asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he can give the source or the names of those individuals or organisations responsible for issuing inciting manifestoes in Palestine; and whether, in view of the violent demonstrations involving loss of life, he is satisfied that adequate steps have been taken by the High Commissioner?

An appeal for civil disobedience was published as a resolution at the Congress of Arab National Committees on 7th May. Manifestoes of a more or less inciting character have been issued by the Arab Transport Strike Committee, by leading Moslem towns-people of Jerusalem, by the so-called National Guards of Jaffa, by the Arab Students' Congress and by the Editor of a prominent Arab newspaper. His Majesty's Government are satisfied with the steps which the High Commissioner has taken, and have the fullest confidence in his handling of the situation.

Has any investigation been made by the Commissioner on the spot into whether any outside influences are getting the printing done? Is it known whether the printing is being done locally or at some outside place?

I have said in answer to previous questions that we have no evidence of any interference from outside.

Has the Commissioner informed any of the Departments here whether these so-called scouts, who are under the educational influences of the teachers in those places, are still carrying on the agitation?

I should like to have notice of that question.

Has there not been a, lot of wireless propaganda from Italy, and have not representations been made about that?

That is so, and representations have been made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, as he said in answer to a previous question; but I do not think the wireless broadcasts which have been given come under the terms of this question.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether it is at the request of His Majesty's Government that the visit of the Emperor of Ethiopia to this country is to be treated as being paid incognito; and, if so, what is the reason for the request.

I would refer the hon. Member to the reply returned yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden East (Mr. D. G. Somerville) to which I have nothing to add.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, whether he will give an assurance that the Emperor of Abyssinia will be free, while in this country, to assist his country in any lawful manner; and whether he will be treated by the Government in the same manner as other crowned heads of states visiting this country incognito.

As regards the first part of the Question, I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave yesterday to my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden East (Mr. D. G. Somerville). I can assure the hon. Member that, during the unofficial visit which the Emperor is paying to this country at his own request, His Majesty will be granted all appropriate courtesies and facilities.

I presume there will be no objection, for example, to the Emperor appealing to the people of this country to carry out their obligations under the Covenant to help his country?

That point has already been dealt with. The conditions have been stated in a previous question.

Will there be any objection to local authorities and voluntary bodies who wish to show honour to the Emperor by presenting him with addresses and so forth doing so?

I do not imagine there will be any difficulty about that.

Do not the Government realise that it will be impossible for the most interesting person in England to be incognito?

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty, whether the cost of the conveyance of the Emperor of Ethiopia from Palestine to Gibraltar in a British war ship will be a charge on British public funds?

Yes, Sir. The Royal Navy has always been pleased to perform these acts of courtesy and will, I hope, continue to do so.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, what number or proportion of the directors of the Suez Canal Company are appointed by the British and French governments, respectively; and who are at present the British representatives.

The directors of the Suez Canal Company, who are 32. in number, are appointed by the general assembly of shareholders. Three of those directors are nominated by His Majesty's Government. Twenty-one directors are French, but so far as I am aware none is nominated by the French Government. By a recent agreement between the company and the Egyptian Government two of the French directorships are to be transferred to Egyptian subjects. The present British Government representatives are Sir Ian Malcolm, Sir J. T Davies and the Earl of Cromer.

Can the Noble Lord say who has the controlling interest among the shareholders in the appointment of directors?

I should like to have notice of that question.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether His Majesty's Government will initiate proposals to the other governments concerned such as may secure to the Suez Canal Company whatever powers may be necessary to stop the passage through the canal of poison gas and other commodities of which the usage is, or may be, prohibited by international law; and whether there is at present any kind of commodity of which the passage through the canal is prohibited.

As regards the first part of the Question, my right hon. Friend does not feel that the action proposed would be likely to achieve any useful result at the present moment. The answer to the second part of the Question is No, Sir.

Is it contemplated that in the event of the British Government being concerned in a war in the East poison gas would still be allowed to go through the Suez Canal to the detriment of British interests?

I have already said that it is not thought we could achieve any useful result at the present moment. Perhaps the hon. Lady has not studied the names of the signatories to the Convention.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any statement to make with reference to the fortification of the Dardanelles and the projected conference at Montreux.

I have at present nothing to add to the answer which I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon (Mr. H. G. Williams) on Tuesday last.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is satisfied that the forces of the League of Nations Powers in the Mediterranean, as co-ordinated by recent staff conversations, are adequate to deal with an attack by the Italian aggressor.

The aim of the conversations to which the hon. Member refers was to safeguard the maintenance of collective security in the Mediterranean. In the view of His Majesty's Government, this aim has been achieved.

I take it that, on this occasion it will be made quite clear that the British Navy, if attacked, will shoot?

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is now in a position to make any further statement regarding Sir F. Leith-Ross's mission to China.

Yes, Sir. Sir Frederick Leith-Ross will shortly be proceeding to Tokyo in order to renew contacts in Japan and to have a further exchange of views on financial and economic questions of common interest to the United Kingdom and to Japan. He will subsequeutly be returning home by way of China.

Can the Noble Lord say whether Sir Frederick Leith-Ross is still the chief economic adviser to the Government—is he still retaining the position, or temporarily abandoning it?

That is quite a different question.

asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether any instructions have been issued for the arrest on the high seas of the trawler "Girl Pat."?

No, Sir. The owners have made no request for assistance in arresting this ship.

asked the President of the Board of Trade, whether any instructions have been issued to port officers in connection with the trawler "Girl Pat "; whether his officers have ascertained whether this vessel took aboard charts or Admiralty sailing directions for African waters when she left her home port on 1st April; whether any statements by her master have come to the notice of the Board since that date; and whether he can give any explanation of the movements of this vessel and their relation to merchant shipping law?

The answer to the first three parts of the Question is in the negative. I can give no explanation of the movements of the vessel, nor, on the available information, can I say whether any offence has been committed against the Merchant Shipping Acts.

Have the owners communicated with the hon. Gentleman in regard to the strange movements of this vessel?

I am afraid I must have notice of that question.

asked the President of the Board of Trade the per centage difference between the exports valued in sterling to the United Kingdom valued f.o.b. from Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, respectively, and the imports into the United Kingdom valued c.i.f. from those countries for the latest year for which the statistics are available, showing accurately the geographical distribution of the exports and imports referred to?

I am having a statement prepared which I will circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT as soon as possible.

On a point of Order. I put this question upon the Order Paper to be answered by the Prime Minister, and it was accepted as such. Then I got word from him that he had put it to the President of the Board of Trade. I am going to raise this matter when the Question has been answered.

I am aware that herrings were recently thrown back into the sea, as stated by the hen. Member. As indicated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, in the answer which he gave on 26th May to the right hon. Member for Stirling and Clackmannan, Western (Mr. Johnston) the Herring Industry Board are further considering the problem of disposing of occasional gluts of herring, in consultation with the Commissioners for the Special Areas and the Food Council. I am confident that the destruction of food stuffs in this country is an infrequent occurrence and that no serious case would escape the Department's notice. I see no reason for setting up a special commission.

Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that both herring and other products are being destroyed, although we know that there are many needy families? If the system were organised properly, would it not be possible to use what Nature has given to us for the benefit of the people? May I ask the hon. Gentleman to deal with the matter, if he can.

I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. but I think the premise is a false one, and that the destruction of foodstuffs in this country is a very rare occurrence indeed. I am aware of the subject A that was discussed upon a recent Question, but I do not know of any other instance.

Is it not a fact that the destruction of herring in this manner is not an infrequent occurrence, and may I ask the hon. Gentleman whether the Herring Board are going to distribute herring in the Special Areas only when there are occasions of glut and not in all circumstances?

Has the attention of the Minister been called to the fact, that only last week in Lerwick, 1,000 crans of herring had to be dumped into the ocean, and is this not an occurrence which has happened several times recently?

In view of the statements that have been made, is it not possible for the hon. Gentleman to set up an investigation to find out how far they are true or otherwise?

Would the hon. Gentleman consider introducing a Bill compelling the herring to approach Fraserburgh in an orderly manner?

I beg to give notice that I will raise this matter upon the first opportunity.

ask the President of the Board of Education the number of children attending public elementary schools in England and Wales that were supplied with milk or milk meals for the 12 months ended to the last convenient date, either free or for payment, and the quantity of milk supplied; and the separate figures for the borough of South-wark and comparable figures for the year 1931?

I have been asked to reply. As the answer contains a considerable number of figures, I will, with the hon. Member's permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Is the Minister not aware that some of these quantities have been reduced?

That is not my information, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put a Question down.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he will consider affording officers of the Metropolitan and provincial police forces the right of being heard either in person and/or legally represented in any appeals they make to him against decisions in which they have been dismissed or asked to resign?

Under the Police (Appeals) Act, 1927, it is within the discretion of the Secretary of State to deter mine an appeal without the taking of oral evidence at an inquiry, and my right hon. Friend sees no ground for pro posing any amendment of this provision.

Is there any reason why a police officer should not be legally re presented?

The Act contemplates the existence of cases in which it might not be necessary to have a formal inquiry. I think common sense would also agree that in such cases it is not necessary.

Cannot a man charged in this way have the right to be legally represented?

In proper cases.

Before we adjourn, it is desirable, in the opinion of the Opposition, to extract certain information from the Government as to their intentions with regard to the presentation of the Unemployment Assistance Regulations. We are concerned with the un accountable delay that has been experienced in connection with this matter over the last 12 months, and we are anxious about the introduction of these Regulations; but our primary concern is as to the form and content of the Regulations if and when they come before the House. The Government's policy during the past 12 months has been characterised by evasion, by subterfuge, by wobbling and by a complete inability to face up to their responsibility. That is not the opinion of the Labour party aolne; it has been voiced for some time by hon. Members opposite, and even by certain right. hon. Gentlemen on those benches; and it has been referred to frequently of late in the Press associated in one way and another with the Government.. There is a feeling that the Government do not know their own minds on this matter. That is a state of affairs which neither the Opposition nor the country will tolerate for long.

Let me recall briefly the circumstances and history of this deplorable business. In 1934, the Unemployment Assistance Board was created and vested with powers to deal with all cases of unemployment assistance other than those which came within the ambit of insurance. 'We recall that that change was regarded with considerable enthusiasm by hon. Members opposite, who had expressed a desire to take unemployment assistance out of the political arena. Unfortunately for them, public opinion exercised its influence through out the country, and that issue returned in more vivid fashion to the political arena. In consequence, Regulations were devised and presented to the House, and it will be remembered that their introduction was received with cries of indignation throughout the country. The protests were of so universal a character that the Government were compelled to withdraw the Regulations; it was a complete humiliation for the National Government. I do not intend to dwell unduly on that pathetic episode; it would in my view be unseemly to resurrect that corpse; but when the Government introduced what is known as the Standstill Arrangement they made two specific promises. The first was to introduce new Regulations at the earliest moment; the second was that no person should suffer by the change. I want to say with the greatest emphasis that I can command that neither of these pledges has been fulfilled. The Government's treatment of the unemployed has been shameful. The constant delay in dealing with the matter has been a standing joke in political circles.

For the convenience of hon. Members, let me present the matter in chronological order. To listen to it may be somewhat wearisome, but I venture the opinion that it will prove instructive. Immediately after the Standstill Arrangement was effected, questions. began to be asked by hon. Members in all quarters of the House. The inter rogations began on 4th March of last year, and the reply then given was the hackneyed one that the Minister was not in a position to make any statement. Subsequent replies given in the following weeks revealed no originality; the same words were used in reply to similar questions; but, after several weeks had elapsed, on the 22nd May the Minister gave a somewhat fuller reply. He said:

"A report on the whole situation under the existing unemployment I assistance regulations and the standstill Act has been prepared by the Unemployment Assistance Board and was submitted yesterday to the Ministry of Labour. The Report also discusses in some detail the lines along which. in the view of the Board, the existing Regulations should be amended."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd May,:1935; col. 351, Vol. 302.]

It seemed, therefore, as if the matter had received a measure of analysis and in vestigation. But, in spite of that, ques- tions continued to be asked, and they elicited the same hackneyed replies—the Minister was not in a position to make any further statement; he could not say when the Regulations would be published. That went on in the months of May, June, July and August, until we came to 22nd October, immediately before the General Election, when the Minister made a somewhat long statement on the subject. He said:

"I had these matters under anxious and prolonged examination and consultation with the Unemployment Assistance Board, and our inquiries are not yet completed. As the right hon. Gentleman"—

I think he referred to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Green wood)—

"is well aware, the subject is one of great difficulty and complexity, and, in view of the importance of a right decision, not only to the unemployed but to the whole fabric of our social life, it is essential that before new arrangements are submitted to Parliament for approval they should first be examined thoroughly from every standpoint. In these circumstances it will not be possible to take any action immediately. I do not anticipate that any alteration can be made in the existing position of the Standstill arrangements before next spring at the earliest."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd October, 1936; cols. 1–2, Vol. 305.]

That was the first that we heard about the coming spring. Then the General Election intervened. We had the Gracious Speech from the Throne, which contained these words:

"Proposals for making improved arrangements for assistance to the unemployed … will be laid before you."

It is clear from that statement that not only were we to have revised and improved arrangements, but they were to come before us at an early date. The Prime Minister ventured these observations:

"It will be necessary … to take an early opportunity of overhauling the arrangements for provision of assistance to the able-bodied unemployed. That will be a very important piece of work for this House, and I hope that it may be under taken before we have come together for very long after the Christmas recess."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd December, 1936; col. 73, Vol. 307.]

That was a very firm and emphatic declaration. Then, on 5th December of last year, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour said:

"As was said by the Prime Minister on Tuesday, it was hoped to lay proposals before Parliament not long after the end of the Christmas recess."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th December, 1935; col. 272, Vol. 307.]

Thereupon the Prime Minister's views were confirmed by the Department. Then we proceeded until we reached February this year, and through February and March questions continued to be asked invoking the same replies as before "nothing to add "—until we come to 12th March, when the Parliamentary Secretary stated that the Minister had been in almost continuous communication with the Board on this subject and other subjects for months past. In reply to a further question he said the Regulations would be issued very soon. The approximate time had been given on many occasions—the Spring—and that still held. At the end of March the Minister again informed us that he had nothing to add to previous replies, and went on to say:

"The House is entitled to certain statutory information at the proper time and all relevant matters will be laid before the House at the proper time. The method of communication between the Minister and the Board meanwhile is a matter for the Minister and the board."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th March, 1936; col. 1618; Vol. 310.]

Then the Parliamentary Secretary said once more;

"The proper time will be in the Spring "—

and when asked to state when the Spring would come he said Spring had come but had not yet gone. He was, in fact, quite poetic. Then we come to the Debate on the Adjournment over the Easter Recess, when the Minister made a statement on the reasons for delay and concluded the House would not have long to wait. The Government intended to tell the House when they intended to produce the precise Regulations in the precise form. Again we went round and round the mulberry bush. The right hon. Gentleman informed us that he had nothing to add to previous replies, referred us to previous replies and the like, and again on 11th May, the Parliamentary Secretary declared that the National Government election address in relation to the matter said that the Regulations would be issued in the Spring at the earliest. Then more questions and more answers—" nothing to add "—until we come to 26th May, when we were informed that the Regulations would not be published before the Whit-sun Recess. Finally, the Prime Minister stated the other day that he was not able to indicate the precise date when the new Regulations would be presented to Parliament, but he did not anticipate that the final decision would now be long delayed. What a record—playing fast and loose not only with the country but with the House. The motto of the Government should be that well-known line from the well-known song:

"It may be for years or it may be for ever."

It is easy for hon. Members to exercise their souls in patience but it is not so easy for the thousands of people who have endured the sufferings of reduced payment and the severance of family life. There are two classes of grievance. There are, first of all, the reductions that have taken place based on fresh determinations due to the increase in miners' wages. Because of the pressure of public opinion, and also because of the very low wages paid in the mining industry, an increase of wages was agreed upon. In some parts of the country they amounted to a shilling a day or shift; in other parts, notably Durham, the increase for adults was 6d. and for youths 3d. per day or shift. I understand that there was a variation also in South Wales. The average, I am informed, was 3½. a day. We have discovered that, in cases where members of a family received an increase of 3s. 6d. a week, a fresh determination was effected if the parent was unemployed and there was a corresponding reduction in the assistance provided. In some cases we have found that after the fresh determination there was actually a higher reduction in the amount paid in unemployment assistance than the actual amount of the increase in wages. That is an astonishing position. This increase in wages was regarded as of a special and unique character. The public volunteered to pay increased prices for coal. It is not a charge on the coalowners. It was unique and had special and characteristic features. In those circumstances we are entitled to ask that that increase in wages should not be taken into account in effecting fresh determiniations. That is the view of every one on these benches.

