Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Wednesday, 11th March, 1936.

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

Private Business

Brighton Marine Palace and Pier Bill,

South Essex Waterworks Bill,

As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.

Surrey County Council Bill (by Order),

Read a Second time, and committed.

Oral Answers To Questions

Argentine Railways (British Investors)

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is aware that on 11th March the Argentine Government is conferring in Buenos Ayres with meat exporters about the lapsing or renewal of the Anglo-Argentine Trade Agreement; and will he, to prevent misunderstanding, request the Argentine Government to inform meat exporters that British public opinion is unfavourable to the admission of Argentine beef into Britain until after the grievances of the Anglo-Argentine railways have been dealt with in a manner satisfactory to British investors?

I have no official information that such a conference is to be held. As regards the question of the continuance of the trade agreement, I have nothing to add to the reply returned by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams) on 6th February.

Is the Noble Lord aware that until the confidence of British investors is re-established in Argentine good faith, the export of British railway materials for developing the Argentine railways will be seriously diminished?

Locarno Treaty

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is in a position to ascertain whether the German Government is prepared, in connection with its offer contained in the memorandum communicated by the German Government to His Majesty's Government on Saturday, 7th March, 1936, to negotiate new agreements for the establishment of a system of European security, to include in the proposed nonaggression pact Austria and Czechoslovakia?

I would refer my hon. Friend to the statement made by my right hon. Friend in the House last Monday and to the reply given on the same day to a supplementary question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham, to which I have nothing to add.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any statement to make with reference to the situation resulting from Germany's unilateral repudiation of the Treaty of Locarno?

I would refer the hon. Member to the statement made by my right hon. Friend on Monday last and to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the course of the Debate yesterday, to which I have nothing to add.

Is the Noble Lord able to say in what building the Council will meet in London?

I am afraid I cannot answer that question yet.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the permanent Conciliation Commission provided for under the Treaties of Locarno has ever been set up; and who are now its members?

I understand that the permanent Conciliation Commissions, referred to in Article 3 of the Locarno Treaty of Mutual Guarantee and provided for in the four Arbitration Conventions signed at the same time as that treaty, were subsequently set up. My right hon. Friend has, however, no information to show who are now the members of these commissions.

In view of the considerable importance of this question, could the Noble Lord say who are the members of the Commission which is relied upon to arbitrate in the case of a breach of the Locarno Treaty?

I would remind the hon. Member that the actual composition of these Conciliation Committees which have to deal with disputes between two foreign Governments is not a matter of direct concern to His Majesty's Government, as they are included in the subsidiary agreements to which His Majesty's Government were not a signatory.

In view of the fact that the recent German action has been regarded more as a breach of the Locarno Treaty than of any prior engagements, would it not be right that machinery set up for conciliation under the Locarno Treaty rather than under prior obligations under the League of Nations would be more proper machinery for arbitrating on the issue?

In his original question the hon. Member asked who are now the members of this commission, and I have answered that question.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has had under consideration the second paragraph of Article 1, Part I, of the Locarno Arbitration Convention between Germany and France; whether he is aware that this paragraph states that the necessity to refer disputes to arbitration does not apply to disputes arising out of events prior to the present Convention and belonging to the past; and whether this qualification to the Convention has ever been the subject of elucidation or interpretation?

The answers to the first and second parts of the question are Yes, Sir. As regards the third part of the question I am not aware that the provision has been the subject of any international interpretation.

In view of the great ambiguity of this Clause in the Convention, and in view of the fact that it has never been interpreted and that nobody knows what it means, if it means anything, will the Noble Lord give it some consideration in the Foreign Office, and will he give the House some information at a later date if I put down another question?

I would refer the hon. Member to a statement made by the then Foreign Secretary in the course of the Debate on 18th November, 1925, from which he will be able to get some information.

Did that statement purport to interpret this Clause in the Treaty?

I think the hon. Member had better look at it.

45.

asked the Prime Minister whether he will consider the desirability of informing the French Government that in the event of France being unwilling to co-operate fully with the British and other Governments, members of the League of Nations, in imposing sanctions in the Italo-Abyssinian dispute, it is unlikely that British public opinion could be relied on to support British assistance to France if required under the Locarno Treaties?

I see no reason to inform the French Government of what the attitude of His Majesty's Government might be in circumstances which have not arisen and, it is to be hoped, may not arise.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it will be made clear in any negotiations that may take place that collective security must operate everywhere, and not only against Germany?

Does my right hon. Friend not consider that to make the honouring of Great Britain's Treaty obligations a subject for bargaining, as the hon. Gentleman opposite suggests, would be wholly dishonourable?

Is my right hon. Friend aware that in British public opinion sanctions do nothing to achieve peace?

Royal Navy

Sabotage

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty the estimated cost of making good the recent different acts of sabotage in the dockyards?

The cost of making good the damage was in every case insignificant, but it will be obvious that this is no measure of the seriousness of the consequences which might have resulted.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether, so far as his records show, there have been recently any acts of sabotage in private dockyards carrying out Admiralty work?

One act, n which sabotage is possible, has recently occurred in a private dockyard carrying out Admiralty work and is under investigation.

10.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether he can make a statement that no naval ratings have been concerned in recent acts of sabotage in His Majesty's ships and so reassure public opinion that these acts do not represent any state of grievance or discontent among naval ratings?

Investigations do not reveal the responsibility for the damage. There is no reason whatever to believe that any state of grievance or discontent exists among naval ratings or dockyard men.

Stokers (Chest Diseases)

11.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether in view of the considerable number of stokers who have been discharged from the Royal Navy in recent years on account of diseases of the chest, he will cause a special inquiry to be made as to the possibility of improving the conditions under which stokers have to work in order to minimise the risk to which their health is exposed?

I can assure the hon. Member that constant consideration is given to improving the conditions under which Naval personnel work and live. No special inquiry is considered to be necessary.

Rosyth Dockyard

12.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether his attention has been called to the recent speech of the officer commanding, Coast of Scotland, in which he expressed the hope that extensions would take place in Rosyth dockyard; whether there is any contemplated development at the dockyard; and whether this will also affect the destroyer base at Port Edgar?

My attention has been called to this speech of which the hon. Member has sent me a copy, but I have at present nothing to add to the answer given to him on 18th December last.

In view of the fact that a certain clearance of the basin of the harbour at Port Edgar has taken place, is there no indication there of some early use being made of this harbour?

I cannot say anything further at the present moment.

Oil Tankers (Charters)

13.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether, in letting out Admiralty oil tankers on charter the Admiralty is in competition with other owners; and, if not, on what basis are the charter prices fixed?

When Admiralty oilers are let out on charter all possible care is taken to ensure that the rates ruling on the market for similar freights are not undercut. The actual rates obtained are settled by negotiation in the usual way.

Does that mean there is actually no basis of competition at all?

I do not know what the right hon. Gentleman means by that.

When vessels are let out on charter, is it done by open competition in the charter market?

It is done in the ordinary way by brokers.

14.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty to whom the charter commission paid in respect of Admiralty oil tankers chartered to private firms is paid or whether this commission is a part of the revenue of the Admiralty?

In accordance with the usual custom of the trade, charter commission in respect of Admiralty oil tankers chartered to private firms is paid to the brokers through whom the charters are negotiated. It is not therefore part of the revenue of the Admiralty.

Kenya-Abyssinian Frontier

15.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the present tribal relations on the Kenya-Abyssinian frontier are satisfactory; and can he state the last occasion on which any British subjects were seized by Abyssinians on this frontier and taken into Abyssinia?

On the whole I consider that conditions are satisfactory. With regard to the second part of the question, the latest occasion of which I have any information was in September, 1933.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether any action was taken in that case?

I think that in that particular case five children were kidnapped, but steps were taken to restore those children. That was the last case, in 1933.

Are the local tribes now co-operating to improve the conditions?

I made inquiries and I have given the answer with regard to children. If the hon. Member will put down a question on the details, I will see whether I can get them.

North Charterland Exploration Company (1910), Limited

17.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been drawn to a memorial addressed to him, which has been published in the annual report of the North Charterland Exploration Company (1910), Limited, in which the signatories express their belief that when the directors of the company acquiesced in the agreement of 1926 they were not fully cognisant of the position, and urge that the Crown ought therefore to make reasonable compensation to the company for the land, taken under the Order in Council of 1928, for native reserves; whether the company's representatives were in a position to acquaint themselves fully with the position at the time; and whether he will refuse to grant public money for the private losses of this company?

I have received the memorial which expresses views substantially at variance with the findings of Lord. Maugham who inquired into this case. The answer to the last part of the question is in the affirmative.

Palestine

Dead Sea Salts Concession

18.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that negotiations are in progress for an agreement between Palestine Potash, Limited, and the Franco-German Potash Cartel; and whether His Majesty's Government has given its assent to such an agreement which would appear to be in violation of the terms under which the Dead Sea salts concession was granted to Messrs. Novoimesky and Tulloch?

I am aware of the negotiations to which my hon, and gallant Friend refers. The company were informed that the Governments of Palestine and Trans-Jordan concurred in the terms of the proposed agreement.

Does this agreement provide for any fixation of prices or not?

It is a sort of cartel agreement. If my hon. and gallant Friend would like to put down another question I will answer it, but I will also send him a copy of the agreement.

Surely this agreement is in direct contradiction to Clause 9 of the Dead Sea Concession?

Our advice is that it is not.

Constitution

16.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what is the present position with regard to the establishment of a legislative council in Palestine; and whether he would agree to set up a commission to inquire into the constitutional problem in Palestine before such a step is taken?

The substance of the Government's proposals has been communicated by the High Commissioner to the Arab and Jewish leaders. In reply to the second part of the question, I do not feel that the appointment of a commission would now be justified. In any event, no further step can be taken until I have received from the High Commissioner a final report, which he is now submitting, on the reception given by leaders in Palestine to the Government's proposals.

Will the right hon. Gentleman, on receipt of the communication he is awaiting, reconsider the whole question in the light of that communication?

No, on receipt of the communication the Government must be influenced by the advice of the High Commissioner.

Would my right hon. Friend consider the setting up of such a commission as contrary to Government pledges, and may I ask whether the legislative council would have power to discuss either the mandate or emigration or land settlement?

In regard to the first part of the question, undoubtedly it would be regarded as absolutely contrary to every pledge given. With regard to the latter part of the question, the mandate would not be a subject for consideration by the legislative council; land questions and immigration could be discussed, but the ultimate authority will remain with the High Commissioner.

Before the right hon. Gentleman comes to a final decision on this very thorny problem will he wait till there has been a discussion in this House of Commons so that the opinion of this House can be heard on the subject?

My hon. Friend knows the difficulties there are in that connection, but I can give him this assurance that so far as I am advised at the moment it is not likely that final steps will be taken until the House will have had an opportunity to discuss the subject on the Colonial Office Vote if it so desires.

Liquor Licences

21.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the reduction of licence fees in Palestine since 1st January, 1934, has resulted in a large increase in the production of wines, and that the increase in the production and sale of these alcoholic beverages is resented by the Mohammedan majority of the population whose religion forbids the use of intoxicants; and whether he will give an assurance that no further licences will be issued?

I would invite the hon. Member's attention to a reply given on 4th March to the hon. Member for Coatbridge (Mr. Barr). I am not aware that the production or sale of wine in Palestine is resented by the majority of the population. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative; but the hon. Member may be assured that the number of retail licences for the sale of intoxicating liquors is at all times strictly limited.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that numerous protests have been made by the Mohammedan community to the High Commissioner with respect to this very matter?

No, I am not aware of that, and I am not aware that there is any danger in connection with the sale of intoxicating liquors. On the contrary, the figures to which the hon. Member refers are only about one-third of those for 1930, notwithstanding the increase in the population.

Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether this wine is both good wine and cheap wine?

I am sure if the hon. Member will consult with the hon. Member who put the original question and they will taste the wine, they will be able to judge.

Malaya (Telephone Service)

20.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the fact that it is possible to telephone from Paris to Saigon or from Holland to the Dutch East Indies, he is taking any steps to secure the establishment of telephonic communication between London and Malaya; and, if so, what steps he proposes to take?

Yes, Sir, steps are being taken to establish telephonic communication between London and Malaya, and the service will be opened as soon as the necessary equipment, which is on order, can be installed in Malaya.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say what the cost of this will be?

I could not without notice.

Aviation

Internationalisation

22.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air, whether, before entering into any long-term agreement with Imperial Airways, a condition will be laid down reserving the right to support a proposal for the internationalisation of civil aviation?

Existing agreements have in no way precluded His Majesty's Government from giving full consideration to this or any similar proposal in regard to civil aviation; and the conclusion of new agreements would in no way prejudice the position in the future.

"City Of Khartoum"

24.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he is aware that the Inspector of Accidents of the Air Ministry stated on 9th March, during the inquest at Alexandria on the victims of the "City of Khartoum," that the primary cause of this accident was shortage of petrol, and for what reason petrol was removed from the machine before the take-off; and whether he is taking any action to prevent Imperial Airways from working on such a narrow margin of safety in view of the evidence given by the Inspector of Accidents?

As regards the first part of the question, I shall not be in a position to make any statement as to the circumstances until my Noble Friend has received the report of the Inspector of Accidents on his investigation. As regards the second part, Imperial Airways have (with Air Ministry approval) increased the tankage of the two sister flying-boats to the "City of Khartoum" now in service in the Mediterranean, thus allowing a larger margin of safety.

Cannot my right hon. Friend either confirm or deny the allegation in this question?

I have answered the question.

When the inquiry has been completed, will my right hon. Friend authorise the publication of the verbatim report of the proceedings, so that Members may know what was actually said in the course of this investigation?

As the House knows, the policy usually followed has been to publish only the conclusions of the Inspector of Accidents because if a full report were published it would inevitably hamper investigations and restrict their scope. My Noble Friend is satisfied that it is better that that policy should be maintained, but in the special circumstances of this case he has decided that the full report should, exceptionally, be made public.

Has my right hon. Friend noticed that the Inspector of Accidents said at the inquest that he had not yet all the technical information he desired and in view of that statement will he change his proposal not to make strenuous efforts to raise and inspect the hull?

We have only the information which has appeared in the Press.

Can my right hon. Friend say whether any of the Calcutta type of aircraft are at present used on this service?

To what extent has the reserve tankage been increased?

To an extent which will give a sufficient margin.

What is the amount?

I could not say without notice.

Proposed North Atlantic Service

25.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether his attention has been called to the transfer of 534 acres from the Government of Nova Scotia to the Irish Transatlantic Corporation, Limited, conveniently situated to the Canadian Government seaplane base at Sydney, Nova Scotia, and the ice-free port of Louisburg, to be used as an airport in connection with the proposed North Atlantic air service; whether he is aware that by using alternative seaplane bases ice and fog-free conditions are available; and why, with these facilities available on British soil, it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to put the American air terminal in a foreign country?

As regards the first part of the question, the Air Ministry has been informed of the acquisition of a site in Nova Scotia by the Irish Transatlantic Corporation. As regards the second the possibility of alternative seaplane bases being used by Imperial Airways will not be ignored; it is indeed already the subject of close study. As regards the third part, the facilities available on British soil will be utilised, since the first regular port of call on the North American side will, it is contemplated, be in Newfoundland, where a landing affords the shortest crossing and saves 200 miles as compared with Nova Scotia. There are obvious advantages in continuing the service to the United States in order to secure a share in the traffic offered by that country.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Pan-American Airways Company have already announced that in the agreement with Imperial Airways, there is a condition that the airport on the other side of the Atlantic shall be near New York?

I have not seen such an announcement.

South Atlantic Communications

27.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he has decided to support financially the inauguration of a British air service across the South Atlantic Ocean; and what company has he selected for this purpose?

The matter is at present under consideration by the Interdepartmental Committee on International Air Communications, and I am not yet in a position to make any statement.

Does my right hon. Friend realise that that is the type of answer which he has given for the last two years; and in view of the fact that other nations are regularly flying on this route, can he not tell us when he proposes to take some action to commence a British air line operating in South America?

Is it not a fact that the Air Ministry cannot inaugurate this service while the men are having margarine?

Royal Air Force

Petrol (Cost)

23.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what was the expenditure on petrol by the Royal Air Force on home service during the past financial year: and what proportion of this sum was clue to the excise duty of 8d. per gallon charged on this fuel?

It would not be in the public interest to give the precise information requested in the first part of the question, but I may say that the total estimate for petrol for the Royal Air Force in 1935–36 is slightly over £1,000,000. The answer to the second part is about 41 per cent.

Is it not in the public interest to say from whom this petrol is purchased and the price per gallon?

I would have to see that question on the Paper.

First-Line Aircraft

26.

asked the Under-Secretary of State for Air the total number of first-line aircraft of the Royal Air Force, excluding the Fleet air arm, which will be available for imperial defence, excluding home defence, when the 12 new squadrons provided for in the current Air Estimates have been equipped?

The answer is approximately 430.

In view of this very slender number of aircraft, will my right hon. Friend say whether the total has been considered in the light of the present state of the world; and, if not, whether His Majesty's Government are relying for the defence of the Empire on denuding this country of aircraft as was done in the case of the Italo-Abyssinian dispute?

I would require notice of that question.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say what relation these figures have to the numbers in reserve and in training units?

Not without notice.

Transport

Medical Practitioners (Facilities)

28.

asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the many urgent calls made on registered medical practitioners, he will authorise the attachment on their cars of a special badge, and/or consider allowing them the use of a distinctive horn, in order that the police may allow them special facilities to proceed on their way in the case of emergency?

This suggestion has always been considered impracticable in view of the impossibility of preventing abuse.

Is the Minister aware that this plan has worked very satisfactorily in Canada?

I was not aware of that fact.

Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries to see whether it is not so?

If the hon. Member will submit the facts to me I shall be glad to look into them.

Llansaint-Kidwelly Road

29.

asked the, Minister of Transport what the position is regarding the Llansaint-Kidwelly road; and when work will be commenced to make it passable for all vehicles?

Kidwelly town council and Carmarthen county council are to confer on this matter.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a number of colliers have to go many miles out of their way because this road is impassable?

I am extremely sorry to hear that, but, as I say, there is a dispute between the town council and the county council as to responsibility for the road, and I have no control over that.

In the case of a dispute between two local authorities cannot the Minister settle the matter?

Not at this stage, no appeal having been made.

Hampton Court Bridge

30.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he proposes to proceed with the erection of kiosks on Hampton Court Bridge; whether such kiosks formed part of the original design of the bridge as accepted by the county councils of Middlesex and Surrey or whether the approval of these councils has subsequently been obtained; and what is the estimated cost of these kiosks?

Four pavilions, of which the estimated cost is £8,000, formed part of the original and accepted design. The question of their construction is now, I understand, under the consideration of the joint committee of the two county councils responsible for the bridge.

Road Vehicles (Lighting)

31.

asked the Minister of Transport whether his attention has been called to the fact that many accidents have been recently caused on the roads by vehicles not lighting up before the specified time; and whether, in view of modern conditions, he will consider introducing regulations that will compel all road users to light up at dusk instead of waiting for lighting-up time?

I have no power to alter by regulation the lighting-up times for vehicles fixed by the Road Transport Lighting Act, 1927.

Will the Minister consider introducing legislation, as these regulations were made before the advent of the motor car?

In 1927.

Is there any definite information available at the Ministry of Transport?

Menai Bridge

33.

asked the Minister of Transport whether in view of the unsatisfactory condition of the Menai Bridge and especially in view of its inadequacy for the growing volume of traffic, his Department will consider a definite proposal to replace or reconstruct the present structure?

A technical examination of the bridge with a view to ascertaining the possibilities of strenthening the present structure is now in progress.

In view of the inconvenience caused to the traffic of North Wales by the inadequacy of this bridge, will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that his Department will do its utmost to expedite action in this matter?

Yes.

Will the Minister consult with his colleague of the Office of Works to see that nothing is done to damage this very beautiful structure, and if a new bridge is necessary, will he consider a fresh site?

I will try to bear in mind both the architectural and the economic considerations.

Forth Road-Bridge

34.

asked the Minister of Transport whether his attention has been drawn to the resolutions of protest against the Government's refusal to make a grant in connection with the Forth road-bridge scheme passed by the Fife County Council, the Lochgelly Town Council, and other public bodies in the County of Fife; and whether, in view of the public demand in Fifeshire for such a scheme, he will reconsider his position and authorise the granting of a substantial sum towards the expenses of the scheme?

I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave on this subject on 19th February, of which I am sending him a copy.

Is it not possible to raise the matter in some way in order that the Ministry can have a discussion with the local representatives, because there is an overwhelming demand for this road-bridge?

I have not refused a discussion.

36.

asked the Minister of Transport the grounds upon which he is not satisfied there is traffic justification for the projected Forth road-bridge; and whether he is prepared to place at the disposal of the Forth road-bridge promotion committee particulars of the census taken by his Department last August, in order that the committee may be assisted in preparing their case proving traffic justification for which he has asked?

I have already informed the promotion committee of the matters upon which it is necessary that I should have further evidence in support of this project, and I am, of course, ready to furnish them with any particulars of the traffic census taken in August last, which they may desire.

Is the Minister aware of the widespread opinion that the answers which he has given up to the present in connection with this matter indicate a desire on the part of the Government to delay a definite decision, and will he do his best to dissipate that idea by carrying out to the utmost the provision of assistance to the promoters in preparing the case for which he has asked?

I can only hope that the hon. Gentleman will assist me to dissipate what is clearly an erroneous impression, and I shall, of course, offer to give the promoters all the assistance in my power in the preparation of their own evidence.

Is there any foundation for the idea that the Minister has been terrorised by the railway companies?

Road Accidents, Store-On-Trent

37.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he will have an investigation made into the increase of road accidents in the city of Stoke-on-Trent and issue a report?

I will instruct one of my officers to confer with the local authority to see whether, in collaboration, means of improving the position can be devised.

Railway Electrification (Manchester Area)

38.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he will hold a public inquiry into the need for the electrification of the railway system within a radius of 50 miles of Manchester?

I understand there is to be a further conference next week between representatives of the railway companies and the local authorities to discuss the development of transport facilities in the Manchester area, and I do not think that I can usefully intervene, at any rate at this stage.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this suggested inquiry is the desire of the whole of the local authorities and other representative organisations, and in view of the fact that this is the most dense population in the world, will he consider taking action?

A conference will take place next week, and the local authorities are parties to the conference.

Will the right hon. Gentleman include in this conference Stoke-on-Trent, which is less than 50 miles from Manchester but not strictly in the environs of Manchester?

I am not quite sure what will be the scope of this conference geographically, but I shall be only too pleased to let the right hon. and gallant Gentleman know.

Public Service Vehicle Licences

39.

asked the Minister of Transport the approximate amount expended, both on legal charges and other matters, by applicants and objectors before the Traffic Commissioners with regard to licences to provide public vehicle services since the Traffic Commissioners were set up; and whether he is aware that a substantial burden is placed on small operators in this connection?

As I have no power to ask parties to disclose to me what they pay to their legal or other advisers, I am not in a position to answer my hon. and gallant Friend's question.

Will the Minister take steps to lessen the charges on small operators in the future?

Ribbon Development

40.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he can make a statement as to the action which has been taken so far with regard to the prevention of ribbon development under the powers provided by the Ribbon Development Act?

Resolutions have been submitted to me by 54 highway authorities proposing to bring under the restrictions of Section 2 of the Act some 5,000 miles of road, in addition to the 43,000 miles brought under these restrictions by the Act itself. I have already approved about half the resolutions. Five highway authorities have applied for my approval of standard widths under Section 1, but many more are engaged in the surveys necessary before the exact line of road and appropriate standard width can be determined.

Does my right hon. Friend find any difficulty about the arrangements between the administration of this Act and that of the Town Planning Act? Has he experienced any delay?

No difficulty of any kind in that connection has been brought to my notice, and I think it is working smoothly.

Toll, Bridges And Level Crossings

41.

asked the Minister of Transport how many toll bridges and level crossings in Great Britain were eliminated during 1935; and how many it is anticipated will be eliminated by 1936?

In 1935 two toll bridges were freed. During that year I made grants towards schemes which will eliminate or avoid four level crossings. I have already made one grant this year for the elimination of another level crossing scheme. Further proposals for eliminating level crossings and freeing toll bridges are now before the responsible highway authorities, but I am unable at present to say in how many cases the necessary arrangements will be completed during 1936.

Can the right hon. Gentleman say how many toll bridges he is considering at the present time?

There are about 75 of them altogether. I am not sure how many are actually before us.

Is the right hon. Gentleman considering the Selby toll bridge?

Facilities (Young Persons)

43.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he has had a reply from the London Passenger Transport Board and the railway authorities on the claim for suitable travelling facilities at cheaper rates than those now operating for young persons working in London and neighbourhood?

Jurisdiction over the fares charged by the board and the railway companies in the London Passenger Transport Area is vested in the Railway Rates Tribunal.

Are we to understand that no such communication has reached the Minister of Transport regarding the fares paid by young people?

Reached me from what source?

From the Ministry of Labour.

Yes. The Ministry of Labour did communicate with me on the subject, and I have replied.

Did that reply contain any satisfactory solution?

I have explained in my answer that this matter is within the purview of the Railway Rates Tribunal.

59.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has investigated the likelihood of railway and other transport authorities giving special facilities for young people starting work in the early morning or leaving their work at a, late hour at night?

It is already the practice, when considering any application for an Order authorising two shift employment of women or young persons, to make enquiries as to the transport facilities available for those living at a distance, and to include where necessary a condition in the Order to enable the Secretary of State to call upon the employer to make special arangements for the conveyance of such workers where the ordinary transport services are inadequate. No further action seems necessary.

Do I understand that, in view of the legislation now operating in regard to industry, investigations are being made to see whether the railway companies will do this in all districts of the country?

No, the hon. Gentleman is labouring under some misapprehension. The provision in the Order is more direct than that which he has in mind; it lays the obligation on the employer himself if unsatisfactory conditions exist.

Dangerous Driving (Penalties)

44.

asked the Minister of Transport whether his attention has been drawn to a case which came before the Ealing bench of magistrates recently, in which it was pleaded on behalf of a motorist charged with dangerous driving, involving the death of a milk rounds-man, that he had been to the Chelsea Arts Ball and had fallen asleep at the wheel, and, further, that a man could not be held guilty when he was not aware of what he was doing; that the defendant was found guilty, was fined five guineas, and had his licence suspended for one year; and whether he will consider the introduction of legislation providing for the imposition of minimum penalties for those found guilty of serious offences involving death on the roads?

Yes, Sir. I will certainly consider the hon. Member's suggestion in connection with any future legislation.

Electricity Supply

Bradford

32.

asked the Minister of Transport how many hours elapsed before the recent failure of the electricity supply at Bradford terminated with full restoration to all consumers; when an official report will be made public; and how many of the selected stations operated by municipalities and companies, respectively, are dependent upon non-duplicated switch-gear control, as was apparently the case at Bradford, which made help from the grid impossible?

The public inquiry into this matter will be opened on 24th March by Mr. H. Nimmo, the chief engineering inspector to the Electricity Commission. In the meantime, I trust that I may not be pressed to give fragmentary information.

Does the Minister know that there is an inaccuracy in this question, and that the switch-gear is fully duplicated and even divided into sections and separated again by masonry, under the direct approval of the Central Electricity Board?

The inquiry will, no doubt, elucidate all these matters.

Law Consolidation

35.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he will consider the possibility of consolidating the law in respect of electricity supply, which is now spread over 11 Acts dating from 1882 to 1935?

I will bear my hon. Friend's suggestion in mind.

Blind Persons (Guide Dogs)

42.

asked the Minister of Transport whether he will endeavour to make arrangements with all public transport organisations that a blind man's guide dog, accompanying a blind man, shall be carried free of charge?

In view of the multiplicity of transport organisations in the country, I do not see how I could practicably make such arrangements.

Is my right hon. Friend aware that the railway companies take a human guide free and charge for a dog, and does he think that is a right procedure?

I hesitate to express opinions on matters outside my control. I am asked to make arrangements with many thousands of transport undertakings, but I do not see how I can practically interfere here.

Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the advisability of supplying one of these blind men's guide dogs to the Cabinet?

56.

asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is aware that a centre exists at New Brighton for the training of guide dogs for the blind; and whether he is prepared to assist in the provision of these dogs for blind ex-service men?

I have been asked to reply. The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. I am informed that the Ministry have no fund out of which such assistance could be given. It may be pointed out, however, that a special weekly allowance, in addition to pension, is provided by the Ministry for all cases of total blindness needing constant attendance. Having regard to present day conditions of road traffic, this is considered to be the more suitable form in which assistance in such cases should be given.

Monroe Doctrine (Britishamerican Territories)

46.

asked the Prime Minister whether he will endeavour to obtain from the Government of the United States of America an assurance that by their interpretation of the Monroe doctrine they will hold themselves bound to intervene to defend Canada, British Guiana, and the Falkland Islands from armed attack by any Power or group of Powers?

No, Sir.

Will the right hon. Gentleman not reconsider his answer in view of the possibly beneficial results that a favourable reply might have on the Government's defence proposals?

Late Roger Casement

47.

asked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that the refusal of His Majesty's Government to allow the remains of the late Roger Casement to be exhumed and transferred to Ireland is causing dissatisfaction in the Irish Free State Dominion; and whether he will take steps to satisfy the Irish people in this matter?

This matter has been very fully considered by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom, but they have found themselves unable to authorise the removal.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the precedent when the English Government allowed the remains of Napoleon to be brought from St. Helena, and is there any reason why one of the citizens of Ireland should not be allowed to be taken back?

I am aware of that, but I do not think the cases are parallel.

Can the right hon. Gentleman give any particular reason, financial or otherwise, for the refusal to allow this removal to take place, because there is a strong feeling in the Irish Free State in regard to this matter?

I am aware that there is or may be strong feeling in Ireland, but, on the other hand, there is strong feeling in this country, and on weighing the balance of the two cases, I could not see that any action of this kind would tend to improve the relations mutually between the two countries.

Does not the Prime Minister think that this is an opportunity for a gracious act on the part of His Majesty's Government to the Irish Free State which would mitigate the evils that have arisen?

Denmark (Trade Restrictions)

49.

asked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the complaint by chambers of commerce that import licences to Denmark are being granted for only a small percentage of the quota agreed on between this country and Denmark; and whether he can make a statement on the subject?

My right hon. Friend has received numerous complaints, and at the request of His Majesty's Government a Danish delegation came to London last week to discuss the grievances of United Kingdom exporters. Proposals have been submitted to the delegation by His Majesty's Government with a view to remedying these grievances, and I understand that the delegation are returning to Denmark.

