In pursuance of the Order just passed by the House, I appoint twelve o'clock noon To-morrow as the time, and No. 10 Committee Room as the place, for taking the Ballot.

I beg to move

The Motion which I move to-day proposes that we should present an humble Address to His Majesty, praying that he will give directions that a monument he erected at the public charge to the memory of that great soldier who has so recently been taken from us.

It is not part of my duty nor is it, I think, part of a layman's duty, nor, perhaps, has the time come upon anyone's part to attempt a military appreciation of the services of Lord Haig. I will content myself with saying that by common consent he was one of the great figures of the War. But the ultimate place of any soldier, as of any statesman, can never be decided in the lifetime of the generation to which he belongs. That is true of soldiers, and it is true of statesmen. Among one's contemporaries the voice of criticism is always loud, and also the voice of controversy. Not all the facts can fee known or will be known for many years. I think for a moment it might be well for us to consider how the judgments of contemporaries have been altered by greater knowledge, by greater research, and by judgment taken in that cool uncritical air when all the participants in the events of the time have passed away and all their voices are silent.

In reading an article the other day I found a statement that the great War in Europe threw up no great figures. I thought it was rather bold on the part of any writer within ten years of that time to attempt such a statement. I remember the same thing being said by intellectual men shortly after the Civil War in America, Many figures have emerged from that war, soldiers and statesmen, but if there be one figure, appreciated far below its true value at the time and which has greatly grown with the passing years and will continue to grow, it is that of Abraham Lincoln. In the same way among his contemporaries was not Sir John Moore put down as a failure, and did not nearly half a century elapse before his Journals were published? He is recognised now as one of the great soldiers of all time.

For many years after the close of the Civil War in America Stonewall Jackson was the name of a brilliant, hard-hitting fighter, but nearly half a century passed before every student of warfare came to recognise that he was one of the great strategical geniuses of modern times. Perhaps more remarkable than any of these illustrations, how true it is in the case of a soldier as it is in the case of a statesman, that you cannot judge the ultimate effects of a man's work until you take into consideration not only the years that preceded his labours, not only those of his own time but the years succeeding, where his influence and the influence of his actions and of his teach- ing is shown on the next generation. Half a century ago, no name amongst soldiers stood higher than that of General Moltke; but before the War, among German students themselves, his fame fell from that highest pinnacle, and since the War I have seen military studies in Germany that traced many of the disasters which overtook them in the War to the influence and the teaching of the great Moltke himself.

So I say that the time has not come for us to judge, even if we were capable so to do, which we are not; but I will hazard this prediction, that the fame of Lord Haig will grow as the years go by. Although I can say nothing on the point of military appreciation, I can speak of Lord Haig's character, because of character contemporaries can judge. There may be much on which the future will throw light, yet, by universal consent, his fellow-countrymen recognised in him, above all, three things that they always value most in a man—steadfastness; absolute and complete integrity; a man to whom a mean thought or a mean action was impossible; and, thirdly, loyalty to everyone with whom he served; loyalty to everyone in the Army, from the highest to the lowest, and, what is more difficult, loyalty to the civil governing power. I say, without contradiction, that in cases where Lord Haig had to follow orders from the Government, even in cases where he could not fully agree, once he had given his word he followed those orders and did so with never a thought and never a word again except absolute loyalty to the duty which lay before him. A rare and great gift in all walks of life! He was no speaker, and there I sympathise with him, but he could use his pen, and in those few words he wrote in the spring of 1918 he was able to write words that have etched themselves into the heart of every man who read them and of every one of his fellow-countrymen throughout the whole world. That pen, which he never hired, was one which he used most effectively for the purposes which he believed to be right. I remember being told, sometime ago, that when Lord Milner went to see him in that terrible spring of 1918 and had to speak to him about the placing of the British command underneath that of Marshal Foch, he saw Field-Marshal Lord Haig alone, first of all. He broached the subject not without difficulty. Lord Milner was a sensitive man and he knew what a British General might feel in this case; but Lord Haig said to him at once:

Perhaps one of the most remarkable things about him was the way in which immediately the War ended he effaced himself. He was a man who entered into no controversy. There was no article of any kind, no book justifying himself, or attacking others. He knew that no man can be his own advocate before posterity. That character was the secret of his strength, and I know, from talks I have had with men, that that humble personal life of his made itself felt all through the British Army incalculably and was no small factor in the moral of those great forces. I do not think the things he stood for can be summed up more beautifully than in the last sentence of the remarkable letter from Lady Haig, which appears in the papers to-day:

He was indeed a very gentle and perfect knight. Our task to-day is to give expression, so far as we are able, to a simple primitive human desire. I know there are people who say, "What need of a monument?" I remember many years ago that in the town of Oldham a monument was put up to a man who was highly regarded by the operatives of that great town, and what was said by them at the time was this: "We want something that is of no use. We do not want anything of benefit to anybody, but just something to remind us of him." That I am convinced is what we all want, and what the members of the British Legion want—just something that they can look at and say, "There he is;" something which they can show their children; something on which they can lay their poppies. That, I think, is the desire of the simple human heart, and it is because I know we are interpreting the primitive desire of millions of silent people in this country that I hope this House, after whatever further discussion it may think fit, will pass this Motion with unanimity.

I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof the words:

Very fortunately, however, the later years of the life of the late Field-Marshal Lord Haig revealed the whole man to us all. When the War ceased and Peace had been proclaimed, loaded with dignities and honours and wreathed in fame, he retired unobtrusively from the public stage on which he had been a central figure. He did not retire to a life of leisured ease or of social futility. His activities since that time were ceaseless, one might say almost illimitable. No ex-soldier, no widow of a dead soldier, no orphan of a soldier has dropped a tear without that tear finding its way to Lord Haig's heart. His activities were devoted to alleviating the lot of his old comrades, the men whom he had led and whose welfare he never dissociated from his own. All the splendid loyalties he had displayed as a Commander found a new outlet in this succouring work. The Prime Minister referred to him as a Borderer. I hope the House will pardon those of us who feel in our hearts and in our flesh and blood and bone that magnificent loyalty that was beaten into human flesh and blood by the history of the Border, and if we praise that loyalty, as I praise it to-day, if I feel it is one of the greatest blessings that human character and conduct can show to the world, I hope it is because with the late Field-Marshal one shares traditions and one shares a past of which one is proud and which one regards as the most precious heritage that men could have handed down to them by their ancestors.

The main, the outstanding quality of Lord Haig, was his fine, simple unquestioning sense of duty, his selfless devotion to a cause, not to question but to do, his calm and just mind without a taint of pettiness, and, above all, his sense of loyalty to his comrades and comradeship to those with whom he was acting. It was no doubt this latter quality, one of the greatest, as I have said, that the human being can possess, which prevented him from entering into those barren controversies about the War, adjudging blame, taking or giving credit to others or himself, and which led him to devote his last years, not to that trivial sort of thing, but to aiding the bereaved and the maimed, and in doing his best to heal the wounds left behind by the War. He was a man who turned his back upon fame and fate and went on with his own work, feeling perfectly safe that whoever judged him would judge him justly, and that upon a just judgment he did not require to bother himself at all.

To-day we bow at the passing of one who but little beyond the prime of his life has been suddenly removed by death—a very happy way, as the Prime Minister has said. He fought many battles, but none more noble than this last battle in the cause of suffering humanity, which fitly closed a soldier s life. Thereby he has gained something more precious than military fame, a place of honour, respect and companionship in the hearts of many grateful people. Alas, that I should have a word to say seeming in a sense in disagreement with the Motion! Will the House believe me that it is no note of discord? It is a contribution, sincerely and humbly offered to the House, a contribution to the thoughts that have been passing through the Government's mind, as to how this man's memory ought to be honoured.

When my hon. Friends heard last Thursday through the newspapers that the Government were to propose a memorial to Lord Haig, they considered the question of approaching the Government at once with a suggestion, and that day a communication was made by us to the Government that the memorial might take some sort of form which would carry on, after Lord Haig's death, the work that was so close to his heart and so dear to his soul while he was among them. The Government did not see their way to accept the suggestion. I feel myself very much drawn, as I am sure hon. Members on all sides do, to the point with which the Prime Minister finished his speech. I love the memorial in marble; I love beautiful representations of a life. But I have never in all my life, though I have striven often to get such memorials and have been successful in getting some—I have never been satisfied that the person who was dead and who was being commemorated was the person who lived a full, fresh and active life; I have never been satisfied that merely marble expression was a sufficient memorial of that life. I have always felt that something should be done to carry on, not merely the decaying memory that becomes more and more dim but becomes more and more recessed, as it were, in the marble, but the living life that gave the dead person his power and won for him the respect of his generation.

The art of monument making is to catch up a man, the personality that he has left. You cannot surely, in these days, have a sort of stereotyped memorial. That is dull; that is dead; that shows you have no imagination at all. You put up a memorial to Mr. A, who has won distinction in a certain line, and put up the same kind of memorial to Mr. B, who has won distinction in a different kind of life. Why, there is no reverence in it! It is simply pulling something out of a pigeon-hole and applying it all round. Personality has to count. This country, when it is to erect memorials that really express the lives and activities of our people, should study personality and adapt its scheme of memorial to the personality that it desires to honour. Any other man may need it, but he does not. Therefore, Sir, I am sure the House will agree that it is no note of discord I strike when I move the Amendment which is in my name. It is a suggestion made to this House. I am sorry that I must use the expression "Amendment." I am sorry that the only word that can be technically used is the word "Amendment," when I move these words which follow my name on the Order Paper. I feel if the late Lord Haig were here to-day and if we said, as we said to him before—Ministers may laugh and may sneer—

indicated dissent.

Then I withdraw it, but it is not the first time since I got up that I have been disturbed by the behaviour of those on the Front Bench. Lord Haig, when he was asked to accept honours as a living man, made various conditions—all honour to him—and I feel to-day, and I am sure a great many hon. Members feel that we know what his reply would be if it were possible for him to say what form of memorial he would like. He has got his peace in Dryburgh; he is lying there in that enclosure alongside the man whose name he honoured, Walter Scott. He is there; we can give him no greater honour than that. We can sound no better praise in his ears than the praise that is sounding in his ears as we are sitting here now. But, if we were to ask him what could we do as a memorial to him, I am sure Lord Haig would reply, "Care for those whom I cared for during my life." I would like to remind the House —and with this I conclude—of a sentence from a letter of his written as recently as 11th November, 1927. He wrote this:

"Even nine years after the War there are thousands upon thousands of ex-service men without work. There are countless widows and orphans with the scantiest means of livelihood. There are disabled and tuberculous men requiring special help. All of these come within the scope of the beneviolent activities of the British Legion. If our voluntary relief committees are to continue or, as I sincerely hope, extend their work, sufficient funds are of vital necessity."

I believe it is possible—I am rot going to labour it—to create a fund under the charge of the Public Trustee and of responsible men to-day, that would be used for the purpose of alleviating distress and hardship—admitted distress and hardship which cannot possibly be brought within the scope of our official attention and which ought not to be brought within the scope of our official attention. That is our idea; that is our plan. It is for that reason I move the Amendment which is down in my name and the names of my colleagues.

I deeply regret that my right hon. Friend and leader the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) is not in his place to-day to take part in the discussion of this Motion, but I, personally, rejoice that I am in a position to say a few words on it. Unfortunately, I have not the eloquence to speak as I ought to speak upon it, but I have one thing, and that is sincerity. I loved Lord Haig. I have known Lord Haig all my life. Ever since I was a boy I have been associated with him. He conies from my country. He is a man of my county—Fife—and during my service in the Army, I served in the same arm in the cavalry branch. I had the privilege of serving in two campaigns with him—in South Africa and in the Great War—and in the Great War for a time I was one of his Staff officers. The memory of Haig will always remain with me sweet, clean and just what I would like it to be. The Prime Minister very aptly referred to Sir John Moore. Anyone who has had long service in the Army—and I see hon. friends opposite who have had more close association with Earl Haig than I have had—must know that as Sir John Moore was the trainer of our armies before the Peninsular War, so Haig after South Africa was the trainer of the weapon that stood the ordeal by battle. He was a great commander. It is not for me now to talk of his power in the field. In the darkest hours he was always tenacious, full of enthusiasm, full of inspiring messages. He believed in his men, and the men trusted him. He never "groused" and never allowed anyone near him to "grouse." He was a man who gave the best inspiration to those around him, and I always think that Lord Haig had much. to do with the recovery of the British Armies in 1918. He was a great leader of his men in war. He was the servant of his men in peace, and many a poor home gratefully remembers what Lord Haig did for them.

The nation owes him a debt that can never be repaid, but I believe, with the Prime Minister, that there are those in our nation who wish for some form of altar at which they can offer their homage and their tributes in the years to come. In Edinburgh, in the Heart of Midlothian, we have such an altar. In the Borderland by Bemersyde we have it. Surely in the heart of the Empire here in London we ought to have some place where we can go and lay our tributes. I am sure the nation will provide a suitable memorial to Lord Haig. It may take other means; it may take methods to enable the hardships and terrible trials of our ex-soldiers, sailors and airmen and their widows and others to be relieved. But surely we, in this House, ought to erect some place where the soldiers who remain and others may go and offer their tribute.

I think we ought not to forget Lady Haig and her stricken family on a day like this. I am sure we hope that the young heir will soon be recovered to health and that he will grow up to carry on the great traditions of his father. Lady Haig, in her message, which I read this morning, rightly points out that the great thing that her great husband wished was that we should serve those who were stricken in the War. The poppy of Flanders is Haig's poppy; it will always be associated with his name, and I feel sure that if he could have a voice in saying what memorial he would like, he would still say that he wanted some shrine where the men could come and bend the head to him. On Flanders fields, I am sure, the spirits there know and gladly welcome him as he has gone home. There was a verse that I read the other day, written by a soldier, which struck me as being very apt. It was: has gone home. The Empire will cherish his memory, and I hope that we will do the same.

As honorary treasurer of the British Legion and their spokesman in this House, I thought it would be right that I should say a few words on this occasion. The part that Lord Haig took during the War has been amply dealt with already, and indeed that part concerns me very little, seeing that I am only one of millions who served under his command. The part that Lord Haig played since the War is; perhaps as well known to me as to any other man in this House. When the War was over and men were being demobilised and sent home, they naturally formed themselves into various ex-service men's organisations. These organisations were all striving for the same thing, for the betterment of all ex-service men, but they were not all striving in the same way, and they were cutting each other's throats in the process of doing it. When Lord Haig returned home, he was approached by more than one of these organisation to know whether he would come with them and take their part. He always refused to do so. He always1 said he would never join any ex-service men's organisations until there was one only in the country, and he set himself to work, as soon as he came home, for that object. As you know, that was achieved, and the British Legion was formed, in 1921, by an amalgamation of all the other organisations; and Lord Haig was made their President.

Since then the Legion has made tremendous progress, and Lord Haig has always been at their head. He seemed to live only for it and for those who were supported by it. Many great generals and leaders in previous wars have thought fit, when they returned home, to retire on their laurels or to take other prominent posts or even, in some cases, to do nothing. None of those things appealed to Lord Haig, who insisted on taking an active part in looking after all who had fought under him. He was not only President of the British Legion; at least, he was not satisfied to see his name at the top of the paper as President, but he took a very active part in the work of the Legion. He presided at many meetings, and there were several subcommittees where he took the chair him- self on every occasion. He attended the annual conference of the Legion every year, and he led them each year past the Cenotaph at their annual ceremony there. Nothing happened in the Legion without his knowledge, and on one occasion he toured the whole country, speaking on its behalf and to its members.

There are men in the House who do not like the Legion, and there may be some outside. They disapprove of its actions in the past on some occasions, and they may do so again in the future, but I would say to them that the Legion, under Lord Haig, may have made mistakes in the past, but in spite of everything it has achieved tremendous things for all the ex-service men. The Legion was Lord Haig; Lord Haig was the Legion. One was an autocrat and the other a democracy. Democracies are difficult things to control, and it is possible that a democrat would not be able to do it. Lord Haig was an autocrat and carried everyone who followed him. I think myself—and I am speak4ng for the Legion—that it is essential that a statue to his memory should be erected, and, as the hon. and gallant Member for Montrose (Sir R. Hutchison) has said, it is necessary that it should be somewhere in London, to be used as a shrine or an altar where we and our children and our children's children may pay homage each year.

The Prime Minister says he thinks that that is all that the British Legion expects the Government to do. I think he is right in that. That is all that the Legion expects the Government to do and all that the Legion would like the Government to do. But the Legion has given this matter grave consideration. We had a meeting last Friday, after the funeral, but we did not think it right, until he was actually buried yesterday, that anything that we had considered should be made known to the public. We discussed many ideas. One was that a national fund should be raised and that the majority of people throughout this country should subscribe to it in a voluntary manner, and we thought that, if that appeal were signed by the Prime Minister and one or two other influential people, more than enough would be raised to carry out what the Labour party, I think, require. The only difference would be that it should not be done by the Government and it should not be run by any Government Department. We know that Government Departments, with the greatest good wishes in the world, could not run it, and I feel sure that the ex-service men who would benefit by this memorial would much prefer that it should be run by some voluntary body.

It was thought we might have something like another Chelsea Hospital, where men and their wives would be able to go in their old age. We have thought it might be possible to get groups of cottages scattered about all over the country, where men, their wives, and their children could live rent free or at a purely nominal rent, and I would like to say that that last suggestion has the entire approval of Lady Haig, who is very anxious indeed that that should be done. It has been said that the passing of Lord Haig, as far as he was concerned, was happy. It was, but the suddenness of that death made it extremely difficult for us to carry on. The work to which he devoted his life must be carried on, and the Legion must go forward. Ten thousand of us were to have made a pilgrimage to the battlefield this year and marched past Lord Haig at the Menin Gate. Lady Haig and her son were also to have been present. Ten thousand of us will go, Lady Haig and her son will still go, and as we march past the place where Lord Haig should have taken the salute, he will be present in the heart of everyone of us who are there.

I think the House as a whole does not desire to continue the discussion, and, possibly, all that can be said on this occasion has been said already; but I feel that it is quite right that I should say a word or two, I hope, in conclusion. There is, I rejoice to find—and I knew it beforehand —no difference of opinion in any quarter of the House as to the personal character and merits of this great man whom we propose to commemorate. There is a great deal that the Leader of the Opposition said, when he came specifically to the moving of his Amendment, with which I am indeed in very full sympathy, but I want to point this out to the House. The amount of money involved in this Vote is trifling. It is money that really could have no effect one way or the other if distributed. The sum is trifling. We moved this Motion, as I said in my concluding words—and I think what I said has been confirmed by the speech by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Fairfield (Major Cohen) who has just spoken—we moved it, as we believe, in response to the demand of the silent millions in this country. We think it is the wish of the people of this country. But when my hon. and gallant Friend spoke about the need of help, and made certain observations about a national fund, there, I think, if I may say so, he struck quite the right note. I think from the soldiers' point of view that this is the right moment to make such, an appeal; I think it is an appeal that should be made in the country as the great national, popular memorial to Lord Haig. If those responsible for it will do me the honour to ask me to say anything in furtherance of it, or to sign such an appeal as the head of the Government, I will be proud to do1 so. I still hope that my right hon. Friend on the other side of the House, having made that moving speech, having placed his views and the views of those for whom he speaks before the House, and having heard what has been said in the House, will even now let this Motion go forward.

I do hope that no word from any section of the House will detract from the magnificent spirit shown by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I would deplore having a Division on this Motion because, while a Division may be understood in this House, it may be misinterpreted outside the House. Therefore, I am not going to say one word, except that I fortunately, unlike the Leader of the Opposition, was privileged to know Lord Haig. I enjoyed his friendship; his memory I will always cherish. I would add nothing to what the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have said for it expresses my sentiments, but I would ask the Government to consider this. As the Prime Minister rightly said, the sum of £7,000, or whatever it may be, is not only an infinitesimal sum, but it is a sum that no decent-minded man or woman would quibble about. Therefore, that is not involved. The hon. and gallant Member for Fairfield (Major Cohen) will not misunderstand me when I say that he must not assume for one moment that he can accurately interpret all that Lord Haig meant in his association with the British Legion, and I would ask the Prime Minister to accept our suggestion, but not as an Amendment. It need not necessarily be an Amendment. We ask that a Select Committee be appointed from this House.

The Prime Minister has said that he would openly associate himself with any effort, but surely it ought to be a national effort. The soldiers that we are out to help served the national cause. The soldiers and the widows and the orphans and the disabled men are not of any party or any class or any creed; they are of the whole nation. I would ask the Prime Minister to accept our suggestion, not as an Amendment, but as a suggestion most fittingly expressing all that Earl Haig would desire; and, instead of an appeal signed by the Prime- Minister as representing the Government, let a Select Committee determine the form of memorial that shall be representative of the nation as a whole, so that everybody can be associated with it. There is no party spirit associated with it, and I would ask the Prime Minister, having regard to all that my right hon. Friend said, whether that would not be the most fitting termination, not only of a Debate in which we are all proud to take part, but of a Debate that we all feel is in accord with the memory of the one departed.

I was very loath to speak at all this afternoon, but I was associated for perhaps a long time more closely with Lord Haig than any other Member of the House. The speech to which we have just listened does force me to say one or two words. Lord Haig in all his life never sought honours given by Parliament. He wanted and received the affection of his countrymen. We, in giving him a memorial, are doing ourselves honour more than him. We had far better carry out his wish in any national memorial to the benefit of ex-service men by allowing individual people in the country to give voluntarily, than by any grant that this House can give. I do hope that even now the Leader of the Opposition will not press his suggestion. I realise, as well as anyone can realise, that he does not do it with any intention of bringing into this Debate one word that could lessen the respect and honour we all wish to pay to the late Field-Marshal, but I fear that unless he withdraws his suggestion that may be the result. In my association with Lord Haig I know how far above all parties he was. I know there are sitting on those benches men to whom Lord Haig never ceased to say that the Army owed a debt of gratitude for work done. With regard to the Liberal party, I know in the re-organisation of the Army how much he owed to the leadership of the then Secretary of State for War under whom he was working. I would ask the House to remember those verses which Rudyard Kipling wrote of Lord Roberts. One verse of that piece expresses all that we feel of Lord Haig, and I think it also gives the Opposition the right and duty to withdraw their suggestion:

"Clean, simple, valiant, well-beloved,

Flawless in faith and fame,

Whom neither ease nor honours moved

One hair's-breadth from his aim."

4.0 p.m.

Before the grave of the departed I stand in the same sorrowful silence as any other Member of the House, and I do not desire in the least to introduce any note or suggestion of disrespect to the late Field-Marshal. I can quite realise the wish of a very large number of persons to pay homage to his memory. A million human beings passed a memorial to Lenin in Moscow, and I do not wish to find fault in a given state of society with other persons who have the same desire towards their own heroes. But I beg to point out to the Government one thing, that while we may do justice to the memory of one person, we should be discreet enough not to do injustice to the memory of others, and also, that while we pay our respects to the dead, we need not forget our duty to those who are living. The Prime Minister said—and I agree with him—that there is a desire in the hearts of a large number of persons to express their sentimental feeling by placing a poppy upon the late Field-Marshal's shrine. The Prime Minister read out a letter from Lady Haig in which she said that, above all, was his comradeship. An army in a war is a finer emblem of comradeship than any other association of persons. I want to remind this House that, bearing in mind this comradeship, bearing in mind the great services in the War of persons whose names are not known, bearing in mind the great sacrifice of those who are dying in our midst for it, and who rendered equally valuable service in this War, this country has got a memorial to the Unknown Warrior and has erected a Cenotaph of an impersonal character, where all persons in the nation who feel inclined to pay their homage to any of the heroes of the War, in justice and fair play to all whose sacrifices have become known, or whose sacrifices have not become known, should go, and by placing there a poppy can express their gratitude for the work of Lord Haig as well as that of the commonest sailor and soldier who made equal sacrifice.

