(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can give the House any information as to the present situation in Belfast, the number of persons killed and injured in the recent disturbance, and the estimated damage to property.

As the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate, this is a matter within the province of the Government of Northern Ireland, which is the Government responsible for the maintenance of law and order in Northern Ireland. I am glad to say, from information which has reached me this morning from that Government, that the situation has very materially improved. I am informed that one woman and six men were killed in Belfast and the number of persons injured is approximately 95. In many cases the injuries, however, are trivial. It is not possible at present to give any estimate of the damage to property.

I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman is not responsible for order in Northern Ireland, but, in view of the disturbances there and the sort of sectarian disturbances in other parts of our own country, would he consider with the Government whether it would not be possible to ask the heads of the Established and other Churches to meet either the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister to discuss whether it would not be possible to allay the sort of feeling that is being created, not only in Northern Ireland, but in this country, so that before things get too serious they may be dealt with in a better way than at present?

I am sure we are all at one in wishing to see religious animosities which cause disturbance in every way discouraged and good feeling improved. What the right hon. Gentleman has said, which was not applicable to the particular case he was raising, is itself a contribution. We all associate ourselves with that. Whether it is an opportunity for calling together the heads of the different bodies, I am not so sure. It is not the heads of these bodies, but some of their unruly followers who make these difficulties. At any rate, I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman has said, and I am sure that in any case we all very much hope that disturbances of this kind may be discouraged.

The right hon. Gentleman says it is a matter entirely within the province of Northern Ireland, but, having regard to the fact that it is British troops who are being used there, it surely brings Great Britain into it to some extent. Will he consult his friends at the Foreign Office with a view to methods other than firing on unarmed people being adopted when troops are used? In other parts of the world troops are used without using armed force. Would not the right hon. Gentleman consider, with the responsible War Office authority, whether better methods could not be adopted even when the armed forces of the Crown are called in?

We all realise the difficulties which a situation like this causes to the Government, but might I ask the right hon. Gentleman to use all his influence to get the contending parties together to try to get over their differences? It is a most anxious time for everyone, and we should like every effort to be made.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in no case did troops fire and in no case did the police fire to kill? The greatest care has been taken by the Northern Government to try to get the matter amicably settled. It is entirely against the wishes, or even the interests, of the Northern Government that these things should happen. What we desire—I speak for the whole of the Northern Government and for the great majority of the people of Ulster—is peace.

I am sure we all agree with what the right hon. Gentleman has said. It is right to emphasise that, as far as my information goes, it is not the troops who were responsible for any of these casualties, for I do not think they fired. My information is that they did not produce any casualties. The question put by the hon. Member opposite is, of course, a very wide one. Indeed, I think he mentioned the Foreign Office and the War Office. Due note shall be taken of his suggestion. I think we should be well advised to associate ourselves with what has just been said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Belfast East (Captain Dixon).

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to limit his consideration, as I think he does not intend to do, to Northern Ireland. I know how these things start and I know how they develop, and, if it were possible without any formality for the heads of the Churches, both in the centre and in the districts, to speak out on the subject, we might, both here and across the water, allay some of the terrible sectarian bigotry that there is.

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

I think it would be for the convenience of the House if I moved this very briefly. The Bill, practically speaking, carries out the financial Resolution which has already been considered, first in Committee and then on Report. In Committee I made a fairly full statement. Some points were raised, and I indicated that I would do my best to deal with them at a later stage of the Bill, but there are clearly other points that hon. Members desire to raise, as is shown by the fact that there is a Motion for rejection on the Paper. I think, therefore, without any discourtesy to the House, if I may now move the Bill, I will do my best to catch your eye, Sir, and obtain leave to speak again at a later stage when I shall be able to reply to points that have been raised.

I beg to move to leave out "now" and at the end of the Question to add "upon this day three months."

As the right hon. Gentleman has indicated, quite a lot has been said on the Bill on previous occasions. I remember the first time that it was brought in, considerably more than a year ago, when it was euphemistically described as a subsidy or loan for a few months. The Minister said at that time that it was his hope that during the currency of the loan negotiations with the Dominions and Colonies and the people who exported meat to this country would be successfully made and that the business would come to an end. That has not happened. The negotiations have not been successful, and the Minister has had to come to the House time after time—four times, I think—in order to ask for more money. This time he seems to have less optimism than at any previous time, for he has asked for more money for a longer time than he has done previously. On Monday of this week the Minister brought for- ward a rather new argument, or at any rate, it was new to me. I had not heard him use it before. In the course of the debate he said that this was a proposal to maintain the wages of the poorest people in the land, and I will quote from the OFFICIAL REPORT what he said:

"This is a subsidy for the poorest of the poor. Let there be no mistake about this being a subsidy for the wealthy farmer—for the farmers with motor cars of whom we have been told. The question is whether basic agricultural wages can be maintained even at the low levels they are at to-day or whether they should go back to the scandalously low levels which were formerly paid."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 193.5; col. 796, Vol. 304.]

I have looked through this question and have obtained what evidence I could as to how far proposal of giving money to the industry has increased or has benefited wages at all, and I am bound to say that all the evidence that I have gained so far does not seem to indicate that the agricultural worker has got much out of it. With regard to this particular loan or subsidy, the hon. and gallant Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Captain Heilgers), speaking on the same day said, in reply to a statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams) said:

"The hon. Member for Don Valley … spoke a great deal about employment. I would point out that beef does not provide much employment. A factor which has to be realised is that the beef industry is one of the smallest employers in agriculture."—(OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 1935; col. 787, Vol. 304.]

So that the special claim of the Minister that this is a subsidy for the poorest of the poor and is to maintain wages does not seem to have much relevance to this particular subsidy, because, on the evidence of the hon. and gallant Member for Bury St. Edmunds, this particular part of the industry provides less labour and therefore less wages than any other part. Let me come to another question as to wages and as to how far agricultural workers have benefited from this and other subsidies. I read in this month's "Land Worker", a publication issued by the Agricultural Union of Workers, a statement about the wheat subsidy which strengthens the point I am trying to make. It read as follows:

"The farmers will be satisfied to find that no change in the standard price of wheat has been suggested by the committee of inquiry. But they will be hard put to it to show from the report that they have shared out in any fair sort of way the £18,000,000 which the Wheat Act has already brought them.

There has in recent months been some increase in wages; round about a shilling a week. We calculate that a shilling a week on the minimum wage for all the workers in the wheat-growing areas means a cost to the farmers of about £500,000 a year.

Hence farmers have begun to pass on a tithe of the benefit they receive to the men who work for them. A tithe; no more. Generosity will never ruin them."

So that when we come down to actual facts, as given us by the Union which eaters for these men, in one particular subsidy where £18,000,000 has already been paid, only £500,000 of that sum has found its way in wages into the pockets of the workers. I come to the question of general subsidies. This is only one among a number of general subsidies and helps of various character which have been given to the farmers and to the agricultural industry since the right hon. Gentleman took office. The "Economist" of 9th December, 1933, stated that the total money granted by the Treasury, together with differential relief from taxation now amounts to more than £45,000,000 annually. That was 1933. Since then there have been other subsidies to milk, and now this subsidy to beef, and I think that I should not be over-estimating if I put the amount at another £8,000,000. If this is added to the £45,000,000, which the "Economist" said has been given directly and indirectly in subsidies or in relief of one kind or another, the sum of £53,000,000 has been given to the agricultural industry during the last 10 years.

Surely, if it is a question of help for the industry in relation to wages and agricultural workers are supposed to have benefited out of the £53,000,000, including the present subsidy, the agricultural worker ought to have had some substantial benefit out of it all. In most cases it has done very little more than maintain the miserable inadequate wages which he has had for some years. I think that the average wage is round about 30s. or 31s. a week. In these days nobody would argue for a moment, whether it is the agricultural worker or any other kind of worker, that 30s. or 31s. is an adequate wage upon which to maintain a man and his family. If, in an industry like this where such a miserably low wage is paid, £53,000,000 of public money is poured into the industry to help it, surely it is not asking too much that at least a fair proportion of that money should find its way in wages into the pockets of the workers.

The Minister has argued time after time when we have brought up this question that we cannot give this money direct to the workers in wages, and he has said that it would percolate through, that it would go down through the industry, and would ultimately find its way into the pockets of the workers. It does not seem to have percolated very rapidly. Most of the money seems to have been absorbed before it could get through. I should not be far wrong in saying, if one takes into account all the increases of wages which agricultural workers have had during the last few years, that it probably would not amount to more than £3,000,000, £4,000,000 or at the most £5,000,000, altogether. If you subtract £5,000,000 from £53,000,000, it is not a very high percentage of all the money which has been poured into the industry that has percolated through and found itself in the pockets of the agricultural labourer.

Is the hon. Member aware that to-day the receipts of agriculturists compared with 1914 are somewhat about the same, whereas the wages paid in agriculture to-day are double what they were in 1914? I submit therefore that some of the benefit given to agriculture has rightly found its way into the pockets of the agricultural workers.

That would be all right if the wages of the agricultural labourers were at that level when the subsidies began to be poured in, but they were not. If the wages of the agricultural labourers play such a big part in the economy of the farmer, then, if you look at this subsidy from another point of view, £53,000,000 is almost sufficient to pay all the wages which the labourers are getting to-day with the exception of a few years after the War, but, in spite of that, they have received remarkably little. Let me put the position from another point of view. When this money is being poured into the industry, it is very strange to us that more questions have not been asked about it and more conditions laid down in respect of the people who receive it. Hardly any conditions have been laid down with regard to any of this money. Some months ago when in this House we discussed the question of regulations we were told how, before this money was distributed to the unemployed, certain experiments and tests had been made, and questions asked and the whole thing laid down upon a scientific basis, not as to how much could be given to them, without any conditions, but how little they could manage on and how little they could claim out of the public purse. There has been no means test for farmers and landowners. The sum of £53,000,000 has been poured into the industry without any condition; poured into an industry which everybody admits has a class of people working in it for wages which are almost less than the wages of any other class. In spite of the fact that £53,000,000 have been given to the industry, less than £4,000,000 have found their way into the pockets of those whose needs are the greatest.

I suppose that, relatively speaking, the agricultural industry is as hard hit as most other industries. We hear how depressed industries are, and I suppose that term applies to farmers, but they are not so badly off as hon. Members opposite would try to make out. I have mixed with farmers at markets in country towns and the evidence of extreme poverty does not seem to be overwhelming. Whenever one asks for more wages in the agricultural industry the reply is: "We cannot afford them, because we are in such a poverty stricken condition. We have not enough with which to carry on." Every month through the National Union of Agricultural Workers a list is printed of the wills of farmers, and I find that these hard hit agriculturists whose industry has received £53,000,000 from public funds in the last few years leave considerable sums of money. In this month's list 23 farmers between them left estates of the value of £495,000 or an average of £21,500 each. The largest amount was £157,000 and the least £8,000. That does not seem to indicate overwhelming poverty. If farmers can die leaving estates of this value, and they have shared in the enormous amount of help that has been given out of the public purse, it is not asking too much that they should give more than they have done to their workers, who are a most deserving class and ought to receive more than they have received up to the present time.