Will the delegation be asked to make some re-adjustment for the failure to comply with the undertaking in the past, which has caused suffering to British industry?

If Denmark continues to impose restrictions, will my hon. Friend consider the advisability of seeing that we impose similar restrictions, when opportunity arises, on their agricultural produce?

I think the House will agree that the proposals that have been submitted to the delegation by His Majesty's Government may be taken to be adequate.

Fire Insurance

50.

asked the President of the Board of Trade whether the Government will consider the advisability of introducing legislation to codify the law of fire insurance?

I am not aware that there is any general demand for such legislation at the present time.

If the hon. Gentleman is satisfied that there is a demand, will he give the project favourable consideration?

Tithe Rentcharge

51.

asked the Minister of Agriculture whether, under the proposed legislation dealing with tithe rentcharge, tithepayers in Wales will be granted the same reduction of their liability as tithepayers in England?

yes, Sir. The reduction of the tithepayer's annual liability to £91 11s. 2d. per £100 tithe rentcharge par value and the limitation to a period of 60 years, contemplated in the White Paper (Cmd. 5102), are intended to operate throughout England and Wales.

Crown Manors Office, Lampeter

52.

asked the Minister of Agriculture the income of, and the salaries paid at, the Crown Manors Office, Lampeter, and how the income is made up?

I have been asked to reply. The office known as the Crown Manors Office, Lampeter, is the private office of a local solicitor who acts as deputy steward, bailiff and collector of the rents of a number of manors belonging to the Crown in the counties of Cardigan and Carmarthen. No annual salary is paid by the Crown to the solicitor for his services, but he receives a commission at the end of each year on moneys collected by him on behalf of the Crown.

How much did that amount to last year?

Perhaps the hon. Member will give me notice of that question.

Manorial Incidents (Carmarthenshire)

53.

asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that payment of manorial incidents, customary fines, and chief rents is now being demanded in Carmarthenshire; and will he say on what basis the amount payable for extinguishment is made?

Under the Property Acts, all manorial incidents were automatically extinguished on 1st January, 1936, and, so far as any Crown Manors in Carmarthenshire are concerned, demands are only being made for payment of manorial incidents due before that date. I have no information regarding other manors in Carmarthenshire. As regards the second part of the question, the subject being of a very technical nature, I propose, with permission, to circulate a short statement in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the statement:

For a period of five years from 1st January, 1936, lords of manors and owners of land out of which these incidents issued may apply to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for an award determining the amount of compensation for extinguishment, and the scale of compensation laid down in Part II of the Thirteenth Schedule to the Law of Property Act, 1922, will normally be used as the basis of the determination. No application for an award has yet been received from Carmarthenshire. There is, however, nothing in the Property Acts to prevent the parties reaching a non-statutory agreement as to compensation without reference to the Ministry and, as regards Crown Manors in Carmarthenshire, such agreements will provide for compensation calculated as nearly as may be in accordance with the scale set forth in the Property Acts.

Housing (Fifeshire)

55.

asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he is aware that, at the last meeting of the Fife County Council; a report was submitted by the convenor of the public health committee showing that a minimum number of 4,684 new houses were required in the county in order to satisfy the legitimate housing needs of the people; and what measures the Government are taking and propose to take to enable this housing programme to be carried through with the minimum of delay?

The report referred to estimated that 6,674 houses in the county were overcrowded. The actual number of new houses required for decrowding purposes cannot be stated until the completion of the overcrowding survey. With regard to the second part of the question, the public health committee have recommended the county council to proceed with an instalment of 1,300 houses for rehousing the worst cases of overcrowding in the areas already surveyed. The Department of Health are keeping in close touch with the county council to secure the maximum progress with their housing operations.

British Army (Discipline)

57.

asked the Secretary of State for War whether he will cause inquiry to be made as to how far the existing rules of discipline and, in particular, the treatment of soldiers when off parade might with advantage be modified, having regard to modern customs of civilian life in this country and in the light of recent alterations in the system of discipline in Continental armies, with a view to making the conditions of service more attractive to recruits?

My hon. Friend may rest assured that considerations of the kind suggested in the question are always present to the minds of the Army Council, and if he has any definite proposals to put forward for rendering conditions of the service more attractive they will be carefully examined.

Does not my hon. Friend think that such an incident as the ordering of a Guardsman to cut off his moustache is the kind of thing calculated to make the service unpopular with the modern young men of the country?

And margarine?

Education Bill

58.

asked the President of the Board of Education whether he has considered the communication and resolution in regard to the Education Bill from the Lancashire district secretary of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, and whether he can state the nature of the reply given?

I have been asked to reply. This resolution which requested the withdrawal of the exemption clause from the Education Bill and suggested that provision should be made for maintenance allowances in respect of children attending school between the ages of 14 and 15 years has been considered by my right hon. Friend. No reply beyond an acknowledgment was considered necessary.

Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the reply was neither dated nor signed, and may I ask him if that is the usual way of answering correspondence?

If there are any further points which the hon. Member desires to raise, perhaps he will put another question down.

The reply had no date or signature, and I am asking if that is the usual way of answering correspondence. If a trade union official did that sort of thing, he would get the sack to-morrow.

Was not the communication similar to that which many of us receive and which all came from the office of a propaganda centre?

Juvenile Employment

60.

asked the Home Secretary whether he will consider appointing an additional member with experience of London conditions to the committee dealing with young people in unregulated occupations?

I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which my right hon. Friend gave to a question on this point by the hon. Member for South-West Bethnal Green (Sir P. Harris) on 20th February.

National Finance

Defence Services

61.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can make any statement with regard to the new methods of procedure which are being worked out for the financing of the proposals for defence embodied in Command Paper No. 5107; what is implied by the statement that the work must not be delayed by the over-elaboration of financial safeguards; and what are the existing financial safeguards with which it is proposed to dispense?

I would refer the hon. Member to the Treasury Minute on Defence Expenditure dated 4th March, of which a copy has been presented to Parliament, setting up the Treasury Inter-Service Committee. I anticipate that the procedure adopted by this committee will enable them to deal adequately and expeditiously with the financial questions involved. It is not proposed to dispense with any existing financial safeguards.

May I ask what that Treasury Minute means? I have read it four times and I have not the slightest idea what are the safeguards involved.

I can only advise the hon. Gentleman to read it a fifth time.

Does it mean that the service representatives on that committee will have carte blanche to spend what they like?

No, it certainly does not mean that.

What safeguard is there against that?

Petrol And Motor Vehicle Duties

62.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what has been the total revenue from the Petrol Tax and Road Vehicle Duties for the years 1932–33, 1933–34 and 1934–35, and what proportions of this sum have been allocated to the Exchequer and to road expenditure, respectively?

No part of the Petrol Tax is specifically allocated to road expenditure, but I will, with the hon. Baronet's permission, circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT figures of the revenue from that tax, of the produce of the vehicle duties and of issues from the Exchequer to the Road Fund for the years mentioned.

Cannot the Minister give us the figures now?

They are very long, and if the hon. Baronet gives me his permission I propose to take the course I have suggested.

Following are the figures:

The revenue from the Petrol Tax in the years 1932, 1933 and 1934 was as follows:

	£
1932	35,172,000
1933	37,499,000
1934	39,535,000

The produce of the Motor Vehicle Duties and the issue from the Exchequer

to the Road Fund in those years were as follow:

	Produce of motor vehicle duties.	Issue from Exchequer to Road Fund.
	£	£
1932	27,910,000	22,910,000
1933	30,712,000	25,512,000
1934	31,538,000	26,438,000

The issues to the Road Fund given above do not include the loan made to the fund from voted moneys in 1932 which was subsequently repaid.

Confidential Document (Italian Publication)

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can give the House any further information with regard to the leakage of information concerning the report of the inter-departmental committee on British interests in Abyssinia?

I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave to a question asked by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Nuneaton (Lieut.-Commander Fletcher) on Monday last, to which I have nothing to add.

Coal Industry (Overtime)

54.

asked the Secretary for Mines the number of shifts on which overtime was worked, and the number of men involved, at the Lowmoor and Summit pits of the Butterley Colliery Company, at Kirkby, Notts, during the months of January and February, 1936?

I have been asked to reply. The particulars are as follow:

Lowmoor Colliery.—During the month of January no overtime was worked, but in February it was worked on three shifts only, the number of men involved being five on the first occasion, three on the second and four on the third, a total of 12 men.

Kirkby Colliery (or Summit Pit).—No overtime was worked in January. In February overtime was worked on three shifts, the number of men involved being two on the first occasion, five on the second and two on the third, a total of nine men.

Ballot For Notices Of Motions

Ministers' Salaries

I beg to give notice that upon this day fortnight I shall call attention to Ministers' salaries and move a Resolution.

War (Economic Resources)

I beg to give notice that upon this day fortnight I shall call attention to the possibility of war and, in that event, the need for organising the economic resources of the country, and to provide that no section of the community shall profit at the national expense of the community, and move a Resolution.

Housing And Slum Clearance

I beg to give notice that upon this day fortnight I shall call attention to housing and slum clearance, and move a Resolution.

Highlands And Islands Of Scotland

I beg to give notice that upon this day fortnight I shall call attention to the distress in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and move a Resolution.

Message From The King

Civil List

The CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Mr. Chamberlain) (at the Bar) acquainted the House that he had a Message from His Majesty the King to this House, signed by His Majesty's own hand, and he presented the same to the House, and it was read by Mr. Speaker (all the Members of the House being uncovered), as followeth

Buckingham Palace.

The demise of the Crown renders it necessary that a renewed provision shall be made for the Civil List. His Majesty places unreservedly at the disposal of the House of Commons those hereditary revenues which were so placed by His predecessor, and has commanded that the Papers necessary for the full consideration of this subject shall be laid before the House.

His Majesty desires that the contingency of His marriage should be taken into account, so that in that event there should be provision for Her Majesty the Queen and Members of His Majesty's Family corresponding to the provision which the House of Commons have been willing to snake in like circumstances in the past. His Majesty also desires that suitable provision should be made for His Royal Highness the Duke of York as the Heir Presumptive, and, in certain events, for his family.

It is, however, His Majesty's intention, so long as the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall are vested in Himself, to make that provision for His Royal Highness the Duke of York and, in so far as those revenues are sufficient, to provide for His Majesty's Privy Purse.

His Majesty recommends the consideration of these several matters to His faithful Commons, and relies on their attachment to His person and family to adopt such measures as may be suitable for the occasion.

10th March, 1936.

To-morrow I shall move that a Select Committee be appointed to take His Majesty's Message into consideration.

May I ask whether His Majesty gave any guarantee that he was going to get married?

Firearms (Amendment) Bill Lords

Read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Monday, 23rd March, and to be printed. [Bill 68.]

Location Of Industry

3.41 p.m.

I beg to move,

"That, in the opinion of this House, it is essential that a complete survey of the nation's industries should be undertaken without delay, and power taken to plan the location of industry throughout the country, in order to secure maximum efficiency and economy, safeguard amenities, and protect the interests of the industrial communities."

The Amendment which has been placed upon the Paper does not deal with the situation that now exists, because the Prime Minister recently informed us that repeated appeals to the industrialists of the country had met with no response. It is becoming essential that the Government should take definite action, and I am therefore proposing that the Government should appoint a commission with power to survey the industries of the whole country and, when necessary, to take action. After yesterday's Debate it has become more necessary than ever that the Government should take action, and very prompt action. The tendency to take industries to the London area is without justification. Not one valid reason has yet been advanced for the establishment of factories in the London area. Every time factories are introduced to this district, the dangers to the community from inefficiency of production, and the problems accruing to the Minister of Transport, are accentuated. They have become worse, and it is evident that the problems of the Minister of Transport will become impossible of solution, because he will be unable to cope with them.

I suggest, therefore, that it should be the duty of the proposed commission, if appointed, to declare certain areas of the country closed areas, and that no one should be allowed to establish a factory in any place in the country without a Government permit. That is vitally important for the district concerned and for the Government's Census of Production. I would suggest an area of 40 miles round London being closed, and that even if a permit were given, which would not be the case until it had been proved to the satisfaction of the commission to be absolutely essential, in the interests of the community that it should be there, I should insist that such factories be placed in satellite towns, such as Welwyn, and certainly not within an area of 20 miles of the centre of London. Unless this matter be dealt with earnestly, so many problems will accrue that we shall lose all our power of control.

In my own district there is a big steel combine which for many years considered it necessary to have a large organisation in London, but when the combine were on the verge of bankruptcy, a committee of inspection who were appointed soon discovered that it was easy to dispense with the organisation in London. Foolish as it may seem, it is true to say—and I say it without fear of contradiction—that factories and organisations have been built up in London for no other reason than the amenities of London life, and on no other principle than that some people like to be here. That is bad for the community.

It is becoming an absolute necessity to be able to disperse factories throughout the country. We are now talking of industries that can be turned immediately to the production of munitions, and that makes it essential that factories should be spread as far as possible, in the interests of safety as well as in the interests of the industrial centres. We are deliberately making targets that could not be missed by a potential enemy. Each year we are making it easier for any enemy to attack us. There is no economic reason to do that. The tendency should be stopped at once, but it will not be stopped unless power is given to some commission to take drastic action. The powers given to the Commissioners in the Special Areas are very limited, but we can learn from the experience of Mr. Malcolm Stewart the necessity for planning the location of industry. With the various development boards in the northeast, he has tried for a number of years to induce people to put their plants in that area. The Prime Minister told us recently that he had personally tried to persuade people to put their factories down there, and that they had not responded.

If it be necessary for the safety and the welfare of the community to have industries in those areas, and if the industrialists have not responded to the invitation to do so in the interests of the community, and if a commission such as I suggest were appointed, that commission should have power to establish industries year after year. In report after report we have been told that light industries are essential to the revival of trade in those areas, and if private enterprise will not respond in the national interest, it should be the duty of the commission to establish such enterprises. The interest of the people in those areas is greater than the interest of a comparatively few people who are looking only at their own personal profit. I do not want to treat this Debate, and I do not want it to be treated, as a Capitalism-versus-Socialism Debate; it is very much more important than that. There is much common ground.

Members on the other side of the House have talked and written about planning for some considerable time, but, if I might say so without being offensive, the difference between their planning and what I should conceive to be good planning is that their planning merely has the effect of guaranteeing profits to the manufacturers, without necessarily guaranteeing any better conditions for the working people. I think that that is a fair criticism of most of their planning that I have been able to investigate. There are some things which can be done, and can be done quickly. Perhaps the most important of all, in the interests of the community, was emphasised in yesterday's Debate. I am sure we shall all be very grateful indeed to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) for his lucid exposition of the technical intricacies of horse-drawn vehicles. If in yesterday's Debate he could point out that the Government were putting the cart before the horse, the Debate of the last two days is insignificant compared with this Debate to-day.

We are going to build up—let us accept it, for the purposes of this Debate, as a necessity—a defence plan, which is going to depend finally for its success on supplies of oil, and those supplies of oil we have not got. In my district we have had the advantage of the great experiment of Imperial Chemical Industries at Billing-ham. The matter is out of the experimental stage now, and I submit to the House that the greatest thing, the easiest thing, and the thing that could be done promptly, is to set about furnishing the nation with its own supplies of oil. The Billingham plant for 18 months has been employing 9,000 men, and it is capable of producing something between 5 and 7 per cent. of our national requirements. That is a very small percentage, but, if it is out of its experimental stage, the Willingham plant could be duplicated at the very places in the distressed areas where the need is greatest. There may be some difficulties, which perhaps will be pointed out by other Members or by the Parliamentary Secretary if he replies; I am just as anxious to know what they are as anyone. If, however, the Billingham plant is out of the experimental stage, and if it can produce 5 per cent of our national requirements, 20 Billingham plants would make us safe in times of peace, and at any rate much safer than we should be at present in times of war. In view of the American Neutrality Act, we are not, apparently, going to be able to draw any extra supplies from that source, and it is not difficult to conceive of our other supplies being very readily cut off.

The Billingham plant, as I have said, has employed 9,000 men for 18 months, and it can employ 2,000 men permanently. It has been using 600,000 tons of coal a year. Twenty of these plants would be a regular customer of the coal industry with a guaranteed market of 12,000,000 tons of coal. I do not know the coal industry, but I should imagine that that would be a considerable help to it, and a considerable easement of the unemployment problem in the very districts where it is most needed. As regards the question of planning, I think it is true to say that the Billingham plant could be duplicated at a cost of £5,000,000—less than the cost of a battleship, and infinitely more important according to the experts. For a comparatively small expenditure, then, we could make ourselves safe as regards oil.

There have been certain attempts at planning, under the guidance of Mr. Stewart, on the North-East Coast. There is a proposal to put down an iron and steel plant at Jarrow which has caused a considerable amount of controversy, and, as it affects my constituency, I want to submit that, if carried out, it would be about the worst sort of planning that anyone could adopt. It is very good philanthropy, but very bad finance and very bad economics. To put down such a plant at Jarrow would cost about £4,000,000. What the capacity is is not important, but I do know that a plant of the same capacity on Tees-side, where we have other facilities, could be laid down for £1,500,000. The nation cannot afford to spend £4,000,000 where £1,500,000 will do the same job. At Billingham, Imperial Chemical Industries spent from £2,500,000 to £3,000,000 on a plant which ordinarily, at that time, would have cost £7,000,000, for they were able to work it in with the rest of their plant and so cut down the expenditure that was necessary. If anyone were allowed to spend £4,000,000 on putting down at Jarrow a plant of the same capacity that could be pit down in Middlesbrough for £1,500,000, it would simply be putting 2,000 or 3,000 men in work at Jarrow and throwing a similar number out of work in Middlesbrough. That is not good planning; it is a perfect example of what the Government should not allow to occur. I hope, therefore, that some steps will be taken, either through Mr. Stewart or someone else, to prevent any such planning as that. If anyone has £4,000,000 to spend in the North-East Coast district, I shall be very glad to volunteer my services to show them how to spend it very much better and more effectively than by following the suggestion to put down a steel plant in competition with Middlesbrough.

I would like to put forward another point which will have to be considered if we are going to plan. There is no profession in the world that calls for such careful planning as that of the burglar, but we do not want planning which, as I said a minute ago, will benefit a few people and injure a great many others. In the steel industry of Middlesbrough our highest record year for production was 1929–30. Last year we have beaten all records for production and all records for profits, but we had 6,000 fewer men employed in Middlesbrough, in spite of all those records. I suggest to the House that if in your planning you do not consider the earning power of the working classes, you are going to accumulate a problem with which you will never be able to deal. I have had a little experience in a Committee upstairs presided over by the Noble Lord the Member for Central Bristol (Lord Apsley). It seems that the object of the planning under the Measure which that Committee is considering is to scrap redundant cotton spindles in order that the remaining spindles may be made busier, that the cost of production may be reduced, that sales may be increased, and that capital may thereby be induced to flow into the industry with which to buy more spindles. I suggest that in an enlightened community there must be a way in which those spindles could be kept in operation. I know lots of men who require shirts, and would be very glad to make use of them.

I believe it is possible to use a great deal of what is called redundant capacity. We had redundant capacity to a tremendous extent in the steel industry four years ago, and no one ever thought that it was going to be employed again, but to-day, I suppose, the steel industry is working almost to its full capacity, and, in view of the Debate of yesterday and the day before, we are going to require all the capacity of the steel industry and of many other industries. I believe that the idea of alternative industries is a very sound one indeed, but, if it is to be carried out fairly and squarely to everyone concerned, some measure of security must be given to the workers. I believe that there is a considerable amount of agreement on these matters.

Let me take a moment to criticise one proposal that is made in the report of the Commissioner, as to the establishment of trading estates. It may seem a good thing, but I do not feel that anyone who wishes to put down a factory is going to be kept out of a particular area because there are no factories similar to those suggested by the Commissioner. We have in our district innumerable factories and sites suitable for all kinds of industries, but we cannot attract people to them. If you are going to take one section of an area, supposing that you are successful and attract industries there, I suggest that you will compete with the rest of that area and that that will not operate to the general good. I do not think that the establishment of factories in one particular part is going to be a good thing in the end. If successful it will mean a transference of people from one section to another. When the works were put down at Corby it was estimated that a profit could be made on the £3,000,000, but there is no consideration taken for the amount of capital that was destroyed by closing down works. To all those millions involved in social services and the homes which were broken up no consideration is given, nor is consideration taken for the money to be invested in building them up again in another part of the country. If they had been taken into consideration perhaps the amount on which they would have had to get a return would have been £12,000,000 instead of £3,000,000.

I submit that the Amendment on the Paper does not seriously deal with what seems to me to be the vital problem of the day. If the Government were in earnest in what they said yesterday and the day before it is absolutely essential that they should take immediate action and do something for the Special Areas, that they should do something to insist on factories being started there, and above all should take up the great question of the production of oil. If there is any shortage of oil in this country it will be the responsibility of the Government of the day, because oil can be produced both economically and successfully.

4.5 p.m.

I beg to second the Motion.

As a Member for a Greater London constituency I naturally look at this matter from rather a different angle to that of my hon. Friend. To begin with I should like to deal shortly with some of the problems connected with the location of industry so far as London is related to the rest of the country, and then to look at the problem from a Greater London point of view. I think it will be fairly generally agreed that we have already quite a sufficient percentage of our population in the South-Eastern part of this country. We have also to consider the fact that from 1940 onwards a decline of population will be setting in. This factor is generally overlooked in most of the town-planning schemes that have been drawn up to date which, for some reason, provide for enormous populations and an enormous industrial development which cannot posibly take place. Consequently, we have to consider the question of preventing a further drift to thickly populated areas, because even when the population begins to decline you may still have a drift taking place to the larger cities and the thickly populated areas.

There seems to me to be little chance of rural development which will lead to a larger population engaged in agriculture, in spite of all the efforts of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and the right hon. Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot). It seems to me that, as in other industries so in agriculture, with rationalisation and mechanisation you will see a further decline in the number of people employed, and if we succeed in raising the wage levels in agriculture we may by that process even hasten the decline. Therefore, if we are going to prevent populations crowding into large, thickly populated areas, we shall have to deal with the rural problem from rather a different angle, and it seems to me that one should encourage the growth of small industrial towns that combine the amenities of town and countryside.

I would like now to go on to the question of replanning in the Greater London area and in the whole of South-Eastern England. Even given the assumption that we will not allow Greater London to increase further in population, inside that area there is going to be a considerable redistribution of population. We are going to have slum clearance pursued further in London, which will mean that populations will be shifted inside that area. What are we going to do when that redistribution of population takes place? How are we going to guide it? To begin with I would favour, as my hon. Friend did, the creation of satellite towns ringed round London as far as possible with industries attached to them, the industries being sufficient to supply work for the people living there. It is very important to recognise what has occurred in the last 10 years. I represent the greater part of the largest housing estate in the world, the London County Council estate at Becontree. Great mistakes have been made with regard to that particular estate. There are over 100,000 living on the estate, and when the estate was originally laid out no suggestions were made for putting factories there to employ the workers living on the estate. It is true that areas were left in which it was suggested that manufacturers might come and place their factories, but no steps were taken to persuade them to come or to insist that they should come there.

You have adjoining that estate a very large amount of land lying along the Thames, marshy land set aside for industrial development, and you have also a considerable area along the North-Eastern Railway on the north. There have been some industrial developments. Fords have built a factory at Dagenham, and a number of other factories have come there, but nothing like sufficient to employ the population living there. You have a very big problem to face to-day owing to the fact that a large number of young married people went to live on that estate. At the time they went there they had young children of school age. You now have these children growing up and an enormous labour reserve is available there, young people just turning 20. A problem of juvenile labour on such a large scale merits attention. Some relation ought to exist between the authority responsible for housing programmes, the authority responsible for local government, the authority responsible for transport and the authorities responsible for industry. To-day there are no connecting agencies between these different authorities. It should be the Government's duty to coordinate activities and see that these different authorities are related one to another. Factories should be moved out from the crowded area of inner London and put near the different housing estates already developed around London. This suggestion is a secondary suggestion to that which I made earlier about satellite towns, but it is essential and necessary. The satellite towns would be separated from London by green belts. Unfortunately the new housing estates already developed have not got green belts separating them from London.

Let us take the question of London transport, which is very vital. Already it is impossible to provide adequate services for people living more than 10 or 11 miles from the middle of London. Shorter hours and higher wages have been won by fierce fighting on the part of trade unions in the past, but the advantage of these are taken from the workers and sacrificed on the altar of London transport. People spend their leisure going to and fro, and so spend the extra wages won in the past. I would like to read a letter I received from one of my constituents. He says:

"I work at the Holborn Restaurant. So does my wife. My wages, when insurance is paid, are £1 14s. 8d., out of which I pay 7s. 6d. a week railway fares. My wife, who bas to work to help keep the place going, is not very strong, and three times a week has to be out just after half-past six in the morning and does not get home until a quarter to ten at night. She also pays 6s. a week for fares, and we have one daughter whose fare is 3s. 6d. a week and she is earning only 15s. So you can see we pay 17s. a week in fares out of our wages. We should very much like a place round Holborn, and have applied twice unsuccessfully for a transfer back to London."

How can people like that really enjoy the fresh air and the gardens of Dagenham? The Holborn Restaurant cannot be moved to Dagenham, but it would be possible to move factories from the centre of London to such areas and so ensure a redistribution of population.

Then there is the question of local government anomalies. I do not want to raise the whole question of London government now, though I think that this very big problem should be seriously considered by the Government. It is essential to point out some of the anomalies of Greater London government that results from the fact that there is no planning or no control of the location of industry. Let us take again the Becontree Estate. The London County Council built the houses. They left the Essex County Council and the various local councils to find all the amenities and social services at very great cost. Take the town of Barking. Its capital commitments in 1931 were £1,500,000. In 1935 they were £2,300,000 and further heavy expenditure is absolutely essential if satisfactory services are to be provided. Something like another £1,000,000 almost certainly will have to be spent in the next five years. Until recently the town has been filling up with houses. Now there is no further space available for houses but there is one square mile by the riverside available for industrial development. There is no chance of getting an increased rateable value by building further houses, so the problem of the local authority is very acute indeed, unless they can get factory development and increase their rateable value in the area beside the river. I suggest that the Government ought to do something either to ease directly this wrong rateable position or else try to control the location of industry by seeing that factories are put there which will help to solve the problem. I would like to give the general case for controlling the location of industry. You have these depressed areas in the country, with houses, water supply, roads and so on all ready for use. Other places in undeveloped areas have not these services. It is a form of national waste when you allow the services already provided to go into ruin and you build up services elsewhere.

"Transference" is frequently a form of national waste. We should not transfer labour but transfer industry to labour as far as possible. Take the case of Richard Thomas and Company in South Wales. Had they moved to Scunthorpe a considerable amount of national waste would have been caused. South Wales would have lost employment and the services provided there would no longer have been of use, whilst Scunthorpe would have had to provide enormous new services for the people who would go there as a result of the transfer. The people of both areas would have suffered and the firm concerned would have had no responsibility for the suffering caused. They would have escaped all the responsibility. I believe, therefore, that if we are to have transference, and obviously in some cases transference is necessary, we should have some national body in existence which should weigh up the question and give a decision before allowing transference of that kind.

There is another important point, and it is a vital part of the whole problem, if you are to control the location of factories and to control the whole industrial and urban life of the country. The people who are engaged in manufacturing processes tend to become a smaller and smaller number of the whole employed population, while the number of those engaged in distribution and in providing services for the population is increasing. That part of the population engaged in manufacture, which is the really vital part of the population from the industrial point of view, is decreasing. Given the control, however, of that section of the population and where it is situated, you control the other section of the population also, for if you have a factory in a particular area you must provide also all the local government services. You must provide the means for teaching the children and must provide transport and so on. Therefore, the control of the location of factories is the essential factor in the whole of the problem. If the Government wish to secure efficiency and economy and if they really wish to safeguard the amenities of the countryside and look after the welfare of the workers of the country as a whole they will take action to plan the location of industry in the future.

4.19 p.m.

I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"His Majesty's Government should endeavour to discourage the undue concentration of modern industries in. the southern counties and to encourage new industries where practicable to establish themselves in the older industrial centres."

Hon. Members on this side of the House, or most of us, at any rate, find ourselves in substantial agreement with both the speeches that have been delivered, and particularly the speech of the hon. Member who moved the Motion. The reason that I move the Amendment is not that I differ fundamentally from either of the hon. Members, but because I regard with some alarm one phrase in the Motion, where they ask that power should be taken by the Government to plan the location of industries. I think that is, to say the least of it, premature. With our existing knowledge, and under existing conditions, I think it would be a very dangerous thing for the State to arm itself with authority to order industries to go into districts where they do not wish to go. In the long run, always assuming that we are operating a capitalist system, that would be detrimental to the industrial life of the country as a whole. I thought at one moment that the hon. Member who moved the Motion almost agreed with me when he referred to one scheme as good philanthropy but bad economics, and he turned it down on that account.

As a rule, I think that industrialists, so far as business is concerned, are not very good philanthropists. Although they may be philanthropists in their private lives, and that may be an admirable thing, they are not philanthropists in their business life, and it would be a great pity if they were. They can be depended upon to go to that part of the country where they think they will make the greatest success of their business. I would remind hon. Members opposite that at the present time, and under the present system, our industrial revival and the continuance of our industrial revival is dependent on the steady flow of investment into industry, under the combined stimulus of profits and confidence. Those are the two things which are essential if the large measure of industrial prosperity that we have managed to regain during recent years is to be maintained and improved upon. I do not see how we are going to increase confidence or profits by forcing modern developing industries to go into special areas and districts where they are not inclined to go. Moreover, I do not think that we shall encourage the investor to invest his money in those industries under those conditions. Under the present system no Government can possibly "plan" for the infinite varieties of future progress in industry and business, or estimate the future demands which will be made for certain products.

The real advantage of the capitalist system lies in a condition of continuous flux and change; in the shifting of the emphasis from one industry to another in order to meet the varying demands of the public; and I do not see how any Government can estimate for the future what those demands are going to be. Therefore, I say to hon. Members opposite that to give power to the Government to order industries about under existing conditions would be dangerous to industry. That is why I have moved the Amendment.

But there is an obvious need for vigorous action on the part of the Government to deal with the general situation that confronts us in the country today. What are the salient features of that situation so far as industry is concerned? First of all, we have a super-concentration of industry in and around London and the southern counties. The disadvantages of that concentration are so obvious that they need hardly be emphasised. From the strategical point of view alone it is desperately dangerous to concentrate nine-tenths of the wealth of this country within an area of 100 square miles in the extreme south. We are the most vulnerable nation in the world; and we must aim at the dispersal of industry in the North, from the social, economic and, not least, from the strategical point of view.