Then I wish to refer to the effect on family life. We have found in certain cases that Unemployment Assistance officers have actually gone to the recipients of Unemployment Assistance and declared that, if a young person or a relative in receipt of an income, either directly in the form of wages or from compensation or some other source, continued to reside with the family, a fresh determination would be necessary, resulting in a reduction of Unemployment Assistance. In my judgment that is a definite incitement—I put it no higher than that—to the break-up of family life. It is telling a young person, "You do more harm to your parents by remaining at home than by leaving and finding a nest for yourself." The late Prime Minister was very definite on that issue before he vacated that position. He said

"any means test that tends to the destruction of families is bad in its application. I believe in the unity of families, the old idea that the family was the unit of life. To apply a sort of three foot rule is to create many injustices."

He was right but, inasmuch as he was right, the Government deserve the most severe condemnation. During the last election the Lord President of the Council declared from the public plat form, in the division that I now represent, that it would be the duty of the Government to reform the means test, by which he obviously meant the general Regulations governing the payment of Unemployment Assistance, and that if the Government did not reform the means test he would resign. He has not resigned, but the grievances remain. We are entitled, therefore, to ask why these declarations were made from time to time, and yet we now find ourselves in the present appalling position?

I ask very direct questions of the right hon. Gentleman opposite. Why has there been this inexplicable delay? Who is to blame? Is it the right hon. Gentleman himself, or is it the Chairman of the Unemployment Assistance Board, or both? Is there some difference of opinion, and, if there is, can it not be revealed to hon. Members? Are we not entitled to know? Is it some. friction or defect in the machine, and, if so, can not it be remedied Is the responsibility to be placed upon the shoulders of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Are financial considerations involved? Are the Government afraid to issue the Regulations because they will mean a further charge upon public funds, or can it be that the Regulations have not been issued so far because the financial commitments would conflict with the Defence programme of the Government? I merely ask these questions, as I am not in a position to know, neither are my hon. Friends behind me, nor even hon. and right hon. Members opposite, they are as much in the dark as we are, and so are their constituents. When are these Regulations to be introduced? This is the 32nd time that the question has been asked in 12 months, and it will also be on the records. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not say to-day that there is nothing to add to the previous replies. Let him reveal some originality this morning in preparation for the brief interlude we are to enjoy during the Whitsuntide Recess. The right hon. Gentleman tells me that he has to go to Geneva. I hope that he will not indulge in the same vexatious delays in relation to the subject with which he is called upon to deal at Geneva as he has done on this question. If so, he might as well remain at home and save the Treasury the expense of the journey. Let us not have this morning the answer which we have had so often, than this information will be revealed to us in the Spring. I think that something has gone wrong with the Government's understanding of the calendar.

Over and above all these considerations is the paramount consideration—what improvements are to take place in the Regulations when they come before this House and the country? We do not want these revised Regulations— and here I speak for every Member of the Labour party in this House and in the country —if they do not reveal a substantial improvement. Therefore, we warn the Government in no uncertain fashion that, if no improvement is revealed, we shall carry on this just agitation in the House and in the country. We believe that we represent public opinion in demanding that the vexatious interference with family life must be abandoned, that the present scales are much too low, and that they represent want and privation, even semi-starvation, in many families in our divisions. We very rightly protest against them and we shall go on protesting until the matter is remedied. I hope that on this issue the right hon. Gentleman will not only enlighten us this morning, but will give us some satisfaction.

I am glad that we have the opportunity before the House adjourns for the Whitsuntide Recess to say a last word on the policy of the Government in regard to the unemployed and to condemn the shabby way in which the Government are treating the unemployed who come under the Unemployment Assistance Board. A huge amount of poverty exists in thousands upon thou sands of families in this country because of the policy and shabby treatment of the Government. The Government can not place that responsibility upon any body else. They have to shoulder the responsibility for the huge amount of poverty existing in the country, and they have to accept the responsibility for the machine which they set up in 1934 to create poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) asked who was responsible for the delay in doing something to better the conditions of the unemployed. He asked whether the responsibility was that of the Minister of Labour, the Chairman of the Unemployment Assistance Board, or the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do Dot believe the stories that the Government are withholding their new Regulations because of any differences of opinion between the Minister of Labour and the Chairman of the Unemployment Assistance Board. I believe that the Government are doing nothing, and intend to do nothing. We are justified in believing that the Government intend to do nothing. The Prime Minister announced the withdrawal of the Coal Mines Bill yesterday on the ground that there was no time to deal with it between now 'and the next Session. If there is no time to deal with the Coal Mines Bill between now and the next Session, there will not be time to deal with new Unemployment Regulations, so I believe that I am justified in saying that the Government do not intend to bring in the new Regulations, or to do anything upon this question this Session.

I believe that they are adopting that attitude because they are satisfied with the standstill order, and are prepared to allow the present condition of things to continue. They want no change. They know that it is only a matter of time when all the people who were on the means test when the standstill agreement came into force will fall out and new entrants will come on to the means test under the old Regulations. The Government are prepared to continue the means test and to smash up family life in spite of what was said in the Manifesto at the General Election, allowing thousands upon thousands of the best people in this country to be pushed into the depths of poverty and be compelled to remain there. The Minister ought to be prepared to bring in the new Regulations. We are not satisfied and We shall never be satisfied with things as they are. We see all the poverty that has been and is being created in our villages, and we shall pro test against the present conditions of things. The first step towards remedying these conditions is for the Minister to bring forward the new Regulations. We can then see how the Government propose to carry out the promises they made at the General Election, and how they Propose to prevent the disunity of family life. We want to see how they propose to humanise the present condition of things and the means test. Even when they bring in the new Regulations we shall not be satisfied unless they put the unemployed particularly concerned into the same position as the unemployed who are receiving standard benefits. We are not pleading for new Regulations merely to tinker with the question and to better things in one or two respects.

There is no justification for treating an unemployed man on the Poor Law basis, because he has been unemployed for more than six months or 12 months. We protest against that. We protested against it in 1934 and we shall continue to protest. We shall protest against it when the Government bring in the new Regulations. The present policy of the Government, the standstill agreement, was discarded not only by the House but the country, yet the Government are prepared to rely upon it. That is a shocking way for the Government to treat these men. This is a human question. Thousands of people are suffering in poverty because of the Government's policy. The Government ought to get a move on and not be content simply to slide along as they have been doing.

The House is en titled to an explanation of the long delay in bringing forward the Regulations. It is a delay which affects nearly half the unemployed at the present time. Nearly half of the unemployed are subject to the Unemployment Assistance Board's Regulations.

indicated dissent.

The Minister shakes his head. I think the figure in March was 45 per cent. If I am wrong the right hon. Gentleman Ns ill correct me. In any case, a very large section of the unemployed are subject to these Regulations. The hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) has spoken of the means test. I do not wish to add very much to what has been said on that question, but I would point out that we want some modification of the household means test in the new Regulations. We cannot ask for or expect to get more, because the means test is in the Act. Hon. Members on this Bench are absolutely opposed to the household means test, and we should like to see it abolished, but it is no use hon. Members above the gangway thinking that they can get it abolished in Regulations, because it is part of the main Act. Although we cannot look for its abolition we can look for some modification which might at least make its incidence a little less severe.

The point to which I should like to draw attention is the question of the basic rent of the house, because it vitally affects the North of England and the de pressed industrial areas. When the Regulations were first introduced, on paper they appeared to give some measure of improvement to unemployed persons with large families, but in the mining districts with which I am familiar any benefit which might have come from the increased allowances for children was lost owing to the operation of other Regulations, and in particular owing to the operation of the basic rent allowance Clause. I hope that this question is receiving the careful attention of the Minister. No one would suggest that an unemployed man living in a high-rented house ought not to receive a higher allowance on the question as to what the basic rental should be, I am speaking for many thousands of unemployed men in the mining districts of the North of England and in my own industrial areas, where the houses are bad and the rents are low. The rents are low not by chance but be cause the houses are indifferent, and I cannot see any reason for giving a man a less allowance because there is not in the house the modern conveniences which a more expensive house would have.

The cost of living in the scattered mining villages where there are not facilities for shopping is often higher where the rents are low, This is a question which the Committee recently appointed might look into, and it might obtain evidence on the subject, because it is one that is being constantly discussed. It is often suggested that where rents are low the cost of living is also low. I do not believe that that is true. Anyhow the result of the Regulations, or particularly the result of fixing 7s. 6d. as the basic calculation for rent, has been that through out the low-rented districts there has been no advantage whatever to persons with large families. This is particularly a question which affects Scotland, the North of England and Wales. The whole question that we are discussing affects those districts far more than the south east or the midlands. I think I am correct in saying that out of very five applicants to the Board, four are in Scot land, the north of England and Wales and only one in the midlands or the south-east.

In speaking on this question on the Easter Adjournment Motion the Minister produced some cases which tended to justify the means test as it stands to day. We must consider Regulations not as they affect particular individual cases but as they affect a very large section of the community, not scattered throughout Great Britain but specially located in the distressed areas and in the hard hit industrial districts of the North of England and South Wales. It is the question of poverty generally which should be dealt with, because it affects the mass of the community, and in spite of what the Government have done there is very little more chance of employment to-day than there was two or three years ago. There have been many voluntary inquiries to show that malnutrition is widespread, but I should like to ask why it is not possible for the Minister of Labour to make these inquiries himself, and not allow them to be made almost exclusively by voluntary or semi-voluntary associations.

The hon. Member will understand that that is not my responsibilitly, and he will not overlook the fact that many months ago a committee was appointed by the Minister of Health on this subject, and that it is sitting now.

My point is that the Minister himself ought to suggest that allowances must be in proportion to the needs, and I want the right hon. Gentle man to make a further and fuller investigation of the need in light of the facts which have been brought to our knowledge by the voluntary bodies who have made independent investigations.

The hon. Member is not unaware that last week I announced the appointment of a powerful committee to assist me in this particular problem.

I welcome that announcement, but I would remind the Minister that this is late in the Spring of 1936 and some of us have been pressing upon the Government the importance of this problem not for months but for years past. It is only now that the Committee has been appointed. We welcome it. The Unemployment Assistance Board has been in existence for 18 months, and as the Minister and the Government lay such stress on the needs of the applicant, I suggest that they should have gone more fully into these needs. The suggestion has been made that the Regulations have been delayed owing to a desire to prevent discussion by many bodies which meet at Whitsuntide. I do not think there is anything in the suggestion, but I hope we shall have a full opportunity of discussing the Regulations when they are laid, and that they will not be rushed through. The view is expressed that we should not press the Government to produce these Regulations because they must, in the nature of things, be worse than the existing state of affairs, and by "worse" I mean that they will adversely affect the standard of living of the applicant. That view is based on the general principle that the whole policy of the 1934 Act was wrong, that to take this matter out of the hands of the House of Commons was a mistake. The Minister has been so tied up by that Act that it is impossible to frame Regulations which will be fair to the whole country and meet the local needs of Scotland and South Wales, the varying rates in different districts and other local conditions which exist.

There is a good deal of force in that argument. The authority has been taken out of the hands of the House but not out of the hands of the Minister, and although technically we are awaiting the Regulations of the Board, the fact re mains that the Minister has the right to table Amendments to the Regulations and to give reasons for the Amendments. Therefore, essentially we are waiting for the Regulations of the Minister. We wish him well and hope that the matter may be cleared up. Even if the new Regulations are less satisfactory than the existing state of affairs, it is only fair that families concerned should know where they stand. Great bitterness has resulted from this delay, which will make it more difficult to get agreement on the Regulations when they do appear. There has been much talk about the weather. It has been a very hard and cold winter in many parts of the North, and it has strained the resources of families. It has been a late and cold and rather depressing spring. The Minister of Labour quoted some verses on the last occasion. May I quote to him this verse:

• "December days were brief and chill,
• The winds of March were wild and drear,
• And, nearing and receding still
• Spring never would, we thought be here.
• The leaves that burst the suns that shine,
• Had not the less, their certain date,
• And thou', Oh human heart of mine,
• Be still, refrain thyself, and wait."

The delay that has taken place in the issue of these regulations is indeed very alarming, but if they are likely to make the position worse than it is in South Wales to-day, then I for one do not want the Regulations. I remember quite distinctly what happened when the last Regulations were introduced. We cannot hold the present Minister of Labour entirely responsible for them. The Government were responsible, and I remember the effect which they had on the County of Mon mouthshire and the whole of South Wales. When they were issued we asked the public assistance committee to go into the matter fully, examine every case in the county and ascertain the effect on the income of unemployed people in the county. There were at the time about 29,000 unemployed, and about 60 per cent of them would come on the Unemployment Assistance Board for assistance. The information we received from the public assistance committee was that the Regulations would reduce the income of unemployed people by no less than £300,000 annually They meant an average reduction of about 4s. to 5s. per week. Everyone knows what an outcry they produced. Demonstrations through out the county grew up without any organisation at all, and all classes of the community were associated with them. It was not a question of the unemployed only. The employed, professional and business people—every one was associated with the demonstrations. There were demonstrations of 50,000 people and more, all voicing their protest against the result on the unemployed of such harsh conditions.

I make an appeal to the Minister. I think it was Beverley Nicholls who said that discussions of unemployment allowances ought to be carried on, not in the House of Commons but in the homes of the unemployed people. I want the Minister to try to picture those homes of the unemployed. Possibly he does not know them as well as I know them, for I live among them. We have men who have been unemployed, not for one year or two years but up to six and seven years. I do not want to take extreme cases but to quote an average case. A man and woman have had 26s. coming into their home. Has any one ever contended that unemployment benefit rates were or are full maintenance? I suggest that all through our discussions on unemployment the rates of benefit have never been held to be anything more than sufficient to meet occasional periods of unemployment, the money to be used for the purpose of helping the workpeople over those periods, the assumption being that they would use what little reserves they might have in order to carry them through their difficulty.

I ask hon. Members to try to picture the home of a man and wife with 26s. a week, with 7s. or 8s. to pay for rent, and 16s. or 17s. left, out of which every thing has to be purchased—clothes, food and all the incidentals that are necessary to maintain life in decency. I do not think that the Minister or any Member of the Government will dare to suggest that that sum is adequate. Six months of that, and then the Regulations operate. What happens when the Regulations operate 1 There is a reduction of 3s. a week, a reduction of 11 per cent. or 12 per cent. I ask hon. Members whose incomes may be £1,000 a year what would be the effect on their homes if they had a reduction of 11 per cent. or 12 per cent. in their incomes. They know perfectly well that the effect would be very damaging. But do let hon. Members try to picture the effect on a home where it is 10, 11 or 12 per cent. out of 26s. That is the problem that has to be faced. I think Beverley Nicholls was perfectly correct when he said that these discussions ought to take place inside the homes of the unemployed and with a full consciousness of what is happening in those homes.

We have had these conditions for years. I put a question to the Minister of Labour yesterday, asking him the number of people on statutory benefit in Mon mouthshire and the number who went for assistance to the Unemployment Assistance Board. There are 13,000 on statutory benefit and 19,000 who are dependant on the Unemployment Assistance Board. What is going to happen if the new Regulations impose further reductions on these people? I put it quite definitely to the Minister, that before he makes himself responsible for imposing further hardships on these unemployed people—they are people who have rendered ser vice to the land and are ready and anxious to render more service—he should remember what effect that action will have on him in the future. The hon. Member for North Cumberland (Mr. W. Roberts) told us of the low standard of life of the people who live in areas where unemployment has existed for so long. The Minister of Labour interrupted the hon. Member in order to state that he" has a committee sitting at, the present time. Are we to await the decisions of that committee before we get the Regulations, or are the Regulations to be produced before the Minister gets the report of that committee? We are entitled to know. I am sure that if every individual case in these names of the unemployed were gone into carefully, every hon. Member opposite would say that very much more than 26s. was needed by a house hold.

The real trouble is that we discuss these things away from these homes. I sometimes think it is too a harsh a thing to say that hon. Gentlemen opposite have no sympathy with the unemployed. I try to persuade myself that hon. Members opposite are not conscious of the conditions that exist. I hope I am right in that. If some day we are able to convey to hon. Gentlemen opposite the real conditions in the homes of the unemployed, perhaps we could expect some thing better than we halve yet had. There is the breaking up of homes, a son or daughter being made responsible for the maintenance of a home, 10s. being allowed to an unemployed son for his maintenance and 8s. for a. daughter, and all the balance going towards the maintenance of the home. In my judgment that is too great a strain to place on any one. Family ties in working class homes are quite as strong as in other homes, but if that test is put upon them it will break up the homes, as happened under the last Regulations.

