House Of Commons
Wednesday, 22nd November,1939.
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
New Writ
For the County of Lancaster (Stret-ford Division), in the room of Anthony Crommelin Crossley, esquire, deceased. —[ Mr. Grimston.]
| 1. | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. | 6. |
| Date when Closure moved, and by whom. | Question before House or Committee when moved. | Whether in House or Committee. | Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by Speaker or Chairman. | Assent withheld because, in the opinion of the Chair, a decision would shortly be arrived at without that Motion. | Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against. |
and(2) in the standing committees under the following heads:
| 1 | 2. | 3. | 4. | 5. |
| Date when Closure moved, and by whom. | Question before Committee when moved. | Whether assent given to Motion or withheld by Chairman. | Assent withheld because, in the opinion of the Chair, a decision would shortly be arrived at without that Motion. | Result of Motion and, if a Division, Numbers for and against." |
—[ The Deputy-Chairman.]
Private Bills And Private Business
Return ordered,
"of the number of Private Bills, Hybrid Bills, and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders, introduced into the House of Commons and brought from the House of Lords, and of Acts passed in Session 1938–39:
Of all the Private Bills, Hybrid Bills, and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders which in Session 1938–39 have been reported on by Committees on Opposed Private Bills or by Committees nominated partly by the House and partly by the Committee of Selection, together with the names of the selected Members who served on each Committee; the first and also the last day of the sitting of each Committee; the number of days on which each Committee sat; the number of days on which each selected Member has served; the number of days occupied by each Bill in Committee; the Bills the Preambles of
Adjournment Motions Under Standing Order No 8
Return ordered,
"of Motions for Adjournment under Standing Order No. 8, showing the date of such Motion, the name of the Member proposing, the definite matter of urgent public importance, and the result of any Division taken thereon, during Session 1938–29."—[The Deputy-Chairman.]
Closure Of Debate (Standing Order No 26)
Return ordered,
"respecting application of Standing Order No. 26 (Closure of Debate) during Session 1938–39 (1) in the House and in Committee of the whole House, under the following heads:—
which were reported to have been proved; the Bills the Preambles of which were reported to have been not proved; and, in the case of Bills for confirming Provisional Orders, whether the Provisional Orders ought or ought not to be confirmed:
Of all Private Bills and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders which, in Session 1938–39, have been referred by the Committee of Selection to the Committee on Unopposed Bills, together with the names of the Members who served on the Committee; the number of days on which the Committee sat; and the number of days on which each Member was summoned and on which each Member attended:
And, of the number of Private Bills, Hybrid Bills, and Bills for confirming Provisional Orders, withdrawn or not proceeded with by the parties, those Bills being specified which have been referred to Committees and dropped during the sittings of the Committee."—[The Deputy-Chairman.]
Public Bills
Return ordered,
"of the number of Public Bills, distinguishing Government from other Bills, introduced into this House, or brought from the House of Lords, during Session 1938–39; showing the number which received the Royal Assent; the number which were passed by this House, but not by the House of Lords; the number passed by the House of Lords, but not by this House; and distinguishing the stages at which such Bills as did not receive the Royal Assent were dropped or postponed and rejected in either House; of Parliament."—[The Deputy-Chairman.]
Public Petitions
Return ordered,
"of the number of Public Petitions presented and printed in Session 1938–39 with the total number of signatures in that Session."—[The Deputy-Chairman."]
Select Committees
Return ordered,
"of the number of Select Committees appointed in Session 1938–39, the Chairmen's Panel, and the Court of Referees; the subjects of inquiry; the names of the Members appointed to serve on each, and of the Chairman of each; the number of days each Committee met, and the number of days each Member attended; the total expense of the attendance on witnesses at each Select Committee, and the name of the Member who moved for such Select Committee; also the total number of Members who served on Select Committees."—[The Deputy-Chairman.]
Sittings Of The House And Business Of Supply
Return ordered,
"of (1) the days on which the House sat in Session 1938–39, stating for each day the date of the month and day of the week, the hour of the meeting, and the hour of adjournment; and the total number of hours occupied in the Sittings of the House, and the average time; and showing the number of hours on which the House sat each day, and the number of hours after 11 p.m.; and the number of entries in each day's Votes and Proceedings; and (2) the days on which Business of Supply was considered."—[The Deputy-Chairman.]
Standing Committees
Return ordered,
"of Session 1938–39 of (1) the total number and the names of all Members (including and distinguishing Chairmen) who have been appointed to serve on one or more of the five Standing Committees appointed under Standing Order No. 47, showing, with regard to each of such Members, the number of sittings to which he was summoned and at which he was present; (2) the number of Bills considered by all and by each of the Standing Committees, the number of days on which each Committee sat, and the names of all Bills considered by a Standing Committee, distinguishing where a Bill was a Government Bill or was brought from the House of Lords, and showing, in the case of each Bill, the particular Standing Committee by whom it was considered, the number of days on which it was considered by the Committee, and the number of Members present on each of those days."—[The-Deputy-Chairman.]
Oral Answers To Questions
China And Japan
1.
asked the Prime Minister whether he is able to make a statement as to the present relations between the Shanghai Municipal Council and the Japanese authorities in the occupied areas in and around the International Settlement?
The situation in the International Settlement itself remains unchanged. The Hongkew area has not yet been returned to the control of the Shanghai Municipal Council. The situation in the western area beyond the Settlement boundary has given rise to some anxiety, owing to a difference of opinion between the Chinese Special Municipal Government of Shanghai, supported by the local Japanese authorities, and the Municipal Council about the policing of the extra-settlement roads. Negotiations are now in progress between the Municipal Council and the Chinese municipality with a view to arriving at some modus vivendi.
2.
asked the Prime Minister the present conditions in which British vessels are permitted by the Japanese to moor in and unload their cargoes at Chinese coastal ports, with particular reference to Tientsin, Tsingtao, and Chefoo; and whether there has been any alleviation of the delays and hindrances of which complaint has been made?
In North China, the wharfage facilities made available to third Power shipping at Tsingtao continue to be inadequate. At Chefoo pressure has been brought to bear on Chinese merchants to ship by other than British vessels, but the situation according to reliable unofficial reports is now stated to be somewhat easier. At Tientsin British shipping has been subjected to certain delays owing to examination imposed by the Japanese military authorities as part of the blockade of the concessions. In South China certain ports such as Foochow and Wenchow have been blocked by mines laid by the Japanese, whilst at others, including Canton and Swatow, which are in Japanese occupation, temporary arrangements have been made for periodical visits by British ships.
Is not this position rather unsatisfactory?
I think that that accurately describes it.
Hapsburg Monarchy
3.
asked the Prime Minister what communications have passed between the British and French Governments concerning the restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy?
The question of the restoration of the Hapsburg monarchy has not been discussed with the French Government.
| BRITISH COUNCIL ADVISORY COMMITTEES. | |||
| Name. | Date of foundation. | Last meeting. | |
| Students Committee | 10th July, 1935 | … | 14th November, 1939. |
| Music Committee | 24th July, 1935 | … | 27th June, 1939. |
| Ibero-American Committee | 10th October, 1935 | … | 2nd May, 1939. |
| Fine Arts Committee | 7th November, 1935 | … | 26th October, 1939. |
| Near East Committee | 20th November, 193.5 | … | 9th January, 1939. |
| Lectures Committee | 8th January, 1936 | … | 10th August, 1939. |
| Books and Periodicals Committee | 20th January, 1936 | … | 4th May, 1939. |
| Joint Films Committee | 8th April, 1936 | … | 24th October, 1939. |
| Student Employment Sub-Committee (suspended during hostilities). | 14th December, 1938 | … | 27th July, 1939. |
| Drama Committee | 24th October, 1939 | … | 8th November, 1939. |
| Resident Foreigners' Hospitality Committee | 18th October, 1939 | … | 15th November, 1939. |
Anglo-Italian Agreement
5.
asked the Prime Minister what are the purpose and scope of the agreement between the Italian and United Kingdom Governments to facilitate economic collaboration; and will he make a statement?
Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the very dangerous reaction there would be to a proposal of this kind in Central Europe?
British Council
4.
asked the Prime Minister what are the committees of the British Council; when they were appointed; and the dates of the last meetings of each, respectively?
The Council has 11 advisory committees. With my hon. Friend's permission, I will circulate the details in the OFFICIAL REPORT
In view of that statement may I ask my right hon. Friend whether he will say in his reply when the British Council last met and the actual date in 1936?
The hon. Member's previous contention in this regard is absolutely correct.
Is not the British Council Lord Lloyd acting on his own?
No, Sir, Lord Lloyd, like the rest of us, has a great many helpers and advisers.
Following are the details:
The agreement to which the hon. Member refers provides for the setting up of a Joint Standing Anglo-Italian Committee to
"consider what steps may best be taken to regulate commercial exchanges and communications by rail, sea and air between the two countries, and, in general, to lead to a
The hon. Member will appreciate that, particularly at the present time, commercial and economic relations between this country and Italy give rise to many problems that can more easily be settled in a committee than through the diplomatic channel. It was to meet this need that we agreed with the Italian Government to establish a Joint Committee in which such questions could be regularly discussed and which would be empowered to recommend to the two. Governments appropriate measures in each case. It is our hope that the work of this committee may lead to an increase in Anglo-Italian trade to the benefit of both countries.closer collaboration between the two countries in the economic sphere."
Where will this committee function, in London or in Rome?
I should like notice of that question.
Does this agreement provide for the use of Italian tonnage?
It is to deal with trade between the two countries.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to "sea." What is meant by that?
If the hon. Member will put a question down I will give him an answer.
Sir Nevile Henderson
6.
asked the Prime Minister whether Sir Nevile Henderson is now employed at the Foreign Office, or what other post does he hold?
It has not yet been possible to offer Sir Nevile Henderson a suitable permanent post, but my Noble Friend hopes to be able to call upon his services when opportunity offers.
Will the right hon. Gentleman call the attention of Sir Nevile Henderson to the undesirability of civil servants making speeches on controversial subjects, as he did at the Press Club the other day?
No, Sir; on the last occasion when Sir Nevile Henderson spoke he spoke with the full approval of my Noble Friend.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he said on that occasion that Germany for all Germans was a noble ideal. Is that the policy of the Government?
The hon. Member must be aware that the contributions which Sir Nevile Henderson has made in recent months have been of great value. He must be allowed a certain liberty of speech.
Poland
7.
asked the Prime Minister whether he has any information concerning the treatment of Polish nationals in the occupied section of Poland by members of the German Army, and S.S. and S.A. formations?
I am not in a position to add anything to my reply to the hon. Member for Derby (Mr. Noel-Baker) on 8th November.
Royal Institute Of International Affairs
8.
asked the PrimeMinister whether, and in what form, the results of the digest of the foreign Press to be undertaken by the Royal Institute of International Affairs will be made available to Members of this House; and whether this digest is now covering the whole of the ground formerly covered by the Military Intelligence Directorate of the War Office, or if technical, medical and other supplements are now being adequately done in other ways?
The points raised by the hon. Member are receiving attention, in the light of certain considerations which would be raised by a decision to make the work of the Royal Institute of International Affairs available as suggested.
When does the right hon. Gentleman anticipate that these digests will be made available to Members of the House?
I said that the question whether they should be made available is receiving consideration, but I am anxious to help the hon. Member if I can.
Is the work being paid for out of Government funds, or is the Royal Institute paying for it?
The Royal Institute is making a contribution of its own, and so is the University of Oxford. The remainder is being made up out of national funds.
Royal Air Force
Press Duties (Journalists)
9.
asked the Secretary of State for Air how many journalists have been appointed to the Royal Air Force for Press duties; how many of them are of military age; how many of them have had previous service in His Majesty's Forces; with what ranks and salaries they have been started; how these compare with other entrants from civil life accepted for commissioned service for combatant duties; and whether any promise of further promotion has been given to them?
15.
asked the Secretary of State for Air the numbers and ages, respectively, of those journalists who have been commissioned in the Royal Air Force for Press duties; whether they are part of the Press Department of the Air Ministry; what reasons existed for their appointment to the Royal Air Force rather than to civilian employment in the Department; and what relation exists between them and the Ministry of Information?
Thirty-one journalists, of ages ranging between 28 and 58, have been appointed to the Administrative and Special Duties Branch of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve for Press duties at Command and Group Headquarters, and of that number 13 have had previous experience in His Majesty's Forces. Twenty-two are at present attached to home stations. The remainder of the information asked for includes a number of details which I would propose, with my hon. Friend's permission, to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Do these gentlemen wear uniform?
Yes, Sir.
Is not that rather extraordinary?
What relation exists between these journalists and the Ministry of Information?
None.
Does the right hon. Gentleman ever tell them anything?
Following is the information:
From the nature of their duties it was considered desirable that they should have the status of officers and be subject to Air Force Law. In accordance with the normal terms of entry into the Administrative and Special Duties Branch, the initial appointments have been made in the rank of pilot officer with pay at the rate of us. 10d. a day as compared with the rate of 14s. 6d. a day payable to pilot officers in the General Duties Branch. All officers are eligible for promotion to the acting rank assigned to the post which they are filling and they have mostly been so promoted. The total cost per annum of these appointments, in pay and allowances, will be approximately £20,000.
Service Press officers attached to the Home Commands act as advisers to the Commanders-in-Chief and Air Officers Commanding on all Press and publicity questions; they supply the Air Ministry with news and articles and with photographs taken by R.A.F. units; and they organise and conduct visits by Press representatives to Royal Air Force stations. Those attached to the Royal Air Force in France are responsible for the administrative arrangements for war correspondents, for the organisation of Press facilities for them, for providing them with news and information, and for certain duties in connection with the field censorship. Service Press officers are not a part of the Press Department of the Air Ministry, and they have no direct relationship with the Ministry of Information, but they are available for the provision of special articles and information as may be required.
Observer Corps
10.
asked the Secretary of State for Air whether he is aware of the dissatisfaction which exists in connection with certain changes now being made in the duties and personnel of the Observer Corps; and whether he has any statement to make?
Like all branches of the Air Defence of this country, the organisation of the Observer Corps is constantly under review, so that, in the interests of economy and efficiency, modifications may be made where shown by experience to be desirable. Certain proposals are at present under consideration and the views of area commanders, which are now being sought, will be fully considered before any change is made.
Will my right hon. Friend be good enough to bear in mind the advisability of at least two persons always being on duty?
Yes, Sir.
Materials (Purchase)
12.
asked the Secretary of State for Air whether he is aware that the continued practice of his Department to place orders for sanitary fittings requisite for camps and aerodromes with manufacturers causes great hardship among merchants and if continued will mean an increase in the number of men unemployed; and that prices of such materials are controlled so that purchases through a merchant involves no extra expenditure as merchants are specially equipped to deal with the details and supervision of such services?
I see no reason to vary the existing practice of the Air Ministry, which is to buy on the most economical terms, whether from merchants or manufacturers.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are 26,000 people engaged in this industry and that the continuation of the practice which is at present followed will lead to closing down in many cases thereby leading to more unemployment, and will he consider giving the numerous merchants in the trade an opportunity of tendering for these supplies on an equal footing with the contractors?
I shall be glad to look into anything which the hon. Member sends me.
Billeting (Payments)
13.
asked the Secretary of State for Air whether he is aware that three women employed by his Department were recently billeted at 2d. per night each on a Middleton, Lancashire, woman, aged 76, drawing out-relief; and whether he will state on what basis this sum was arrived at?
Yes, Sir; three members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force were so billeted between 29th September and 13th October, on which date they were posted to other duties. The arrangement was, I understand, agreeable to the householder, and the amount paid was in accordance with the scale laid down in regulations. The scale is common to the three Services and provides for such a payment for each individual where unfurnished accommodation only is provided, as was the case here.
Does the right hon. Gentleman contend that 2d. a night is sufficient for this purpose, and is he aware that the public assistance committee of Oldham, who were paying this old lady out-relief, unanimously passed a resolution of sheer disgust with the right hon. Gentleman?
As the hon. Member knows, this payment was in accordance with the scale of the three Services.
Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it is time that he altered the scale?
I must abide by the regulations.
Is the right hon. Gentleman content to allow this scandalous scale to continue? Does he propose to take any steps to have it changed?
In this particular case I understand the arrangement was made with the householder in question.
Winning the war on 2d. a night.
Distinguished Flying Cross
14.
asked the Secretary of State for Air whether he has now arrived at a decision as regards the award of the Distinguished Flying Cross?
As I have already stated, this matter is now being examined, and I will inform the House directly a decision has been reached.
Can the right hon. Gentleman give me any idea when I may put down another question?
I will communicate with the hon. Member.
Will the right hon. Gentleman at the same time take into consideration the principles upon which this decoration is awarded instead of the decoration of the Order of the British Empire, which was recently conferred upon a non-commissioned pilot who showed great gallantry when his machine was brought down, and the decoration was also recently conferred upon a shorthand-typist in his Department?
Leave (Free Railway Warrants)
16.
asked the Secretary of State for Air particulars of the arrangements he proposes to establish in respect of the granting of leave and free rail conveyance to Royal Air Force personnel?
Personnel in the United Kingdom will be given free railway warrants for travelling on leave twice a year, including embarkation leave.
This decision brings the Royal Air Force into line with the other services. May I ask whether the reference to free railway warrants includes free steamer warrants where, for example, the personnel is situated in the Orkney Islands?
I will make inquiries into that.
Vaccination And Inoculation
17.
asked the Secretary of State for Air whether the circular regarding the voluntary nature of vaccination and inoculation for soldiers circulated to all commands on 18th September was sent to Royal Air Force squadrons?
Certain instructions were issued to Royal Air Force Commands in June last, but a further circular is now being issued to the Commands.
Will the right hon. Gentleman also inform the troops that Government lymph is produced partly from rabbits, and is very likely, therefore, to spread encephalitis, and is exceedingly dangerous to use?
Ministry Of Information
Propaganda
18.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information what is the volume of propaganda sent abroad by his Department each week; to what countries it goes; whether it is sent at Empire Press rates; and what is the proportion of space on aeroplanes taken by the Government for these official compilations, as compared to that allotted to private newspaper correspondents?
The work of the Ministry in making the British case known throughout the world is of many different kinds, and varies so much from week to week both in form and substance that any attempt to estimate its volume is impossible. Our endeavour is to meet as fully as possible the requirements of our representatives abroad as telegraphed to us and of overseas newspaper representatives in this country. We are thus in touch with all countries except Germany. Postal despatches and telegrams are sent at the cheapest rate available in each case. Neither our own postal despatches nor those of newspaper correspondents are given specific allotments of space in aeroplanes. With the ready help of my right hon. Friend the Postmaster-General accommodation for both has been and is being steadily extended.
Staff
19.
asked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information whether he will arrange to publish a list of the headquarters staff of the Ministry, as on 15th November, 1939, other than clerical and messengers, stating the salary of each officer and a statement of his previous occupation?
A list of the staff giving the particulars asked for on 9th October was circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT of that date, showing the total of 205 persons on the headquarters staff of the Ministry, other than clerical and messenger staff. That number has since been reduced by 73, offset by 20 persons whom it has been necessary to add to the staff as the work grew and new needs arose. I will place a copy of the complete revised list as at 15th November, 1939, in the Library of the House.
Can my hon. Friend include Sir Campbell Stuart's organisation in the list of salaries?
Sir Campbell Stuart's organisation does not come under the Ministry of Information.
When did it cease to be under the Ministry of Information?
I cannot give the exact date, but about a fortnight ago.
Can the hon. Gentleman give the House an assurance that the necessary work of his Department shall not be curtailed by shortage of staff, and that it will be increased if it is thought necessary?
Yes, Sir, I am sure that the House would approve the Ministry engaging more staff if it finds it necessary to do so.
Wireless Licences (Old Age Pensioners)
20.
asked the Postmaster-General whether the Government will, as an earnest of their expressed desire to improve the lot of old age pen sioners, be prepared to announce that, as a Christmas gift from the nation, they will be given their wireless licences free of charge?
I would refer the hon. Member to my right hon. Friend's reply to a somewhat similar suggestion made on 15th November by the hon. Member for West Leyton (Mr. Sorensen).
Is the hon. and gallant Member aware that it would cost nothing to give this present to pensioners who have not already a wireless licence?
The powers of the Post Office in this matter are defined by the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1926.
This is a question of the generosity of the Government.
Post Office
Air Mail Services
21.
asked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that an urgent air mail letter, posted in Montreal on 23rd October, was not delivered in Bilston till 6th November; and will he take steps to prevent such delays?
The departure of the Pan-American Airways flying boat due to leave New York on Wednesday, 25th October, was delayed, and the mails which come by surface route from Lisbon did not reach this country till 4th and 5th November. There is no evidence of delay in this country, but if my hon. Friend will furnish me with the cover of the letter he refers to, I will gladly have inquiry made.
If I give the hon. and gallant Member a letter received yesterday which had taken 25 days to come from Holland will he also look into that matter?
Yes, Sir.
Will the hon. and gallant Member tell us where is Bilston?
Deliveries
22.
asked the Postmaster-General whether the recent deterioration in the promptitude of the delivery of letters, etc., especially in rural and semi-urban areas, will be rectified at an early date?
As my right hon. Friend explained in reply to a question asked by my hon. Friend on 13th September, some slowing down of mail services has been unavoidable because of the shortage of experienced Post Office staff, the re-arrangements of train services, and the lighting restrictions. I regret that it has been necessary to reduce the number of deliveries of letters and parcels but I see no prospect of restoring them in the near future to the peace-time standard. I can assure my hon. Friend that all practicable steps are being taken to avoid delay in the delivery of letters.
Are additional staff being taken on to replace those who have left to join the Services?
Yes, Sir, a large additional staff has been taken on.
Letters And Parcels (French Troops)
23.
asked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that correspondence and parcels posted in this country for French troops serving in France are not subject to the special rates for correspondence and parcels posted to the British Expeditionary Force; and whether, in order to emphasise Franco-British partnership, he will arrange for this concession to be extended to the relatives resident in this country of soldiers of the French army?
I am aware that the position is as stated by my hon. and gallant Friend, and, so far as concerns parcels, I would refer him to the answer which my right hon. Friend gave on 25th October to a question on the same subject by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chatham (Captain Plugge). The question of a reduction of the postage rates on letters to French troops had already been brought to my notice and is now under examination.
Would my hon. and gallant Friend bear in mind that a concession of this kind would be very much appreciated by our Allies?
I will bear that in mind, but my hon. and gallant Friend will realise that these things must be done by consultation with the Government concerned.
Mails To Neutral Countries
24.
asked the Postmaster-General whether all possible steps will be taken to reduce the delays in the mail service to neutral countries?
I fully realise the importance of reducing delay to correspondence for neutral countries, and advantage is being and will continue to be taken of all suitable opportunities for the despatch of mails.
Government Departments
Evacuation
25.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether the hutments he proposes to build are to be used to house evacuated civil servants or as offices?
The hutments, as and when it is possible to erect them, will be used for the purpose of offices.
When will the first lot of hutments be available?
It is difficult to make a guess in these matters at the present moment.
26.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether he has underconsideration any plans for communal meals for evacuated civil servants?
Billeted civil servants are provided with two meals daily in their billets. Where adequate local restaurant facilities for the remaining meals are not available, arrangements are made for luncheon clubs or canteens to be set up.
Is my right hon. Friend aware that if it is not possible to provide meals in restaurants it is impossible for private individuals to provide such meals; and, in the interest of civil servants and householders, will he not reconsider the matter?
I think the arrangements which I have indicated meet my hon. Friend's point.
New Departments (Functions)
45.
asked the Prime Minister whether he has considered, and can now announce, his decision as to the publication of a concise guide as to the precise functions, responsibilites and objects of the various new Ministries and Departments?
Yes, Sir. I will endeavour to arrange for a guide on the lines suggested to be available as soon as possible. But in view of the urgent work now falling upon Departments, it may be some time before it can be published.
Will the right hon. Gentleman indicate how these respective Departments are to be co-ordinated?
Royal Navy
Commissioned Accountant Officers
28.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that mobilised reserve-accountant officers are depending largely for instruction in their work on writer and supply officers and ratings, of whom they are in charge; and whether he is satisfied with this arrangement from the point of view of morale and efficiency, bearing in mind the lack of opportunity for promotion in the writer and supply branches?