Then there is what the hon. Member opposite well described as the appalling waste of the existing facilities in this country for the conduct of industry. We have schools, houses, churches, parish halls, which are becoming derelict and wasting away, although they are soundly constructed, and only need a certain amount of repair. Yet those buildings are not being used; while on the other hand we are putting up new buildings in the south to meet the increasing demands caused by the younger industries which will continue to flock into the southern counties, and to cluster around London. That is obvious wastage. There is great wastage involved also in large-scale movements of the population from one part of the country to another. If we were a country of the size of Russia there might be some economic justification for the movement of population on a large scale; but we are a tiny country, and to say that transport facilities are too bad and that our distances are too great is fantastic. In the modern world a distance of 100 or 200 miles is, or should be, negligible; and the pushing of people about distances of 50 or 60 miles, taking them from their homes, is pure waste, and should be stopped as far as possible.

Lastly, there is the continuing social deterioration in the Special Areas, where the incidence of unemployment is high. It is extraordinarily bad for young people year after year to be out of a job and to see no prospect of ever getting a job or even any reason why they should have been born. You cannot estimate the psychological effect on young people brought up under these conditions. I think we are all agreed as to the harm that it does. The first step to be taken is not to start ordering industries about, but to do what was pointed out by the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department in his admirable report on the Distressed Areas of the North-East Coast, when he said:

"It is necessary to remove or minimise the causes which operate to exclude certain areas in this country from any industrial development."

Before we start telling industries where to go, the Government would be well advised to concentrate on improving the special areas, because we all want them to become attractive to industry again. It is because some of us do not think that the Government have been active enough in this direction that we are inclined to complain, not that we want planning of industry—I am not what might be called a "planner"—but because the Government have been remiss in not taking sufficiently energetic steps to make these areas tolerable. There lies a ground of complaint, and that is one of the reasons why I have put down my Amendment.

What are the causes that make these districts so unattractive to industry? They were admirably summarised by the Secretary for the Overseas Trade Department in his report. Briefly, they may be described under three heads, according to the Minister, and I think he is right. First, there is undoubtedly the question of rates, to which the right hon. Member for Platting (Mr. Clynes) drew attention recently. I do not think the Government have paid adequate attention to that problem. Only one real attempt has been made since I have been a Member of this House to deal with this problem, and that was when my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) brought in his Derating Bill in 1929. Many hon. Members opposite do not like that Act; but it was a genuine attempt to grapple with the problem of rates, and it was founded on the very sound principle that you should not tax capital or the means of production, but only profits arising from the use of capital. That was an effort which did bring about certain improvement in these districts; and I think that more is needed in that direction. I know that this point does not concern the Board of Trade, but this Debate covers a wide field, and if I deal with any subjects which belong to other Departments I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade will draw the attention of his colleagues to anything that is said, which he thinks may be of interest.

In regard to the question of rating I submit that there are too many local authorities in this country. There are too many little local authorities, which makes real planning in the sense of town or regional planning frightfully difficult. It also makes for a very bad system when you get local areas segregated into rich areas and poor areas. You get a small district administered by one local authority where all the people are pretty well-to-do, while next door you have another small district where everybody is absolutely down and out, with no money at all. There is no sense in the present local geographical arrangement of local government, and the question might well be surveyed by the Government. These local areas were defined long before the modern industrial system grew to its present extent, and they do not really meet the requirements of modern times.

What about Peterhead and Fraserburgh?

I do not think that the amalgamation of these particular areas is necessary. But local authorities do not like each other very much. I think the only possible thing for the Government to do is to set up a Royal Commission to inquire into the whole question of the delimitation of areas for local government in this country. That is a thing that ought to be taken in hand.

Another point was raised by the Secretary to the Department for Overseas Trade when he said that there should be a subsidy from the Exchequer to reduce the cost of public assistance in the distressed areas upon the rates to the average level appertaining throughout the country. The Government have not acted on the suggestion; and until they do, it is idle to expect that industrialists will deliberately and voluntarily go to the special areas. I should like to direct the attention of hon. Members to that matter. There is finally the bad reputation of these areas which, I think, is largely due to the appearance of these depressed and derelict areas, which has been, in some cases, very much exaggerated in the Press. It is psychological to some extent. If you mention South Wales to an ordinary person who has never been there, he regards it as a kind of desert. There has been so much propaganda about these distressed areas, and the horrors of them have been described so vividly and graphically, that industralists when embarking upon a new industry, say, "We are not going there anyway." I think that this evil reputation is caused by the tales of these districts. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade that one of the first objects of the Government should be to clean up the older industrial areas, and make them more attractive for industry, and for the people who, unfortunately, have to live in them. How, under existing conditions, can anyone who has to live in these areas be proud of their district, or of their homes, or of their lives? It really is impossible. These districts, in their present condition, are a direct encouragement to dirt, untidiness, and lack of sociability, and lead their inhabitants to despair and deterioration in every way.

I was taken to task the other day for describing the central industrial belt of my own country of Scotland as looking like Abyssinia after an air raid. I do not take back one word. That is a true and fair description of large parts of the country between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and particularly of parts of Renfrewshire and of Lanarkshire. The area is just a desert, and a very squalid, dirty, filthy desert at that. It is horrible. And the attention of the Government should really be most forcibly directed to that state of affairs. This is, at the moment, infinitely more important than planning. You cannot get industries to go to these slag heaps and mud pits, with dirty, drab, dreary little houses, inhabited by miserable people without any hope for the future, with enormously high rates pressing upon them. The ironical part of all this is when you compare these conditions with those in our Dominions and Colonies and many other places, like South America. British capital has helped to develop and lay out marvellous cities all over the world; and it is a pity, when you come to the centre of it all—the source of the whole strength and wealth of the British Empire—that we find we have capital enough to spare for almost every other place in the world but home; and the second city in the Empire classed as a "depressed area." It is a disgrace. It reflects badly not only upon the Government, but upon the whole community, upon local authorities, upon industry, and upon everybody.

There is a sort of latent passion in the people of this country to develop every other country to the maximum extent possible—not only in search of profit, but out of love for the development of everything overseas—and to ignore their own front door. That is one of the tendencies that ought to be checked. How? I understand that the Government are con- sidering the setting up of trading estates in various of the Special Areas. One of the first tasks which should be given to these trading estates should be the cleaning up of the Special Areas, and making them not only habitable, but attractive, and if they did that immediately, it would be the greatest step they could take to attract industries to go into them.

The second point I should like to raise in this connection is the question of economic development. I do not mean great schemes of public works to provide employment, but long-term capital improvement; to improve the capital equipment of this country, which really increases our fundamental wealth. We have neglected this since the War. I mention roads anti docks. I think that we should have done more in this connection, as both roads and docks are inadequate in this country. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I go back to my native country, but I know a little more about it than I do of some other parts of Great Britain. I am sure that the same arguments apply to other parts. In Scotland it is a scandal that there is no adequate system of road transport on the main trunk route up and down the east coast. There is no road bridge across the Firth of Forth, and no road bridge across the Firth of Tay. Under any system working properly these bridges would have been built 10 years ago. The authorities are still haggling whether they shall build a road bridge to carry the whole main stream of traffic by road up and down from the main centres of industrial Scotland along the north east coast.

It is unfortunate that, apparently, the sole arbiter on this question is the Minister of Transport. I yield to no one in my admiration of the Minister of Transport for the energy, enthusiasm and courage with which he has grappled with his various problems. But I do not think that the Minister of Transport ought to be the sole judge of whether Scotland is properly equipped with road transport. The attention of the Government as a whole ought to be given to what used to be a problem, and has now become a scandal. In this connection I would direct the attention of my lion. Friend to the necessity, twice pointed out by the Commissioner for the special area in Scotland, and to which I believe my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland has now given his attention, for the institution of a central development council for Scotland. The council should consist of the leading industrialists in Scotland, representatives of the trade unions, and leaders of local government, with a representative of the Government to act as liaison officer between the Government and the council, to co-ordinate activity, and direct economic development. The influence of such a body on the location of industry would, in my opinion, be enormous, and, I think, decisive in the long run. I believe that the institution of such a body would do away with the necessity for Government planning of the type envisaged by the hon. Gentleman who moved this Motion.

The subject of housing is also tremendously important. The houses in the Special Areas are now so grim and so forbidding that the very sight of them would frighten anybody away who contemplated setting down an industry and asking his workers to reside there. The Government ought to direct special attention to this aspect of the problem of the Special Areas and the location of industry. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Romford (Mr. Parker) who seconded the Motion dealt with this, and I agree with every word he said. I am sure that he and hon. Members generally would be interested to read the most interesting report of a deputation sent by the Secretary of State for Scotland to study Continental methods of housing. They issued a report, which is not as widely known as it should be, upon the present methods of housing on the Continent of Europe. It received the warm approval of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but it wants more than words from the Secretary of State to carry the recommendations of this report into practice. It wants vigorous action. We are faced now with the necessity for rebuilding considerable portions in the built-up areas of our towns where for economic reasons it is impossible to erect single family dwellings. Therefore, some more concentrated form of development on modern lines, with communal amenities, in other words, flats, is necessary. Mass building for the workers has become a real necessity, certainly in Scotland, and, I expect, in many other industrial districts in this country. The report which I have mentioned says:

"The housing schemes on the Continent is given into the hands of a competent (and often a brilliant) architect, who proceeds to fit the details into a general architectural conception. In Scotland house design is too often hack work."

I beg of the hon. Gentleman to ask the Minister of Health, and also the Secretary of State for Scotland to devote great attention to this problem of housing construction. In Amsterdam, the report says, that there is a committee representative of the municipality, the Public Works Department. the architects, and the builders, to whom plans for all new buildings are submitted for approval. Their powers are delegated by the municipality, but they are founded upon powers to control design and amenities which are statutorily available to the municipality. No such powers exist in this country. Such powers should exist. The municipalities should be given power by the Government to exercise some general control and supervision over new housing construction. The housing construction which has gone on in this country during the last 10 years is a nightmare of ugliness, and is completely haphazard and unco-ordinated.

The remarks of the hon. Gentleman apply as much to the small individual houses as to flats. The architectural problem is the same. The hon. Member has approved the flat system as against individual houses. What are his reasons for supporting the system of tenements, now that we are getting away from it?

The real answer is that I have always known in my heart of hearts that the hon. Gentleman is fundamentally an individualist and I am fundamentally a communist. I really do believe in a communal social life for the workers of this country; in common kitchens, laundries, electric light, hot water, babies' crÊches, chemists shops, and in general co-operation and coordination.

We cannot go the length of having a common institution in Glasgow in our tenements, of one lavatory for 10 tenements. That would be carrying his communism to extremes.

They may do that in Russia, but they are not doing it here. I am proposing the most up-to-date and modern workers' tenements such as exist, and such as I have personally seen on the Continent of Europe. That is an admirable system. I do not say, do away with single houses altogether, but to do so in built-up areas where you cannot extend into the countryside and have not unlimited sites.

The only thing of which we have a decent supply in Scotland is space.

It certainly is not the case so far as central industrial Scotland is concerned. If you shifted all houses outside you would have an enormous additional cost of transport to the workers in getting to their work. If the hon. Member had seen, as I have seen, some of these Continental schemes—

I have seen them, and I have been inside them, which is more to the point.

So have I. I merely say that if you are to build these schemes, and you will have to build some of these schemes, there is no reason at all for the frontage of the tenement building to be in strict alignment with the frontage of the traffic street. That has been the main cause of the wretchedness of all our tenement buildings. If you built flats, and made the frontages attractive, it would make all the difference.

I hate to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he is so confident as to how to deal with the inhabitants. I want to put to him one problem. I do not know whether it is one which he has to face in his own domestic circle. Has he ever faced the necessity of airing a baby? In the newspapers to-day he will see a picture of a celebrated American citizen who has had to bring his baby in the pram down 36 flights because there is a strike among the liftmen. Does he realise that one part of tenement life is the problem of rearing babies in a healthy way?

Has the hon. Member seen some of the modern flats with balconies, and is he honestly against that type?

Yes.

Come over here.

I am bound to give way to my Noble Friend when it comes to a question of rearing babies. I would point out to the hon. Member opposite that I do not propose skyscrapers. The maximum height need only be two storeys. In any event there are facilities in the way of balconies, and of communal playgrounds for children in tenements abroad incomparably superior to anything we possess in this country.

I come to a final point, perhaps the most important of all. The Motion talks about the Government planning private industry. There is immediate and effective action that the Government might take at once and that is in the sphere of defence. This is the most important of all. It has been shown in the last two days that there is a shortage of factories capable of making munitions, and a serious shortage of skilled and semiskilled labour. My right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) pointed out—and Members on all sides agreed—the necessity for the provision of alternative manufacture, so that we should be able, if necessity arose, to swing over our industrial production from the products of peace to the products of war. He pointed out the necessity for the widely distributed manufacture of components, and the provision of assembly plants. That is where the Government can effectively intervene at once so far as the Special Areas are concerned. Whether hon. Members opposite think it is desirable to proceed with a large rearmament programme is irrelevant, because we are going to proceed with it; and therefore it is essential that the Government should place some, at any rate, of these orders and some of these factories in the special and depressed areas. And in doing so they should seek the assistance of the trade unions.

There is, of course, a point, which I have no doubt the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade will raise, and that is the revival of international trade, if it can possibly be achieved. That would do more good in the long run to the Special Areas and industrial districts of the North than anything else. It may seem a mad moment even to mention the subject of international trade. Nevertheless I am not at all sure that we may not be on the verge of being able to pull off something pretty big in international politics. I have a sort of feeling that in the next few weeks, perhaps days, the future fate of the League of Nations will be decided one way or the other; and if it is decided for the good I would beg my hon. Friend to consider how valuable the services of the League of Nations have been in the past in the economic field, and how overlooked and ignored they have been. If more attention had been paid to the activities of the League on the economic side and less to their activities in the political field, it would be a far stronger body than it is to-day. Think what the Committee on Nutrition is doing at present, and how much agreement it has achieved.

The same applies to other economic committees. A great measure of international agreement has been reached, always subsequently stultified and brought to nought by purely political antagonisms. There are certain problems to be faced in the economic field which can only be solved by international action and agreement. The problems of embargoes and currency stabilisation; of the redaction of tariffs; of migration; of raw materials, which may involve the open-door in the colonies of all nations—all these problems demand an international solution, and cannot be solved in any other way. Until we get such solutions, all our other problems will remain.

The surest way of getting a real revival of the League of Nations is to make it concentrate on economic problems, which are the chief cause of poverty and the chief cause of the war threat. If there is any hope, if there is going to be any solution of the negotiations going on in London this week, then to my mind is the first field to which the attention of the League of Nations should be directed is the economic field.

This Debate has covered an immense ground. And I cannot see how the Government can carry through an effective economic policy without a far better administrative organisation than they have at present. The Seconder of the Motion referred to that aspect of the question, and I entirely agree with him. We do not complain of the intentions of the Government. We believe them to be admirable and excellent in every way. What we do complain of is lack of central direction; and I must also say of lack of imagination and vision in the past. The problem of government on the economic side is identical with the problem of government in the field of defence. There is a lack of co-ordination. You have Ministries such as the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Labour, all working in separate water-tight compartments, very well administered in their own field, but no co-ordination. No central direction, and therefore no theme. They talk of setting up a Munitions Council. I hope such a council will be set up—it was suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping—but it will be of no more use than any other council or department unless you have a Minister to co-ordinate all the departments concerned with supplies, who can survey the whole field, including the supply of food; and who can pursue a well-considered long-term policy designed to make the country a well-balanced economic unit, and make it efficient not only for war and for the products of war, but for peace and the products of peace.

4.54 p.m.

I beg to second the Amendment.

The hon. Member who moved the Motion suggested that possibly the Debate was as important as that which took place yesterday. Whether that is true or not, there is a far more substantial measure of agreement in all parts of the House on the broad lines of the question that we are discussing, and on the necessity of some action to prevent the continued drift of industry to the South. The only part of the Motion to which we object is the suggestion that industry should be placed under the complete control of the Government with regard to locality, which it says will secure the maximum efficiency and economy of industry. I have no reason to believe that that would in fact be the case. As a matter of fact, I cannot help feeling that throughout the last four or five extremely difficult years of the world depression the tendency has been in many cases to attempt to regulate industry to too great an extent. After all, industry, generally speaking, has fulfilled admirably the functions expected of it. It is currency, banking, and generally the system of the exchanges and the consuming power of the world that have broken down and not the actual effectiveness of industry itself.

If we are to assume that the function of industry in the world is to produce a steady flow of cheap goods, to pay adequate wages and to see that the general conditions under which the wages are being earned are on the whole improved, taking a long view of the last 20 years or so certainly industry has succeeded in fulfilling that function. What has broken down has been the financial system of banking, the troubles that have arisen from currency and all those matters, which have only ended in choking the industries of the world in a perpetually rising flood of cheaper and cheaper goods. I cannot help thinking that, instead of placing added restrictions and perhaps placing difficulties in the way of industry, we should turn our attention to trying to cure the other evils of which I have spoken.

There is one other aspect of the situation that might possibly be dwelt upon, and that is that the drift of these industries south is not always an unmixed blessing to the localities to which they drift. I represent one of the areas to which that drift has taken place. Proud as we are of being one of the most highly industrialised areas in the country now that there is a very wide range of products being manufactured, we are approaching a point in which the advent of new factories to our area is not quite so welcome as it was. I should like to say a word about what is causing that situation, and that is the working of de-rating as it is actually affecting new industries and areas in which new industries are being built to-day. The hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Parker) pointed out that he had a very large housing area and that new estates had grown up in the last few years, and suggested that it would be a benefit to that area and to the industries themselves if more industries were built within it. But he might find that, as those industries were built more and more and they had the advantages of the De-rating Act, the people in the housing area would perhaps resent the fact that they would have put upon them more and more the burden of replacing the deficiency caused by the de-rating of the factories that had been built within the area.

I should like to suggest that a more effective way of dealing with this general drift would be to have an inquiry into the working of the De-rating Act, bearing in mind that you might not necessarily have to apply exactly the same provisions of the Act to all parts of the country at the same time.

In intention and in effect the Act, I believe, has been successful in northern areas in keeping industries going, upon which large numbers of people in the localities are dependent. I think it should continue, but the Government might seriously consider whether the Act should not be withdrawn when dealing with new factories to be set up in the future in the wide areas in the south. It would be a deterrent to those people who may want to move their factories into the southern area. There is bound to be a border line somewhere through the country upon one side of which you will find factories derated and on the other side factories which are not derated; that is bound to happen, but the principle has already been accepted in much of the legislation passed through this House. We are constantly attempting to assist this or that industry in this or that place because an emergency has arisen and because we cannot allow the industry to come to an end. That argument is constantly used when we are discussing the question of subsidising an industry. The question whether we should assist industry in one part of the country and not in another, is not a matter of academic justice; the point is to encourage industries to remain or spring up in those parts of the country where they will be most beneficial.

Let me emphasise again that it is not only hon. Members who represent seats in the north of England, those parts of the country from which industry has been inclined to flow, but also hon. Members who sit for seats in the south who are capable of appreciating a national need and seeing further than the local newspaper in their constituency. They also realise that a perpetual journey of fresh industries to areas which in the past have been largely residential is a somewhat mixed blessing, and that there is a good deal to be said against the uncontrolled entry of these industries into these residential areas.

5.4 p.m.

I want to make one or two observations on the subject matter of the Motion. The hon. Member is to be congratulated on having brought it forward, because it enables the House to have a discussion on a matter of vital importance to the country. But I suggest that it would have been better if he had extended his suggested survey a little beyond the immediate industrial field. You cannot get a complete picture unless the survey is extended to co-ordinate information on a much wider range. For instance, he referred to the control of industry and to the urban life of the country and said that the industrial population is a vital part of the nation. Some of us regard it as of importance for the future that the urban section of our community should not be regarded as being so vital as it is to-day. It would be much better to have a bigger proportion of the population elsewhere. I should like to have seen the suggested survey extended to collect information on land drainage, for the sake of the cultivation of the soil and of industry itself. I should like to have a survey of the water resources of the country, not only for the purposes of water supply but of power; and, with regard to the location of industry, I should like to have seen an examination of the case of existing industries and their potentialities, having regard to their present location, their power possibilities and also their transport facilities.

Already there is a great deal of this information available, and all that is wanted is that there should be Government action on the information already possessed. In the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Transport and in the reports of the Commissioners for the Special Areas, information is available on practically all these subjects, and what is really wanted now is for the Government to act on the information which is there. It is, of course, well known that rapid changes are taking place in the location of industry in this country. For some years there has been a move of industry from the north to the south, and if you look at the figures for certain areas around the Metropolis you will be startled at the enormous increase on the insured population in some districts. In the County of Middlesex in the last six years there has been an increase of 100 per cent. in the insured population, and an increase of 30 and 40 per cent. is quite common. While that is going on here you will find the insured population in depressed areas is actually a good deal higher than it was five years ago.

Many reasons are given for this. In the reports on the depressed areas mention is made of the inaccessibility of markets, although outside Cumberland this does not apply to the depressed areas. There is also the question of high rates. I do not agree with the Commissioner that too much stress is laid on the question of high rates, because I think it plays a much bigger part than the Commissioner cares to admit. Then there is the fear of labour unrest. I was delighted to hear the Prime Minister's statement the other day; it will have a great effect on industries who are contemplating moving into these areas. The facts do not warrant this fear. But whatever are the reasons, this uncontrolled drift of industry to the south is a serious matter. By allowing this uncontrolled drift of industry into new areas, without any plan at all, you are possibly creating depressed areas of the future, and, in addition, you are taking away agricultural land at a rate which is really quite alarming. It also means an appalling waste of money. You have municipal expenditure in these districts on housing, drainage and water supply, and, further, the expenditure of the people who buy or erect their own house.

While you have this appalling waste you hear from day to day of industries locating themselves, or new industries being put up, in sparsely populated places like the Highlands because water power is available. I have yet to learn that water power is cheaper than highly efficient electricity produced from coal. There is no evidence as yet to show that it is any cheaper. Industries go to places without houses and without labour. Houses have to be built and labour has to be brought to these districts. Indeed, the raw material of those industries in some cases has to be brought from the depressed areas, and then the finished product brought to the south before it is sold. It all means an appalling waste. When there are places in which labour is available and where the raw materials are available, with all the housing and municipal services in existence I urge the Government, in a case of that sort, to use their influence to see that industries are put in places where all these facilities are already available. There is also the question of those places far removed from the industrial centres of the country which are hit by unemployment and have no hope of partaking in any revival. In these places I would ask the Government to consider the possibility of assisting local industries in order to give employment to the population. I think the Government can help a very great deal in this matter. The hon. Member for Aberdeen East (Mr. Boothby) suggested that it would be dangerous for the Government to arm themselves with powers to order industry to go to any particular place. I have no wish to see this done, but the Government have more right to insist on this now because industries themselves have come to the Government and have received considerable help. If the State gives public assistance, directly or indirectly, to industries, they are entitled to demand that the public interests should be considered when these industries are being put up.

The trouble so far has been that the depressed areas have not been treated as part of a national problem. The inquiries which have been conducted have been of great value in letting the country know what most of us knew already, but I do not think that anything worth while will be done unless it is done nationally. It is a national responsibility. These depressed or Special Areas have in their days contributed very largely to the prosperity and development of the country and the Empire, and in their prosperity every other section of the community benefited. It is therefore not too much to ask the nation as a whole to help these areas in their adversity. After the Great War the devastated areas of France were treated as a national responsibility; they were not asked to repair the damage in their own areas. Our Special Areas are as much devastated as any areas during the War and, therefore, I think we are entitled to ask the Government to treat them as a national problem. It is vital to the welfare and well-being of our country that it should be so decided.

In supporting this Motion I would like to say finally that I hope the Government, while undertaking a survey of the industrial life of this country, will not forget that it is of vital importance that every aspect of the national life should be investigated, not only the industrial but the agricultural, and the potential resources of the country. I believe that if the Government would take a national view and would utilise the tremendous amount of information which is already available to them and act upon it, we should then start on a road which would lead us to recovery.

5.16 p.m.

I am sure that all hon. Members are grateful to the two hon. Gentlemen who moved and seconded the Motion this afternoon, for, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Pembroke (Major Lloyd George) said, this is a national matter and cannot be considered as something detached or as something which affects only the areas about which the Motion speaks. I represent a city of great industrial diversity, a city which happily is not a depressed area; but I think it is the duty of everyone of us to do all we can to assist the areas which are not so fortunately placed, and which are to-day suffering such misfortunes. I think that whatever we may do to assist those areas at the present time will have its effect in the national sphere, and for that reason I think a national effort is called for. It is important to remember that the areas which are so afflicted are the very places where the raw materials exist in abundance, where there are eager hands waiting and where they have been fitted and equipped for many years to play a very important part in the industrial life of the nation. It is those areas that are suffering and it is to those areas that our attention must be directed.

My hon. Friend who moved the Amendment said that one of the difficulties facing the Commissioners and the Government in their efforts to deal with the problem is that there are too many local authorities. That may be a very easy thing to say, but when one tries to remove an authority in these areas or elsewhere there are great objections. One has only to read the report of the Commissioners with regard to Merthyr Tydfil to see the difficulties that have to be met when it is sought to take away the status of a local authority or to reduce the number of district administrations. In this connection, I would like to ask whether the Government have taken any steps to carry out the recommendations of the report so far as Merthyr Tydfil is concerned, or whether Merthyr Tydfil will he allowed to continue as a separate entity as at present. The story which the report tells of Merthyr Tydfil is a, very disconcerting one. It tells of how a large, busy industrial area, while still possessing all its raw materials and labour facilities, has arrived in the position in which Merthyr Tydfil now is. Unemployment has tremendously increased and the rateable charges of the area have become so great that they are the highest in the country. That is a position which it is very sad to contemplate, but it is a position which has to be dealt with.

I do not like to think, as is suggested in the Motion, that we should have to license industries and to compel them to get permission before being established. I think this would be placing difficulties in the way of areas which are not depressed, and yet would do no good to the depressed areas; but I do think that something could be done by united effort to bring some kind of industrial activity to places such as Merthyr Tydfil and the other depressed areas. These areas have contributed very much to the industrial life of the nation and I do not think we ought to despair of their position now, but ought to face the facts. We know there has been a big trend of industry to the South.

I apologise for interrupting the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I would like to say that when it comes to my turn to intervene in the Debate I shall hope to satisfy the House that there has been no drift of industry to the South, although there has been a large movement of population. I think it would be hard for any hon. Member to find an instance of an industry moving from the North to the South. There have been movements of population and certainly a large number of new industries have been started in the South, but do not let us use an expression which carries with it in this House and outside a misapprehension.

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman for his interruption. It must be recognised that the population has moved and, as far as one can understand, has been employed in the South in industries which have been set up there for the first time. These industries have either been started for the first time in this country, partly because of the restrictions on imports imposed by this Government, or they have been established somewhere else and it has been desired to start a branch in this country. There is no question of a movement of industry as such from the North to the South, but the industries have been started in the South. I hope the condition of the Special Areas can be changed, but any licensing of industry might have unfortunate repercussions on industry taken nationally. I hope that an attempt will be made to comply with the hope that was expressed so passionately a short time ago by the Prime Minister when he said, referring to the national work which the Government has done, that industry should look at the position from the national standpoint and co-operate accordingly.

It is unfortunate to read in the report of the Commissioner how little attention is being paid to the efforts that are being made. For instance, I see that 5,829 copies of a questionnaire were circulated by the Commissioner asking whether or not, if they were thinking of extending their works, they would come into one of the depressed areas. The Commissioner states in his report that 4,066 firms did not reply, and I think that is a very serious reflection upon industry in general. 1,313 firms gave unqualified negative replies to all questions; 386 gave qualified negatives to all questions; and 64 answered at least one question in the affirmative. Here we have an effort made by the Commissioner, who is charged with a very difficult public duty, and he has met, in my humble judgment, with very little co-operation from industry, if this is the only result he has obtained from the labour he has been trying to perform. The report goes on to say:

"Of the 1,763 who replied, only 38 stated that they had established new works or branches in the Special Areas in the last few years, while 35 stated that they had actually considered within the last five years the choice of a site in one of the Special Areas but had decided against it. Of the latter number, 12 gave no reason for their adverse decisions. Of those who gave reasons, 14 indicated "technical trade reasons"; seven indicated inaccessibility; three fear of labour troubles; three lack of capital; two shortage of work, and two high rates."

I venture to say that this shows that there have not been the co-operation there ought to have been between industry and the Commissioner. My hon. Friend who moved the Amendment and who gave the House a very interesting discourse on many matters, went into great details as to what should be done. I wish the Government would tell us to-day that they are taking the initiative in starting immediately trading estates in these areas.

I hesitate to interrupt my hon. and learned Friend again, but I would remind him that the Motion under discussion is not in the least degree limited to the depressed areas. To confine the Debate to the depressed areas is, I think, unnecessarily limiting the scope of what the hon. Member who moved the Motion had in mind.

I am always grateful for any intervention of my hon. Friend, because he is always so helpful in every way. But I do hope that while discussing industry generally we shall be able to discuss some sort of remedy for the more particularly depressed areas. If I understood correctly, what the hon. Gentleman who moved the Motion had in mind was that the survey of industry should be made for some real and effective purpose and should have the object of finding, as far as possible, some means of helping the areas which are in need of help. One observation I would like to make regarding the whole survey is that I hope one of the results of any such survey would be to arrange some decentralised body to help at any time any industry which applies to the Import Duties Advisory Committee for an increase in protective duties, because I believe co-operation between industry and that board, without any Parliamentary interference, is very much to be desired.

I would like to turn to the depressed areas and to express the hope that in that part of the survey dealing with the depression in industry, the Government will put into effect the recommendations for the establishment of trading estates. I do not wish to deal with the many questions of housing, transport and building, to which my hon. Friend referred in moving the Amendment, but I would like to remark that when a trading estate is being dealt with it will be in the largest sense, and will also include transportation, electrification, and so on. One advantage of a trading estate is that it enables all difficulties which arise to be dealt with in a comprehensive manner. In the proposed survey I would urge the Government to adopt the view of the Commissioner which is that:

"There is universal agreement as to the need for attracting to and developing in the Special Areas fresh industries of the lighter type."

It is no good asking voluntary associations to undertake the whole labour and responsibility of finding some kind of palliative for the present situation. We must try to get at the root of the trouble and it is only the Government that can do so. They can do so by carrying out an industrial survey of a thorough character by the erection of towns and the maintenance of easy transport and electrification and I submit that the establishment of trading estates would be the first step towards bringing some kind of industrial prosperity to the affected areas. The Commissioner further says:

"Such industries have been increasing very rapidly in the south of England during recent years but there has been little development on similar lines in any of the Special Areas."

