asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if his attention has been drawn to the circumstances under which a bank teller, on duty alone in a branch bank, was murdered in Clydebank on the 12th August, 1931; and if the Scottish Office has advised the joint stock banks in Scotland in the interest of their employés to adopt the rule, observed in trustee savings banks, that at least two members of the staff must be in attendance within bank premises during the transaction of all business?

The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. As regards the second part, I understand that the attention of the banks has been drawn to the matter by the staff organisations in England and Scotland, and it seems unnecessary, therefore, that my right hon. Friend should offer any advice on the matter.

In view of the fact that the answers given by various joint stock banks in Scotland have not given satisfaction to the employés and do not meet their reasonable demand to be protected from assault and possible murder, will the hon. Gentleman advise his right hon. Friend of the desirability of convening an informal meeting of the representatives of the joint stock banks in order to consider coming into line with the practice in the trustee savings banks?

I shall convey the suggestion of the hon. Member to my right hon. Friend, but of course the hon. Member is aware that my right hon. Friend has no jurisdiction in the matter.

asked the Secretary for Mines the average output per person employed in mines in Glamorgan from 1920, each year, to 1931, also the average wages paid per person for the same period?

As the reply involves a number of figures, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate such information as I have in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I regret that particulars of wages paid in Glamorgan are not available, but I will give figures for South Wales and Monmouth as a whole.

Can the hon. Gentleman give the answer to the question on the Paper—whether the average is up or down?

The figures vary, and it is difficult to give an average, but, taking the output of coal per person employed in the mines in Glamorgan in 1930, the tonnage was 260, and the average annual cash earnings in that district in that year was £117.

asked the Secretary for Mines the number of collieries closed down in Glamorgan from 1920 to the last available date in 1931, giving each year separately; the number of men affected; and the number of men employed each year from 1920 to 1931?

As the reply involves a number of figures, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Has not the deplorable situation in the coal industry in South Wales been caused by the excessive dumping of steel?

asked the Minister of Transport whether the London and Home Counties Joint Electricity Authority have arrived at a decision with reference to reducing the number of variations in the basis of charge for domestic purposes in the London area; and will he give particulars?

I am sending the hon. Member a copy of an answer given on this subject to the hon. Member for North Kensington (Mr. West) on the let July. The position is still as indicated in that reply.

Cannot the hon. Gentleman do anything to facilitate matters and bring about uniformity of price for these electrical appliances?

We are doing everything possible.

asked the Minister of Transport if he is aware that proposals are on foot by the Guildford Rural District Council for a 60-foot by-pass road through the Shere valley; that such proposals, if carried out, would ruin the amenities of this district, and would involve heavy cost to the taxpayer; that such proposals are opposed by the majority of the residents of the district; and, in view of the need for economy, will he withhold his sanction from this scheme?

I am aware of proposals for a new road which would have the effect of by-passing Shere. This is part of a town-planning scheme, and interested parties will have an opportunity of voicing their objections at a local inquiry by the Ministry of Health which will be held on the 13th October. The scheme is in a preliminary stage, and no application has been made to me for financial assistance.

Will the hon. Gentleman ask the Surrey County Council to take steps in this matter without further delay?

asked the Minister of Labour whether he will give the number of permits issued to foreign dance bands to enter Great Britain from 1st January, 1931, showing the number of musicians employed in these various bands; whether the permits were for appearance either in music halls or cabaret performances; and the average length of such permits?

No permits have been issued since the 1st January, 1931, to enable foreign bands to come to this country to play for dancing, but three individual foreigners have been granted permission since that date to join British dance bands. Eight bands—comprising 148 individuals—have been admitted since the 1st January, 1931, to play at music hall or cabaret performances. Two of these are still here. The validity of the permits has varied from seven days to three months, but extensions have been granted in some instances.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether extensions have been granted to the three individual permits and for how long? Are they indefinite?

I could not answer that question as regards three individuals without having further inquiries made.

Is there any prospect of reciprocity now from America so as to allow Jack Hylton's and other bands to go there?

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the investigation held by the Disciplinary Board of the Metropolitan Police into the charges in which one inspector and 23 constables were suspended from duty last July, pending investigation for alleged corrupt dealing with bookmakers and street traders, has now been finally completed; and can he give the results?

As the reply includes a table of figures, I will, if I may, circulate a statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

The whole of the cases have now been dealt with by the Discipline Board as follow: One inspector and 26 constables have been dismissed. All these men appealed to the Commissioner, who dismissed the appeals. One sergeant has been reduced to the rank of constable and transferred to another division; four constables have been fined anti transferred to other divisions, and one sergeant and eight constables were found not guilty. The inspector and 17 of the constables who were dismissed appealed to my predecessor or myself under the Police (Appeals) Act. One appeal was withdrawn, 14 have been dismissed, and the remainder are still under consideration.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say when some final decision will be arrived at with regard to the appeals outstanding?

There are only three still outstanding, and they will be dealt with very shortly.

What steps are being taken to prosecute the people who have corrupted or endeavoured to corrupt these men?

I should like to have notice of that question.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether his attention has been drawn to the transgression of air navigation rules by the flying of a civil aeroplane on 30th September under the upper portion of Tower Bridge and Westminster Bridge; and what action his Department propose to take in the matter as regards this incident and the prevention of similar incidents in the future?

Yes, Sir; the police are in touch with the Air Ministry regarding the institution of proceedings against the pilot concerned for infringement of the Air Navigation Regulations.

asked the Minister of Agriculture the total number employed in all categories at the Ordnance Survey establishment at Southampton in 1913–14 and in 1930–31; the total expenditure in salaries and wages; and the total working expenses apart from salaries and wages?

The number employed in all technical and clerical categories of the Ordnance Survey in Great Britain in 1913–14 was 1,624, as against 1,034 in 1930–31. The total expenditure in salaries and wages was £162,990 in 1913–14, as compared with £214,360 in 1930–31, whilst other working expenses amounted in 1913–14 to £25,250, and in 1930–31 to £26,160. There was, however, a decrease in the net cost from £152,310 in 1913–14 to £130,740 in 1930–31, owing to an increase in appropriations-in-aid. The above figures are exclusive of artificers and cleaners, whose work has partly been taken over since 1914 by the Office of Works.

While I am very much obliged for that long answer, may I draw the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the fact that my question asked for the expenses at Southampton, not throughout the country?

The office is in Southampton.

Does the Southampton office cover the whole of the United Kingdom?

Yes.

Is this station at Southampton in the most favourable position for having these agricultural people stationed?

They are not agricultural; they are making maps for the Ordnance Survey.

asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury the total number employed by the Stationery Office in London in all departments in connection with Ordnance Survey and other maps in 1913–14 and in 1930–31, with the total salary and wages expenditure for the same period?

Apart from a negligible fraction of the time of sales staff, no staff are or were employed by the Stationery Office in 1913–14 or in 1930–31 in connection with Ordnance Survey or other maps.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty (1) if he will snake a statement as to the recent unrest in His Majesty's Navy, and what is the present position;

(2) whether it is his intention to set up a committee of inquiry into the recent events in His Majesty's Navy with a view to the avoidance of similar outbreaks in future, the redress of grievances, if any, and the restoration of public confidence?

It is not the intention to set up any further committee of inquiry. The representations made with regard to pay and pensions at the inquiries at the Home Ports and the representations made by the Commander-in-Chief at foreign stations have been the subject of careful consideration, and the Fleet Orders announcing the decisions arrived at as a result of those representations were published on Saturday last, and have no doubt been read by my hon. and gallant Friend. The ships of the Atlantic Fleet which have remained at the Home Ports in order to facilitate the holding of these inquiries will reassemble at an early date and continue their exercises. As I stated in this House on the 30th September (OFFICIAL REPORT, Column 340), the Board of Admiralty are carefully considering whether any, and if so what, changes are necessary in the methods at present open to men of the Royal Navy for making representations as to their service conditions.

Is there any evidence of outside subversive influences in regard to these outbreaks, and does my right hon. Friend realise that the great majority of the Navy remained loyal, and that unless discipline is enforced and mutiny and weakness is punished, you only discourage that loyalty?

The House debated this question the other day.

Is that not a gross reflection on men who were defending their wives and children?

On a point of Order. Did I understand you to say, Mr. Speaker, that my question in regard to outside subversive influences was not in order?

All that I said was that we had debated all this the other day, and I did not think we needed another one to-day.

It was only a question, not a Debate, Sir.

asked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the changed conditions of unemployment relief, he will give an undertaking that there will be a fortnightly publication of the numbers of persons receiving relief from or through the public assistance authorities throughout the country?