I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave him on this subject on 4th October. As I have previously announced, direct promotion to commissioned rank is now being extended to the accountant branch.
Re-Employed Officers (Uniform Allowance)
29.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether naval officers on the retired lists, voluntary employed prior to the outbreak of war, were paid a uniform allowance; and, if so, under what conditions?
New scales of uniform allowance for officers voluntarily reemployed were laid down in May of this year; these rates are the same as those payable to officers called up on the outbreak of war.
His Majesty's Ship "Thetis" (Salvage)
31.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he can now make a statement on the salvage of the submarine His Majesty's Ship "Thetis"; the means adopted for the recovery of the remaining bodies of the crew; and whether facilities were afforded to the relatives to make the funeral arrangements, or were they carried out by the naval authorities?
After delays due to bad weather, the salvage of His Majesty's Ship "Thetis" has been success-fully completed and the vessel was taken to Liverpool on 17th November. The bodies of those of the crew which still remained in the submarine were removed by a special party of Cannock Chase miners who volunteered their services, assisted by naval ratings and personnel of the Liverpool Salvage Association. The victims, when identified, were buried, in accordance with the wishes of the relatives, either privately or by public funeral at Holyhead, at which full naval honours were paid. Now that this difficult salvage operation has been successfully carried out I should like to pay a tribute to the work of the Liverpool and Glasgow Salvage Association, who were responsible for carrying out the salvage, and also to the naval personnel and to the civilians who were associated with them in their long and arduous task.
Were the naval ratings specially trained in this work, and will the Admiralty consider having naval ratings trained for such emergencies in future?
Yes, I think they had been. Of course, the help of the Cannock Chase miners was invaluable.
Has any word of thanks been sent to the miners for their courageous assistance in this unfortunate incident, and if not, can it be conveyed to them that the people of Merseyside appreciate very greatly the services they rendered?
I am not sure whether that has been done, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
Steamship "Athenia"
27.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that, in order to damage this country, lying tales of the sinking of the "Athenia" are still being circulated by letters posted in neutral countries; and whether he will set out the actual facts in a White Paper or otherwise?
I am aware of these fabrications, but they are so obviously false that I think we can safely leave the truth to find its own acceptance.
German Mine-Laying
32.
asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what evidence is available that the German navy at the present time is taking no adequate steps to render their mines innocuous when they break adrift; and, in view of the fact that such action is not in accordance with international law, what he proposes to do in the matter?
I would refer my hon. and gallant Friend to the statement made yesterday by the Prime Minister, in which the illegality of the German methods of mine-laying were made clear.
West Indies (Commission's Report)
33.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the report of the West Indies Royal Commission has been completed; and, if so, when it will be published?
No, Sir. I cannot yet add anything more definite to the reply which I gave to a similar question by the hon. Member for Dews-bury (Mr. Riley) on 27th September.
May we be assured that it is not proposed to hold up indefinitely this report, because of difficulties connected with the war?
Certainly. There is no intention of that sort whatever.
Palestine (Jews Under Detention)
34.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many Jews in Palestine were under detention at the outbreak of war; and how many are now detained?
The General Officer Commanding in Palestine has recently ordered a review to be made of the cases of all Jews under detention, with a view to releasing as many of them as possible. At the outbreak of war there were 175 Jews under detention; that number has now been reduced to 57.
Do the 40 Jews who were sentenced quite recently for carrying arms come under that review?
No, Sir. They are under detention in another sense, and the General Officer Commanding is now considering the punishment which the military court decided was appropriate.
Were not these men complimented previously by the military heads and will the right hon. Gentleman not exercise his influence to prevent the sentences—a 10 years' sentence in one case and a life sentence in another —being confirmed by the military authorities?
I do not propose to interfere with the discretion of the General Officer Commanding, who has all these considerations in mind.
May we take it that the right hon. Gentleman will not interfere, in the direction of getting the sentences confirmed?
Certainly. I will leave it entirely to the General Officer Commanding.
Jamaica (General Election)
35.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Governor of Jamaica has consulted him on the question of the postponement of elections to the Jamaica Legislative Assembly, which are due in January, 1940; and what decision, if any, has been reached?
Yes, Sir; I have received from the Governor of Jamaica a copy of a resolution passed unanimously by the Legislative Council of Jamaica requesting that I should advise His Majesty that an Order-in-Council should be made postponing the general election for the Legislative Council due in January, 1940. I propose to submit to His Majesty in Council the draft of an Order for this purpose.
Is the postponement for the duration of the war or for a specified period?
That matter is under consideration, but for the present it is not for a specified period.
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman not to confirm a fire-year period, in view of the possible recommendations of the Royal Commission's report?
Certainly, I would not intend the postponement to be for any specified period, five years or otherwise at present.
Gold Coast (Gold Companies' Profits)
36.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will request the Governor of the Gold Coast for a return covering the last 10 years, showing the total profits declared by the gold companies of that Colony, and the amount spent on the welfare of the workers by these companies during that period?
I am asking the Governor to supply the information desired by the hon. Member.
When shall we put down another question on the subject?
I will communicate with the hon. Gentleman as soon as I have any information.
Trinidad And Tobago (War Gift)
37.
asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in view of the bad social conditions in Trinidad as revealed by the 1937 report on the industrial dispute and the Orde-Brown inquiry into the condition of labour, he will acknowledge the generosity of the war gift of £200,000 from the Trinidad Legislature, and direct that it be utilised for decent housing, preventive medicine, social services, land settlement schemes, and the abolition of poverty and squalor in the Dependency?
The contribution of 1,000,000 dollars, or somewhat over £200,000, towards war expenditure, which has been generously voted by the Legislative Council of Trinidad and Tobago, on the initiative of the unofficial members, is being made from the Colony's reserve fund of 5,000,000 dollars, and it should not affect the programme of social and economic development in Trinidad which is being financed from other funds. The gift has been gratefully accepted by His Majesty's Government, and I would take this opportunity of expressing in this House my appreciation of the spirit of loyal co-operation in war displayed by the Colony.
May I have an assurance from the right hon. Gentleman that there will not be any retrenchment in the social services for the purpose of making good the money that now goes out of that fund?
Yes, Sir.
Transport
Railways (Government Control)
39.
asked the Minister of Transport whether, in view of the difficulty in reaching agreement with the railway companies as to financial terms for the present period of State control, and the possibility of the war with Germany being protracted, he is considering the desirability of nationalising the railways in order to avoid disputes, such as were dealt with by the Colwyn Royal Commission after the last war, and immediately to ensure complete unification and simplified working of the railways under a single board that would be directly responsible to the Minister?
No, Sir. I have every hope that it will prove possible to reach agreement on the terms of compensation to the railways and the present arrangements secure, through the Railway Executive Committee, the necessary unification in operation under war conditions.
May I ask what body is considering the claims, if any, from the railway companies and who is adjudicating on the claims?
It is not a question of a body considering the claims. The matter is one for negotiation between His Majesty's Government and the companies.
In the event of their failing to reach an agreement, what steps are they proposing to take?
I do not like jumping a fence before I come to it.
Railway Station Names (Illumination)
40.
asked the Minister of Transport whether he can do something to make more distinguishable the names of stations on suburban lines during the black-out; and whether he will suggest to the London transport authority the painting of the names in luminous paint?
The Railway Executive Committee is considering what means can be taken, consistent with the lighting restrictions, to improve the illumination of station names. I am advised that luminous paint would not afford a satisfactory solution of the problem.
Would the right hon. and gallant Gentleman consider the suggestion that the Transport Board and the other railways should in the meantime employ more men on the stations to call out the names of the stations?
That is a new suggestion and I will certainly draw the attention of the Board to it.
Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that on some of the District Railways there are small gas jets which are not more than about three-candle power?
Grain Cargoes (Discharge, Plymouth)
41.
asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware that there is a shortage of feeding-stuffs in Devon and Cornwall, and neighbouring districts, owing to ships not being allowed to discharge their cargoes at Plymouth and owing to a congestion of ships and of trucks at Avonmouth; that large numbers of dockers at Plymouth are in consequence unemployed; and whether he will allow ships to discharge cargoes of grain at Plymouth?
I am informed that there is no exceptional shortage of feeding-stuffs in the areas mentioned. In one case a vessel with a part cargo of barley destined for Plymouth and owned by the Ministry of Food was diverted to Avonmouth, where the balance of the grain, also owned by that Department, was required. With this exception there has been no diversion of cargoes from Plymouth. There is no congestion of ships or trucks at Avonmouth and the present lack of employment among dockers in Plymouth cannot therefore properly be attributed to the causes suggested by my noble Friend.
Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman not aware that there is a great shortage of feeding-stuffs in many parts of the country, that such feeding-stuffs as are available are up by no less than £2 a ton in price, and that the present position of the farmer is absolutely intolerable?
That is not a question I can answer as Minister of Transport.
Facilities (Manchester And Salford)
43.
asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware of the hardship and inconvenience caused through lack of transport to a large number of citizens in Manchester and Salford, who are compelled to wait in queues in the streets for long periods; and what action he proposes to take to provide adequate transport facilities?
I am aware that there have been complaints of inconvenience caused by lack of transport in the areas to which the hon. Member refers. My officers have been in consultation with the local road transport undertakers on this subject and everything possible is being done to provide adequate facilities withhin the restrictions necessarily imposed by the rationing of fuel. If, however, the hon. Member has in mind any specific case of difficulty and will send me the necessary particulars, I will certainly have further investigation made.
Pedestrian Traffic
44.
asked the Minister of Transport whether he is aware of the confusion caused in the darkened streets by the varying directions for pedestrian traffic; and whether he will make it known whether pedestrians should keep to the right or to the left of pavements?
I am glad to take the opportunity of impressing upon the public again that they should walk on the left-hand side of the pavement. There is only one exception to this rule; in a one-way street pedestrians should not walk near the kerb in the same direction as the traffic.
Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman not aware that, in spite of the Highway Code, the public generally do walk on the right and not on the left, and does he not think it desirable that highway authorities should placard the streets, "Walk on the left"?
Notices have been tried and I am sorry to say that so far the public has not responded. If the hon. Gentleman or any other hon. Gentleman can persuade the public to walk on the left I would be very grateful indeed.
Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware of the number of apologies that one has to make to sandbags on the roads?
Is the right hon. and gallant Gentleman aware that the usual method of education in order to teach this is in the schools, whereas the best educationists are the parents?
Public Appointments
46.
asked the Prime Minister whether he will give an opportunity for the discussion of the Motion standing in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for Carlisle asking for the appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into the system of appointments to national defence posts, civil and military; and whether he will, in any event, have the terms of reference of the Select Committee on National Expenditure drafted widely enough to allow them to review the question of appointments?
[ That a Select Committee of this House be set up to examine the system of appointments to national defence posts, civilian and military; and to report whether any improvement consistent with the policy decided by Parliament can be effected.]
I do not think it is necessary to find time for the discussion of this Motion. It is contemplated that the numbers and scales of pay of appointments in the Defence Forces and in Government Departments should be within the purview of the proposed Select Committee on National Expenditure. The principles regulating new appointments would, no doubt, also be within their purview so far as questions of possible economies are raised thereby.
Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that already there is wide public feeling that a number of appointments which were hastily made at the beginning of the war should now be reviewed from the point of view of economy and of efficiency?
As I have said, it will be within the purview of the Select Committee, and no doubt they will give their attention to it.
Ministry Of Supply
Pulp (Paper Controller's Purchase)
48 and 49.
asked the Minister of Supply (1) whether he is aware that the Paper Controller is purchasing stocks of pulp now on the water at £15 per ton and selling it to paper mills at £10 16s. per ton; and how he justifies this loss;
(2) whether he is aware that an order has been issued by the Paper Controller taking over existing stocks of raw material from paper mills at pre-war prices and forcing the same mills to re-purchase the same material at considerably higher prices; and whether he will explain the reasons for this arrangement?
Owing to the rise in the cost of imported woodpulp, it has been necessary to increase substantially the maximum prices for paper. Had the new prices been based on the cost of current pulp imports, they would have been higher still. They have been kept down by taking over existing stocks of pulp and pooling them with further imports up till the end of the year. The combined supplies are available at a price based on the average cost, which is intermediate between the cost of pre-war stocks and the cost of present imports. It is not anticipated that there will be either a loss or a profit to the Control on the operation as a whole.
Wool
50.
asked the Minister of Supply whether prices of British wools have now been fixed; whether arrangements with brokers in Scotland have been agreed to by the brokers' representatives; and whether any business in British-grown wools has now taken place?
British wool, other than that in farmers' hands, was taken over on 30th October, and from this date the Control have been selling such wool for home trade at issue prices which have been notified to the industry. The question of the price at which wool still in farmers' hands will be taken over is still under consideration. I understand that representatives of the Scottish brokers have expressed general agreement with the arrangements for dealing with Scottish wool proposed by the Control, and that it is expected that agreement will also shortly be reached on the outstanding question of the brokers' remuneration.
May I ask whether there is any real reason why farmers should have been prevented by the operation of the Ministry of Supply from selling their wool for nearly three months? There has never been any explanation whatever why these prices should not have been fixed long ago and why the farmers who need the money should not be enabled to sell their wool.
I think there is a reason in connection with the Wool Control for wanting to control large stocks. I am sorry there has been a delay in fixing prices; I was not aware that hardship had been caused thereby.
51.
asked the Minister of Supply whether he is aware of the continued dissatisfaction of textile traders with the methods of wool control, par ticularly in regard to unfair appraisements, undue preference extended to firms represented on the control executive, opportunities given to learn competitors' business affairs and the loss of their businesses without redress by certain traders; and what he proposes to do in the matter?
It is necessary in a control of this kind that the administration should be in the hands of experts in the trade. So far as possible the existing channels of trade are being utilised, but some modification is inevitable in the circumstances of the time, particularly, in view of the acquisition by the Government of the greater part of the wool supplies. If the hon. Member is in a position to supply me with any evidence of unfair practices, I will have it investigated.
Will the right hon. Gentleman consider coming down to Bradford to see for himself?
Yes, Sir. Other things being equal, I shall be happy to undertake that mission.
Pit Wood
52.
asked the Minister of Supply whether arrangements have now been made for importing pit wood from France and Portugal for the next 12 months; and, if not, whether he can state for what period arrangements have been completed?
Arrangements have been made in France and Portugal which it is hoped will ensure a steady flow of pit wood from those countries.
53.
asked the Minister of Supply the prices per ton for pit wood in France and Portugal?
I am informed that these prices vary from about 14s. to 16s. a ton f.o.b., with additions for small quantities of specially prepared sizes.
How does the right hon. Gentleman account for the differences of prices of timber in Spain, France and Portugal as compared with the prices in this country for home-grown timber?
I should have thought that it was very simple. In order to provide home-grown pit wood it is necessary to bring the wood in some cases from forests planted a long way away from the mines. There are only certain parts of Britain where forests can grow, and in many of those places the railway haulage to the colliery is as much as 25s. per ton. I am not aware that the price of home-grown timber is at all disproportionate to the cost of felling, cutting, transporting and delivering, and I know the collieries are only too glad to receive it.
61.
asked the Minister of Supply the approximate weekly output of pit-props now being delivered from the State forests to the mines of this country; whether any such supplies are coming from forests in the special areas; and what assurance he can give that there are ample quantities of pit-prop supplies available for the war period from the same sources?
The approximate weekly output of pit-props from the Forestry Commission's State forests in England, Wales and Scotland is 6,000 tons, of which approximately 1,000 tons are produced from the Special Areas or from the districts within 15 miles of the Special Areas. The output from the larger State forests is being increased each week and production can be maintained for a considerable period.
Does not the Minister consider that this is a very satisfactory use of a State service developed since the war, and is he taking steps to see that there is an expansion of these supplies and that plantings are well maintained?
Yes, Sir. It is a fortunate natural history fact that, if you plant a tree, it grows 5 per cent. a year, so that with wars at 20 years' intervals you will get a proper supply of full-grown trees.
War Materials (Orders Abroad)
56.
asked the Minister of Supply the approximate value of orders for aeroplanes and for war material placed in the United States of America and in the British Dominions; and what steps he is taking or proposing to take, to employ workers in Great Britain who are now unemployed, on this class of work?
I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air, and we are agreed that it would not be in the public interest to give the information sought in the first part of the question. As regards the second part, I can assure the hon. Member that every endeavour is being made to utilise suitable capacity and to develop fresh capacity in the United Kingdom, and this aspect of the situation receives full consideration before orders are placed abroad.
In view of the continued increase in the number of unemployed, many of whom are competent to make these munitions, would the right hon. Gentleman not set up some kind of committee to go into the question of providing work for men who are now unemployed, before sending so much work abroad?
I cannot accept the suggestion that there are large numbers of unemployed who can make these munitions—
Oh, yes, there are thousands.
I do not think so, but through the medium of the area committees which are being set up by the Ministry in consultation with the employers and the Trades Union Congress, we have every hope of being able to bring a number of these men into productive industry.
Can the Minister say when these committees will be functioning?
Very shortly. Communications are taking place and the country has already been divided up. It is now a matter of getting the names of representatives of employers and employes respectively.
Is it the intention to take these workers away from their home districts or of utilising services which are now being offered by firms in various parts of the country?
The latter proposal.
Factory Premises
57.
asked the Minister of Supply whether he is aware that fac- tory premises, where thousands of munition workers were employed during the Great War and which were afterwards converted to other uses, but which could be easily re-converted for the production of necessary war material, are available for such purpose; and will he take steps to have such premises used before putting up new and costly factories here and placing large contracts abroad?
Existing factory premises which are suitable for the production of war material are being used to the greatest possible extent, and this must necessarily be the policy followed in view of the importance of curtailing the erection of new buildings in war time. The hon. Member is, however, under a misapprehension in thinking that conversion is an easy process, as in most cases substantial additions of new plant and machine tools are involved. New factories are only being erected for special purposes for which existing buildings are unsuitable, and orders abroad have been restricted to cases of special justification.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are factories which were engaged in this work during the last war, in which suitable bases for machinery and overhead steel girders and things of that kind were erected and still exist? They are very costly; and a new factory, whether the building is a new one or an old one, has to be fitted up.
The hon. Member exaggerates the number of buildings erected in the last war which are available now. In so far as they are available and suitable, they are being used.
Has the right hon. Gentleman a record of these buildings?
Yes, Sir.
Staffs
55.
asked the Minister of Supply the total staff and the annual cost in salaries of each of the controls set up by his Department?
As the reply contains a set of detailed figures, I will, with the permission of my hon. Friend, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
Following is the reply:
| MINISTRY OF SUPPLY. | ||
| Staff of Raw Materials Controls. | ||
| Control. | Total Number. | Salaries and Wages Approximate Annual cost. |
| £ | ||
| Alcohol, Molasses and Solvents. | 21 | 1,000 |
| Aluminium | 57 | 19,500 |
| Fertilisers | 13 | 5,000 |
| Flax | 46 | 16,500 |
| Hemp | 35 | 14,000 |
| Jute | 30 | 5,500 |
| Leather | 47 | 12,500 |
| Paper | 58 | 22,500 |
| Silk and Rayon | 5 | 900 |
| Sulphate of Ammonia | 10 | Nil. |
| Sulphuric Acid | 8 | 2,500 |
| Timber | 522 | 172,000 |
Notes.
1. Figures have not been included for the Cotton, Iron and Steel, Non-Ferrous Metals and Wool Controls, as definitive arrangements for their staffing are still under consideration.
2. The figures for the Timber Control exclude Department II (Home-grown Timber) which is mainly staffed by Civil Servants of the Forestry Commission in receipt of their normal salaries or wages.
3. Some 40 persons included in the numbers shown are serving without remuneration.
60.
asked the Minister of Supply the total Civil Service staff of the Timber Controller, permanent or temporary; their salaries individually; and the total estimated or realised monthly expense of the Timber Controller's office?
The total staff of the Timber Control at a recent date was 778, made up of 522 in Departments 1, 3 and 4, and 256 in Department 2, which deals with home-grown timber. All are temporary staff except some 75 civil servants of the Forestry Commission, who are serving for whole or part time in Department 2. The present monthly cost of salaries and wages for the Control is approximately £20,000. I am placing in the Library of the House a list of the present personnel (except juniors) of Department 2, with their salaries, which will supplement the list regarding Departments 1, 3 and 4 already placed there in connection with the information given to the hon. Member for North Salford (Mr. Morris) on 19th October.
What do these 700 people do; are they buying or selling, do they make entries, or how are they occupied?
They are dealing with one of the essential raw commodities of the country, timber; and their purchases run into scores of millions of pounds a year.
Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that the timber controllers are dealing fairly and squarely with the importers of pre-war days?
I hope so. That is a very general question. The action of the Timber Controller, as of all other controllers, is constantly under review, and a member of the Supply Council, Sir Andrew Duncan, is chairman of all the controllers. I have every hope that all interests in timber, an essential commodity, are being properly and equitably looked after.
Contact With Industries
54.
asked the Minister of Supply what is the machinery for maintaining constant contact between the Ministry and its various controls and industries which are on war work?
As regards the control of raw materials, it would not be possible, within the compass of a Parliamentary answer, to describe in detail the arrangements for day-to-day contact between the Ministry, its control organisations and the various industries concerned. In general, however, it may be said that, apart from communications with firms and sectional organisations on matters arising from day to day, contact between a control and the industries concerned is maintained chiefly by advisory committees covering various aspects of the trade. As regards the production of munitions, contact with industry is maintained by constant consultation with the leaders of industry and heads of the main firms concerned; by the regular visits of representatives of the Ministry to all manufacturing establishments; and through inspectors and area officers. I am glad to be able to add that an advisory committee has recently been appointed by the Trades Union Congress to maintain touch with the Ministry.
Am I to understand from that answer that there really is no Ministerial machinery other than these complicated arrangements which my right hon. Friend has just described?
No, Sir. My hon. Friend would be quite wrong in understanding anything of the kind.
Export Trade (Applications For Raw Materials)
58.
asked the Minister of Supply whether he will assure the House that applications for raw materials from firms engaged in various branches of export trade are being dealt with expeditiously and sympathetically; and whether he will state the number of such applications which have been under consideration by the appropriate committee at the latest convenient date?
I can assure my hon. Friend that every effort is made, consistently with the fulfilment of Government defence orders, to provide exporters with raw materials and to deal expeditiously with their applications. Moreover, in order to assist export trade, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is consulting with various exporting industries with a view to the formulation of export programmes. Formulation of these programmes will, of course, help priority committees, working under the Ministerial Priority Committee and the various controllers of raw materials, in making the most appropriate allocation of supplies, both for defence needs and for the export trade. In reply to the second part of the question, I fear that it would not be practicable to produce a statistical appreciation of the number of applications for raw materials for export which have been dealt with so far, because the circumstances of the applications and the amount of materials in question are so varied and the numbers so considerable.
Is there some subcommittee under the priority committee which is giving special attention to the needs of the export trade?
Yes, Sir. The needs of the export trade are borne in mind by each priority committee.
Armament Workers (Release From Defence Forces)
59.
asked the Minister of Supply whether he is now satisfied that applications from firms engaged in armament production for the release of skilled workers who have been embodied in the Defence Services are being examined sympathetically, and that such men are being restored to their ordinary employment without undue delay?
The problem of reconciling the needs of industry and of the Defence Services in respect of skilled men is, as my hon. Friend is no doubt aware, a very difficult one, in which other Departments are concerned in addition to the Ministry of Supply. I can, however, assure him that applications from firms engaged in armament production for the release of skilled workers from the Defence Services are being examined sympathetically by the Ministry of Supply, and that the Ministry is making every possible effort, with the co-operation of the Service Departments, to secure that a large proportion of such men are restored to their ordinary employment without undue delay.
Could my hon. and gallant Friend indicate how applications are dealt with? Are they dealt with by commanding officers of units or, in the first instance, by the Minister of Supply?
It depends on which category they fall into: for serving Territorial soldiers who are not officers or N.C.O.'s, applications should be made by firms direct to the commanding officers of the units, but in other cases the firms should approach the contracting firms, who are responsible for putting forward cases to the appropriate Service Ministers.
Are key agriculturists who have joined up being released in the same way?
It is not a matter for me, but applications should be made to the Ministry of Agriculture.
If I bring a case to the notice of my hon. and gallant Friend, of a firm who are having great difficulty in getting skilled workmen released in order to carry on work specially required by the Admiralty, will he do his best to expedite the release?
