there are only 11 per cent. unemployed now.

That depends upon what they are making. I hope the hon. and gallant Member for Tiverton (Lieut.-Colonel Acland-Troyte) will tell us later. It does not, however, destroy my argument for one moment. I am taking the published returns for the whole of the lace industry in the country, and, judging from those published figures, there can be no doubt that the position has worsened and has not improved. I want to take another point, where I think the President might have done more for the trade of the country than he has done. There have been two or three legislative matters before the House of Commons, for which I do not suggest the President is responsible, but where we think he might have brought far more pressure upon those responsible for the policy than he did on behalf of British trade. If you take the effect upon our export trade of the contributory scheme for pensions, so far from acting on behalf of trade and protecting against impositions of that kind upon industry, I gather—

I am afraid this point cannot be pursued. It is purely a legislative matter, and, in any case, it is a matter for which other members of the Cabinet are responsible.

This is the Board of Trade Vote, and what we are anxious to say on this occasion is that we should have liked to have seen far more open opposition to something which injured trade from the Cabinet Minister in charge of the Department of Trade than was actually the case. There is no doubt in our mind that the contributory scheme with its charge upon industry has been a factor in retarding our export trade. I can see the Chairman has his eye upon me and I will not go into the figures, but the same remark applies to Unemployment Insurance contributions and the return to the Gold Standard. There is another matter on which I hope I shall be able to keep in order, and it is the question of the general policy of the Government in urging people to buy British goods. That is a very fine appeal to patriotic sentiment, and one with which I do not at all quarrel, but, if that is to be the main policy of the Government for rehabilitating trade in general and for helping export trade, then I am afraid that they are going to be very disappointed in the results, for they will be failing to keep in mind, as I gathered on April 29th the President wanted to keep in mind, the importance of the European and foreign markets as well as of w the home market and the British Empire market.

I want to impress upon the committee, if I may, the very great importance of the European market. There has been far too big a tendency in this House during the last two or three years to overlook the importance of the European market in striving for the development of the Empire market. I have been into the figures again, and I find that in 1913 our European market was 34 per cent. of the whole of our market, and in 1924 it was 31 per cent. Obviously, if we can do anything to restore the purchasing capacity of Europe, and to develop their potential buying power, we shall be doing far more for the immediate relief of British trade depression than by simply going on with a policy of trying to get our people to buy British goods. It has to be remembered that every time we develop here and there a home trade by the slogan, "Buy British Goods," we actually displace probably as much, and probably more, British labour from industries which have been, and would be, making goods for export. So much as you develop British produce for the home market, so much you displace labour which has been engaged in making goods for export; and, whilst I am not at all against a general policy of assisting British production for the British markets, I think we ought not to lose sight of the fact that we shall be displacing a considerable portion of the trade at present carried on in the export department. I am disappointed, therefore, that that has been really the chief contribution, the biggest contribution, that the Board of Trade has been able to make towards the rehabilitation of British trade.

I should like to emphasize in connection with that the great disappointment that we feel—I know the President expected me to say this—that the Government have not been more willing to recognise the potentiality of the Russian market. I notice the hon. and gallant Member for the Everton division of Liverpool (Colonel Woodcock) smiles. It is not the first time he has smiled, but the actual experience of some of those who are engaged in Russian trade is not such as would bear out his apparent view. I speak for those who have been engaged in Russian trade now for nearly three years, and who, considering the limited sphere, have done a tremendous volume of trade with Russia. It has amounted to millions of pounds, and there has not been a single bill—post-dated bills as well as other bills—which has not been met on the day when it was due. We have had every kind of inducement from our experience in the matter to go into further business with Russia. The answer of the President of the Board of Trade will probably be, "You can trade with Russia. We are not stopping you from trading with Russia." I know that will be the answer; but whereas we are prepared to do the business in a reasonable discounting way, the policy of the Government and the utterances of its members and particularly of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in places like Battersea, are not such as to give confidence to other people in the City to discount Russian bills at a reasonable rate.

If trade with Russia was discounted by the various interests concerned at the same rate that we have been able to do it, there would not be anything like the same cause for pressing the Government to extend the credit facilities policy to Russia. It is largely the political policy of the Government, apparently supported by the President of the Board of Trade through his utterances, that leads to unsettlement with regard to Russian trade. We urge that the Government should quite frankly admit that they have been wrong in regard to the Russian trade position. Their attitude has been wrong. I think that events will prove that it has been wrong, and will prove even to the Government that they have been wrong. We have proved from our experience the soundness of going into trade with Russia, and we believe that if the Government will extend their hand to assisting trade with Russia, other people besides ourselves will be able to enjoy the benefits of trade in that direction.

I want to say a word or two in regard to the general policy which has been adumbrated respecting the development of trade with the Empire, and I wish to emphasise that it will be of little use our developing a policy for increased Empire trade unless the increase that we get in that trade is an actual increase on the whole of our turnover. If we are going to get a development of Empire trade simply by the displacement of our business with the foreign market or of some measure of our home trade, it will not be of any use to us at all. If we are to have real development it must be something which will develop in addition to all the existing arrangements of trade that we have to-day. In that connection, I am sorry that the Board of Trade, apparently, have not paid very much attention to what has been developing in the Dominions. I asked a question without notice the other day on that matter, and I apoligised for doing so; but the President of the Board of Trade did not seem to know very much about the development of the policy of Control Boards in New Zealand and Australia.

I want to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman can tell us officially on behalf of the Government what is the present position with regard to Control Boards in New Zealand, Australia, and possibly Canada. I do not know much about the Canadian position, but I gather that they are moving towards some pooling in regard to wheat. I am particularly interested in the case of New Zealand. As far as I have been able to ascertain, and this is why I want official information, the Control Board in New Zealand has a good deal of Government backing. It is not actually a Government Board, but it seems to have a semi-official character. That Board proposes to regulate all c.i.f. contracts, and this arrangement will mean that the products coming from New Zealand to this country will be placed in their hands, and the prices we believe will be raised to the British consumer. The Board will control importers on this side—I had fears it might operate during the national emergency—and importers will not be able to obtain the supplies they require except at the will of this Control Board. I deduce from that, that by the raising of the price, Empire trade will be damaged, and some people are saying that it is already being damaged.

Is it in operation, or is it proposed?

I gather that the actual functioning of the Board is not to take place until the 1st August, but that some officer is acting from the 1st May in London. On that point I want official information. The President of the Board of Trade knows how important is the dairy trade of New Zealand with this country. We take 22 per cent of the Butter we import from New Zealand, and we take 48 per cent. of the cheese we import from New Zealand. This trade, apparently, is to be placed in the hands of the more or less rigid control of a Board, which is not merely a private pooling Board, but has some amount of Government backing. That is a point which should be within the knowledge of the Board of Trade. If the Board is going to function to the detriment of British traders in this country, the Board of Trade ought to make representation to the Dominion Government on the matter.

I would like to utter a word of warning to those who are interested in this Control Board, and draw attention to an article which appeared in the "Imperial Food Journal" on the 22nd April. We have enjoyed in the last few years considerable development in the New Zealand butter trade; very good quality of butter well-graded, reliable always at whatever time of shipment as to quality. But they must not think that they are going to play ducks and drakes with the British importer because they have got to a position like that. Here is an interesting quotation from the "Imperial Food Journal:" make the position quite clear to the New Zealand Government and the Australian Government, if a similar control begins to operate in Australia. I speak for those who have a considerable knowledge of, and considerable trade in, these particular products. We are engaged every week in handling very large quantities of these particular products, whether from New Zealand or Siberia or other parts of the world, and we do not like the present outlook, in view of the promised operations of this Control Board, and we should like to know what is the attitude of the Government in regard to it.

I should like to say a few words in regard to the attitude of the Board of Trade towards the development of the inquiry by the League of Nations through the Economic Conference. I observe that the Government have sent to the preparatory Committee two gentlemen in whom we all have confidence, Sir Arthur Bal-four, whose capacity we all know, and whose devotion to public duty we all admire, and Mr. Layton, the editor of the "Economist." When the Economic Conference was under discussion last September at Geneva, M. Loucher said that one of the most important things to bear in mind was that if they were to get a really exhaustive and fruitful inquiry into international trade, economic relationships, statistics of consumption and the like, it was essential that working class interests should be consulted. I am glad to say that some of the other nations which have been represented in the discussions of the Preparatory Committee have had the good sense to take into consultation working-class representatives with trade experience.

I know that some hon. Members will smile when I say it, but there is no better working-class trade experience in the world than co-operative trade experience, and three Governments have appointed to the Preparatory Committee as one of their representatives a prominent national co-operator. We should have appreciated it if that could have been arranged in this country. I do not suggest that a co-operator should take the place of one of the two eminent gentlemen who have been appointed as representatives of this cuontry, but I do ask of a country like ours, going into a discussion of this kind, if it is not possible to give direct representation to the co-operative move- ment of this country, that the President of the Board of Trade should arrange that co-operative information and advice on international, as well as national, co-operation should be made available to the representatives who have been appointed to represent the British Government. That is not all that we should desire, and I think I am not asking too much. I believe that the trade of the world will only recover, as we would all like to see it recover, when there is a far greater measure of international co-operation in relation to finance and trade than we have at the present time. As far as we are concerned in our own co-operative movement, we have already obtained very considerable experience through our international wholesale trading society, and we hope to get further experience in regard to international co-operative banks, which ought to be put at the disposal of the representatives who are engaged on behalf of the British Government in the work of the Preparatory Committee at Geneva.

With respect to the operation of the Preparatory Committee, I have read hastily the first Report of the Preparatory Committee issued by the International Labour Office. I take one or two paragraphs. Here is one:

The hon. Member is not entitled to pursue that topic at this time.

We shall have to try and raise that question at another time, but it must be perfectly obvious to anyone who has studied the question and who is anxious to see the rehabilitation of world trade—which alone is going to do us good—that we must adopt some policy which will not lead to the special and artificial fostering of a trade in this or that country but which will lead to the development of production on a far more co-operative basis, using the resources of the world for the benefit of the whole trading nations of the world, not always keeping in mind our immediate interest in fostering a particular industry in this country. I am sorry your view, Mr. Hope, will not allow me to pursue that matter further at the present time. The only other question to which I want to call attention is this. Since the War there has been a great difference between pre-War and post-War experience in the relation of wholesale and retail prices. I have looked at a number of statistical charts, and whereas before the War it was very rare to find a long period during which the retail level of prices remained considerably above the level of wholesale prices, since the War there have been quite long periods, as long as seven and eight months, when a fall in the level of wholesale prices has not been met by a corresponding fall in retail prices. That is a point to which the Board of Trade should give careful attention.

I expect the President of the Board of Trade will say that, as far as food prices are concerned, the Food Council has been set up, and it is functioning, but only as far as the very limited powers he has bestowed upon the Food Council will allow them to go; and that these things will improve. It is true that in the last 12 months prices have been gradually falling, but if you take the end of 1925 you have the curious experience, especially as regards food, of a rising retail price with a falling wholesale price. I know that is largely due to the lag which nearly always takes place between the one overtaking the other, but when I compared the statistics of the post-war period, with the pre-War period, I think, as a result of what took place in fixing retail prices during the War that there has been a consistent tendency since to charge too large a part to the consumer in the retail price. From the evidence given by some of the witnesses from the wholesale side before the Balfour Committee, it would appear that whereas the wholesale side of trade since the War has suffered heavy losses owing to the variations in the market, it has been a rare occurrence for the retailers to make similar sacrifices. The Board of Trade might give some attention to this matter and see whether there is not some way in which they can assist the productive and wholesale trade by making some arrangement by which the retail prices may be more in accordance with wholesale prices.

As far as food is concerned, I do not think the action of the Food Council has always been as helpful as it might have been. Take bread. Not long ago the Food Council issued a Report in which they suggested what should be the varying figures of the price of bread based upon the price of flour. My information is that they formed their conclusions very largely from the figures which we submitted on behalf of one of our largest operative societies. The figure issued by the Food Council for the price of bread is higher than is necessary. From the statistics we put in on behalf of the Co-operative Society we found, after making every allowance for establishment charges and depreciation for trade union conditions, and even for such charges as life assurance, that we could make a higher profit than would be necessary if we charged the price as fixed by the Food Council.

Nationally.

Yes, even nationally. I do not say that all co-operative societies are perfect, but from the detailed costings which we freely gave to the Food Council, too high a price is fixed by the Food Council. And on what ground? It is on the ground that if they do not fix that price, the inefficient and small people will have to go out of business. If there is to be a recovery of British trade, if the President of the Board of Trade is to have regard to the various factors which contribute to the cost of production, it will not do for the Food Council to think of things which will keep inefficiency established, and keep the cost of living so high as to affect the cost of production. I am sorry, therefore, that the Food Council has not taken more effective action. If the President of the Board really wants to produce such an effect upon the cost of living as will have a beneficial effect upon the cost of production, then he must arm the Food Council with far more drastic powers than they have at present. I make no complaint of the personnel of the Food Council, but you are giving them an impossible task in trying to get the cost of living down until you give them far more plenary powers than they have at present. I am obliged to the committee for the patience with which they have listened to me, and I hope we may have some reply from the President of the Board of Trade which will reassure us on some of the points raised.