So far as my Department is concerned statistics showing the numbers of persons receiving relief from the public assistance authorities are published quarterly, and at present my right hon. Friend sees no sufficient reason for more frequent publication.

(by Private Notice) asked the Minister of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the rapid spread of the Colorado Beetle in France towards the Channel coast; and what action he proposes to take for the safety of our potato crops from this serious danger?

Yes, Sir. I am aware of the situation which has caused me much anxiety. I am advised that it demands drastic measures, and I propose within the next few days to make an Order under the Destructive Insects and Pests Acts to the following effect, namely, to prohibit totally as from the 15th March next, the entry of potatoes grown anywhere in France, and of nursery stock and living plants grown within 200 kilometres of any place where the Colorado Beetle is known to exist; and to prohibit, for the period from the 15th March to the 14th October in each year, the entry of raw vegetables grown within the same distance from any such place.

(by Private Notice) asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury what arrangements have been made in regard to the use by Members of their railway vouchers in the event of the Dissolution of Parliament?

The following arrangements have been made, and I would ask hon. Members to co-operate as closely as possible with the authorities of the House in securing their observance:

1. A Member may, if necessary, use one voucher for the single journey to his constituency immediately after the Dissolution. (Where, of course, a Member holds the return half of a ticket entitling him to return to his constituency, the use of a further voucher will not be necessary.)

2. A Member will retain possession of his current book of vouchers and will be at liberty to commence using them, as before, immediately on re-election.

3. A Member will not use any vouchers during the period between the use of the special voucher under No. 1 above and his re-election.

4. A Member defeated at the poll will return his book of vouchers immediately after the declaration of the poll.

5. A Member in possession of a book of vouchers and not seeking re-election may retain one voucher for use as under No. 1 above and will return the remainder of his book to the Fees Office.

6. A Member will be asked to reimburse the amount of any fares covered by vouchers the use of which is not in accordance with the above provisions.

In view of the very detailed announcement made by the Financial Secretary, perhaps the Prime Minister can now tell us the date of the Election?

I beg to move, in page 1, line 6, to leave out from the word "that" to the word "there" in line 8.

It will be difficult in the excitement caused by the announcement of the election to bring the Committee back to a consideration of such matters as we have to discuss to-day, but it is very essential that it should be done. The effect of my Amendment would be to make the Clause read:

"If it appears to the Board of Trade that there is or is likely to arise in Great Britain"

and so on. This Amendment is moved in order to get an answer to a very important point raised on the Second Reading, to which I received no adequate answer last night: Will it be open to any trader against whom action is taken to apply to the Courts for an injunction to suspend or prohibit the operation of a Regulation controlling the price of supplies on the ground that the facts on which the Regulation is founded have not been proved or are untrue? On the Second Reading, I said there had already been certain cases of difficulty in regard to Government Regulations and Orders based upon Acts in which appeared phraseology such as appears in this Bill—"If it appears" to the Minister concerned. There has been considerable difficulty in getting Regulations operative, because of action taken in the Courts with a view to having them declared to be ultra vires. We ought to have proper legal advice on this point, either from a Law Officer of the Crown, or from the President of the Board of Trade based upon legal advice he has received.

The second reason why this Amendment is moved is that we still want to know, and especially in view of the answer of the Parliamentary Secretary last night, what is meant by the words "the present financial situation." All that he replied to my question was that those words mean the present financial situation. I want to know what will be "the present financial situation" when any case is taken into court, what will be the intepretation of the Statute. I still think we ought to have the view of one of the Law Officers on this point. In the short time available for the consideration of the Bill I have been unable to get any high legal opinion upon it. The point has nevertheless been raised, and it might well be argued that "the present financial situation" could be confined to the financial situation on the day fixed for the Bill to come into operation. If that is not so, we ought to have an authoritative statement about it.

In any case, this Bill is for a limited period, for six months. Suppose that the financial situation does not improve. What is proposed then? Is it proposed to bring forward an entirely new enactment or to extend this one, and, if so, how are the words "the present financial situation" going to be applied in any specific case taken into court? Surely this is a matter which ought to be made clear beyond peradventure at this stage, so that after the Bill is operative there ought to be no opportunities for it to be made the subject of litigation in the courts owing to loose wording. In view of the announcement made to-day I wish to help to dispose of the business as soon as possible, and I do not want to take up time by repeating at length what I argued on the Second Reading on this point, but I consider that it is a vital point. My questions are: What will be the real position of a citizen who is summoned; will he be able to appeal to the courts to say that the regulation is ultra vires if it is left like this; and what is likely to be the exact interpretation placed by the courts upon the words "the present financial situation"?

The right hon. Gentleman has put very clearly and precisely two points which ought to be put and which ought to be answered. He asks, first, what would be the legal position of a subject who wished to challenge a regulation as being ultra vires. He asks whether a citizen could claim an injunction. I am advised that he could not obtain an injunction, but that in a case of this kind an application for a mandamus would be the correct form of procedure. The right hon. Gentleman will see that the words are, "if it appears to the Board of Trade," and that does mean that the Board of Trade have the duty of determining whether, in their opinion, there is a case of exploitation. If there is a case of exploitation, then the Board of Trade are entitled to make a regulation. In deciding whether the Board were justified or not in the action which they took, I think the court would have regard to this—I think this has been held to be so many times—that it will be a question of whether the Board had exercised in a proper and bona fide way the duty of determining and expressing their opinion. I think that was the case raised a good many times during the consideration of the Consumers' Council Bill, and that was the answer given then, and I am bound to say that, in law, it is a perfectly correct answer.

The next point the right hon. Gentleman raised was what was the correct definition of "the present financial situation," and whether those were the right words to use in the Clause. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was anxious to know whether those words confined the Clause to a situation existing on the actual date on which the Bill became law. That point was carefully considered when the Bill was drafted, and I am advised that, without a shadow of doubt, the present financial situation means the situation which exists during the currency of the Act. If hon. Members read the Act to-morrow morning, it will be the present financial situation to-morrow morning. If they read the Act this day three months it will be the situation which exists this day three months. There is a parallel case which arose in War time in regard to the definition of the term "the present War," which meant during the currency of that particular War. In this Bill, the present financial situation means the situation existing at any given date during the currency of the Act.

Am I to understand that "exploiting the present financial situation" means the situation which has arisen since we went off the Gold Standard? If we return to the Gold Standard and exploitation takes place, will it be possible to deal with that situation under this Bill?

I must say that I think it would be most improper to take any steps of that kind by regulation. This Bill deals with the existing abnormal situation arising from the fluctuation of the exchange. The Bill is designed to operate for a limited period during the time when the exchange may be in a state of fluctuation. I do not know what may be the future of our exchange, or when we may get a stable exchange, but this is an emergency Measure to meet an emergency situation, and that is why the operation of the Bill has been limited to a period of six months. I think I have now disposed of the three questions which have been put to me by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander).

I think it is clear, after the Debate which took place yesterday, that the powers which the President of the Board of Trade is taking in this Bill are much too limited. If the particular sentence, the omission of which we are discussing, is left in, the powers provided in the Clause will be completely stultified. I think it is plain from the Debate that has already taken place that there are two courses of action which it may be necessary to take. The first is in the case of profiteering. Apparently, the only case in which the President of the Board of Trade thinks it will be necessary to intervene is that of a particular trader, or group of traders, who are not playing the game, and who, contrary to the majority of traders, are acting in a way which may be unduly profitable to themselves, and opposed to the general interests of the community. I suggest that if a trader is so unpatriotic, whether he be a wholesale or a retail trader, as to refuse to play the game, he can get out of his difficulties by applying for a mandamus against the Board of Trade. Therefore, as far as profiteering is concerned, this Clause completely stultifies the only line of action which the President of the Board of Trade contemplates. In this Clause, there are any number of opportunities for lawyers to argue the case that the regulation is ultra vires. I would like to call attention to the wording of Sub-section (1) of Clause 1 which reads:

"If it appears to the Board of Trade that by reason of the action of any persons in exploiting the present financial situation."

After the action has taken place, surely regulations issued by the Board of Trade would be too late. Actions may have taken place on the part of dealers which might create a shortage. If this Clause remains unamended the Board of Trade cannot act until after the action has taken place, and consequently it is very necessary that the Board of Trade should be able to make regulations before the action has taken place. It is no good closing the stable door after the horse has been stolen. In my opinion, if hon. Members wish to make this Bill effective, those words should be omitted. The other purpose of the Bill is to prevent a shortage. The only means suggested to prevent a shortage is to divert the food supplies in particular directions, and that is the remedy suggested by the President of the Board of Trade.