The right hon. Gentleman calls this a loan to the industry. I suppose it is. He proposes that it should be paid back from another fund to be raised in another way in the future. This proposal seems to me to be iniquitous. It would be better for the working classes generally, and not only for the agricultural workers, if this was a straight subsidy out of public funds. When a subsidy comes out of the Treasury the wealthy people contribute a certain proportion towards it, through the revenues of the country, but they are not to pay for this loan. It will be raised not out of public revenues but ultimately out of a levy which is to be put upon imported beef, which is in the main consumed by the poorest section of the community. The poor people are to have a halfpenny or one penny a lb. put on the price of the beef they buy in order to provide for this loan to the agricultural industry. Not only is this loan to be paid back to the Treasury but if the right hon. Gentleman has his way a subsidy will be paid to the cattle side of the industry for ever. A subsidy or levy is to be raised from the poorest of the poor who have to consume imported meat because they cannot afford English meat. This is to be done for the benefit of people richer than themselves who can afford to buy home-produced meat, and also for the benefit of the agricultural industry, which has received benefits to the extent of £53,000,000 and has been so miserably mean that it has only given £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 back to the agricultural workers. It is an iniquitous proposition, but it is not through yet. It is to come into operation 13 months hence, and a lot may happen before then. Optimistic as the right hon. Gentleman is with regard to finding the money at that stage of the proceedings, he may discover that he is mistaken.

I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he holds the idea that a subsidised industry is a prosperous industry? The Chancellor of the Exchequer in speaking on the Budget told us that we had recovered 80 per cent. of our prosperity. I wonder whether he included the agricultural industry in that statement and whether he took into account the fact that that prosperity has been recovered owing to the enormous amount of public money that has been poured into the industry. I wonder if he calls that real prosperity. Is the right hon. Gentleman, and the hon. Members opposite who support him so gleefully when public money is being handed out, satisfied with the conditions in this industry? We are getting to know what the public think about these subsidies by what is happening with regard to the beet-sugar subsidy. That subsidy has been given with little comment for years, but the public are getting sick of it at last and some very awkward questions are being asked. A Committee of Inquiry has reported against that subsidy but it still goes on. The dissatisfaction is not confined to the public and the opponents of the scheme in this House. Supporters of the Government are getting very disturbed about the money that is being poured into the beet-sugar industry year after year and are asking whether it is not time to stop. If this thing goes on in regard to cattle, meat and other things, what position shall we reach?

I have been surprised that the right hon. Gentleman, with his ability and energy, has not turned his activities into a better direction to help the farming industry. It is one of the easiest methods to help a person or an industry to give money, but it is a lazy method, an unimaginative method, the method of the line of least resistance, and it means the building up of a vested interest. It means that people get so used to this sort of assistance that they will fight tooth and nail on every occasion, as they do in this House through their representatives, not only to retain what they have but, if possible, to increase it.

I come now to my last point. Does the right hon. Gentleman think that all this sort of thing indicates a healthy state for a capitalist society? What has become of the old yeoman spirit we used to hear about so much in the agricultural industry? What has become of their independence, their private enterprise, their individual initiative and the spirit of competition of which we have heard so much. Apparently capitalism cannot possibly carry on without having huge doles from the public. In some cases the right hon. Gentleman when he has been doling out this money to agriculture has tried to lay down certain conditions, that if they will help themselves he will try to give them help. But another feature has made itself evident. The right hon. Member for South Molton (Mr. Lambert) last week admitted that they were getting tired of having conditions imposed upon the industry; take your hands off, give us the money but let us alone. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture has indicated the same thing. He has pointed out the glorious prospect of having this dole, and in addition he says: "we will give you money to spend on the industry, we will not only give you money direct but we will improve the industry, the buildings, without it costing you a penny, all at the expense of the State." This is a new feature of capitalism as adumbrated by the National Government. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he thinks that he has made a success of this business. This constant coming to the House of Commons and asking for a dole for the industry—at which I admit he is very successful—does it not spell failure rather than success? If he is going to find a remedy for the position of agriculture will he not rather have to turn round and take up exactly an opposite policy? I hope the Bill will be rejected.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) concluded his speech by admitting that the endeavours of the Minister of Agriculture, which of course, are only partial, have been successful in restoring to this great industry of agriculture some measure of success. I welcome the Bill in so far as it extends the subsidy for a longer period than has hitherto been provided, up to June next or possibly October next year. Hitherto the periods have been much too short. It is impossible for a farmer to make his plans ahead unless he has some feeling of security for longer than the seven months which have so far been given, and I am glad now that a longer period has been provided which will allow the farmer to make his plans more surely for the future. At the same time I must express my disappointment that the Minister has not been able to make some provision for giving a more direct benefit to the store cattle producer. Under present conditions the benefit which is given to the beef producer cannot filter down to the storekeeper, owing largely to the increased imports which are coming from the Colonies, especially from Canada and Ireland. In his speech last Monday the Minister of Agriculture said:

"I hope that this arrangement and the fact that it interlocks with our long-term policy will enable the livestock industry to make its plans well ahead. If you are going to benefit the United Kingdom livestock industry you must have a subsidy the effect of which will be felt right through the industry, down to the breeder. The store man has had a very bad time."

May I interpolate here that it has been the worst time in the history of the industry

"and especially in the outlying parts of the country he has not received benefit from some of the assistance which the House has given. It is therefore necessary that in any long-term policy the benefit should be felt by the store man as well."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th July, 1935; cal. 770, vol. 364.]

I should like to emphasise those words. The store man is the one who produces the raw material for the beef producer. At the present moment there is a clashing of interests. There are three types of farmers dealing with live cattle, in addition to the man who is a dairy farmer. There is the store producer, who never can possibly finish. In the main he farms in the West and North of Scotland and in the South Western parts of England. He has not got the land or the facilities, the buildings or the cereals with which to finish young cattle. There is a second class of farmer who either because of the quality of his land or its extent can produce and finish young cattle, and there is a third class of farmer, the pure finisher, who produces the beef which now gets the subsidy. The suggestion has been put forward by farmers throughout the whole of Wales and the Western parts of Scotland that this subsidy should be so utilised as to give them a more direct benefit. They suggest that it should be limited in the case of imported cattle to only 50 per cent. so that the beef producer when he sells his beef will only get 2s. 6d. per cwt. on the beef he has produced from imported cattle. Another proposal they have made, which I hope the Minister would consider, is that the period should be extended from three months to six months, a period which will entitle the beef producer to get the subsidy in respect of imported cattle. Hitherto the voice of the store producer has been rather overwhelmed by the voice of the pure beef producer and so far no agreement has been arrived at.

I would warn the Minister that if he follows this policy it will mean that the breeder of young cattle will go out of business. He is going out of business now, as will be seen from the figures. The last figures I have are up to June 1934, and there has been a drop in the number of cattle one year old and under of 57,600, a decrease of young cattle produced in this country of 4·4 per cent. That is a very serious decrease. What is happening is this. Farmers instead of breeding for the beef producer are turning to dairy production. I know of one farmer, my next door neighbour, who was a big producer of young cattle. He could not finish them. His market is at Shrewsbury and his cattle were bought by farmers in the east of the county who have cereals and who can finish and thus get the benefit of the subsidy. What is happening in his case? He told me that although he has 84 cattle on his farm to-day 83 of them are for dairy purposes, and he keeps only one man. In days past he used to produce young cattle for the market and the beef producer. Unless the store producer gets more direct benefit he will go out of business, and that will be a disaster for the beef producer.

In the meantime what is the beef producer doing? He is purchasing cattle which have been imported from Ireland or Canada. Naturally he wants to buy in the cheapest market and to get the biggest benefit, ignoring the store producer. I am aware that during the last 12 months the price of two-year-olds has gone up a little. I think that it has gone up about £1 a head, but in the case of one-year-olds and under I do not think it has gone up as much as 5s. a head, and that is 5s. a head upon the lowest price that has been known since the Eighties, even lower than the price during what we farmers knew as the Hungry Nineties. Yet here are the figures of imported cattle. Irish stores imported up to June, 1934, were 199,858, but in 1935 the figures had gone up to 266,518, an increase of imports from Ireland of 66,660, as against a decrease of cattle produced in this country of 57,000.

Then, with regard to Canadian store cattle, as the House knows none were imported in 1929. By 1934 the number had gone up to 51,000, and the import price paid for these amounted to well over £800,000. In 1935, I agree, there has been a reduction of Canadian cattle imports, but it is merely temporary, because the restrictions were withdrawn by the United States and that is a more immediate market for them. The imports from Northern Ireland for the four months ended 30th April last have also increased by 31,000, making a total increase from the whole of Ireland of 87,000 head of cattle. It is a really serious position and I hope that the Minister will consider what help he can give out of this subsidy so as to give more direct benefit to the breeder, who is supplying the raw material for the beef producer. During the Committee Stage I hope that the Minister will accept an Amendment which will either extend the period from three months to six, or limit the subsidy in respect of imported cattle to 50 per cent. of the present figure.

To begin with I would like to say a few words in reply to some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling). He said that the Minister had not been too fortunate in his policy and that his negotiations had been unsuccessful. I disagree. Considering the amazing difficulties that the Minister has had to face we may say that he has been quite successful, that he has carried out negotiations with very considerable skill and has reached so far a quite useful point. What we have to realise is that we have now got agreement in the Dominions that there is necessity for some regulation of imports into this country. They are now, for the first time, beginning to appreciate the fact that unlimited imports into this country can only result in an ultimate crash in the market here, from which they would suffer just as much as we; and not only they, but the Argentine too. If the beef market in this country were to crash it would have repercussions all over the world, and the end of that it would be very difficult to foresee. Therefore, if we have only got to that point it has been something well worth struggling for, because it is a foun- dation on which we can hope to build a prosperous industry.

The hon. Member for Wentworth went on to complain that something like £53,000,000 of Government money had been poured into the industry. That is an indication of the parlous condition into which the industry has got during the last few years. The hon. Member asked, where is the old yeoman spirit of which we have heard so much? No one would be more glad than myself to see the yeoman conditions return. But since those good old days many changes have taken place in the world, and today we have competition from places which were then unheard of and of a sort which was unheard of. It is that which has injured the industry of this country, and would have killed it completely but for the fact that the Government have taken steps to secure at least a livelihood for these people.

I want to deal with one other point, and that is the question of wages, because it is extremely important. There is not a decent farmer in Great Britain who will not agree that the present rate of wages for farm labourers is far too low. Farm workers are amongst the most highly deserving type of people we have. In my part of the country, a cold part, they go out in the early morning, in the dark, in bitterly cold weather, to work in the fields at what is one of the hardest of jobs. Looking after animals is most highly skilled work. Anything that can be done to improve the lot of farm servants we should all strive to do. A difficulty with regard to the beef subsidy during the last few months has been that it has not put the farmer into a position to pay better wages but has only saved the existence of the farmer. Had it not been for the subsidy—I am talking of my own part of the country—I am certain we should have such a collapse in the agricultural world that it would not have been a question of raising wages but of the people now employed in the industry being put out of work altogether. Recently, we have seen a very welcome improvement in the price of beef. The hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) is not in his place, but we have heard from the Liberal benches criticism of the subsidy on the ground that it forced down the price of beef last winter. I wonder how Liberals explain the fact that the price is once again showing welcome signs of increase. My point is this: We are hoping at the end of this subsidy period to get a long-term policy, and the essence of that long-term policy is that a price will be fixed. If the price obtained in the market does not come up to the fixed price the difference will be made good from a fund obtained through a levy. I ask the Minister to ensure that the basic price is fixed at such a level that farmers will be able to pay, not the miserable wages now paid, but the sort of wages that they would like to pay. It is vitally important that we should have the people who are working on the land well paid, well fed, well clothed, well housed and contented. It will cause a real sore in the body politic if as a result of all the things we are doing the farm labourer feels that he is not getting his fair share of what is going. He can only get that if the fixed price enables the farmer to give him a decent wage.

