(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Agriculture whether the right hon. Gentleman is now in a position to give permission for the importation into Great Britain of Irish Free State store cattle on licence to farmers?

I have not be far taken any part in the proceedings on this Bill, but it is a question in which for many years I have taken a very keen interest. I would not have intervened had it not been that I have certain observations which, I think, one ought to make before letting the Bill pass to another place. In the first place, we have had a very detailed examination or the Bill through all its stages, and what has emerged, I think, more than anything else is the fact that it ought never to have been necessary to introduce a Bill of this kind, if only the Government had fulfilled their election pledge to make farming pay.

The Bill itself is practically a hybrid Bill. Its parentage is Liberal, and it has been foisted upon the world by a Socialist Government. It provides, quite inadequately, for the solution of the rural housing problem, which has arisen very largely because of the gradual breaking up of the great estates of the country. Some people seem to think that the shortage of houses and cottages in the rural districts of the country is due to the ineptitude and the parsimony of the landlords. That is nothing but a complete travesty of the truth. It is due to the great depression to which the agricultural industry has been subject ever since the War. It is due to the immense burden of taxation which has fallen upon a particular class in the community, namely, those who happen to be in the occupation of land, and which has made it impossible for them to maintain in their own possession their great estates. It is largely due to the breaking up of the great estates of the country that there is a shortage of cottages, owing to the fact that they have been taken possession of by persons, who are in no way connected with the agricultural industry, for week-end and other social amenities, and also because of the fact that the money available for the building of new cottages, and for the repair of old cottages, has not been in the hands of those who, before the War and for generations, had made it their business to maintain, if not on our modern standards of comfort, at least in decency, the labourers at work on the land.

That being the case, I certainly shall not oppose, nor, I think, will any hon. Member on this side of the House oppose, this Bill, because, though completely inadequate, and, in spite of the fact that it is also reactionary, because it reintroduces a system which we hoped we would gradually rid ourselves, namely, subsidy, nevertheless it is a Measure which is aimed at the purpose which we all have at heart, that is, the decent housing of the rural workers. But it is felt on these benches, and it has been expressed through all stages of the Bill, that it will not have the effect which it is intended to have. We have no guarantee that it will, in fact, house rural workers. One of the great needs, as we all know, is to build cottages in the country where the agricultural labourer will be near his work, and that is where our Bill of 1926 was an admirable Measure, because it was to re-equip cottages which were sited properly in the country, for the agricultural industry is an industry which is not subject to movements from one centre or district to another. We have found when many a scheme has been produced, and which has resulted in the erection of what are known as council cottages in the rural districts, that the cottages have been occupied, not by rural workers, but by workers in other industries, plumbers, carpenters and so forth, who are not engaged in work upon the land because rural workers cannot pay the rent at which the cottages can economically be let.

That is one of the things which we, on this side of the House, feel ought to have been included in the Bill. We ought to have made it clear to the rural district councils and to the committees which are to work this Bill, that they must enable cottages to be let at a rent which an agricultural labourer can pay. What is the good of putting up in a rural area a cottage which cannot be let at a rent of less than 5s. or 4s. 6d? Landlords have come in for a certain amount of criticism, but in the old days it was the landlord who put up cottages for the workers, with no thought in his mind of an economic rent, but solely in order that his labourers might live near their work under decent conditions; and he charged them a peppercorn rent of only 1s. or so. It is because that type of employer is disappearing owing to heavy taxation, that the country is faced with this problem. We on this side of the House disagree with the principle of subsidies, but if you are to have a subsidy, it is only justifiable if it has as its purpose the housing of those people who under any scheme at present existing cannot get houses for which they can afford to pay, in other words, the poorest people in the country, and the poorest are the agricultural workers.

I hope that the Minister, in his instructions to the committee and in the policy which he pursues in relation to this Bill, will make it clear beyond any doubt that if this scheme is used for the housing of better-paid workers, it must be scrapped and something must be substituted which will enable the agricultural labourers to get houses. A great deal has been said in criticism, and a good deal is now said in cynical amusement, with regard to our Act of 1926. I hope that the Minister and the committee which will work this Bill will, when they are treating with rural district councils, make it clear that their policy is to investigate very closely whether those councils have done their duty in regard to cottages already existing within their borders. I admit that there are many agricultural cottages which ought to be pulled down and replaced, but where it is possible, houses should be converted and improved for the existing tenants.

Cottages already in existence are better built and have stood the ages very much better than a great many houses that have been built under council schemes. Of course, they are not up to the standard of modern civilisation, but if they can be brought up to that standard, the first and most economical thing for the committee to do it to satisfy themselves that they have been renovated. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dumbarton Burghs (Mr. Kirkwood) and I are both Scotsmen, and as such are naturally and morally conservative, and I am certain he will agree that the people on Clydebank would rather live there where they have their roots than in other parts of the country. The same thing applies to the agricultural labourers. They do not like to move out of their villages when they have lived in the same place all their lives. If, therefore, by spending £50 or so you can put into good condition a cottage in which an agricultural labourer has always lived and which is near his work, it is far more economical that putting up a new house which may in the end be inhabited by someone for whom it was never intended under this scheme.

A good many of us on this side of the House have a sort of feeling that this scheme is a rather inadequate makeweight for the shrinkage which will take place in ordinary housing owing to the threat of the Land Tax, which has already led to the cancellation of contracts for houses and which will lead to a great many other cancellations. We all know the figure of shrinkage which created the crisis from which we suffered after the War, and which began with the land taxes of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). The first year's shrinkage was 40,000 houses, and it is an odd tiling that this Bill provides for the erection of 40,000 houses. It will enable the returns, if the 40,000 houses are built, not to show the real effect of the threatened Land Tax but to hide up the situation very satisfactorily from the Government and Liberal point of view. We on this side of the House do not propose to divide against the Bill. We think it is a bad Bill in many ways. We think that Parliament ought to have the right to lay down the conditions under which the subsidy is to be given and the regulations under which the Bill is to work. We think also that we ought to have had in the Bill the maximum rent which should be charged to an agricultural worker, for that would have given a clear indication to the district councils that this is a Bill to benefit the rural workers and no one else in a way which possibly even the regulations of the Minister would not do.

Bad as the Bill is, we think that if it does anything to produce an addi- tional cottage where it is needed for the rural worker, in spite of its extravagance, it spite of the fact that it is spending public money at a moment when we ought to be saving it, it is deserving of a measure of support, and it is not possible for us to oppose it. It is a makeshift. If the Socialist Government had only been able to implement their pledge to make farming pay, there would have been no need for the Bill. I hope that after the General Election, when we occupy those benches and put into operation a strong and constructive agricultural policy, the country will be able in the ordinary normal course of events, as it has done in years past, to put agriculture on to its legs so that there will be no need for any State subsidy and agriculture will be able to find cottages which its workers need.

I congratulate the Minister on this Bill, and also the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth (Sir J. Tudor Walters) for the assistance which he has given, which I hope will be continued. The consultations ho has had with the Minister have produced a rare and refreshing fruit. This is one of the best Bills that the Government has yet produced [Laughter.] It is a Measure which, in spite of the laughter of hon. Members opposite who are supposed to represent agricultural interests, will give homes for 40,000 agricultural workers and their families, which will give employment to 100,000 workers, which will save the Insurance Fund £5,000,000; incidentally, this is a better way of saving £5,000,000 than the method adopted under the Measure which this week kept us up all night. This is a Measure on which the Minister is to be congratulated. I regard it as one of the first steps of recent years to bringing about the renaissance and regeneration of the countryside. The right hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood), who is not here this morning, last Friday made great play with the name of the Minister of Health. All I can say is that the peasants of England would rather take shelter under the greenwood tree than in the dank recesses of the trackless wood where lurks the spotted snake with double tongue.

All of us, whether we represent industrial areas or not or whether we come of families who have lived, perhaps, for generations in urban surroundings or not, have a great love and devotion for the countryside, because it is the countryside from which we originally sprang. In the country we feel a plenitude and a satisfaction, a peace and a benediction such as nothing else can give—because we have come home. I am never so contented as when I am wandering among the lanes, the meadows and the wooded hills of Nottinghamshire, but never do I feel so distressed as when I see the conditions under which some of the workers have to live. A Royal Commission reported 25 years ago that there was a shortage of 200,000 cottages in rural England, and, as the Minister of Health showed the other day, very little has been clone since then to improve that state of things. As a result of that shortage, farm workers have to live many miles away from their work, have to walk or cycle for miles to and from their work in all weathers; and as the young people grow up and want to get married they find there is no cottage where they can make a home and are forced into the towns to swell the stream of unemployed.

Many of the cottages which do exist are unfit for human habitation. The country is a healthy place in which to live; the air is fresh and not polluted by the results of industrialism; but in spite of that we know that the health of the children and of the grown up people is very often not what it ought to be. The reports of medical officers of health for the rural districts show an appalling state of things. Consumption, bronchitis, rheumatism and all sorts of ills exist there on account of the conditions under which the workers have to live. I have heard a story of an old woman who said that at night time she could shut the door and she could close the window, but that she could not be sure of keeping out the cat—it came in at some crevice somewhere. Members may also have read "The Awakening of England," in which the author relates how a curate in one village said that when he visited the sick in a certain row of cottages—and they were always sick there—he usually found on rising from his knees at the bedside of one of his sick parishioners that the knees of his trousers were wringing wet, if there had been any rain. Those conditions are shocking, visitors from America and elsewhere who go round our villages and admire the roses about the doors and the honeysuckle under the eaves would not care to live in those cottages during a typical English winter. This Bill will do a great deal to improve the present state of things by giving us 40,000 cottages at rents which the workers will be able to pay. At the same time I would like to say that 4s. 6d. ought to be the maximum rent. I should like to see the rents at 3s. 6d. or 3s. and I think that might be possible if the committee does its duty.