He also states:

"The small industrialist seeking a site for a new factory is attracted by the admirable facilities provided so freely on estates like those at Trafford Park and at Slough … and is repelled from the Special Areas by the lack of such facilities and the expense of the preliminary work which he realises is necessary in their absence … Private enterprise has hitherto refrained from establishing trading estates in the Special Areas presumably because the risk involved is considered too great."

I suggest that the Government now have a first-class chance of taking an important step forward by making this survey. If risks are involved we ought surely to consider that no risk would be too great that would give us a reasonable chance of re-creating the trade and prosperity of these areas.

Has my hon. and learned Friend considered trading estates established by private enterprise, such as that at Welwyn Garden City?

I think that Welwyn Garden City is a first-class example of a trading estate established and managed by private enterprise; but we are in this difficulty. For reasons which may be right or wrong and into which I cannot enter now, there is an objection on the part of private enterprise to establishing trading estates in the distressed areas. If the Government take the view of the Commissioner that trading estates represent a vital part of the solution of the problem of the distressed areas, and if private enterprise is not willing, for whatever reasons, to establish estates like that at Welwyn, I hope the Government will take such action as will encourage private enterprise in this respect or else that they will take steps to encourage the Commissioner himself to establish something in the nature of trading estates. I know and appreciate the readiness of the Parliamentary Secretary at all times to co-operate with industrialists in dealing with the difficulties which we are now encountering, and I hope before the close of this Debate he will tell us that this grave problem is going to be tackled—not that it is going to be put off temporarily or that some remedy of a purely partial character is going to be suggested but that it is going to be tackled fundamentally.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) referred to a readiness at all times to expend money anywhere except at home. What has been done elsewhere could be more readily accomplished here. We have developed our Empire and built up great cities in the furthest parts where, years ago, there were only forest clearings. Here we have our own depressed areas full of natural resources and yet suffering heavily through no fault of their own and forming black spots in the employment map of this country. We know that trade in this country to a very large extent to-day is experiencing a period of comparative prosperity, and I hope that the Government will not hesitate about tackling the black spots which remain. In connection with the necessary defence schemes which we have been discussing for the last two days I hope that the Government will insist, when their survey has been made, that certain areas covered by that survey shall be singled out for contracts. In my own constituency we have a great diversity of industries and by good management, by the skill of our workers and by co-operation to create favourable conditions, we have been enabled to enjoy a certain measure of prosperity. But I suggest that we must not look at these questions merely as they affect our constituencies individually. We must regard the problem as a whole and I hope that effective measures will be taken to overcome the difficulties of the Special Areas and to put an end to the tragedy and suffering which exists in those areas. Whether it is to be done by a limitation of the hours of labour, by a shorter working week—

I think the hon. and learned Member had better get somewhere nearer to the Motion which is under discussion.

I am sorry if I have wandered from the actual Motion, but I wished to conclude by saying that whatever measures may be found necessary as a result of the industrial survey to deal with the present situation I hope the Government will not hesitate to apply those measures. I have one further request to make. There seems to be a considerable measure of agreement in the House upon this Motion. This has been, I hope, a useful Debate. There seems to be a general desire on the part of hon. Members that something effective should be done ta deal with the problem and I hope, therefore, that it will not be found necessary to divide the House on a question in regard to which there is, I think, a real consensus of opinion.

5.37 p.m.

I think it is rather unfortunate that the hon. and learned Member for East Leicester (Mr. Lyons) did not address himself to the difference between fie Motion and the Amendment. It would be unfortunate if this became a debate centring round the distressed areas. I believe that that would be the greatest possible disservice that could be done to the distressed areas, because it would obscure the nature of the problem which we have to discuss. The difference between the Amendment and the Motion is that whereas the Amendment declares that the location of industry can be determined by inducement, the Motion declares that it must be done by means of plans imposed by the Government on the economic structure of the country. The issue lies between the Amendment and the Motion in that regard. There is general agreement that industry has to some extent found its way to the wrong places and the question arises, how is it to be redistributed or how can further maldistribution be prevented in order to avoid the bad social consequences which have been mentioned this afternoon.

I think if we approach the problem from that angle we shall at once begin to see some light. We have to ask ourselves, why is industry growing up in the South and South-Eastern parts of the country more than in the Northern and Western parts? I think it is incorrect to say that one of the main causes is the rate burden. I should be the very last to argue against an equalisation of rates in Great Britain. I think the higher rates in some of the industrial districts are utterly inequitable and that there ought to be a redistribution of the burden. But it is incorrect to say that that is the cause—

I have not the figure in mind and I should like the hon. Member to tell us what is the present rate at Merthyr Tydvil?

It is more than 30s. But I must be careful to guard myself in this respect. I would be the last to argue that the rate burden should remain at that height. We on these benches have, on many occasions, advocated the equalisation of rates in Great Britain and we stand by that proposition. What I say is that it would be a mistake to suppose that, if there were equalisation, it would materially affect the distribution of industry. Obviously, if a manufacturer is considering whether he should put his factory in the North or in the South the fact that only one-quarter of the rates will fall upon the factory, whether it is in the North or in the South, means that the difference in the rates does not make much difference in the overhead charges. Furthermore when there is competition between factories, the relief given to both factories in respect of rates means that their competitive position remains relatively the same. If one man is six feet and another man is seven feet, you do not detract from the disparity by taking an inch off both. The trouble with de-rating was that it exempted the factory outside the distressed areas from three-quarters of its rate burden, as well as the factory inside the distressed area. I believe that the Parliamentary Secretary himself is agreed that it can be shown that the equalisation of rates, while desirable for many other reasons, would not have a great influence on the distribution of industry in Great Britain.

The trouble, as I see it, is this: There has not been a drift of industry. There has been a contraction of the capital goods industries in the North and West. There has been a great deal of technological unemployment in those industries and the redundant industrial population has been drawn to man the light industries which have grown up in the South and South-East. Those light industries have grown up for reasons that must be artificially controlled if redistribution is to be arrested. Before the industrial revolution the location of population was determined by purely physical factors. Mankind established himself at the mouths of rivers, along the banks of rivers or in places where nature smiled upon his social plans. When the industrial revolution occurred the extractive industries determined the places where the main industries were established. The iron ore belt, the coalfields, the location of forests and water power formed for society a sort of ground plan and mankind had to conform to it. Mankind in those days was more mobile than industry and as a consequence of the fixation of industry there grew up the industrial centres in the North and West where the extractive industries were to be found.

That ground plan has now been destroyed, very largely because of the development of motive power and the increase in mobility. Electricity can be provided almost everywhere at the same cost. It is possible to create inside factories artificial climates so that articles can be produced under artificially-created climatic conditions, where it would have been impossible to produce them before. That is bound to have an ever-increasing influence upon the location, for instance, of the textile industry. Indeed, textile factories have now been established in parts of the world where they would have been impossible 20 years ago. So the fact now is that industry is more mobile than man. Man, when he settles down, establishes round himself a complicated, social apparatus of roads, drains, sewers, hospitals, colleges, and other institutions. When industry goes away, he is left there with all that immobilised social capital. That seems to be the fundamental difference between our society and the society immediately following the industrial revolution.

Why is it that, in these circumstances, industry grows in the South and South-East and not in the North and the West? It is because of one single thing; it is because these light industries depend enormously upon a local market. Light industry is taking the place of the extractive capital goods industry because light industry becomes more and more the characteristic industry of society as the standard of living rises, and these industries are growing up around London because London affords an enormous market. Here is a challenge that we have to make to the Movers of the Amendment: How, apart from Governmental intervention, can you arrest that process?

I do not know why the hon. Member looks at me. I have nothing to do with the Amendment.

I was not looking at the hon. Member. I was looking in that direction, because if I did not look there, I should have to look somewhere else, and my challenge was also rhetoric. I hope the defenders of the Amendment will reply to it. How are you, apart from Government intervention, going to arrest the growth of new industries which grow up around London because London affords the market?

Intervention may be intervention which involves force, or compulsion, or it may be intervention which involves encouragement. That is the difference between the Amendment and the Motion.

I agree, but when I speak about intervention, I mean intervention by compulsion, and that is the difference, as the hon. Member says, between the Amendment and the Motion. My complaint of hon. Members opposite is that they continually complain about circumstances which they are not prepared to take action to stop. There was a report made by Lord Haldane in about 1921–22. That report recommended that the establishment of great power stations should be in the coal areas. Had we taken that advice then, the Battersea power station would not be where it is, and although it is one of our loveliest buildings, it ought not to be where it is; it ought to have been situated in the coal belt. The whole organisation of Great Britain would have been influenced if there had been a plan of industrial development in this country. Certainly the shocking excrescences, the aesthetic barbarities, of the vulgarised belt around London would have been prevented if we had had control over the industrial development. When I look across at hon. Members, who may ask to be regarded as patriotic, I invite them to go with me for a motor ride around the outskirts of London and say whether that sort of country is worth defending at all. It is so ugly, so monstrous, that every patriotic Englishman ought to be up in arms against it. I regard the jerry builder as a worse enemy of Great Britain than the Germans ever could be, and if it were possible to organise an air raid and take the population out, I would be in favour of it in some of these districts around us.

I say that simply as a digression, but I do want to challenge hon. Members that they must face that central position, that in some way we must intervene, and, as the Mover of the Motion put it, we must insist upon sanitary belts, upon the prevention of factories being erected in certain areas. If factories want to establish themselves, they ought to go to other parts of the country. Could any hon. Member here tell me the point at which this drift need stop? If it is true that light industries do go to the South and South-East because the local market is to be found there, then there is nothing at all to stop London growing indefinitely until it sucks the whole of Great Britain in. If you are going to start a different set of influences, they must be started artificially, or you must provide inducements which will start the process in the reverse direction, or, in other words, make it more attractive for industry to establish itself. say, in Wales, or in some part of Lancashire, or on the North-East Coast, than in London. And mark this: They must be inducements of an economic kind and not of a philanthropic kind. You must make it as profitable or more profitable to take their factories there than around London.

I should be interested to learn how it is going to be done, because one of the tragedies of the situation is that the spending power of the new areas in the South and in the South-East is so much more per head of the population that it provides a larger market for the sort of goods produced by these industries. That is one of the difficulties. The spending power in the North and the West is to a very large extent now being determined by the numbers on unemployment insurance benefit. So long as the impoverishment of the population continues, you will not be able to provide in those areas the attraction that the factories find round London, and when we have been pleading in this House and in the country for greater spending power for miners, for increased wages for miners, it is because we know that, apart from its particular merits, increased spending power for the miners is an essential condition if you are to maintain the light industries in the distressed areas when you have established them there.

I hope I have said enough to indicate the lines on which our minds are moving. I believe the House is to a very large extent conducting a post-mortem examination on a situation which could have been prevented if the House had insisted upon taking it in hand long before this. It makes some of us a little tired to listen to these well-meaning, erudite speeches from hon. Members in other parts of the House that never reach executive action, because they are continually trying to superimpose order upon the anarchy of capitalist competition. I would end by saying that if it is true, as I have tried to show, that the ground plan of society has been destroyed by modern, commercial, city development, it seems to me that an artificial plan must be put in its place. It is therefore incumbent upon the Government, if they are going to show any sense of social responsibility, to conduct the survey which is asked for in the Motion and to bring before the House of Commons a plan of controlled industrial development in Great Britain which will prevent these migrations of the industrial population every 50 or 100 years, with the vast waste of social expenditure involved in them.

5.55 p.m.

In the speeches which we have heard this afternoon it seems that there is general agreement that the haphazard drift of economic life can no longer continue. That has been recognised too by the Government, as has been shown by their introduction of tariffs and trade agreements and by the statutory guidance that has been given to industry in such matters as electricity, agricultural marketing schemes, the Coal Mines Act, North Atlantic shipping, and indeed, more recently, in the regulation of the cotton and beet-sugar industries. It seems that "The old order changeth, yielding place to new." [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Hon. Members opposite cheer that, but it is the National Government that has changed the old order, and yielded place to the new.

It seems that a certain amount of State intervention has come to stay, and I feel that it is our duty to see that this is done under conditions of the greatest possible economic freedom. I feel that the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Mr. Edwards) did a service to the House when he brought forward the location aspect of this problem, and I would say that we on this side of the House believe that the general location of industrial activity can be guided without interfering with the control of industry itself. My hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) also did a good service, because I feel that he was able to bring the discussion to a more specific point when he showed us the real danger to the industrial structure that exists in the concentration of the industries of the nation in the South and South-East, The hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. A. Bevan) raised a point which I believe he thought insuperable when he told us that light industries went where the chief markets lay, and those markets were around London. Surely he had entirely forgotten the fact that the bulk of the population of Great Britain lies North of a line which could be drawn from the Severn to the Wash.

When we speak of London, we use it as an illustration. Any great city with such an enormous population is equally in point. It does not please any of us that you should have a terrific development, say, in Birmingham at the expense of impoverishment elsewhere.

I would not do the hon. Member an injustice, but I would enlarge his point by saying that perhaps the biggest market of all lies in the Midlands and the north and that therefore there is an equal opportunity there for the development of new and light industries. As was pointed out a little earlier, the new location of industry is causing something of a drift of population to the south of England, but it is only a drift, because on the whole the population is largely immobile. Very often it is the case of a lack of inclination to tear up family roots from districts in which for generations people have lived, and indeed where they have spoken a common dialect, and because people are anxious not to part from their friends. They have developed a pride of locality, and I feel sure that such people would rather the Government should try, not to develop new areas, but to assist them in clearing up the old areas and rebuilding something new and fine in those situations. After all, while the personnel is not mobile, I submit that capital is, and it makes no difference to the use for which money is raised in the City for new industries where the factory is to be placed. It comes for all industry, wherever it may be. I feel that we must face this and that we should have regard to the optimum use of existing populations in places where we find them.

There is the further point that if the population is moved, it is impossible to tear up the houses and take them to the new areas. We have built up in the industrial areas a vast System of social services, such as drainage, waterworks, roads, schools and hospitals, and it is foolish to incur great expenses and new capital expenditure in other areas until we have tested the limits of re-development in the older areas with a view to making the maximum possible use of the existing capital. That capital is the nation's capital, the people's capital, and it is the duty of the Government to see that it is put to the greatest possible use. In the older areas, if a factory is closed or removed to another area, it leaves a greater burden on the factories that remain. Whereas in the past perhaps five factories contributed to the rates which carried the social services, when one factory went it meant a greater burden on the industry that remained. There is, too, the question of amenities. Once a new area is industrialised much of its amenity value is, of necessity, lost for ever. We should try to preserve the amenities of our countryside and display caution in opening up a new area until we have made the most strenuous efforts to develop the equipment of those areas which are already industrialised.

After the question of the areas themselves comes the question of the skilled labour which should be within them. It has been admitted in the White Paper on defence that one of the great tragedies of the depression has been the destruction of a large part of the country's skilled labour force. Nevertheless, when people have once been employed as skilled labour they usually retain their capacity for learning skilled trades. It will probably be wiser to try and infiltrate into the older industrial areas some new trades and occupations, and for that purpose to take into those areas some skilled workers who will teach some new trade to the people already there. We cannot move the old factories, but we can take skilled workers to them so that they can teach the unemployed of the distressed areas some new avenue of employment. For the success of such a scheme good will is necessary, and we must have the co-operation of the trade unions and the workers in seeing that the labour conditions are such that manufacturers can be assured always of a helpful and friendly spirit of reasonableness in negotiations. I am sure that the trade unions would be glad to co-operate in seeing that such conditions are brought about.

Much has been said, with regard to the question of defence, about the danger of putting our vital industries into one place because they could easily be destroyed by a potential enemy. Perhaps more important is the position of the skilled workpeople themselves, because, if they are too much concentrated in one area, they are liable to destruction. It is our duty to see that they are made safe by being scattered over safer parts of the country. There is undoubtedly a tendency of industry to concentrate round London, an area which is one of the most vulnerable parts of the country from the point of view of attack. Socially, it is bad that London should grow in this way because already it means that there is scarcely any direction from London in which it is not necessary to travel 20 miles before finding open country. Apart from that consideration, when everything is tending to become concentrated it is bad from the point of view of defence. The areas in the North and West, where the expert industrial populations are, are the safest, and the Government should pay great attention to this aspect of the question.

Certain of the industries in the North of England, cotton in particular, are far from the peak of past years, but around the cotton industry there has grown up other highly skilled industries for the manufacture of machinery, chemicals, glass, and such-like trades. There is no reason why the Government should not make a serious effort to sec that the new factories which will be needed to fulfil their defence policy are located in the northern areas. There are, all over Lancashire and Yorkshire, factories which are vacant and ready for development. They are on fine sites in many places. There is an example in Lancashire at Lytham, where there was a big seaplane base and where the men understand that side of industry. It was allowed to decay and surely the time has come for the Government to go back to that and other such places that were used in the Great War. Similar opportunities present themselves in the country between Liverpool and Widnes, where skilled people are waiting to take advantage of the defence policy of the Government.

We must make the maximum use of the existing equipment, both in labour and in capital, and remember that from the defence point of view these areas are the safest, being in the least accessible and least dangerous parts of the country from the point of view of a potential enemy. Our view on this side of the House, in considering the redirection of industry in the older areas, is that it is not a question of force, but we do ask the Government to do everything within their power to make the older areas as attractive as possible so that new industries will go to them. I would remind the Government, that their new defence policy wilt probably give them the power to give guidance to industry. This is an opportunity to see that that policy is used for something greater than the mere manufacture of destructive equipment, for practically and socially there is every argument for a reconsideration of the location of industry so as to utilise the resources of the nation to the full.

6.8 p.m.

I am in rather a peculiar position in regard to this Debate, because I do not altogether agree with the wording of the Motion, and must, therefore, be out of harmony with the Amendment. It is very pathetic that the House should listen to these long speeches which have no relevance to the matter under discussion. Each speaker that succeeds the other has as much invention as a child unborn in dealing with the subject. I often wonder what would happen if the Gallery were enlarged so that the voters could hear their representatives when they deal with a subject like this. We have invented a new word "planning." If we want to do anything, we must plan for it; if a problem faces us, we appoint a commission so that we can have a plan. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby), at whose mind I marvel, is full of schemes and designs. It is all very well saying, "If I were dictator this is what I would do." The point is, what are you going to do now? It is not what you are going to do if you live long enough. When the hon. Member for East Aberdeen got going this afternoon, I wondered where he was going to stop because he started with Aberdeen and wound up with a, new idea with regard to the League of Nations. What that had to do with the location of industry I do not know.

Why do industries go to certain places and refuse to go to others? My hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) rightly said that in the first instance industry is attracted because of the natural situation and amenities of an area. That is true of any industry. May I say in parenthesis that I cannot help feeling that the Debate we are having is not so much due to any idiosyncracy of employment in industry as to the fact that the Government are worried about the distressed areas. That is why we hear so much about them this afternoon. We were assured by the right hon. Gentleman opposite that it would be well to keep this Debate wide and not to keep our attention too much on the distressed areas. I agree with him, but I think that he will admit that we can scarcely carry on a discussion like this without making reference to the rather depressed conditions that prevail.

I understood the hon. Gentleman to say that the Government wanted to have this Debate because they were anxious about the depressed areas. The Motion is put forward by an hon. Member on his side of the House.

Is there anything ingenious about that? I hope the hon. Member was awake when I started my speech. I remember trying my hand at getting an industry into a health resort which I represent, called Stoke-on-Trent. There was a large foreign tyre company which was anxious to set up business there. As it would employ 10,000 people, we got busy to try and attract it. We discovered that there was another town in the running to get these people. What did we do to beat it down? There was a question in the House about the unseemly procedure we adopted. We said that we would give them the land for half of nothing, and that we would wink at the valuation so far as rates were concerned—quite good, honest, straightforward dealing. The other town lost the advantage because it was not quick enough with these inducements. We have got that factory in Stoke now, and it is one of the largest tyre works in the country. I suggest that an industry can easily be induced to go to a certain area if the site is suitable in all senses for it, if the local rates are not oppressive, and if the general conditions of the populace round the area are not likely to become menacing because of poverty and consequently of higher rates.

Let me give an example. We must revert back to the report on the distressed areas. What does the hon. and gallant Member for Hornsey (Captain Wallace) say in that report?

"Rightly or wrongly, the burden of high rates is most frequently quoted. As already stated, a vicious circle has been established, and an area which by means of its industrial development in one cycle has become populous cannot arrest its industrial decline by substituting developing industries for those that are contracting, because the very contraction which it seeks to remedy imposes a burden which acts as a strong deterrent to a new industrial influx."

The Commissioner in Wales gave a ghastly description of rates of 35s. in the pound being a deterrent to new industries. I put it to any hon. Member whether he would not go to an area where the rates are 5s. in the pound in preference to another area where they are 35s. in the pound? The thing is plain and inevitable. We were told this afternoon that many industries have purposely not come to the South of England. I do not think it will be denied that many new industries have been established in the South, and I made inquiries as to the rates in the districts where those new industries are springing up, and the result is well worth noting. For years this House has condoned the spending of millions of public money in making new roads round about the South of England. These new roads, contiguous to railway centres, must, of necessity, form an inducement to new industrial enterprises, coupled with the rates ruling in those areas. In one particular area where new industrial developments are pretty rife, Malden and Coombe, the composite rate, the county rate and local rate combined, comes to 5s. 5¼d. In Merton and Morden the county rate and the local rate is 9s. 2d. In Surbiton the rate is 8s. 8d.

Compare the position there with the conditions that prevail in the distressed areas. Suppose that we were issuing an advertisement in an effort to induce industrialists to come into an area to put up a new factory. One of the items in the advertisement would be, "Low rates" and then we should speak of railway and transport services, of water laid on, of electricity and gas being available. What inducements could we put into an advertisement to persuade an industrialist to come into one of the distressed areas, because the Amendment says that industrialists must be induced to go there? I went over the report to pick out the inducements that jump to the eye. You would have to put down, "Come to the distressed areas. There you will find high rates, subsiding land owing to unscientific mining, waterlogged land, heavy unemployment and distress, and acres of old-fashioned housing and slums." That is a true description, according to the Government report, of the circumstances in the distressed areas. Comparing these conditions with those in Surrey and in Kent, will anyone tell me that any man in his senses who was going to put up a new workshop would not make his choice down here rather than up yonder? Of course he would.

The hon. Member for East Aberdeen suggested that the rating question should be dealt with. One of the serious actions of the Government in this connection was the passing of the Derating Act, because it relieved industry from certain rates, hut despite that fact we still have this distress. Derating has not in the slightest degree helped to solve the problem and it will not do so. I agree that rates should not be levied upon industry, but the Derating Act was about the most fatuous proposal that ever passed this House. It may be that some people believed we were going to help industry by that Act, but anyone who knew what the economic results would be is not surprised at what has happened.

I heard someone on this side, I think it was the Member for Ebbw Vale speak about the equalisation of rates. I hope that that policy will not creep round this House. Some people think the State is a sort of milch cow. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Oh yes, hon. Members opposite do, otherwise they would not take the subsidies they have received in the last 10 years. The only difference is that they want no State control and plenty of State subsidies, while we on this side say "State subsidies plus State control." Between the two I wonder where I am going. But where will equalisation of rates land us? Is it suggested that the rates in certain places shall be raised to pay the rates somewhere else? It would be out of order for me to discuss that question, and I will not do so, but I can well imagine what would happen under a system of that kind. The Derating Act has been no solution, and the equalisation of rates would be no solution, and I cannot see how we could, in present circumstances, invest the Government with some power of compulsion to require manufacturers, industrialists or anyone else to leave one area and go to a distressed area. To that extent, I think, this Debate will not prove of very much worth.

The hon. Member for East Aberdeen also said that what we wanted was not merely that the rates should be removed from industries, but that there should be a general cleaning-up of the industrial districts. Who made them mucky? Who turned these districts into what they are to-day? I suggest that the people responsible for the ghastliness of those areas should be called in to clean them, up, by a special tax if necessary. Why should the burden of it be thrown on the people who did not do it?

Most of them are bankrupt, and many of them have gone out of business.

That is largely true—at least, in some cases it is true. I have no objection to the community being asked to do the cleaning-up, on the condition that after it has done so the community shall step in as the owner of the property. I have two cases at the back of my mind in which the local authorities and the State, by contributions, helped the cleaning-up of certain areas, and when they were cleaned up the local landowners got higher prices for the sites. I object to wholesale robbery of this kind. If there is to be cleaning-up and the State has to do it I will vote for it, but only on condition that the rejuvenated property shall be the property of those who cleaned it up.

Next we were told that trades would go to certain areas if there were new and better houses in those areas. In the old days we used to say that trade followed the flag. I am inclined to think that houses follow trade. Why worry about building houses in places where there is no trade or industry? The houses will follow all right if the industry is there. Then we were told that not merely must we have houses—built, remember, with State grants—but new roads, new bridges and other public amenities, built by the State, in order to induce—what? Trade and industry. Not that the trades and industries will operate for the profit of the State as a whole, it will be for the profit of private individuals. I do not think that that proposal will please the average working man or working woman in this country. We shall not cure the present chaotic conditions in industry by investing the Government with power to compel industries to go here, there or anywhere the Government may wish.

We are in the mess we are in to-day as the result of the policies which have been pursued for years by this House. We have the derelict areas. In Durham we have a county the natural wealth of which is not excelled by any part of England, and on that wealthy natural asset called the land of Durham we have unemployed men and women drawing £7,500,000 in public assistance and out-of-work relief. We have hungry men and unemployed men living on public organised charity, drawn from the taxes and the local rates, living, moving and having their being on one of the finest gifts that God could give to man; unemployment on God's great gift of land, on which man could employ himself were it not for some great barrier that stands between labour and natural wealth. We cannot solve that problem by tinkering little tricks of this kind, by empowering the Government to move factories like chessmen on a chessboard. We are suffering to-night not merely from the faults of years ago, but from the accentuated and impetuous haste with which the present combination called the National Government has petrified the northern areas by the strangulation of international trade, by the piling up of artificial industries drawing their sinews and substance from the Treasury of the State. Go on with that if you think it will help, but it is clear to those of us who are watching this tendency that there is nothing but destruction awaiting the State which pursues this policy. Therefore, the proposal before us to-night, like so many more which have been made the excuse for Debate here, will lead us nowhere; and as I sit in this House and watch men at that Box handling the great responsibilities of State and listen to the counsels they offer, I oftentimes loudly say "Amen" when the Chaplain comes in and prays for the State.

6.29 p.m.

I am sure the hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) will agree with me that he certainly cannot sell Durham coal by rhetoric. It will be generally agreed that when a private Member initiates a discussion as interesting as that which we have enjoyed to-day, he deserves the thanks of the House, as does his Seconder, and I pay a tribute at once to the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Mr. A. Edwards) for the way in which he moved the Motion and for the matter contained in his speech. I think some of it was a little theoretical. I think that, like the occupants of certain pulpits, he suffered a little from not being contradicted enough; but that is something we can deal with in subsequent and private discussion. I would like him to be good enough to re-examine his geography. I understand that one of his proposals was that an area of 40 miles round London should be a closed area, and that factories should not be allowed to be built within it. Having some sort of idea that my constituency came within that 40-mile limit, I had the geography looked up. His proposal would bar new factories in Maidstone, Chatham, Guildford, Reading, Aylesbury, Luton, Dunstable, Hitchin, Hertford and Welwyn, only to name a few places. That may be what the hon. Gentleman intends, but the House may as well know where the arbitrary 40-mile limit round London takes us.

I should do the best service in my power to the House this evening if I communicated information rather than dealt with the arguments or with any points that have been raised. The Motion contemplates a survey. To have any meaning at all such a survey must include all the manifold industries carried on in this country. Would anything be added to our knowledge if such a survey were made? We know in broad outline the economic and historical considerations which have led, for example, to cotton being established in Lancashire, woollens in Yorkshire and iron and steel and shipbuilding in the North-East and in Scotland. All the facts necessary to fill in the outline are already available in Government publications. The reports of the census of production taken at intervals contain information as to the regional distribution of industry, including information as to output and the number of persons employed in each of the regions. The country is divided into eight regions for England and Wales, two for Scotland and one for Northern Ireland, and in the reports changes in the distribution of industry can readily be traced. We are at work now on the census of production for 1935, and, are bringing the information up to date. Besides that, the Ministry of Labour Gazette gives information as to the distribution of insured persons in employment in the various industries. A series of industrial surveys has been made by various universities at the request of the Board of Trade. Supplementary surveys, bringing them up to date, are now being made for the Commissioners for the Special Areas. Apart from these Government reports, there are a large number of authoritative works dealing with particular regions in which the fullest use is made of Government information.

I cannot help thinking that the hon. Member is probably not suggesting that that survey should be made, but that the information which is available should be compiled in a different form. I suggest that mere compilation which does not add to knowledge is hardly worth the magnitude of the task that it would involve. Unless it were completely thorough and completely efficient, its results would be misleading. I have indicated to the House the extent of the information which is available because it is desirable that there should be no misapprehension on that point.

A good deal of discussion has taken place about the drift to the south. I ventured to interrupt the hon. and learned Member for East Leicester (Mr. Lyons) when he was addressing the House, to call attention to the fact that it was not common ground that there was a drift of industry to the south. I admit that there have been great changes in population. It has been made clear by speakers in the Debate that many new and lighter industries, including a number that have been set up under the tariff wall for the first time in this country, have, because they made consumable goods, as the hon. Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Bevan) pointed out so well, been attracted to the proximity of a great market with immense spending power. At the risk of keeping the House for a minute let me deal with this drift of industry and give the House some information.

May I interrupt the hon. Gentleman? Twice this afternoon it has been stated that new industries came to the South of England because of-some protection policy. I would like to ask the hon. Gentleman how much industry has left this country to establish itself by foreign tariffs in other countries?

Broadly, "None," is the answer. I will give the matter a little further examination and give the hon. Member a fuller answer.

I would like to tell you that you are not telling the truth at that Box.

I will deal with the matter.

Do not be so snappy.

I will deal with the point now. The Board of Trade Surveys of Industrial Developments for 1933 and 1934 show that there is very little evidence of a drift to the South in the sense that new factories have been set up in the South as the result of transfer from the North. What has happened is that the majority of new undertakings that have been started have been located in the South because of the attraction of the huge London market for the industries producing goods such as clothing, fancy and semi-luxury articles and component parts.

Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that there has been a transference of power production from the North to the South?