The hon. Member for Wentworth referred to some of the wills of farmers who had died, and he quoted some big figures. I wish he would pursue his researches further and visit some of the banks in his constituency or the neighbouring agricultural constituencies and find out how many farmers, particularly the smaller men, have overdrafts. The great bulk of them are not rich. They are mostly very small men who are being kept not only by loans from banks but from auction marts, and often by arrangements with seedsmen and others. They do not leave fortunes of £10,000. Until they are in a sound financial position it will be very difficult for them to pay their workers properly, as they wish to do. I hope that the Minister, therefore, will see that the price is fixed at a reasonable figure to allow that to be done.

I entirely agree with the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) about the desirability of having a longer subsidy than we have had in the past. I fully realise that there were reasons which made it necessary to have a short-term arrangement in the past. The fact that the subsidy has now been fixed for 13 or 15 months at any rate, and certainly for such time as will enable a long-term policy to be produced, should be of the greatest possible value to the cattle producer in this country. As there is greater stability in the market and as the right hon. Gentleman has been able to have some limit put on the amount of imports from the Dominions during the next 18 months, the farmer will be in a much better position to foresee the course of prices in the coming year. That in itself will tend to improve the price of store cattle. I agree that the price of store cattle is one of the things which will have to be watched carefully. If this policy is to be successful, as we hope and believe it will be, it is essential that the producer of store cattle in this country should get his share of what is going. I have heard it said that some of the subsidy has taken wings and has flown over to Ireland and though I know the difficulties in the way and I realise that what it is possible to do in one part of the country cannot be done in another I hope some solution may be found. I realise that the problem is not quite so simple as a good many people think but, despite the difficulties, I hope we may get a reasonable solution.

The present subsidy has worked with great smoothness and has been of great value to the industry. The short term policy was the best that could be devised in the circumstances but for the long-term policy I am inclined to think that we shall want a system of payments which will benefit the people who are producing the best quality of meat, rather than this type of flat rate. A man may sell in the market a beast weighing 9 cwts. of absolutely prime quality. On that he gets a better price per cwt. than the man who is selling a 14 stone beast. It is conceivable that he might not get such a good price per beast as the man selling the less good but heavier animal because the subsidy is paid for weight. In my part of the world where quality is of vital importance it would be better to have some means whereby the value of the animal per cwt. was taken into consideration. There could be no more serious thing than a deterioration in quality, certainly in the part of the country which I know, because, there, we sell very largely on the quality of our beef. I do not think that anybody will deny that the beef which comes from Aberdeenshire is the finest quality of beef produced anywhere in the world.

On the wider question of our negotiations with the Dominions I would recall that at the Ottawa Conference we started an entirely new line of thought and a new orientation in the business relations between this country and the Dominions. It is not surprising when we are making great changes of that kind to find that some of the machinery which worked perfectly well under the old conditions is not sufficient for the present conditions. The fact that we had to postpone these negotiations until the Premiers of Australia and New Zealand could be here, shows that there has been some breakdown in the machinery. I do not think that is anything of which anybody need feel ashamed or which need cause any surprise. It is natural that it should have happened. At the same time, it shows that we must have fresh machinery for dealing with these matters in the future. The right hon. Gentleman, if not at this stage perhaps at some later stage, may be able to give us some idea of what shape that machinery will take.

It is going to be much easier in the future than it has been in the past for people in this country to go to the Dominions. One can now go to Canada in a matter of eight days where it formerly took as much as five or six weeks. If there are to be consultations between responsible Ministers I hope that they will not always take place in London but that our people will go to Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. When I visited some of the Dominions two or three years ago I found a very strong feeling of welcome for any Member of this Parliament who took the trouble to go there and study conditions on the spot. Nothing could do more good to our Imperial relations than that some of our Cabinet Ministers should, from time to time, see for themselves the conditions in those far-off parts of the world. My right hon. Friend the Minister has made many journeys in various parts of the Empire and I am sure he would welcome an opportunity of visiting other parts of the Empire. I hope therefore that any machinery which is introduced will involve visits of people from this country to the Dominions as well as the other way round.

Lastly, in any machinery of this sort provisions ought to be made, not only for meetings between Members of governments and Government staffs but also for meetings between people engaged in the trades concerned. Nothing would smooth over difficulties more easily than that people who actually deal with these matters, such as the National Farmers Union, for instance, in England and Scotland, should meet with the agriculturists of New Zealand, Australia, Canada and other parts of the world. While the work which the Government can do is of immense value, the work which the industry can do for itself is also of great value. It is vitally important that once we have established the long-term policy we should not regard it as fixed in all details. This world is not static and there is nothing in it which is static. The details will have to be changed from time to time and it is important that we should have means whereby these changes can be foreseen as far as is humanly possible, and provision made for them. We should not have to wait until it is too late. We should have the means of forseeing developments and of being able to deal with them promptly when they arise. I hope that we may have an opportunity of hearing something more on that point. I take this opportunity of thanking the Government and the right hon. Gentleman and the other Ministers who are involved in this matter for the steps which they have taken. I hope that we shall not have to wait for the full period contemplated before we get the long-term policy but it comes as a great relief to know that there can be no hiatus between the end of the subsidy and the beginning of the long-term policy.

I feel that some of us who sit on these benches are occasionally under a certain disadvantage. Our education has been sadly neglected, and we are not always able to deal in detail with some of the intricate problems which are placed before us. On the last occasion on which I spoke on this subject I found, what is unusual in these agricultural debates, namely that a white heat was being engendered, and the right hon. Gentleman the Minister seemed to be roused to a pitch which recalled the days when he occupied the position of Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. I cannot promise to rouse him again to-day. I almost wish I could, but I find some difficulty in following the case which has been put forward here. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) in effect, although he did not say it in so many words, asked for another increase of the subsidy. He referred to the people concerned with store cattle and so did the last speaker—to whom I listened with great pleasure because I have not for a long time heard him speak at such length, and he speaks with great knowledge of the subject. They both agreed that the store cattle people were up against it. The hon. Member wanted us to take from the other farmers and to give to the store cattle people, but he knows that the farmers who are getting this money would never tolerate the lessening of the amount.

I do not suggest reducing the subsidy.

But if the store cattle chap gets more, the other chap must get less, if the amount remains the same. I may not know very much, but I cannot see even the Minister of Agriculture beating me on that point. The hon. Member says that the store cattle people are being badly treated and not getting a fair chance, and so, he says, "Give us more," but the other farmer will not stand for it. We are not yet at the end of the thing, however. It is not fair of the Government, it is not really reasonable that we should stop where we are stopping. The thing should go on. On the last occasion the Minister took me to task because, he said, anybody who dared to oppose this subsidy was standing for poor wages in the agricultural industry. When he attempted to reply on the last occasion he did not seek to vindicate what he was doing so much as to say, in the first place, that this was the only way to get wages increased, and, secondly, he sought to find a refuge for what the Government were doing in something that the Labour Government had done in the Coal Act. It was not that the Government's action in itself could be defended, but that the others had done something that was wrong.

Far be it from me to get involved in a discussion of the Coal Act and all its ramifications, but let us look at the position. When the present Government took office one of the first economy measures which they took was to abolish the inspectors set up under the Agricultural Wages Acts. They say that the agricul- tural labourer is a fine type of man and all that, but they like him so much that almost the first thing they do of an economy kind is to take away the wage inspectors, who to some extent are a buffer against his receiving lower wages. They like him, but they do not like him so well that they will keep these inspectors on. Just imagine an economy measure, from those who say that one of the important things to do is to keep up wages in order to save Britain, which results in the sacking of seven inspectors. It did not matter about the poor agricultural worker. His wage could go down, but the National Government, in order to save Britain, had to send away seven inspectors. They went for the time being, and although the majority of them have been returned to their posts, two of them have not yet been returned; and the most daring thing about it, I am told, is that the two most active men among those inspectors at defending the agricultural workers have so far not been returned to their posts.

This is from the defenders of the wages, from the people who are giving £3,000,000 till next June and, if it continues till October, roughly speaking almost £4,500,000, for the sake of the wages of the agricultural workers. In my more callow days I might have been taken in, but what are the facts? To-day we subsidise this industry with very few conditions other than saying that they ought to fulfil certain things regarding wages and so on, but in so far as the internal working of the farms by the farmers is concerned, there is no interference. And this, mark you, when people are being handed out millions of money. What the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) said is true; the agriculturists have not merely a beef subsidy, but they have also a wheat subsidy and a sugar beet subsidy. It is not a matter merely of giving the labourer 31s. instead of 28s. a week: it is an accumulation of all the subsidies. The farm labourer could be given a higher wage without doing any work if he had the subsidy himself, without the farmer intervening at all.

When you make a demand like this in the House of Commons, you ought to show that the farmer is poor and needs it, that he is in poverty and needs help, but that has never been done. It has only been done in general terms like those used by the last speaker, who said the farmers were not well off, but that does not prove it. There has never been set down in this House, even by the Minister of Agriculture, the proof that they are hard up. It may or many not be true, but it has never been proved. On the other hand, the case of the poor has been examined, and it has been demonstrated that there are poverty-stricken people. You say that the agricultural wages are low, but because they are low it does not mean that the farmers are poor. Because you have low wages applying, it does not mean to say that the employers are hard up, because some of the worst paid people in industry are those in industries where the profits are greatest. All that we are told is, in general terms, that these people are hard up, and consequently that they need public money.

I say to the Minister of Agriculture that he, like me, is one of the Members for a great city. We come here from the place where I was born and bred, and he and I share the representation of a part of that city. I represent the Gorbals Division and the right hon. Gentleman represents the Kelvingrove Division. His division, or a portion of it, is street for street the same as mine—no difference—packed with poverty. No farmer in this country can equal the poverty of a part of Kelvingrove. What does the right hon. Gentleman do? I say to Members in this House that, even when they gain Cabinet rank, they have no right to do what he is doing in this way. He gives millions to beet sugar. He sits in that Cabinet and asks that a man and a woman should live on 24s., which his Cabinet regulations provide for the unemployed, after years of unemployment. In the City of Glasgow rents are high, the cost of living is not low, and beef is dear. These millions are handed out to people who have never proved their poverty in the same way as have these poor people, the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman, who ought to have a claim on him second to none. It is no answer to say we have done it before. We came here to ask millions for our people—the tests we have to undergo, the inquiries, the shocking interference with family life! Some think that it does not matter, because they are just poor people. What are they—just dock labourers, old shipbuilding workmen; and their families have their hearts and guts torn out of them. But the farmers—oh, no, do not say that they have a lot of money! The hon. Member for Wentworth suggested a means test for them; that 'we should be allowed to examine their banking accounts, their private family incomes, where their sons are, and so on. It is said that that would be a penalty on the industrious farmer. But, when it comes to the poorest, that inquiry is quite right. There is a feeling that these people are something different from the others, that money should be given to the farmers because they are a better class.