I do not know how that point is to be dealt with, because the most probable cause of a shortage of food will be some extraneous action over which no one in this country has any control. It may be due to world chaos caused by the dislocation of international trade. This is a point which I put in the discussion yesterday. We must visualise the possibility that, on account of a dislocation which does not exist to any great extent at the moment, but which might conceivably exist in a greater degree during the next few months, the exchanges might be so disorganised that it might be difficult for the dealer to cover his risk between the purchase of the goods and the time he is able to sell them in sterling in London. The dealer might say that, in those circumstances, it would not be worth his while carrying out the deal, because he might be involved in great losses against which he could not insure.

Again, quite possibly the exporter in a foreign country might be unwilling, in view of the circumstances which might exist, to enter into deals in sterling, and in such circumstances we might conceivably get a temporary shortage of food; and during the election, when wild state- ments are made on all sides, there might be such a turmoil or fear in the exchange markets of the world that that possibility might eventuate during the next month. Such a shortage would not be caused by anybody's exploitation; nobody would be exploiting the financial situation at all; and yet that situation might arise. But the Board of Trade, if these words remain in the Bill, would be unable to take any action whatsoever to remedy that situation, because it had not been caused by anybody's exploitation. Therefore, I say that, if the President of the Board of Trade is really serious in attempting to deal with the possibilities that may arise, he must take these words out, because, as far as I can see, if they remain, the Board will be completely stultified. I can understand that the right hon. Gentleman is working in complete harmony and co-operation with the trade, because there is nothing in the Bill which could possibly frighten the trade in any circumstances; but, if these words are left in, they will certainly frighten those of us who want to see food supplies assured during the next six months, and the Bill will scarcely be worth the paper on which it is printed.

The President of the Board of Trade, in the course of his reply to my right hon. Friend who moved this Amendment, drew an analogy between t he phrase "the present war," which was used in a good many Acts during the Great War, and the words in this Bill, "the present financial situation." Might I suggest to him, however, that there is no similarity at all between the two phrases? If a similar phrase had been used in those earlier Acts, it would have been "the present military situation," and the military situation, obviously, fluctuated from day to day as the person who was watching it saw it.

I do not know whether my analogy was right, but as to the legal interpretation I am advised that there is no possible doubt.

Nevertheless, I think the right hon. Gentleman wants words that are absolutely free from doubt—

That is why, when drafting the Bill, and since the question was raised yesterday, I took the highest advice, it being my duty, on a matter of interpretation, to give the House an authoritative opinion; and T am advised that these words are exactly correct.

Might I suggest that more analogous to the phrase mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman would have been some such words as "the present monetary crisis," or "the present currency crisis," or "the present monetary emergency," or "the present currency emergency," as the case might be? That is the same form of continuation as the phrase "the present war," whereas the form of words now used is exactly analogous to the phrase "the present military situation." May I remind the right hon. Gentleman, also, that the use of the phrase "the present war" involved a further Act of Parliament to determine when "the present war" came to an end, and it was decided by Act of Parliament that "the present war," as mentioned in those various Acts, came to an end, not on the 11th November, 1918, but on some date very much later—I believe some day in, June, 1921, nearly three years after the event.

I should also like to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is satisfied that the word "action" is sufficient. May not the difficulties at which this Bill is aimed be caused by the inaction of somebody—by persons merely taking no action at all? Suppose that an, importer goes out of business. Suppose that he says, "I am not going on with the business. I have already made enough, and, if I go on a little longer, I shall be found out and all the powers of this Act will be brought against me. It is true that I have made several hundred thousand pounds, and could only be fined £100, but, having made money, I am not anxious to lose any of it." I suggest that some word to cover mere inaction ought to be included.

Then, what does the word "exploitation" mean? It is a word that I never use myself. I have heard many of my hon. Friends use the word, and have often asked myself what it means. I took the trouble to look it up in Murray's Dictionary, and I find that it gives in inverted commas the use which I presume the right hon. Gentleman means it to have, showing that it regards it as a slang phrase, as not being good English at all; and it does not give a single example of it prior to the early nineteenth century.

I believe that a, very good example of it is to be found in "Labour and the Nation."

I am not at all sure that the hon. and learned Member for South Nottingham (Mr. Knight) would feel that he could ask the Courts, at any rate during the jurisdiction of the right hon. Gentleman at the Board of Trade, to accept "Labour and the Nation" as the interpretation of the right hon. Gentleman's meaning. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he can hardly shelter behind that, because I find that the first meaning of the word was:

"to accomplish, achieve, execute, perform; to fight (a battle),"

and the example given in Murray's Dictionary is taken from a play of the year 1500, called "Melusine":

"I ordayne the bataill to be to-morrow exploited."

In view of what we heard at the end of Question Time to-day, it appears to be a very apposite word to use. The Poet Laureate Skelton used the word in this sense:

"To exployte the man owte of the mone,"

which suggests to one's mind the endeavours to exploit someone known as "Slippery Sam" out of the Cabinet. But when we get down to the final meaning, the fourth which is given—and it is given in inverted commas—we find that it is:

"To work (a mine, etc.); to turn to industrial account (natural resources);"

and, by a transferred meaning,

"To utilise for one's own ends, treat selfishly as mere workable material (persons, etc.)."

It does not appear to give any idea that it means "to treat selfishly" a situation. I suggest that it is a loose word altogether. The only example given is from the "Westminster Review" of July, 1888:

"An association of capitalist share-holders exploiting their wage-paid labourers."

Apparently it was only about 40 years ago that the slang meaning which the right hon. Gentleman has put into this word came into being. This provision is very loosely worded if the right hon. Gentleman desires to use it at all, if the terrible pictures that were painted of what was going to happen when we went off the Gold Standard were accurate. The notes for Conservative speakers spoke of pound notes being only of use as pipe-lighting spills. If that kind of thing is going to happen—and I have heard no denial of it yet from the Government benches—we want something far more solid, far more substantial, than the words in this phrase which my right hon. Friend has moved to leave out. I assume that everyone quite genuinely desires, no matter where he may place the responsibility for this crisis, to be assured that nobody is going to turn a national emergency to private profit, and that we are not going to have a set of gold-standard profiteers in the same way that we had a number of War profiteers. We may be sure of this, that, if we do have such a situation, the powers of this Bill will not check public opinion from dealing directly and drastically with the situation. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman to give us a form of words which cannot be disputed, and which will make it quite plain that the House intends that this situation shall be most drastically dealt with.

I feel that my hon. Friend has raised a point of very great importance, and I think we should have from the President of the Board of Trade a legal interpretation of the word "exploit." I do not know whether this term has, in fact, ever been determined in the courts, but we are fortunate enough to have the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Smith Nottingham (Mr. Knight) here. With his great knowledge, I have no doubt he will be able to help the right hon. Gentleman out if he is in any difficulty. Unless this word has actually been determined in the courts and has a specific legal meaning, it seems to me that the whole Clause is rendered of very little use. For instance,

"If it appears to the Board of Trade that by reason of the action of any persons in exploiting the present financial situation."

There are many on these benches who believe that the right hon. Gentleman, and the Conservative party generally, have been exploiting the present financial situation. That is a use of the word in which its meaning is commonly under- stood. If, for instance, there was likely to be an unreasonable increase in prices by reason of the action of any persons exploiting the financial crisis, we might very well argue that, if the right hon. Gentleman should unfortunately be a member of the Government which exploits the present situation and puts on food taxes, thereby bringing about an increase of price, we ought to be able to put him in the dock and have him fined in accordance with the later provisions of the Bill. It is extremely important, if we are going to pretend to deal with this problem, if this is not merely political eyewash, that we should have some words which specifically bear the meaning that, if anyone unreasonably raises prices, the public should be protected. We ought not to pass this Clause without having some indication as to the -exact legal meaning of the word "exploit."

I should like these words to come out, because they limit the powers of the President of the Board of Trade. I am very anxious to give him all the powers I possibly can to deal with what I am convinced is going to be a very serious situation, but these words limit the position. They say that no action can be taken by the Board of Trade unless there is exploitation. What is meant by that? Is a rise in price exploitation, because prices are rising now? How is he going to find out whether those prices have risen legitimately and properly unless he has had an investigation? I have had it brought to my notice today, in the costume trade, that furred collars for coats are being held up because of exchange difficulties, and the goods cannot be made because of the uncertainty about price. The same thing is happening even in the food trade. A trader told me yesterday that he had to order a ton of sugar on the market. He did not know what the price was. The traveller could not tell him. He simply had to take his chance. The same thing has happened with reference to potatoes. They are already advancing in price, and, if the French potatoes are to be excluded because the Colorado beetle is advancing on the Channel ports, they are going to rise considerably higher. There is already scarcity in the country because of potato disease.