The right hon. Member for West Woolwich talked a good deal about economy. He said "Where is your economy now, spending this £2,000,000?" I say that to spend money on providing houses for the workers of the countryside is the truest national economy. Besides giving health and happiness to 40,000 workers and their families the Bill will help to get rid of that great curse of the country side, the tied-cottage system. It is very distressing for people to be unemployed in the cities, but after they have gone about looking for work and come home tired in the evening at any rate there is a home waiting for them. If they become unemployed in the countryside and happen to live in a tied cottage they are turned out of that cottage, and are on the road and have nowhere else to go. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] The hon. Member who has just sat down spoke about families being rooted to the soil, having lived in villages for hundreds of years, and we know that families of the same name have lived in villages from Saxon days, like one of the characters in "Tess of the D'Urbervilles." If these people are turned out of their tied cottages they have nowhere else to go, and often must leave the district and go into the towns, and are lost to the countryside.

There is another result of this tied-cottage system which is especially noticeable in the South of England. I have fought a constituency in the South of England, and I know. It is notorious that many workers in the villages are afraid to show their political opinions by attending political meetings. They are afraid it may get to the ears of their employers, who are often their landlords, and that they will suffer in consequence. I have stood at a crossroads in the country making a speech and it seemed that no one was there to listen. The people were there, but they were not visible. I have looked a few yards down one road and a few yards down another road and have seen groups of people. They were listening, but they were afraid to let it be known that they were listening; they were afraid to be seen at the meeting.

I was told by one old campaigner that if I wanted to get a really good meeting in the countryside I should have to hold it out of doors, when it was dark, and when there was no moon. I did so. The whole place was as dark as a wolf's throat. It was crowded with people. There was an enormous crowd of people. [Laughter.] I do not know what hon. Members are laughing at. I felt very humble about it when I heard that there were farm labourers there who had walked four or five miles across the downs in order to attend that meeting. My point is not that the farm workers should be allowed to ex/press Labour views, but that they should be allowed to express any views they may hold, and it is a shame that they are afraid to do it under present conditions. If we abolish the tied-cottage system, as this Bill will help to do, the farm worker will be able to express his own views, he will be able to look his neighbours in the face, because, like the blacksmith in Longfellow's poem:

"He owes not any man."

I believe this Bill will prove to be the first clause of a new charter of health, of hope and of happiness for the countryside of England.

The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) has told us that in some parts of the country farm workers, because they lived in houses owned by their employers, were afraid of expressing their political opinions. I am afraid that the hon. Member has had a rather unfortunate experience and that has not been my experience. If the hon. Member for Broxtowe will come with me to certain mining areas of this country and try to address a Conservative meeting even in constituencies which now return Conservative Members—

I think we had better not pursue that point.

I thought it only right, Mr. Speaker, that both sides of this question should be stated. The hon. Member for Broxtowe is ruggedly honest when he expresses his views in this House, and he has told us that in his opinion this is the best Bill which the Government have introduced. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Well, I will say that he stated that it was one of the best, and on this side of the House we are going to examine it from that point of view. The hon. Member for Broxtowe spoke of rare and refreshing fruit. I think it will be wise to examine this Bill very closely in view of what has been said in the past. On the 18th of February this year the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Fenryn and Falmouth (Sir J. Tudor Walters) said that this question of rural housing was not merely one affecting rural workers, but it was a great scheme for relieving unemployment, and therefore we must consider this Measure from that point of view. In addition to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth, other people have held the same view, and have stated that a scheme such as this would be of great assistance in reducing unemployment. I have in my hand a newspaper issued on behalf of the Holland-with-Boston Labour party, and the writer gives details of the splendid proposals which have been brought forward by the Government for relieving unemployment. The writer says, in regard to these proposals, that the first one is a proposal for a great rural housing undertaking. It is No. 1 on the Government's programme for relieving unemployment. The next is in connection with the extraction of oil from coal, main line railway electrification, and methods by which Russian trade can be extended. The next proposal is to encourage tourists to come to Great Britain. This writer finishes up by stating that another proposal is the utilisation of waste land for afforestation.

That is the programme, and I will examine for a moment how it applies to the particular scheme which we are discussing. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth is always listened to with great respect in this House. The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have had three successive holders of the office of Lord Privy Seal during the existence of the present Government, and they have been specially charged with the task of finding work for the unemployed. Those Ministers have examined this scheme for rural housing and schemes for housing generally on their merits as schemes for relieving unemployment. We know that the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs (Mr. Thomas) examined the scheme we are now considering and evidently did not think much of it, because he did nothing at all to put it into operation and turned it down. The late Mr. Vernon Hartshorn took a great interest in this question. I should like to pay him that tribute. I remember that he intervened in a debate and wanted to know when hon. Members talked about the large amount of employment that would be given by such schemes as these how small the total really was. Speaking on the 18th February, 1931, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth said:

"I am going to suggest a scheme of housing by which the Government may employ directly 250,000 men, and indirectly another 250,000 men."

The late Mr. Hartshorn intervened, and asked:

"For how long a period?"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th February, 1931; cols. 1293–94, Vol. 248.]

That was a reasonable question. I have every reason to believe that the late Lord Privy Seal did pay attention to the suggestions of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth, and he also submitted a report to the Cabinet dealing with all the schemes that had been brought forward for the relief of unemployment, including the scheme under discussion. What has happened? We have heard nothing further of that report, and apparently the late Mr. Hartshorn did not think much about this scheme.

The late Mr. Hartshorn was the first to meet me in conference with respect to the proposals which I made, and he expressed warm approval of the proposal that 100,000 houses should be built. Unfortunately, before the next Conference, Mr. Hartshorn passed away. It was on his suggestion that the Conference adjourned, so that precise detailed figures might be examined to test the soundness or otherwise of my proposals; but he expressed the opinion that a scheme of this kind should be carried out. It is only fair to his memory to point out that the hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley), quite unintentionally, is inaccurate in suggesting that the late Mr. Hartshorn was not interested in this scheme, and was not prepared to support it.

My information was that he did not include it in his report. I know that the late Mr. Vernon Hartshorn took a deep interest in this question, but unfortunately he has passed away; or, otherwise, we should have heard more about the scheme. The present holder of the office of Lord Privy Seal must have examined this scheme, because it would be passed on to him. I know that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth is not satisfied with a measure that provides only 40,000 houses, because he talked about the necessity of providing 100,000. Therefore, it is quite clear that the Government are not whole-heartedly in support of this scheme, or we should have had a much larger provision of houses than that which is provided for in this Bill.

I agree with what was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Davidson), that we should be doing a wrong thing by opposing this Bill, miserable as it is in regard to the number of houses provided. Therefore, we are not going to stand in the way of placing it on the Statute Book, because no one disputes the cottages are wanted in the country areas. We have to have the committee set up which is provided for in this Bill, although we do not yet know what its composition is going to be. We do not know even the chairman's name. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us who the chairman is going to be. I hope it will be someone who has had experience in providing houses in rural areas.

Now I come to the question as to what has been done by private owners during the last few years. We have the Minister's own statement to the House that since the War 410,000 houses have been erected in rural areas, and that of these 84,000 have been built by local authorities under various Acts—and he said, quite rightly, that the local authorities had not done as much as he would have liked. That means that 326,000 houses were provided in rural areas by private enterprise since the War, and, considering the condition of agriculture in the past few years, it cannot be said that landowners and farmers have not done their duty as far as they were able. In Lincolnshire we have some splendid houses in the rural areas, provided by landowners—some of them very large landowners—at a time before the present high taxation, when farming was really being made to pay, and they were able to receive rents from their land. These houses on the countryside have been provided by these beneficient landowners—[Interruption.]—that is quite a correct description, because never on any occasion has the rent charged been an economic rent, and, therefore, we must not belittle these efforts.

I hope that this Bill, with its subsidies, will be more effective than other Measures which have provided subsidies for housing, and will not have a bad effect on the cost of building. We were told that the Addison scheme was going to do wonderful things. I was a member of a housing committee when the present Minister of Agriculture came down and addressed a large meeting, and gave details of how the scheme was going to work out. I am sorry to say that it did not work out as he said it would. There was a great increase in costs, and local authorities had to bear a burden which, although it only represented a small poundage, is still there, and will have to be borne by ratepayers who have not yet grown up to manhood, because it extends over many years. We do not want to put any further burdens of that kind on the backs of prosperity. Why was that scheme a failure? In my opinion it was because right and proper conditions were not laid down in the Act, and that is why I have been so keen in these debates to see to it that the present Minister put into the Bill exactly what he wanted done, so that the instructions would go forward to the local authorities and there could be no deviation from them.

As to the question who should occupy these houses, it is true that the Bill says that they are to be for agricultural workers or persons in a like economic position. That leaves the door very wide open. Under the Addison Act we said we were going to let the poorest people have the houses—the man with the largest family, the man in the most need; but in the long run the position became this, that the first thing an applicant was asked was what was his occupation, and if he said he was a casual labourer he could not have a house, while if he were a railwayman or a local government servant with a regular job and a regular wage he could have one, and houses which were intended for the poorest working people were afterwards occupied by people who could afford to take a house elsewhere.

As regards the financial conditions, I think we ought to have more information from the Minister. He laid down, in the formula that he stated in the Debate on the 7th July, that for an authority to be eligible the estimated product of its 1d. rate should not exceed 5d. per head of the population, and, secondly, the poundage of the general rate levied for the year 1930 must exceed 10s. Already there has had to be a climb down as regards the 10s. It has been discovered that, as far as Scotland is concerned, it will have to be 8s., or no one will come in at all.

That represents exactly the same figure, comparatively.

The right hon. Gentleman did not tell us that on the 7th July: it has been discovered since.

Scottish Members are perfectly well aware of it.

Anyhow, the right hon. Gentleman will find that this figure of 10s. will not work in England if he is going to provide cottages in the districts and for the people that are most in need of them. He said on the 7th July that these seemed to be reasonable conditions which would establish a level of real poverty. I hope that he will reconsider that part of his speech. It is not laid down in the Bill, so that it cannot be said to be guaranteed by Statute, even if the Bill passes. Then we are told that the committee is to be guided by any general directions which may be given to them by the Minister with the approval of the Treasury. Will this mean that the Minister will give directions as regards rents? We made an attempt to include in the Measure a definite instruction that rents above 3s. a week should not be charged, but we were voted down by hon. Members opposite.