That has never been claimed.

It is claimed in effect. You deny the right of interference and examination into your family life and private accounts. When the subsidy started it was only for a limited time, only to give breathing space while the Government got a policy. We have continued it again and again. It is to be continued long enough to carry over the election period. The right hon. Gentleman says he will take this £3,000,000 of money to June, but the Government will also take permission to continue it to October which brings up the sum to about £4,250,000.

The right hon. Gentleman said that the Dominions are going to limit their supplies of beef coming into this country. It may be that I am a bit fogged. I represent Gorbals, which cannot get enough beef. I do not think the Minister of Agriculture will deny that a man and woman living on 24s. a week, in a place like Glasgow where 7s. 6d. goes in rent, cannot buy much meat, even foreign meat. I cannot see how the producers are to be ruined because beef becomes plentiful. Here you have beef made scarce, for the people cannot get it. The right hon. Gentleman says, "Keep it out." It is impossible now for most of the poorer class to get it. Beef is not too plentiful. Beef is scarce. Why should hon. Gentlemen and their friends have a right to make it scarce when it is too scarce already? The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot) should turn his attention to the other side. Why does beef sometimes glut the market? It is not because it is too plentiful; it is too scarce, because in my place and in the mining areas the people cannot get beef. I read a book given to me by the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) written by a Yorkshire miner on the means test. He told how when he was a miner he got beef every day; he had to have it. Now he gets it on Sunday, one day per week instead of seven, The market is glutted, not because beef is plentiful, but because these men have not the purchasing power to buy it. Do the Government never think that instead of subsidising the farmer they ought to subsidise the purchaser? that the men who are unemployed ought to have their income raised so that they can buy beef That would be something wrong, I suppose. The idea is that you have to watch that you do not give these men too much; in fact, you cut their income down.

When the Minister comes along with his final solution, which I understand is to be a tax on Argentine beef, or a levy, the proceeds are to be paid as a further subsidy to the farmer. As the hon. Member for Wentworth says, "Who is to pay this levy?" Everybody knows that the difference in price between Argentine beef and home-bred beef represents a big margin, and, unless the Government put on a very high levy, Argentine beef will still be cheaper. Argentine beef is the beef of the poor. I live in Battersea, and the other day I went into a butcher's shop, since we still look after our own family affairs, to buy beef. There was no home beef there; it was all Argentine and foreign beef. When I mentioned it to the butcher, he said, "Look here Mr. this is a poor district". In effect, this levy will be paid by the poor.

The Government's next policy is to be even meaner than the last, The present one is that part of the rich pay through general taxation; the next is that in order that the poor farmer may exist, the poorest of the poor, who can buy only foreign imported meat, are to pay more so that the levy can go to the farmer. If that policy were directed to the rich there would be a revolt. If that policy were carried out by us in regard to their class there would be every feeling of indignation aroused. The Government adopt that policy in regard to our class, and increase the price of beef. I do not believe that there is a plentiful supply of beef or that there is too much coming in. I believe the fault is that the wages of the miner are too low, and the income of the unemployed inadequate, and that the Government, instead of subsidising the farmers and producers, ought to turn their attention to the others and find out that the basic wages and incomes of the people of the working-classes or of those unemployed are too low, and say that those who are carrying on or those who are unfortunately unemployed should be given decent remuneration, so that they may buy the goods that are produced.

The hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) said that a certain amount of heat crept into the Debate when I was winding up on the last occasion, and that he would do his utmost to engender a little heat on this occasion. I am sure the House will realise that with the whole weight of his Parliamentary ability he has done his utmost to raise the temperature to a reasonable point. He has issued some challenges which I shall be glad to take up because the statements he has made are those which he males in Glasgow, in Lanarkshire, and up and down the poor areas of this country and it is better that they should be made here where they can be refuted than that they should go unchallenged in the districts which hear no one else, and therefore take all that the hon. Member says, with all his skill in presenting a case, as gospel truth.

There are one or two other points which I should like to mention before I return to the speech of the hon. Member for Gorbals. The point was made in the last Debate as to the possible evasion of the marking regulations concerning beef and that it weakened the market for home beef unduly. I understand that that applied especially to Scotland. The Secretary of State is making inquiries into that matter, but very full marking regulations have been put into force, and, if they are not being observed, it is a matter of administration, and we shall do our utmost to see that they are observed. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. C. Davies) made an eloquent plea for the store cattle man. I agree that his position has been serious in the past, and I think it is very necessary that the position of the breeding industry in this country should be maintained, for otherwise we shall not be able to obtain store cattle at reasonable prices. The long term policy, as was said by the hon. Member for Aberdeen and Kincardine (Mr. Barclay-Harvey), in a most thoughtful and well-considered speech, will do more to set up the position of the store breeder than any ad hoc assistance. The difficulty of ad hoc assistance is that it may mean an over-organisation which might well defeat its own objects, and which is far from being an agreed matter among all sections of the agricultural industry. The east countrymen and west countrymen will need to come to some common agreement on this matter before we can approach the House, for nothing could be more likely to frustrate any objects which we have in view than to bring forward measures for the relief of agriculture which were protested against by important sections of agriculturists themselves.

There were two other speeches of importance to-day one delivered by the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) in a most spirited fashion, and one delivered by the hon. Member for Gorbals. The hon. Member for Wentworth showed greater skill than the hon. Member for Gorbals—greater Parliamentary skill, that is to say, because he did not adduce arguments which could be readily refuted by reference to his speeches and actions in the past and his general line of policy in this House. The hon. Member for Gorbals was not trammelled by any of those considerations. He swept them all away with a sentence "If we did that, I say we were wrong, and we ought to have been judged for it." That is a very easy way of carrying on opposition—when you are in power to do all you can to keep up the level of wholesale prices, but when you are in Opposition to say: "Push them down, and, if we did anything to put them up, we were wrong." Let the hon. Member go to the coal areas and say that his policy is to repeal the Coal Mines Act; and let the price of coal go, in an unregulated market, as low as possible. He will have to fight hon. Members on the Labour benches, but that will not worry him, because he has fought them before, and no doubt he will continue to fight them. He will, however, find the fight a stiff battle in the mining areas. It is no use coming to this House and saying: "When we passed a measure to support the wholesale level of prices in a commodity in which we are interested, in which our constituents are interested, no doubt we were wrong." But will he repeal it? That is the acid test. The hon. Member makes no answer to that question. When on a previous occasion the policy of maintaining the level of wholesale prices was brought up a much respected Member of the House, speaking from the Government benches, said:

"The burden of this part of the Bill is not to sell at terms which may rightly be regarded as an extravagant profit, but to stop the sale of coal at a loss, to get a good average price in those parts of the market which can bear that price, and to relieve the price in other parts of the market"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December, 1929; cols. 1266–67, Vol. 233.]

He went on to say that there were 30,000,000 or 40,000,000 tons of coal going to public utility organisations in Great Britain and that they were getting coat at far too low prices. What were those industries? Electricity and gas, and one of them is the fuel of the poorest of the poor. What did the hon. Member for Gorbals do then? He walked into the Division Lobby and voted for the Second Reading of the Bill, which passed by a handful of votes which the hon. Member and a few of his friends could have turned.

I understand that the right hon. Gentleman opposed the Bill. Was it not doing for the coalowners what the right hon. Gentleman now wishes to do for the farmers?

We opposed the Bill, and I am willing to face every line of our argument on it. One of the main lines of the Bill, which the hon. Member will remember and for which he voted, was a levy on the home consumer of coal in order to subsidise export coal. The hon. Member was going to tax the man and woman in Gorbals on their gas so that he could get cheaper coal for the Belgians, the Poles, the Czechoslovakians and everybody else. We not only voted against it on Second Reading, but we later knocked it out of the Bill. He stood for maintaining a level of wholesale prices of coal, and I ask the hon. Member here and now—does he intend to repeal that?

Give me a government, and I will show what I will do.

That is the answer that all dictators give. When I ask the hon. Member a straight question, he does not give a straight answer. The hon. Member used a good deal of effort in saying: "Here is money being given away without any restrictions and without any inquiry into the position of the people who are to receive it." How many inquiries did he or his friends hold into the circumstances of the coalowners when they were making provision which admittedly was to improve the state of profit in the coal trade? Nothing, he says, should be given without an investigation to see whether the people are suffering from poverty and whether they actually need it. We all remember the great speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) when he said: "To whom is all this money going? The owners," and the whole Labour party chanted with him, "The owners." The hon. Member for Wentworth read out a long list of wills left by farmers. Did anybody look up the list of wills left by coalowners before the right hon. Gentleman the late Mr. William Graham brought in the Bill which admittedly was to improve the level of profits in the coal trade? Then there is the building industry, to which he and his friends have often given subsidies. Was an inquiry held into the position of all builders before the late Minister of Health brought forward a Bill to subsidise the building industry? No. I admire the hon. Member for the Gorbals Division. I admire his skill in raising passion and prejudice and in fomenting disorder. He is a revolutionary.

I am a moderate.

When I listen to some of his speeches I wonder why any of us here ever get returned to Parliament. The case as he presents it sounds a most convincing case, but there is a counter side to it, and if he will examine the matter fairly he will realise that all the arguments he has been raising against giving assistance to the agricultural industry could be paralleled by arguments against giving assistance to the coal industry or the building industry. This is a question of food, which is of vital importance to all people It is of vital importance that the industry which provides food should be maintained. "But," says the hon. Member for the Wentworth Division, "This subsidy is not going to those who most need it. The agricultural labourers are not sharing in these advantages."Their wages, if they had been calculated on the cost of living, or calculated in comparison with what wages were before the war, would be infinitely lower than they are to-day. We have managed to hold agricultural wages in this country at a higher level than they have been since the boom years after the war.

What has happened in other countries During that time agricultural wages in the United States have been nearly halved, and in the Dominions they have enormously declined; not to mention the declines which have taken place in European, countries and the terribly low levels of the wages received by agricultural workers there, because theirs is a different economy and it is not fair to make a strict comparison. But it is fair and not unreasonable to compare our wages and the movement of wages with those in a country like the United States.

To have been able to hold or restore wages to what they were in 1925, 1926 and 1927, would be regarded in any other agricultural country as a result worthy of the utmost efforts which any Government and any Parliament could put forward. We have done it here, and the comparison to be made is with wages prewar, or with the proportionate rise in other wages, or with the receipts which the farmer gets from the sale of his products. After all, the farmer is only the agent who passes on the products of the land, and most of the money received from the sale of those products is redistributed in the expenditure incurred in producing them. We here have been able to take up that challenge and deal with it more triumphantly than the people in any other country in the world.