These are all matters that the right hon. Gentleman is bound to take into consideration. Are all these people exploiting the present situation or not? Prices are rising. Is that because of exploitation? We do not know. I take it that, if these words are kept in, the right hon. Gentleman will have to adopt an inquisitorial inquiry. He will have to nose round, like a Nosey Parker, into the business of every tradesman to find out whether there is exploitation or not. If these words are taken out of the Bill, it is quite enough for him to say, "I can see that there is going to be a shortage of food or that there are rising prices on every hand. The Board of Trade must take action to deal with the situation in the interests of the people as a whole." I am very anxious to give him all the powers that he can possibly ask for. I would almost allow him to be a Mussolini. He has the presence of one. I would almost give him autocratic powers in this direction if he would use them, as I think even yet they will have to be used.

The next Amendment I propose to call is that in the name of the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. R. A. Taylor), to leave out paragraph (a).

On a point of Order. We know that the selection of Amendments lies with the Chair, but I would point out that the decision that you, Sir, have just announced prevents us from discussing in Committee the question of extending to other commodities than foodstuffs the powers that are given under the Bill.

I did not call the right hon. Gentleman's Amendment, because, after very careful consideration, I was obliged to come to the conclusion that it was out of order. The right hon. Gentleman, I see, has observed that it does not come within the Title, and he is proposing to amend the Title. If he refers to the authorities on the subject, he will find that an Amendment of this kind cannot be moved unless it deals with a matter which is strictly relevant to the matter in the Bill and unless there is an Instruction moved before the House goes into Committee. It is quite clear that such things as clothing and fuel are not matters that are relevant to foodstuffs.

I submit that this is a very serious decision as affecting the community, because it must be remembered that this is hasty legislation. It is being pushed through at great speed, with very little notice, and yet it purports to deal with a danger to the community—the present financial situation. Yet it is confined to one Section. The only thing we can do in the very short time left to us is to move that it includes other matters and I submit that it would not be at all unreasonable that we should debate the question of extending control to other commodities with a view to preventing exploitation and profiteering.

I have every sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman's difficulties in meeting rather abstruse points of this kind which sometimes arise, but there is a special Standing Order dealing with the matter, and the Standing Orders and Rules of Procedure of the House are for the benefit of the House generally, and must be observed strictly. The right hon. Gentleman has exhausted his opportunity in not moving an Instruction before the Committee stage.

That is the whole point when dealing with legislation of this kind. The House did not get this Bill until Friday, and there was very little time to consider the whole thing. We are not being treated fairly in the matter.

The Bill was available on Thursday morning, and all that the right hon. Gentleman had got to do on Thursday afternoon was to read the Title of the Bill, which is printed in very large type in the first five lines. If he wished to raise this point, he should have moved an Instruction.

The right hon. Gentleman has given me an opportunity, if I wanted to use it, of saying that if he had sufficient time to examine the Bill in order to put down his Amendments, he had sufficient opportunity at the same time to consider whether his Amendments were in order or not. But, however desirous he or other right hon. Gentlemen or hon. Gentlemen may be to discuss certain matters, I am afraid I should not be doing my duty to the Chair if I allowed Amendments of this kind.

Last night in the Debate I drew attention to curtain things with regard to what might be determined as foodstuffs. You may take foodstuffs as being raw material for food. Take the case of fuel for heating which is required for making tinned foods. It is a question of costs coming into the commodities, and unless you are going to protect people, then this Bill is only so much election eye-wash.

The Ruling which I have given has been given after a very full consideration, and these rather abstruse arguments which the hon. Member is bringing forward in dispute of my Ruling really cannot be allowed.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 18, to leave out paragraph (a).

One of the main reasons why I put this Amendment forward is that in the Second Reading Debate the President of the Board of Trade was extremely nebulous with regard to the powers which were to be exercised by the persons referred to in this Sub-section. Before the Committee assents to the principle involved in this paragraph, we ought to know exactly who are these persons, or organisations, or bodies of persons, on whom the President proposes to "confer or impose" very great powers. I assume from what he said the other day that the bodies referred to will be organisations of traders, organisations which exist mainly for the purpose of protecting the special interests of a group of traders engaged in a particular branch or trade. Does he, for instance, propose to confer upon the organisation representing the wholesale food importers any special powers to fix prices, or to enter into any agreement with each other, or to exercise any control over supplies which they may pass to particular persons? Does he propose to bring in the organisation representing the wholesale distributors, those who buy from the importers and sell to the smaller retailers in the provincial towns as well as the organisations representing those engaged in retail trade? If he does propose to confer upon these persons wide powers in regard to the withholding of supplies and other matters, this raises an extremely dangerous principle, and creates possibilities of preferential treatment that ought to be very seriously considered before Parliament agrees to confer any such powers upon traders' organisations.

The Committee will well remember the Report of the Royal Commission on Food Prices and the action which had been taken by certain organisations in withholding supplies from retailers who had sold their products. The particular case to which my memory takes me was in regard to the price of bread, where supplies of flour were being withheld under a term of contract between the millers and the bakers, and where the person who was selling bread at a lower price than the price agreed upon by the master bakers was not able to secure any supplies of flour. I am by no means certain that these bodies are capable of interpreting the whole of the duties which may be laid upon them in such a way as to serve the public interest. I would not for a moment suggest that there are not many men connected with those organisations who will take a wise, reasonable and honourable view of their responsibilities. But it is an extremely dangerous thing to give any body of persons outside this House the right to penalise competitors in the same line of business with whom they may have these agreements, and I would like to hear more as to exactly who these bodies are before we part with this paragraph.

Further, I think that we are entitled to ask the President of the Board of Trade to make some statement to the Committee as to the present position with regard to the stocks of various foods held in this country. Can he, for instance, tell us what are the stocks of imported meat in cold storage? Can he tell us what are the existing stocks of wheat, flour, butter, bacon, cheese, margarine and so on? These are questions of very great importance, because I understand that these powers are being sought to deal with the possibilities which may arise if we have a serious shortage of foodstocks in this country. The present crisis with which this country and the world generally are faced, is not a crisis due to a scarcity of foodstuffs or other things; indeed, to some extent it has been brought about by a glut of commodities, and the difficulty has been to relate these huge stocks to the consumptive power of the people. I cannot escape the conclusion that that portion of the Bill which deals with the shortage, particularly in relation to foodstuffs, is, to some extent, designed to perpetuate that feeling of panic which has been developed and to some extent generated by the members of the Conservative party so as to create a public psychology in which they can secure the glamour of a patriotic appeal to the country in order that the country may be willing to accept things at which, in normal times, its reason would revolt.

Therefore, we are entitled to ask for some indication from the Government, when they are proposing to confer powers like these upon bodies outside Parliament, what stocks exist, what is the national position, and what justification is there for any suggestion that we are approaching, or likely to approach, a condition of shortage with regard to foodstuffs? I understand, though I am not sure whether my information is correct, that there are some five months' supplies of imported meat in cold storage, and if there is any rise in the price of commodities of this kind where there are huge stocks in the country bought before there was any rise in price, then we are entitled to ask the Government to take far more drastic powers to protect consumers than they are proposing to take in this Bill. With regard to the supplies that may have to be imported on which an increased price may have to be paid by reason of the change in the rates of exchange, that, of course, is a different matter, but if there are huge stocks of foodstuffs accumulated in this country, we want some definite power to be given to the Government to prevent the sale of those stocks during the next few months at prices which are unreasonable in relation to the prices paid for them at the time of importation.

For instance, will this Bill give power to fix prices, to decide what is a fair price? Suppose there is a profiteering ramp by forces external to this country. Many of the supplies which come into Great Britain are subject to great speculative operations by people resident outside this country, and you may have a situation which demands that the State should be able to make large purchases and, if necessary, take the same powers as the French Government did not only to make purchases by the State, but, if necessary, so as to break down profiteering, to open shops to sell goods direct to the people, if such a situation did develop. We want to know whether this Bill will give the Government power to engage in that sort of operations and to lay down what is a fair price for staple commodities?

May I ask whether or not local authorities will be able to issue a fair price list for foodstuffs under the terms of this Bill, or whether the persons on whom it is proposed to confer powers, I presume to regulate prices and to take action against people who violate an undertaking of the trade, will publish to the public a list of prices which ought not to be exceeded? Therefore, I think we are entitled to say that, so far as we can see at present, the provisions of this Bill do not enable the Government to meet the emergencies which may arise, and that the powers are so limited that this is a mere political window-dressing device on the eve of the General Election, rather than a real determination by the Government to use the powers which already exist in the Emergency Powers Act properly to protect the people from any of the developments which may come out of this crisis.