I appeal to the Minister to see that the new Regulations when they are issued shall not have regard only to the rates of benefit that are paid but shall have regard to the needs of the home. Let us meet the needs of the home. If the Minister accepts that responsibility he will render a very great service not only to the unemployed but to the whole of the country in maintaining unfortunate people who are living under conditions that are of a very low standard. I ask the Minister to give careful consideration to this matter and to see that the Regulations when introduced in no way worsen the present conditions, but take into consideration the needs of every house hold.

I do not suppose that the Minister has felt his withers unduly wrung by four consecutive Opposition speeches. We recognise, of course, that the Opposition have a constitutional duty to oppose and to examine; but what we are entitled to regret is that the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) and the Seconder should have introduced this subject to day with quite unnecessary and characteristic violence and exaggeration. Hon. Members opposite must know perfectly well that the means test agitation is really flat. [HON. MEMBERS: "No"] Oh yes. After all, we have had it in the last three elections, and I know very well from my experience in my own constituency that in the last election the means test attack had no sting in it. That is why, after the few first days of the campaign, hon. Members opposite transferred the gravity of their attack from the means test to foreign affairs. Now, rather naturally, when the line they took then on foreign affairs has been proved by the event to be so hopelessly wrong, they feel fairly safe in trying to shift back the agitation against the Government to the basis of the means test Regulations.

Let hon. Members cast their minds back to the last election but one, the election of 1931. At that time there was not a single hamlet in my constituency in which there were not people who were not indignant at the abuses which had crept in during the administration of the last Labour Government, thanks to the relaxation of the Regulations. Hon. Members opposite know perfectly well that their cause suffered more harm from the absence of the means test and the grave abuses which crept in in consequence than our cause has suffered, or will suffer, from the imposition of any means test. I say to the Minister that while we regret this delay we realise, as the hon. Member for one of the Cumberland Divisions seemed to realise, that it is not a simple problem which faces the Minister. Of course the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) would find no difficulty in dealing with it. His solution would be to dole out unlimited public funds to anybody who needed the money. [Interruption.] Of the hon. Member who is intervening now behind the hon. Member for Seaham, I say that his was a constructive opposition speech, to which I take no exception, and I was not referring to him.

To the Minister I say that we regret the delay, but hope he will not allow the party opposite, who made such a mess of this matter when they had a chance to deal with it, to "rattle" him. I do not suppose they will. Let us have these Regulations in due course, and the sooner the better, but let them be good Regulations, an improvement on the present Regulations. Let us wait until the Minister himself is quite satisfied and let us have good Regulations, and then let the Government stand firmly behind them, and we back bench Members will not be afraid to give them all support.

I must thank the hon. and gallant Member for Welling borough (Wing-Commander James) for his very kindly lecture to us on this side about our constitutional duties and our constitutional rights. I cannot speak for the official Opposition, but I should say that they know their rights just as we know our rights, and just exactly how to raise these questions from day to day without being lectured in schoolmaster fashion. Some of us nay not belong to the hon. Gentleman's class, but we are not devoid of ordinary intelligence and capacity. He said the means test was to a large extent dead at the last election. I do not know his constituency well, and it would be presumptuous of me to say anything about the feeling there, but sitting in front of hint is the hon. Member for one of the Renfrewshire Divisions, and I am sure that lie would not agree that the means test was dead at the last election. It was one of the leading issues.

I said the agitation had no sting in it.

The sting was so great that Cabinet Ministers deemed it necessary to issue special messages on the subject to the electors and I am convinced that it was the biggest problem facing the Government in that election—in any of the great industrial districts. Then the hon. and gillant Member talked about the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell) doling out public money. I wish that hon. Members when they get into politics would try to be fair. Fancy a supporter of a Government with the record of this one talking about other people doling out public money. They have given money to the shipowners, to the railways, to sugar beet cultivation, to the "Queen Mary," and their sup porters are still claiming that other sections of industry have not been subsidised. The right hon. Member for Hill-head (Sir R. Horne) has said that ship ping has only been partly subsidised, that there are certain lines in a bad way, and that to keep them going they need to be subsidised. Then there are branches of agriculture which have not got all the money they want, they are still in a bad way and are lining up in a queue for more. In face of that the hon. and gallant Member talks about hon. Members on this side handing out a few shillings to some miserable workmen, living in a miserable alley or a miserable backyard. It is a shocking and disgraceful thing.

Hon. Members opposite may talk as much as they like about the difficulties of farmers and the difficulties of shipping, but take all their difficulties and multiply them by 10 and they still will not be anything like the difficulties of the people whom we are discussing to-day. Money has been handed out to the people in those industries without any test, money doled out by the million—and then the hon. and Gallant Member comes here with his contemptible and miserable sneers in talking about the difficulties of the poor. I also feel terribly annoyed at the flip pant way in which the Minister has discussed this question. I hope that I can see the jocular things in life and am not without some sense of humour, and at the outset I took the answer about the Regulations coming with the Spring in a partly humorous way and partly serious, but lately I have got sick and tired of it, the humour has lost all its savour. When he said it would be done in the Spring we thought he meant the Spring; now we have gone on until the thing seems to be treated as though it were a comedy. There may be a reason why the Regulations were not introduced in the Spring. The House is entitled to know the reason for the delay.

The Minister has not been pressed for this reason, that there is a genuine feeling along the line of the fears expressed by the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) when he said "I do not want the new Regulations if they are not going to be better than the old ones." Some of us have not pressed for them for fear they would be worse. But the Unemployment Assistance Board have reported and the Minister has now got all the particulars before him. Will he deny it? Of course he will not. The present position demands that something shall be done. I do not think anybody really knows what the law is at the present time. The law before this situation arose was that, roughly speaking, transitional payments were paid according to what the Poor Law authorities in the area had paid until the Regulations came in. Now we have this position. The transitional payments people pay either their scale or the Poor Law scale but it is not the Poor Law people who determine what scale shall be paid. It is the transitional payments people who determine the scale. What is happening now is that people do not know what the Poor Law scale is and all sorts of confusion arises. A person goes to the transitional payments people and says, "I want the Poor Law scale because it is better" and they say "What is the Poor Law scale; how do we know it?" A decision on this matter was made two years ago but no one knows it and thus we have all sorts of conflicting views.

I have a personal complaint against the Minister. Last Easter I raised a matter and asked him to make inquiry into it and he promised to do so. I have waited since for an answer but I have not got an answer yet on a point which I raised, I hope, with sufficient courtesy. It arises out of the stand still order. Under standard benefit a person who claims, say for his mother, has the right, if refused, to appeal to the court of referees. That right has now gone, as far as the person under transitional benefit is concerned. The person who determines the matter now for transitional benefit is the insurance officer and the claimant has no right of appeal to the court of referees. What ever else we may do, at least we ought to retain for the unemployed whatever rights of appeal they now possess. There is one point arising out of standard benefit into which I would ask the Minister to look. I may say that I am not at all satisfied with the position as regards standard benefit and in one respect, indeed, it is almost intolerable. Take the position of a woman who is acting as a housekeeper. The position, as I see it, is that where there are children; benefit is payable, but where there are no children no benefit is payable. Take the case of a man who is living with a sister. He and his sister may have lived together since the death of their parents but that man when unemployed gets nothing for his sister.

I was saying that I think it is a terrible thing that a man who is a bachelor or a widower, who has no children, and who has living with him a housekeeper or a sister who performs all the domestic duties, should not at least receive unemployment benefit in respect of that woman. If he goes out side and brings in a woman off the street, and there are children, he immediately secures unemployment benefit, but if he happens to have his sister or a housekeeper living with him, and has no children below school age, he receives no benefit.

There is one other point that I would like the Minister to consider. In these days we hear a great deal, and rightly, about under-feeding, particularly of the children. I would do all that I could to assist any effort that is being made to raise the standard, but I want to-day to raise possibly the most tragic position of all. The most tragic position that I see in my day to day rounds is that of the single woman receiving only 15s. a week unemployment benefit. It seems to me a terrible tragedy in our great industrial towns, especially in the winter, for a single woman, who has little attractive ness left, in her middle age, with very few people who want her, who has lost her nimble fingers and is not wanted in factory life or in a shop, wanting decent clothes and cleanliness and trying to live in a great city on 15s. a week. An hon. Member opposite spoke about handing out public money. I only wish he could see a woman such as I have described living in one of our great industrial towns. You can split the money up as you like and do what you can with the 15s. Make it as mean as you can, it is a human impossibility for a single woman not resident with her parents, but in lodgings, to live on an income of that kind. I earnest' y plead with the Minister that, what ever else is clone, the single woman should be given not less than the single man. We demand equal pay for Civil Servants, and I can never understand why Liu far more human appeal for equal remuneration for the unemployed women is not granted. It is a far more human case than that of the Civil Servants for they at least have a minimum standard.

The delays about which hon. Members have been complaining to-day are doing the Minister no good. These Regulations are not brought in for some reason that no human being can understand. They have been promised to us over and over again and we are entitled to have some decent reason for the delay. I am not going to denounce the means test to-day because it has been denounced on so many previous occasions from these benches. I shall content myself with saying that this problem brooks no delay, and out of common hunmanity the Government ought to deal with it. Hon. Members opposite talk about the difficulty of getting recruits for the Army and every hon. Member on those benches is worried because recruiting is going down. What do you do with the reservist, however? You give him a pension of is. a day and at the end of 13 weeks he gets £4 11s. In the meantime he and his wife have been living on 26s. At the end of the quarter his unemployment pay is stopped because of his pension money. You expect people to join the Army, to fight and go and kill after that treatment. You expect them to go into the one job into which human beings do not want to go and that is how you treat them. If I were in the Army I would rather turn the guns on to those who are responsible for this dastardly conduct than turn them on the so-called invader. It is time that something was clone to deal with this problem and I hope that the Minister will take prompt action to do so.

Everybody in the House has the utmost respect for the views of the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), for we all agree that he probably knows more about the law and the facts about unemployment insurance than almost anybody in the House. I cannot help thinking that he was a little unjust to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Wing-Commander James), who was speaking of the abuses which undoubtedly exist when he referred to doling out money. When the hon. Member makes the point about Government doles to industry, it is worth while remembering that they were given with a view to affording employment, and it is really one form of that public work for which the Labour party in particular are advocates. I hope that when the Regulations come out they will be more generous in the main than the Standstill Order and the last Regulations, but that the generosity will be based on an in creased discretion. I was impressed by what the hon. Member for North Cumber land (Mr. W. Roberts) said when he reminded the House that we have to keep within the framework of Part II of the Act. I am not certain whether a really satisfactory relief system for our unemployed can ever be run under Part II of the Act. I have never been satisfied on that, and I am not sure that it was not that which caused the right hon. Gentle man who was the last Minister of Labour to take his courageous action in regard to the Standstill Order.

The real point I wanted to make was one that concerns the point raised by the hon. Member for Gorbals. This is not only a question of money; it is a question of the use of money. In setting up the Unemployment Assistance Board we gave them certain duties in the super vision of the use of the relief which was granted. We gave them powers to grant relief in kind in certain circumstances, and I doubt whether many members of any side would say that they were not wise powers. We have now got Boards on both sides. We have a considerable surplus of many agricultural products and foodstuffs, such as herrings, milk, cheese and potatoes. On the other side, we have the Unemployment Assistance Board. I would like to ask the Minister whether, when framing the new Regulations, he will see that the Board take into consideration the need for bringing these two forces together—supply on the one side and a great potential demand on the other. The Bishop Auckland experiment of allowing people to fetch potatoes at a cheap price has been discontinued, but it led to a great increase in the local demand for potatoes: I believe that a great deal of the trouble about mal nutrition which undoubtedly exists is due to the misspending of money and the spending of money on foods that are not really nutritious.

I view the idea which the hon. Member is propounding with a great deal of apprehension. Is it his view that a portion of the unemployment benefit should be taken and that the unemployed should be compelled to take certain kinds of food which the Government supply?

That is not my point. My point is that the depressed areas, where the great proportion of the unemployed are on the means test—about four out of five—should be treated as Special Areas and that the Unemployment Assistance Board should be enabled to set up means of supplying the unemployed, if they want the stuff, at specially cheap rates, even if in many cases it does harm to the local shopkeeper. I think that in those areas the unemployed are entitled to special treatment when they have been out of employment for more than six months. In my opinion, payment in kind is only desirable in cases where it is found that the money is definitely not being spent on food, but on betting or some thing of that sort. It is the well-meaning unemployed man who cannot get work, who needs work and who does not get sufficient to eat, and who perhaps spends his money rather unwisely on the food which he chooses.

They can choose their food as well as the hon. Member and I can.

That is true of many hundreds of them, but it is not true of all of them. If they had a cheap supply of potatoes, herrings, milk and cheese it would be a very great boon to them, it would increase the demand for those commodities and increase the taste for the things which really provide the best nutrition that can be obtained. I do not think my suggestion is entirely without value, and I wish my right hon. Friend could have spoken after me because I would like to have heard what he had to say regarding it.

I do not wish to detain the House for more than a few minutes, but I would like to say a few words regarding the remarks of the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Crossley). I am speaking as a Member who comes from a Special Area; I have lived there all my life, and I am sure the hon. Member for Stretford will pardon me for saying that I regard my own people as the best on earth. I think it is wrong to treat these people as though they were people who had to have charity doled out to them. They are men, women and children who have all the capacity and intelligence to make of life a rich and beautiful thing. What has happened is that they have been caught in this terrible economic depression which has hit South Wales and other areas an economic blizzard which they did not create and for which they are not responsible. They ought to be treated as human beings and not as people to whom charity has to be doled out.

The last thing I would suggest is that we should treat them in that way. My suggestion was rather that, being in a special economic depression, we should apply special measures to those areas.

To speak of special measures is to create in the minds of these people the idea that they are a special sort of people. They are not. They are ordinary human beings, and the Government ought to treat them as such. An hon. Member opposite said that the sting has been taken out of the means test. If that be so, why is there this delay in issuing the regulations? Is it because the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour knows perfectly well that the sting is still in the means test that the regulations have not been issued? So far as the delay is due to the fact that the Minister is learning how difficult, I might say how impossible, it would be to apply a household means test without creating injustice, we shall not be sorry for the, delay, because it will mean that the Government are learning a lesson. There is no method of applying the household means test which would not be harsh, which would not be unjust, and which would not break up homes.

An hon. Member opposite said that the Government cannot abolish the means test because it is in the 1924 Act. Are the Government tied by that Act? They know far more about the means test now than they did when, they issued the regulations. I urge the Government to abolish the means test and to raise the scales. In the Unemployment Insurance Act the scales for statutory benefit were deliberately designed as a means of tiding a man over from one job to another, to enable him to maintain himself for two weeks or two months. It has been clearly stated that they were never in tended to be scales which would enable the claimant and his dependants to live upon them. But when the right hon. Gentleman fixes his scales under these regulations, he will fix them for men who have been unemployed for long periods, who have no reserves, whose savings are completely gone, who have very little prospect of work and who are therefore utterly dependent upon the assistance they get from the Board. I urge the Minister not to retain all these restrictions and means tests. Why not fix scales that are based on human needs? Why not increase the scales so that the unemployed will get sufficient benefit to maintain themselves?

There are one or two other points to which I would like to refer. Mention has already been made of the fact that we have just passed through a terribly severe winter, and every hon. Member who sits for a South Wales constituency has had brought to his notice that during the winter, because of its severity, the lack of coal in the houses of unemployed people has been a very serious matter. The consequence has been that, driven by desperation, driven by a cold and cheerless hearth, the men have sometimes stolen threepenny-worth of coal from the sidings that are stocked with thousands, nay millions, of tons of coal. They have been fined 10s. or 20s., and in recent cases some of them have been given two or three months' hard labour. This is creating tremendous feeling in South Wales. These men have spent 20 or 30 years of their life in mining coal, and now, because of the economic depression, when they steal a few lumps of coal they are sent to prison. When the Minister issues his new Regulations, why should he not give a hundredweight or two hundredweights of free coal to every unemployed family? I have already stated the proper way in which this problem should be faced—to increase the scales—but if the Minister cannot do that I would urge him to consider the measure I have just suggested.

When I suggested something of that sort, the hon. Member resented it.