We also tried to get in a condition that the rents should not be more than 10 per cent. of the standard wage for agricultural labourers, realising that that is the figure of 3s. per week which is always taken into account in dealing with agricultural labourers' wages. Again, however, hon. Members opposite voted us down. It is quite evident that they are not in deadly earnest about guaranteeing a cheap cottage for the agricultural labourer, because otherwise they would have been prepared to include in the Bill a definite instruction to the committee that a rent in excess of 3s. should not be charged. This is a big controversy. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth, in his speech, talked about 2s. a week, with additions for repairs and so on, making an absolute maximum of 3s. The Minister talked about 4s. 6d. inclusive of rates, but he was not prepared to make even that an absolute maximum; he said that it must be left to the discretion of the committee to decide. I suggest that it is quite wrong to leave out of the Bill some instruction to the committee as regards rent.

There is one matter for which I desire to thank the right hon. Gentleman. We made a special effort to include in the Bill a provision that Parliament should have some control over the cost of the houses, the rents charged, and other matters that will be handed over to the committee, and, after a big struggle, the Minister agreed that such a condition should be put into the Bill. It has made the Bill a much better one. I am sorry to say that we were not able to get him also to agree to lay down a condition that British materials only should be used as far as practicable in the construction of these cottages. If this is to be a scheme to assist employment, surely such a condition is necessary. How are you going to help British unemployed people if money is to be spent on Russian doors, Belgian tiles and bricks, and so on? When we were discussing this matter, an hon. Member representing a Welsh constituency made a plea that Welsh slates should be used for the roofing of these cottages, and talked about tiles imported from abroad which were causing unemployment in his district. That was from a real, staunch free importer.

How hon. Members on those benches, when it comes to their own constituencies and the industries there, are all out for protective measures such as those suggested by hon. Members on this side, or in any other way! I have heard Liberal Members for agricultural constituencies holding forth that protection should be given in the case of certain commodities grown in their districts, but, when it comes to helping other people, that is a different story. The London County Council have shown in their housing schemes that they can build houses cheaply when British materials are used as far as practicable. They have carried out that principle, and have provided an enormous amount of work for British workmen by so doing. I should like to see the Government have the courage to follow the excellent example set by the London County Council, and do the same.

I also hope the Minister will see to it that there are no restrictions as regards service supplies to these cottages and no such thing as laying it down that the housewife can only have electricity. If gas is available, and she wants it, she ought to be allowed to have it. We have had case after case where, under housing schemes, local authorities have laid it down that the occupants should only use one method. The tenants have resented it. They regard it as a system of tied houses, and it is nothing else. Workmen in the gas industry have expressed through their representatives in this House, that they do not agree with any system of tying the tenant down to any particular form of service. I hope the Minister will have a consultation with the hon. Member for Plaistow (Mr. Thorne) on this. He knows all about the question and feels very strongly about it. I had a conversation with him only the other night.

One thing in the Bill that I do not like is this compulsory power to build by the Ministry in connection with some other Government Department. We know what that is. It is a little sop for their followers on the benches behind. The Bill itself is a concession to Liberal opinion and this is a sop to Members behind, to make it palatable to them. It is not going to work very well. It will show that many of the theories that they preach are all wrong when put into practice, and that, if you want cheap houses, you will not get them from Whitehall.

I trust that, when we have finished with the Bill, the Minister will settle down to departmental work and will not bring any more Bills forward. There is a glut of legislation. The people in the country are sick of it and are saying, "For goodness sake close the House of Commons for five years and get on with the work." The Housing Act of last year has not functioned yet at all. We have not had any houses built. Schemes have been put forward, but that is as far as we have got. The reason is that the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have been too busy with Bills in the House, instead of getting on with departmental work and putting some push into the matter. If we had a legislative holiday we could get on with business much better.

12 n.

There is no doubt that the Bill has been well discussed. Various points of view have been fully ventilated and Amendments have been accepted, which proves that it has been well worth while to examine its provisions thoroughly. I congratulate many of my colleagues on the fact that they have devoted much time and thought to considering its provisions and have made an honest attempt to improve it. I hope the local authorities will work the Bill in conjunction, of course, with the Housing (Rural Workers) Act, 1926. If they neglect to work it in conjunction with that Act, this is not going to be very much good. Something like 10,000 parishes will apply, and that only works out at about four houses to the parish. That is not going to be much good unless something else is done. There are many houses in rural areas which could be put into first class condition at a small expenditure, assisted by the Act of 1926, and, because local authorities have been indifferent, there has not been enough push from the Ministry as regards the matter and we have not had the houses reconditioned. The Bill is a poor attempt to placate the Liberal party but is a little step forward though not, I hope, the best Bill that this Government is going to introduce. If it is, God help the Government.

I should like to thank the hon. Member for his somewhat tardy recognition of the fact that the Liberal party has taken the lead in many of these social reforms. At any rate, he has shown that there is a coalition of all parties in the House to assist the agricultural labourer to get better houses. The main part of his speech was devoted to demonstrating the old thesis that Codlin is the friend and not Short. Codlin has failed very badly and we are going to give Short a trial of this most urgent problem, because that there is urgency there can be no doubt whatever and, naturally, the Liberal party will be found in support of the Measure if there is a Division. A very great deal has been done with regard to housing in general by the Acts of the preceding Government and also under this Government. No one can go about the country without realising that a very large number of houses have been and are being built under the Act passed by this Government, the late Government and the one preceding it. The real case for the Bill is this. Notwithstanding what might have been done with regard to, other classes of the community, the agricultural labourer has so far had little or nothing done for him, and where the need is greatest there the least has been done. This Bill is an endeavour—I hope it will be a successful one—to mitigate, if there is no hope of entirely curing, that evil.

I should like to deal with the interesting proposal of associating an outside committee with the administration of the Bill, most interesting development which the House is witnessing not only in this Bill but in others. In all probability we are seeing the first steps of the development of a system which I hope will be successful. At any rate, something must be done so to organise national efforts for the remedying of national evils that we shall be able to bring into the machinery for dealing with these evils some force other than this House and the departments of the Civil Service concerned. Undoubtedly, with the best will in the world, houses built solely by public authorities, and controlled by this House and the Civil Service, have not been cheap, have been far fewer in quantity, and to a large extent have failed to meet the national demand. The House of Commons, in the subconscious but practical way in which so many of its difficulties are mainly solved, has hit upon what may be a practical working solution of some part of the evil by linking up outside committees composed of practical men and women who, not as a vocation associated with financial pay but by way of devoting themselves with such time as they can spare to the public services, so that they can ally themselves to this House and to the Civil Service in order to allay some of our most important and devastating social evils. Therefore, I welcome this breakaway from precedent. Whoever the chairman may be—and I hope that he may be a gentleman who will be able to give the necessary time—I trust he will possess practical knowledge, and that the committee, with the good will of this House and of the Civil Service behind it, will be an effective driving force for handling for the first time a problem of this kind on sound financial and practical lines.

We know the difficulties of the county council who are over-burdened with work. Each succeeding Session piles more upon them. I found myself in considerable sympathy with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley) when he said that he thought it would not be a national disaster if this House closed down rather longer than is anticipated and thereby cut down the output of legislation. I think that instead of suffering from a lack of legislation we are suffering from too much of it. I speak after some thought upon the matter. [An HON. MEMBER: "You are becoming a Conservative."] I am as I always shall remain, I hope, a sound Radical prepared to face the facts of the situation. Undoubtedly, there is an immense number of Acts being piled upon the Statute Book which are incapable, as the Civil Service now stands, of adequate administration, but hon. Members in all parts of the House will agree with me that this Bill will not be one of them. It is a, genuine attempt to deal in a new way with an old problem. I have every hope? that with the good will of the House behind it—it is evident that the good will of the House is behind it no matter what the criticisms may be from one side or the other—it will, in the interests of a class of the community which, above all others, deserves not only practical sympathy but the help of the country as a whole, do a great deal to mitigate the evils of that problem.

The hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley), in reply to the hon. Member for Broxstowe (Mr. Cocks), said that he and his colleagues could not get meetings in the mining areas and that—

I suggested to the hon. Member who dealt with that subject that he had better not pursue it, and the hon. Member should not pursue it either. It is not in the Bill.

Surely, I have a right to say a word in reply to the hon. Member.

I called the hon. Member to Order on the subject and stopped him.

I am bound to bow to your Ruling. It was really the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mr. Davidson) that has brought me into this debate. He struck a chord deep down in my nature when he said that, like me, he was a Scotsman and therefore a Conservative, because in all my experience—and I have met men and women of many races—I believe that we are the most Conservative race on earth. With your kind permission, Sir, I will try and explain how that comes in, because this is really a housing question. The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead went on to speak about rural houses, the homes of the cotters, and as our national poet Burns described it in his "Cotter's Saturday Night." He described those homes and played upon it as only a Scotsman, and particularly a Tory, can, In the rural and agricultural districts of Britain there is Conservatism deep down. The Tory party wish to keep their grip there.

What are the conditions in those houses? My interjection, when he brought me into the field, was that they were dens of consumption. Let him go through his native land where Socialist propaganda has not been able to pierce yet and where we have not been able to convert the local councils to the advisability of the better housing of the people. What will he find in the lonely glens and straths of Scotland to-day? Hovels, and you have to go to the kraals of South Africa to find their equal. Those black houses were not built by the Labour party. They were built by the landlords—the men whom the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead stood up and defended to-day and to whom he paid a great tribute, the men who chased the finest breed of men and women out of the Highlands of Scotland and drove them to the uttermost parts of the world, the landlords of Scotland. Nobody knows better than the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead what happened through the Highland clearances. It was not the Socialists who broke up the family life of the Highlanders of Scotland. It was the landlords. He mentioned the Irish. It was the same in Ireland. It was the same the world over. Nevertheless, I have always maintained that it is the home life of the common people of our country that is the backbone of the great British Empire. Those who have been responsible for the Government of this country, those who made our songs understood that well. Lady Nairne knew it well when she penned the lines:

"Oh! the auld hoose! the auld hoose!

What though the rooms were wee,

For kind heart's were dwelling there

And bairnnies fou o' glee."

