When, on Tuesday night, the discussion on this Clause was interrupted. I thought that the Under-Secretary had not met our point of view. It is true that he gave a long explanation, but I was not satisfied that he had met the many points put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South East Leeds (Major Milner). My hon. and gallant Friend gave many reasons why the franchise should be extended over a certain period. He asked that during the 10 years, if the Provincial legislature felt that there ought to be an increase of franchise, it should be ratified, and that if at the end of 10 years they had not done that, power might be given to bring it about nevertheless. My hon, and gallant Friend said that under the present franchise those in charge might not give to the adult people the full right that we think they ought to have.

Much may be said for the view that it would be unwise to give this right to all adults, and my mind goes back to a meeting that I once attended in a Committee room upstairs, when a prominent advocate from India was speaking for the rights of the people of India and urging that something more ought to be done for them. I asked him whether that meant adult franchise, and he replied," No, not for the moment." I could not understand then why, when he was speaking about the freedom of India, he could not see his way to give them adult franchise immediately. He said that it would take a little time to get a knowledge of self-government into their minds, and that therefore for a period the franchise should be restricted. There may be something in that argument, but we are asking that over a period of time some attempt should be made to increase the franchise.

After all, we must look upon the Indian people as trying, somewhat like ourselves, to get into the position of being able to deal with their own affairs, and, unless we can hold out to them some hope that they will have that opportunity, it will be very hard on the ordinary person who has not got it at the present time. The points put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend are well worth repeating. He urged that there should be equality of political rights; we consider that, when a man reaches adult age, he ought to have equality of political rights. My hon. and gallant Friend also pointed out that this would be the best means of getting representation for the people as a whole, without distinction of class. We regard it as very important to remove the distinction of class, and to give everyone the right to vote for self-government.

The Under-Secretary, in reply, admitted that these points were good ones, but his main arguments were, first, that the Franchise Committee had been categorically against the introduction of adult franchise in the immediate future, and, secondly, that this proposal would raise the number to whom the franchise was now being given, namely, 35,000,000, to 130,000,000—a big step forward; and one is bound to pay attention to that argument. But the Indian race is a tremendous race, and 35,000,000 voters can hardly be said to represent the extent of the franchise that they ought to have. Whenever the change takes place it will be a big jump, and mere figures of that kind ought not to weigh with us, because we are dealing with a tremendous population—a population numbering, I understand, 350,000,000—and therefore the suggested figure of 130,000,000 must be regarded in relation to the total population.

A third reason given by the Under-Secretary was that after 10 years any Provincial legislature could appeal to the Home Government, and that then would be the time to deal with the question. He also spoke about the question of the administrative practicability of making such a change in the immediate future. That, however, is a matter that will right itself after a year or two. We are dealing with a period of 10 years, but in five years, or even before, we shall reach the period for which we are asking, and by that time any difficulty as to administrative practicability may have been overcome. The Under-Secretary's concluding argument was that it would be a mighty jump at one step from the franchise proposed at present to the immediate establishment of adult suffrage.

In dealing with this Bill one is interested to see the turn that events take from time to time. The Government occupy a unique and interesting position There are two sides, of course, to the Bill. There is what may be called the repressionist side—and I use that word advisedly—represented by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft), and the hon. Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto). The hon. Member for Barnstaple has already spoken on this matter, and has shown where he stands in regard to it. He could not see why we should extend the franchise to a number of people who probably have no knowledge as to how to use the vote, and I gathered that he thought that we had already been unwise in this country in giving the vote to so many people. The point I would urge this morning is that the repressionists come to the help of the Government on anything that the progressives, who represent the other side of the Bill, bring forward. When we argue for any improvement in the Bill to advance the prospects of the people of India, the Government are aided by the repressionist section, while, on the other band, when the repressionist side put forward their point of view to retard what is in the Bill already, we come to the aid of the Government. Consequently, the Government occupy the very happy position of always knowing that, whichever way matters go, they will receive support from the one side or the other. I expect that today they will be in the same happy position, and that the repressionists will go into the Lobby with them and help to keep up the majority that they have had all the time. I hope, however, that we may be able to get from the Under-Secretary something further in reply to our arguments which will give us some hope that something better will be done as the Bill goes forward.

When I was speaking on this Clause on the last occasion, I asked the Under-Secretary whether he could give the figure, or at any rate an approximate figure, for the cost of the proposal now before the Committee with regard to adult suffrage, and I believe he was good enough to look up those figures. I think that, if he is going to make any further reply on the appeal of the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker), it would be very useful to the Committee if he could tell us what would be the cost of this proposal, because that is a very material factor in view of the additional cost all round that must be involved in these great proposals for changing the method of government in India.

It will be generally agreed, I think, that we have never had a Minister who resists Amendments so persuasively as the Under-Secretary of State for India, but on Tuesday night he was more than usually persuasive in resisting this Clause. The reason was that he had to resort to all kinds of rather weak arguments. He pointed out that it would be very costly and administratively difficult because of the lack of education among the people of India; it would be geographically and educationally difficult to get returning officers and other officials necessary to carry through an election on such a basis. I believe that such arguments may be applied to India for centuries to come. If it be a question of cost, India will never have adult suffrage because it will never be cheaper. These are not powerful arguments against the proposed new Clause. The hon. Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto) has said that he is not concerned whether he is elected by a small number of voters or by a large number, and that he does his work just as effectively now as he did when he was elected by a smaller number. I do not think that the franchise is a thing to be arranged to please the elected member or that he should have any complaints to make about it. It is our policy to give the franchise to the people we represent, and we have no regrets in regard to the giving of adult franchise in this country. Our experience is that we ought to give adult suffrage of a more complete character. We should say to India that within a limited period we intend to give them that which we think they will discharge effectively.

Some of us doubt whether the time is ripe to give adult suffrage to India, and personally I believe that at the moment it would be a doubtful step to take. Some hon. Members say that we should do it now, but I doubt whether now is the moment to grant adult suffrage to India as a whole. There may be Provinces in India, as I feel sure there are, in which adult suffrage could be given effectively, but we have to remember that the very constitution of the Legislatures makes progress impossible in this direction. We think that the Legislatures have been so arranged that it can never be expected that adult suffrage will be granted. I read the last few lines of our Clause several times before I found myself in agreement with it. I am not inclined to over-ride elected bodies, and when they are elected they should be allowed to discharge their duties without any interference from a superior body. But these bodies are elected in such a way that I can never hope that any Provincial Legislature in India will grant adult suffrage in the next 100 years, never mind 10 years. It is because I see no hope of the Indian people getting universal adult suffrage that I am in support of the Clause. I hope that the Under-Secretary will give a further reply, and, if possible, base his objections on firmer ground than he did on Tuesday night. His objections were weaker than any he had brought forward against any previous Amendment in this Committee. It is no use saying that it is difficult. We know that adult suffrage in India does not mean the same as it does in Great Britain; that adult suffrage for 350,000,000 people is a very different thing from adult suffrage for 50,000,000. When people are fit to vote they should have the vote.

The Clause contains good parts and bad parts, and the part of it which lays down that an Order-in-Council may—we have always been told "may" means "shall" make provision after 10 years is thoroughly bad. I do not believe in doing these things in that way. The hon. Gentleman pointed out that the Government on these occasions are in the happy position, that if the progressives support them, the other people attack them, and vice versa. I have never held, as a good solid Conservative, that adult suffrage has been in any way bad for the Conservative Party. The history of adult suffrage in this country shows that we now have the biggest Conservative majorities we have ever had. I have always believed in adult suffrage. I do not see why as time goes on the workers of India, who are probably just as conservative as, if not more so than, the workers of this country, if they get their own way and are not duped by Socialists and others, should not return enormous Conservative majorities, who will see to it that India as a whole plays its full part in the comity of the British Empire. I do not stand against universal suffrage on that basis at all. I think that it might be very helpful in the future. But you are met with an appalling difficulty in a great country, which is really a continent, having enormous areas holding some 350,000,000 adult males and females You have to build up a system of voting and get people used to going to the poll in an organised way such as is done in this country. In these circumstances, it is absolutely impossible at the present time to grant adult suffrage to India in any shape or form.

But it is not right that we in this House should lay down that the cost of such an electorate is prohibitive. I do not think that that is the right spirit in which to enter upon the question. The cost would fall on India and the representatives of the Indian people, and sooner or later they are the people, who should decide the position of the franchise for themselves. Whether the time is now, or whether, as I think probable, it will not be for a considerable number of years, I do not want to see it, laid down in this House of Commons that the working masses of the Indian people are to be deprived of the franchise indefinitely. It should be part of a clearly thought-out Government policy on this question to have a gradual extension of the franchise in that country, given possibly to some Provinces earlier than to other Provinces. I hope that it will not go out from this House of Commons that the Conservative party, who have benefited so much from universal franchise, are against it in any shape or form. It might do harm, and would revive memories of bygone days, when we had curious ideas about this or that section of the people in India. Broadly speaking, if you have a good policy you can get it across the people, but if you have a rotten policy you will remain in an insignificant position.

It is extraordinary that when democracy throughout the world is trembling in the balance we should think of extending adult suffrage to India, even in 10 years' time. Doubt is arising in many of our minds whether we were wise in extending adult suffrage to this country, and whether the result has been satisfactory. Since the Parliament of Simon de Montfort it has taken 600 years for us to get adult suffrage in this country, and yet it is suggested in the new Clause that in ten years' time in India adult suffrage should be given. I doubt whether the intelligence of the ordinary Indian is anything like as great as the intelligence of the Anglo-Saxon 600 years ago. If hon. Members would propose to give adult suffrage to India in 500 years from now I would vote for it, but it is ridiculous to suggest that adult suffrage should be given to a country where you have a mass of unparalleled ignorance. The people are probably fairly contented but very ignorant. They know nothing about politics and very little about the world, and yet hon. Members would seek to give these people a vote in ten years' time. I am sorry that hon. Members on the benches below me have not more common sense.

I do not like the proposed new Clause, not merely on the grounds of expense but on general lines. We are indulging in a great experiment in India and it seems to me foolish to make certain that the experiment will fail, as it evidently would fail if this Clause were passed. Anyone desiring to destroy the Bill should without any doubt vote for the Clause. Some months ago I was talking to a friend who had been an officer in India, in charge of a large district, and he told me that one day he was in the principal town of his district, when he met a prominent Indian from a village 30 to 40 miles away. He said to the Indian: "What are you doing here?" The reply was: "Government have sent me". My friend said: "The Government have sent you? That cannot be, because anything that the Government do passes through me". The Indian answered: "A man came from Government and told us we must come here to-day. We have spent a lot of money, 40 of us, because Government told us we had to put a cross on a piece of paper with an elephant on it." That incident happened quite recently. What is the use of talking about adult suffrage for such people? To them "Government" is something quite different from what Government is to us. To them "Government" is a mysterious, permanent, benevolent autocracy which goes on for ever. These people have not got it in their minds that the Government changes as the result of an election.

Every Colonial and Indian servant you talk to uses the word "Government" in a way that we never do. Here was this prominent Indian actually saying that he had gone to that place because "Government has told us to put a cross on a paper which has a picture of an elephant on it". I suppose that if the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) went out there he would tell them to put a cross on a piece of paper which had the picture of a tinker on it. Perhaps another picture would have a picture of a tailor on it. If my hon. Friend the Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Ban-field) was concerned there would be a piece of paper with the picture of a baker on it, and they would be told to put a cross there because there was the picture of a baker. What is the use of talking about adult suffrage in India which has not the faintest resemblance to adult suffrage in this country? The proposal is so incredibly stupid that I could not understand it except that it comes from the party opposite.

I dealt with the main points that a rose when I spoke in the previous discussion but perhaps hon. Members will desire me to give a short answer to the points that have since been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams) has attempted to define what "Government" is. I can only suggest that his description of Government as "A mysterious, permanent benevolent autocracy which goes on for ever," applies to the National Government. He attempted to draw a distinction between human nature in India and in England, and said that in India the people voted when they saw the picture of an elephant on a piece of paper. My hon. Friend is so persuasive that the voters in his Division vote for him when they see his picture, and return him by large majorities. The fact is that human nature is very much the same in India as in England. In the franchise that we suggest we are including a great many of the peasant owners and small cultivators and I am sure, despite the difficulties that have been described, they will exercise the franchise in the spirit of common sense that one associates with agriculturists all the world over.

When we come to consider the extension of the franchise on an adult suffrage basis it means, as I said on the last occasion, an immediate jump from 35,000,000, which we propose, to 130,000,000, which is half the adult population of British India, apart from the States. We in this country, as has been pointed out by several speakers, have taken a long period to reach adult suffrage. There are some countries in Europe to-day which have not yet attained that position and there are some countries which have not yet enfranchised their women. We are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams) pointed out, very much indebted to adult suffrage, and I believe that the wider the suffrage the more votes the National Government will receive. That is why on the last occasion when I spoke I said there was no objection to adult suffrage as an ideal. In the case of India it would do away with all the fancy franchises, the difficulties of representing communities, and so forth, which one has had to explain to the Committee on several occasions, but I must point out that it would be folly and administrative madness, as well as politically inexpedient, to extend the franchise at one jump in the immediate future, which is what the new Clause would allow the Provincial Legislatures to do. The Indian people must get accustomed, through their representatives, to the franchise, and must learn what the vote means and what its use implies. I have said already that the administrative machine could not possibly handle the vast numbers of voters that would be created by adult suffrage. I do not think that we can possibly go any further and impose any further burden on the administrative machine than is proposed in the Bill.

My hon. Friend the Member for Barnstaple (Sir B. Peto) asked me about the cost. The only assessment of cost that has so far been made is in the appendix to the Franchise Committee's report, on pages 278 and onwards. That was an estimate of the cost of the proposals that we have suggested, and there has been no assessment of what adult suffrage would cost. I think it would entail referring to India and careful working out before we could give a final figure. Taking 50 or 60 lakhs as the cost to the Provincial Governments of an election on the basis of the franchise we propose, which would be a sum of £375,000 or £400,000 for the whole of the Provincial elections all over India, if we were to multiply that figure by four times and take a simple sum in arithmetic the cost of adult suffrage on that basis—it might not be completely accurate—would be in the neighbourhood of £1,800,000. That is the cost to the Governments. Then there is the cost, which is not easy to assess, to the candidates and parties. One would rather not conjecture what that cost would be, but one knows that as English democracy has progressed the cost to the candidates and the parties has become increasingly great, which I am sure would be the case in India. It would be rather unwise to give any estimate of the costs to the party and candidates but if the Committee requires it I should say that it would be in the neighbourhood of three or four crores, that is on the basis of the Committee's Report, about £2,000,000 or a little over. For reasons of political expediency, and the danger of hurrying too much in a matter on which all nations of the world have found it inadvisable to rush, and because of questions of administrative difficulty and costs, it would be unwise for the Committee to accept the new Clause.