I appeal to the House not to set up these piecemeal, personal monuments of an individual character, of a single personality, in a manner which would detract from the value of the great impersonal monument which the nation has already erected, and I do appeal to the Prime Minister, apart from the question of money, apart from the question of the fund required being large or small, to accept the Labour party's suggestion of an Amendment in order to avoid erecting a personal monument which clashes with the larger, impersonal ideal of that which has already been erected. I would be heart and. soul with the House if it were to vote even the large sum of £1,000,000 provided it was handed over to the ex-service men and the Legion itself to administer according to the wishes and desires of the men who have suffered so much, who are still living and still suffering. I, therefore, appeal to the House not to misunderstand my intervention, but to observe the sanctity as well as the true character of the Unknown Warrior's grave and the impersonal Cenotaph, and not to be disrespectful to the memory of all who fell in the War by erecting individual and personal monuments.

I rise, not for a second to have the presumption of adding anything to what has been said about the late Lord Haig, but only to ask the Leader of the Opposition if he will not at this moment, for the reasons so cogently given by the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), withdraw his Amendment. I would appeal to him for this reason. It is perfectly true, although we in this House are well aware that the right hon. Gentleman has moved his Amendment not in any sense in criticism of the Government's proposal but merely, as he has said, as a suggestion, it is equally true that the proposition will not be received in the same spirit outside this House, that it will give rise to wrong impressions and wrong ideas, and I suggest it is not at ail impossible to bring forward the suggestion—a suggestion with which the Prime Minister himself, and speakng I am sure on behalf of many others, has great sympathy—on another occasion in another form. I appeal, therefore, very strongly to the Leader of the Opposition, for the reasons I have stated, to withdraw his Amendment to-day, and to bring forward his proposition on another occasion, when, I am sure, it will have the whole-hearted support of Members of all parties in the House.

I should like, on the other hand, to address an appeal to the Prime Minister with regard to the Amendment moved on this side of the House as a supplement to the Motion on the Order Paper. I think there would be no general objection on this side of the House to an inexpensive monument being erected, but what we do say is that a real memorial of Lord Haig should be something in keeping with the work he has done in the later years of his life. I should also like to emphasise what the right hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas) said, that the obligation to the ex-service men and their dependants is a national obligation, and as such should be met in a national way, and not by any voluntary fund such as the hon. and gallant Member opposite suggested. After all, I think this is a great

opportunity for the nation through this House to do something to make up for the injustice which has been done to countless ex-service men and their dependants since the War, and it is an opportunity which, I think, we ought to take. Our ordinary pension Debates during the past few years have not attracted that interest either in the House or in the country which they ought to have done, but in those Debates instances have been brought forward time and again where the obligation which the British nation believed that this House had undertaken has not been carried out.

Reference has been made to-day to the case of tuberculous ex-service men. There are any number of these men who were gassed in the course of the War, and whose disease did not make itself known for years. Many of those cases have been disallowed, and widows and children have been deprived of the benefits which they ought to have. This seems to me an opportunity which the House and country ought to take to make this memorial to Earl Haig something in the way of making up for what we have failed to do in the past. I was one of those who had the privilege of serving under Lord Haig. I was in the Ypres Salient when he sent out that famous message to which the Prime Minister has referred, and I have followed very closely the work which he has done for ex-service men in late years. I am quite certain that we shall be carrying out the work which he would wish this House and the country to do by accepting the Amendment which this party has put forward, not as a contrary proposal but as a supplement to the Motion of the Prime Minister.

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

The House divided: Ayes, 220; Noes, 103.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

"That this House will, To-morrow, resolve itself into a Committee to consider an humble Address to His Majesty, praying that His Majesty will give directions that a monument be erected at the public charge to the memory of the late Field-Marshal Earl Haig, with an inscription expressing the admiration of this House for his illustrious military career and its gratitude for his devoted services to the State."

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister undertook yesterday that I would to-day reply to some inquiries which were addressed to the Government by the leaders of the two parties opposite on matters of foreign affairs. Though I am sorry to do so in their absence, I am aware of the circumstances which have unavoidably caused that absence. I think it will be for the convenience of the House that I should deal with these matters at once, before the House becomes wholly involved in other matters of a more directly domestic concern. My first observation would be to join with what the Prime Minister said in grateful recognition of the unanimity of the House in respect of the declaration made in the Gracious Speech as to our policy towards China. That policy was the result of mature consideration and was deliberately announced. I stated at the time that the date and moment for its application must be dependent upon circumstances which were and are beyond our own control, but to that policy we remain faithful, and we are glad to recognise, as was made clear yesterday, that it is no party policy, but an expression of goodwill and of friendship of all our countrymen towards the people of China and their legitimate aspirations. We have, indeed, no other interest in China than that our citizens should be allowed to pursue their legitimate avocations as traders in peace and security, and we are prepared to meet Chinese aspirations for the revision of the Treaty in the most liberal spirit, provided only that that security is given for the lawful occupations of our people.

The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition asked to know more of the present position. He expressed some impatience that more progress had not been made. I think, perhaps, that for the moment he a little forgot what has already been done, as he certainly underrated the immense difficulties which stand in the path of progress. China is still rent with civil war. It is without any Government that can speak in the name of the whole Chinese people. Indeed, Governments come and go, as leaders come and go, and rise and fall, and there can be no more difficult task than to carry out the wishes of His Majesty's Government and the policy which they have announced while the Chinese themselves are unable to provide a stable and settled Government for China. Still, we have made some progress. In view of the long delay which has occurred in carrying out the promises of the Washington Convention, His, Majesty's Government have accepted the position that we should not be justified in withholding our consent to the collection of the 2½ per cent, surtaxes which were there provisionally agreed to. They are being paid by His Majesty's subjects throughout China, but His Majesty's Government object, and must continue to object, to illegal levies over and above these surtaxes, which are continuously cropping up in the different parts of China under this or that passing local authority. They will not object to tariff autonomy based upon a uniform national tariff which does not discriminate against British merchants and which is administered fairly. It is for the Chinese themselves to agree on this most important question, and when they do agree among themselves—and I am happy to say that there have been some signs of late that such an agreement was, perhaps, beginning—then His Majesty's Government will help them and will adopt no obstructive attitude.

Similarly with ex-territoriality. We have made some progress in the face of these difficulties. His Majesty's Government already recognise the modern Chinese law courts in cases where British subjects are plaintiffs or complainants. We are ready to apply in British Courts the existing modern Chinese civil and commercial codes. A mixed Commission met at Pekin last spring to consider this offer, but, unfortunately, it made little progress, and the Chinese codes are by no means complete, and many of the Chinese laws are not yet translated into any European language. Modern Chinese jurisprudence is a field which needs developing, and offers great promise, but it has not yet advanced far enough to constitute a recognisable judicial system, and it is hardly possible to make further advance in the direction of surrendering our existing rights while the system is still half complete and is further suffering from the division of authority of which I have already spoken.

A third branch of our programme was the surrendering by negotiation of our special rights in the British concessions. The concessions of Hankow and Kiukiang were surrendered. I wish I could give a more satisfactory account of the state of things which has prevailed there since that surrender. I cannot say that it is wholly encouraging. The circumstances of chaos and of civil war are an immense obstacle to the proper and efficient discharge by the Chinese of the obligations that became incumbent upon them from the moment that we surrendered any of those privileges. We can, only watch the development of affairs and proceed along that path as circumstances may render further progress possible. Of the reductions in the Defence Force, both naval and military, mention is made in the Gracious Speech. The land forces numbered about 12,500. They are already reduced to about 4,500, and orders have been given for the withdrawal of another battalion.

I shall be as glad as hon. Members in any part of the House when conditions of order and security in China make a total withdrawal of that force possible, but that time has not yet arrived, and no responsible Government could leave our concessions there until there is a more normal state of things prevailing. I must mention with regret the failure of any Chinese authorities in that part of the country to give any satisfaction up to date for the outrages perpetrated in Nanking. It is impossible for our Consul- General to reoccupy the Consulate, which even at this moment is occupied wrongfully and unlawfully by Chinese troops, and no sort of satisfaction has hitherto been offered for the outrage either to life or property or national dignity which was inflicted upon us as well as upon other nations in that place.

On a broad review, the situation is undoubtedly better than it was a year ago. The particular anti-foreign campaign and the agitation which was carried on, and at that time was of a still more anti-British character, has changed, and I think there is beginning to appear among the Chinese people a better appreciation of the real goodwill of His Majesty's Government and of the British people, and they are beginning to consider, as they did not at the time consider, the liberality and the friendship implied and involved not only in the declaration which we published a year ago but in our actions since that time. That, I think, covers the ground of the inquiries which were put to me in regard to China. I might add that His Majesty's Minister is now on his way to visit Hong Kong and Canton, and he will, before his return to Pekin, also visit Shanghai and the Yangtsze again. I may, in passing, note with great satisfaction the friendly relations which at present exist between the authorities in Canton and the Colonial Government of Hong Kong.

The next subject of foreign affairs to which the Leader of the Opposition referred was the Geneva Conference. We have already had some discussion in this House in regard to the three-Power Naval Conference in Geneva. I should not have thought it necessary to repeat what I said on that occasion had not the Leader of the Opposition wholly ignored the answer which I made to him then. The right hon. Gentleman continues to say that the failure of that Conference was due to the Foreign Office surrendering to naval experts its proper function, and to a lack of Foreign Office preparation for it. I wish the right hon. Gentleman would make his charges precise and particular, because I think, if he imposed that task upon himself, some of his charges would disappear before he spoke in this House or on the platform outside. What does the right hon. Gentleman mean by the Foreign Office surrendering its function to the naval authority? The preparation of His Majesty's Government for that Conference was most carefully made. We worked out a very important and a very detailed scheme for the restriction and reduction of naval armaments. We did that through the ordinary machinery of the Admiralty, but also through the Committee of Imperial Defence and by Cabinet discussion, and the programme which my right hon. Friend, Lord Cecil, and the First Lord of the Admiralty took to Geneva was a carefully considered programme, which, alas, was never allowed to come to a fair discussion in that Conference. But to say that we went into that Conference without preparation, or to suggest that we treated the matter as one of departmental administration to be settled by our naval experts alone is to suggest the direct contrary of the facts.

The right hon. Gentleman speaks of "The failure of the Foreign Office preparation." What meaning does he attach to that? I take it that he means that there was insufficient communication between His Majesty's Government and the Government of the United States before the Conference met at Geneva. If he means that, then I think he is right. I think it would have been better if there had been a confidential, and even a semi-official or even unofficial exchange of views between the two Governments, I will not say before the Conference met but even before an invitation was formally issued for it. But it does not lie in the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman opposite to reproach me for having stood in the way of a proposal for open diplomacy from the first. The right hon. Gentleman and his party are never tired of accusing me of carrying on secret conversations where everything ought to be done in the light of all the world and where an enlightened public opinion may correct idiosyncracies. If the right hon. Gentleman had been brought by the failure of the Conference to see that that diplomacy has still a part to play in the world; if he had been brought to recognise that to rush into a public discussion is not always the best method of arriving at a conclusion, and that to discuss in the presence of a Press which takes up the cudgels on one side or the other does not always tend to that friendly atmosphere in which agreement is reached, then I should have welcomed the right hon. Gentleman's intervention even though he comes to us in terms of criticism.

I regret the failure. His Majesty's Government regret, as I have no doubt the Government of the United States regret, the failure of their honest efforts and our honest efforts in association with a third friendly Power—Japan—to carry further forward the work of the limitation of naval armaments which was begun at Washington. I do not think, and I do not believe that any other Government thinks, that we should be well advised to take up that subject again at this moment, but I hope that we, who were there represented and other Governments who were interested but not parties to that Conference, may learn something from that failure, and when the time comes to review the Washington Convention, if they will profit by the lessons of the past, we may succeed where last year we failed.

There are other negotiations into which we shall have to enter with the United States of America. The Leader of the Liberal party inquired as to the proposals for an arbitration which are now before us. I cannot speak fully upon that subject. The Treaty submitted for our consideration was mutatis mutandis the same as that submitted to the French Government. I understand that a Treaty was signed a few days ago between the French and the American representatives, but not exactly the draft which was originally proposed by the American Government. I do not know exactly what form the Treaty has taken between France and the United States as a result of the negotiations which have been passing between those two Governments. I understand that that Treaty will not be published until it has been made known to the Senate. I think it would be out of the question for me to disclose to the House the exact terms of the draft as I originally received it, but I can answer the question which the Leader of the Liberal party has put to me. The right hon. Gentleman inquired whether the new proposals were different from, or whether they were more than the existing Treaty. He asked whether they were "all-in" proposals, and he suggested that it would be an immense advantage if every cause of difference between the two countries could be referred to a joint judicial tribunal. I can say this much. The new Treaty, like the old Treaty, is not an unlimited Treaty of Arbitration on every head. Like the old Root-Bryce Treaty, it is confined to what are called justiciable differences. More than that, like the old Treaty, it excepts certain questions from its scope, even though they be justiciable. It proposes, not indeed a repetition of the old reservations but the adoption of new reservations or exceptions in their place, and the exact effect of those reservations is just one of the many important questions which His Majesty's Government are at this time carefully examining in order to ascertain whether the Treaty is, in fact, of wider scope, or whether it is narrower in scope, and in either case in what the difference consists.

There is a third restrictive element which prevents this from being a complete all-in agreement for arbitration, which is also common to it and to our existing Treaty. The American Government find it necessary to reserve the constitutional right of the Senate to be consulted on each individual reference to a Court of Arbitration. That is a reservation which, as I have said, finds a place in our existing Treaty, but it is a reservation of very wide scope and of a most important character. Even a very cursory survey of those great compositions of international difficulties which we are accustomed rather loosely to describe as arbitrations—though in many cases they have been processes of conciliation, and not of arbitration in the strict sense of the term—a very cursory review of the history of those cases shows the immense importance of the terms of reference in many of the most striking instances which have been given. The answer, therefore, to the right hon. Gentleman is that this is not a great unlimited agreement which is proposed, but that it is an agreement subject to limitations and reservations, partly-repeated from the old Treaty and partly in substitution for those which were involved; and we must consider the matter thoroughly, and must, of course, enter into the fullest correspondence and consultation with the Governments of His Majesty's Dominions overseas, before we give our answer to the proposal which has been made.

Could the right hon. Gentleman, although he cannot give details, say whether the communication from America included, as in the case of the communication to France, a proposal in regard to a general declaration ruling out war between the two countries, and whether there is any such proposal in regard to the Treaty itself?

I would sooner not enter into the text of the Treaty, if I may be allowed. That is just one of the subjects which I think has been a matter of discussion between the French and American Governments, and, as I have said, I am not aware what solution they have found. There is, however, one observation that I wanted to make before leaving the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, and it is connected, I think, with the question which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Buxton) has just put to me. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Liberal party, as I have said, delivered an obiter dictum that he was implying that it was in the interests of arbitration that every dispute between nations should be referred to a judicial tribunal. I venture to differ, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will reconsider his attitude on that matter. A judicial tribunal is eminently the right tribunal to try a justiciable point, that is to say, a point which can be determined by a rule of law; but I do not think that a judicial tribunal is the best one in which to seek a solution of political differences not determinable by any rule of law, such as sometimes have been the cause of the greatest difficulty, and have given rise most frequently to war.

There is, however, a second Treaty existing between ourselves and the United States, to which I think sometimes insufficient attention is paid, namely, the Bryan-Spring-Rice Treaty, which provides, not, indeed, that there should be no recourse to war, not, indeed, a judicial tribunal for the trial and decision of all differences, but provides that any dispute between us should be referred to a Commission of conciliation, that a year's time should be given, and that we should await the Report of that Commission before we take to arms. I am not at all sure that, at the present stage in Europe, it may not be the case that the next advances may be made rather along the lines of the Bryan Treaty than along the strict lines of arbitral agreements. At any rate, when we talk of the Treaties of Arbitration, do not let us forget the very important and very useful and salutary provision of the Treaty which was signed by Mr. Bryan, and the late Sir Cecil Spring-Rice.

That is perpetual, is it not?

It goes on unless denounced. It is capable of being denounced, but it continues, if my memory serves me rightly, in force unless and until denounced. I can scarcely speak of arbitration with the United States, either in its narrower or in its larger sense, as implying every process for the friendly settlement of any differences between us, without saying once again that whatever our machinery is—and let us make it the best we can— for a British Government, war with the United States is unthinkable, and the prospect of a war with the United States, or preparation for a war with the United States, has never been and never will be the basis of our policy in anything. I was interested the other day to note the evidence given before the Pan-American Congress by the Secretary of the United States Navy. Throughout his testimony the Secretary of the Navy repeatedly insisted that, in putting forward the programme of naval construction which is now being considered, the Navy Department had no thought of entering into a race for armaments with any foreign Power. He stated that the United States have not engaged in competitive building of warships, and do not intend to do so; and he added that, in preparing the programme before them, the General Board had considered primarily the United States Navy's own needs, and that such needs were only indirectly related to the strength of other navies and their construction and replacement programmes. He emphasised the fact that the Washington Treaty left all its signatories free to build as they choose in all types except capital ships, subject, of course, to the limitation that no such vessel should exceed 10,000 tons in displacement, or carry guns of greater calibre than eight inches; and, in reply to a question, he specifically stated—and I am glad that he did, for I hope it will put an end once and for all to rumours which ought never to have had any currency—that:

"Because Great Britain, for instance, has built a larger tonnage of cruisers than we have chosen to build, it is no imputation on her part of any departure from either the letter or the spirit of the Treaty "—

that is to say, the Washington Treaty. He added that, if the United States had chosen to build more than other Powers, it would have been strictly in accordance with the Treaty; and in his original statement—that was in answer to a question—the went so far as to say that the 5–5–3 ratio in types of ships not covered by the Washington Treaty would be competitive, inasmuch as such a programme would be directly dependent upon the plans of others. I think that that is an almost hyper-criticism of a proposal to restrict numbers by agreement, but, at any rate, he made it clear that there has been no breach of faith, no infringement either of the letter or of the spirit of the Washington Treaty, on the part of His Majesty's Government; and I can say for our Government, as he said for his, that our building is not competitive, and that our programmes are framed only with a view to the necessary protection of our British interests. That these programmes will be modified—and the failure of the Conference has not lessened our desire that they should be modified—is, I think, sufficiently shown by the action we have taken, on a review of the present conditions, in lessening the announced programme for the present two years. I hope I have dealt adequately and to the satisfaction of the House with the questions which were put to me yesterday. I am glad to repeat, in conclusion, my acknowledgments to the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, as well as to the right hon. Gentleman the leader of the Liberal party, for their friendly tone in regard to China, and I shall hope to continue, not merely in China but elsewhere, to conduct a policy which all parties in this country can approve and support.

5.0 p.m.

I desire to make only a very few remarks with regard to the important speech which the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary has just delivered. It was by way of answer to the questions put by my right hon. Friend yesterday, and I only want to make a comment on one or two of the matters referred to. In dealing with international questions at the present moment, the over-shadowing matter, to which the attention of all countries is directed, is the question of the pacific settlement of international disputes, and a far greater and more determined advance towards disarmament. Listening very attentively to the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary, I could not help feeling that, in so far as Conferences such as the Three-Power Conference at Geneva, or the prospects of the renewal of such a Conference, are concerned, there will be very little hope in that direction of attaining the desired aim. But when the right hon. Gentleman touched on the prospects of the renewal of the Treaty of Arbitration with the United States, I felt that that was the larger and more comprehensive policy which might not only regulate the use of armaments, but might possibly lead to their more speedy abolition. I quite understand that the right hon. Gentleman was not able to give us any full details of the Treaty. The Treaty between the United States and the French Government has only just been signed, and it has, as he told us, to be brought before the Senate before it can be made public. He is therefore in the position of not being able to disclose to the House the nature of the suggestions made by the United States to this country for the renewal of the Treaty which I think has to come into force on 4th April of this year—at least the Bryce-Root Treaty, I think, on 4th April ceases to have effect. There is not very much time before that date, and I would ask, on behalf of the Opposition, that we should have a very full opportunity to hear from the right hon. Gentleman his intentions with regard to the Treaty when he can divulge to U6 quite fully what those intentions are and what are the proposals that have been made to him by the United States.

I feel that we are, as so often happens in this House, confronted with a matter of enormous importance rather unawares on an afternoon when we did not expect a, matter of this moment to be brought forward. The opportunity of engaging with the United States Government in a Treaty which will contain provisions for arbitration and a declaration on the part of the two Governments that they desire to abandon the war weapon in all questions arising between them and that they desire, in the terms of the American proposal, to outlaw war between the two countries is a matter of such grave importance, and constitutes such a great step towards the end we all have in view, that I feel we are right in hoping that a fuller discussion may be allowed on it. We are hopeful, but we cannot be sanguine. We find that the League of Nations is being quoted too often as an organisation that has made war legal under certain circumstances, as an organisation membership of which involves the maintenance of armaments. I do not look upon the League in that light, but there have been utterances from the Government declaring that the League of Nations depends on the armaments of Great Britain. I do not believe the League of Nations ought to, or will in the long run, depend on the armaments of any country, and until it is based on moral sanctions I doubt whether it will derive the authority it ought to have and the confidence of the nations which it will gain when armaments are abandoned. But we are suspicious. Not only have utterances of that sort been made but in a document which has been issued, and of which I have only seen a summary, we find a declaration by the Government on the question of security and a very emphatic refusal to sign the optional clause. That is a disappointment. The summary of this document, so far as I have been able to read it, shows on the part of the Foreign Secretary an attitude of caution pushed to the extent of damping down the progress which a greater eagerness to arrive at a solution of this question of disarmament would involve.

The right hon. Gentleman has said before now that progress must be very slow. In this great question, I doubt if that is really the case. I doubt if the time is not very short. For most questions that we have to deal with even in foreign affairs time is necessary. They have to be done gradually. But I am not at all sure whether in this question it does not rest with this generation to solve once and for all this problem and, by means of a determined effort on the part of those who have really known by personal experience what war times mean, to put an end to this method of attempting to settle international disputes once and for all. I believe more rapid progress might be made, not by conferences, not by detaching this arm and that arm and wrangling with experts as to what limitations and reductions should be made, but by comprehensive agreements between nations in which the principle of outlawry of war, in which the ideal of the abandonment of the war weapon should be given expression to by Governments with a sincere desire to come to an agreement. The right hon. Gentleman has just said we all entirely agree that the idea of warfare with the United States is unthinkable. I do not believe in the idea of any nation desiring to attack us, but with the United States we have at this moment a magnificent opportunity of going further, of having the courage to express the opinions of the people in both countries and not to lag behind. I therefore only desire to say to the right hon. Gentleman that the importance of the few words he has said to-day on this Treaty will be fully realised, and if we can have an opportunity for a very careful and full discussion of this Treaty when he can tell us more, I hope he will persuade the Prime Minister to grant such a day in order that this question, which he as well as we realises to be of such great importance, may receive full consideration and be discussed in such a manner as to show to the world that some great advance is about to be made.

