House Of Commons
Wednesday, 27th March, 1929.
The House met at Eleven of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
Private Business
Leamington and Warwick Traction Bill,
As amended considered:
Ordered, That Standing Orders 223 and 243 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read the Third time.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Soke and City of Peterborough Bill,
As amended considered:
Ordered, That Standing Orders 223 and 243 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read the Third time.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Lewes Corporation Bill,
Ordered, That, in the case of the Lewes Corporation Bill, Standing Orders 84, 214, 215 and 239 be suspended, and that the Bill be now taken into consideration provided amended prints shall have been previously deposited.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill, as amended, considered accordingly.
Ordered, That Standing Orders 223 and 243 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read the Third time.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Metropolitan Railway Bill,
Ordered, That, in the case of the Metropolitan Railway Bill, Standing Orders 84, 214, 215, and 239 be suspended, and that the Bill be now taken into consideration provided amended prints shall have been previously deposited.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill as amended, considered accordingly.
Ordered, That Standing Orders 223 and 243 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read the Third time.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead Gas Bill,
Ordered, That, in the case of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead Gas Bill, Standing Orders 84, 214, 215, and 239 be suspended, and that the Bill be now taken into consideration provided amended prints shall have been previously deposited.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill as amended, considered accordingly.
Ordered, That Standing Orders 223 and 243 be suspended, and that the Bill be now read the Third time.—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Doncaster Corporation (Trolley Vehicles) Provisional Order Bill,
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill,
Read a Second time, and committed.
Ministry of Health Provisional Order (No. 5) Bill,
"to confirm a Provisional Order of the Minister of Health relating to Walsall," presented by Mr. Chamberlain; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 87.]
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (No. 6) Bill,
"to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Minister of Health relating to Brighton and Hove, Bromley, Guildford, and Warrington," presented by Mr. Chamberlain; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 88.]
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (Yeovil Extension and Water) Bill,
"to confirm certain Provisional Orders of the Minister of Health relating to Yeovil," presented by Mr. Chamberlain; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 89.]
Darlington Corporation Trolley Vehicles (Additional Routes) Provisional Order Bill,
"to confirm a Provisional Order made by the Minister of Transport under the Darlington Corporation (Transport, etc.) Act, 1925, relating to Darlington Corporation Trolley Vehicles," presented by Colonel Ashley; read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, and to be printed. [Bill 90.]
Street Accidents Caused By Vehicles And Horses
Motion made, and Question proposed,
"That an Address be presented for a Return showing the number of Accidents resulting in death or personal injury known by the police to have been caused by vehicles and horses in streets, roads, or public places, and the number of persons killed or injured by such Accidents in Great Britain during the year ended the 31st day of December, 1928 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper No. 57, of Session 1928)."—[Sir V. Henderson.]
May I ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman if since yesterday he has received any further information as to whether any distinction is going to be made in this Return with regard to Accidents caused by different, categories of vehicles? He said yesterday that he would like notice of the question that I put to him then, and I understood from him that 24 hours' notice would be sufficient?
Yes, Sir; a distinction is made. The list of vehicles is divided up into motor omnibuses, electric trams, motor cycles with sidecars, motor cycles without sidecars, motor cycles with pillion riders, motor cycles without pillion riders, private cars, taxicabs, motor lorries, pedal cycles and horse-drawn vehicles.
Question put, and agreed to.
Oral Answers To Questions
League Of Nations
Arms Traffic
1.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs with regard to the resolution unanimously adopted by the sixth assembly of the League, inviting members and non-member States to transmit to the secretariat documents relating to the international traffic in arms whether the British Government has hitherto acted in accordance with this resolution; and, if not, will he take steps to rectify this omission?
The resolution of the Assembly recommends that the statistics should be furnished in the form of the models embodied in an annex to the Arms Traffic Convention of 1925. The adoption of the recommendation would involve a change of system in the preparation of the statistics, entailing considerable administrative inconvenience and expense, which His Majesty's Government do not feel justified in incurring until the entry into force of the convention. The returns published under the existing practice contain much detail, and should, in the meantime, prove adequate for the purpose in view.
Mexico (British Subject's Capture)
2.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the amount of ransom demanded by the Mexican bandits who captured Mr. John Wilmot Reid, a British subject, at Durango, Mexico; whether the British Minister at Mexico City had made any representations to the Mexican Government on the subject; whether any negotiations have taken place for Mr. Reid's release; and will he give full particulars?
The ransom demanded for the release of Mr. Reid and of the American citizen captured at the same time is stated to be $24,000. His Majesty's Minister at Mexico City has addressed representations to the Mexican Government. He reports that pursuit of the bandits by Federal troops has temporarily been suspended, and that the St. Nicholas Mining and Milling Company are treating for the amount of the ransom.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the last communication was received, as, according to the Press report, these men are in dire jeopardy of losing their lives?
I cannot say, but I hope that that report is at least very much exaggerated. The first purpose of the Mexican Government and ourselves was to save the men's lives.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that their families are very much concerned, and are any fresh communications taking place with our representative, so that the oil company can forward the ransom to these bandits?
Our Minister in Mexico will give any assistance that he properly can; he does not require any further instructions on the subject.
Royal Navy (Compassionate Grants)
4.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether it is the practice of the Admiralty to ask the Charity Organisation Society to conduct investigation into the circumstances of those whose cases are being considered for compassionate grants by the Department?
The answer is in the affirmative, except in cases where the Admiralty are already in possession of sufficient information of the circumstances of the applicant.
Is it considered to be in keeping with the policy of a Government Department that they should use such an organisation as the Charity Organisation Society to find out the circumstances of their employés?
Is not the Charity Organisation Society a most efficient body?
Up to 1924, the services of the police were utilised for this purpose where we did not know the circumstances of the case ourselves. It was then thought that the Charity Organisation Society was a body eminently qualified to carry out this work, and we have derived complete satisfaction from the work of the Charity Organisation Society in this respect.
In view of the knowledge that some of us have of the Charity Organisation Society, may we ask the Admiralty to make these investigations themselves?
In view of the knowledge that some of us have of the Charity Organisation Society and of its splendid work, will the hon. and gallant Gentleman go on doing as he does now?
rose—
This is really not the time to discuss the merits of this society.
Is the Charity Organisation Society asked to inquire into the statements made by officers requiring this sort of compassionate allowance?
Yes.
Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that this society exists to organise charity out of existence?
Should not we all like to see the necessity for charity disappear?
There never was such a brutal body of people.
Unemployment
Statistics
5.
asked the Minister of Labour how many more people were in employment on 1st January, 1929, than were in employment on 1st January, 1925, distinguishing between insured and uninsured trades; and how the figures are arrived at?
Separate statistics of the numbers of uninsured persons in employment are not available. I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a statement giving such figures as are available regarding the numbers of insured persons in employment in Great Britain in January, 1925, and January, 1929, respectively.
If the figures of the uninsured trades are not available, will the hon. Gentleman make clear, in the statement which he has promised, how much of the increase in the insured trades is due to people coming into the category of the insured trades from the uninsured trades; how much is due to the better administration of the scheme; and how much to the fact that a large number of people have come into the insured trades from the uninsured?
If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will put the question down, I will see what I can do.
| Date. | Estimated numbers insured aged 16–64. | Insured persons unemployed. | Difference between Cols. 2 and 3. | Estimated number of Insured persons aged 16–64 in employment after deducting from Col. 4 3½ per cent. of the numbers in Col. 2 to allow for sickness and other unrecorded non-employment, exclusive of temporary holidays. (A) Including persons directly involved in trade disputes. (B) Excluding persons directly involved in trade disputes. | ||
| (A) | (B) | |||||
| 1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. | |
| 1925. | ||||||
| 26 January 1929. | … | 11,182,000 | 1,246,000 | 9,936,000 | 9,545,000 | 9,543,000 |
| 21 January | … | 11,682,000* | 1,421,800 | 10,260,200 | 9,851,300 | 9,848,300 |
* Provisional figure. | ||||||
Bethnal Green
7.
asked the Minister of Labour what are the number of unemployed persons on the live register for the borough of Bethnal Green, separately from those from adjacent boroughs registered at the same Employment Exchanges?
At 25th February, 1929, there were 3,148 persons resident in the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green on the registers of Employment Exchanges, including 2,603 men, 480 women and 65 juveniles.
Is it not a fact that it is on the Paper now? I desired the Minister to differentiate between uninsured and insured trades. Would it be possible for the hon. Gentleman to make a differentiation so as to bring it within the terms of the question on the Paper?
We have not got the information for which the hon. and gallant Gentleman asks.
Do not the figures show what men and women have come into the insured from the uninsured trades?
No, I do not think they do, and that is rather a different point from the point on the Paper.
The question on the Paper asks for figures distinguishing between insured and uninsured trades.
I have stated that separate statistics of uninsured persons in employment are not available. We have not got them.
Following is the statement:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for the trouble which he has taken.
Textile Trades
8.
asked the Minister of Labour the numbers of men and women registered as unemployed from the textile trade, cotton and woollen, in February and March of this year?
As the reply includes a number of figures, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Following is the statement:
| NSURED PERSONS classified as belonging to the COTTON and WOOLLEN and WORSTED TEXTILE INDUSTRIES recorded as Unemployed in Great Britain at 25th February, 1929. | |||||||||
| Industry. | Men. | Women. | Juveniles. | ||||||
| Wholly unemployed. | Temporarily stopped. | Total. | Wholly unemployed. | Temporarily stopped. | Total. | Wholly unemployed. | Temporarily stopped. | Total. | |
| Cotton | 10,396 | 12,798 | 23,194 | 16,144 | 23,816 | 39,960 | 531 | 2,316 | 2,847 |
| Woollen and Worsted. | 5,768 | 7,294 | 13,062 | 5,552 | 11,885 | 17,437 | 355 | 752 | 1,107 |
| Statistics of unemployment in the various industries in respect of March are not yet available. | |||||||||
Aviation
Flying Clubs (Subsidies)
9.
asked the Secretary of State for Air whether it is now an accepted principle of the policy of his Department that no more subsidies should be granted to flying clubs; and, if not, whether he will consider the claims of Sheffield at an early date?
It is not so much a question of policy as of unavoidable financial limitation, and I am afraid that the money available for this purpose makes it impossible as I informed my hon. Friend on 13th March, to add to the number of Light Aeroplane Clubs already in receipt of subsidy.
10.
asked the Secretary of State for Air the exact nature of the benefits that will accrue to flying clubs becoming affiliated to National Flying Services, Limited; and whether these benefits will be the same for clubs that already receive the Government subsidy and for those that do not?
The exact nature of the benefits referred to will depend upon the arrangements which may be made between National Flying Services, Limited, and the flying clubs, and I am not in a position to give any detailed information upon this subject. Speaking generally, however, I understand that it is the intention that affiliated clubs should have the use of all the aerodromes and landing grounds created by the Company and that the recreational facilities and amenities provided at the Company's central club should be avail- able to members of the affiliated clubs. So far as I am aware, the benefits will be the same for all affiliated clubs, whether they have or have not been in receipt of Government subsidy.
Poisoned Fumes
11.
asked the Secretary of State for Air what steps he is taking to remove the dangers, both as to the Royal Air Force and civil aviation, as revealed by the inquest on Flight-sergeant Pearcy, who died during flight from poisoned fumes from his engine?
The accident referred to arose out of a moat unusual combination of circumstances in connection with a particular form of apparatus for heating the cockpit from the exhaust. It is unlikely in the extreme that the same kind of accident would happen again, but in view of its possibility and in the interests of safety, I have had the use of this apparatus discontinued pending further experiments which are being undertaken for its improvement. The heating apparatus in use on civil aircraft is of an entirely different design and has given no trouble over a number of years.
Housing
Improvement Schemes (Compensation)
14.
asked the Minister of Health whether he is now prepared to take steps to remove the grievance to property owners arising from Section 46 of the Housing Act, or whether he has any fresh statement to make on this question?
I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given to the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Wells), on 1st March, of which I will send him a copy.
Rural Labourers' Dwellings, Wales
15.
asked the Minister of Health the number of rural labourers' dwellings condemned, with the aggregate number of their occupants, in each of the six counties of North Wales; and what period is allotted for their reconstruction?
My right hon. Friend regrets that the information desired is not available.
Public Health
London Lock Hospital
16.
asked the Minister of Health what changes in administration he is proposing as a result of the recommendations of the Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the London Lock Hospital; and whether the constitution of the board of management has been so changed as to give a greater choice of women?
As indicated in reply to questions on this subject on the 14th March, the hospital is a voluntary institution, and responsibility for carrying recommendations of the Committee into effect rests, not with my right hon. Friend but with the board of the hospital. My right hon. Friend has not yet received specific proposals from the board as to their reconstitution, but he understands that they contemplate the inclusion of women on the board in future.
Conference, Zurich
17.
asked the Minister of Health why he has refused to sanction the attendance of delegates from municipal councils to the forthcoming conference in Zurich of the Royal Institute of Public Health?
My right hon. Friend has given careful consideration to the application of the institute in this matter, and he does not feel satisfied that benefits commensurate with the considerable expense involved would be obtained by the attendance at the cost of the rates of delegates from local authorities at the conference.
Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that this conference is of an international character, presided over by Lord Meston, and that it would look rather bad for England to be the only country that is not represented?
No, it is not a case of an international conference. It is a case of a British society holding its conference abroad—a very different matter.
National Health Insurance
18.
asked the Minister of Health the number of men, women, and young persons insured under the National Health Insurance Act at the end of 1928?
The number for Great Britain is estimated to be 16,950,000, of whom 11,550,000 are men and 5,400,000 are women. These numbers include 790,000 persons who, having reached 65 years of age, have ceased to pay contributions under the Act and to be entitled to sickness and disablement benefits.
Local Government And Rating
Sutherland And Shetland
19.
asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what is calculated to be the net gain to the counties of Sutherland and Shetland under the Governments de-rating scheme?
The net gain to the County of Sutherland, on the basis of the 1927–8 rates, is estimated at 56d. per head of the population, equivalent to a sum of approximately £4,158. The corresponding figures for Zetland are 76d. per head of population and a sum of £8,081.
Freight Rebates
29.
asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware that the Associations of Coal Owners in Monmouthshire, South Wales, and the Forest of Dean have directed that the freight rebates on all coal are to be retained by the colliery companies; and what steps it is proposed to take to secure to the iron and steel and other industries the relief intended to accrue to them from the rebate on freights?
I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to a question asked on the 12th December by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Sir W. Preston), of which I am sending him a copy.
I have seen the answer which the hon. and gallant Gentleman has already given to the question, but will he please state why it was that the President of the Board of Trade during the discussion of this Bill made it clear that the freight rebate to the companies would be carried over to the iron and steel industries and to other industries using coal?
The President of the Board of Trade always stated that the reduction in freight must go to those who paid the freights.
General Election (Territorials In Camp)
20.
asked the Secretary of State for War what provision will be made for Territorials who may be in camp at the date of the Election for recording their votes; and what opportunity will be given them to hear the policy of the different political parties before doing so?
Territorials who may be in camp during the Election may be placed on the absent voters' list or may be granted leave from camp for the purpose of recording their votes. Full instructions will be issued in due course. As regards the last part of the question, no opportunity can be given while in camp.
Can my right hon. Friend say whether the individual soldier will have to make his own application to be put on the absent voters' list or will an order be given to the battalion?
If the individual soldier wants leave, he must apply for it.
Before he goes to camp?
No, not necessarily before he goes to camp. As regards the absent voters' list, instructions will be given so that probably soldiers can make application.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say what is the latest date on which application can be made to be put on the absent voters' list in connection with the next Election?
I am afraid I cannot. I will have instructions issued at an early date—as soon as they can be got ready.
Is it not already too late?
I believe that it is not too late for the absent voters' list.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether leave of absence will be granted to these Territorials for 30th May?
I am afraid that I did not catch that question.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether leave of absence will be granted to these Territorials for the purpose of casting their votes on that date?
Whatever the date is, they will get their leave.
Will my right hon. Friend say, if it is too late at the present time to be included in the absent voters' list, that special facilities will be offered to these men to be put on that list considering that they are doing a national service by going to camp?
I am surprised to hear that it is thought to be too late to go on to the absent voters' list. There is some provision with regard to serving soldiers, and that is the provision which it is intended to put into operation. I will see that particulars are published as quickly as possible.
Trade And Commerce
Optical Glass Manufacture
22.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he can make a statement as to the progress in the manufacture of optical glass in the United Kingdom?
The Committee which reviewed the effect of the Key Industry duties in 1926 referred in its Report (Cmd. 2631) to the progress made by this industry, and since then further advance has been made in range, quality and quantity of production. It is estimated that before the War 90 per cent. of the glass used in British optical instruments was of foreign manufacture while now about 90 per cent. of the glass so used is British.
Lace Exports
23.
asked the President of the Board of Trade the exports of lace, in quantity and value, from this country, other than lace made wholly of cotton, in the years 1924 and 1928, respectively?
The total declared value of lace of United Kingdom manufacture, other than that declared as cotton, exported from this country during the years 1924 and 1928, was £118,127 and £646,826, respectively. The figure for 1924 unavoidably excludes artificial silk lace and includes linen embroidery, as such goods were not separately recorded in that year. In the second half of 1925 the exports of these articles amounted to £29,810 and £11,626 respectively. Comparable quantitative data are not available.
Is this not a striking example of the beneficent influence of the Safeguarding of Industries?
Do these figures include re-exports, and also the net portion of the lace trade?
As I said in my answer, it is lace of United Kingdom manufacture other than that declared as cotton. I think that the net consists almost entirely of cotton.
Why does not the hon. Gentleman answer the question on the Paper instead of making an electioneering answer?
Will the hon. Gentleman kindly repeat his question?
The question asked is for total exports, and the hon. Gentleman gives as an answer something which suits his purpose.
I am asked for exports of lace and I have given exports of lace other than lace made wholly of cotton. The figures with regard to cotton have frequently been given, and the hon. Member apparently desires to have the other figures.
My hon. Friend has given me exactly the answer I wanted.
Imported Rose Trees (Marking)
33.
asked the Minister of Agriculture if he is aware that the draft order dealing with imported rose trees can only be carried out by exposing the roots and damaging the trees; and whether, before issuing the order he will give further consideration to this matter?
34.
asked the Minister of Agriculture, in view of the fact that at the recent inquiry under the Merchandise Marks Act the importers of rose trees offered no objection to the proposed marking order, whether he will consider a slight amendment of the draft order to enable the labels to be placed on the shoots instead of the collars, and thus obviate the risk of damage to the trees?
36.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, seeing that the draft Order in Council issued under the Merchandise Marks Act dealing with imported rose trees proposes to make it compulsory for labels to be attached securely by wire or other metal to the collar of each rose tree, there is any evidence in his Department that this can be done without ultimate damage to the tree?
The minutes of evidence at the recent inquiry indicate that both the place and method of fixing the label were fully considered by the Standing Committee. The recommendations of the Committee undoubtedly follow in these respects the course of the evidence, which showed that the collar was the most suitable permanent part of the rose tree to which the label could be fixed, and that during the time in which the label is required by the Order to be attached no damage would result. The Committee's Report was fully considered before the Draft Order was issued, and I can see no reason to depart from their recommendations.
Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that it is somewhat remarkable that the Committee has selected the one particular place on the plant where the wire attachment, in the opinion of experts, cannot be securely fastened without damaging the trees?
All the experts in this country who gave evidence took an opposite view from that of the hon. Member. They did not think that any damage would be done to the trees. They said that this was the only place where the necessary attachment could be secured. The only evidence given to the contrary before the inquiry was that of the Dutch Agricultural Attaché, but that evidence did not convince the Committee.
Has the right hon. Gentleman heard of any instances where a wire attachment has been put on this particular part of the plant?
There has never been any previous case under the Merchandise Marks Act.
Was the original Act intended to give powers to make orders not only to indicate the source of origin but to destroy the value of the goods?
There is absolutely no evidence that it will hurt the plant. All my experts, the horticultural Commissioner of the Ministry among them, who have specially considered this matter, formed the view that there was no danger whatever to the rose trees?
Will the right hon. Gentleman be prepared in the light of experience to reconsider the method that has been adopted?
I would gladly reconsider the matter if experience shows that the fears expressed are well-founded.
Empire Marketing Board (Assistant Cinematograph Officer)
42.
asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs what are the functions of the assistant cinematograph officer on the staff of the Empire Marketing Board; whether the appointment was open to competition; and what qualifications are necessary?
The officer in question has undertaken a number of different duties incidental to the cinema work of the Empire Marketing Board, including the direction of a film of the herring industry. The post was felt to require special qualifications, and was filled by the selection, after trial, of an officer who had devoted several years to a study of those aspects of cinema work with which the Board are chiefly concerned.
Is this officer concerned with making the film?
No, Sir. He is concerned with helping those who are making the film by giving information as to our requirements.
Will the right hon. Gentleman answer that part of the question as to whether the appointment was open for competition?
If the hon. Member will read my answer, he will find that (hat point is answered.
South Africa And Germany (Treaty)
asked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs if the Commercial Treaty between the Government of the Union of South Africa and Germany has been ratified and whether he can make any statement on the matter?
I would invite reference to the reply given to the hon. Member for Cardiff East (Sir C. Kinloch-Cooke) on the 13th March, to which I am not at present able to add anything.
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Treaty has already been ratified by the South African Parliament?
The Treaty has not yet been ratified by South Africa as far as I am aware.
Does the Resolution passed in the Senate of South Africa in the view of the right hon. Gentleman veto the ratification of the Treaty?
I am certainly not going to express an opinion on a constitutional issue in South Africa.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this Treaty was ratified by the South African Parliament some little time ago?
As I say, I do not think it has yet been ratified by Parliament.
Coal Industry (Steel Props)
26.
asked the Secretary of Mines, in view of the increasing use of steel props in mines and the increased employment in both steel and coal trades that will result from their use, the nature of the reports he has received from the mines where they are in use?
The subject is fully discussed in the published Annual Reports of the Divisional Inspectors and of the Chief Inspector of Mines, to which I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend. The general tenour of the reports is that steel supports, properly applied, make for safer working under most conditions, and that for this reason an increased use of them is very desirable.
Can the hon. and gallant Gentleman say how many steel supports will be required to prop up the Government at the next election?
Transport
Motor Vehicles (Regulations)
27.
asked the Minister of Transport whether any progress is being made in eliminating the differences in Regulations as to width, overhang, brake arrangements, and other details of motor cars in the Regulations of the country generally and those of the Scotland Yard authorities; and whether he has received any complaints from the Board of Trade and commercial car manufacturers that these Regulations prevent standardisation of products and lose us orders from abroad?
I understand that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis is introducing certain relaxations in the constructional requirements applicable to motor omnibuses, motor coaches and taxi-cabs licensed to ply for hire in the metropolitan area. The Commissioner as no powers with regard to classes of motor vehicles other than hackney carriages. I have not, so far as I am aware, received any formal complaints on the lines indicated in the last part of my hon. and gallant Friend's question.
Will this change with regard to commercial cars bring them more into line, with the Regulations of the Ministry of Transport, and has my right hon. Friend read Sir John Thorneycroft's speech?
No, Sir; I have not read Sir John Thorneycroft's speech, but I understand that as far as motor coaches and motor omnibuses are concerned the Commissioner's Regulations are now being revised in that direction.
Electric Cable, Whipsnade
28.
asked the Minister of Transport whether his attention has been drawn to an application which has been made for compulsory powers to place an overhead high-tension electric cable across some land on the top of the Downs at Whipsnade, near Dunstable, which has been given to the National Trust as a place from which extensive views both to the north and south can be obtained; and will he give careful consideration to the proposal, and any possible alternative routes, before authorising a line across the property which must materially affect the purpose for which the land was given?
I have received an application from the Corporation of Luton under Section 22 of the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1919, for wayleaves in respect of an overhead line to which the county council and the local authorities concerned have given their consent. I have ordered an Inquiry to be held on the 8th April, at which the objections of the National Trust and other owners of property to wayleaves across their land will be considered.
Heavy Motor Vehicles (Taxation)
38.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether the relief under the Third Schedule of the Finance Act, 1928, in the taxation of heavy motor vehicles using entirely pneumatic tyres, is held to be available to users of such vehicles in Northern Ireland?
I have been asked to answer this question. The changes effected in recent Finance Acts in the licence duties for motor vehicles do not apply to Northern Ireland.
In view of the fact that the British taxpayers in Northern Ireland are under the same regulations in regard to taxation as they are here, could not the right hon. and gallant Gentleman make representations to the authorities in Northern Ireland?
I do not know whether the Government in Northern Ireland have made regulations in regard to taxation on the same lines as ours, but, if the hon. Member desires it, I will make inquiries and let him know.
Naval And Military Pensions
30.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that Mr. F. Melhuish, of 12, Northesk Street, Plymouth, who served in the Army from December, 1916, to October, 1919, received a gunshot wound in the left shoulder in October, 1917; that he is now suffering from tuberculosis which has been certified by the resident medical officer of Plymouth sanatorium as being most extensive immediately behind the scar of the wound; and that Dr. H. M. Reid, of Plymouth, has stated that the wound is the probable cause of the infection which started under the entrance wound; and whether, in view of the fact that the statutory period of seven years in which Mr. Melhuish might have claimed a pension has expired, he will give special consideration to this case, with a view to a pension and treatment allowances being granted?
As the hon. Member has already been informed, the whole of the evidence in this case has been most carefully considered, notwithstanding the statutory bar referred to, but my right hon. Friend is advised that on the information at present before the Ministry it does not justify him in taking the special action suggested in this case.
Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the man's legal adviser has been refused sight of the case and is not able to pursue the matter in the way that he would be able to do if he had full information given to him?
We are prepared to give all the information we can, but the man's documents are entirely confidential.
India
Bank Rate
31.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for India what were the reasons which prompted the Government to insist upon the Imperial Bank raising its rate from 7 to 8 per cent.?
With the hon. Member's permission, I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT an extract, which is rather long, from a reply given by the Finance Member of the Government of India in the Indian Legislative Assembly on 26th February dealing with the point raised by the hon. Member.
Following is the extract:
"The action taken by the Government was taken in its capacity as Chief Currency Authority—a responsibility belonging in most other countries to a Central Bank. It is only natural that in this capacity the Government should take steps to see that money rates in India are so adjusted as to avoid a depletion of their gold and sterling Reserves. The main factors in the situation on the strength of which the Government took their decision were as follows:(a) The decision of the Bank of England to raise their rate from 4½ per cent. to 5½ per cent., a course which was forced on the Bank of England by the high rates prevailing in the United States and the consequent export of gold from England to the United States. The circumstances in which this rise in the English bank rate took place indicated that there was likely to be a period of high money rates in the big financial centres of the world. This may be described as the immediate cause for the action by the Government of India, and it must be remembered, when comparing the present 8 per cent. with the maximum rate of 7 per cent. prevalent in the last two years, that the Bank of England rate since March, 1927, had been steady at 4½ per cent. Our policy could not be unaffected by the sudden rise to 5½ per cent., for it is impossible to isolate policy in India from financial conditions in the outside world. (b) While this special factor operated as an immediate cause, local conditions were such as to create a predisposition for making such a cause operative. In the height of the busy season, exchange was weak, the banks were borrowing heavily instead of placing themselves in funds by selling exchange, stocks of cotton were accumulating in Bombay and, generally speaking, the indications were that in order to maintain the equilibrium of exchange and to ensure that Indian prices moved pari passu with gold prices, it was necessary to raise the level of the money rates in India. If the implication of this question is that there is anything abnormal in such action or that it indicates an artificial control which is not exercised by the currency authorities in other countries, I wish to say most emphatically that any such implication is incorrect."
Arrests
32.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for India on which Provincial Government's initiative were warrants issued by the magistrate in Meerut for the arrest of persons residing in different and distant provinces in India, in connection with the recent charge against 31 persons for levying war against the King; and what was the action of the accused persons taken in or in the immediate vicinity of Meerut that necessitates the trial of persons from distant provinces in Meerut?
The warrants were issued by the magistrate at Meerut on complaint being laid under the authority of the Governor-General in Council. As regards the second part of the question, I am not in a position to make any statement since this is clearly a matter that will emerge in the course of the trial.
Streatham Cemetery
36.
asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware that the register of Grave No. 888 at Streatham cemetery, Garratt Lane, shows that this grave should contain 10 coffins, but that when the grave was opened at the head and foot only five coffins could be found; has he considered the request from the Wandsworth Trades Council asking him to appoint an inquiry to investigate these irregularities; and what reply has he made?
My right hon. Friend is informed by the burial authority that in consequence of an allegation that the grave in question only contained four coffins, a trial excavation was made at the head of the grave and disclosed five coffins within 10 feet from the surface. It was impossible to ascertain without exhuming all the bodies how many more there were in the lower half of the grave, and as the allegation in question had been shown to be untrue further investigation was thought to be uncalled for. With reference to the latter part of the question, my right hon. Friend explained to the hon. Member on the 18th instant, that this is a matter for the Minister of Health. He has accordingly transferred the resolution to the Minister and told the Trades Council that he has done so.
Is the hon. Member not aware that the register shows that there should be ten coffins there, and that the allegations made by many of the grave diggers in the cemetery is that tunnelling operations are going on there and that the bodies are moved by what is called humping.
I am not aware of anything in regard to tunnelling operations.
Is it not a fact that this question was put down to the Minister of Health and has been transferred to the hon. Member's Department?
No, Sir.
British Social Hygiene Council (Grant)
39.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what, if any, conditions are attached to the grant of £500 made to the British Social Hygiene Council; and whether the grant was made after consultation with the Minister of Health?
This grant is made to assist the council in organising pro- paganda work in the Colonies, etc. Its employment is limited to certain specified services, such as the supply of films and medical and educational literature. Payments out of the grant are made only in reimbursement of certified expenditure on approved services. The grant has not recently been the subject of discussion with the Minister of Health, who has no responsibility for work of this kind in the Colonies.
Will the right hon. Gentleman call the attention of the Minister of Health to the valuable services rendered by this council, considering that in the discussions on the Local Government Bill the Minister was very disparaging about it?
Films (Production)
43.
asked the Prime Minister whether he has received representations from British film-producing companies asking him to consider if facilities can be granted to them for the purpose of taking scenes and filming special views of London; and can he say what has been his reply?
I have been asked to reply to this question. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has under consideration certain representations on the subject, including a request for an interview which reached him yesterday. He proposes to arrange an interview before sending any reply.
Is the hon. Member aware, according to the information that I have sent to the Home Secretary, that American film-producing companies have obtained this permission? In those circumstances, why is permission refused to British producing companies?
I am not aware of that fact.
Will the hon. Member look at the correspondence that I have sent to the Home Secretary, pointing out the different instances where permission has been granted to American producing companies?
Yes.
Contributory Pensions Act
12.
asked the Minister of Health the number of pensioners under the Widows', Orphans', and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act who are in receipt of outdoor relief and institutional relief, respectively; and the amount so expended?
Precise information on the points referred to is not available, but it is estimated that the number of pensioners under the Widows', Orphans', and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act, 1925 (including dependent children of widows in respect of whom children's allowances had been granted), who were in receipt of outdoor relief in England and Wales at the end of March, 1928, was about 58,000, and the number of those in receipt of institutional relief was about 2,800; and that Poor Law relief was then being afforded to those persons at the rate of about £600,000 a year and £185,000 a year respectively.
13.
asked the Minister of Health the number of pensioners of whose death notice has reached the Ministry of Health, giving the numbers, respectively, of widows, children, orphans, and aged persons?
The following particulars, showing the number of notified deaths to 21st March, 1929, relate to England and Wales:—
Widows, 5,145; children and orphans, 2,163, of whom it is estimated that 140 were orphans; persons between 65 and 70, 24,359; persons over 70, 28,423.East Africa (Commission's Report)
40.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he proposes to send to East Africa any Colonial Office official or other person to inquire into the questions arising out of the Report of the East Africa Commission; if so, whom he proposes to send and when; into what subjects the inquiries are to be made; and whether such person will have power to negotiate on his behalf as well as to make inquiries?
I hope to make a statement on this matter at the end of questions.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what action is contemplated by the Government with regard to the recommendations of the Report of the recent Commission on Closer Union in East Africa (Cmd. 3234), and what machinery is proposed for giving effect to his undertaking that local opinion in East Africa will be consulted before any final commitments are entered into.
I propose to ask Sir Samuel Wilson, the Permanent Under-Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, to proceed to East Africa as soon as possible in order to discuss the recommendations of the Hilton Young Commission for the closer union of Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda, and such possible modifications of these proposals for effecting the object in view as may appear desirable, with the Governments concerned and also with any bodies or individuals representing the various interests and communities affected, with a view to seeing how far it may be possible to find a basis of general agreement. It will be his task to ascertain on what lines a scheme for closer union would be administratively workable and otherwise acceptable, and to report the outcome of his consultations. His report obviously will not be available until after the General Election, but any proposals for action arising out of it will, in so far as the present Government are concerned, be submitted to Parliament before any final decision is taken.
Do I gather that that answer means clearly that Sir Samuel Wilson will have no power to commit the Government in any way and that the one object of his mission is merely to ascertain local facts; and, further, is it clearly understood that the proposed residence of the High Commissioners is not to be a subject of his inquiry?
Sir Samuel Wilson will not commit the Government or Parliament in any way. His object is merely to ascertain, as I have already stated, on what terms closer union could be made workable and could be made acceptable. No particular question like that of the whereabouts of the capital is excluded from his consideration.
The position then is clear, that, when the new Parliament reassembles, nothing arising out of Sir Samuel Wilson's mission will prejudice in any way the action of any Government called upon to deal with it, and that, before even the Government deals with it, Parliament will have an opportunity of considering it?
The liberty of action of any Government is quite unfettered.
May I ask whether the present investigations will also cover the question of the franchise; as to whether it should be a common franchise or a communal franchise?
That question may be brought to the notice of Sir Samuel Wilson, but the hon. Member is aware of the policy of His Majesty's Government on that matter.
Do I understand that if representations are made to Sir Samuel Wilson, he will also cover in his investigation local feeling with regard to the franchise?
Yes, local feeling in every community concerned, but a change of policy can only result from general agreement.
Kenya (Illtreatment Charge)
41.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether a charge of illtreating a Kenya native, which was brought against a settler in Kenya Colony, and a charge against his native headman and a European police constable of aiding and abetting, have now, owing to the suicide of the settler, been withdrawn in the case of the native headman and the police constable; whether he can state the reason of the withdrawal; and whether he has received a full report of the case?
I have no information beyond the statements which have appeared in the Press, but I expect to receive in due course a full report on the case from the Officer Administrating the Government of Kenya.
Gas Undertakings Bill Lords
Read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Monday, 15th April, and to be printed.—(Bill 91.]
Message From The Lords
That they have agreed to,—
- Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill,
- Pensions (Governors of Dominions, etc.) Bill,
- Unemployment Insurance (Northern Ireland Agreement) Bill,
- Unemployment Insurance (Transitional Provisions Amendment) Bill,
- Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill,
- Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill, without Amendment.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the Borough of Warrington to construct waterworks; to make further provision with regard to their water undertaking; and for other purposes." [Warrington Corporation Water Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act for incorporating and conferring powers upon the Galloway Water Power Company; and for other purposes." [Galloway Water Power Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers on the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of the City of Manchester in relation to their waterworks, tramway, and electricity undertakings; to make further provision with respect to the terms for the supply by them of water in bulk; and for other purposes." [Manchester Corporation Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to provide for the transfer of the gas undertaking of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the borough of Wokingham to the Yorktown (Camberley) and District Gas and Electricity Company and to confer further powers on such Company; and for other purposes." [Yorktown (Camberley) and District Gas and Electricity Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the county council of the
administrative county of Cornwall to extend and improve Torpoint Ferry and to construct a new bridge and street works at Penryn; to alter the boundary between the counties of Cornwall and Devon; to vest the Bodmin County Asylum estate in the said council and make provision for the constitution of the asylum committee; to make further provision with regard to highways, the protection of rivers and streams, and public health; and for other purposes." [County of Cornwall Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the South Lancashire Tramways Company to provide and run trolley vehicles and omnibuses; to change the name of the company; and for other purposes." [South Lancashire Tramways Company (Trolley Vehicles, etc.) Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the Mayor, Aldermen, and Burgesses of the county borough of Grimsby to construct a dock and other works adjoining the existing docks at Grimsby; to confer further powers upon the Corporation in regard to financial matters; and for other purposes." [Grimsby Corporation (Dock, etc.) Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to convert the existing capital of the Wands worth, Wimbledon, and Epsom District Gas Company; to make new provisions as to the charges for gas supplied by and the application of the profits of the Company; and for other purposes." [Wandsworth, Wimbledon, and Epsom District Gas Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to authorise the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Company to raise additional capital; to confer further powers upon the company; and for other purposes." [Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Bill [ Lords.]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers upon the London County Council and Metropolitan borough councils; and for other purposes." [London County Council (General Powers) Bill [ Lords.]
And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to extend the boundaries of the city and county of Kingston upon Hull and for purposes incidental thereto." [Kingston upon Hull Extension Bill [ Lords.]
Warrington Corporation Bill [ Lords],
Galloway Water Power Bill [ Lords],
Manchester Corporation Bill [ Lords],
Yorktown (Camberley) and District Gas and Electricity Bill [ Lords],
County of Cornwall Bill [ Lords],
South Lancashire Tramways Company (Trolley Vehicles, etc.) Bill [ Lords],
Grimsby Corporation (Dock, etc.) Bill [ Lords],
Wandsworth, Wimbledon, and Epsom District Gas Bill [ Lords],
Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electric Power Bill [ Lords],
London County Council (General Powers) Bill [ Lords],
Kingston-upon-Hull Extension Bill [ Lords],
Read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitioners for Private Bills.
Selection (Standing Committees)
Scottish Standing Committee
Mr. WILLIAM NICHOLSON reported from the Committee of Selection; That the following Member, representing a Scottish constituency, is appointed to serve on the Standing Committee for the consideration of all Public Bills relating exclusively to Scotland and committed to a Standing Committee: Miss Jennie Lee.
Report to lie upon the Table.
Adjournment (Easter)
Resolved,
"That this House, at its rising this day do adjourn until Monday, 15th April.—[Commander Eyres Monsell.]