I think my hon. and gallant Friend had better bring that to the notice of the Admiralty, because they seem to be the contracting Department.
What process is to be adopted in the case of a soldier who was unemployed when he joined up, but is, nevertheless, a skilled craftsman?
He will, no doubt, find good scope for his skill in the fighting service which he has joined.
Food Supplies
Butter
62.
asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he is aware that a serious shortage of butter in retail shops, for example, in Edinburgh, recently coincided with a glut of supplies at certain centres for which the necessary release permits could not be obtained; and what is the explanation of this?
I am aware that, owing to the conditions under which shipping is now being operated, it may well occur that stocks of butter in storage at a particular port are more than sufficient to meet the allocations for retail shops in the immediate vicinity. My hon. Friend will, however, appreciate that such stocks form part of the supplies required for the nation as a whole and are not available for use solely in the area surrounding the port of arrival.
Is there any reason for retaining some of these stocks at docks and railway centres until they go bad?
That is another question, and if my hon. Friend has any information of that kind I hope that he will let me have it.
Can the Minister assure the House that there is a much more efficient and equitable distribution now than there was one or two weeks ago?
Yes, Sir.
Herring
63.
asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he is aware that, although fresh herring are scarce in the shops, and the price of kippers almost prohibitive, the herring fleets at Lowestoft and Yarmouth were recently ordered not to go to sea; and whether he will look into the matter, with a view to preventing the wastage or loss of a valuable article of food in war time?
I am informed that herring have been landed at Lowestoft and Yarmouth in quantities more than sufficient to fulfil the requirements of the market there for freshing and kippering, and that it has been found advisable for the owners to regulate landings in order to try to prevent gluts. It is, of course, impossible to maintain landings at a uniform level owing to unpredictable variations in the catch from day to day, but every effort is being made to dispose of as many fresh and kippered herring as possible. As all sales of both fresh and kippered herring since the 16th October have been subject to the Herring (Maximum Prices) Order, 1939, I cannot accept my hon. Friend's contention that prices are almost prohibitive.
Are they still dyeing the kippered herring?
Feeding-Stuffs
64.
asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he is aware of the difficulty of the small consumers of feeding-stuffs for both poultry and cattle who have to purchase their supplies at less than two tons at a time; and whether he will take steps to ensure that the corn trade give an equitable allocation to these small consumers, and that the price charged is not excessive in relation to the charge which is made for supplying two-ton lots or more?
The Ministry of Food does not control the distribution of feeding-stuffs beyond the wholesale merchant and the provender miller, but arrangements have been made to allocate supplies of imported feeding-stuffs equitably amongst the processing firms and the wholesale merchants. Under the Feeding-Stuffs (Maximum Prices) Order all merchants are entitled to charge the usual additional price margins for the sale of small lots and there is no reason to doubt that they will deal fairly with their smaller customers. If my hon. Friend has any particular case in mind and will communicate with me I will have it investigated.
Does my right hon. Friend realise that when he was Minister of Agriculture, day in and day out, I drew his attention to what would happen; and why is there no vision or common sense at all? The whole matter is thoroughly unsatisfactory.
Questions To Ministers
(by Private Notice)asked the Prime Minister whether he has considered the proposal to extend Question Time by a quarter of an hour as long as the sittings are limited to three days a week.
I have already considered the right hon. Gentleman's proposal, but I came to the conclusion that it might result in increasing the difficulties which hon. Members are experiencing in regard to questions. I think it might well be the case, if we extended the question hour, that more oral questions would be tabled, even more supplementary questions asked, and a demand made for a further extension of time. I am supported in this view by the experience of the last war. Then the difficulties in regard to questions were, I think, greater than now. In 1916, the House sat as a rule on three days a week. For a brief period from 26th October to 22nd December the Government extended the question time by a quarter of an hour. On the very first day, Mr. Speaker Lowther had to remind the House that Question Time had been extended not to allow Members to put more supplementary questions, but to get through more questions on the Paper. I find that from the beginning of the Session to the Summer Adjournment in August, 1916, the daily number of questions on the Paper was of moderate dimensions increasing to figures between 142 and 173 only on six occasions, but when the question time was extended the figures rose and, during the much shorter period of 25 sitting days, on 11 occasions, the number of questions fluctuated between 162 and 267, rising to 320 on one day. The experiment was not repeated. At the beginning of the following Session, Mr. Bonar Law stated that it was his view and the view of the Government that the extended time placed too great a strain upon Departments and that it would not be desirable to adopt it again.
I circulated yesterday a table showing the result of the working of the new order of questions, the number of supplementary questions asked, and a note as to what the effect would be if hon. Members were limited to two instead of three questions daily. There has been some improvement, and I hope to see still better results. The average number of oral questions not reached is now about 35 to 37. I notice that in 1916 complaint was made that on three successive days 80 to 100 questions were not reached. I would suggest to the House that we should give the new order of questions a further trial. We are working under unusual conditions and I have previously reminded the House of the heavy burden which Parliamentary questions place upon the Departments. I venture to hope that Members in all parts of the House will co-operate in working the present system in the general interest and that they will carefully consider putting questions down for written answer and also reducing so far as possible the number of supplementary questions. I propose that the working of the questions arrangements should be kept under constant review, and I will bear in mind the various proposals which have been made.May I ask the Prime Minister whether he has not observed one fallacy in his reply, that the mere fact that a question is not called, though it may relieve the Minister of the further answer, does not relieve the Department of the need for finding the answer for it, nor for the written question, except that there may be a matter of time? I ask the Prime Minister to keep this matter under constant review, because the fact is that this House has lost a day of questions, and I hope that we shall not take the precedent of the last war as necessarily final of what this House should do.
I have already said that I will keep this question under review. I do not think that the ex- perience during the last war is irrelevant to the present conditions. The fallacy seems to be on the part of the right hon. Gentleman, because if the extension of Question Time results in more questions being put down, as it did in the last war, then we are evidently imposing a greater strain upon the Departments.
; Since the Prime Minister adjures Members of Parliament to make as much use of written questions as possible, will he also adjure his own Ministerial colleagues to answer written questions as early as possible?
I have done that, and if the right hon. Gentleman looks at the figures he will see that there has been considerable improvement.
Is it not a fact that during the last war there was no limit to questions, whereas now there is a limit to three oral questions to each hon. Member, and that the fact that there was no limit during the last war was the cause of the increase in the number of questions?
If the hon. Member looks at the table that has been circulated he will see that the revision from two to three would make very little difference.
Will the right hon. Gentleman advise his colleagues to give better answers to questions, and then there would not be so many supplemen-taries?
If hon. Members would put better questions they might get better answers.
Sittings Of The House
Resolved,
"That this House do meet To-morrow at Twelve of the clock and that no Question be taken alter One of the clock.—[The Prime Minister.]
Message From The Lords
That they have agreed to,—
Restriction of Advertisement (War Risks Insurance) Bill, without Amendment.
Land Warfare
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [ Captain Margesson.]
3.51 p.m.
By interposing a delay of several weeks, the Polish Army facilitated the concentration of the French Army, and during this time, as the House is well aware, the British Army was also assembling in its positions. It would be a mistake to suppose that the resistance then offered by the Poles was the last stand to be made by a valiant nation in these hostilities. Already, at this moment, their army is being resuscitated on friendly soil, and the cause which they are so resolute to vindicate attracts like a magnet their countrymen from all parts of the world. Thus is it seen that the spirit of a people is not lost in the ashes of its churches, its villages and its cities.
When I last spoke to the House we had T58000 men in France. Since then some thousands each week have followed them. By the spring of next year they will have been reinforced again by no inconsiderable armament. So will it continue till the cause is won. Although there is no distinction remaining, it must be said that we could not have completed our formations in France without the assistance of the Territorial Army, whose peacetime training has adequately justified the generous sacrifice of leisure which it entailed. Territorial units reached France at a very much earlier stage and in greater numbers than in 1914. Do not, however, let this country pretend that within a proximate time Britain can furnish an army of Continental dimensions. The first men to be called up under obligatory service were summoned to the colours on 15th July this year. It was a timely innovation in our military practice and we shall owe to it the smooth and steady expansion of our effort. Nearly 1,000,000 men are under intensive training in Great Britain. Our own defences by sea, land and air, and the barriers against aggression long since established by the prevision and provision of the French Republic, give safe cover to our preparations. The Maginot Line is some measure of the debt which free nations owe to the vindicated caution of a country which, even when beset with financial troubles, did not hesitate to divert to its construction an unstinted proportion of its economic resources. The major system of the Maginot Line—with its subterranean railways, its underground accommodation and its ingeniously emplaced batteries of guns—extends along the frontier which divides France from our enemy. That frontier is 200 miles in extent. But the low esteem in which the given word of Germany is held, illustrated, as it has repeatedly been, by the world-wide credence that so spontaneously attaches to the slightest rumour of designs upon a neutral country, has necessitated that the defences of France should extend beyond these limits. Indeed, whereas Germany has to defend 200 miles of frontier against the possibility of attack by the Allies, France has had to envisage the possibility of aggression by Germany along 800 miles, from the North Sea to the Alps. We now share the task with them. There are French troops in the British part of the line and British troops in the French part of the line. The understanding and good relations are complete. The sector at present allotted to the British Army, while not comparable with the major system of the Maginot Line, was thus fortunately provided in advance with field works. The task which fell to our soldiers on arrival was to add to and improve upon these, and this task they are undertaking with a will. This is a fortress war. The House can see in its mind's eye the busy work of our soldiers, digging and building. Under their hands blockhouses and pill-boxes take shape, and with digging machines and with squelching spades they throw up breastworks or carve out entrenchments. They are making battery positions, skillfully concealed, and obstacles to tank attack. Everywhere there is activity, and everywhere there is mud. Over hundreds of square miles of this bleak scene, British troops pursue their avocations. They animate the villages. They pass to and fro. Their lorries rattle along country roads, more accustomed to slowly moving horse-drawn farm carts. An organisation of almost inconceivably great dimensions has been established—a world within a world. The food, the clothing, the equipment, the correspondence, the amusements of a whole community are brought and distributed over a distance of hundreds of miles. Some idea of the ground to be covered can be vividly represented by a single figure. In the initial stages the British Expeditionary Force consumed 500 tons of petrol a day. Now alternative bases have been established, additional locomotives will be imported and permanent ways laid down. But still it is a question of vehicles, vehicles and more vehicles. We have already sent to France over 1,000 tons of spare parts and accessories. If a letter is sometimes delayed in course of post, it will be recollected that in Britain communications pass through long-established channels with post offices, machinery for sorting, and static staffs. The British Expeditionary Force has an improvised organisation and is dealing with 270,000 letters and 17,000 parcels a day—in proportion, nearly double the quantity handled in 1918. At ports and railheads goods are unloaded, loaded, and despatched with meticulous efficiency by labour provided from this country. When one occasionally hears that a man in whom one is interested has not received a second blanket, it will be borne in mind that this is the first war which we have waged in which more than one blanket has been issued. The soldier, of course, must travel light. A soldier's life, while he is campaigning, is, as the House knows, never an easy one, and while everything practicable is being done to alleviate his lot, nothing can avoid the discomforts which are the inevitable accompaniment of active service conditions. No man from personal experience understands better than the present Commander-in-Chief the circumstances of warfare and the requirements of his troops. His presence, inspiring confidence, is familiar in every part of the line. The ground which our Army occupies is also well known to him, and it is stimulating, as one stands upon some famous ridge or some hill once designated by a number, to hear his vivid description of a well remembered exploit or encounter. On the visit from which I have just returned I traversed with him almost the whole of the front and came into the closest possible contact with officers and men of many different units. I can render at first hand an encouraging account of the fortitude and good temper of the troops. Their health is exceptionally good, the sickness rate being actually lower than the peace-time rate at home. The billets are mainly in farmhouses and village buildings, but we have sent to France enough huts to house 36,000 men. We are building great hangars and depots for the accommodation of stores, and I hope that the House will realise that the organising ability of the Army in tasks, having no parallel in their magnitude and variety in civil life, is illustrated by those exceptional defects which prove the rule. Meanwhile our Army grows. We despatch arms and equipment to other parts of the world. We are preparing for all eventualities. At home our antiaircraft and coast defences remain continuously manned by personnel whose conditions of service in many cases are as hard as and more lonely than those in France and whose duty is as important. We have taken, besides the Militia classes which have been called up, over 85,000 voluntary recruits since the war began. Every week we have absorbed over 300 officers from the Emergency Reserve. Over 7,000 men from the ranks have been recommended for commissions, of whom 2,500 have already been posted to officer training units. Those fit for active service in the divisions at home will be progressively relieved from duty at vulnerable points as the county home defence battalions are formed. There is room in these battalions, as in the pioneer battalions, for men past middle age. Thus the Army offers occupation in patriotic national service to old and young. The raising to 40,000 of the numbers of the A.T.S.—that admirable regiment of women—is another means of releasing active men for active service. Those in munition factories are doing equally valuable work, for on them depends the speed with which additional contingents can participate in the war theatre. Thus the war proceeds. It is a war of endurance, a quality for which the British people is renowned. Every day that passes finds us stronger. On the economy of the enemy the passage of time has not the same effect. To win, he would have to break through the Allied defences. An assault upon these is awaited with confidence by the Supreme French Commander. On our side we can afford to choose our opportunity. There is no dissension in our ranks; there are no conflicting counsels. Our strategy is predetermined, and so is the issue in this struggle.4.7 p.m.
The House will have heard with interest the account that the right hon. Gentleman has given of our Armies in the field and our Armies at home. It has been particularly vivid from the effects of his recent visit to our old friends and neighbours, the French. I am sure we all heard with satisfaction of the steady gathering together of the forces of the Polish nation, and I am sure we were equally overjoyed to hear of our close co-operation with the French. I was impressed with what the right hon. Gentleman said as to the magnitude of our effort and the magnitude of the material forces which we must have behind the spirit of our men. War, to-day more than ever, must take into account not only the fighting spirit of the troops and their skill, which are, of course, of first importance, but the supplies actually in their hands; and the organisation of the stream of supplies must be constantly flowing from this country to keep alive and equip our forces oversea and also fully equip our forces at home.
The right hon. Gentleman has given us an account of our troops in France down to the blankets, and so far so good, and he has spoken of the huge weight of spare parts that have to be sent. He has indicated that gradually our strength oversea will be increasing. We must be assured that we are going to utilise all our resources to see that those troops are ready in due time and are fully equipped. There must be abundance of essential supplies for the Army, for the Navy, and for the Air Force, and it is the duty of this House to see that those supplies are available. We have been critical from time to time of the organisation of supplies. We were critical of what we considered the long delay in constituting the Ministry of Supply. We still have those criticisms. We have no desire in any way to minimise the enormous efforts that have been made, and we certainly have no desire whatever to give any comfort to the enemy, but we do want to be assured that the resources of the nation, material and human, are being properly utilised to make their maximum contribution to the common cause. We want to be convinced too that we are making the fullest use of all the resources of supply abroad. We do not want to weaken the national effort—we want to strengthen it—but we do want to be satisfied. There have been criticisms, there have been apprehensions, and if those apprehensions are ill-founded, they ought to be dispersed. I think the time has come when this House should be fully satisfied on the whole question of the organisation of supplies for our Forces in the field. It is a thing we cannot very well discuss to-day—it is very difficult to discuss it in the House in the course of our ordinary Debates—but I think the time has come when I should give notice that in the new Session we shall ask for a secret Session of the House at an early opportunity, in order that we may discuss improving our organisation and output of supplies and that this House may make its proper contribution to that subject. There are criticisms; there may be doubts. They ought to be dealt with, and this House has its responsibility, which it cannot leave entirely to the Ministry. We want to be assured that we are doing our utmost for the more energetic prosecution of the war, and in that matter the whole question of supplies is important, and particularly that of the increasing flow of supplies which will be necessary. We want to be sure that everything possible is being done.4.13 p.m.
I wish to thank the right hon. Gentleman for his eloquent statement of the work of the Army. I know that the House appreciates these regular statements, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Air also will take an early opportunity to present a picture of the great work done by the Air Force. The right hon. Gentleman painted in vivid colours the 800 miles front that occupies the united efforts of the British and French Armies. I was glad particularly, and I am sure the House was, that the right hon. Gentleman paid a high tribute to the heroic sacrifices of our great French Allies. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition—and I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Caithness (Sir A. Sinclair) would endorse what the right hon. Gentleman said—about the problem of equipment. Obviously, with the best will in the world, in making a quick expansion there are bound to be deficiencies, and I know that my right hon. Friend has on many occasions pleaded for, and attaches importance to, a secret Session, not so much for the Government to give information to us as that Members of this House may have an opportunity frankly to speak their mind and impart information which they hear in the course of their work.
I think that visits of the civil head of the Army are much appreciated by the men at the front. The General Staff is responsible for strategy, but when inevitable deficiencies arise the responsibility lies with the Government at home, and it is a great thing for the Army to feel that the civilians are not sitting comfortably at home in armchairs merely reading reports, but are getting first-hand information as to the necessities and needs of the Army. I understand that the right hon. Gentleman has a scheme for welfare officers first of all for the Army at home, but I hope that something of the kind will be organised for the Army overseas. May I suggest that when opportunity arises visits of small parties of Members of Parliament to the front should be organised? In the last war small parties of half a dozen Members made regular visits to France. I remember going myself in company with the then Mr. Speaker, and we got great inspiration and help in our work from the first-hand knowledge which we obtained; and the friends of the men overseas do like to know that their representatives in the House of Commons are doing their best to obtain a knowledge of some of the difficult problems which the Army has to face. The right hon. Gentleman gave us a vivid picture of what is going on in France. "All quiet on the Western Front," is constantly heard in the newspapers. That does not arouse much interest and excitement as would greater activities, but, none the less, the discomfort of the wet and slime of the men in France cannot be over-estimated. We suffer discomfort owing to the black-out, but it is nothing to the discomfort and the nerve strain which our soldiers are facing with remarkable patience and endurance. It will be an encouragement to the men to know that the House of Commons is conscious of what they are doing, and that the Secretary of State for War is active in looking after their interests. The right hon. Gentleman made a slight reference to the Army at home, and referred to the anti-aircraft work, the lonely jobs of some men who are defending our shores. The great expansion of the Army from 250,000 to 1,000,000 men must cause difficulties. The right hon. Gentleman has one fault, and a serious fault—he is very sensitive to criticism; he always takes it as a personal attack upon him. As an old colleague of his let me say that it is the wrong attitude. He should welcome and encourage criticism as long as it is inspired by a desire to help. You cannot improvise machinery for a vast Army in a few months without having difficulties and hardships. They should not be glossed over, and to suggest that any criticism is merely propaganda for the Germans is doing no good service to his Department or helping a solution of his problems. Most of the camps and all of the billeting have been improvised in a few months. It is a wonderful achievement, but there must inevitably have been deficiencies. I went to a country town a few weeks ago just after the outberak of war. It was already crammed to capacity with evacuees, mostly children. Every bed and every room had been allocated. Three weeks afterwards a company of 250 soldiers came, wanting billets. They were crammed in somewhere. somehow, but it is all nonsense to say that they are living in the lap of luxury and have no grievances. It is the right of a Briton, and especially of a British Tommy. to grouse and grumble. He is immensely good humoured and long-suffering, but he has an inalienable right to grumble and grouse; and he is the right person to grumble and grouse. It is the duty of every hon. Member by question and speech to ventilate his grievances to the right hon. Gentleman who is the civil head of a great Army. We want to have a contented Army and to get the best service out of them by letting them know that their friends and relations are well looked after by the State, that their allow- ances are generous, that there is no red-tape, and that where grievances are revealed which can be satisfied, the people at home are doing their best to redress them.4.22 p.m.
The House, I am sure, has been interested to hear from the Secretary of State for War an account of the progress of our Army in France as a result of his recent visit to the Front. I want to exhort the right hon. Gentleman to concentrate on seeing that this great Army which he is building up is an Army which will be able to act under modern war conditions. He has admitted the difficulties with regard to guard duties, and so on, which have undoubtedly detracted from the training of the Army. I would urge that every possible step should be taken to raise the county battalions of older men which have been spoken about for some weeks. It is of supreme importance that the Forces should be brought up to strength. I should not have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have neglected all publicity measures to achieve this. It surely is one of those occasions when you may have struck the imagination of the public by a great campaign asking men to join up in these county regiments, in order that they may be trained so that they may be more effective in battle and thus save the lives of men by this higher training.
I also want to emphasise the importance of taking supreme measures in order to bring our equipment up to date. It is remarkable what has been done considering the strain on our national resources in other directions. We should make it clear to our French ally, who are making such tremendous sacrifices and whose soldiers are engaged for a pittance compared with what we are giving, and whose dependants are undoubtedly suffering great sacrifices, that we are making a tremendous contribution on the sea and in the air, and that, in fact, this is a burden which certainly equalises the efforts of the two countries, even if it does not do more, when the burden of fighting at this moment is more upon the sea than anywhere else. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not allow a defence complex to influence him too much. Do not let us get the idea that this war must necessarily end in fortifications. The enemy, if he finds there is an absolute stalemate against the great fortifications on the Western Front, is likely to seek some other effort in order to have a fluid battle elsewhere, and we must be prepared for that. That is why I want to see our Army trained more and more for the conditions of modern warfare in the field, and that we should not allow our Army to get the absurd idea which it has never held before—the idea of Captain Liddell Hart—that you have only to sit still and win a war. That has never been proved in the past. The policy of the defensive has been spoken of too much. Where the British Army has always been successful is when there has been an opportunity of a break-through. I urge the importance of the British Army being prepared to take the offensive at any moment. I am not suggesting that our military commanders are not imbued with this spirit, but we must remember that no war can be won in the air or in the sea. If the enemy is going to sue for peace, it is because of the efforts of the military arm, and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not allow the idea to go forward that we are merely concerned in digging ourselves in and defending ourselves against any great attack, but that he will speed up the offensive equipment for the Army, so that if it is possible it will be able to take the offensive, as it has done in the past.I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
Orders Of The Day
Official Secrets Bill Lords
Considered in Committee.
[Sir DENNIS HERBERT in the Chair.]
Clause 1—(Amendment Of 10 And 11 Geo 5, C 75, S 6)
Amendment made:
In page 1, line 22, insert "and on tender of his reasonable expenses."—[ Mr. Peake.]
4.28 p.m.
I beg to move, in page 2, line 4, to leave out "it appears to."
Hon. Members will see that this Amendment has to be considered in connection with an Amendment on the following line, after "police," to insert "has reasonable grounds to believe." I hope I shall have the permission of the Committee to discuss the two Amendments together. If they are accepted it will mean that the Sub-section will read:It has, of course, been recognised, at any rate by implication, by those who are responsible for the Bill that the. powers of interrogation contained in Section 6 of the Act of 1920 are both dangerous and exceptional, and that they need to be hedged about with every kind of safeguard. Therefore, two new safeguards are introduced in this Bill. There is, first, the provision that the powers shall be confined to offences or suspected offences under Section 10 of the Act of 1911, that is to say, espionage and kindred matters; and secondly, that those powers shall not be exercised without the prior consent of the Secretary of State. In Sub-section (2) of this Clause, however, there is a provision that:"Where a chief officer of police has reasonable grounds to believe that the case is one of great emergency."
he may then exercise the powers without any previous permission from the Secretary of State. I do not think anyone will dispute that situations might arise where the case was one of emergency, and where it would be unreasonable to require that the chief officer of police, who might be a very long distance from London, should obtain the prior permission of the Secretary of State. To do that might defeat the whole purpose of the interrogation. Our objection is that under this Subsection the chief officer of police himself is the sole judge as to whether the case is one of great emergency, and his decision cannot be challenged afterwards in any way. As a result of this, if there were an unscrupulous chief officer of police or a chief officer who was anxious to stretch his powers more than the House intended, one might have a position which would make complete nonsense of the safeguard about the Secretary of State's approval, because the chief officer of police could simply use his powers of interrogation and if afterwards he were challenged in a court of law, he could say that in his opinion the case was one of emergency. It would simply depend upon his decision in his own mind, or upon a decision which afterwards he said he had made at the time. In these circumstances, it seems to me that it would improve the Bill, and would not really take away from any of its main purposes, or weaken the hands of the police in any material way, if the words of the Amendment were inserted, requiring the chief officer of police, before proceeding under Sub-section (2), to have reasonable grounds for thinking that the case is one of great emergency and that the interest of the State demands immediate action. This would mean that in the very last resort, it would be possible in a court of law to test the reasonableness of the grounds. It is very unlikely that it would ever be necessary to test the matter in that way, but I think the fact that words of this kind were contained in the sub-section would have the result of making chief officers of police a little more careful than otherwise they would be in deciding that the case was one of great emergency and that the interest of the State demanded immediate action. For these reasons, I hope that the Government will accept these Amendments."Where it appears to a chief officer of police that the case is one of great emergency and that in the interest of the State immediate action is necersary"
4.35 p.m.