I am sorry that the Under-Secretary of State has given so unsympathetic an answer. There are two parts to the new Clause. The first empowers a provincial legislature to make a law, and on the general merits of allowing a provincial legislature to make a law in regard to the franchise in its own province there is very little necessity, I should imagine, to argue the case. If anyone ought to know the case for and against an extension of the franchise it cannot surely be the Imperial Parliament as compared with a provincial government in India. The other part of the new Clause says that if in the event of nothing having been done in the course of 10 years "His Majesty in Council may." It does not say. "must"; it is not mandatory; it is merely permissive. It does not necessarily follow that at the end of 10 years the Government will take immediate action. The situation would have to be reviewed and some time must elapse. Arguments in regard to procedure have been addressed to the Committee. The hon. Member for Canterbury (Sir W. Wayland) I know was speaking in a jocular vein, but it would be rather a pity if his speech was read in India tomorrow and the conclusion drawn that he was speaking in earnest. One cannot allow his remark to pass that the intelligence of the people of India is on a level with that of people 600 years ago. The people who would benefit by the operation of the new Clause are the younger people. Older people are already enfranchised under the proposals of the Bill, and the people who would benefit by the new Clause are the younger people who have no property qualification, but who are, however, possessed of better educational qualifications. Unless the new Clause is accepted it is the more intelligent and cultured section of the people who will be excluded from the franchise, although there are a certain number of these young and cultured people who will get the vote by virtue of a property qualification. A large number of the peasant classes will also be excluded from the franchise unless there is some provision of this kind.

I admit, of course, that there are practical difficulties, but we must not forget that nothing is likely to be done, even under the new Clause, for some years because provincial legislature will not begin to operate, so far as their ordinary work is concerned, for some time after the Bill becomes law, and no one would suggest that their first task would be to extend the franchise. All sorts of other things will have to be done and, therefore, any extension of the franchise will not be taken up for some considerable time after the Legislature has begun its ordinary tasks. The new Clause says that His Majesty in Council may do this, not must, and that, of course, depends on the advice of the Government of the day 10 years hence. The hon. Member for Canterbury said that democracy was trembling in the balance all over Europe and asked why we proposed a step like this. We want to show our abiding faith in the efficacy of democracy. We believe that the stability of our own constitution in the welter of confusion which exists in Europe provides a striking example of the value of democracy, and we think it is worth while that the young people of India should have their share in the actual task of government, because if they are cut off the chances are that their activities may go into less constitutional channels. At a time when ideas, some of them held by Government supporters to be subversive and disturbing, are making themselves apparent in India it is important that these young people should not feel that it is no use trying to use Parliament, but should be encouraged to use that institution. That is the only way of guiding the youth movement of India along channels which are desirable, from the standpoint of everyone. Therefore I urge upon the Government that they should look more sympathetically on our proposal.

We admit the practical difficulties, no one would be so foolish as to say that there are none. They are obvious, but I do not think that it does any good to cite individual cases as the hon. Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. Williams) did. I can produce numerous instances of people in this country walking up to the ballot box and asking to be allowed to vote for Mr. Lloyd George or some other well-known politician though that distinguished person was not a candidate in that division. We shall all agree that the power to vote has been an excellent vehicle for expressing the desires and aspirations of the people, and at a time like this, when we are making a new departure in constitution building in India, it is, in my judgment, desirable that young India should be saved from undesirable courses and guided along the path of constitutional progress.

I did not put it forward that the question of cost should be the governing factor in considering the proposed new clause. That aspect of the question is not before the Committee at the moment, but I thought that the Under-Secretary of State might have some figures which might be some guide to hon. Members as to whether they should vote for or against the proposal. I did not put it any higher than that. What does the new Clause propose? The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones) rather glossed over the important question of cost.

I must remind the hon. Baronet that this is the third speech he has made on this Amendment.

With all respect to the Chair I must point out that what you may term my second speech was merely a question and a request for information.

If the hon. Baronet will confine himself to asking for information I shall not complain. He had made one speech.

What the new Clause really proposes is that if in the next 10 years the state of the finances of India and other considerations do not permit of an advance to adult suffrage, His Majesty in Council may, in effect, order the introduction of adult suffrage. If the Indian Legislatures are of opinion that the extra cost, which the Under-Secretary has told us is in the neighbourhood of £1,250,000, is not justifiable, His Majesty in Council may, in spite of that opinion of the Legislatures, put adult suffrage into force. A more undemocratic proposal I have never heard put before a Committee of this House, and I am astonished that hon. Members opposite, who are sticklers for preserving the powers of legislatures, should put before this Committee such a proposal.

rose—

May I appeal to hon. Members and point out that it was intended generally by the Committee to complete consideration of this Clause at the last sitting? We have had a lot of discussion upon it. If we were to get to the end of the fourth Schedule to-day we should be three days behind the time-table.

I will not keep the Committee more than a couple of minutes. I do not think I can be accused of intruding unduly on the Committee, because in the Sittings of the last 10 days I have not risen once. I merely wish to say that I should have given this Clause hearty support if it had been conceived in a more practical spirit. I can heartily support much that has been said in support of the new Clause. I think it is a pity that the Bill completely debars both the Legislatures and ourselves from reconsidering the question of the franchise for so long a period as 10 years. We all recognise that the form of franchise proposed to be given by the Bill is inadequate, and especially inadequate as far as the women are concerned. Ten years is rather too long a period to pass without reconsideration of the subject. I, therefore, make an appeal to the Government. If they cannot accept this Clause as moved they might at least consider an Amendment in a form that would give power to the Provincial Legislatures or to this Parliament to initiate proposals for adult suffrage, and for these proposals to be carried both in the Provincial Legislatures and in this House before His Majesty in Council agrees.

The new Clause as moved is open to dangers. If it was worked in perfect good faith it might be all right, but we have to face the cold realities of the subject. There are elements in India which may take control and endeavour to bring about chaos for the purpose of proving that this Bill is an unworkable Bill. I hope that that will not happen, but those who study the literature issued by the Youth Movement, to which the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones) referred, know that there are leading persons in that Movement who directly want to bring this Act to nothing for the purpose of introducing something that is the very opposite of complete democracy, if possible a dictatorship. Though I am in favour of the proposal of the Clause, I cannot support the Clause because I think it is not sufficiently safeguarded.

Then there is the possibility that an extension of the franchise might be considered, not in the form of complete adult suffrage, but in the form of suffrage for urban districts, which are more educated and advanced, or in the form of that group system which was so strongly approved by many experts of India and was thrown out by the Joint Select Committee only because it was thought to be impracticable administratively. In 10 years there may be reasons to change their views on the subject, and

I wish to ask the hon. and gallant Baronet the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) and his friends whether they desire to take a

In accordance with the general understanding there will be no debate upon this new Clause to-day, and I, of course, would not attempt to refer to the subject at all except to say this—

There is no question before the Committee on which the hon. and gallant Member can speak. I told the hon. and gallant Member and others that I would select this new Clause for the purposes of taking a Division upon it. I have asked whether they wish to divide upon it or not, and I only wish to get an answer to that question.

May I ask for your guidance, Sir Dennis? The subject matter of this new Clause was not mentioned in any of the debates so far except for a passing reference by myself. My hon. friends and I would rather not divide upon it now if we thought that to do so would preclude us from raising the question again on the Report stage. I am aware that you, Sir Dennis, can give no undertaking in that respect, but if we thought that it would be possible to raise the question on Report we would not divide upon it to-day. If that fact could be borne in mind, we would prefer not to delay the Committee by a Division on the present occasion.

I am afraid I cannot help the hon. and gallant Baronet at all. I have no control whatever over the Report stage.

In the circumstances, we shall endeavour to raise the matter on the Report stage and will not press it to a Division now.

I beg to move "That the Clause be now read a Second time."

I do so in the absence of the Noble Lady the Member for Perth and Kinross (Duchess of Atholl). The Clause provides for compensation for premature retirement in the case of civil servants and other servants of the Government of India under the new conditions. It is rather complicated and in order to explain it briefly I shall divide it into three parts. In the first place, these Government servants ask that the Secretary of State should be given power to make regulations and rules providing for a scale of proportionate pensions to be given to civil servants and others who retire prematurely when the new Constitution comes into force. In the Government of India Act of 1919 it was laid down that premature retirement by an officer under the Constitution then brought into force, would carry with it the right to proportionate pensions in the case of all civil servants who had been recruited by the Secretary of State in Council prior to 1920. Obviously that was a suitable date for the purposes of the Government of India Act, because the Act came into force in that year. But no similar provision has been made as regards the present Bill, which is going to make much wider changes in the Constitution of India than those brought into force in 1920.

It is true that the Secretary of State in his evidence gave it to be understood that on the inauguration of the new Constitution in India he would make rules which would bring all servants of the Government, recruited by the Secretary of State, under the provisions of the Section in the 1919 Act. But nothing has been done yet. On the day after the issue of the White Paper by the India Office, there was a communiquæ issued from the India Office which practically said that the Secretary of State would do what I have just said. That was on the 18th March, 1933, and it was intimated that on the inauguration of the new Constitution in India, concessions would be extended to all civil servants appointed by the Secretary of State in Council. That is not enough to satisfy the civil servants in India, who want something further. They want these rights put into statutory form, so that they will know exactly where they stand.

In the memorandum which was presented to the Secretary of State a few weeks ago on behalf of the Bengal Civil Service, and which is endorsed by the All-India Association and other civil service associations in India, they said in the foreword:

"We have studied the Bill with great care and note with grave apprehension that of all the safeguards described in our memorial as essential only one has been given."

That is the Indian civil servants' family pensions fund, and I am now asking in this new Clause for what is contained in paragraph (3) of the memorandum. When I am talking of the memorandum, I am talking of the expurgated edition presented to the Secretary of State, a copy of which has been laid in the Library and is, I believe, in possession of all Members of this Committee. They laid down in that memorandum that the right of proportionate pensions should be confirmed by Statute to every member of the civil service, whatever his race or domicile, who joined before the introduction of the new Constitution or who will join during the period preceding the setting up of a judicial inquiry into the service conditions. They particularly laid down in this paragraph their desire that Indian members of the civil service should not be precluded from any rights that they may obtain under this Clause. We realise, of course, that there will be considerable difficulty for the Secretary of State in drafting rules and regulations to cover all cases, and we realise that those rules and regulations would have to be somewhat elastic in form, but the civil service in India really desires to see something definite in the Act.

The second point is this: In Subsection (3) of the proposed new Clause they ask that, in addition to any pension, they should be granted, as a measure of compensation for the loss of a civilian career, a special gratuity. I understand that in the years 1932 to 1934 there was a measure of gratuity granted to officials who retired, but it was on a very low scale. I understand that a man was given on retirement a gratuity amounting to half a month's pay for each year of service he had completed up to 15 years' service. That meant that the maximum gratuity any such man could earn would be 7½ months' pay. Take the case of a man with 15 years' service in India, who is probably married and has a family, who is going to be cast at home on the labour market, with very little chance of getting re-employment, a man who has wonderful qualifications after 15 years in India, which most Members of this Committee do not realise—his knowledge of languages, of working with Indians of all classes, races, and religions, that he has obtained there by his own hard work. All these will count for nothing in the labour market in this country when he becomes a candidate at the employment exchange.

We ask that this gratuity should be put on a definite scale and should be increased. That is the case of people who retire voluntarily, who do their best to serve under the new conditions but who find them impossible and that they cannot do justice to themselves or do their work under Government as before the new Constitution was introduced. They realise that under the new conditions they cannot remain useful servants of the State, and they retire because they cannot continue to be useful servants of the State. Those people, we think, ought to get a gratuity on a sufficient scale to enable them to tide over the time in the old country till they can get some new employment.

The last point goes farther. There will be certain cases of Government servants who may be retired compulsorily, not, of course, cases of misconduct or inefficiency, but for the requirements of the public service We think they ought to get a gratuity on an increased scale, and what we think is right is laid down in Sub-section (4) of the new Clause. I hope the Under-Secretary of State will give favourable consideration to this Clause. As I have said, the Government servants in India who were largely overlooked in the Round Table Conferences and by the Joint Select Committee and who really feel very strongly on this point, should get at any rate some compensation when it is found impossible for them to continue to serve in India in the same spirit of usefulness as they have done in the past.

I rise to support the new Clause, and I do not know that there is very much that I can add to the various considerations that my hon. and gallant Friend has put before the Committee, but I would lay stress on the facts in the communiquæ which was issued on the 18th March, 1933, simultaneously, so to speak with the White Paper. It was obviously intended that this communiquæ should reassure the members of the Secretary of State's service that, as with the inauguration of the now Constitution different conditions had arisen from those under which they had been recruited, it was therefore the intention of the Government to continue the privilege of retiring on a proportionate pension the people who found that they had no future or would be likely to find life unpleasant for them under the new constitutional scheme. There can be no doubt whatever that the inconveniences that these gentlemen in the services may have felt under the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme were comparatively insignificant compared with the change in their fortunes, in the influence they will carry, and so forth under the Constitution contained in this Bill.

I have had many talks with members of the services returning to England, who say that already, with the new Constitution looming before them, a great deal of their work has, as they say, lost its savour. In things which they expected to do, which they have always done and which, in fact, it was their duty to do, they find that their recommendations are just quietly ignored by the Minister in charge, and that really upsets the whole system on which the country is governed. Whatever be the Constitution, so far as Ministers are concerned, the people who have to work it are the district officers and the commissioners above them, and if the recommendations of these officers are liable to be ignored because other persons have private influence with the Ministers and bring pressure to bear on them, it is obvious that the service may at any time relapse into nothing but a disheartened remnant, which cannot possibly work with satisfaction to the people, to their Ministers, or to their own sense of duty. It was, therefore, obviously with this desire that that communiquæ was timed to be issued along with the White Paper, but the Civil servants of Bengal and the European Government servants who have their own associations and, in fact, the Indian Civil Service over the whole of India complained, and with reason that the Bill does not embody the announcement in the communiquæ. I have a copy here of the communiquæ, the meaning of which is quite clear. The first words are:

"It has been decided that on the inauguration of the new constitution of India, the following classes of officers recruited before the inauguration shall be eligible to retire on pension at any time during the remainder of their service."

and so on. And then they set out the whole of the All-India Service still existing in the country. It was then discovered that this particular point was not remarked upon by the Joint Select Committee, and finds no definite reference in the Bill, and they ask that while the details as to the kind of compensation, or the exact rules governing pensions should be made by the Secretary of State, that, as provided in the new Clause, the right to retire on pension should receive adequate sanction in the body of the Bill.

Then there comes the question of compensation for loss of career. Now the man who retires on half his pension retires in one sense voluntarily, but no one will retire voluntarily in the circumstances which would arise. A man, for example, who has to retire on half pension with a wife and with children to educate, will certainly not sacrifice his career unless the circumstances are such that he feels he must do so. Although it may be a voluntary retirement, in effect the pressure of circumstances and the hopelessness of doing efficient work are such that he feels he has no other course. The Bengal Civil servants in their memorial indicated that if their position and rights are duly safeguarded, they will continue to do their duty loyally and faithfully as before, unless and until conditions become intolerable. It is quite clear that members of the Civil Service, who, after all, have been engaged all these years in the government of India, and who are now displaced finally, so to speak, from the positions they have occupied and have had the knowledge that the powers above will always support them when they are doing their honest duties with due care and good faith. Those are the criteria under which the Civil servants have always remained up to the present day. They do their duty in difficult circumstances, and they know that they will be supported as long as they do their duty in good faith.