The hon. Gentleman has raised several rather constructive points. The last was that we ought to exercise the powers contained in the Emergency Powers Act, but, as I explained to the House yesterday, the Emergency Powers Act does not apply to the present situation. What the Bill does is to give us the power to use exactly those powers as if the Emergency Powers Act were enacted.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the powers in this Bill give the State the power to purchase in bulk and to import in bulk?

I was going to deal with the hon. Gentleman's points one by one. He asked why we did not use powers under the Emergency Powers Act. The answer is because it would be illegal to do so. The Bill is introduced to give us exactly the powers which he says we ought to possess. He said that obviously nothing could be done and that everything was camouflage. The real proof of success is the extraordinary stability of prices during the last fortnight. That, I think, is a complete answer to that point.

The Bill was not in force then.

The hon. Gentleman keeps on presenting to the House a picture—it bears no sort of relation to facts—that everybody thinks that there is going to be an acute shortage of supplies, because no one is going to dare to trade. If hon. Gentlemen opposite come back to office, I do not think that a situation quite as bad as that would arise. There is not the faintest prospect that people are going to refuse to buy and sell in this country. It really seems to be quite irrelevant.

I do not think that that is a true account of what I said. My point was that we were just as likely, if not more likely, to have a shortage of food from external causes—not through the fault of anybody in this country—as by anyone in this country exploiting the situation, and we are making no provision in the Bill to deal with any situation which arises externally.

I think it is simply nonsense to suggest, when there are great stocks of foodstuffs available in the world, that none of those stocks are going to come forward. Does the hon. Gentleman really mean that with about a year's supply of wheat hanging over the market wheat dealers are going to hold off. It bears so little relation to the facts that if I were to come down to the House and say that the world is suffering from an excess production of many commodities, and there is such a risk that none of those commodities will come on to the market that I intend to set up a great State import board for fear we should suffer from starvation in a world which hon. Gentlemen opposite have often said is suffering in a strange way from glut, really I think the House would laugh me out of court, and they would be perfectly right in doing so. No one would be quicker than hon. Members opposite to say, "Why occupy the House of Commons in discussing such a stupid Measure as that?" and I think that they would be quite right.

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincoln (Mr. R. A. Taylor) really raised this matter in order to ask about the delegation of powers. There is not a delegation of discretion. The decision as to whether there is or is not a case of exploitation on which action is to be taken is a decision of the Board of Trade. That cannot be delegated to anybody. That is my decision. The power to delegate is a power to delegate executive action, and that must exist. I cannot say to whom such power will necessarily be delegated. It may be to the local officer of a Government Department—there are many of them in the country—and it may be to a local authority or to officials of a local authority. But what would be delegated to them would be executive action, to carry out the decision of the Board of Trade, and not a discretion to decide what action should be taken, which is the discretion vested in the Board of Trade. The hon. Gentleman said—yesterday I said I did not delegate my discretion at all—that he hoped that in any case it would not be delegated to a trade organisation. I think that that only arises in quite a different connection.

Somebody asked me, "What would you do supposing it was alleged that a particular grocer in a particular place was charging an unreasonable price?" The hon. Gentleman himself suggested that obviously you cannot go fixing the same prices everywhere. I agree. That is one of the difficulties. That is why, roughly, price-fixing is always an impossible thing to do, because circumstances vary so much and, as we found in the War, when we came down to a limited number of things and tried to fix prices, we had to fix on a margin to enable the most inefficient man to carry on. The result was that you fixed your prices far too high and your maximum price always became the minimum price, and a great many people who, if they had been left to carry on in proper competition, would have sold much cheaper, made an unnecessary amount of money. I think he is perfectly right in the criticism he made. You cannot fix prices to apply in Bond Street and Whitechapel and so on. Equally, he said, you cannot fix a price for a great co-operative society or a great store which has a great turnover and which can carry on on a small margin of profit, and make it apply to some little shopkeeper with a very small turnover, and who is inefficient. I do not use the term offensively. I agree that you cannot do price-fixing in that sort of way. That is why it is always necessary to tackle this thing from the wholesale end.

But I said that supposing I received a complaint about a particular shop being unreasonable, I thought the natural thing to do would be to go to the trade federation of which that shop was a member and which had agreed to help and say, "Here is an allegation that one of your members is not playing the game, get on to it and take that action first." I think that that would be a reasonable thing to do. And so it is on the big wholesale scale. If I found that one wholesale dealer was not playing the game, I should try to act through the organisation of wholesalers, who are very anxious that everybody should play the game. I stated in the House yesterday that the bulk of them were playing the game, and that the mere threat to a man was quite enough to deal with the matter. The short answer is that discretion is not delegated to anybody. It is only executive action, and for that you must use whoever is the most proper person.

The hon. Member asked about stocks. Stocks, as he knows, must vary from commodity to commodity. I am perfectly satisfied, as I said, that there are ample stocks available, but that does not necessarily mean that those stocks are available in this country. He mentioned, for instance, meat, and asked if it was not a fact that there are several months' stocks of meat in this country? There are considerable stocks, I believe, of frozen mutton in this country, but he knows that when you pass from frozen meat to chilled meat the latter gets sold within 24, 25 or 26 days or whatever it is, of the animal being killed.

Except that when there is a surplus it is taken into cold storage and frozen.

A surplus which degenerates. It is that which gives to the markets which are nearer in, like the Argentine, a great pull over certain other markets. It is as true of beef as it is of mutton. Frozen mutton has a happy habit, I believe, of de-coagulating satisfactorily when you unfreeze it, whereas frozen beef does not de-coagulate, and that is why chilled beef is better than frozen beef. In chilled meat you cannot have great stocks in the country, because they must come forward week by week. It is exactly the same with regard to Danish bacon or light cured bacon. You cannot have stocks in this country. The bacon has to come week by week in supply. Therefore, whether the particular commodities of which stocks are ordinarily available in this country are coming forward depends very much upon circumstances of this character. The hon. Member happened to mention butter. I can tell him about butter because I have been going into the question lately. The stocks of butter in cold store on 1st October were approximately 19,000 tons, and the ordinary consumption in a month is 32,000 tons. There, again, there merely being 19,000 tons, is nothing one need be anxious about, because butter from different parts of the world comes forward all the time. Therefore, you cannot lay down any hard and fast rule about stocks.

I can assure the hon. Member that I am keeping a very close watch on the stock position generally, and it is important that you should be careful, if you are attempting to adjust prices which are entirely outside your control, because unless the price is satisfactory, the seller may not send his goods forward. In conducting business—though I am not conducting it, I am in close association with the people who conduct it—you must realise that by trying to keep prices below what a buyer can reasonably expect to get, you may prevent supplies coming forward and put yourself in the position of creating a real shortage in the market. But as long as trade goes on through the normal channels and the ordinary course is pursued, I am sure that the country need have no alarm that there will be any shortage in the food coming forward. I think that disposes of all the points which the hon. Gentleman raised, and I am very glad that he raised them, because it has given me an opportunity of making clear exactly what is meant.

We are getting on. We are getting information bit by bit, and that is why the Committee stage is so useful. We have got an answer to our question as to the application of powers which we were not able to get yesterday. I think that we are indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. R. A. Taylor) for the case he put and the answer which he has elicited. But I am afraid that the reply of the President of the Board of Trade only goes to show that our fears as to this Bill being largely a bluff have been proved. It is clear now from the latter part of his answer that after all this great shout about taking the most drastic powers that have ever been taken, is really just a little bit of window dressing. What they propose to do is to say, "Well, we hope that you will be very good children, but, if anything goes wrong, I propose to write to the traders' association, and the traders' association will see whether this individual trader or that individual trader has or has not charged too much." If the traders' association is unable to persuade the poor unfortunate delinquent that he has been wrong or something of that kind, there may be some further consideration as to whether this person is or is not a person who ought to be indicted for a criminal offence. What a different complexion this puts upon a Bill which was heralded at the end of last week as being the most drastic Measure upon food that had ever been placed upon the Statute Book of this country. How it supports the case which we have already put, that probably it is only introduced into the House just for election purposes. I have been waiting to hear from the President of the Board of Trade, yesterday and today, what is the real explanation why the Emergency Powers Act has not been used. Yesterday and to-day he has told us that it was illegal to use it. Why is it illegal?

I consulted the Law Officers of the Crown. The reason why I ruin not using those powers is that there is not a national emergency within the meaning of that Act. I am not competent to explain the matter, but I asked the Law Officers whether I could act under the Emergency Powers Act, and they said: "No. You must have a separate Bill giving you powers."