I am not anxious to divert the Debate from the subject which has been under discussion, but I want to deal with another aspect of the matter than that which has been before the House. Before doing so I should, however, like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he has any information in regard to the position in Russia. There have been many reports in the papers lately that indicated a possible change of view with regard to the Russian Government, and a prominent newspaper even announced the other day the intention of that Government to bring into force a new policy in regard to trade. I should have been glad to know whether there is any confirmation of any of these reports. I hope at some time the House may have a full explanation with regard to China. It is very difficult for us to follow exactly the reasons why the troops have been withdrawn. We fully recognise the explanation the right hon. Gentleman has given to-day of the improved position in China. If I recollect rightly, one of the reasons given at the time the troops were sent out was the fear that Shanghai might at some time be threatened by defeated armies, which as a matter of fact to a certain extent ultimately became true. I cannot see, although for the moment the fighting may not actually be near Shanghai, that the danger has been by any means removed, and I should like to ask whether other forces have been provided, either from other countries or by an increase in the local forces, and that our troops have been liberated because others have undertaken their responsibilities.

I will answer the hon. Member's question at once. As he knows, other countries sent additional forces to Shanghai after we had despatched our own, but we are not reducing ours because they have made an effort at combination to secure the defence of the community but because in the present conditions our military advisers think the security of the community can be assured with the lesser force that is left.

I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman. The point I specially wanted to deal with is the outlook for trade and certain representations which have been made at the meetings of the leading bankers. We can well understand that those occupying the position of the gentlemen who have, made these speeches have naturally been inclined to lay stress on those sides of the trade outlook that are likely to be most pleasant to the shareholders or, in the case of the President of the Board of Trade, to his supporters in the House of Commons. Nothing would please me better than to think trade was making a very decided improvement. I should be only too glad for the party opposite to have whatever credit attaches to the Government in office for a real improvement in trade if I thought the country was benefiting, but it seems to me unsatisfactory that a general impression should be created that there is an improvement, which on close investigation is not of such importance as may seem to be indicated by the general tenor of speeches and newspaper articles. We have to face the fact that the great staple industries are still very far removed from showing any signs of that improvement of which the House would be only too glad to see indications.

If we take a few of those industries and look at the special position as revealed by the figures I think we should come to a juster idea of the real position than by simply reading the speeches that have been made and beginning to think that possibly everything is for the best. One of the trades which undoubtedly has made a very distinct improvement during the past year, and in connection with which some satisfactory figures have been quoted, is that of shipbuilding. On the other hand, if we look at the figures for last year and remember the specially low level at which the shipping industry had sunk in the previous year and then consider the increased figures, we may feel that naturally there is great cause for satisfaction. But if look back a number of years and compare the figures for shipping with years that have gone by and then examine our position as one of the great nations that build ships, I think we shall find that possibly the hopes that have been held out in regard to the improvement of shipping are not really quite as satisfactory as many of us would have thought.

The output of new tonnage, measured in thousands of gross tons, launched during last year in the world was 2,286, and of that 1,226 was the share of British shipping. That gives a percentage of 54, a very decided improvement, of course, upon last year, when our percentage was only 38. But if we compare the 54 per cent, of the world's output of shipping with previous years, we find we are not in the favourable position that We were during the years from 1908 to 1910, when our output was 57 per cent., or during the year 1913, when our output was 58 per cent., and only a little better than the average for the years 1923 to 1925. So that we may find that the general position, while indicating a certain progress, does rot fully justify some of the hopes that have been raised. If we look at the tonnage under construction on the 31st December, 1927, we find that in the United Kingdom the figure was 1,580 thousand tons gross, making 51 per cent, as the British percentage of the world's tonnage under construction. To go back to previous years, we find that in 1910 the percentage was 67, and that in 1913 it was 59 per cent. Our position is only comparable with the year 1920 and a little worse, as a matter of fact, than for the year 1924. I have taken these figures dealing with shipping, because shipping is one of the industries which has been specially mentioned, and naturally the progress made in that respect has been pointed out.

No one has attempted to dispute the fact that the position in the Lancashire cotton trade is still serious. A leading financial journal said that

It seems to me that one of the lessons that this country has still to learn is that industry has to be reorganised. Everybody in this House recognised during the coal dispute that one of the problems of the coal trade was that the employers had never reorganised the industry on the lines that many of the other great employers had reorganised their industries. Men who were in control of that industry were unwilling to see the need for such reorganisation. I believe to-day it has become generally recognised in all branches of industry that everything has to be overhauled, put into the melting-pot in order to bring it right up to date if industry is to be successful. I remember a year or two ago, when the Prime Minister of Australia last visited this country, a very interesting address that he gave to some of us in one of the rooms of this building. He pointed out how at that time the English motor firms—the incident is well known because he mentioned it elsewhere—were sending motor cars to Australia that were quite unsuited to the special needs of that country. They were ignoring the facts of the difference in roads and were sending out English cars which were suitable for English purposes but not suitable for Australian purposes. Since then, I believe, the defect has been remedied to the general benefit of the motor trade in this country. That, it seems to me, is an example of what is needed and what has to take place in our industrial system to-day if we wish to compete in the great markets of the world.

One of the things that undoubtedly must have, and is having, a considerable influence upon the industrial position today is the financial problem. I read with some interest the speech of Sir H. Goschen at the meeting of the Westminster Bank, especially where he dealt with the question of the effect of high taxation upon industry. It has so often been taken for granted in this House that Income Tax is a burden upon industry. Hon. Members opposite have certainly so stated over and over again, and it has always seemed to have been the policy of Tory Chancellors of the Exchequer that if only you could reduce the Income Tax you would then insure the prosperity of the country. As a matter of fact, we have had reductions in the Income Tax and the prosperity of the country has only followed to a very limited extent. Some of us have queried the whole principle as to how far the Income Tax actually is a burden upon industry and I therefore read the words of Sir H. Goschen on this occasion with much interest when he pointed out that

I regret that in so many quarters the case that has been made by Mr. McKenna, as chairman of the Midland Bank, has not received the full consideration that the matter deserves. Two years ago he suggested that there should be a Committee appointed to investigate the position of the Bank of England, and I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he was proposing to appoint such a Committee, and the answer I received was in the negative. I do not believe that our financial system and the Bank of England and the general banking system would be any the worse for a very careful investigation being made into the working of the system to-day. We had, two or three weeks ago, from Mr. McKenna another contribution dealing with the question of the gold problem and bringing out certain very important financial proposals. From the statement which Mr. McKenna has made, and which no doubt many hon. Members have read, the argument is adduced that the central bank to-day can largely control prices. That has been suggested before, but the importance of Mr. McKenna's speech is that he is basing his argument upon the experience of America during the last few years. In the old days we left it to the chance of trade as to whether gold came into a country. If there was an inflow of gold there was a fresh creation of credit. If gold was taken out, then the reverse process took place. Instead of regarding these gold movements, which naturally had a profound influence upon prices and upon the trade of the country, as simply a problem of gold movements, Mr. McKenna pointed out that the United States, faced with a great mass of gold coming to them from Europe, felt that the effect of it upon their trade would be too serious to allow it to come in and go out without any control, and they have virtually instituted a system of control, and in that way have helped to stabilise their prices instead of having them swayed up and down as otherwise would have occurred.

If this speech of Mr. McKenna is justified, it really has a very profound influence on the industrial outlook of this country. It is folly simply to ignore it and treat it as if it were of no importance. It seems to me to be a matter which the Government ought very carefully to consider. Everybody, I think, is agreed, whatever his views about the return to the gold standard, or whether deflation was instituted too quickly or not, that the policy of deflation inevitably led to unemployment. In Italy, I understand, they came to a certain point when the Prime Minister dare not go any further because he saw the profound influence it was having upon the trade of the country, upon both employers and upon the number of unemployed.

Therefore, the monetary policy seems to be very closely connected with the problem of unemployment, as will be admitted by anyone who takes an interest in these matters. In passing, I very much regret the absent seat which has been created on the benches opposite by the death of the hon. Member who represented the Ilford Division, who took a very special interest in this question. Some of us on this side who had the privilege of sitting with him on Committees for two or three years know the very deep interest he took in these financial questions, and the great amount of time he devoted to his public service. The House has certainly sustained a great loss through his death.

I should like to urge upon those responsible for the financial policy of the country that the matter which Mr. McKenna has mentioned should be very carefully considered. I am very glad to see that, at last, the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems suddenly to have become aware that there is another side to the financial question besides that of Income Tax. In a somewhat brusque way he has informed his followers that they cannot look for a reduction of Income Tax in the next Budget. His mind has turned to the question of rates. Some of us have been trying to draw his attention to that subject for a number of years, but he seemed utterly to ignore the question. The taxation that presses upon industry most heavily is, first of all, the rates. Another form of taxation which presses is the contribution made towards insurance. I am glad to think that, at long last, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has turned his thoughts in that direction, and I hope proposals will soon be placed before the House, because it is a question of very great importance.

We seem at the moment to be in a flight lull; a better feeling is abroad. During the last year there has been a large reduction in the number of days lost on account of industrial disputes, and meetings are now taking place between employers and the representatives of the employçs to see whether a better understanding can be brought about for the future. I confess that I am somewhat of a pessimist in regard to this movement; not that I should not be glad for anything that can be done in that way, but I rather doubt whether those who are going into this matter have sufficiently realised the facts of the great problem which they are facing to-day. The position to-day is not altogether the outcome of the doings of those who are living at the present time. We have to remember that in the last 50 or 100 years those who preceded us and who had the control of the capital in this country exacted very heavy toll from the workers, and to-day we are reaping the harvest of the folly of those terms. Often complaint is made by those who belong to the governing classes in this country about trade union regulations, but we have to bear in mind that many of those trade union regulations and many of the things about which employers are complaining to-day are the result of their own policy in the past. They talk about the benefits of private enterprise, but how often has it happened when they have had some system by which a man was paid by results, the man would discover that if he happened to be unduly clever the employer, when he found the man could earn over and above what he was expected to do, would say, "You are making too much money," and he would adopt another system? By the present system the employers have practically stamped out any initiative on the part of the workers. Unless the employers and those who want to bring about a special understanding are going to consider that this is a very great and very difficult question, and something that is not going to be settled in a few minutes, there is no very great hope from these negotiations.

There is one point which I have not seen mentioned in this connection and that is that, once again, you come back to the financial policy. I do not know whether there has ever been suggested at these conferences the effect which the floating of joint stock companies, and in some cases the watering of capital, has had upon industry. I do not know whether the watering of capital of so many companies during recent years has been sufficiently taken into account in connection with the effort to bring about an agreement between the workers and employers. Take the case of capital which has been watered. You get people who have been led into taking shares in those concerns, and they expect a return on the money. The capital which has been created is far in excess of what the business is justified in carrying. What happens? Naturally, the shareholders expect the workers to provide them with what may seem on the capital to be a moderate dividend of 5 per cent., 4 per cent., or 3 per cent. They want some return for the money which they have put into the concern. On the other hand, the workers say that when some financial company has bought out an old concern and floated a new one, the real profits of the business have been scooped up, and the concern is left in such a condition that the problem of what wages can be paid is enormously complicated. Those who consider this problem will have to look into the financial question before they come to any satisfactory arrangement between employers and employed My view is that we cannot leave the great mass of poverty which prevails today without making some attempt to try and see whether work cannot be found for the unemployed. If I were advising the employers of this country—I do not imagine that the possessing classes would attach much importance to anything that comes from these benches—I should say that it is in their own interests to remove this great open sore in our midst. To leave it as it is is a cause of every kind of discontent, and in it will be found the readiest harvest for the evil seeds any people may wish to sow. Therefore, to speak at the present time about trade and trade prospects being better and at the same time to fail to grapple with this great mass of unemployment, is an act of supreme folly from the point of view of those who own the wealth of this country. We must think, too, of the tragedy of the lives that are involved, of young men who have no chance of getting work, men who are only too anxious to get work but cannot get it. Only too often the libel is uttered that these men do no want work. Many hon. Members opposite will agree with me from their own experience that that is a libel upon the characters of these men who are anxious, even passionately anxious, to get work but cannot get it. It is deplorable that the Gracious Speech from the Throne has made no reference whatever to this great open sore in our midst, the failure to solve which those who follow us may come bitterly to regret.

There is hardly a single point among the very many interesting points made in the speech of the hon. Member who has just sat down on which I would not like to follow him and to say a few words, mostly, I fear, to attempt to controvert what he has said. But with one of the references he made I am sure every right hon. and hon. Member on this side will wish to associate himself most cordially. Some of us, like him, served on the financial Committees upstairs with my late hon. Friend the Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise), and we fell that his death has removed a figure of real importance in this House; a man of absolutely single-minded devotion to his work, who was an example to many of us. I, personally, was associated closely with Sir Fredric Wise almost from the day when he first entered this House, and I thank the hon. Member for the sympathetic references which he has made.

I fear, however, that I must join issue with the hon. Member on the point he raised in relation to the bearing of the Income Tax upon industry in this country. I entirely agree with what he said about the pressure of local rates upon industry, and I am delighted that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should have drawn in an emphatic way the attention of the country to that very important question. If he had to choose between a reduction in Income Tax and the treatment of the problem of rates, I think that he has chosen wisely in the circumstances of the moment in giving preference to local rates. But I must, at the same time, guard my own position by saying that I dissent emphatically from the view expressed by the hon. Member that the Income Tax is not a direct burden on industry, and I am sure the hon. Member will be the first to admit it from another point of view. Does the hon. Member for one moment suggest that if we could get the price of capital in this country down to the pre-war figure, if we could get secured capital and debentures on to a 4 per cent. basis or anything in that region, that that would not be the greatest possible relief that industry could have at the present time? It would be an enormous relief to the whole of industry in the country if we could cheapen the supply of capital. How the hon. Member or anyone else proposes to cheapen the supply of capital unless they encourage the accumulation of capital, I cannot understand.

It was not, however, to call attention to these matters that I rose. I wish to call attention to another omission from the Gracious Speech from the Throne which I observed, I am bound to say, with very great surprise. As far as my recollection goes, there have been very few Gracious Speeches from the Throne in the last 8 or 10 years which have not, although I admit very often in a more or less perfunctory paragraph, called attention to the necessity for introducing into this House or into another place some Measure for the reconstitution of our Second Chamber and for the amendment, not the repeal, of the Parliament Act of 1911. As one of those who for many years has been very keenly interested in this question, I desire respectfully to draw the attention of His Majesty's Government to an omission which to many of us has seemed a curious, a significant, and a very unusual omission. Perhaps I may be allowed to refer to the recent parliamentary history of this question.

First of all, I would venture to address one or two sentences to the one hon. Member opposite who represents for the moment the historic Liberal party. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) is not in his place, because I would have liked to have called his attention to the Act for which he was very largely responsible, the Act of 1911, which contained an unusual feature. That Act contained an unusual Preamble. It set forth that it was the intention of the Government of that day, of which the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs was a very distinguished and prominent Member, to substitute for the House of Lords, as it at present exists, a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of an hereditary basis. I hope the hon. Member opposite will be good enough to communicate with his colleagues of the Liberal party and ask whether we may count on their support if we propose to give effect to the intention which they expressed in the year 1911. I may remind the hon. Member that his present leader, a year or two back, went much further than putting a Preamble into an Act of Parliament. In 1922 he was responsible for bringing forward in another place very important, interesting and significant Resolutions. In July, 1922, the Government of which the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs was the head submitted in another place a series of Resolutions dealing with the future composition of the Second Chamber and its powers which were of a very drastic character. The first of these Resolutions asserted: but if he were present I should like to put the question as to whether he adheres to the Resolutions he then put forward and whether, if the Government to-day brings forward proposals based on the Resolutions, we may look to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues for support? So much for the position of the Liberal party in this matter.

I come now to the Resolution which was adopted in another place as recently as last July, on the motion of one who occupied for many years, for some years after I came into the House, a very distinguished and important position. He brought forward a Resolution in another place last June to this effect:

This brings me to the position of the Government in this matter. Some of us in this House, and certain other Members of another place, went to the Prime Minister and interviewed him in July, 1926—the actual date is 20th July, 1926— and in answer to that deputation composed of Members of his own party the Prime Minister said:

I am not surprised that the hon. Member for York (Sir J. Marriott) is rather hurt at the way he and some of his friends have been treated, but after three or four years' experience of the present Government we are beginning to realise that their pledges are made to be broken. The hon. Member has made a special appeal to me. He has great faith; and I am afraid that if he is going to wait for the restoration of the veto of the House of Lords until the time when the Liberal party is in power he will be disillusioned. When that happly moment comes our time will be better occupied than in restoring the privileges of the House of Lords. Apparently this Parliament, in spite of the eloquence of the Lord Chancellor and the indignation of Lord Birkenhead, is not going to deal with the restoration of the privileges of the House of Lords and reform of the Second Chamber on the lines laid down by the Government last Session in another place. But I am concerned with a much more serious omission than this. These constitutional and abstract theories leave the country unmoved. It is much more concerned with social and economic questions.

6.0 p.m.

I have great respect for the Minister of Health, for whatever his faults may be we realise that he has knowledge and experience. He won his political spurs as Lord Mayor of Birmingham, and I have always paid a tribute to his knowledge of local government. We hoped for great reforms from him. Towards the end of 1925 he produced a most interesting, almost an historic, document in which proposals were put forward for Poor Law reform which were to form the basis for consideration and discussion by local authorities. In 1926 I asked the Government when these proposals would take the form of an Act of Parliament and I was informed that the Government wanted a year for consideration. They have had a year. We understood that this Bill was to make its appearance during 1927, but we were told by the Minister of Health that, although he was full of goodwill and good intentions, the programme of the Government was so crowded with other matters that there was no time to deal with this important question. Nobody can say that the King's Speech this year discloses an overcrowded programme. There would have been plenty of time to deal with this vital question of Poor Law reform. It is not because the Government are not prepared. The Ministry has been thinking over it for two or three years, and there have been constant conferences with local authorities. I understood there was something like general agreement. Why has the Government run away from this question? Why are they content to leave this problem unsolved? It is now stated that Poor Law guardians are to stay and that there is to be no reform. Cannot the Government with their big majority force through Parliament the scheme which they think is necessary? Surely this is a very serious omission from the Gracious Speech, and we are entitled to ask for an explanation. If we are not to have it this year, is it suggested that the Government hope to live another year, or do the Government want to leave the question to Members below the Gangway or above the Gangway to find a solution, because the Government do not feel that they are themselves competent?

The hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, has forgotten the possibility and almost the certainty of the Government having another five years of office.

I have never suspected the right hon. Gentleman of being revolutionary. According to the present law it is necessary to have an Election every five years. The right hon. Gentleman forgets that the Minister of Health promised to bring forward, in the present Parliament, a scheme of Poor Law reform. Having the time this Session, having dropped the right hon. Gentleman's own Measure, the Factory Bill, with which he is very much in love, a Measure which has been in the pigeonhole for nearly two years, is it not about time that the Government really did some constructive work and put forward some scheme to deal with this thorny social problem? I have been looking at the Report of the Royal Commission of 1908, in which a scheme of reform was put forward. There was general agreement then about it among all parties. There may be many controversies as to details between the various sections in this House, but I think there is general agreement that the present Poor Law system is antiquated, discredited, inefficient, expensive and, what is probably more serious, unfair in its incidence as regards cost. I need not refer to necessitous areas. Apparently the Chancellor of the Exchequer has suddenly wakened up to their importance. You will never get a solution of the problem of necessitous areas without taking in hand the reform of the Poor Law. This scheme to which I have referred, which was supposed to be the foundation of proposals, laid down as the first proposition, on page 2, that boards of guardians should be abolished. Yet nothing has been done in that direction.

The present Poor Law system works badly throughout the country. It works badly especially in the North of England, where there is so much unemployment. It works badly in London. I am very glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) dignifying the Front Opposition Bench. I think he will confirm what I am saying. Hard work as he has done on boards of guardians, he will be the first to agree that the system under which guardians work is unsatisfactory and should be reformed. One of the proposals put forward in the Government scheme is that the method of dealing with able-bodied persons should be correlated to Unemployment Insurance. That seems to be justified in the light of common sense, for to have two parallel systems at work is not only extravagant, but is bound to lead to abuse and in many cases to hardship and injustice. I admit that at the fag end of the gracious Speech there is a reference to the Common Poor Fund. In London there has been an attempt to distribute the burdens fairly over the whole area, but unfortunately, as London is divided into districts of rich and poor and as most of the poverty is concentrated in the East and South-East of London, however complicated the machinery for dealing with the Common Poor Fund, however much equalisation is attempted, wealth is so unevenly distributed that the system must break down.

One quarter of the assessable value of London is concentrated in the City of London and the City of Westminster, which contain many valuable properties. Naturally in those two areas poverty and unemployment are conspicuous by their absence, and the amount of out-relief they have to give is infinitesimal, because the working classes as a whole have been pushed out into South London and East London to areas already overcrowded. It is true that under the machinery of the Common Poor Fund those two cities are compelled to contribute very large sums to help their less fortunate neighbours, Poplar, Bethnal Green, Bermondsey and Southwark, and such a system is inevitable as long as the present system of London Government remains and London is divided into 25 Poor Law Unions. It is very poor satisfaction to Westminster to know that, although it has not any poverty of its own, it is compelled under the present law to hand over immense sums to other boroughs which can spend the money in their own way. Such a system is indefensible but it is inevitable so long as the present methods remain. None the less it is unsound financially. If you are to extend the system you must have abuses and discontent and something very near scandal.

London has a right to demand that the system of government should be changed. The Government have time and they have their majority, and there is no reason why the scheme should be put off for makeshift proposals. If the Government do not intend to tackle this question, let them disclose what their policy is. As a matter of fact the present Poor Law system is gradually breaking up. Through the machinery of Old Age Pensions the old people are gradually being taken out of the Poor Law, and, thanks to the extension of the Education Acts, a large number of children are now relieved through the machinery of the education authorities. All who now remain are the sick and the able-bodied. The original scheme was that the hospitals throughout the country should be transferred to the county authorities. That would be a very simple proposal to carry through and would not require any complicated legislation. Even the able-bodied who require assistance are very largely, at any rate for a period, taken away from local relief and are paid out of national funds through the machinery of the Insurance Act. Does it not seem the natural line of advance to remove from the local rates entirely the able-bodied poor, or, to use the phrase in a scheme put forward by the Minister of Health, to correlate the system of relief with the machinery of unemployment insurance?

If you take the able-bodied poor out of the control of the Poor Law guardians and remove the children from their care, and then take away the old people, there is very little work left for the guardians to do. I suggest to the Government that they are under an obligation to the nation to translate into a Bill the scheme outlined by the Minister of Health in 1926. That scheme has been largely approved in principle, though not in detail, by the local authorities throughout the country. If the Government do that, they will to some extent justify their existence. If they fail, it will be said of them that though they had a large majority and the power they signally failed.

I hope the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken will forgive me if I do not follow his remarks further than to say that I congratulate him on the lucidity with which he has put forward his own point of view. I rose for one purpose, and that was to refer to the portion of the Gracious Speech in which the following words occur: the question of how we can restore the country's trade, from which springs all the revenue for social purposes, and how we can relieve industry of the great burden of taxation from which it is suffering. I realise that it is proposed to consider the question of rates, and that is very important to industry, but here again I do not quite understand whence the funds are coming in order to provide for the changes. Agricultural credits also, I think, are welcome to all Members sitting on the Conservative benches, but at the same time it will be generally admitted that we do not get down to the root of the problem merely by allowing farmers to get more deeply into debt. I humbly suggest that had the Gracious Speech contained a phrase something like this— make equally efficiently ourselves. Our great basic industries are suffering prolonged anxiety, adversity and distress, and agriculture is going through what is probably one of the worst periods of its history, certainly in modern times.