Lady Nairne penned that verse to a generation different from the generation of to-day. Not that the landlords of that day were any more kindly, because she was writing after 1745, the Jacobite Rebellion. They were not any kindlier disposed than are the landlords of to-day. It is because of that love of homeland, that love of home ties that it is essential for any Government to look at this housing problem in its proper setting. I believe that we have men in the Government who understand that position—and to see that the common people, the poorest people, are well housed.

I hope you will permit me one word, Mr. Speaker, because I think I ought to be allowed it, in answer to the hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley), who put a slight on the Minister of Agriculture of to-day in respect of what he did when he was the Minister of Health in the Coalition Government. He said that the Minister of Health of that day had handed on to unborn generations a heavy debt, handed on to generations unborn, high ideals, ideals that are causing trouble to-day. He raised the ideal of the standard of housing, the like of which had never been before. It was the present Minister of Agriculture who devised the idea of no more single apartment houses in Scotland, no more one-roomed houses. In 1919 he committed the most grave crime that could be committed so far as the ruling classes of this country are concerned, when he put on the Statute Book an Act which provided that nothing less than a three-apartment house was to be allowed to be built. The powers behind the throne could not tolerate such a man.

The three-apartment house meant a three-apartment standard of life for the natives of my land as against the single-apartment standard of life. It meant a three-apartment standard of education. It must be remembered that our standard of education had always been higher than that of England. We had been able, our race, the common people of my race, had been able to take their place among the races of the earth although they had been reared under conditions of the single-apartment standard. What would it have meant, had we been able to get the money, if that same race had been reared on the three-apartment standard? The powers that be could not afford to give the working classes of my country the three-apartment standard of life and at the same time pay £1,000,000 a day in interest on War debt, and as they could not have those two things together, the present Minister of Agriculture was shifted from his job. The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), who was then the Prime Minister, had all the power and wealth of this country brought to bear on him and he was told that, he had to sack the Minister of Health of that day, now the Minister of Agriculture, because he was a dangerous man.

To-day, the same power, the Tories, is being exercised to try and keep down the standard of life of the rural worker. I agree readily, and I have said it before in this House, that the ruling classes of England, including the employers of labour, are more generous to their people than the ruling classes and employers of labour in my country. I admit readily that the Lords of the land in England, many of them, take a delight in acting generously, in being the big man of the village, and if the lady, kind and gentle, and the daughters dispensing—

I think the hon. Member had better get to the Bill.

I am very sorry that you have found cause to intervene, Mr. Speaker, because this is something which I honestly believe. I leave the future to judge betwixt you and me. Everything that I have said has to do with the housing of the people and with rural housing.

The hon. Member must deal with the Bill.

I am saying that the housing of the agricultural labourer or, as we call him in Scotland, the country serf, is a very serious business. Up to now the housing of those folk has been in the hands of the men who are represented on the Opposition benches to-day. Their forefathers built the houses which it is suggested should be altered; houses not fit for cattle to live in. The Tory party is a party of fear. They fear that the present Government will be able to demonstrate to Britain that they are going to house people in a manner which the present generation never believed was possible. I will try to keep within your ruling, Mr. Speaker, and I will not mention names or constituencies, but, think of it. It makes my blood boil to hear the Tory party suggest what should be done with houses which have been built by themselves for these rural workers, houses which have neither light nor water, nor any conveniences at all. They come forward to-day and suggest to this Government, which is going to house these people in better conditions, people who have never had any amenities at all except natural amenities which would have been taken away if it had been possible—come forward and suggest what shall be done with these houses. They come forward and say: "See to it Minister of Health that none of these houses have electricity or gas." What hyprocrisy, Mr. Speaker, to talk in that fashion to folk who have never had gas or electricity and who, when they go into the big house as servants and are told to put the gas out blow it out. Then, when the mistress rings for the servant in the morning and she does not answer, it is discovered that she is dead.

I really must ask the hon. Member to obey my Ruling.

I have got that across, anyway. Hon. Members opposite may laugh at me, but it is God's truth I am telling you. The Housing Act of 1930 gave the Minister powers of default, that is power to take steps where local authorities neglect or refuse to build houses—he can step in and build them. That is a power that is in the Bill. Why has he to take that power? It is because of the landlord power all over the country. What has the Lord Privy Seal had to do in Scotland? He has had to go round the country and threaten local authorities with the power of his great office and to tell them that the housing conditions in their district are a disgrace. I am not saying this, it is a Minister of the Crown. This Bill gives us £2,000,000. It will be divided between Scotland, England and Wales. Scotland will get 11/90ths and England and Wales with take 89/90th, and there will be a separate Advisory Committee for Scotland.

As far as it goes, I welcome this Bill very much with its 40,000 houses, but, after we have done that, it is infinitesimal to the contribution that ought to be made to this great problem. I have to admit the contention put forward by the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead that the workers in these rural areas will not be able to pay the rent, but this Government is not responsible for that position. The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead will not say that these houses that are to be built are too elaborate, that they are too good. He will agree with me that these country folk ought to have the best possible conditions of life, because once the peasantry of our countryside is destroyed it can never be replaced. This Government is making some attempt to retain the people in the countryside, but it is not these 40,000 houses that is going to make any effect on the great question behind it all, and that is the question of poverty. This Government is not responsible for that. You, hon. Members opposite, and your fore- fathers are responsible. The Tory party—

The hon. Member really must not stray away on subjects which are not in the Bill.

I will finish. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, to have transgressed your Ruling so often to-day. I have not in recent months disturbed the House very much. It will depend on circumstances whether I disturb it in the future. That is not a threat, I believe in acting. The nation requires houses for health and decency and self respect. The way to tackle this problem is nationally. As we tackle defence so we must tackle our existence. The Socialist way is the only way.

Undoubtedly the Bill is to be welcomed as the first attempts this Government has made in the interests of agriculture. I cannot accept the very rosy estimate made as to some of its effects. I think it will do something to help the agricultural labourer, though I do not believe it will have any effect whatever in making farming pay. Reference has been made to tied cottages. The tied cottage system is a thing that cannot be abolished, in the interests either of the farmer or of the labourer who works on a farm, but of course it has certain drawbacks, and I believe that the Bill will do something to remedy those drawbacks by providing a larger number of houses in the country districts generally. The hon. Member for Broxtowe (Mr. Cocks) said that agricultural labourers did not go to political meetings because they were afraid to reveal their political opinions. Really, that is not the case. Let me suggest another reason why agricultural labourers do not attend political meetings.

The hon. and gallant Member must not go into that question again.

I thought I might reply to the hon. Member for Broxtowe, but if I am out of Order I shall, of course, not pursue the subject further. During the Debate reference has been made to the necessity of making houses harmonise with their surroundings by the use of materials suited to each locality. That is a very important point. I have noticed that hon. Members of all parties have been urging the claims of the materials produced in their own constituencies, and very naturally. I certainly agree with what was said by the hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley), that at any rate the materials used should be British materials. Of course, if we are to have a large number of new houses built we shall probably want some more roads. I would remind the Minister, therefore, that the best road stone in the country comes from the quarries on the Clee Hill. There is the question of water supply, which is often a most difficult one in the agricultural districts, particularly in hilly country like that which I have the honour to represent, where there are so many houses not assembled in villages but scattered all over the hillside. The question of a water supply is a very serious one, and I know very many cases of houses where every drop of water used has to be carried 200 or 300 yards, sometimes uphill, and it is a very great burden and hardship. I know that it is extremely difficult to solve the problem, but I hope that all possible attention will be paid to it.

Then there is the question of the advisory committee to be appointed under the Bill. The right hon. Member for North Cornwall (Sir D. Maclean) made some very interesting remarks on the general subject of these committees, and there was a good deal in what he said. Gradually powers should be delegated to these committees, apart from this House. That would relieve the House of some of the congestion from which it now suffers. I wonder whether the Minister will be able to do what I understood he said he would do during the Second Reading Debate, and that is to tell us the composition of the committees before the Debate closes. In view of what took place last night, perhaps he will tell us who will be specially charged with representation of the interests of Wales, and whether that individual will be able to talk Welsh?

I cannot complain of the tone of discussion this morning, though an attempt has been made by hon. Members opposite to minimise the importance of the Bill. That is not unnatural. We should have expected hon. Members opposite to water down the generous terms which the Bill guarantees. Let us first refer to the question of the advisory committee. I am very sorry that last night, when I was not here, this question was raised again, as I thought I had appeared in sackcloth and ashes and expressed my sorrow for having misled the House. I should have thought it would have been sufficient co have left the matter there, but it was discussed last night. On the Second Reading of the Bill I unfortunately made a statement which I did not mean to carry into effect and have not carried into effect. It was an inadvertence on my part, for which I am sorry. I am not the only person who has stood at this Box and made a mistake, nor shall I be the last.

I feel that as a result of the expression of opinion of Members of the House, the committee will have to be a little larger than I had originally intended. That has made it impossible for me this morning to be able to announce the full personnel of the committee, though I hope to do that as soon as the committee is constituted. When we know who will be the members of it a statement will be made in the House. The Chairman has been appointed. He has appeared at the psychological moment. I think I may say that if we had put to a vote of this House the question as to who should preside over this committee, there would have been a unanimous vote in favour of the right hon. Member for Penryn and Falmouth (Sir J. Tudor Walters). I believe that he fulfils all the qualifications for which the right hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood) asked the other day, in so far as any person less than perfect could possess all those qualities. I am thankful to the right hon. Member for Penryn for acceding to my request, and I am sure that the House will agree in heartily thanking him for having met our suggestion.

The two main criticisms raised again to-day in the course of the Debate relate to the directions and conditions. They have now been dealt with in a way different from what I intended. The principal point at issue is that hon. Members opposite wish to have these conditions and directions specifically stated in the Bill, whilst I wished to act in the light of experience. We have arrived at what is a compromise, which will enable us to deal with the matter by Order, to be laid on the Table of the House. That ought to meet the desires of hon. Members opposite. The question of a specific rent has been raised again. I do not want to go into that question now, because the Lord Privy Seal last night dealt fully with it and explained the need for a certain measure of elasticity. I gather from the views expressed by hon. Members opposite that this is a bad Bill and is also a fiddling Bill. It is a Bill on which the party opposite had not the courage to divide on Second Reading, and it is one on which they will not divide on Third Reading. If it be so bad as they allege, I should have thought it would have been their moral duty to have carried the war into the Division Lobby.