I have listened with intense interest to the speech by the hon. Member, who rendered during his term of office most distinguished service to the Board of Trade. The impression which his speech gives is one of wide knowledge of the subject with which he has been dealing and a clear point of view, although it is not one with which I entirely agree, as to what our trade policy ought to be. He spoke with obvious enthusiasm, which reminded me of the controversies of years ago of leaving to other countries the business of making things which they can best make, and confining our activities to making those things which are within our capacity. That would be a very benign theory if we could get other people to accept it as well.

There are many things which we could supply to the great continent of America at a much cheaper price than the same commodities are manufactured in the United States to-day. But, unfortunately, the United States does not look at it in that light, and they put a very severe embargo on the commodities which we can best make going into their markets. If we are going to be perpetually excluded from almost every other market in the world, except at a high ransom, then obviously we shall have to turn our own methods into the production of whatever we can have a chance of selling, and not only is some policy of safeguarding necessary, but the experience we have had during the last two or three years has been quite sufficient justification for the measures which have been adopted. The hon. Member has asked about results, and I have no doubt the President of the Board of Trade will give him a much better answer than I can. But it was perfectly apparent to me that he was forgetting altogether the increased consumption of the home market through the operation of the Safeguarding of Industries Act.

The hon. Gentleman made a reference, as he was bound to do, to our neglect of trade with Russia. I am sure that he will not accuse me of any particular reluctance to trade with that country, because he knows that I was a signatory to a trade agreement which was made with Russia. Unfortunately that agreement produced very disappointing results. It offered us conditions which I in my heart believed would bring about an increased flow of trade between Russia and this country. But very little has developed from the arrangements which were made in that agreement. People who made no agreement at all have done just as well as we have, and our unhappy experience has been that nearly every stipulation that was solemnly made in that document has been broken from time to time and has been broken in the most flagrant fashion during the past 10 days by people who solemnly bound themselves to its terms. That is not very encouraging. But if the hon. Member takes it from the trade point of view alone, I think he will find that the ordinary trader in this country and the banks in this country are offering to Russian trade all the advantages it is possible to offer from a business point of view. I confess I do not understand what the hon. Member meant when he said that the Government should do something special to encourage trade with Russia. Why should we not do something special to encourage trade with other parts of the world which are more favourable to us?

All I ask is that the Government should not mete out special disabilities to Russia, but should include Russia in the same insurance schemes as all other countries.

My hon. Friend is surely exaggerating that point of view, because, as he knows, not only does the Export Credits scheme not extend to all countries, but there are some insurance schemes which are as yet not applied to any other country at all. These, I believe, are under consideration. You must take into account in trade the particular state of your debtor and his reliability. One might use the very illustration which the hon. Gentleman used, of a certain amount of trade being done by individuals in this country with Russia. It shows there are people who are not at all unwilling to take the burden of that trade, provided the advantages offered to them are sufficient. In my belief the only way in which you will succeed in the end in creating any trade with Russia is by letting it develop along normal channels. After all, what is the gravamen of this attack? What does the hon. Gentleman expect that trade with Russia will amount to altogether at the best? We know what it was before the War, when Russia was a rich country, with its resources developing and when it included a very much larger territory and a more immense population than that of to-day. The whole of its trade, even at the zenith of its career, was not more than is given us in manufactured articles by our little Dominion of New Zealand.

When the hon. Gentleman contrasts the development of Continental and Russian trade with Empire trade and asks us to turn our eyes to the Continent of Europe and Russia rather than to our Dominions, he is asking something which it would be madness for us to adopt. He used a phrase which seemed to me to be full of fallacy. He said that we were only substituting Empire trade for our Continental trade. But surely that is not the position at all? To-day we have a capacity for manufacturing goods sufficient to supply not merely the Dominions but our old European customers. It is only because they are not buying from us that we are not selling to them. We can, at any time, develop that European trade without in any way making a substitution, to the advantage both of the people who are able to buy from us and those who are able to sell.

I leave that particular part of the hon. Gentleman's speech in order to refer in passing to another point. I have seldom found anyone—it is somewhat refreshing to find anyone now—who is so confirmed a Free Trader as my hon. Friend. He not only deprecates the putting on of any imposts upon foreign goods coming into this country, so as to give an advantage to our own producers, but he disapproves of the Board of Trade issuing to the community an injunction to "Buy British goods." He says: "Do you not understand that if they buy British goods they are checking an export?" The cult of Free Trade could go no further than that. I do not propose, even if I thought I was capable of doing it, to disabuse my hon. Friend of that particular point of view. I should prefer that he should hold it determinedly and utter it constantly, and I hope that he and the Labour party will go to the country at the next Election with the slogan "Buy foreign goods."

The only part of the hon. Member's speech with which I agreed was that in which he dealt with the present anxieties of our trade. I do not think that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will disagree, that the present is an occasion for some disquietude. 1925 was a very bad year. It was worse than 1924, which in itself was bad enough. All our great staple trades were really in the abyss of despair. The steel trade manufactured last year 800,000 tons of steel less than in the year before. The shipbuilding trade is in a morass. The cotton and woollen trades have had a very bad time. It is true that the first quarter of this year showed some signs of revival, particularly in the month of March. But April has blasted all our hopes, and, owing to recent events, we must anticipate that the month of May will show a further decline in the volume of our trade. If you take the first quarter of this year as being a period of rather better trade, you will find that whereas our imports have gone up by 16 per cent. over our imports of 1913, our exports have gone down by 20 per cent. as compared with our exports of 1913. That is the period to which it is necessary to look back, because it is the only year by which we can measure our prosperity.

These figures reveal a very serious state of affairs. They reveal an adverse balance of trade of colossal dimensions, and unfortunately that situation does not seem to grow better. It seems, rather, on the whole, to grow worse. One read last year the explanations which came from the Board of Trade with regard to the way in which that adverse balance was made up, but I do not think that even those explanations would be sufficient to cover the adverse balance of the present year, and if things go on as they are that advance balance must increase. My right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade shakes his head. I shall be very glad to hear from him that he can give a more optimistic account of the situation. I think that everyone who has considered the figures of the present year looks at them with extreme anxiety. One had been hopeful that there might have been some change in the world's trade which would have brought us into a position of greater prosperity. There are various suggestions which have been made for reviving the trade of this country. We adopted the Trade Facilities Scheme, and we are now discarding it. I do not know how long my right hon. Friend expects to go on with the Export Credit Scheme, or whether he thinks that that also should soon come to an end. But it is perfectly apparent that, whatever temporary advantages these schemes brought about, they did not bring in their train any permanent benefit. Now we are departing from them. We have to get on to a much more solid position somewhere.

What is really at the bottom of all this, trade depression? It seems to be useless now to go over the ordinary features of which we know—the wreckage of the world, the lack of customers, and the inability of people to purchase to the same extent as they did in the past. But there are certain features which, I think, go deeper than that, and to which this House should pay some attention. I may be greatly daring in thinking that this is a convenient opportunity to consider the position in which we stand, and what we may be able to do to make things better. We are not an ineffective people in this country. We see other countries prospering greatly at the present time. We see some countries which financially are not nearly in such a strong or sound position as we are, which yet are able to afford much greater employment to their people, countries in which no such distress exists as that which we are experiencing. What are the reasons which go to the root of this problem, and in. what way is it possible that we might redress our difficulties? I would like to say, as a preliminary to the few remarks which I have to make on this topic, that I think we have demonstrated to the world that the people in this old country are not only as sane and as patient and as serene as those of any other country in the world, but that for the particular business in hand, whatever it may be, when we apply our minds to it we are the moat effective people in the world.

I am not talking of any section of the community, but of all the sections of the community, who were ranged against each other in the course of the last fortnight. I am certain that you could not find in any other part of the world a mass of people who were engaged in a strike of vital importance, who so completely restrained themselves from any acts of violence in the course of the struggle. It was one of the greatest examples of restaint on the part of people that could be found in the history of the world. The temptation to assault and violence when you are idle and on strike and see other people doing your business, must be very great indeed. I must say that I admired the people who in the course of the past fortnight preserved themselves from all acts of violence.

5 P.M.

On the other side, the skill and power of the community which were exhibited in carrying on the affairs of the country has extracted the admiration of the whole world. I should like the committee to accept from me a personal reminiscence. During the War I was put in a position in which I had to control a very large quantity of products which were required for the carrying on of the War. I was working in close co-operation with the United States. I began my job with the belief that the Americans, having come into the War, would produce with more "hustle" and activity than our people and, in particular, that their manufacturers would show more inventiveness and resource than our manufacturers when confronted with new problems. My experience was exactly the contrary. At that time, without any question, we got much the quickest and best product from the British shops, and our employers and the managers of our great industries showed a skill and resource in finding out new methods and new designs when confronted with difficulties such as no other people I know of exhibited then or afterwards. But to-day the situation is no longer like that. We seem, somehow, to have slipped back in our capacity to deal with the situation of world trade. We do not seem to be so active as we were, and I think everybody who has been to America recently, as I have, and particu- larly that delegation which was sent by one of the leading newspapers of this country, have come to the same conclusion, namely, that the people across the water are to-day working harder than we are. I am talking both of the employers and the workers.

In my view, from such conversations as I have had and from what I have seen going forward, the employers of America are putting their hearts and souls into their business in a way our people are not doing and equally there is a degree of activity and enthusiasm about the work which is being given by the ordinary workmen in America which completely surpasses anything you can see here. There may be very good reason for it. They are certainly in a very much more hopeful position, but at any rate the contrast is very obvious. There is an hon. and gallant Friend of mine sitting opposite who will bear out everything I say because I believe he and I had similar experiences. It may be that there is more opportunity there; certainly there is greater reason for confidence which puts more activity into the operations of trade, but the contrast undoubtedly is very marked, and I fear, without some increased activity in this country, we shall take a very minor place in the future compared with the great Continent on the other side of the water.

A representative of the workmen who was one of the delegation to which I have referred returned with the message that co-operation and goodwill had a great deal to do with the higher production which we see in America. I am sure that is true, but co-operation and goodwill must be translated into practice. What is the kind of practice which ought to result from co-operation and goodwill? I think undoubtedly when one comes to consider, what is the main factor in the prosperity of America at present, one finds it is that of high production. I was interested to see that one of the resolutions passed by the Trade Union Congress in America in the autumn of last year, stated that the first essential of success was high production and that it inured equally to the benefit of the employer and the workman. We should all like to see that doctrine thoroughly understood and practised here. We have for a long time, I am afraid, taken another view, and I find traces of the opposing fallacy, even in the Coal Report, where it is suggested that you must not have any increase in the production of coal because you will not find a market for it. Why, the whole truth about the economic problem, so far as industry is concerned, is that the bigger production you have upon your outlay the cheaper you are able to sell the commodity, and the cheaper the commodity the bigger your market.

And the bigger the wages you can pay.

You have only to take an illustration from the motor-car industry of America. People said," You cannot turn out all those motor cars; you will not find people to purchase them." But as soon as they were being made cheaply enough, an enormously increasing market was found for them. So it is in the experience of the world with regard to every commodity. If I might make an interpellation with regard to coal, I would say that many people at the present time believe that a high output of coal would be detrimental to the trade. They say that there is so much competition from oil that you cannot find markets, and many people will tell you that the reason why you have all this trouble in the coal trade is because there is not sufficient consumption. The truth is that if you examine the figures which the Commissioners themselves give, and exclude the Continent of America and Britain from your survey, you will find looking at the chief coal markets of the world, that so far from the consumption having gone down, it has gone up. Whereas before the War the consumption of coal in our main export markets was 466,000,000 tons, in 1924 it had gone up to 491,000,000 tons and in 1925 to 494,000,000 tons—a steady increase in the consumption of coal. I have never been one of those who believed that the consumption of coal in the world was going to be less. The question which remains is: Can you sell it at a price to get the market? The trouble has been that, whereas, of the amount sold in these markets before the War our proportion was 19 per cent., in 1924 it had gone down to 16 per cent. and in 1925 to 14 per cent. That is the explanation of the difficulty we have had in selling our coal.

I only give that as an illustration of my main theme which, I am sure, is accepted by everybody, that high production is the secret of success and prosperity in trade in any country, and also the basic secret of high wages. I know I need not elaborate that point to the President of the Board of Trade because it is a doctrine which he has preached for a long time—I am afraid sometimes to ears which were not willing to listen. But may I urge upon him the necessity of inculcating some of the doctrines which we have recently learned. In his high official position, as head of the trade of this country, he can well take occasion without any offence, to let our employers understand how necessary it is that advantage should be taken of every new device of science, and how important it is, as we have learned from the experience of other countries that nothing that is wasteful in production should be left as part of the machinery of the factory. That is one of the great lessons which we have learned.