I would like to examine that point, but I think the hon. Member will agree that as to a power station being in the vicinity of a coalfield it has been shown that electricity is capable of being conveyed for considerable distances. New development is by no means confined to the South. Material for the 1935 Survey of Industrial Development is not yet complete but several important new undertakings have been set up last year in the North, including factories for the manufacture of clothing near Manchester and Leeds, shirts at Warrington, waterproofs at Stalybridge, caps in Glasgow, radio apparatus at Manchester, aircraft at Stockport and Bakelite at Blackburn, to mention but a few. In addition, there was of course the development at Billingham, to which the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough called attention, and important manufactures in Ayrshire, Scotland. If there is a drift to the South, there is a counter-drift to the North. Of that there were instances last year, of which I have the details, including a factory which opened at Dundee following the closing down of a factory in London, the transfer of the production of moulded wood products from Kent to Scotland, of surgical dressings from Slough to Yorkshire and the transfer of a plant for the manufacture of linoleum from Greenwich to Kirkcaldy. I only mention those so that the House may see two sides of the picture.

It is probable that the depression in the heavy and export industries, which affected the North and Wales much more severely than the South, has had a greater effect on the regional distribution of employment than the attraction of the South for lighter industries. The Ministry of Labour figures show that between 1927, and 1935, the number of insured workpeople between 16 and 64 in employment in the Southern section of Great Britain rose by 680,000, while the number in the Northern section fell by 387,000. This difference in the trend of employment only occurred up to 1932, and it was most marked between 1929 and 1932. Between 1932 and 1935, the number of employed rose both in the southern section and in the northern section, the increase in the southern section being 652,000 and the increase in the northern section being 407,000, since 1932. It is therefore misleading to talk of the drift of industry to the south, and to suggest that the tendency which existed between 1927 and 1932 for employment to expand in the south while contracting in the north, has continued and is increasing. It is a mistake to affirm any such thing. The truth is on the lines that I have given.

Does the hon. Gentleman include Birmingham in the North?

The division of the country into North and South puts Birmingham into this area. The South includes London, South-Eastern, South-Western and Midlands. North includes North-Eastern, North-Western, Scotland and Wales. That is a classification which is well known, but I am grateful to the hon. Member for allowing me to make it clear. The House will understand that the problem of the location of industry differs very much according to whether you are discussing the building up of an entirely new area, or are dealing with an industrial country in which the major industries have already, to a large extent, settled the problem of their own location. No doubt in an authoritarian State there would be a prohibition on any individual or group from starting an industry without permission, and the applicant for that permission would either find himself unconditionally refused or, if his application were granted, it would be subject to conditions that he should establish his factory in such a location as the Government of the clay might indicate. As between the authoritarian State in which everything is prohibited unless permission is granted, and the complete freedom of a western country or a republic, there is all the difference between complete control on the one hand and the almost complete absence of control on the other. The question raised to-day in this Debate is really whether it is possible to have a half-way house.

Let me examine the problem a little. Presumably the hon. Member who introduced this discussion has at the hack of his mind the attracting of industries to certain parts of the country. He sees areas which have enjoyed industrial prosperity finding themselves with the tide of industry receding from them, and busy industrial quarters giving way to deserted or semi-derelict areas. Confronted with that sight, and knowing all that that means in terms of human misery, the hon. Member seeks a way of remedying that state of affairs, and he has conceived and brought before the House to-day this idea that the, way of dealing with the matter would be to exercise pressure upon new industries to take the place or the old which, for varying reasons, have fallen into decay. That is the substantive point behind the hon. Member's Motion. Side by side with this receding of the tide from certain industrial areas in the north, the northeast coast, South Wales and Scotland, he observes groupings of industries round the Metropolis and round some of the larger industrial towns. He observes the diversity of lighter industries carrying with them a low ratio of unemployment, and he observes the prosperity of many industries, which means an increased rateable value and a tendency to make a greater yield for a penny rate, and consequently a lower figure for local rates. He sees what he thinks a disproportionate advantage in the south, and a disproportionate disadvantage in the older areas.

No one will quarrel with that broad analysis. These striking differences, locality by locality, undoubtedly exist. The problem is whether the hon. Member's remedy is the right one, whether it is feasible, whether it has consequences which are undesirable and whether it has consequences which are even worse than the disease which the hon. Member is seeking to remedy. Take the question of persuasion. The hon. Member is probably well aware that every effort is used by the Government, by development councils and by Commissioners for the distressed areas to induce industry to take advantage of manufacturing conditions that already exist. No one wants an area which has suffered from depression to become more depressed. Everyone wants industry to return to those districts where industries formerly flourished. The question is, is persuasion the right way or should coercion be permitted, and if you call it coercion, what do you mean? Does it mean that any hon. Member would go so far as to say that an individual industrialist, proposing to embark his money in an adventure, is to be prohibited by the Government from starting his industry in the area which he, as an industrialist, considers to be the only one in which he can employ his money to the greatest advantage? Prevention must mean prohibition. If the hon. Member means that the Government should take powers by Statute to prohibit an individual from starting a factory where he wishes, in order to compel him to go to some place where he does not wish to go, I fear that that is a proposition which I could not commend to the House as a whole, and which the House as a whole would not be likely to accept.

Is it not the case that regional planning schemes now do precisely what the hon. Gentleman says cannot be done?

I am not objecting to town planning. There are various schemes of town planning, with which I shall deal in a moment, but I am asking a question of the House, and I am asking it genuinely for information I am seeking to ascertain the mind of the House. The speech of the Mover of the Motion was rather theoretical—

I certainly think that the Government could exercise powers of prohibition in certain circumstances. For instance, should a. man, if he thinks he can profitably expend his money by so doing, be allowed to put up some beastly factory on a beautiful place like the top of Box Hill?

In view of the hon. Gentleman's statement, what value is there in the Prime Minister's suggestion that industrialists should go into the derelict areas? There must be some form of pressure, because otherwise they would not go there.

Obviously, I cannot deal with all these points at once. I sympathise with the example given by the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Sir J. Withers). The case of someone wishing to destroy an amenity is one problem, but that is not the real industrial problem. If amenities are included, and if it is necessary to make some reservation, let us make it, but the problem with which we are confronted, and to which the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough invites us to address our minds, is whether a man shall be prevented from starting an industry where he wants to do so and shall be ordered to go somewhere else where he does not want to go, and what are the consequences of these two lines of conduct? The problem is different according to whether it is looked at from the point of view of compelling a man to go or prohibiting him from starting; these are two sides of what may be a connected problem.

There are powers under the Town Planning Acts which schedule areas for business purposes and for residential purposes, and local authorities are to a large extent obtaining control over their own areas; but within an area scheduled for business purposes there is not as yet—apart from the necessity of complying with by-laws and observing the restrictions attaching to the land on any building estate and the lay-out of the ground—any condition which prohibits the installation of such a factory as the industrialist desires to set up. It is felt that in the last resort it must be for the industrialist, whose money is at stake, to determine for himself the factors which are most likely to make for or militate against the success of his enterprise. Think of the consequences of an attempt by the Government to veto the selection by the industrialist of the site of the industry which he desires to start. How far would the Government, by vetoing the site chosen by the industrialist, expose itself to the criticisms that it was Government action which had resulted in the industry proving unsuccessful? How far would the Government become partners in the adventure? Would there not be Government responsibility for the consequences, without any form of Government control in the event of success?

Does not the hon. Gentleman know that local authorities are doing that every day? Certain offensive trades are not allowed to be started in certain areas.

Of course, there are trades which cannot be set up within certain areas, but these are the exceptions. I am addressing myself to the broad problem of industry, and not to the minor exceptions; and I think the hon. Lady will agree with me that, over the broad range of industry, there is at present no power to say to an industrialist, "You shall not start your factory in one county; you must start it in another." I am aware of the limitations that there are, but the generality of the question which I am putting is, I think, substantially right. I do not want to quarrel with the House over any question of minor or local or particular exception; I believe that the Government's duty to foster industry is an equal duty to the older and to the newer industrial areas. I do not think it is for the Government to select the industrial area that they wish particularly to sponsor. There may be national reasons, there may be arguments, which would induce the exercise of powers of persuasion, but I feel that they have the same duty towards both the newer and the older industrial areas in regard to the fostering of industry.

It will be gathered from what I have said that I find a difficulty in finding any half-way house between individual liberty of selection of a site and complete Government control, and I do not believe that the House as a whole is prepared to sponsor complete Government control with the power of veto. I think that that is the division between those who sit on this side of the House and certain Members who sit on the other side. The Government would feel a difficulty in assenting to this Motion in the terms in which it has been moved. We sympathise with the objects that the Mover has at heart; we sympathise with the causes which have induced him to select this subject; many of the points which emerge from the analysis he has made of conditions in industry we do not dispute. The very interesting points that have been raised over a wide field will all be examined, and, if it appears possible that a closer examination would be profitable, I will invite the hon. Member to be so good as to favour me with further details of certain plans which he only sketched out. But the Government think that the terms of the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) more completely represent their views, and they will be able to support that Amendment. [An HON. MEMBER: "He said he was a communist."] The hon. Member said he was a communist, but it is not necessary for me to say that I agree with every word that he said. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen roamed over a very wide field—

A very good field.

I do not know whether the field was a very good field, but it certainly was a very wide one. There would not be time for me now to explore, still less to debate, the large number of very interesting points which were raised by him, and also by the Seconder of the Amendment in a speech which I think found considerable favour in all parts of the House. The construction which the Government put upon the Amendment must, of course, be the one which follows from the general tenor of the remarks I have made. In a complex world, and in discussions relating to British industry, I venture to think it is a mistake to imagine that the task is simple, the structure uniform, or the remedy a single one. I believe that it is at least possible that Government intervention in the location of industry might raise as many problems as it would solve, and that many difficulties undreamt of by those who sponsor planning would be created by Government intervention in the selection of sites of factories, whether old or new.

Will the Parliamentary Secretary bring to the notice of his colleagues the problem that I raised with regard to the machinery of government, because I do not think that he himself is quite satisfied in that regard?

A great number of the points which the hon. Member raised were, I think, points of great interest, and not least the one to which he has just referred. I will see that the different Departments have the advantage of their attention being drawn to those points. Had time permitted, I should have liked to discuss the questions of transport and public utility services, the question of labour in industry, and the general question of the structure of industry as we know it to-day. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman will at least agree with me that, when you are talking of industry, you must think of the work-people as much as the industry.

You did not do that in yesterday's Debate.

It was not my good fortune to be in charge of yesterday's Debate. These matters can be raised on another occasion. It is sufficient for me to say to-day that there are formidable difficulties in the way of accepting the terms of the Motion, and that I think the Amendment, which I am proposing to accept, adequately covers what the Government have in mind. I conclude, as I began, with an expression of thanks to the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough for raising so interesting a topic.

Are there not means by which the Government can bring pressure to bear on industrialists, who come over here to start new factories, to locate them in certain areas? If someone comes from abroad with a new process, and wishes to set up a factory in this country, he must bring with him a number of key men to get the process going. Is it not possible for the Minister of Labour, for instance, when he comes to grant a permit, to say he will make matters a little easier, and, perhaps, give more permits for key men, if the factory is set up in a distressed area?

Certainly, it is possible to use powers of persuasion, but if the choice is between the factory being put up or not being put up, there is no power to prevent it, and it is only to the point of prohibition that I have been addressing my observations. Powers of persuasion exist, but, as I interpret the Motion, the Mover wanted power to prohibit. That the Government cannot see their way to grant. Powers of persuasion they desire to encourage.

6.59 p.m.

I think the hon. Gentleman's speech has been somewhat illogical. He is now prepared to accept the Amendment, which is over the borderline of persuasion. It says that the Government should endeavour to discourage as well as to encourage new industries in various areas, and that is the point to which I think the House must address its attention. The economic situation is a very serious one. I am bound to admit that it is perfectly natural that industrialists should consider their own interests. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade has talked about industrialists going where they think it would be for their own personal advantage, but a large number of questions are raised in consequence of this freedom of choice on the part of industrialists to do what they like with other people's capital. Big sociological questions are raised when industrialists do what they like with the capital which they control. This country was industrialised first of all the nations a century and a-half ago. Industry was concentrated in those areas which were fortunate enough to possess coal and iron. That concentration has continued.

The situation is, of course, entirely different to-day. We must admit it. The development of road transport makes nearness to raw materials less important than it used to be. The development of electricity and the ease with which electricity can be conducted, makes the power problem simpler than it used to be when coal was the great magnet. There is another motive which has been at work since the War, and that has been the motive of cheap labour. Employers have sought areas where transport facilities, electricity and so on were available and where they could find amenable and docile labour, far away from those stormy petrels in South Wales, for example, areas where trade unionism was weak, where wage standards were down to the rural level, and where there was a plentiful supply of cheap labour. The result has been a diffusion of industry. I think that the Parliamentary Secretary was right. There has been no drift of industry to the south, but there has been a wider diffusion of industry over the country, due to the factors which I have enumerated.

I remember how the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, foisted on an unwilling Ministry of Health his De-rating Act, and he put forward when he spoke one argument—I think that it is the only argument he ever used in this House with which I agreed—in favour of de-rating. His argument has not proved to be effective, but his reasoning seemed to me to be sound. He said that in these industrialised areas, for a variety of reasons, rates were high, but these were the areas which had been industrialised and if anything could be done to prevent this diffusion, it ought to be done. His suggestion was de-rating. De-rating has not proved to be successful.

But it is true that in those old-established industrial areas you have a population which is used to the conditions of industrial life, you have a great variety of skill. There the employers have some sense of industrial organisation, the whole community's life has been organised on a basis of industry—transport, house supply and so on. And behind all that there is an enormous amount of social capital invested. Every industrial area in this country has profited by the activities of local authorities. Local authorities have on an increasing scale had to provide houses which private enterprise did not supply, and roads, schools, hospitals, water, power and so on. If those areas are allowed to become derelict because they are deserted by industrialists an enormous amount of social capital in this country is virtually destroyed. That is a very serious situation. I could not agree that because some large manufacturer thought that capital could be better employed elsewhere he should bankrupt a local authority. It is not merely a question of whether the industrialist can make more profits, but that even in private enterprise the local authorities of this country have become partners. They have made the successful conduct of these enterprises in the past possible. You take away from the big industrial areas all the activities of local authorities and those industrial enterprises could not survive for a fortnight.

Therefore the State has a very great stake in this problem. The State is prepared to organise itself for defence, is prepared to divert the economic system from its normal channels of peaceful production without considering the interests of individuals. Why is not the State prepared to take a hand in this problem of considering what is best in the national economic interest? It is not easy. The Parliamentary Secretary spoke about persuasion. This is the last Government who ought to speak about persuasion. Mr. Malcolm Stewart has tried persuasion with no result. He made an appeal with no result. The State time and time again has stepped in deliberately to limit the freedom of people to do as they like. The Parliamentary Secretary, when my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Miss Wilkinson) referred to regulations with regard to offensive trades, said that they were exceptional. But there are a large number of exceptions and it is exceptions which, multiplied, in time make the rule. We have time and time again interfered with the rights of people to put their businesses where they liked. The Town and County Planning Act enables local authorities to exercise very powerful influences to stop the establishment of factories, petrol stations and so on. This Government in its policy has done it. Can anybody set up a bacon factory nowadays where they want and when they want? Of course they cannot.

The whole policy of this Government, misdirected, has been really to fetter individual initiative, to deprive individuals of the right of doing what they like with their own; and indeed the Parliamentary Secretary is one of the architects of this authoritarian State which he deplores so much. I remember when I was last in office a great deal of discussion, in which the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) took a prominent part, on the building of satellite towns. His idea was that we should take a great national pepper pot and sprinkle this country with satellite towns. It seemed to me on the face of it a magnificent idea. I asked whether these were to be merely dormitory towns and the answer was No; they were to be towns with industries located in them. The question I put was, "Is anybody in this House prepared to make me a commissar, with all the powers of a commissar, to compel people to put factories where I want them?" Persuasion is no good. I did my best when I was in office to persuade large enterprises to go down to Merthyr Tydfil, to go down to South Wales, to go down to the new Garden City of Welwyn. How reluctant they were. Persuasion, as this Government has discovered, is not the slightest use, and I am prepared to face the problem of compulsion.

The Parliamentary Secretary says that there is no half-way house. I agree. I say that we have arrived at a stage now when we cannot allow Britain's surface, Britain's soil, Britain's resources and Britain's beauties to be used as people who are only seeking profit think fit. It raises great problems and difficulties, but a Government which is prepared to begin with the organisation of our industry for war purposes ought at least to have sufficient imagination to try to organise it for peace purposes. The Government, having supported the Amendment, are in a dilemma. If they are prepared to leave this vast problem to their own persuasive powers, which have not been effective up to now, they will fail, and it will mean that in an age when economic direction, national economic direction, is becoming more and more necessary, they will fail. The only alternative is for the State, through such organisms as it cares to establish, to take on this problem with all its responsibilities. It is not by any means the most difficult problem which this nation has had to face. The chief obstacle is the inherent individualism of those who conduct the big economic enterprises of this country.

I should hope that sooner or later this country will have the courage to take its economic life into its own hands and to refuse to permit industries to ramble about the country wherever they like, when they like, and that the nation will regard the control of its own economic life as essential to its prosperity and to the well-being of its people. I am glad that my hon. Friend put down this Motion. He is a business man of some experience. I am glad that the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Parker) seconded, because, if I may say so in his presence, he is one of our rising economists. I am neither a business man nor an economist, but only an ordinary person; but I am glad that people who have some claim to speak on this subject have chosen to speak on it. I am glad that the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) who has certain natural affinities with Members on this side but finds the tug of Toryism too great for him, said what he did. A Debate of this kind is all to the good. The Government's policy will not be deflected one inch by what happens tonight, despite the Parliamentary Secretary, but at least it has given Members on both sides food for thought, and it shows that on all sides of the House there is uneasiness about the present situation and a realisation that something should be done. My only hope is that hon. Members will realise that the way to do what should be done is the way indicated in the Motion.

7.16 p.m.

We have had a very interesting Debate ranging over a wide variety of topics. I think the Parliamentary Secretary in his excellent and lucid speech gave us very adequate reasons why there is no need for having a survey, though in particular branches there may be some special need for investigation. Particularly in the heavy industries I think there might be a maximum amount of investigation to get as much co-ordination as possible in case of emergency between the Government and those industries particularly associated with national defence, and I have no doubt that this is in the mind of the Government. I found myself in agreement with the hon. Member for East Middlesbrough (Mr. Edwards) when he dwelt on the importance of producing more supplies of oil from coal. When people criticise London as being so vulnerable to attack, they should remember that it is not London alone which might in time of war be attacked, and in discussing the location of industries the Government should bear in mind that certain other areas, including the East Coast, are just as vulnerable.

In this Debate we have to separate industries. In regard to the heavy industries, so closely associated with national defence, the Government can use their influence to some extent in directing them towards the Special Areas and away from London, but in regard to the lighter industries the situation is rather different. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough said there was no valid reason for establishing factories in the London area. The only reason he could think of for them coming was that the principals of the firms concerned liked to be in London. As representing one of the areas in which there has been the greatest development, comprising the larger part of the district known as the Great West Road, there seem to me many reasons why the light industries should be attracted to London. The most obvious is the immense market that is available. In addition to that, the question of transport is of considerable importance. I found myself at variance with the hon. Member for Aberdeen East (Mr. Boothby) when he rather deprecated any importance being attached to transport. In regard to many industries, the question is of very real importance indeed, and it may entirely make or mar the success of a particular industry. Another reason why they like being near London is that they are in a position to supply the demands of the market which fluctuate quickly.

The hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) told us of the various means that have been adopted to induce a certain large foreign tyre company to come to his constituency. I, too, have in my constituency a large foreign tyre industry. I cannot tell the hon. Member how they were persuaded to come there, because at the time I was not myself a resident, but I can tell him that as the result of that factory coming there—it is an American concern—it is not merely supplying the home market but also supplying Continental needs which were formerly supplied from America. I mention that to illustrate the importance of allowing industry to be free and to show that sometimes you get a foreign firm coming here and doing an export trade which is of very considerable value. We must not forget the immense importance of the export trade and I think that to accept a Motion which places so much power in the hands of the Government in deciding the location of industries would be most unwise. I have had in recent weeks to give a considerable amount of time and thought in connection with the starting up of a new industry. I hasten to add that it is not in the London area but in that region which has been described by the hon. Member for Aberdeen as looking like Abyssinia after an air raid, namely the industrial belt of Scotland.

There are many difficulties in starting up a new industry. Many negotiations have to be carried through and one has to consider sites, raw materials and labour supply. If you are going to add to that the difficulty of having to consult and get permission from a Government Department, delays will take place which will only add to the difficulties of those who are starting up new industries. Industry is a thing that changes. It moves. I do not believe you can tie it down to particular areas. You must allow it to move and follow the market, and one of the reasons why Great Britain has, on the whole, been such a successful industrial country, developing new ideas and producing goods which compete with those of other countries all over the world, is that industry has been untrammelled and has been allowed to move and follow the market.

I recognise the plight of the special areas, and anyone representing a constituency that is more fortunately placed would be unreasonable if he was not prepared to lend support to anything that was likely to assist them, but I believe you must not limit industry too much. The Government have considerable powers at present, particularly in connection with the heavy industries and, if they apply them wisely, it will go a long way towards bringing back happier times to the special areas and at the same time not limit the development that has taken place in other areas and has played such a large part in bringing about the better conditions and increased employment that exists at present.

7.25 p.m.

The Debate has very largely centred round what are termed the Special Areas. I want to touch upon a problem which is just as great, the urban areas that surround huge industrial centres. I am speaking of the Black Country and the area adjacent to Birmingham. The problem there in the main concerns one particular industry. The reserves of labour, particularly young persons, have to be transplanted from this district into adjacent industrial areas. I want to put in the plea that special facilities should be provided for the admission of this industry into the urban districts for the use of this labour which is at its disposal. I have in mind the production of oil from coal. The authorities gave little facility for the experimental processes which have been in operation. Gradually the enterprise was squeezed out and it had to find a refuge somewhere else where it could get better facilities, and it has now become a practical commercial concern providing employment elsewhere than where it was originally intended.

Division No. 90.]	AYES.	[7.30 p.m.
Acland, R. T, D. (Barnstaple)	Hall, G. H. (Aberdare)	Price, M. P.
Adams, D. (Consett)	Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel)	Pritt, D. N.
Adamson, W. M.	Harris, Sir P. A.	Rathbone, Eleanor (English Univ's.)
Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'Ishr.)	Henderson, A. (Kingswinford)	Richards, R. (Wrexham)
Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)	Henderson, J. (Ardwick)	Riley. B.
Aske, Sir R. W.	Henderson, T. (Tradeston)	Ritson, J.
Barnes, A. J.	Hicks, E. G.	Roberts, W. (Cumberland, N.)
Benson, G.	Hopkin, D.	Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)
Bevan, A	Jagger, J.	Rowson, G.
Broad, F. A.	Jenkins, A. (Pontypool)	Sexton, T. M.
Bromfield, W.	John, W.	Short, A.
Buchanan, G.	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)	Silverman, S. S.
Burke. W. A.	Kelly, W. T.	Simpson, F. B.
Charleton, H. C.	Kirby, B. V.	Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)
Chater, D.	Lansbury, Rt. Hon. G.	Smith, E. (Stoke)
Cluse, W. S.	Lathan, G.	Smith, T. (Normanton)
Cocks, F. S.	Lawson, J. J.	Sorensen, R. W.
Cove, W. G.	Leach, W.	Stephen, C.
Daggar, G.	Lee, F.	Stewart, W. J. (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)
Dalton, H.	Leonard, W.	Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, N.)
Davies, D. L. (Pontypridd)	Leslie, J. R.	Taylor, R..1. (Morpeth)
Davies, R. J. (Westhoughton)	Logan, D. G.	Thorne, W.
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)	Macdonald, G. (Ince)	Thurtie, E.
Dobble, W.	McEntee, V. La T.	Tinker, J. J.
Dunn, E. (Rather Valley)	Maclean, N.	Viant, S. P.
Ede, J. C.	Macmillan, H. (Stockton-on-Tees)	Walkden, A. G.
Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty)	MacMillan, M. (Western Isles)	Walker, J.
Evans, E. (Univ. of Wales)	Marklew, E.	Watkins, F. C.
Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H.	Mathers, G.	Watson, W. McL.
Foot, D. M.	Maxton, J.	Welsh, J. C.
Frankel, D.	Messer, F.	Westwood, J.
Furness, S. N.	Milner. Major J.	White, H. Graham
Gardner, B. W.	Montague, F.	Whiteley, W.
George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)	Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Ha'kn'y, S.)	Wilkinson, Ellen
Gibbins, J.	Morrison, R. C. (Tottenham, N.)	Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)
Graham, D. M. (Hamilton)	Muff, G.	Williams, T. (Don Valley)
Green, W. H. (Deptford)	Naylor, T. E.	Wilson, C. H. (Attercliffe)
Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A.	Oliver, G. H.	Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)
Grenfell, D. R.	Owen, Major G.	Withers, Sir J. J.
Griffith, F. Kingsley (M'ddl'sbro, W.)	Paling, W.	Young, Sir R. (Newton)
Griffiths, G. A. (Hemsworth)	Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.
Groves, T. E.	Potts, J.	TELLERS FOR THE A YES.—
		Mr. Edwards and Mr. Parker.
NOES.
Agnew, Lieut.-Comdr. P. G.	Barclay-Harvey, C. M.	Brocklebank C. E. R.
Albery, I. J.	Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsrn'h)	Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)
Allen, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'kn'hd)	Birchall, Sir J. D.	Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)
Apsley, Lord	Bird, Sir R. B.	Bull, B. B.
Astor, Major Hon. J. J. (Dover)	Boulton, W. W.	Burghley, Lord
Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley	Bower, Comdr. R. T.	Burgin, Dr. E. L.
Balfour, G. (Hampstead)	Bowyer, Capt. Sir G. E. W.	Butler, R. A.

In planning the location of industry some regard should be had to the absorption of labour in districts which are mainly dependent upon the basic industry but which have little opportunity to provide for the young people who have no desire for the occupation in question, and in particular young women who have some conception other than domestic service. I would urge the importance of bringing those industries into the districts where the labour is instead of transferring the people to follow the industry.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."

The House divided: Ayes, 124; Noes, 139.

Carver, Major W. H.	Joel, D. J. B.	Robinson, J. R. (Blackpool)
Castlereagh, Viscount	Jones, L. (Swansea, W.)	Ropner, Colonel L.
Cazalet, Thelma (Islington, E.)	Kerr, H. W. (Oldham)	Ross Taylor, W. (Woodbridge)
Channon, H.	Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univs.)	Rowlands, G.
Christie, J. A.	Lamb, Sir J. Q.	Runciman. Rt. Hon. W.
Clydesdale, Marquess of	Lambert, Rt. Hon. G.	Russell, A. West (Tynemouth)
Cook, T. R. A. M. (Norfolk, N.)	Leckie, J. A.	Russell, R. J. (Eddisbury)
Cooke, J. D. (Hammersmith, S.)	Leech, Dr. J. W.	Salt, E. W.
Cooper, Rt. Hn. A. Duff (W'st'r S.G'gs)	Leighton, Major B. E. P.	Samuel, Sir A. M. (Farnham)
Cooper, Rt. Hn. T. M. (E' burgh, W.)	Llewellin. Lieut.-Col. J. J.	Samuel, M. R. A. (Putney)
Craven-Ellis, W.	Loder, Captain Hon. J. de V.	Savery, Servington
Cross, R. H.	Loftus, P. C.	Scott, Lord William
Cruddas, Col. B.	Lumley, Capt. L. R.	Selley, H. R.
Culverwell, C. T.	Lyons, A. M.	Shute, Colonel Sir J. J.
Davidson, Rt. Hon. Sir J. C. C.	MacDonald, Sir Murdoch (Inverness)	Smiles, Lieut.-Colonel Sir W. D.
Davies, Major G. F. (Yeovil)	McKie, J. H.	Somervell, Sir D. B (Crewe)
De Chair, S. S.	Macnamara, Capt. J. R. J.	Southby, Comdr. A. R. J.
Drewe, C.	Magnay, T.	Spender-Clay, Lt.-Cl. Rt. Hn. H. H.
Dugdale, Major T. L.	Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.	Spens, W. P.
Duncan, J. A. L.	Markham, S. F.	Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Fylde)
Dunglass, Lord	Mayhew, Lt.-Col. J.	Stanley, Rt. Hon. Oliver (W'm'I'd)
Elliot, Rt. Hon. W. E.	Mills, Major J. D. (New Forest)	Stewart, J. Henderson (Fife, E.)
Ellis, Sir G.	Mitchell, H. (Brentford and Chiswick)	Strickland, Captain W. F.
Elliston, G. S.	Moreing, A. C.	Stuart, Lord C. Crichton- (N'thw'h)
Elmley, Viscount	Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H.	Sutcliffe, H.
Emrys-Evans, P. V.	Morrison, G. A. (Scottish Univ's.)	Thomson, Sir. J. D. W.
Erskine Hill, A. G.	Munro. P.	Touche, G. C.
Fremantle, Sir F. E.	Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. W. G.	Train, Sir J.
Gledhill. G.	Orr-Ewing, I. L.	Wakefield, W. W.
Gluckstein, L. H.	Patrick, C. M.	Walker-Smith, Sir J.
Gower, Sir R. V.	Penny, Sir G.	Wallace, Captain Euan
Gridley, Sir A. B.	Perkins, W. R. D.	Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. L. (Hull)
Grimston, R. V.	Petherick, M.	Ward, Irene (Wallsend)
Hannah, I. C.	Procter, Major H, A.	Wardlaw-Milne, Slr J. S.
Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel A. P	Radford. E. A.	Waterhouse, Captain C.
Hepworth, J.	Ramsden, Sir E.	Wickham, Lt.-Col. E. T. R.
Holdsworth, H.	Rathbone, J. R. (Bodmin)	Womersley, Sir W. J.
Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J.	Reed, A. C. (Exeter)	Young, A. S. L. (Partick)
Hopkinson, A.	Remer, J. R.
Hulbert, N. J.	Rickards, G. W. (Skipton)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—
		Mr. Boothby and Mr. Duggan.

Proposed words there added.

Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

"That, in the opinion of this House. His Majesty's Government should endeavour to discourage the undue concentration of modern industries in the southern counties and to encourage new industries where practicable to establish themselves in the older industrial centres."

Condition Of The People

7.39 p.m.

I beg to move,

"That, in view of the failure of the capitalist system to provide the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population or adequately to utilise and organise natural resources and productive power, and believing that the cause of this failure lies in the private ownership and control of the means a production and distribution, this House declares that legislative effort should be directed to the gradual supersession of the capitalist system by an industrial and social order based on the public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution."