All these things, their influence for good and their power to help the poor, and so on, have been the attraction of the Service to people who enter it. There are unfortunate cases in which, owing to economy, alleged or real, certain high appointments have to be done away with. In those cases there can be no doubt whatever as to compensation for loss of career. That was recognised in the case of Civil servants in Egypt when the constitution there was entirely altered, and it is only right that that should be done in this case, for as I said before, great loss is involved in retiring on half your pension when half your service is still to run, and in which you could have put by something to supplement the pension you would get. Those conditions are such that no one would want to retire unless he felt the position to be intolerable. Therefore they want the provision in the communiquæ put in the Act itself; and, secondly, they plead for additional compensation for loss of career. It may be that some years ago there were a certain number of retirements because people thought there were possibilities of appointments going, but that prospect is not very great now, and is not likely to attract anyone to throw up his career. Nobody is going to sacrifice half his pension and half his pay for the remaining part of his service in these circumstances, and I hope that, whatever views may be held on the Montagu reforms, the complete overturning of the position as regards Civil servants in India which this Constitution brings about, will carry with it a readiness on the part of the Government to meet them with a concession which might not have been necessary under the Montagu reforms.

I am not quite sure that I understand the effect of the Clause. I understand the suggestion is something like this: There will be, in any case, under the Bill pensions provided for those Civil servants who retire, but certain Civil servants may wish to retire voluntarily, and I understand the proposal is that if notice is given at the appropriate time, they shall be entitled to pensions and gratuities, and that then a special gratuity shall be based on the assumption of the loss of career to the person concerned stated in terms of money. That is in the case of voluntary retirement, but if he is compulsorily retired, that is to say prematurely retired, he is to have a special gratuity, which is to be twice the amount of the special gratuity he would have if he retired prematurely and voluntarily.

Yes, twice the amount.

A great French writer who visited India a few years ago wrote these words

"I have seen a miracle. I have seen 2,000 Englishmen governing 320,000,000 people of India and governing them well and justly."

It is on behalf of those 2,000 Englishmen that we have put down this new Clause. The Committee should realise the great difference between the Indian Civil Service and the English Civil Service. An Indian Civil servant is serving in a great continent with vastly different climates. He is often serving in a part of India where the climate is more or less deadly to the white man. He has to endure that. I have endured the hot weather and have slept night after night in a temperature of 116 degrees at midnight, and I know the effect on the health of even a strong man in the cavalry such as I was. A civilian who has to move about the country for his work is liable to suffer prematurely in his health to an extent which renders it necessary for him to seek work in a less trying climate. A man may possibly have had 13 years' service in India and have a wife and children. They have to endure the same climate as he has to do, because in the lower grades of the Civil Service a man cannot afford to send his wife and family to the hills. I have seen many an unfortunate woman having to stay in the hot weather with her husband because he cannot afford the double expense of a house in the hills for his wife and children and a house on the plains for himself.

The family constantly have to go home for health reasons and the man gets a letter from home saying that they cannot return owing to the risk to health. That is where the voluntary premature retirement comes in. What can the husband do? If he has 13 years' service he would get 3,750 rupees per year, which, at the present rate of exchange of 1/9 granted to Civil Servants, brings in £330 a year. Compare that with an ordinary Civil Servant who, under the same conditions, can prematurely retire on £618. For that reason, it is essential that we should protect those who are serving us so well in India by granting a gratuity which they can invest in order to get an adequate living pension when they have to retire prematurely. I feel certain that if the Secretary of State were here he would receive this Clause sympathically, and possibly accept it, because we are only asking for justice to those who are serving our country in India.

In answering some of the points that have been raised on this new Clause, it would be convenient if I followed the various sub-sections and showed how the position with which they deal is already met. With regard to sub- section (1), there are already premature retirement rules. By rules made under Section 96 B of the present Government of India Act they were applied to all men recruited before the 1st January, 1920. Hon. Members 'have been perfectly right to note that that privilege has been extended on the recommendation of the Lee Commission in 1924, and announced in a communiquæ issued on 18th March, 1933, to all new recruits up to the inauguration of the new Constitution who are recruited by the Secretary of State. That means, as regards rules for premature retirement, that provision has been made up to the date of the inauguration of the new Constitution for all Secretary of State's men. In order not to go too much into detail, I will refer hon. Members to paragraph 71 of the White Paper, which promises the continuance of this right to retire prematurely on proportionate pension to new recruits for the Indian Civil Service and the Indian police, that is, the remaining services recruited by the Secretary of State up till such date as these services are transferred, if indeed they be transferred, as the result of the inquiry that will be held into the services at some period after five years.

Therefore, up to the date of the inauguration of the new Constitution the Secretary of State's men who are new recruits are covered by the present rules which have been promised in the communiquæ to which I have referred up to the inauguration of the new Constitution. After that the Secretary of State's men, who are new recruits, in the Indian Civil Service and the Indian police will have the same right until such date as the inquiry takes place, and, if the inquiry reports that these services shall no longer be under the Secretary of State, new arrangements, if necessary, will have to be made. Up to that distant date, therefore, the matter is covered by existing rules or by rules embodying the announcement of 1933. They lay down that, provided a man is physically fit for further service, is permanently employed in a service under a Government responsible to a Legislature and, if recruited since 1924, the date of the Lee Commission, is of non-Asiatic domicile, he shall have these particular rights for which hon. Members have been asking.

With regard to Sub-section (2) the Secretary of State has already in Clause 236 of this Bill power to make rules for pensions, etc., and this right may be taken under the Interpretation Clause to cover the problem which we have before us. The terms of the present premature retirement rules have been looked into, and in fact are always before us, and the opinion is that they form a just and satisfactory basis upon which to give a pension to those who wish to exercise the right to retire prematurely.

Sub-section (3) raises the point of the special gratuity. I have referred to the present premature retirement rules and have said that the Government regard them as being a just and equitable basis upon which to reward those who wish to avail themselves of the right to retire on a proportionate pension. The hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) referred to certain gratuities which had been given. I think the facts are that those gratuities have been given always in cases of compulsory retirement. In the case of voluntary retirement we consider that the rules as to pensions sufficiently reward the officer. I shall come to compulsory retirement in a minute; that is another matter. I am not aware of gratuities being given for voluntary retirement. Those who have retired voluntarily have come under the ordinary rules which provide for that eventuality. At this stage it is important to remind the Committee that in inaugurating this new Constitution it is our wish and determination to provide a career in the Indian Civil Service, for the Secretary of State's men. We have taken particular care in this Bill to insert as many service provisions as are necessary to ensure getting the right type of recruit and to ensure a man a proper future in the services, which are so vital to India and we are convinced that it would be difficult to find a more definite and just set of rights for civil servants than those we have included in this Bill.

Under Clause 235 we assure certain posts and a career to this type of officer, and we take pride in offering him a career rather than in giving him undue opportunities to retire prematurely. We are confident that the future in India will offer suitable opportunities of a good career for officers. Over and above this we have rules for premature retirement, and we consider that they will cover all that is necessary, but in order to make assurance doubly sure we have in Clause 238 given power to the Secretary of State to grant compensation, and we prefer to keep this power of granting compensation general and at the discretion of the Secretary of State rather than to tie him down statutorily to certain fixed rates such as seem to be envisaged by this new Clause. The powers under Clause 238 are absolutely unlimited. In any case where the Secretary of State thinks compensation is necessary he is able to take action under that particular Clause.

Let me come to the question of compulsory retirement. In that case the new Clause asks us to pay double the gratuity we should pay in a case of voluntary retirement. I have already said that owing to the nature of the rules, which we think are just and equitable, the question of a gratuity ought not to arise on voluntary retirement. In the case of compulsory retirement it has arisen in the past, and I can quite see that it could arise in the future, and that is the reason why I revert to Clause 238, which gives the Secretary of State the definite power to grant compensation in cases of compulsory retirement. The hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe referred to previous cases of gratuities which had been granted. Those have been granted chiefly under retrenchment schemes. It has been necessary, unfortunately, to retrench a few officers in a crisis—I am glad there have not been very many cases—but where that has occurred opportunity has been taken to compensate them for being compulsorily retired as an addition to the normal pension they get under the rules, and the Secretary of State has full power in case of necessity to provide such gratuities at his discretion on compulsory retirement. We think this is a much more equitable and sensible plan, and much better for the services, than laying down a rigid set of rules and regulations about gratuities which might not meet the case of a particular man who was so unfortunate as to be retired compulsorily. Therefore, I submit that we have met the spirit of the new Clause in what we have already done. My right hon. Friend did examine the submissions to which hon. Members have drawn attention in the memorandum of the Bengal Civil Service Association, and it was in the sense of the reply which I have given that he considered this matter ought to be dealt with. He is fully aware of its importance, but considers that the provisions of the Bill meet exactly what is required in the most sensible way.

With regard to the last sub-section, which raises the question of machinery and rules, the Mover and Seconder of the Clause wish the provisions of Clause 235 with respect of rules to apply to the particular rules in question here. We have all ready debated this matter at some length, and I do not want to go over the ground again, but hon. Members will recall that it was decided that only the rules relating to reserved posts should be treated in that way and laid before both Houses. Nevertheless the Committee will recall that we deleted from Clause 263, Sub-section (2), relating to the Rules Publication Act, and in that way directed that those rules shall now be published under the terms of the Rules Publication Act, an amendment which the services desired. Therefore, all rules will be published and will be before the world. They will be promulgated by the Secretary of State and his advisers, and in all these matters the Secretary of State will have the benefit of the advice of his advisers, by whom in a great majority of cases he will have to be bound.

The only thing remaining to say is to refer the Committee to Clause 239, under which no rule can be altered to the disadvantage of the officer concerned. I think the Committee will realise that we have tried to meet every single point in this difficult matter, because we entirely agree with the seriousness of it, and the need of providing the services with a reassurance on the point. We have met the principle of the new Clause, and in all the details, either as regards compensation under Clause 238, or as regards the method of publishing the rules, we have gone as near to meeting the desires of the services as is right and, as I believe, is best suited to their interests.

I always speak with diffidence on this Bill, but I was very interested in the remarks of the hon. and gallant Members who moved and supported this new Clause. We on this side of the Committee always desire proper treatment for civil servants. We stand for adequate superannuation, remuneration and compensation as well. I would ask the hon. and gallant Members who are behind this new Clause to remember that no superannuation or pensions schemes have ever been accepted by Parliament without some computation of the ultimate cost, and I should have thought the India Office could have given us some figure as to the increased cost of these provisions. I wish to congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) on turning out this morning as a first-class trade union advocate. He and the other hon. and gallant Members said that they represented 2,000 members in the Indian Civil Service. I am not sure that it would not pay our own trade unionists to employ them in future if we were sure that they would be always as ardent in favour of trade union principles as they have been this morning. But I was surprised at one point which they made. They said that the climatic conditions in India are literally appalling. I have never been to India, but I have visited Egypt, though a spent only a fortnight there it was enough to get a taste of the climatic conditions in the East.

When hon. Members were talking of the appalling climatic conditions in India, I wondered what they would say if we proposed a superannuation scheme for our coalminers because of the appalling climatic conditions under which they would say if we proposed a superannuation scheme for our coalminers because of the appalling climatic conditions under which they work in the mines. My mouth literally watered when I heard that it is possible for a young man to serve in India for 13 years and then come back to this country and enjoy a pension of £618 a year. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, £300!"] Then I am mistaken, but, if it be £300, my mouth still waters. That is after 13 years. We must understand that we are not dealing here with our own money. We are not deciding to pay this money out of our own coffers. The money will come out of the pockets of the millions of peasants and working people of India, I suppose. We ought therefore to be careful what we are doing.

I understand that the Government are not accepting the proposed new Clause, but I thought that the Under-Secretary of State was in the same breath rather playing into the hands of those who had moved it, and was trying to win them over by indicating that, although this Clause might not be accepted, the Indian Civil Service are safe in the hands of this Government, and will be compensated just as if the Clause were adopted. Does the hon. Gentleman say that the Government will accept the proposition contained towards the end of the proposed new Clause, in Sub-sections (3) and (4)? I am almost sure that no Government in this country would accept that principle.

I pointed out that it had not been the practice to pay gratuities in the case of voluntary retirement and that I did not suppose it would be the practice in the future. In the case of compulsory retirement, each individual case will be examined, and in any case where compensation is necessary compensation will be paid.

That means to say that the hon. Gentleman, on behalf of the Government, is not after all accepting the proposal. It is an extraordinary state of affairs. I am certain that if a proposal to grant a gratuity, a double, special gratuity, were proposed in respect of our own Civil Service, hon. Gentlemen who are supporting the present proposal would vote against it. [Hon. Members: "Hear, hear."]. Even if the first principle laid down in the Clause were proposed in respect of our textile workers, coalminers or iron founders, the same hon. Members would troop into the lobby against it, because they would ask the fundamental question "Where is the money to come from?" Of course, the money in this case comes from India and does not affect taxation in this country, but hon. Members are quite willing to increase the cost on the Indian revenues by proposing what they are now doing.

No.

I feel sure that the hon. Gentleman does not want those words to go down in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

If the hon. and gallant Gentleman can show me how you can carry out these present proposals without increasing the cost to India, I should like him to do so. If we were to carry a proposal to pay a similar special double gratuity in this country, I can imagine the Chancellor of the Exchequer standing up at that box and saying: "Halt. This cannot be done without another 3d. on the income tax."

Surely the case of the textile workers in this country would not be a parallel one, because the amount of money which will be involved in the case of India will be comparatively small and very much less. There are only 2,000 members in all.

When I saw some of the figures the other day I was astounded at the amount already paid away in pensions to gentlemen who have served our country in India. Unless I am mistaken, the total paid in pensions runs to about £4,000,000 already, that sum is paid out of Indian revenues to people who have served this country in India. I am not saying that those gentlemen have not served us well. I urge the hon. Gentleman who represents the Government to go a stage further and, while giving proper treatment to Indian Civil Servants, to say that they shall not get what is propounded in the last few words of the Clause, because if they did it would be an offence to the Indian people who would have to pay the piper without calling the tune.

The hon. Gentleman who has just addressed us in such a clear and forcible manner has missed the whole point which animates those who have brought forward the proposed new Clause. He dealt with it as though it were entirely a question of the rewards and the personal position of the members of the Indian Civil Service. There is, of course, that aspect, and the aspect of hardship caused to people whose careers are prematurely closed. They have had to go through a long and special educational training, have had to acquire very high competitive distinction before being appointed, have had to fit themselves in free and open competition with the whole of the country and have had to adapt themselves to conditions in India of a very special character; and then they have found that their work in India entailed such intolerable conditions that they could not continue and have been forced to retire at a moment when they looked forward to long years of regular work, to which they had devoted their lives.