It is no good robbing British Peters in order to pay British Pauls. It is no good imagining that you can solve the problem by transferring the burden from one section of the community to another. That is not the way to prosperity. There is only one way in regard to this great question of trade, and that is to endeavour so to use government that our producers will be enabled to compete on conditions approximately equal to those of our competitors. All the great questions which are exercising the minds of every party—questions of economy, of employment and of credit—depend on the vital fact that foreign imports of manufactured goods are so dislocating our industry that in many cases our trades have no chance of recovery. I do not wish to give the House many figures but, believing that these are not generally known, I would ask attention to some striking facts with regard to our retained imports of foreign manufactures. I will state them in round figures. In 1923, we imported foreign manufactures to the value of £230,000,000; in 1924, £266,000,000; in 1925, £288,000,000; and in 1927, £297,000,000. These are for the most part, goods which we could manufacture ourselves equally well, such as iron and steel, woollen goods, cotton, hosiery, machinery, pottery and glass—goods for which we have been famous, in the production of which we have led the world, and which in the past we taught the world to make.

The only hope of helping the coal trade is by encouraging those industries, as we heard in the brilliant speech from the leader of the Nottingham miners last Session. [ Interruption. ] I find a great deal of sympathy from hon. Members on the Labour Benches. In fact, I feel much more close to them on this question than to hon. Gentlemen on the Liberal Benches. I think the Liberal party, or what remains of it, has been a drag on the wheels of national machinery. But this is the important fact—that we are to-day importing these quantities of foreign-made goods. May I emphasise the fact that I am not referring to raw materials or foodstuffs? I am referring to goods which have given employment to over 1,200,000 foreign workers while we have over 1,000,000 unemployed. With these facts hitting us in the face I cannot agree with those who say that this is the time for the consideration of other Measures. We have in the very situation which I have presented, the remedy staring us in the face. It is no use to sit down and say that the situation is very serious and cannot be solved.

On a point of Order. A most important statement is being-made on this subject, and of three Ministers representing the Board of Trade, not one is present, the only Minister in attendance being the Minister of Agriculture.

There is no point of Order.

I feel the reproach which has come from the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Mr. Harris) because I am to blame. I did not let the President of the Board of Trade know that I was going to speak, and for that reason, I shall say nothing attacking the right hon. Gentleman. [An HON.MEMBER: "Are you sure he would have been here?"] I am sure he would have shown me the courtesy which he always shows. After all, when I have such an important listener as the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green, I do not think it matters that gentlemen who agree with what I am saying are not in the House. This fact with which I am dealing is one of considerable importance, if not to the Liberal party, to the masses of the people who are represented by the other two parties in the State. I agree with an hon. Member who spoke earlier that there is no question of more importance than this. We may approach it in different ways, but if we desire to see our country benefit and bring about a cessation of this hopeless state of affairs, we ought to get together and try to find a solution in the spirit of the remarks which were made earlier in this evening's Debate.

I will now ask what remedy have hon. Members of the Labour party for this great problem t I think the remedy is no longer the conscription of wealth. I think the Capital Levy has also been pushed on one side. I think it is no longer urged that the solution is the payment of £4 a week for every worker in this country. That proposal has also "gone west." I believe I am also right in saying that the destruction of the capitalist system is an idea no longer favourably received on the Front Opposition Bench—with apologies to the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). All these causes have disappeared. All these cries have been abandoned by the public orators of the Socialist party because those on their own Front Bench have exposed the impossibility of the proposals. As a drowning man clutches at a straw, they are, in the final resort, clutching at a straw which they have named the Surtax. That may have attractions for some hon. Members, but the increase of taxation by £100,000,000, which I believe is the figure, is not the way to bring the people back into employment. It would merely aggravate the disease. In addition, I think it has already been declared on behalf of the Socialist party, that the one thing at which we ought to aim is greater saving by the people, and I fail to understand how these two principles can be welded together.

When I turn to the Liberal party, I find it difficult to know how they will vote on any particular question. On many occasions last year, five of them used to vote in our Lobby and five with the Labour party, while the other 20 or 30 went home to bed because they could not make up their minds. When we realise these facts, it will be agreed that there is only one party in this House that has any policy at all on this matter. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] It will be observed that hon. Members on the Labour Benches at last recognise that it is our party which has a policy, and I am glad to hear those sympathetic cheers. It is a proved policy and a successful policy. It has routed the pessimists and the purists and the professors who instruct hon. Gentlemen of the Liberal party to oppose any Measure for the benefit of British industry. That being the case, I want to ask my right hon. Friend and his colleagues when they have a policy which has been proved successful, why do they tarry by the wayside? Why do they not give to other industries the benefits which they have already given to those industries which they have rescued from destruction?

I do not know whether hon. Members above the Gangway read with the same care as I did the recent speeches by leading bankers. If they did, they will have remarked on the extraordinary fact that all the banking leaders in this country referred to the deplorable condition of great industries such as agriculture, steel, cotton, woollens and worsted. Every one of them also referred to the hopeful signs in the new industries which were prospering and booming to such an extent as to offset the deplorable condition of the older industries. It is very remarkable that not one of them seemed to have time to mention the fact that every one of the prosperous industries is protected in one form or another. There was another rather startling omission from those speeches. We had no comment on the fact that a considerable number of new industries have come into this country from abroad during the last three years, which are giving employment to some thousands of British workers. That is a very encouraging fact. I will not give a list of them unless requested to do so, but it is always an encouragement to see foreign industries being uprooted and brought into this country to employ British workers and pay profits into the British Exchequer.

I come to the broader question. I wonder if the Government have realised the combined effect of the McKenna Duties and the Safeguarding Duties. Taking the last two years it will be-found that we have reduced our imports of these safeguarded goods by 28.4 per cent, and we have increased our exports of safeguarded goods by 11.2 per cent., and—largely, I think it must be admitted, by the operation of safeguarding we have improved the balance of trade in those few industries by £22,000,000. In June of last year compared with June, 1925, while employment as a whole had slightly improved—I think it was by 5.5 per cent.—employment in the classified safeguarded industries alone had improved by 10 per cent. If we add all those ancillary industries which are not classified by the Board of Trade, such as motor tyres and so forth, the figure will be found to be much greater. What are the trades which are booming at the-present time? They are artificial silk, motor tyres, gloves (fabric and leather), musical instruments (pianos and gramophones) and chemicals. [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Scrymgeour) encourages all those industries, I know, because they none of them require that kind of juice of which he does not approve. The fact remains that all those industries have come within the ambit of the Government's economic policy, and I congratulate the Government. My only surprise is that the Government never mentioned the fact themselves. What is the one bright spot in agriculture at the present time? I suppose it is the beet-sugar industry, which is protected. Take lace and wrapping paper, which were both referred to in two of the bankers' speeches, and you will find that lace has been saved from destruction by the action of the Government. When those duties were imposed, the lace trade of Nottingham was suffering as never before in this country. I was there at the time, and I saw two factories which were going to be closed down for good, but the moment it was known that those duties were to be imposed, those factories were purchased, and they are employing Nottingham workers in the lace trade to-day.

Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman not aware that there is more unemployment in the piano industry to-day than there has been since before the War?

I cannot say what the figures are to-day, but in two years the number of persons employed in the musical instrument industry of this country— pianos and musical instruments are not separated, and if I am wrong the hon. Member will forgive me—has increased by 2,000 since those duties were imposed.

Pianos have gone down.

I will quote one figure which will interest the hon. Member very much, because it may be that his friends in the piano-manufacturing industry are so skilful that they are now turning out two or three pianos per man where they turned out only one before. The import of pianos into this country has decreased from 25,000 instruments per annum to 5,000, and that is very satisfactory when we know that the home production of pianos has practically filled that gap and that just as many pianos have been sold; but if he tells me that to-day employment in the piano industry has gone down, I accept his word, as always. He must be right, but it is very remarkable when we see what has been the effect on the pianos imported and produced in this country. I only mention these facts because I think they are important, but if it is true that, in spite of what we have done to the piano industry, there are still men unemployed, I will ask the hon. Member to join me in seeing if we cannot persuade the Government slightly to increase the duty which already exists.

May I take the one industry of motor cars to show how the alarmist theories have all been defeated? Mr. Morris, who, I think, every hon. Member will agree, is a great national asset, wrote a letter some two or three months ago, in which he explained that his production since the McKenna Duties were restored had increased by 35J per cent., that his price had decreased by approximately 22 per cent., and that his exports of motor cars had increased by 169 per cent. Those are truly remarkable figures, and you get on top of that Sir Herbert Austin saying, at the annual meeting of Austin Motor Company, Limited, on 21st December, 1927: value of those exports of motor cars has increased by £4,000,000 in the three years, does it not mean that 20,000 extra British workers in that one line of export alone have been employed in British industry?

What did the gloomy prophets with the voice of woe and the aspect of the undertaker say at the time when the Government brought these proposals before Parliament? They said, "You cannot have it both ways; you cannot get revenue and employment." I am glad to be able to tell them that the conjuring trick has been completed, that we have not only got revenue to the amount of nearly £12,000,000, but we have also very considerably increased employment. They said, "If you impose these duties, you will have inefficiency in those industries which you are surrounding with cotton wool." [An HON. MEMBER: "What about agriculture"?] Hon. Members may draw red herrings or food across the track, and I will be ready to deal with them at the right moment. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister at the last election, as every honest man knows, definitely stated that he was going to produce no duty which could possibly be called a duty on foodstuffs. Hon. Members said that an industry which you safeguarded would become inefficient, and that is a generally accepted principle of the Liberal party. [An HON. MEMBER: "No!"] Then it has been abandoned. We are getting on, so I need not deal with that point. Again, they said that prices must rise. I make this definite challenge. In what industries which have been safeguarded have prices risen? Am I not right in saying that in no case have prices risen, and that in several cases, as in the case of motor cars, the price has very largely decreased? They said that employment would suffer, but everybody knows that the employment figures have been very considerably better in the last three years, and better in the safeguarded industries than in any other industries- They told us that what was most important of all was that if you safeguarded a trade, your exports in those articles would decrease. I am glad to say that they can rest assured that the exact contrary has occurred.

No wonder these gentlemen are not very pleased at the present developments. They have been on trial in the constituencies recently, and they have not only been on trial, but they have been found guilty on every count of economic inexactitude, of fatal pessimism, and of disbelief in the ability of their countrymen to be efficient in industry. What leg have they still to stand on? They think they have one, but it is not a real leg; it is a wooden one. The last remaining shred of garment in which the Liberal Free Trade party are clothed is this: They say, "Ah, but if you restrict your imports, since goods are paid for by goods, you will restrict your exports." Every single attempt to examine the result of the safeguarding duties must prove that theory to be false. Exactly the contrary has occurred, and I make this definite challenge. If it is true—and, of course, it is true—that goods are paid for by goods and services, is it not equally true that, if you purchase those goods in Britain instead of abroad, those goods are still paid for by goods, with the difference that the goods are paid for by British goods instead of by foreign goods, that you have given a double wage bill to British workers, a double profit to British manufacturers, and a double Exchequer advantage to help the revenue of this country?

Lastly, I come to the question of economy. A very large number of my hon. Friends feel—and I think it is felt also in other sections of the House—that the speediest way towards the recovery of this country will be a real economy, if we can find that way. Frankly, I do not think it is real economy to try to dismiss Government officials. It merely means more people going on to the labour market and requiring benefit. I do not think it is such a good economy as some think to say you will not go on with your cruiser construction, which only means throwing men out of work in the dockyards and fewer men required in the Navy. I am not discussing the main Question, but you do not really help forward by that kind of economy. What we have to do really to economise is to bring the great mass of our people who are today unemployed back into industry, and when the grand inquest of the nation takes place, I think that our party, with any other party, will suffer if we cannot show that we have done everything in our power to bring those people back into industry. At the present time unemployment is costing this country anything between £80,000,000 and £100,000,000-per annum in unemployment benefit, in relief, in charitable help, and in one way or another. If we can absorb our unemployed into industry, which we can do if we have a national policy of Protection, we will immediately be able to talk about economy on a grand scale, and we will save this vast bill which we are carrying as a burden at the present time.

Why do the Government not act when they have themselves proved that this is the way to act? If you could reduce your unemployed to a very large extent, then for the first time you would be able to save this country a very large sum of money. Again, if you were to exclude, let us say, one-third of the manufactured goods now coming into this country, you would immediately have a great source of revenue coming in from increased Super-tax and Income Tax. The greatest economy of all is not to carry your 3,000,000 souls on your back by national charity but to get your million workers back into productive industry so that they become creators instead of straining the resources of the country. There is only one reason why we have not gone further forward with this policy, and that is the White Paper, but the White Paper is not sacrosanct. I do not believe there is any reason whatsoever why the White Paper should stand. When the Prime Minister gave his pledge that all efficient industries in this country which were suffering from unfair competition should receive the benefits of safeguarding, as he did—and he did not exclude any industry with the exception of agriculture, because agriculture clearly was covered by the previous pledge with regard to foodstuffs—I believe it was his intention to try to help every industry which wanted to be safeguarded.

Whatever the intention may have been, the exact contrary has occurred. It is no harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an industry to go through all the machinery that was set up. But who set it up? The Government themselves set up the White Paper, but here, again, shall industries perish because there was a Departmental decision? If the White Paper is holding up these industries, why not reform that White Paper and get on with the work? I believe the country is prepared to support the Government if they will come forward with the widest policy of safeguarding industries. What is more, I can tell the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope he will tell his colleagues, that the party in this House is very enthusiastic, and that 286 Members of the party have joined the Empire Industries Association to put this question before them, and if they will only go forward, they will have a policy which everybody who has attended the recent by-elections will tell them, will carry the enthusiasm of the people and sweep them in with a great majority at the next general election.

I wish to express my disappointment that the Gracious Speech makes no reference to any work that the Government might undertake in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Land Drainage. The Report of the Royal Commission is a very remarkable piece of work. It is a useful Report. The evidence given by the experts of the Ministry of Agriculture forms a most remarkable volume, and lifts this matter altogether out of the realm of vague discussion into the realm of practical politics. I believe the Government have got a chance now that any Government might well envy, a chance to do something to increase our national wealth, to relieve a very great number of the unemployed, and to save in productive expenditure part of those vast sums which we now spend in unemployment benefit. The Royal Commission reports, first of all, that the evil with regard to flooding is a great and growing evil. They report that there is no existing machinery nor the money to deal with the question at the present time.

With regard to the work to be done, they are very emphatic indeed. The Ministry of Agriculture state that at least 1,700,055 acres of land are in immediate need of drainage, and that the greater part is suffering from flooding. Something over half a million acres need lesser drainage. The experts of the Ministry of Agriculture have planned out the whole country into river basins in need of drainage, and they have divided them into four classes in order of size. In Class 1, areas of 1,000 square miles and upwards, there are 17 great schemes; in Class 2 there are 10; in Class 3 there are 48; and in Class 4 there are 35. There is, therefore, a very vast amount of work to be done in order to put land, which is going out of heart by reason of water, under proper cultivation. That is the general survey of England and Wales.

We had another Commission with regard to Ouse drainage. This has been the subject of an expert committee of engineers, who held 22 meetings and paid many visits, and who recommend a scheme of work, which they say they are unanimously of opinion is necessary to place the river and its tributaries in a sound condition—a scheme of work which in all costs about £2,750,000. Therefore, there is no controversy at all that this work is urgently necessary and would be a great benefit. The Royal Commission discussed the question of administration, and they point out that there is no authority at the present time that can deal with the matter on a sufficiently large scale, and that the drainage authorities, owing partly to their small size and partly to their very limited powers, are quite unable to undertake the work. They suggest quite a reasonable scheme for local management—a scheme of joint committees of county and borough councils which, with some modifications, appears to be a very reasonable thing.

Then we come to the question as to who is to pay for it, and the Royal Commission utter nothing but a cry of despair. They say in their recommendations that, in view of the prevailing agricultural depression, caution should be exercised in carrying out extensive schemes. They propose to throw the cost upon the rates, merely saying that in certain cases assistance from the Exchequer would be justifiable, and that, foreign countries sometimes place the whole cost of the burden upon the national Exchequer. Anybody who knows the country knows that the finance of local authorities is in no condition to bear an extra burden; the poor rate is so heavy and other demands are so high, that local finance is overburdened—a thing which we have preached for months and years, and which has just arrived within the horizon of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It would be impossible and undesirable to put this burden on to the rates, and if we wanted a proof we have it in the proceedings of the Select Committee on the Ouse Drainage Bill. In that case the scheme was urgently necessary, and the Government were giving half the money. We have got a great Blue Book of evidence and there were nine county councils and four borough councils against the Bill; I can, not unfairly, compress their evidence into one sentence: "We cannot, and we will not, put this burden on to the rates." The work is necessary, but the local authorities will not and cannot pay for it. Any fair person would agree that it is undesirable as well as impossible.

What is going to happen to the land of England? We are paying very large sums in unemployment benefit and poor relief. The hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), with the natural buoyancy with which he deals with figures, put it down at £100,000,000. From what I can find in the Blue Books about £45,000,000 is paid in unemployment benefit, and out of £49,000,000 which is paid in Poor Law relief, £20,000,000 can be said to be directly due to unemployment. It may be more, but I think £20,000,000 is true. That is, £65,000,000 a year out of one pocket or another goes to relieve unemployment. The state of unemployment is, as has been pointed out previously, a very exceptional state. It is not true that there is a large depression from which we may hope all industries can recover. What we are seeing is a depression in certain of the heavy industries, a depression so great, that those who can best judge the subject do not believe that industries such as coalmines and steel-smelting can ever again carry their normal complement of men. In the case of coalmines, what you have to do is to envisage a state of affairs when, after other industries have revived, you will still have a quantity of superfluous labour—men who have got to be taken from the pit villages, and put on to other useful work. I believe the case is the same with the steel-smelting, and that those who understand that trade think there will be a permanent superfluity of smelters.

I ask you to put together these two great facts—the fact of this very large work which needs to be done in land drainage, and the fact that you have got to transfer men from employment which no longer needs them. It is not new that we have to provide alternative occupations to get the men out of the depressed industries. What is new is the analysis given by the experts of the Ministry of Agriculture as to the schemes of land drainage and their geographical position, and, in one case, as to the actual plan and the actual estimate. That is the new fact. I ask the House to envisage an unemployment scheme of a new kind. Up to now the State has contributed 75 per cent, or 100 per cent, of the cost of schemes, and has left them to be managed locally, and to be done by the local unemployed. That is not a very profitable way of doing it. If you are to do anything commensurate either with the depression in the coal trade or with the needs of agriculture, I ask the House to think of an unemployment scheme financed and managed by the central authorities, a scheme by which men would be drawn for the duration of the scheme from trades where there was no reasonable prospect of employment during a reasonable time. That is a new thing, and it might raise many objections. Some people might say, "Are you going to drain the flooded lands of England for the benefit of the private landlords?" I say, "Not at all."

7.0 p.m.

Such a thing would be absurd, and would be absolutely unnecessary. You could perfectly well have something by which you could show the improved value of the land. You could reinforce such a provision by power of purchase at the valuation rate, and in doing that you would not be undertaking any new principle at all. If you placed an annual charge upon the land in this way, you would be doing no more than any drainage authority has done since the Statute of Henry VIII was passed. It is a bogy to think that you would improve the land to the advantage solely of the individual owner. Then people who are more practical say, "What about housing these men?" It is impossible for the Minister of Agriculture to send great masses of navvies about the country in places without houses. I wish to remind the House that the people we desire to go are not the men of 45 or over who have the stiffness and outlook that come with middle age. The people we want to get out are the young men—the unmarried young men. We would offer them a hard job, but anything would be better than what they are doing at the present time. If you have men like that, they would be precisely as mobile as soldiers, and could be housed no better than troops are housed.

So much for the housing. Then people would say, "What will this cost? Will it cost a great deal?" There is no estimate. It may cost as much as you like to spend—20, 30, 40, 50 million pounds. I do not know. But I come back again to what sum does £65,000,000 a year represent? What sort of capital is represented by that frightful annual burden? It is a sum of which we really shudder to think. I say that this scheme is a hopeful and possible thing. We want the land of our country reclaimed. It is not merely a question of leaving the pools of water where they are; they are growing every day. Experts speak of the deterioration of the land. We have had bad weather lately, and reports of floods have come, not from London alone, but from all over the country. We have, I think, a chance of putting this on a reasonable footing, for the only bright point in the Report was the statement as to what the experts of the Minister of Agriculture had done with the money voted for this purpose by Parliament. Parliament has voted about £900,000. The Minister has restricted the drainage work to the winter, which is the worst time to drain, and to rural unemployment, not a very efficient form of labour.

In spite of that, the one thing done has been the drainage scheme carried out by the unemployed. The Minister of Agriculture is perhaps not competent to carry out such great things as the large schemes. It may well be that some of these things are too big for him and his staff to manage, and that we shall have to have some contractor with special rules as to the enrolment of labour. But if the Minister can do the little schemes as he has shown, nothing except the absence of goodwill on the part of the Government and the absence of the desire to get forward would hinder us from beginning this Summer on the small schemes. I do not think any Government has had such a chance. A Government of great imagination would seize it, and I desire to refer to this report which is too little considered, and to express my profound disappointment that there is no mention of the Report in His Majesty's Speech from the Throne.

I should like to make one or two short observations regarding His Majesty's Speech largely on the matter so eloquently pleaded by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), the question of safeguarding British industries. Large numbers of people, members of industrial constituencies, are so much face to face in these days with the realities of unemployment and the disastrous results of unemployment, that they cannot neglect an opportunity of bringing their point of view before the Government on this important question. Large numbers of hon. Gentlemen opposite came to this House last year and are continually telling us to-day the difficulties of the coal problem which, they say, it is the Government's duty to do something to settle. Yet when efforts are made by Conservative Members of Parliament to try to bring pressure to bear on the Government to go forward with a scheme for protecting British industry to provide work for the workers of this country, they are the very people who give us no support. It seems an extraordinary thing to me that when the miners' leaders and colliery owners come to the conclusion that the coal problem is a problem for the Government and desire some remedy for the unemployment among miners that exists throughout the whole country, no miners' agent can suggest any form of solution. It is a fact that the iron and steel trade s intimately connected with the colliery trade, and that the working of the factories would produce a greater consumption of coal. It therefore seems to me that the colliery agents and members of the colliery districts should give support to any programme to increase production in the coalfield.

Everybody knows we are importing in this country 4,000,000 tons of foreign steel. I am going to take no figures which exaggerate, but an ordinary estimate. It takes between 3½ and 4 tons of coal to produce a ton of steel. I suggest it is worth examining the matter to find out what effect generally throughout the coalfield the safeguarding of so small a part of this 4,000,000 tons as a quarter would have. Even if 1,000,000 tons were saved for the protection of the iron and steel industry of this country, it would have a very material effect upon coal production in this country. I know the view the Government hold, and I am certain they realise there is support in this country in favour of a policy of safeguarding. The trouble of the Government, in my opinion, is that they feel that if they go forward and "chance their arm," if I may use a slang expression, on safeguarding, hon Gentlemen opposite will go to the country and say the Prime Minister has broken his pledge. What I say to hon. Gentlemen opposite who represent the interests of the working class—I do not say that offensively— is that I do think they might support a policy which cannot do harm.