I hope the Government will accept the Amendment. This Bill is a great improvement on the Act, but I think that everything which the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) has said will be admitted by the Government to be true. The Amendment really means that the chief officer of police will have to have reasonable grounds for believing that the case is one of emergency and that the interest of the State demands immediate action, instead of its being purely for the chief officer of police to say "Yes" or "No." I think every hon. Member will agree that if powers of this kind, which are usually exercised only by the Secretary of State, are to be given to a chief officer of police, then we should at least say that the chief officer of police must make it clear that he has reasonable grounds and that we should not simply leave the matter to his "yea" or "nay," because if a chief officer of police did this purely on his own notion, without having reasonable grounds, I cannot see that there is anything in the provision which would enable him to be brought to book. The point is one of substance. The Amendment would improve the Sub-section, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to tell us that in another place they will accept what we in this House consider—whatever their views may be—to be a slight improvement in the Bill.
4.37 p.m.
I have looked very carefully at this Amendment, which is similar to one that was moved in another place by Lord Samuel, when the Committee stage of the Bill was being taken on 7th March. In introducing that Amendment, Lord Samuel stated that it covered a very small point, and that indeed is the view which the Government take of the matter. We regard this as being a very small point, and I am not sure that the hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot), in moving the Amendment, realised what a very small point it is. I thought that it could be taken from what he said that, as he read Subsection (2) of Clause 1, these powers of interrogation, which are limited by this Bill to cases of espionage, could be put into operation by a chief officer of police upon his forming himself the opinion that the case was one of great emergency and that in the interests of the State these powers should be exercised. Of course, that is not so. If hon. Members will look carefully at Sub-section (2), they will see that:
Therefore, one has to turn back to Subsection (1) to find out what are the powers which the chief officer of police may exercise. If hon. Members will look at Sub-section (1), they will see that in the first three or four lines it contains two vitally important safeguards; first, that the chief officer of police has to be satisfied that there is reasonable ground for suspecting that an offence of espionage has been committed, and, secondly, that he has to have reasonable grounds for believing that the particular person is able to furnish information as to an offence or suspected offence."Where it appear? to a chief officer of police that the case is one of great emergency and that in the interest of the State immediate action is necessary, he may exercise the powers conferred by the last foregoing Sub-section."
Surely, it is not quite correct to say that the chief officer of police has to have reasonable grounds. What the provision says is that he must be satisfied that there is reasonable ground. If one turns back to Sub-section (1), again the chief officer of police is the sole judge as to whether the grounds are reasonable.
I do not quite agree with the hon. Member's interpretation of Subsection (1). It seems to me that if there were a prosecution for an offence under this Bill, it would be open to the defendant to plead that the chief officer of police was not satisfied that there was reasonable ground either for suspecting that an offence had been committed or for believing that the particular person was able to furnish information in regard to the suspected offence. The powers exercised under Sub-section (2) are only such powers as are contained in Subsection (1). Therefore, what Sub-section (2) does is, that it enables the prior consent of the Secretary of State to be dispensed with, in circumstances where it appears to the chief officer of police that the case is one of great emergency. I must confess that it seems to me that the best judge of whether there is a case of great emergency is bound to be the chief officer of police himself. After all, an emergency presupposes that one has to act with a certain amount of haste, and it might be that if the chief officer of police did not make up his mind quickly on such an issue, the opportunity of obtaining some very vital information in connection with espionage might go by.
The chief officer of police has to make up his mind quickly and he will not be in a position to check and counter-check the information upon which he decides to act. At the same time, as I have said, I do not feel that this is a very big matter. I have a good deal of confidence in the judgment of chief officers of police, and I feel that if they were able to satisfy a jury on the first two provisos of Subsection (1), they would not have very much difficulty in satisfying the jury also on the matter contained in Sub-section (2). The hon. Member for Dundee and the Committee should also bear in mind that the action taken under Sub-section (2) has to be reported forthwith to the Secretary of State, and further, that no prosecution can take place under the Act without the consent of the Attorney-General. There seem to us to be a mass of safeguards, but I repeat that this is a very small matter. The hon. Member for Dundee has been after a certain number of what I may call sizeable fish in the Defence Regulations. Here he seems to be pursuing a very small sprat, but if he desires to have this sprat, we are prepared to let him have it.Amendment agreed to.
Further Amendment made: In page 2, line 5, after"police,"insert"has reasonable grounds to believe."—[ Mr. Foot.]
Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Bill reported, with Amendments; as amended, considered; read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.
House Of Commons Members' Fund Act, 1939
Resolved,
"That the Public Trustee shall be Custodian Trustee of the House of Commons Members' Fund and that Sir George Courthope, Mr. Owen Evans, Mr. Lees-Smith, Mr. Marshall, Sir Henry Morris-Jones and Mr. Spens shall be Managing Trustees of the said Fund in pursuance of Section two of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act, 1939"—[Mr. Grimston.]
Unemployment
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."— [ Mr. Grimston.]
4.45 p.m.
On behalf of the Opposition, it is my duty to-day to raise the question of unemployment. We have heard to-day a statement from the war front. It is the duty of the Opposition to bring the mind of the House back to a very dangerous enemy on the home front. The rapid increase in the number of unemployed since the outbreak of war and the complete abandonment of all efforts by the Department to deal with it, are disturbing great masses of people in this country. I think one could say that, as far as the Government are concerned, there is a complete black-out on the unemployment question. It is almost incredible that there should be no fewer than 1,430,000 unemployed in this country at the present time, and, what is more menacing, is the fact that each of the last two months has shown an increase of 100,000 upon the figures of the previous month.
In addition, there is the alarming position which has grown up, as a result of war changes, among hotel-keepers and boarding-house keepers and their staffs. Among these are many who are not registered and who do not come into the figures but whose position has become very serious. There is no doubt about the privation existing among that section of the community and we draw attention to it to-day along with the General unemployment question, because it looks as though we were to have a repetition of the tragic situation which we had a few years ago in connection with the black-coated workers. That problem deeply disturbed this House and the country and it has not been faced. Then there is the question of the temporary unemployment which is said to result from the lack of transport. Quite frankly, some of us who have closely examined this question fail to understand as regards the internal transport of the country, why there should be unemployment attributable to that cause. This unemployment is all the more acute because it is limited to certain areas and touches a limited number of people, but it is so insistent and so regular and the men affected are receiving so little in wages, that it is almost true to say that it would be better for some of them if they were wholly idle. A particularly vicious feature of the present situation is the number of boys and girls under 17 who are unemployed. I ask the House to note these figures. In August last there were 78,000 boys and girls under 17 unemployed, and these were, in the main, in junior instruction schools. To-day, after two months of war, there are, I believe, about 110,000 of these boys and girls unemployed, or an increase of 32,000 on the August figure, and as far as I know, few, if any of them, are in schools. The House has been continually disturbed about unemployment among this section of the community. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister, to his credit, has been for some years so deeply concerned about it that he has hustled to get junior instruction centres going, but at this time it is tragic to reflect that we have such a large number of boys and girls unemployed and not under any form of instruction. I think it is clear that the Government's plans have been based on the assumption that the number of unemployed would be reduced, directly or indirectly, as a result of the production of war material. In fact, as I have shown, the numbers have increased. When we remember that something like 500,000 young men—the Minister will correct me if the figure is wrong—have been taken out of industry and that thousands of millions have been and are being expended in the production of war material, and when we find in the face of those facts that there are 1,430,000 unemployed, I suggest it is a serious matter and one which ought to give serious pause to the Government. It was bad enough that masses should be idle in times of peace. I suggest it is criminal that the numbers should be increasing to-day in the existing circumstances, particularly when we are engaged in a conflict which is said to involve the liberty of mankind generally. I warn the Minister that, although the House is not too full at this moment, yet this matter will have repercussions on the morale of the people at home if there is not a serious attempt to deal with it. The people of the country are steady and united and determined in the cause in which we are engaged, but they are deeply troubled by the fact that while great masses of money are being spent on war material, large numbers of men and women and youngsters, who want work and who want to play their part, are debarred from the fulfilment of that wish. As I have said, the Government assumed that the war effort would be sufficient to absorb a great part of the unemployed.Not in the first two months. May I put this point at once to the hon. Gentleman? I could not accept that assumption. To make the assumption that in a short time there will be a great decrease in unemployment, and that in the course of months we shall come to a period of full employment, would be to state the Government plans rightly, but, surely, it would be a very short-sighted Government that would not expect, in the dramatic change-over from peace to war, a great dislocation caused by the cessation of services which are normal in peace time, but which become uncalled for in war time.
The Government never said that.
I am obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but if that is so, why have the Government practically suspended all grant-aided work upon roads and building and the rest of it? It is a fact that all the efforts which the Government were making to carry out necessary works and to engage the unemployed, have been suspended throughout the country except for the completion of old schemes. I suggest that the Government should reconsider this position. Have they, indeed, given any thought to the present position? I rather infer from the right hon. Gentleman's interjection that they have not.
indicated dissent.
I hope to hear a statement to the contrary to-night, but the right hon. Gentleman's intervention was not hopeful from that point of view.
Then there is the case of the Special Areas. Special Areas work has been abandoned. I am not asking the right hon. Gentleman whether that is so or not, because I know it has been abandoned. He has made statements in this House from time to time on this subject which were rather general and, if I may say so, rather vague, but there is not any doubt about the fact that the Special Commissioner and his staff have been practically demobilised. Scheme-making is abandoned. I go further and say that sites which were purchased with a view to possible building, have been practically forgotten. I give an instance of this complete abandonment of schemes in connection with the Special Areas. For years there has been grave misgiving in Durham about the accumulation of water in the western part of the county and its pressure upon certain pits which are still working. Not only the miners themselves but technical people in the industry have been deeply disturbed about this matter. The water has accumulated at such a rate that they fear that it may break through and carry death and disaster with it. Some of my hon. Friends and I saw a plan made by a skilled surveyor which showed how a certain river had been directed in such a way that it was pressing upon a series of collieries. I shall not mention them because it would not do any good to disturb the men who are working there, but in the immediate vicinity there are no fewer than 10,000 men employed in the pits and the people in districts further eastward have been very much concerned about it. A comparatively small amount of capital expenditure is needed to drain those pits. A scheme was almost complete and if ever a scheme of this kind was necessary it was the draining of that area. To-day the scheme has been abandoned. If schemes of that kind have been abandoned, then, I suggest, it shows that nothing at all is being done in respect of the Special Areas. At any rate, that is an instance of the views prevailing in the department upon this matter. Then there are the scheduled areas which are not Special Areas. In the Lancashire area there has been great distress. A certain type of legislation dealing with that matter was put through the House but it is practically a dead letter. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, does he intend to continue Special Areas work and scheduled areas work under the Act and to keep his staff for that purpose in actual operation? I want the House to bear in mind that it took some years after the last war, before the Special Areas scheme came into existence. But great experience has been gained since then. If the Special Areas legislation, and all the activities of the organisation, are set aside there is real danger of losing that experience, which has cost a great deal. Then there are the junior instruction centres. They were set before the House as an alternative to secondary education, and it was said during the passage of the Bill that this education was to be of a first-class kind. Now the schools have been closed. All these young people are running wild. They are not employed. The number is growing, and yet there seems no inclination at all to open the schools. I should like to put another question, about the increased cost of living. It has never been argued that the amounts that the unemployed receive are sufficient to maintain them but, if the cost of living is increasing, the least that can be done is to see that they get an increased amount to meet that increase. When the right hon. Gentleman says it has risen so many points—7½d. in the £—to the average layman outside that seems ridiculous. There is a multitude of small things which have gone up not 10 or 20 but 200 or 300 per cent.—things which are absolutely necessary to working-class people. If you send for a thing which was a 1d. yesterday, it is 2d. to-day, and that is going on on a large scale. When are we going to have the new cost-of-living index? I know that a large collection of material has been made, and I question whether it could have been as well done in any other country, thanks to our highly skilled Civil Service, but is it not possible to give us an early revision of the present cost of living, which is antique and does not really touch the edge of the actual life of the people? For the purpose of improving the amount that the people receive it is extremely important that we should have that cost-of-living figure as soon as possible. Generally speaking, the Government do not seem to be concerned at all about the present or the future of the people, particularly as far as unemployment is concerned. Take the Location of Industry report. It has taken about two years to consider it. The Department has submitted a memorandum to the Commission which in itself was a scathing criticism of the present condition and location of industry. When we come to discuss the report, some of the material that he gave the Commission will be at the disposal of the House, but in its analysis it is shown that the country was approaching a period of very great danger unless something was done to deal with the question of distribution of population. We have had proof of that during the past few months. It is said that something like 1,000,000 people have left London. From the appearance of the streets I should say that there are many more than that. It is clear that visitors do not come, as they used to do. Great offices and staffs have left London, and I understand that some of them have found almost permanent places outside. But surely it is not the intention of the Government to have a Royal Commission sitting for something like two years to gather up information from the whole of the Departments or from specially skilled people. I believe they are going to publish a report and then do nothing about it. [Interruption.]The right hon. Gentleman says they have not got the report yet, but I suggest to him that, when it is published, the attitude of reluctance to deal with the matter which the Government have shown ought to be changed, for there is no more important subject that we can deal with in the country's affairs than the subject dealt with by this Commission. You have men who have served on that Commission, as indeed you have upon the Royal Commission dealing with compensation and other matters, who are doing nothing and who would be pleased to give their services in respect of these matters. The least the Government can do is to go ahead with this work and not only meet the present position but plan for the future. It is clear that the Minister of Labour has no power himself to deal with these matters. It does not matter how unemployment increases. It can double or treble itself. He has no power to deal with unemployment problems, except here and there, it may be, a small scheme or something like that. He is concerned about many things. Here we are spending thousands of millions in a great conflict. We have unity of command overseas and great resources at the disposal of those who are responsible. It would take only a fraction of those resources and a fraction of the energy available if there was unit]/ of command to deal with unemployment, but there is no disposition to deal with it. There is no machinery to deal with it. There is no person who is legally responsible for dealing with it. I suggest that it is a separate task for some Minister and some Department. If that Minister and that Department were in being, there are people and organisations who could give the necessary experience and offer suggestions which would make it not too difficult to deal with the question in its present proportions. It would be possible to tell a very sorry tale to-day. There are areas in the country where whole communities are idle, and have been for years. I came across an old friend recently who had been a soldier in the last war. It was regrettable to see the condition he was in. He is turned 50. He said, "Look at me; there is plenty of good work in me yet." He had been idle for seven years. I said, "Are you willing to go into the pit?" He said, "I am willing to go into the pit or anywhere." He is only a sample of whole villages in Wales, Durham, Lancashire and other parts of the country. We do not like talking about these things too much at this time of day. We know that there are people in another country who are glad to get hold of material of this kind, but we are not going to refrain from criticism because of that. I know it is said that Hitler has solved unemployment. That is nonsense. You can easily solve unemployment if you shove great masses of people into concentration camps and drive large numbers of them to work under slave conditions as though you were shifting bags of sand about. We had an instance of that to-day when the President of the Miners Federation of Great Britain brought with him a statement which had been passed through from German miners who have had their hours increased without a corresponding increase in wages. "The Hitler system," says the message, "deprived us of our trade unions and has made us the slaves of his war economy. We salute our comrades in other countries who fight in the common front against German Fascism, which has provoked this war." They go on to tell what their conditions are. There are certain people who really made use of the fact, even in this House, that Hitler has solved unemployment. All I say upon that matter is that, from our point of view, if we have our distressed areas, Germany altogether is a distressed area to-day. When I survey the position in this country and the genius which has built up our fine social services, although sometimes they are not adequately financed from the point of view of the people served, and when I think of the growth of the social sense in my time and the growth of neighbourliness and humanity, I cannot believe that it is beyond our ability to solve the unemployment problem. In giving employment to men and women, and in making it possible for them to give full expression to their physical and mental energies, we not only do a service to the country, but increase freedom. The outstanding thing about the British worker is that he does not ask charity of anybody. It is a significant thing about him that he usually builds his organisations from the bottom upwards, so he is not asking for charity. He simply asks for work, and it is lamentable that in these days, in such a great country as this, we have these masses of unemployed and no disposition on the part of the Government to face the problem. We demand that men shall be able to work instead of being massed together in idleness and that they should be allowed to serve the country in this hour of crisis and freely play their part in the great cause in which we are engaged. We are not only concerned about the people and about their conditions. We are concerned also because, unless the problem is faced and solved in this time of conflict, all the courage and endurance on the war front will avail us nothing because of the corroding effect of unemployment on the people on the home front.5.19 p.m.
I think it was a wise thought which prompted the Opposition to initiate this Debate. It is time we had a general survey of the course of unemployment since the outbreak of war, because there are new tendencies and new factors at work. I feel very much the limitations under which a Debate of this kind must take place in present conditions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) was speaking, my mind went back to the observations of the Leader of the Opposition this afternoon when he referred to the desirability of having a secret session. There are matters on which we could speak with advantage to the State in a secret session—not that we want to acquire any secret information, but there are matters on which we think we can be useful to the Government in conveying feelings and information to them. The situation has changed very much since the earlier months of the year when we were thinking and believing that we were approaching a period of complete employment. We were then wondering how we were to avoid bottlenecks in employment and where the people were to be got to carry out the task which we foresaw they were to be called upon to discharge.
The war has come, and, as we have been reminded, we have 1,430,000 unemployed persons. This fact has a new significance, because it is one of the surest indications whether we are making the maximum effort to win the war. As long as we have a figure of unemployment like that we cannot feel that we are making the greatest possible effort to bring the war to an end at the earliest possible time. It is a terrible figure in any circumstances. The tendency seems to have altered and we have now, judged by the total numbers of unemployed, been going back during the last two months. There has been a change of trend in employment from south to north. In particular, I believe that in the matter of juvenile unemployment there has been a sad increase in London which calls for special attention. Then there has been an increase in the number of women who are unemployed for some of the reasons which have already been mentioned, and particularly in certain areas. These are all matters which we hope will be taken up in the not too distant future. The reason for all this is not far to seek. We are in a period of transition from a comparatively free peace economy to a controlled war economy, and I have been amazed at the way people have stood up to the loss of employment and livelihood which have been caused by Government controls and interference of one kind and another. They have said, "We realise what an enormity we are fighting against, and if what is happening to us is necessary for the public good and the cause we have at heart, we must put up with it." That was the spirit in the first month and it was the spirit in the second month. I would be wrong if I were to say, from what has fallen within my own observation, that that is the spirit to-day. There is now a new mood of inquiry. People are asking how long the period of transition is to go on and how long it is before a state of transition passes into a state of permanency. There are many people who now feel that it is time that some of the negative and repressive activities of the Government were reinforced with greater vitalising activities. What has happened is that the war plan of the Government, carried out with a great deal of prescience and ability and with great completeness, was entirely negative and repressive in its character. A negative and repressive machine was put into operation by the House of Commons after about three days of breathless legislation. Such a mass of Orders and Bills had, I think, never been seen before in such a short space of time, and it was a remarkable achievement. On paper we had forthwith a. war-time economy, but it was entirely repressive and negative, full of controls and restrictions. If that negation and the controls and the like are to remain without a great constructive effort going on at the same time, complementary to them, the state of things will be such as I would hesitate to dwell upon. We are not here this afternoon to find the culprit. I do not gather that my hon. Friend was seeking a culprit. He made some reference to responsibility, but if there were a culprit it would not be my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour alone whom I should name on the Government Front Bench. The responsibility goes much wider. His is the responsibility for mustering, as far as we can, the labour forces of this country for our national effort and for supplying men for the fighting services and for the Ministry of Supply. He cannot exercise those functions and ensure employment when some controller or some other Department, by withholding material or services, or by setting up some order of priorities, or by taking some action which he thinks may be necessary to the State, throws people out of employment. Reference has been made to the hotel, catering and transport industries. What has happened in these cases may have been inevitable at the time but —and this is a matter on which I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman if he is in a position to answer—it is of the first importance in all these matters that people should arrive at certainty as soon as possible as to what the}' are to be enabled to do in their industries and occupations. The adaptability of humanity is the most surprising thing about it, but one thing it cannot stand up against is uncertainty in any direction. I want to ask whether there is, over the whole field of employment, through the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Supply, or the Ministry of Shipping, an effective order of priorities and services which are essential in the national interest? Without that and without an effective central control we shall get into worse confusion, and the difficulties which have come upon us owing to the repressive and negative machinery will not be put right. We have had a good deal of discussion in the Press from eminent and prominent economists and others, and that is where they point to. I think that that indication is right. We have an immense amount of work being done and the question is whether there is an essential control at the centre, a directing authority, so that people may know exactly where they stand. I should also like to know whether anything effective is being done to bring the smaller employers in the various trades and industries into effective co-operation with the Ministry of Supply. We have seen the motor industry and the garage industry being abandoned up and down the country, until now in some parts there is doubt whether there is a nucleus left to repair and look after the road vehicles which are an essential part of the national apparatus. There are a number of contractors capable of doing valuable service to the State who are neglected. There are stories going about, which one hesitates to repeat, that unless you are in the ring you cannot get a look in. It is important to scotch at an early stage the idea that there is favouritism in any direction in connection with the ordering of our affairs. The views of the industrial and trading community are very well summed up in a statement published by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, not a very extreme body, not as a rule a critic of the Government. It said:That is what the House of Commons is anxious about, and what an increasing number of employers and workpeople are concerned about, and it is upon the answer to that question that the solution of these difficulties will depend. I am glad that the Government propose to publish the report of the Commission on the Location of Industry, because although we are now at war it is quite time some of us were devoting our attention to what is to happen after the war, and I regard the report of that Commission as likely to be very useful in that consideration, as also, of course, will be the new cost-of-living index. It is unfortunate that that was not completed before. It is not anybody's fault that that is so, because it was not possible to complete it and to let us have the deductions which can be drawn from it. I am not sure in my heart of hearts whether I want to have it published at this moment or not. I should like to have it published as soon as it is possible to give effect to the deductions which can be drawn from it, but I do not know what is in it. I suspect that it might be very difficult to give effect to some of the deductions which I, at all events, might draw from it. In conclusion, one word on the subject of the juveniles who are unemployed, because they will be the next company who are to take over the responsibilities of democracy, whether as, I hope, merely citizens or whether as workers or even as fighters. I associate myself with everything that was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street as to the necessity of looking after their interests in every conceivable way. In war time there is an unfortunate tendency among local authorities in general to say of educational activities or welfare activities of one kind or another, "We are not expected to do that in war time," and so they drop out. I would invite the right hon. Gentleman, so far as it lies in his power, to see that there is no relaxation of the activities of any of the organisations which have been instituted by Parliament and his Ministry for the benefit of the group from 14 to 18 years of age. It is a lamentable fact that we have had to abandon the proposal to raise the school-leaving age to 15. That is one of the penalties of the war. We shall need the juvenile instruction centres badly if the war goes on. There is a need for special and technical training of one kind or another, and we ought to be reviewing the situation very carefully with a view to keeping in being all the agencies which have been in operation for their benefit. It has come within my observation that there is a good deal of resiliency among these organisations. Some which almost went dead at the outbreak of war are now being revived, with difficulty in some cases, but nevertheless with courage and spirit, and anything that the right hon. Gentleman and his Department can do to encourage that revival will be all to the good."They find it very hard through all the maze of war time measures of control and so forth to acquire any grasp of what the economic strategy of the Government really is. They have an uneasy feeling that, although the plans made by this or that Ministry for achieving a particular aim are excellently thought out, nobody has planned the complete strategy."
5.35 p.m.