The last point which was made by the hon. Member for the Wentworth Division was that these subsidies constituted an intolerable burden on the nation, that the complaint against them was widespread, and that if they went on they would lead to the agricultural industry incurring widespread unpopularity, and—although he did not say this—that they would no doubt be swept away by him and his friends or they would make the sweeping away of them one of the planks in their programme in the agricultural constituencies. We shall wish them joy in the attempt. The measures which he and his friends put forward were admirably successful in maintaining the price levels of coal in which he is interested. The price of coal to-day is about 175 points above the pre-war retail price. It was 185 to 200 points above in 1925 and 175 to 180 above in 1931. They were able to hold the price of fuel at 175 points above pre-war. Food prices are at about 125 points above. Since 1925 food prices have gone down from 171 to 120. Since 1931 they have gone down from 131 to 120. The policy of the Government has been to get the maximum supply of food at the lowest possible prices consistent with a reasonable remuneration to the producers. Since 1925 the fall in food prices has been the equivalent of £230,000,000 a year, nearly all of which saving has been enjoyed by the working classes of this country. That is equivalent to the whole of the interest and Sinking Fund on the National Debt. That is equivalent to lifting off the shoulders of the people the whole weight of the National Debt to-day. Is it unreasonable to say that 10 or 15 per cent. of that enormous sum should be used for the assistance of the agricultural industry in order to maintain the wage level and to maintain the production of foodstuffs? Is that the contention? There is no answer. It is easy enough to make denunciations—

It is not so easy to interrupt.

I have never noticed the hon. Member for Gorbals hesitate to interrupt when he thought he could make a point. I say that in this country we have been able to secure a plentiful supply of food at very low prices. To do that has thrown a strain of almost intolerable degree upon agricultural production in this country, and to modify that intolerable strain assistance has been given to agriculturists, and, if agriculture in this country is to continue, it will have to be given to it. We on this side have faced that issue and hon. Members opposite will have to face it also. There is the policy—supplies of food at low prices; and there is the proof of the policy—'a fall in the index figures of food values, a fall calculated at between £200,000,000 and £300,000,000 a year since 1925. And in this and other Bills which we are bringing forward is the counterpart, the assistance which has to be given to agriculture to enable it to survive and to enable it to pay wages which admittedly are as low as we could reasonably permit them to be and which indeed should be much higher. When hon. Members opposite were on this side of the House, they too adopted a policy of maintaining the wholesale level of prices. They, too, maintained a policy of working through private enterprise in the coalfields, working through owners without suggesting any inquiry into the private circumstances of the people through whom and by whom the wages, which were their chief concern, were to be paid. They would never dare to repeal those Measures if they came into power. We are following the policy of maintaining the wholesale level of prices, and say that by this and other means we intend to continue along the path on which we have set out.

I should not have risen but for the right hon. Gentleman's persistent references to the Coal Mines Act, 1930. He will persist in drawing a parallel between that Act and the action of the present Government in the case of agriculture, though he knows there is no parallel at all. All that the Coal Mines Act did was to place in the hands of the coal owners, or the coal industry, a piece of machinery by which they could market their commodity on sensible and efficient lines. There was no subsidy of £53,000,000.

Will the hon. Members deny that there was restriction of output?

No, what I am suggesting is that there is no parallel at all between the mining industry and the agricultural industry as dealt with by the National Government. The right hon. Gentleman referred to figures this morning, when he calculated to have reached £53,000,000 per annum in direct subsidies to agriculture. That is the question at issue; the wisdom of the bits and pieces policy, which may be the only policy, and not the mining industry Act which was merely a piece of machinery to enable the mining industry to market its commodity efficiently. There was no subsidy. The right hon. Gentleman has a Milk Marketing Board which, if operated sensibly, would in all probability enable agriculture or the dairy farmers to make their business a paying proposition. Here is a subsidy, and when in any direction subsidies are being given, the right hon. Gentleman always harks back to 1930 and tries to make us believe that we gave the colliery owners £50,000,000 more or less; we did not give them a shilling. The right hon. Gentleman knows that if he examines the figures he will find that the price of coal has not increased perceptibly.

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to keep agricultural, prices 175 points above pre-war, I will not ask this House for a red cent.

The right hon. Gentleman simply gives one retail figure. He introduces an argument about the price of coal to gas and electricity undertakings; if he cared to examine the profits that were being made by the gas and electricity undertakings in this country, who are large consumers of coal, he would be the first to admit that it was high time that, in its own interests and in those of its workpeople, the coal industry had better bargaining power with those companies and undertakings, whose profits had been excessive, and that some marketing scheme was brought into existence to prevent consumers taking advantage of internal competition which had brought ruin to tens of thousands, of miners' families in this country. The right hon. Gentleman implies to the House that the miners and the mineworkers must have made tremendous profits out of that coal measure, but that is not the case. The miners were entitled to a decent wage. When the right hon. Gentleman refers to the colossal perpendicular drop in agricultural prices since the war, let him recall that the amount of miners' wages, which was £265,000,000, was down to £87,000,000 last year, and yet the coal industry has not been here for a subsidy.

There will be many more Debates before this subject is finished with, and I hope that when the right hon. Gentleman is dealing with subsidies he will not introduce again the simple marketing scheme which was applied to coal, because there is no parallel. Unless a better argument can be adduced to justify a subsidy, a levy or direct or indirect assistance to agriculture, that industry is not entitled to assistance. If, however, justifiable reasons can be advanced for a direct or an indirect levy or for any other financial assistance, let the House take a decision on that basis, and let the right hon. Gentleman not try to compare a simple marketing scheme without a subsidy with a scheme such as this, in which there is no marketing scheme in existence. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government suggest that there must be protection before marketing. We think that it ought to be marketing before protection. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will in future compare like with like and not with unlike.

I do not want to delay the House, because we have a somewhat heavy day's work before us. I did not put down a proposal for to-day, because I know that the Government like to get as much business as possible worked off on a Friday, when there is the smallest number of Members present in the easiest frame of mind for letting things go. I merely rose to say a word or two in reply to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman, so far as it was directed to my hon. Friend the Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan). I am surprised and somewhat hurt at the irritation displayed ay the right hon. Gentleman. This is, if I remember rightly, the first intervention of those of us who sit below the Gangway, on this matter of the subsidy. We have treated the right hon. Gentleman not merely with tolerance but with generosity, in the various experiments he has introduced to restore the prosperity of agriculture in this country. We recognised that he was performing a very difficult task and we did not subject him to undue criticism or opposition. I do not see why he should get all heated up over a very simple and legitimate observation on the part of my hon. Friend.

He draws a parallel between our attitude to-day and our attitude on the Coal Mines Bill, and he states with very great pleasure that my hon. Friend voted for the Second Reading of that Bill; but he does not cite any of the speeches of my hon. Friend or myself on the Second Reading, nor does he make any reference to subsequent stages of the Measure. We supported that Measure on the Second Reading with very many reservations, and with many Amendments on the Committee stage, in particular to try to give effect to the very two points that have been the basis of my hon. Friend's criticism to-day. They were Amendments to secure definitely in that Measure a guaranteed minimum wage for miners. There was no such provision in that legislation and there is no such provision here. The Government of that date, through their spokesmen, held the view, as is held by the right hon. Gentleman, that if they got that Measure the wages would automatically come right. That is the view to-day: Subsidise the farmer and the farm labourer's wages will come right. The view of the Labour Government was: Establish this measure of organisation and price fixation in coal, and the miner's wages will come right. It did not happen. These thing do not happen automatically. You give employers a favoured position, but it does not follow that the wages of the workers are kept up. The miners' wages on the average are not kept up by the Act, they are just one or two shillings above unemployment allowances.

Where would they be but for the Act?

They would be a shilling or two above the unemployment allowances, and that is where they are now, at rock-bottom on starvation wages. The organisation has not taken place as was anticipated. My hon. Friend criticised that Measure right through, on the grounds that, firstly, there was no provision for guaranteeing a living wage to the miners, and secondly, no arrangement for safeguarding the price to the consumer. We endeavoured by Amendment to put proposals into the Measure by which the interests of the consumers of coal would be safeguarded against exploitation. If the right hon. Gentleman, in coming forward with these subsidies, had included a provision to safeguard the wages of the agricultural workers not incidentally, but definitely, and deliberately, by establishing minimum rates for agricultural workers, and by a further provision to prevent exploitation of the consumer of British beef, we should have

It is a, little unfortunate that it is necessary to raise the matter which I propose now to raise, having regard to the fact that it is obviously inconvenient for hon. Members to be present to hear the discussion. It is, however, imperative that we should discuss this matter to-day. The subject is one which ought perhaps to have been discussed before. We cannot allow this discussion to be postponed any longer, and, therefore, I hope the House will extend their indulgence to me while I call their attention to some facts which should be placed before it. I absolve myself from the necessity of giving an historical review of the Greenwich Foundation and its accounts, except to say that the Royal Greenwich Hospital School has its roots right back in the reign of William III, and that it actually took the form of a school as we now know it in 1821. In 1870 the school was re-organised and divided into what are known as the nautical school, and the upper nautical school in which naval uniforms and naval regiments were introduced.

In connection with this foundation there is another foundation called the Boreman Foundation, also an old one, going back to 1672. In 1887 about 100 boys under the auspices of the Boreman Foundation were admitted as day boys to the upper nautical school for education. That arrangement has now ceased. It is not for me to inquire what other arrangements have now been made for the Boreman Foundation boys, that does not concern us to-day. It is more particularly a matter for the hon. Member for Greenwich (Sir G. Hume) and I know that he has already taken considerable interest in the matter. But I am wondering whether a certain preference which has now been exercised in the new arrangements with regard to the Boreham Foundation is justifiable as far as it is a preference to the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force. However, that is not my business, and I will come to the particular point which concerns us to-day.

The House is invited to confirm a Resolution in the name of the Civil Lord of the Admiralty that the statement of estimated income and expenditure of Greenwich Hospital and the Travers Foundation be approved. It is obvious that a school founded in 1821 must in the course of time come up against the proposition of reorganisation and equipment to meet modern requirements. This problem, in due time after the war, confronted the Governors who were responsible for the foundation, and it was decided that a new school should be provided. Happily, their decision in this matter was facilitated by a very remarkable act of generosity on the part of a gentleman, Mr. Reade, and hon. Members will find a succinct summary of the details of Mr. Reade's munificence in the statement of the accounts of the school. Mr. Reade came to their aid by providing them with a very large tract of land, an estate in Suffolk of over 850 acres, a very substantial piece of charity. It was then decided that the school should be transferred to this estate. I must direct the attention of hon. Members at this point to the fact that the proposal to build a new school was naturally circumscribed by the amount of money available, and it was decided to build a school at a cost of not more than £700,000. Contracts were invited. All contractors who were asked to submit an estimate were specifically invited to give an assurance that the work could be kept within the figure of £700,000. As a matter of fact, the lowest tender I believe was over £1,000,000, and in the face of that those responsible naturally had to reconsider the situation.