May I suggest another on which perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will take some action, and which I derived from an interesting speech made by one of those delegates when he returned from America after a survey of the American shops. It came very close to my breast because I remembered an experience during the War which created intense anxiety in my mind. This delegate gave as one of the reasons for the difficulties in our trade and one of the factors which enabled industry to be carried on with more efficiency and expedition in America, the fact that at the present time our lines of demarcation as between trades were such as to create great impediments in the activity of some of our shops. That brought to my mind an experience during the War when two of our most important torpedo boat destroyers were held up in harbour in this country because of a dispute between two trade unions as to which of them had the right to do a particular job that would not have taken more than a short time to accomplish, upon the coaming of a hatch. These two vessels, at a time when the country needed their services most anxiously, were held up for some days until that dispute was settled. Mr. George Barnes, who was well known in this House, gave an even more extraordinary illustration the other day, as to how for months the shipbuilding yards on the North-East coast of England were deprived of their ordinary business because of a, similar dispute between two Trade Unions.

I should like to suggest to those who are members of trade unions and who are listening to me, that if these rules which may have been very necessary in the past and had a good foundation in experience, are now found to be obsolete and if they tend to become pernicious, the time has come to review their efficacy and consider whether it would not be better to get rid of a system which undoubtedly in other parts of the world has proved detrimental and has been discarded. If I might make a suggestion to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, I would propose to him that he might take some suitable opportunity of conferring with the leaders of the trade unions on this matter with a view to getting rid of something which, I am certain, particularly in the shipyards, is a great impediment to our trade and a cause of increases in the ordinary expenses of the building of our craft.

There is one more matter of this kind which I wish to mention and, again, as a preliminary, I am going to give a personal experience in order to indicate why I am specially interested. Two years ago I was trying to put through a transaction with a very large firm in France who are producers of iron ore. When we had come very nearly to some arrangement, the French manufacturer and mine-owner said to me," But I refuse to send my boats to your English ports." I asked him why, and he said, "It would mean a great increase of the cost." Again I asked him why, and this is what he told me, and he showed me the records of several voyages to substantiate his words. He had two boats which carried ore from the ore fields to wherever it was to be landed and the records of those voyages showed that a boat took three times as long, on the average, to discharge in an English port as a boat similarly loaded in a Continental port. You can imagine what a difference in freight it makes when you hold up a ship for ten days instead of three days, and how it adds to the cost of the iron ore and to the cost of the steel which you make from the iron ore.

Did you verify that statement?

Yes, I verified the facts. I know that the experience of other people is the same, because I have gone into the records of a great many other kinds of cargoes at different ports, and that is why I wish to direct the attention of the President of the Board of Trade to the matter to-day. We are, after all, living by exports, and, as we live in an island, one of the chief costs of the goods we produce and send away is dock charges and the cost of the dock labour in loading and unloading our vessels. What I find, having gone into this matter a little more particularly, is that not only is the time of discharge in this country considerably greater than at Rotterdam, Havre, Dunkirk, or Hamburg, but the cost, on the average, of discharging and tallying in our country is something like 50 per cent. higher than abroad. I am sure hon. Members who are shipowners know that what I am saying is substantiated by innumerable instances, and indeed it has had the effect in a large number of cases of sending our vessels abroad, for their discharge at foreign ports rather than here, and seeking rather to get cargoes for Continental ports than for English ports.

These matters seem to me to have a vital effect upon our trade. It is surely our duty at the present time to get down our costs in every way possible. Everything comes back at the present time to the question of price, and price depends upon cost, and cost depends upon our mechanism and upon the way in which we organise. I am not seeking to impute the blame to one set of people more than to another, but I say that this is a thing which seems to me to deserve complete investigation, and that some attempt should be made to remedy an evil which, I am sure, is causing us a loss of very much trade, which otherwise to-day we should obtain. I think, if I may venture to say so before this Committee, that this is a good time to raise this question. I believe that the people of this country at the present moment are more anxious to co-operate than at any time since the War. I think we under- stand to-day the need of working in a common spirit and in complete amity, with a desire, not for the benefit of any one section of the community, but for the advantage and prosperity of all. We have shown that we are a country which bears well a period of vicissitude. I am sure that we ought now to strive with all our might—every individual citizen and every organisation—to give the great people of this country the prosperity which they deserve.

The right hon. Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) expressed himself as being somewhat depressed with the confirmed Free Trade views of the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. I may confess myself also equally depressed, but not quite for the same reason. I do not believe in imposts on foreign goods, and in that sense I am not a Protectionist, but it does seem to me to be rather late in the day, after generations of discussions, to bring forward all the old arguments about imports and exports checking each other and so forth. We all agree that in the long run you cannot export goods without importing them. That is true, but that does not happen to be the argument, which has to do with the question of the purchase of British goods. I do not know that I think it a very important matter that the Board of Trade should advertise hugely, counting upon the patriotism of the people, in favour of the purchase of British goods. When the argument is put forward that if you buy goods in this country, whether it is a question of imposts upon foreign goods or not, you are merely displacing the labour which would otherwise be employed in making goods which you could sell to foreign countries, surely the obvious answer to that is that while it is true that other countries would buy from you and therefore employ your labour, it is also true that if a merchant purchases goods at one period from Berlin and then substitutes Liverpool or Manchester for Berlin, there is just as much trade being done of a mutual character. The people in Manchester or Liverpool are providing just as much work for the merchant, say, in Sheffield, or his workpeople, as the foreign producer would be providing—[HON. MEMBERS:"Hear, hear!"], with the difference and with the advantage, from my point of view—and my point of view is not that of those who want to cheer what I am saying at this moment—that you have two transactions in this country instead of one.

That seems to me to be the answer to the old Free Trade argument, which I do not accept. I do not think it is a Labour point of view particularly, and I am certainly convinced that it is not the Socialist point of view. I do not believe in Free Trade, but neither do I believe, for other reasons, in artificial imposts upon foreign goods coming into this country. I think the reasons are of a technical character, with which probably my Free Trade friends would agree. I do not need to go into them, but I do disagree with the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade when he takes the Board of Trade to task with regard to the question of the control of imports. I believe in the control of imports. I believe that we ought to develop our own country to the utmost, and that for more than one reason I think we should develop our own country to the utmost because, by developing all the trade you can within your own shores, you have a greater control over the economic conditions and over the questions of wages and conditions, so that I would encourage as far as possible the development of our own industry and leave the question of exchange between this country and other countries to the surplus of the argument, and I think we could leave that question very safely once we had developed our own country to its fullest possible resources. Yes, but that is Socialism. You cannot develop this country to its fullest possible resources if you who are Protectionists, equally with Free Traders, hold the view of the right hon. Member for Hillhead that we are bound to be, and ought to set ourselves out to be, an exporting country, that we must always depend on exports, and that we should do all we can, whether by Empire trade or in any other way, to keep this country essentially an industrial and exporting nation. I do not think it is a good thing that you should try to keep this country essentially an industrial and exporting nation.

That brings me to the main argument, which the right hon. Member for Hillhead explained in dealing with the question of high production. He said that in America it had been proved that high production was the secret of high wages and of prosperity. In the first place, I am not quite sure that high production is much more the rule in America than it is here. In this country there are many industries which are very highly efficient and in which production is very high indeed, and up-to-date methods are being adopted, and adopted successfully. Also, I am not sure that high production is the universal rule in American industries. It may be true of Fords and the Bethlehem Steel Works, and of quite a number of very important shops and big industries in America, but I do not think it is true universally throughout American industries or agriculture. The point, however, which I wish to put before the Committee is this, that so long as you have a small amount of high production, so long as it is localised, then those who adopt those highly efficient mass-production methods are bound to have an advantage. It does not follow that the advantage is a national one, because we have to take into account the point, for instance, that if Ford's Motor Works in America, by mass production, are able to produce a very cheap car, and, therefore, to sell that car in very large quantities, the people who are buying motor cars as a new item of expenditure are not spending their money upon something else. That is a point of view at least to be considered.

I do not say that that is the last word on the subject, but the real point, surely, is this, that so long as it is localised and confined to a number of works, or even to one country, you can "point a moral or adorn a tale" about high production and high wages quite easily, but mass production must inevitably mean, sooner or later, universal mass production; it must mean mass production in all countries, in all industrial countries, and when that begins, when you have not only this country, but also Germany, Italy, France, and the rest of our competitors carrying out the policy of mass production, what is going to happen to high wages, and where are you going to get rid of your products? That is what you have to consider. It is all very well to say that if only you produce twice as much as you produce now, you will be able to sell so much more easily, but do you think that other nations are going to stand still while you are doing it? I read an account, I think it was in the" Econo- mist," of a new coal hewer in Germany, which tears out coal from the face like a knife going into butter, and mechanically puts the coal into conveyers, which are electrically propelled. We ought to do the same thing, it is true, but that does not solve the problem. The problem is one of universal economics, and ultimately you will have the position as you had in earlier stages of industrial Britain, and Europe, and the world, of essential over-production, or of relative over-production, of commodities, the piling up of large quantities of goods which cannot be sold. The only way, surely, to deal with a problem of that kind is to consider the question from a different point of view. Let me say, in passing, that I should very much like to have had from the right hon. Member for Hillhead some particulars about this old charge against the trade unions of restricting output.

I did not say a single word about trade unions restricting output in this country. I said the theory had been held that you could have too much output, but I did not say to whom it belonged at all. I am afraid some employers have held it as strongly as some trade unions sometimes.

If I misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, I certainly shall not continue upon that line of thought. I will not carry the argument farther, because I evidently misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, but I will go on to the moral that I wished to draw from what I had previously said. I believe in the development of our own industry, in our own country; and I believe in the control of imports in this way: if it is not going too far beyond the confines of this Vote—I do not wish to offend against the rules of procedure— I should like, by way of illustration, to say that suppose you bought more of your food supplies from the growers of food in this country, suppose you developed your agriculture, and suppose that the balance that was necessary to come into this country from foreign countries, from the Empire, or from anywhere else was known, surely it would be good policy for this country not merely to control the imports of foreign foodstuffs, but to make State purchases of foreign foodstuffs, to organise scientifically the whole production and distribution of foodstuffs in this country.

What is true of that might also be true of industry generally, and it is a policy which I hope some future occupants of the offices of the Board of Trade will follow. It might very well apply to the question of Imperial trade, and hon. Members opposite are very much interested in the development of the Empire. I do not disagree with that. By all means develop the Empire. At the same time, do not develop the Empire merely for the purpose of assisting the people in between, who get their rake-off from in between the producer and the consumer. That is by the way. The point I want to make is this: Why should it not be a good thing for this country to develop the Empire in this way, or develop foreign countries in this way for our own purpose? There are American capitalists who are not investing their surplus capital in foreign concerns, but are actually building their own factories in foreign countries, making certain portions of their semi raw material in foreign countries. In our own country, there are people, for instance, like Liptons, who develop Ceylon by growing their own tea there, by the investment on the spot of British capital. The same with the meat-juice firms, who have their cattle ranches in South Africa and Australia. It is the exploitation of the British Empire by British capital.

If that can be done by private capitalists, why should it not be a good thing for the Board of Trade to develop that policy for the nation? There are many things you ask the nation to do. I am dealing with the real question, and that is the feeding, clothing, sheltering and educating a population of 45,000,000 people. If you can solve the food production problem by developing your own country to its uttermost, knowing what people require, knowing what you can produce and what the balance is, and then develop your own Imperial lands by direct State production of exactly the quantity of goods you require as the balance for feeding the population of this country, that is a far better method than a method which simply means taking it out of the consumer by imposts on foreign goods. [HON. MEMBERS: "No !"] Perhaps I do not understand it. I am trying to show, anyhow, not only my limitations, but what I think about the subject generally. Whether I understand the question of imposts upon foreign imports or not, I do feel that I understand the importance of developing the food supplies of this country, and I think if you want to develop Imperial trade and develop the Empire from a productive point of view, you cannot do better than organise it scientifically, producing for use, and not merely for profit. That production for use policy is the only way you are going to get over the other difficulty of manufactured articles.

I have referred to the question of high production. When it becomes universal, you will not get rid of your products, but if you only make things to use, and when you do produce what you want to use, whether food supplies or anything else, you will have solved the economic problem. There will be no unemployment, no over-production, and we shall not be at the mercy, as we are to-day, of the lowest denominator, not only of European but of Asiatic conditions, and of the machinations of foreign finance and the fluctuations of foreign markets.

I have listened to the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) with a certain amount of amazement. He believes in the home production, and so do I, but I am against him as far as he is against the foreign trade of this country. You may say, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) said, that we live on the export trade of this country. You may say it is the breath of this country, because if you had not your exports, you could not possibly pay for the imports.

Why are you a Protectionist then?

I did not say I was a Protectionist at all, but I will tell the hon. Member one thing. I am against the State purchase of any commodity. I think if he will do me the honour of looking up the trading accounts of this country, both during the War and after the War, I believe he may possibly change his mind. My main object in rising this afternoon is to forward what has already been said by the hon. Member for Hills-borough (Mr. A. V. Alexander), and also my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead in regard to the balance of trade in this country. I cannot help thinking that it is one of the gravest problems we have to face at the present time. The hon. Member for Hillsborough mentioned certain figures, and perhaps the Committee will forgive me if I go into those figures again. They may be slightly technical, but it is important that the whole country should understand the gravity and the smallness of this trade balance. Our imports in 1925 were £1,300,000,000. That was 3·5 in excess of 1924. Our exports—and I should like respectfully to contradict the figures that the hon. Member for Hillsborough gave— as far as I can remember were £927,000,000 or a decrease of 1·4 compared with 1924. That leaves a debit balance of £395,000,000. How is that paid for? That is paid for by our invisible exports. [An hon. Member: "The whole of it?"] The whole of the debit balance of £395,000,000 is paid for by our invisible exports. They include foreign investments, and the Committee must know that our foreign investments compared with pre-War days have gone down considerably since the War.