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[ Commander Eyres Monsell.]
Nationalisation
I desire to call attention to some recent statements made by the Prime Minister in the country relating to the subject of nationalisation and the effect they have upon our relations with Dominion Governments. Speaking at Newcastle and reported in the "Times" of the 25th January, the right hon. Gentleman declared that the record of nationalisation is nothing but failure and loss everywhere, and speaking later at Dundee he declared that:
Statements like these are being broadcast in their hundreds of thousands from the Conservative party's General Election war chest. I have copies of them here with their headings "Where Nationalisation has Failed," and "Speakers' Notes." "Speakers' Notes" are most interesting. These documents, with the Prime Minister's speeches, whatever their intention may be can have but one result in our opinion so far as our relations with our Dominions are concerned, and that result will not be a pleasant one. Previous attacks upon Dominion enterprises—and the bulk of these attacks are upon Dominion enterprises—have been publicly resented in Canada and Australia and New Zealand not by those in the Dominions who might be supposed to agree with hon. Members on these benches but by representatives of the Dominions, who, normally, might be supposed to agree with hon. Gentlemen opposite. For example, the last outbreak of this Dominion resentment was in the London "Times" by an ex-Conservative Prime Minister of Australia, Sir Joseph Cook, who writing on the 6th of November, 1926, was most emphatic upon the damage which these attacks were having upon opinion in the Dominions. Sir Joseph Cook went at considerable length into an examination of the Conservative party's facts and figures, which he disputed, and he added:"any policy of nationalisation, of which there is not a single successful instance in any country, in a country controlled by ballot, operated by bureaucracy would inevitably hamper, if it did not lead to the loss of our Overseas trade."
Not only has Sir Joseph Cook protested, but the late Agent-General of Queensland also protested against complete misrepresentations of the financial position of Queensland made by Conservative speakers and writers in this country. He protested in letters to the London "Times," to which no representative Conservative could reply. It is within my knowledge that the most recent series of attacks, in the documents and speeches to which I have referred, have not been made after consultation with the Dominion representatives in London. There have been no inquiry made about the facts, no attempt at all at accuracy. But, as I happen to know, some of these documents are based upon telegrams supplied by the correspondents abroad of the London "Daily Mail." Here is a Prime Minister of this country who goes about using figures and alleged facts which can ultimately be traced to the columns of the "Daily Mail" and to anonymous correspondents of the "Daily Mail" at that. What can the result be if the Prime Minister goes about crying "stinking fish" at Dominion properties and Dominion efforts? It can only have the result of depreciating their values in the money market; it can only have the result of making it more difficult for the Dominions to borrow money in the London market; it can only have the result of depreciating their securities. I hope to show that these statements and allegations, so far as the Dominions are concerned, are made with a hopeless disregard of facts, are made in flagrant violation of official figures which are available in the Library of this House. Those figures have been obtained by question and answer in this House, and it is because of the facts that we propose to challenge these statements this morning. One word more about the Dominion representatives. There are distinguished Conservative or distinguished anti-Socialist Prime Ministers in the Dominions overseas. There are Mr. Ferguson, of Ontario; Mr. Bennet, the leader of the Conservative party in Canada; and Mr. Bruce, the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia. Not one of those three gentlemen can be got to endorse a single statement, made with regard to their own countries' affairs, which is being broadcast as gospel truth by the Conservative party in this country—not one of them. I hear an hon. Gentleman interrupt that He does not expect them to do so. That is a frank avowal that he would not expect the Conservative party leaders in the Dominions, who know most about the facts, to endorse these allegations that are being broadcast by the Tory party machine and by the Prime Minister. Let me now give one or two illustrations. I shall take the Australian railways, which appear to be a great source from which the Prime Minister obtains his election oratory. I am going to confine myself to quotations from Conservative party blue books and official statements. Take the statements of the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia, the leader of the anti-Socialist party there. He came to London and addressed the London bankers on 16th November, 1926. His address was thought so highly of that it was reprinted, and it is available to any Member of this House. What does Mr. Bruce say?"I cannot help feeling that there is just a little too much of this carping criticism which could all be avoided by a reference to all the factors of the situation. The point is that these very small losses are deliberately incurred as matters of national policy and with the knowledge that what is lost in this way is repaid over and over again by other Government receipts."
Nor has the amount of capital expended upon railway development been in any way excessive. Though Australia has a greater railway mileage than Great Britain, the capital cost of the Australian railways is £293,000,000, while the capital represented by the four great British systems is £1,060,000,000. A further advantage of Government-owned railways is that they rendered possible from the very beginning that co-ordinated control which the recent great amalgamations in Britain showed to be recognised as necessary. Then Mr. Bruce goes on:"Australia's railways as Government institutions have enabled development to precede and pave the way for settlement, instead of the slow, wasteful and often socially unfortunate method of allowing settlement to precede development. The railways have proved to be tremendously effective agencies for developing our latent national assets and for opening up avenues for private investment and enterprise, thus making a very great indirect as well as a direct contribution to the national wealth."
Then we have the further fact that it has been the deliberate policy of every Government in Australia to spend money in developing its railways in order to develop its back blocks. In years of drought, in bad seasons, the Government railways have deliberately, as a matter of national policy, reduced the freights in order to save the farmers from ruin. That has been a matter of deliberate policy acquiesced in by all parties in the State. It is a farce to pretend that national railways, regarded as roads and as opening up country when they cannot possibly pay a return for many years to come and only after the country is properly developed—that these railways can be said to be a failure by losing money. 12 n. Take the case of the South African railways. There can be no question about the financial result. I asked the right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, if he would be good enough to put the official figures in the Library of this House. I had the figures, but I wanted them from him. The right hon. Gentleman put the figures in the Library. The State railways in South Africa since 1922 have produced a net profit every year, varying from £1,433,000 down to £311,000 last year. Those are the official figures. Not only so, but here again we have the fact that in times of drought owners of stock who wish to transfer stock to fresh pasturage may simply give promissory notes to the State railways. Goods are carried at half price in bad seasons. In parts of the Cape Provinces and Namaqualand in time of prolonged drought there is free conveyance and also gifts of free water by the State railways. In addition there is a continual reduction in fares and freights, until now the State railways of South Africa carry goods at about 50 per cent. less than the ordinary rates. Take the Nigerian railways alone."Although as a matter of national policy some railways have been built in Australia which it was clearly foreseen could not operate on a commercial basis, the financial position of the railways as a whole is thoroughly satisfactory. Our railways return revenue sufficient to pay all working expenses, to keep the lines in excellent repair and to meet nearly the whole of the interest on their capital cost. In 1924 the earnings of the State railways, after covering all expenses, provided a sum for interest equal to 4¼ per cent. on capital, and a fractional increase in freights and fares would have covered the present slight deficiency of interest and created surpluses for the relief of taxation."
Royal Assent
Message to attend the Lords Commissioners:
The House went; and, having returned,
Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:
Adjournment (Easter)
Question again proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."
I was making reference to the State railways of Nigeria, and last year, as hon. Members may find from the Reports in the Library, there was a profit of £925,000 odd. Freights were reduced simultaneously by from 1s. to 33s. 9d. per ton, according to the class of goods and distances, and, in addition to that, labour rates have generally increased. It is, as far as I know, the only railway system in the world where simultaneously there were very large profits made, considerable reductions in freights and increases in wages. To come to the Canadian National Railways, also a fruitful source of Tory oratory, I do not know that I can do better than quote from a leading article in a leading Conservative newspaper in Canada, the Toronto "Daily Star," after the Prime Minister's speech at Newcastle. In a leading article on 1st February, the Toronto "Daily Star" refers to
It goes on to say:"the surprising statement in the course of a speech by Mr. Baldwin that Canada's experiment in nationalising her railways was causing her a loss of $50,000,000 a year.… Misinformation about nationalised railways or public ownership in any form is provided with easy means of travel all over the world.
The railways were taken over by the Canadian Government and nationalised in order to rescue them from bankruptcy."The nationalised railways are operating in Canada with a success that has silenced every critical voice in the country. They are operating not at a loss but at a net profit of $50,000,000. This net profit more than pays all interest charges except on an accumulated railway debt piled up in the hands of the Government in the course of 70 or 80 years of subsidised private railway operation and management. This piled up debt the railway in private hands would never have attempted to pay. No private company would have accepted the railway as a gift with this debt to pay."
And this is a capitalist Tory newspaper—"Since the nationalisation and consolidation of several railways took place"—
I go to the Canadian Government offices in London, and I ask Mr. Harding, the manager there, if he will oblige with balance sheets for the National Railways in Canada. Any hon. Member can get copies, and the Secretary of State for the Dominions has put them in the Library. What do these balance sheets show? They show that a few years ago the privately-owned railways in Canada were in ruin. They were bound to be given up. They were offered to the Government. They could no longer be continued. The owners could not pay the wages, and they served notice on the Government that they required to close the railways. The Government took over these railways really as a bankrupt concern. What is the financial result? In 1926, there was a net operating profit of $47,000,000 odd; in 1927, a net operating profit of $42,000,000 odd; and in 1928 a net operating profit of $55,000,000. From that there has to be deducted interest due and paid upon the publicly held bonds and other securities, and after paying interest on the publicly held portion of the bonds and securities, there was still a profit on the last three years to hand over to the State Treasury. It is quite true that the railways have not paid interest on the accumulated deficit in the old days of private enterprise, and those of us who were members of the Parliamentary delegation to Canada last year learnt that the Conservative party leaders in Canada agreed that they ought not to pay interest upon these accumulated deficits. But there is no party in Canada—neither Mr. Mackenzie King's party nor Mr. Bennet's party—which is willing to pay, and we know that all parties in Canada were satisfied that the Canadian National Railways under the valuable direction of Sir Henry Thornton have become an unqualified success. There were members of the Government in that delegation. There were the Under-Secretary of State for India, who headed the deputation, and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, both of whom signed a report, which was signed by all parties, in which I find these words:"a miracle has been witnessed—new life surges through the entire system, and failure has been replaced by success."
The Hon. Charles Stewart, Minister for the Interior, in the Canadian House of Commons, used these words:"Another important fact….was the advance of the Canadian National Railways from their old position of insolvency to the profit-making stage….Members of the delegation were impressed throughout their westward tour by the vigour and capacity shown by the management of the National lines under Sir Henry Thornton."
So satisfied were they with the success of the nationalisation of the railways in Canada that leading statesmen, not Socialists at all, stand up publicly in the Canadian House of Commons and declare that they are prepared to extend it. Then I turn briefly to the question of the Indian railways, and I ask the Noble Lord the Under-Secretary of State for India, whom I am pleased to see here—"After the demonstration of public administration of our National railways and public administration by the Hydro Electric of Ontario, you will not have any difficulty in persuading the various Provinces to join hand in hand in bringing about public ownership of our water power and coal mines."
I came out of compliment to the hon. Member.
I appreciate the compliment. The Noble Lord is a very efficient member of the Government, and I ask him publicly in this House if he will give me the results of the State management of the Indian railways. He gives us some of those results in the Library of this House, which show that the net profits on the Indian State railways, including both commercial and strategic lines—upon which there will never be a profit, but which are run away up to the Afghan border for military purposes—for 1927–8 were £8,205,000, and of that sum £4,731,000 was handed to the Indian Treasury in relief of taxation. How can the Prime Minister possibly go about this country saying there is not a solitary instance of the success of nationalisation when we can quote four Members from his own Front Bench who are compelled, in answer to questions in this House, to give results from their own Departments showing the success of nationalisation in one form or another?
In regard to the Australian Commonwealth Shipping Line, I see that the "Speaker's Notes"—a Speaker of the Conservative party, whose notes are not supposed to fall into alien hands at all—for the 7th February, the "Speaker's Notes" for the 21st February, and the Prime Minister, who evidently gets his inspiration from the same source, all agree that the losses on the Commonwealth Shipping Line were £14,000,000, but the Commonwealth Auditor-General, who is supposed to know something more about it, says, in his annual report, published in the Australian Press on the 8th February, this year:"The net loss on the Commonwealth Shipping Line to 31st March, 1928, was £7,967,236."
Is not that enough?
It is only half of the lie that is being told about it. But if you are going to make a balance-sheet on these matters, you must obviously take into account the financial advantages which have accrued to Australia as a result of the Commonwealth shipping venture, and I am going to quote an official Report which has been placed in the Library of this House by the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs. The Report is numbered 132, and dated 11th November, 1927, and hon. Members will find in it the statement that the Commonwealth Line
In October, 1926, another attempt was made to raise freights by 15 per cent. on cargo from the United Kingdom to Australia, but that was frustrated by the Commonwealth Line. The board refused to agree. They only carried 7 per cent. of the total, and their earnings would therefore have gone up materially, but in the interests of Australia they declined. The Report also states:"was instrumental in bringing about a general reduction of approximately 10 per cent. on freight rates on commodities exported from Australia to the United Kingdom and the Continent. Confidential documents placed before the Committee prove that this all round reduction was not a spontaneous action by the other shipowners, but was forced by the determined action of the members of the Shipping Board in Sydney. The annual saving to Australian primary producers and exporters by reason of this reduction alone amounts to far more than the greatest annual loss made by the Line, even including all interest and debenture charges, and it must be remembered that the greater portion of voyage losses was incurred owing to the unsuitable tonnage transferred to the Board."
Since the line has been handed over to Lord Kylsant and his friends, we find, in the City notes of the London "Times":"The annual saving to Australia in this instance again more than covers the annual loss by the Line after including all charges, such as interest and depreciation."
Why did they sell?
Because there was a majority of profiteers in the Commonwealth Parliament. After the line was sold to Lord Kylsant there was an intimation in the City Notes of the London "Times" that a 10 per cent. rise was to be made on the freights between Australia and this country. Surely, if we are to have the balance-sheet at all, we must take into consideration the saving in freights to the primary producer and the development of inter-Empire trade, and, if the profiteers in the shipping world are to be allowed to put up freights 10 per cent., 15 per cent. and another 10 per cent. against Australian-British trade, the results will be much more serious both for Australia and this country than many hon. Members presently imagine. I could on this subject quote the Conservative party in Australia protesting in the interests of Australia against the handing over of this State shipping service to a profiteering interest, which can only regard Australian interests as a secondary consideration.
Then I take the South African Steamships. They show a profit last year, according to the Controller and Auditor-General, of £29,678 net. The Canadian Merchant Marine is another fruitful source of Tory sneers and jeers. Every party in Canada stands by that Merchant Marine, which is an attempt to develop trade between Canada and the West Indies, and to prevent the West Indies falling economically into the orbit of the United States. One might have expected that a party which pretends on the hustings to have some sympathy and friendship for the British Empire, would not spend their time running down a State service which has the support of all political parties in Canada, and which is justified by Liberals, Socialist, and Tories alike in Canada on the ground that it is bringing a big developing trade between the West Indies and Canada, which would otherwise be lost entirely to the United States. With regard to Nigerian shipping, I asked the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether he is aware that the State shipping service of the Government of Nigeria after allowing for depreciation, overhead charges, etc., can transport coal from Port Harcourt to Lagos at 6s. 9d. per ton, whereas the Elder Dempster Company is charging 19s. 6d. for the same service. What does the right hon. Gentleman reply to that? Does he deny it? Not he! He says:There cannot be any denial. Then I take one of the greatest enterprises which I ever had the privilege of studying. I see present hon. Gentlemen opposite who were on the Parliamentary Delegation to Canada last year, and who saw that great Hydro-Electric undertaking operating at Niagara Falls. This is publicly owned, and was originated by a member of the Conservative party. The Conservatives in Canada took office in 1905, and the then Premier took Sir Adam Beck into his Cabinet for the express purpose of securing national ownership of the electric supplies at Niagara and that Cabinet definitely repudiated the profiteering concession handed out by their predecessors in office. What does the Tory Prime Minister of Ontario, Sir James Whitney, say about the hydro-electric scheme? He comes to this country and addresses the Parliamentary Association, the chairman of which is a member of the Government, and he says:"I am aware that the Nigerian Marine Department is able to carry coal at the figure stated."
I remember him pointing to the international bridge at Niagara and saying that half of the bridge was lit by publicly-owned electricity, and the other half was lit by privately-owned electricity from a corporation in the United States, and the publicly-owned current was one-third of the price of the privately-owned undertaking. Investi- gators were sent by the Government of the United States, and they all came back with the same story, that the Canadian electric current, owned by the Hydro Corporation with Government capital administered by the municipality, is at least one-third of the price of private enterprise electricity on the other side of the water. Mr. Fergusson declared that as a result of the cheap electricity supply hundreds of miles away from Niagara Falls, companies are coming over from the United States to build their factories near in order to reap the benefit of the cheaper electricity. I do not know how the right hon. Gentleman is going to attack the Hydro undertaking, and I do not know how he and the profiteers in the forthcoming Election will successfully attempt to prove that nationalisation has been a failure in the Hydro-Electric undertaking of Canada. I turn next to the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, which had a net profit in 1927 of £6,031,000."We have the cheapest electric current anywhere in the world."
Profiteers!
If the hon. Gentleman will listen a minute, he will understand. Part of that profit is handed over in legal taxation; another part is spent upon opening up new branches and developing savings banks all over Australia. These profits are apart from the profits on the note issue, which for the half-year ending 30th June, 1928, amounted to over £500,000. How that is going to be answered I do not know. No Government in Australia would think of stopping the Commonwealth Bank. It was started, certainly, by the Labour party, but it has been adopted and taken over by the Conservatives. It is run as part of the machinery of State in the Commonwealth, and it has been a huge success. Not only has it earned these profits, but it has kept down the rate of interest which would otherwise have been exceeded by private banks. There are any number of other enterprises in the Commonwealth where financial success has been secured. There are butcher shops, fish shops, produce agencies, railway refreshment rooms, and so on. The profits upon all these enterprises can be seen by any hon. Member who cares to turn them up in the Annual Report of the Auditor-General on Public Accounts for 1927–28, Document A.52, Tying in the Library of this House.
Take State insurance. Has that been a loss in Queensland? Can anybody say that? It has raised the benefits paid to workmen who suffer injury from £1 per week to £3 10s. per week, has reduced the premiums paid by the employers, and has handed over profits to the State. Since its inception, there has been an average annual profit of £50,000 handed over in relief of taxation, and premiums have been reduced by from 25 per cent. to 33 per cent. Who is going to say that that system has proved a loss? Its working expenses have been reduced by as much as 13 per cent. compared with those of the companies. One could go on for hours with a catalogue of the successes of nationalisation drawn from the Library of this House. There is the most remarkable instance of the diamond mines of South Africa. The "Daily Telegraph" of 15th March this year prints the annual report of the Treasurer, Mr. Havenga. That shows a net profit of £6,450,000 to the South African Treasury in a year, on a capital expenditure of only £150,000. That is 6,000 per cent. profit; and the money is handed over to the Treasury.Who bought the diamonds?
I can answer that silly question. I can answer as many silly questions as you like to put.
Manners!