Two courses were open to them, either to reduce the extent of their scheme and bring it within the limit of £700,000 or postpone some portion of the scheme. Unfortunately as I think, other people have different views, they took the course not of amending their scheme but of postponing the operation of the scheme. That was the position until 1928. Fortunately, the Admiralty were able to have recourse to their good fairy Mr. Reade. They were naturally reluctant to abandon their plans and so once again they had recourse to Mr. Reade, who saw the original design, and was so captivated by it that he assured them, he was in New Zealand at the time, that he would make provision in his will which would enable them to complete the school as originally designed. Mr. Reade died in 1929, and his will fulfilled the assurance which he had given to the Admiralty. But it is important to remember this significant fact, that though Mr. Reade fulfilled absolutely the promise he made, the money which he left to the authority was not to be available until the year 1940.

In the presence of that new situation those responsible had to determine what to do, and the decision was taken to proceed with the scheme as originally designed, in the knowledge, of course, that in 1940 this money would be available. But since the money was not available immediately and there was not enough money in the funds at the time, it was necessary for those responsible to determine how they could defray the intervening cost between that time and the year 1940. It was decided that the cost in the meantime should be defrayed from the Hospital funds. An alteration was made in the design for the chapel, and two extra houses for the masters were decided upon. The moment those responsible knew that the Reade money would be available in 1940 a decision was taken to proceed with the original design of the chapel, which had been postponed, and two extra houses for masters were to be built. The chapel was altered on the recommendation of the Fine Arts Commission, I think, to the tune of £11,000 additional expenditure.

That is briefly the story leading up to the decision to erect the school. Let the House note these points: First, the Admiralty when first confronted with the financial problem in relation to the original design merely chose to reduce the scheme. Secondly, when the Reade money was in prospect they reverted to the original design. Thirdly, they proceeded to execute that design at once. This is very important, and is a matter of vital public concern. It was obvious that there were details of the original design which could, without doing violence to Mr. Reade's bequest, be postponed until a more favourable opportunity arrived. Let me give two illustrations. A chapel and an infirmary were to be built. Surely it ought to have been apparent to those responsible for this expenditure of money that they could have postponed building the chapel until the Reade money was available in 1940. When I speak of the chapel hon. Members, of course, think of a very modest building, but I am speaking of nothing of the sort. I speak of a chapel which costs £57,787. There was put into the chapel an organ which cost £7,098.

I beg the House to pause for a moment upon those two facts. What was the immediate urgency for a chapel? I am not against providing a chapel—far from it. After all, if you have 700 or 800 boys it is proper that you should provide for their spiritual needs. But I do say that that provision could have been postponed and arrangements made in a practical way meanwhile for using the school hall. I believe I am right in saying that even now during the week the school hall is being used for prayers. An expenditure of between £60,000 and £70,000 in the aggregate was embarked upon. I have no sort of criticism to make of the chapel. It is a magnificent structure; I was almost saying that it is a dream of a place. I speak for myself when I say that in my judgment it is for too elaborate a place for a school of this sort. In any case what was the point of having an organ worth £8,000 installed, an organ which challenges comparison with any not only in England but probably in Europe?

My argument is not against either of those things. My argument is that since there was the need for the postponing of expenditure, having, regard to the fact that the money would not be available until 1940, here was a chance of postponement. Take the case of the infirmary. I am not sure that I would agree as to the necessity for providing this very fully equipped infirmary. Of course I know that 700 or 800 boys in a, school must necessarily have small ailments and meet with accidents from time to time, but this infirmary is the most up-to-date thing. It has its X-ray apparatus and all the rest of it, though there is not a resident doctor on the premises. If a very serious accident takes place and a doctor has to be summoned, it must be a private doctor in Ipswich, some miles away. He may be at home when called up, or he may not. It would be an infinitely cheaper method for a motor ambulance to take a patient to the Hospital at Ipswich, and if necessary there would be ample money available to give a retainer to the Ipswich Hospital in return for this exceptional expense. The school hospital, as I have said, is completely equipped; it is the last word in equipment. I have no criticism to make of the provision of such a hospital, but I very much question whether it ought to have been done at this stage, even if it had to be done later, having regard to the fact that the Reade money was not immediately available.

The House will see in a moment what the consequence of this expenditure was in other directions. I come now to some details of expenditure. I ask the House to look at the statement of accounts up to April, 1935, in which the Auditor-General makes his own reflections on the expenditure. "The total capital expenditure on the school on 31st March, 1934, was £999,507, and the latest estimate of the total cost is £1,077,000. The original estimate was that the total cost of the school would be less than £750,000. Now we are in the region of £1,100,000. Take some of the details. The building contract was formally completed on 31st October, 1933, and the chartered surveyors employed by the Admiralty report the final cost to be £832,299, compared with the original contract price of 2629,585. The extra cost, £202,714, is stated to be due mainly to: erection of a chapel, £57,787; erection of 24 additional houses, £40,000.

Can anyone suppose that reasonable people, thinking clearly of what they were doing, would shift 800 boys out to an estate, far away from any town, and would fail to anticipate the need for providing houses for the masters? In any case 24 additional houses had to be provided. The houses, alone, apart from costs of road-making, drainage and so forth cost £40,262. Roads and so-forth cost £38,000 and drainage, subways, mains etc., cost £29,000. What astonishes me is this. They had the contractor on the spot and had given him a contract, at a given figure. It became necessary to spend more money on additional work. I speak subject to correction, but I believe I am right in saying that the extras amounted to a sum approaching £200,000. Will it be believed that that extra work, involving that vast sum, was actually given to the contractor, on the ground that he was there on the spot? The story is one which challenges the attention of this House.

It is not a party matter. It is not a matter in regard to which I indict the Civil Lord of the Admiralty or his colleagues. I am sure the hon. Gentleman is just as uncomfortable as I am about it and I am sorry, seeing that he has just entered upon his office, that he should be called upon to answer on behalf of the Government on this matter. I should have been glad to have seen the First Lord of the Admiralty in his place. But, however that may be, it is not, as I say, a party question. It is a matter of vital public interest regardless of party and I feel sure that when the public read the details of this transaction they cannot but be exceedingly disquieted in regard to the administration of these funds which are, after all, of a charitable nature. Let me read a further passage from the report of the Auditor-General:

"Capital expenditure outside the building contract amounted at 31st March, 1934, to £223,507, and expenditure subsequently incurred or anticipated will bring the total to £244,700." This total includes in round figures £90,000 for fees to architects And other consultants; "£31,000 for general equipment (including £7,098 for the chapel organ), £13,000 for laying out grounds and playing fields, £31,000 for building and developing the Home Farm and £24,000 for estate charges. As it appeared that prior Admiralty approval had not been obtained for certain items of expenditure under the above heads I inquired as to the authority under which the payments had been made and was informed that covering approval had since been given. I observe, moreover, that certain of the expenditure was incurred without obtaining competitive tenders and that furniture and other equipment to the amount of £5,300 was purchased, in part without competition, from the firm referred to in the next paragraph."

What does the next paragraph say? Here is a story of something which I think ought to incur the censure of every decent minded person:

"It was decided that on transfer of the school to Holbrook a new style of dressing the boys on week-days should be adopted and orders amounting to over £6,000 were placed without competition with a well-known Departmental Store for the initial supply of certain articles of the new outfit. It was subsequently found that miscalculations had been made in the sizes of articles required and further non-competitive orders amounting to some £4,300 were placed with the same firm."

That is to say, that £6,000 was spent upon misfits, and when they discovered that the articles were misfits they went back to the same firm and ordered another £4,300 worth. That is not the fault of the firm, but the point is the apparent lack of any consideration in the matter. The Report goes on to say:

"The clothing thus purchased for the complement of 860 boys included 2,400 raincoats, 5,000 pairs of shorts, some 4,500 each cellular and woollen vests and drawers and 11,300 pairs of stockings."

Lest I should be unjust to anybody let me say that, with some of my colleagues, I went to see this school a fortnight ago, and I am bound to say that I found the boys very well and neatly dressed. I have no complaint to make about the quality of the clothes which they were wearing during my visit, but I suggest that the details I have quoted indicate that this is a matter calling for some explanation. May I also mention that in his evidence before the Public Accounts Committee this year, the present director, who is not responsible for this business in any way, assured us that in his judgment this expenditure need not be nugatory or ineffective. It is fair to make that statement.

I turn now to the question of where this money comes from, and in dealing with this matter I am not going to use my own words but I am going to take some observations from the evidence of the witnesses who were examined on behalf of this Greenwich Foundation. I quote from the volume containing the first, second, and third Reports of the Committee on Public Accounts ordered by Parliament to be printed on 13th February. I take the evidence of Mr. Smallwood on page 395:

"Next year and until the Rea-de Estate comes in, we shall meet any unavoidable excess of expenditure over our income by reducing our contribution to the age pensions. On the assumption that the age pensions total amount remains the same, that will, of course, increase the proportion paid out of Navy Votes. The age pension, I believe, amount to a liability of about £260,000 a year out of which this year Greenwich Hospital is paying £70,000. I cannot say what we shall be able to pay next year, but if there is any variation that will reflect itself in what the Navy Votes pay."'

What are we to deduce from that statement? It means that because of the failure to postpone expenditure which was necessary to complete the full design until the Reade money was available in 1940, in order to find some of the money there has been to a degree—I must not use an unkind word, but I am not sure that the word "raid" is an unjust one—a raid upon certain pension funds and a consequential extra burden upon the Navy Votes. I ask the House, as a matter of fairness, do they think it is a just thing that a school of this kind, desirable and splendid as it is, should be proceeding with this scheme in the knowledge that the money will not be available till 1940 and, by the very process of proceeding with it, mulcting the Navy Votes in an extra expenditure that might easily have been avoided? I do not know who is going to justify it, but I have not heard it justified to my satisfaction yet, and I do not think I shall hear it justified either.

Let me turn to the effect upon the boys. The total number of boys who went to be educated at this school in 1928–29 was 930. The total number of boys in the new school in 1933–34 was 789. A commitment of nearly £1,100,000 has been entered into, and up to date, instead of providing an equal number of places compared with those provided in 1928–29, we have now got there only 789 boys. I ought to add that it is the intention that the full complement of the school shall ultimately be 1,120. That can only be realised by erecting extra buildings. You will have to build two extra hostels, and if they are built, they must necessarily be buildings in keeping with the rest of the buildings, otherwise you will ruin the whole design, but if you build the two extra hostels comparable in design with the present buildings, I wonder what the expense is going to be. The cost will be, not £1,100,000, but it might easily be substantially more.

Again, I apologise for detaining the House, but this is a matter of first-class importance. I have seen the buildings, and I venture to say that there is not a more magnificent school, either public school or any other school, in any part of the country. It is a magnificent structure. After all, it ought to be. I could build a magnificent structure myself for £1,000,000. Give me the money, and I will design a place, or get someone to do it for me, and if I cannot do it myself, there is a pretty good margin out of this £1,100,000 with which to employ an architect to do it. It is a wonderful place. It is, in the first place, something in keeping with the intentions of that good, generous donor, Mr. Reade, and secondly—and I say this quite willingly—it indicates the generous intentions of those who designed this building in relation to the provision for the boys who would attend the school. But when I have said that, I must say one or two other things as well, and I doubt whether, having got your £1,100,000 to spend, you could still justify this expenditure.