I can only conclude that, at bottom, they know that this is not a bad Bill as it was described by one right hon. Gentleman, nor is it a fiddling Bill as it was described by another hon. Member. The 1926 Act, to which so many references have been made, has in five years resulted in the reconditioning of between 3,000 and 4,000 houses in England and Wales. Here is a Measure which in a far shorter time is going to produce at least twelve times or fifteen times as many houses. If this Bill is to be regarded as a fiddling Measure, then what about the much vaunted Housing (Rural Workers) Act, the one ewe lamb produced by the Tory party and trotted out on every possible occasion for our view, as a far nobler beast than it really is. To produce a very large number of new houses is an entirely different thing from reconditioning not merely as to scale, but also in the quality of its effect. Believe me, whatever may be done in the way of rural reconditioning does not completely meet the problem of to-day in the rural areas. Therefor we have to make this provision for new buildings. I think that hon. Members opposite know that the need exists for cottages at low rents. Their Amendments were directed towards rents lower than the maximum which I suggested in my speech, but they did not feel so strongly about that matter as to throw their forces into the Division Lobby.

We know that the right hon. Gentleman could not be here last night but he will find that we did press an Amendment on that matter to a Division and that his party voted against low rents.

I am not dealing with that at the moment but with the point made by the hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Womersley) when he said that the Government were not in earnest in this matter of low rents. My reply is that considering the very large number of people in the Conservative party it is remarkable that they could only produce less than 30 to go into the Lobby on this question. If the motives of the Government and their earnestness are being challenged, I am entitled to point out that the earnestness of hon. Members opposite on the subject does not appear to be of a very high order and I follow that by saying that in the past they had unlimited opportunities for dealing with this problem—opportunities which were denied to us until the last two years.

I have never in this House pitched too high my hopes for any proposal which I have brought before it. I have always thought it better to err on the side of modesty but I am bound to say, as the Bill leaves the House, that of the many Measures with which I have had to deal during the past two years, none has given me greater pleasure and I am glad now to be passing it on to another place. The picturesque appearance of our rural cottages hide unhealthy and unwholesame interiors in only too many cases. These houses are ofter over-crowded and it is also true that in the country villages young couples are unable to get married because of the lack of housing accommodation or can only get married if they drift from the country to the town. The building of houses under the Bill in those poor areas, where otherwise they would not be built, will do something to deal with the problem of the over-crowded houses in the rural areas and with the drift of young people to the urban centres.

Incidentally, it will deal with another problem. It has been suggested that farm workers always live next door to the farm on which they work but that is not true. In many cases rural workers have to walk, or cycle or travel by motor omnibus considerable distances to their work and those who live next their work are, for the most part, living in tied cottages. The houses that will be produced under this Bill will, I hope, obviate the necessity for long distance travelling between the worker's home and the farm, and the Bill will provide cottages, every one of which will be untied cottages and as regards which there will be no restriction by the farmer on occupation.

The Bill, in providing homes nearer to their work for these farm workers and in dealing with the heavy congestion which exists in some areas, is making a substantial contribution to the solution of the problems of the countryside. The effects of this Measure will not cease when the houses have been completed. In so far as, in agricultural parishes, you relieve the rural district councils, you give them resources to develop their housing proposals in other areas which are outside the definition of "agricultural parishes." You also teach the countryside a new tradition and new standards of housing, and therefore, the effects of this Measure will last long after the Measure itself has really ceased to operate. All I need say in conclusion is that the Bill leaves this House and goes to another place with the benediction of the overwhelming proportion of the Members of this House. Whatever shortcomings hon. Members opposite think the Bill still contains I think we can now send it to another place registering our view that it should be fully implemented when it is on the Statute Book, and that all of us to whatever political parties we belong, will do our best to make it a success.

I am not one who should be included in the category coming under the condemnation of the Minister, because I think that this is quite a good Bill, as far as it goes, though it is a very little one. There is no doubt that the rural housing problem has become very bad, especially within 50 miles of London. In that area the picturesque cottages of which the Minister has spoken, are all being bought up by middle-class Londoners with motor cars, at handsome prices which the owners cannot resist, and the result it that the agricultural labourer is simply being dehoused. We must put something in the place of these cottages. The people who buy these cottages are able to put them in proper condition and as to the new cottages which are to be put up under this Measure, I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman whose services the country has been so fortunate as to secure as chairman of this committee will see that they are good cottages and that they are put up with economy. The only thing about which I am disappointed is that the Government did not adopt the right hon. Gentleman's whole scheme, because he announced to the House that he could build something like 100,000 houses and that, with the relief in unemployment benefit, the cost would be very little indeed, making it possible to let them at very low rents.

I have one suggestion to make to the right hon. Gentleman as regards the rents of these houses. There is only one way in which to make these house rents cheaper. That is by giving the agricultural labourer sufficient ground in which to grow his own food, to keep his pig and his hens, and the farmer should assist him and feed his animals and poultry for him, so that his money wages will not matter so much, but he will have an actual profit out of his holding. That used to be the practice in Perthshire long ago. The workers on the farms were really smallholders living round about, and they did the farmer's work and their own work, borrowing the farmer's horses and so on. They bought very little in shops, and therefore they did not have to pay the shopkeepers' and, middlemen's charges. They got their food direct from the soil, and the result was that the money wage was not the most important matter. What mattered was what they could win from their own bit of land. If it is possible for them to make a profit out of their land, the rent will not seem so high, but if you are merely going to build cottages with a larger number of rooms, which means a larger rent for the agricultural workers, you are loading them with a burden. What you must do is to give them the necessary bit of land extra, so that they can make their own wages out of it.

Then I hope it will be possible to manage to give them a decent water supply in the way that I have seen it done in the Colonies, where every house has facilities for catching the rain water—very large corrugated iron tank bigger than the house. A great deal might be done in the way of preserving the pure water supply from heaven if these cottages which are to be built were equipped with tanks; that would be a very great help. I wish the Government had given the chairman power to carry out his whole scheme, but as far as it goes I regard this as a beneficial scheme, because the housing question is the essence of the depopulation of our country districts. If the young people can get houses, they will stay on the land, but if not, they will continue to be driven into the towns.

I rise to oppose the Third Beading of this Bill for two reasons: first, because the Minister has not taken power to stop subsidised factories buying raw sugar from abroad, which thus enables them to compete against refineries in Great Britain; and, secondly, because he is continuing to expend public money for purposes connected with the Bill. The Minister has had so many bouquets thrown at him during the last few minutes that I feel that he will take more readily the criticisms which I shall advance against him for not having taken the steps which he might have taken to incorporate the suggestions which I have put before him. We are very glad that the Debate is taking place at this hour, because the last stage of this Bill was taken in the early hours of the morning. During that Debate a Unionist Member described the subsidy as the greatest ramp of modern times, and that expression meets with approval from more than one quarter. These subsidised factories have a very clever Press propaganda, which is persistently sending out information to the Press and creating the impression in the public mind that all is well. It is, therefore, fitting and very proper that a Debate of this nature should take place at this hour, and I am grateful for the opportunity afforded by the postponement of the Third Beading last night.

I am afraid that in the last Parliament I worried the House on more than one occasion with my case against this sub- sidy, but, as the result of my representations and representations made from other quarters, the late Government gave a valuable concession to the local refinery industry in lowering the excise duty. They realized that under the subsidy a real injustice had been done, but during the last few years another injustice has arisen, and I hope to show that it was never the intention of the late Government which passed this Measure, or of the Labour party which enunciated the policy in 1924, that the subsidised factories should purchase raw sugar from abroad and refine it in competition with the local refinery industry in Great Britain. That is the first point which I wish to substantiate.

The hon. Gentleman seems to be about to discuss policy in connection with this Measure. As he knows, he cannot go outside the provisions of the Bill on Third Heading.

I am opposing the Bill.

But the hon. Member must oppose the Bill because of what is in it, and not because of what is not in it. On the Third Reading, it is not permissible to discuss what is not in the Bill.

I am opposing the Bill because of its provision to grant a further subsidy to the subsidised factories. My point is that the subsidy under this Bill should not be given, and I will endeavour to show that as a result of the subsidy a great injustice is being done. I submit that that will be within your Ruling. The late Minister of Agriculture, when in 1924 he introduced the original subsidy of which this is an extension, stated that the main argument which appealed to him was that it would stimulate the production of home-grown sugar. He went on to say:

"The refiners have complained that the scale of the subsidy as at present drawn confers a preference upon the production of refined sugar as compared with the production of what may be called raw sugar, and thereby they fear that the attempt which we are making to assist one British industry will merely be made at the expense of another established industry."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th Dec., 1924; col. 1289, Vol. 179.]

He explained that that was a misapprehension, and that the policy was to stimulate home grown sugar.

I am afraid that I cannot allow a discussion on the original policy. It was not allowed on Second Reading.

I am not anxious to discuss the original policy, but to show what was the original policy, of which this is an extension. During the last three years these subsidised factories have been importing large quantities of raw sugar, and under this Bill they are to be allowed to continue that policy. It was never anticipated that this would happen; the recent report on the sugar beet industry published by the Ministry of Agriculture points out that it is a practice of recent growth. It says on page 189:

"By far the most important subsidiary industry in recent years has been the refining, during the off season, of imported raw sugar obtained from both cane- and beet-growing countries, and this has enabled these factories to reduce the cost per ton of beet worked."

The practice I am complaining of is one of recent growth, and under this Bill the Minister could have taken steps to stop it. He was offering a valuable concession to the subsidised factories, and could have taken steps to stop them from importing raw sugar, which would have had the direct effect of encouraging them to offer a higher price to the farmer, so as to get the raw material which they require for their industry. The farmers of Great Britain are suffering to-day as a result of this practice. The subsidised factories are buying sugar from abroad. They have written down their capital, or, rather, they have made in former years, and if they could not purchase this raw sugar from abroad they would be far more inclined to offer a higher price to the farmer for his supplies. The Minister, in the interests of his Department, and in the interests of home grown sugar, should take steps to stop at the earliest possible moment what I say the legislature never intended to sanction in 1924.