The Leader of the Opposition yesterday depreciated the satisfactory conditions in, this country. He said the only improvement in trade was in small industries. I desire no better tribute to the safeguarding duties than that. He said that only certain trades had increased, and the principal among them were the protected industries—the motor car industry, for instance. Surely hon. Members opposite must realise that this question of safeguarding is a policy which is worth trying. It has not proved disastrous to the workers of the motor car industry. It has not proved disastrous to the workers of any industry. I say, with great respect, that this question of safeguarding ought not to be a party question at all. It is an economic question to be judged on economic grounds. The question ought to be examined by a tribunal who would go into the question of the taxation of the iron and steel goods to see what the effect, or probable effect, would be on the workers of this country. As the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth put it, the Opposition have no complete policy to offer to the country, and on the Liberal side of the House there is no policy either. We come here day after day and1 listen to unemployment Debates, and there is not a solitary suggestion made to help a single man in this country to get a job.

I do think that we are entitled to ask the Government that this important matter might be considered. Last Session question after question was asked about the Committee on Iron and Steel, and we have been told that the Cabinet Committee have turned it down. Some of us would like to know the reason the Cabinet Committee turned this particular question down. Some of us feel very strongly that on the protection or safeguarding of industry rests the future of this country. I do not care what hon. Gentlemen opposite say. You can safeguard labour by your trade unions. You can force up wages as much as you like, but you cannot force the man who has the money to pay your wages. This is a thing which has got to be faced as well by you as by us. In conclusion, I would ask the Minister who is going to reply not to dismiss this question merely as one brought forward by a small section of the supporters of the Government. There is more behind it than that. It is quite easy to say and to think that only one or two people in this House desire to talk about it. There are a tremendous number of people in the country who believe in this proposal, and we feel that the time has come to ask the Government to give us some hope for the future.

It had not been my intention to take any part in the Debate on the Gracious Speech from the Throne but for the intervention of the hon. Member for the Penrith and Cockermouth Division (Mr. Dixey), which is in the same county of which I represent a division. Knowing that his division is largely agricultural and that my division is, generally speaking, more an industrial one, as far as iron and steel and coal are concerned, I have risen to try to find out from the hon. Member whether his attack is directed against the Government, or the Labour party, or myself. I do not know which it is. He started by saying he wanted Members from industrial constituencies to help him to press the Government to give an inquiry into the safeguarding of the iron and steel Industry. Then he went on to revile or to reprimand us because we had not brought pressure to bear on the Government. Knowing the hon. Member very well, I realise that if we had attempted to bring any pressure to bear on the Government no one would have been more stalwart in resisting us than the hon. Member. Therefore, one hardly knows exactly what he is at. What we do know is that ever since he became a Member of this House he has been consistent in pursuing the idea of safeguarding and protection as means of solving the unemployment problem. In his speech he told us that 4,000,000 tons of steel were imported into this country last year. He forgot to tell us whether the whole of that was what we know as completely-finished steel or not, and he never went into the whys and the wherefores of how the steel was brought in and for what it was brought here.

He told us that a Cabinet Committee had turned down the proposal to safeguard this industry. If that be so, he ought not to make any attack on "the party opposite," that is, the Labour party, but ought to concentrate all his activities on the Cabinet Committee. Surely the hon. Member does not want to tell this House that a Government of which he is a staunch supporter would turn down a proposal of this kind if they thought there was any likelihood of it being of any benefit to those industries. If he does think so, he must feel that the Government are seriously neglecting their business as far as safeguarding the interests of the workers is concerned. He cannot go to his constituency or to mine and tell the people there that the Government have given every consideration to the best interests of the workers in that area, because he has just said that the Cabinet Committee have turned down this proposal. In regard to other factors which enter into the production of steel the hon. Member has kept silent. Royalty rents enter into the cost of production of steel. If it be correct, as he says, that it takes from 3½ to 4 tons of coal to produce a ton of steel, then the amount paid in royalties, according to the royalty rents of Cumberland, would be at least 3s. 4d. on that ton of steel. Then he must realise that there are royalty rents on iron-ore, on limestone and on other ingredients. Has the hon. Member given any consideration to the effect which a considerable reduction, if not the abolition, of royalties would have on the cost of producing a ton of steel? That, of course, will not have entered into his calculations. I submit to him, with all the respect I possibly can, that before he delivers another speech on the safeguarding of the iron and steel industry he should give some consideration to the factors just mentioned.

He went on to say, further, that if we safeguarded our industries the power of the trade union movement would be sufficient to safeguard the conditions and the wages of the men employed. Is he sure of that? If he had said that two years ago I would have been inclined to agree with him somewhat, but does he not realise that owing to the new Act dealing with trade disputes a considerable amount of the power which we had for the safeguarding of those conditions is crippled? [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] Well, events are proving that as we travel along, and when hon. Members opposite get into industrial Divisions they will learn that what I am saying is absolutely true from the number of votes which will be recorded against them. Being a trade union leader, and living right in the midst of my people, I know the thoughts, the ideas and the minds of the people whom this trade union legislation affects. The hon. Member also said he did not want safeguarding to be a party question. I submit to the House that any subject which the hon. Member has ever taken up from a political standpoint has always been a party question with him, and I venture to assert that had I risen in my place to-night to advocate safeguarding for the iron and steel industry the hon. Gentleman would have heard me with a good deal of suspicion and alarm. He frankly admits that he has tried his best to make this an absolutely party question.

Not having been prepared to make any speech in reply to the hon. Member, I have not been able to deal with this subject as exhaustively as I should like to have done, but there will foe plenty of opportunity for debate on other occasions as the months roll by. As a last word, may I suggest to my hon. Friend that instead of making attacks upon what he calls "the party opposite," that is, the party to which I belong, over this particular question, he should go to the country and use all his power, his energy and his activities, which are very many, in his own Division and in mine, in condemning the action of the Cabinet Committee in not acceding to the request for safeguarding which has been made so many times? He should tell the people that in his honest belief the Government are not prepared to consider anything that would be of advantage to the workers of this country. If he will do that, I am prepared to go out and back him up by telling the people in those two divisions how, from another point of view, the Government are not prepared to do anything of benefit to the workers. I offer that suggestion to the hon. Member. As to his speech, bad and disjointed as mine may have been, I say to him that he showed less knowledge of the safeguarding of the iron and steel industry than I have been able to show in my few remarks. The next time he addresses the House on this important question, which I know to be one dear to his heart, I hope he will be able to give us more data of how safeguarding is to be applied and what will be the ultimate result in its application to this particular industry.

The last speaker, in referring to the Government, said they had done nothing for the workers of this country. I do not propose to go into that question, but I would ask him to look up the Government record, from which he will find that the Government have done a very great deal for the workers. Reference has been made to the fact that the Gracious Speech from the Throne promises a very small amount of new legislation. The country is suffering at present from too much legislation. Ever since the War every Government has spent its time in grinding out new laws, and the serious part of this is that in practically every case those new laws have meant increased rates or increased taxes. I have a paper showing the number of Acts of Parliament passed since 1918 which have caused increased expenditure to local authorities. The number comes to something over 50. During 1925 and 1926 there were 18 Acts of Parliament which brought increases of rates. It is quite time this stopped, and I am glad to see that the Government are not going to bring in as much legislation this Session. It is also time Government Departments stopped bringing in Administrative Orders adding to expenditure from the rates.

I am sorry the Minister of Agriculture is not able to be present this evening. I wish he had been speaking in this Debate, because the state of agriculture is very serious, and it would have been a good thing if he or some other member of the Government had told us in this Debate what they proposed to do and what they are doing for agriculture. I am glad the Government propose to bring in a scheme of agricultural credits. They have been a very long time in preparing this scheme, and I hope that means that it will turn out to be a really good and efficient scheme and that it will cover both long-term and short-term credits. If long-term credits are to be any good they must enable the farmer to borrow money at a small, reasonable rate of interest, say about 4½ per cent., and also borrow very nearly up to the full value of his farm—up to something like 90 per cent, of the value. Unless the scheme does give the farmer his money on reasonable terms, it is not going to be any good.

Agricultural credits will certainly be helpful, but they will not go to the root of the trouble in agriculture. I think we all know that the real trouble is that the cost of production is too high in comparison with what the farmer receives when he sells his produce. We Government whatever can do anything to increase the cost of the article to the consumer, because the country would not stand it. Subsidies and protection being absolutely barred out, we have to consider how the Government can reduce the cost of production. Of course, a good deal can be done to help the farmer by means of improving marketing conditions and by co-operation, but I do not want to go into that to-night. As far as I can see, the most helpful way of assisting the farmer to lower the cost of production is by reducing the rates he has to pay, and I am glad to see that a reform of rating law is foreshadowed in the Gracious Speech from the Throne.

The first reform which ought to be carried out with regard to the rating is one which should relieve agricultural land of the remaining 25 per cent. of the rates which they have to pay, and that reform ought to be carried out, not in a way that would throw the burden upon other ratepayers, but by some method under which the burden would be borne by the Exchequer. We claim this, not as a subsidy but as an absolute measure of justice, because to-day the farmer is the only person who is taxed on his raw material. We know that in the year 1896, when the first 50 per cent, was taken off agricultural land, the Exchequer gave a grant equal to 50 per cent, of the rates at that time. As a matter of fact, the Government do not now pay anything like 50 per cent., but they pay a proportion amounting only to about 15 or 20 per cent. I think the Government should at once take steps to make that up to a genuine 50 per cent, from the Exchequer. A proposal of that kind would help all ratepayers in agricultural districts.

The third step is one which should come from the Road Fund towards the relief of rates. I would suggest that the Ministry of Transport should cease making new roads and carrying out expensive schemes for constructing great trunk roads and spend more money upon the upkeep of roads. I would like to see a grant of 75 per cent, given in the case of first-class roads, 50 per cent, in the case of second-class roads, and 33⅓ per cent, in the case of unclassified roads. There is another way in which the Government can help agriculture, and that is by refraining from throwing more burdens upon agriculturists by passing Orders like the Milk and Dairies Order, and for the Prohibition of Preservatives in Cream. These may be very good things in their way, but they add considerably to the difficulties of the agricultural industry, and this is not the time when an industry like agriculture can afford to have more difficulties placed upon it. The Minister of Health is quite ready to bring in Orders like the Milk and Dairies Order, which add to our difficulties, but when he is asked to introduce an Order to prohibit the importation of condensed skimmed milk he will not do it, although I think he ought to help us in that way. I often wonder whether the Minister of Agriculture really does pull his weight in the Cabinet, and whether he realises the position of the agricultural industry. If he did pull his weight in the Cabinet, I believe that when the Minister of Health came forward with Orders of a kind calculated to handicap agriculture, he would say to his colleagues: "This Order ought not to be passed." If the Minister of Agriculture had adopted that course, I feel sure that he could have insisted on an Order being introduced prohibiting the importation of condensed skimmed milk as a quid pro quo.

Another thing which the Government might do to help us is to issue instructions that only English meat and Eng- lish produce should be bought for the feeding of our defensive forces. I think the Minister of Agriculture ought to get the other Members of the Cabinet concerned to deal with this question, and he should try and persuade them to provide only English meat and English produce generally for our defensive forces. I know there are difficulties in the way of carrying out my suggestion, but I think they could be overcome. I would like to point out that our agriculturists have to pay towards the upkeep of those forces. The farmer is proud of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, and he is quite willing to pay his share towards the upkeep of those forces; but he does feel it very hard that the money which he pays should be spent in purchasing inferior foreign meat. Supposing the Departments concerned had contracts "before them for the manufacture of ships, guns, or munitions at a slightly cheaper rate than those articles could be made in England, I am sure that the Army, the Navy or the Air Force authorities would not buy those articles abroad, but would pay the little extra cost and buy them in England. If they are ready to take this course, why should they not be willing to pay a little more when purchasing their meat and other produce in order to help the farmers of this country?

I think the Government might also do something in the direction of taking some further steps towards marking foreign produce. We all recognise that the Merchandise Marks Act has not fulfilled our wishes in this respect, and it has failed to be of any assistance to agriculture. I think the Minister of Agriculture should give very careful consideration to the question of bringing in an amending Measure to secure beyond doubt that the consumer is not getting foreign produce palmed off upon him as English produce. That is a suggestion which might be applied to the manufacture of cider. One of the very few paying branches of agriculture in my part of the world is the growing of cider apples, and even that is threatened by the importation of foreign apples and foreign cider. We are quite prepared to face fair competition, but unfortunately foreign cider is imported and sold as English cider. I suggest that there is no reason why an import tax should not be put on cider and apples imported from abroad. As a matter of fact, all other foreign wines are taxed, and there is no reason why foreign cider should not be taxed. The Government should consider the introduction of a law making it a penal offence to blend foreign cider with English cider, and it should be made illegal for foreign cider to be sold under the name of one of our great cider-producing counties.

There is one other matter which I desire to bring forward. In Exeter and no doubt in other towns the farmers have to pay a toll on any article which they bring into the town for sale, whether they are sold direct to the shopkeepers or in the market; whereas foreign goods coming in by train escape this toll. They do this under the powers of an Act which was passed in 1841. In those days the goods were sold in the streets, and there was no foreign competition, but now you have what I think hon. Members will agree is an absurd situation. You have a pound of butter produced by an English farmer put on a counter and it is taxed, and at the same time you have put alongside the English article a pound of butter produced by a foreigner, and the foreign article is not taxed. This is a direct tax on English produce, and it is a matter about which the farmers feel very keenly. I appeal to the Government to go into this question, and, if necessary to introduce legislation which will prevent food produced on English farms being taxed when food produced in foreign countries is not taxed.

I would like to make a few observations with regard to the policy put forward by the Government in the Gracious Speech from the Throne. Of course, this Debate is what I should call political window dressing. I come from a very large industrial area which is the seventh largest county in the kingdom. I suppose it is quite true to say that the greatest sins connected with the policy of the Government are sins of omission. This is the fourth Session of this Parliament and it is quite reasonable to assume that what we do not get this year we shall not get next year. That is why I am protesting on behalf of my constituency that the King's Speech contains no reference to the question of any relief for the flooded areas. West Ham was very badly hit during the recent floods. We did our duty to the people whose houses were wrecked. In many cases the bedding was swamped. We provided coal out of the rates to warm the dwellings of the poor people, and probably many hon. Members will be surprised to know that we sheltered over 100 families in one night in our public hall. I do not want to deal with any more particulars of the flooding in that part of London. If you considered only the information which appeared in the newspapers you would imagine that the flood only arrived at Westminster and left West Ham alone. I wrote to the Government Department concerned with this question, and there has been a conference. We were very much disappointed with a statement made by the Minister of Health to the effect that there would be no public grant for the victims of the floods. I may mention that one firm in West Ham has written asking me to bring their case, before Parliament. It is a firm which manufactures drugs, and it has been estimated by competent authorities that they lost £1,000 in one day. They are a small struggling firm, and the loss of £1,000 is an extremely serious thing for them. When I heard hon. Members belonging to the party opposite talking about the safeguarding of industries, I could not help reflecting that the case with which I am now dealing is one where the Government could certainly do something and come to the rescue of people who suffer through something over which human beings have no control whatever.

I am also very much surprised to find that the programme of the Government contains no reference to the development of greyhound racing. I do not take my politics from the newspapers, but I understand that there is going to be a furore in this House with regard to the development of greyhound racing. Last Session I put a number of questions showing the insidious manner in which the people connected with this kind of racing are working. I do not speak in this House as a pedantic moralist, but I view the moral development of Britain's boys and girls as part of the work that comes within the general scope of the Department of the President of the Board of Education. We know that the develop- ment of greyhound racing tracks in this country is having a very serious effect upon the rising generation. I called the attention of the Minister of Labour last Session to the insidious way in which the proprietors of the proposed greyhound racing track within the Borough of West Ham were offering bribes to people holding allotments within the borough, who had a statutory right to hold them till the last day of March this year. A big firm connected with the development of greyhound racing tracks was using the Ministry of Labour—not the Minister of Labour, but the Employment Exchange in Canning Town—in order to wheedle these people into giving up their allotments for a compensation of 5s. I and my colleagues connected with the National Union of Allotment Holders were able to scotch that, but I do feel that it is the duty of the Government to apply themselves quickly to arresting the present pernicious system of gambling which is operating, not so much among men and women, but among the rising generation of this country.

I am sorry that the Minister of Agriculture has left the House. I know that he has been here for a good time, and I am not saying that in any carping way, but I feel that the policy of the Government with regard to allotments in this country is one that does not earn very much praise. There are thousands of men in the country waiting for allotments; in my borough I think there are 81; and the Government's policy should be, if I may say so, broader and kinder and more attractive to people who feel that the making available to them, after their ordinary day's work, of opportunities for recreation and for the application of mind and hand to Nature with a view to getting something from the soil, would be a perfectly legitimate application of the powers of the Government. I am very pleased that the programme of the Government refers to a change in the law relating to the Parliamentary and local government franchise, and, speaking for myself, I would say that, if that policy means the giving of votes equally to men and women at the age of 21, my vote will be cast in that direction. What I fear, however, from the very indirect wording of this reference, is that there will be some attempt, in the case of people who have been in receipt of Poor Law relief, to tamper with their rights of citizenship. Wherever one goes one hears it said that the Government are going to change the law and put it back where it was before the War. If they do that, they will be taking from many men, who served their country as soldiers during the last War, a right which is a privilege of British citizenship, and, in my opinion, interfering with the liberties of our people in an unwarrantable manner. Poor Law relief, and the recipients of Poor Law relief, are not what they were before 1914. While I say that I am pleased that the Government appear to be going to give an equal franchise, I have to laugh when I think of a Conservative Government sheltering itself behind what are commonly called "flappers," though I think that that is a very disrespectful term. It used to be considered in this country to be a very cowardly thing to shelter behind the skirts of a woman—

You could not do it now!

No, I think you would be a magician if you could shelter behind the skirts of a lady to-day. I am not going to take advantage of an opportunity of speaking on the Address to deal with details in regard to the Poor Law guardians at West Ham; we will deal with that matter on the proper occasion; but I understand from the Gracious Speech that there is some possibility of the Government approaching the general question of the burdens of local rating. I see on the Front Bench one of the Government Whips (Captain Margesson), who at one time had what I am sure was the pleasure of representing in this House one of the Divisions of West Ham,, and, apart from the fact that he was not on our side politically, we always appreciated him as a representative. I want the Government to see that, in reference to an area like West Ham, their proposals or suggestions are very belated. They are the very proposals that were submitted to the Government in 1925. The Borough Treasurer of West Ham prepared a very comprehensive scheme for the relief of necessitous areas when the Labour party were in office. I do not say that that scheme will necessarily be adopted by the Government, although I wish it could be. The only fly in the ointment, if I may use the vernacular, is that it would appear that, if that scheme were adopted, West Ham would get a bit out of it, and it was urged that, as the scheme was devised by the Borough Treasurer of West Ham, it seemed rather suspicious that West Ham should be getting a fair proportion of the benefits of the scheme. In my opinion, any Government, in its application and distribution of the powers of local autonomy, should distribute the degrees of assistance—they may be- called favours— in proportion to the degree of need.

A meeting which I recently attended was called by some very important persons for the purpose of asking that in West Ham we should get more playing fields. In the year 1928, people have come to realise that in West Ham we ought to have more places for our children to play in, because that recreation and the breathing of fresh air means life. West Ham used to consist of market gardens. It grew up with the discovery of the East Indies, the Charter to the East India Company, and the development of the East India Docks. That was an inroad into that part of the East End of London, but it certainly meant the opening up of opportunities for that area which we now call West Ham. Before the War, West Ham was comparatively prosperous. Boats used to come from the Baltic laden with flax, hemp, oil, grain or timber, to be unloaded at our docks by our labour. They were then reloaded with machinery, either engineering or agricultural, manufactured in and around London. When I hear Members of this House speaking about the safeguarding of industries, I wish I could get them to realise that it is not possible to give any House the power to safeguard and protect an industry which has disappeared. On account of international complications, and as the result of war, there are certain markets which previously existed and which we know very well we are not likely to regain. In and around the docks of West Ham our men used to be engaged in their thousands, but now the figures show that, in 1927, unemployment in our dock life amounted to 27 per cent. There were over 1,500 dock labourers out of work within the Borough of West Ham.

8.0 p.m.

What I want the Government to realise, in regard to their indication that they are going to approach the rating problem, is that, instead of merely getting some actuarial authorities to introduce a new scheme of rating whereby we juggle with figures but in the long run get nothing that is of much value, there should be an adequate remission of our present local burdens in proportion to the national responsibilities that are borne on local shoulders. We have to face locally the problem of keeping able-bodied out-of-work men. We are not ashamed of that, and, even if we were, we have no alternative but to keep them. If we viewed this problem as a moral, and not merely a political, problem, we should try to visualise the real human effect upon a man who, before the War, had been, perhaps, engaged in an industry for 20 years, keeping a respectable though poor home, and who, when he came back from the Army, found, as many of the soldiers now coming back from China are finding, that his employer had filled his job. He runs through his unemployment benefit, and a 'day comes in the life of that man which is a tragic day indeed, when he is compelled to seek the assistance of the Poor Law relieving officer. I have seen men whose souls have been thus blighted, going for the first time with bowed head to the door of the relieving officer; but, after a while, they go with head erect, because the peculiar perniciousness of the system has somehow entered into them, and, because work is no longer available, they become a permanent charge upon our local rates. Are we to turn our backs on our kith and kin and our fellow men because they are unemployed? We do not. We have a problem in West Ham where we have to expend a great deal of the local ratepayers' money to relieve a burden which, from whatever point of view you approach it, should be placed on national shoulders. I should like the Government to realise that that is the biggest of problems in the borough that I partly represent. But there are others.

I have heard, and I think read, a speech delivered by the Minister of Health with regard to the Government's attempt at slum clearance. Every month the Medical Officer of Health of West Ham reports that 80 per cent, of the houses inspected are not considered in all respects reasonably fit for human habitation. To be fair, apart from mere political propaganda, they are old houses, and the people who now own them do not get the best out of them financially. The people who have had the best out of them have gone. The law of maximum utility was arrived at 20 years ago and the law of diminishing utility and diminishing returns has set in, so much so that even if the local authority, or the Government themselves, invested money in the property reported on by the Medical Officer of Health, the investment would give a deficit and not a surplus. The existence of this slum poverty in big boroughs is undermining the lives of our future citizens, and increasing the deaths of our children. I believe the Government are going to interest themselves in a national campaign for the cure of rheumatism. I wish them luck But there are many other and better ways in which a great Parliament like this could approach the question. We often say prevention is better than cure. We have people in West Ham sleeping five, six, seven and 10 in one room. Last year I put a series of questions to the Ministry of Health, taking from the last census the actual figures relating to the borough in which I live. It is a standing disgrace lo any country that calls itself Christian and civilised that you can find any houses in any borough where there are 10 human beings living in one room.

I offered to take the Minister of Health to West Ham and show him round. Nothing doing. The figures I quoted were issued by the Government themselves, and they must have been perfectly aware of the inhuman and unmoral circumstances under which these people were compelled to live. A penny rate in an area like West Ham brings in only about £5,000. If we are going to get no help the moment must come when we shall be compelled by force of circumstances to refrain from carrying out the nation's orders at the expense of the poor local people. The speech of the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) was buoyant. He has a right to be buoyant. The assessable value per head of Bournemouth is £11 7s., and the rates collected per head are £4 8s. The assessable value per head in West Ham is £4 11s. and the rates collected per head are £5 3s. The poorer the area the more, proportionately, it is called upon to pay. To put it another way, the less capable an area is of meeting its liabilities, the more the national Exchequer imposes upon it its schemes of social reform and public health. I wonder whether you have considered the degree of financial disability that you impose on areas like West Ham. Take the work of the Ministry of Health with regard to the treatment of tubercular people. We are proud in West Ham of the way in which, irrespective of party, we have tried to approach the problem of getting these poor people into some sort of normal health, but it costs us money. Our fever hospital is one of the finest in the country. You may say every area has a fever hospital, but there are peculiar circumstances connected with areas like East and West Ham, where disease must necessarily increase, and therefore the cost of social services must correspondingly increase. Our people are badly housed and our fever hospital is overcrowded.