If the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White) will allow me to say so, I listened to his speech with great interest and with almost complete agreement. I listened also to the speech of the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), and whether we agree with all of that speech or not, I think it was one marked by that moderation which is so very essential at a period such as this. As we are discussing unemployment we have my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour here, but actually the unemployment problem affects almost every Government Department—the Ministry of Supply, the three great Service Departments, the Ministry of Shipping, the Ministry of Agriculture, even the Board of Education and the Treasury. All are playing their part in either stimulating or retarding employment. I agree with the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street: that the increase in unemployment is rather disquieting in view of the fact that so many men have been called up to join the armed forces, but he must realise that it is inevitable that there should be a certain amount of dislocation in the transition from a peace economy to a war economy.
It may be said, of course, that certain steps could have been taken to diminish the dangers of this transition period. On the evening when the Budget was introduced I ventured to prophesy that it would increase unemployment for the time being. I felt that that heavy taxation, necessary as it will be, inevitable as it will be, was perhaps somewhat premature. It would have been better if held over for a few months until we had got employment into full swing. I feel that as time goes on the problem will almost entirely solve itself, probably in a few months or in six months, as the great machine of national production gets into full movement. There is only one possible danger which I can foresee which might hinder that, and that is if through our fear of inflation we took too stringent steps to prevent it. All hon. Members have bitter recollections of the 10 years from 1922–32, that period of stringent deflation, and the cost of it in unemployment and human suffering. While we must guard against inflation by all means, we must not overdo things; otherwise, our action may have an extremely bad effect on the unemployment figures. The present distribution of unemployment is changing rapidly. Certain of the depressed areas are ceasing to be depressed, but other parts of the country are getting, as it were, patches of new depressed areas. Naturally I can only speak intimately of conditions which I know, of those in Lowestoft, for instance. I should like to bring some facts there to the attention of the House, not only because it is my own constituency, but because conditions in Lowestoft are typical of those in many towns large and small over great stretches of the east coast. The first cause of the depression there, as in so many other east coast towns, was the termination of the season at the end of August. Hotels, boarding-house keepers, lodging-house keepers— many of the lodging-house keepers are working class people—-and shops have been very hard hit, and in many cases people cannot raise the money to pay their rates. The fear is that they will have to sell their assets stage by stage to meet their rates, and finally have to seek public assistance or unemployment pay. A very strong committee has been formed to consider their interests. In the last war through such a committee a large fund was raised to help the east coast towns, and the Dominion of Canada contributed to it very generous sums indeed. Then, too, the local industries are moribund—dead or dying. I have here a letter from the Ship Repairers and Engineers Conference at Lowestoft and Yarmouth. It states:They ask that the matter should be treated as urgent, and point out that though the Government have asked employers not to stand off their workpeople they will be forced to do so, as most of the engineering work is going inland to large engineering firms. I approached my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty with a request from one or two shhipyards for work, because the men were being stood off in great numbers, and he has already, I think, taken steps to give work to one yard at least, for which I am very grateful, but I feel more could be done. A good deal more Admiralty work could be given to these small shipyards, which turn out trawlers, Diesel trawlers, steam trawlers and yachts, and could certainly build submarine chasers. There is another factor. As I have said, there is heavy and increasing unemployment in Lowestoft—I think it is daily increasing—and not only in Lowestoft but in smaller towns, Beccles and Southwold. I get almost pitiable letters from builders stating that the building trade in that area of the country is completely dead. Hon. Members in all parts of the House know what a tremendous factor that is in causing general unemployment. Here is a letter from a Lowestoft builder saying:"In addition to general engineering and the manufacturing of new machinery the normal work of these firms has in the past consisted of carrying out all classes of heavy and light repairs to fishing trawlers, drifters and coasting vessels. The firms concerned include foundries, machine and boiler shops, and employ a large number of men who are capable of dealing with any but extreme precision work. May we, as a suggestion, request that a representative of the Ministry should come to this district? We should be only too pleased to show him our capabilities."
I ask hon. Members to note this—"We should be very grateful if you could help us to obtain some Government work suitable to our trades as we are practically ruined through the national situation. There seems to be a very unfair distribution of Government contracts and work, as the large firms are getting all the work whilst smaller firms are doing nothing. We are open to accept contracts for anything in the building or woodworking line, such as Militia huts, etc., as we have an up-to-date machine-shop and plant. In normal times"—
That is not an exceptional case. I may be asked, "Have you any practical proposals to put forward?" I will put forward a suggestion, but not with extreme confidence. We have regional commissioners. I was extremely glad to hear the Minister of Supply say to-day that in smaller areas trade union representatives were being appointed to assist in the supply of labour. My suggestion is that it might be possible during this transition period, and for a maximum period of six months, to appoint a paid commissioner in each county. His duty would be to make a survey of unused productive plant in the county area, whether factories, engineering works, shipyards or whatever it might be, and also of unused and unemployed skilled men, such as engineers, fitters, bricklayers, builders, shipyard workers or carpenters. His second task would be to get into direct touch with the various Departments in Whitehall. For instance, suppose that hutments were needed in any area. The county commissioner could short-circuit the proceedings by saying: "I have available contractors, managers, foremen, bricklayers, carpenters and so on." He would be able to shorten the proceedings very much, and the advantage would be that it would help to bring into utilisation the full production resources of the nation. Let me give another example. The other day an appeal was broadcast for net makers who were required to make nets for camouflage. The next day I heard by telephone from three or four places in my constituency. They said: "We have the net makers and everything ready, but we have not the material." I wrote to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, and I must say the Ministry were extremely prompt. Within a week they had arranged to appoint local controllers to supply the material. A county commissioner, on hearing the broadcast, would have gone straightaway to the towns where he knew this work was done. He would have ascertained the position and taken the train to London. He would have said: "We want the material, and I shall then be able to provide you with all the nets you want." I quite agree with the hon. Member who opened the Debate that it is not good for the national morale that there should be increasing unemployment. It is our duty to hasten the transition period and to hasten the largest possible amount of employment. There is one other point to which I hope my right hon. Friend will refer today, because it is of immense importance. We are always hearing, and quite rightly, that we must foster our export trade, because it will help our employment and our national production. Nevertheless, I am disturbed at the position of our trade with our great ally, France. I would not have mentioned this matter in public, although I have received private letters from France on the subject, except for the fact that a letter was published the other day in the Press from the President of the Anglo-French Chamber of Commerce in Paris. It was signed by him, and was signed also by the French President of the Chamber of Commerce in London. It is not, therefore, indiscreet to mention this matter in the House. I think it should be mentioned. The actual statement of the President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Paris and of the French Chamber of Commerce in London, and signed by both, is dated 4th November and is as follows:"we employ 60 to 70 men, and had secured a contract for building council houses, but on the outbreak of war this was immediately cancelled, leaving us without anything to do, and we have had to discharge all employes."
They go on:"Government Departments on both sides of the Channel have elaborated regulations which impose serious restrictions on Franco-British trade, and our respective Chambers of Commerce are daily receiving complaints as to their severity. Indeed, we know that a good deal of bad feeling has been engendered, and this is harmful to unity and friendship as between allies…We are being charitable in assuming that those responsible for drafting these regulations had no opportunity of consulting interests on the opposite side of the Channel; otherwise they would appear to be all the less intelligible."
They end the letter by saying:"Existing regulations must be modified without loss of time."
I am not quoting irresponsible people. That statement was signed by the Presidents of the British Chamber of Commerce in Paris and the French Chamber of Commerce in London. A private letter, which I received from a merchant in Paris, says:"A sane expansion of Franco-British trade under this unity of command on the home front would set an example to the rest of the world as to the proper way to deal with the evils of national self-sufficiency It would encourage all other peaceful countries to join with us in striking a blow at international1 trade barriers and it would pave the way to the future peace of the world."
From the official point of view it may be said that most of those prohibited imports are luxuries and that in war time we cannot afford to import luxuries, even though we export British goods in partial exchange for them. Sir, we cannot afford to alienate, distress and cause heavy economic loss to a very important section of French opinion, and we cannot afford also to continue in our own country a state of affairs which must cause unemployment in a section of our export industries. I apologise for having detained the House, but there is much more that I should like to have said on the general question of unemployment. I remember that, in the second speech I made in this House, which was in March, 1934, I said that the solution of the unemployment problem was bound up with the question of peace and war. Therefore, even in a crisis like this, and even should it get worse, it is not inopportune for this House to discuss that problem. Whatever type of peace we may believe in, we are all agreed that no peace will be a general peace unless it includes a great and general measure of agreement among all nations to disarm. It is folly to talk of disarmament if every nation that disarms is faced with a gigantic problem of unemployment and consequent social strife. While it is right to discuss the immediate problem of unemployment during the war, we should bear in mind that the solution of the general problem is part of the solution of the present trials of the world."I understand the British Government issued a list of goods, the importation of which would be prohibited during the war. It so happened that practically the whole of the French imports into England made in Paris were on this list."
5.55 p.m.
Of all the problems that have been in front of this House during the last four years, that of unemployment seems the hardest for finding a solution. In peace-time, as our system of society is organised and regulated, it is always taken for granted that there must be a reserve of unemployed. Conversely, war has always been expected to provide work for all. During international conflict the withdrawal of men from industry to the fighting services has usually resulted in there being more jobs than workers. To-day, in the present emergency, we find that unemployment is on the increase in this country and that, at the present time, there are 1,400,000 people for whom the country can find no work.
One of the aims of the present struggle between this country and Germany is to defend the rights, privileges and independence of small nations. One of the small nations that exist is the nation of the out-of-works. It is being denied the ordinary human independence which work and wages provide. The folk who constitute this nation within the nation are entirely blameless. To the reproachful question, "Why stand ye here all the day, idle?" so frequently put to them, they hurl back, bitterly, the resentful answer: "No man hath hired us." Because the nation has neglected to hire these people, it is failing to pull its full weight in the present struggle. Because of this failure there was a leading article in last night's "Evening Standard" of a very strong nature. By permission of the House I would like to quote from it these words:The paper went on to say:"The whole of this tremendous structure of trade and commerce depends on one thing, and one alone—the labour of the British people. They pay the taxes, supply the munitions and fill the holds of our merchant ships. Are we using this great engine of power to best advantage? We are not."
Strong words, in reference to the big army of unemployed, but fully justified. Later on, the same leading article says:"At this critical hour when huge numbers of our people are diverted to the business of manufacturing implements of destruction, when, above all other times, it is necessary to increase the pile of goods which we can eat and drink, and which give us warmth and clothing, at this moment one million four hundred thousand of our citizens are denied the right to make any contribution to our war effort whatsoever. Instead, they are forcibly condemned to live only as burdens to their neighbours as if they were blind, dumb, deaf and crippled. And their number is not decreasing. In the first two months it has swelled by two hundred thousand."
Quite recently there has been an arrangement for the pooling of the resources of this country and France. Can it be said that our contribution to such an amalgamation of economic power is up to our national capacity, when man-power is being allowed to stand idle? Up and down the country in the various counties and districts there seems to have been a lack of co-ordination to encourage people to get work. In my own county, where we have from 50,000 to 60,000 unemployed, there lies the opportunity to strengthen the national cause and at the same time to restore independence to deserving people. How can the Government help? We have seaports on the eastern shores of Durham County, there are shipbuilding yards in other parts of the country, and in this hour of need those various shipbuilding yards ought to be encouraged. In the North-East county in which I live is the Team Valley Trading Estate, which received considerable Government assistance in order to set it up. Here are factories which should be utilised by the Ministry of Supply; otherwise the tenants will be forced into bankruptcy. In yesterday's "Yorkshire Post" there was an account of a meeting and an address by the secretary of the Team Valley Tenants' War Committee, in which he said:"We must squander no more of our riches…Every hand and every brain must be employed. Such an effort it is the business of the Government to organise. They cannot be said to be doing it while nearly twenty thousand workers a week are dismissed from their employment."
In the West of Durham we have three important industries, limestone quarrying, whinstone quarrying, and lead mining, and in South-West Durham, that most special of all the Special Areas, there is that flooded coal—11,000,000 tons of it—which seems as if it is to be for ever lost to the nation. With that limestone in the dales and the equally excellent Durham coal there could be instituted factories for the manufacture of calcium carbide. Should this war be of long duration, the Minister of Supply may find himself short of this essential commodity. I know that he informed the House that the Government have sufficient stores of calcium carbide. but if those stores be depleted and the North Sea be as dangerous as it is now, then the imports of it from across the North Sea will almost surely cease, and one must remember that every ounce of calcium carbide is imported into this country. The whinstone industry in my own area has virtually closed down for the duration of the war. The stone has been extensively used for road making, which has now almost ceased. Modern investigation into the manufacture of concrete has shown that whinstone dust and small whinstone mixed with cement makes the very best form of concrete. Experiments recently have proved the resistance of this cement plus whinstone to the effects of high explosives. Concrete is and will be needed in large quantities. In the making of aerodromes and bomb proof shelters this form of concrete can be recommended to be of the highest excellence. Why not re-open the whinstone quarries and use the splendid stone and the equally splendid men who have been discharged from their work? Similarly, the carrying of lead from abroad may be seriously interfered with by enemy action. In the West of Durham we have those lead mines and the miners themselves standing by. In all these industries that I have mentioned we have an abundance of the commodities and alongside experienced workers longing to prove their metal. I hope my criticisms have been of a constructive nature and have had a dual purpose, first, to strengthen the nation's power and, secondly, to give employment to the unemployed. As we see the formation of the fighting units at the present time, we ask, Whose sons are these? These, in many cases, are the sons of men from 40 to 60 years of age who stood between this country and disaster in the last war. They constituted then the hard core of our fighting Services, and no finer fighters were to be found than the miners and the quarrymen from the Special Areas. Now they form the hard core of our unemployment problems, and they are standing by ready and willing to buttress up our industrial forces. Drifting mines are a menace to our imports, but drifting men—the unemployed—are menacing home productions. We are told by Charles Kingsley in his poem, "The Three Fishers," that "men must work and women must weep." So long as we have these people who have been outcasts in peace and are now outcasts in war, it appears that men must not work, while women must weep more because of the heartbreak caused by unemployment with its associated denial of decent human aspirations of independence. Therefore, in all parts of the House we appeal to the Government to try their very utmost to set this million and a half deserving citizens to some useful work."Some of Tynesids's new light industries on the Team Valley Trading Estate may be forced into bankruptcy if orders are not forthcoming to replace work stopped on account of the war…Factories were almost idle for want of orders. Representations had been made to the Ministries of Supply and Labour asking them to place Government work for light engineering products, metal work, woodwork and textiles, but they had been unsuccessful so far."
6.8 p.m.
As I know there is a number of hon. Members who still wish to make observations, I am sure the House will forgive me if I do not extensively follow the interesting questions which have already been raised. The hon. Member for Birkenhead, East (Mr. White) made some reference to matters which we might be considering now in relation to circumstances after the war. I am really not sure how far it is worth while to consider such matters at this stage, because it must depend so much upon how long this terrible war lasts as to what exactly we must do. Since the matter has been raised, however, I should like to make one observation. I hope that when these matters come to be considered we shall work out in conjunction with other countries practical methods of raising the standard of living of the masses. It is in that sphere where enormous markets lie ready and it is in that sphere in particular —I believe in that sphere only—that there lies a real chance of dealing with these ever recurrent difficulties of unemployment. With regard to unemployment in general, I would only say that a great deal has been said this evening about how much unemployment there is, and I have no doubt in special localities there is great distress still, but it seems to me that the problem at the moment is not so much one of unemployment but what we are going to do when the super-employment arrives, as it must arrive soon because of war requirements.
I wish to refer to something absolutely specific and which has been causing very great anxiety for a considerable time amongst fishermen of this country. I make no apology for referring, however frequently, in this House to the fishermen in this country because their livelihood is linked up with the well-being, the safety and the general character of this country. I wish to refer to an anomaly in the Unemployment Acts to which I have frequently referred, not only in this House but outside this House, and I wish to ask the Minister certain questions in regard to certain hardships. It is only fair to observe that I have written to the Minister and he has told me that he has the matter under consideration. I know my right hon. Friend well enough to believe that he means exactly what he said, and I have no doubt that he will consider the matter, but if I may say so it is because I am sure he means exactly what he says that I raise the matter because I am so concerned with the distress which may flow from this trouble unless immediate and favourable consideration is given; and since the matter has been a running sore ever since I have been a Member for over two years a mere consideration does not seem to be quite enough in the circumstances. In this country all round the coast in our little fishing villages, particularly in Cornwall, there are what are called share fishermen. For instance, a family of fishermen consisting of fathers and sons or brothers, together own a little boat in shares. The remuneration that they get is not from a wage but—small enough and smaller indeed than the wage which is earned by the ordinary fisherman when he is wage earning—it comes from a share in the profits brought home by this boat. In a little Cornish fishing village it is in many cases impossible for there to be a regular wage because these small boats cannot go out at all in extremely rough weather and, therefore, there could not be a sufficient continuity of operation, let alone a sufficient abundance of profit to permit of a regular wage. Accordingly, it is the tradition and practice to have these share fishermen. It has been constantly said that these fishermen, these partners who share their boats in this way, are not employes and therefore do not come within the scope of these Acts. The matter has been raised constantly and has caused great anxiety. Three years ago Sir William Beveridge went along the coast in Cornwall and Devon and saw the fishermen. I know where he went and I have talked to the men with whom he spoke; he was greatly impressed by this—I rather think that the hon. Member is talking about an Amendment to the Unemployment Act. That is out of order on an Adjournment Debate. Hon. Members cannot discuss legislation on these occasions.
With great respect, I was not proposing to deal with an Amendment of the Act, but I was endeavouring to show how this matter could be dealt with under the Act by regulations. The point I was about to raise is that Sir William Beveridge urged these men to put themselves within the scope of the present enactment. I quite appreciate that it appeared as if I was going to talk about some Amendment. On the contrary. Sir William Beveridge, with all the imprimatur and authority of the Minister of Labour, told these men how they were to put themselves within the scope of this Act. He gave them encouragement and told them that they should find somebody who would be their employer, whether it be an aunt or a wife. What they have done in most cases is this: They have selected a fish merchant to act as their employer. In these villages in Cornwall the fish merchants are mostly of the same kith and kin as the fishermen. They look after the books and the marketing, and, in many cases, the fishermen, besides fishing, work on the packing and treating of the fish.
Last year, just before winter set in, an onslaught was made on this very system which Sir William Beveridge had inaugurated in order to enable fishermen to obtain benefit. There were 24 cases brought at Porthleven. We won them. We were told that they were leading cases, and would decide the rest. Then on Armistice Day—of all days—the fishermen at Newlyn were told that their unemployment benefit was stopped. Those cases were fought, and, as far as my memory goes, all were won. I have no doubt that it was the duty of the local officials to bring those cases. I am not complaining. But I cannot help feeling that at that time the officials at Bristol did not sufficiently appreciate the difficulties of the situation. Every sort of technicality was invoked. One case was fought on the proposition that a fisherman was not unemployed because, although his boat was drawn up on the shore, his gear was still in the boat. I could give one example after another of how every conceivable technicality was invoked to deprive these humble fishermen of their chance to get unemployment benefit. As a rule, fishermen do not apply for benefit unless they are in real distress. Of those cases over 100 were won. This year, unfortunately, a case was lost. I would not call it a leading case, because each of these cases turns on its own merits. It was said, in this case, that the fish merchant had not sufficient control over the fisherman for them to be regarded as master and servant. Be this as it may, this case never went to appeal, because, unfortunately, the fisherman died. It was probably bad law, because on a recent similar case the court of referees decided in a different sense. However, last week action was taken, recommending that all along the west coast of Cornwall share fishermen should be excluded from the benefits of this Act. That seems to me a terrible thing at the opening of winter, when there is bound to be unemployment in the fishing industry when there are storms, and small fishing boats cannot go out—although these are the men that go out on the "Q" ships and the minesweepers. I should like to make one or two suggestions, which I hope are constructive, and which I hope the Minister will seriously consider. The first is that Section 3 (2) of the Act of 1935 gives him power to make regulations to include within the scope of the benefits of the Act classes of persons whose working conditions are similar to those of persons already covered by the Act. It seems to me that if that provision is applicable to this case—and I am told by experts that it is—the whole matter can be straightened out by a regulation running into only three lines. It is simply a question of bringing the appropriate regulations before this House. I have asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he will suspend the operation of the decision. He has refused to do so. I do not quarrel hotly with him on that matter, because at the moment the fish are there and the men are working. But the hardship is coming, and I want the right hon. Gentleman to be ready with whatever regulations are necessary to meet this hardship when it befalls. I know the right hon. Gentleman has said that he is saving the country's money. Not a bit of it. The amount of time and money that has been wasted in fighting these cases, in getting the officials at Bristol and all round the coast to obtain evidence, must be out of all proportion to the amount of money that has been, or could be, saved. This matter will be fought out again; the expedients recommended by Sir William Beveridge will be hunted up again. I am prepared to see every little fishing boat in West Cornwall turned into a one-man, or rather a one-boat, company, rather than see the fishermen starve this winter. As far as I can see, if we turn these boats into one-boat companies we have a cast-iron case. Is the right hon. Gentleman going to force us to do that? The fishermen who man the lifeboats all round the coast can float anything, let alone companies. Is the right hon. Gentleman going to force us to float such companies, instead of getting what seems to be the due of these men in a rational way?6.21 p.m.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), I think we are entitled to raise this question of unemployment even in time of war. It is customary for us to hear statements from the Minister of War, the First Lord of the Admiralty, and the Secretary of State for Air; and I think it would be a good thing if other Ministers were expected to make statements as to the work that they are doing during the war. I have a few points to raise, on which I hope the Minister will be able to make some reply. First, I want to refer to restrictions on the movement of miners going from colliery to colliery. I am informed that in one case a miner found a job at a colliery some miles nearer his home, in order to save money on bus fares. He gave the legal notice to terminate his employment at the colliery where he was working, and applied for work at the other colliery. He was asked where he came from, and was then told, "We cannot take on men from that colliery." I should like the Minister to make the position clear. I understand that the Control of Employment Act has not yet come into operation.
There is no power in law for anyone to interfere with the movements of a person from one place to another.
The sole responsibility is on the colliery concerned?
Undoubtedly.
I should like the Minister to make it clear that there is no justification in law for such interference.
I answered a specific question on this point about seven weeks ago. I can only repeat what I said then.
I should like to see such a statement circulated in Lancashire. The other point that I want to raise is this: I have tried for months to find out why, in munition factories controlled by His Majesty's Government, men over 50 find it impossible to get work. There is a feeling, especially in the neighbourhood of Euxton, that it is because of their age that they are refused employment. These men could give good service, and I want the Minister to make it clear that their age is not a bar to employment. The way to make that clear is to find jobs for a number of men who are over 50.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street referred to the method of calculating the cost-of-living index. The other day I had the pleasure of addressing a women's meeting in my own division. I was the only man present, and I had a very fine meeting. Many of these women were the mothers of men who had been called up under the Militia Act; some had sons in France; some were the wives of unemployed men. They said they had difficulty in understanding how the cost-of-living index was calculated. They gave me specific cases of articles which had gone up in price by 40 per cent. They pointed out that unemployment benefits have not been increased. The miner living next door to an unemployed man has had 8d. a day increase in wages—that is none too much; if anything it is too little—but the unemployed man has had no increase. I was asked whether it was possible to do something in order to bring about an increase in payments. I said, "On Wednesday of this week there is to be a Debate in the House on unemployment. I know the Minister of Labour is a very kind-hearted gentleman, and I will put your case to him." There is a surplus in the Unemployment Fund, cannot some of it be devoted to increasing benefits? Here is another matter. Some of my friends have left Lancashire for North Wales, in order to work in the quarries. They have written to say that the quarries are about to close. I want to put this question to the Minister: I realise that it is not altogether a question for his Department, but that is one of the difficulties that we have in bringing up these cases.We always pass them on.
Could not something be done to prevent the sort of thing which is happening? My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelly (Mr. J. Griffiths) will give details when he winds up the Debate for us. I have personal friends writing to me about the wholesale closing-down of quarries, because housebuilding is going down. I want the Minister of Labour to acquaint the Minister responsible for this kind of thing with the fact that something ought to be done.