No.

Our foreign investments were very much greater in pre-War days than they are to-day. I differ from the hon. member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams), and I think if he looks up the figures he will find I am more or less correct. The invisible exports include, as I say, foreign investments, shipping, bankers' commissions, and insurance. These invisible exports came to £425,000,000 in 1925, and if you deduct the £395,000,000 for the excess of imports over exports, you find a balance of only £28,000,000. It is very small. It has gradually been reduced. In 1924, that balance was £63,000,000, and in 1923 £152,000,000. I quite agree that we have had to pay our external debt out of that amount, but for a huge country like ours—and this figure is only an estimate—to have such a small overseas balance shows indeed the gravity of the situation, as far as our trade is concerned.

What does it mean? It means that our foreign investments are reduced, because the overseas balance of £28,000,000 is available for overseas investment. Actually our overseas investments have been greater than this amount. In 1925 they were £88,000,000, and in 1924 they were £134,000,000, but if you look at it from the point of possibly investing more than your oversea trade balance, you will find that your exchange will depreciate or you will have to export gold against the balance. I think the President of the Board of Trade possibly will have more satisfactory figures to give us for the first three months of this year.

The hon. Member for Islington referred to the home market. I am sure he will be pleased, and I think the President will agree with what I say, that the home market for 1925 was indeed good, and you have only to look at the Clearing House returns, which were a record for 1925, to realise that the trade at home was good. But it is the export trade, the world trade to which the right hon. Member for Hillhead referred, on which we depend to a very large extent. This world trade, as the hon. Member for Islington must know, is wrapped up in finance. Trade is far more wrapped up in finance to-day than in 1913–1914. You have your various difficult currency problems to settle. You have an absolutely new trade in the shape of what is called forward exchange. How can you do trade with countries like Italy or France except under great difficulties, when you get the lira rising over 10 points in a day and the franc four or five points? It makes it difficult. It shows how finance is wrapped up in trade, and how it affects the trade of this country. Thank goodness, our credit has kept good. It is the mainspring of trade. You may say in a commercial sense credit is the promise to pay at a future time for valuable consideration in the present. So long as we can get satisfactory credit, so long as we can maintain it at a cheap level, it will be good, and a benefit to trade in this country.

The right hon. Member for Hillhead referred to the United States of America, and that portion of his speech was very interesting. Can the Committee conceive the fact that the United States is a creditor to-day and was a debtor in 1913–1914, must affect the world trade and also the trade in regard to this country? Take the debts which are due to the United States—£3,000,000,000 over 62 years. Does anybody in this Committee think that that will not affect the trade of the country? During the three months January to March, the world exports to the United States have been greater than the imports from the United States. That is a benefit to World trade, but with that huge debt no one can conceive that until something definite was settled with regard to that debt the trade could come down to the normal capacity of 1913–1914. I am not a great believer in this War Debt. I know it affects trade, and I remember what was placed to the credit of Bismarck. He said, after the 1870–1871 war, that he would sooner give an indemnity than receive one. Those words are worth remembering, especially as I understand the French Finance Minister is in this country. The embargo on foreign loans has affected our export trade. I quite appreciate that it may be an advantage to this country to receive £15,000,000 in America at that particular time, for it would help to pay the external debt; but it must affect the trade of this country. This £15,000,000 was the Commonwealth Loan which New York took instead of London.

I hardly like to touch upon the gold standard because it is such a technical question, but undoubtedly it affected our export trade in 1925, however we may have benefited through the imports from other countries being cheaper. I cannot help feeling that the crux of the whole trade of this country comes down to Government finance. Our immense debt of £7,600,000,000, our burden of taxation —for we are heavier taxed than any country in the world—does any member of this Committee think that this helps our trade? It is the burden of taxation which affects us as much as anything, and that cannot be reduced unless you reduce the Government expenditure. When hon. Members realise that every penny the Government takes from us all has to be made by commerce and industry, and goes out of commerce and industry into the Government's pockets, I think the President of the Board of Trade will agree with me that possibly the great burden, even more so in our case than in the case of perhaps any other nation, is the enormous expenditure of the Government at the present time. Take the local expenditure. In 1925–1926 the local expenditure was £166,000,000, £6,000,000 more than the previous year. In 1913–1914 the local expenditure was only £87,000,000. I do not wish to keep the Committee any longer, but I do want to impress upon them the absolute necessity of keeping up our export trade, because we have somehow or other to pay for the food and raw material coming into this country. We can only do that by our export trade. I contend that the reduction of the Government expenditure would do more than anything else to help that trade. I sincerely hope that when the President of the Board of Trade comes to reply he may be able to give us some reassuring figures as to the balance of trade in this country, which is so important for the nation as a whole.

I only rise to call attention to one particular matter. Before, however, I come to that, I should like to confess that I have listened to some of these interesting debates on economics with some feeling of confusion. I have heard one hon. Member say that he believes in Tariff Reform and also in Free Trade. I must confess some little inability to understand what that means. I believe that in Australia they call that sort of policy a "Yes-and-No" policy. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) always makes a most valuable contribution to our Debates, but, if I may say so with all respect, in view of his great knowledge on these matters, he is a little one-sided. He always seems prepared to speak of the shortcomings or failures on the part of labour, on the working side, but he does not seem to draw the attention of the Committee or the House to any shortcomings on the part of the employers. His whole speech was an attack, as I considered it, on the methods in which actual labour was carried out in this country.

I only give one example. He said that it cost 50 per cent. more to unload a ship in English ports than it does in various European ports. I consider that to be most misleading. In view of what has been said as to the Exchange by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. Gentleman ought to know that it is impossible to make comparisons with the cost in these European countries in which the Exchange is different from our own. Not only that, but we have had comparisons of figures with the United States. I want to make one more remark in connection with the payment of high wages. It is repeatedly said on the other side that we ought to work harder, and that high production means high wages. I, myself, feel considerable sympathy with those who have some doubt as to whether that is actually carried into effect. We have lately heard of a book by a couple of engineers as to the course of work in the United States, and in this book, high wages as a result of high protection are advocated. In the past in this country, in almost every sphere of activity where payment of wages was in relation to the results, where the results were increased, not only was it found that wages did not and have not increased, but frequently they decreased. I can give a case from my own limited industrial experience— and perhaps it may be accounted as a fair example—where people have been paid so much per hundred for certain articles. By skill and extra work they doubled their output, whereupon their employer said: "We shall have to half the pay or the commission." Until that spirit is totally eradicated, it is no use saying that high production means higher wages or higher payment. We must have some sort of guarantee to meet cases of that sort.

However, I really rose to ask the President of the Board of Trade, who is to speak shortly, as to the Committee on the Administration of the Companies Acts. I myself have been interested in this, so far as is in my power in this matter. I should like to ask him whether he can do something to expedite the inquiry of the Committee which is looking into the matter of the malpractices now being carried on in connection with the formation of companies and transactions in stocks and shares. Only the other day I asked him if he could not do anything to expedite the deliberations of that Committee. He said that he did not think he could; that he had not done so, and he appeared extremely unwilling to tell us what is going on. I should like to contrast the attitude of the President of the Board of Trade in respect to that Committee with his attitude towards the Committee for the Safeguarding of Industries. This matter to which I refer is one of the greatest urgency, and I would submit to him very respectfully that a matter of this kind, protecting the small investors of this country, is at least of equal importance with the other. This Committee has been sitting for 15 months. We have had no indication as to how it is going on, and the President of the Board seems reluctant to do anything to hasten its deliberations. I have prepared a list of these malpractices, but as I only desire to speak for a few moments, and I am not quite sure whether it would be in order to give them, I shall not deal with them. But I do hope the right hon. Gentleman will do something to expedite the findings of the Committee, because to hundreds of thousands of people all over the country it is a very important matter—this matter of security for the small investor. They are looking to the right hon. Gentleman to tackle the matter and to remedy the large number of grievances which undoubtedly exist.

I will deal with a number of details to begin with, and then come to the wider topics which have been raised by hon. Members. In reply to the hon. and gallant Member for Hackney South (Captain Garro Jones), may I say that I was unwilling to press the very strong, very busy, and very representative Committee dealing with the whole of company law administration to present their report before their labours were completed. The hon. and gallant Gentleman, I think, will realise from his own experience that you cannot get the best brains to deal with a very complicated subject, and give that Committee very heavy work to do, to which the members devote a great deal of time and energy, without giving them a chance to make a thoroughly good job of the work you have given them to do.

Has the right hon. Gentleman any idea—we have asked many times—as to the date when the Report will be out?

I am glad to say that I have now received the Report, and I hope to publish it at a, very early date. I would not be in order in discussing the recommendations of the Report; besides, I have not yet had time to study it. But I can say at once that I have read enough of it to say that it is of very great interest and value; it covers the whole field by the recommendations it makes.

Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to publish it?

Yes, Sir, I do—to publish it at an early date. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Sir R. Hamilton) criticised the Safeguarding of Industries Act administration by the Board of Trade, and said that the Board of Trade had been guilty of dealing with safeguarding by departmental action when the matter ought to have been dealt with by legislation. In dealing with this matter, the Government have taken exactly the action which was asked for by one section of the Liberal party when the present leader passed the Safeguarding of Industries Act. I well remember it, and hon. Members in the House then will also remember it. When the original Act was introduced and passed by the Liberal party, the dissentient part of the Liberal party said: "It is very wrong." That was the point taken by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, the Member for Leith (Capt. W. Benn), whose absence we all regret.

6 P.M.

His point was, "You have no business to deal with safeguarding by Orders"— which was the procedure under the Safeguarding of Industries Act—"what you ought to do, if you are to put on taxes at all, is to put them on through the regular constitutional machinery of a Finance Bill. That is the way in which we shall escape from executive action and get the proper Parliamentary practice and procedure." That is exactly what we have done; but now I am criticised for a duty imposed through the regular financial machinery. The duties which we passed last Autumn passed through the whole of the regular machinery of finance in this House. Therefore, so far from having usurped the privileges of Parliament by embarking on a course of executive action, we are carrying all our duties by regular financial procedure. To talk about our putting things away in a back room is really fantastic, because this House has the opportunity, when the Bills are brought forward, of seeing what the facts are, and of criticising the proposals upon their merits, and I shall be prepared on the proper occasion, whenever duties are brought forward, to defend them on the full responsibility of the Government.

The hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) had another criticism. His criticism was not so much directed to procedure, but, he said, the results were unsatisfactory. The results are quite satisfactory to us, and will be increasingly so as further duties are put on, and, if the hon. Member addresses his inquiries to those hon. Members who have a close acquaintance with the factories which are producing the articles in question, he will find in every case that what we have done has been of great assistance to them. He said to us, "What about lace?" and suggested that we forgot that there are still some unemployed in that industry. I know there are, but he did not tell the Committee that the demand for lace throughout the world has gone down, and that if it had not been for putting on of that duty those people would be wholly out of work in this country to-day. That duty has kept people in work whose employment would otherwise have gone. If he inquires what is happening in the glove industry, which a few months' ago had large numbers of men out of work and numbers on short time, he will find that to-day nearly all those men are working in their industry, and that apprentices are now being taken on where apprentices had not been seen for years.

The same is true of other trades. He said, also," You are killing the export trade." That is a remarkable suggestion. I find that in the case of motor-cars, which he quoted to us, our exports in 1924 were £6,500,000 and in 1925 £9,500,000. Indeed, it is only natural to suppose that that would be the result, because it is certainly true that if you wish to keep an export trade and to be able to compete in foreign markets you must have sufficient security to persuade manufacturers to lay down good plant and have a sufficient volume of production to be able to sell at competitive prices. Whether you proceed by this method or any other, unless the home market is made reasonably secure there is no guarantee that you will be able to carry forward your export trade. I will come back to the other point of the hon. Member for Hillsborough in a moment.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), asked what progress was being made with the Census of Production. We are proceeding with it as rapidly as we can, and we are examining now representative samples of the returns which have come in from leading industries in order to see whether they are sufficiently reliable and sufficiently representative to enable us to present preliminary figures or preliminary estimates, as regards some of the most essential trades. There will be no delay in pressing forward with that work. He asked also about the Balfour Committee. I certainly do not wish to interfere with the course which the Balfour Committee have mapped out for themselves. Their considered judgment was that they wanted to get all the facts before they began to discuss conclusions, and I have no doubt it was a wise decision on their part. They have published two volumes of great value, and hope to be able fairly soon to complete, a third volume on those special groups of industries on which they have taken a great deal of evidence.