There is a vital difference between bringing food to the house and bringing coal to it. Every housewife in this country likes to buy her own food, and I think the hon. Member would agree they had a right to do that. Another thing I would like to urge upon the Minister is that he should take steps in some way or another to meet the considerable feeling which exists about the way in which the "pots and pans" Clause has been worked. In issuing his new Regulations if he cannot increase the scales, as I think he ought, and thus make all these other things unnecessary, I do suggest that he should deal with this Clause. There are investigators who go into people's homes to find out whether they are in need of the things for which they have applied, and I think the Minister will agree that that is adding insult to injury. The unemployed man's house is made a centre of attraction; the investigator goes up the street, knocks at the door, and says. "This is a person who has made an application, who has applied for new bed-clothes or for household utensils." If there is anything which is driving the unemployed to desperation, it is such things. They are not being treated as human beings.

During the last few weeks in Parliament, we have had a Measure which we regard as a very puny effort to deal with the problem. I urge upon the Government to remember that these Regulations are a problem of the Special Areas and that they affect hardly any other areas. If the Government want to help those areas and their industries, they must re member also that a large percentage of the purchasing power of the people there depends upon what they receive by way of unemployment benefit and assistance. I hope the Minister, if he wants to restore life and vitality in the Special Areas, will listen to the pleas and to the warnings that have been addressed to him. I urge him to take a bold step and to abolish the means test, and to treat the unemployed as human beings. The right and proper way to deal with the unemployed in the new Regulations is to treat them as human beings.

I do not complain of the raising of this subject or of the tone and temper in which it has been raised. I would observe, for the hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan), that when suggestions of a cheery nature have been made in recent months about the Spring they have always come from the other side of the House, and not from this side. The use of the phrase "the Spring" in the Election manifesto was a warning to the country of the gravity of this problem, and of its complexity. The Government showed their prevision as to how long we should take before our pledge could be kept to bring the Regulations forward. The phrase was quite plain, and we felt it necessary to warn the electors then not to expect the Regulations soon. We put the phrase in for all those who had to analyse subjects of this great gravity and complexity. It is one thing for a Minister to hope for a result in a month or a week, but it is an entirely different thing to know when a decision will be reached and to be able to fix the date. We said," All those who are fighting the election are en titled to know what is in the mind of the Government on this matter ", and I think that what we did was fair by the electors and to the House of Commons. We said that all concerned with the unemployed might expect the improved arrangements, which were mentioned during the election, by the Spring at the earliest.

I am asked "Why?" The hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Shinwell), in his very interesting and exhaustive analysis of the questions and answers in the House, has been perfectly plain with the House as to the difficulties of the problem, and I have only one complaint to make about the history of it. The history of this subject did not begin with the Act of 1934. This is not a departmental issue. It is one of the great social issues of our post-War period—indeed, it was a great social issue long before the War, although its magnitude was not then understood because our social services were not developed in a way that brought it to light. Very few people then, except the unemployed themselves, and those who came person ally into contact with them, knew how the unemployed were situated. The wonderful ramifications of our great social services and the extraordinary effect of the Insurance Acts has brought to light things which the nation desires to have brought to light. By 1920 it had become quite clear that the Insurance Acts, which had been ample for the limited purpose for which they were designed, were no longer adequate. Several successive Governments have had to grapple with the problem of how the nation would wish able-bodied men and women who have exhausted their right to unemployment insurance benefit to be dealt with. I am not Vie first Minister to whom has been given the charge of finding an acceptable solution of that great social issue.

I will not recite the long history. First of all we had the unemployed workers' donation, then uncovenanted benefit and later transitional payments. There was shift after shift, and the Act of 1934 was the first drastic, uniform and universal attempt to deal with the subject. I am asked why it has taken us 18 months to come to a decision, and why it has taken me nearly 12 months to face the House. The answer lies, first, in the gravity and complexity of the problem, and, secondly, in the answer to the following question: How can you best make arrangements to maintain a national system based upon the national scale and yet make your arrangements sufficiently flexible to deal with the local variations in need and in practice which are not one year, or two years or 20 years old, but are, in some cases old enough to go back far into history. That question was indicated in the Election manifesto. That is the interesting point in the question of the hon. Member for Seaham as to delay. I assure him and the House that there will be not a minute's delay on my part, although this is only one of the many problems with which a Minister of Labour has to concern himself. No Minister would keep this problem in his mind one second longer than was essential for him to put forward a scheme that would commend itself to Parliament and to the country.

The history of the last 12 months has been very interesting for several reasons, of which the first is that there has been a great deal of objection. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Welling borough (Wing-Commander James) said that at the last Election the means test agitation was not effective. It is true, regarded as a national agitation. In some areas it was effective. I have no doubt whatever than if we were to discuss in confidence with hon. Members opposite the hopes and fears which were entertained before the last Election, I should not be wrong about the hon. Members who are making statements in regard to what happens on this side of the House. I will make a guess. I think I should not be wrong in supposing that hon. Members who hoped that they were going to win the Election on this issue were disappointed with the result. The issue lies there. Those who come from the areas where there is a large number of unemployed should be careful to put their case not in an extremely extravagant way, but in a way which will commend it to the country. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) did not show in his speech his usual logic. He spoke about charity, and he asked us to request the Board to do it in another direction.

My remedy was to raise the scales of the unemployed who purchase all those things, and if that is not possible in the Regulations which are to be issued, I brought the question of coal to the attention of the Minister.

The issue arises, from where is the money for that to come? We have to remember that there must be no injustice to the general taxpayer, including the man who is getting the Board's scales and who should not be asked to pay one penny of his money to those who are not really in need. This is a profound social issue. It cannot be solved in an emotional haze. We have to solve the problem upon a firm basis and to end the various shifts which have been public policy under all Govrenments since 1920. We have to get a. firm basis, and no thoughtful man outside a small section will say that we are entitled to lay down a policy of public assistance to those who have exhausted their right to unemployment insurance benefit with out a test of need. The hon. Member for Gorbals (Mr. Buchanan) takes the other view, but I do not think he would say that the majority of the electors share that view. The hon. Member for Ponty-pool (Mr. Jenkins) quoted the powerful plea of Mr. Beverley Nichols with regard to seeing this question in the home. Hon. Members will know that, when I went to South Wales, my face was so well known there that I could not keep my visits as quiet as I should have wished, because I wanted to make discreet inquiries. The hon. Member said that this should be seen in the home, but does not he see that that is one of the things that take time?

The right hon. Gentle man, having been to South Wales and seen the homes there, will agree that their condition was wretched in the ex treme. I want to tell him that that wretched condition still obtains, and has continued ever since his visit.

I did not suggest that there were not wretched conditions, but the idea that the conditions of every one of the people in South Wales are alike is entirely false to my own knowledge of South Wales and of the conditions in the homes of those who are receiving benefit. I went to one particular street in a certain town, not many miles away from the constituency of the hon. Member for Llanelly, where I found a household which included four brothers. Three of them were bringing home earnings of £12 16s. ld., and one young man was drawing 17s. from the Unemployment Assistance Board. In that same street there were men under the regulations, with no resources, drawing the present scale. Are hon. Members going to tell me that, in a household where three brothers are earning £12 16s. ld., the tax payers of the country, including men with no resources in the same street, should be asked, out of the general taxes, to maintain that man when the resources of his home are £12 16s. 1d.?

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, in attempting to deal with the situation of that man, he is creating hardship for many other families not similarly placed?

The hon. Gentleman need not put that to me. He is making the case for the Minister of Labour and the Government of which he is a member making quite sure that they do the right thing with the minimum of hardship.

I do more. What I intended to imply was that the means test principle is impracticable, however desirable it may be from the standpoint of the Minister.

The answer is that I do not agree at all. A test of need has been the normally accepted rule of public assistance in this country for hundreds of years, and no body of people who have examined the idea of applying a test of need have ever been able to find any other way of doing it than by taking the household as the basis for the test of need. I desire to show the House and the country that there is another side to this matter.

The hon. Member for North Cumber land (Mr. W. Roberts) and his friends below the Gangway, before the last Election, never said that they were not in favour of a test of means; what they said was that they were not in favour of a household test. The hon. Member for North Cumberland said that he had to go away, and, therefore, I put these facts on record for his thought before the next Debate takes place. Let me put two or three questions to those who do not take the view of the hon. Member for Gorbals, that all means tests should be swept away, or the more limited view expressed by the Labour party in their manifesto at the last Election. They did not then urge the abolition of all means tests, but said that they would

"sweep away the humiliating means test imposed by the 'National' Government"—

a very different thing. Let me put a few questions to all who talk about an individual test. It is difficult to attach a real meaning to the suggestion of an individual means test, but let me take the ease of a single man living at home, with a father and brother in work. These are the questions that any hon. Member must ask himself who wishes to satisfy his constituents of his devotion to retrenchment, and who says that he is against a means test. Are the needs of the unemployed applicant to be treated without any reference to the home surroundings in which he lives? Is he to receive the standard rate of benefit or some other fixed rate? Is that fixed rate to be determined without any reference to the differences between the resources of one household and another? If the father in addition becomes unemployed, is the assistance to the unemployed son to remain at the fixed figure, or is the authority to take into account the fact that the father's resources are no longer available in the household? Is the father to be paid a fixed rate, or is that rate to be subject to adjustment if in any respect the position of the son alters? Are savings or capital resources to be taken into account? If so, why should they be the only resources to be taken into account in the case of a test of means? Finally, how can any man or any Minister deal with subterfuges such as the transfer of such resources from the applicant to some other member of the family? It is very simple to say, "I pay my tribute to a test of means, but I do not mean a household means test; I mean art individual means test," without applying one's mind to what that means. I have done my best, with the full assistance of the Board, after a period of analysis and by weighing all kinds of alternatives, to seek actual verification. I have left London myself and gone to area after area, town after town, village after village, and home after home, and any man who will do that with the investigator will know that it is not possible to draw an abstract picture of an unemployed person's home. There is no such thing. There are no two unemployed persons' homes that are alike—

The right hon. Gentleman has stated over and over again that he has paid successive visits to the depressed areas and has conducted investigations. Is he satisfied that the Regulations under the standstill arrangement are working satisfactorily in every case that he investigated?

Certainly not; that is why I am going to ask the House to make improved arrangements. The very fact that the hon. Gentleman puts that question to me is my case to-day. The House and the country have been generous, and no one recognises that more than I do. They have been patient. The very fact that the analysis of the hon. Member for Seaham has shown that in 18 months—six months of my predecessor's period of office and a year of mine—only 32 questions were put by hon. Members on this subject, indicates that hon. Members, while they may not be vocal, are quite aware that this is a grave and complex question, and that no Minister would be justified in going to his colleagues with proposals and bringing them before the House without doing his best to make quite sure that the pledges given during the last Election will be kept as far as it is humanly possible to do so.

I have tried my best at analysis and examination of various suggestions with the Board's local officers to see exactly what the situation is. I shall not hold the decision up. [Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman says the Spring time. Any Minister who in November could look ahead and say that the problem would not be before the House until Spring at the earliest cannot be charged with short-sightedness. He must have the gift of pre-vision. We shall do our best to solve this problem which has perplexed us for the last 16 years. We shall do it in the terms of the Election manifesto, giving a system which is firm on the one hand and flexible on the other. If any one thinks you can solve the problem by adopting the scales of the most extravagant socialist authorities, that is not a policy that will commend itself to the country as a whole. I cannot give a definite date, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there will be no undue delay in introducing the Regulations.

I am sorry to interrupt a Debate on a subject which is of deep concern to all of us and, if I ask the House to turn from the problem of the means test and unemployment and transitional benefit to the question of defence, I hope it will not be thought that I am under-rating the question that the House has been discussing for the last two or three hours. I am convinced that the question of defence is not, as the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) suggested, a matter of interest only to those who have Imperialistic ideas but is of the deepest importance to every home. I was not in the House, unfortunately, when the Minister for Co-ordination of Defence made his two very interesting statements last week, but I have read them two or three times over, and it is because one aspect of those speeches strikes me as very serious at present that I ask leave to refer to the subject to-day. The right hon. Gentleman ended his speech with a plea for co-operation, and I am sure he will believe that it is in that spirit that I am now addressing him in particular about the industrial side of his policy. I would protest against the suggestion which seems to be rife in many quarters at present that those of us who are deeply concerned about defence and keep on pressing various aspects of the problem on the Government, are anxious to embarrass them. I am sure there is no such motive in any single one of us. The times are much too serious for political recrimination of that kind.

Some people seem to be preoccupied with political considerations—the question of how the supporters of the Government are to be organised in view of the next election, and indeed in what way different sections of them are to play their part even before the next election. My view is that long before the next election events will have carried this country into a new world, a new order, or disorder, of ideas, and that all our political arguments at present will be upset by what is going to happen. That is my pro found belief. I therefore take no interest whatever in the political aspect of this question. I think the problem of how we are to emerge, without war if possible, but in any case without defeat, from the situation that is going to arise, should have our sole preoccupation. In that spirit I wish to re-open the question of the right hon. Gentleman's special responsibilities in regard to manufacture. I repeat that I have no desire to embarrass him, difficult as the subject is for him to deal with. I regard him in deed as our man. He is batting for the side in a very critical situation. All we want is that he should make runs and, above all, make them quickly, for in this matter time is everything.

It was suggested in the Debate the other day that the arguments advanced in favour of immediate and stronger action were arguments based purely upon guessing, and that we were exaggerating the danger and urgency of the problem. I think the best reply to that may be found in a speech not many weeks ago by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare). He speaks, at any rate, with very recent inner official knowledge of the situation, both in this country and in Europe. I am sure he cannot be accused of any desire to embarrass the Government. He said,

"First and foremost, the predominant factor in any programme of defence is the factor of speed—speed, speed, speed. It is speed that has revolutionised the world. It is speed that has made the difference between war conditions to-day and war conditions before the War. It is speed that is incumbent upon all of us if this time we are to free this country from the dangerous position of insecurity in which we find ourselves."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th March, 1936; col. 1870, Vol. 309.]

Those are words used by a Member of this House who has only just laid down the seals of office and who spoke with the fullest inner knowledge of the situation in this country and in Europe. It cannot be said that we are exaggerating either the danger or the urgency of the problem. In view of this paramount need for speed, I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will agree that last week he revealed a very disquieting situation. I refer especially to what he said about the provision of machine tools and gauges. I think he told the House that gauges would not be available, even if certain negotiations in which he was engaged prospered for four or five months, and that machine tools might take even longer. If matters had to rest there, we have to face the fact that we shall be entering 1937, a critical year, still with out the means of manufacture which are absolutely vital.

I make no complaint of the candour shown by the right hon. Gentleman. I believe the time has come to tell the country the truth, and the truth has been too long withheld from them. The right hon. Gentleman himself will recognise that a speech of that character, made in a situation like this by a Minister of the Crown, is an event of very great gravity. The country, I think, is hardly alive to the gravity of the impression made by that speech in Europe. Here we are hardly alive to the seriousness of the position, but in Europe the impression made by that speech has certainly peen profound. It has alarmed, it has to some extent discouraged our friends and the friends of peace in Europe, and I fear it has done something to encourage those whose interest in peace is not so great.

Two things are necessary to put this country in a better position—to hasten the time when its defences will be secure, and, in the meantime, to give that impression of energy and of determination in this country necessary to back its diplomacy through a very difficult period. The first thing is to make it perfectly plain that the spirit of this country is sound. I have no doubt about it whatever. I believe that the country now feels considerably humiliated by the recent course of events, and that it wants to see our Government asserting the authority of this country more effectively. I believe that it wants to put its foot down, and to put it down thoroughly. The time has at last come when we are losing patience throughout the country with the dreamers who have been, pre venting us from repairing our defences in time to meet an emergency.

In that connection, I should like, as far as I can in this House, to give a little more currency to a scene which occurred last week at Pwllheli, where a meeting was held to protest against the establishment of a bombing school in the neighbouring peninsula. I am glad to see that the people there, a large crowd including, as the report says, many unemployed, did their best to break up that meeting. The, report from which I quote, which is from the "Sunday Times' "own correspondent at Pwllheli, and which was published last Sunday, says that the speakers who made a plat form on the top of a roundabout were un able to obtain a hearing, and that "God Save The King", and "Britons never shall be slaves" were sung while the leaders were vainly attempting to make themselves heard. If I quote that report in this House, it is because I hope that episodes of that kind in this country will receive at least as much currency abroad as resolutions passed by the Oxford Union, which has done a great deal of harm in recent times.