There are going to the school every term or even more often a number of new boys. Those who have experience of teaching in schools will know that it is not at all a desirable thing to have a new stream of boys coming in two or three or more times in the year. I ought also to add in fairness that the new boys are very carefully provided for on the physical side. Some 300 of them go into a quarantine hostel, called Nelson House, in a school within a school, with proper medical attention, with their teeth, their eyes, and so on attended to, and I have no criticism to offer on that score; I should say also that on the average the boys go in at the age of 12. On the other hand they go out, not after a given period of time, but as the Navy requires them, and so you have not spent £1,100,000 in providing a school of a secondary character or of a public school character with a definite course or curriculum covering a period of time. Not only are they coming in irregularly, but they are going out irregularly, and the consequence is that, in my judgment, far too much money has been spent upon the school, having regard to the nature of the function which the school is to perform.

Let the House notice also on what scale this school is staffed. There is a Matron, a very excellent lady, receiving £350 to £450 a year, with furnished residence and an allowance of £107 for provisions and servants; there is an assistant matron, receiving £180 to £220 a year, with furnished residence and an allowance of £107 for provisions and servants; there is a house sister, receiving £110 to £135; there are 10 house sisters receiving a little less; there are two infirmary sisters and three staff nurses. All that is in this year's Estimates. Let us pause for a moment. Here is a staff of considerable size to deal with 800 boys. It is a colossal expenditure, and I will say more: it is an unjustifiable expenditure. Other arrangements might and should have been made for providing for the physical well-being of these boys without this vast scale of expenditure. They are all most excellent people, and I am not saying a word against any of them.

Let us look at the spiritual provision for these boys. There is a chaplain, with an unfurnished residence, who receives £928 a year. There is an asterisk against this item, and the footnote says that he is an officer who receives the full pay and allowances of his rank. The same applies to the assistant chaplain, also with an unfurnished residence, and his allowance is £470. In addition to that, there is a Methodist Minister for the Nonconformist boys, and there is also a Roman Catholic priest. That would be a pretty stiff proposition if there it stood. The chapel is a magnificent structure which you would not expect to find in any place except where there were almost unlimited riches. It is a perfect dream. Lovely, I admit; very attractive, I admit, but utterly indefensible, at least until the Reade money was available in 1940. There are also a superintendent with £800, a chief officer, an assistant chief officer, a headmaster, divisional masters, with unfurnished residences. There are 10 assistant masters, with allowances. There are 23 assistant masters in addition to these. There are a temporary teacher, a paymaster and an assistant paymaster. The people who embarked on this thing just acted as if they had carte blanche. I do not want to use unkind terms, but, if this kind of provision were made in other parts of the country by other people, the roof of this House would be off. I wonder what would have happened if it had been done in Poplar. The thing is intolerable.

What is the finding of our Public Accounts Committee in this matter? I challenge the House to say that we have exceeded in our judgment the merits of the case. We say:

"On reviewing the evidence before them, Your Committee have come to the conclusion that the conception and carrying out of the plans for the new school were marked by insufficient regard for the effect on the accommodation provided, and on the financial resources of Greenwich Hospital and its other obligations."

I have taken a good deal of time discussing this matter, but it was necessary in the public interest that it should be ventilated. My colleagues and I on the Public Accounts Committee have discussed this matter two years running, and we have devoted one whole sitting to it. Speaking for myself—I do not commit my colleagues—I am not satisfied now that I know the whole of this story. I am not satisfied now that this House has access to all the information which it should possess. I might have asked my hon Friends here to put down a Motion for the appointment of a Select Committee. I have not done that, because I did not want to deal with this in a party way, but I do suggest to the Government, not as a Member of the Opposition, that a Select Committee would not be inappropriate in discussing this matter. There should be somebody who has plenty of time to devote to it; you cannot devote enough time to it in the Public Accounts Committee.

Lest I be deemed unfair, let me pay this tribute to the school. I met the officers of the school, and they treated me and my colleagues with the utmost courtesy, and I am glad to acknowledge it. I am an old teacher, and I flatter myself that I know a school when I see it, and I am bound to say from my observation of the school that it is equipped in a most excellent way, that it is staffed by people who desire to and who do perform to the utmost of their power all that is possible in the educational interests of the boys. I could criticise it, but the Board of Education's inspector has already done that. The manual instruction really requires attention. There is a tendency to regiment the boys a little too much, and a slight danger of their individuality being suppressed by the over-emphasis on routine. I do not think that there is quite enough opportunity for the boy to express himself in his own individual way. But these are small criticisms. On the whole, it is a magnificent place and a splendid school, and all there, I am quite sure, wish to do their best by the boys.

But that does not absolve us from saying that the financial arrangements in connection with this school leave a good deal to be desired. I will not put it higher than that; I could, but I will not. When public funds such as these are being administered on behalf of interested people, it is right and proper that the nation at large should feel absolute assurance that the very best economy is being practised in connection with the administration of the money. I hope that I have not spoken too strongly or unkindly, but I deem it my duty as a member of the Public Accounts Committee and of this House to call attention to what I am quite sure is something that requires ventilation.

The hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones) has given a very detailed and, I am quite certain, a very accurate account of the history of this school and, as far as we know it on the Public Accounts Committee, of the history of the construction of the school. I do not propose to go over the ground that he has already covered, but I would like to ask the Minister who is going to reply whether the following facts can be considered. It seems to me obvious that there has not been adequate supervision over the financial arrangements in connection with the construction of this school, and there are certain elements in the whole thing which probably of themselves would tend to make it not too easy and to make it quite possible that there should not be proper control. First of all, there is the benefactor who has given a large sum of money, and who no doubt had ideas in his own mind as to what, he wanted to achieve; and no doubt that to some extent was a guiding influence and rightly a guiding influence. But then there are other influences. There are the funds which Greenwich Hospital had available, but in addition they had obligations to these age pensions. The whole thing is mixed up.

It seems to me that if we want to get it properly tidied up in future it is highly desirable that the whole of these financial arrangements should be considered. Would it not be possible to come to some definite arrangements with Greenwich Hospital whereby a certain proportion of their funds remained available to them for school purposes and certain other charitable objects for which the funds were originally endowed, to separate entirely the age pensions by some agreement as to what proportion the hospital funds can afford to bear in future, and to transfer the balance for all time to the Navy Vote. I cannot see how the present arrangement can possibly continue to be satisfactory.

As regards the school, like the hon. Member for Caerphilly, I cannot help regretting that when this school was being put up sufficient attention was not paid to the fact that fewer boys would be accommodated than were originally accommodated in Greenwich. We have heard that there are certain tests which the boys have to pass and that lately there has not been a sufficiently large number passing the test for the room available. That is not very convincing, because one cannot help feeling that these tests should be to some extent in accordance with the room available, and that if the room was not available the tests should be more severe. We have also learned that the cost of the boys during the first year of the opening of the new school, which was considerably higher than before, is being reduced. I do not want to say a word against adequate economy, but I should be sorry to think that we have spent all the money which we have spent on making this beautiful building if the only economies were at the expense of the boys who go to the school afterwards.

It occurred to the Members of the Public Accounts Committee when going through these accounts that reasonable precautions had not been taken with regard to the ultimate cost under the heading of capital. The original plan and, in fact, the appointment of the architect were dependent upon the school being built for a certain sum. When the estimates came in, we have been told, they were beyond the figure that was originally contemplated, and the school was started on amended plans and an amended figure. As time went on, however, more money was spent. There is one thing that strikes me as strange. It is that very little attention apparently has been given to maintenance costs. While it may be true that certain unforeseen things happen that necessitate extra capital expenditure, there does not seem to have been any real thought given to the ever-increasing running costs of the school. Therefore, there is not only the large capital sum that has been spent, but there is the enormous figure which it is going to cost to maintain it in an efficient manner. The whole outlook of those who have been responsible for the school seems to suggest that they have lost a sense of proportion. The number of pupils has been reduced, but the number of staff has been enormously increased, and the cost of running per boy per annum, taking all the expenses, has gone up considerably, although, it is true, it has fallen slightly since the first period of accounts.

I feel that this way of spending money ought to be looked into very closely. It appears that the money was spent first and that then the Treasury were consulted. I should have thought that the Treasury would have kept a closer hand upon those responsible and would not have waited until this huge sum of money had been spent before awakening to the fact that a greater sum had actually been spent than it was anticipated would be spent. It strikes me that someone is very much to blame for the extravagant and loose way in which money has been disbursed. I do not wish to emphasise the many points that one could emphasise in this connection, but I will give the House one example. In the ordering of the clothes that were wanted for the pupils of the school, there was not even sufficient attention given to the sizes of the articles that were wanted. A large number were ordered and for the time being they cannot be used. It is said that they will be ultimately used, and that was the mentality in which apparently the whole of this scheme was carried out. I would ask that the Admiralty should go into this matter very thoroughly, because I feel that when money is being spent, although a large amount of it has been given by a generous benefactor, there is no reason why it should not be spent to the best possible advantage. I am sure that the Treasury and the Admiralty must recognise that if they had to deal with this matter again greater precautions would be taken. I hope that the observations of the Public Accounts Committee will be taken very much to heart and that we shall see less of this extravagant way of spending money.

I do not think that anyone will complain of the tone and temper with which the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Morgan Jones) has approached this problem. Indeed, it is only right and proper that the Public Accounts Committee should act in the way he represented as the watch-dog for the taxpayer. This is not, however, a very simple question. It is a very peculiar and interesting old charity with a long history, which it would be out of place to discuss now at any great length. It dates back to William and Mary in 1694, and it has done a great work during the intervening years. Our concern to-day is with Greenwich Hospital School—that is the first point—and the second is this quite peculiar arrangement with regard to age pensions. I confess that a few weeks ago I was not aware of the peculiar position of these age pensioners, and I doubt whether many of my hon. Friends are aware of them, and perhaps the House will bear with me if I explain them. The key point which it is well to remember, is that these old charities—some hon. Members may know the history of Christ's Hospital—have been for a good many years past moving their schools from the more crowded districts of London into the countryside, and I could quote figures from other schools to show that the cost in this case is not quite as excessive as the hon. Member for Caerphilly has suggested.

I think we are all agreed that the move to the country was essential and overdue. The criticism is directed towards the cost, the capital cost and the inevitable running costs, as the hon. Member for Harrow (Sir I. Salmon) has pointed out. This business has gone on during five Governments, and at least five of my predecessors, including the hon. Member who is now Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) were in some way connected with it. The main job was done during the years 1925 to 1929. As is to be seen from the accounts, the total estimates this year are about £221,000 and the expenditure £216,000, leaving a balance of just under £5,000. There is a net saving on the previous year of £11,605. The essence of the whole question is, Was Holbrook School an extravagant venture? The hon. Member for Caerphilly says nobody is really prepared to defend the position, and I certainly shall not stand here and defend every individual item, but let us look at the whole facts. The actual cost of the school was £1,077,000. The running costs are £78,000 a year, which is £91 a head for the 860 boys who were there last year, a saving, again, on the previous year of over £6,000. The cost in the last year of Greenwich, in those more contracted quarters, was £61,000 for 821 boys, the figure for 1932, though previously there was a larger number of boys, or £74 per head. How is the difference of about £18,000 a year in running costs made up? It is accounted for by a variety of reasons. First, there was the introduction of the house system, familiar to all those who have been at some of the public and secondary schools, which necessitated house masters and, incidentally, house matrons.