The hon. Member for Hillsborough raised the question of Russia, asking me if I realised the potentialities of the Russian market. I think there is no one on this side of the House who does not realise those potentialities, but there are some people who seem to overrate them, and overrate what that market can ever be to this country, seeing that Russia is not as near to us geographically as it is to other great industrial countries. But the development of those potentialities does not rest with this Government, but with the Government of Russia; it is only that Government which can create the conditions of full trading facilities of which he speaks. I would add here that it is not anything the Government does which creates the discount rate. The hon. Gentleman said the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a speech in Battersea about Russia, and he then remarked "That is what keeps the discount rate of Russian bills high." I have a great admiration for the Chancellor's speeches, but I am quite sure that they do not settle the discount rate in the City.

They settle nothing.

The discount rate of Russian Bills is settled by one thing and one thing only, and that is the value which the people who are asked to discount those bills put upon them, and it would be very unwise for any Government to attempt to put any other value on them.

The hon. Member also said a word or two about Control Boards in the Dominions. I am sure he will be the last to depreciate the value of co-operative efforts amongst producers. These boards, co-operative boards of producers, are, I am sure, a natural and inevitable development, and are sound in principle. After all, the pooling of supplies is necessary, not only if the producer is to get the best advantage, but if he is to sell his goods to the best advantage of the consumer. It is only by pooling, I think, that you can get uniform grading, which is essential if you are to secure a high standard of quality through all the commodities; get expert packing; and improved marketing by continuity of supplies and by better advertising and by the avoidance of speculation.

Those are obvious advantages in the pooling of supplies, and, provided that no attempt is made to exploit the consumer, they are all to the good; but I believe it is difficult to exploit the consumer unless there is a monopoly, and any attempt to do so is bound to defeat its own ends. I do not say that a pool may not now and again, perhaps, try misguidedly to influence the market by the holding back of supplies for a time, but I am quits sure that any general attempt to hold back supplies by any producers pool, where there is not a monopoly—and there is no question of that here—is bound to defeat its own object, is bound to create a glut and to create uneven prices, whereas the whole object of good marketing must be to increase consumption. Therefore, the sound policy for a producers' board is one which is good alike for the producers and the consumers. My hon. Friend spoke rather as though these boards were new.

Of course, he knows that is not so, that they are only following what has been done in other countries. Practically the whole of the fresh fruit of California is marketed by a Californian Board. The Danish bacon supplies are similarly marketed in this country—all their export business, I think, is done co-operatively. In view of the question he has raised, I think it is fair to say that the Royal Commission on Food prices, after a rather careful examination of the activities of the New Zealand Meat Producers Board, gave this finding:

One thing to be remembered is that the British market is practically the only one which New Zealand has for exports of these particular products, and almost the whole of their exports come into this country. We must, therefore, take care that the operations of the Board does not lead to the exploitation of the consumer here.

But they have not a monopoly. You have a Producers Board, for instance, for New Zealand butter and they are competing with Danish and other produce. Australian meat is competing with Argentine meat, and the Canadian wheat pool is competing with Australian wheat. Therefore, you have the full force of competition in any commodity with which these Boards are dealing. I am convinced that it would be a better policy for them to improve their position in the market by relying upon increased consumption rather than upon a limitation of supplies. Surely that is a sound position.

I have also been asked a question about the proposed Economic Conference of and the League of Nations. I should like to point out that the Committee which, is now sitting is a preparatory committee engaged in drawing up an agenda which will in due course be submitted to the full Council.

This committee is not, as the hon. Member supposed, appointed by tie Governments concerned, nor is it going to be a conference of Government representatives. The hon. Member for Hillsborough asked me whether I would appoint some member of the co-operative organisation upon the British delegation, but I would like to point out that the appointments of members of the committee are not made by the Governments but by the League of Nations itself, and I think it is important that it should be understood that the Conference, when it takes place, is not going to be a conference of Government representatives, but it is going to be like the Brussels Conference, a meeting of business and labour experts. It should also be clearly understood that its recommendations will not be recommendations of the Governments, and will not in any way bind us. A conclusion has been drawn, on account of something which has been discovered in the report of one of the committees in regard to tariffs, that we ought-to abandon our Safeguarding of Industries policy, but I can hold out no hope of that. In the first place, the gentlemen who are sitting around this table and discussing their respective tariffs, with the exception of the representatives from this country, all come from countries which have general tariffs, and the last thing which I am sure-they have the least intention or expectation of doing is that their Governments will become converted to free trade. In this matter, the policy of the Government with regard to the industries of this country must be dictated solely by the interests of British industries.

Two or three hon. Members have raised the question of the general trade position, and they have asked me whether I have anything to say in addition to the speech I made on this subject when going into Committee of Supply. Obviously, it would be impossible for me, in view of the events of the last week or two, and before we know how soon we can see a settlement of the mining dispute, to give anything but a most speculative account of our trade or its prospects. I am not going to attempt any such speculation now. We did start the first quarter of the year distinctly better than the previous twelve months. It is true that the April figures show a serious falling off, but that was an abnormal month, because we were coming under the threat of a coal dispute, with the result that people were less and less willing to place orders.

April was also the month in which Easter fell. If that is to be taken as an indication of what we are to look forward to in normal times beyond the first quarter, I should regard it as a very depressing month. But I do not think we ought to take it as an indication of what is likely to be the normal state of trade, and I should be disinclined to draw any very certain deductions from those figures. In this connection, there are certain figures to be borne in mind. The first is, when comparing April this year with April a year ago, we find that prices have fallen by something like one twelfth, so that imports this year are really about equal to the imports of April, 1925. There is, however, this consolation. When you come to raw materials, which in April, 1925, were much lower than in March, 1925, we find that this year the imports of raw material are 3 per cent. up in April as compared with March. I agree that when you come to the exports the position is serious. Even taking into account the decrease in values and the non-working days of Easter, there is a serious diminution. But, if it is impossible to estimate what the prospects are, it is not difficult to draw some lessons. It is vital, if we are to look forward, as the Prime Minister said, that all our efforts should be directed towards a settlement and a building up. It is essential that there should be increased output and more confidence. Manufacturers must be ready to adopt and instal the most up-to-date equipment and plant. There is also the other side of the picture. There must be a response by the workmen to justify further expenditure on plant, because both those things go together hand in hand.

Notwithstanding what has been said in this Debate, I am certain that at the present time we are not living on credit, although our net trade balance is nothing like as much as it should be. Nevertheless we have still got a trade balance available for investment. Some remarks have been made which appeared to discredit the campaign we have started in to "Buy British Goods," but I have nothing to retract in regard to anything I have said on that subject, and I shall go on preaching it. I am confident that whether or not I go on preaching it, the country is prepared to go on practising it. This will accomplish two things. In the first place we are creating more employment by making our purchases as much as possible in the home market; and in the second place it will increase our trade balance available for development and for investment in the Empire market. We must not under-rate the importance of the home market and the Empire market because our prospects depend largely on the development of both.

Even so we have got to get the biggest share we can in any market. Our prices have been coming down, and this has created a, readiness on the part of the people of other countries to buy our goods. Another thing which is helping to sell British goods is British prestige. It is not only prestige as to the quality of our goods, but it is something of the prestige of our country and everything for which it stands. I believe to-day, after all that has happened recently, the prestige of this country stands higher in the world than it ever did before. I believe there is a greater admiration for us as a people, and I believe, looking to the future, we can use that prestige to advantage, going forward in the markets of the world, and this will enable us to redress a great deal of the loss that might otherwise have occurred from the events of the past fortnight.

I am sure that everyone will join in hoping that the aspirations contained in the right hon. Gentleman's last few sentences may be borne out by events and I feel sure, too, that he is right when he says that at the present moment, perhaps especially because of the events of the last few weeks, there is a greater determination amongst all classes to make a combined effort to help British trade. For that reason it seems to me that the present time is a very opportune one for the right hon. Gentleman to consider very carefully whether the policy which the Government and his Department are pursuing at the moment is not in some respects calculated to harm British trade more than to help it. The right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his remarks, said that he was very satisfied with the results of the safeguarding policy. He went further. Not only was he satisfied with past achievements, but he ventured into the realm of prophecy. and said that the future would hold even better things as the result of this policy. May I ask him three things with regard to the results of the safeguarding policy?

Let me take first the results of safeguarding in the lace industry. May I remind the right hon. Gentleman of the figures, with which I have no doubt he is perfectly familiar, with regard to imports. re-exports, retained imports and British exports in the cotton lace and net industry, comparing the period July-December in 1924, when there was no safeguarding duty, and in 1925, when there was a safeguarding duty. With regard to imports, they have fallen off in that period by very nearly 75 per cent., which, no doubt, is a cause of satisfaction to the right hon. Gentleman and his supporters. But re-exports have fallen from just over £1,000,000 worth to £87,000 worth. What is true of the lace trade is also very largely true of other trades. I have been informed only this morning that the same result has followed very largely in the cutlery trade The hon. Member for the Hillsborough Division of Sheffield (Mr. A. V. Alexander) knows a great deal about the cutlery trade, and he may be able to confirm this, but I am told that there is a very large movement now in the cutlery trade for buying direct from Germany, whereas formerly a large re-export trade was done in this country. I have not the figures for that trade with me, but I have the figures for the re-export trade in the cotton lace and net industry, and there, as I have said, the re-exports have fallen from just over £1,000,000 to £87,000.

Possibly the Parliamentary Secretary, if he replies later, will give us some information confirming those figures or criticising them in any way that they deserve. The retained imports, on the other hand—which, after all, are surely the imports that affect British trade—have not decreased, but have increased in the same period from £117,000 odd to £165,000 odd, and the British exports have declined from £1,300,000 to a shade over £1,000,000.

No doubt the right hon. Gentleman is familiar with these figures, and I would ask him, is he satisfied with that as one result of the safeguarding policy? The right hon. Gentleman, in criticising the hon. Member for Hillsborough, said that the hon. Member for Hillsborough had quoted some of these figures but had omitted to say that there had been a general falling off in the world demand, and, therefore, I suppose he considered that the argument of the hon. Member for Hillsborough fell to the ground; but within a few sentences the right hon. Gentleman himself was quoting, as an example of the benefits of safeguarding, the experience of the motor trade, where, as he pointed out, the exports had gone up. Does he contend that there has not been an equally large increase in the world demand for motor cars? If the argument is invalidated in the one respect, surely it is in the other.

Let me now turn to a more recent example, that of gas mantles. Here again I am largely seeking information, because I think the Debates on these Votes are the occasion for trying to get information. Is it true that, as a result of the safeguarding duty on gas mantles, an agreement has been arrived at between British and German makers, whereby, in consideration of a lump payment to the German makers, they have undertaken not to import German gas mantles into this country? I should like to have some information about that. If that is true, is it true that the result has been to remove all competition from the gas mantle industry, and to leave the consumer at the mercy of a ring? The third point that I want to raise with regard to the success or otherwise of the safeguarding policy is this: Has the right hon. Gentleman's Department had any complaints at all with regard to delays owing to the difficulty of saying what is an article that falls under the safeguarding category and what is an article that does not? For instance, I have had a complaint this morning—and this may possibly be worth going into by the right hon. Gentleman— in connection with the cutlery industry. What is cutlery? Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will have a ready answer, but in this particular case the complaint relates to small toy scissors, which are part of the equipment of an imported doll. There was some doubt at the Customs as to whether that was an article to be taxed or not, and I understand that the Customs Authorities said that they were not able to make the decision themselves, and would refer the matter to the Board of Trade. I am told that the importers in this case have already waited three months for the decision, and are still waiting. I would like an answer, if I might have it, to these three questions as to whether in those respects the safeguarding policy has been a success.

Now may I turn for a moment to the question of the Committees which are set up by the right hon. Gentleman. My first complaint is this. I believe that when the original Safeguarding Act, to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred, was passed, during the period of office of the Coalition Government, the present Prime Minister was then the president of the Board of Trade, and I believe that, in deference to the very generally expressed wish of the House at that time, he increased the number of members of each Committee from three to five. The present President of the Board of Trade has allowed a minimum number of three and a maximum of five, but I believe that in every single case the number appointed has been, not five, but three. The result has been that very often evidence has been heard by these Committees with only two members of the Committee sitting, and sometimes with only one. That, surely, cannot be a very satisfactory state of affairs. Then I think we have a certain amount of complaint with regard to the personnel. I do not want to mention any names, but in one particular case we have had sitting on a Committee, which is to decide whether a particular industry is or is not to have the advantages of this safeguarding legislation, a member who is notorious for his Protectionist views.—

As people who are acting in the public service are being attacked, may I point out that there have also been what the hon. and gallant Member terms notorious Free Traders, members of his own party; and both, I believe, have given impartial and just decisions.

My criticism would equally apply to that. The fact remains that people who sit on these committees should be as far as possible impartial people. Then I think it would perhaps be as well—and this is a specific complaint not about persons, but about procedure—if the right hon. Gentleman would lay down rules for the procedure of these Committees. For instance, I gather that on one occasion a learned Counsel who was appearing for one of the parties had to make a very grave complaint that the proceedings were prolonged to such an hour that it was physically impossible for him to continue his task, while on another occasion, when Counsel employed by one of the parties concerned had to leave the committee, it was carried on till 9 o'clock at night, and the chairman of the committee, so I am informed, gave as his reason for this that he had been instructed and pressed by the right hon. Gentleman to bring the proceedings to a conclusion and make a report.