There is nothing to prevent an Indian Civil servant retiring and coming back to this country. He is not prevented from following another career, or from entering into business, as some have already done.

That is true. Nothing in the law prevents them doing that, but the argument which my hon. Friends have brought forward is the special conditions to which the Indian Civil servant has adapted himself for the purpose of the Indian Civil Service may make it extremely difficult for him to obtain any future employment comparable with that which, when he joined the Indian Civil Service, he had a reasonable right to expect. That is the personal, compassionate and equitable aspect, but much more important than the consequences to the individual Civil servant are the consequences to the Civil Service as a whole, and that is the point. The Government are, in my opinion, doing a very great injury to the Indian Civil Service by the Bill; in fact, the Bill will wreck the Indian Civil Service. That is not the Government's position on the matter. They say that the Indian Civil Service will continue for many years to play an important part in guiding the Indian people. They contemplate that the Service will continue to exist. Lord Halifax described it as a new adventure, or something of that kind.

From that point of view it is essential that the Government should offer adequate inducements to those who enter the Civil Service, if the high standard is to be maintained. If once that high standard were lost, if once you get a class of people of low morale, or defective education in that peculiar position where the lives and fortunes of such great numbers of Indians are largely affected by administrative functions, our rule would lose all its repute and virtue, and a most shocking condition would arise. It is therefore of the highest consequence for the Government, who believe that the Indian Civil Service will have a declining but still appreciable part to play in India during the next few years, and it is essential to make exertion to maintain the high qualities of that Service and, in this wicked world, to do so by adequate inducements. I do not say that these inducements should be always money inducements; only partly so. These people pass very high competitive examinations. They are the bright brains of the country. People who want to make their lives in an honourable profession have been attracted to these Civil Service examinations. Those who pass are the flower. Lately I understand that is not so. The Noble Lord rather challenged me on this point when I mentioned on another occasion that the people who have passed high in the Civil Service examinations had not offered themselves for the Indian Civil Service.

I do not know whether it is true or not.

Then it remains, like others of my statements, unchallenged and, I believe, unchallengeable. The career is the thing which draws these men. Many of them, under our present capitalist system, before it is swept away by the party opposite, could look forward if they use their ability—the kind of men who pass high in these examinations—to making a considerable fortune if they went in for commerce or manufacture, but instead they have devoted themselves to this special task. If you are to keep up this quality, you must offer them the satisfaction of a career. It is not the payment of a salary; it is the offer of a career which alone creates the authority which enables one white man to hold up the reputation of the Government of India, in an enormous district, with perhaps a million natives around. It is the career, not the sordid material gain which is so wounding to hon. Gentlemen of the Labour party. It is this high sense of civil and social duty, and not the mere payment, which surrounds a profession whose rewards are not measured by cash. Therefore, if you do not offer this career you will lessen your quality, and, in order to preserve this career, it is essential that, if you take it away from them, you should pay a substantial compensation. That is what we have asked in this new Clause.

It is not only the case of those who are compulsorily abolished, because Civil Service rules prevail not only in India but in this country, but it is those people who will be driven out owing to the experiment which the Government are making in creating conditions absolutely impossible for these people to do their work—conditions, indeed, which are hardly possible for honourable men to discharge. We know how the Indian police representatives asked again and again whether it would not be better for them to leave the country with clean hands. When people are put into this condition, with all around them confusion and corruption, and members of the Civil Service find themselves hampered at every stage in stretching out a protecting hand to shield the oppressed natives from the impositions of Government influence installed in power by this reactionary franchise and second chamber and every reactionary force in legislation—when the Indian Civil servant finds himself unable to discharge his duty and shield the helpless millions from the oppression of the worst kind of land owners, the most rigorous millowners and the most intolerant of priesthoods, and has to stand by apparently a helpless spectator of the regime and system which makes this possible, then, if he has to withdraw from the scene—his career broken—from honourable motives, there ought to be a special compensation paid to him. It is really in the interests of the Government proposals, because if they do not do this voluntarily, the deterioration that has already begun and the breakdown of the Indian Civil Service which they are driving forward with both their hands will continue, and grow worse and they will not even have that interval of eight or ten years in which they hope the British public will have accommodated themselves to the disastrous condition of affairs which prevail throughout India.

We are indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for having presented to us so attractive a picture of the unattractive conditions of capitalist India. There is no difference on his side and our side with regard to the provision for adequate compensation for the Civil Servants of India. That is agreed ground, but that is not the point. The educational argument he brought forward is irrelevant. Without making any reflection on the Indian Civil Servants their educational achievements in passing examinations into the Service are no greater than those who enter the English side of the Service. The point at issue between us is simple. People who are compulsorily retired must be compensated. That is all right, and an understandable proposition, but my difficulty arises from the other side of this proposal, namely, in respect of the Civil Servant who has entered the Service in India, has served a proportion of time and then of his own free will, not because of anything the Government do, determines that he wants to abandon his service in India and return to England or some other place.

Surely the hon. Gentleman understands that this so-called voluntary retirement is really compulsory in every case, because there is a condition of things under this new Act which was never envisaged by these men when they went up for the examination. A man may have been hunting terrorists and the position under the new conditions may be quite impossible. He has to retire.

That is really very interesting, but it will scarcely do. Let us address ourselves to the simple point. An individual in the Civil Service wishes to retire. It is a voluntary act on his own part, and, if there are extraneous conditions which compel him to retire even voluntarily, I understand the answer of the Under-Secretary of State was that the Secretary of State has unlimited power—he used those very words—to meet each individual case on its merits. But the case we are here concerned about is that of the person who retires voluntarily. It may very well be that a situation may arise—let us hope it will not—where a large number of Civil Servants might so dislike the regime and the changes that are taking place that they might all desire to retire voluntarily at the same time.

What is the proposal? The proposal is that they should have not only the ordinary gratuity in compensation, but a special one, and that, indeed, if they are compulsorily retired that special gratuity is to be doubled. Really where are we getting? The hon. Baronet on the other side, when we were discussing adult suffrage, promptly wanted to know what the cost was going to be. If I remember rightly, his soul was in torment until he got the information, but I do not see him suffering an excessive disquiet while this discussion is on. Why is there not an anxious inquiry as to the financial effect of this proposal? It really is not just. By all means grant any provision you like for people who are obliged to give up their job, but when people give up their job voluntarily, of their own free will, what case can there be for it? The right hon. Gentleman argued in favour of doubling the special gratuity provided for in Sub-section (3) of the Clause, but surely there is a limit beyond which we ought not to go in these matters. I repeat that none of us wants to do any unkindness or injustice to Civil Servants, but to embark upon this crescendo of compensations, as my hon. Friend called it a few minutes ago, is really intolerable, and we must protest against it.

When the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones) talked so emphatically about these Civil servants retiring entirely of their own free will, I was reminded of the old controversy as between free will and predestination. I think that predestination is much nearer the mark than free will in the cases we are now considering. It may be true that technically the Civil servant whom we are considering is not forced by Government to retire, but he may very well be forced by circumstances to retire, and those circumstances are circumstances which will be created by this House and by this Bill. The Under-Secretary, in his reply, seemed to deal with Sub-sections (3) and (4) of the Clause on the assumption that we who have drafted the Clause assumed that there was now a gratuity paid to those who retire voluntarily. That, however, is not so. Subsection (3) says:

"The said rules shall provide that in addition to any pension, gratuity, or the like similar to those provided for by the said premature retirement rules, there shall also be payable to any such person as aforesaid as compensation for the loss of his career a special gratuity calculated on a scale to be determined by the Secretary of State and set out in the said rules."

We admit that no gratuity is paid now in cases where the retirement is voluntary, but we think that there ought to be a gratuity in cases of so-called voluntary retirement. The reason seems to me to be obvious. If all that the Civil servant gets on voluntary retirement is, as has been pointed out, half a month's salary in respect of each year of service—if that be the measure of the gratuity that is paid in the case of compulsory retirement—I agree that the sum granted in such a case ought to be much more substantial than that given in cases of voluntary retirement; and Sub-section (4) of the Clause says that Civil servants who are required by competent authority to retire—that is compulsory retirement—should have a gratuity which, as laid down in the proviso, should not be less than twice what would be paid on voluntary retirement.

Let the Committee consider the situation of these Civil servants. They are in India. They have served, perhaps, 10 or 15 years. They find their position intolerable, and they have to hand in their resignations, nominally voluntarily, but really because the conditions of service have become impossible for them. They have to come back to this country. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Enfield (Lieut.-Colonel Applin) has pointed out, their pension after 15 years' service would be about £330 a year. Think of all the expense to which such a man is put in his transfer. The hon. Member for Caerphilly says that there would be no hardship, because another career would be open to them; but how much does it cost them to transfer themselves, with perhaps a wife and a couple of children, back to this country before they can begin to look for a career? How many months will they have to wait, and what is going to keep the Civil servant, with his wife and perhaps a family, while he is waiting and receiving no remuneration whatever except his monthly allowance at the rate of £330 a year?

It is obvious that, if we wish to do justice in this matter while we are making this great experiment, which will involve entirely new conditions of service, we must provide that an adequate sum shall be paid to these Civil Servants—call it a gratuity, as in the Clause, or what you like—which will tide them over from the time when their career in India is broken and they have to transfer themselves and their belongings home to this country and commence to search out for themselves a new career at a period when most of them would be considerably older than their younger competitors, who are much more likely to succeed in snapping up the opportunities for employment that may be open. The alternative is to contemplate a state of affairs in which these people are left hopelessly stranded, with no resources to enable them to carry on, for, owing to the cost of living in India, they will not have had, after 10 or 15 years' service, any opportunity of making any material savings which would carry them over from the one career into the other.

Therefore, the scheme is utterly incomplete unless we provide, as the Clause does, that in the case of these so-called voluntary retirements they should receive a sufficiently substantial sum to tide them over the inevitable period when they will be receiving no income at all except their small pension. That is in the case of voluntary retirements, so-called, but it ought in future to cover every case, including compulsory retirement, when, as the Clause proposes, the scale should be at least doubled. Unless a Clause of this kind is put into the Bill, it will fail, not only to do justice, but to make it possible for these Indian Civil servants to contemplate this eight or 10 years' period of transition during which they are asked to form the steel frame, as we have heard it called, of the Government of India, and to carry this very Bill which we are passing to the period when it is possible for it to work. It cannot work straight off without their assistance, and they are being put in a difficult situation at a time of transition when all sorts of things may happen which in many cases may well make their retirement inevitable, and in all such cases there ought to be a substantial and adequate gratuity.

I think everyone will agree that this is a vital matter, which concerns the Civil servants of India perhaps more than any other question. In spite of the fact that this is a Friday, and our minds are already turning towards thanksgiving in another direction, I think we have a special duty to remember the Civil servants of India in this vital discussion. The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies), who is not now present in the Committee, seemed to think that my hon. Friends and I regard lightly the question of additional cost, but what I took exception to in his remarks was the statement that we wanted to increase the cost on the poor Indian peasant. Everyone knows that the cost to the Indian peasant of this whole scheme of reforms is going to be immensely greater than anything we are considering in connection with the small matter dealt with in this Clause. The hon. Member is not now present, but I think his colleague, the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee), will agree with me that in any event the safeguard for which we are asking for the future of these Civil servants is a decreasing and declining one, and is likely, as the days go on and the transition period comes to an end, to be almost entirely obliterated.

Therefore, it is not a question of a large cost which is going to be of a permanent character. The hon. Gentleman also spoke rather scathingly of my hon. and gallant Friend and others who take the view that we do, that we were representatives of a trade union. As these Civil Servants have no representatives in this House whatever, it, is surely our duty as Englishmen and British subjects to see that we do everything in our power to secure that there shall be absolutely fair treatment for this particular class of the servants of the State. The hon. Gentleman also seemed to think that the pension figures mentioned in the moving speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Enfield (Lieut.-Colonel Applin) were excessive, and they almost made his mouth water. These men, certainly in my day at the public school, were the absolute pick of those who went up for service of this kind. The brightest brains in the VI form to whom everyone looked up went in for these Civil Service positions. It must be realised that exceptional men went out to India in this great and wonderful service and that they have given evidence of their brains and integrity in the work which they have done in the past. It is true that those men almost inevitably could have secured great positions in any other walk of life, but when they come back here they are men in a groove whose lives have been spent in this wonderful administration work in India, and who find it most difficult, unless they happen to be specially endowed with dual brains, to obtain any kind of employment in this country.

I particularly want to emphasise two points. The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones) and the other hon. Member speaking from that bench both spoke of voluntary retirement. Why should you do anything for a man who voluntarily retired? Let us be honest with ourselves for once. I am not making any kind of aspersion against the East, but we know perfectly well that it might be almost impossible for certain men to serve under new masters of an entirely different character from those under whom they have been accustomed to work in the days gone by. It is better that we should be quite frank. I know that perhaps the hon. Gentleman the Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) will disapprove of what I am saying, but I should not myself care to serve in a regiment under an Eastern commander. It is not because I do not respect the Easterners. They have brains and they compare equally in many cases with people in this country, but it is a different condition. These men who are now going to be placed under Indian Ministers did not join this great Service thinking that that was to be the case, except in a very limited extent.

Would it not be assumed by anybody who joined the Service there in the last 20 years, that there was likely to be a progressive association of Indians with the administration of their own country?

I do not, complain at all of the interruption of the hon. Member, who is most courteous to me on every occasion, and I do not complain of the idea in his mind, but the men who have joined the Indian Civil Service in the last 10 years had not the remotest idea that there was to be this sudden complete leap out of our responsibilities. That is the point which we try again and again to impress upon the Committee, because there was never any indication of this sort of thing. Of course, in the 1919 Act and in the Montagu-Chelmsford proposals the words used were "progressive association." It has always been spoken of as "progressive association" since Queen Victoria gave her great pledge to the Indian people. The Montagu-Chelmsford reform was to be taken step by step, but we see in this proposal the great change with which the civil servants are confronted. Let us be frank once more. When you talk of a transitional period you mean complete abdication, and you are, in fact, handing over India to Indians. That fact has to be realised, and surely it opens up an entirely different vista of service to men in the Civil Service. It is not always true to say that a man retires of his own free will. There are servants of the State moved to distant parts which are not very healthy who perhaps are not very much liked by their superiors. This sort of thing has happened in the past, and it is possible that it may happen in the future. A man may find his life's work in the future, instead of being one of glory and pleasure, one of discomfort and pinpricks. These are the kind of circumstances some of us may have known in our own lives where you have been under a chief with whom you have found it impossible to work and so have sought employment elsewhere.

I would remind hon. Members that in the Act of 1919 it was realised that there was going to be a different situation. Premature voluntary retirement with proportionately reduced pensions was granted to officers who found it difficult or impossible to continue their service. It will be seen that that very contingency which we are considering to-day existed when you still had the steel framework in existence. Therefore, how much more necessary must it be to make suitable provision at the present moment. This brings me to the second point, that of the man who is forced to go. Is it too much to ask that he should have really generous treatment? When a man is told that he has to go because of retrenchment surely we are not asking too much that the gratuity should be doubled. I will read the paragraph in the letter from the Bengal Association of the Indian Civil Service, which I think, has the support of most of those in the Civil Service. I am referring now to the official document, in which it says:

"We have studied the Bill with great care, and note with grave apprehension that of all the safeguards described in our Memorial as essential, the only one included in the text of the Bill is that which relates to the founding in England of the Indian Civil Service Family Pensions Fund."