How large have been the imports of foreign sugar which has been melted by these subsidised factories has only recently come to light. This valuable report reveals that in 1928 92,000 tons of raw sugar were brought here and melted, in 1929 212,000 tons, and in 1930 160,000 tons. Sugar being to-day about £6 10s. a ton, the total trade amounts to nearly £1,000,000 a year. I am not saying the Minister is creating more employment in one place than in another, but the direct result of his policy is that he has diverted trade worth £1,000,000 a year from the pockets of one industry to another industry. That cannot continue. First of all we have granted enormous sums to these fortunate individuals, and afterwards we allow them to secure this large trade, which they otherwise never would have secured, and which they would not secure to-day if this Bill were not passed; because the case for this Bill is that unless it is passed beet will cease to be grown, large areas will go out of cultivation and the factories will close down.

This practice started, I think, in Scotland, or rather it started with the Anglo-Scottish Beet Corporation. It is extraordinary that this company—it is characteristic of all the companies—should be allowed to use public money to divert trade worth £1,000,000 a year from one set of traders to another. This Second Anglo-Scottish Beet Corporation borrowed £750,000 from the British Government while having a capital of only £250,000.

I have not the slightest objection to the hon. Member castigating the people responsible for these proceedings, but his remarks have nothing whatever to do with the Bill.

I submit that this Bill enables these factories to continue in being, and that I am entitled to point out the result of the Minister's action. If he had not taken the action he has taken these factories might well have gone out of business altogether. This particular company is really the most fortunate in the world, because I have never known a single public company able to borrow £3 for every £1 they put up themselves. I never heard of any ordinary company with a capital of £1,000,000 being able to borrow £3,000,000 on that capital, and, in addition to that, receiving 5 per cent. interest.

The hon. Member is now going a little wide of what has been laid down by Mr. Speaker in regard to this Debate.

I am anxious to obey your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I would like to point out that there is no other opportunity under the Rules of the House which will permit me to deal with these facts. As you will know, Sir Robert, when we are in Committee of Supply I cannot deal with anything which involves legislation. Therefore, this is the only opportunity I have got. I waited for an opportunity until the early hours of this morning, and yesterday morning, to draw attention to this case. I have already said that this Bill enables these factories to continue, and I am trying to show the result of what has happened, and what will continue to happen in the future. This is not the first Bill which has been brought forward on this subject. The subsidy has been reduced as the years have gone by, and the fortunate individuals who have secured these enormous sums of money in the past are anxious to put pressure on the Government. As as result of that pressure, we have brought in the Bill which is now before us. What security have we that we may not be faced in the near future with further Bills borrowing further sums of public money for these fortunate individuals? It is not as if these individuals were numerous. Their shareholders are not many in number, being only some 2,300 altogether. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Foreigners."] Whether they are foreigners or not, I am not anxious to submit to the House, but I know that their machinery is bought mostly from abroad.

Not the Anglo-Scottish.

I will state where these firms have bought their machinery.

I am afraid that question is not in order at this stage.

May I point out to you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that these companies are named in the First Schedule of the Bill, and the list includes the Anglo-Scottish Beet Sugar Corporation. All the companies are named, and surely my hon. Friend is entitled to discuss what will happen as a result of the passing of this Bill.

The hon. Member can discuss only what is in the Bill and not what has happened in the purchase of machinery.

The marvellous White Paper which has been issued lifts the veil and reveals the truth to the public as to how this large sum of public money has been spent. The British Beet Sugar Corporation have placed in reserve a sum equal to 90 per cent. of their capital, and their shareholders number only 38. The Home Grown Sugar Limited have placed to reserve £128,000. They have 700 shareholders and their ordinary capital is only £125,000. Consequently, they have placed to reserve a larger sum than their whole capital. The Ely Beet Sugar Factory Ltd. has placed to reserve sums equal to 60 per cent. of their ordinary capital, and now these companies are asking for more money. The Minister has been far too generous. No doubt the companies think he has been hard upon them, because all people who have received enormous favours of public money, when those favours' are not equal to those they have received in the past, feel that they have a grievance. In view of all that has happened, I regret that the Minister did not take the steps which he could have taken, and, so long as this injustice continues, so long as the Minister by his policy is diverting a sum of £1,000,000 per year from one industry to another, he is doing an injustice which he cannot seriously continue to do.

The late Government realised the state of things which I have put forward today, and, as a result of our efforts, we were able to secure real assistance. Now this further disadvantage has been placed on the shoulders of the refining industry, and I suggest that the Minister should take steps in some way or other—I understand that the Minister is responsible, because he is administering this fund—to remedy this injustice which is creating unemployment in one quarter in order to provide employment in another quarter, and public money is being used for that purpose. By all means spend public money to promote home-grown sugar, but what you are doing now is diverting trade from one area to another, and you are placing an economic injustice on one set of shoulders and at the same time giving economic favours to another class. I think the Minister of Agriculture must see the reasonableness of my contention. No one could realise that this would be the result when the subsidy system was first-started.

Why blame me?

I blame the Government for not taking action to remedy the injustice whoever is responsible for the initial policy. The right hon. Gentleman has asked me why I blame him. I contend that the original policy was initiated by a Labour Government and was afterwards carried out by a Conservative Government in 1925, but even that Government, when it realised that an injustice had been done, took steps in 1928 to remedy the injustice. It is since 1928 that this new development has taken place. So long as this continues, so long will these subsidised companies be able to buy more sugar from abroad, and the less willing will they be to pay a reasonable price to the farmer, whose chance of securing a fair price for his beet will be weakened and whose hands will be tied. He will be weakened in his competition as to prices with these subsidised factories, because they can buy their sugar from abroad. If their power to purchase their raw material from abroad is removed, they will be more willing to pay a higher price to the farmer for his beet.

I have tried to put these points fairly and to state my case accurately. I feel that in the last Parliament we succeeded, and, although we may not get a satisfactory answer from the Minister on this point, I am still hopeful that, when he again comes to the House to ask for more money for this purpose, we may receive a more sympathetic answer than we shall receive this afternoon. This large expenditure is coming out of the public purse. In an earlier Debate to-day an hon. Member on this side of the House spoke in opposition to the principle of subsidies. Once you grant a subsidy, no one can tell where the benefits will ultimately result—[Interruption]—or the injuries, as my hon. Friend says. This point was put to Ministers a few years ago. This subsidy should cease. It is a scandal that—

I must again point out that we are not discussing the question of subsidy, but the advances provided for under this Bill.

There should be no more money granted to these companies. Why should they come here and ask for public money? Have they not received millions already? How much more are they going to ask for? Surely, I am entitled to protest against this pouring out of millions of public money into the pockets of a very few. I am prevented by many rules and regulations from raising this matter on other occasions, and, surely, you will allow me to make my final protest against what I think the Minister will agree is a real injustice to the refining industry. I sincerely hope that he will take steps sooner or later to remove the injustice to which I have referred this afternoon.

The last speech gives me cause for very serious misgiving, because it shows that, once these devious courses are embarked upon, the most obvious son of grace will fall from his high estate. The doubt that now exists with regard to the fiscal beliefs of the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley—

The only matter that now arises for discussion is the fact that proposals have been submitted for certain advances. Mr. Speaker, in reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel), gave the following Ruling:

"As regards this particular Bill, I understand that the proposal is that certain circumstances have arisen which may make it necessary to make advances to the sugar industry. The only subjects that would be in order in the debate on this Bill would be whether certain circumstances justified the proposed advances, and the conditions under which they should be made."

Surely, the issue raised by these advances is whether the circumstances do or do not justify them. There are, I understand, some thousands of men in Silvertown and in Greenock who will be placed in great difficulty with regard to their employment as a result of this competition, which has nothing to do with the growing of beet, but is a competition between, on the one hand, a factory that is subsidised, and, on the other hand, a factory that is directly taking public money in advances of this kind. Surely, any Member whose constituency is affected, or who wishes to stop waste of public money, is entitled to raise the whole question as to whether the advances are justified or not.

If an hon. Member confines his observations to the advances provided in this Bill, that will be in order, but to go outside those advances into the general question of the subsidy would not be in order. As this question was raised on the Second Reading by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen, who sits in the same part of the House as the hon. Member, perhaps I had better read, for his information, the first part of Mr. Speaker's Ruling:

"I should certainly say that it would not be in order to discuss the merits of the Sugar Subsidy under this Bill. The subsidy was granted, as the right hon. Gentleman is well aware, in an Act of Parliament, and it cannot be reviewed unless the Question before the House is that of its renewal or repeal."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 14th July, 1931; col. 406; Vol. 255.]

I have no desire to raise the question of the subsidy at all. My object in searching for a Ruling is this: While we may not discuss the subsidy, surely we are entitled, before we grant these advances, on the Third Reading of this Bill, to discuss the circumstances, because, unless we can do that, the Minister will not be able to say whether the advances are justified or not.

At the very beginning I told the hon. Member for Greenock (Sir G. Collins) that that would be in order, but I considered that he was going far wider.

I desire to confine myself strictly within the narrow limits of Mr. Speaker's Ruling; I do not contest it for one moment, and I hope I shall be able to say what I desire to say without going outside it at all. I think I am entitled to say that the circumstances of this case are such that they have compelled one whom I understood to be an absolute and sincere Free Trader to ask that these subsidies shall not be continued as in this Bill, because he desires to prevent these advances from being made, believing that they will have the effect of enabling people to get certain things into their factories that he thinks ought to be dealt with in his own constituency.

No; that is quite wrong.

The hon. Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown), after spending some time in trying to help the hon. Member for Greenock (Sir G. Collins), is now trying to hinder me. He mentioned that Greenock was one of the places affected. This is the kind of thing that always happens when these advances are made to particular people. The most enlightened son of grace finds that a person who is in no way connected with grace has robbed his soul of the purity it used to possess. I do not think that this Bill ought to pass without its being made quite plain to the Minister that many of us on this side of the House view the Measure and the making of these advances with the gravest misgiving. I doubt if this Bill could be left to a free vote of the House; I doubt if there is a majority in the House for it—in fact, I am certain that there is not. But we recognise that the circumstances, which have not been created by the Minister, but which he has inherited from his predecessors, probably make this Bill a very regrettable necessity. While, however, we may be prepared to recognise it as a necessity, we want the Minister to understand that we regard it as a very regrettable necessity, and I am speaking, I know, for a large number of Members on these benches when I say that any future Measure further to extend these advances or in any way to continue this subsidy will have to be justified very clearly and explicitly on the Floor of this House before we shall feel that we are doing justice to our constituencies, where there are no sugar refineries. You have to find the money for this very favoured industry from industries which are labouring under the greatest disadvantages. If he is able to justify it, I have no doubt he will get our support, but he will find me at least a very difficult person to convince that any justification for a consideration of this policy can be made.