I am dealing for the moment with the success, or otherwise, of nationalisation. I am not arguing whether it is advisable or not that we should have diamonds, or that people should wear them, or that we should have a social system in which people want to wear them. I am dealing purely with the financial success or otherwise of State enterprises. I am showing that, according to the "Daily Telegraph" report, there was a profit of £6,450,000 on a capital investment of £150,000 in one year, and that the Treasurer comments:
"This is a complete vindication of the Government's policy of establishing State diggings in the face of the strongest opposition."
Will the hon. Member tell us what diamond mines the South African Government own, and whether the figure he has quoted does not include royalties? They do not own De Beers.
No, but they own State diggings in Namaqualand and other places.
Does the figure include royalties on De Beers?
The words in the "Daily Telegraph" are "net profits."
I do not often intervene. Will the hon. Member allow me to ask him one question: "Who buys the diamonds? Where does the money come from to buy them?"
Will the hon. and gallant Member let me go on with my arguments? I would be very glad at another time to have a discussion on the folly or otherwise of a social system which permits people to have such an accumulation of capital that they can afford to waste money on diamonds. In the meantime, under some difficulties on account of interruptions, I am endeavouring to show the financial results of these State enterprises. Take the State coal mines of Victoria. There was a net profit last year of £74,000, according to the "Financial Times" of 4th February this year. I have not been able to check that figure by any Government report. But I will take the case of Nigeria, about which we have fortunately, official information. The hon. and gallant Member, the Secretary of the Scottish Board of Health was the leader of a delegation to Nigeria in 1928, and on his return he issued an interesting and valuable report, which is in print. He says of Nigeria that there they have nationalised railways, and, what is more, they draw their coal from State mines. The State railway goes to the State mines, the coal is taken out by State miners, and sold to the State railways at a price fixed not by the higgling of the market, but by the costing section of the coal-mining department of the Labour Department. The State railway hauls the coal down to the State port, and loads it into State-owned ships. Further, the land is communally owned.
What is the economic result? The first economic result is that Nigeria buys 70 per cent. of her total imports from this country. She is the best buyer per head of British goods, and her purchasing power is rising more rapidly than the purchasing power of any other part of the British Empire. [Interruption.] I am sorry I could not hear the hon. Gentleman's interruption. Perhaps it was just a cough. I was saying that her purchasing power is rising more rapidly than the purchasing power of any other part of the British Empire; and she has State ownership practically of every possible monopoly. Wages are continuously rising in Nigeria, and we are assured by the delegation which went from this House that there is a state of contentment and happiness visible among the people of Nigeria such as they saw nowhere else in Africa. Hon. Members opposite will have to meet these statements of fact on the hustings. We do not require to go to other parts of the British Empire for examples. We have here some successful results of nationalisation. I personally am not a supporter of public ownership of the liquor traffic, but for other reasons many of my hon. Friends differ from me in that regard. However, the economic results of the Carlisle experiment are surely patent to everyone. The Government have issued a document giving the trading accounts. It is No. 32, and they are on page 96. This report declares that from Carlisle alone the Treasury has received £1, 107,676 since the inception of this experiment. Hon. Members who have attempted to criticise the Carlisle experiment have been at some pains to show that this scheme has paid no Income Tax, no Corporation Profits Tax, and no Excess Profits Duty since its inception, and figures are got out in the Public Accounts Committee upstairs which show that these three sums together would reach £599,000. Even after deducting the £590,000, there remains a profit of £500,000. I cannot see what answer there is to that argument. In reference to the Post Office, it is quite clear that last year the State Department made a net profit of £8,850,000. The Postmaster-General went down to Croydon on the 12th of this month and said:Therefore, we have the admission of the Postmaster-General that he is using the profits made by the Post Office as fresh capital. Take the case of the telegraphs for which the Government paid £10,880,571 of good cash for a property that was valued, goodwill included, at £2,000,000. In the purchase of the telegraphs we gave away £9,000,000 for nothing, a deal which Lord Goschen declared to be wicked and monstrous. Since then, the telegraph department have gone on paying 3 per cent. interest on that bogus £9,000,000. The Post Office Telegraph and Telephone Departments taken together, according to the commercial accounts issued by the Postmaster-General for last year, show a profit of £7,500,000. With all these facts and figures before the Government, taken from official documents relating to the British Dominions and this country, how the Prime Minister can stand up before a public audience and say that there has been no instance of successful nationalisation either in this country or in the Dominions, I cannot imagine. I will end, as I began, by saying that, apart altogether from the political Debates, arguments, and economic discussions which we must have before any fresh developments in nationalisation can take place, we on these benches regard it as a menace to the British Empire that the Prime Minister of this country in order to gain a temporary political advantage, should be going about the country making statements and giving figures which cannot be substantiated, which are untrue in fact, and which can only have the result of making it more difficult for the Dominions overseas to raise money upon their own public property. The course which has been suggested has already been protested against by overseas statesmen. We believe that the attitude of the present Government towards nationalisation is a menace to the continuance of the British Empire, and the sooner they are out of the road the better."If he liked he could show a very much larger surplus on the telephone account, but in effect he was ploughing the profits back into the business."
The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) has made against no less a person than the Prime Minister a very serious charge of telling deliberate untruths. I have in my hand a report of the Prime Minister's speech at Newcastle, and I cannot trace any statement in that speech in which he states that no country under a system of nationalisation has ever produced a profit.
The Prime Minister said at Newcastle on 24th February, 1929:
"Any policy of nationalisation, of which there is not a single successful instance in any country, in a country controlled by ballot, operated by bureaucracy would inevitably transfer, if it did not lead to the loss of our overseas trade."
Of course, if the hon. Member says that the statement he has just read appeared in a speech made by the Prime Minister, I have nothing more to say upon that point. I know that the Prime Minister put a certain question to the Socialist party, and he asked how they proposed:
The fact that he used the expression "many other countries" appears to me to prove to demonstration that the Prime Minister did not make, and could not have made, the categorical charge of total and universal failure attributed to him by the Member for Dundee. Another misleading statement made by the Member for Dundee was to the effect that the Prime Minister chose the bulk of his examples from the Empire. The Prime Minister, in effect, examined the subject impartially. He alluded to the fact that Belgium had abandoned the nationalisation of her railways; that Germany, a highly industrialised nation, had, like ourselves, made a failure of nationalised mines; and that Russia, when all the circumstances should have been favourable for experiment, had made "colossal losses" in the same field. The hon. Member for Dundee went further and made the assertion that the Prime Minister and Conservative critics generally based themselves on unreliable telegrams to the "Daily Mail." Nothing could be wider than the truth. A telegram describing the admission of the President of the American Shipping Board that losses on the nationalised American Mercantile Marine amounted to £72,000,000 in the past eight or nine years was published in the "Times," where it attracted universal attention. There is another point which I should like to make before I examine some of the examples of successful nationalisation which the hon. Member has adduced. One argument used by the hon. Member for Dundee was based on the suggestion that, by examining the facts and figures of nationalisation in the Dominions, a person no other than the Prime Minister is doing some harm to the great imperial cause of which he has always been a faithful champion. I think such a charge as that against the Prime Minister comes very ill indeed from the hon. Member. I have in my possession a series of articles written in the "Manitoba Free Press" in December and January this year, in which comment is made upon what happened in Winnipeg during the visit paid to that country by a deputation of British Members of Parliament. The following criticism appears in one of these articles, which contains a reference by name to the hon. Member for Dundee:"to avoid falling into the same pit into which many other countries so far had fallen in making the experiment of nationalisation."
"Does a lie, once started keep on for ever?
One would hate to think that western Canada will for ever, or even for a century, be 'tarred and feathered and carried in a cart' by a portion of the Press of the Empire because disgruntled men among the British harvesters made certain exaggerated and fantastic statements regarding their treatment here, which were further strengthened by the condemnatory attitude of certain Labour Members of the British Parliamentary Delegation.
1.0 p.m. The allusions scattered through these lines to iron bars and armed soldiers guarding the emigrants, which were all proved to be absolutely false, refer to statements made in Winnipeg by the particular hon. Member, who now accuses the Prime Minister of endangering the Imperial connection by making untrue statements.Will the 'Iron gate' in the second-class waiting-room of the Dominion Government immigration hall at Winnipeg, which has now become 'iron cages in which we were imprisoned,' frighten away good settler material in the Old Country, because these Parliamentarians passed by—not a poet this time—and with the dramatic way of orators referred to it in the striking term, 'Iron cage'."
On a point of Order. If the hon. Gentleman desires to have a discussion upon what happened at Winnipeg, that can be quite easily arranged, but I submit that, as there will be no opportunity on this occasion of replying to or rebutting these statements, it is irrelevant that they should be made. I am perfectly willing if I can be given a further opportunity of replying.
May I point out that the hon. Member made certain allegations about the Prime Minister—I think he said that the Prime Minister had been round crying "stinking fish"—and yet the Prime Minister is not even in this town, and the hon. Member knows that he cannot be in this House, and, therefore, cannot rebut what the hon. Member has said about him.
Is it not the case that any subject can be raised on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House?
One subject is as relevant as the other. It is true that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) has spoken, and so has exhausted his right to speak. But no doubt one of his friends can speak in reply.
I should not have referred to the matter but for the cruel and damaging charges which have been made against the Prime Minister by the hon. Member for Dundee. I was in Winnipeg myself at the time, and I know that there have been few more serious occurrences, from the point of view of the relationship between Canada and the home country, than those events in Winnipeg in which the hon. Member was concerned. [Interruption.]
I should like to examine a few of the cases which the hon. Member has adduced as actual practical examples of the advantages of nationalisation. He alluded to the fact that, by question and answer in this House, the information had been obtained from the Under Secretary of State for India that of late years the Indian State Railways have been making considerable profits. It is a fact, which everyone who is interested in India must be very pleased to learn, that the State Railways have been making a profit of £8,000,000 or £9,000,000 a year; but the hon. Member does not seem to be aware that these very important railways have been the property of the State in India since 1880, a matter of 48 years. I have here the Report of the Acworth Committee on Indian Railways, which gives some idea of the results of that experiment over a long term of years. This is what the Report says:That is on an outlay of very nearly £400,000,000. The Report—it was written in 1921—goes on to say:"To the end of the last century there was an annual loss amounting in the aggregate to £51,500,000. For the next 10 years the State secured a small annual profit, ranging roughly from £100,000 to £1,250,000."
Then, coming to the final result:"In the last nine years the profits have been considerable, averaging up to £4,000,000 per annum."
In effect, the Report states that the making of so great a profit out of the State railways was rather a proof of the deleterious consequences which often arise from State management. It is notorious that, until the recent separation of the Railway Budget from the State Budget, the State milked these railways relentlessly. Something like £14,000,000 or £15,000,000 was taken from the railways in a single year and they were left with nothing for renewals or reserves—"These heavy profits, apparently, began to be made in the War years."
They must have been really profitable.
I have paid not that a profit was made, but that the State took from them £14,000,000 or £15,000,000 without leaving them anything for replacements, renewals, reserves and so on. The very serious state into which the Indian nationalised railways were allowed to get is just an example of the dangers of nationalisation. At present a profit of £7,000,000 or £8,000,000 is being made, but it is on a capital investment of about £400,000,000. The hon. Member never referred at all to capital charges. Do not let us be told that these profits have been made, without any mention of capital charges. The hon. Member, I think, mentioned that the South African railways made a profit of £370,000, but I wonder what the capital at charge is. I cannot tell the House in that case, but in the case of the Indian railways the House can rely upon its being something like £400,000,000, while the profits are now something like £8,000,000 or £9,000,000 per annum. That in itself is rather exceptional and not yet characteristic of these railways, although everyone hopes that it will be permanent.
Would the hon. Member be good enough to make it clear whether these profits on the Indian railways are not after interest at the rate of 5 per cent. has been paid on the invested money?
These are genuine profits—
After allowing 5 per cent. interest on the capital.
The profits that have been made during the past three or four years, since the separation of the general Budget from the railway Budget, have been perfectly genuine profits, and the interest has been paid on the capital. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] That is so, but look at the contrast with the previous 40 or 50 years. I was trying to tell the House what the cause of the profits has been. In the first place, India for three or four years has had a succession of extraordinarily good monsoons, and there have been other rather exceptional reasons. For instance, in, I think, 1923, permission was given to raise freights and passenger rates. We hope that the profits will go on, but the point is that the amount of capital at charge and the previous history of these railways are very important factors in arriving at a balance of advantage as between State and company management. They are now living under a new regime in India, and there has not yet been time for all the possible developments of nationalisation suggested by the Acworth Committee. One of the serious effects of complete national management has been that strikes on these railways and in the shops have become considerably more frequent, and, since the nationalisation of the management of the railways, there has been considerably greater pressure to favour special classes in the community. If the facts are going to be stated in the country, they should be stated in relation to the amount of capital at charge, and it should also be clearly explained that the system is on its trial, and that it is quite impossible at the present time to prognosticate anything in regard to its future working.
Reference was made by the hon. Member to a report, which I do not think I am guilty of an impropriety in saying was drafted by me as the Secretary of the Delegation to Canada. The statement was, of course, seen and passed by other members of the Delegation before it was published, and I do not think that any alterations were made. In justice to myself, I should like to read the whole of the passage to which the hon. Member referred. I do not know why he did not read it in its entirety; it seems unfortunate. The passage is a quotation from a speech made at Montreal in the presence of the hon. Member, of myself, and of Lord Peel, the Chairman of the Delegation, by Mr. R. S. White, whom I myself described as a veteran Canadian Parliamentarian and publicist, and it was obviously included in the Report in justice to Canada, in order to show that the Delegation had been seriously studying the whole economic outlook of that country. It says:"Owing to the advance of the Canadian National Railways from their old position of insolvency to the profit-making stage on the £200,000,000, approximately, of national bonds and debentures held by the public it was possible in 1926 and 1927 to pay a dividend from profits, although the payment of a net return on the whole of the £200,000,000 of national stock and bonds held by the Canadian Government is still a matter of future development."
further stated that it was extremely problematical whether a single penny of interest would ever be paid on that sum. Do let us have a full disclosure of the facts.
I distinctly stated that no dividend was paid on that sum.
The only comment I would like to suggest is that that very fine system of railways is showing, as we said in our Report, signs of great vitality, but I would suggest to the hon. Member that a great deal of that has been brought about by the fact that Sir Henry Thornton was induced to go over there again, after having been associated with extraordinary success in the management of one of our own company-managed lines. To throw further light on this matter, I should like to refer to the balance-sheet of the Canadian National Railways, and perhaps some succeeding speaker on the Opposition side will explain these facts. I have here the consolidated balance-sheet at the 31st December, 1927, and I do not think that to quote it can do any harm to the relations between this country and Canada. Otherwise, I would not mention it, but it is a subject of discussion from one end of the Dominion to the other, and they are rather gratified than otherwise at any serious interest taken here in their economic affairs. The balance-sheet contains the following item:
What is the meaning of that? Then there is this item in the income statement:"Profit and Loss Balance—Deficit…438,413,818 dollars."
That is not a very great matter, but further on it says:"Miscellaneous operating deficit…45,000 dollars."
"Net income deficit:
Year ending 31st December, 1926…27,247,000 dollars.
I will not attempt to go into the accounts, but I do think that the Prime Minister may very well have been justified in suggesting that there was at least a net loss of £10,000,000. Then I should like to say a word or two about the shipping figures given by the hon. Member. There, again, the Prime Minister did not rely on the "Daily Mail," and it is very curious that, a few days after he spoke, everything that he said in this regard was completely confirmed by no less a person than Sir William Currie, the president of the Chamber of Shipping, a man whose industry and character are known throughout the shipping world. He said this:Year ending 31st December, 1927…31,373,000 dollars."
Have the conditions, in those Dominions to which the hon. Member referred, really been tangibly compensating conditions? The hon. Member for Dun- dee quoted a statement made, I think, possibly, by Mr. Bruce in Australia, or certainly by an Australian Conservative, to the effect that the admitted losses had been almost intentionally incurred with a view to the system of back-block settlement and so forth. Here, again, I do not want to say a word that will impede the development of the process of migration to our overseas Dominions. Most of us want to aid that process as far as we can. But is not the result of all this experimentation in Australia rather to retard that back block settlement than otherwise? I remember hearing the Australian Prime Minister say in this Palace of Westminster that the cost of that black block settlement, owing to the high cost of living, grows higher and higher every year until you hear of staggering sums of £2,000 or £3,000 that are needed to plant migrants on the land. The hon. Member has made out no really valid case either against the Prime Minister or in favour of nationalisation. All over the world, all over Europe, all over the British Empire, and at home also, there is a great cloud of witness adverse to his proposition. I thought his defence of the Post Office was extraordinarily flimsy. What is the capital? How many hundreds of millions have been put into the Post Office account? As to the telegraph service, I do not know how anyone can defend it in the face of the Hardman Lever report. Wherever you examine it, the Prime Minister's contention is sound. It is very difficult to slow any clear example of nationalisation which will stand complete investigation as to capital and current account, where over a term of years a genuine profit has been made and the economic position of the taxpayers improved by the experiment."One of the principal difficulties which British shipping has had to face since the War has been the incursion into the industry of various countries in the form of State-owned ships. Whether the results justify this experiment must be left to the judgment of those who indulge in the experiment, but it would seem to the onlooker that losses of £3,250,000 over seven years, such as Australia has suffered, £56,000,000 over seven years in America, and £1,750,000 over five years in Canada, require some very tangible compensating conditions."
The subject of the Hardman Lever Report has been discussed several times in the House, and a sufficient answer was given to the statements in reference to the telegraphs. The last speaker exhibits the Tory mind upon this question by his reference to the Post Office and to the fact that Rowland Hill established the penny post many years ago, and that we are now charged 1½d. for our stamps instead of 1d. When Sir Rowland Hill established the penny post, economic conditions and price values were considerably different from what they are now, and I do not think it would be very easy to find any company or any industry which has only increased its prices 50 per cent. over pre-war. After all, the point is that the telegraphs are part of the national Post Office concern. Reasons have been given for the handicap the State has had with regard to the telegraphs and the astounding ramp many years ago which the nation, is paying upon to-day—paying upon false capital to the extent of 3 per cent. Those matters have not been answered by the last speaker.
I want to go on to one or two things he mentioned with regard to Canadian and Belgian railways and other subjects connected with public enterprise. He quoted some figures to show that some millions have been lost upon the Canadian State railways. I imagine he means millions of dollars and not sterling. He does not mention that those railways were taken over because they were in a state of complete insolvency. Suppose it were true that at this date, nearly 10 years after they had been declared by the highest authorities perfectly bankrupt, there were losses to the extent of a few million dollars on some branches of that national service.433,000,000 dollars deficit.
Upon what? Certainly not a deficit so far as the earnings and the progress of the State railways are concerned. I know precisely to what the hon. Member is referring. For 70 years, under private ownership, those railways which have been nationalised have paid practically no dividend. Yet because there are losses from a certain aspect to the extent of some millions of dollars, and after 10 years of unquestionable progress, which is admitted by everybody who knows anything about those railways, we are told that that is an argument against nationalisation. After the War, the Canadian Government found it necessary to take over those railways, and, in adjudicating upon the question of compensation, two out of the three arbitrators took the view that the Preference and Common Stocks had no value. The shareholders appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and Lord Birkenhead delivered the judgment upholding the award. After 70 years of private enterprise, the shares have no value. After 10 years of public enterprise, the railways have been put upon a profit-making basis, upon the basis of huge advances to the advantage of Canada, huge advances between income and output, and yet we are told that the example of the Canadian State Railways is an argument not in favour of nationalisation, but against nationalisation. The net earnings for 1928 exceeded 50,000,000 dollars. Of course, if you load these schemes with all the failures of private enterprise before, and expect an additional profit out of them, you can always show a loss. That is precisely what is done in order to show losses upon national and municipal enterprises all over the world and all over this country. What you call debt, you would, if it were private enterprise, call capital. That is the difference. You are paying twice over.