Until a clay or two ago I did not know that I should find myself at this Box to-night speaking upon this subject. Hon. Members will have noticed from the Order Paper that my hon. Friend the Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) was to have spoken on a Motion in his name dealing with Armament Profits, but unfortunately, owing to the very serious illness of a member of his fatuity, it is not possible for him to he here to-night. I can assure the House that he felt keenly about his subject, and if it had been possible he would have been present to move his Motion. If not so many years ago people had been told that the division in polities to-day would have been one between Capitalism and Socialism, they would hardly have believed it. At that time Capitalism seemed to be on a very firm basis. Hardly anybody ever dared to question it, and it looked as if it might go on almost for ever. But to-day a very different state of things has arisen. In this House, for generation upon generation, Liberals and Tories have had no division on this question of Capitalism, and there are no divisions between them to-day. Any divisions have been more superficial than real, and they have certainly not been upon the economic state of society as it exists to-day. Since that time there has grown up in this country a Labour movement which is now the second largest party in the State. A new cleavage has arisen. The Labour movement believes that the capitalist system must inevitably go if the ills to which society is prone to-day and from which our people suffer are ever to be remedied. We do not think that these evils can be remedied within the present system. They are fundamental, and before they can be got rid of so that our people may have a decent standard of life and a chance to enjoy the products of their labours, the capitalist system must be superseded by a system of society known as Socialism.

In the last 150 years the human race has gained such a control over productive forces that, if these were properly utilised, we could produce an all round abundance for everybody. I think that everybody accepts that fact to-day. We are often told that we are suffering from over-production. Thousands of people believe it, but we Socialists do not believe it. We prefer to say that the trouble is one rather of under-consumption, and that while there may appear to be a surplus here and there, there is really no surplus. If the wants of the people in this and every other country were supplied, instead of there being over-production, there would be thousands of millions of pounds more of goods required than exist at the present time. There would be a tremendous shortage. We are told that there is over-production, and when one studies appearances it looks like it. We read of an abundance of fish being dumped back again into the sea because it could not find a market, or being sold for manure at less than £1 a ton, of wheat being grown in such huge quantities that it is used as fuel for locomotive engines, and for the purpose of feeding pigs, and of 19,000,000 acres of cotton in the United States being ploughed up. We are told that since 1933, when the restriction on the production of coffee began to take effect, no fewer than 36,000,000 bags of coffee have been destroyed. We have been informed in our own papers that just outside Liverpool thousands of cases of oranges have been clumped into the sea because a market could not be found for them, and that on the Clyde milk has been poured into the river. We have been told that in America 2,000,000 pigs and about 6,000,000 head of dairy cattle have been slaughtered and deliberately destroyed. We are told that there is such a glut of various materials that we have to put schemes of restriction into practice. We have been discussing for years restrictions upon rubber, tin, copper, tea, and a host of other commodities. We have had the great and mighty efforts of the Minister of Agriculture to place restrictions on things coming into this country, on all kinds of foodstuffs, which the ordinary people consume. We can read of the immense strides which have been made in productive capacity as compared with a few years ago. In the years immediately after the War immense strides were made in the production of all commodities which people want to consume. Let me give a few quotations:

"Take the brickmaking worker. Yesterday, with simple tools, one man, in an eight-hour day produced 450 bricks. Inventions were busy again. The modern brickmaking machine was evolved and the 450 bricks grew to 320,000 for a day's output."

"In 1879, 41,695 men produced 3,070,875 tons of pig-iron in the United States. In 1929 24,960 men produced 42,613,983 tons; in the matter of loading two men displace a former 26."

"The glass worker, as an individual working in a team to-day, and aided by a wonderful machine co-operatively fashioned, can produce fifty-four bottles to every single one of yesterday's production."

"The girl bank clerk with the Automatic reckoners deals with 60,000 ledger entries in an hour, and displaces 60 other clerks."

"Three employees with a machine can produce 700,000 cigarettes in a day: they displace 697 men."

"Twenty-four men daily carbonise 400 tons of coal, producing 7,000,000 cubic feet of gas instead of 44 men producing 4,000,000 cubic feet."

I could go on. We have a world full of possibilities in the production of commodities of everything that mankind wants, and yet in the midst of all this we are faced with widespread poverty in nearly every country in the world, and in this country in particular because we are more directly concerned with it. The productive capacity of the world is gaining to such an extent that if there were no barriers, no restrictions in the way, it is sufficient to provide every man and woman in the world with a much higher standard of life than we have yet dreamed of. Yet in the face of this condition we have poverty existing which is almost appalling in this the richest, or at least the second richest, country in the world. It is something at which to marvel. It is no uncommon thing to read in our newspapers such a case as this:

"A poignant tragedy of the wife of an unemployed man, who starved herself to provide food for her children and then took her own life was revealed at a St. Pancras inquest yesterday. … Dr. W. J. O'Donovan, who made a post-mortem examination said that Mrs. H—was definitely in the first stage of starvation."

I have other cases here. You can find them in all newspapers, and for every one which appears in the Press there must be thousands which do not appear. It may be said that these are exceptions, but whether they are exceptions or not such cases ought not to be possible in present day circumstances in England in 1936. Indeed, it ought to be a sheer physical impossibility for anyone to starve to death or suffer from malnutrition. But it is the capitalist system which, in spite of all this seeming abundance, allows men and women to starve to death in the year of Christian civilisation 1936. We have had a lot of discussion on what is called malnutrition, and one famous scientist Sir John Orr has made a statement upon it. I think we are threatened also with a book on it giving us a lot more information. But he says that practically 20 per cent. of our population have not sufficient food. That means that with 45,000,000 of population, 9,000,000 of them are suffering from malnutrition, from shortage of food, and this in a world of abundance and in a day when we are dumping fish into the sea or making manure of it, destroying coffee and cotton and lots of other commodities.

A year or two ago a committee was set up to advise the Cabinet or to make an inquiry into this question of malnutrition. It included prominent scientists in this country. It made a report and submitted it to the Cabinet. We have asked for the report to be published, but have never got it. We are told, and I believe there is some truth in it, that the report is of such a damning character, that malnutrition exists to such an extent, that the Cabinet and the Government are afraid to publish it. However, we are gradually getting at the truth in other ways. One of the most ironical things I have ever heard in this House was during a discussion which took place on the question of malnutrition, when the Ministry of Health, in the face of the existence of this malnutrition and despite the possibility of getting rid of it, made the suggestion that only so many calories and proteins were necessary to maintain life. It appeared to me that the Ministry of Health was concerned not with distributing the abundance which exists to those people who are starving but was actually busying itself with calculating how little they could give them, how little a man required in order to live if he was fed scientifically. That appears to be the attitude of the Minister. Working-class families are not given to considering this question from a scientific point of view. They like the best quality of food and plenty of it, and then the calories and proteins can take care of themselves.

On the question of malnutrition and semi-starvation and its effect on the people, it has been found that the average height of English public schoolboys of 11 years of age was 151.1 centimetres, and of the same number of boys in the Glasgow elementary school 138.5 centimetres. In other words, public schoolboys, who are well fed and well nourished, had 10 per cent. more height than schoolboys of a similar age in the poorest schools of the country. That is another aspect of the question of malnutrition under this great beneficent capitalist system, which can produce the necessaries of life at such a rate that we do not know how to get rid of them. The very machinery itself is clogged with the abundance of the commodities it produces and yet children are starving and are unable to build up a physique which is necessary for them because we have not found the way, under this present system, to give them even the bare necessities of life. A year or two ago the medical officer of health for the City of Newcastle presented a report in which he set out the results of an inquiry into the physical health of children between one year and five years of age. Of a number of children examined he found that 36 per cent. were unhealthy physically unfit. What an indictment of the system of society under which we live to-day. In this area more than one out of every three children was found to be unhealthy or physically unfit. He also says that this is preventable because when he examined children from a richer area the same amount of ill-health and physical unfitness did not exist. In his opinion it was clearly a case of malnutrition, and was clearly preventable.

Then there is the question of wages. The wages of millions of our people today are barely sufficient to keep body and soul together. If we go back 50 years and realise the amazing progress that has been made in productive capacity and then consider the relatively small amount of increase in the wages of the workers one is amazed. We had a dispute in the coalfields shortly before Christmas. For eight or nine months we were busy telling the people of the poverty which existed among the miners, one of the hardest jobs and one of the most dangerous jobs in industry. Men were earning less than 45s. per week; and the people of this country were so sympathetic towards the miners that in a number of cases they agreed to pay more than the contract price for coal because they were so ashamed and so shocked at the low wages paid. What capitalism could not or would not do for the miners was left to the generosity of the British public to do. But there are thousands now who are receiving little or no addition to these miserable and shockingly low wages. In Durham and in South Wales there is a very small addition. In a number of districts the wages have been so low for years that they have had to put into operation what is called a subsistence wage of 6d. per day, because it was admitted that the wages which certain people were receiving were so low that they could not keep up the physical health necessary for their work unless it was increased by this 6d. per day subsistence allowance. And this is in capitalist England, the second richest country on the face of the earth, and under a system of society of which hon. Members opposite boast.

The same thing applies to agriculture. The first industry of importance in any country is the growing of food. We have had Debates galore on the subject. Farmers and landowners are being paid millions of pounds in subsidy out of public funds, but, in spite of that, the agricultural labourer remains at about 31s. per week. Everyone should be heartily ashamed of such a state of things under the capitalist system. There is a Bill now before a Committee, the Unemployment Insurance (Agriculture) Bill, under which they get 14s. for a man over 21 years of age and 7s. for his wife. Under the Unemployment Insurance Act the figures are 17s. and 9s. respectively. It would appear that 14s. per week for a man and 7s. for his wife is sufficient in the case of agricultural labourers. In other words, the agricultural labourer gets a shockingly low wage to start with and then is to be penalised in his unemployment allowance because of this low wage. That is in capitalist England. That is the utmost that capitalism can do for him. The child of the agricultural labourer was to have been allowed less than the child of any other unemployed man. He was to have had only half a crown, compared with 3s. for any other child. The amount has been raised. The Government have been generous enough to increase the amount by 6d., to 3s. What have hon. Members opposite to say about a state of society which imposes such conditions as these in 1936? The cotton industry is in a somewhat similar condition. I was reading the other day in the "Daily Herald" about the wages of weavers. It takes the wages of a man, his wife and his children to keep the house going in the cotton districts. It is the same in the shipping industry. Only within the last week or two have the wage cuts of 1931 been partially restored to those engaged in shipping, in spite of the millions that have been given to the shipowners. That money has not found its way into the pockets of the workers.

There is another significant aspect of this question, and that is the number of people in receipt of out-door relief. The figure has increased tremendously compared with what it was a few years ago. In 1935 there were 1,537,000 people on the Poor Law. In 1931 the number was 995,000. Between 500,000 and 600,000 more people were on the Poor Law in 1935. That means that the poverty of the people was so extreme that in very many cases, in addition to the low wages that they were receiving or in addition to their unemployment allowance they had to resort to the Poor Law for relief. It was said at an election some years ago that one of the best barometers of the prosperity of the country was seen in the number of people who were on or off the Poor Law. If that is the barometer, the prosperity of this country must be shockingly bad, because the number of people on the Poor Law is greater than in living memory.

Then there is the question of the number of unemployed. The figure is over 2,000,000. What is capitalism doing about that? Here are 2,000,000 people refused a job, admittedly getting hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together, with no hope, no prospect. Hon. Members opposite apparently believe that under this system this figure must be accepted as normal. That condition of things prevails even when we are supposed to have had a boom in trade. In 1924 there were 1,500,000 people unemployed, and it was then said that the figure was abnormal. If that figure was abnormal, what about to-day's figures? The total has been up to 3,000,000. In spite of all the efforts of the Government in the way of tariffs and in spite of the work which has been found by the manufacture of the implements of war, it is still at the figure of 2,000,000. Is capitalism satisfied with that? Ever since the War there has been this huge army of unemployed, and evidently those who believe in the capitalist system are coming to accept it as a figure that must remain.

What a state of things—20 per cent. of the people without sufficient food, 1,500,000 on outdoor relief, 2,000,000 unemployed, millions receiving wages which are hardly sufficient to keep body and soul together. That is capitalism in 1936. Let us look at the question from the angle of the national income. The latest figures that I have are for the year 1928, but I am informed that there has been no appreciable difference since that time in the percentages. The annual income of the country in 1928 was £3,760,000,000. One-half of one per cent. of the work available population took 16 per cent. of that income, 9 per cent. took 29 per cent., 15 per cent. took 16 per cent., and 75 per cent. of the population took 39 per cent. Three-fourths of the population for their work took slightly more than one-third of the total income which had to be divided among them in wages. Do hon. Members who believe in the capitalist system regard that as an equitable distribution? Is there any wonder that the capitalist machine, with its vast potential capacity, is gorged and cannot function, even though people are starving? If a bigger proportion of the national income went to the wage-earning classes as purchasing power, what would become of the goods in the shops and the factories? They would disappear and the wheels of industry would once again fly round. Hon. Members believe in a system of society in which a small percentage of the population take nearly two-thirds of the income. We are paying for that condition of things, with the result that with our capacity to produce, with a huge productive force, we are not allowed to work, and people are not allowed to consume as they ought to do. We have widespread, rampant poverty in the midst of these tremendous potentialities.

The profit-making motive is at the bottom of it all. No matter how useful or necessary a commodity may be to the life of the people if it does not pay a profit to the people w ho own and control industry you cannot have the commodity. I used to work in the coal-pit, and I know something about coal. The collieries of this country are privately owned. Coal is a necessity. During the War when the Government wanted us to produce more coal, they said that coal was the life blood of the nation, that it was the basis of the commercial prosperity of the country. What has happened this winter? During the cold weather of the last eight weeks there have been hundreds of thousands of homes where people have been sitting in rooms without a fire, shivering in the cold, while millions of tons of coal have been stacked in every coal yard and on every railway siding, and 350,000 coal miners are unemployed, while others who are employed are working short time and drawing poor wages. There is plenty of raw material in the earth. If the coal industry was properly organised in a proper state of society the collieries could be worked to full capacity, yet people are shivering and starving to-day. It does not matter how necessary coal is for the life of the people, if it does not pay the coalowner a profit to get it, people can starve, as they do. Private profit is the motive, and this misery is the price that we have to pay for it.

In the 1924 census of production Capitalism revealed another significant feature. It transpired that there were 21,000,000 people gainfully occupied but the amazing figure was that of that 21,000,000 slightly over 8,000,000 were engaged in productive industry. The number of people engaged in the distributive industry alone had increased by over 2,000,000 since the War. In other words, for every two people engaged in productive industry nearly five people were engaged in other occupations, in the luxury occupations or distributive occupations and in some cases parasitic occupations, in the sale or transport of the things that the two people made in productive industry. I used to hear it said during Socialist propaganda on the soap-box: "Who will do the dirty work under Socialism?" It seems to me that the supporters of Capitalism will have to ask themselves that question. If things go on as they are there will be nobody to do the productive work. If the capitalists would only examine their own system of society and look at that angle of it, they would learn a lesson or two.

Our productive forces are halt, lame and prevented from working as they ought to do. Large as our output is it is nothing compared with what we could produce if the system of production was properly organised. In the last 15 years there have been three Royal Commissions on the coal mining industry and each Commission has condemned almost in toto the methods employed in the coal mining industry. In 1931 an Act was passed doing certain things. It gave the coalowners power to put their own house in order, but they have not done it. Despite the condemnation of the three Commissions, despite the voluntary power given to them to put their own house in order, they have not done it, and we are paying the price for that, as we saw just before last Christmas when there were so many underpaid miners, while the coal of the domestic consumer stood at a shockingly high price. If the coal industry were properly organised the consumption could be enormously increased. He would be a bold man who would say that if the people were given liberty to consume all the coal they wanted there would not be an enormous increase in the consumption of coal.

The same thing applies in almost every-other industry. A few months ago the position of the steel industry came up for consideration on the question of tariffs. The steel industry was in such a wretched condition that even Members of the Government who believe in capitalism told the steel manufacturers: "You cannot have this tariff protection unless you put your house in order. In other words, your industry is in such a state of disorganisation that we who believe in capitalism will not help you until you help yourselves." The same thing applies in regard to cotton. For two or three years efforts have been made to get the cotton people to put their industry in order. They pay shockingly low wages, and efforts to induce them to agree to a certain principle of reorganisation has failed. The other week a Bill was brought forward with that object in view and it was nearly lost when it came before the House. What about agriculture? The Minister of Agriculture has been pouring money into agriculture as if he were pouring it down a sink. What difference has it made? He would be a bold man who would say that, with all the regulations, Acts of Parliament and all the subsidies given to agriculture, agriculture is well organised for better production. Chaos still exists.

When this question was discussed last in 1924 certain speeches were made, and I have taken the trouble to look at them. It was argued then that capitalism was the best system of society for the same reasons that are advanced in the Amendment on the Order Paper to-night. The Amendment says that

"the abolition of private interest in the means of production and distribution would impoverish the people."

Heaven knows, if impoverishment would be greater under Socialism than under capitalism there would be some reason to condemn Socialism, but there is not a single justifiable reason that can be found to prove that. The Amendment also says that the House is

"unalterably opposed to any scheme of legislation which would deprive the State of the benefits of individual initiative."

Individual initiative. I have heard that argument for over 20 years. Does that apply to the Post Office Hon. Members opposite have praised very highly in recent weeks the initiative that the Post Office is showing. Would not all those interested in industry to-day like their industries to be paying the profits that the Post Office has been paying for a good many years past? Does the hon. Member believe there is a lack of initiative in the Post Office? Is there any lack of initiative in the gas industry, which is largely under municipal control? Is that part of the industry which is under municipal control being conducted worse than the private companies supplying gas? Does not the same apply to electricity? If hon. Members will study the reports, they will see that the figures prove this to be true and prove that the municipalities give better conditions of service, better commodities and pay better as well. In other words, the industries to which I have referred are well organised, and they are organised for use rather than for profit.

The question of Russia was also raised on that occasion and I have read the statement then made by Lord Swinton. The whole of his argument was the failure of Socialism in Russia. I received two books from the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. M. Samuel), the one entitled "Back to Bellamy" and the other "The Great Experiment." After reading his statements about the Five-Years Plan, I had the best laugh I had had for a long time. If ever statements were disproved by facts, the statements contained in that book are. I dare say that the hon. Member is a firm believer in Capitalism, for he has been brought up in it.

But what is the position in Russia to-day? If Lord Swinton had an opportunity of standing at that Box now, I wonder whether he would use the same arguments? Has either the first or the second Five-Years Plan been a failure? Lord Swinton argued that the Russians themselves, although believers in Communism, had been compelled to give the land of Russia to the peasants, thus creating millions upon millions of little capitalists. That is not the case to-day. At the present time the collective farms are engaged in co-operative production. Even capitalists in this country are beginning to realise that the success in Russia has been so amazing that they must sit up and take notice of it. What was given to this House in 1924 as an example of disastrous failure has been proved in the years that have since elapsed to be a great success. Hon. Members, even on the Liberal benches, may argue that in Russia the standard of life is not half as good as it is in this country. Probably that is so, but at the present rate of progress in Russia, it will not merely be as good as ours in a year or two, but will surpass ours. What is still more important is that every increase in the productive capacity in Russia is for the benefit of the consumers, who are themselves the producers. In this country an increase in productive capacity goes to a tenth part of the population, which is largely represented by hon. Members on the opposite benches.

In view of all this, we say that there is no case against Socialism. We say that Capitalism has failed and that it stands indicted at every turn. We believe that hon. Members will be so ashamed of it and so ashamed of its effects in this country at the present time so far as poverty is concerned, that they will support our Motion.

8.19 p.m.

I beg to second the Motion.

Although most of us on these benches regret that the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) is not here to move his Motion, I am satisfied that the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) put down his Motion. He has spoken very strongly about what is taking place in capitalist Britain and he has not spoken too strongly. Those of us who represent more or less mining constituencies know to our sorrow what is taking place. We know that there is far too much poverty both in the homes of those who are out of work and in the homes of those who are fortunate enough to have a job. During the last few weeks we have had Debates in this House concerning the Special Areas, and I think that sufficient evidence has been brought forward by my hon. Friends to show that that which the Government have suggested as a remedy in those areas is entirely inadequate. There are other areas in the country which, although not defined as Special Areas, are certainly distressed areas, and have to maintain more than their fair share of unemployment and poverty. Whatever differences may exist on the latter part of this Motion, I think there is not an hon. Member in this House who can deny the statement contained in the first part, which refers to

"the failure of the capitalist system to provide the necessary standard of life for vast numbers of the population or adequately to utilise and organise the natural resources and productive power."

My hon. Friend in moving the Motion referred to the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. M. Samuel). The hon. Member for Putney believes in Capitalism. I have read with very great interest a series of articles which he has written and which has been published in a Glasgow paper, and I have read with no less interest and with very much amusement his books en-tit led "The Great Experiment" and "Back to Bellamy" I venture to suggest to the hon. Member for Putney, and to the hon. Members who have put down an Amendment to the Motion, that they cannot deny that Capitalism has failed to give vast numbers of the population a decent standard of life, and what is true to-day was true in pre-war days.

In pre-war days there was plenty of unemployment, and the difference is that then the gaps between one job and the next job were shorter than they are now. In pre-war days, when markets were increasing, if a man lost his job in one pit he had a reasonable chance of getting another job within six weeks in some other pit; but to-day, when a man becomes unemployed, he does not know when he will be able to get another job. Anybody who cares to read the current issue of the Ministry of Labour Gazette, and will look at the relative ages of those who are out of work, will agree with me when I say that there are tens of thousands of people who have very little probability of ever getting another job. That is a terrible situation, and it is not due to Socialism, but to the failure of Capitalism. As the hon. Member for Wentworth said, the basis and object of Capitalism is to secure profit. When business men sit down to consider a commercial possibility, they do not say that the people in a given locality are in need of work and that they will find work for them. They consider whether there is a reasonable chance, if they invest money, of getting a return on that capital, and the employment of labour is a secondary consideration.

One aspect of Capitalism was not touched upon by the hon. Member for Wentworth, and it is the power given to employers to close down industries when they wish to do so without having any regard to the social consequences of their action and without having any regard to what will happen to whole communities of people. There can be no doubt that that is a side of Capitalism that has played havoc with the lives of many people during the past 10 or 12 years. Again, if one looks at Capitalism from the point of view of the finding of work for multitudes of people, one will find circumstances of a nature which not even hon. Gentlemen opposite could justify. I ask those who oppose this Motion what they suggest as an alternative, and what they suggest should be done to remedy the situation in the industrial: parts of this country? The Government have done nothing to deal with that situation. In 1931 they were elected as a National Government and in 1935 they were re-elected. On the second occasion they altered their tactics so far as unemployment is concerned. Instead of putting on the hoardings the numbers of people out of work, they did the contrary, and started advertising the fact that there were so many more people in industry than a year or two before. The Government's tariff policy, although it has helped some industries, has certainly injured others. An attempt has been made to prop up Capitalism by giving subsidies directly from the State to shipping, agriculture and other industries. A policy of tariffs and quotas has been pursued but has not remedied the-situation. We now have the right to ask that something of a more fundamental character should be done to deal with the distress which is all too prevalent in the country.

Consider the position in the mining industry. I believe that this country will be driven by sheer economic necessity to nationalise the mines. Taking a bird's-eye view of the present position in the industry we find that there are roughly 700,000 employés which is nearly 500,000 less than there were 12 years ago. At the same time the productive capacity of the individual miner is greater than it has ever been before. This is largely due to changed methods of production, increased mechanisation, the introduction of coal-cutting machines, pneumatic picks, conveyors and so forth. These changes have played havoc with the numbers employed. Large numbers have been thrown out of work and left without a ten-to-one chance of another job?

What is the remedy? We say there ought to be a reduction of the working day to a seven-hour day, bank to bank. That would enable numbers who are now out of work to be re-employed. When a demand for shorter hours is advanced the coalowners' reply is that the industry cannot afford a shorter working day. One of the reasons which they give for its inability to do so is the fall in prices, due to cut-throat competition which has compelled colliery companies to find cheaper ways of production. When one group of pits has indulged in these cheaper ways others have been compelled to follow suit, and there has been no advantage to anybody. It has almost been to the mutual disadvantage of coal-owners and workers. We say also that there ought to be better pension schemes for aged workers. It is a scandal that, when an industrial worker has spent 30, 40 or perhaps 50 years in an industry, he should be denied a decent pension to enable him to spend the autumn of his life in something like security. But when that demand is put forward the same reply is forthcoming. We are told that neither the State nor the industry could afford it. If the mining industry were properly organised under public ownership, if mines, minerals and ancillary industries were publicly owned, it would be possible so to organise the industry as to give a shorter working day, higher wages, and better conditions. It would be possible to go in for more direct selling, to readjust pit-head prices and to employ more men in the industry.

On the question of mines nationalisation, there has been a great change in public opinion during the last. 10 years. If in 1925 any hon. Member had suggested that a National Government, composed largely of Tories, would ever definitely announce from that Box their intention of nationalising royalties, it would have been regarded as impossible. But that is the situation to-day. It is the intention of the Government, we are told, to nationalise the minerals of the country. Time will show what kind of Bill will be introduced by them, but they have accepted the principle. They have done so because the Reorganisation Commission has stated that the private ownership of mineral wealth is retarding their amalgamation schemes. I submit that we shall also be driven by economic necessity to nationalise the pits.

If there is one thing more than another which separates hon. Members on this side from hon. Members opposite it is this. We believe that the present social order is not the best social order we could have. We stand for big fundamental changes in the social order—for what is commonly known as Socialism. There was a time when that word frightened people almost out of their wits. To-day Socialism is discussed in nearly every constituency in Britain. We make no apology for saying that we fought our election campaign on that programme. We asked the people for a mandate to bring about these big changes, and 8,000,000 people voted for us. It is true that we have not a majority but we have those 8,000,000 behind us who know that we stand for a Socialist objective. Hon. Members opposite are more concerned, even at Election time, with denouncing Socialism than with putting forward their own programme. Time and time again, during the General Election, National candidates without attempting to defend the record of their own Government or to give an exposition of their own programme, engaged in denunciation of the Labour party's programme and told the people what was going to happen if the Socialists were returned. This Amendment states—

"the abolition of private interest in the means of production and distribution would impoverish the people and aggravate existing evils."

It is hardly possible to aggravate existing evils in this country. We who believe in Socialism are prepared to preach it in season and out of season. We believe in it and the people who voted for us believe in it. Those who support private enterprise ought to be prepared to defend their doctrine. It would be interesting to hear from them what they propose to do to deal with the poverty which exists to-day, in the midst of plenty, throughout this country. The Tory party never was a social reform party. I defy anyone to say that the Tory party was ever. the party of social reform. Nearly all the social reforms we have had in this country have been preceded by agitation from the Labour movement, both industrial and political. Before the first Workmen's Compensation Act you had it. Both before and after the War it was only when you were prepared to agitate that you got anything. The same remark applies to the wages system. I heard an hon. Member opposite say the other day that capitalists were being frightened away from certain districts by Socialist agitation.

The fact of the matter is that if the working people of this country had been quiet, they would have had a worse standard of life than they have to-day. There is not an hon. Member opposite who can tell me when the employers of this country willingly conceded a wages advance or were prepared to admit that they could afford a wages advance. The miners, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth said, had to put up a national campaign to get a wages advance, and the most they got was a shilling a day, some of them less than that, and in one district nothing, in spite of the fact that their average wage is £2 4s. 6d. and that they have tens of thousands of their people going home with less than £2 a week. It was only when the workers were organised in trade unions that they began to make real progress. They did not make it because capitalism wanted them to make it; but in face of capitalist opposition. Therefore, we are pleased that the hon. Member for -Wentworth has brought this Motion forward.

We say definitely that the main cause of the people's poverty is the private ownership of the means of life, and knowing that we have almost solved the problem of production, knowing that the factories and workshops are packed with the very things the people need, and that the only reason the people have not got them is that they are too poor to buy them back, we believe there ought to be a reorganisation of society based on the public ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Even though this Motion may be defeated tonight, we shall go on propagating our views in season and out of season, in this House and in the country, until such time as we get from the people a mandate to carry those views into effect.

8.38 p.m.

I beg to move, in line 1, to leave out from "That," to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

"this House, believing that the abolition of private interest in the means of production and distribution would impoverish the people and aggravate existing evils, and that far-reaching measures of social redress are being accomplished without overturning the present basis of society, is unalterably opposed to any scheme of legislation which would deprive the State of the benefits of individual initiative."

The hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. T. Smith), who has just resumed his seat, challenged Members on this side on the deterioration which he said had taken place in the conditions of life in this country under the capitalist system. I would suggest to him and to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling), with all due respect, that this year of grace 1936 is not a very good year in which to say that, considering that when the National Government took office in 1931, after two years of Socialist administration, the condition of this country was very deplorable indeed and that since then, as every Member of this House will admit, great advances have been made. The hon. Members for Normanton chided the capitalists, as he calls us, for not having made any contributions towards the welfare of the working people. He said that any advances which had been made had come as a result of agitation from his own party. That is news to me. I thought that in a democratic country which for some time past has been governed by the Liberal party and the Conservative party, with occasional intervals of the Socialist, party, any movement towards social progress should be regarded as due to the opinion of that democracy as a whole and no attempt should be made to pin it on to one section of the community alone. Anyhow, leaving that where it is, I am prepared to stand on the ground that, wherever the agitation came from, the Acts nearly always came from the Conservative and Liberal parties.

The hon. Member for Wentworth took the same line and adopted the same tactics as his illustrious forbear did 13 years ago. He described the lamentable condition of the country, he sought out every conceivable unhappy event which has happened, and he pinned the whole thing on to the capitalist system. He dealt with over-production and under-consumption, starvation, malnutrition, under-payment of wages, over-payment of capital, the unemployment position, and so on. In every point which he made, I can assure him that, as far as I am concerned—and I am a fervent believer in what he describes as the capitalist system—I am entirely in agreement with him, and every Member on this side feels the same. It is not to the advantage of the capitalist system that there should be malnutrition or underpayment of wages. Anybody with only my own very elementary knowledge of business knows very well that the greater and the quicker your distribution, particularly if it goes through wages, and the more rapid the industrial circulation, the greater the advantage even to the capitalist alone. But many of the troubles from which we admit we are suffering to-day are definitely traceable to world conditions following the most extraordinary period the world has ever passed through from 1914 to 1918, which completely inverted the ordinary state of international trade and left this country, which is dependent at least to the extent of 60 per cent. on what it can sell abroad, in a disorganised condition.

May I at this point express my strong belief that wealth is the result of production and that production is of no use to anybody unless somebody else will buy it. We cannot solve our difficulties by the distribution of cash or pound notes. It is no good setting up printing presses and thinking that by paying people more money we can solve our difficulties. We have to set the people to work, and we have to give them markets for what they produce, and that is and has been our great difficulty ever since the War.