I cannot believe from what one reads further in this document that the Members of the Civil Service in India will be satisfied merely because it is stated that there are wide powers in the Bill for making rules. What these men ask, and what I think they are entitled to receive, is that, under any change of government in the days to come, they should feel equal security. That is what we feel. It really is imperative that the Clause should be passed in order that they should know absolutely where they are. It is essential that the flow of the best of our sons should go to India in the Civil Service and that there should not be a drying up of recruitment because there is doubt as to the future.

The case that was made by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State has not really been contraverted. I observe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) is about to retire. I should like to say something in my right hon. Friend's presence before he retires.

To another form of duty.

A less unpleasant duty, I hope. I regretted very much his assertion that there has been a great decline and decay in all the Indian services. There is not a title of evidence to justify that very sweeping observation. I rather suggest that he was run away with by his impetuous steed. There has been nothing like it since John Gilpin was run away with. Another citizen of "credit and renown." If my right hon. Friend will look at his statements to-morrow I think he will see that he said certain things which were unjustified and which will be resented by the representatives of the great Service for whom he is rightly solicitous this afternoon.

Does my right hon. and learned Friend deny that in the Linlithgow Report on the Agricultural Department of India there is a perfectly clear admission of great deterioration, marked deterioration in the efficiency of the Service? I very much regret that my noble Friend the late Member for Perth (Lord Scone) is not here, because he has on repeated occasions given definite instances—with which I have not charged my memory—of services which have markedly deteriorated. I never thought for one moment that that would be denied. Even under the present regime there has been a marked deterioration. What it will be in the future no one can measure.

We are dealing in this Debate with the Indian Civil Service and I understood, and I think the Committee understood, my right hon. Friend's disparaging references to be to the efficiency of that Service.

Not to the personnel.

I am very glad to have elicited that correction from my right hon. Friend. I understood that he was dealing with the Indian Civil Service—the Service which is in all our minds—and that he said that there had been a great decline and decay in all the Services. I understood that he was adducing the argument that the position of the people who had gone out from this country and who were still in the Service was likely to be seriously prejudiced because there had been such a deterioration already.

I am obliged to my right hon. and learned Friend for having shown the ambiguity that might attach to the use of the word "services"—services in the sense of a body corporate. That was not in my mind. I meant services in the sense of functions discharged, the character and efficiency of the services discharged for the benefit of the Indian people. That was what I was directing my mind to.

I am much obliged to my right hon. Friend for making that matter clear, and now, so far as I am concerned, he may retire.

May I leave the bar?

If my right hon. Friend so desires. I am sorry that so discouraging, so dismal, so depressing a picture should have been given of the prospects of the young men who enter the Indian Civil Service. I think my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) used the expression "disheartened remnants."

I did not use that term, but I thoroughly agree with it.

One of my hon. and gallant Friend's colleagues used that expression and he fully agrees with it. That is no service to those whom my hon. and gallant Friend and his colleagues are seeking to represent. It is very easy to produce such an effect by such statements as to make not only the public think but the people in the Service think that there is no prospect for them and that they had better clear out at the earliest possible moment. There is no reason to believe that those who have gone into the Service in the last five years are under any such impression. They are as good a type, as keen in their sense of duty to the Service and as efficient in the performance of their duties as any of the men who have been so rightly praised this afternoon for the part they have played in the Government of India. With a great deal of what my right hon. Friend said about the careers that these men expect I heartily agree. All of us know of the distinction which has characterised the men who have gone into that great public service. What I deprecate is the defeatist tone that has been adopted. I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) will make no mistake about what I mean. He is a defeatist. He and his colleagues have adopted an attitude this afternoon of pretending that the game is up and that the whole of the Civil servants who have gone out from this country when this Bill is passed will be looking for their bags in order to pack them and come home and to draw whatever scanty compensation may be awaiting for them. That is, I believe, a false picture.

Let me say a few words with regard to what was said by the hon. and gallant Member for Enfield (Lieut.-Colonel Applin). Some of the figures he quoted, if they were intended to apply to the Civil Service, were not quite accurate. After 12 years' active service which corresponds roughly to about 15 years' service in all, a man who has voluntarily retired would draw a pension of £570 a year. Hon. Members may want to know the basis of that calculation. It is a proportion of a pension of £1,000. After 21 years' active service a man would be entitled to a pension of £1,000. Therefore, if he serves 12 years and voluntarily retires he will have a pension of £570. I am not saying that that is one penny too much.

That applies to the Civil Service, but does not apply to all the Secretary of State's services.

The right hon. Member for Epping was referring to the Indian Civil Service and the figures that he gave were not the right ones. They may be figures that apply to the Army or to the police. The real point of the Clause is that statutory effect should be given to the permanence of the scale of pensions which is deemed to be adequate to the circumstances. I am not going to say that any reward is high enough for men who have given very great services under very difficult conditions, who are bearing great responsibilities and are running considerable risks even of life or of health. Whether or not we should like to give them more, is not the question. The question always in these cases of pensions for public servants is what is suitable and proper—I will not say adequate—and what is right in the circumstances to give. There is no reason to suppose that under the powers which the Secretary of State has had in the past or which he will have in the future under Clauses 236 and 238, he will provide less adequate pensions or compensation than have been provided in the past. The point made now is that it should be an adequate statutory pension. If hon. Members will look at their proposal they will see that the Secretary of State is still to remain the ultimate master. There is no scale in the new clause; the Secretary of State has to fix the pension at what he thinks is right. It is a distinction without a difference. To my mind there is little difference between leaving the Secretary of State to provide proper compensation in the cases dealt with by Clause 228 and the proposal in the new clause, that there is to be given as a pension a sum to be fixed by the Secretary of State.

May I draw the attention of the Attorney-General to a paragraph in the letter covering the memorial of the Bengal Civil Servants Association:

"We venture to observe that the exercise of these powers must depend to a large extent on the individual views of the Secretary of State and his advisers for the time being. There is, therefore, no guarantee of continuity in this respect as the Bill now stands."

That is the point. If you are going to do it why not put it in the Bill?

The Under-Secretary of State when referring to Clause 238 said that the power to give compensation had been very rarely used, only in a few cases of retrenchment. That is exactly why the Civil Service do not think that this arrangement is adequate. They want it put in the Bill for that precise reason.

My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said that cases of compulsory retirement as a result of retrenchment had been very rare, but this power has been used and can be used in the future. It is a very ample and elastic power and speaking as one who has had some practical experience in regard to these compensation cases, I would rather give a Minister these powers than go to a Minister who is tied and fettered by rules, and whose answer through a secretary would be "My sympathy is unbounded—but my authority is limited." Nor can I see that you can get continuity or permanence under the new Clause any more than you can under the provisions of the Bill. The real gist of the matter is that hon. Members want provision made for compensation in addition to the existing pension for voluntary retirement, their case being that what is so-called voluntary retirement, is compulsory retirement. That is the real point.

I dispute their proposition altogether. If there be a case where the conditions of service are adversely affected in that way it is covered by Clause 238, but if the proposition be accepted and dealing with cases of so-called voluntary retirement which are in fact compulsory retirements, hon. Members must realise that they will be covering retirements which are really voluntary, and there will be no means of distinguishing between the two cases, between the cases which they think deserve compensation and those cases which, I suppose, they consider do not deserve compensation. A man can voluntarily retire after 12 years and take on a lucrative position under some great public company. In all the circumstances the conclusion of the Secretary of State, presented to the Committee by the Under-Secretary of State, is one which we think should prevail. It is sufficient to provide in the way the Bill does, in addition to the rules which at present exist, for cases of voluntary retirement, and as far as compulsory retirements are concerned adequate arrangements exist. The view I have taken must not be represented as one wanting in sympathy or admiration for this public service, nor is it idle sympathy which I offer. We think that the sums provided are substantial and that the existing provisions are, on the whole, more likely to be in favour of the public servant than hard and fast rules in regard to compensation which hon. Members propose irk the new Clause.

May I refer once more to the figures I gave, which I have since verified. They are perfectly correct. A pension of £330 a year applies to the uncovenanted Civil servants not to the covenanted Civil servants, who get £618. That was the whole point of my argument.

The hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) really makes the most astounding statements. He has suggested that those who joined the Indian Civil Service did not anticipate any change and that they are seriously upset by having to serve under Indians. Ever since the Montagu-Chelmsford Report they have known what was going on, and that Indians might be in charge of the senior services. There are also Indian councillors, and the reserved departments have been under Indian officials whilst you have Indians in the government of provinces. It was always known that the Montagu-Chelmsford scheme was put forward as a temporary scheme to be revised in 10 years' time. Really there must be a limit to the suggestion that if any changes are made civil servants have the right to ask for large compensation for changes which they did not anticipate. If the hon. and gallant Member is right in saying that those who enter the Indian Civil Service are highly intelligent people, and of course he is right, then he cannot say that they did not know perfectly well what to expect in the way of change. The hon. and gallant Member does a great disservice to the Civil Service of India in constantly suggesting that they are a hopeless set of people who will throw up their jobs at a moment's notice rather than serve under Indian Ministers. He has entirely misrepresented the spirit of the Indian Civil Service. The bon and gallant Member is full of very out-of-date ideas. When he speaks of civil servants being sent to very unhealthy places if they happen to be objectionable I know where he got that from. He got it from "Departmental Ditties." "Departmental ditties" are very interesting, but they are not an Authority for laying down the conditions of the Civil Service at the present time.

I hope I did not convey the impression that I was making any general suggestion that this would happen. What I said was that in certain circumstances it may happen, and it is in those circumstances that we wish to see security given. It has happened before and it may happen again. My information is not as old as the "Ditties" referred to, but comes first-hand from those who are in the Indian Civil Service now.

That kind of thing happens in every service. It happens in this country. One has had cases brought up of some one being "done down" in some way.

Yes, I agree, but that is no reason why we should not provide against its happening under this Bill. The hon. Member in his rather sweeping way brushed the matter aside by saying that no one joined the Civil service who was not aware of what happened. I ask whether there was a single British Civil servant in India when the late Socialist Government was in office who had any indication that there was going to be Federal Government with all power at the Centre.

They all knew perfectly well that the Montagu-Chelmsford system was a temporary system and that after 10 years some difference would be made.

Now that the Debate between my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) and the hon. Member for Limehouse (Mr. Attlee) has ended, I intervene to refer to one remark made by the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. M. Jones), with regard to the dismissed Indian civil servant, whether voluntary retired or otherwise. His statement does not quite come up to the facts as I find them. I am afraid that it all boils down to this—that in his opinion any Civil servant in India who happens to find himself retired, whether voluntarily or otherwise, will be able to come back here and be able to join those queues which read advertisements to see if there is the possibility of finding some sort of employment for which they have had no training whatever. I know that when a man has had special training, whether in the Indian Civil Service or in the Army or Navy, he does not find that that training helps him a great deal when he comes out of the service. In fact he may possibly find it to be a handicap. I have had actual incidences in my own neighbourhood in the North of men who have been axed from the services in this country and have found that their special training has been a handicap when they have tried to find a civil job.

What the hon. Member for Caerphilly said can be summed up in the statement that the Indian Civil servant should be no better off than any member of the services who happens to come on to the unemployment market in this country. I agree. On the other hand I do know that since 1919 there has been a certain amount of disquiet among the people who have had the idea of sending their sons into the Indian Civil Service, and that, disquiet has been mainly because there seems to be no certainty as to what is to happen to their sons in the future. I agree with the Under-Secretary that Clause 238 does go a great way to safeguard any man who happens to be compulsorily retired. But what is worrying me when I listen to men of the experience of the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox) and the hon. and gallant Member for Enfield (Lieut.-Colonel Applin) is the double type of voluntary retirement which undoubtedly has been admitted by the learned Attorney-General himself. As I listened to the Attorney-General I could not help noticing that he agreed that there was the possibility of two types of voluntary retirement in India owing to the circumstances that prevail there now.

There is no doubt in my mind, from what I have been told, that there is at times the growth of such an impossible state of affairs that the European is practically compelled to look for a change. I put it in that way. I do not look upon the man who retires voluntarily in those circumstances as an absolute volunteer. I certainly disagree with the idea that he should be put on the same footing as the man who, to take the instance mentioned by the Attorney-General, retires in order to join the board, say, of an oil company. In the latter case retirement would be absolutely voluntary. I am not worrying about that type of man at all. What I am worrying about is what does happen, as I have seen myself in my experience in the Army. Circumstances can arise in which a man can be as honest as you like, but if he becomes unpopular the conditions become so pressing that he is in a sense compelled to retire and to make out his retirement papers himself. It has to be done as voluntary retirement. I would like to hear from the Under-Secretary whether there is anything in Clause 238 that will safeguard a man in such circumstances as those. Suppose that a man does retire in such circumstances. He can have resort to the Viceroy. Has he any further redress beyond that? Suppose that the man is not satisfied with the treatment that he receives as regards gratuity, is there any further step he can take to safeguard his position with regard to gratuity or pension?

There are two questions I wish to ask. Without raising once more the question of gratuities, would it not be possible between now and Report for the Government to meet us in some way with reference to the first sub-section of the new Clause. The minute of 18th March extended the concession of 1920 to all Civil servants appointed by the Secretary of State, but this concession is not embodied in rule. It is in the communiquæ, but those concerned and many members in this House would be far happier if it could be embodied in some definite statutory form. My second question is, has the Government had its last say on the subject of Asiatic members of the service, between whom and the European members a very unfair distinction appears to us to have been drawn?

Let me answer the question I have just been asked. The Secre-

Is it not possible for an Asiatic-born member of the civil service to retire on a proportionate pension? If not, surely such a man would be placed in a very difficult position in some cases, after he had been engaged in combating civil disobedience or terrorism.

This privilege, under the decision of the Lee Commission, will be only given to those of non-Asiatic domicile unless they were recruited before 1924, and as I have said I do not see any likelihood of the policy based upon those recommendations being changed.

Surely it is most unfair?

I select the next new Clause on the Paper (Federal Revenue Board) There is only one other that I propose to select, namely, the new Clause of which the marginal heading is (Federal Irrigation Board) That leaves two hours, in which I hope the Committee will get through these two Clauses.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be read a Second time."

The object of this Clause is to try to make workable the financial system of the Federation, which, without some provision of this kind, seems to me to be almost certain to break down. The subject is one of immense complexity, and without wishing in any way to detract from the immense labours of the Joint Select Committee, it does not seem to me that that Committee fully dealt with the immensely complicated question of the financial adjustments involved in Federation. Fully to realise the position it is necessary to read the Davidson Report, which goes into the matter very fully and illustrates the enormous complexities involved.