This is most interesting. The Bill is intended to deal with a situation brought about by the

"action of any persons in exploiting the present financial situation,"

and that in consequence there is likely to arise

"any shortage of or any unreasonable increase in the price of any article of food or drink."

We have been harried on these benches because it is said that we did not recognise that there was a crisis. The crisis has not been sufficient to invoke the use of the powers of the Emergency Powers Act. The way the Government jump from foot to foot is most amusing. We have not yet got a real answer. We are informed by the President of the Board of Trade that he has taken the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, who have advised that the Emergency Powers Act cannot be invoked. Perhaps the Attorney-General will explain why the Emergency Powers Act cannot be invoked. We had been given to understand that if someone was acting in such a way as to prejudice the community, all that was needed was a threat from the President of the Board of Trade to bring into operation the Emergency Powers Act, and that that would be effective. Why cannot that be effective now?

The Emergency Powers Act provides that:

"If at any time it appears to His Majesty that any action has been taken or is immediately threatened by any persons or body of persons of such a nature and on so extensive a scale, etc."

When I was asked to advise the President of the Board of Trade, I said: "It is impossible to put those powers into force, unless you can say that the scale is extensive." You may want to deal with a small trader or a particular case of profiteering. Any lawyer will agree at once that it is impossible to do that under the Emergency Powers Act.

What has the scale and size of the emergency to be? What number of people or what amount of goods are to be involved? If the goods are being sold at an unreasonable price, what amount is to be involved before action can be taken under the Emergency Powers Act, or under the present Bill?

The whole object in bringing in this Bill instead of relying upon the Emergency Powers Act is that you get out of the difficulty of having to define the scale. That is why I advised that the Emergency Powers Act was no good.

That demonstrates what we said yesterday, that this Bill is bluff, introduced for the purposes of the election. The Attorney-General says that he cannot advise the use of the Emergency Powers Act because the crisis is not of a sufficient scale.

I did not say that. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I said nothing about the magnitude of the crisis. I was dealing with the magnitude of the particular case of exploitation. You may have a case of exploitation, a gross case, but not on a big scale. Does the right hon. Gentleman want to stop that? If so, he cannot do it under the Emergency Powers Act.

I should have said that you could very well do it under the Emergency Powers Act. After all, that has been said in this House during the last three weeks, if the crisis through which we have been going is not sufficient to enable the Government, according to the advice of the Law Officers of the Crown, to invoke the use of the Emergency Powers Act, then all the speeches of right hon. and hon. Members opposite have been wind, with no substance in them. What they say now is that there is no prospect of any exploitation on a sufficient scale to justify the invoking of the Emergency Powers Act, yet the President of the Board of Trade says that it is necessary to introduce a Bill of a separate character with powers as drastic as those in the Emergency Powers Act. When we come to the explanation we find that all that they are going to do is to make representations to the trading organisation that a particular trader has been a bad boy, and to ask them to communicate with him and see if they cannot persuade him to be a better boy in the future. Unless that has happened, no action will be taken. This Bill is a piece of pure window dressing for the election.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 7, to leave out paragraph (b).

My purpose in moving this Amendment is to get some explanation from the President of the Board of Trade as to the scope of the paragraph. The paragraph seems rather dreadful. It provides for trials, confiscations and other things. If, as the President of the Board of Trade says, the difficulty can be got over by merely making representation to the trading organisation, there is no need for these provisions with regard to trials by courts of summary jurisdiction, fines of £100, confiscation of profits and confiscation of articles. What need is there for these provisions if the trading association will put the matter right? I should like to know, in the event of a prosecution, who is to conduct the prosetion. Will it be the Board of Trade or the trading organisation or a common informer?

The President of the Board of Trade has said that he can get over his difficulties by going to the wholesale association or the retail traders' association, and saying that a certain person is not playing the game. That is all very well, but I would point out that the Food Council stated that they could not secure what they wanted. They came to the Government and said: "We think that too high a price is being charged for bread in London, and that bread within a certain period ought to have come down in price." They also stated that milk ought to have come down in price, at least for the period of one month. Because they had no powers to deal with it, they asked the Government for powers. Now, the President of the Board of Trade says that he can get over the difficulties by asking the traders to play the game. The difficulty has not been got over hitherto. A Commission was appointed to inquire into the meat trade and the prices charged, and they found it very difficult to get one of the Vestey brothers to give evidence or to answer questions. We are entitled to ask whether the President of the Board of Trade is going to get powers to investigate books and to go into the thing from beginning to end. We are entitled to know that, before we consent to paragraph (b), which provides for heavy fines and confiscations.

Who are the persons who are to be prosecuted? In the case of a company, will it be the secretary of the company, or will it be the poor branch shop manager? There has been accumulating legislation, such as the Merchandise Marks Act and the Weights and Measures Act., under which the ordinary branch shop manager has to keep his eyes open to see that the law is obeyed not only by himself but by his assistants. He is a poorly paid person, as a rule. He merely works for a wage. He works under instructions from headquarters, or under instructions from a visiting inspector, who tells him what he is to do. Who is going to suffer all the pains and penalties if he has been acting under instructions? If a multiple firm is involved, will the firm be prosecuted, or will it be the branch manager or the shop assistant?

The hon. Member who moved the Amendment has asked who will be prosecuted. In the case of a company, who will be prosecuted and put into gaol? Upon whom will the penalty fall I Are you going to collect the directors or the shareholders and put them into gaol? It seems to me as a layman that this Bill has been drafted in a very loose manner. References are made in paragraph (b) to "persons guilty of an offence against the regulations." In view of the use of the word "persons," am I to understand that the Bill refers to the people immediately in charge of what is being done in the shop? They might apply to the individual who owns his own business, but when it comes to a multiple shop the case does not seem to be covered. Who are the persons that will be affected in the case of an offence by a company?

As far as I can understand the Bill, the Board of Trade is empowered to make regulations after an act of exploitation has been done. Supposing there is a gross act of exploitation, something which may be very serious and which may cause a shortage of food. It. will be after the event that the regulations will be made; possibly some little time after. As I understand the Bill, it will be impossible in those circumstances to bring the person or the persons concerned to court until after the regulations have been made. It will only be possible to bring the people to court after the damage has been done. That does not appear to me to be very helpful, and I hope the Attorney-General will be able to throw a little light upon it.

I want to deal with this question from the point of view of the penalties. Yesterday I suggested that the penalties are totally inadequate for these modern times, and I read from some old Statutes the kind of penalties which were then imposed. On further inquiry I find that even the courts leet, which existed before Parliament was instituted, had greater powers conferred upon them by the King for dealing with what was called forestalling and engrossing, or re-grating, than are proposed by this Bill. I want to ask the Attorney-General whether he thinks that a fine of £100 as a maximum for a first or second or third offence is adequate to deal with this kind of offence when trade is conducted on the scale it is to-day. Suppose one of the great meat importers makes a sight mistake of 1½d. or 2½d. in calculating what is a reasonable rise in price. In a few weeks he can make a profit which will make £100 a very small fraction of his illgotten gains. I presume the Attorney-General does not intend the Bill to be used for terrorising the small shopkeeper. When the previous Act was in force I was chairman of an urban council. We had one case brought before us. It was the case of a woman who kept a small shop in a cottage. It was alleged that she had over-charged ½d. for an ounce of pepper. We deliberated for two and a-quarter hours, and then came to the conclusion that she had done so and that she must refund the ½d. To our amazement she said that she had not change for a penny, and neither had the person who complained; so the clerk to the urban council had to go into his office and get two halfpennies. I suppose the Bill is not aimed at catching small fry like that, and I am quite sure that the hon. Member for Grimsby, who has a great knowledge on these matters—

That is exactly what your Consumers' Council Bill sought to do.

I know that the Conservative party dwells in the past, but I did not know that it dwelt so much in the past as to worry about the Consumers' Council Bill.

The hon. Member who started this question was rather quick. I cannot allow a discussion on the Consumers' Council Bill to be developed.

That is all I was going to say; it was nothing more than fair comment on the interruption. I am quite sure that the Attorney-General intends to go for any really big people who commit an offence just as zealously as he will for any small shopkeeper. Therefore, I ask whether the penalties are anything like sufficient. Let me repeat the suggestion I made yesterday. Early in August, with the May Committee Report in my hands, I went to Land's End and thought the thing out in solitude. It seemed to raise the kind of issues which take men into different parties. I tried to see the thing through to the end. I did so, and I came to the conclusion that if one tried to effect the economies in the May Committee's Report at the expense of the unemployed you are going to have serious food riots during the winter, and most men who saw the thing through to the end came to the same conclusion.