The hon. Member is under a complete misapprehension. In the income (accounts, there is a net income deficit. There is no charge in these accounts whatever for interest. It had a net income deficit of 34,000,000 dollars, over £6,000,000, in December, 1927.
That does not alter the statement which I was making. I am going to deal with my argument in my own way, and it is sound enough to stand without interruptions of that kind. This applies to the Indian railways in the same way. If you are going to pay private enterprise as well as expect money to be made for public services, you put a double burden upon national enterprise. The "Economist"—and it is an announcement coming from a journal of standing—says this about the Canadian State railways on the 22nd December, 1928:
That is the evidence of the leading financial journal of this country. Reference has been made to Sir Henry Thornton, the idea of the argument being that if you can show that a national railway or a national concern of any kind has the good sense to employ brains and ability in the prosecution of the concern, that that is a tribute to private enterprise. After all, we of the Labour party who want more public enterprise and to nationalise concerns which are essentially national in their character—not all industry—say that the nation can quite as well employ the best brains and ability of the nation as can a private board of directors. There is nothing that capitalists as capitalists, apart from the possessors of brains and ability, an do for the nation that the nation, properly organised, cannot very well do for itself, and there is abundant evidence in proof of that statement. Sir Henry Thornton, who is a man whose word is to be respected in regard to the affairs for which he is responsible, says:"When it is realised that as short a time ago as 1922 the earnings of the State-owned systems were slightly less than 3,000,000 dollars the improvement in position can only be considered as phenomenal."
I want to put before the House the consideration that after all the mere question of whether a concern pays financially is not the only, and not necessarily the main, consideration. Public enterprise pays even when there is no profit at all, or no possibility of profit. We do not expect the Navy to make a profit or Westminster Bridge to make a profit. We do not expect other concerns of public service to be judged from the standpoint of an ordinary commercial balance-sheet. The hospitals, of course, are largely voluntary services. That view is supported by no less an authority than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I know that if one is going to quote the Chancellor of the Exchequer one is faced with the fact that he can prove almost anything from the statements which he has made. The right hon. Gentleman, advocating railway nationalisation in 1918, said:"We have knocked sky-high the belief that good and efficient management with enterprise and initiative cannot be applied successfully to a Government-owned railway."
That is a quotation taken from the "Dundee Advertiser" of the 5th December, 1918."So long as the railways were in private hands they might be used for immediate profit. In the hands of the State, however, it might be wise to run them at a loss if they developed industry, placed the trader in close contact with his market and stimulated development."
Who pays the loss?
The people of the nation pay out of one pocket and put the money into another pocket. I should not myself call that a loss. Surely, hon. Members have intelligence enough to realise that it is quite feasible that when the nation can afford to pay for a service it is going to be an advantage in several and more general directions. That is part of the business of government. In answer to the statement that the people pay the loss, let me give the hon. Member an illustration of the kind of thing I mean. I am not advocating free transport in this country. I do not think that this would be at all possible or practicable, but, supposing it was, and that the whole of this nation were to decide that it would be more economical if everybody could travel free on all railways and tramway systems, no profit could possibly be made. There would be no balance-sheet of an ordinary commercial character whatever. All the outgoings would be clear outgoings and there would be no incomings at all. If the nation decided that that would be the most efficient way of running the services, what is there to be said about it? The nation would pay. Everybody pays for everything which is worth having. The people who pay are the nation, but, in that case, they would have their services rendered in one particular fashion rather than put profit into private pockets. That is the only difference. What nonsense it is to talk about a commercial balance-sheet, which is the first, the primary, and almost the only consideration in private enterprise, and to argue as if that were the only consideration when dealing with public services.
The hon. Member was very much concerned and affected by the statement of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston), who said that the Prime Minister's statement that nationalisation had never shown a success in any part of the world. If there is no truth in that statement, then the Tory literature with which the nation is being flooded to-day is not true, and the electors at the next general election are being deliberately misled by the Tory party. The quotation occurs in Tory literature, that the Prime Minister said distinctly that there was no case anywhere in the world where nationalisation had succeeded.
He was referring to mines.
I will read an extract from the speech of the Prime Minister, which appears in "The Times" newspaper. The Prime Minister said:
"The industry is shrinking in every way."
That has reference solely to the mining industry.
I will read everything that the hon. Member wishes me to read. The Prime Minister said:
"With regard to mines, I would remind you that in this country from 1917 to early 1921, when they were controlled by the Government, 40 millions was paid into them by the Exchequer. Germany has tried it. She is a highly industrial country and has given it up. Even in Russia, where you would think all circumstances were favourable for experiment—(Laughter)—the losses have been colossal. The industry is shrinking in every way, and a portion of their richest mines have been leased to a foreign syndicate. The record is nothing but failure and loss everywhere. If loss is made it can only be made up in one of two ways. It can be made up by the Exchequer, which means the taxpayer, which means you, or it can be made up by reducing wages. There is no other way. I think we deserve a little more information about a great change of that kind before we express our approval of it."
I submit that that is proof positive that the Prime Minister never made the statement that has been attributed to him by hon. Members. He was talking about the mines.
If that is proof positive that the Prime Minister was talking about mines, what is the use of the headquarters of the Tory Party broadcasting all over the country, on posters and in leaflets, the statement, without its context, without any reference to mines, that nationalisation does not pay and has not paid anywhere? That is the answer to the hon. Member, if there is any ambiguity in the quotation from the speech of the Prime Minister. Reference has been made to the Belgian railways, by way of quotation from Tory leaflets. The hon. Member said that Belgium had given up her railways, and that Germany had given up her railways; that they had been failures and had been given back to private enterprise. Does the hon. Member agree that that is a fair statement?
I read a quotation from the Prime Minister's speech with reference to those railways.
The hon. Member throws the responsibility upon the Prime Minister. Therefore I will deal once more with the Prime Minister. What are the facts? The Prime Minister stated that Belgium had given up her national railways. For 70 years the Belgian railways were a magnificent commercial success. Their fares and their zone system were the wonder of the world, so far as advantage to the community was concerned. The service was given at practically cost price for 70 years by the State. The railways were not given over to private enterprise, and they do not belong to private enterprise to-day. So far as certain changes have been made, it has been because of the success of the Belgian State Railways and not because of their failure.
indicated dissent.
"No," says the hon. Member. As a result of the War, Belgium's finances became in a lamentable condition. Everybody knows that and everybody understands why that was the case. The result of that situation was, that the Government could not meet the Treasury Bonds which were falling due and it was necessary to take the one great national asset, the railways, as backing for the Government's financial responsibilities to the private holders of Treasury Bonds. Therefore, the Belgian Government induced the holders of Treasury Bonds to take railway bonds in place of them. The Government's great asset was the railways. Thereupon, the Government formed a company, called the Belgian National Railways. These are the railways supposed to have been given back to private enterprise. A lease was given to a company to work the railways for several years. The capital of the company was divided into 6 per cent. preference shares, participating in surplus profits, and ordinary shares. The holders of the Treasury Bonds were asked to take these preference shares, which they did, without any representation upon the board of directors.
The result was that the Government were relieved of their financial difficulties. It was purely a war measure, and purely the result of the abnormal circumstances incident upon post-War difficulties. The point about it is that the railways are still national railways. They are still run by the nation. They are not managed by private enterprise. All the ordinary shares are owned by the Belgian Government. The preference shares which were given in place of the Treasury Bonds do not carry any representation in the management of the railways. The board of directors is composed as follows: 15 members appointed by the Government direct, three chosen by the Government from a panel nominated by the State Industrial Council, Labour Members and the State Council of Agriculture, and three members appointed by the railway workers through their various trade unions and other organisations. That is what is called giving the State railways back to State enterprise, because they failed. This was done as a financial measure because of the abnormal difficulties of Belgium. It was done not because of the failure of State enterprise but because of the tremendous success of State enterprise.To get rid of political influence.
The hon. Member cannot get out by bringing in another issue. He must stick to the argument. The statement was that the Belgium railways had failed, and because of their failure they had been given back to private enterprise. So far as political influence is concerned, I find plenty of political influence in regard to private enterprise in this House. Therefore, the Belgium railways remain the property of the State, and except for certain independent appointments they are still Government managed.
What about the German railways? This is another instance, we are told, of the failure of nationalisation. It is another case of war difficulties. The transfer of German railways to what is alleged to be private enterprise was insisted upon by General Dawes. It was not a question of the failure of the German railways. They are not a failure; they are a magnificent success. General Dawes knew that they were a magnificent success, and he viewed them with his eye on reparations. That is the reason why he provided for the creation of a private railway company with a mortgage of 11,000,000 gold marks in reparation bonds. That was imposed upon Germany.The reference was to the German experiment in the nationalisation of mines.
It is mentioned in Tory literature that nationalisation, apart from mines, has failed, and it was mentioned by the Prime Minister. I am concerned about the insidious lying that is going on on the part of the Tory party.
Nothing was said in the Prime Minister's Newcastle speech about the German railways. The reference was to mines.
Let us see about the State mines in Germany. Mr. Baldwin inferred that Germany had given up State ownership of mines.
I must ask the hon. Member not to refer to hon. Members by name.
I apologise for my mistake. The Prime Minister inferred that Germany had given up State ownership of mines. That is not the case. The various German Governments are large owners of coal, iron, potash, and other mines principally through their shareholdings in companies. In the prospectus issued on 6th November of the Prussian Electric Company it was stated that the Brunswick Coal Mines, one of the most successful lignite producing undertakings in Germany, was owned as to 92 per cent. of the shares by the Prussian Electric Company and the Electric Power Company. It was not added that these companies are directly but entirely owned by the German Government. That raises a point of great interest in this matter.
When we define nationalisation we are not advocating a system of complete centralised bureaucratic management of the whole of industry. The position of the Socialist party, and Socialist opinion, is that there are certain industries which serve a national purpose and which cannot be split up. You cannot split up the railways; they are a national service. The Post Office is a national service; you cannot run the Post Office on local or varied lines. It has to be co-ordinated because it is essentially national in its character. We say that because of their basic character the coal mines of this country are a national service, but it does not follow that we believe in nationalising everything. We do not. We believe in public ownership; in the people democratically organising their own work and their own resources in order to make the best for themselves and their country, but there is sufficient elasticity in Socialist theories to allow the principle not merely of nationalisation but of local administration and co-operative methods, and also methods which are known amongst the intelligentsia of the Socialist movement as guild Socialism. Under Socialism there will be much more real individualism than you have to-day. No Socialist desires to interfere with things which are essentially individual in character. I am thinking about art and music, and the production of books. What the Socialist says is that industry and the resources of the nation should be taken out of the hands of profit mongering individuals; that no one has a right to make a profit out of the labour of someone else. Nationalisation is a principle which we seek to apply under capitalism. It is not Socialism, although it is managed on Socialist lines in a Socialist state. We advocate nationalisation for services which are ripe for nationalisation and which can be organised most efficiently on national lines. I should like to refer to another argument that has been used. We can show all over the world how efficiently national and municipal services can be run on national lines. In the town of Rosario in Southern America the drainage is leased to a public company. It is one of the most inefficient drainage systems in the world, but it makes a profit of 12 per cent. The Tory party—I notice that the Liberal party are absent as usual not having got over the effect of the Albert Hall meeting last night—would argue that Rosario with its inefficient drainage system was a success because it puts 12 per cent. into the pockets of private individuals, and that the main drainage system of London, which is one of the wonders of the world, is a failure because it does not put 12 per cent. into private pockets. The hon. Member for Penryn and Falmouth argues that if you show a small profit on a big capital it is not worth mentioning. The difference is that the bigger profits on a small capital when they go into private pockets go to the advantage of private persons, and it is much more important to the public advantage that a small profit should go into the public purse than a large profit should go into private pockets. But why should we look at this question from the standpoint of making profits at all? When it is a question of serving the interests of commercial men in this House hon. Members ask that the Postmaster-General should bring about a return of the penny postage because the Post Office is making £6,000,000 profit. How dare the Post Office make that profit? The argument is that when it comes to making out a case against nationalisation a small profit is of no concern, but that when you have a large profit it must go into private pockets before you can prove it is a success at all. I think the case for nationalisation is proved overwhelmingly throughout the world.I do not want to follow the last speaker into an examination of the case in favour of nationalisation, but I am tempted to say a word or two on the question of the Belgian and German national railways.
Will the hon. and gallant Member give us the date; whether it is pre-War or ante-War?
Well, the hon. Member might allow me to say two or three words before he interrupts. In regard to the Belgian railways, and also in regard to the German railways, I do not understand why if they were so very profitable the system has been altered by anyone at all. The two cases are not quite parallel. For some reason the people in Belgium who knew the facts of the case in regard to their own railways made a change, and the change was rather away from absolute Government control and towards, at any rate, a wider system of control. The people of Belgium, apparently, did not agree with the strangle grasp of nationalisation on their railways. With regard to the German railways, it is a matter of history that when the Reparations Commission under General Dawes went to Germany to find out how we could get reparations from Germany they settled on the German railways as a very prosperous concern.
Why did the Commission not leave them with exactly the same management if they were so very prosperous, and if they considered that by the same management we should get the maximum amount of reparations from them? General Dawes was faced with a difficult problem. He was not a capitalist or an employer of labour, or any bad sort of man like that. He was sent as an American financier to find out how we could get the last penny out of this defeated country; and he fixed on the railways. But he did not leave the railways of Germany entirely under national ownership. It was not a change entirely towards private ownership, but it was a change in that direction. He altered the system of control of the railways in Germany, and the action of General Dawes shows that they were not quite so well managed as they might have been. I see that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) is again in his place. I am horrified that he, of all people in the world, has called the veracity of the Prime Minister into account. I speak with feeling because I read the hard things which the hon. Gentleman says about people in the paper which he edits in the West of Scotland. That paper is full of abuse of everyone with whom the hon. Gentleman does not happen to agree. I believe that we can safely leave the veracity of the Prime Minister to the judgment of the general public, particularly when the record of the Prime Minister is compared with the record of the hon. Member. The Prime Minister has remained silent amid the jeers and taunts of hon. Members opposite, while struggling for national prosperity during 1926 and the other difficult years which have had to be faced during the lifetime of this Government. The record of the hon. Member for Dundee can be read. Hon. Members can get his paper "Forward" in the Library. I have a number of quotations here. Everyone who believes in fair play will be entirely disgusted by what they read in the columns of that newspaper. I believe that if a system of nationalisation, even the restricted system of which the last hon. Member spoke, were found to be the best thing for the industry of the country we should most certainly have that system. We have heard many cases cited. Some hon. Members have said that nationalisation has been a success, and others have said that it has not been a success. That is not the way in which we have to approach the problem. We have to make up our minds whether our industrial machine could in any way be speeded up by the adoption of nationalisation. Of course the old policy of the Socialist party was to throw the net of nationalisation over all the industries of the country. I was glad to hear from one hon. Member that they have reached a sort of convalescent stage, that the disease is passing out of their minds and bodies, and that now they say that nationalisation is only to be applied to certain industries.What I said can be seen in "Labour and the Nation," the official statement of the Labour party. Socialists never did say that they were in favour of the nationalisation of everything.
I am judging from the remarks that fell from the hon. Member just now. He rather let the cat out of the bag by his later remarks, which showed that though the Socialists are hoodwinking the country in "Labour and the Nation," and are putting that point before them, there are remarks of hon. Gentlemen, to be read in the OFFICIAL REPORT, which show that the net is still to be drawn over all the industries of the country But we can pass from that subject. The hon. Member for Dundee, we presume, wishes to nationalise the industries only because he thinks that it would be for the benefit of the country generally. The Prime Minister is not in favour of nationalising industry. Let us again compare the records of the two men. What did the hon. Member for Dundee do in 1926, when we had a great trial of strength and fortunately the country emerged and, though shattered, was eventually put on the way to recovery. What did the hon. Member for Dundee do then? Did he go anywhere and try to help the workers out of their trouble? Certainly not. He supported a strike, and even in my constituency he was all the time trying to keep the miners back from getting a decent and honourable settlement, such as they could have got long before. On records again the country will certainly turn to the Prime Minister.
The hon. Member was partly responsible for the loss of £7,000,000 in the trade of the country in 1926, by his support of industrial upheavals. The workers of the country should know that he was partially responsible for the misery of thousands of homes, for the unemployment of one-fifth of our industrial population. Now he comes and says that he really has at heart the welfare of the workers of the country. All I can say is that it is very difficult to believe that the sheet is entirely white in 1929 when it was so extraordinarily black in 1926. I do not believe that there is any machinery in the Government that could control the great industries of the country. Where it can be found that an industry could be worked better under nationalisation, let it work under that system, but let every single industry be examined on its own merits as a business proposition. No one would say nay to that. There is, however, only a certain amount of interference that the Government and Parliament can apply to industry, if good is to be done. 2.0 p.m. Lord Melchett has instituted something which most of us hope will result in a great Industrial Council on which both sides, workers and employers, can get together to thrash out the problems of industry. How absurd it is to think that this House could thrash out the great affairs of industry! The hon. Member for Dundee, speaking from the Front Opposition Bench, has given us a vicious and bad-tempered speech. He has tried to advocate nationalisation, a great change in our industrial system. The speech itself was a condemnation of nationalisation. The Government has not gone in for a general system of nationalisation and never will do so. It has gone as far as it possibly can go already. It has gone a long way to help industry by its de-rating scheme and safeguarding measures, and I am sure that the country as a whole will accept the lead given to it by the Prime Minister rather than that given to it in the speech of the hon. Member for Dundee. The hon. Member for Dundee has gone all round the world for examples of where nationalisation has been a success. He has told us all sorts of stories about the Commonwealth Shipping Line in Australia. He has said that, even if the Commonwealth Shipping Line was running at a loss to the nation, that was able to give cheaper freights than Lord Kylsant's line or some other line. But these cheaper freights were only given at the expense of the community; and why should you burden the community in order to bolster up one particular trade?They know their own business best.
In this case, with all respect, I do not think they did, because they sold the Commonwealth Line after about five years at a loss of several millions of pounds. They made their experiment, and they practically admitted that the experiment was a failure. I do not wish to detain the House with all these examples, but I would refer to a report which appeared in the "Sunday Times" in October last of evidence given by a Mr. Eggleston before a Royal Commission which inquired into the finances of the State railways in Victoria. He said:
Is it really in the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite to benefit industry, three years after they nearly smashed it, or is it only the case that they want to make our railways and other public services happy hunting grounds for themselves?"The railways instead of being an asset to the Government were a burden on the community, and he definitely attributed this fact to political interference. If this political interference continued, the railway service would become an instrument of wholesale corruption, resulting in large losses to the State. The railways would become the playground of politicians and a sink for public funds."