The spirit of the country is all right, and it will support the Government in any measures necessary to deal with the present situation, but the country cannot do anything by itself. Speed and action depend entirely upon the Government. If our diplomacy is to count at all in coming weeks, we must do all we can to remove the impression created by the situation which the right hon. Gentleman revealed and to uncle the world feel that we are doing our utmost, and doing it successfully, to overtake the deficiency from which we had suffered in the structure and organisation of our defences. The right hon. Gentleman paid a great tribute to industry. I am glad that he did. Since industry is ready and anxious to meet the Government, has not the time come when the Government should meet industry by the appointment of a special Minister to deal with this special problem? That is the point to which I particularly wish to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman this afternoon. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) made that suggestion last week, the right hon. Gentle man seemed to think that he was asking in the immediate present for special powers and for the establishment of war conditions in manufacture. He replied by saying that the time had really not come for so great a dislocation of industry and for interrupting the normal production for peace purposes. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we have nothing like that in mind.

There is no need at the moment, I am certain, for establishing anything in the nature of war conditions, and I should like to make perfectly plain to him that for which we are asking. I believe that a special Minister might do a great deal, if he concentrated upon this problem and had nothing else to divert his attention, in helping to solve this question of delay in manufacture, which is so grievous. He could study much more effectively than has yet been done, the dovetailing of the production of munitions into the normal processes of industry. He could institute, I believe, a wider and more thorough search for new machinery capable of producing the munitions we require at much higher speed and with a much less expenditure of skilled labour. The right hon. Gentle man, I am sure, is aware that machines are in existence which produce some of the most essential things at a far greater rate than has been possible in the past, and with an astonishing economy of skilled labour. We know that progress in that way has been made abroad, and we think that the Government should concentrate upon securing machines of that kind for this country. I would re mind the right hon. Gentleman also that in the "Times" of last Tuesday a great authority on engineering, Mr. H. I. Brackenbury, while agreeing with the right hon. Gentleman that it was no use crying over spilt milk, nevertheless begged for certain special measures to be taken at the present moment, and in particular for

"the provision of a highly skilled planning staff and an equipment of the best and very expensive machinery for the manufacture of gauges, jigs, tools, dyes, etc."

That is the crux of the problem, and is what the right hon. Gentleman himself called the bottle-neck, and I am convinced that the best way of dealing with the special problem of getting rid of that bottle-neck is too great a task for a Minister who bears the other immense responsibilities borne by the right hon. Gentleman. Consider what those responsibilities arc. He described them in his speech last week. He said, in the first place, that he was keeping in the closest touch with the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee and constantly acted as its Chairman. That in itself, I believe, is a one-man job. It has to cover the whole range of our defence plans and our defence organisation, and he himself described the many problems that arise out of it. There is the inquiry which he is conducting into the vulnerability of battleships under air attack; there is the question of whether the present organisation of the Fleet Air Arm is adequate, and other separate investigations. He is responsible for investigating all the difficulties and possibilities of anti-aircraft action and for giving a real impetus and breadth to scientific research. Apart from all these things, as affecting the defence plan of the country, he has to consider the equally difficult questions of personnel.

I do not believe that a Minister with such vast responsibilities can afford sufficient time to concentrate on the manufacturing side of the problem. I am making no reflection whatever upon the industry, the capacity, or the stamina of the right hon. Gentleman—I believe them to be enormous—but I simply believe that no human being can do what he is being asked to undertake for the country at the present time. It is the same with the three Ministers, one of whom I see before me now, who are in charge of the separate Service Departments. They have very great Departmental duties, most of them involving a full day's work in any case, but these duties are necessarily in creased by the expansion which is at present being undertaken by all three Services. They have to decide what their Services require and how their Services are to be altered. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War is finding some difficulty now in deciding what the Army requires. That, surely, in itself is a very difficult task and must take up a great deal of time.

I do not think that the three Service Ministers can go beyond the question of deciding what their Services require. They cannot have regard to the further question of how the munitions and equipment which they require are to be pro vided by industry. In these circumstances too much is bound to be left to subordinate Civil servants. I make no reflection whatever upon our Civil servants; they are faithful, industrious and immensely competent, but these questions are not questions which can be dealt with by subordinate Civil servants in the different Departments. They have not the experience, and, above all, they have not the authority, and the fact that questions pass from one Department to another through subordinates is bound inevitably to cause red tape.

I beg the Government to give immediate consideration to the appointment of a special Minister, and I suggest, in the first place, that he should be made simply chairman of the Supply Officers' Committee. Let him relieve my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence of that part of his task. Let him study this problem presented by industry at the present time, this terribly urgent problem. Let him study foreign methods and weigh our own manufacturing difficulties, and then let him decide what is required. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead (Sir R. Horne), with much greater knowledge and experience of business than I have, will be able to explain more fully what a Minister with this kind of responsibility can do at the present time. All that I have attempted to do is to press upon the Government the immensely urgent need for a decision of that kind. We do not want a dictator in this country, but I believe we need two consuls according to the old Roman method, and that those consuls should be made responsible for the two great branches of defence—on the one hand, the working out of war plans and the organisation of the fighting Services; on the other hand, the organisation of industry. I believe that to be needed for the welfare and safety of the country, and I commend it to the Government in the spirit of the splendid old Roman definition of Consular duty:

"Ne quid res publica detrimenti capiat."

I shall not occupy the attentior of the House for many minutes. All that I can do or wish to do is to reinforce the appeal which my hon. Friend has made so eloquently, an appeal to the government not to delay in appointing a Minister of Supply. That appeal, I am sure the House will readily recognise, is not in any way a reflection upon my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. There is no man who has a greater admiration for his gifts than I have: I have been well acquainted with his legal ability during a long process of years, I know his great capacity as a Minister, his power of industry, his clear-sighted ness, his pre-vision, but I say that all these qualities combined cannot make it possible for any man, alive or dead, to undertake the responsibilities with which he is to-day charged.

It looks to me, upon the surface of things, that there ran be no argument about this matter. My hon. Friend has described the activities in which the Minister will be engaged. They are of the widest possible character. If we take alone the question of the military side of My right hon. Friend's activities, there is imposed upon him a burden so colossal that it will be with difficulty that he will be able to discharge that part of his duties, without adding any more to them. When he was appointed I am sure that mart' people recalled the fact that another great and distinguished lawyer had been set such a task in times past. I refer to Lord Haldane. Every one recalls what great success Lord Haldane made of his task, and every body will hope that my right hon. Friend may accomplish a similar achievement, but Lord Haldane had only one of the three Service. Departments to look after, while my rig it hon. Friend, as the Co-ordinating Minister is to preside in regard to the whole.

I have no doubt that Lord Haldane found his task one which occupied the whole of his attention. Rut the military question has become one of far greater complexity than it was in Lord Haldane's days. The War Office by itself, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War will recognise, demands attention to a far greater variety of subjects than was the case some years ago. The necessity for a close study of such topics, when you begin to estimate what kind of armaments you want in the circumstances in which we find ourselves, will take the whole time of any man, no matter how great may be his gifts. To preside over three Departments of Defence is enough to occupy the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence.

When we turn to the provision of supplies, those of us who have any recollection or any experience of what happened in the war will realise that here in this new field there is an infinite variety of topics that have to be mastered. Anyone who recollects what the Ministry of Munitions was during the war—I am not thinking about the vast supplies produced or the immense quantities but the variety of departments with which the Ministry of Munitions was concerned—will realise how greatly the attention of any Minister must be occupied in dealing with the question of supplies. For a year I was in charge of most of the supplies for the Admiralty, and I found that was a task which was so difficult and so wide as to demand the fullest possible attention of any man who was occupied with the question of supply. Now there is added to the pre occupations of my right hon. Friend the matter of dealing with the food supplies of the country, which required the full attention of a Minister and a whole department during the war.

I am entirely convinced, as I am sure the whole House is convinced, that it is impossible for any one man to accomplish all that my right hon. Friend is supposed to do. If that be so, what are the reasons that can be adduced in favour of any delay in the appointment of a separate Minister? I have been reading my right hon. Friend's speech in the Debate last week, and he suggested two reasons. He said, in the first place, that in 1920 the whole of this matter had been examined and it had been decided to scrap the Ministry of Munitions which then existed. It is a sufficient answer to such an argument to say that we are not now in the conditions of 1920. At that time we hoped that the world was for ever going to be at peace, at any rate, the policy of the country was based on what was regarded as an assured certainty, that there would be a 10 years' peace. But who to-day can say that there is any assurance of a 10 years'. peace? The conditions of 1920 afford no argument for a policy to-day.

The other point which the right hon. Gentleman made was that the appointment of a Minister of Supply at the present time would probably lead to a dislocation of the ordinary peaceful trading of the country, that many occupations would be interrupted from which the country is deriving the wealth which enables us to support our monetary burden. There is no need, if you appoint a Minister of Supply, to enter upon any premature dislocation of trade. What such a Minister of Supply would do would be to deal with the task with more complete efficiency, which my right hon. Friend must be trying to do now. He would do it under better conditions, and with the possibility of concentrating upon it an amount of time and industry which I am sure the Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence, with all his other preoccupations, cannot possibly de vote to it. The difficulties are rendered much greater by having one man only to look after these immense responsibilities. So far from the dislocation of industry coming sooner by the appointment of a Minister of Supply I think it would be pushed off till a much later period. The Minister would be able to devote his attention to the whole field; to get into contact with the industries of the country and with those who have a personal knowledge of them, to an extent impossible for the right hon. Gentleman, and by this means he would probably be able to do a great deal to put off the day on which interference with industry would become necessary. I am sure that we should not immediately require to have any series of regulations such as were enacted under D.O.R.A. A Minister of Supply appointed to do this duty and capable of carrying it out—such a man as I believe that the Prime Minister would appoint—would be able to help industry to understand these problems and by contact with the leading industrialists of the country be able to achieve a very great deal which in other circumstances might require legislative intervention.

Does the right hon. Gentleman think that such a Minister might possibly do something to assist the depressed areas?

I hope very much that the Government will do something for the depressed areas in the work which is being carried out in connection with the scheme of defence. That must be in their minds, and I have no doubt that a special Minister dealing with this matter would be able to make suggestions which would be fruitful in helping distressed areas. But suppose the Minister of Supply were to do nothing in the intervening period except to survey and study the problem, that by itself would be worth while. Imagine the position, at the moment when the occasion arose, of a man suddenly pitchforked into the task of being Minister of Supply and having to learn all that my right hon. Friend had previously acquired, before beginning to execute his task. I submit that for every reason which can be adduced a separate Minister of Supply is necessary. I do not wish to go back on the past or to make any reproaches, but I have formed the impression, from my own knowledge and from what I have heard, that there is a certain ignorance in some of the Departments which are charged with the duty of looking after these matters, an ignorance which one would not expect to find.

I also get the impression that the inquiries which are being made are not always directed to the right quarter and that the people who are making such inquiries are sometimes not sufficiently knowledgeable to get the right answers. Questions are put by people who do not entirely understand the problem. Then, of course, we had the revelation, which was very disquieting to most of us, which the right hon. Gentleman made last week, and very properly made—about the deficiency in which we stood with regard to machine tools. That disclosure has had a profound effect on the Continent of Europe, as I happen to know. It has certainly weakened the confidence of many of our friends in our capacity to meet our present obligations. This is a matter which has been known for two years. One would suppose that such a matter would have been dealt with by the Departments concerned, being of so vital a character to our interests. Nobody need have known we were increasing our supply of machine tools to meet any emergency, no one would have thought that there was any militaristic spirit. To me it seems to show that the Departments of the Government charged with the duty of looking alter these matters are not really sufficiently active in considering what are our obligations, and the state of jeopardy into which We might drift. From that point, of view I should like to see someone specially, charged with the duty of looking after these concerns, and with nothing else to do. It is what is called a full-time job.

Let me say in conclusion, that the position of gravity in which we live at the present time is of such a character that we cannot afford to run any risks whatever, and in particular we cannot afford to run any risks by delay. What is the condition in which we find ourselves in Europe? We have made an enemy of Italy. We have aroused great suspicion in France as regards our policy, our purpose, our capacity, our vision and our judgment. We have not reconciled Germany. That great country is re arming, and there are looming on the horizon very acute differences in regard to a matter on which I am certain we shall feel that our rational honour is involved. One has to keep in mind that two of these countries have as their national philosophy the doctrine of force. We have seen one of them, against all its pledges, acting as a common aggressor in the world, and prepared to employ force to the ultimate extremity. Who can rely with any confidence upon suggestions that such forces may not be turned against us in our present weak position?

It is incumbent upon us, therefore, it seems to me, by every means in our power to make ourselves strong. We have lost our prestige in the world. We cannot fail to recognise that fact. Every newspaper in every country refers to the fact that Mussolini has triumphed over Great Britain. [HON. MEMBERS: "No !"] I am not saying that that is true, but that is the impression in the rest of the world. The world talks about Britain's bluff being called and believes that its power was too feeble to tackle a difficult situation. The Foreign Secretary, in the course of a speech the other day, talked of collective failure. He said that you had collective successes and you had to recognise that there was such a thing as collective failure. It was not a collective failure on the part of the 52 nations which were ranged together on this issue. It is recognised as Great Britain's failure.

When my right hon. Friend the previous Foreign Secretary was reproached from one part of the House with the fact that Britain had taken the lead at Geneva in starting the campaign of sanctions he gave an answer which was very like the answer given by a Highland Chief when he was asked to take his seat at the head of the table. He said, "Wherever I sit at the head of the table." The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea said that wherever Great Britain was engaged in negotiations it necessarily took the lead. The Under Secretary for the Foreign Office the other day gloried in the fact that we had taken that lead. That is why the Prime Minister said that he himself felt bitterly humiliated. Prestige matters a very great deal. Lack of prestige is a thing which causes troubles in every part of the world—troubles which would not arise if we were known to be strong. What is going on in the East End of the Mediterranean, in Palestine and in Egypt would not have happened if we had been stronger. The Italian Dictator has succeeded in carrying out his purposes against the whole weight of our authority. We must re cover that prestige. It is our duty to our people here, to all those whom we represent, for the avoidance of war to recover our strength—to do it with all the means in our power and as rapidly as we can accomplish it.

I should like to refer to one special aspect of this problem, to which the hon. and gallant Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) referred. Before doing so one is tempted to start joking about the shadow Cabinet, about certain cartoons and about several people that are prominant in this discussion. But the time is too serious for joking. There is a growing realisation of the war danger arising from the greatest potential aggressor in the world. Certain hon. Members who have already spoken are very largely responsible, or the circle in which they move is responsible for bringing this war danger about. Prior to 1933 Germany had made great attempts to satisfy the demands of the international financiers for interest on the loan. When the new regime came into being certain circles in this country, and particularly one great and influential circle, was largely responsible for enabling the international financiers to pursue a new policy, and although there is not time to deal with this aspect of the situation, of which the common people of this country have not lost sight, I may say that I have been co operating with a group on this side in preparing a pamphlet to be distributed throughout the country, tracing and analysing those who have been responsible for indirectly financing the rearmament of Germany.

Those people who come here and accuse the Government of not taking action in the past want to look through the glass themselves and they will see who has been responsible for financing the re armament of Germany. There is no time to analyse that to any 'satisfaction at the moment, but what we can do is to pro duce documentary evidence based on the replies we have received from the Minis tries, from the Stock Exchange Gazette, from the Investors' Chronicle and from the various financial papers which are distributed to all Members of this House, and I am confident that the common people of this country will stand for the maintenance of principles only. The principles for which they will stand, are the principles that these hon. Members who have spoken this morning have been responsible for undermining.—[HON. MEMBERS: "What?"]—Those principles are the maintenance of collective security.— [Laughter.]—Hon. Members laugh. Hon. Members ridicule, but hon. Members want to come out into the industrial parts of this country and they will see which theory is accepted on this issue.

The right hon. Member spoke about the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare). My view, and the view of a large number of people, is that he was very largely responsible for undermining the principle of collective security and confidence in this country. There is no time to analyse that situation to the extent that we should like. It would not be fair to proceed upon it, but I think we should not be doing justice to this side unless those few observations were made. I should like to address a few observations to the hon. Baronet in particular and to the Government. During the past few months I have put a few suggestions to the hon. Baronet about the conditions in the aircraft industry and the manufacture of aircraft. Strikes have been held throughout this country. There have been several in London and Manchester, one in Bristol and others in several other parts of the country. I have had a fairly wide experience of industrial organisation, and I have come to the conclusion that men do not come out on strike unless they have legitimate grievances.