There are in India 215 States and 327 estates, with a population of 81,000,000, in hardly any two of which are the financial problems precisely similar. Thirteen maritime States have the right of collecting their own sea Customs and so enjoy an immunity from central Customs. The Davidson Committee estimated that immunity at £137,000 a year. Some 63 States which formerly produced or exported salt and enjoyed various rights in connection with the revenue arising therefrom now have special rights arising from the taking over of those revenues by the paramount Power, and there are different and varying compensations payable in almost every case. Five important States, including Hyderabad and Baroda, have from time to time ceded portions of their territories to British India in return for specific military guarantees, and it has still not been settled whether those territories should be restored under the Federation or paid for in money.

Then 49 States, under comparatively recent agreements, maintain State forces partly available for all-India defence and security purposes, and the question of what credit those States are to be given in respect of these forces is still unsettled. Yet other States enjoy rights and privileges or immunities, as they are called, of one kind and another by way of compensation for abandoning internal Customs, transit dues, postal rights, and so forth. Some again have a right of raising their own revenues from States that are tributary to them. Most of the 542 States and estates, covering nearly half the area of India, inextricably mixed up with British India, have their own Customs and insist on retaining them, Federation or no Federation. The Joint Select Committee deals with these questions, but merely expresses the pious hope that in the fulness of time what it describes as this anti-federal outlook may disappear. There is no suggestion, however, as to how it will disappear, and from what we have seen of Customs elsewhere, it seems extremely improbable that these internal Customs and duties ever will disappear.

I have only roughly sketched some of the difficulties, and hon. Members would have to read and re-read the Davidson Report as well at Chapter I of this Part of the Bill before they could get any clear idea of how immensely complicated these financial adjustments are. I have said enough, I hope, to show that this matter is one of immense complexity, and it is one on which constant friction will be very apt to arise. The Government entertain the hope that with the growth of responsibility in India good will may be introduced, but with these financial adjustments it seems to me that there is a tremendous risk, apart altogether from the complicated machinery in regard to the working of the finances of the Federation, of constant friction arising, and it is highly desirable, so far as it can be done, to get the machinery for the collection of taxes as far removed from party politics in India as possible.

That is the object of this Clause. The Board would not have anything to do with politics, but it would be purely administrative, collecting whatever revenues are lawfuly collectable and distributing them to the various authorities which are entitled to them under the Act. The Board would have nothing to do with policy, but it would be an All-India body charged with collecting revenues and distributing the appropriate portions in the appropriate quarters. It would be free from interference by politicians of whatever complexion, and it would be free from the party considerations which in other cases lead to very severe financial difficulties. I know it is not an exact analogy, and indeed it might be argued that it is no analogy at all, but I would remind the Committee of what has happened in the case of another country which has recently been given Home Rule, and that is the case of Ireland. That kind of situation might very easily arise in future in India.

There is no doubt whatever that the Irish Government have the duty of making certain annual payments to the Government of this country, but under the stress of party warfare in Ireland those payments were withdrawn, with the result that we had to enter upon an economic war with Ireland in the endeavour to collect our just dues by means of tariffs, which has done enormous harm to Ireland, and although it has benefited to some extent our own agriculture, it is certain that in the long run those duties have done very considerable harm to both countries. That kind of situation might very probably arise in India, when you would have these immensely complicated payments to be made. There would be a constant risk of dues and payments not being made, but if we set up this Board, the whole matter of the collection and distribution of money would be on a much sounder and safer basis than under any other method which has been proposed. I therefore hope the Government will accept this new Clause.

I should like to say a few words in support of this Clause and to touch on some of the aspects of the question. We have been told from the very beginning of the discussions on this Bill that for nearly everything, for nearly every possible contingency, there are safeguards. Safeguards in almost every case resolve themselves into a Governor or Governor-General exerting authority over the heads of the local government, and if we consider what is likely to happen on such occasions, we shall find that it is not likely that any Governor-General or Governor will exercise that authority very lightly. It is probable that a dispute will go on for some time and that attempts will be made to get other ministers. Therefore, the safeguards will only really be exercised in a case where practically the whole community are found against the Government, and the Governor-General when he endeavours to exercise that authority, has to make use of the Civil Servants. He simply steps into the place of the government, and, therefore, he has to make use of the Civil Service for the control of the people with whom he has disagreed, but it is not intended that the Governor-General should take over permanent control. Those Civil servants will know that the intervention is only temporary, and, therefore, they will have to consider their own future. I know we have in this country a Civil Service which loyally serves the country, but I do not think any Civil Service here has ever been put to such a trial as that to which the Civil Service in India is going to be put. I am using "Civil Service" in a general sense, and not speaking merely of the Indian Civil Service. The members of the Board would be appointed by the Secretary of State, and everybody acting under the Board would be acting in a purely administrative way. They would have no interest in any political controversies. The only interest any Member of the Board would have would be in seeing that there was legal authority for the collection of taxes. In that way a neutral body would be interposed, and difficulties with regard to the Civil Service and party considerations could not arise. That is one aspect of the case.

There is another aspect which, I think, ought to be considered. In Clause 33 of the Bill, and some other Clauses, sums are charged upon the revenues of the Federation. I think it will be admitted by anyone with any experience that the charge on a fund while that fund remains in the hands of a person who is interested in it and can dispose of it, is a very different thing from a person being in charge of a fund in the hands of a third party. All this fund will come, in the first instance, into the hands of the Federal Revenue Board, whose duty it will be to pay due regard to the discharge of the sum charged on the revenue by this Bill when it becomes an Act. Therefore, the security of everybody who has any charge on the revenues of India will be very much increased. I would like to point out one other thing. This cannot be called in any sense of the word a wrecking Clause, because it in no way interferes with the structure of the Bill. All the different authorities constituted by the Bill are left absolutely intact. It only interposes here a hand to receive the moneys levied for the purpose, and to distribute them in accordance with the Act.

Therefore, I suggest that this Clause has a double effect. First of all, it renders a great deal more valuable the safeguards provided in the Bill. Take, for instance, defence Suppose there is a dispute between the Governor-General and the Federal Government with regard to the provision of money for defence. His position under this Clause would be very much more simple. It would be the duty of the Board, out of moneys which came into their hands, to pay the money over to the Governor-General. The Federal Government would not get any money of which it could dispose for its own purpose until prior charges were paid. That is no derogation of their rights, because that happens in any country which remains solvent. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in this country frequently tells us of the amount levied which is earmarked, as, for instance, charges on the National Debt and other services, which have to be met before he can consider any question of expenditure on new items of policy, or matters of that kind. Therefore, it is in no way a derogation from the authority or dignity of government. It is merely the interposition of a piece of machinery which, we believe, will greatly improve the Bill, and greatly strengthen the safeguards under it.

I should like to support the new Clause which has been moved by my Noble Friend. There is very great danger in this Committee of falling into the same error as they fall into in the Legislative Assembly of India, in discussing financial affairs in an atmosphere of unreality. I believe that if a Board of this kind be set up with the function of collecting all the taxes and paying them to the properly constituted authority, there is quite a prospect that certain parts of the new Constitution will work slightly better than we otherwise would imagine. One of the duties of this Board would be to pay the Governor-General all money required for Indian defence. A good many stages have been won by the Congress politicians in India in their campaign for complete responsibility, but up to the moment defence remains a reserved subject. I believe that very nearly 80 per cent. of the central expenditure is allotted to subjects, including defence, which are outside the control of the Indian politicians, and I would suggest very seriously that it is unlikely the Indian politicians would facilitate the collection of this vast revenue, over the expenditure of which they have little or no control, but a Board of this kind would provide the absolute certainty that the fund required to keep the defences of India in good and proper order would be raised and paid to the Governor-General.

Another point about which many of us feel very strongly is that a Board of this kind would go some way to meet the grave fears of the thousands of Indian pensioners. There have been one or two victories achieved by the body of Indian pensioners. They secured a statutory obligation on the part of the Federation and Provinces to provide the Secretary of State with adequate funds to pay pensions, which is more or less secured by Clause 153; and they secured from the Secretary of State, by Clause 260, an undertaking that he is responsible for the payment of pensions in this country. There is, however, no machinery established to secure that the money is collected and paid, but if there is a Board of this kind, with the prospect of the money being duly paid to the pensioners, the position is more hopeful. This Board would be very much like the Chinese Customs Board in the position of stakeholders who would collect money and pay it out. It would be entirely free from political pressure, or any grave danger of conflict arising in the future between the Governor-General and the Ministers being followed by a refusal to collect revenue on the part of the Ministers. I hope, therefore, that the Chancellor of the Duchy will give some indication that he, at any rate, appreciates the fears which have inspired us to put this new Clause upon the Order Paper.

I shall respond at once to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lennox-Boyd), and I hope that I shall succeed in allaying his fears. It is only fair to the Committee to make it clear at the outset that, although the speeches have been extremely interesting, they have really not impinged upon the main difficulty of the new Clause, which contains the suggestion that there should be set up a Secretary of State's revenue board to operate in the Provinces and a board to operate at the Centre. The Government are unable to accept any suggestion of a revenue board appointed from home to operate in the Provinces. Finance in India is, after all, nothing but administration in terms of figures and those who know anything about Indian administration realise that the key man in provincial administration is the collector, who is both the revenue officer and the district magistrate.

We cannot, therefore, in the view of the Government, adopt a proposal which would divorce one set of executive functions from the other. If this proposal, so far as it affects the Provinces, were adopted, it would mean a complete recasting of the whole administrative system in India, about which I have understood my hon. Friends have always had words of praise rather than of blame. They have quite rightly taken great credit to this country for the system of administration which has grown up and has been worked successfully for so long in India. This proposal would mean the complete destruction of that form of administration and the recasting of it. Therefore, so far as the provinces are concerned, it would be impossible. It would, too, be immensely resented in India, for it would be a complete denial of what is known as provincial autonomy.

So far as the Centre is concerned, I do not think that my noble Friend has quite grasped what will happen before the Federal Government comes into operation. The complications of the relations between the States and the Federation in matters of finance are immense, and, if anyone wants to understand those complications, they ought to read the report which bears my name. When the results of the report and when the details have been actually worked out as between the States and the Government, their financial relations will be included in their treaties of accession. We hope that those complicated difficulties will be successfully solved before a State accedes. Those complications ought not to blind us to the fact that the Revenue Board which exists already in India has the duty of collecting the revenue and not the duty of dealing with these complicated difficulties. The Federal Revenue Board will have only two heads of taxation to deal with—income tax and Customs—because these are, broadly speaking, the two main sources of Federal revenue. Take the case of a State which comes to an arrangement by which it keeps the Customs on the goods it consumes in its own State, and by which the rest of the duty which is levied on goods which pass into the Federal area goes to the Federation. The machinery by which that allocation and division will proceed will, I imagine, be very little different from that which exists to-day. It may be that the actual details of the amounts will alter, but the machinery which at present exists doing precisely the same thing will, no doubt, continue, and the Revenue Board which exists to-day in India will, as a department of the central Federal Government, be able to create or continue the machinery for the collection of taxes.

There are two safeguards. It is difficult to foretell the future, but I am told that on the existing Central Revenue Board there are two very senior Indian Civil Service officers; and, if there be any danger of deterioration in the machinery of collection, which it is, after all, in the interests of both the Provincial and Federal Governments to maintain, there is always in the background the essential responsibility of the Governor-General to maintain the financial stability and credit of the Federation. Therefore, I suggest that, much as I realise the fears which have exercised the minds of my hon. Friends, it would not be possible for the Government to accept this new Clause for the two reasons I have given: in the first place, so far as the Provincial Revenue Board is concerned, it would destroy any idea of provincial autonomy and the whole method of administration which has run so successfully in the past; and, so far as the Centre is concerned, it would be unnecessary and would not be a very welcome safeguard.

I have listened to my right hon. Friend with the greatest interest, because he always presents his case in such a pleasant and attractive manner. I was not impressed, however, when he said that this proposal would be contrary to any conception of provincial autonomy on the ground that the collector performs another function.

I am afraid I telescoped my arguments and did not make the matter clear. If you take finance out of the sphere of provincial autonomy and put it in the hands of the Secretary of State, what is there left?

We are not handing finance over to the Secretary of State. The whole matter of policy remains with the Provincial Governments. There is no challenge on the question of policy at all, because it is made clear that this Board is to take orders from the Federal Government where necessary and from a Provincial Government where necessary, and it has to act on the orders given. If there should be any conflict where such orders are properly given, there are provisions in the Clause for dealing with the doubts as to whether any orders given are valid or not. This is a purely administrative body. The Federal Government make their laws with regard to taxation, and the Provincial Governments make their laws, and the contents of these Acts are communicated to the Federal Revenue Board, which then proceeds to collect the revenue. Part of their task may be to make assessments, but the other is to collect the money. When they have collected the money they are to bank it and in due course hand it over to the respective recipients, the Central Government or the Provincial Government, in accordance with the Acts of the respective legislatures; so there is no challenge to autonomy in the sense of autonomy meaning a right to make laws and a right to see them carried out.

All that the Clause provides is that the mechanism for the collection of the revenue shall be one with which there cannot be any interference, with guarantees for honesty of assessment and the avoidance of peculation so far as possible. It is not the case that people cannot do a job properly merely because they are requested to do it by somebody who is not, strictly speaking, their master. There is the analogy of the Metropolitan Police and the local government authorities in the Metropolitan Police area. The Metropolitan Police are solely under the jurisdiction of the Home Secretary, but the London County Council, the Metropolitan Borough Councils and the Croydon Borough Council never have the slightest difficulty in getting assistance from the police. Even the Royal Borough of Kingston has not control of its own police, but I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston (Sir G. Penny) will agree that the Metropolitan Police do whatever the Kingston council call upon them to do, so far as they are entitled to do it. The idea that a man cannot take directions from one person on one occasion and another person on another occasion is a delusion. I have always had respect, affection and admiration for my right hon. Friend, but I suggest that on this occasion his arguments are not as sound as the arguments with which he has frequently convinced me on other subjects, and if this motion is taken to a Division I shall find myself in a different Lobby from him.

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Clause.

I beg to move, "That the Clause be now read a Second time."

This new Clause is to provide for inspection and advice from the central authority in India in respect of the large irrigation works situated in various parts of the country. I do not think any Member of this Committee or the Government can contemplate the handing over of these vast irrigation works completely to the Provinces and to inexperienced Ministers with complete equanimity. Do hon. Members generally realise the magnitude of these works, and their vast importance, not only to the actual areas which they cover but to the country at large, from the point of view of insuring the food supply? They cover some 35,000,000 acres, which is five times the area of the Nile irrigation scheme; and in the Sukkur barrage scheme there are three distributory canals which are larger than the Suez Canal, the largest being even bigger than the Panama Canal.

Irrigation experts who were beard by the Joint Select Committee and Sir Charlton Harrison, former chief engineer of the Sukkur Barrage, whom I heard speak in one of the committee rooms upstairs, are insistent on the necessity of a strict supervision over the maintenance of these irrigation schemes. Sir Charlton Harrison, whose authority is, no doubt, very great, said that any deficiency in the management for even a short period might practically destroy the value of that great undertaking for several years. In the case of the Sukkur Barrage, the Bill provides a special responsibility, which I presume covers the whole of that irrigation scheme; but it is a mistake to suppose that the Sukkur Barrage is of any really greater importance than the triple canal projects of the Punjab and many other works of vast magnitude in other Provinces.