I should like to ask another question. The right hon. Gentleman, in the course of his remarks, said that the House of Commons has the opportunity of seeing what the facts are. I deny that. One of our complaints all last summer, day after day and night after night, was that we could not get to know what the facts were. The right, hon. Gentleman appoints these Committees, they hear evidence, and they produce Reports. It is true that we get copies of the Reports, but we do not get the evidence on which those reports are based, and I would suggest that to say that this House has the opportunity of seeing what the facts are is—unconsciously, of course—misleading the House. What we do want is to have a better opportunity of seeing what are the facts on which these conclusions are reached, and I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman or the Parliamentary Secretary if there is any definite procedure under which the Board of Trade considers these reports when they are made.

We know what the right hon. Gentleman does. Over and over again, standing at that Box, answering criticisms which we have made in the light of information which we have had to pick and scrape where we can because the right hon. Gentleman will not give it to us—over and over again the right hon. Gentleman has said—[ A laugh ]. An hon. Member is amused, but I do not think that this is a matter for amusement. The House of Commons, after all, has as its chief duty the watching of the methods of taxing the community. That is the basis on which it rests, and I submit that over and over again we have been asked to make decisions with regard to taxing the community, and we have not had the facts upon which alone a real decision and a considered judgment can be given. If that amuses the hon. Member, well and good, but it does not amuse us. I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman what is the procedure for estimating and for coming to a conclusion upon he reports which these Committees make. I have in my hand a copy of the Report of the Committee on Wrapping Paper, on which we are to have a duty this year, and I will, if I may, read a few lines from paragraph 64 on page 23. The Committee says this: if he will consider the matter carefully, I think he will see that the consideration I put forward has a good deal of substance in it. He is not allowing the House to carry out the duty for which its Members were elected unless he will allow us to see this information and to judge for ourselves. I should like to know if there is any definite method in arriving at a decision upon these reports, and I should also like to know if there is any machinery at all for revising the decision. I hardly think the right hon. Gentleman himself can be satisfied with the results of the Safeguarding policy with regard to cotton net and lace.

The duties are imposed for a term of years. Therefore, any question of revision would not depend on the action of the Board of Trade, but would require legislation.

The point I was trying to make was that when the term of five years comes to a conclusion the House, I presume, will be called upon again to make a decision. Is there any proposal to publish information from time to time as to the working of the duties? If that is not in order I will leave the subject, and I will ask one or two questions as to the policy of the Department with regard to exhibitions. A little while ago the right hon. Gentleman made the announcement that the Government was paying £25,000 for advertising the British Industries Fair. How far has that money been successfully expended?

On a point of Order. This is a matter that arises on the Vote for the Department of Overseas Trade.

Do I understand the President of the Board of Trade has no control over it?

Not over this Estimate. The expenses of the British Industries Fair are on the Vote for Overseas Trade.

If it be clear that there is a separate Vote, under the practice of the House, it must be discussed on that.

I will bring the matter up on another occasion. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman does not want to shirk discussion.

I also understand we are not allowed on this occasion to raise the subject of the Committee presided over by the Parliamentary Secretary in regard to key industries.

I do not think I have said that. I am not quite clear whether this Committee is one that has been appointed by the Board of Trade. We are not entitled to discuss whether there should be other key industries included in the list or whether some that are now included should be taken away, because all that would require legislation, but, as to the proceedings or personnel of the Committee, I imagine that would be in order

I rather wanted to know what were the conclusions that the Board of Trade came to on that Report. If I am not misinformed, the Report was finished, and handed in four days before the Budget statement, and it recommended a renewal of the duties that had been imposed under the previous Act. I find, from figures supplied by the Board of Trade with regard to some of these articles, that there are very considerable imports into this country which are used by various industries.

On a point of Order. Of course, the whole of this is the subject of legislation. This Report was published as a White Paper in connection with the Budget. The Ways and Means Resolution includes the whole of the duties, and all these duties which the hon. Member is now discussing will figure in the Finance Bill.

The merits of the inclusion of any of these duties cannot be discussed now, particularly as they are already included in the Ways and Means Resolution and in the Finance Bill, which I understand will be discussed on Wednesday and Thursday. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman is asking for information, or criticising the delays of the Committee, or the personnel of the Committee, that no doubt will be in order, or if he is asking merely whether the Report can be published soon, but he cannot discuss the merits of the duty.

I assume, as this is a Committee appointed by the Board of Trade, it reports to the Board of Trade, which takes certain action on the Report. It is not until the Cabinet has considered the Report of the Board of Trade that these things are enshrined in proposed legislation. It is the process which takes place before that point is arrived at on which I should like information. It is really with regard to the policy, not of the Government but of the Department in recommending certain things which affect British trade. These figures will show that there is a large number of articles which come under the key industry category which have been imported in the last four or five years, which are used by a large number of important trades.

I think this must really wait until Wednesday.

Then may I ask has the Committee set up by the Department invited and considered the criticism of the trades that may be affected by these duties? My point with regard to the composition of the Committee is this. It consisted of very distinguished people, and was presided over by the Parliamentary Secretary. In addition to him there were two distinguished scientists and a very distinguished patent lawyer. In a Committee which was considering the effects of legislation of this kind, surely there ought to have been someone who would have been able to represent the commercial interests of the country.

Would he have been as impartial as the hon. Member desires?

I do not see that there is any reason at all why a commercial man cannot be impartial. There are many trades that are affected by these duties, and many that are not. I think it would have been better if people with commercial experience, able to bring their knowledge to bear on the effect of these duties on the commercial life of the country, had been included on the Committee. At any rate, apparently only four days elapsed between the report of the Committee dealing with duties on thousands of articles and the day on which they were enshrined in the Bill.

My final point is this. I think there was a slight omission from the right hon. Gentleman's speech, when he was making a general survey of the prospects of trade. Perhaps it would be possible for his colleague before the end of the Debate to make a general survey of the activities of the Board of Trade. The expenditure of the Board of Trade has very largely increased as compared with the pre-War period. Two Committees have recommended the total abolition of the Department of Overseas Trade. I wonder whether we can have a little explanation of the large increase in these figures.

7.0 P.M.

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend for even the small ray of hope he was able to put into the very fine speech he made, notwithstanding all the circumstances connected with the last fortnight or even with the last few months. It is most encouraging that we can look forward with hope to the future, and that our trade will have an opportunity of improving and increasing and seeing better conditions than we have seen during the development of the coal crisis. One of the greatest surprises to me is that the Labour Benches have been unoccupied. The average number in attendance during the whole of the afternoon has not exceeded eight and the maximum has been 10. If that is the interest the Labour Party take in the men they represent, it shows a very bad case indeed. Even on the Liberal benches there has been a far greater proportion, and in some cases a greater number— there were several deputy leaders there— while the Opposition benches, with all their interest in the working man and unemployment, have been almost bare. I must apologise for being drawn into those remarks. I am very glad to make them, because I feel there is a great deal of truth in them, and I hope that those who represent the Labour Party will in future show a better attendance.

With reference to the hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander), it is always very interesting to listen to the speeches which he prepares with great care and delivers with a very pleasing manner. I am a great admirer of his work, but what I admired mostly of his ability in to-day's speech was the great memory which he showed. Yesterday I read through very carefully the speech he made on this very Vote last year. His abilities shown in that speech are only exceeded by his memory, because, if he will read the Official Report, not for to-morrow, but for the 6th July of last year, he will find almost the speech of to-day reported verbatim. It is a great thing to have a good memory, and if he prepares one good speech, as he did last year, it will last him for two or three years. There is one thing he always refers to, and that is trade with Russia. He told us last year— I shall not read it again, but it was the same as he said to-day— about the amount of trade they were doing with Russia, referring to his connection with the co-operative interest. He says they have had no trouble in discounting bills or in any other business way. I congratulate him on having done so well. He is very welcome to continue that trade, and he is very lucky not to have encountered the trouble which other commercial houses have unfortunately had.

If this country is going to have trade with Russia, let it be carried on by the private enterprise with which he is associated. I can tell him of other companies that have not been so fortunate. He has altogether over-estimated the trade we are going to get from Russia, as even if it gets back to the 1913 figures, we have been told by the right- hon. Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) that in 1913 the trade of Russia was not as large as the trade of New Zealand. If we are going to worry the Government about Russia in order to get a little extra trade, we are running after the shadow instead of the substance.

With regard to his reference to my speech last year, if the Government continues the same insane policy this year as well as last year, there is no reason why we should not come to the same conclusion. It is perfectly true that the figures for trade with Russia were not so large before the War. Given the potential purchasing capacity of the people they did not have under the Czars but will have if they are allowed to develop in the proper way, it is capable of great expansion.

I do not think that anybody on these Benches will follow the hon. Member's remarks about Russia. If he wants me to refer to his speech last year, I can only refer to a speech which is on the same destructive lines as it is this year, without the least bit of constructive suggestion about it. If he is going to reprove sin, he is only going to reprove a condition of things which continued just as it was left by a Government in which he was an Under-Secretary in the Department which we are discussing to-day.

Speaking about trade, we have been told that retailers' profits at the present day were too high, and the hon. Member for Hillsborough instanced the case of his own concern, the Co-operative Societies. They could very fairly set an example and reduce their profits, and so give the poor working man the benefit, by the reduction of prices which he complains are too high in the retail business. I do agree that the ratio of profit that retailers are making to-day is totally out of proportion to the ratio of profit they made in pre-War days. As to the wholesalers' profit, that has been a precarious item, and the merchant knows very well they have been uncertain and small. That does not apply to the Co-operative Society, which is both wholesale and retail. The wholesaler throughout the country has taken great risks and come down on many occasions with contracts, but the retailer, as the hon. Member knows from his own experience, is making profits totally out of proportion, and not in ratio to what he made in pre-War days.

A great deal has been said about imports and exports. Unfortunately our exports are decreasing and our imports are increasing, which brings us to the foreign investments which we are making in this country, and which are such an important factor in the whole well-being of this country. I want to ask the President of the Board of Trade if the Government are encouraging foreign investments as they did in pre-War days. There was a period since the War when there was an embargo placed upon all foreign investments in order to damp them down as much as possible. Is the Government still adopting the policy of not encouraging foreign investment of the money we have in this country? Again, he spoke about our not living on our credit. That is a most encouraging thing to hear from the President of the Board of Trade, but we are getting far nearer that point than we were some years ago, and, unless things are going to improve and be in a better relation, we shall be getting down to the very knuckle, and probably have to live upon our credit subsequently.

It is this national credit and national prestige of which he has spoken, and which has been developed in our foreign trade and in our Crown Colonies which should be helped, as it brings trade to this country and thus increases our exports so that with our exports increasing we may have better trade and less unemployment. This country has passed through a very serious state during the last six months, which probably accounts more than anything for the trade returns for the last four months. I hope that with the settlement of all this industrial unrest there will be an opportunity for employers to make contracts that will be beneficial, that there will be a stimulating freedom for them to commit themselves to more business enterprise in all parts of the world. If we are going to have this unrest brought to a settlement, and 10 years of good steady work, I think this country will again return to a prewar state.

I do re-echo that part of the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for the Everton Division of Liverpool (Colonel Woodcock) about the necessity for work. We have heard an extraordinary speech made by the right hon. Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne), in which he gave certain facts about the rate of unloading vessels and turning ships round in our ports. He gave some extraordinary figures, and alleged that it cost 50 per cent. more to unload and turn round ships in this country than on the Continent. Coming from an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer, an ex-President of the Board of Trade, and an ex-Minister of Labour, three offices which qualify him to be listened to, that statement is going to do us much harm abroad. I regret it was made without being supported by any evidence or figures, because I do not believe it. Perhaps you can pick out isolated cases here and there. I hope the President of the Board of Trade or his Department will look into this case, and issue an authoritative denial, because I am quite convinced, from what I know of the work done at our seaports, that it is not true. If it be true, there should be a most searching inquiry by the Board of Trade into the causes, and remedies should be suggested. I shall refuse to believe it is true, generally speaking, until the Board of Trade has substantiated it. In the case of Hull, we are a very cheap port, and the dock workers in Hull work extremely hard and ships are turned round extremely rapidly. Their trouble there is to get work to do. The President of the Board of Trade must take up this matter. When the right hon. Member for Hillhead makes a statement of that sort, it is a matter that must be tackled by the Board of Trade.

I have frequently complained of this extremely costly Department. The cost is very heavy, and really it does nothing at all to assist British trade. Endless returns and statistics are compiled, but we are not getting value for £521,000. The President of the Board of Trade and his Department, with the best will in the world, are not doing anything active at the present moment for British trade. One thing they could do without legislation would be to get up a strong committee to look into this question of costs in our ports. I hope they will do so, and that they will visit Hull, where they will find our costs are cheap. I hope that, if there be anything to be learned from Hull, it will be applied to other ports as well. That is one thins which I hope the President of the Board of Trade will tackle without undue delay.