In addition to the cuts, you have depreciated the pound. There is a fear of rising prices, or this Bill would not be before us, and we may have—I see no possibility of avoiding them in some districts—serious riots which may be beyond the power of the police to control, and which may result in the calling out of the military. If any of these food riots are provoked by offences under this Bill I think there should be power to deal effectively with the big people who may be at the back of any shortage or exploitation. I ask the Attorney-General to consider whether a fine of £100 or three months' imprisonment, or both together, with the forfeiture from the purchaser, as I take it, of the articles in which the exploitation has taken place is a really sufficient punishment, or will be sufficient evidence to the country of the good faith of the Government in this matter. I suggest that we are dealing with a subject that may be of the utmost importance to the stability of the State during the coming winter and we ought not to allow this Bill to pass until we are assured that its provisions are an adequate safeguard against exploitation.

It may be convenient if I add one or two questions at this stage, and the Attorney-General can take them altogether. Probably the right hon. and learned Gentleman has seen some remarks I made yesterday. I want to put this specific case to him. If a company, in the opinion of the Board of Trade, is guilty of an offence and is prosecuted, some person is to be taken to court. You can indict a secretary or managing director, and actually send such a person to prison; but in this Bill you are adding other penalties. You are ordering the forfeiture of the goods of the company. You are also asking them to disgorge profits which are, in the opinion of the Board of Trade, excessive. I am not quite sure that the Board of Trade is sufficiently protected in matters of this kind. May you not get a civil action against the Board of Trade for any action they may take which has resulted in criminal proceedings?

Let me put another point to the Attorney-General. To any ordinary person reading this Clause it is clear that forfeiture is added as an extra penalty. It says:

"Any articles in respect of which the offence was committed."

Does that mean that you are going to exact forfeiture from the person who has bought the article at much more than the proper price? Does forfeiture of the profit mean that the extra profit goes to the court authorities or to the Board of Trade; or is there a provision that if these extra profits have been made they shall be forfeited and refunded to the purchaser who has been defrauded? That is an important point. I should like an answer to the question of what protection there is for the Board of Trade against any civil action arising out of these cases, and whether the power of forfeiture means that you are prepared to give the court power to forfeit the whole of the stock of the man who has been selling at an undue profit. That would be an extraordinary action to take. Also whether a forefeiture of the profits in respect of a transaction for which a person has been found guilty, is to be a repayment to the person who in the opinion of that decision, has been defrauded.

I have been asked a good many questions, and I hope I shall remember them all; if not, hon. Members will remind me. First, as to the structure of the Clause. It is borrowed almost verbatim from Subsection (3) of Section 2, of the Emergency Powers Act. The words are precisely the same until you get to the words in line 16:

"Or of any profit accruing to the person."

which are different. To the end the paragraph is different. I must explain to the Committee again the whole object of the Bill; and many of the questions will be answered by a consideration of that fact. The Emergency Powers Act was passed in order to deal with trouble on a very extensive scale which threatened to deprive the community of the essentials of life. When I was asked to consider the possibility of exploitation on the part of someone, which we all hope will not occur, and so far there is no evidence that it will occur, and whether the Emergency Powers Act gives us adequate powers there is no lawyer in the land who would have hesitated about the answer. The answer which I felt bound to give was that the Emergency Powers Act did not give us the powers which were needed. Unless you have exploitation on an extensive scale and a threat of a deprivation of the essentials of life you cannot act. Consequently, we had to bring in this Bill, which enables us to deal with cases on a much smaller scale, even with individual cases. I felt, although I hope none of these powers will be necessary and that there will be no exploitation, that it would be foolish to separate unless we had adequate powers to deal with such a threat if it took place. If you are to do that you must have a penalty Clause. The hon. Member for Central Sheffield (Mr. Hoffman) has completely misunderstood what the President of the Board of Trade said. My right hon. Friend said that, if there was trouble in a particular case he would probably go to the trade organisation. That seems to me an eminently sensible thing to do. At the same time we cannot rest content with that. My right hon. Friend may not be able to get a satisfactory dealing with the case. He must arm himself with powers. Then I am asked "What do you want these powers for?" The President of the Board of Trade said, "In the first instance I shall go to the trade association, but if I cannot settle it in that way I shall not hesitate to use the powers under the, Act." It is necessary, therefore, to be provided with powers, and drastic powers, in order to deal with the situation.

I was asked, next, who prosecutes and who is to be prosecuted? Both those questions will depend on the regulations to be made. It will be perfectly proper for the regulations themselves to define who that would be. In normal eases the prosecution would be conducted by someone acting on behalf of the Board of Trade. The regulations themselves would authorise the Board of Trade to appoint various officers, or officers of municipalities up and down the country might undertake prosecutions. In more serious cases—I have always tried to carry out this idea in my administration of the law in the last two years—a different procedure would be adopted. It is absolutely inexcusable for the law to hit the small man and miss the large, and if I have the administration of the law I shall always hit at the large man. In serious cases of that sort I have no doubt that I should myself be called in to prosecute. That answers the question as to who would prosecute.

Does that answer mean that there will be no common informer prosecutions, that it will be impossible for an ordinary citizen to act the part of the common informer?

I hope to goodness we shall have nothing to do with the common informer; the less we have to do with him the better. The next question is, who is to be prosecuted? I am aware of the great hardship possible in the case of some of these small people, the managers of small shops. We all know that they are liable to be called over the coals for doing all sorts of things which in fact they are required to do. The right way to administer the law is not to try to hit these people, but to hit those who tell them that they have to break the law. So long as I have anything to do with the administration of the law, I shall see that the right people are hit. But it will be for the regulations to provide for this. The regulations will be administered with common sense and against the men behind the scenes, the directing brains. No regulations would be satisfactory in cases of this sort unless they made it possible to go behind the small man and to get at the man who is really directing things. Then my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) asked as to the adequacy of the penalty. It was suggested that in a particularly bad case where enormous profits are made a penalty of £100 is neither here nor there. I am not sure that I should say the same about three months' imprisonment. After all, if you get someone very rich who may be sent to prison for three months for an offence which must shock the consciences of decent people, you may be sure that at least you ruin that man's prestige.

I presume the Attorney-General contemplates persons of both sexes. I have the case of Mrs. Meyrick in mind. She got six months' imprisonment for an offence, and it seemed to have no more effect on her than water on a duck's back.

It should be observed that it is possible to have a fine and imprisonment as well for this offence. Not only that, but you can have the forfeiture of any articles in respect of which the offence was committed; and, further, this is of importance—

"or of any profits accruing to the person committing the offence in respect of the transaction to which the offence relates, or the forfeiture of both such articles and such profits."

You might get the case of one of the big meat people making a mistake of 2½d. or something of that sort, and in the course of a short time it amounts to a big sum of money. You would get behind and get at the real directing brain, to the man responsible, and go for him and try to get him three months' imprisonment. You would go to the company and try to get from the company a penalty of £100, which is not very much, and you would get the entire profits which the company had made from the deal which constituted the offence.

Would that mean in respect of the particular transaction on which action was taken, or in respect of a whole series of transactions that were involved? I presume you would deal with him in respect of one act, as between him and a retailer, but you would discover that it was really part of a general policy that had been pursued with many hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of retailers. Would this cumulative penalty with regard to profits apply to the lot? Did the learned Attorney-General notice yesterday that as long ago as 1350 this House enacted that in these cases double the profits were always to be taken?

Of course I agree that we will probably start with some particular case, but if that particular case revealed that there had been a good deal of illegitimate profit-making going on, I should consider myself perfectly entitled, indeed obliged, to pursue the other cases in order to get the profits. I should go through the whole string of transactions in order to prevent that gentleman making a profit which he ought never to have come by. Then I was asked what was meant by forfeiture. It is plain that the forfeiture mentioned contemplates that the thing to be forfeited is still in the hands of the person who has committed the offence. It would be a farcical thing if you settled that a man had committed an offence by selling a commodity at too high a price and did not make him disgorge the article for which a customer was asked too much. Forfeiture obviously means that where the subject matter of the transaction is still in the hands of the person who committed the offence, it shall be forfeited. Take the case of a man who has bought stock at a certain low price and is endeavouring to retail it to various consumers at an exorbitant price. You would take the whole of the stock that he was trying to hold up.

The whole of the remaining stock?

The right hon. Member for Hillsborough (Mr. Alexander) asked me about the position of a company. He called attention to the use in the Clause of the word "persons":

"provide for the trial by courts of summary jurisdiction of persons guilty of offences against the regulations.…."