Who is the gentleman whose words the hon. and gallant Member is quoting? What is his position, and who did he represent?
He was one of the witnesses before this Royal Commission. He is a Member of Parliament in Australia, and knows the conditions in Australia. He is not one of the people who are sitting here thousands of miles away, telling us all about the Australian railways. He was able to speak from first-hand knowledge of the railways of his own country. The hon. Member for Dundee also referred to the hydro-electrical power scheme in Ontario. I have here the report of a United States Committee which was appointed to inquire into the electrical supplies of the United States and Canada, and they find that the municipal plants of the United States have an average revenue per kilowatt hour, which is 73 per cent. higher than the average revenue collected by the private companies. They find in Canada in 1925 the average revenue per unit of the municipal plants including this hydro-electric scheme in Ontario was 83 per cent. higher than that of the private plants. It is not a fact therefore that this scheme is an unqualified success. The hon. Member for Dundee visited Canada, but he was only there a few weeks at most. Yet he comes back and claims to be able to tell us all about the benefits of this great concern. This committee which was sent from New York to inquire into the prosperity of these electrical concerns expresses a contrary view. Again, who are we to believe—the people on the spot, or hon. Members sitting here? The hon. Member wants us now to alter the whole industrial system of this country—he and his friends having benefited our industrial system so much in the year 1926. If nationalisation can be proved an unqualified success in every place, let us adopt it; but do not let us forget that its adoption means that we must stop, or at least slow down our industrial machine. The people who will get the advantage of that slowing down or stoppage will be our foreign competitors, and the people who are going to suffer are the workers of the country. Is this system of nationalisation going to make for employment?
The same commission said so.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Shinwell), writing only last November in "Forward," said the reverse. He said that nationalisation would never solve the unemployment problem. So that there is disagreement between hon. Mem- bers opposite on that point. Let us have sanity in this matter. Do not let us treat it, as the hon. Member for Dundee has treated it, merely as a political stunt. He has come into the House showing temper, and abusing the Prime Minister.
I have never heard a more ill-tempered speech than your speech to-day.
The country, however, will decide for sanity and the Prime Minister rather than for the hot words and abuse of the hon. Member for Dundee.
rose—
Sir Laming Worthington-Evans.
I would have liked very much to have heard the hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy), who was not in his place in the earlier stages of the Debate. If he had been I would have made other arrangements, and would have been prepared to give way to him, but I think it is now time to reply to the Debate which has been occupying the House for some time.
I was speaking on the nationalised wireless.
This Debate has been initiated, not by an advocate of nationalisation putting forward the claims of nationalisation, but by one who sought to convict the Prime Minister of inaccuracies in certain references which he had made to nationalisation. I propose to follow the same line. I do not propose to deal with the case for or against nationalisation, but to confine myself to showing that what the Prime Minister said was actually and absolutely accurate, and that he was justified in saying it. Let us first make sure what the Prime Minister did say. Various quotations have been made, and I have been trying to follow them with the aid of an extract from the "Times" report, and I have heard things attributed to the Prime Minister which were not in fact said by him. The Prime Minister began by saying:
"There are one or two questions on which the electorate ought to be instructed by those who say they are advocates of nationalisation, whatever that may mean." It is noticeable that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) did not take up that challenge. He did not say: "You want to know the answers to these questions. These are the answers." He might have tried to do that had he chosen, but he studiously avoided doing anything of the sort. The Prime Minister went on to say:
Those are all three extremely pertinent questions, and, if the Opposition had really wished to discuss this matter intelligently to-day, they would have devoted themselves to dealing with those three questions, and they would have put before the House their considered reply to those three questions. What have they done? Instead of doing that, they first said that, when the Prime Minister spoke of Australian shipping, Canadian and Australian railways, he was casting aspersions upon the Dominions, stirring up difficulties in the Dominions, and generally that he should be censured for so doing. What was the Prime Minister doing? After asking those three questions, to which I referred, he said:"I think the electorate want to know first of all how nationalisation is going to be brought about. They will want to know secondly, whether it will lead to cheaper production with a view to knowing whether it will make this country more efficient to compete in the foreign countries of the world; and thirdly, they will want to know whether nationalisation will lead to a higher standard of life for those who work in the industries concerned."
That is the Prime Minister's statement with regard to Australia, and the hon. Member for Dundee gibes at him and says that the facts are not taken from official sources, but from the "Daily Mail" or some other paper with which he does not appear to agree. Those figures of £14,000,000 seem to me to have been almost accepted by the hon. Gentleman himself. I say almost because he accepted half of them. He quoted the Auditor-General of the Australian Commonwealth, who, in a calculation that he made, said that the losses were something over £7,000,000 and under £8,000,000. Again, is the hon. Member sure that those figures include interest?"How do they intend to avoid falling into the same pit into which many other countries so far have fallen in making this experiment? Nationalisation has been tried with regard to shipping, railways, and mines. The Australian experiment has shown a loss of some £14,000,000 in the last few years."
It is the net loss.
On capital or on running account? I do not want to pursue it, and I do not believe it is very material, for this can be said with fair certainty. I am now going to quote as my authority for this a non-political financial newspaper. An Australian correspondent of the "Financial News" has drawn up an account of these losses, and he makes them £10,500,000, plus interest. I myself cannot say whether the interest is £3,500,000, in which case the £14,000,000 would be arrived at, but it is at any rate a very substantial loss, a minimum of £8,000,000, a maximum of £14,000,000, which has been incurred over the nationalisation experiment in Australian shipping. If there is any change to be got out of that, if there is any satisfaction to be got out of the difficulties of nationalisation, then surely I will concede that at least there is a big loss, if not the whole loss.
Now I come to Canadian shipping. Again, no official figures are quoted, says the hon. Member. If he will look at the "Canada Year Book, 1927–28," which is a Government publication, and turn to page 708, he will find these words:This is under the heading "Canadian Merchant Marine.""Early operations proved profitable"—
What the Prime Minister said—I keep reminding the hon. Members of what the Prime Minister said—about Canadian shipping wag:"and a surplus of 1,000,000 dollars without provision for interest charges was shown in the year ending December, 1920. Subsequent years, however, have shown the effects of the depression in the shipping industry and annual deficits of 8,000,000 dollars, 9,000,000 dollars, 9,000,000 dollars, 8,000,000 dollars, 7,000,000 dollars, and 8,000,000 dollars were shown in the years 1921 to 1926 respectively."
and, if the losses on this account are added up, it will be seen that the statement made is entirely accurate and justifiable. The next illustration that the Prime Minister gave us was the Australian railways. There he said that"The Canadian experience shows a loss of £10,000,000."
When I look up the "Report on the Economic and Commercial Situation of Australia," published by the Department of Overseas Trade, I find that they deal with the matter in a somewhat different way, but, in effect, the same result is arrived at. There different years are being compared, showing each year from 1920 onwards losses of £2,500,000, £3,500,000, £1,250,000, and so on. Then there are some years for which detailed figures are not given. Then, there occur these two lines on page 291:"In railways, the Australian Government, not the separate States but the whole Federal Railways, have lost £16,000,000 in eight years."
It cannot be said, therefore, that there was any exaggeration in the statement made by the Prime Minister. A great deal has been said in this Debate about the Canadian railways. The Prime Minister did not refer to them, but a great deal has been said about them. It is not my concern to prove that the Canadian railways have or have not paid. There has been a very good statement made in the House by the hon. Member for Penryn (Mr. Pilcher), who knows what he is talking about and who had the balance-sheet in front of him at the time, which quite clearly showed what the deficit was for the year of which he was speaking. Again, it gives me no pleasure to record it, but I read from the "Canadian Year Book" that the deficits are not only in the year to which the hon. Member referred but in other years. There was a deficit in 1922 of nearly 58,000,000 dollars, in 1923 of 51,000,000 dollars, in 1924 of 54,000,000 dollars, in 1925 of 41,000,000 dollars and in 1926 of 29,000,000 dollars. What is the use of denying that there has been a huge deficit? There is no use in trying to over-prove the Canadian case. It is quite likely that Canada was wise and well justified in assuming the Grand Trunk and the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroads, and in converting them into the Canadian National Railroads together with other lines. Very likely it was good State policy, and I am the last man in the world to try to criticise thorn for pursuing good State policy. But do not try and prove that it has paid when it has not paid, if their balance-sheets are correct, and I have not the slightest doubt that the figures they give officially are correct. Although the Prime Minister did not refer to it, the hon. Member and others on the other side of the House have dealt with that case as if it was on all fours with the Canadian shipping and Australian railways and seemed to suggest that he has been guilty of an inaccuracy there. Then the hon. Member referred to India, but again the Prime Minister did not. It was my hon. Friend below the Gangway who read an extract from the Acworth Report. Thank goodness, the Indian railways are in a much better position, as a result of the Acworth Report and of the Governmental action that has been taken on it, than they have ever been in before. The service they are giving is better, and the revenues they are receiving are better, but it is a sorry tale if you read the whole story of the Indian railways and the results of the interference of Government in the running of those railways. I am sorely tempted to detain the House for a moment or two—"The total of the net deficits of all States from railway working, after payment of interest since 1911, has amounted to £24,000,000."
Since they took them over?
No, but do not let the hon. Gentleman run away with the idea that something miraculous has happened since the Government took them over, because the Government have been the railway owners for a very long time in India. What has happened is that the two budgets have been separated. The railway budget has been separated from the general budget, and the Government of India have ceased to block capital expenditure on the part of the railways, because they wanted the capital expenditure for other purposes of the Government, which was the course which had been followed until after the Acworth Report, but in regard to all those years while the Government was in control, here is a little bit of evidence taken at Calcutta. Has the hon. Member ever read it?
Yes.
And did it not make him very nearly sick to see what Government interference did with the management? If not, the hon. Member must have a stronger stomach than I should have had. This is what it says:
Want of trucks, goods held up, Bengal iron cannot be developed because they cannot get it to the coast, trade generally cannot go on because of the absence of railway sidings and wagons, all under Government, all strangled by the Government's stranglehold—"There is a large demand for Indian coal for export, but in the absence of adequate transport facilities for meeting it, India is losing an exceptional opportunity of establishing herself in the markets of the world."
We have got that here in Hull.
If a private railway company had been in the position that the Acworth Report dealt with, that company would have lost its franchise long before.
Government interference is not our case at all.
The Prime Minister referred to New Zealand and said that nationalisation there had never paid, and that was not challenged by the hon. Member. Those are the only specific examples of the failure of nationalisation that the Prime Minister gave in his speech, but he made another statement, with regard to mines, which has already been read by the hon. Member for Islington, West (Mr. Montague), and my hon. Friend the Member for Penryn challenged him while he was reading it. The statement:
is a statement which refers to the nationalisation of mines. It is part of a paragraph which refers to mines, when they were controlled by the Government here, losing £40,000,000, and when they were controlled in Germany and control had to be given up; and then there is a reference to Russian mines, and then the statement in question."The record is nothing but failure and loss everywhere."
I will accept the interpretation of the right hon. Gentleman of that paragraph in the Prime Minister's speech if he will communicate it to the Conservative headquarters, who are responsible for the Tory literature which is being circulated throughout the country.
I am speaking in public and on record, and I do not know to what literature the hon. Member refers. I have not seen it. If he likes to call my attention to any specific leaflet, I will look at it, but obviously I cannot deal with it in Debate without having it in front of me. The case that was developed on the benches opposite was that the Prime Minister had said that everywhere and in every case nationalisation was a failure, and the hon. Member quoted a well-known power station in Quebec and showed that that was successful. An hon. Friend behind me, in reply, seemed to doubt whether all the claims that the hon. Member made for it were justified. I do not know. I am not concerned to say that nationalisation can in no case be successful. There are monopolies which can be held by a Government and the success or failure of which we cannot test, and perhaps ought not to test, from the pure profit-and-loss point of view. Wherever you get, however, into industrial and commercial things, you can test them from the costs, the wages, and the profits points of view, and wherever that has happened I believe it is true to say that there is a gross and absolute failure of nationalisation.
When, however, you are dealing with a monopoly like the Post Office, you cannot say, as some hon. Members say, that it has made a profit of £7,000,000. I always laugh when I hear of that profit of £7,000,000. If you can control the costs, more or less—because, after all, wages costs are not within absolute control, but more or less—and if you can control the price of the product that you sell, you must indeed be a fool if you cannot show a profit on your account; and no one has accused those who manage the General Post Office of wanting in wisdom and brilliance in that respect. They certainly can show a profit so long as they are enabled to charge 1½d. for a letter. Why should they not charge 1½d.? But if they go back to the old 1d., very nearly all that profit, so-called, that paper profit, will be gone, and it will cost £5,000,000 to £6,000,000 to knock the ½d. off, and then your so-called £7,000,000 profit will be £2,000,000. But are you really making a profit, and, if so, how much? I have no hesitation in saying, although I do not intend to devote the time to the general case against nationalisation, that, on balance, private ownership and individual enterprise in 95 cases out of 100 will beat nationalisation hollow.I regret that at the beginning of my speech I must refer to a personal attack that was made on my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) by the hon. Member for Penryn and Falmouth (Mr. Pilcher). The hon. Member referred to an occurrence in Canada. My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee was not only present, but saw that occurrence. There were at least five Members of this House and two Members of the Canadian House of Representatives who saw it, and it is a piece of colossal impertinence on the part of anybody who does not see a thing to pretend that those who do see it have not seen it.
May I state that immediately that occurrence happened and these assertions were made at a club at Winnipeg, I went down to see the alleged cage with iron bars and examined the conditions of all the Winnipeg immigration stations in the greatest detail, and satisfied myself that these assertions were false from beginning to end.
I venture to say that the hon. Gentleman did not see the conditions at all, and he did not even see the immigration station that was complained about.
I examined every immigration station in Winnipeg the very same day.
I say deliberately that two Members of the Canadian Parliament and five Members of the British Parliament saw these conditions. I regret that this thing is continually being raised, because it cannot do any good. The hon. Member for Penryn and Falmouth cannot attack my colleague without expecting a reply. If he had left the thing where it was, so it would have stood. Hon. Members of the Conservative party can take it for granted that we are not going to accept their assumption of superiority. My experience does not lead me to accept them as in any way superior, and we had better have a complete and proper understanding on that point. If they attack, they will get a return, and they are neither superior in points of honour nor in points of sportsmanship. That is my experience. I saw these things. The hon. Member for Penryn and Falmouth did not see them. I repeat that what the hon. Member for Dundee said in Winnipeg was true. About that there can be no question, but it is no new thing in the House for statements made by this side to be contradicted by people who do not know the circumstances.
I read from a leading Canadian newspaper published in Winnipeg. These words:
were not mine but those of the "Manitoba Free Press.""Will a lie live for ever?"
Whether a lie lives or not, the fact remains that the conditions described by the hon. Member for Dundee were the conditions that we saw, and there is no question about it. The hon. and gallant Member for Stirling and Clackmannan Western devoted a large part of his speech also to the sins of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee. I suppose that all our sins are as scarlet, but may I call his attention to the fact that in my division at the last election handbills were circulated appealing to the people on the grounds that we were Communists and that Communism stood for the nationalisation of women and the destruction of religion. Was there ever a filthier lie than that in the political history of this country? Was anything worse than that ever done? When we are calling kettles and pans black, we do not gain anything. It would be infinitely better if we realised that we all have human frailties, and if we did not pretend that one side was all angelic and the other side all demoniacal.
I would like to draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that the hon. Member for Dundee, early in his speech, made the remark that the Leader of the House of Commons had been crying stinking fish. That is really what rightly annoyed hon. Members on this side, because it was a very offensive remark to make about the Leader of the House, and the hon. Member for Dundee has only reaped a little of what he tried to sow.
My hon. Friend read an extract from a previous Prime Minister of Australia protesting against this kind of assumption.
That remark was not in the letter which he read.
What about nationalisation?
When we get to close grips with any question we have to be turned on to something else. The fact of the matter is that not only my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee is complaining. There is a considerable amount of feeling about these continual references to nationalised institutions, a great number of which are successful, which exist in our Dominions and Colonies. Speaking of nationalisation as a failure or otherwise, the hon. and gallant Gentleman referred to the example of Belgium. The national railway system of Belgium before the War was the cheapest in the world. You could travel any time during the year, or anywhere you liked for five days, for the sum in English money of 9s. 5d. [An HON. MEMBER: "What was the value of the franc?"] It was roughly 9½d. and the exchange value 25 francs 30.
Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my question?
I am telling him what the facts are. Does the hon. and gallant Member deny that it is a fact that both for goods and passengers the Belgian railways before the War were the cheapest in the world?
I did not deny that, and I did not specifically go into it. What I said was that for some reason the Belgian people did in some measure alter the system of the control of their railways, and that they knew what they were about.
The hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) gave a complete answer to that question, and I am not going to repeat answers that have been given. Take the case of the German national railways. Is there any question that if the German national railways had not reached their high state of efficiency, Germany would have been out of the War inside the first six months? Is it not the fact that the perfection of the German railway system was one of the principal reasons why Germany was able to stand up during the War as she did? What is the use of denying what is well known to anybody who has ever taken the trouble to investigate the position of the German railways? Before the War our business men continually complained because of the cheap rates on the German national railways, and because of the way that their Government helped them. Complaints were frequent from traders of all kinds in this country that they were badly handicapped.
Was not that due to the preferential rates granted by our own railways to German imports?
I take it, from the interjection this time, that private enterprise is so bad that it helps the foreign producer as against the home producer.
Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that the competition we suffer from on the Continent is cheap water transport, and not railway transport?
I am sure the hon. Baronet, who is well informed, must know that what I am saying about the German railway system is perfectly true—that the goods rates were lower than ours, that those railways were deliberately run to help traders, and that if a certain class of commodities wanted a little help there was always the national railway system ready to give it a slightly less rate still. Is there any doubt about that?
What I have tried to explain is that the competition we suffer from is not from the German railways, but from their canal system.
The hon. Baronet will pardon me if I say that, whilst I am under no illusions as to the part the water system of Germany has played, I know something about what the railway system accomplished in that country. I really have taken some interest in one particular trade in this country, and have tried to get to know what was going on with regard to it in other countries, and I give my experience for what it is worth: that it was a matter of common knowledge before the War that the German railway system did give cheaper carriage rates and did help traders more than our own railways did. Germany had a railway system which had been developed nationally for two purposes, for trade and for military use, and for both purposes that system proved itself highly efficient. In Belgium there was a State system with the cheapest service in the world both for passengers and for goods.