The magnitude of the interests concerned and the terrible losses that might ensue if a work of that kind were allowed to deteriorate make it very necessary, although the day-to-day administration of irrigation may be left under provincial control, to have an expert adviser under the central Government who can go round giving advice to the local governments and bringing to their notice any tendencies to deterioration in management which he observes. The appointment of Inspector-General of Irrigation was greatly valued by the local governments of India. Under the new Constitution the Provincial Governments will probably have capable chief engineers as advisers, but the problems here are often so complicated and involve such large expenditure that any head of a Government is only too pleased to have a second referee, as it were, before he is committed a large outlay which may end in failure. There can be nothing derogatory to a Provincial Government in having such a central adviser as is proposed here, with whom should be associated a board, the members of which would be selected from some of the chief engineers of works in the various Provinces.

It is not proposed to go beyond advice and inspection; there is no proposal to exercise active control over the day-to-day administration of ordinary irrigation work by Provincial Governments and their engineers. It is important that there should be such advisers, and that there should be a board recognised for the purpose. The Bill provides for a special commission, in cases of disputes about water rights and so on, but that commission has a somewhat narrow scope, and, if irrigation is to be put to the very best purpose, vast sums are not to be risked, and, if there is to be security for the great loans which have been contracted by the Government of India for the maintenance of irrigation, there must be some co-ordinating body on the lines suggested in the proposed new Clause.

It will be remembered that many of the large canals lie across two Provinces or a Province and a State. It is impossible for one Provincial Government to look after more than that part of a canal which is within its own territory, and if the Government next door and their advisers have failed properly to supervise the maintenance of the upper part, for example, of the canal, the prosperity of the other Province may be seriously prejudiced by such failure. I would like to say a few words about the enormous advantage of irrigation works of various denominations. Under the ordinary rules which prevail, irrigation works are classed as productive or protective. Productive irrigation work is expected to pay a good net return on the capital outlay, but you do not reckon on making much of a profit on protective work. You may get a certain return, but you do not reckon upon receiving full interest.

I am very well acquainted with this subject in the Central Provinces, where all our works are protective. They are not generally constructed for profit; their real value is protection in the year of famine or of failure of crops and consequent loss of revenue as well as loss of every kind which the State otherwise enjoys. Such works are often classed as unproductive because the only item on the credit side is the irrigation revenue, that is, the irrigation fees, and some part of the land revenue on the irrigated land. The protection is much more valuable than that, because when you have protected the land you have gained everything which you would otherwise have lost, not only under the head of irrigation and land revenue but under every other head, railways, textiles or stamps, or whatever revenue accrues to you from the fact that the land is prosperous, and which would be lost by a complete failure of the crops. If you can save them, the protective work has been of the greatest value to the food supply of the country.

Whether the irrigation work be the great productive work, or whether it be the protective work—in my experience it is true that engineers sometimes do not take so much interest in protective work as in the highly productive work—it is of the greatest importance. In my own Province, 500,000 acres are capable of being irrigated where there were none in 1903. The work was only begun after that date. Those works enforce the argument that somebody should be able to advise the local government and the central government, who are paying the interest of many of the larger works, as to whether irrigation is being conducted with due efficiency and without any risk. It is very important also, as has been already mentioned under previous Clauses, that the staff of irrigation engineers should be maintained at a high level of efficiency, and it may be said, as the Secretary of State himself has admitted, that recruitment of British engineers should be resumed.

I would like to dwell on that point. During the years in which irrigation has been a reserved subject, the number of British engineers recruited by the Government could be counted on the fingers of one hand. They would not even complete the five fingers. It is a great disadvantage and a great regret of irrigation officers and engineers that that recruitment was not more fully maintained during those years. Irrigation experts whom we consulted were all of the opinion that the British contingent would be required for many years to come. One of the great points that arise from the Government dropping recruitment during those few years is that you get layers of rank. There are senior men, three or four together, who are British, and then you get four or five layers of men who are Indians. Then the next layer is British, and they do not get promotion. You may be quite sure that very few Indian Ministers will want to pass over Indians and select a British officer over an Indian who is his senior. Even though the Minister might be willing to select a British officer, his friends will make it very difficult for him to do so. It is important, in recruitment of engineers for the irrigation department, that the two races should go along side by side and not, as it were, in strata, one lot being Indian's and the lot below them British.

I hope that the Government will accept the proposed new Clause, subject to such modification as they may find necessary, and that the principle of having British chief irrigation officers to the Government of India will be maintained in the Bill. No one could say that there is anything derogatory to a Province in having a skilled officer of that kind to give them a second opinion when they are not quite certain whether the opinion of their own expert can be relied upon. Another point raised in this connection is the necessity for having advice when Provincial Governments send up schemes involving large expenditure either for new works or remodelling, and the suggestion made in the Clause is that works exceeding 10 lakhs should not be put into effect until they have been passed by a higher expert. This has been the procedure for years, namely, that the irrigation work sent up by a Province when it costs more than a certain amount not only goes to the irrigation expert at headquarters but very often right up to the Secretary of State. Great schemes involving huge loans and great benefits or losses to the State should be thoroughly well examined before a whole lot of money is spent on them, and that has been the rule hitherto.

There is one other matter to which I would like to refer. In India the food supply of the country depends not only on what is grown in a Province but on what is brought from other Provinces. In Madras the greatest food crop is rice; in the Punjab it is wheat. These crops go all over the country. They have a surplus in one Province, which is exported all over the country, wherever the railways can take it. Therefore, everybody in India is interested in the Punjab's wheat crop or in Bombay's cotton crop, and for these reasons we cannot isolate irrigation as a purely provincial concern. It affects the whole of the population; it supplies food to them all, and is concerned with seed supplies. Another point I should like to mention is that we are rather in the habit of saying that famine was banished from India by irrigation works and railways. The position, of course, has been enormously improved by irrigation works and communications, but there are still vast areas all over India which are entirely unprotected by irrigation. And one has always to remember that catastrophic famines such as those I experienced in 1896–1897 and 1899–1900 may at any time recur. History shows that twice or three times in a century you get a failure of this description. And then, when you have been accustomed to saying that it is all right, you find what tremendous effects follow from catastrophies of that kind. Having experienced them myself and having read about them, I think that it is of vital importance that the policy of irrigation and surveys and preparations for these projects and schemes should come under more supervision than is offered by the man who may be chief engineer in a Province.

In supporting this new Clause, I hope it may be possible not only to get the support of the Government but also the support of the principle of it of members of the Labour party, because the Clause does deal with a really important matter in regard to the future of India. It deals with the life of the poorest class of the community in India, the peasants, to whom irrigation must be their very life's blood. As matters stand at the moment, irrigation is in fact purely a Provincial subject. It is not a transferred subject, and, in fact, the superior officers in the Irrigation Service belong to the All-India service. To-day, unless you have some alteration made in the Bill, you have this vast service, which affects at any rate a quarter of the food supplies of India and the livelihood of somewhere about 50,000,000 peasants, a purely Provincial service. It can only be a Provincial service if the rivers and canals of India were all prepared to be provincial and not to pass from one Province to another. But the rivers and canals run through many Provinces. Take, for example, the Indus, which serves the North-West Frontier, the Punjab, Sind and elsewhere. Not only the rivers but the canals pass over more than one Province.

If you have vast canals and rivers going from Province to Province, at once the question of trouble between Provinces arises unless there is some authority over and above the warring Provinces which can deal with a dispute. Consider the form of the dispute that may break out. The up-river Province proceeds to engage in some irrigation construction. The down-river Province is immediately fearful lest it should interfere with what is its life's blood. Under the Bill as it stands today you have no central authority up above which can allay the anxiety. You have certain machinery to deal with matters after a breakdown has taken place, certain responsibilities given to the Governor-General; but that machinery is a cumbrous machinery, and it cannot come into operation until there has been a breakdown. You may have bloodshed and war between Provinces in a short time, because this comes down to fundamentals. What we ask is that you should have some central authority, a Federal Board containing the greatest experts in irrigation, set up to assist the Governor-General and Governors to deal with these disputes when they arise instead of having to wait for a breakdown If you wait for a breakdown you will find very often that it is too late to tackle the question, that lives have been lost or at any rate property destroyed.

There is this further point, that, although there is some machinery in the event of a dispute between two Provinces, there is no machinery at all in the Bill for dealing with the question of giving useful advice to Provinces which are going to extend their existing schemes or start new schemes of irrigation in their own districts. If a Province is embarking on a big scheme, a needs expert advice—the best advice in all India. The ordinary Province has advice for dealing with ordinary matters, but often it is devoid of the very best advice such as is required for a scheme very much bigger than a Provincial scheme. In many instances it is rather like the surveyor to a small district council finding himself in the position of being the only man who is to judge and deal with the vast town planning scheme, needing the very best information that can be obtained. The same analogy applies to the Province which needs a bigger scheme than an ordinary Provincial scheme, and which has not the expert advice that is necessary to ensure that the scheme shall be a success; and on the success or failure of irrigation schemes in India depends more than on anything else the future prosperity of the peoples of India as a whole.

The Clause proposes that in the case of a scheme costing 10 lakhs or more the Federal Board should examine the scheme and give the necessary advice to the Province. That brings me to my last point, which again is important. There is a great opportunity for an extension of irrigation in India, but, if such a scheme is to be successful in a Province, the Province has to float a loan. It is very often difficult to raise money for purposes of irrigation schemes, but, if the Province has received advice and support for their scheme from the Federal Board, consisting of the best experts in India, that will have a big influence on the amount of money that the Province will get when it raises its loan. I am not tied, any more than my hon. Friends are, to the exact terms of the Clause, but we do ask that we should be given some assurance that the Government are prepared to consider setting up a Federal authority to link together the Provincial irrigation services, in order that the best use may be made of irrigation for India, and that this Bill at last may, if I may say so without offence, produce something new and valuable in the interests of the peasantry of India, who, after all, are India, whatever politicians may say or think.

I desire to say a few words in support of this proposed new Clause, which I believe may, if adopted, yet save the service of irrigation in India. There has been nothing more disgraceful than the light-hearted way in which the Joint Select Committee treated this question. The Simon Committee turned down the idea of doing away with all-India recruitment for the service of irrigation, but, ever since the White Paper appeared, it has been decided to provincialise entirely the service of irrigation. What does that mean? I do not think that Members of the Committee can realise the extent which irrigation covers in India. It covers five times as much territory as it covered by the whole of the Nile irrigation works; it is the biggest irrigation service in the whole world; and yet it is proposed to hand it over to the control of groups of politicians in the future. It is light-heartedly assumed that, if there is a breakdown, the Governor-General and the Secretary of State can intervene and resume recruitment from England, but where are you to get trained engineers in this country should India fail? The Indian service of irrigation is carried on by people who have gone out there as boys from this country, and have gradually learned their job by practical work. If the service breaks down in India, it will be impossible in any part of the world to find people to set it right again. I remember that a gentleman who is a responsible engineer in connection with the Sukkur barrage scheme told us here that three years' maladministration of that scheme would be enough to ruin it. That scheme cost £14,000,000 In the last Sub-section of this Clause it is proposed that the Governors of each of the Provinces where irrigation plays a large part shall have:

"an additional special responsibility for the conservation, distribution, and extension of water supplies."

They have that in Sind at present, but it is only one of the Provinces which really exists on irrigation. Do the Committee realise that 35,000,000 acres are at present irrigated in India and that it is the lifeblood of the peasantry of the country? The hon. Gentleman the Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) spoke of the group with which I work as repressionists or oppressionists, I forget which, and I would like to point out that, in moving this new Clause about irrigation, we are standing up for the rights of the people of India, the poor cultivators, whose welfare we have chiefly at heart. I hope that the Under-Secretary, even in the absence of his chief, will be able to give us some assurance that he will accept this Clause, which I really believe is a Clause which will do something to mitigate some of the great evils of this awful Bill.

I am afraid that I cannot accept the concluding words of the hon. and gallant Member for Wycombe (Sir A. Knox). In fact, he would not expect me to do so. I had better at once address myself to the important new Clause which he has been supporting. The Government are fully aware, and are proud of the great Irrigation Service in India. Nothing that hon. Members have said about the importance of irrigation, its almost dramatic importance, to India can possibly be exaggerated. We think that the British race is wisely proud of the achievements of its engineers in bringing water to thirsty lands and in putting so many people on the land in colonies and so forth which derive benefit from irrigated areas. I think that when we reflect upon some of the immense schemes in operation we must pay every attention, as indeed the Joint Select Committee did, to the problem of irrigation. I cannot accept what the hon. and gallant Member has just said about the Joint Select Committee lightly dismissing this subject. They considered it very carefully, and in paragraph 307 they suggest that a Board should be developed on the lines of the recommendation which they made for the Forestry Board, which latter was in the following words:

"We think that in future co-ordination will best be secured by the creation of a Board of Forestry on which, in addition to forestry experts, representatives of the Provincial Governments would serve."

The Joint Select Committee considered that it would be in the interests of irrigation if a similar board were set up for irrigation. I shall be dealing with this problem of co-ordination in the remarks which I propose to make, and, in doing so, I shall try and show the Committee how it will develop under the proposals of the Bill. First, I will answer the point touched on about the importance of personnel in the Irrigation Service, efficient engineers and possible recruitment in this country. This subject cannot be gone into now, because it does not directly arise. It has been referred to by two hon. Members. May I remind the Committee that in considering Clause 234 my right hon. Friend definitely undertook to reconsider that Clause, which concerns recruitment for the Irrigation Service, with a view to giving the Secretary of State powers to recruit British officers in the Provinces where it may be necessary. Hon. Members should bear that in mind when they consider the care with which the Government have gone into the question of irrigation.

Surely that is only in case of breakdown.

I think I should be out of Order in discussing that redrafted Clause now, but if my hon. and gallant Friend will wait for the Clause which will be submitted on the Report stage he will be able to examine it and see whether or not its terms are satisfactory.

On a point of Order. Is not the Under-Secretary to be permitted to give us, in a sentence, the effect of that Clause? He raised the paint about Clause 234, and my hon. and gallant Friend asked whether it is only to operate in the case of a breakdown. As the Under-Secretary Mentioned Clause 234, surely he could answer that very plain question.

My right hon. Friend puts his request in such a way that I cannot resist him. It is intended to redraft the Clause slightly to enlarge its scope. At the present time the resumption of recruitment is envisaged and in the redrafted Clause—I hope the Committee will not bind me down too much at this moment—it is suggested that in any case where necessary in the Provinces the Secretary of State shall be able to start from the beginning to continue the recruitment of British engineers for the Irrigation Service.

"Where necessary". What does that mean?

In a case where the Secretary of State considers it necessary to continue recruitment in a Province he will have the power to do so under the terms proposed in the new Clause 234. Ron. Members will therefore see that that Clause will come a great deal nearer what they desire than Clause 234 as at present drafted.