A week last Thursday I put a question to the Minister of Transport asking whether he could give any indication of the number of road schemes and bridges that have been suspended in Lancashire alone and the number of men to whom it had denied work. He told me some colossal sums of money, and that the suspending of these schemes had put 1,800 men out of employment. There is something wrong when, at a time like this, with an unemployment figure of 1,400,000, the Government on their own suspend schemes on work of national importance to the extent of putting out of work 1,800 men. I cannot believe that it is not possible for the Government to do more for the unemployed even in war time. I again refer to the women's meeting. All of them were very sad. Everyone wanted to see Hitler defeated and was prepared to carry any burden that was essential to bring that about, but at the same time there was a feeling running through that meeting, as there is among the unemployed in this country, that the unemployed are not having a fair deal. It is not fair for the Minister or the Government to try and argue that owing to the distress consequent upon war, they were not able to deal with unemployment in a better way. The turning over from peace to war was a big dislocation, and I know that the Minister will tell us that the big increase in unemployment is among the domestic trades and in hotels and so on. If the Government find it impossible at the moment to reabsorb all men into industry, is it not possible to bring about in the meantime some improvement in the lives of the unemployed?6.32 p.m.
Like other speakers, I do not intend to dilate upon the question of unemployment in any general way, but already the hon. Gentleman the Member for Ince (Mr. G. Macdonald) has referred to the matter which I particularly desire to bring before the House. As he has already hinted, the House is well aware that as a result of the declaration of war all building schemes by local authorities, and, in fact, by private individuals, have been brought to an end. The building trade, in the last returns, showed an enormous increase in unemployment, and that directly affects the main industry in my own county and in the neighbouring county of Merioneth. Already for some time complaints and representations have been made to me of the complete disregard of the use of slates in Government schemes of building. I have from time to time approached the War Office, the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Health, the Board of Education, and the Ministry of Supply and have urged upon them to specify the use of slates in their building schemes, but inevitably I have been put off by some reason or other, not always a very good one. One reason which has been put to me, is that slates are not artistic, and that the great complaint about men's barracks was that they were ugly buildings. I think that most of the Members of the House will agree with me that slates are, after all, indigenous to this country, and I say without hesitation that slates are more in conformity with the general appearance of the country than those horrible red tiles and other tiles that we see.
I come to the position with regard to the slate industry. I succeeded the other day, at the request of the industry, in getting slates excluded from war-risks insurance. That has given a short lease of life to these quarries. At the moment the demand for slates is practically hon- existent, and all that the quarries can do is to produce slates for stock. Had they to pay war-risks insurance on all these accumulating stocks they would have had to shut down at once. What is the position in the industry to-day? There are already approximately 2,000 workers unemployed, and the remaining 6,280 are on short time. As from this week the men at the well-known Penrhyn Quarry will only be working every alternate week, and in the Dinorwic Quarries, the biggest slate quarry in the world, for some time now they have been working only five days a week. At the present moment there are in stock in the various quarries in North Wales 15,000,000 slates, the best roofing material in the world, which can be used and adapted even for temporary buildings such as are being put up now. There is the added advantage that when these temporary buildings are pulled down the slates can be recovered and can be sold practically at the same price at which they can be bought to-day. Let me compare the price of putting slates on buildings with that of other materials. The only thing that is really necessary is that there should be a little difference in the pitch of the roof. The buildings that are being put up can bear the weight of the best slates. The seconds and thirds are probably too heavy to put on temporary buildings, but the best slates certainly are not. Best Welsh slates cost 5s. 6d. to 5s. 9d. per square yard, shingles, which come from abroad, cost the same price and are practically unobtainable to-day, asbestos slates cost 5s. per square yard, and asbestos sheets 3s. 6d. per square yard. I have here a telegram I received yesterday from one of the quarries:Candidly, I fail to understand the policy of the Government. Here is a material which is to be had in plenty, the whole of it produced by British labour, and yet asbestos is going to cost more, and there is delay in delivery of between eight and 10 weeks because there is a shortage of it. There is no cost of shipping to bring the slates from overseas as there is in the case of asbestos, and yet when I have asked any one of the departments to put slates in their specification I have been turned down every time. I think I can safely say that there is not a better class of artisan in the whole of the British Isles than is to be found in the slate quarries of Carnarvonshire and Merionethshire. But what is going to happen to them? Already 2,000 are out of work, and within the next two months, unless the Government change their policy, the whole of the 8,000 will be out of work and on unemployment benefit. I do appeal to the right hon. Gentleman. I know that it is not all to do with his Department, but it affects him in this way, that, if these men are placed on the dole, as they are bound to be within the next two months unless a change occurs, it will cost the country £750,000. That is probably a small sum compared with what these 8,000 people are now spending in the purchase of goods and so on. Many of them, I am glad to say, earn enough to pay Income Tax. In one quarry alone, I happen to know that 400 of the employes pay Income Tax every year. The Government are bound to lose more financially than if they encouraged the use of these slates, 15,000,000 of them already in stock, the best roofing material in the world, which at the end of the war, if these buildings have to be pulled down, can be sold certainly at the same price, because they are offered to-day at the pre-war price. They are offered to the Government or to anybody who cares to buy them at the pre-war price. The price is bound to go up after the war. The Government would more than recover the cost of these slates and there would be no loss to the country. In the meantime this excellent body of men would be in employment and serving their country just as much as the younger generation who have already joined up."I understand thousands of pounds to be spent on permanent buildings Air Ministry contract at Norwich. Few tiles to be used, only 730 yards slates. Bulk of contract green asbestos sheets, cost 5s. 7d.per yard. Slates can be fixed at 5s. 5d per yard."
6.42 p.m.
I have listened with very great interest to this Debate, and I am sure that it is very desirable that such a Debate should take place at the present moment. Important as the matter is, I do not consider that the unemployment question will be a very serious one in the immediate future. When there is dissatisfaction we can discuss it in the open, we know exactly what is happening in the country, and we have faith in the figures that are published and know them to be accurate. The unemployment problem has always existed, in all nations, at all times, and under all Governments, and, to an extent, will continue to exist, but if there is anything that we can do to improve matters, it is our duty to do it. One thing to which I object is that the Government are blamed for everything. It would appear from the speeches that have been made in this House this evening that the Government are 100 per cent. responsible for unemployment, but there are other contributory factors. The hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) referred to slates, and he implied, as a typical case, that the Government were the only purchasers of slates, and he said that, unless the Government altered their policy, there will be another 6,000 people out of employment. There are other purchasers of slates besides the Government, and we have to get such an attitude as that adopted by the hon. and gallant Member out of our minds.
I was very interested in the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). He complained of the suspension of Government expenditure on public works. I really do not see how he can logically complain, when the Government are spending more to-day than they have ever spent before, on different matters certainly, but they are finding employment by their expenditure. If the amount of money that we are spending to-day on Government work does not solve the unemployment problem, then the expenditure of money is never going to do it. The hon. Member referred to Lancashire unemployment. I understand that is included in the North-Western area. While he was speaking I looked up the figures. In August, 1939, the unemployment in the North-Western area was plus 551, compared with September, 1938, when it was minus 151,000. Therefore, it was not a fair comparison. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member refer to the cost of living. I addressed a question to the Minister on this problem a week or so ago, and he gave me a reasoned reply. I am very sorry that he could not say more. It is essential that we should have the information, whatever it may contain, at the earliest possible moment. We have been extremely free from industrial disputes. Owing to the negotiations which have taken place between employers and workers, the Employers' Federation and the trades unions, and the reason that has been exercised on both sides, we have been free from industrial disputes during a period when prices have been rising, which is the period when industrial disputes take place, and I want us to maintain that position, indeed, we must maintain it if we are going to win the war. To an ever greater extent the cost-of-living figure is being used on which to base wage rates, and for that reason alone I hope the Minister will listen to the appeal that we should have the information as early as possible. We know how hard his Department is working. We know the congestion in the Department, and we have sympathy with them, but if the right hon. Gentleman would let us have the cost-of-living figure on the basis of the new particulars he has collected, it would be of considerable benefit to the country. The hon. Member for Lowestoft Mr. Loftus) referred to the question of the survey of unused plant. I do not know anything about the conditions in his area, but I know that in several areas throughout the country the Ministry of Supply is making a survey of unused plant and in addition the Chambers of Commerce are doing it. I think there are quite enough surveys being made. The surveys find employment for the people who are making the surveys, but not much other employment. The unemployment problem is always changing. We had a different set of conditions before the war, we have a different set of conditions during the war, and we shall have another set of conditions immediately the war is concluded. Pre-war, the main problem was that the supply exceeded the demand. There was bad distribution of labour, through the demands on the light industry and the depression of the heavy industries. The problem that we have to consider now, during the war, is that of the transition period. How is it feasible to expect us to get through this transition period very quickly? We have only had two and a half months of the war, yet hon. Members expect us to have completed the transition period from peace time to war already, although it may take a year or two years. In one industry, of which I know something, the motor car industry, many works are shut down. They have to change their production from motor cars to something else that the Minister of Supply, or the Admiralty, or the Air Force want. In the meantime, I know of works where tens of thousands of men are being discharged. It is no good blaming the Minister for problems of that kind. They are due to the circumstances in which we are working. This changeover and the money we are spending does not necessarily find work for the unemployed. Probably many unemployed people are unsuitable. I do not say that employment will not be found, but it may not be immediately, and at any rate it is no good blaming the Minister for not putting more people into employment. I have heard it stated several times that since the last great war emigration has stopped or has been considerably reduced, and that if it had been maintained at the same rate as it was before 1914 we should have no unemployment. That is an absolute fallacy. It would not necessarily have been one or one and a half million of unemployed who would have gone overseas, but it would have been probably the hard working section of the community. You cannot just pick up the people who are unemployed and put them into particular employment suitable for them. They have an obligation as well. They have to adapt themselves to the circumstances. The labour situation in war eventually must be one of marked shortage. That time will come. That is why I said at the beginning of my speech that I do not consider unemployment to be a very serious problem, although it is a problem to which we must pay attention. Compared with 1914 and with conditions immediately after 1914, employment is better now than it was after two or three months of war in 1914. I know that there are no comparable figures, but the trade union returns of that time showed that two and a half months after the outbreak of war in 1914 they had more people unemployed than they had prior to the war. Now we have conditions something similar to what they were prior to the outbreak of the war. If the Minister is to be blamed, give him credit for that also. We are spending four or five times as much on war to-day as we were spending at the same period in 1914. That will improve employment. Another factor that has increased unem- ployment has been the evacuation of women, a condition which did not exist in 1914. There is one further factor that has contributed to the unemployment factor, and that is the output of the worker is low and that the labour turnover was high. Hon. Members may think that I am reasoning illogically.In what industries?
The engineering industry in particular. The output of the worker is lower, and the labour turnover is high. How does that contribute to unemployment? Take a factory which has six, 12, or, it may be, 50 departments and in one, two, or three of those departments you get a high rate of labour turnover. That becomes a bottle-neck in the factory, and it is no good pressing the other parts of the works to a greater extent than those one or two departments can keep in balance. The result is that many departments are not being worked at full pressure because of the inefficiency of one or two departments upon which the others depend. The labour turnover is detrimental to full employment. That is another problem that we have to solve. We have had the Control of Employment Act, but we are told that it is not being enforced. I do not know whether that is so or not.
With regard to the unemployment position I am convinced that at an early date the conditions will be very much better. After all, we have 300,000 fewer unemployed than we had a year ago. I am an optimist. I consider that in war conditions we shall have a shortage of labour and that it will be a question not of finding employment but of finding sufficient people to do the work that has to be done. The important factor during the war is that we must have full employment of all our labour, and the solution of that problem lies with the State, the employer and the employed.6.55 p.m.
Those who were present at the beginning of the Debate will agree that we are indebted to the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) for the very high standard with which he opened it. I should like in one respect to follow the hon. Member who has just spoken, because I am familiar with the engineering industry, and I have no hesitation in saying that the output of the worker is higher than ever it was in the history of the country. I cannot, however, go into that matter this evening because it would take too long. I want to deal with several other questions of importance to the people. Last Sunday it was staled on the German wireless that the trade unions in Britain had had to right every inch of the way for every concession. That is true, but the fact remains that we have still got our trade unions.
And Germany has not.
It is against that background that I want us to consider this question of unemployment. My immediate concern is that what is said in this House from now until the termination of the war may be repeated outside and against Britain in particular. Therefore, it is very important that we should consider the question of unemployment in its correct perspective. I want to address the House on that basis, so that anyone who repeats what is said here must repeat it against the background of reality which has been produced by political development in Europe during the past six years. It has often been said by people outside who are not familiar with the facts, and it has been said by hon. Members opposite, who can be named if need be, that during the past six years Hitler has solved unemployment. That is not true. Any hon. or right hon. Member who has followed the development of affairs in Germany are bound to come to the conclusion that Germany has not solved unemployment.
What are the facts? First, a large number of men and women were employed for longer hours. Secondly, it is true that they wiped out the unemployed, but that is a far different matter than solving the question of unemployment. How did they deal with unemployment? It is important that we should bring out these facts, because on this side we represent the struggles and aspirations of the people of this country and of other parts of the world. This is how they dealt with unemployment in Germany. First, they introduced what was known as the Goering plan. Every exchange in Germany had instructions from Goering that the unemployed were to be called to the exchange, class by class. The first class called were in two categories, one, those who were the strongest numerically, and the other those who were the weakest socially. These categories covered approximately 2,000,000 men and women most of them single. When they had signed on at their exchange many of them were sent to labour camps which were to be seen in all parts of Germany. Young men were drilled with spades on their shoulders; unemployed clerks and typists and shopgirls, unemployed teachers and unmarried women, were shipped from the large cities like cattle shipped from agricultural areas. It was an astonishing spectacle. There were piteous scenes as young men and women were taken away from their homes. Girls were inspected in groups and then sent away in lorries from the employment exchanges. Many of the girls were in nice city clothes. Many were forced to go to work on the farms, and to work as maidservants to the Junkers and the steel and coal magnates. You can well understand how some of us were inclined to be very bitter during the past few years knowing all these facts, but yet we had the hon. and gallant Member for Bournemouth (Sir H. Croft) getting up and recommending that the Government should take similar steps to deal with our young men and women. If there were time one could tell terrible stories of how these young women have been treated once they have been dragged away from parental control and their home surroundings, and all that that means for women between the ages of 18 and 21. They have been dragged away from their home environments, forced to work unlimited hours, badly treated, badly fed and badly paid. They could not ventilate their grievances because they had no organisation. They had no House of Commons in which the representatives of young men and women could speak as the hon. Member for Jarrow (Miss Wilkinson) does in this House. They had no House of Commons where miners' representatives could speak in the way we are doing from these benches this afternoon. Once these millions of young men and women had been dragged away from their homes and were without organisation they were helpless, they were just individuals, and if they protested there was the concentration camp in the background. In these circumstances hon. Members will understand why I was forced to interrupt the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) one Friday morning when he said, in reply to the Prime Minister, that the Germans had solved the unemployment problem. The Germans with their political philosophy could not solve an unemployment problem. The position is that this kind of people were responsible in Germany for that kind of treatment to young men and women and the same type of people in this country would do the same thing for our people, if it were not for the fact that the people of this country would not stand for it. They would do the same thing in this country but for the power and strength of the trade unions and the Labour and co-operative movements. Since 1931 we in this country have been fighting a rearguard action as far as unemployment is concerned. I have here pamphlets which represent the blackest page in the history of this country so far as social services and unemployment pay are concerned. They were issued in 1931 and I have carefully preserved them. One was issued by the National Confederation of Employers and the other by the Federation of British Industries. These were the people who first suggested the means test, who first suggested huge cuts in unemployment benefit and in the social services. While we are prepared to produce before the House evidence showing how our people have been dealt with in other parts of the world, we must not forget this black page in the history of this country and those who were responsible for forcing the Government to embark on the policy they did in regard to unemployment benefit. We are now at war and, therefore, we have to consider all issues in a different way than if we were living in normal times. At the same time, there is some misunderstanding in the country regarding our position. It must be made quite clear that, as regards internal affairs, there is no political truce so far as our party is concerned. We cannot afford a political truce on questions of the character we are now considering, because the people for whom we are speaking have had to straggle far too long, and we cannot afford a trace on issues of this character. While we are prepared to take up a certain attitude in regard to the international situation, it must be made quite clear that on questions of the social services, unemployment, old age pensions and workmen's compensation, we cannot afford to compromise. While we are prepared to mobilise all the resources of the country to deal with the international situation and to deal with the enemies of the people and humanity, we should be lacking in our duty if we did not deal with the enemies at home who were responsible for the issuing of the pamphlet's of which I have spoken. All those in this country who stand for this kind of treatment of our people, all those who stand in the path of progress, are just as much enemies of our people as are the people who are responsible for the present international situation. It is only the sacrifices of our people that have made it possible for us to speak in this House in this way. We are only ordinary men and women. We are here not because we are anything out of the ordinary, but because men and women like ourselves sacrificed themselves during the past 100 years in order to reach out for a better chance in life, for better education for their children, and because each succeeding generation has been prepared to do this we can speak in the way we are speaking to-night. Having won the right to speak and to vote, having won the right to organise, we cannot afford to compromise on the right to live, and our people cannot live on the unemployment benefits they are getting at the present time. It is not in accordance with our ideals. The schoolmaster has been at work. We have been taught to reach out for better homes and for a better Empire and to give our children the chance of a better education, and our people cannot afford to do that on the benefits which are being paid to the unemployed at the present time. I have here a scale of benefits—I am afraid that would require legislation.
I have been very guarded with regard to the matter. It is a responsibility of the Unemployment Statutory Committee which is now considering resolutions which have been sent to it by the Trades Union Congress and others. It is a matter which has been taken outside the jurisdiction of this House, and I understand that it is this committee which has recommended an increase of benefit. Therefore, it would not require legislation.
Undoubtedly an increase in unemployment benefit would mean legislation.
May I draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, to the fact that the Statutory Committee has power to make a recommendation to the Minister, and that the Minister merely confirms that recommendation without there being any legislation?
May I point out that the position is that the Statutory Committee makes the recommendation and that I have to propose a regulation to the House, but of course, the actual procedure under the Committee is a matter of the normal administration of the Unemployment Insurance Act.
May I submit, therefore, that the regulation is a matter coming under Acts which are already the law, and that it does not really involve legislation?
May I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that, as the Statutory Committee has power to recommend to the Minister that there should be an increase in benefits, it is in order for the hon. Member to suggest that the Minister should consider the Statutory Committee's report and ask it to make a further increase? Is it not in order for the hon. Member to suggest to the Minister that he should examine the Statutory Committee's report with a view to further increasing the benefit? I think that is what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) is doing.
If the hon. Member confines his remarks to what the Statutory Committee can recommend, I shall have no objection.
I take note of your Ruling, Mr. Speaker. I had intended to preface what I was saying by expressing the hope that the Minister would use his influence with the Unemployment Insurance Statutory Committee and consider the resolutions which have been sent by the Trades Union Congress and other bodies urging that the time has arrived for an increase in unemployment benefits. I was going on to show that, on the basis of the returns of the Unemployment Assistance Board, the follow- ing benefits are being paid. The average amount paid in Birmingham is 21s. 9d, in Hanley 22s. 7d, in Preston 20s., in Glasgow 22s.10d., and in Dundee 21s. 3d. I suggest that benefits of that kind are no longer sufficient. The Statutory Committee and the Unemployment Assistance Board should have regard to the need for an immediate increase. In my view, the minimum benefits which should be paid are 22s. for a man, 12s. for his wife, and 6s. for a child. Therefore, I ask the Minister to consider what is said in this Debate, and to get the Statutory Committee and the Unemployment Assistance Board together as soon as possible in order that we may set an example to the world by showing that, even in time of war, we are determined to increase the benefits and allowances paid to the unemployed, so that our people may have a better standard of living than they have at the present time.
Further, I submit that the time has arrived when something should be done for the rehabilitation of those who have been unemployed for a long time. I know of no greater tragedy than that of the men and women who have been unemployed for years and years and who in these days, when great calls are being made in other directions, cannot get an opportunity of playing their part. I hope the Minister will have regard to the fact that people are getting more and more concerned because they are not being allowed to serve in any way, that he will have regard also to the various questions that have been asked about the means test, and that, even if he is not prepared to abolish it, he will consider whether it cannot be more generously administered than at present.7.15 p.m.
I do not propose to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. E. Smith), except to say that I agree with him that, however the problem of unemployment is to be solved, it must not be solved by the methods used in Nazi Germany. I hope that, as one preliminary step to bringing the maximum number of people into employment, we, as employers' and workers' representatives, will set our faces steadfastly against excessive overtime. I do not think excessive hours make for efficiency, for the health of the workers, or for really good production. The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), in opening the Debate, earned our gratitude by the thoughtful way in which he did so. He put before the House one or two problems on which I should like to make some remarks. He referred to the disquieting fact that, although so many men are under arms and have been withdrawn from civil employment, they have not been replaced by men drawn from those registered as unemployed at the Employment Exchanges. I think the answer is that, while they are withdrawn from the body of producers, they are also, in a very large measure, withdrawn from the body of consumers at the same time. These men are serving in large units, they are fed and clothed by the State, and the very fact that most of them are living away from their homes has an adverse effect on the spending power of the ordinary men and women of this country.
Therefore, we have to ask the Government, as represented in this Debate by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour, what steps they are taking, as the one big purchaser, to equal the demands that were formerly made, in the days of peace, by the countless ordinary men and women acting as consumers and customers of the various industries and shops of the country. I believe that three or four forms of action can be taken. I agree that we do not require big long-term schemes for dealing with the problem of unemployment, for in a comparatively short time we shall not be looking for jobs, but we shall have some difficulty in mobilising the reserves of skill and industry to carry out the tasks before us if the war is to be successfully concluded. I want to reduce that time-lag to the shortest possible period, and I think it can be done in some or all of the following ways. Already, the Government, through the Ministry of Supply is certainly the largest employer in the country, but I hope that the Minister of Supply will, as far as possible, spread the work among the people who are equipped with skilled workers to carry it out at the present time. After all, sooner or later the war will end, and there will have to be a change back. That time of rearrangement will be a time of equal dislocation to the present, and therefore, if we can keep the men and their tools working in the factory with the employers to whom the}' are accustomed, there will be less difficulty in the future, even though perhaps it may not be quite so economical at the present time. Similarly, I think some help might be given to the hard-hit building industry and that, wherever possible, work should be given to local people. I was interested in the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Loftus) who suggested that wherever possible local builders should be employed. I support that suggestion with all earnestness. Do let us try to employ the people of a district on such Government buildings as may be required in that district. Do not give this kind of work always to big London firms who do it with imported workers. Let it be done by the local people. I think also that we might help to take up the time-lag to which I have referred, by pressing on with the development of our export trade. The market provided by the ordinary home consumer has gone down. All the more reason why we should try to find a counterpart for it overseas. The new step which was announced yesterday as a proper reply to the indiscriminate warfare now being waged at sea, will give us new opportunties in the export market. I hope we shall seize those opportunities with both hands. In this connection, I hope we shall extend as far as possible the field of cooperation with our French allies. I believe that the interchange of trade between the two countries will have a stabilising effect on our joint economy and will help in winning the war. It may be urged that many of their sales to us are of a purely luxury nature but those purchases will be made only by people who have the surplus money to spend on this class of goods and if we can help French trade I believe we shall bring the French nation closer to us in this time of war and create a better spirit and open a wider field of co-operation for the days of peace. Another way in which we can assist to get the maximum of employment in this country is to examine the case of those industries which have had an especially bad time in recent years. The hon. Member for Ince (Mr. G. Macdonald) who spoke so well earlier in the Debate knows far more about the conditions in Lancashire than I do, and I think he will agree that the wages earned by a skilled opera- tive in the cotton industry of Lancashire compare very unsatisfactorily with the wages of less skilled workers in other and happier trades situated in other parts of the country. My own division is agricultural, and the agricultural workers' wages also compare very unsatisfactorily with the wages in other industries. Let us, therefore, look into these trades which have had a bad time in the past and as a first step towards increasing the requirement of home commodities, bring the wages in those trades up to the general level of skilled workers' wages throughout the country. Those are some of the ways in which the time lag can be put right. I believe that in the months ahead we shall have difficulty in finding the men and the machines for our factories but I believe we shall do much to keep this country on an even keel, and to win through to victory, if we avoid, as far as possible, the dislocation which would be caused by mass movements of men from one district to another. Secondly, we should try to find other customers abroad, for the goods which we cannot buy ourselves; and, thirdly, we should make sure that the first wages increases are made where they are most needed. We do not want to have an ascending spiral of wages and prices, but let us make sure that such workers as the agricultural worker, and the road-man working on the other side of the hedge from him, and the cotton operative, get a better return for their labour than they have had in the past.7.26 p.m.