Our local hospitals cannot take in the people who are sick. They have to be sent to Poor Law institutions. Our sanatorium is overcrowded, and we have a large number of people on the waiting list. We do not object to bearing these responsibilities, but if the Government seriously intend to approach the problem of relieving local burdens I can help them. Here is the place to start. Why start there? Because we in the East End of London are the pioneers of general theories of social reform. I have vivid and unpleasant recollections of when Parliament passed the adoptive Acts, following the Boer War, when the nation was perturbed about the physical deterioration of its manhood and recruiting officers were continually reducing the physical standard. Parliament appointed a Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Frederick Maurice. After investigating some of the largest counties in the country, he reported that the physical deterioration of Britain's manhood was apparently due to early mal-nutrition, and Parliament passed the adoptive Acts, for which I give it very great credit, but there were many fights before we could get the local education authorities to adopt it as a principle. In my borough nearly 3,000 scholars are fed daily. Without that they would go to school hungry. You cannot educate hungry children, and I do not think this great country has the right to have a child in school hungry. We are rich enough and we ought to be proud enough, and certainly we ought to be generous enough, that the children of the poor shall be as well treated as any others. When I was in West Ham we fed 3,000 children daily. That is not class war. That is because we believe that well-fed, well-clothed and well-educated children are going to make this country bigger and better. We sing "England, the land of hope and glory." I have pointed out a black spot—not a red spot—where help is badly needed and will be gladly received and where we should respond to any help that could be rendered us, because we cannot for many more years continue to carry the burden of the ship of State on the shoulders of the local ratepayers of West Ham.

The hon. Member who has just sat down complained to us, as, indeed, did the Leader of the Opposition yesterday afternoon, that the Gracious Speech was meagre. I think, if I remember rightly, the same language was used by the Leader of the Opposition a year ago. No doubt from the point of view of an Opposition, a Gracious Speech is always meagre unless it be unduly verbose. But for this House as a whole, and probably even more for the country, there will be no cause for complaint if it be proved that the present Gracious Speech is slightly more brief than many of its predecessors, for none of us will be sorry if we enjoy a brief respite from that spate of legislation under which we have suffered from all parties ever since the Armistice. One can only imagine that the right hon. Gentleman's point of view is not that of merit but of volume; that what he searches for in the Gracious Speech is not quality but quantity. For my part, I trust that now and in the next Session of this Parliament we shall not have more legislation than is imperatively necessary, even if by such restraint we run the risk of incurring the censure of hon. Members opposite.

There are references in the Gracious Speech to the improvement in the outlook of trade in certain industries, and I notice that the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition yesterday was inclined to minimise that improvement. He seemed to want to shelter himself from the sun of an improving trade under a parti-coloured parasol. He was also a little sceptical at the expense of the new industries which, to some extent, are responsible for the improvement in employment. I remember very well, not so long ago, hon. Members opposite criticising very severely a Measure which was introduced to place a duty upon silk stuffs coming into this country, and I remember we were then told that these were not, as we were told yesterday, luxuries for the rich but necessities for the mass of the people of this country. I noticed that hon. Gentlemen opposite are slightly modifying their views as to the part artificial silk has to play in this country. But I think we shall be wrong, speaking generally, to minimise the importance of these new industries.

My own constituency is intimately concerned with one—the motor car trade— and there must be many other Members of this House whose constituencies are affected by these new industries. We cannot expect them to take the places, for instances of the great staple industries of this country, but it may be that in the period of transition through which industry in this country is undoubtedly passing to-day these new industries have an increasingly important part to play, and we should be doing wrong if we were to belittle their part. Just take, for example, the manufacture of electrical machinery. It is a very remarkable fact that in 1926, despite the dispute in the coal mining industry, and the consequent confusion which was caused over all our industrial life, our exports of electrical plant and machinery were actually greater than they were in the previous year. That industry for all practical purposes is a new industry as compared with pre-War days. And so the chemical industry is, in a sense, a new industry in its modern aspect as compared with pre-War days. I believe that in viewing the position of trade and industry we should be wrong to concentrate only upon those industries which in pre-War days undoubtedly were not only the staple industries but by far the most important. These new industries are going to play an important part also, and in the transition which is now going on it may be a greater part than some of us realise.

I notice that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at Birmingham the other day, held out hopes, which are to some extent strengthened in the Gracious Speech, of some efforts to be made to relieve the burden of rates which we all acknowledge presses so heavily upon industry There can be no dispute that that is a very heavy burden upon industry, but for my part I am a little anxious as to the means by which the Chancellor of the Exchequer, supposing he has the necessary cash to do it, can realise his hopes of extending that relief to industry, because obviously it will not be an easy task to distribute relief, if it may be given, to local authorities in the matter of rates with equity and justice from one end of England to the other. It is not to be an easy task. We have not been let into the secret of what inquiries the Government have made, but I trust that in dispensing that relief, if there be any to dispense, the Chancellor of the Exchequer will not for a moment allow himself to favour the claims of one part of England against the other.

I would further add that, for my part, I rather regretted the tone in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer at Birmingham spoke with reference to what he is pleased to call the standard rate of Income Tax. There are not many of us, I think, who expected or hoped for a reduction of the Income Tax in this year, but at the same time, and particularly to-day, I think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would be making a great mistake if he was to view a standard rate of Income Tax of 4s. in the £ with equanimity. I feel sure that he does not. It will be said, of course, that that rate, as it stands to-day, is not as heavy a burden on industry as is the burden of rates. I think that in a measure that is true, but it is also true that if trade and industry are to expand so that we may absorb our ever-increasing population, we need, in order to make that expansion effective, an ever-increasing supply of capital, and capital is only produced as a result of the savings of every section of the community. A high rate of Income Tax certainly does militate against the saving of capital by that section of the community which is made up of Income Taxpayers.

Nor is that all that the Chancellor will have to contend with. There is the problem of debt conversion, and it is certainly true that as long as your rate of Income Tax is high the investing public of this country will be drawn away from Government stocks and will be tempted to turn their funds to industrial or other securities where they see some hope of obtaining capital appreciation as opposed to the more sober and less remunerative Government securities. It is certainly true that a high rate of Income Tax militates against investment in Government securities, and as it must be the object of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as far as he can to raise the value in the market of those Government securities, so this present high rate of Income Tax makes the conversion operations increasingly more difficult.

We were glad to read in the Gracious Speech a reference to the matter of long and short termed credits for agriculturists. I trust that these credits will not only be useful for the farmer who has purchased his land, but will also be useful for him in the ordinary day to day work of his business.

There is in connection with agriculture one suggestion which I would have the temerity to make to the Government. I would like to endorse what was said by the hon. Member for Tiverton (Lieut.-Colonel Acland-Troyte). In some parts of the country we feel it a matter of grievance that the contracts for meat for the Services go exclusively either to the Dominions or, sometimes, abroad. The Government observe a practice in the placing of contracts for manufactured goods which is both just and reasonable. They say that wherever possible they will give a preference to the British manufacturer. All that the agriculturist asks is that the measure of preference which to-day is given to the British manufacturer should also be given to the British producer. We maintain that there is nothing very unreasonable in asking that the axiom which applies to the manufacturer should be extended and applied to the agriculturist. The cost is not as great as some of us have feared. I understand that the cost amounts to £40,000 per month. Therefore, the British producer may claim that at that price the difference is certainly not greater than is the difference in contracts for manufactured goods which are given to the British manufacturer, even though the cost may be higher, because of the desire to keep employment in this country. We trust therefore that the Government will reconsider their decision and try, if only for two or three months in the year, to place these contracts for meat for the Forces with our own producers here at home.

The Leader of the Opposition, speaking yesterday afternoon, told us that he endorsed the Government's policy on China or, at least, he endorsed the sentence which appeared in the Gracious Speech. I remember the right hon. Gentleman's speeches on earlier occasions when the Troops were being-dispatched to the Far East. His speeches on those occasions did not endorse the Government's policy. The situation had changed but the Government's policy has not changed, and the right hon. Gentleman has found an opportunity of changing his mind with the change in the situation. Perhaps, after all, his second thoughts were better than the first. I trust also that in the matter of the Gracious Speech hon. Members opposite may find their second thoughts better than their first and that the fears which they have expressed this afternoon may prove unfounded and that the work outlined in the Gracious Speech they may discover to be helpful rather than harmful to the best interests of the nation.

The hon. and gallant Member has told the House that the country was very anxious that the spate of legislation which has taken place under recent Governments should come to a stop. If that be the real opinion of the country, His Majesty's Government are, for the first time, in the way to becoming popular, for no one can accuse them even in their most generous moment of overloading the House of Commons with work for this Session. The Leader of the Opposition has been taken to task by the hon. and gallant Member very genially for saying that the Gracious Speech was meagre, but that was really true. It is a long time since I was a boy and began to take an interest in politics, but I do not think that I ever remember a Gracious Speech in which so little was said or asked for or promised. I hardly remember a time when the country demanded because of its condition more real activity and fundamental searchings of conscience on the part of this House, and yet the Government have the temerity in the face of these circumstances to come to the House of Commons and ask it to spend several months in the apparently genial process of doing almost nothing at all.

The hon. and gallant Member spoke with satisfaction because some new in- dustries in the country showed signs of great promise, and he appeared to be willing to give the Government the whole credit for that manifestation of prosperity. A new industry arises because of a demand. There is a sudden demand for a certain type of goods, and a new industry springs up to meet it. That is in no sense a symptom of permanent prosperity. Fashion changes, and artificial silk may not be a permanent factor. It is a dangerous thing to build upon. What is really required is that we should do our best to sustain our old and fundamental basic industries in this country, and so long as that problem is not tackled, a very serious situation will have arisen. In connection with what I have said in regard to the poverty of the Gracious Speech, there has perhaps not been a time in recent memory when more problems of a fundamental character were pressing for the attention of this House and for a solution. The financial situation is such that even a much desired reduction of the Income Tax cannot be granted. There are burdens upon the people which are said to limit the development of industry, and yet we find the House is to give almost no attention to the problem.

Take the question of unemployment, which has been spoken about by speakers yesterday and to-day. There, we have a problem which is fundamental to the prosperity of the country, and there ought to be no Session of Parliament whilst these conditions continue that does not give some attention towards the solution of that problem. I do not believe that this House is so' poverty-stricken in capacity on any side that it cannot with advantage to the problem spend some time in considering it. Take the whole question of the Poor Law. That we had hoped would have been tackled by the Government during the present Session. There you have a problem that has been waiting for solution for many years, and the House ought to have been invited to have paid earnest attention to it in the present Session. Almost associated with that problem there is another about which I feel the deepest and the keenest interest. A year or two ago I had the privilege of serving on the Royal Commission dealing with Lunacy Reform and Mental Disorder. That Royal Commission presented to the Government what we thought was a well-balanced, sober and critical judgment upon a very difficult and very moving problem, and we did hope that the Government would have found time in which to have dealt with the unfortunate state in which many of our afflicted fellow-citizens find themselves under present conditions. It would have done the House no harm in the present Session, had time been found, for dealing with that very urgent, very practical and moving problem.

Then there is the question of housing. Whatever credit we may take to ourselves for the improvement that has taken place in recent years in housing, the problem cannot be regarded in any way as solved. There is still the very greatest need for houses for the wage-earning classes. It is almost impossible even now for poor people with children to get places in which their children can be brought up with any probability of developing healthy constitutions. The House might have been invited to have dealt with problems connected with its own responsibility in other ways. I will not mention more than one. For very many years the Ordnance factory workers employed by the Government have been pleading for a consideration of their claim to have a contributory pension scheme adopted for their help and need. But year after year has gone by until those who are concerned in the problem go grey with despair and abandon hope.

Leaving home conditions and looking at the responsibilities of this Government in regard to a wider area, it amazes me that in the Gracious Speech there is not one word respecting our responsibilities for the development of the Empire, which we are supposed to lead. We have heard both to-day and yesterday of the signs of the development of trade and industry. There is no more favourable field for that development than that which our Empire offers, yet we have the patriotic party coming down to this House and almost putting an affront on the Dominions and Colonies by leaving them altogether unconsidered in the work which is before us during this Session. I hope, as every Member in the House hopes, that the signs of trade revival are not a delusion; that they are really true. If I may make a confession it is this, that for some years I have read with great care the addresses of the chairmen of banks and great industrial magnates, and they have been promising us this revival every year for the last ten years. There is no party in this country that has so betrayed the nation in regard to information as the great economic theorists in the land, and I think this House should do itself the justice of not relying too closely upon what these gentlemen may prophesy but should study and examine the question itself and see whether there are signs of that permanent development and improvement which we are all anxious to see and assist. So long as some of the gates of trade are closed there cannot be that revival for which we hope, and if the Government are really desirous that the unemployed should be absorbed in industry they should take the earliest opportunity of opening the gates of trade, if they can, between ourselves and the great Russian people, who are many millions of possible purchasers.

There are two problems in regard to social and educational questions which the House might have been. invited to consider, but which have been altogether neglected. I feel that specially in regard to education. If you think of it, the only real class division is the educational division in this country, and we can never be happy until all the talent which is native to our character is developed and placed at the disposal of the nation. Under present conditions the whole conduct of business, the whole administration of the nation, and the whole of the professional work that has to be done, is done not necessarily by the ablest brains in the country but by that 10 per cent, whose parents have been able to give to their children something like a decent education. If that is true, if the progress of the nation depends upon its quality and its equipment in capacity, then every day that we cease to develop its educational gifts and native qualities we are doing an immense injury to our own people.

The last point I want to refer to was developed by the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), who, of course, represents a vast industrial constituency and, naturally, his vehement advocacy of Protection should be very marked. He trotted out all the old delusions which I thought every party in this House had abandoned. He persists in advocating that old superstition with a ferocity which is worthy of a better cause. These issues, in our judgment, are dead, and the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth might as well try to revive the National party as to revive that old conception of Protection in this country. These vast problems ought never to be absent from our minds, inasmuch as the whole future of our country depends on their being considered and not ignored, and I very much regret that the Gracious Speech has omitted to deal with them.

The speech to which we have just listened, personally with considerable pleasure, has this in common with nearly every speech that has been delivered in the course of this Debate; it has been confined to the omissions with which, potentially, the Gracious Speech might have dealt. It is quite clear, in a gathering of the size of the House of Commons, that if every subject which every Member regarded as of importance was included in the Gracious Speech we should not at this moment be debating it but still be listening to it being read in another place. The disappointment that is general in regard to omissions from the King's Speech is emphasised on this occasion because of the paucity of its paragraphs, the brevity of its language and, consequently, the economy in printer's ink. But I myself wish to join with some of those who have taken part in the Debate in expressing regret that one particular subject has not received any mention in the Gracious Speech; what I would call for want of a better word, Empire organisation.

I do not suggest that the Government is not as much aware as anyone of the enormous importance of this question. Indeed, if we required any evidence of that we have only to consider the fact that during recent months the Prime Minister of this country, for the first time in history, has paid a visit to a neighbouring Dominion, and that the Secretary of State for the Dominions is only now returning from a protracted tour throughout the Empire. In that connection it is a matter of opinion and a subject for debate as to whether, as a general rule, it is desirable that the head of a Department of Government, who must have very heavy duties to attend to, can discharge those duties better by a more circumscribed activity during his tenure of office than by pursuing the enormous interests of the various Dominions which are attended to in his particular Department. For two reasons I think we should regard that policy with caution; first, lest it become a precedent for his successors in that important position; and, secondly, lest his colleagues in the Cabinet might feel called upon to emulate his geographical ubiquity. At the same time there are many of us who feel that the subject is of such outstanding importance that on this occasion at all events an exception has been justified not only by the immediate importance of the question but by the success that we know has attended those visits to the Dominions on the part of the Secretary of State.

The question of Empire organisation is one that has had the close attention, not without some apprehension, of those who have made a study of our Imperial relationships for some years past. If it is ever true that one living generation can see important history in the making under its eyes, this is the occasion during the few years that have elapsed since the conclusion of the Great War. From the Treaty of Versailles and onwards, we have really the whole fabric of our Imperial relations, particularly with the self-governing Dominions, coming under reconsideration and being remoulded and adapted as the logical steps and development of the situation compel. I think it is not without interest, at a time like this, that we should consider whither some of these developments are leading, because, after all, this fabric of Empire, of which we are all so proud, has to be built up on a certain foundation which will stand the test and the development of history.

Hon. Gentlemen who overcrowd the Liberal Benches have too often thrown in our teeth, when we speak of such things as Imperial Preference, the statement that we have a cheap conception of the bonds of Empire based on mere consideration of pounds, shillings and pence. The cords that bind the various parts of the Empire together are woven of many different strands, and it is absurd to ignore any particular strand which may play its part in forming that cord. There seems to me no question about it, that the lines of economic least resistance are important strands in such a cord. Therefore, I think the nation as a whole, and certainly the party to which I have the honour to belong, are at one in the conception of Imperial Preference as being the line of policy which tends to cement rather than loosen the bonds of Imperial connection. But if we regard the special conditions which should be contemplated, if we would have a broad conception of what is the basic bond of the self-governing Dominions, we need to consider the particular conditions which are peculiar to the different Dominions. For example—only to touch on such things briefly—if we look at the Dominion of Canada, we need to bear in mind that in one portion there has been a dual race and dual language, that Canada geographically, so to speak, is length without breadth, with one flank almost in the air towards the Arctic Circle, but the other flank travelling side by side with the boundary of her powerful southern neighbour.

Therefore, the fact that Canada in her wisdom decided that her currency should be based on the decimal coinage rather than on the coinage that obtains in the mother country and other self-governing Dominions, has itself played a part in the problem of our relations with that Dominion. Finally, there is the question of her literature, which for so long has come largely across the border from the United States, and even in the matter of newspaper articles, on English politics for example, for too long has been obtained by the citizens of that Dominion through American spectacles, though to-day that condition does not obtain. So we might go through the various self-governing Dominions; for example, South Africa, having not only dual races and dual languages, but the further problem of a small white population placed, not in unoccupied territory capable of enormous development by means of immigration, but with a seething coloured population around it which brings in its train a further consideration.

During the War, as was inevitable, and as has always been the case with previous wars where allies are concerned, often the relationships between the different allies during the war itself were more or less strained. That was in- evitable, for the reason not only that they were citizens of different countries, but that they had fundamentally a different mental outlook, a, different valuation and a difference of general attitude towards the problems of life and its developments. But in the part that the British Empire played, while there may have been difficulties to be straightened out, those problems never arose, because from whatever part of the Empire came the representatives of that Empire to fight for the one cause, there was this one great bond of what is called the Anglo-Saxon race, by which I mean that, however different our immediate conditions might have been, however potentially independent and self-governing the Dominions might be, the vast bulk of the population in the Dominions come of the same kith and kin, of the same race, and therefore have the same outlook on those problems, which we have prided ourselves throughout history we possess here in the mother country, and that is our conception of law, of order, and of liberty, in addition to our general attitude towards the problems of life, industrial, economic and political.

If that is true, and if in the development of time our self-governing Dominions are more and more self-governing in the complete and absolute sense of the term, it becomes increasingly important that those cords of Empire that they possess, by which the cohesion of the fabric is built up, should be tested and adapted in order to fit the conditions that are changing before our eyes. It seems to me that one of the vital considerations, therefore, is that we should play our part in maintaining that overwhelming homogeneity of population in our great self-governing Dominions. That brings me to a point which has already been dealt with by more than one speaker in this Debate. It comes down to the question of the transmigration of population. I use that term rather than the word "emigration," which has sometimes an aroma of suspicion in the minds of certain people inside and outside this House. We should look at this matter from the point of view of giving our people the best opportunities in life, from the point of view of dealing with the question of overpopulation in certain areas of the Empire and under-population in others, from the point of view of seeing that large numbers of our people should not be deprived throughout their lives, from cradle to grave, of those opportunities of self-development and self-fulfilment which they might have if their geographical surroundings were other than those into which they are born.

Finally, we should bear in mind the enormous importance to us of assisting the self-governing Dominions themselves to build up a population which shall always be overwhelmingly homogeneous with the race—or races if you like— populating the Mother Country. As the conception of independent portions of Empire becomes developed and emphasised, so does the necessity develop of binding together that fabric with a cord that cannot be severed, so that whenever any crisis may come, it will stand the strain in the same way that it did in 1914, so that the great British Empire may continue to fulfil her destiny and stand for and spread throughout the civilised world those ideals of order, of government, and of liberty that we as a nation have stood for throughout the whole of our history.

I have listened to some eloquent speeches from the other side of the House asking that a tariff should be put upon steel, and I have been almost persuaded that "Sing a song of tariffs" might be turned into a couple of verses from "Paradise Regained." I am in agreement with those who think that the omission from His Majesty's Gracious Speech of any reference to the condition of the iron and steel trades is a matter for regret, but when hon. Members opposite express surprise that we do not join with them in their demand for tariffs, and when they almost charge us with being unfaithful to our following, because we do not do so, I am inclined to think that they have not given sufficient thought to the matter or that they do not know exactly where we stand. If they are for a tariff war, we have anticipated the limit of that tariff war in saying that we are opposed to the importation into this country of any goods from anywhere which are made under sweated conditions.

9.0 p.m.

There are gentlemen on the other side who are keenly interested in the iron and steel trades. Several of them are favourable to tariffs. I ask them why do they not adopt our policy of exclusion? But they will not agree with us in that policy. They do not see that to put a tariff on imported steel will not prevent our competitors increasing their tariff. Then we shall have to raise our tariff again, and so the merry game would go on until we were landed into a tariff war which might or might not be a regrettable thing. But it would be very similar to the attitude of the Labour party in this House on the exclusion of sweated goods. Hon. Members opposite are rather illogical in their arguments. They say that we import 4,000,000 tons of steel. That is not quite accurate. The figure refers to iron and steel and is slightly more than 4,000,000 tons. But they do not tell the House that we also export 4,000,000 tons of steel and when the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) wants to keep out foreign iron and steel and use the whole of the iron and, steel made in this country, he gets a little sum like this. Last year we produced 9,000,000 tons of steel, and 7,000,000 tons if pigiron. We exported 4,100,000 tons of iron and steel and we imported 4,300,000 tons, so that things balance themselves. If hon. Members would take the trouble to try to understand the problem, they would find this to be the case. I have not overhauled the figures for some time, but at one time I took a great deal of interest in these figures, and I found that whilst we were importing pig-iron from Germany, we were exporting almost an equal amount of a different brand I have forgotten which way it was, but I think we were importing about 85,000 tons of acid iron and exporting to Germany about 83,000 tons of basic iron in the same period. It was a mere exchange of brands. They could make one brand more cheaply than we, and we could make the other brand more cheaply than they. It would have made no appreciable difference to this country if we had stopped importing and changed the brand that we produced and used. It would not have made more than a couple of thousand tons of difference.