There is another thing he can do. The President of the Board of Trade has a peculiar position in this country. He attends all the great meetings of employers and the annual dinners of Chambers of Commerce. He makes the speech of the evening. I have listened to many of his speeches with great pleasure; they are made after dinner, but they do not suffer from that. We have just been through a very damaging time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer to-day in answer to a quesion said, "We have not spent very much in the last fortnight. The direct expenditure of the Goverment has not been very much more than three-quarters of a million. I do not expect my Income Tax return is very much down." He was thoroughly optimistic. Apparently, the only serious expenditure was "The British Gazette." I have asked for a detailed estimate to be made, as far as it can be made, of the actual cost within the last fortnight. It is necessary and desirable that the country should know not only the direct Government expenditure but the estimated loss in trade, contracts, exports and imports.

The President of the Board of Trade is specially responsible, and I hope he will impress more than ever on the people of this country the necessity for hard work. That appeal should be addressed to all classes. As far as I can make out, the people in this country only work hard when there is a strike in progress. The salient factors of our social life seem to be a mad search for pleasure, a want of seriousness and a want of enterprise. People think so much about sport. There is too much dissipation and riotous living. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] I would advise the hon. Member for Reading (Mr. H. Williams) to go to the West End of London and see what is going on there. Let him try to get a table at any popular restaurant and see the expenditure. The idleness and dissipation among the upper classes and the middle classes, which is naturally copied by the working classes, is tremendous. The working classes copy the example, although they are not able to afford the luxuries. They look to pleasure as the principal aim of life and not to work. I am not blaming them. They only take the example from above. They are not the most to blame. The most to blame are the men of education and the leaders of industry who ought to set a better example. When you have an employer of labour not coming to his office on Saturday and only arriving at noon on Monday, it is not for him to complain that his staff consists of clock watchers—people who are always looking at the clock and waiting to get away. That is the sort of spirit that has worked great harm in this country.

I hope the hon. and gallant Member will explain to the Committee how the President of the Board of Trade is responsible for this condition of things.

I will explain to him fully what he ought to do. After what has happened during the last 14 days, whatever else results, I hope there will be a different spirit in this country. I hope the President of the Board of Trade will use his great position to drive the lesson home on all occasions. There is no doubt that in other countries commercial people are working harder than we are to-day, and harder than we have been working for some years past. There is a great opportunity for the Presi- dent of the Board of Trade to lead a great crusade. I am sure that he would do much more good by going to the great industrial centres than remaining in his own office. He has able subordinates, who can carry on very well for him. The Government were able to send their undersecretaries to different parts of the country during the recent strike, and got on very well without them. Let the secretaries carry on in the Board of Trade, and let the President of the Board of Trade go to the great centres and preach the doctrine of hard work and enterprise, the recovery of the old pioneering spirit, the throwing overboard of industrial Conservatism, which is nearly as disastrous as political Conservatism. I refer to the reluctance to take advantage of new inventions and discoveries, the reluctance to make use of the excellent scientists passing through our universities and to bring all the brains and enterprise possible into our business.

The President of the Board of Trade is the youngest but one in the Cabinet. He is only a year or so older than I am. Let him preach to the youth of England, who will have to save England, and will have to save our industries and our commerce. Let them do what their forefathers did when they built up the greatness of this country as a commercial nation; let them recover our lost markets. We spend over £500,000 on the Board of Trade, but apart from Blue Books, statistics, &c., there is nothing practical to show for it. Nothing is done by the Board of Trade to help British commerce in any way comparable with the enormous expenditure. I have been stirred into saying these things by some of the remarks that have been made in this Debate and by my realisation of the enormous losses of this year, partly due to the uncertainty of what was going to happen before 1st May, and partly by the great damage that must have been done during the last fortnight.

I would not detain the Committee or the Government from proceeding with other business if it were not that I feel very strongly that perhaps this is rather a special occasion in the industrial history of this country and a time when, above all other times, the House of Commons should make perfectly clear to the country what it believes to be necessary for the future of its industrial life. I do not propose to follow my hon. and gallant Friend, the Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) in the sermon which he addressed to the youth of England, or in the copy-book maxims which he thinks the President of the Board of Trade ought to preach in the industrial towns and cities; but I do think that it is extremely important at a time like this, when possibly more than at any other time in recent years, the country is prepared for co-operation in a unique degree amongst all classes of workers, we should consider what are the troubles with which industry is faced and to what extent Parliament can help in overcoming them.

I do not feel quite so optimistic as my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade when he reviewed the conditions of our industry and gave the figures of exports and imxports. It is true that those figures only tell one side of the story. It is well known that figures can be made to prove nearly anything, but when one realises that our exports —I speak of last year particularly— represent £773,000,000, or £28,000,000 less than 1924 and only £6,000,000 better than 1923, whereas our imports, even excluding re-exports, show an increase of £31,000,000 over 1921 and £191,000,000 over 1923, it does not require any great knowledge of finance or any great investigation of export or import figures to enable one to realise that there is something wrong and something which the country must take note of. I want to make it clear that I appreciate the possibility that a large excess of imports does not necessarily mean that the country is suffering to the extent that the figures would at first indicate. Let us consider what are the difficulties to the employer on the one hand and the worker on the other. Perhaps it would be fair to take the position of the worker first. His position to-day arises from the results of a long period during which he has not received from industry the reward which the expansion of trade might have led him to expect. I think that is the root cause of the trouble. In other words, he is not getting the standard of life which a century of industrial expansion in Great Britain almost entitles him to expect.

Anyone who studies the past history of industry in this country will be struck first and foremost with the fact that considering the enormous wealth which the country has gained from industry for a century and a half, the progress of the industrial worker has not been commensurate with the wealth gained by other members of the community. If there is one thing more than another which makes the worker in industry uneasy and difficult to deal with it is the feeling that he is not getting a fair return or a fair share of what industry yields, and possibly to that it might be right to add the feeling that the industry in which he is engaged is not being worked to the best possible advantage. I would ask the Committee to consider this point. Why is it that the worker in industry is not getting the share that he expects? This is an opportunity in the history of this country for the trade unions themselves to consider whether some of their rules are not antiquated and out of date and whether some of those rules have not more to do with keeping down the standard of living of the workers than anything else. This is a time when they can without any fear of loss of pride consider whether some of those rules refer to the past and have no value in these times of modern industry.

If the worker is not getting a sufficient share from industry, the question arises whether there is any fiscal matter in regard to which Parliament can help him. It would not be in Order, and I do not propose to do it, to enter into fiscal questions in detail, but I would put this one question, which I think the worker would be wise to consider, i.e. , whether cheapness gained at the expense of the standard of living of the workman is not cheapness gained very dearly. Then there is the enormous question of production. We hear a great deal of the enormous advantage which the American workman enjoys, and which industry in the United States enjoys, speaking generally. I have some knowledge not only of industry in this country but also in the United States and other parts of the world, and I think there is a definite misconception on that point. It is true that the amount of money which the American workman handles is very much larger than that which is handled by the British worker, but I question whether at the end of the month or at the end of the year the American workman has any larger amount of savings or any larger balance that he can turn to as a result of the more intensive industry which he has put in during that period.

I am sure that the hon. Member would not wish to convey a false impression. As he knows, even a casual glance at the figures of the savings bank deposits in the United States for the last five years show that they have increased five-fold, and in some cases ten-fold, in some States.

I am not disputing that point, nor am I questioning the enormous wealth and indeed the increasing wealth, of the United States. But the deposits in this country are increasing also. The point I wished to make before passing from the question of earnings in America and in this country was with the object of trying to get the British workman not purely to look to the American system as his only safeguard, but to consider whether he is not really, in a way, more advanced here than in America. I am not at all sure that the advance in industry in the United States has brought that country into a condition in which it is really so well able to take a move forward in world trade as we are in this country.

I do not agree with those who are constantly pessimistic as regards the outlook for British trade. We are all fond of talking of the advantage of the League of Nations, and everyone will agree that if it is desirable to support the League of Nations in every possible way, but we do not hear a single word of the League of British Nations, which would give us within ourselves and quite independent of other people a far greater expansion of trade than any country has yet experienced. There is no cotton operative in the north of England who could not tell you that only about 3 per cent of the cotton he uses comes from British sources, but he does not know that there is no reason whatever why a much larger proportion should not come from British Possessions. The only reason those Possessions do not produce more cotton is because they have not got a sufficient supply of the very things we want to sell, railway materials, machinery and building materials. The development of our own Empire, and the expansion of British credit for that purpose would give us a far bigger move forward in world trade than probably any country has ever experienced before.

Let me turn to the question of the employers. I said just now that the workmen's strongest feeling was a demand for a greater share in industry; and that to my mind they must get. In the same way it is equally essential that the British industrialist should be free from the restrictions which at present compass him about. There is hardly an employer of labour in this country who during the last few years has felt able to enter into any contract with any certainty at all that he would be able to carry it out; that before the time came for the contract to be fulfilled there might not be some new restrictions on the part of the unions, or a strike, or a lock-out, which would prevent his carrying out the contract. That has more to do with our slow advance in trade than almost anything else. They were faced with this difficulty almost every week in the last few years, and if it is the case that the standard of living of the worker has to be raised—and it has—it is equally essential that the employer should be assured that he is going to get co-operation from the workmen in trying to get the greatest possible production and in carrying out the contracts into which he has entered.

I feel a little diffidence in dealing with the next point, but in all the discussions which have taken place in this House there has been more nonsense talked on the subject of economy than on anything else. The other day I took the trouble to go into the Library and look up the Debates which took place in the House of Commons just 110 years ago, and almost word for word the speeches I have heard delivered here in the last few months were delivered by our predecessors 110 years ago. There were statements made in that year as to the country arriving at a state of bankruptcy because we had an expenditure much greater than anything that had been known before. May I refer to one speech specially, made in the House of Commons on the 3rd April, 1816 which ends as follows:

I am not suggesting another general inquiry into the industries of the country, but an inquiry as to the difficulties from which industrialists are suffering in particular industries, and with particulars from the people in the industries themselves, the President of the Board of Trade would be able to point out any further developments which are necessary or possible for Parliament to take to help the trade of the country. A good deal could be done. It cannot be done by Parliament alone, but it can be done if it comes from within the industries themselves. I do not want to go into the matter in detail at the moment, but I think the time has come, after this great struggle, when the whole country is more willing than it has been for many long years to face the position, and for all classes to work together. Employers and employed feel that if there is anything they can do to get industry on a proper basis, this is the moment when any move would not be misunderstood. I am more than anxious that this oppor- tunity should be taken; when employers and employed feel that restrictions must go, when new machinery and new ideas can come into force, when a system of co-partnership can be arranged. This is the moment to bring the necessary changes into effect and if the House of Commons will say that it looks willingly to a consideration of any steps necessary for reorganisation and reconstruction so that we may further develop our trade and industry, we shall have done some good in discussing this matter to-day.

I should not have taken part in this Debate but for the number of times I have heard a reference to the antiquated rules of trades unions. Hon. Members who have spoken have done so in general terms. At least they might have given us some idea of the particular rule to which they were referring. I wondered whether it was the depressed engineering trade or the shipbuilding trade. If so, then they had better look not in the direction of the workmen, but in the direction of the employers and ask them to get rid of their antiquated rules and methods of training and working. The present position of the industries of this country is not due to the non-co-operation of the workmen. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) lectured us this afternoon, and I think he might have known better having occupied Cabinet rank. He said that if something was done by the workmen of this country, then everything would go right, that we should have high wages and good trade, and secure those orders which the country wanted. We listened to him at great length, but not one idea was given to the Government or to the country that would help us at this moment. He gave high praise to the President of the Board of Trade, and I marvelled at the language coming from that quarter.

The right hon. Gentleman only told us one thing— that there should be a response from the men in the shops. A speech of that kind in this House is an insult to the millions of men and women who are employed in the industries of this country. It is not a question of a response on the part of the workers; it is not a question of any difficulty in cooperation. The difficulty lies in the fact that for some reason or other those who have the control of the businesses of this country have not been able to secure the orders. If they can find the orders the people are there to do the work and there are no better workpeople in the world. That is admitted by the employers. The other point was that made by the hon. and gallant Member for Everton (Colonel Woodcock) who is so rarely in the House. He referred to the few Members present on these Benches. I do not blame my colleagues for absenting themselves when speeches of that kind are being delivered in this House. Many of them are engaged in Committee work at this moment, and some are engaged in connection with a dispute that is being cleared up. There is little need, therefore, for the references made by the hon. Member for Everton. It will be time enough for him to lecture members of the Labour Party when he attends to his own duties in the House.