What is bringing these grievances about? Dominant captains of industry in this country at various conferences have said, and certain Government officials—not necessarily heads of Departments but representatives of State Departments—are hinting or saying openly that a certain number of trainees shall be started in proportion to the number of skilled men employed. As an illustration, I will refer to the position in one large aircraft factory where the boys are working at 4d. an hour. I will deal with one factory only, because if my statement is challenged I have evidence here to prove what I am saying, but the statements I am about to make apply to many others. The boys are working for 4d. an hour, plus 10s. a week from the Lord Mayor's Fund. At the end of six weeks their wages are increased to 6d. an hour, but the 10s. from the Lord Mayor's Fund is taken away. Adult workers in this factory receive from 10d. to 1s. 3d. an hour. The trade union recognised rate paid in all establishments outside the aircraft industry is 1s. 7d. an hour. It is such conditions as those that are giving rise to the grievances which reflect themselves in strikes and discontent.

I would ask the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Altrineham (Sir E. Grigg) whether they think this sort of atmosphere in the factories adds to the airworthiness of the aircraft that are being manufactured. In the particular firm to which I am referring, 50 per cent. of the employés are trainees, and then the hon. Member for Altrineham speaks about the astonishing economy of skilled labour in the manufacture of air craft ! There will be more strikes and more grievances if this is to be the policy pursued in the aircraft industry. Strikes have taken place because in many cases young men have been introduced as trainees a id have been trained by skilled men, who found themselves discharged in. a few months and the trainees put in their jobs. If any hon. Member doubts this, I have evidence which I can bring forward to prove that I am stating facts. After a few months fully-rated skilled men are discharged and low-rated men are put in their places. In one aircraft shop the shop steward raised this matter.

That is an acknowledged way of raising questions throughout the heavy industries. This procedure has been arranged between the employers and the employés and in most factories it is allowed to operate, but in the aircraft industry we find that when an individual is appointed to represent his fellow-workers' opinion, he is open to victimisation and in many cases the result is that he is discharged. In one large factory, the shop steward was discharged because he raised this issue. A strike took place and 100 per cent. of the men downed tools, with the result that the man was reinstated. I appeal to the Minister that an investigation should be made into these conditions. I have put question after question with a view to drawing attention to these conditions, which are getting no better. Having brought attention to the matter, I hope an investigation will be made in order that the same conditions that apply throughout the heavy industries shall apply in the aircraft industry.

It was not my intention to speak in this Debate, but in view of the confusion which exists in the minds of the electors throughout the country as to the exact nature of the duties of the Minister concerned with defence problems, I thought perhaps it would not be an impertinence on my part to my right hon. and learned Friend, if I touched upon the question of strategy in relation to the setting up of a Ministry of Supply, if that Ministry is to be set up. A technical survey o the resources of the country has been made, and a meeting will shortly be held for the placing of contracts, which will depend for their ultimate success upon the reasonable and sensible co-operation of alt sections of the nation. Further contracts are to be placed as and when my right hon. and learned Friend further perfects the machinery for co-ordinating a clear-cut policy of defence alignment and not, as it is all too frequently misrepresented to be, a new method of organising home and Dominion Governments for war.

Most hon. Members are familiar with the milestones that have led to the appointment itself—the late Lord Salisbury's pro found observation that the British constitution as at present worked was not a good fighting machine; the setting up in 1904, at the instigation of Lord Balfour, of the Committee of Imperial Defence; Lord Haldane's pre-war skirmishes in preparedness; the unique circumstances of Lord Kitchener's Secretaryship of State during the War itself; and after the War the thankless task of successive Governments in this House to maintain any form of defensive alignment in the teeth of anti-waste oppositions. But with the Minister for the Co-ordination of De fence comes a completely new set of circumstances, and we are faced in national defence with two terrific factors of our time—the results of which no one can possibly foresee or predict what they way lead to—the growth and ascendency of aircraft as a fighting service and the re armament of the world. With no one nation quite certain of the next-door nation's attitude, as to whether it is to be a friend or a foe, our own position has become simply this: whereas before the War, in a given set of circumstances, our concern was merely how much punishment we could dish out to an obvious opponent, now, in a comparatively un known set of circumstances, our chief anxiety is just how much punishment we ourselves can take, and not quite certain from which quarter the blow is to come. Let us take the more obvious weaknesses in our defensive system as we see them to-day. Obviously it is the Eastern half of the country that is to suffer most and not the Western half. Taking a line from Flamborough Head on the East Coast down the North and South Forelands and along the coast to Southampton Docks, that is obviously the section of the country that is to suffer most. Therefore, I beg my right hon. and learned Friend—

On a point of Order. Is it in order that the hon. Member should address the House from a printed speech?

Has not the practice of not reading printed speeches been wholly abandoned, especially by the Labour party?

I should be sorry to accuse one party more than the other.

If that be the complaint of my hon. and learned Friend opposite, I will continue without any form of printed notes at all. As the time of the House has been taken up considerably by this subject, let me simply say that if the evil of world war is on its way, then to attempt to meet it in the terms of the outbreak of the last Great War as a rehearsal, will be both dangerous and fallacious. Next time, war will come at. a pace of incredible breathlessness. A call for volunteers from a nation bolstered with false optimism by catch phrases such as "Business as usual" or sustained by the sentimentality of a song like "Keep the home fires burning," will be of little avail. All business will be war business, nearly all fires will be air raid fires. If one half of the population is seeking blessings for our armed forces and the other half are merely content to disentangle themselves from the muddle in stead of busily testing their own capacity to organise, then disaster is certain. If Empire lines of communication are over loaded with frantic, wire-burning, cables of recrimination between Governments, and undermanned with crews and ships then defeat will be our only Ally.

The British Empire which looks so magnificently strong upon a map of the world, is, in actual fact, desperately vulnerable if its armed vigilance is over taken by an aggresor. But if, through the agency of my right hon. Friend, the nation is to be assured in advance that its Navy will be ready, as it was once through the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill), that its Army is to have the ample equipment which it once enjoyed through the achievements of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), that its Air Force is to possess in an unequalled degree that modern first essential which my right hon. Friend for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) so aptly described as "Speed, speed, speed," and if, above all, foreign nations are made to realise that speed and strength are still two outstanding qualities of Great Britain —then not only will you have forestalled the outbreak of another war, but, much more you would have provided an unshakable guarantee of world peace. The Minister concerned brings to his task the impartiality of the lawyer, the discretion of one with many years experience in the service of the State, and that rare quality which the late John Morley characterised as the front Bench mind. It falls to the lot of this Parliament to choose between strength and weakness, beween muddle and preparedness, not in a world as we hope it one day will be, but to meet the grim and rather frightening realities of the age in which we live. The choice is obvious and the reward for our wisdom will be the restoration of our country's dignity and happiness.

My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham (Sir E. Grigg) began his observations by assuring me that he had no desire to embarrass me, and I should like to acknowledge also what my right hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead (Mr. R. Horne) said as to myself. I can assure hon. and right hon. Gentlemen who are raising these questions that no idea entered my mind that in doing so they had anything but a true and sincere zeal for the interest of the country. But I am bound to say that in a demand for a Minister of Supply they have taken a rather different line from what I under stood to be the suggestion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) as stated to the House in his earlier speeches. I will refer to some of those observations in a moment, but let me say at once that I have no difference with my hon. and right hon. Friends as to the urgency of the matters which I have been called upon to undertake. My hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Cary) who has just spoken with great eloquence, described how important it is for this country to be equipped for an emergency which may overtake us like a thief in the night. I cannot see myself quite in the heroic style which he held up for my imitation, but I am here to do my best with the duties entrusted to me and I hope whether or not I can ever get within measurable distance of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping or the other people mentioned by my hon. Friend, we shall achieve the same result.

As I say, I do not differ from my hon. Friends in what they have said as to urgency. The plain position was really stated in the White. Paper. There may have been some things which the House would have wished to see more fully explained, but anybody who cared to read between the lines of the White Paper must have been aware that the Government were fully conscious of the urgency of these preparations. I accept every thing which my right hon. Friend said by way of underlining the observations contained in the White Paper. He suggested in one of his speeches that the Government must not be afraid of alarming easy going voters. I assure him that we are not afraid of alarming easy-going voters. He finished his speech the other night by inviting the Government to see that the programmes which were undertaken should be punctually completed. I quote his precise words so as to give my right hon. Friend the assurance which he desires. His closing sentence was:

"All I ask is that these programmes to which the Government have attached their confidence shall be punctually executed whatever may be the disturbance to our daily life."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st May, 1936; col. 1448, Vol. 312.]

My hon. and right hon. Friends have now expanded that very proper demand, one to which the Government ought to give their support, into a demand for a Minister of Supply. I can assure the House, so far as I am personally concerned, I should be the first to welcome the appointment of a Minister of Supply to take off my shoulders some of the responsibilities which rest upon them.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear hear."] Perhaps my hon. Friends will allow me to finish my sentence. I was going to add—if I thought it was in the country's interest. The House will easily understand, as I have already said, that I am the last person in the world to object to that proposal. There is no question of my personal pride involved, and if to-morrow I were to see my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping for instance, or my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham housed with a staff on the Hotel Metro-pole, in accordance with the suggestion made in the last Debate—

indicated dissent.

Let me assure my hon. Friend that the suggestion was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping. He said he passed the Hotel Metropole and had pictured it to him self as taken, over by a Minister of Munitions or a Minister of Supply with a staff for which the building would be adequate. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham ought to do my right hon. Friend the credit of reading his speeches.

I assure my right hon. Friend that I read the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) with the greatest care and attention and attach much importance to them. I agree that in the speech he drew a picture of the development of a Ministry of Munitions but I did not understand that he regarded it as an immediate necessity.

I do not know about immediate necessity but what my right hon. Friend said was:

"Last week, when I was passing the Hotel Metropole and saw all the vans gathered there to carry away the furniture, in order that the hotel shall be a temporary Government office while some re housing scheme of the various Departments goes on, I said to myself, Late as it is, hero is the moment. Here is the place.' "—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 21st May, 1936; col. 1443, Vol. 312.]

I am bound to say that the whole tenor of the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping has been to lead me to form the impression that what he wanted was a Minister of Munitions with compulsory powers. Anybody who did me the honour of listening to my observations a week ago yesterday will remember that I devoted a few minutes to the suggestion that that would mean the dislocation of the industrial life of this nation. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hillhead has told the House that what he wants is a Minister of persuasion, a Minister who will advise and go about the country soliciting the co-operation of business men. I really must make good this point to the House, in order to point out how different and how much smaller is the proposal which is now put to me. My right hon. Friend the Member for Epping on the 4th May said, on one of the Navy Supplementary Estimates debates:—

"We ought to create a proper Ministry of Supply not necessarily on the great scale of the Ministry of Munitions, but on the same lines. There ought to be a Ministry of Supply which would make a great many of the articles for the different Services."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1936; cols. 1420–1; Vol. 311.]

That is a pretty far-reaching proposal. "On the same lines as the Ministry of Munitions ", can mean nothing unless it means clothed with the same powers, under which notoriously, the Defence f the Realm Regulations, to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hillhead referred, were carried out.

May I make my position clear? While I am advocating the immediate setting up of a Ministry of Supply, if necessary, should the occasion arise and the emergency be great enough, you would have to clothe him with powers and give him a large staff in order to enable him to exercise his functions.

I quite accept that, and that is the position of the Government, that if they think the time has come—that is really the point—to clothe a Minister of Munitions with compulsory powers, then, of course, it is the plain duty of the Government to take the decision to do so. I do not in the least want to spend any time on a mere debating point, because I have something further to say as to the progress of the Government's programme, but I think I am entitled, inasmuch as this has been represented as a demand to-day for the appointment of a Minister of Supply without any compulsory powers, to point out that that is a more limited demand than was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping, for instance, on 23rd April—to give one more quotation—when he said that power should be taken to control "such industries as are involved." I understand that proposition, and, as I say, if the position were such that the Government, with all the responsibility upon their shoulders, thought that they must ask the country to give them these compulsory powers, I am sure the House would give the Government the authority, which would be necessary to be taken by Act of Parliament, involved in the creation of a Ministry of Munitions for this country.

Now may I come to the much more limited and modest proposal that there should be a Minister of Supply. Even my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping, I think, suggested that it would not be necessary to transfer to such a Minister the work which is being done by the Admiralty to-day, or at any rate not all the work which is being done by the Admiralty. He recognised that the Admiralty has its dockyards and its regular shipyards, where it gets the ships built, and that therefore to that extent the Admiralty would be still mistress in its own house. I have suggested on a previous occasion to the House that, so far as the Air Ministry is concerned, what is being done is about as effective to produce the aircraft that are necessary as anybody, even if he were armed with compulsory powers, could devise; and in a few minutes I will give a little more in formation to the House as to what is being done in that respect.

Therefore, if I am right about the Air Ministry, it comes down to the question as to whether this Minister of Sup ply, who is to be merely an adviser or persuader, should undertake the responsibility for making the contracts necessary to give the Army its requirements. There is no doubt at all that the War Office, through no fault of the War Office or of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War, is what I may call last in the race. It started last in the race. The Air Ministry started two years ago. The Admiralty has been envisaging its requirements for some time and has made plans accordingly. The programme in connection with mechanised vehicles and with shells, which concerns the War Office, has only been entered upon at a later stage that either of the programmes of the two other Services.

For myself, I am not persuaded at all that it would be conducive to further speed if this Minister was appointed. It is not my daily or hourly task, nor is it my duty, to make the contracts, nor would it be the duty of a Minister of Supply, as now proposed, to make the contracts; and my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham realises that, because he is not suggesting that this Minister shall make the contracts, which is the proposal of my right hon. Friend below the Gangway, but that he should go about the country seeing business men. I was sorry to hear him say that he has in formation that the agents at present serving the Government are not as well qualified as they should be, that the in- quiries are not made in the best way. I should have been very grateful indeed to my right hon. and learned Friend if he could have called my attention to any instances of that sort, and no doubt after this Debate he will give me any information that he has on the point.

My right hon. Friend must remember that I could not give in stances in the House, bit I shall regard it as my duty to call his attention privately to instances which have come to My notice. I would, of course, remind him that I do not wish to do these things in public.

I am not making it a grievance that my right hon. and learned Friend did not mention any names in debate here, of course, and if he is good enough to tell me that he will give me particulars, it will be most helpful and it will assist the persons who are responsible for making these inquiries, and also the public interest. What I want to come back to is this suggestion that a Minister of Supply till riot be making the contracts any more than I am making the contracts to-day. What I am trying to do, what it is my duty to do, is to keep abreast of the performance of the different Departments and of their programmes, to help them not to get in each other's way, and to stimulate the production as far as possible by seeing the groups of industry which are responsible for this or that article, as the case may be, and those are exactly the duties which a Minister of supply mould per form.

Now let us come to what I understand is the critical question, as to whether these duties are really too much for my shoulders or not. That is the whole question. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is he re and has heard the Debate, and the House may be sure that neither the Rime Minister nor myself will be slow in saying whether we think these duties should be transferred from my shoulders to other shoulders. I am persuaded of this, that if there was to be a Minister of Supply of this sort, unless he was merely to take over my duties; as they are per formed now, there would be consider able delay in the reorganisation. If my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping is going to speak later, he will correct me if I am wrong in understanding the proposal as it is made to-day. Really it is that instead of one of us, there should lie two of us, but that the second should be performing the same duties as I am now performing, but with more time at his disposal. That is, if I may say so, a very natural and a very proper suggestion to make. The only question really is as to whether it is likely to make things go any more quickly at the present time rather than to let me continue with the duties which I have undertaken.

Now let me give the House a little in formation I have as to the progress which is being made. There are two things wanted by the Air Ministry—one is air frames, and the other air engines. I am happy to tell the House that, so far as air frames are concerned, the Secretary of State has been in negotiation with the Austin Company and Messrs. Rootes, two of the largest motor undertakings with the best knowledge and experience of up-to-date methods probably in the country. They have undertaken, and the terms of the agreement have now been concluded, to erect a factory for the production of air frames. The project of the new factory is an immense one. The best brains in the country have designed it, the layout is completed, the plans for putting out specifications for tenders are completed, and the plans for plant requirements, railway sidings and diversion of roads for an aerodrome have also been completed. The whole project is now ready for the erection of the building, for the installation of plant, and the production of air frames. Suppose a Minister of Supply were appointed tomorrow, would he be able to do a single thing to hasten the production which is now possible under this plan? Messrs. Austin and Rootes are two out of a number of firms with whom it is expected to make similar contracts. I mention them be cause it was on Wednesday or Thursday that the terms of the agreement were arranged, and these two firms are now proceeding with the work I have mentioned.