The Interpretation Act provides that the word "persons" includes bodies cor- porate, and consequently a company is a person. A company can be proceeded against criminally, and often has been. You cannot make a, company stand in the dock and cannot make it go to prison, but you can exact money from a company by means of a fine, and you can forfeit its goods and deprive it of profits. In these cases we would pursue not only the company but also the brains behind, the directors of the company who were responsible for the policy the company had carried out. I was next asked whether these powers could be put into force until there had been some exploitation. The Board of Trade must first of all be satisfied that there has been some exploitation, and directly that appears the Board of Trade can utilise the powers of its regulations.

If what the learned Attorney-General said about forfeiture was correct it ought to be made perfectly clear in the Clause. The Clause states:

"together with the forfeiture of any articles in respect of which the offence was committed."

I have had that looked at by a lawyer, and his interpretation was that the articles in respect of which the particular offence had been committed were the articles in, respect of which the prosecution was undertaken, and that it would be necessary to have another form of words if they were to apply to the forfeiture of remaining stocks of similar commodities. It is vital to get the necessary words altered; otherwise you may get the very intention of the promoters of the Bill completely upset. For the sake of good English surely the Government would be glad to amend the words to-day?

I should be sorry to be too confident about it, but I should have thought there was not much doubt as to the meaning of the Clause. The offence would be committed if you got a stock of goods and you tried to sell them at an exorbitant price. The exploitation would be the seeking to get a very large price; the holding up and the asking of such a large price would constitute the offence. Those undoubtedly would be the articles in respect of which the offence had been committed, though they had never been sold, and there would be a forfeiture of those articles.

Does not the learned Attorney-General draw a, distinction between exploiting and attempting to exploit I Does not the word "exploiting" in Sub-section (1) mean that a person has been exploited?

The person who asks the exorbitant price is most certainly exploiting.

It is to be assumed that in defining the offence care would be taken to cover all possibilities of exploitation. In those circumstances obviously the stock in the shop would be forfeited. I assume it would be considered to be idle to deal with the matter only in cases of sale.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 23, at the end, to insert the words:

"(3) Any regulations made under this Act shall be laid before each House of Parliament as soon as may be after they are made, and, if an Address is presented to His Majesty by either House of Parliament within the next subsequent twenty days on which that House has sat next after any such regulation is laid before it praying that the regulation may be annulled, it shall thenceforth be void, but without prejudice to the validity of anything done thereunder or to the making of any new regulation."

This Amendment deals with the necessity of laying before the House of Commons regulations of the kind proposed in this Bill. I was astounded to find that there was in this Bill no provision at all for laying before the House of Commons regulations through which such widespread control will be exercised over the citizens of this country. It is perfectly true that as regards the general body of Government regulations such regulations are covered by the Rules Publication Act, which provides for a period of notice and also that they must be laid before Parliament, but the Rules Publication Act explicity excepts from that procedure Orders made by the Board of Trade. In those circumstances, when the President of the Board of Trade asks Parliament for the extraordinary powers proposed in this Bill, it is surprising that he should want to exercise those powers by means of regulations made behind the scenes—regulations which are not even to be published in the "London Gazette" and which are not bound to be brought under consideration and review from time to time in Parliament.

When regulations of this kind are made I regard it as vital that the House of Commons should have the opportunity of saying whether a particular regulation is just or not, and whether it is operating unfairly or not, and that we should, if necessary, have the power to remove it by the usual procedure of a Prayer that the regulation in question be amended or revoked. Out of two or three forms of words available in the Statutes I have chosen a form for this Amendment which will not entail the holding up of the procedure of the Board of Trade in the meantime. Under this Amendment they would still be able to take immediate action against any profiteer and they would receive the necessary indemnification in regard to any action that might be taken under a regulation, which was subsequently amended by the House of Commons. Even at this late stage I hope that the Government are prepared to be reasonable and to give the people of the country in this matter at least their proper rights, and the protection to which they are entitled as citizens.

I should not have said anything on this Amendment except that I was prepared to be reasonable and to accept the right hon. Gentleman's proposal, had it not been for his expression of amazement that this provision was not already in the Bill: I am glad that such a provision should be in the Bill. In the course of the last two years I have sometimes stipulated for a provision of this kind being put into Measures, and I have not always succeeded in getting it. I was a little surprised to hear of the right hon. Gentleman's amazement in this case, because my mind went back to an occasion not many weeks ago, in the happy days when he and I were collaborating together and when we were dealing with a Bill called the Anomalies Bill, which contained powers to make Orders and Regulations. There was no stipulation in that case that those Regulations should be laid either for negative or positive approval. Still, in the right hon. Gentleman's new circumstances being in Opposition and free from the cares and worries of office— he can now enjoy a feeling of amazement on this matter, and I for my part certainly will not begrudge him that enjoyment.

I still think that we should not allow this Clause to go without a protest against the inadequacy of the penalty proposed. We cannot move an Amendment now, but in order to test the feelings of the House and the Government I propose when we reach the Report stage to ask for permission to move an Amendment making the penalty £1,000 instead of £100. I hope that between now and then the Government may consider the matter and that they may see their way to accept such an Amendment. We need not go back on anything which we have said as to the inadequacy of this Clause to cope with the situation, but the Attorney-General has illuminated some of the dark places and matters which appeared to be doubtful have now become clearer as a result of his lucid explanations. We look to the right hon. and learned Gentleman to have this Measure administered in the spirit of the speech which he made on paragraph (b) of Subsection (2), and I am sure that while he remains in office we shall not look to him in vain.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 36, to leave out the word "six" and to insert instead thereof the word "twelve."

We are dealing to-day and we were dealing yesterday with two Bills, the less important of the two being the Sunday Performances (Temporary Regulations) Bill. It is proposed, however, that that Measure should continue for 12 months whereas this Measure is only to continue for six months. I do not know why there should be that distinction. There is every argument why this Measure should be continued for 12 months. Everybody hopes that the present financial situation may be cleared up in six months' time, but I do not think that anyone in his senses really believes it possible that such will be the case. It is most unlikely that the situation which the Bill is designed to meet will have ended at the period when the Bill is due to expire with the powers which are given in it. It would be reasonable to extend the period for a year, and I suggest that it will possibly be necessary, in any case, before the end of six months to extend the Measure for a further period. It should at any rate be made to operate at the same period as the Sunday Performances Bill.

I am sure that the Committee will not expect me to go very deeply into the point raised by the hon. Member. He wants to know why this Bill has not been made to run for 12 months instead of six and he seems to compare this Bill with the Sunday Performances Bill. Of course, no such comparison is possible and the reason why the period of six months has been taken for this Bill is because that is the approximate time for which it is expected that it will be necessary, and that is the period of time which has been fixed in the Measure already passed dealing with the Gold Standard. I disagree with the hon. Member's view that there is no possibility of the stabilisation of the currency before the end of six months, and I do not think that it would create a good impression if we were to make the period of this Bill 12 months instead of six. Everyone, in the House of Commons and outside, hopes that before the end of six months we shall have done something in the way of stabilising our currency, and if our hopes in that respect are not realised, then it will be possible to extend the period of the Bill.

That really means that the Government have been unwise in the action which they have taken. The danger of profiteering is not going to be done away with before the date which has been fixed in the Gold Standard Measure. It is quite likely that that danger will continue. There is a Resolution on the Paper to-day which will have the effect of saving from the executioner's axe the London Passenger Transport Bill which had already passed through nearly all its stages. That shows how the Government could have dealt with this situation without fixing any date of this kind. They could in 24 hours have passed the Consumers' Council Bill, which had already progressed through all its stages with the exception of Report and Third Reading. That would have given a much juster position for both the consumer and the producer and would have placed upon the Statute Book an Act of a permanent character about which there need have been no anxiety as to its duration. It would have been there for all time as a good deterrent to would-be profiteers and it would have given a just method of procedure where inquiry or action became necessary.

The Government, however, have failed to enact a Measure which took so much precious time in this House and in Committee and instead they give us a Bill which is not likely to operate effectively and which is to be limited to a period of six months after which we are told there is likely to be no need for it. Some of us believe that the need is likely to be continuous. I notice in "The Times" to-day a reference to the purchasing power of the pound at wholesale prices being 98.6 per cent. of the pre-War level. If we take into account the actual cost-of-living figure to-day it would appear that the internal purchasing power of the pound is about 45 per cent, or 50 per cent. below the pre-War purchasing value indicating quite clearly the continuous discrepancy between fluctuations in wholesale prices and fluctuations in retail prices. There is clearly a need for some more permanent Measure to deal with the possible exploitation of the community. This Bill will not do so. It is temporary; its form indicates that the Government are not going to use it in dealing with undue opportunities of overcharging consumers and, it is, as I have said, purely for election purposes.