It is not my custom to take up the time of the House very frequently, and I do not wish to do so for more than a minute or two now. I would like, however, to direct the attention of the President of the Board of Trade to the working of the Standards Department of the Board of Trade. I am glad to notice that there is an increased allowance of £440 in the Vote, and I hope that that increase will be sufficient to enable the Standards Department to deal adequately and, I hope, more quickly, with the work with which it is entrusted. The work of this Department is somewhat in arrear. Members have been unable to obtain the annual reports which many look forward to receiving. It is important that these reports should be in the possession of Members at any rate before this Vote is taken. There is one other point to which I would refer, and that is the work of the Food Council. I put a question to the President of the Board of Trade recently, and suggested that the Food Council's terms of reference might be extended to enable them to deal with the question of selling food by weight or by measure. I am sorry that objection was taken to that extended reference, but I hope that there may be a reconsideration of the matter, because I can conceive no body better fitted to deal with the question of the sale of foodstuffs by weight and by measure than the Food Council. They have done much excellent work in protecting the interests of the housewives of the country. The field is by no means covered yet, and if the terms of reference were extended they might do still more useful work in the future.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

I beg to move to reduce the Vote by £100.

I do so in order to draw attention to certain grievances of the Mercantile Marine of the country. I will refer first to a grievance of those who take an interest in Mercantile Marine affairs, and that is that this Vote is always taken at an hour of the evening when either everyone wants to get away or Members are going out to dinner. In other words, the Vote is always taken at a time when proper attention cannot be given to it. Undeterred by that fact, and supported by the presence of an hon. colleague from Hull and the hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley), I propose to state one or two long-felt grievances on the part of that magnificent body of men, the British Mercantile Marine. First, I will deal with the officers. The officers to-day have three main grounds of complaint. The first is that they suffer from a great deal of unemployment. That cannot be helped, as it is part of the result of the worldwide depression of trade.

A second grievance is that in far too many ships the obsolete two-watch system is still carried on. I consider that all vessels, except those of the smallest size, say, 1,000 tons, should carry three watch-keeping officers. I have had some experience of watch-keeping. I kept watch for many years at sea, and I hold that the two-watch system is not suitable for modern conditions. Vessels are getting faster, and traffic is more congested at sea on the main routes, and the strain of watch and watch is very hard on officers. If you have the master of the ship and two mates, those two mates have to keep watch and watch, they have to take sights, they may be required for any emergency, and on long voyages the system is barbarous. The three-watch system would be in accordance with the Government's declared policy of an eight-hours day, and it would relieve a good deal of the present unemployment by absorbing some of the fully qualified officers, with fine records in the War, who cannot get berths at all, and are having to serve before the mast, or are working as dock labourers and in all sorts of shore-going jobs. I hope the Board of Trade is sympathetic to the proposal.

Secondly, the Merchant Service Officers have for long asked for some superannuation or pension scheme on a contributory basis. Most of the great shipping lines have such schemes already. The officers contribute, the companies contribute, and everything is alright; but the smaller lines and what are known as the tramp lines, for the most part have no such scheme. By the very nature of their calling, officers of the Mercantile Marine need such a scheme. They would be willing to contribute. The great majority of the shipowners would be prepared to assist, but they know always that two or three recalcitrant or obscurantist members of the shipowning profession stand in the way. I hope that the Board of Trade will give sympathetic attention to this matter. What is needed is a wide superannuation scheme for the shipping companies and all ships that have not already an approved scheme. We want someone who will do for the Mercantile Service Officers what the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) did with his great health insurance and pension schemes for other sections of the community. The Government should contribute to such a scheme as a lasting monument to the men of the Mercantile Marine. A great many of them have risen from the fo'csle, and they served the country well in the War. They are deserving of assistance and recognition now.

Before I come to deal with the seamen and firemen and the catering branch, I want to say something on the question of oil in navigable waters. This is a very serious matter on the north-east coast. The Board of Trade will have to send a representative to Washington or New York for the Convention which the United States Government has summoned for this year. I want to be assured that those British representatives are working to a practical proposition. The fact that the United States Government has called this International Convention does not relieve the Board of Trade of the responsibility of having a workable scheme. Have they the best available people to work on it? Amongst those I include, of course, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. I hope that they are looking into this very difficult and important question. Many of the old fishermen on the northeast coast have put down the extraordinarily bad fishing seasons that we have been having to the oil in navigable waters. The oil does great harm to sea-birds, and every humanitarian and lover of beauty will, I am sure, support anything that will prevent the wholesale destruction of beautiful sea birds by oil.

Last night, in anticipation of this Debate, I was reading that great poem of Coleridge's, the "Lay of the Ancient Mariner." I need not remind the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade of what happened to the man who slew the albatross. Hundreds of beautiful sea-birds are being destroyed by oil. The fishermen pick the birds out of the sea and try to clean their feathers [ Laughter ]. An hon. Member laughs. It is a pathetic thing to see beautiful birds with their feathers clogged with oil. The hon. Gentleman who laughs, I think, does not know the sufferings of these birds. The seaside resorts in many cases are also suffering from the oil, which is spoiling the amenities of the coast and driving still more people abroad for their holidays, when they might be spending their money in England. If the International Convention which is to deal with the matter should fail, I shall blame the Board of Trade, for we are the principal mercantile nation, we have most ships using and discharging oil, and we should have a workable scheme ready for the Convention.

With reference to the men of the Mercantile Marine, I am astonished at the attitude of the Board of Trade on the question of the employment of seamen, and particularly the preference given by many shipowners to foreigners and Asiatics instead of British seamen. I asked the Parliamentary Secretary a little while ago if his attention had been drawn to the serious unemployment amongst seamen and the number of foreigners who were taking the places of Britishers in British ships, and he said there was a certain amount of unemployment amongst British seamen, but it was not possible to give the exact figures, and all the rest of it. He said the number of aliens was only some 5 per cent.

Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman read my answer to his next supplementary question?

8.0 P.M.

I have not the report here, but I did get the exact figure later. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary himself is not unsympathetic in the matter, and that the answer I have referred to was prepared by his Department. I say that the Department is not sympathetic, and that it ought to be, and that it is up to the political head to make the Department sympathetic. The Parliamentary Secretary says that he does not think representations to the shipowners would serve any useful purpose. Representations from the Board of Trade might serve a very useful purpose. Let me give the figures of unemployment in the Mercantile Marine.

The last figures which I could get showed 10,794 seamen registered for unemployment benefit and reporting at the Mercantile Marine Offices. There are many more who, despairing of getting ships, have gone into other employments and are not reporting as unemployed. Of the number registered, 2,217 were seamen, 5,000 were firemen, and some 3,500 belonged to the catering department. That is a very high figure of unemployment among these men, many of whom are tried seamen, who went through the War. The House of Commons passed a special vote of thanks to the men of the Mercantile Marine for their services in the War and, now, many of these men are unable to get ships, though they are willing to work. Let us examine the reason for this state of affairs. The figures for 1925, the latest I could obtain, show that at the end of that year there were employed on British ships foreigners, other than Asiatics and Africans, to the number of 13,798. There are also Asiatics and Africans, some of whom are British subjects or who say they are British subjects, such as Arabs from Aden who may really come from the hinterland, and Chinese from Hong Kong or perhaps from the neighbourhood of Canton—people who do not speak English, but who call themselves British subjects, and when it suits them claim some other nationality. The number of these employed on British ships is l6,789. Thus there are over 30,000 Asiatics, Africans and other foreigners employed in British ships. I do not wish to stress that point unduly. Many of these Asiatics and others are British subjects who were very valuable in the War, and who were very steadfast and loyal, and I do not wish to raise any racial prejudice. I would only point out that in order to get foreigners into employment as footmen or chauffeurs, all sorts of formalities have to be gone through with the Ministry of Labour, yet in the case of seamen there are no difficulties at all. I know that the law does not prevent British shipowners signing on these foreigners, but I think when ever they can, shipowners ought to take suitable British seamen first. That may not be very strict and orthodox Free Trade, but these are not orthodox times. When the Government think fit to safeguard this or that key industry, and protect this or that manufacturing process, when we cease to be a Free Trade country, then I think the men in the Mercantile Marine are also entitled to some protection by the efforts of the Board of Trade, and by such influence as the Board of Trade can bring upon the shipowners.

I would invite the Parliamentary Secretary to come down to the docks at Hull or at Grimsby and to see the splendid material which is there idle, and would like to see if he would give the same reply to those men as that which he gave to me on this matter. I admit that many ships engaged in certain trades must employ foreigners. There are ships which do not touch at any home port, and there are ships which work constantly under tropical conditions, and therefore must employ a certain amount of Asiatic or coloured labour. I do not want any hard and fast rule laid down, but I think it is pitiable when we have excellent men looking for berths in a port like Hull, that a British ship which touches that port at the end of every voyage should sign on a deck crew of Japanese. It may suit the Japanese Admiralty to have these fine reserves ready for the Japanese Navy when they are required, but I do not think it suits the British Admiralty and it ought not to suit the British Board of Trade. Every effort should be made to induce shipowners whose ships enjoy the protection of our flag and our Fleet, the services of our consuls abroad, and the prestige of the British name, to give preference to suitable British seamen and firemen wherever they are available.

I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade to tell the Committee what has happened to the fund known as the Lascar Fund. The administration of this fund, I understand, is in charge of the Board of Trade, and some of the aged seamen who ought to benefit from it do not appear to be getting the consideration which they deserve. I should also like to raise the question of the payment of reparations to seamen. It has been stated more than once in the House of Commons that this matter is now closed, but I assure the hon. Gentleman that that statement has not given satisfaction in the seaports. There are many men who feel that their claims have not received just consideration, and many anomalies exist. There are cases where a ship's boy has actually drawn more by way of reparation than the captain of his ship. I would impress upon the Parliamentary Secretary that there is a feeling in the ports that this question ought to be reopened, and consideration given to certain claims and that the matter ought to be dealt with quickly.

In the course of the Debate on the previous Vote a question was raised which I am told ought properly to have been raised on this Vote, and I hope I shall be in order in referring to it. It is the question raised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne) of the excessive cost of turning round and unloading vessels in our ports. If there is anything in the statement made by the right hon. Gentleman, the Board of Trade should at once institute an inquiry. Those who represent seaport towns realise that for such a statement to go forth to the world will be detrimental to our trade. We of the Humber ports are very proud of our records in the matter of unloading ships. The port of Immingham, near Grimsby, has a world record for loading coal.

I do not think this Vote covers the question of port authorities discharging ships.

It is rather unfortunate that there should have been a change in the Chair at this juncture, because I am informed that the Committee were told previously that the matter could not be raised on the previous Vote, but might be raised on this Vote. Of course I bow to the ruling of the Chair.

If the Government were responsible for the charges levied, it would be in order but I do not think that is the case.

I wanted to make this point clear, because it is in the best interests of the Mercantile Marine as a whole— for which the Board of Trade is responsible— that this matter should be investigated. I appeal to the President of the Board of Trade, through the Parliamentary Secretary, to consider the setting up of a committee of inquiry at once to ascertain whether the statements made are accurate or otherwise.

I rise to ask some questions in regard to Item M and Item O in the Estimates dealing with lighthouses in British occupation. I desire to have some further information as to these lighthouses, where they are situated, and who are manning them. Are they being manned by people from this country, and, if so, what are the rates of pay and conditions attaching to the employment of lighthouse keepers, and to the crews of vessels who are taking out reliefs and other workers? I notice that the word "temporary" is used with regard to them, and I should also like to know how long it is expected that we shall hold on to these lighthouses. Regarding the special grant to the General Lighthouse Fund, I should like to know what steps the Board of Trade intend to take to see that that fund is administered in a way that will give reasonable conditions to the officers and men in the lighthouse service. Officers who served well during the War, and took even more risks than officers in the Navy, have not been rewarded in any reasonable way for their services. Although they were doing work even more serious than the work of the fighting ships, and although they carried fighting men on board during that period, when the time came for handing out the rewards, they were looked upon as non-combatants.

If the Government are going to spend this money as a grant to the General Lighthouse Fund, they ought to see that these officers and men, are properly treated. For some time they have been endeavouring to set up a Whitley Council, so that the Elder Brethren of Trinity House and those in their service might meet together and discuss the conditions attaching to the service. For some reason difficult to understand, the Elder Brethren have declined to agree to a Whitley Council to cover the officers and men on the steam-boats and light vessels, and those engaged on the wharves. I hope the Board of Trade will see that the men in the Trinity House service have the opportunity of getting consideration.

I do not know that the Parliamentary Secretary can answer these questions, but I am afraid this has nothing to do with the Vote.

Then may I put it in this way. We are handing out some £15,000 this year and £30,000 was handed out last year. Are we to be told that the Department knows nothing of the conditions in regard to the expending of that money?

If the hon. Member will examine the Estimates, I think he will see that this is a special grant towards the removal of wrecks.

The men I am dealing with are the men who remove those wrecks.

I think they are under a different authority from the Board of Trade. They are under Trinity House, and not the Board of Trade.

I suppose that Trinity House has to receive its finances through the Board of Trade from the light dues which are gathered up by the Board of Trade, and the only opportunity we have of dealing with the expenditure of the Board of Trade on lights is now, when we have this grant before us.

I cannot see that this question comes under this Vote at all.

On a point of Order. I understand that there may be a separate administration of the Fund, but it is the duty of the Parliamentary Secretary to preside periodically over the finance committee of the Lighthouse Fund on behalf of the Board of Trade, and it is, therefore, difficult to know how we are going to deal with this grant from public funds unless we can criticise it on this Vote.