Does that mean that the Secretary of State in certain Provinces will not hand over the power of recruitment?

The question whether that new Clause is going to extend beyond a certain point is one that I cannot allow to be answered. We cannot discuss the new Clause now.

Having regard to your ruling, I would remind the Committee that we shall have an opportunity fully to examine the new Clause later.

When?

On the next stage of the Bill.

The Report stage.

Yes.

On a point of Order. It is a very difficult and inconvenient situation into which the Committee has been led. This question is being raised on the new Clause that we have moved, but the Government have another plan, quite different from the one that we have hitherto been led to believe was the scheme of the Bill. Vague indications of that plan have been given, and yet we are expected to continue discussion of our new Clause without knowing what is the policy of the Government. To debate the new Clause 234 which is to be introduced on the Report stage is no doubt out of Order at the moment, but the policy of the Government ought to be laid before us now if this discussion is to be useful. I submit that at the point we have reached it is extremely difficult for us to discuss the new Clause, when the Government have an entirely different plan, a modified plan, which they intend to introduce on the Report stage. Surely, we ought to know now exactly what is the policy of the Government. The actual form of drafting may well be left until we reach the Report stage.

The right hon. Gentleman will realise that what the Committee have to deal with now is the new Clause which has been put down. In going through the Clauses of the Bill, when a certain Clause was reached, the Government, as I understand it, made a promise that they would introduce a new Clause to deal with the matter of that Clause in a way different from that provided in the original Clause in the Bill. We cannot in the circumstances do more than consider the new Clause now on the Order Paper and cannot in any way, nor can the Government, discuss a Clause which has already been dealt with or a new Clause which they propose to substitute on Report.

The question of recruitment is quite apart from the question of an Irrigation Board, and perhaps I was not right in bringing in the question of irrigation on the question of an Irrigation Board. Therefore I will confine my remarks solely to the question of the Irrigation Board. The new Clause asks that the Governor in a certain specified number of Provinces shall have a special responsibility for irrigation. The only case in the Bill in which the Governor has a special responsibility is that of the Sukkur Barrage in Sind. The whole financial future of the district is bound up in the administration of that barrage, and it was thought wise to give the Governor special responsibility for the administration of the scheme in order that from the receipts the Province may prosper. It has not been thought necessary to come to any different decision for irrigation in other Provinces than has been made for law and order.

It has not been thought necessary to reserve irrigation, but to transfer it to the control of Indian Ministers; and the Government at this stage cannot accept the suggestion that we should go back on that main decision. Provincial autonomy means responsible Government within the Province, and that responsibility must carry with it the care for the peasants in the Province, the provision of water supplies and irrigation services. If the new Clause were accepted it would remove from the provincial field the department of irrigation, and that would mean that it would almost become a concurrent subject. We maintain that we cannot allow hon. Members to move into the Bill a new Clause which would take irrigation out of the control of a Province as we consider it to be in the main a provincial subject. If a new scheme is to be started for the sake of a particular Province, and if new supplies are found, the administration of the scheme is fundamentally and primarily a question for the Provincial Government.

There is the question of research. Research in irrigation will be a central subject. It is referred to in item 12 of the legislative list. Co-ordination, on the other hand, must in our view follow the recommendation of the Joint Select Committee. There must be a board on which, in addition to experts, representatives of Provincial Governments will serve. That is the sort of board which ought to co-ordinate irrigation policy all over India. The hon. Member for South East Essex (Mr. Raikes) referred to the possibility of water disputes on the Indus which flows through several Provinces, whose waters are valuable to mankind in that area and said that there should be some machinery for arranging disputes. This matter was examined by the Joint Select Committee and the Government have inserted in the Bill Clause 129 and onwards, which deals specifically with the interference of water supplies, and Clause 130 has the sub-head "decision of complaints," in the case of water supplies. The decision is left to an ad hoc tribunal which the Governor may summon for the purpose. Therefore, the difficulty of the hon. Member in the case of water disputes is not met through some special responsibility but by the definite provisions of the Bill about water disputes and anything arising therefrom.

I admitted that there was machinery to deal with the matter, but my criticism was that that machinery came into operation only if you had had a breakdown and that it was a cumbersome method of dealing with disputes.

It comes into operation as soon as any complaint is made. It is then possible for the Governor-General to take action as suggested in Clauses 129 and 130. We consider that that part of the subject is dealt with in that part of the Bill. When we come to co-ordination our point of view does differ from that of the hon. Member. We consider that in the Federal Constitution that we suggest this matter should be done by consultation between the Provinces, and that is why we have inserted in the Bill Clause 133, which makes it possible for an inter-provincial council to be set up. Paragraph (c) of that clause gives that inter-provincial council power to make recommendations upon any such subject, and in particular recommendations for the better co-ordination of the policy and action in respect of that subject. The Joint Select Committee definitely hoped that the Governor-General would set up an irrigation board under a section to be inserted in the Bill. We have inserted Clause 133 with a view to co-ordinating policy on such vital matters as health, irrigation, forestry and so forth. The question of health has already been raised in an earlier Debate. Now we have the same problem of co-ordination of policy, but this time with regard to irrigation.

I would remind the Committee that paragraph xxi of the Instrument of Instructions instructs the Governor-General to encourage by all reasonable means consultation with a view to common action between the Federation, the Provinces and the Federated States. If Members of the Committee will refer to that Instrument they will see that it calls upon the Governor-General to encourage co-ordination, which would include the establishment of a board such as hon. Members desire. We cannot, however, accept their exact definition as to what sort of board it should be. They lay down the condition that any project which costs over 10 lakhs should be referred to the suggested board. Ten lakhs would mean that every irrigation scheme over and above the ordinary level of a tank scheme or boring for water would have to be submitted to the board. We think that that level would be too low, and in our proposals we do not make any specific suggestion for a money limit. But under the following provisions in Clause 159 the Provincial Government, if it wants to borrow, is tied up in the manner suggested and will have to depend upon the Federal Government and various conditions for the loan which would certainly be necessary in the case of any large sum, and there is provision in Clause 159 for the Governor-General finally to adjudicate in cases of dispute.

If a Province had to undertake any irrigation scheme of over 10 lakhs it would probably be a scheme involving a perennial supply and of such a large nature that a loan, as far as we can see, would be essential. In that case, there would be an element of control from the Federal Government over the unit which was seeking a loan from the Centre for the purposes of that irrigation supply. We think that the combination of Clauses 133 and 159, read together with the Instrument of Instruction, which we can if the Committee so desire further examine—giving power as they do to set up an inter-Provincial Council and asking the Governor-General to encourage this by every reasonable means—we think that those provisions, together with the borrowing provisions in the Bill, achieve what is legitimate and right in the proposals of the new Clause. The Government attach importance to the question of irrigation and they think that apart from coercion, which would be impossible in a Federal scheme, the method of consultation is essentially the best and that, as far as it can be achieved through the method of consultation, the various proposals which I have mentioned, taken together, do achieve the object which hon. Members have in view.

I have heard with regret the Under-Secretary's rejection of this new Clause, the purpose of which is to mitigate in some way the evils which we apprehend will arise from transferring the control of irrigation to Indian Ministers in the different Provinces. May I have the attention of the Under-Secretary?

I am paying attention to the right hon. Gentleman's remarks.

I do not think that I had actually achieved any remarks—certainly not any which called, for legal consultation or advice.

The right hon. Gentleman forgets that he made some very important remarks earlier and I pay attention to every remark of his.

I am much obliged to the Under Secretary and while I do not wish to interfere with any consultation, I would like to have his undivided attention. I am trying to put to him the relation of his present decision to the general attitude of the Government on this Bill. They have said that the dangers to be apprehended of divergencies between the Provincial Governments, are so great that it is necessary to have a Federal Government at the Centre instead of the present weak Government at the Centre so as to control the Provinces. That is their major promise. They have further let us know that a long period must elapse before the much stronger Government at the Centre takes the place of the present Government. In the meanwhile, we are to continue under various transitional arrangements. The third factor in the data before us is that if the Princes do not come in, this transitional period will be of indefinite duration. Therefore, according to the Government, for an indefinite period of five or six or it may be 10 years we shall be in a position under transitional arrangements, in which the weak Government—according to their argument—at the Centre, will be incapable of controlling the divergences between the Provinces.

That is the general proposition and what subject is there I would like to know which is more likely to cause divergences between the Provinces than irrigation and what question is there which can be less effectively dealt with on a purely Provincial basis? Anyone who reads the passages referring to this matter in paragraph 330 of the Simon Report will see the importance which was attached by that body to the difficulties of co-ordinating the work of the Provinces and preventing disputes on irrigation. Damming the waters of a great river at some high point in its course, and distributing those waters by canals along the salients of the ground instead of allowing them to flow down to the re-entrants, for the distribution of that water over large areas, must affect, in a great many cases, as any student of the irrigation system of India can easily see, more Provinces than one. Here we are to have a condition of affairs which may last indefinitely, and will last certainly for a great many years before the Federal system can be brought into being, when the Provinces will be tearing each other apart, when all those centrifugal tendencies which so alarmed the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster some time ago will be operating with all their devastating and detrimental force, and yet at this time, at this period, there is to be no central control, no gripping together of this process of irrigation which is vital to the welfare of the people of India.

There is a callousness about this, flinging down the irrigation system of India into the tumult of chaotic provincial disputes, into the weak and feeble, infantile beginnings of provincial self-government, when you consider what rests upon it, that the food of a quarter of the people of India—

More than that.

is grown by means of artificial irrigation erected by British organisations—that is to say, nearly 100,000,000 of people. The population has increased during the last 50 years by nearly 100,000,000, and those 100,000,000 people have come on to this earth to greet the light of the sun in response to this system of irrigation and to the augmentation of the food supply arising therefrom and only capable of being maintained thereby. That is the position. Now the Government, in pursuit of their political schemes, in this insensate, headstrong top-heavy mood which they have gained in the course of this Bill, that it is a thoroughly bad Bill but that they must thrust it through lest worse befall them—the Government now propose to leave the irrigation system of India to be gravely deteriorated—I will not say more than that—by the conflicts between the Provinces which they foresee will occur during the whole period before the Federal system can be brought into operation. The consequences of allowing the irrigation system to deteriorate will only manifest themselves in famines and in abridgements of the population. Some years ago, when I was responsible for the administration of Iraq, or Mesopotamia, I remember hearing from Sir William Willcocks, that great irrigation engineer, of a tragedy which occurred there, which illustrates in the most effective manner the perils of a population which has been brought into being as a result of irrigation when that irrigation is allowed, through Oriential inefficiency, to fall into decay. There was the great system of barrage and canals in the Euphrates Valley, and from a particular barrage, constructed 2,000 years ago, the water was driven along a canal for nearly 300 miles under the head accumulated behind the barrage, and at this end, a whole province had come into being, great groves of palm trees, temples, cities, an entire population subsisting at a high state of economic well-being, all at the end of this canal, separated by blistering deserts from the rest of the country, very much like the Fayoum Oasis in Egypt, though on a very much larger scale. What happened? The Church 700 years ago overran the place and the same kind of retrogression of civilisation took place that I may well believe some of those responsible for these matters in the future may allow to take place in India. The efficiency of the system deteriorated bit by bit along the Tigris and Euphrates. The foundations of the barrage crumpled, and one day the barrage gave way, the whole of the water ran out of this canal, and the whole province was doomed to certain extinction—just as certain to be blotted out as the bulk of the passengers in the "Titanic," when that vessel struck an iceberg and they were plunged into the icy sea.

That is the kind of problem with which we have to deal in India. You say, "Will not the Indian Ministers be careful?" Of course they will be careful, but I do not believe that Indian thought, Indian science and Indian skill could have raised these great irrigation works, and in consequence, you could not have brought into being these vast populations which are now there, which are the real children of the British Raj, because they would not exist but for the peace, order and organisation of irrigation which you have given them, and, having given them, having, as it were, lured them into this precarious existence, you then proceed callously to disinterest yourselves in the very means by which their existence is preserved.

I very much regret that the Under-Secretary has not been able to accept this proposal. We cannot pretend that, in itself, it is a complete proposal, but, obviously, following the clear lead given by the Simon Commission, irrigation should have been kept as a strictly reserved service. They gave a very clear lead. They distinguished carefully between those security services which they said without hesitation they would hand over and this irrigation service which they admitted is far more doubtful and disputable matter. But ignoring their recommendations, filled with your desire to make some kind of symmetrical proposal which shall conform at each point to the political canons and theoretical standards you have set up for yourselves, which form no contact with realities, you are determined to plunge this vital part of the economy on which the whole of the Indian population exists, into the vortex of your ill-conceived political projects.

There are one or two points which, I think, the Committee ought to realise. First of all, the canals to-day are the life-blood of India, and the people of India are dependent entirely on the canals for their daily bread. In 1877 and 1899 there were two terrible famines which very nearly destroyed the people. Again there was a general famine throughout India which ended with terrible dysentery and loss of life amounting to something like 1,000,000 people. All that has been swept away since we built these canals, took over the water and distributed it to the people of India, and we must continue that distribution. A new and great work such as that the people of India cannot carry out themselves until they have had the experience we have.

Are there not very important irrigation works in the native States?

The irrigation works in the native States of India are entirely controlled by the British Government.

Is that true with regard to Mysore?

It is a comparatively small amount of irrigation compared with that in Sind and the Punjab. India cannot do without canals. There are two systems of irrigation in India—the minor system, which is provincial, and the major system, which we built and we control, and for the last five years we have not recruited one British engineer. Of the acreage under crops in India, 244,000,000 acres are watered naturally, and no fewer than 32,750,000 acres are watered by major irrigation. It is important to remember that in bad districts we make a loss on the supply of water. People are fighting for it, and evidence was given before the Commission showing that vast numbers of people asked for water and offered to pay for it. The fact that we have controlled it enables the ryot to get the same amount of water as the rich man. No evidence was given before the Select Committee by the Irrigation Department. That is an important fact. They did not do so because they dare not, for they knew that the one vital question is that of irrigation. It is essential, if we are to see that the people of India do not go back to the days of famine and the common people are allowed to get the fair share of water with the rich people, that this Clause should be passed, and we should continue to control the major irrigation system of India.

May I ask the Government to make one concession. I gather from the Under-Secretary that in various portions of the Bill the position is safeguarded, but many of us think that, although that safeguard may be adequate, the water scheme should not be laid down in the Bill in some special position. The Under-Secretary said that the principle of Sub-section (9) of the new Clause already applied in Sind. If part of the Clause is applied to one particular Province because of the importance of that Province it might be possible to insert this Sub-section in the Bill so that it may be generally applied. It lays down that it is the duty of each Governor to have a special responsibility for the service, distribution and extension of water supplies in his province. That seems to be the main principle of the Clause. I was almost converted by the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), but I believe that the natural flow of communications between the Governor-General will enable anything like a big barrage being erected for several Provinces and looked after. It is, however, rather the more local side of the question with which I would like the Government to deal. I would like them