One of the hon. Members opposite wanted an inquiry, and he said he did not know why we on this side would not join him in insisting upon an inquiry. He also told the House that a Cabinet Committee—I do not know its proper title —had turned down the proposal. May I suggest that an hon. Gentleman who has no faith in a committee of his own colleagues would not be willing to accept the decision of any committee which did not agree with him. The hon. Member wants to argue with the Premier, and I hope the Premier and he will have a cup of tea together some time and that he will get a little enlightenment as to the difficulties of dealing with this subject. It seems to be suggested that the Premier has been misled, or has misunderstood the matter; otherwise, he would agree with the hon. Member for Penrith (Mr. Dixey). Personally I feel that the Prime Minister is likely to know a little more about the question than the hon. Member for Penrith, and if the hon. Member inquires into the subject he will find it is not a simple one. For instance, he will not agree with me when I assert that the situation in the iron and steel trades has been caused by this Government and its predecessors. During the War, iron and steel workers worked so hard turning out iron and steel as to endanger their health. When the War was over, and the products of that iron and steel were of no further use, they were collected as scrap, brought to this country, and used up in the manufacture of steel.

The people who did so believed that it was cheaper, but they had no regard for the fact that by doing so, they closed down blast furnaces in this country just as deliberately as if they had been the owners of those furnaces and had ordered the fires to be put out. They threw the blast furnaceman out of work. As the hon. Member for Penrith says, every ton of steel requires a certain amount of coal, and this action led to a train of mischief. There were blast furnacemen out of work, colliers out of work, transport workers out of work, coke workers out of work, and ore miners out of work; and a thing that ought to have appealed to hon. Members opposite, if they had seen the situation—and I am not claiming foresight—is that the capital that is derelict in this country must amount to millions upon millions of pounds, because, in my opinion, we have pursued an unwise policy so far as that scrap was concerned. We went on with it. The German fleet was sunk, but we were not content to leave it there. The Govern- meat tried to make money out of having that fleet raised and sold as scrap, and they might have made a monetary gain for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it was a national disaster.

We have some 450 or 460 blast furnaces in this country, and at the present time only 148 of them are in blast, the remainder having largely been thrown out of blast by the policy pursued by the Government and their predecessors and by the patriotic capitalists who are prepared to purchase cheap goods anywhere on earth. The Government went in for a return to the gold standard and prewar parity, and while we were deflating, our competitors were inflating. While we were pursuing a financial policy which raised the price of British goods in every market in the world and cheapened the goods made in other countries, we got the result that reason would say we ought to have got. Before the War we used to import iron and steel. In 1913 we imported 2,230,000 tons, and in 1927 we imported 4,406,000 tons. That is exactly what one would expect to happen. I have stated in this House on several occasions that that financial policy might have been a wise one to pursue, but, in my opinion, before it was pursued we ought to have had an estimate of the value of the goods that we purchased abroad and sold abroad, and that estimate has never been undertaken. We followed blindfold pre-War theories of finance, and we have almost brought ourselves to disaster as a result.

The eloquent Member for Penrith urges us to turn out more steel; he wants higher production. I wonder when he would admit that we were really turning out enough. In 1875 the average output per blast furnace in this country was 961½ tons a year. We have blast furnaces in this country to-day that can turn out 5,000 tons in one week—five years' work in a week—and we are still lazy devils who are not doing our bit. "Let us have more output," says the hon. Member for Penrith. If I were to say he does not know what he is talking about, you might think I was rude and using language I was not justified in using. Another hon. Member opposite chided the Leader of the Opposition for not being able to appreciate the apparent improvement in trade. We have had the President of the Board of Trade producing figures which go to show that last year we had a very good year. His Parliamentary Secretary at that time—not the hon. Member for Beading (Mr. H. Williams)—also made the statement that if we disregarded for the time being the basic industries of cotton and coal, the trade conditions of the country were in a very satisfactory position. That seems to me to be turning a blind eye to the facts of the case and refusing to see them. If the hon. Member opposite is wrath with us because we cannot see the brilliance of the industrial situation, I wonder what he would think if his wages had been halved in the past six years.

Wages in the iron and steel trade in 1913 would average about 45s. a week. Please remember that that is an average, and an estimate, not by myself, and that that 45s. includes wages of men who would probably be getting £10 or £12 a. week and of men getting 18s. or 19s. a week; and while there are men in the iron and steel trade who are fairly well paid, on the whole the industry is a badly-paid industry. In 1913 the average wage would be about 45s. In September. 1920, the average paid out in that month, according to figures produced by the employers themselves, was £5 7s. 11d., and throughout the whole of last year the average would be about £3 0s. 6d. That again includes the man with the big money and the man with the small money. That sum is less than three-fifths of what wages were in 1920, and I do not think Britishers would be worth their salt if they took reductions in wages of that description without murmuring.

Progress is made by your discontented men. It is not the chap who takes everything as it comes who makes progress, but the man who says, "This is a rotten state of affairs, and we are going to alter it." He is probably two ends of a nuisance to the chap who is in power, but it is not by accepting disaster that you make progress, but by fighting it and overcoming it. I wonder what the hon. Member would think if in 1913 he had that 45s. a week, when a pound could purchase 20s. worth of goods, and in 1927 he had only £3 0s. 6d., when a pound could purchase only 12s. worth of goods, with the cost of living 68 per cent. up. Three times 12s. is 36s., and that is the present worth of the pre-war 45s., so that those steel workers are worse off to-day than they were in 1913. They can purchase less for a week's work, and that again is, broadly speaking, an average and does not apply to all of them, but this is not the occasion on which to go into these details.

With regard to output, I will give some broad figures affecting blast furnaces. In 1913 the output of pig iron in this country was 10,260,000 tons; in 1927, it was 7,293,000 tons. There was a fall in pig iron output, and I am glad for one that we are getting to the end of the period when the steel-maker has an unlimited supply of scrap. He will be compelled in the immediate future to buy pig iron somewhere., and when he does, let us hope that he will not forget his British colleagues. The output of steel in 1913 was 7,663,000 tons, and that up to then was a record year. In 1927 it was 9,098,000 tons. The men employed to-day in steel work are turning out per head more steel than in 1913. Each man is more efficient than he was in 1913. Therefore, the charge of laziness and the cries of "Get your back into it," "Roll your sleeves up, "Take your shirt off," "Get on with the job," ought not to be levelled at men like that. We turned out more steel last year than we did in any year since 1920 with 30 per cent, fewer men in the trade than we had in 1920. That is going on throughout most of our industries. I have mentioned wages, but wages are an illusive matter when dealing with this question.

I want to make an assertion here. I do not think there is a man in this House, and that includes the Prime Minister— and he knows something about it—who can tell you what the labour cost of producing a ton of steel is in any country outside of Britain. They will tell you that wages in Germany are lower; the hourly rates, the weekly rates are lower, but it does not follow that labour cost is higher here, because the British worker is the best worker on the face of the earth bar none; he is the most efficient worker on the face of the earth. The British steel worker, the tin-plate worker and the sheet worker are the men who have taught the world to do these jobs, and they have not forgotten the knack themselves. Therefore, we want labour costs; we want some- thing different from the hourly rate or the weekly rate of some particular man or of some particular job. In 1923 tin-plate makers of this country produced a lot of statistics. Among them they told us that 6,000 workpeople had produced 900,000 tons of steel at an estimated wages cost of £810,000, or 18s. per ton. That was an average labour cost, taking good works and bad works. In some works you would find it more than 18s.; in others you would find it considerably less. I believe that in the best factories to-day the total labour cost of producing a ton of steel mgots is less than 10s. per ton; and, therefore, when people want reductions in wages, the only benefit the steel-maker would get would be 10s., even if the men worked for nothing and kept themselves.

When people talk of putting on tariffs they forget their own arguments. If the hon. Members who have spoken to-night had spoken at length, they would have told us that wages are so low in Germany, France, Belgium and Luxemburg that we cannot compete. The tariff countries are low-wage countries; therefore, it does not follow that, if this party did agree with the party opposite and urged the Premier to put on tariffs, we would get high wages here. We would just get those wages we could take at the point of the bayonet, no more and no less. I said some time ago that we could produce steel as cheaply as anybody in the world. If there is anybody who doubts that, let him select a country with a tariff and go and ask that country to take the tariff off. In Germany quite recently the Minister of Economics ordered an eight-hour day on a three-shift system in the iron and steel trade. The employers in the trade told him and the Government that if they had to go on to the three-shift system, and if they had to give the workmen some compensation for loss of earnings because of the shortened hours, they could not meet the competition of Britain; they could only meet the competition of Britain by tariffs and keeping our steel out. In Australia they are busily engaged now in considering a revision of the preferential duties, not for the purpose of keeping out foreign steel only, but for the purpose of keeping British steel out. They cannot produce steel in Australia as cheaply as we can in this country and pay carriage out to Australia. The same thing applies to France, Belgium, Luxemburg, the United States and Canada.

There ought to be at this time no demand for reductions of wages. It is the wrong way out. If our friends would analyse the statistics about iron and steel imports and exports, and home production and consumption, they would find that there is a gradual growth of the quantity of steel used in this country, and that growth has been during a period when shipbuilding and engineering are admittedly in a bad condition. That growth wants encouraging. You are not going to encourage that by reducing wages or increasing hours. The wise policy for the employers of - this country, if they wished to encourage home trade, would be to increase wages so that the people could buy the goods. Some hon. Gentlemen opposite may believe that we steel workers do not eat steel. It is true, but in a sense we do indirectly. Steel is made into ships and engines to bring goods; from other countries, which we would buy if we had the money. If people had not the money, the goods would not be carried. The shipbuilding industry is not busy when nobody wants the goods carried. The wiser policy with regard to hours would be for still further reductions until we absorb the unemployed. I think it is a national disaster from many points of view to overwork one part of the nation and underwork another. Stupidity cannot go further than it went the other day when in a subsidised sugar factory a crane overturned and killed two men. The manager said there was no difficulty about these men working 12 hours a day, seven days a week; they did 100 hours a week. I do not think his statement is correct, but in all probability he meant that he paid them for 100 hours. Here is a man who believes it is good national policy for workmen to work 12 hours a day when there are workmen on his doorstep asking for work. That is a national disaster, and I hope the Government, when they draw up their next programme, will take matters like this into consideration. We have had appeals to go over and help them, but I wish they would come over and help us.

Earlier in the evening, when the hon. Member for Stratford (Mr. Groves) spoke from the benches opposite, he used this expression, "All the unfortunate things in life seem to drift to my area," and he went on to state the importance and size of the area by giving the population and other particulars. I could not help thinking that there was another industry, and one to which I should like to bring the Debate back, and the House to give short consideration, and that is agriculture. I can also make a statement very similar to that made by the hon. Member for Stratford, and say that all the unfortunate conditions of life seem to centre upon that industry. In all the social or legislative alterations which have taken place, bringing with many of them fortunate conditions to other industries, the unfortunate conditions which are sometimes added to those fortunate conditions seem to have gravitated to the industry of agriculture.

The hon. Member went on to enumerate what those unfortunate conditions were. He mentioned first the consequences of the disastrous flood which has recently taken place. I am diffident to make any reference to that, because I am sure that every section of the House and of the community will join in expressing every sympathy with those who suffered owing to that disastrous flood. All I would say is that the consequences of floods do also come to the industry for which I am now speaking. There have been many occasions when vast loss, and loss of life too, have taken place owing to the disastrous effects of too much water on the land. The hon. Member, as we know, has a great sense of humour, and, when I heard his next reference, I wondered if it was going to he one of his humorous sallies. He referred to greyhound racing. I do not want to say anything as to the merits or demerits of this particular matter, but his complaint is that the dogs have gone to his district. My complaint is that my industry has gone to the dogs. That is not in the interests of the community as a whole. He also referred to the fact that poor areas were often compelled to pay a greater amount of taxation. We hold that in our poor industry, agriculture, that also has been the fact. That is another similarity, but I shall not go on making further comparisons between the speech he made and that I am now making. I shall turn briefly to the question of trade.

A great deal has been said yesterday and this evening as to the unfortunate position of trade in this country. Unfortunately, again, the condition of the trade or industry of agriculture is very bad, but, although it is bad, I can assure hon. Members that those engaged in that industry can still, while deploring their own conditions, feel sympathy for those in other industries who are suffering also. Reference was made in the Gracious Speech to improvement of trade-There are signs of improvement in trade, but, unfortunately, it is true to say that that improvement is very much more largely confined to the secondary industries than to the primary industries, and we in agriculture are in a primary industry. We sympathise with others, and we hope for their prosperity, because the agriculture of this country, unlike the agriculture in many other countries, is very largely, if not entirely dependent upon the home market. Undoubtedly, depression in the other trades particularly the heavy trades, has a very depressing effect upon the market for the commodities which agriculture produces. We hope that there will be an improvement in those trades, not without some slight feeling of hope for improvement for ourselves at the same time.

I do not want to make this the occasion for an agricultural speech, as many of the points have already been dealt with most admirably by previous speakers, but I feel that this is an occasion on which I must express, on behalf of the organised section of occupiers of land, what will undoubtedly be a feeling of very great regret and almost consternation in their minds when they see—I will not use the word meagre as it has been used too often—the inadequate reference made in the Gracious Speech to the unhappy state of their industry and to proposed legislation. I do not say that in any unkind spirit. I say it with the intention of speaking what I believe to be absolutely true and of stating a fact that has to be reckoned with, and I do so with a great hope still that something may be done to assist that industry. Reference was made in the Gracious Speech to the question of credits, and it has also been referred to by other Members. It is a matter of satisfaction to see that the promise which has been given to us previously is now implemented by the inclu- sion in the Gracious Speech of this matter under the heading of proposed legislation. I hope that the introduction of that legislation will be early and not late, because undoubtedly, speaking of the long-term credits particularly, unless that legislation is brought in soon and is favourable in nature, it will arrive far too late to save many of those who require it most. I hope sincerely that there will be no undue delay in the introduction of that Measure.

The other question which is connected with the agricultural-industry is the reference to rates. It is stated that an inquiry is being held. Now all sane people will understand that, before a large Measure is brought in, an inquiry must be held, and it is quite natural that, in the consideration of the question in its broadest sense, an enquiry will be necessary, but here again I am afraid that the procedure which I should have hoped for has not been adopted. An inquiry into the whole system will take a great deal of time, and how long is that inquiry going to run on? Nobody can say. The references which have been made to it in this House have been almost entirely concerned with the incidence of rates on industries, on local authorities, and on necessitous areas, and one knows the very strong claims which can be made in all those directions. One also realises that, where there are strong claims and debatable points, those will in the natural course of things take a considerable amount of time to be properly and adequately considered by an inquiry. I am afraid that will mean a delay which will be disastrous as far as the relief to agricultural land is concerned. I did hope— as I still hope—that some temporary measure of relief from the burden of rates lying upon agricultural land could have been brought in to take effect in the almost immediate future in order to tide over the period which will necessarily elapse while this inquiry is taking place into the whole question of taxation. I said I did not wish to make a long speech and I will not, but I would like to remind the House of the old saying,

At the outset I wish to refer to a sentence in the Gracious Speech which I do not think has been handled during the course of the Debate. It is a reference to that part of the country which the Secretary of State who is now on the Treasury Bench specially represents, namely, Scotland. I find that we are to have a reorganisation of departments. That does not sound very significant as regards proposals for dealing with the interests of Scotland. As the Secretary of State is well aware, Scotland is in a very deplorable state, and requires immediate attention, and it is exceedingly disappointing to find that the Government, though impelled as we assume they have been, by the Secretary of State, to do something for Scotland propose to do nothing more than is implied by a Bill which was before the House last Session. Scotland is finding her interests looked after mainly by London—in so far as the railway companies have their control centred in London; just as the Banks of Scotland which have difficulties in the value of their notes are also controlled from London. We find, also, that the Ministry of Labour intend to try to shorten the extraordinary amount of time which is taken up in settling applications for relief concerning Scotland. The circuitous system hitherto in force is to be in some degree modified, and we are understood to be particularly grateful. But as the hon. Member for the Scottish Universities (Mr. Buchan) has himself acknowledged, there is prevailing in Scotland a state of affairs which does call for special attention, and a feeling is growing up in Scotland—I am glad to find it is growing also in the south, in England and in Wales—which may show itself at the next General Election in the appearance of independent candidates put up to secure for Scotland that right which she had many years ago, the right of exercising a control of her own affairs and of taking her place alongside the Dominions and other parts of the Empire, with powers of her own.

I have given an honourable undertaking not to occupy unduly the time of the House, and I will pass from that and come to other matters which pertain to the country at large. The omission of the Factories Bill from this Session's programme of legislation is a very important matter. Another important omission is a Bill to redress those grave injustices taking place under the Widows' and Orphans' Contributory Pensions Act which are recognised to be urgent by hon. Members opposite. There is another question not mentioned in the Gracious Speech, and that is the totalisator. The Government have not the courage to put forward that proposal on their own account in the King's Speech. In their meagreness of detail as regards definite proposals; in other words, in their politically profligate and bankrupt condition, they do not care about the idea of putting references to the totalisator into the mouth of the King. Another procedure is to be adopted in this case. A sort of plebiscite of the House is to be taken, with a free vote, and if there is a majority in favour of it then the Government will step valiantly into the arena, and say "We stand by the totalisator." Why not take the Factories Bill on the same plan? Why not submit that question to a free vote of the House, so that we may see whether or not some force or other is behind the Government keeping the Government from fulfilling their honourable obligations made at that Box on repeated occasions? In view of the variations in opinion on this matter, so much more important than the totalisator, why is this question not to be submitted to the House for a free vote? Then there is the question of redress of the hardships under the Widows' and Orphans' pensions scheme, which is proving such a fiasco, as we knew it would from the beginning. People are finding themselves deprived of their unemployment benefit and their sickness benefit; they are dropping 18s. a week for the sake of getting 10s., and that is considered to be a benefaction by this Liberal Government. [ Interruption. ] I did have a recollection that there was a Liberal party. The Government think they have been doing something, but I submit that they have been doing somebody. I must admit that in my short experience of Parliamentary life this is a most disappointing Speech—this Gracious Speech, as we must officially recognise it to be, otherwise it would have to be said that it was a very sad affair.

I want to come to another industry. We have heard a lot about safeguarding and about sheltered industries, but there is one business which is recognised not only as a trade but is commonly referred to as "the trade." It is a very remarkable thing that this particular trade, which is described by this definite article instead of an indefinite article, is one to which very few Members in this House care to make any reference in this connection. I want to show by a few figures that it does have an important bearing on discussions on the state of industry. I wish to refer to its particular relationship to unemployment. We hear of no proposal from the Government for dealing with the serious crisis of unemployment. Yesterday I put down an Amendment to the Address which, like a few other Amendments from parties divided and undivided—my party is undivided, of course—is not likely to come up for discussion, and therefore I thought it as well to take this opportunity of making a brief allusion to the subject.

I want the House to see the far-reaching significance of this matter, by taking note of the profits which have been earned by "the trade" while the primary industries of the country have been in a very low condition. The firm of Samuel Allsop, Limited, in 1914 made a net profit of £3,599. That profit went up in 1926–27 to £104,872. The firm of Ind, Coope and Company, in 1913 showed a profit of £91,972, and in 1927 their profits went up to £391,742. The profits of the Wen-lock Brewery in 1924 were £95,447, and in 1927 those profits went up to £159,924. As against this the Clayton Wagons, Limited, manufacturers of railway rolling stock for the year ending 30th June last showed a loss on trading of £97,294. I will now give the Board of Trade figures for 80 industries1 in the country and compare those figures with the statistics of the trade to which I have referred. In those totals of 80 trades which are of a varied character, you have a total net value of output of £1,271,307,000. The number of persons employed in those trades is 5,418,677. The net value of output per person employed is £235, and the number of workers per £1,000,000 value of output is 4,262. In the case of the brewing and malting trade the net trade output is £121,812,000, and the number of persons employed is only 66,069. The amount of money which in the brewing trade finds employment for 1,000 persons would on the average of the above 80 trades find employment for 7,863 persons. And the amount of money which on the average of those 80 trades finds employment for 1,000 persons would in the brewing trade, finds employment for 127 persons. In this connection, I would like to quote the statement of Sir George Paish, the international financial adviser to the Government, which he made in September, 1925. Sir George Paish goes the whole way of declaring that if given the control of the expenditure of the money that now goes into the channels of this trade, he would guarantee that within 12 months not a single man or woman would be unemployed in this country. That is not a statement of mine or of anyone who might be put down as accustomed to using fanatical declarations. I am sure there is no man on this side of the House or the other who will dispute the reliability of a man like that to make a statement on the strength of his businesslike investigation of the facts and the working out of them in the way he has described. If that statement is anything like approaching the truth then I say that the Government is deliberately guilty of sheltering, safeguarding and protecting a business that is, to use the phrase of an hon. Member opposite, "driving legitimate industry to the dogs." I am taking now purely and simply the economic aspect of this question. Sir Donald Maclean, one of the leaders of the Liberal party, also said: other people concerned and Members representing almost every section of the House are on the track of this electric hare. They are deeply concerned about the immorality of racing with this electric hare, and they are also troubled about the dogs. May I remind hon. Members that there is not the same force at the back of dog racing as there is at the back of horse racing. I was sorry to find that not long ago it was necessary to rebuke the representatives of the Church and other organisations that ought to be giving a lead to the country in this matter. They made the unfortunate admission that, while they were out to stimulate Members of all parties in this House to deal with betting on dogs, they did not think it would be practical to intervene with regard to betting on horses. Why? Simply because of the powers that are at the back of the horse-betting business right up to the highest persons in this country. They are at the back of this thing, and if our professing Christian and moral forces cannot tackle betting, whether on a horse or on a dog, and only exhibit here some concern about a matter that has only to do with workaday people, then they are only playing into the hands of those who in this House are falling deeper and deeper into the morass of compromise and expediency. I submit it is the 'duty of the Government to govern in the interests of the nation at large, and if they do so they will put forward that which I maintain is essential concerning these great immoral forces, that is a straightforward line of action that will involve the elimination of these great evils and give the people a chance of living in the way that, as the chaplain reads here daily: fore, that the omissions which some hon. Members regret are omissions at which other Lon. Members rejoice, and, indeed, it is quite clear, from the range and variety of the subjects which have been touched upon to-day, that if the King's Speech had mentioned every one of the subjects which have been referred to, the Opposition would certainly have had no excuse for criticism on account of its meagreness.

I am a little surprised that no more than casual reference has been made to one paragraph in the Speech, namely, that which refers to the rates. Such references as have been made to it have been mostly in connection with particular or local interests, but it seems to me that this is by far the most interesting indication of policy that the Government have given us. It seems to contain the germ of a start in a new direction, the development of which will, I feel certain, be looked upon with the greatest interest by every Member of this House, and which, particularly, has a very important bearing on the burning question of economy. On the subject of economy there are two quite distinct ideas, which seem to me to be too often confused. In the first place, there is what may be called economy in administration, and, in the second place, there is what may be called economy in policy. As far as economy in administration is concerned, there cannot be two opinions. It is a matter which this House ought to pursue, not only continuously, but relentlessly. But, as I think has been pointed out before, and as must be self-evident to practically every Member of this House, there is no really big field left upon which to economise in administration. I can hardly believe, with all the committees of inquiry that have gone through the national expenditure in the last few years, that there is really any big field left for administrative economy. Some thousands might be saved here, some thousands might be saved there, or, perhaps, hundreds of thousands, but I do not believe that millions can be saved by administrative economy.

There is, perhaps, one line of attack which might be promising, and that is in regard to the revision of the form in which the national accounts are presented. Anyone who has attempted to study the Estimates, and particularly anyone who has been a member of the Estimates Committee, must realise how very difficult it is for this House to keep a check on expenditure when the accounts are presented in the form in which they are. That, and some reorganisation of the functions and allocation of the duties of Government Departments, would, I think, conduce to greater administrative efficiency, and hence to greater administrative economy.