Where are we going to get the markets if our people have not got the purchasing power?

My point is that, inasmuch as the people in foreign countries have entirely changed their economic policy, due either to impoverishment following on the War or else to a new policy of self-containment due to fear of war, those markets have gone, and the people in this country who used to produce for those markets are now left without the power of earning wealth. We cannot satisfy those people by the distribution of money alone; we have to give them work. Let me say one thing from the point of view of profits. I believe, and I think it is an accepted fact, that invested money, which is the result of work done in the past, has the right to a return if it is put into industry, in the same way that labour has the right to a return. We have these two forces in industry, the investor and the worker. Only under prosperous conditions, where profits are being earned, can both these parties get a fair deal. I welcome the trade union movement in this country; everybody on this side of the House always has—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh !"] Certainly, we had a lot to do with bringing it into being. The trade union movement can only live under conditions of prosperous industry. It is up to the unions to negotiate for an increase in the standard of living of the people they represent, and they can only do it within a prosperous industry.

One point interested me intensely in the two speeches made by the hon. Members opposite. They did not mention co-operative societies, in which a great number of their followers will be found. The co-operative society is a completely capitalistic institution. I defy any Member on the other side to demonstrate that it should not be regarded as founded upon and working through the capitalist system. It works very well, and I hold a high regard for it. The phrase "capitalistic system" has been used, and I have been warned by the hon. Member for Wentworth that I must not mention "individual initiative." I intend to do so, however, because I believe that under that system we get the freedom of the individual and his power to use his initiative. The law that a man reaps where he sows is a rather hard law, but, as an ordinary man who has to earn his living, I am prepared to stand by it. It gives a great stimulus to the evolution of men and women because, unfortunately, 90 per cent. of our time is spent working in order to live, in order to provide ourselves with the necessities of life, and in order to make progress and to reap rewards. If there were no stimulus in that respect there would be a big gap in the lives of many of our citizens. There are over 10,000,000 people employed, and my argument affects every one of them. I believe that the capitalist system is fundamentally democratic and that it is essential to a democratic Government, because it gives every man and woman an opportunity, if he or she excels in labour and ability, to get ahead.

Another great aspect of the capitalist system is its adaptability. Various suggestions were made by the hon. Member for Wentworth as to what could be done and should be done. I should like him to cast his mind back over the last years of our industrial and economic history, and to ask him whether he would not agree with me that the system which has been in operation throughout that period has been responsible for enormous changes in our social structure. It has produced the wealth which has paid for most of our social amenities. In the last four and a-half years there have been enormous strides in health, education, housing and the like. Capitalism is not receding. There are many more small capitalists than there were some years ago, and their number is always increasing. During the terrible years of the War and since, this country has kept its head above water. Our people have suffered terribly, but the country has kept its head above water more than any other nation, except some of the small Scandinavian nations. It is the only big powerful exporting country which has kept its head above water, and that is largely due to the fact that we were not panicked out of our system of capitalism into a dictatorship or into Communism or something else.

We are now approaching a new phase. An industrial revolution, like most other revolutions in this country, comes by night almost, and people do not know what has happened until it is over. In the last few years enormous changes have been going forward in industry and in the point of view of people towards industry. That is why the capitalist system is good; it can change in conformity with the ideas of the people. This new phase, which is demanded by the people of the country, is that industry should re-organise itself as was done in the iron and steel industry; that the units of industries must think nationally; that as national industries they must get in touch with their consumers and keep in touch with them; that as national industries they must have closer relationships with their workpeople; that as national industries they must get into touch with their opposite numbers in other countries. All these things are being done, in some cases slower than others. The cotton industry and the coal industry are lagging in this process, and in order to stimulate them the Government have been prepared to help them through statutory powers given to a majority.

The iron and steel industry affords a typical example of what is happening in industry and what the people of this country demand. It was not badly organised when it received tariffs. It was nearly down and out for the lack of tariffs. It is no good saying to a man desperately ill from loss of blood, "You are a miserable specimen, you have made terrible mistakes," but, we should say, "We will give you strength again, and when you are strong you will have to see to it that you lead a proper life." That was said to the iron and steel industry, and since it received tariffs that industry has accomplished a great measure of reorganisation. It is in touch with its consumers, it is in touch with the steel cartel on the Continent, and it has done more through that reorganisation to help to set on foot the movement which, I believe, is going a long way towards the solution of many of our international difficulties. Only industries which are still activated by the individualist or capitalist system can do that. The position would be intolerable if the State were in control of the iron and steel industry, and had to negotiate with the other countries of the world in that industry.

Then there is all that is happening in agriculture. It is an experiment, and my friends tell me that this and that which is being done for agriculture is wrong, but as an experiment and as a start the movement is in the right direction. Farmers should organise and sell their products better, and consumers should organise and get into touch with the farmers. Distribution should be improved and farming made into a paying proposition. If it is necessary in the early stages of these operations to pay a subsidy I am in favour of it. There are occasions when this individualist system has to be put on one side. There are the circumstances of war, when the country cannot afford the time, and time is the factor, to continue individualist production and the State has to take control. There are other circumstances which, in my opinion, require special measures. In the distressed areas we have a condition of affairs which is not susceptible to the ordinary economic factors of our system to-day. I have no hesitation in making that admission, nor would any other Member on this side of the House.

I suppose the hon. Member would admit that conditions there are the result of the activities of the system he is defending?

I do not admit anything of the kind, because the coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding and cotton industries are depressed on account of world conditions over which we have no control. I live in a distressed area. My constituency is just outside it, unfortunately. [HON. MEMBERS: "Unfortunately?"] Unfortunately because, under the Government's policy at the moment, some of my works do not get contracts which otherwise they might get. That is why I said "unfortunately." But, apart from that, I am most anxious to find a solution for the troubles of the distressed areas. I have heard hon. Members laugh loud and long at the Chancellor of the Exchequer because he said it would take 10 years to deal with that problem. I have yet to hear any proposition from that side of the House which is going to take any shorter time. One way will cure it in time, and that is the ordinary evolution of the capitalist system, the gradual accumulation of trade, which will seep into those areas and have permanent results. But I agree that time is a factor in that case and that we cannot wait while the ordinary economic factors operate.

In conclusion I would say that every trouble has been pinned on to the capitalist system. We have been told that the Socialist system would cure our troubles, but I have yet to learn what exactly is the Socialist panacea. What are their suggestions? Where has Socialism been tried out and where has it been successful? As far as I know the pure Socialism which hon. Members opposite have in their minds has only been tried in some of the small city states of ancient Greece, and there not for very long. [An HON. MEMBER: "Russia !"] The Russian system, I understand, is not one on which hon. Members base their Socialism. I have always understood that; perhaps they will put me right if I am wrong.

The hon. Member said a few minutes ago, and I entirely agree with him, that the Scandinavian countries have been doing very well. He is surely aware that there are Socialist Governments in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

I appreciate that, but I know also that the economic policy of those countries is not based on Socialism. As far as I know Socialism has never been tried out. It is ill defined and has not been tried out. The only places where it, is being tried are the totalitarian States — Germany — [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—Italy and Russia, where there is the domination of a dictator either in person or by a. political caste. [HON. MEMBERS: "Do not blame us for that!"]. I am not blaming hon. Members for anything. I appreciate the fact that they have never had an opportunity of putting Socialism into practice in this country, and that is probably why we have been able to carry on.

One last point about Socialism. I fought the last election not, as an hon. Member suggested, by denouncing my Socialist opponent, but by trying to put my own point of view. One very good reason for that was that I could not discover what his policy was. But I did discover one thing from the party as a whole—that socialisation, in their sense, meant State-ownership of the means of production and distribution and of the banks. The banks are not mentioned in this Motion. I understand that Socialism, in order to be effective, must be complete. You cannot take it by easy stages. You cannot apply it to rich men first, and then gradually get lower and lower in the scale until finally, you are dealing with the man who has savings in the Post Office Savings Bank and the man who has a small house which he has bought out of his savings. If you are to have Socialism, it must be universally applicable to rich and poor alike. It is a principle. It is not a sort of try-out which you can apply here and there and not somewhere else.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), when talking about the Services, said that anybody in the Services was like somebody on a moving staircase, because without any effort one way or the other they slowly went up. He said that no new devices were being discovered, and that it required an outside mind. I do not agree with regard to the Services, but I agree that if we had Socialism we should all be on that moving staircase. We might go up to a certain point, but get no further. I am reminded that a staircase goes down sometimes. In fact, it has to go down in order to go up. I move the Amendment because I hope that the House will refuse to interrupt what must be admitted to be the great progress which we have been making, in a system which has been tried out, is capable of change and is very easily affected by public opinion. I ask the House to continue that system and not to allow the cold and rigid hand of State ownership to check the progress we are making and to plunge us back into chaos and confusion.

9.8 p.m.

I beg to second the Amendment, and, in doing so, I ask that indulgence of the House which I know is always accorded to a newcomer. Perhaps I have the right to add a few words to this Debate, as I have the honour to represent not only one of the largest but, as it happens, one of the most anti-Socialist constituencies in the country. I think it was the hon. Member for Normanton (Mr. T. Smith) who mentioned the Election. In the last five years, the people of Southend-on-Sea have voted overwhelmingly for the National Government and against a change of system, and my Socialist opponent at the last Election polled only 55 more votes than her predecessor in 1931, an increase which is not even in proportion to the growth of the population.

The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) said, or implied, something about Capitalism receding. I should have thought that it was more apt to say that Socialism is receding. I see signs of dissent on the benches opposite. Thirteen years ago, a similar Motion was moved in this House by Mr. Snowden, and a similar Amendment was moved from these benches. What has happened to Socialism in the intervening years? At that time Hungary had already had a socialistic experiment and a Socialist form of Government. After a series of excesses, that experiment was renounced, and I have never met a Hungarian who was anxious for its return. Munich, a city of which I know something and, which is a peaceful, pleasant city, was by an unexpected turn of history, suddenly given a Socialist Government for several months. It was unexpected both by Government and governed alike. I do not think that even the sternest critic of the Nazi régime would like to restore the conditions that existed in those months. He would agree that they are much better off now.

What about Italy? Italy had a growing Socialism with lock-outs and strikes. Then came the experiment of Fascism. When the Debate took place 13 years ago, Fascism was then only au experiment in its initial stage. Whatever you may think of it, you must admit that Fascism is now a dominant force in European politics. One wonders what has become of the Socialists in Italy? History has repeated itself in Germany very recently. The socialistic republic in Germany was unable, for reasons that we perhaps do not understand, to hold the affections or respect of the German people, and it led to Hitlerism and Naziism, and so contributed its share to paving the way to what is called the German problem.

Take the case of America and Canada, practical and democratic countries. If the remedy, as hon. Gentlemen say, is so efficacious, why have the particularly democratic and practical countries never seriously taken up Socialism, even during the dark days of depression when mankind naturally turns to other thoughts and other theories? It is only in Spain that the theory of Socialism is growing. I do not think that any of us would care to exchange his lot with that of the average Spaniard. Throughout history, Spain has always been one of the most backward countries in Europe.

I was much moved by the eloquent speech of the hon. Member for Wentworth and the ills which he recounted, but I could not make out how the remedy he suggested was going to cure such ills, which we all deplore. I do not believe that there is a very great difference, in this country, in ideals and in patriotism between hon. Members of one party and hon. Members of another. There is only a difference in method, and I think it can be maintained that our methods are more efficacious if less illusory. If that be not so, why is it that when a country tries a socialistic experiment it rarely does so a second time? I should be grateful if hon. Members opposite would point out places where socialistic experiments on a large scale, such as were suggested by the hon. Member for Wentworth, have been carried out with comparative success, and have satisfied the anticipation of those responsible. On this side, we can point many well-known instances in which such experiments have failed dismally. We have only to look at the United States which, in 1916 bought the major part of the Mercantile Marine. Since then they have been trying to get rid of it. Unfortunately, their experiment in Socialism has cost America the almost astronomical figure of £670,000,000 which I believe, if rumour is to be credited, is something like three times as much as we are about to spend on our defences.

In Canada, the situation is very much the same on a smaller scale. In Australia, as hon. Members know, an effort at State control of shipping was made. That unfortunate experiment brought disillusion and debt, and the Australian taxpayer was left with a debt of £15,000,000 on his shoulders, which he was loath to pay and almost incapable of paying. In France, where they did much the same thing the figure is considerably higher. It has been estimated that State control of shipping has cost the French Republic £43,000,000, in addition to the annual loss which it involves. There is another point of view, which, perhaps, is not so important and that is the point of view of the ordinary traveller or user of these services. If any hon. Member had occasion as I had, to use the railways in America immediately after the War, he will have rejoiced, as I did, when they were handed over to private ownership.

As the House is aware, in Canada at this moment there are two rival railways, The Canadian National Railway and the Canadian Pacific Railway, the latter of which is well known for its generous treatment of its employés, and has done much for the development of the Dominion. I think that, if anyone wanted to consult his comfort and convenience, there is little doubt on which of those two systems he would travel. I have travelled on both. Nor do I believe that the railwayman on the Canadian National Railway feels that he is any more free, or a better fellow or more self-respecting, than his relative or neighbour who happens to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway.

I know that hon. Gentlemen opposite are fond of referring to the Post Office as the ideal of Government efficiency and of the way in which State services can be run, and I agree with them, but, with all possible respect to my right hon. and gallant Friend the Postmaster-General, I do not think anyone would maintain that the telephones in this country, or in France, are any better than, or as good as, they are in the United States, where they are privately owned. There are many instances of a similar character.

I realise, however, and we all realise, that the condition of the workers in these industries is far more important than the convenience of the casual traveller. The condition of the workers is a problem of very great importance. I know of one company that employs about 4,000 people, paying them good wages, giving them free medical attention and assistance of every kind, giving them free sick benefit throughout the time of their incapacity for work, and, when they retire from the business, giving them a pension, which is continued to their widows should their widows survive. I happen to know, also, that there are several thousand people on the waiting list wishing to be employed by this company. Would hon. Members suggest that the vast number who are employed, in Lord Nuffield's great works, would be any better off if they were working for a State-controlled company? Would they suggest that these people, happy in their mode of life, would wake up one morning with a feverish glow of exultation if they found that they had suddenly become servants of the State? I do not think so.

It is difficult, of course, for us to gauge the conditions of people under a Socialist State, because we have only the example of Russia by which to judge; that is the only place in the world which is socialised on a large scale. Lord Passfield has said that the standards of life of a Russian worker have not yet come up to the standards of a British working man when he is at work. That is a very mild utterance. I could find many quotations from people who would sympathise with hon. Members opposite. I found one the other day from Mr. Muggeridge, an ex-Communist, who says:

"I say—and no unbiassed person who has lived in Russia can contradict me—that most Soviet workers and their families today are living entirely on bread rations; that they taste, from one month's end to another, neither meat, nor butter, nor sugar, nor vegetables; that their housing conditions are more abominable than the most abominable slums in England. … All their waking time they are terrified— terrified of the G.P.U.; terrified of one another; terrified that they will lose their ration cards; terrified that they will be refused a passport; and will be driven away from the corner in some room or cellar where they are at least allowed to sleep in peace. None the less their lot, as compared with the peasants, is privileged, luxurious and happy."

I should think that the lot of the ordinary British working man under an individualistic competitive system is far better than that. The competitive spirit, no doubt, has its unpleasant phases, but, nevertheless, it achieves great results, and I am afraid it is so deeply engrained in human nature that not the whole Socialist party, nor even 10 Socialist parties, would ever quite eliminate it.

If a system such as is embodied in this Motion were brought into being, what would happen? It seems to me that it would crush ambition and stifle individual enterprise, that it would crush all liberty and all individual development, and would add monotony to the lives of millions and misery to the lives of many. That is what would happen if the scheme were a success, but the fact must always be faced that it might be a failure. Then all the time would have been wasted, millions of money would have been spent, millions of people would have been thrown into unemployment again, and there would be a degree of industrial dislocation that would take a generation to rectify. That is what would happen if the system were a failure, while, if it were a success, it would bring about a standard of civilisation such as we read of in the works of Maeterlinck and Fabre on the life of the higher insects.

We must consider, not whether the scheme suggested in this Motion would be better for one section of the community, but whether it would be beneficial for the whole community, and I personally believe that it would not be. I cannot see how any one section would definitely benefit by a system like this. Indeed, it would bring about a condition of life which would be infinitely inferior to that which we now have in this country, which, I am glad to say, is the last refuge of democracy. Moreover, would not this proposed change run the risk of bringing about a dictatorship? I have read some of the speeches of Socialist doctrinaires, who have told us what they are going to do. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Hillsborough (Mr. A. V. Alexander) himself said a year or two ago that the danger of a dictatorship from the Left was as great as that of a dictatorship from the Right—that the danger was as great from Socialists as from Fascists. If this theory were put into execution, whether it were a success or a failure, I think that one inevitable result would be a reaction, and a strong reaction, for, in a country like England, where the centre always governs in the end, too great a push towards, say, the Left would result in people going to the Right, and too great a push to the Right would result in their going to the Left. I should have thought that the last thing hon. Members opposite would have wanted to bring about would be the possibility of a dictatorship from either side. I cannot think that the Motion which has been proposed to-night would in any way bring about better conditions in this country.

9.26 p.m.

I am sure that the House would unanimously wish me, in conformity with its usual custom, to tender our congratulations to the hon. Member on his maiden speech. It is not often that such a privilege falls to one who himself is a new Member of the House. I do it with sincerity because of the tone in which the speech has been delivered, the excellent way in which the hon. Member's views have been phrased, and although I cannot be expected to agree with his arguments, I think I may congratulate him on having stated them as cogently as anyone holding the same views could do. Having said that, the hon. Member will forgive me if I say that I do not intend to follow him in the whole of his remarks. The House will be sensible, as I am, of the circumstance that the general tenor of his address has proceeded on lines that suggest to me that he is impressed with the idea that to-night it is Socialism that is on trial. It is not Socialism that is on trial; it is Capitalism that is being impeached and Capitalism that must be defended.

I am glad to know that the Mover of the Amendment—and I do not think anyone on the benches opposite will take a different line—rightly agreed with practically everything that has been said by the Mover of the Resolution in his indictment of the conditions of poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, and general lack of opportunity for people to lead a full and generous life, that exist in this country. I do not think that any Member will deny the existence of poverty on a widespread scale. But we are entitled to ask what are the causes of that poverty, and of the system which produces and distributes wealth in such a way as to produce the lack of satisfaction of human needs which is associated with the expression poverty. That the system has broken down and failed to justify itself is evidenced by the existence of that poverty. I think it will be admitted that that poverty is not due to any lack of wealth. It cannot be denied that we have the men and the material, in sufficient numbers and quantities, to make up that deficiency if it existed. We have men, material and natural resources capable of supplying all the needs of our people. It has rightly been pointed out by the Mover of the Resolution that there is some barrier between that abundance and the poverty which is widespread and intense.

The hon. Member who moved the Amendment seemed to cast doubt on the suggestion that poverty was so widespread that we needed to change the system because of it. There was a time in this country when there was no such widespread poverty, when we had nothing like the resources of men and materials which, employed in association with natural resources, satisfy the needs of our people. One can go back to the Middle Ages when undoubtedly, if there was no great wealth on the one hand, there was no great poverty on the other, when there was abundance for all. Even though that abundance may be admitted to have been a rude abundance, it was sufficient to satisfy the needs of the people according to their standards, without any of the grinding toil, the feeling of insecurity, and the petty persecutions menacing their freedom which are associated with industrial conditions to-day.

There are hon. Members on the other side who should be more familiar with history than I am because of the larger opportunities they have enjoyed, who will know that I speak the truth when I refer to that age when an agricultural labourer in 15 weeks' work could earn sufficient to provide himself, his wife and his family with all they needed for the year. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] The hon. Member may call it rubbish, but if he would do me the honour of consulting the historian of work and wages in this country, Professor Thorold Rogers, he would find that it is not my opinion I am putting forward, but the opinion of a man who has given mind and time to the study of these questions. There was a time when there was no such thing as widespread poverty in this country.

Was that under the capitalist system?

Certainly not. With the coming of the industrial revolution, with the multiplication of our powers over nature, with the development of invention, with the application of forces inducing nature to provide us with a greater abundance for less expenditure of energy, with the coming of immense wealth on the one hand, we began to see the appearance on the other hand of a widening and deepening poverty. It seems to me that this process has gone on and developed and intensified to such a degree that the time has come now when we might at least pause and ask ourselves why is it? If we do that we may be able to find the answer to the paradoxical situation which sees poverty existent in the midst of plenty and the threat of war overhanging us notwithstanding a people almost universally-minded towards peace. We shall discover in the system that hon. Members opposite defend, and we attack, the causes both of that poverty and of that threat of war. It will be agreed that poverty is not due to any lack of wealth quite as readily as it is apparently agreed that poverty exists.

It seems to me, then, that if poverty exists in spite of an abundance of wealth the next step that we have to take is to try to ascertain what there is that stands between the people who are experiencing that poverty and the wealth which will satisfy their needs and drive away their poverty. We had an inkling of the answer to that question when an hon. Member who spoke on the previous Motion of the great distress in the coalfield, particularly in Durham, which he spoke of as one of the wealthiest little corners in the world, received from the hon. Gentleman who spoke for the Government the satirical response that "You cannot sell Durham coal by rhetoric." I quote that not criticise it but to show the idea that lies in the minds of the defenders of the present system, who can conceive of no other object in the matter of producing wealth except to sell that wealth. That is the sole object with which capitalism as a system allows the wheels of industry to turn at all. Its object is production, not to satisfy the needs of the people, not to meet the demands of consumption, but to sell with the ultimate object and result that the sale shall produce a profit for those who graciously permit others to produce but have not provided, as a reward for their labour in production, the means whereby they can buy.

Here it seems to me we have the kernel of the evil, this production for sale instead of production for use. If commodities were permitted to be produced to satisfy human needs, at least we should dispense immediately with a good deal of the poverty that prevails at present. We have been told that there are hundreds of thousands of families which during the last few months have been shivering in their hovels, which it would be an abuse of language to call their homes, because of their inability to buy coal. There are thousands of miners unemployed who, if they had been permitted to go down into the bowels of the earth, would work, even, without wages or reward of any kind, but would be only too glad to win that coal for the satisfaction of the need of their unfortunate brethren of their own class who without that coal could hardly keep life within their bodies. Capitalism is responsible for the circumstance that people shiver in cold while coal which would warm their bodies is in plentiful abundance and those who would are not permitted to secure it. It is not only coal. The same thing applies in the matter of clothing. I have been developing some measure of cynicism during the last few weeks, while sitting in the Committee that is discussing the question of how to dispose of what are called redundant spindles. I ask myself: Is there such a thing as redundancy of coal when people have empty grates in their homes and want fuel and cannot get it? Is there such a thing as a redundancy of spindles and looms so long as a single human back remains insufficiently clothed? What stands between the utilisation of these natural resources and the manpower which would turn them into commodities which would satisfy our human needs? Nothing but capitalism which says not only that these things shall not be used for the satisfaction of their own desires unless a profit can be made thereby but says they shall not be employed for the satisfaction of the needs of our own people.

I am not so ignorant of economics as not to understand and appreciate the necessity, so far as some commodities are concerned, to exchange them in the markets of the world but, if it is not capitalism, what is it that has choked up the channels of trade and exchanges and prevented other people as well as our own from having the enjoyment of them? What the Parliamentary Secretary meant when he said you could not sell Durham coal on rhetoric was that coal should not be produced unless it could be sold. If he had followed up that line of thought he would probably have reminded us, what we do not need to be reminded of, that under capitalism you cannot dispose of your coal unless foreign markets are available. But surely in our own market with the unsatisfied needs of our own people, not only for fuel but for food and for clothing, there is a market which, if it cannot yield a profit to the individual controller of industry, he ruthlessly closes but which, nevertheless, might be turned to the use of satisfying the needs of the common people who are willing and anxious and capable of satisfying their needs and those of their kith and kin but are not allowed to do so because a profit cannot be made. It seems to us that that is all wrong. Before we can alter it we shall have to ask how it comes about that the 10 per cent. of the population that the Mover of the Motion spoke of as appropriating 66 per cent. of the whole of the wealth produced are able to do that. Quite rightly he suggested that we have for present purposes solved the problem of production. Hon. Members opposite will admit that. The problem that we are faced with now is the problem of distribution.

If you cannot get markets to dispose of what you call your surplus commodities, you at least have an unsatisfied need at home for food, fuel, clothing and shelter, but the same barrier is raised between those unsatisfied needs and the willingness of people who would satisfy them if they had the means whereby they might be satisfied from our abundant natural resources. How does it come about that this is possible? It is because no one can produce any wealth at all without access to the things that are necessary to produce it. My hon. Friend the Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) would say that the first thing to which to have access is land. The next thing is machinery. No individual has any right, natural or moral, whatever might be said about his legal rights to claim individual possession of any of these things. These things which are needed for the satisfaction of our human needs are not the product of any individual effort. Land, of course, is not the product of any individual or collective effort, which has regard to the circumstances of its natural productivity. It is the providential gift of God to us all. Heaven knows by what right, but I strongly suspect by the right of might, the major part of it has been appropriated. I know that I can say that much about a large proportion of the territory round the town in which I happen to reside. Hon. Members who sit in this House know something about the wholesale way in which the common lands of the common people were enclosed without justification.

But more important than that in these days—at least it will attract the attention of hon. Members opposite more—is the question of industrial machinery. None of those things can be said to be individual products to-day. I put the proposition to the House and ask any hon. Member to deny the accuracy of the statement, that all things which we call wealth to-day are not individual but collective products. The yield of Capitalism out of which springs all the defects of modern society that we condemn in our midst, that which is collectively produced is individually appropriated. Ten per cent. of the people take 66 per cent. of the whole of the products, which is more than they can possibly consume for themselves or find markets in the world for the disposal of the surplus. There was a time when those markets were available. Capitalism over-reached itself, and seeking to take more and greater profits than it could possibly extract from its markets here at home, sought to exploit the markets of the world. In doing so it incidentally taught other people the same kind of exploitation. Having taught them how to play that game, they have played it as successfully as, and, in some cases, more successfully than, their original instructors.

To-day we see the sad example of the consequences of Capitalism, of its extreme, insane folly, looked at from the point of view of safeguarding home industries and the development of home prosperity, crying because they have killed the goose that lays the golden egg in connection, for instance, with the textile industry of Lancashire. What has killed the textile industry of Lancashire? We are told that it is foreign competition. Yes, but who taught the foreign competitor his business, who supplied him with the surplus capital invested there, all the more readily because it found cheaper labour to exploit than the labour it was possible to exploit at home? And who sent the men, and the machinery and the capital out there? The cotton masters of Lancashire of a generation ago; and now their sons are weeping and wailing and talking about redundant spindles and redundant looms because they themselves have killed, by their over-reaching themselves, the flourishing textile industry that once was part of the backbone of this country. It is the same with every other industry as well.

We suggest that, having located the cause of poverty, not in any lack of wealth but in the failure justly and equitably to distribute it, having located that failure in the circumstances that those who would distribute it equitably are not allowed to do so because the private ownership of wealth necessarily falls to the private ownership of the instruments for producing wealth, we suggest that having located the cause of the disease, without any quackery, the obvious remedy is to cure the disease by the removal of the cause. That is what we are coming to. Hon. Gentlemen opposite may fume, fight and propagate against it, but notwithstanding all that they may say or do, the irresistible circumstances bound up in economic tendencies are driving them eventually in our direction. There can be no mistake about it. They are recognising their own failure to such an extent that practically all the legislation about which I have heard anything in this House since as a new corner I first entered its portals, has been devoted to the patching up of that old system.

What is all this talk about depressed areas? The more you advertise the depressed areas, and the more you lament the consequences flowing from the existence of these depressed areas, the more you indict the system responsible for their existence. It is necessary to organise the land, the material and the machinery of the country in such a way that the goods will be delivered to the people of the country. You have had control of it ever since the industrial revolution. It is this which leaves you with the festering sores that tell of your failure to deal with the trust that you have had placed in your hands, and of which the people of this country in their trustfulness have been foolish to allow you to continue in possession too long.

Turn your eyes to the mining industry. It is useless and insufficient to talk about the loss of foreign markets as being responsible for the decay of the mining industry to-day. If not the Capitalism of this country it is the Capitalism in other countries which is responsible for that. It is the Capitalism which is worldwide and which knows only patriotism for that with which its interest is associated and from where its profits and dividends are extracted. Is it coal? It is an evidence of the disastrous failure of Capitalism that has had control. Is it cotton? It is evidence of the disastrous failure of Capitalism which has been responsible for its decay. Is it shipbuilding? You surely do not charge the Socialism of this country for the pass to which you have brought shipbuilding in this country. Is it engineering Is it any one of the great basic industries of this country of which we used to boast so proudly and which now lie in rack and ruin, and which you are seeking this and that means to patch up by subsidies here and there and by imposing restrictions upon supplies, in order to secure those profits which you have not the business ability to extract from the industries you have ruined? Is it these things that tell of the success of Capitalism? There is your indictment, in the decaying industries of which you alone have had responsible control since the beginning of the industrial revolution.

A greater indictment still than the decay of industry is the decay of men. You do not pause to realise the significance of this until you are confronted with circumstances that give greater cause to fear that your individual and class interests are in danger. When circumstances like those of the past weekend arise, you not only begin to think about the need for men to work for you, but about the need for men to die for you. It is then that you begin to look around you?

And you find them on this side.

It is the decay of men and the wrecking of homes for which you have been responsible. When hon. Members opposite lament the decay of skill among those who formerly they used to boast were the most capable workmen in the world, it is they who have to share and to bear the sole responsibility. That is the condition to which they have brought this industry, which gives the men no opportunity of keeping that skill by practice in productive industry. It is they who are responsible, not only for the decay of industry but for the decay of men. Their system having failed it is time to apply a fresh system, not in a hesitating manner, for the elimination of methods of competition and the substitution of methods of co-operation, methods which the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Peat) said he admired. The time has come to substitute that communal system which exists in the cooperative movement for the system of private ownership and control which exists in the capitalistic concerns of this country. On that basis and on that basis only can we recover our prosperity and give to each and every man, woman and child a free and full life.

Hon. Members opposite need not fear that freedom will be endangered. What freedom exists under the capitalist system? Freedom has its roots in economic circumstances. Who controls my bread controls my liberty and controls my life. What economic security is there for the average individual to-day, called into the workshop when profits promise to result and cast out on to the scrap heap unwanted when it suits the system. Redundant spindles and redundant men, scrapped more remorselessly than you would scrap a worn-out horse. You find a corner in the paddock somewhere for your favourite worn-out mare, which has served you well, but for the human beings who have wrought and toiled that you might live in luxury, there is no corner in the paddock for them. The only corner that is reserved for them is the paddock that is called God's acre. A corner six feet by three feet is reserved to contain all that remains of them when life has left their bodies.