I agree with the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken about the necessity for an increase of wages, but I would not limit it in the manner which he suggests. I think that throughout the whole country just now there is need for a big increase in the wages of all workers. I have listened with great interest to this Debate. I suppose had we been living in normal times the Minister of Labour would have come here to-day with a certain amount of trepidation because of the increase in the number of unemployed during the last two months. But there is possibly an excuse for the right hon. Gentleman in the fact that we are now in what some hon. Members have described as a transition period between peace and war. Probably the Minister is not to be blamed unduly for the present position. I agree that, in present circumstances, neither the right hon. Gentleman nor possibly any individual Minister has responsibility for the position in which we find ourselves. Therefore, while, on previous occasions, I have had many hard words for the Minister of Labour I have probably no reason to add to them in this Debate.
Since I became a Member of Parliament I have had a good deal of experience of the Ministry of Labour. I have taken an active part in Debates on unemployment during my membership of this House. I have had the opportunity of meeting many of the officials of the Ministry. As I listened to the Debate this afternoon, I recalled the fact that this is a comparatively modern Ministry. It only came into being towards the end of the last Great War. From my experience of Government Departments I would say that it has as efficient a body of civil servants as are to be found in the country. I certainly pay my tribute to the capacity and efficiency of the Department. A previous speaker made a point with regard to the case of the Cornish fishermen, and I would qualify my tribute to the Department by saying that sometimes they are, possibly, a little too efficient. Some of the Ministry's officials try to prove themselves too competent in seeking to take cases which have been decided by courts of referees further than there is any real need to do. That is one little criticism which I would make of the Ministry's officials. I think one weakness of Ministers has been that they have not repressed their officials sometimes in regard to the taking of appeals in cases where there was no need to do so. The hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) made out a strong case for his fishermen. It might be held that the grant of benefit to those fishermen involved a charge on the Fund which should not be placed on it. I would say, however, that those men are entitled to be in insurance and on the Fund. If they have longer periods of unemployment than others, it is the responsibility of the Minister so to organise matters that those periods can be filled up, with other forms of employment if necessary. The Minister of Labour has not been too well treated by some of his collaegues. It is obvious, from the references that have been made to the Minister of Supply and the other spending services, that it is not the Minister of Labour who should be in the dock but some of his colleagues. I would illustrate what I have in mind by two instances. There was the action taken by the Government with regard to the stopping of building. The Secretary of State for Scotland intimated to local authorities that they would have to close down on the building programmes on which they had embarked. I think that was absolutely wrong. It might be that the difficulty of finding material and labour, because of other demands made upon them by the war, would make necessary the curtailment of the programme, but there was no need to get into a panic and close it down at once. The result has been shocking in ever so many instances. I was looking forward to the carrying through of a housing scheme in my own division. I had a promise of much that was going to be done. I find now that, in a district in Glasgow where the infantile mortality rate is something terrible, there has been such a practical slowing down of the scheme that it will not be finished for years after the war. It was just as necessary, in my opinion, for that scheme to go on as the building of any munitions factory, because of the circumstances of the people in that district. It was the Secretary for Scotland who was responsible but, as a result, the Minister of Labour is in the dock here to-day. There has been an increase in the number of unemployed, and among them are many building trade workers. Let me take another illustration, drawn from the action of the Secretary for Mines. The Government Departments had to show that they were fully aware that we were in this terrible period of war and that something had to be done. Every Department seemed to think they had to show that they were fully alive to the situation and were taking all necessary steps to deal with it, so the Minister for Mines intimated that we had to cut down our coal, gas and electricity. It was blatant absurdity. It showed absolute lack of imagination. It was the wrong approach altogether. It was the approach referred to by the hon. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White), the heads of Government Departments thinking in terms of restriction instead of expansion and construction. Instead of getting into immediate employment 70,000 or 80,000 miners by opening up pits that had been closed, all he thought of was in terms of restriction and limitation. The consequence has made itself felt in the gas, electricity and coal industries in the most shocking way. When the Minister was questioned about it it was obvious that he had not made up his mind what was the motive that had prompted him to act in this way. In every Department I find that there has been a similar type of mind shown in handling the situation. The heads of the great Government Departments have to show that they realise that they are in control of the situation, and they seem to think they will show it by imposing regulations and putting on limitations. They are going to have the whole of industry ready for its full utilisation in order that the war effort may be carried on, but, as far as I can see, they have been putting obstacles in the way of industry being thoroughly organised and used for national needs. They have been putting on restrictions, and they do not seem to have been doing much in the way of expansion. That is one of the reasons why I think the Minister of Labour is to be sympathised with, because I do not think other Ministers have consulted sufficiently with him and his Department. As I see it, they have been too much in the hands of individuals outside the Civil Service, taking a great employer here and a great employer there and listening too much to the great employers, who are naturally inclined to think along the lines of the utilisation only of the great plants of the country and less of the smaller productive forces in the community. I suppose every hon. Member is practically in the same position as myself. I can take out from my pocket one or two letters from small firms in my area who have had to put off so many of their workpeople because of the difficulty they are finding in getting contracts for Government work, while their ordinary work has been closed down very much at the instance of the Government. The Minister of Labour is to be sympathised with because so many of his colleagues in other Ministries are not showing the imagination and the ability to utilise to the full the productive plant of this country in providing for the ordinary needs of the people. The Treasury is also to blame very much in the way in which it puts its frozen paw upon the possibility of expansion of the social services. I would like to impress upon the Minister that in the situation in which he finds himself now, when so much of the work which formerly came within his purview in areas of production are now outside his purview and under the control of the Ministry of Supply, the Ministry of Food, and the various other Ministries, there is presented to him the opportunity of making adequate provision for the needs of those who are still unemployed. It is important that he should, in close consultation with the Statutory Committee, go into the whole question of the financial provision for the unemployed. It should not simply be made to depend upon the cost of living. Certain hon. Members have referred to the importance of the cost of living index and the figure that may be presented as a result of the prolonged investigations that have taken place. We all look forward to getting the report and the new figure which will come from those investigations, but Members who are intimate with the conditions of the unemployed during those years know the tragedy that has been going on in the homes of the unemployed. In these days when apepals are being made for a united national effort, the Government could show its sense of dependence upon the great mass of the people by the abolition of the means test, an increase of pensions and of unemployment benefit, and, as the greatest employer in the country, by a big increase of wages so that the standard of life of the people could be materially improved.7.44 p.m.
The hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) has touched upon one or two points which are very pertinent to the Debate. The Minister of Labour could do a good deal through the immediate action of other Departments with regard to housing, roads and bridges. With regard to housing, when slum clearance was in full swing and it was suddenly cut off as by a guillotine, it dislocated the employment market to a serious extent. With regard to road works, the Ministry of Transport has sent out a circular stopping practically all the main schemes of road improvement and have almost gone to the extent of commanding local authorities not to do any work of re-surfacing other than what is essential. That means that many county councils will be faced with the position of having to dismiss regular employes who are in their superannuation schemes. I hope that the Minister will interest himself in that side of the unemployment problem.
I trust that the House will never tire of discussing the ugly and unfortunate aspect of our lives presented by unemployment. We are inclined to speak about this problem from an economic point of view, but it is well to recall that when the great agitation was on foot to abolish slavery and child labour employers were able to put up potent economic arguments why they and other shameful social evils could not be done away with. I am hoping that by continuous discussion in the House we shall be able so to sharpen the public conscience that, as in the case of slavery and child labour, we shall reach the day when unemployment will be looked upon as something that is wrong and that must be swept away despite the economic difficulties that are put forward. For nearly two years Ministers of State have made announcements of the proposed expenditure of huge sums of money upon armaments. The reaction was, much talk about the possibility of an industrial revival. Indeed, so much was the industrial revival spoken of that it was not an easy task to keep before the public mind that large-scale unemployment was still a primary factor in the life of our country. One of the major tragedies of unemployment is that few people face the facts. In spite of vast rearmament expenditure, of the well-tried transference schemes and of the entrance into the armed Forces of large drafts of men, it does appear as if unemployment is tougher than the hardest metal in its resistance to treatment. The conclusion is forced upon one that there is and will be in the Special Areas a large number of men surplus to industrial needs. That might be challenged. It has been challenged in the Debate today by the optimism that has been shown from some quarters of the House that this vast expenditure upon armaments will solve the unemployment problem, but the war is bound to come to an end sometime. The Minister of Labour will remember that a thorough industrial survey was made in South Wales which estimated that if 80,000 insured workers were bodily removed from South Wales, there would still remain an ample supply of labour to cater for the needs of industry, while still leaving—and this is the important thing—12 per cent. of the total labour supply wholly unemployed. That is a sobering statement. Even if that basis is not accepted, there are thousands of men to-day who should be told definitely that there is no hope at all of their being re-absorbed into industry. An enormous number of elderly men are unemployed. I do not refer to the "ins and outs," to the two-monthly, the three-monthly or the six-monthly periods; we have got beyond monthly periods and come to annual periods. There are in South Wales men who for 10 or 11 solid years have not had a single day's employment. I am wondering whether the best minds of the country have really been applied to this problem with the will and the desire to find a solution. Migration has taken over 300,000 from South Wales. There has been a constant trickle despite the fact that heavy industries like coal and steel are expanding—those concertina-like industries which expand and contract and leave tremendous tragedies of long unemployment periods in their trail. I do not think that even the present expansion of those industries, and the still further expansion that will take place, will be sufficient to make that contribution towards solving the unemployment problem which we desire. One is bound to ask himself the question, "Shall there be no change from this meagre empty life of the unemployed?" Is it inevitable, that un-ployment must abound, especially in the Special Areas, and what helping hand does the Government hold out? The Minister of Labour has been patted on the back by hon. Members sitting behind him, and he certainly would be a very hard-hearted Minister of Labour if he did not do his utmost to try to make some contribution to the easing of this problem. Within the limits of the order of society under which we live, he has endeavoured to do his best, but let me say that the black and barren means test, the household means test in particular, is something of which the unemployed are asking to be relieved. Nothing is causing so much misery and anxiety as the reduction made in allowances just because one member of the family gets a little increase in wages, the taking of a certain percentage off the allowance in order to operate the means test principle. Though some hon. Members may say, "It is the same old jargon, the same old talk," I would say that we have got to plan a compulsory earlier retirement age from industry, plan for overtime to be abolished and plan for people to cease holding two jobs. There are any number of policemen getting rather handsome pensions who take up other employment. It ought to be made a condition of their receiving their superannuation that they should not take other jobs while here is an unemployment problem. It is not policemen alone; I mentioned them only because they came first to my mind; there is a large army of others taking jobs when they could well do without them. We must also plan the raising of the school-leaving age to 16, and plan to increase the purchasing power of the people. Another aspect of the problem which has not, I think, been mentioned to-day is the decreasing amount of human labour required in industry owing to the introduction of ever more efficient mechanism. In 1920 it took 12 minutes to make an engine-bearing bolt; to-day it takes less than five minutes. Consider the case of the worker at the loom in the textile industry. Therer are now cases of 4, 8, 16, also 32, and even 75, looms being looked after by one operator. A worker used to build six rubber tyres by hand; to-day, one man and a girl, with two machines, can turn out 120 tyres. A power-chisel does the work of ten men. Seven men cast as much pig iron as 60 used to do. Such a recital enables us to picture the magnitude of the task facing the State, the workers and the unemployed. Things are made on machines in order to avoid paying men wages. A few years ago a large baker in South Wales to whom I was speaking said, "Pearson, I could employ a larger number of men if only they took less wages." I asked, "How is that?" He told me, "Because of their increasing wages I have been forced to put in ever more efficient machinery in order to do without so much labour." That is the sort of thing that is going on. In face of the ever-increasing efficiency of machinery, and attempts to avoid pay- ing men wages by the introduction of such machinery, we must tackle the problem which is created. What we are doing is attempting to sell the products of the machines to the men and women from whom those machines have taken the means of buying them. These are matters to which we shall have to apply the best brains of the country. We must endeavour so to spread increased purchasing power that what the machines produce can be consumed. To my mind, there is a failure to show strong and decisive will power and competence to deal with the unemployment problem. Because of that failure, this party has been moved to continue to play the searchlight upon the problem, for reasons that are compelling and irresistible. The industrial and economic conditions of large stretches of our country have become open and festering sores. We cannot remain content while such conditions prevail. Our plea is that we should tackle the seat of the disease. There is an orgy of waste in the unnecessary accumulation of wealth in few hands, an unnecessarily low standard of life of the workers by hand and brain and consequently a low consuming power on the part of the majority of the people, in this machine age. There is a need for organising in order to satisfy the elementary wants of life without stigma. We must prevent the throwing of good food back into the sea, the restriction of crops and the supplying of good milk to cattle rather than to children. Such things are nothing short of blasphemy. I recognise that there is a limited scope to the discussion of questions relating to the increase of unemployment allowances, but there is a big difficulty for those people, who number one and a third million, and who have to live upon an amount of money which is not sufficient to give them the necessary sustenance of life. Indeed, the marked increase in the cost of living must make their position exceptionally severe. If there is anything that the Minister of Labour can do to bring the matter before the proper authority, I hope he will use his influence, and every possible endeavour, in order to remove from the backs of the unemployed a hard measure of injustice, when the cost of living is increasing so sharply.
8.3 p.m.
My hon. Friend has certainly made a very good speech. It was comprehensive and made a great impression on the few of us who are here. I wish there had been a fuller House to listen to him. I am sorry that the Minister of Labour was out of the Chamber when the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) spoke. It is not often that the right hon. Gentleman gets a compliment but the hon. Member certainly eulogised him, and it was a pity that the right hon. Gentleman was not present to hear him. He accused other Ministers, but left the Minister of Labour high and dry as having done his best. I cannot altogether agree with the hon. Member. I know that the Minister will have welcomed the Debate, because it gives him an opportunity to explain to the House why the position at the moment is so acute. Dislocation resulting from the outbreak of war has caused this extensive breach in employment, and I know that the right hon. Gentleman will want to explain to the House why it has happened.
My complaint about the Minister of Labour, and the Government in general, is that they ought to have expected this kind of thing to happen and to have so organised that the effects would not have been felt as badly as they have been. The hon. Member for Camlachie spoke about the rationing of coal. I know that is not altogether a matter for the Minister of Labour but for the Government generally, but it was one of the silliest things that could have happened. You are causing the coal industry to be held up. Owing to coal being rationed, the industry is not being allowed to raise all the supplies that it can. The argument of the Minister of Mines may have been that it would mean expense to put the coal down at the pit head, as there were no wagons. From time to time I have known of owners when we have expected a strike or lockout, who have put down coal indiscriminately in readiness for a stoppage. War is a far greater menace to the country than any strike or lockout. Why could not the Minister of Mines, in conjunction with the Minister of Labour, have seen that the mines were kept working at full pitch in readiness for what might happen? This is one of the ways in which we blame the Govern- ment for not organising to meet times of great stress. Another point that I want to raise is in connection with munition work. There seems to be no system at all for taking on workers. I have had many complaints from my own division of Leigh. Near Leigh are two Government factories. There is a very big one at Euxton, near Chorley, employing thousands of men, and another, which has been in operation not very long at Risley, near Warrington. They are employing people, yet there seems to be no system with regard to how the men are to be taken on. I have a letter which reads something like this:Another feature of this matter is that many of our people who apply for work are over 40 or 50 years of age, and it appears that their age is a bar to their getting work. I ask the Minister whether he will give the House a full explanation of how the men are engaged. Is it left entirely to the contractors to take on whom they want? If that is so, does it mean that they are imbued with the desire to take on just those men with whom they will have the least trouble, and that people who are active trade unionists or who insist upon getting a proper standard of payment are put on one side in favour of people who do their work without any protest? We are entitled to-night to know what system is operating. Do the people go to the Employment Exchanges when they are sent there? Is there any likelihood of work, or is it useless for them to go? Our people want to know the answers to these questions, which ought to be examined very carefully. Dislocation has taken place owing to the starting of the war and some kind of co-ordination should have been carried through and provision been made to take the men on. We have raised this Debate in order to give the Minister of Labour an opportunity of making a full explanation to the House and the country of the present position. I want him and the country to get ready for eventualities. We keep meeting this question of unemployment, and we never seem to be prepared for it. There is bound to be an end to the war, and it may come quickly. In my view, it will come quickly. I think that the Germans will crack very quickly, but I want the Government to be ready for that time coming. We ought not to have the country in the state of chaos that always takes place at such times. I would say to the Government now: Look ahead; form in your mind some plans as to how you will absorb the men and women who will be thrown out of work when the war ceases. Let us not have, as we had in the past, this immense dislocation and discontent that always happens after situations such as the present one. We have had the lessons in the past; we had the lesson after the last war. We should be able to get ready for the future, and if this Debate does no more than impress upon the Government the need for coordination at the present time to meet the difficulties created by the onset, so that men can be absorbed, and put the Government in readiness at the end of the war with a plan to absorb the men who return from overseas, it will be time well spent. I speak for myself, and I think for my colleagues, when I say that we on these benches are prepared to give all the help we can in the successful prosecution of the war, but in doing that our duty is to look to the social services and to do all we can to prevent suffering and want among our people. It can be done jointly. I believe that if the Government will listen to our appeal and believe that we desire that the war shall be won, they in their turn will give to us all the help they can to see that our own people at home do not suffer. If that is done, I for one shall be very glad indeed. I trust that some help will be given by the Minister of Labour."We went and paid our fare to get to this place. When we arrived and presented ourselves for work, there was no work for us. We noticed many Irishmen being taken on. They appeared to the contractor to be more suitable for the work than we were. We complained about that, and about the system which caused us to go there, although there was no work when we got there."
8.12 p.m.
I desire to direct the attention of the Minister of Labour to the position in my constituency in this regard, that prior to the outbreak of the war the Government had spent thousands of pounds in bringing workers from the distressed areas into Park Royal and all the factories on the Great West Road to engage in the new light industries that had been established in that area. Men had been brought from South Wales, Durham, Northumberland, and Scotland. Prior to the outbreak of the war very few indeed were unemployed and signing on at the Employment Exchanges, but since the outbreak of the war it is difficult at times to pass through the street because of the congestion arising from the number of men on the footpath who are seeking to enter the exchange to sign the unemployment book.
The change is most marked. Those men had fresh hopes. Many of them were unemployed for a number of years, but they were able to adapt themselves to the new industries with the assistance given by the Employment Exchanges. Only on Monday I happened to be talking with some of them, and they are already becoming depressed. I hope we shall not allow them to get back into their former condition of depression, and I hope that this discussion to-day will give the Minister an opportunity of being able to tell the House just what plans the Government might have in view to meet the situation which is again overtaking these men. It is depressing enough for us to contemplate, let alone the men who are directly concerned. Not only does it concern the men, but we have had such a large number of young women and girls employed there, exceeding anything we have known before, that they have had to take new premises in order to house the staff and make provision for these women and girls signing on. The change is a revolution in that regard. It is a serious state of affairs. I hope we shall receive some words of hope from the Minister this evening. I will pass from that and put the position in respect of those who have been engaged in the building trade, and on public works. The Government have made a serious blunder in instructing local authorities to shut down their road works. I happened to be a member of the council immediately following the last war, and I know the difficulties with which we were confronted because the Government of that day adopted precisely the same policy as this Government is adopting in regard to the upkeep of roads. In order to put roads into decent repair again we found that the heavy traffic had not only eaten out the surface of the roads, but it had gone deeper and had really undermined the foundations of the roads. There is no economy in adopting a policy of that kind. There is another aspect. Many of these local authorities have put these public employes on to their superannuation staff. In many instances they are now contemplating having to discharge those men. If they are discharged we have got to pay them unemployment pay. Their hopes are vanished; many of them are of an age where private employers will not employ them, and their hopes are blasted, so I hope the Minister will not lose sight of that aspect of the case. I hope he will bear in mind that unless our roads are kept in a reasonable condition we will suffer from the point of view of transport. It is going to necessitate the repair even of the vehicles far more early than would otherwise be requisite. Therefore, looking at it from every aspect, it cannot be called an economic, but a most uneconomic policy. Then there are the building trades. The Government are responsible for giving local authorities an indication that all public works and buildings should not be proceeded with, in short that they should be shut down. The private builders will shut down, there is no arguing that. The speculating builder is bound to shut down in the existing circumstances; the prices of materials will close him down. But there is no reason why we should instruct local authorities to shut down whatever housing scheme they may have in view, for this reason: While it is perfectly true that camps are being built, many of them are now being completed very rapidly; and the result is that a large number of building trade operatives are becoming unemployed. We must provide other employment for these men. I found a crowd of them outside the Employment Exchange in my constituency last Monday, and the manager tells me that the number has been increasing week by week. These men are skilled. We cannot afford to allow their skill to go unused. I remember that, in the early days of the last war, when dilution was being considered, one firm especially, who had a large number of joiners and carpenters in their employ, instead of bringing in untrained men to work on the machines, brought in these carpenters and joiners, who speedily adapted themselves to the machines. Something of that kind could now be done in the munition works. I played a part in securing the adoption of that policy in those days, and, from my experience then, I offer that suggestion. Already there are camps being built for children. I think our evacuation scheme has shown that it would have been far better to have been able to house the children communally, rather than in separate houses. If the war goes on, we might have to find a way out by building camps, where those children might be kept and given a communal life, instead of being billeted with families. One cannot argue the merits of that now, but, from experience, some of us are convinced that a mistake has been made, and that we might find a better way along the lines I have suggested. It would be a means of enabling these men to retain their skill, and, what is more important still, it would give an economic return to the community.8.24 p.m.
As this country has declared that it is putting forth its maximum war impulse, our Allies and the friendly neutrals, if they do any thinking on the subject, may well be astounded to discover that, in spite of that effort, we have to-day nearly 1,500,000 unemployed men and women, who are anxious to play their part in this great national endeavour. I shall look with some interest at whatever sections of the foreign Press are still available to us, to see what comments they make on this Debate. There is no doubt that the Government themselves have deliberately accentuated the unemployment in the country. The sudden shutting-down of housing, of school building, of public works, of important schemes such as sewerage works, which are an imperative necessity in certain areas, has added substantially to our unemployment problem. The building trade has become a stagnant industry. [Interruption.]
The Minister says "No."
That is confirmed by interviews which the building industry representatives have had with the right hon. Gentleman, imploring him and the Government, who have been preventing the employment of our people, to adopt a different attitude. We have had representatives from the Welsh quarrying areas pleading here that building should at once be resumed, in order that these quarry-men shall be employed. On the estate on Tyneside in which the right hon. Gentleman takes such pride, the Team Valley Estate, we have had people swept out of employment as though some gigantic broom had been at work. The allied trades have suffered. We should like to know from the Minister, if he can tell us, the volume of employment directly or indirectly affected by the decision of the Government not to permit this imperative work to go forward. We have in my constituency slum quarters not fit for human beings to live in. The Government are compelling people, during what may be a 10, 20, or 30 years war, to live in conditions which every minister of religion, every educationist, and every medical man in that area say should be swept away without further delay.