There was also extra expenditure on what the hon. Member for Caerphilly calls the infirmary, but what I should call adequate medical and dental provision for the children. At Greenwich, for a thousand boys, there was a part-time dentist who was paid £75 a year. I think it will be agreed that that provision was inadequate. The expenditure in the first year in this direction—it is these small items that matter so much—amounted to something like ten times £75. The reason for that—and this occurs right the way through the story—is that a great many dental defects were found in the children when they were moved out, and attention had to be directed immediately to this problem. The expenditure now is half that figure, about £350. At Greenwich the children were given 2½ square meals a day, and now they are given three square meals a day.

Did the hon. Member say the dental expenditure was now half?

The figure of £750 come down to something like £350. Another item of expenditure is for grounds and playfields. There was 800 acres left by this generous benefactor, and some of the fields, which had previously been ordinary hayfields, could not provide a good wicket or be used immediately for football; naturally, they had to be adapted, and they have to be kept up, and that runs into an extra figure of about £1,500 a year. Then there is certain heating, lighting and sanitation work, which involves an additional annual cost, because the whole estate extends over some half mile and there is a considerable increase in general overheads. Most of these overheads—the house system, with the extra provision as to housemasters, medical and dental treatment, food and so on—are hardly the expenditure which I should have expected my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly to object to to any great extent.

And I did not.

I do not think any hon. Member opposite, or elsewhere, would take serious objection to boys being kept in proper health and having proper food and proper recreation. I do not think that any hon. Member with a knowledge of education will deny that in the case of a residential school in the countryside there is a need of importing and providing services which are at hand in a great urban community. These children when sick were sent to the Seamen's Hospital at Greenwich at a cost of 2s. a day. Now they are out in the countryside, and I do not think there is any hon. Member with any knowledge of the old-fashioned type of industrial school, with 60 to a class and in cramped conditions—nobody has been more eloquent in condemning such conditions than the hon. Member for Caerphilly—who will deny that it would have been criminal folly to reproduce those conditions in the new environment in the country. So far, I think, we are all more or less agreed. Now we come to the estimates and contracts, and the cuttings-out and additions; and in some cases, I am afraid, there were some definite under estimates. After a very careful examination of these figures and of the buildings on the spot I must make this confession—and perhaps I am now taking on the work of the Public Accounts Committee—that I cannot trace any superfluous or extravagant expenditure, but I think there is room for a very legitimate difference of opinion on individual items. I am prepared to take the chapel as an example. There was one figure mentioned by the hon. Member. I think that sometimes he dramatised the situation. He said: "£90,000 for fees." I am informed, and I have had it confirmed that that is the regular amount, eleven per cent., which is charged both by Government and outside firms. It is the total commission. Another expenditure which might have been foreseen was really the result of the very peculiar position at Holbrook. A sum of £25,000 had to be expended, and I think it was inevitable, on the sea wall, repairing the dilapidated condition of the farm buildings and some of the houses. We were not taking over in this case an up-to-date site, as was the case with Christ's Hospital, in Sussex. If hon. Members will look at the cost per head and compare it with similar types of schools which have moved out to the country, they will not find the figure excessive. I am referring both to the capital cost and the cost per head as compared with comparable schools which have moved from urban centres in London to the country.

I have nothing but praise for my predecessors. This was an extremely difficult job, and has taken 15 or 16 years. The importunity with which they pursued the problem of getting the school built is a credit to all parties, and has resulted in the erection of this very simple and, in essence, very beautiful school. We can never forget the patriotism which led Mr. Reade, a New Zealander, to hand over this estate of some 800 acres, and a legacy which by 1940 will have amounted to about £750,000. The capital to provide for this school was derived from three main sources. There was the surplus income from Greenwich Hospital for over 10 years, which amounted to £422,000; then there were three Prize Fund grants, which amounted to £231,000, and the re- maining capital realised from loans falling in, and so on, which amounted to £424,000. That is how this £1,000,000 has been realised. In 1940 or thereabouts, this bequest will become due, and the extra £750,000 will, if confidence remains the same in the country, bring in a reasonable income to the hospital.

I come to the thorny point of the age pensions. Age pensions were based, before 1919, on need. It means that the man of 55 gets 5d. a day and at 65 he gets 9d. a day if he is in receipt of the ordinary service pension. Up to 1919 the pensions were given on a needs basis and not on a basis of right. After the report of the Jerram Committee, the Army, Navy and Air Force received this additional 'age pension as a contractual right. It is no longer a selective benefit, but, if you like, may be regarded as an addition to wages. It is a change from a charitable award to a covenanted Naval emolument. There is all the difference in the world between them. Every soldier and every airman gets this emolument from the Army Vote and the Air Vote. In the case of the Navy, for a considerable number of years this old charity has supplemented them to the tune of something like £100,000 a year. The reason why this question of the school has become something more of a public matter than it might have been, is that it is a charity under an Act of Parliament. The accounts are presented each year, generally as a matter of form. In the last two years the pension contribution of over £100,000 has been reduced to £70,000, and the consequence is that there has been an extra charge of £30,000 or £40,000 on the Navy Vote.

The hon. Member for Gravesend (Mr. Albery), in a very helpful suggestion, asked whether is was not time that the whole matter was cleared up and made a little more definite. I entirely agree, and I think the hon. Member for Aberdare will also agree, that it is high time that the matter was cleared up. There is no particular reason why this added amount should be given each year. I would remind the House that there are three ways of amending the position. You can either give a fixed sum, in which ease it would be a lower figure; you can take it over entirely by the State—in other words, the Navy would bear the whole of the extra age pension of the Army and the Air Force—or you can say: "We will give you what we can afford." After looking through the previous history, there is no question, so far as I can see, of any specific amount, whether of £70,000 or £100,000, being definitely laid down in any arrangement between the Treasury and the Admiralty. That is all I have to say on the question of the age pension.

I have one or two remarks about the rest of the finances. The year 1929 was that in which Lord Snowden made the issue of £300,000,000 of war loan stock including a conversion from 5½ per cent. to 5 per cent. It was also the year of the death of Mr. Reade, and the year when payments began to fall in for the school. For several years before 1929 there had been a surplus Greenwich Hospital income of some £40,000 a year, and it was that accumulated surplus which made it possible to do these things. There would have been £7,000 a year surplus if it had not been for the extra expenditure and reduced interest. Since 1929, the rates of interest have fallen, and this has reduced the income of Greenwich Hospital by. £20,000 a year. That is a very considerable amount.

That figure was mentioned in the Public Accounts Committee and there was discussion about it. I ought to say that the reduction of £20,000 was not entirely accepted as being due to the conversion.

I have read the minutes very carefully, and the whole of that £20,000 is, I am still persuaded, due to reduced rates of interest. The expenditure of the school has gone up by something like £18,500 a year and other benefits by £8,000 a year. There is thus a total increased burden on the charity of something like £47,000, and at the same moment you have this remaining surplus of £7,000 which makes a total deficit of £40,000, which has been met by reducing the contribution for the age pensions from £110,000 or thereabouts to £70,000. I think hon. Members will agree that that was an unavoidable reduction. The age pension is no longer a charitable benefit from Greenwich Hospital. Greenwich Hospital contributes, to what is now a State contract, a sum which it can afford. That is why the contribution has decreased from over £100,000 to £70,000.

This school, as every Member who has spoken agrees, is a magnificent place. I have been interested for years in education, particularly of boys who go to this kind of school, and I have inspected it as carefully as I can. I agree with other hon. Members that it is a first-class institution from top to bottom. There are small points which we might criticise, such as the hon. Member for Caerphilly has criticised. A point struck me about the manual training centre. There are other points about the education which are not under discussion. The personnel of the Navy is not 150,000 but more like 100,000. Every year from this school some 200 boys go out, fit and well educated, the finest type that you can find, to join the Navy. I did not see the boys with raincoats on; I saw them with nothing on. I saw them going into the swimming-bath just when the weather was changing, and when they were brown, and I can assure the House that in the case of this charity the country is getting very good value for its money. Moreover, this is only the start; the school is in its very early days. Some hon. Members were present at the Naval Review, and saw the rockets and illuminations—the spectacular side; but I would like to remind the House that behind all this is the human factor of the personnel of the Navy. This money was not spent for any man's aggrandizement; it was spent on youth, and I do not think there could be any better expenditure. This is a charity, and a charity must be well administered. It is no good going back to the type of the old industrial school; you want to get away from that.

I hope that this work reflects some of the consideration of the Board of Admiralty for the lower deck. The first years of such a place are bound to be experimental, and I am quite persuaded—and in this I think I shall have the agreement of my immediate predecessor, who was just as keen on this project as any other of my predecessors—that rigorous economies can now be pursued without doing injury to the main edifice and the main character of the school. These economies have started, and personally I hope they will continue. At any rate, as long as I have anything to do with the administration I shall make it my business to see that they are continued, so that we may get maximum value for this expenditure. I believe that this school is going to leave a mark on education. I do not think that that is putting it too high. But, at the same time, I am not blind to the criticisms which the hon. Member for Harrow and the hon. Member for Gravesend have implied. All I can say is that, as long as this matter is under my care and administration, I shall see that two main lines are followed—the one that the school continues in this great pioneer educational adventure on which it has started, and the other that the costs are reduced and that the expenditure and running costs are rigorously examined year by year, so that we may get full value for the money which has been spent.

I do not propose to pursue this matter at any length. I rise simply to say that I and my predecessors feel that we should have been there instead of the hon. Gentleman to conduct the defence against the charge which has been made in connection with this school. The House is indebted to the hon. Gentleman for the very frank statement which he has made. This is his first statement in his new office, and I must say that he has not had a very easy task in undertaking the defence against charges, which as he rightly said, have been made against four or five of his predecessors in the office which he now occupies. I should like to point out, without attempting to apportion blame to anyone, that I and my colleagues in the Government of 1929–31 came in in the middle of this question. The preliminary work, the planning and, indeed, the building of the school, had commenced before we came in, and the work was completed after we left. I do not say that in any way to excuse us from any responsibility which might rest upon us.

As the hon. Gentleman has rightly said, the school is a magnificent school. It has cost a considerable amount of money. I am not sure, but I think it was my colleagues on the Board of Admiralty at the time I was there who were really responsible for the construction of the chapel, or rather, for adding the work which was left out in 1927, and for going on with the completed scheme. We did that because we felt that it was in accordance with the bequest of the late Mr. Reade, who, as has been already said, was a very great benefactor of the Greenwich Hospital School. We felt that the completed scheme should be proceeded with. We took the very best advice as to the best methods of proceeding with the work, and, whatever responsibility might be laid at the door of any previous Board of Admiralty, we must take our responsibility in the matter. I am not going to enter into the detailed work of the last three or four years; the hon. Gentleman has dealt with it very fully. I simply conclude by saying, and I am requested by my hon. Friend to say, that, quite apart from anything he has said concerning the capital cost and the lavish expenditure on the building, he and others will watch with interest the economies to which the Civil Lord has referred, and will see that they are fully carried out. It is not our intention to divide the House on this matter, but simply to say that it will receive our attention as far as the future administration is concerned.