Economic security does not exist today, even for your own class, much less for the working class. It does not exist for the capitalist. He may be a millionaire to-day and a pauper tomorrow. Such is the cannibalism of the capitalist system that it preys upon its own kind as remorselessly as it preys upon the working class. There is no real freedom for us and no real freedom for you in the capitalist system. We know from bitter experience how true the lines are, ending with the words:

"Bread is Freedom, Freedom Bread"!

Individual initiative never did give its best when inspired only by the motive of material gain. It has never had the right encouragement. That can only come about when society recognises the sordidness of its material standards and assesses value not for what is given but what is got. Some day we shall have to change all that, but you must give men liberty first; give them their economic freedom, and then they will discover that social freedom which inspires to social service. I believe sufficiently in the inherent goodness of human nature to believe it to be true that if you give them liberty, encouragement to give of their best to society, they will create and give of their best for the enrichment of mankind at large.

These are the ideals that we set before us; and I would remind hon. Members opposite that ideals far from being impracticable things are the only things that are practicable when you give them an opportunity of proving themselves. In their lack of ideals hon. Members opposite sneer at us. Who boasts of his lack of ideals boasts of his intellectual bankruptcy. We are proud of our ideal. If you recognise the validity of our ideal—you say that you share with us the ideal at which we are aiming—then give our ideal its opportunity and it will unquestionably organise its own machinery for its realisation, and in doing so the biggest barrier to human progress that has ever existed will be destroyed, because the capitalist system will be moved from the path of human progress.

10.3 p.m.

I should like to call attention to the terms of the Motion. It says that:

"Legislative effort should be directed to the gradual supersession of the capitalist system."

That is not the programme of the Socialist party. It is the system of which Lord Snowden spoke when he was addressing some of his disciples before the 1929 election and complained that if the Socialist party went on as they were doing it would take 2,000 years to get Socialism. Then they made him their Chancellor of the Exchequer. I was present in this House, although not a Member of it during a debate nine or ten years ago and again in 1928 on somewhat similar lines to the present discussion. I well remember the duel between Sir Alfred Mond, as he was at that time, and Mr. Snowden. I remember also, a somewhat similar debate, which was almost fit for a mock parliament, in which Mr. Saklatvala took a prominent part. He was the only Communist in the House at that time. I wish the present Communist Member of this House were here. Perhaps he would confirm what Mr. Saklatvala said. Mr. Saklatvala was at great pains to show that the Post Office as run in this country is not a Socialist institution, and that the tramways, transport and the Broadcasting Corporation were not Socialism, had nothing to do with it, and had no genuine bearing on Socialism.

The hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) once produced a joint manifesto with the late Mr. A. J. Cook, which said that Socialism had nothing in common with Capitalism, but that it had to do with human beings, and sometimes hardly that. There can be no doubt that they have nothing in common. They are quite different things, and in spite of the newly-wed affinity between the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) and the Socialist party, he would no doubt confirm that fact. What has happened under the present system in the last 70 or 80 years? We all know that Karl Marx was over here for a number of years and sat in the British Museum, wearing out his trousers and his temper. He hated the English people like poison—and poisoned them. What has happened since? Since that time enormous progress has been made. I have only to quote men like Benjamin Turner or the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury). Speaking at a Labour party conference in Birmingham the right hon. Member invited all those who felt depressed to go to any public school, a school in a slum district and look at the children, from the babies to the boys and girls in the upper classes, and pessimism would fly away. I could give many other quotations, but there is not time. But look at what Capitalism has done in regard to magnificent local hospitals and the development of social services such as were unknown when the right hon. Gentleman was a boy, and before he had turned his mind to politics. Have the social services been reduced since 1928, when the last Debate of this sort took place? Not at all. They have been increased. Has the purchasing power of the pound declined? Not at all. It has been increased. Although wages have declined some £400,000,000 or 500,000,000 since the days of inflation, the purchasing power of the pound still enables the public to buy bigger quantities than before of the necessaries and even of the luxuries of life.

Let me refer to Sir Walter Citrine. When Socialists tell the truth they show that there is no need for Socialism, but when Socialists talk Socialism they seem to think that there is no necessity to tell the truth. Sir Walter Citrine gave a whole list of improvements in the condition of the people and in the social services of this country, and pointed out the untruthfulness of the argument that the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. He described the efforts of the trade unions to protect the workers, and their success, which we all acknowledge, but he gave a long list of improvements, just as the right hon. Member for Bow and Bromley did, a most wonderful list. We all admit that there is not perfection in this world, but we say that this is evidence from hon. Members opposite that things are not so bad in this country.

Hon. Members opposite have chaffed me about a book of which I was a joint author, in which the conditions in Russia are described. If the Russians had said that they were going to do certain things, no matter what the cost in human suffering and in human life, no matter how long they took they were going to do them, it would have been all right; but do not call it Socialism. They have always condemned the industrial revolution in this country, they have always condemned mass production. They have always condemned piece work. I have been at Socialist meetings and have asked questions about piece work in Russia. Socialists say that there could not be any piece work in a Socialist country, but I have made the speaker inform his audience that there is piece work in Russia and more speeding up than in this or in any other country, a speeding up of a most disgraceful kind. Everything that they have condemned the Russians are now doing. They said that they were going to do away with the middleman and produce a model man. They have only produced a muddled man. There is more lack of planning in Russia than anywhere else. They have failed in quantity, quality, time, cost and in the human factor. That is not the standard of life which our people want. And do not let us say that it is Socialism, and try these experiments. There is no plan whatever from the Party opposite. I can demonstrate that by what they say about the distressed areas. Look at what is said in the report of the General Council of the Trades Union Congress in respect of the distressed areas. At the congress at Margate a committee reported:

"In their opinion large-scale unemployment would continue for a considerable period of time. They could see no series of work schemes or economic readjustments in the near future, whether introduced by a Conservative or a Socialist Government which would absorb the majority of workers who are at present deprived of their livelihood."

What is the hurry for Socialism? Why cannot we go on working with the Capitalist system which has produced the many benefits mentioned by Socialists themselves Then there is Mr. Ernest Bevin who, much to his honour, said that he did not pretend and the General Council did not pretend, that within their brains they could produce remedies for the depresed areas. I know that hon. Members opposite do not like Mr. Ernest Bevin or the speeches which are made by Sir Walter Citrine, but, after all, these men are their paymasters, they are the employers of the Socialist party. They have them on a string. I wish I had the eloquence of the hon. Member who sat for Tottenham in the last Parliament.

The members of the Socialist League have done the country a great kindness, an act of humanity, in pointing out the dangers of the situation and what would happen. Those who have read "The Problems of a Socialist Government" and Mr. Mitchison's "The First Workers' Government," with its certificate of merit from the hon. and learned Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps), from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), from Lord Passfield, from Mr. Cole—who I believe is economic adviser to the Socialist party—and others, will realise the nonsensical things which they say about Capitalism and Socialism. If hon. Members opposite understood them, they would laugh as I do. I will tell the House the sort of things these gentlemen recommend and hope will happen. Here is one of them. They declare that the Socialist Government will exploit the natives of South Africa for gold, and, having declared that capitalists are not entitled to their savings from foreign investments, they declare they would continue to exploit the foreign workers to pay them the interest instead. Of course, hon. Gentlemen opposite would be very pleased at that, but would the workers of other countries consent to be exploited by them and get nothing in return? The late Mr. Wise, who was the Socialist party's expert on banking and who wanted to nationalise banking, said they would try to retain London as the banking centre of the world to make profits out of the rest of the world.

Perhaps the best of the whole lot, to anybody who knows anything about it, is this one. Professor Cole is a gentleman who writes books costing 7s. 6d. or 15s. more often, I think, than he sells them. This is my final illustration of the nonsense that is talked by these professors and intellectual gentlemen. In his books "The Next Ten Years in British Social and Economic Policy," he says:

"As industry passes under public control, and inequalities of wealth are removed, the State will need to adopt new methods for securing the requisite accumulation of capital, and the development of company reserves suggests what forms these new methods can take."

Now, what on earth that means or how any country can know what profits it is going to make in the next year—well, as anybody who has ever been in business will know, that statement is most ridiculous. And these are the people in whom our friends opposite pin their faith absolutely and utterly. The Communists and Socialists are all of the same breed.

I object to that.

I am glad to see our Communist is with us. What is the difference? The Communist is a gentleman who thinks that he can bring about Socialism by a bloody revolution. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] The Socialists in this country think they can bring it about by bleeding taxation. I propose to illustrate that by a reference to the programme of hon. Gentlemen opposite. According to their own Chancellor of the Exchequer that programme was to cost an extra £1,000,000,000 a year in taxation. I heard them complain yesterday that £300,000,000 extra was to be spent on defence but they themselves proposed a programme which was to cost £1,000,000,000 a year. Lord Snowden himself declared that was Bolshevism run mad. In this Motion they have taken up a false position. They have taken, as they always do, only one half the balance sheet. They have overlooked all the good things to the credit of capitalism and trotted out all the bad things which everybody knows and acknowledges.

As I see a representative of the cooperative movement in his place, I would merely add this. I have always maintained and always shall maintain that the co-operative movement in this country is a good capitalist institution. But it could not pay any dividends in a Socialist country. It has never paid any dividends in Russia. The co-operative societies have never succeeded in Russia. They have been eaten up, as has been the case in every other department of the Russian system, by bureaucracy in the most violent and disgusting manner. The societies have either been suppressed or, as they say in Russia, "liquidated." The experience of the co-operative movement in Russia is not a good recommendation for Socialism. Nor are the results of Socialism in Russia generally such a recommendation, because the masses of the people there are in a state of poverty which is almost unexampled and every plan has failed, as to quantity, quality, time and cost. I say "Let us stick to what we have got and to the system which has produced enormous benefits." If any hon. Gentleman opposite can show me a railway train, or an omnibus which has been produced "for profit and not for use," I shall be glad to know of it.

10.25 p.m.

I am sure the whole House joins with me in regretting that the hon. Member for Roth-well (Mr. Lunn) is not here to move his Motion, particularly when we know the sad cause of that inability. I am sure also that the whole House is grateful to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Paling) for introducing the subject which he has introduced. It cannot but be of advantage to the House to have an opportunity of discussing across the Floor a subject which is of such importance and which bulks so largely in our electoral campaigns in the country. The reason why I rise to say a few words in support of the Amendment is that I do it out of friendliness to hon. Members opposite. Nobody could have sat through this Debate and heard the eloquent speeches made by those hon. Gentlemen who have so eloquently deplored those faults in our social system which have yet to be remedied without feeling that there was a great and a sincere desire on their part to contribute of their best towards a solution of the difficulties which still afflict society. It went to my heart to hear all this ingenuity, public-spiritedness, and intelligence wasted and thrown aside on this quack remedy of Socialism. It is like the melancholy spectacle of the sincere seeker for health who gets turned aside in his endeavours by the allurements of some advertisement for a patent medicine.

I am fortified in that view by the method of presentation of the case that we have had from hon. Members opposite. They have adopted precisely the method that you see adopted in the patent medicine advertisements, namely, a series of startling descriptions of physical illness. "Do you have spots in front of your eyes?" "Do you feel a sense of fullness after meals?" By this lamentable painting of only the darkest side of our social picture, and refusing for a moment to look upon the bright side, they hope we shall be scared by the terrific contemplation of those horrors into swallowing their particular cure.

When I come to the Motion, I find a certain sense of difficulty in following precisely its meaning. The hon. Member who moved it so eloquently speaks of the capitalist system, and I suppose those words convey a clear impression to his mind. I wish they conveyed as clear-cut an impression to my mind. It is easy to see that he is contrasting in this Motion two systems—one the system which he wishes to replace and the other his own system of public control and ownership. Now that is a system that exists on paper. It has been worked out as a complete theory, and he would have us assume that this other system, the capitalist system, against which he wishes to contrast that one, is a theoretical system of the same kind. But in this Motion he is comparing two quite unlike things. One, the Socialist system of public ownership and control, is a system in a theoretical sense. It has been imagined and written out, but the capitalist system is not a theory of action at all. It is, in fact, simply the way in which humanity, in spite of the arguments of hon. Members opposite, has chosen to conduct its own affairs in all countries and for all time. The system of the private ownership of the means of production and distribution has undoubtedly characterised the whole of our economic history of which we have any record at all.

The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Marklew) spoke of a golden age just before the industrial revolution in this country, when there was a great deal, as he told us, of simple contentment and security, a time which he contrasted unfavourably with the present time. But in that time before the industrial revolution there were these very features which are inveighed against this Motion. There was this private ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. There was not then any social order based upon

"the public ownership and democratic control of the instruments of production and distribution."

If the hon. Member instances that period as a period of relative prosperity and contentment, the whole of his argument goes when he asserts that our present distresses are due to the absence of something that was absent then. The capitalist system is of no such recent origin. When we are asked to do away with private ownership of the means of production and private enterprise, which have characterised the whole history of humanity from its earliest start, we are asked to make very sweeping changes. The speeches of hon. Members opposite pointed to the evils of the present system, evils which are inherent in our civilisation, and I would not minimise them, although I would like to say a word on the other side. I do not think, however, that a single speech completed the logical process which this Motion asks the House to accept, namely, that these difficulties are due to the private ownership of the means of production. No speech proved that those difficulties would be in any way removed or palliated if we were to adopt the system of public ownership and control which is recommended in the Motion.

It would be very true to say that the Motion accuses Capitalism and that it is not Socialism which is on its trial. When we are dealing with a matter of this kind involving public affairs, hon. Members cannot ask the House to accept a Motion which destroys the present basis of society unless the House has a clear idea of how society is to be worked in the absence of that system. It is, therefore, idle to attempt to consider this question without knowing what hon. Members opposite would put in its place. When I look at the Motion a little further I see that there are two elements in the system which is recommended, and I would say a word about them because I do not think we are as far apart as may be thought. First, there is a question of public ownership. It is true that in this country the means of production are owned privately. The farmer owns his equipment and his stock; the journeymen workman owns his tools; the private person owns the shares in companies; and the bigger companies own the means of production. If one considers the distresses of our times—and we may be thankful they are no worse—we find that the real grievance of the people is not that there is so much private ownership, but that there is too little.

There is not an hon. Member who does not agree that the innermost desire of the great bulk of the population would be met if private property were owned more extensively. What we want is not less private ownership, but more of it, and it seems an extraordinary remedy that would have the effect of destroying all the ownership that exists. It is clear that the Motion proposes public ownership, and it may be supposed that if the public owns something each member of the public has some sort of shadowy ownership in it.

The public own a road, own a sewer, own a water supply and the use of those services is open to us all. Those are services provided by the collective effort of the community and we all share them and own them.

In that sense we all own underground railways or railway companies. [HON. MEMBERS: "No !"] I ask the right hon. Gentleman to follow my argument. I started by saying there was too little private ownership and proceeded from that to say that if you have only public ownership you have no private ownership at all, and instead of meeting the desire of the people to own property you defeat it.

If you own a road that does not mean that you can take away pieces of it.

I own many things in a public capacity. I own the Post Office—the right hon. Gentleman and I own the Post Office—but let either of us go to a post office and try to get a halfpenny stamp for nothing and we shall see how shadowy is the ownership. These Motions calling for the public ownership of property really mean the dispossession of all people who own property at the present time and the handing of it over to other people. We used to be told that "God gave the land to the people," but these Motions calling for the nationalisation of the land mean, really, taking away the land from people, large and small, who own it now, and giving it to the Civil Service.

To come to the question of public control. It is wrong to say or to assume that the present system is devoid of public control. That might be so if hon. Members were contrasting in their own minds their own system of public ownership and control with some fancy system where laissez faire runs riot and there is no protection from the full blast of the most doctrinaire mid-Victorian Liberalism. Under our present system we have a great deal of public control. If the right hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members opposite are going to visit upon me and my friends the sins of the fathers of the mid-Victorian period they have come to the wrong place. He ought to approach those hon. Members of the Liberal party who sit on the benches in front of him. We have always tried by factory Acts, trade union Acts and other Measures of the kind to give some measure of public control to mitigate the full harshness of economic Liberalism.

I can tell hon. Members that they will never find this Government slack or behindhand in imposing any sort of public control which may be necessary in the public interest. But I gather that does not satisfy hon. Members. They wish the public control of industry to go further than merely guarding a framework in which it can act. They wish it to extend to management, they want the public to conduct the management of these businesses. That they can never do. The public can never manage a business any more than the public can speak down the telephone. Public management in that sense will have to be done by some man or woman whom you appoint to do the job for you. If hon. Members will be kind enough to follow me in what I am saying, they will see that if you have public control in that sense all you have done has been to change one boss for another. You have pat in the place of the private manager a manager who is a servant of the State. You have exchanged King Log for King Stork. Are you any better off? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] Hon. Members seem very certain, but I am not so sure.

Let us see how we stand at the present time. If there is a dispute with the management of a company at the present time because that management is abusive or tyrannous, you have always the State to come to, but if the management were also the State and if the one universal employer were the State, that State, if you went to it with a grievance, would be judge and advocate in its own cause, and I very much doubt whether the liberty of the people of this country would be what it is to-day. I would ask hon. Members who are proposing this great change to consider another point. No hon. Member has not, at one time or another, received information from a constituent about a hard case relating to a pension or some other payment out of public funds. Hon. Members, particularly those who have been in office and have had to administer some of those hard cases, know how you get a case where, if the money were your own, you would give the money without a moment's hesitation, because there is ale feeling that the woman, say, has had a hard time and deserves assistance. If you are a public servant, and it is not your money but the money of the public with which you are dealing, you must not go outside your regulations or you will be false to your trust. What does that mean? It means that in the present system of private ownership, wherein a man can deal with his money, within limits, how he likes, an elasticity and a mercy are imparted to society which would disappear entirely if it were tied up in the swaddling bands of regulations. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is not true of the manager of a multiple firm !"] The manager of a multiple firm can always get authority to deal with a hard case in a way in which a public servant cannot.

The efficiency of a publicly-managed business is left entirely out of account by hon. Members. Hon. Members always seem to proceed on two assumptions, neither of which is completely true. The first is that we have solved the problem of production, and that we shall go on automatically and for ever producing in our present volume. If it be a fact, as is supported by hon. Members on this side, that a privately-owned business has a great advantage in economy and efficiency of production, and if it be true that a publicly-owned and managed business falls short in that efficiency of production, I would ask hon. Members to consider that they have not to deal with a static volume of production, but they have to take steps to maintain that volume before there can be any form of public distribution. The trouble is that, by the drastic changes that are proposed, you might easily have such a shrinkage in production that the problem of distribution would become merely academic.

This country has made its own experiments in government. Mankind, ever since the dawn of its history on this planet, has been trying to devise political means of living together, and all sorts of political expedients have been tried. Not one of them has been free from blemishes, imperfections, injustices and wrong, but I venture to say that the system in this country, with all its faults, shows that we have achieved at this moment a state of society which, although it has many faults, still provides, so far as the great comforts of civilisation are concerned, freedom from force and fraud, freedom from hunger—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Let hon. Members remember their history—freedom from oppression, liberty of speech, liberty of conscience and liberty of religion such as no other society has ever paralleled. Yet we are asked at this moment to accept the Socialist basis of the exercise of public control.

I would ask hon. Members to notice that the Motion which has been moved to-day is in the identical terms in which it was moved 13 years ago by Mr. Snowden. When we consider the events that have taken place in those 13 years, and consider the fact that they have not imposed upon hon. Members opposite the alteration of one syllable of their Motion, I think that, having regard to the passage of time and the momentous events that have occurred, it will be agreed that hon. Members opposite are a good second to Rip Van Winkle. What does this Motion involve? It involves the totalitarian State. Whenever people get themselves into the habit of considering that the State is more important, wiser, or better than the men and women who compose it, they are on a declivity which leads irresistibly to dictatorship. I hope the House will ponder long before it accepts any Motion of this kind. We have nothing to learn from these new methods of government; we have more order and liberty here than anywhere else in the world; and I hope the House will reject a proposal that we should, at this of all times, abandon the free system under which our greatness has grown and under which alone our liberties can be preserved.

10.47 p.m.

I have only asked for a few minutes in which to close this Debate, because I did not wish to take up the time of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House on a private Members' night. I am sure that my decision has been justified by the admirable speeches to which we have listened. This has been a typical House of Commons Debate—a good-tempered and temperate Debate, which neither the pleasantries of the Financial Secretary nor the provocations which were shot out by the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. M. Samuel), like the quills upon the fretful porcupine, could disturb. But any foreigner who might be here, and who might imagine, from the good-tempered chaff from one side of the House to the other, that there were no very grave issues underlying our discussion, would be much mistaken, because there is a vast cleavage of attitude between those on the opposite side of the House who think that what has been and is to-day must ever be—[HON. MEMBERS: "No!"]—and those who, on this side of the House, think that essential changes have got to be made in the industrial system of society if this country is to preserve its position and if the cracks in the social system, which recent Debates have disclosed more and more clearly, are to be got rid of and a whole social system introduced in its place.

There are two things upon which, apparently, the whole House on both sides is agreed. The first is that very grave evils are displaying themselves in our system at the present time. The second is one which is perfectly clear to all of us, and which was enlarged upon by the Financial Secretary, namely, that, whereas the system of Capitalism, though in a changing form, has been with us for a considerable time, Socialism has not yet been put into concrete form at all. I make an exception of the case of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics because we all recognise that experiment is very new, and I am not going to dogmatise as a result of that experiment. But I would like hon. Members opposite to contrast their attitude towards the system in that country to-day with what it was 10 years ago. To-day they are wondering to what extent it is going to succeed, whereas 10 years ago there was scarcely one hon. Member on that side who did not prophesy that within 10 years the whole system would have broken down. I admit that that system has not existed long enough to enable us to obtain a complete picture of what is taking place there.

It is true that Socialism is a work of imagination—[Interruption]—because it has not yet been put into practice. But that is no reason why it should not be put into practice. If hon. Members opposite had gone on the principle which is represented by their jeers to-day they would still be living in the conditions of primitive man, and they would not have attempted to make any of the experiments that man, in his determination to progress, has made, and which some man saw in imagination before the more laggard of his fellows were prepared to take that step in advance. It is only recently that circumstances have arisen which make Socialism the inevitable thing which it has become. Time was when the capitalist system, unfair as it always was to a large section of the people, was comparatively successful. As the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Peat) said, it provided individual initiative and it did deliver the goods. It went on producing more and more, and people said that capitalism had only to go on for a little while before everyone would have what they should have to satisfy their full needs of life. It has only been in the last decade or quarter of a century that the prophecy has been belied. When capitalism produced more and more, instead of all the wants of humanity being satisfied it has simply resulted in the unemployment of men and women and the rusting of machinery which could not be used. Therefore we have come to a stage that no one fore-saw, when capitalism, instead of delivering the goods, is creating unemployment and the disuse of machinery. We are having all kinds of Bills like the Cotton Bill to dispose of what is supposed to be redundant machinery. We are having all the proposals of the Minister of Agriculture for preventing that abundance which otherwise would be for the benefit of mankind.

There is a second change which has taken place only in recent years. It is true that in the earlier stages capitalism consisted of a great number of small competitive units and resulted in considerable individual initiative. But all that has changed. Capitalism to-day does not consist of a large number of small competitive units. It consists of a smaller and smaller number of what are very nearly monopolies and the initiative has to a very large extent gone. The really capable founders of the capitalism of the nineteenth century have been replaced by two sets of people. In the first place there are the salaried managers, who are not owners in any sense of the word, and in the second place there are the investors, who are more and more divorced, as the hon. Gentleman himself has good reason to know, from the actual control of industry. Therefore, the changeover from the existing form of capitalism to control by the community is a very much smaller one than it ever was in those old days. The Financial Secretary said he pitied the people who became the servants of the State. I should think that falls rather ill from him. He certainly does not regard it as a disadvantage to be employed by the State.

But there is still another change that has taken place in quite recent times that makes a very great deal of difference. I remember quite well when the one thing that employers asked was to be let alone. The Financial Secretary pointed out that that was largely the plea of the Liberal school of thought. But every employer, whether Liberal or Conservative, took the view, "For Heaven's sake, leave me alone. I am quite able to manage my business for myself." Is there a single large industry to-day in which the employers are saying the same thing. One industry after another is coming to the Government cap in hand asking for financial support and assistance in order to run their business. The Minister for Agriculture comes here almost every day with some proposal to regulate and to give quotas. The Financial Secretary himself brings forward orders under the tariff scheme. The President of the Board of Trade asks us to find subsidies in order that the shipping trade may make adequate profits. There is a well known motto in British tradition that he who pays the piper calls the tune. It may be that under the present Government private Capitalism can get away with having the piper paid for it and calling the tune at the same time. It will certainly not be allowed to do that for very long.

Finally, I say that we are coming to a time when everyone is recognising that industry has to be planned. The present system works out badly. As the hon. Member for Darlington frankly recognised there is need for planning and for State intervention so far as the distressed areas are concerned. Experience is that there cannot be planning by those who are running industry themselves. The only body that can really plan industry must

Division No. 91.]	AYES	[11.0 p.m.
Adams, D. (Consett)	Hardie, G. D.	Richards, R. (Wrexham)
Adamson, W. M.	Henderson, J. (Ardwick)	Riley, B.
Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (H'Isbr.)	Henderson, T. (Tradeston)	Ritson, J.
Anderson, F. (Whitehaven)	Hicks, E. G.	Robinson, W. A. (St. Helens)
Barnes, A. J.	Jagger, J.	Rowson, G.
Batey, J.	Jenkins, A. (Pontypool)	Sexton, T. M.
Benson, G.	John, W.	Short, A.
Broad, F. A.	Kelly, W. T.	Silverman, S. S.
Buchanan, G.	Kennedy, Rt. Hon. T.	Simpson, F. B.
Burke, W. A.	Kirby, B. V.	Smith, Ben (Rotherhithe)
Charleton, H. C.	Lansbury, Rt. Hon. G.	Smith, E. (Stoke)
Cruse, W. S.	Lathan, G.
Cocks, F. S.	Lawson, J. J.	Sorensen, R. W.
Daggar, G.	Leach, W.	Stephen, C.
Davidson, J. J. (Maryhill)	Lee, F.	Stewart, W. J (H'ght'n-le-Sp'ng)
Davies, D. L. (Pontypridd)	Leonard, W.	Strauss, G. R. (Lambeth, N.)
Davies, R. J. (Westhoughton)	Leslie, J. R.	Taylor, R. J. (Morpeth)
Davies, S. O. (Merthyr)	Logan, D. G.	Tinker, J. J.
Dobble, W.	Macdonald, G. (Ince)	Viant, S. P.
Dunn, E. (Rother Valley)	McEntee, V. La T.	Walkden, A. G.
Ede, J. C.	Maclean, N.	Walker, J.
Edwards, Sir C. (Bedwellty)	MacMillan, M. (Western Isles)	Watkins, F. C.
Fletcher, Lt.-Comdr. R. T. H.	Mothers, G.	Watson, W. McL.
Frankel, D.	Maxton, J.	Westwood, J.
Gallacher, W.	Messer, F.	Whiteley, W.
Gardner, B. W.	Milner, Major J.	Williams, E. J. (Ogmore)
Garro-Jones, G. M.	Montague, F.	Williams, T. (Don Valley)
Gibbins, J.	Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Ha'kn'y, S.)	Wilson, C. H. (Attercliffe)
Graham, D. M. (Hamilton)	Muff, G.	Windsor, W. (Hull, C.)
Green, W. H. (Deptford)	Naylor, T. E.	Woods, G. S. (Finsbury)
Grenfell, D. R.	Oliver, G. H.	Young, Sir R. (Newton)
Griffiths, G. A. (Hemsworth)	Parker, H. J. H.
Groves, T. E.	Pethick-Lawrence, F. W	TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—
Hall, G. H. (Aberdare)	Potts, J.	Mr. Paling and Mr. T. Smith.
Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel)	Pritt, D. N.
NOES.
Alexander, Brig.-Gen. Sir W.	Cross, R. H.	Herbert, Major J. A. (Monmou'h)
Alien, Lt.-Col. J. Sandeman (B'kn'hd)	Cruddas, Col. B.	Holdsworth, H.
Anstruther-Gray, W. J.	Davies, Major G. F. (Yeovil)	Holmes, J. S.
Aske, Sir R. W.	De Chair, S. S.	Hope, Captain Hon. A. O. J.
Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley	Dodd, J. S.	Hudson. Cant. A. U. M. (Hack., N.)
Baldwin-Webb, Col. J.	Duggan. H. J.	James, Wing-Commander A. W.
Balfour, Capt. H. H. (Isle of Thanet)	Duncan, J. A. L.	Joel, D. J. B.
Barclay-Harvey, C. M.	Eden, Rt. Hon. A.	Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)
Baxter, A. Beverley	Ellis, Sir G.	Jones, L. (Swansea. W.)
Beaumont, Hon. R. E. B. (Portsm'h)	Elliston, G. S.	Kerr, J. Graham (Scottish Univs.)
Boulton, W. W.	Elmley, Viscount	Lamb, Sir J. O.
Bower, Comdr. R. T.	Emrys-Evans, P. V.	Leckie, J. A.
Boyce, H. Leslie	Erskine Hill, A. G.	Leech, Dr. J. W.
Brocklebank, C. E. R.	Everard, W. L.	Little, Sir E Graham-
Brown, Col. D. C. (Hexham)	Foot, D. M.	Llewellin, Lieut.-Col. J. J.
Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Newbury)	Fremantle, Sir F. E.	Lloyd, G. W.
Bull, B. B.	Furness, S. N.	Loftus, P. C.
Burghley, Lord	George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)	Lumley, Capt. L. R.
Cary, R. A.	Gibson, C. G.	Lyons, A. M.
Christie, J. A.	Gridley, Sir A. B.	Mabane, W. (Huddersfield)
Clarke, F. E.	Griffith, F. Kingsley (M'ddl'sbro, W.)	McKie, J. H.
Clydesdale, Marquess of	Grimston, R. V.	Macmillan, H. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Cook, T. R. A. M. (Norfolk, N.)	Hannah, I. C.	Magnay, T.
Craven-Ellis, W.	Hartington, Marquess of	Margesson, Capt. Rt. Hon. H. D. R.

be the community, and what we have to choose is this: Either we as a community have to be planned for and controlled by the trusts, or we have to have the planning and controlling and the ownership of those trusts. Between those two alternatives the House will have to decide.