So far as engines are concerned, seven firms have been allocated to the Air Ministry through the machinery of the Supply Board. Perhaps I may, on behalf of those who work with me, take a modest pride in that achievement. The Supply Board has, as a result of the inquiries—which my right hon. Friend suggested were not always made in the right place or with a proper perspicacity—allocated seven firms with knowledge and eminence in making internal combustion engines who will form themselves into a committee. They have agreed to do so, and they are working as a team for the purpose of allocating among themselves the production of the air engines which are necessary. They have put forward a cut and dried scheme for securing the necessary output with the absolute minimum: delay, that is, with as little delay as is; consistent with getting the raw material and the men for producing the output which is desired. Again, I ask the question suppose a Minister of Supplies were appointed, would he be able, by going down and sitting with these seven expert firms, to increase the rate at which they are producing air engines? Who is sup posed to go and do it? Is he to be a. politician? Is he to be an industrialist?

All I can say is that, so far as industrialists are concerned, we have the assistance daily of a number of the most eminent industrialists in the country, some of whom I have repeatedly seen, who give advice which is exactly of the same nature as the advice which a Minister of Supply would receive. We are not lacking in advice. It is my duty to refer to the public spirit which these industrialists have shown—of course, without remuneration. Their services are put at the disposal of the Government as fully and readily as if they were the salaried controllers of departments with which we were familiar in the War period. I put the question again. Would a. Minister of Supply assist the production of either air frames or air engines at any greater rate than will be effected by the plans which I have outlined to the House, and which are not plans so much as accomplishments. They are stages in the production of these articles which are so urgently necessary.

What does my right hon. Friend mean by accomplishments?

As my right hon. Friend rightly said the other day, the first year you are sowing, the second year you are harrowing, and the third year you are reaping. The sowing is as necessary and important an accomplishment as the reaping because you can not get reaping without sowing.

It is rather late for sowing.

Is this Debate to come down to little recriminations as to whether it is too late or not? I am sure that my right hon. Friends do not wish to make recriminations as to whether it is too late. That is not the point. The point is what is possible to do to-day, and I say here and now that a, definite stage in the production of air frames and engines has been reached under the organisation which is at present in existence.

Has the right hon. Gentleman any objection to giving the names of the firms?

Not a bit. They are: Austin, Rootes, Standard, Daimler, Singer, Wolseley and Rover. The House will agree that they are all firms which are eminent in the production of internal combustion engines. When I am told that these people might have been got together two years ago—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"]—Those cheers leave me quite unmoved—

And England undefended.

My Noble Friend does not do himself or me justice if he suggests that I am indifferent whether England is defended or not. Everybody knows that, rightly or wrongly, until the Government entered upon this policy after the last General Election, this country was proceeding with a policy of what I may describe as disarmament—at any rate, it was not rearmament. I am not going to take up time by arguing the rights or wrongs of the policy which the Government deliberately adopted prior to the General Election, but at the General Election the Government got a mandate to proceed with rearmament to the extent, at any rate, stated in the White Paper. I am dealing with the question whether that programme, approved by the House, is being carried through under the best auspices and with the best speed. That is the only practical question. If I were to spend my time in the House or in my room debating and considering who is to bear the responsibility for postponing these programmes I do not think that at the end I should produce a single additional air frame or engine. What is much better than spending time on these barren inquiries is that I should give whatever labour and powers I have to hastening the programme now that a decision has been taken.

What about the workmen's conditions?

I have not forgotten that question. I desire, in concluding this part of my speech, to repeat that the Prime Minister, I am sure, and the Government will consider at any time whether the load can be transferred from my shoulders to another's shoulders with advantage to the country as a whole. My own personal impression is—I may be wrong, I may seem vain—with the organisation as it is to-day and with such services as I can offer in carrying out the programme, it is more likely to be accomplished at an early date than if a new Minister of Supply were appointed with the very moderate powers, if powers at all, which have been suggested by my hon. Friend who introduced this subject. The hon. Member opposite referred to a question which he will not expect me to go into in any great detail. Question relating to work people are, in my opinion, best discussed in the industries them, elves through the appropriate trade union machinery.

My point is that there are a large number of non-federated firms with a large number of employés and there is no machinery for negotiation with the non-federated firms through the recognised channels.

If the hon. Member likes to give me any information as to any non-federated firms I will sec whether there is machinery by which any difficulties can be considered and removed. It is only a week ago that I tried to grapple with the question, and I am not going to say anything more than I did then about gauges ace machine tools. My hon. Friend did not quit, understand what I had said on the previous occasion. I did not say there mild he no gauges or machine tools available for four or five months, but that if I gave an order now the fruits of that, order would not begin to be seen for four or five months. That does not mean, however, that the machine tool makers are idle. They are working at full pressure. A number of machine tools have been ordered by firms who are going to take Government contracts. What I was talking about were orders in bulk which I or Government Departments might contemplate giving to the people who make machine tools. So far as going abroad for machine tools is concerned, my right hon. Friend the Member for Epping was good enough to make a suggestion to me on that score and the matter is well under consideration. The question of the designs of the tools that can be obtained from abroad is—I am rather afraid to say "being considered," because I shall be told that nothing is being done, if I say that, but it, is being considered. It would he much easier and pleasanter to be able to say to the House, "I think this is a good plan, to have a Minister of Supply; I am perfectly certain he would get on faster with things than I can; I think he could do wonders which the present organisation cannot achieve." But I should not be giving the House my own sincere opinion if I said that, and I prefer to ask the House to give the Government and myself their confidence for the time being and until they have reason to believe that we shall not be able to implement the obligations we have undertaken.

I am sure every one will feel that the right hon. Gentleman who fills the office of Minister for Co-ordination of Defence is certainly extraordinarily capable of co-ordinating the Parliamentary defence of the Government and its policy against whatever criticism may be directed upon it from any quarter of the House. I listened to his speech with the experience of one who has been a very long time in this House, and I saw in it almost every mode of the Parliamentary art by which a Minister in control of a majority, with all the advantages which attach to Ministers on the Treasury Bench, can place this man in his place, give a demurrer to that one, give a conciliatory answer here and generally invest the whole of our proceedings with the idea that all is going on well, that there are no grounds for anxiety, that everything is being attended to in good time, and that all We have to do is not to embarrass him by questions or debate, not to add to his labours by drawing him to the House unnecessarily, but wait, with the greatest tranquillity and with the greatest patience and conviction, and that then, in due course, we shall find that everything has been properly attended to.

If I gave that impression to the House I did not intend to do so. The more questions the House asks me the more I shall be happy to answer them, because I hope the House will satisfy itself by examination whether these matters are receiving attention.

I was referring to the general impression produced upon me by listening to the speech of my right hon. Friend. [Interruption.]

An hon. Gentleman here says that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong.

Government supporters in every quarter of the House for a long time have been saying that I was wrong in these matters, but I am not aware that the Prime Minister has said that I am wrong. I do not wish to raise controversy; we are not here to raise controversy, but because a certain number of gentlemen are concerned about the condition of the national defences. They are more concerned about that than they are with sitting down and cheering Ministers or throwing in an interruption. After all, the condition of the national defences is extremely grave. I am not going to repeat that point, because it is in everyone's mind.

The speech of my right hon. Friend was replete with the Parliamentary arts in their perfection. I can only hope that equal sucess will attend him in the much more serious and vital region of the actual production of our munitions and the co-ordination of our defence. I noticed in his speech most of the usual Parliamentary arts, and in particular there was the suggestion, very delicately made and not pressed to the point where it would excite any protest on the part of the House, that in advocating the creation of a Ministry of Munitions, the Hotel Metropole and so on, I was, as it were, putting in a word for myself. I hope that I may disabuse him of that. I have really sincerely tried as well as I could, in the number of speeches I have made, to make it impossible for such a suggestion to be made. At any rate, I am sure that my right hon. Friend will not mind my freeing myself from any aspersion of that kind, however unintentional, on his part.

It was not intended. My right hon. Friend's imagination is running away with him. I would not attempt to suggest a comparison between myself in the performance of these duties and the right hon. Gentleman.

I am very glad in deed to establish that point, because undoubtedly, in the months which are to come, my right hon. Friend and myself will have a good many discussions and, I fear, some controversy, and I should be very sorry if those were in any way vitiated by any such personal suspicions as, I am glad to receive his assurance, he in no way harbours. Allow me to say that all the impression which my right hon. Friend has given, that all is being done, that everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds and that nothing could be done better, does not tally with the information which I have been able to acquire by keeping in touch with the movement of affairs in the country. I say that all your programmes are in arrear without exception. I say that two years ago there was time to make a move. No move was made. My right hon. Friend has announced plans for great factories to produce aeroplane frames or engines, Admirable. Two years ago it was seen, and full warning was given in this House, that the Germans were making gigantic air preparations. Surely it cannot be counted as a virtue to the Government that it is only now that measures are being taken which were obviously necessary if we were to keep that parity which we were so often promised and which we have now fatally lost.

It is a very well-known phenomenon in Parliamentary debate that if a Minister makes some new statement about a great factory or something like that, everybody is very pleased, but you have to see these things in their proportion and in their sequence. An announcement like that having been made only shows how regrettable it has been that the action was not taken at an earlier stage. My right hon. Friend said the other day that you must not cry over spilt milk, and he said it to-day in other words, as to recriminating about the past, and so forth. I will tell the House the use of recriminating about the past. It is to enforce effective action at the present. It is no use recriminating about the past simply for the purpose of censuring and punishing neglect and culpability, though that, indeed, may at times become the duty of Parliament. But there is great necessity for recriminating about the actions of the past and the neglects of the past when one is not satisfied that all is being done at the present time, That is the justification for it.

Take the question of machine tools. That was the most formidable statement that my right hon. Friend made. These machine tools, I presume, are needed for all the additional programme—the ammunition, the guns, and so forth, and all the innumerable detailed appliances for placing our Army and our defences in a condition of security. Surely this ought to have been foreseen a year ago. What is this argument that it was necessary to wait for the General Election before Ministers could do their duty and place their country in a state of security. There is no justification in that, and I am astonished that my right hon. Friend should use that argument.

It has been said that before the General Election there was no mandate to do it, but there is no mandate so imperative on Ministers of the Crown as that they should guard the safety of the country. Throughout the last Parliament there was never a name It when the Prime Minister—either the present Prime Minister or the previous Prime Minister—could not have asked both Houses of Parliament to support him in any measures that might be necessary to maintain the security of the country. Nothing relieves Ministers from that prime duty. It is the first object for which coherent governments are called into being.

But even since the Election, eight months have gone by. If these machine tool orders which my right hon. Friend tells us he is putting out this week, or is conferring about putting out this week, had been given eight months ago—if they had been given when the Prime Minister spoke of all the dangers that there were attaching to our defences at the beginning of the Election—the position would have been entirely different now, for it takes eight months to make these tools. That is an extraordinary omission. I stand aghast at it. We are assured that all is going on in a perfect manner; we were given the same assurance a year ago. Every suggestion that any difficulty or danger would arise was brushed aside, and with just the same Parliamentary arts, and the consciousness of a good safe majority and so on, were brushed aside two years ago. But now it appears that great errors were being committed then. These factories, which should have been laid down then, have only just been conceived. We know now that these machine tools which we are now about to order should have been ordered then, but were overlooked. You have to fill a tank with water; it is a matter of life and death. Everything is there; you have the tank and you have the water; but you have forgotten the plug.

That is the kind of thing that arose in this matter, and my right hon. Friend now exhibits it to the whole world. As we see by the telegrams from different countries, it produced a shock, because while everyone knows that the industry of Britain is vast and flexible, if it has not these particular appliances it cannot manifest itself. A hideous hiatus of eight months must elapse before it can manifest itself, and, after that, it takes another eight months to make a gun. So that an enormous vista of anxiety lies before us, what I may call this valley of the shadow that we are going to move through for a long time—month after month of deep anxiety, when efforts will be made increasingly every month, every week, when anxiety will grow in the nation, when my right hon. Friend will be exerting himself night and day, I have no doubt. God speed him in it, but, all the same, he will be paying the penalty. It is not his fault, but, he will he paying the penalty of these previous neglects. As Macaulay said:

"There is a crassa ignorantia and a crassa negligentia on which the law animadverts in magistrates and surgeons, even when actual malice and corruption are not imputed."

That is a sentence that may indeed be employed to whoever was the official or the Department responsible for not looking ahead and seeing that this comparatively petty expenditure upon machine tools, and the machinery for making them, was not put in order at a time when you could see Europe darkening round you, when you could see every nation arming, and you were appealing to the nation for a mandate to re-arm. These recurrences from the past make one justified in continuing to press and to exert a vigilant scrutiny upon the Government, not to hamper or embarrass the right hon. Gentleman, who is as guiltless as a lamb born only nine weeks ago in the Spring, and upon a system and a habit of mind which have already brought the State into-grave danger, which system and habit of mind are largely prevalent and regnant to-day, and may well, if not arrested and galvanised into action, in time bring us to a catastrophe fatal to our race and fame.

I do not propose to take part in the domestic squabble that we have witnessed except to say that the Government might well have appointed the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) to the position of Minister of Co-ordination, because they would have saved themselves a good deal of trouble. Whether he would have made any better job of it than the present Minister is very doubtful. I wish to raise the position of Abyssinia, in view of the forthcoming meeting of the Council. It. is true to say that the position to-day is causing a great deal of anxiety in the minds of many people. The Emperor is a fugitive from his country. More than a third of the territory of Abyssinia is in the hands of the Italians. The resistance of the Abyssinian armies has been broken by the use of poison gas and aeroplanes. At the same time there is still an independent government recognised by this Government and 50 other Governments. It is still true that a large part of Abyssinia is under the control of representatives of the Emperor, and that Italy cannot be said to be in complete control of the whole country. It may be argued that Mussolini has decreed the annexation of the country and, having regard to-his de facto possession of the capital, is it not wise to recognise that position? But I hope the Government are not contemplating recognising that purported annexation. It would be a gross betrayal of the Covenant of the League of Nations and everything that the Covenant implies.

That being so, what is the duty of the League in these circumstances? I suggest that, however much we may realise the deplorable situation that exists to-day, it in no sense justifies the States members of the League not facing up to their obligations under the Covenant. The duty of the League is to resist Italy's aggression against Abyssinia, and the collapse of the Abyssinian armies has merely transferred the issues from the military to the economic field. No one can suggest that the economic resistance of Italy can indefinitely withstand the economic pressure which can be exercised by 50 other countries. Lord Stanhope, a member of the Government, said the other day, that the existing sanctions are producing a tremendous effect, and that, if continued for another two or three months, supplies of raw materials would virtually cease and cause widespread unemployment. I hope that the Government, when they go to Geneva in two weeks' time, will not only support the continuance of sanctions as at present, but will support any proposal for the intensification of sanctions. The Noble Lord the Under-Secretary has claimed great credit on the grounds that the Government took the lead in October of last year. I confess that I have never been able to understand why he should seek to take such credit upon the shoulders of the Government. All they seem to have done was to place on the Agenda that was to be considered at the meeting of the Co-ordinating Committee in October, the suggested sanctions which have since been employed. All the lead that they gave was to put certain items on the Agenda, and there is no evidence that, unless the British Government had taken a firm stand at that time, the position would have been any different.

What is the position? We have constantly had the famous Resolutions of 1921 referred to in this House. The Government have sought to justify their own policy when delay has taken place by reference to this Resolution. May I remind the Under-Secretary of one of the Resolutions, which provides that when economic pressure is prolonged measures of increased stringency should be applied. Why not apply that Resolution in these circumstances? Why not, as has been suggested on other occasions, withdraw the ambassadors? Merely to withdraw the ambassadors is not an act of war but it would have the moral effect of showing the Italian nation that in the view of all the other State members of the League, the conduct of their Government and of their country during the last 18 months meets with the condemnation of those countries. After the European war, this country refused to accept an ambassador from Russia because hon. Members who support the Conservative attitude in this country took the view that the events of the Russian revolution were such as to justify this country in refusing to accept any representative of the Soviet Republic. Is there any hon. Member prepared to rise in his place in this House and say that in the conduct of the Italian Government in murdering and butchering Abyssinians with the aid of poison gas and the machines of modern warfare, of which their opponents had not the advantage of any supply, there is any distinction morally between the two cases? However, I suggest again that they should consider that proposal. Why not have a shipping embargo and refuse to allow any ships belonging to countries who are members of the League of Nations to take any goods into Italy or to take any goods from Italy. That, I believe, would have a very drastic effect upon the economic position of the Italian Government and nation, and would very quickly bring them to their senses.