I am very glad that an opportunity has been afforded to me to explain to some of my friends what the Bill is about, it is evident that they have misunderstood the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) which was for the most part entirely irrelevant and had nothing to do with the Bill. I am not responsible for nor is this Bill concerned with the original policy. If I had been responsible for the agreements made under the Act of 1925, they would not have been in the form they were. The unprecedented drop in sugar prices coincided with the circumstance that under the Act the subsidy dropped from 13s. a cwt. to 6s. 6d. That coincided with an unprecedently low world price of sugar, several shillings less than it had been for several years before the War. The result of those two things occuring at the same time was that it was impossible to get an arrangement for growing the beet, and I had to try to devise some arrangement in the interest of agriculture so that we could continue a sufficient measure of cultivation in the country without suddenly finding that a large amount of land which had been designed the year before for sugar beet cultivation this year was not being cultivated. That was my difficulty and the proof of it is that negotiations between the farmers and the companies had been going on for three or four months and there was no prospect of get ting any arrangement by that means. This scheme was designed to help us to secure a modicum of sugar beet grown where the land was suitable, where they could grow it at substantially lower prices. I took care that this proposal embodied two principles, that the whole of the extra money that Parliament would be asked to give should go to the grower and should not remain with the factory—

That does not alter my argument at all. I could apply the same argument to the shipbuilders in my constituency.

The hon. Member could not. If any of this money could be kept by the factory, he could apply the argument. The advance can only apply under these conditions. The factories are not allowed to keep anything for profits, they are not allowed to put anything aside for depreciation or reserve, and their accounts are to be open to our accountants to inspect. I have secured that this money is to be used only for securing the continuance of the cultivation of beet. The hon. Member wants to sacrifice the whole of that. I agree that some of the factories are wealthy and they have done well out of the British taxpayer, better than they ought to have been allowed to do, but that has nothing whatever to do with me—it occurred years ago—and it is not concerned in this Bill. These factories have not taken advantage of this arrangement and they are not paying the growers the price for the best. The fact is that not a single halfpenny of this money goes through the factories' accounts at all and all the criticism of them that has been made is entirely beside the point. The proof of this is that those factories, wealthy as they are, which have paid lower prices to the grower and have refused to take advantage of the Act, have suffered a decline of their beet sugar cultivation by 44 per cent., while those that are taking advantage of it have suffered a decline of only 18 per cent. The whole of the benefit goes to the grower. We made the agreement so that the factories cannot place a penny to reserve. I cannot be accused of further enriching these factories. We have prohibited them from putting anything to depreciation. Hon. Members have not understood that, otherwise they would not criticise the proposal in the way they have done.

I did not say a word about the factories. My point is equally sound whether the money goes to the farmer or to the factory.

I was confronted with an arrangement whereby we had the risk of about 300,000 acres of arable land going out of cultivation, and I had to try to devise some arrangement to prevent it. That is my justification, and I am justified because I secured the cultivation of about 240,000 acres. The next thing done by the Bill is that this has to be repaid. That has not been understood. It is arranged in this way that, if after this year sugar rises to a certain price, plus an allowance for depreciation, but nothing for profit, this advance has to be repaid before any profit it taken. That has not been understood. I am not enriching these factories at all by the arrangement, but it is true that I am allowing them to have the opportunity of making beet sugar in accordance with the Act to enable the growers to grow beet. That is the whole case. I come to the point of the hon. Member. To my surprise, the total amount of imported sugar refined by these factories altogether, the whole lot of them, including the wealthy ones that are not taking advantage of the arrangement, was 161,000 tons, refined from imported raw sugar. That is the volume of the grievance of the hon. Member.

To-day, what about to-morrow?

What about the other factories, the great solid group in whose interest this proposal is made I How much did they refine? They refined 1,650,000 tons. In other words, the total importation and refining by all these factories together was only one-tenth of this other group. Why do these factories refine raw sugar? How does it affect them? When the beet season is over they have nothing to do. After the beet has been converted into sugar, after February or March, the campaign ceases and, therefore, they are confronted with the necessity, if they have refining machinery, of either importing raw sugar to make use of the machinery and thereby reducing their overhead charges, or of having the whole factory standing idle without anyone employed during the summer months. That is what the hon. Member wants. He is a Free Trader.

It is not a question of being a Free Trader. It was the original scheme.

The proposal is that I am to refuse to assist people who produce in the aggregate only one-tenth of what the other factories combined produce. They are to keep their factories standing idle during the summer months and dismiss their employés in order that those other great concerns which already produce nine-tenths may have the advantage of this morsel.

A million a year.

And that comes from a Free Trader. I do not profess to be a, worshipper at the shrine of Mr. Cobden perhaps as faithfully as some hon. Gentlemen. I think that circumstances have changed and that views are not necessarily enduring, but I confess that it never entered my mind in my most heretical moments to make a proposal of that kind. The chief offenders against which the hon. Member is complaining are not coming into this Bill at all, because they are not using this machinery and not paying the proper price to the farmer. They are not getting anything even in their accounts, it does not apply to them at all. I am afraid that I have been a little warm in this matter. I do not often rouse up, but this proposal does rouse me. I am not prepared to allow those in the most necessitous arable areas of the country to be done. I have taken the most extreme and minute precautions to prevent these factories from receiving a halfpenny benefit out of the proposal. Therefore, I hope that this thoroughly sound Bill will be given the Third Reading.

I will not stand for more than a moment or two between the House and the Division, but the speech of the hon. Member for Greenock (Sir G. Collins) was so misleading that I hope that I shall be allowed to correct two assertions which he made and which to my personal knowledge are definitely inaccurate. One was that the growth since 1928 of the practice of refining in the subsidised beet-sugar factories was rendered possible by the subsidy. As a matter of fact, that recent growth—the practice of refining in those factories—is directly due to the action of the hon. Member and his friends in asking for an alteration, in favour of the refiners, of the Customs Duty in 1928. That alteration was made by the House, and it reduced the relative value to the beet-sugar factories of the subsidy then paid. It was necessary for those factories cu look round to find some means of replacing that loss of relative value if they were to be able to give the same terms that they were offering then in their national contracts to the farmers. The very alteration in favour of the refiners gave the opportunity. One of the weak spots of the sugar-beet industry has been the fact that the campaign, as it is called, the work in the factory, is concentrated by natural causes from which they cannot get away within a period of about 100 days, just over three months. In the past the sugar-beet manufacturer, during that three months campaign, has had to bear the whole burden of the overhead charges for the year, because there has been no possibility of spreading those charges over other items of manufacture.

It became not particularly remunerative but economically possible in view of the alteration made in 1928 in favour of the refiners for the refining part of the sugar-beet manufacturing machinery in the factories to be used during the idle period for the refining of imported sugar. The result has been that in those factories where this practice has been possible a very large portion of the overhead charges, the cost of maintaining the technical staff and so on, throughout the greater part of the year has been carried by the refining and been taken away from the cost of the ordinary sugar-beet campaign. Consequently, those factories have been able to offer to the farmers better terms pro tanto than would have been possible if the refining had not been the practice during the summer months. I do not wish to say any more, because I realise quite well that what I have been saying is strictly out of order. But I thank you, Sir, for allowing me to correct the misleading statement which was made in the speech of the hon. Member for Greenock.

I will keep within the Rules of Order. The very warmth of the Minister will make the House and the country more uneasy. We do not believe that this is a good Bill. It is a very bad Bill and the last of a series of bad Bills. I have never given a vote with greater pleasure in my life in this House than the vote which I gave against the original Bill in 1924. I only regret that the House is not now full and that it is not possible to divide against the Bill to-day. I do not mind whether these factories refine foreign sugar or not provided they do it out of their own funds and not out of the pockets of the taxpayer. I do not mind whether there are one hundred or a thousand factories providing they are buying sugar fairly and in open market upon an equal basis. The protest which we make against the Bill as against the whole of the policy is the taking of public money to favour certain people in a particular industry at the expense of the general taxpayers and to the detriment of other people who are trying to carry on industry without such public money. Why then should not the Greenock Factory, or any other factory not operating under the Schedule of the Bill, have a similar amount of loan or money? The whole thing is rotten from the foundations. It cannot stand on its own foundations. The moment the stream of public money dries up, the thing is shown to be the artificial creation which it was from the beginning.

There can be no doubt that this is a very bad Bill. It may be an ingenious Bill, but sometimes the worst Bills are the most ingenious. The right hon. Gentleman has been very hot to-day. The House and the country will get a great deal hotter in the days immediately ahead of us about this subject. It is a public scandal. At a time when we are worried as to how our finances are going to meet at each end, with a Supplementary Budget ahead of us, we pay these huge subsidies and, in addition, we are making loans to people many of whom ought to be able to take money from their own reserves, because they have made enough money, as the Minister admits, in recent years. It is not a matter of shibboleths. You do not get rid of an injustice by labelling it with a shibboleth. That device is to save lazy people the trouble of thinking. If you want foreign sugar to be imported let the people who can handle it best for the well-being of the public who consume the sugar, do so. It is not right for successive governments to make payments from the public purse to one side of an industry which is denied to the other side. These are our objections to the Bill, and I am sure that they will gather force in the days ahead.

I cannot allow an attack of the kind that has just been made on a nascent industry to go without a reply. The attack is entirely unjustifiable. By the introduction of the subsidy we have created a new industry in this country.

The hon. Member was not in the House earlier when it was ruled that we cannot discuss the subsidy on this Bill. That was ruled out of order by Mr. Speaker on the Second Reading. All that we are concerned with are the loans that are to be advanced under this Bill, and repaid.