With regard to electricity supply in Ontario, we have had quoted to us the report of some commission, I do not know what kind of commission, from the United States which solemnly goes to Canada and presents a report. Is there any doubt about this statement, made to some of us in Canada by the Canadian authorities themselves, that on the international bridge, with the American private concern on one side and the Canadian national concern on the other, the cost per lamp on the United States side was something like four times as much per month as it was on the Canadian side? These are facts which are easily ascertainable. Is there any question about the further fact that nobody in Ontario, whether Liberal, Conservative or Labour, would dream of pretending that the national system of electricity had not been successful? The things they are doing with it are marvellous, and they definitely claim that the cost of the current supplied by the publicly-owned system on the Canadian side is one-third, or less than one-third, of the cost of the current supplied by the privately-owned service on the American side. We shall gain nothing by not looking facts in the face. I want to look facts squarely in the face, and I see over and over again the most overwhelming proof that nationalisation has been a success. I see cases—what is the use of denying it?—where apparently interest has not been paid on capital; but I ask myself, taking both together, is there something inherently good or something inherently bad about a national service? I look at the cases where it is alleged that money has been lost, and I find that where money had been apparently lost, it has generally been quite deliberately lost; that is to say, an uneconomic service has been provided in order to reap good results years ahead. It has been done for the future development of the country. In my opinion, before many years are past this country will be driven, though it had better do it voluntarily, to engage with other parts of the Empire to develop the Empire, whether economic results accrue immediately of not. What is the use of expecting that you can drive railways through unpopulated country in order to develop it and immediately get a profit? It is foolish; but if you waited for private enterprise, which must see its profits, development would inevitably be hindered. Take, if you like, our own country. I am not going to flog the examples, though I could go into a dozen and one cases. Let us see how we stand in our own country. Whenever we are driven to extremities we adopt this method of bringing every thing under one head and under Government control. What did we do during the War? Did we allow private enterprise to go on making munitions in its own way? If we had done so, we should have lost the War. Did we allow the railways to go on in their own way? Not at all. We had to control the railways, or we should have been absolutely beaten inside the first three months; but as soon as ever a profit can be made out of them, after the War is over, we hand these things back to the profiteers. Would anybody ever dream of having the three Services which the party opposite think most about, the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, owned by anybody except the nation? Not at all. The policy is that whatever is needed in the interests of the country out of which profits cannot be made must be national or municipal; but the instant a condition of affairs arises in which a profit can be made, then private enterprise can have the profits. If the old theory of private enterprise and competition were good, one could understand this hostility to nationalisation; but the old system of private enterprise and competition is dying before our eyes. Who was the great apostle of private enterprise and competition in this House until quite recently? Lord Melchett. Now he is spending every waking moment in trying to abolish competition.The right hon. Gentleman must not proceed to an advocacy of nationalisation, on the Motion for the Adjournment, because that would be out of order.
But I certainly understood that we were dealing with the subject of nationalisation and the Prime Minister's statement, alleged to have been made in Dundee, that nationalisation had never been a success in England. I bow at once to your ruling, Sir, but I thought that was the subject we were discussing.
It would be out of order on the Motion for the Adjournment to discuss proposals which would lead to legislation. I understood the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Johnston) had accused the Prime Minister of inaccuracies in his statements outside this House as to the matter of nationalisation, more especially within the Empire. That is quite another thing from a general debate on the merits of nationalisation.
I bow to your ruling at once, and I will confine myself simply to this contention, that the alleged statement of the Prime Minister at Dundee, that nationalisation had never been succesful, is not borne out by the facts. The State railways of Belgium show that the statement cannot be borne out; the State railways of Germany prove that the statement was incorrect; the electricity system in Ontario proves that the statement is not correct; our own Post Office proves that the statement is not correct; and I say, finally, that in the case of the most essential of all services for the defence of the country nobody would ever dream that anything but a national system could be in any way successful.
Statutory Rules And Orders
I feel very strongly tempted to question some of the statements which have been made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Preston (Mr. Shaw), because I have some knowledge of the Belgian and German railways to which he has referred. I refrain from doing so, because I want to call attention to a totally different matter. I am only too conscious that this is not a particularly convenient occasion for raising the point involved in a reply given to me about a fortnight ago by the Prime Minister in this House. I very much regret that the Prime Minister is not able to be here for reasons which we all appreciate. About a fortnight ago, I asked the Prime Minister:
The right hon. Gentleman gave me a long and considered reply to that question. The case which I am going to put before the House this afternoon rests almost entirely on the Prime Minister's reply. I will, therefore, quote a sentence or two from that reply. The Prime Minister said:"Whether he has considered the suggestion for the setting up of a Sessional Joint Committee to scrutinise all Statutory Rules and Orders issued by His Majesty's Privy Council or by Public Departments."
That reply really constitutes the basis of the case which I want to submit to the House this afternoon. Before putting my case, I should like to acknowledge publicly and very cordially the exceedingly valuable help which has been rendered to those who take an interest in this matter by the "Times" newspaper, and indeed by the Press of all parties in all parts of the country. Hon. Members who perhaps have not given any special attention to this subject would be astonished if they could see the volume of correspondence, both public and private, which has reached me and others in the last few weeks. Almost all the public comments in the Press recognise the gravity of this question and the unsatisfactory position in which, for the moment, it has been left by the reply of the Prime Minister. Probably no one would be more amazed than the Prime Minister himself if he could appreciate what has been said and written on this subject within the last few weeks. I doubt whether the Prime Minister has really appreciated the intrinsic importance of this question or the strength of the public feeling which is behind it. It is only fair to say, and I say it in the most explicit way, that of course I recognise that, when the Prime Minister replied to me the other day, he was only concerned for the moment to rebut a suggestion for the appointment of a Sessional Joint Committee to scrutinise all these Statutory Orders and Rules. I am not presuming this afternoon for a moment to suggest any specific method for dealing with an evil which I believe to be great and growing. All I want to do is to call the attention of the House of Commons to the gravity of this evil, and then I am afraid we must leave it to the next Parliament to find a remedy. Briefly and broadly, I submit that the position in which we find ourselves amounts to nothing less than an abdication on the part of Parliament of its supreme legislative function. I do not think the Attorney-General, who, I believe, is going to reply, would deny for an instant—I do not think he can deny—that there has been, of late years, a marked and a very significant change in the form of English legislation. In former days, and not so very long ago, Englishmen were said to be distinguished, and honourably distinguished, from their countrymen and neighbours, by an instinctive scepticism about bureaucratic wisdom. I am going to quote a short passage from one who will be immediately recognised as a great authority in this House—I mean the late Clerk of the House of Commons—Sir Courtenay Ilbert. No one will deny that he spoke, at any rate on the form of legislation, as an authority second to none. Here is what Sir Courtenay Ilbert said in his classic book on this subject:"Some idea of the annual number of Statutory Rules and Orders issued may be gained from a comparison with the number of Acts actually placed on the Statute Book. Taking the last three years, which were quite ordinary years in both respects, the average number of Acts passed was 50.6, the average number of pages in the official volumes being 539.0, but the average number of Statutory Rules and Orders issued was 1,408.6, the average number of pages in the official volumes (which are more closely printed than the Statute volumes) being 1,844.0."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th March, 1929; cols. 24–25, Vol. 226.]
3.0 p.m. I think the House will acknowledge that that is a very authoritative description of the form of our legislation up till about 20 years ago. In a word, one may say that, in those days at any rate, Parliament, in making laws, attempted to provide beforehand by precise statutory enactment for every contingency which could reasonably be expected to arise. I am not for the moment discussing whether that is wise or unwise, but am merely saying that it was the traditional method of English legislation to provide by Statute, as far as possible, beforehand for every contingency which could be expected to arise. As a result of this, the form of English Statutes was exceptionally detailed and elaborate. No one who has followed closely the proceedings of Parliament during the last 20 years will, I think, be tempted to deny that the tradition of which I am now speaking has of late years been very largely abandoned by Parliament. We have moved and are moving more and more rapidly in two directions towards Continental methods. Many of our modern Statutes are mere skeletons of legislation. They afford really no adequate idea of their ultimate scope. They lay down a few general rules, and then they leave it to the appropriate Government Department to give substance to the legislative skeleton by the issue of administrative Orders. This growing tendency has been noted by all the more responsible commentators on English law and English constitutional procedure. In particular, it was noted some years ago by President Lowell, a very competent observer of English institutions, who, after referring to the growing practice of delegating legislative power, added these very significant words:"Rightly or wrongly, Englishmen have an instinctive distrust of official discretion, an instinctive scepticism about bureaucratic wisdom, and they have carried this feeling with them into the United States and the British Colonies. They are ready enough, they are often embarrassingly eager to confer new powers on the executive authority, central or local. But they like to determine for themselves how those powers are to be exercised. They like to see in black and white the rules by which their liberty of action is restrained, and to have an effective share in the making of those rules. And they insist on the meaning of those rules being determined, not by administrative authorities, nor by any special tribunal but by the ordinary law courts of the country. This is the peculiarity which constitutes the most marked distinction between British and American legislation on the cue hand and Continental legislation on the other and which makes the framework and arrangement of an English statute such an incomprehensible puzzle to the ordinary Continental student of laws."
I could quote only not from distinguished constitutional jurists; I could quote at length from the obiter dicta of members of our own judicial bench. As was pointed out not long ago by the "Times," the danger we have to face at present is in reality two-fold, and it is to this two-fold danger that I want very seriously to direct the attention of the House. The first danger is the wholesale delegation to the administrative Departments of legislative, or quasi legislative powers, which ought to be exercised only in Parliament itself or, to put it at the lowest, under the closest scrutiny and supervision of Parliament. That is the curse of delegated legislation. A distinguished Cambridge jurist not long ago published a very illuminated little book to which he gave the title of "Delegated Legislation." He points out that in a single year, I think 1919, out of 102 public Acts placed upon the Statute Book no fewer than 60 delegated legislative power to some subordinate authority. You have one of the most conspicuous illustrations of that delegation in the Aliens Restriction (Amendment) Act, which was passed in the year to which I am referring. Under the powers conferred by that Act, an Order in Council was subsequently made which, in form, in length, and in elaboration is not distinguishable from an. Act of Parliament. Such delegation constitutes an abdication by Parliament of its proper functions. That is the legislative danger, the danger of a rapidly accumulating mass of statutory Rules and Orders of which Parliament has really only a formal cognisance. There is another danger, not only the danger of delegation of legislation, but the danger of the delegation to these administrative Departments of judicial functions. That is to say, to the danger of administrative law you add the grievance and the danger of administrative tribunals. We have within the last few days passed an Act which is a most remarkable illustration, the Factory and Workshops (Amendment) Act, and to-day I find in the Vote Office a White Paper which is about to be laid, if it has not been already laid, on the Table. The Act itself consists of two operative Clauses which are contained on half a sheet of paper. Before the ink on that Act is dry, we have issued, or about to be issued, by the Secretary of State six closely printed pages of Statutory Rules and Orders which will lie on the Table, and I predict that no one will ever see them until they have been actually put into operation. This is a very grave danger, and I think I need make no apology for bringing it to the attention of the House, because, as was said only a day or two ago—again I quote from a leader in the "Times":"We hear much talk about the need for the devolution of the power of Parliament to subordinate representative bodies, but the tendency is not merely in that direction; the real delegation has been in favour of the administrative Departments of the Government."
Those are the dangers as I conceive them to be and to which I want to draw the very serious attention of the House of Commons even at this inconvenient moment. What are the safeguards upon which the Prime Minister advises Parliament to rely? What are the safeguards which, as it would appear, the Prime Minister deems adequate and sufficient? The safeguards enumerated by the Prime Minister were two: First, the power of the Courts to declare an Order, if ultra vires, null and void. I submit, with great respect, that that is an utterly inadequate and illusory safeguard, and for one or two reasons. First of all, because the aggrieved subject has set the Courts in motion. The Courts in this country do not act proprio motu. They do not pronounce, unless they are applied to, on the validity of Statutes. I say that Parliament has no moral right by its own lack of vigilance to impose this costly and tiresome duty upon the subject. Secondly, if Parliament is careless in the matter of the form of legislation, the Courts of law are impotent. They can only interpret the Statutes. The root of the evil, therefore, is much more deep-seated than the Prime Minister appears to appreciate, and it calls, I submit, for a very different sort of remedy. But the Prime Minister had a second safeguard which he mentioned to the House in the reply to which I am referring, and it was the alertness of Members of the House of Commons. All Rules and Orders, he pointed out, must lie upon that Table. One does not require to be a very old Member of this House to know the value of that safeguard. I suggest, with deep respect, that the Prime Minister is placing the common sense of the House a little too high when he suggests that that is an adequate safeguard. I agree that if, following the suggestion made by the Hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Benn), an affirmative Resolution were required, the danger would be, I do not say removed but substantially diminished. Even so, I think it would not suffice. May I very respectfully submit to the House that, if we are to preserve that which has always been regarded as one of the most precious heritages of the English people, their personal liberty, if we are to resist a grave and growing danger; a danger on the one hand towards administrative law and a danger on the other hand towards administrative tribunals; if we are to resist growing, grave and dangerous tendencies, we must not only have increased vigilance and alertness in our own legislative work but we must devise some new form of procedure which will give reality to what is at present in the form of a farce invalidating Rules and Orders which lie unnoticed and un-regarded on the Table of this House."The public are unaware of the extent and the drastic nature of the powers which the Departments have secured within recent years by Clauses deftly slipped into long Bills, and never explained to the House. The judges and the lawyers know, and from time to time raise their voices against the insidious and progressive danger which the acquiescence of Parliament in these Clauses involves. Is it conceivable that, if Parliament had known what it was being asked to do, it would have refused a defendant in proceedings by a Department even the right to be heard by the official who determines the case or to see the report of the inspector on which it is supposed the decision is to be made? This the House of Lords has held to be the effect of one of those Clauses. Would Parliament have knowingly empowered the bureaucratic tribunals set up under Clauses of this kind to decide cases without an oral hearing, or after a hearing from which the public are excluded—an exclusion expressly sanctioned by a Statutory Rule as to one class of these tribunals—or to decide on written statements without examination and cross-examination of the writers? Did it ever contemplate, and did Ministers ever invite it to contemplate, the creation of tribunals in which, it seems, the official discharging judicious duties need not have had any professional training in law?… The multiplication and the extension of these powers undoubtedly violate the rights and privileges of Parliament and of the subject."
My hon. Friend has drawn attention to a subject which has been commented upon in the public Press on many occasions in the last few years. There is, undoubtedly, a good deal of dissatisfaction with anything which is supposed to emanate from a public department without having run the gauntlet of Parliamentary discussion. It is perhaps not for me to inquire on this occasion what is the cause of that irritation. If I were to inquire, I should suggest that it partly springs from the irritation to which all of us are exposed from time to time, on being compelled to pay very high taxes at the behest of one particular Government Department. It is the same sort of irritation that leads members of the public, when they meet with a little inefficiency, for instance, in the telephone service owing, possibly, to the illness or temporary incapacity of an operator, to abuse all Government Departments, of which that for the moment is supposed to be typical. Whether the irritation that we feel is due to these causes which are very often experienced, there is, undoubtedly, a much more wholesome objection, and that is to departmental action which many people think is proper only to Parliament. It is the traditional British objection to official government. The British mind, undoubtedly, prefers that Parliament shall govern this country rather than that officials should govern it. In so far as my hon. Friend has expressed that feeling, I suppose every Member of this House would sympathise with him. I did hope that he would have been able to suggest some solution for the difficulties which confront not merely the nation but Parliament.
The reason why I did not do so, was that I did not want to violate the Rules of Order.
I was about to say that, quite possibly, that was the reason why my hon. Frend refrained from suggesting any specific cure for the ills to which he referred. I was going on to say that if that was the reason it indicates both his difficulty and my difficulty in dealing with the subject, because I suppose that neither I nor the hon. Member nor any other hon. Member may discuss whatever legislative proposals are necessary to cure the mischief. I see the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr. Benn) shaking his head with annoyance, but really it is the Rules of the House, I understand, and not any desire on my part to burk discussion. Although my hon. Friend has refrained from any discussion of the steps that should be taken to remove this evil, perhaps I may consider for a moment whether the evil is as great as he supposes. He has said that nobody could deny that there has been a departure from the practice of the past in maintaining the control of Parliament. I doubt whether that is correct. I should be inclined to say that if you admit the complexity of modem life and the elaboration of control by the State of many subjects Parliament, on the whole, exercises to-day a more continuous control over the nation than at any time in the history of Parliamentary government.
Direct control?
Yes, direct control, and I will tell the House why I think that is correct, although hon. Members may not agree with me. If you look at the records of Parliamentary discussions 40 or 50 years ago you will find an almost complete absence of the Committee stage as we know it in the discussion of Bills. If you look up any of the Acts of Parliament on the Statute Book until comparatively modern times, you will find most elaborate and detailed provisions contained and printed in Sections of those Acts of Parliament which are almost unintelligible for their length, complexity and elaboration. These Acts of Parliament were passed through this House practically without a Committee stage to which we are accustomed. If points were raised in Committee they were points of substance, Second Reading points rather than a variety of discussions or small points which make the Committee stage in these days so prolonged. On the whole the Acts of Parliament which we find on the Statute Book up to 30 or 40 years ago went through this House at the behest of the Ministry of the day without any discussion at all except upon what I may call Second Reading points.
There is another species of Parliamentary control to-day which is increasingly exercised over Ministers in the form of questions. Let anybody look again in the records of Parliament and they will find that up to 20 years ago the number of questions asked was more often in single figures than in double figures. Question Time now is a very effective form of bringing Ministers to their bearings, ventilating public grievances, and, generally, in directing Ministers in the way they should go. Therefore, I believe that Parliament does exercise daily control over the Government. Let me give one other reason for thinking that this is increasingly the case. I suggest that the plan elaborated and improved when the Coalition Government was formed in the days of the great arrears due to the War, that is, the system of Grand Committees sitting upstairs and discussing Bills, has given hon. Members greater opportunities of improving Bills which are submitted to Parliament. For these and other reasons I think Parliament is exercising much greater control than at one time it exercised over legislation. One could easily deceive oneself as to the extent to which Acts of Parliament are the work of this House or the work of Government Departments. But, broadly speaking, except in the case of very simple Measures, Acts of Parliament are bound to be the product of Government Departments. A private Member has not the knowledge or the sources from which to derive the knowledge to enable him to prepare an elaborate Act of Parliament. It requires a great deal of skill and knowledge, and a great deal of research even to prepare them. When my hon. Friend refers to the Factory and Workshop (Cotton Cloth Factories) Bill, does he not think his illustration shows how difficult it is to increase the amount of control which Parliament exercises? He complains of the statutory Order which has resulted from the passing of that Bill. I find that in the Bill it is provided that before Regulations are made under the Act, a draft shall be laid before each House of Parliament for a period of 30 days.Of course.
My hon. Friend says, "Of course." I am pointing out that it is not enough to show that it is very difficult to exercise Parliamentary control over legislation. My hon. Friend really must go a step further and show how Parliamentary control is to be exercised if he would be as helpful as I am sure he desires to be. At the moment I am at a loss to know how Parliament can exercise any better control over the detailed, technical and minor matters which almost every Act of Parliament deals with, than by saying that the Orders are to toe laid on the Table of the House and rejected or accepted as Parliament thinks fit. This particular Order which my hon. Friend has given as an illustration has not merely been laid on the Table, but it has been recorded in a White Paper which is issued to the House, and the White Paper is notified to hon. Members in the Pink Paper circulated to them, and every facility is given which the limits of 24 hours in the day and five days in a week give to hon. Members to discuss these matters.