I hope that the Government will consider whether it is not possible to expel Italy from the League. It is specifically provided in the Covenant that a nation which is an aggressor nation, such as Italy, shall be liable to expulsion, and I hope that the noble Lord will advocate the expulsion of Italy from the League, or, at any rate, from the Council of the League. What is the use of Italy being allowed to sit at the Council table to adjudicate upon the activities of other countries in similar circumstances? I hope that the Government will not be intimidated by any suggestions that continued or increased sanctions will involve this country or other countries in war. That is the position whenever you apply sanctions. If you are going to refuse to apply sanctions so as to make them effective, because you are afraid of war, and if you will only incur the danger of war because sanctions are effective, then what is the use of taking up the time of the League of Nations or the time of any one else in discussing proposals for bringing pressure to bear upon an aggressor nation?

I hope that when the Government go to Geneva in two weeks' time they will realise that the position is different from what it was a, short time ago. A new Government is coming into office in France. I very much doubt whether that Government will allow itself to be bound by the terms of the Agreement of January last year between M. Laval and Signor Mussolini. I was informed from fairly reliable French sources the other day that that Agreement provided that Italy should have a free hand in Abyssinia and that the French were not interested in Abyssinia, provided that France could rely upon the support of Italy in the event of trouble on its other frontiers. I hope the Government will realise that the new French Governmnt will give them support, not only in the maintenance of sanctions but even with a view to in tensifying sanctions.

I hope that the Noble Lord will realise the issue that is before us at the present time. Some one has to give way. Either Italy is going to overcome the economic pressure brought against her by 50 other nations, or Italy will have to give way. If the former that means that this country and other countries may have to bend the knee to the bully and aggressor, and that is something which I should have thought that no Conservative Government would face with any sense of dignity. It is suggested from Government circles that it is time to revise the Covenant. There may be something said for taking stock. It may be that there is some thing to be said for bringing the League of Nations up against the full implications of the Covenant, but I suggest to the Under-Secretary that the trouble to-day is not due to the Covenant itself.

The failure to prevent Italian aggression is not due to anything in the Covenant. It is not the fulfilment of the Articles of the Covenant which has caused the trouble, it is the non-fulfilment of them. Had the full implications of the Covenant been acted up to in the early days at Geneva and our Government and other Governments had taken their courage in both hands, we might not have been in the position that we are in to-day. I hope that the Under-Secretary will also realise what this means to the small nations. I believe that he will get all the support he wants if he goes to the Council meeting on the 16th and takes a firm stand and tells the Council that this country is prepared, in co-operation with the other countries, to take all the risks that may follow a determination to prove to Italy that aggression does not pay. The small nations are saying to themselves at the present time: "We do not know what will happen to us if Italy gets away with the swag on this occasion." It may be all right for this country, which has powerful armaments and is in a position to protect itself, but there are nearly 50 small nations who have been associated with the League of Nations because they believed that they would receive the pro tection of the Covenant, backed by the resources of nations, great and small, de termined to uphold the principles of the League.

What is going to be the value of the Covenant, so far as security is concerned, if Italy is allowed to annex practically the whole of the territory of another member State. What is to prevent another powerful member of the League, or another powerful country, doing the same thing to other small nations? Vital issues are at stake, and I hope the Government will realise that this is the time to take strong action, whatever the consequences may be, or to say to public opinion throughout the world that if we are to have a League of Nations in its present form they must take all the risks, and that if they are not prepared to do that then we shall have to face the question of revision. That position has not yet arisen. I believe the countries of the world, if given a strong lead by this country, will respond and co-operate with the French and Russian Governments and ourselves, three powerful nations which, having regard to their wealth and possessions, must have greater responsibilities than the smaller nations. If they are given such a lead then I believe the other nations will follow.

I am not going to say anything about the humiliating events of the last few months, but I shall deal with the possibilities of the situation as it is at present. The first thing to keep clearly in mind is that the League has not failed. The League system has not been tried. It has been tried only in a half-hearted way. It has always been contemplated that there would be at the back of the League economic and military sanctions, and before you can say that the League has failed you require to try it out to the full. I hope that is the policy of the Government. A great deal has been said about the necessity for re-forming the League. That is not the real question. All that is required is to use the League to the full, to develop and build up on the existing foundations. There is quite sufficient in the League to give security and peace throughout the world. I am sure that there is no Minister more anxious to do this than the present. Foreign Secretary. He occupies a great position in this country, but I must say that the people are getting a little puzzled. They are wondering how he is going to come out. He was given an exceedingly difficult job; the pitch was queered before he took on the work. His admirers are expecting and believing that he will act courageously and boldly for the principle for which he stands.

The most interesting event of the next few weeks is going to be the visit of the Emperor of Abyssinia. The Foreign Office say that he is coming here incognito. I daresay that may be the best arrangement, but it can only be in a purely technical sense. While he is here he will be the most interesting man in the country. The people in their thousands will be most anxious to see this fugitive, this most pathetic and most interesting figure; a man who placed all his hopes on the League of Nations and this country, and who has been completely let down. There is an over whelming feeling throughout the country, and I am sure the people here will be glad to take advantage of any opportunity which may present itself to show to him, and through him to the Government, how anxious they are that even now steps should be taken to remedy the great wrong that has been done.

It should be made quite clear again that none of us wants sanctions kept on for purposes of revenge. They were put on for two purposes, to stop the war and to prevent an aggressor gaining anything from the use of force. They are now being kept on for the latter purpose, and they should be kept on and intensified until the aggressor is prepared to accept a League settlement. I hope, therefore, that the Government representative will go out to Geneva on 16th June and give a clear and courageous lead to the world and not wait for anybody else to do so. Nobody can or will take our place as the leaders of the world. Let us show the other nations that we are prepared not only to propose some thing but to see it through to the very end in all circumstances. You cannot expect the small States to go in for minor sanctions which only irritate Italy and which they find are not carried through to the end.

I hope that amongst other proposals to be considered will be those which have already been suggested by my hon. Friend—the withdrawal of ambassadors, the prevention of Italian shipping coming into League ports, or League shipping going into Italian ports, the severing of connections between Italy and Africa, and any others which are practicable. The Government are far more competent to know what is practicable and what steps are possible to bring Italy to realise that the world will not tolerate a peace which is not in accord with the Covenant of the League of Nations. Two things might follow. The first and the most likely is that Italy, when faced with a body of League States determined to act to the end, would submit. It is possible that things having gone so far she might once more become the aggressor. One must face every possibility, and she might not be the only State to take a part in becoming an aggressor.

That is the possibility which must be faced. It could be very quickly over come. Action will have to be taken by the League in a police sense. What is the alternative to a risk of that kind It is to wait a few years until the dictators are ready in overwhelming might in different parts of the world to strike out right and left and involve us and every other country in Europe in a world war, resulting in the vast slaughter of millions of human beings, as happened 20 years ago. That is the alternative. I hope very strongly that the Government are going to stand out resolutely for the only foreign policy that this country will ever support as a national policy, and that is collective security through the League. If they will do that, they can even now secure the peace of the world and save the lives of millions of human beings.

I am certain that the House is most grateful to the hon. Member for Kingswinford (Mr. A. Henderson) for introducing this subject. The time has come when we should take careful stock of this situation and form a clear picture of some of the results of the conquest of Abyssinia to Italy, and some of the difficulties which face her administrators there and likewise some of the reserve power possessed by the League. We frankly deceive ourselves if we believe that the war will continue for long after the cessation of the rains. Many people in this country believed that the South African war would repeat itself in Abyssinia. Hon. Members will remember that the Boer armies, although enjoying several victories, were defeated after one year, but maintained a damaging guerilla warfare for two years. The Abyssinians have shown themselves little expert at guerilla warfare. They held up the Italians for a certain period in the Tembien Massif. Again and again they attacked the powerful frontal positions and engaged in their traditional method of hand-to-hand fighting, only to suffer immense losses under the machine gun and artillery fire of Italy. [HON. MEMBERS: "And poison gas !"] Yes, and poison gas.

The first difficulty which will face Italy in Abyssinia is the lack of communications. Except for the so-called motor road from Dessie to Addis Ababa, nothing but goat and mule tracks exist. We understand from the latest sources of information that Italy is embarking on a big scheme of road development. As long as she continues on that line and does not build railways, which demand steel, I understand she will experience no difficulties from sanctions. The Jibuti Railway is already present, but I more than believe that France will not be willing to see her great port on the Red Sea merely survive as an entrepôt for Italian goods in Abyssinia. Furthermore, Abyssinia now falls within the Italian currency area and all those goods which are required for the development of housing, such as bricks and mortar, timber and textile materials can readily be imported from Italy, and Italy will thus not suffer from the imposition of sanctions.

The League, on the other hand, possesses certain advantages. The Italian gold reserve is rapidly draining away. The latest figures given in the League of Nations returns show that Italy has suffered a diminution in trade of more than 50 per cent. during the last year. Finally, we have the guarantee given by certain Mediterranean Powers to Great at Britain whereby those Powers placed their harbours at the disposal of His Majesty's Navy and undertook to come to our aid in the event of an Italian aggression. These are formidable supports for the collective system. Signor Mussolini is a realist. I believe that he will recognise that these supports are formidable and will be willing to come to an agreement with the League of Nations, both honour able to the League and honourable to himself. I think we deceive ourselves if we believe for one moment that Italy will evacuate Abyssinia. Nothing short of military force will drive her great army of a quarter of a million from Abyssinian territory, and what Power in Europe is willing to undertake that military expedition '1 In addition, we might be able to obtain some guarantee from Mussolini not to raise a great black army in Abyssinia. Such an army lying near our air communications between Cairo and the Cape would menace extremely our security. The interview which Mussolini gave to a representative of the "Daily Telegraph" may confirm the view that he would be willing to subscribe to such an agreement.

But it seems to me that the most important point is that Italy should not treat Abyssinia merely as a vassal State to be developed for the sole benefit of the conqueror. The principle of trusteeship animates His Majesty's Government in their Colonial policy, and if Italy would agree in any future economic development to give a fair and just share to Abyssinia, I believe such an agreement might do something to restore the prestige of the League. If Italy would undertake not to confiscate territory but to pay compensation, if she would undertake, in the event of any mineral resources being developed, to give a fair share to the inhabitants, such would fill the bill. Those who have studied Italian policy in Sierra Leone and Libya state that the Italians on the whole have been good colonizers, have respected native rights and have allowed the natives to continue undisturbed in their possession of foods. It is a policy such as this, which would be co-operation and not exploitation, that I believe would do something to satisfy the principles of the League. The League could then at least say to itself that although it had been unable to prevent the conquest of a proud and historic people, it would be able in the near future to do something for their material benefit.

I am sorry that I have only a very few minutes in which to reply to the debate on this very important subject. I hope hon. Members will realise that it was inevitable in the nature of things that there should be a very short time avail able on this occasion and in addition I was anxious that as many Members as possible should have an opportunity of expressing their views this afternoon. The hon. Member for Kingswinford (Mr. A. Henderson) with whom I have had many exchanges of view on this subject (luring the last few weeks reverted in the course of his remarks to the past history of this dispute and made certain critical references to the action of the Government. In view of the shortness of the time available he will forgive me if I do not reply to those criticisms, especially as they have all been debated again and again in this House, and if nothing that he could say would change the views of the people who do not agree with him nothing that I can say would have any effect on the views of those who do not agree with the Government. In fact, all Members of this House and indeed, every body in the country have already made up their minds on the past history of this dispute.

Nor will the hon. Member, I hope, resent it if I ask him not to expect me to give any very definite indication of what the Government propose to do at Geneva on 16th June. If there were to be a Government declaration on the subject, it would not be made by the Under-Secretary on the motion for the Adjournment for the Whitsuntide Recess and on a subject raised by two private Members. It would be made, properly, in a full-dress debate on foreign affairs with all the panoply associated with such an occasion. I conclude that the object of hon. Members in raising this subject was not really to get a declaration from the Government, but to expound their own views. I must say that sometimes the hon. Member for East Wolverhampton (Mr. Mander) and the hon. Member for Kingswinford are a little harassing to the Department with which I have the honour to be connected, but there is one thing that none of us doubt and that is their real and deep devotion to the principles of the League and their real anxiety and unhappiness with regard to the events which have taken place in Abyssinia. We all know that they regard this question as one of immense importance and the maintenance of the principles of the League as essential to the peace and prosperity of the world, and I take it from what they have said that their wish to-day was to show that those opinions which they hold so strongly are held to day in the House of Commons, in order to keep alive the view in which they believe. They have expressed certain doubts or anxieties as to the attitude of the Government at Geneva. As I have said I cannot say exactly what is going to happen there, but I would ask them to believe that the Government believe just as strongly as they do in the necessity for maintaining the League in the world to-day.

We are conscious, as everybody who looks at the present situation with a clear mind is conscious, of the limitations of the League, arising very largely from the fact that it does not comprise all the nations of the world. We must recognise, too, those weaknesses which arise from the fact that it is a human institution, but if we recognise those weak nesses and limitations yet the fact re mains that it is essential that the League should be maintained, if only because there is in the world to-day no com parable alternative for the maintenance of peace. I suggest that our job, the job of the Government and the Opposition alike, is to face the weaknesses of the League and see if we cannot find a cure.

The hon. Member for Kingswinford said he did not think that revision of the Covenant was necessary. He said he under stood there was a, view in Government circles that the Covenant ought to be revised, but that he did not agree with that view. I do not think it is the Government's view that the Covenant ought to be revised, but that due consideration ought to be given to the question of whether it needs revision. They have an open mind on this question, as I think we all ought to have, but to say that in no circumstances ought the existing Covenant to have any re-interpretation would be a very rash thing to do. That question of making the League a practical instrument for the maintenance of peace and for the settlement of international disputes will, in the stocktaking which has already been adumbrated and must, in my opinion, take place in the very near future as a result of the un happy events of this year, I can assure hon. Members, be uppermost in the minds of the Government, and in this object they will hope and expect to receive the whole-hearted co-operation of all sections of opinion in this House and in this country to whom the cause of peaceful progress is dear.

I fully recognise that it is impossible to elicit from the Government any clear declaration of the policy we shall pursue on the 16th June next; but my purpose is merely to say that if the Government choose on that date to pursue a bold line of leadership at Geneva, they will evoke from the rest of this country a support no less united than that which was aroused by the great speech of the right hon. Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare) at Geneva on the 11th September last. I ask the Government for clearness of policy, not only with regard to Ethiopia, but with regard to Central Europe as well. Last Wednesday I asked a question about the attitude of His Majesty's Government towards the in dependence of Austria and Czechoslovakia. The answer was obscure in the extreme. That question is intimately interlocked with the Italian question, and if to-day we condone Italy's crime in Ethiopia, the situation in Europe when inter national morality has finally ceased to exist, will be several times worse than it is to-day. The result of such condonation would be to exalt crime and flatter Fascism. I ask for us to be realists about opinion in England. I believe that that opinion would support the firmest and boldest possible line against Italian aggression, but, on the other hand, I am painfully aware that that opinion, partly, I am afraid, owing to sections of the Press, is not fully aware of the greater danger which exists in Central Europe. How can opinion in this country be expected to discriminate in favour of Italy, after her most guilty aggression, and at the same time against Germany?

I would like to answer my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham (Mr. Hamilton Kerr). I wonder what is his evidence that any guarantee which Mussolini may give about not arming the coloured races in Africa will really be adhered to, after his aggression against Ethiopia, which is a classic instance of the tearing up of a whole gallery and a whole series of treaties. We should not have been so reluctant to confess that in North-East Africa we have great Imperial interests. Why not? Does not the League of Nations exist to protect our interests no less than the interests of other nations? To put it at the very lowest, it is the worst patriotism to ignore the danger to Egypt and to our communications with the East.

A Tory after all!

That is the first time that it has ever been alleged against me that I am not a member of the Conservative party. [Interruption.] I have one more point to make before the clock strikes, if the hon. member will refrain from intervening in the middle of my speech with one of his own. I would like to say this about the "reform" of the League. For what it is worth, my support would not be forthcoming to any "reform" of the League of Nations which, by excising from the Covenant Articles 10 and 16 and so absolutely depriving the League of coercive power, would reduce that great international authority to the level of an international Pleasant Sunday Afternoon.