I apologise. I do not want to widen the scope of the Debate, but I would point out that the price of sugar to the consumers in this country is lower than the price in any other country.

I welcome this Bill, and we on this side shall be glad to do all that we can to facilitate its passing into law. It gives effect to a gracious and generous action and one that the House will approve. There is one point in regard to the Financial Memorandum to which I should like to draw attention. I may be a little out of order in referring to it now. I notice that when we have concluded the Second Beading of the Bill there will be a Motion by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. T. Kennedy) that the Bill be committed to a Select Committee. If I am permitted to put a question on that point now, it will save the time of the House later. Why is it found necessary to send the Bill to a Select Committee? What petitions does the Minister expect?

What is going to happen to the premises that will be evacuated? In the financial Memorandum, paragraph 3, it is stated that £2,480 per annum will be no longer necessary for payment of rents for the premises now occupied by the Museum, and that the leases expire in 1941–42. Perhaps the First Commissioner of Works will say when the premises are to be evacuated. If my memory serves me, the premises were next to the Imperial Institute and were part of some old buildings of the Science Museum. What will happen to the buildings so far as the public purse is concerned when they are evacuated by the War Museum? Do they revert to the Crown in 1941–42, or will they be occupied by the Science Museum again when the War Museum leaves them? We regard the Bill as a very admirable one, and those who have been behind it deserve the thanks of the House.

I cannot help expressing regret that it has been found necessary to introduce this Bill to legalise the arrangement which has been come to with the donor of the park, the borough council and the county council. I do so because there is a very serious shortage of open spaces in the area concerned, and those who are interested in the district are very jealous of every square yard of open space available. The Bethlem Hospital site lies between two constituencies, my own and the constituency of the hon. Member for North Southwark (Mr. Isaacs), who is extremely interested in this matter and shares my views in regard to it. There is the severest over-crowding in the district, as bad as in any part of London, and at the same time we suffer from the shortage of open spaces. In my constituency there is a small open space, but in North Southwark, where the overcrowding is probably worse than anywhere in London, there being over 100 people per acre, there is no open space at all. The inhabitants have to go quite a long way outside Southwark before they can find an open space.

The people in this area, particularly the children, not only suffer from the fact that they have to live and sleep in over-crowded homes, usually two, three or four in a bed, but their opportunities of recreation are confined to the streets and alleys where they live. The possibility of enabling some of them to play with grass beneath their feet was one which we welcomed, and we are all very grateful to the donor of the park for conferring a really great boon on the neighbourhood. Under the force of necessity, almost, it has been suggested and agreed that a portion of the Bethlem Hospital site should be retained for the Imperial War Museum. I can assure the First Commissioner of Works that the people of Lambeth and Southwark would very much rather have an open space to play in than a war museum. It is true that the wings of the hospital will be pulled down and only the central block, which is a very fine one, will remain. A con- siderable area in the park will be left and it will serve a most useful purpose as an open space, but I cannot help regretting that even that small space should not be made available for the benefit not only of the children but of the older people of the district, who want to go somewhere for recreation and rest just as much as the children.

I regret that we shall not be able to have the whole of the site, although I realise the situation and also that the Southwark Borough Council have agreed to the suggestion put forward in the Bill. I would like to ask the First Commissioner whether the building which is to be used as the War Museum will be available for the public, not only the grown-up people but the children in wet weather. If so, it will be very useful, particularly when the children go out to play and a shower comes on. I hope the right Bon. Gentleman will be able to assure me that grown-ups and children will be given ample opportunity of going into the building in wet weather and having shelter there. I regret the necessity of the Bill, and I can assure my right hon. Friend that the hon. Member for North Southwark, who feels intensely on this matter, agrees with me.

In answer to the bon. Member for Farnham (Mr. A. M. Samuel), the Bill is going before a Select Committee because it is a hybrid Bill and might affect private interests. In regard to what has to be done with the inadequate buildings which are at present occupied, I believe some portions will be destroyed. The fact is that there is no proper accommodation for the museum where it is at present. I should like to remind the House that the museum was established by Act of Parliament; we are not setting up anything new. The National War Museum is not a museum to glorify war, but it is, as His Majesty the King said when he opened it, to show the people what war really means. There are a very fine lot of pictures which are not at present properly shown which we hope will be properly shown in the new building. All London, I think, owes a deep debt of gratitude to Lord Rothermere for the splendid public spirit he has shown in putting up the money for this site, and also for the trouble and time he has given in assisting my hon. Friend the Member for the Combined Universities (Sir Martin Conway) the Director General of the War Museum, in bringing about the agreements which were necessary. We should not have been able to have accomplished this task without the very arduous efforts of the hon. Member for the Combined Universities and his skill as a negotiator.

In reply to the hon. Member for Lambeth North (Mr. Strauss), I want every inch of land we can get for the children. They must live somewhere, and they must be sheltered, and if we had pulled down the building entirely we should have had to put up a shelter for them. I am sure that the Commissioners of the War Museum and especially the Director General, will see that they are able to go through the museum. In any case the children are entitled to go into the museum any time it is open. This proposal has already been agreed to by a Committee of another place, and I feel sure that we shall have the unanimous support of this House. When the hon. Member for North Lambeth and his friend the hon. Member for Southwark North (Mr. Isaacs) see the building without the wings, dealt with as only the Office of Works can deal with it, I am sure he will be as proud of it as I hope to be myself.

I desire to say a word or two about the War Museum because I have been so closely connected with it for the last 40 years. Let me make one thing perfectly clear, and that is that the museum never has been, and was never, intended to glorify war. It never was a museum to glorify victory. It has been so arranged from the start that Germans and members of other enemy countries may find it as interesting as our own people, and such as, in fact, been the case, because we have had many visitors from Germany to visit it, and they regard it as an extraordinary accomplishment to have been to bring together a memorial which would not be an offence to anyone at all. Then as to the future. May I call the attention of the House to the fact that there is no museum whatever on the south side of the Thames. Museums are valuable educational institutions, and even if we are taking away a small piece of open space we are returning a very interesting museum, and one which is one of the most popular in this country. Over 3,000,000 people have already visited it, and every Saturday and Sunday, and on Bank Holidays, we get large numbers of people who are extremely interested in what we have to show.

The most important feature of the museum is its collection of pictures and other works of art. We have exhibited on the walls or in portfolios 5,000 works of art, and these are to be within the reach of the people of South London. We have also an immense collection of photographs, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of them, and they are arranged in such a way so that anyone who desires can follow the course of the war historically. They are thus of enormous value. Then we have also a vast collection of photographs of the brave men who lost their lives in the war, and also brief biographies. There are samples of guns and other instruments of war, and I hope that when they are shown we shall get a lecturer to explain these things. If he talks about the elaborate Russian fuses to any children he will be able to say that there were hundreds and thousands of these beautiful little clockwork machines blown to pieces during the war, enough to have supplied every man and woman and child in this country with a very good watch.

It is said that if you are to preserve peace, you must remember war. The hon. and gallant Member for Central Hull (Lieut.-Commander Kenworthy) in a debate on this matter the other day said that he wanted the war to be forgotten. I am afraid that if the war were forgotten we should drift into a new war very much sooner than I hope we ever shall. To forget the war is to forget the sacrifices of the brave men who lost their lives in the war. We must not do that. We must remember what we suffered, and what they did for us during that time. We have an extraordinarily fine number of pictures by Sargent and a room full of pictures by Orpen, a numerous collection by Lavery, elaborate drawings by Muirhead Bone and sculpture by Jagger. All the great artists during the war years are represented very numerously, and very beautifully, in our museum.

Every one of these pictures was painted by a man who had actually been in the trenches. They represent not merely the general aspect of things, but they represent in the most extraordinary way the moods of the country during the War. In this museum for a very long time our successors will be able to see, as they cannot see in the case of any other war, the mood of the country reflected in these pictures. How extraordinarily interesting it would be to have some records of the moods of the country during the time of the Crusades! Here we have this great collection, one of the most interesting and most important in the whole world, a collection of a kind that exists nowhere else, most beautiful and most precious, and we bring it within reach of a vast multitude of people in South London, who at present have no museum at all. We shall, of course, welcome the children in the wet weather. They come to us at South Kensington in great numbers now, and I am sure they will do so when the museum is transferred.

I know too well how right the hon. Member for North Lambeth (Mr. Strauss) is as to conditions in Southwark, for which I once stood as a candidate, and how the prospect of this open space has been welcomed by all the people of that neighbourhood. While this building was still an asylum, I once went into it, not because I was a candidate for admission, but because I was glad enough to think that the people in that district might return me to this House. I am certain that the right line has been taken in preserving the central building, and I am glad to think that the outbuildings, which are not so good, are to be taken down by the Office of Works. It would be far better to allow the main building to remain than that the First Commissioner of Works should put up some temporary shelter the colour of some of those which he has erected, of which I do not approve. It will be a good thing for the people of South Londn to have some museum to which to go. As one who takes an interest in the Imperial War Museum, I am certain that it will now be housed in a far better building.

I wish to know, Mr. Speaker, whether it is possible on this Resolution to raise any question other than that of the remission of debt to the persons and local authorities mentioned in the Resolution. I desired, on this Financial Resolution, if it were possible to raise a matter about which I have put questions to the Financial Secretary, as to the conditions upon which loans are given by the Public Works Loan Commissioners to certain public authorities. I understand that the policy behind the work of the Commissioners is that it is expedient, as far as possible, to help small towns and local authorities which cannot go into the public market to get loans for themselves. When these bodies want money they go to the Commissioners who advance the money, and they are able to get that money probably on better and easier terms than they would otherwise be able to get it. Recently, however, it has been the custom—

As I read this Financial Resolution it only refers to certain loans which have been granted, and I do not think that the general policy of the Commissioners would arise upon this Resolution.

I felt that there was some difficulty in that respect, and that is why I put the point to you, Sir, at the outset of my remarks. I think that the question which I wish to raise certainly arises on Clause 1 of the Bill but I recognise that the Financial Resolution may not apply to Clause I of the Bill.

The hon. and gallant Member had better wait until the Bill is being discussed to raise that question. Obviously, this Resolution only refers to particular loans made to certain people and certain bodies.

Then I shall postpone it.