10.0 p.m.

I have not the time to-day to go into the details of what I should like to suggest, but perhaps some future opportunity may present itself. On this question of administrative economy there can, as I have said, be no two opinions, but there comes a point, which I think has already been reached, when large economies must involve curtailment of an existing national service, or the abandonment of some projected national service—that is to say, when economy becomes identified with a policy of retrenchment. That seems to me to be a dangerous situation to get into. There was a time when retrenchment and reform went hand in hand. Those must have been spacious days, when it was possible to transfer money from one set of services for expenditure on another. But, as I have tried to explain, the Services have been so combed over again and again that such a state of things is not possible to-day. I do not think that retrenchment and reform can go hand in hand to-day. But who is there who really, when he comes to think about it, would make retrenchment and not reform the pivot of his policy?

We are going through a time of difficulty, a transitional period, a period when our economic organisation is undoubtedly undergoing great changes, a period of reconstruction. We have great economic and social problems to face—all the problems that are put under the head of unemployment, and they are many. questions of the mobility of labour; the question of the surplus miners; questions of industrial training; questions of slum clearance. How is it possible for anybody to face and attempt to cope with such problems as these, and at the same time talk about a policy based on retrenchment? Quite clearly the two things are utterly incompatible; and yet this is a dilemma into which it is possible for people quite easily to fall if they follow the idea of economy too far. It is necessary to take a wider point of view about economy than is very often taken. People are rather inclined, when they are talking about economy, to concentrate either on the Budget alone or on the rates alone. They sometimes seem to forget that a saving on the one may merely mean greater expenditure on the other. Is it not time that we began to look upon the national expenditure as a combination of rates and taxes, and not simply to look at the Budget as one separate thing and at the rates as another separate thing? It is because this paragraph in the Gracious Speech indicates a realisation of this fact by the Government, and their intention to act upon it, that it seems to me so extraordinarily important.

What is the object of economy? I think we shall all agree that it is to reduce the burdens upon industry. Which is the greater burden upon industry—the rates or the taxes? I do not suppose there will be any shadow of doubt in anyone's mind now that it is the rates. In that case, surely the Government are right to take up the question of relieving the rates, even if it may mean an increase in the figures of the Budget, because as we all know, although it is too little realised outside, the total figure of the Budget is not really the figure by which you ought to judge when comparing one year's expenditure with another. It is impossible to speak about this question except in general terms while no detailed proposals are before us. Something has already been done, and that this question has been in the Government's mind for some time is quite clear from the passing of the Rating and Valuation Act and from the way the Government have realised that the first thing you have to do is to spread the burden over a larger area. This seems to indicate that some larger and more comprehensive scheme is in course of formation. I have often thought one of the greatest opportunities open to the Government would be to revise the relations between central and local governments. I am glad indeed if they are going to take full advantage of it on this occasion. In no better way could they establish the claim of this Conservative Administration to have set up a landmark in the political history of the country.

As one who has spent the Recess in visiting most of the mining villages in the county from which I come, I did not expect much from the Gracious Speech from the Throne, but, although I have watched the development of the policy of this Government during the past three years, I was amazed at the slight reference to the present social and industrial situation. We are told that a progressive improvement in both home and external trade justifies the hope that, with co-operation and good will, steady progress will be made in the future. One would scarcely think, from that reference to the social and industrial situation, that there are 1,200,000 men and boys unemployed and that those men and boys are as good as the best type of citizens who are employed, and that, whereas a few years ago it used to be said that men were too old at 40, to-day we have arrived at a situation when the worker is almost too old at 14. That, it seems to me, is a situation that cannot be allowed to go on indefinitely without the gravest results ultimately to the country, neither is it one that can be allowed to drift merely in the hope that somehow or at some time industry is going to improve. This phrase in the King's Speech is reminiscent of many speeches we have heard from the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister of Labour during the past Session, and which have been rather trimmed up in the Press for shop window purposes. Unless there is some real attempt by the Government to face this situation we are going to have a permanent problem which will ultimately sap the very foundations of our national life.

I want to speak with special reference to the industry which I represent, and I make no apology for dealing with the mining situation once more. In the mining industry there is not only unemployment and low wages, but there is a state of social life resulting from the present organisation of the industry which makes life, even for those who are working, almost unbearable. The fact that we can have a King's Speech in which the mining industry in its present condition is not mentioned is really a serious position for the country. We have had all the things during the past 12 months that some hon. Members opposite have been asking for. We have had longer hours, increased output, decreased cost and decreased wages, and the whole story of the past 12 months, following upon the attempt to apply those things, has been one of disaster not only to the miners themselves, but, if what the coalowners say is true, to them also, and certainly gives no room for hope in the future. From the lesson of the past 12 months, the attitude of the Government in reference to the 48 Hours Convention last year was one of the most amazing steps I have seen in my social experience, because it simply means that the Government are going to give encouragement to people in other industries who want to lengthen the hours of work, with the clear knowledge that that step is not only going to be disastrous to the workers in the industry but probably disastrous to the employers, because of the reaction in other countries. In the mining industry the whole position, as the result of the increase of hours, has affected the people employed, the wages, the output and the social life.

We have spoken of unemployment. We have spoken of low wages. On the experience of the last 12 months, the increase in hours stands condemned if it was only because of the disastrous effect upon the social life of the mining villages. There is not an hour from midnight to mid-day and from mid-day to midnight when men and boys are not going to and fro in the average mining village. The churches are making protests that they cannot get on with their evening services because of the buzzers calling men to work at six and half-past-six on Sunday evening. That is the story of the average village. But when you get down below, not only have there been increased hours, decreased wages and decreased cost of production, but there has been a relentless driving of the average man working in the pit such as has never been known in the lifetime of the oldest miner. The most patient miner and the most docile colliery official grow bitter when they speak of what happens below. A representative from one colliery that I know said to the manager, "Well, but these are harsh conditions," and he admitted that they were. Yet men have to obey. Men are driven with the lash of the fear of being turned out of their employment. They will work for almost any wages. They will work at any time. There has been a weeding-out of the "unfit," as the employers call them, and yet, with all that, we have nothing but increasing arrears in the industry. We have reduced wages to an extent which does not give the best workman a decent living, and yet after 12 months of such experience we have a Gracious Speech from the Throne which does not even mention the mining industry.

I raise this question for one particular reason. There is a great deal of talk about industrial peace. There is no one who knows anything about the mining industry, and who has lived in the midst of it, who not only wants, within reasonable limits, industrial peace, but who in the depths of his soul prays for a condition which will bring about industrial peace. I want to say that from my experience of the mining villages the most devoted leaders can strive to make industrial peace, the most model employers can strive to emulate them in their efforts, but the situation in the mining industry in this country is such that unless the Government of the day, with decision, with courage and with vision seek to lift the miner out of the slough of despond into which he has been thrust, no agreement for industrial peace can be worth the paper on which it is written while the miner is at his present level. I do not say that with pleasure. I say it as one who feels, at all events, that in justice to this country and to this House, as well as in justice to ourselves, that one ought to give a clear and accurate expression of what is taking place in those remote areas of the country. That we can have a Gracious Speech from the Throne in which there is no reference to such a critical situation in our national life is to me one of the most amazing things. It may be excluded from the Gracious Speech from the Throne. It may be pushed into the background for the moment, but I am afraid, indeed I am certain, that it will reassert itself.

Let me put another point of view to those who want industrial peace. There have been gentlemen from the Notts coalfields who have come into the north of England seeking to engage men under the condition that they would be employed if they were suitable for a certain purpose. That is not the first time that kind of thing has taken place. I have heard gentlemen in this House cheer because they thought that was a wonderful and clever sort of thing. They apparently did not know that some of the most belligerent and bitter men you find in the mining fields of to-day are the sons or grandsons of people who were brought into other coalfields under similar conditions. You always get the most hostile spirit and you always get the most militant and aggressive type of man from the son or grandson of the man who began under the blacklegging or servile conditions that they are now laying down. My point is that there can be no guarantee of industrial peace while that spirit is allowed to prevail, and not only allowed to prevail but actively encouraged by people in other parts of the British coalfields.

One sees one's friends in an area where men are striving, as men never strove before, to make their contribution to the success and prosperity of the industry. I do not believe that this country has the slightest idea of what the- men are doing and what sacrifices they will make in order to keep the wheels of the pits going. In my own division not very long ago, about six months ago, the coal-owners said to the men, "We have asked for a reduction so repeatedly that we dare not ask for any more. You have been willing, you have co-operated and if you give us another 10 per cent, reduction for six months we will treat it as a loan and will repay when the opportunity comes." The humour of the situation is that a woman went into the debt court and told the judge that she was willing to pay when the mine owners had paid the men the money which they had lent to them. It seemed a great mystery how the men in the coal pits have been able to lend money to the coal owners. It is a revelation of what the miners will do in order to keep the mines going.

In the Ministry of Labour Gazette we get records of reductions in wages. It is about time that they scrapped that record. I do not think that for some of the main industries of the country the record is any indication of what takes place. We get what are called piece rate reductions in a given colliery or factory, but they are seldom recorded. These reductions have gone on. The men have co-operated, and the reductions at one colliery or at one company have been used to cut down the wages and the prices in another colliery, district against district, and the result is that everybody are worse off than they were before because of that process. I know what is said by the gentleman who calls himself a man of long vision, an economist, an expert, the sort of man we have now on the Front Bench opposite in the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade. He is an economist. I suppose the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Ellis) would call himself an economist, like the hon. Member for the Moseley Division of Birmingham (Mr. Hannon).

I do not claim anything.

I am glad that there is, at any rate, one business man who does not claim to be an economist. Wages have gone down; the men have given up at every stage, and the position now is almost worse than it was before. The proposal for a Transfer Board does not touch the fringe of the problem. It ignores altogether the great permanent body of men and boys in the coalfields who are sinking further into the slough. The Government does not attempt to deal with the problem. It passes its Unemployment Insurance Act, under which thousands of men and boys will be left without any hope of getting their benefit this year; and then we talk about industrial peace! There is the question of training and keeping fit these men and boys; carrying out the suggestions of the Blanesburgh Committee—the suggestions for constructive employment—the need for schemes, which have already been mentioned this evening, which are badly wanted and which ought to be put into operation. The only hope we get is that unemployment benefit is to be taken off at a greater rate—and then we talk about industrial peace!

At the end of the conflict in 1926, in a speech in this House, which was not agreed to by all my friends, I pleaded for a settlement which would lead to something like permanent conditions in the mining areas. The drift is still going on. One can see the hopelessness and despair, the dilapidated condition, of men who were once self-respecting, independent, well-dressed; men whose minds have been well trained, and who, as students, would not be put to shame by men who have had university opportunities. In spite of all this we have not, in the fourth Session of this Parliament, the slightest reference to the misery and social despondency to which a great part of our population, almost a nation in itself, has come. The men in the mining areas are generous, they hate conflicts because they have had most experience of them, but if this drift goes on, if the Government of the day will not take their courage in their hands and show a proper conception of the problem which has to be faced, then, although there may be an armistice which may last for a year or two years, the situation cannot but result in conflicts in future years.

I do not know why they should not take steps to deal with the matter. I see possibilities. I see the training of men being undertaken on a small scale. The experience is there, but the will is wanting. If we can keep soldiers and sailors, if we can train our military reserves and feed them and clothe them and house them well and pay them decently, for one or 10 or even 20 years, we ought to do the same thing as efficiently for our industrial reserves, who are the unemployed. The average unemployed man is willing to do almost anything if thereby he can only have an opportunity of contributing his share to the ordinary work-a-day affairs of this country and to the success of the national life, which he as much as anyone else desires.

With regard to the Gracious Speech, I seriously suggest that if Ministers are now descending to frame this quality of message for His Majesty they might just as well change the title and not call it any longer a King's Speech, for it is not so clearly understood by the ordinary man as it is in this House that His Majesty is not responsible for the production but that it is a bungle made by the Ministers themselves. We have heard that the Speech has this time adopted that great Tory stunt which was used once upon a time in elections, just to have a sort of somnolence as the chief factor of national life. Everyone understands that great problems are staring the Government in the face, but the Government appear to think that by not mentioning them a new psychological condition will be brought about, which will produce peace in industry, peace in the country, peace in the Empire and peace internationally. But the Government are quite aware that it is a mere gamble, and that in spite of any such psychological effect there might be material conditions which would produce contrary and disastrous results.

It is not merely the question of unemployment, but the way in which the Government have twisted all the existing laws in the shape of various amendments, so that even under-employment is getting more and more extensive. With the new scheme for stamps, the new scheme for gaps, the new scheme for days of work and so on and so on, and the variety of schemes to disqualify the unemployed from obtaining benefits, the Government have offered a premium to under-employment, which is assuming disastrous dimensions. Above all, with this peace in industry stunt, there is still the graver danger coming, and that is of employment on reduced wages and still further reduced wages, until almost in every home there will be very little inducement to go to work when the head of that home sees the misery in his own home after a hard week's toil. We are told sometimes that we offer no constructive suggestions to the Government, and that we—especially the Communists—only make destructive suggestions. We may talk in terms of the destruction of that which goes to undermine human life and human dignity; but such a destruction ought to be welcomed by the nation, rather than the continual, slow destruction of the largest number of its population through the ill-treatment of its working class.

What is the claim made on behalf of the capitalist order of things? It is that the capitalists create centres of employment and wage-earning and that although, as an inducement to undertake that great task, they make profits for themselves, yet they are all the time supplying direct remunerative employment and dignified work to the nation at large. But for the last five years capitalism has ceased to carry out that contract and has ceased to function in that manner. On all sides of the House the evils of unemployment, under-employment and wage reduction are admitted. Yet what are we told is the remedy? We have heard a great deal about the safeguarding of industries. We have heard little details about the silk trade and the motor trade and about certain profits and certain prices, but all the time the great factor remains that more than 1,000,000 persons have no employment; that nearly 500,000 children of both sexes, leaving school at the tender age of 14, have no employment and that large numbers of employed, running into a figure of hundreds of thousands, have only part-time employment, while millions of workers during the last four years have been suffering further reductions of wages. What is the value of the safeguarding system if it can only safeguard the good of the working class in this fashion?

I do not know what may be in the minds of my colleagues on these Benches whose Amendment to the Address we shall reach at a later stage in these Debates. They blame the Government for not grappling with the question of unemployment. How are we to grapple with it? Is a surtax going to abolish one million unemployed? We hear from the Liberal Benches, and sometimes even from some of my Labour colleagues, about schemes of afforestation and drainage and road making. Would even these provide a permanent remedy for unemployment? Take the case of the textile industry. The workers in that industry are told to-day that if they do not accept reduced wages there must be an extension of unemployment. Would it be a consolation to girls accustomed to work at the looms to create for them some fisheries or some afforestation or road construction? I suggest that the problem must be tackled directly at its source. If there is a plant, if there is machinery, if there are persons skilled and trained and accustomed to work on those machines, and if merely the arbitrary will of the capitalist master, for the sake of his profits, decides to shut down those machines, and keep the workers away from their work, the only way of destroying unemployment is to take charge of those machines and that plant, and to let the workers come and do their work. [An HON. MEMBER "What would you do with the stocks?"]

I am glad one of our colleagues—I was just going to say comrades—is worried about the stocks that would be produced. The stocks may be boots, and does anybody doubt that there are not millions of people here who could do with a few more pairs of boots? The stocks may be clothing, or they may be food products. Does anybody suggest that there is no additional need of these articles? The stocks may be machinery, iron and steel, and to those who question, "What shall we do with the stocks?" we say: "We shall dispose of them to foreign countries," and then they will reflect upon their stupid foreign policy. What shall we do with our stocks? Give up spiking Russia, and deal with them, and you will get rid of your stocks. Give up murdering Chinamen in China. Give them liberty in their country, and let them live, and you will get rid of your wretched stocks. Give up deceiving the people of India with fraudulent Commissions of conspirators going out and murdering the people for the sake of the reception of the wretched Commission. Let the people of India have their liberty, and you will have your work, and your stocks will be got rid of. A Government or a country decide upon a wrong line of action, the line of robbers, oppressors, and tyrants. at home and abroad, and when they suffer from its consequences they begin to see that their own policy affords them no remedy but is rather the root of the evil.

We were told in many congratulatory phrases the policy of His Majesty's Government towards China. What was that policy? May I suggest to this House that the British troops who went across to China from this island and pretended to have gone out for the safety of British life and property are to-day responsible for the oppression upon the working class in Lancashire? The troops who marched out from this country to China not only oppress the Chinese workers, but are today producing hunger and starvation and terrorism among the workers of Lancashire. The Foreign Minister and the Prime Minister and others stood up to congratulate themselves on the splendid work that the British Expeditionary Force has performed in China. What was that splendid work? It was to kill the Communists or to get them killed by others, to kill the workers who were organising themselves, to deprive the workers of China of the power of getting at the top in their own country. What was the effect of that Chinese Expeditionary Force? The effect has been that children of six and eight years of age continue to work in the cotton mills there, that females continue to labour for 10, 12 and even 14 hours on wages of 6d. and 8d. for the whole day, and male labour similarly. This is the grand result obtained by the British Expeditionary Force, and the Indian masters and magnates begin to bring pressure on their workers for them to work longer hours or to mind more machines than before, and? for all that extra work to accept another 12½ per cent, reduction; and then, following upon that, the mill-owners in Lancashire demand from their workers a further reduction.

No British force could have been more directly responsible for the oppression upon the Lancashire workers than the British Expeditionary Force that went out to China. Such wonderful results produced in all industries, the whole foreign policy of this country, the capitalist movement, and the artificial production of the atmosphere of peace are not taking us to prosperity or peace, but further into a position of danger. I submit that we are approaching the time when, in justice and fair play to the working class, you ought to say to the capitalist masters that when they fail in their undertaking of keeping a plant open for the workers, the State will come and take possession of their plant and let the workers work it. However laughable that may seem to-day, the time is bound to come when the Government will have to resort to that measure. Although the Foreign Secretary has assured us that under certain conditions they are going to grant a certain measure of freedom to China men in their own country, he has not quite explained what part His Majesty's Government have played in Southern China in the last massacre of the workers under the excuse of their being Communists. The report given proves that when refugees have gone into British territories they have been handed over to such war lords as were openly known to do nothing to them except to shoot them. The Foreign Office has not explained that position quite clearly.

With regard to the foreign policy of this country, there has been quite a mysterious chapter as to what goes on with Persia. We are told that the neighbouring country of Persia, Afghanistan, has suddenly become a favourite of this country, as well as of all European States. The common factor of these States is their dread or hatred of Russia, and they have suddenly developed a love for Afghanistan, although it was unknown before. Events will develop and we shall see the outcome of that policy later on. Meanwhile the Foreign Office of this country is trying to conceal the facts with regard to their outrageous, oppressive and unjust attitude towards Persia. We find that a representative of the Government of India—a type of your Foreign Affairs Minister—has gone out to Persia. The Government of India have no authority over the foreign policy of the British Empire as a whole. Nor has India any voice in the foreign policy. India has a limited right with regard to certain matters of trade, and the maintenance of Consulates, and so on, in Persia. Taking advantage of that right, some person goes out to India, but whether he negotiates on behalf of the Foreign Office here or on behalf of the Viceroy is kept a complete mystery. There is also the mystery of a certain Sheikh. Somehow or other the British Foreign Office is most anxious not only to get a person who is the open enemy of the Persian Government and who openly keeps on raiding the peaceful villages in Persia, but is extremely anxious to use force and an outrageous policy towards Persia, and to instal this man as a sort of chief, with independent powers in a certain territory, which territory somehow or other adjoins upon that great suspected oil tract on the other side of the Persian frontier.

The whole of the negotiations with the Persian Government are kept in concealment simply because they are too mean and too dishonest to stand the light of day. There are not only negotiations being conducted, but terms are being imposed upon Persia with regard to the right of British aeroplanes to fly over Persian territory. If the whole of these negotiations were brought out and placed on the Table of the House, it would be seen that in their language, demands, and methods, they form a set of negotiations which the Foreign Office dare not conduct with any other European Power. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs has completely evaded the whole issue, and the answers he has given on the subject—that they are talking about Customs duties and trade—are completely evasive answers. Other nationalities and countries and foreign offices, and other newspapers know all about it, and all that the Foreign Secretary does is to manage to keep the British nation ignorant of what is happening.

Then there is the first paragraph of the Gracious Message in which it is stated that our foreign relations are friendly. Surely it was the duty of the Prime Minister to draw His Majesty's attention to the fact that the relations of this country with Russia, which were quite wantonly made unfriendly, still continue to be unfriendly. It is not correct to state that the relations of this country are friendly with all the countries of the world when such a glaring exception still exists. There ought to have been mentioned that since the rupture with Russia there had been frequent suggestions as to whether on certain conditions those broken negotiations would again be taken up or not. There ought to have been at least some explanation as to His Majesty's Government's intentions with regard to their policy towards Russia. We do not know how far the Foreign Office is now repentant of what it did, and how far the Home Office is repentant of what it did, but even if the Government want to persevere in that attitude it is only fair that the citizens of this country and the world at large should know something from the Foreign Office as to its intentions for the future.

Another subject not mentioned in the Gracious Speech but brought out during the Debate—by question and answer— was the Simon Commission, which has gone out to India. When a short time ago I told this House that the Commission would1 be regarded as an outrageous insult by the whole of India—that was not my opinion, I was expressing what my countrymen would feel—I was not only laughed at but scoffed at and turned down by an official of the State who if he had known his duty, ought to have known public opinion much better than he pretended to do on that occasion. That is not all. There was that lady with the doubtful mentality, Katherine Mayo, who was made to produce that book just to tell that there are depressed classes and Mohammedans who are going to support the Government. The well-established and organised bodies of the depressed classes and the Mohammedans, and the leaders who up to now have been always recognised by the public to be the leaders were, if anything, even more bitter in their denunciations of that Commission than anything else. The Undersecretary of State in the House of Commons also gave us that false and misleading information, and in order to prove that writer's dictum, and the Under-Secretary of State's dictum, the Government of India resorted to the very degraded trick of setting up a bogus deputation of the Mohammedans and the depressed classes, to go to the docks to receive the Commission.

Such things do not happen. If a Commission goes out to hold an inquiry people do not rush to the railway stations or to the dockyards and say, "We have come to give evidence." They wait till their turn comes and give evidence. Other parties who were going to protest were shut out by the police force. The Government had to use armed force. Two people were killed—the man in the street would call them murders; in legal and technical language I suppose I should say that there was "justifiable homicide of at least two persons." Hundreds of others were arrested and would be charged with some crime or other. That is the reception which this Commission received.

Before the Prime Minister answered the question yesterday—before the question was asked—at a quarter past 10—a telephone message was delivered at my house that a message had arrived from the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon). That was at 10 o'clock, at my house. It was not yet the publication hour in Bombay. I was asked whether I would join some very reputable Labour leaders in now changing their policy and wiring out a recommendation. Our Indian leaders and the leaders of public opinion have not been so foolish. They have denounced the deputation as it well deserved to be denounced as a gang of Imperialist conspirators who have gone to oppress and tyrannise over the people of India. There is no mention in the Address that the other day His Majesty sent out his Viceroy to Ireland—a Free State and a free Irishman sent out there, and His Majesty in sending him had to assist the new Viceroy with about six taxicabs each filled up with half-a-dozen armed policemen or Scotland Yard detectives.

Motion made, and Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and agreed to.—[ Mr. C. Edwards. ]

Debate to be resumed To-morrow.