But I want to go a step further and say that we must all recognise that there are two broad classes into which these statutory Orders can be divided. I dare say there are minor classes, but, broadly speaking, statutory Orders can be divided, first, into the class of Orders which take from the courts those powers of decision between the Crown and the subject which we would prefer to see left to the courts; and secondly, the class of statutory Orders which deal with the infinity of details and technical matters which no Parliament could be expected to deal with, having regard either to its knowledge or the time at its disposal. I take down a volume of statutory Orders at random, and I find pages literally taken up with Orders under the Fisheries Act (England and Wales) dealing with such matters as these: Inspectors' Fees for marking cran measures, as to the construction of barrels for the packing in them of white herrings. I find also whole pages of Orders which the Secretary of State may make under the Factory and Workshops Act, for securing the welfare of workers in certain factories and workshops—Orders which are necessary because conditions vary from day to day. Unless Acts are to be left unfulfilled the Secretary of State must have power to make these Orders. I rather suspect that no hon. Member would object to the second class of Statutory Orders, subject to the retention of the power of Parliament to reject the Orders after having them laid on the Table. The first class of Orders which arrogate—if I may use the word—to an official, a power to decide something which ought to be left to the Courts, I think are in a different category, and I quite recognise that there has been, perhaps, too free use of that expedient. It is not a departure for which this Government is responsible; it was a departure which was taken in the days of the Coalition Government. I think some of us remember the first uses of the much criticised section of an Act of Parliament of which there was a sample in the Local Government Bill a few days ago. It may be that the time has come when it would be desirable to set on foot some inquiry to see how far the mischief, if it be a mischief, has extended, and what steps can be taken to prevent a too frequent use of the power. I do not pledge the Government that such an inquiry will be set up. In the last days of the Session, in a dying Parliament I think it would be useless and improper to do so. I merely indicate, and put on record, as far as my own opinion is concerned, the fact that I think it very likely that the time may soon come when it will be desirable that some such inquiry should be set on foot for the purpose of examining into what I may call the first class of the orders to which I have referred. I should like to say one further word. My hon. Friend referred to strictures sometimes made from the Judicial bench as to the use which Government servants have made of their powers. I think we do no great service to the State or the people if we use excessively hard criticisms of public servants. We have a Civil Service of which I was going to say that its danger perhaps is its very efficiency. It is infinitely more efficient than the Civil Service of 50 years ago, and it is, perhaps, more efficient than any other Civil Service in the world.Of course I entirely agree, but the strictures which fell from the judicial bench were directed much more against the carelessness of Parliament than against the activities of the Civil Service.
I quite recognise that. I was not suggesting that the strictures to which my hon. Friend referred were in all cases directed against the Civil Service, but undoubtedly some of them of late years have been directed against persons who are permanently or temporarily occupying posts in the Civil Service. These strictures have not always been agreed with, as I know from personal knowledge, in the ultimate court of appeal. Sometimes the learned Lords in the final court of appeal have expressed disagreement with criticisms of the use of departmental powers in particular cases. I only say so, because I do not think it is right that one side of the case should be presented. I am not criticising my hon. Friend for any want of fairness to the persons who have been criticised by the judicial bench, but it is right that the other side should be presented.
It is obviously difficult on an occasion like this to give such a detailed or considered reply as one would like to make if the whole matter were subjected to an exhaustive examination in the House. Indeed, I was not quite sure of the line which my hon. Friend would take, except that I knew he was going to direct the attention of the House to the disfavour with which the excessive use of the power of making Statutory Rules is regarded. I was ignorant of any expedient which he might propose. The Prime Minister dealt in his answer with the proposal to set up a sessional committee, and it is unnecessary for me to repeat what the Prime Minister said. The Prime Minister referred, in short, to the difficulty of a committee sitting from day to day examining into all these orders, and also the difficulty of securing people at all times to conduct the necessary work while Parliament is not sitting. These are practical difficulties. All I say is that the ventilation of the subject in the Press and in the House, even at this stage in the Session, will, I think my hon. Friend may be assured, keep the mind of the public alert to what might possibly become a greater evil than it is. What I have said this afternoon may quite possibly, at some future stage, lead to a more authoritative suggestion that a commission or inquiry may be set up to see what expedient is possible, having regard to the limitation of time in this House, to prevent any abuse of the powers which Ministers undoubtedly have under modern Parliamentary conditions.Racecourse Betting Control Board
I desire to put one or two questions to the Home Secretary with regard to the activity or inactivity of the Betting Control Board which was set up by the Totalisator Act last August. Under that Act, there are four representatives of the Government on the Board, and, therefore, Parliament cannot divest itself from responsibility for what has been done by the Board. The right hon. Gentleman has been courteous enough to write to me in relation to the points which I wish to raise. He points out in his letter, that, as Home Secretary, he has the responsibility, first of all, of appointing a Chairman of the Board and appointing another member of the Board, and, secondly, of prescribing the form of accounts of moneys received and expended by the Board. I am not making any attack on the right hon. Gentleman. In fact, I sympathise with him. This child of the Totalisator Act, or rather, this changeling, as it changed very considerably in the course of its passage through Parliament, has been adopted by the Government, and in my view should have been attacked for its upbringing to the Treasury. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, however, being under some suspicion as to the paternity of the child, would have none of it, and, when they brought it to the Exchequer, he said: "No, go and leave it on the step of the Home Office." The Home Secretary is rather to be commiserated; but we have a duty to the public. There has been some public interest aroused and some correspondence in the more responsible Press as to what is going on.
These are the kind of questions I would like to ask: This Board has officials, employés, offices in London and Leeds, is making surveys, has been employing professional men, and yet there is no knowledge so far as Parliament is concerned as to how much money has been expended, as to who is supplying the money that has been expended, or as to who is going to supply it, except that we know the cost must ultimately come from the public out of the percentage to be retained by the totalisator. It does not seem to be right that Parliament should be without information when there are one or two questions with regard to the way in which this money is being ex- pended which are very pertinent. We had the advantage the other day of asking a few questions of the Chairman and other members of the Control Board. We were received with perfect courtesy and answers were given so far as they felt able to give the answers. But the answers were not complete. For instance—I am sorry the Attorney-General has left the House, because this might appeal to him—we learned that, instead of adopting one of the machines which have already been in use for many years in the Dominions and foreign countries, the Board is experimenting with what I might call a synthetic totalisator. It is trying to make up one. Specifications have been asked for, and an hon. Member who asked questions about patents was assured that the people who would make these machines would have to insert a clause safeguarding the Government against any claim for infringement of patent. Anybody who knows the law, knows that is no safeguard at all. How far is the public purse safeguarded by an agreement of this kind? Again, why has there been all this delay? We were told last summer that the Bill was wanted because it was hoped to have these machines erected on the racecourses during the coming year, but I believe there is very little chance of there being more than one erected by the end of the year. In reply to a further question, I was told that the Board was living on an overdraft and that beyond that no information could be given. I gather from the right hon. Gentleman's own letter that he has to prescribe a form of accounts for the monies received and expended by the Board, and to present to Parliament the Board's annual Report of their proceedings, together with their accounts. If the right hon. Gentleman is in a position to answer, and feels inclined to answer, may I ask if he has made any inquiry into the expenditure by the Board and into the financial arrangements that have been made? What is the meaning of the phrase "living on an overdraft?" Is it a bank overdraft, or what financial arrangements have been made? In general, I should like to know to what extent the public, because the public in the long run will have to pay this money, has been committed. I asked at that particular meeting whether there was any possibility of saying what would be the percentage taken from the Totalisator Fund, and I was told that it was quite impossible at the moment to arrive at any figure at all. Therefore, the sum total of it was that, beyond being told that they were doing their best, that they hoped to get one or two machines erected this year, and that there was an office in London and another in Leeds, we were quite unable to get any information at all as to what are the commitments into which the Board has entered.To what meeting is the hon. Member referring?
I am referring to a meeting held some weeks ago, at which we were given the opportunity of asking questions of the chairman of the Board. It was a meeting to which those Members of the House who had been on the Standing Committee which considered the Bill last year were invited, and many of them availed themselves of the opportunity to attend. In general, there is a good deal of uneasiness, partly owing to the circumstances in which the Act was passed, on the part of the general public, as has been shown by correspondence in the Press, and I would like the right hon. Gentleman if he cannot answer my questions now, at any rate to give me some assurance that he will make some inquiries into what is going on.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow West (Mr. Crawfurd) has been good enough to ask certain questions in regard to this matter. I will not say I think he must have omitted to look at the Act of Parliament, but he must have forgotten the circumstances under which the Act was passed. I rather think that Parliament, when it passed this Act, must have had the hon. Member in its mind, because Parliament said it would so constitute this Board that the hon. Gentleman could not ask all these questions. Parliament did not want the Government to be responsible for all the details in connection with this Board.
That was our complaint against the Bill before it was an Act of Parliament.
I know, but I, as Home Secretary, certainly did not intend, if I could help it, that Parliament should pass an Act that would place on my shoulders the responsibility of telling my hon. Friend opposite what the odds were on any particular totalisator on any particular race. If the hon. Gentleman is really entitled to ask all these questions, there is a whole series of questions which could be put, at any time, not merely on the Motion for the Adjournment of the House, but at Question Time, as regards the actions of this Board. I have the Act here, and let us see what the position is. Parliament appointed this Statutory Board, and the first place where the Home Secretary or any other Minister comes into touch with the Board is through the right of appointing, in the first place, a chairman. I have to appoint the chairman; others of my colleagues, with myself, appoint various other members of the Board; and certain outside bodies, such as the Jockey Club, the National Hunt Committee, and others, appoint other members of the Board; that is the unofficial constitution of the Board.
Having appointed the Board we have to find out where else any possible Parliamentary control is created by the Act. It is quite true, as the hon. Gentleman has said, that the Board has from time to time, when there is any surplus in the totalisator, to apply the money, in accordance with a scheme prepared by the Board and approved by the Secretary of State, for certain purposes such as the breeding of horses or the sport of horse racing. There I come in again, and the hon. Gentleman will be entitled to ask me whether the Board has submitted a scheme to me, and whether I have approved it. I agree that he will be entitled to go further and ask for details of the scheme and of my approval. The only other respect in which I am affected is that the Board has to submit annually to the Secretary of State a report of their proceedings, together with their accounts in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State. The Board came into existence at the end of last year and they have suggested to me, and I have agreed, that their first year shall run for 15 months until the end of 1929; thenceforward, it will run according to the calendar year. Until the end of this year, there will necessarily be no accounts presented to me. Therefore, there will be nothing for me to approve. Equally, there will be no totalisator fund out of which it will be possible to make grants for horse breeding or any other purpose. Therefore, I can only say to my hon. Friend that under the Act—and I must take my stand upon the Act—I am not responsible, nor is Parliament, for the day-to-day transactions of this Board.I am not asking about the day-to-day transactions, and the odds, and so on, because it would be impossible for Parliament to interfere. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there will be annual reports, and comparing the position of the Board with that of a public company, I am asking whether there ought not to be something like a statutory meeting.
No, because it is not a statutory company coming under the provisions of the Companies Act. It is a statutory board appointed by Parliament, and controlled only in particular details by Parliament. The hon. Gentleman asked me about the type of totalisator, but I have nothing to do with that. I am not an authority, and I do not hope to be an authority on the different types. The Board can establish any kind of totalisator which it likes. I have the right to make one caveat in regard to what the hon. Gentleman said about the public having to pay. He used expressions about this being the money of the public. Really that is not so; it is the money of such members of the public as choose to bet through the totalisator, and that is quite a different thing. The hon. Gentleman and I need have no concern about our own contributions to the totalisator, because we need not go and bet. It is not public money. I cannot possibly go further than the very unsatisfactory information which I have been able to give the hon. Gentleman, but at the end of this year I shall be prepared to answer fully questions in regard to the accounts.
The right hon. Gentleman will not be dealing with them.
The hon. Gentleman need not amuse himself with any ideas in regard to that. At the end of the year, I shall be fully prepared to answer questions whether there is any surplus, and how that surplus has been expended, and to discuss with the hon. Member the accounts and the form of accounts that I shall subsequently have to prescribe. That is all that I can say, except perhaps to advise the hon. Gentleman not to spend his own money in this direction.
Before this latest subject was raised, I had been intending to say a few words on—
On a point of Order. I want to ask the Home Secretary a further question on this subject, and I understand the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman) wishes to go on to another topic.
I have been waiting to deal with the subject of Parliamentary procedure, and I was interrupted by another subject being introduced.
I am very sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, and I do not wish to stand in his way, but it has been usual in these Debates to dispose of one subject before going on to another, and I did wish to ask the Home Secretary some questions on this matter, which I think is of some, public importance.
The two hon. Members must settle between themselves as to which will give way. It is not for me to decide. I called on the hon. Member for Oxford University (Sir C. Oman).
I do not want the hon. Member for Oxford University to exhaust his right to speak if he allows me to put my question.
If the hon. Member gives way, he does not exhaust his right.
I hope the hon. Member for Oxford University will not mind if I refer to something which was said by the Home Secretary and ask him a question about it.
I must protest that I want to stand on my rights. It was my wish to continue a Debate which was interrupted by the introduction of an entirely different topic. I leave it to you, Mr. Speaker, to decide what is to be done.
The Attorney-General is away, but the Home Secretary is here, and I hope the hon. Member for Oxford University is satisfied that I only want to put one point to the Home Secretary which will not take more than two or three minutes. It seems to me that the statement of the Home Secretary is a very extraordinary-one indeed. I understand that he is still responsible for the Metropolitan Police, and at the greatest of the race meetings, held at Epsom, he is responsible for good order and for preventing malpractices, including welshing and things of that sort—which of course he does, without any quibble whatsoever. But now that we are to have the totalisator the right hon. Gentleman says that he has no responsibility. We know that he shrank from having to appoint the Chairman of the Board and shrank from advising his right hon. colleagues the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Minister of Agriculture and the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to whom they should appoint. But he cannot help his position. He is responsible; and we cannot let this occasion pass without a protest. I do not say there will be, but there may be, in future, some irregularities which raise questions of public interest, and in view of his position as head of the police force the right hon. Gentleman cannot possibly be allowed to ride off in the way he proposes.
The right hon. Gentleman who raised this subject spoke of "we" and "us" upstairs, meaning, apparently, Members who were interested in the totalisator who were on the Standing Committee, and said we were invited to a private meeting upstairs. Other Members were not invited and I was not invited. Apparently there was a private meeting at which the hon. Member and some of his confreres were present and where they cross-examined—May I protest? The hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) is talking about a conspiracy. May I point out that if there is anyone who is kind enough to give a party and ask me and not him he has no cause to regard that as a conspiracy.
It was my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Mr. Kelly) who said conspiracy. These questions were put before the House, and apparently the hon. Member was satisfied and so was the Home Secretary. I do not think the public will be satisfied because, for good or ill, the State is now a partner in this nefarious business. I understand difficulties are arising in regard to the Derby, which I am told will not be run under the totalisator. It has also been asserted that the amount of revenue which it was estimated would come to the State will not be realised. During the discussion on this subject in the House we were told of the hopes of large sums of money being realised in this way, and how the racecourses would be cleared of rascals. I remember that the arguments used by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale were met by that kind of argument. Now the Home Secretary tells us that this question is not in the hands of the Government now, and it is no concern of the Home Office. The right hon. Gentleman says the Government have appointed their directors, and until the annual accounts come in he cannot give any more information. The Home Secretary cannot ride off like that, and he will either have to do his duty or get out, and fortunately he will get out very soon.
Parliamentary Procedure
In regard to the question of procedure in this House, I can only speak with an experience of 10 years. My first point is the absolute necessity of time saving in this House, and we ought to restrict the volubility of certain individual Members of this House. If one looks through the OFFICIAL REPORT, one finds that an enormous proportion of the time of the House, judging from the number of columns, is occupied by a comparatively small body of Members of this House. Sometimes those hon. Members pose as the watchdog of the State, and they express doubts upon every conceivable subject. Sometimes they appear as voices crying in the wilderness, and on other occasions they are urging that the time will soon come when red ruin and the breaking up of law and order will come about. All those hon. Members achieve one end, and that is they take up a large amount of the time of the House. When they get up to speak there is a general exodus of Members from the House. I have often wondered how it is possible for men of considerable intelligence to speak so often with the idea that they are following the career of the great Mr. Burke and becoming the dinner bell of the House. As the Duke of Wellington once said:
There are two or three things which I want to put before the House, and I do so now because it is perhaps the last opportunity I shall have as there will not be a further opportunity in the few remaining moments again after Easter. My first suggestion is that, a calculation having been made of the amount of time likely to be occupied by the Session, tickets covering a period of a quarter of an hour for speaking should be issued to Members of the House, and they should be strictly non-transferable. The speakers who have those tickets should be called to order by Mr. Speaker the moment when the time stated on their ticket comes to an end. In the case of some hon. Members, I think those tickets would be exhausted within a very short time after the beginning of the Session, and I am sure that would be for the general profit of the House, the realm, and the Empire. Probably it might not have that effect, but might only have the effect of leading those hon. Members to speak on subjects in which they were really interested, and to speak at moderate length and generally to give other people their chance. That is my first suggestion—that there should be a time allowance to all Members of the House, which should not be exceeded. My second suggestion is this: On a minor scale, but very vexatiously, time is wasted in this House by one section of the House, generally the "Noes," called for a Division. Mr. Speaker asks them two or three times whether they wish for a Division, they keep on shouting "No," and Mr. Speaker allows the Division. Shouts ring round the building, the bells ring everywhere, and unwilling Members troop in from the Library or the Smoking-Room, only to find, when they reach the door, that no Tellers have been appointed and the Division is off. A quarter of an hour is sometimes wasted in that way, and I have a suggestion to make as to how it could be stopped. I have the greatest belief in the wisdom and deciding power of Mr. Speaker, and I would suggest that, when he has decided that the number of Members who have called for a Division makes it necessary to order a Division, the party Whips of that side should be held responsible for having allowed their friends to keep on calling for so long that a Division has been ordered. I should like to have some form of censure invented for the use of Mr. Speaker, and as it could not be applied to any vague and anonymous section, I would suggest it should be applied to the party Whips of that section. I do not know whether it would be possible for it to take the form of applying a fine, but I cannot help thinking that, if the party Whips knew that there was a fine of, say, two guineas for calling a Division and then putting it off, there would be a great deal less interruption of our dinner time, because these interruptions seem to have a particular knack of coming precisely between the hours of half-past seven and half-past eight. Again, on the question of sparing time, why should it not be possible during Divisions to open the doors for the Division a little earlier? In the summer the heat is torrid, Members are crowded together to pass through, and frequent shouts of "Gate" may be heard while the Tellers are lingering. It seems to me that a slight change by which the Tellers should be appointed, and should take their posts at the doors at once would be an enormous improvement. The last point I wish to bring forward is that some check should be put on supplementary questions. They are often very right and proper, and necessary to elicit the actual meaning of a Minister's reply, but they are occasionally purely futile, and they are still more occasionally, what is worse than futile, intended to be funny. I should like to find some arrangement by which, by the authority of Mr. Speaker, a black mark should be placed against the would-be funny asker of questions who is preventing deserving questions in the sixties and seventies from being asked. I have made these few suggestions, the result of 10 years pondering. I am sorry they will be perfectly futile when made at this particular hour, and at this particular time of the Parliament, but I thought I ought to express my opinion and, in any case, liberavi animam meam."We must get on with His Majesty's business."
Question put, and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at Five Minutes after Four o'Clock until Monday, 15 th April, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of this day.