We have had the same attitude shown in regard to the coal trade. Not satisfied, I suppose, with the fact that there are some 50,000 or 60,000 miners unemployed in County Durham, the Government have adopted a stupid system for the rationing of coal, gas, and electricity. As a result, we have meetings of miners in County Durham asking why, if they are advised by the owners that the prime necessity is the production of coal, because we depend upon coal more than anything else, the Government propose to close, or partly close, the Durham pits on some days, and sometimes for two or three days together, thus throwing our people out of employment. I have asked whether the Department responsible for rationing coal would take it off altogether, instead of limiting consumption to 100 per cent. of that for last year. I did not get a satisfactory reply to that. If it is the case that rationing is partly due to a shortage of wagons, we have two complaints to make. In the first place, the Government should have anticipated such a shortage. They should have known that if we were using our wagons to transport goods from the West Coast to the East Coast by road and rail, there would be a shortage. Anybody else would have foreseen that. I know firms in Newcastle that are eager to consume far more coal than they did last year, and they need it, because of the necessity for the production of munitions on the maximum scale. We are entitled to ask whether all that can be done in the matter of food production in this country has been done. The Government certainly did all they could to depress that industry from the Employés' point of view. They resisted appeals from all sides of this House for a minimum wage of £2 a week. Can we expect a large consumption of the goods that we produce when this is the situation? Do the Government expect an increase of commodities and of consumable goods when they have taken no steps to produce, during the years that they have been in office, a minimum standard of wages? The statistician and the nutritional expert will tell you that nearly 40 per cent. of our people could do with a higher standard of income in order to live a normal existence. I come to shipbuilding. I am apprised that there are many berths disengaged on Tyneside, and I suppose that will apply on the Tees, on the Wear, and on the Clyde, and perhaps on the Thames. Is that a situation that ought to be permitted to continue? If we are to have the sinkings such as we have had during the last 10 days, the Government will require to put forward all their efforts in the matter of the replacement of tonnage, and yet we have shipbuilders and boiler-makers, and men in allied trades connected with shipbuilding, unemployed upon Tyneside to-day. We endeavoured to ascertain recently by question whether it was a fact to rejoice at that the Government had placed orders for 30 new ships. We did not get a satisfactory reply. The Minister of Labour ought to know these things, and perhaps he will tell us in his reply whether these orders have yet been placed. If they have not, the Government are jeopardising the safety of the country. We cannot expect private shipowners who lose vessels that have been under-insured to dip their hands deep into their pockets to replace their tonnage if they cannot get the value of that tonnage. It will largely depend on the Government's action in the matter of shipbuilding whether we get the replacements which the safety of the country requires. With regard to the Ministry of Supply, I find that, in spite of the many weeks that the war has been raging, the area committees have not yet been set up. We were told that the Department was waiting for a meeting with the Trades Union Congress. The Trades Union Congress has assumed a degree of importance in the mind of the Government which is highly commendable, and we compliment the Government upon at last recognising those who speak and function for the industrial workers of the country, but in spite of that the area committees have not yet been set up. Why are they not set up? I was privileged, with one or two other Members of Parliament, to examine samples of goods which industrialists in small factories on the North-East coast may produce for the Government if they can obtain the machine tools for the purpose. The samples were there, but on inquiring for the specifications, the key to the utilisation of these samples, we were told that it would be two or three weeks before these were available. What magnificent foresight has been displayed in this matter. We endeavoured—and I think it is relevant to this discussion—. by questions to ascertain whether the Government are looking sufficiently ahead with regard to industrial matters in the location of industry. I inquired whether, in schemes of town and country planning, the Minister of Health, the spokesman for the Government, had resolved that his policy would be to secure the better distribution of industry and population. As a policy, clearly it has been proved to demonstration long ago that we are acting injuriously to the best interests of the State and of the industrial workers in not having planned ahead, and when I asked a question the answer was that every scheme must be taken upon its merits. I could obtain a better answer than that from an elementary schoolboy who recognised the necessities of the time. It is clear that, if the Government are seriously looking ahead to their responsibilities, there will have to be a general raising of the standard of the conditions of the industrial workers of this country, but, more than that, they will require to raise the standards in our Colonial Empire. There we have a population which is 50 per cent. greater than that of these islands, and the social standards there are notoriously low. This year there have been insurrections and rebellions and so forth, the whole of which were directly and immediately traceable to the low social conditions in the Colonial Empire. Had the Government during these many years of office turned the slightest attention to our Colonial Empire and not turned a deaf ear to the appeals from this side and from the other side to take steps for raising these standards, there would to-day have been a vast potential demand for the commodities produced in these islands. That has been left to chance. The coloured and semi-coloured populations of the Colonial Empire have been left to the tender mercy of the exploiting merchants and producers there, with the result that individualism has run rampant, and we in this Parliament have taken no steps to raise the necessary standards in the Colonial Empire. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Labour may smile. I am not sure whether he is smiling at my observations or not, but in this matter there is very little at which to smile. It is one of the blackest scandals, in my judgment, that the Government, with all their powerful influence, have neglected these vast populations. I did not discover that there was any neglect of defensive measures for the different sections of the Colonial Empire. There was no shortage of cash there and no shortage of good will. The ships of war and all the paraphernalia of defence were there in abundance, at the charge of the Exchequer of this country, and possibly it is entertaining for these impoverished peoples to learn that we have sent out from the Colonial Office ordinances for the preservation of law and order. We cannot send out ordinances for the raising of the standard, so that there could be normal human existence for these people. No. Those standards will, I suppose, be left to some subsequent date at the termination of the war. So far as looking after the people for whom we have the gravest responsibility is concerned, there is nothing doing. In that regard we have displayed gross shortsightedness. If we had not permitted the exploiters of the Colonial Empire the liberty and the licence that we have allowed them, we should have had enormous results from the great potentialities of the markets of the Colonial Empire. If the Government were serious in this matter, they would have taken the children out of industry between the ages of 14 and 15 and handed them over to the educationists, where they ought to be. At the other end they would have taken the veterans of 60 and 65 out of industry. They would in that way have turned the lamp of common sense upon this problem, which has so far not received the serious attention of the Government. It was my privilege in the ballot to obtain an opportunity of dealing with one of our social problems, and I dealt with the question of unemployment. The evidence, it appeared to me, was overwhelming that the Government were not serious in endeavouring to extinguish this great blight, which is a curse on the people of the district which has sent me to this House. We ask the Minister of Labour to look sympathetically upon the views that we have expressed with regard to the position of the different Departments and Ministries, because great things could be done if the will were there, now and in the future, when the problem of unemployment is bound to become more acute.8.43 p.m.
I am grateful to you. Sir, for allowing the Debate on unemployment to go into such wide fields. I do not think I shall be off-side to-night very often. I should like to draw attention to an interjection made by the Minister of Labour during the speech of the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). He said: "We cannot do it all at once." There are, in round figures, 1,400,000 people out of work, and I was amazed that the Minister of Labour should make a statement like that. One would think that the question of finding work for the unemployed had grown up like mushrooms in the night, and that the Minister of Labour had wakened out of a dream and said, "We cannot do it all at once." When we have had debates on unemployment, the Minister of Labour has thrown out his chest and said, "See what I have done." If I had time I would go to the Vote Office and look up the OFFICIAL REPORTS. If those were not the exact words the Minister used, that was the exact meaning.
That is the hon. Member's interpretation.
I am not sure whether it is just my interpretation, but that is what it meant. It is no excuse now, after 11 weeks of war, for the Minister of Labour to say, as he has often said before, "We shall manage it in the spring." That was his text over 18 months ago. As the right hon. Gentleman and I have often sung, it will be, "In the sweet by and by." This is not a question that can be wrapped up in that way, when we have had in the last two months 200,000 more unemployed than previously. That brings it down to the individual. I am afraid that in this House when we talk about millions we forget the individual. It is the individual who is out of work and has nothing coming in but what he gets from the Employment Exchange, who feels it. We must put ourselves in the place of these individuals. The hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Adams) spoke about the building trade and said that it had stopped.
He said it was a stagnant pool. It is not.
There are 140,000 members of the building trade out of work.
Are there?
Yes. They have no butter, but only a bit of margarine. They have 27s. a week for man and wife and 3s. for a child, amounting to 30s., and some of these unemployed men have to pay 14s. to 15s. in rent. If you reckon three meals a day, what is left will only provide about 1½d. per meal. The Minister says that is not stagnant. If he thinks it is not stagnant, they think it is stagnant. One hundred and forty thousand of these people are out of work.
No.
I got it from one of the capitalist Sunday newspapers. I did not go to church on Sunday morning, and I picked up a Sunday newspaper. It states that 140,000 building trade workers and 100,000 constructional workers are out of employment.
The hon. Member must not take all that is in the capitalist Press as being correct. He will find that the figure was 117,000 at the end of October.
Was that on 30th October?
Yes.
The right hon. Gentleman knows the disadvantage that we suffer in this respect. The "Ministry of Labour Gazette" is usually published on the 15th of the month, and it is not out yet. We understand the reason, but we have been at a disadvantage.
I am making no complaint. I am only correcting the hon. Member.
I am glad that the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street intervened. These are the latest figures that we have. Apparently, the Minister has some figures up his sleeve. He knew that this Debate was coming on, and we have not been able to get the latest figures. He has quoted figures which we have not got.
The hon. Member is offside now. I produced these figures the last time. They were in the ordinary communiqué.
I am only 23,000 out. We are now told that 117,000 building-trade workers are out of employment, and the Minister says that that is not stagnant. Then there are 100,000 constructional workers out of work. It is not only a question of the men who are out of work but of those who are under-employed at the present time. Let me give the Minister some facts which are more up to date than his own. At the pit where I worked before I was elected to this House there were, only three weeks ago, men on the afternoon shifts who were pushed 10 days out of 11. By that I mean that the men did not work a full shift. They knocked off at half-shift time, and they did not get any unemployment benefit if they worked any part of a shift. Some of the men in this pit went home with 2¼shifts at the week-end and never had a penny from the Employment Exchange. There are thousands in that position. The transport of this country is slipshod, knock-kneed, pigeon-toed, and out of gear. Wagons for the Yorkshire pits come up through the Midlands, then through Lancashire, and then to the South Yorkshire coalpits. They used to come by the L.N.E.R. straight from London.
I want the Minister to look at this question of half-time work. Our men, instead of playing five half-shifts in the afternoon, would prefer to work two full shifts and play the other three, and then get part-time unemployment pay. A roan who works for 2¼ days gets 9s. 4d. a day, that is, two nine and fourpences, plus 4s. 8d. If he works two days, he gets two nine and fourpences and, if he has a wife and child, unemployment pay of 15s. I hope the Minister will see to this matter. There are some 70,000 miners out of work, but the Secretary for Mines says, "We must ration coal. There must be 75 per cent, of gas and electricity, and if we do not ration them, we shall not win the war." I went home during the week-end, and they said to me, "George, what is the matter down yonder? We think they are out of their minds and do not understand things. There are 450 of our men out of work. We want work." But the Secretary of Mines says, "Ration coal, do not use it." I am glad, however, that the Secretary for Mines has at last awakened out of his dream. I ask the Minister of Labour to sec that these 76,000 miners are back at work. Some pits in my own Division are closed. One was producing 700 tons of coal a day, or 4,200 tons of coal a week, and yet men in that area are out of work. These things require consideration. I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to go on without being called up for being offside.I should like to put a question to the Minister. If he cannot solve the problem of unemployment, and I am sure he cannot, will he be prepared now to abolish the means test? If he is not prepared to abolish it, will he apply the means test to the Army and see that those who have the most go first, which will mean that the unemployed will be the last to go?
8.56 p.m.
I will take that question in the course of the speech which I propose to make in my reply to the questions which are bound to crop up in a Debate of this kind. May I begin by saying a personal word to the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson). I am sure that Members of this House outside his own party will agree with me when I say that they have heard with great pleasure that his party have elected him as a member of the Executive Committee. I speak not as a party man but as a House of Commons man, and I am sure all Members of the House would wish me to say this. The hon. Member is a hard hitter, but he is fair and speaks with great eloquence. Sometimes we do not think his points are on the mark, but, nevertheless, he puts them with great persuasiveness and with great power. I interrupted him at the beginning of his speech because it seemed to me that he was under a misconception. He seemed to think that the Government thought that immediately war broke out there would be no dislocation, and a great increase of employment, at once. On the contrary, the Government made it clear to the House in the first days of the war that the contrary was their view. I asked the House to pass an Unemployment Assistance Act, allowing for the assistance of persons who normally do not come under the operations of the insurance scheme and who were outside the scope of ordinary unemployment assistance.
There are two points which may be of some comfort to hon. Members. The dislocation has not been as great as I feared, and the number of those who have applied for assistance has been very small indeed. I will, if I may, give the exact figures later on. However, the war has brought this problem into a new focus and raised a number of issues which have never been raised before. It is quite clear that from the beginning of the war, as was the case in 1914, the Government knew that to change over suddenly from peace conditions to war conditions would mean dislocation, but that the dislocation would not be of long duration. For that reason they made special provisions for those who would not be able to apply for unemployment assistance, but most of the offices which were opened for this special purpose have now been closed and will not be reopened unless some sudden dislocation of a warlike nature should arise. Let me now make one or two general observations. Although, as I have often pointed out to the House, to quote the total figures of unemployment is never fairly to state the problem as it is, it is even more important now to quote them with reservations, because they mask facts on two sides. It has been pointed out over and over again that the round figure of 200,000 is the addition to the total of unemployed in the two months since the war started. That figure masks a very important fact. It is not an addition of 200,000 to those who are normally registered as unemployed at the Employment Exchanges, because, I can inform the House, it includes 86,000 people who have registered at the exchanges for work for war purposes for the first time. That is an important fact. Several references have been made in the course of the Debate to our maximum effort. I have never said that we are now at our maximum effort. The hon. Member for Chester-le-Street talked about the number of unemployed being an enemy. I do not dispute that because, from the point of view which the hon. Member was putting, there was force in that description; but from the point of view of those who know that our effort will grow and become more intense, that reserve upon which we can call is not an enemy, and from some points of view it is an asset. There is another thing that must be remembered concerning those who will be in the field of industrial employment. We are now dealing with a total population that is over 5,000,000 more than in 1914. The field is much bigger than it was in 1914, and I want to say one cautionary word about this. It must be remembered that a very large proportion of that excess is in the elderly group. The second general observation I want to make is that the figure of 200,000 masks another side of the problem, because while that figure of 200,000, less 86,000—Are these 80,000 in work?
No. What I am pointing out is that we are not now comparing like with like in comparing the figures in the month of October and September with the figures in August, July or June, because in the normal way these people did not seek employment, but they have registered—and many of them are women —for war work.
Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that these 86,000 are on the Central Register he has established, or are they people who have come under insurance for the first time?
They have not normally insured work and they are not on the Central Register; they are people who feel that, in war conditions, the nation may need their aid, and they have put down their names at the exchanges for employment, as any person in the country is entitled to do. They are persons who are not normally seeking work, and they are now seeking work for the nation's sake, and I am sure the House will welcome that. I am sure that, as our effort increases, places will be found for them, and that they will come into the national effort. As I was saying, the addition of 200,000 masks another side of the matter. When we talk about 200,000, less 86,000, we are not talking about a figure which may be regarded lightly at the moment. I agree with everything that hon. Members have said in that respect. I am glad to see in the Chamber the hon. Member for West Willesden (Mr. Viant), who spoke as a London Member, because the outstanding feature in connection with this mask is the complete change in London, a change which was quite natural in the circumstances.
Let me refer briefly to the districts, to show what I mean when I say that the figures mask differences. Since the war broke out, despite dislocations in the areas, there is a number of areas in which employment has still been improving and unemployment going down. That means, of course, on the other side, that the problem in the areas where there has been an increase in unemployment is worse. That is what I mean when I say that the figures, taken as a whole, will not lead the minds of hon. Members to the real problem which we have to face every day in the Employment Exchanges in the various districts. I will give the House some facts, without worrying it with figures. Let me take, first, the areas which have shown a decrease. In the Midlands, there was a decrease in September over August and a decrease in October over September. In the North Midlands, there was a decrease in September over August and a decrease in October over September. The North-Eastern area—one or two Members from constituencies in that area have spoken— showed a decrease in September over August and an increase of rather less than 1,000 in October over September. Therefore, the situation in that area is fairly static. In the North-Western area, there has been a slight increase of less than 1,000 between August and September and another 2,000 in October. In many other areas the picture is a very different one. In the Eastern area, there was in most districts, in September, a large increase, amounting to 16,000. Hon. Members will understand that, in view of the geographical position of the East. They will understand that war conditions bring a whole series of problems which no amount of planning could have avoided, which were inherent in the change-over from peace, with all its varied activities, to war, with the inevitable restrictions in those areas. restrictions which no Member representing those areas would for one moment deny were necessary. In the South-Eastern area, which includes Kent and that part, there was an increase in September from 20,000 to 27,000, and then to 40,000 in October. I give the figures for that area, because I think they are important to hon. Members representing that part of the country. The figures (here have doubled. In this area, we are up against three or four particular trades, with which I will deal on broad lines, such as hotels and the building trade, particularly small builders. I did not mean to belittle the problem of the building trade when I interrupted the hon. Member for Consett (Mr. David Adams) to say that his description of it as being a stagnant pool was quite wrong. In the building trade, we are dealing with an industry which for 20 years has witnessed a wonderful expansion. It is an industry employing over 1,000,000 workers, according to the last return, whereas when we began the big housing programmes there were nearly 400,000 fewer insured workers than that number. That great increase has taken place because of the unexampled expansion of building in this country, most of it being of a private nature, and a great part of it in London and the south and southeastern districts around London. Whatever may be said about the local authorities—and that is another issue—it is clear that the facts have changed, and the changed facts show themselves at once in these figures with regard to the building operatives.Send them to Glasgow.
The building industry is a very highly organised industry and it has one of the ablest joint councils in the whole realm of industry. It gave me great help, when I asked whether we could not get, not merely a joint council but a consultative committee, with the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry in the chair, to see how best we could organise building labour for Government work. We have had magnificent help from that body and, looking ahead, say 18 months or two years, to a time when the maximum effort will be made, when the factories which are now beginning to take shape will have plant and workers in them, I estimate that the Government programme for them will amount to something like £300,000,000. The House can see that the building outlook is not wholly of an unpleasant character. To that, of course, I must add a proviso. Of course there is more difficulty in dealing with those small local establishments which play such a big part in private housebuilding and in local authority work in the smaller towns and villages where there has been such a large expansion of housebuilding in this wonderful period of slum clearance and the provision of new houses.
I think the House will be interested in this way of presenting the picture and perhaps I may take one or two other areas. I would have the House understand that we are really alive to this problem and that we understand the meaning of what has been happening in the last 12 weeks. If we take the South-West area, we find there a slight increase in September of some 4,000 and then another 9,000 on top of that. When we come to Scotland we find that the position there has been wonderfully stable, despite all the dislocation in the East, despite the black-out and all the other factors which have come in with the war. The increase in September over August was 2,000 and the increase in October over September was 5,000. Now we come to Wales. I am sure the House listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Mr. Pearson) and I am also sure that a larger House than we have to-night will hear him with great pleasure and profit in the future. He talked about the flight from South Wales but the war has brought a change and there is now no flight from South Wales. It is not in my Department, but I should not be surprised to find that the increase of population in South Wales in three months will amount to a staggering figure. I shall do my best to get the figure at the earliest possible moment. I am not, of course, talking of workers but of total population and the fact is that there has been a complete change, as a result of the changeover from peace conditions to war conditions.Has the right hon. Gentleman the figures for the West Riding?
No, I have not the figures in that way. For the purposes of this analysis we have 12 divisions and that is the form in which these figures are presented. In Wales the situation is fairly stable. A figure of 102,000 in August went down by just over 1,000 in September. It crept up again last month to 108,000—about 5,000 more than the August figure.
That is not creeping; that is jumping.
One other general observation. The House will probably say to me, "What is your forecast for the future?" I do not propose to quote figures because comparable figures are not available but I have taken great care every week to make a rough calculation, on the monthly labour analyses, of what the trend is. I desired to inform myself of how things were going, and what really happened was this. There was a big jump at first in the first week of the war. In the second there was a rather smaller advance; in the third a smaller advance still and so on in the fourth and fifth. Now, I am very happy to tell the House that not only have we reached the end of the increase in unemployment but as far as I can see the next total figure—I say this with reservations because we shall not have the full total returns until some days hence—the next return will I expect show that the tide has turned the other way.
Many hon. Members will recall what happened in the corresponding period in 1914 and the tremendous increase in unemployment which occurred in the first three months of the war. We have to consider the elements of this problem as it presents itself now. We have to consider that, as a result of the outbreak of war, we had to mobilise the armed forces fully; we had to carry out a comprehensive programme of Civil Defence, including the black-out and evacuation; and the Navy had to take over the task of clearing the seas—and some of the strange transport puzzles which worry the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. G. Griffiths) and his hon. Friends, are not unrelated to what is happening on the seas. In addition, industries connected with the export trade have been compelled to stand off workers until the plans for protecting sea-borne commerce could be brought into operation. The convoy system has this effect, as the First Lord of the Admiralty has pointed out, that while it is a wonderful instrument, it makes the operation of sea-borne traffic slower than the normal peace-time traffic would be. Then we have had the case of the industries which are dependent directly on the railways. They were dislocated for some weeks, because the railways were carrying special burdens in connection with mobilisation and the transport of the Army and the Air Force to France with all the necessary equipment. All this coincided with a time when, in some of these areas, normally, there is a big increase of unemployment. Areas which have seaside resorts normally at the end of September add large numbers to the unemployment roll. Of course I cannot debate problems for which other Ministers are responsible but it is always the duty —the pleasant duty may I add—of the Minister of Labour to receive some of the broadsides which are shot at his colleagues.You can stand it.
I make no complaint; I said it was a pleasant duty. I am afraid that this evening I must make a longer draft than I would wish to make upon the time of the House, but it is important to get on record what our view is of this problem at this stage. Let me add that in the 4½ years I have been at the Ministry I have never had a Debate arising out of which there have not been certain points to which I have had to call the attention of my colleagues. I do not think I remember a Debate in which I have had so many points addressed to me to which it is my duty to call the attention of my colleagues. I will see that their attention is drawn to them so that their remarks may go to the right quarter. I have dealt with the major issues raised with regard to the actual increase in unemployment. I hope I have reassured the House that they may look upon this increase as temporary and that the next figure may easily show a slight decrease.
I was asked about juveniles. We had to take some restrictive steps in the early days of the war as a matter of precaution. Looking back on the past 12 weeks it may be said that we need not have done this but, if events had taken another course, the tale would have been a different one. We thought it wise to make sure about the young people and then, directly we saw how the war was going, we said to the local authorities, "If you think, in the exercise of your discretion, that junior instruction centres should be opened, you are quite free to do it, and you will rank for grant in the usual way." The number of centres before the war was 180, and at the moment there are about 30 which have re-opened. The hon. Member's constituency is not one of the areas where this has happened, but that is within the discretion of the local authority. They have the responsibility and, as far as the Ministry and the Government are concerned, they are quite free to re-open if and when they feel that their responsibilities will allow them to do so. There has been an increase with regard to juvenile unemployment. In the case of boys there were 38,347 registered as unemployed at 14th August and 44,543 on nth September, an increase of 6,000, or 16 per cent. In regard to London, the increase was very much more marked than elsewhere. With regard to girls, the corresponding figures were 39,384 and 64,331, an increase of 24,947, or 63 per cent. So this juvenile problem is very largely a London problem, as would naturally be expected. There was very little change between September and October. The number of boys registered declined to 43,920 but the number of girls increased very little—by just over 1,000—to 65,793. So the movement started by the war was arrested, and, I know from other indications that the other movement has begun and young people are beginning to be absorbed into industry. If I am asked, as the hon. Gentleman asked me, what view I take of the future, I have every reason to expect that juvenile unemployment very shortly will decline to a very low figure, except perhaps in certain very limited areas where there are few local openings available. The general demand for labour due to war production will afford good openings for juvenile labour, adaptable as it is to new processes, and the withdrawal of young men from the labour market to the Services will create a demand for the older juveniles. Therefore, the House need not take too serious a view of this temporary increase in juvenile unemployment. The hon. Gentleman asked about the Special Areas. I have nothing to add to the answer I have given before, that the commitments that the Commissioner had undertaken 'will be continued after the lapse of the Act itself. That is inherent in the 1934 Act. With regard to the report of the Location of Industries Commission, we have not yet received it but the Prime Minister has announced that when it is received—and it is expected shortly—it will be published. The non. Member for East Birkenhead (Mr. White) asked how long I thought the period of transition would occupy. I have said that I think it is coming to an end. The maximum war output will not be attained for some time. That will, of course, alter the whole situation and I shall expect, to use a word that the hon. Member for Hemsworth likes, roughly by the spring to be badgered because of shortages of labour in particular places rather than because of the large total of the unemployed. The hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Loftus) called my attention, and that of the President of the Board of Trade, to certain remarks by members of Chambers of Commerce about the export trade, and the hon. Member for Barnard Castle (Mr. Sexton) raised the issue of whinstone and lead mines in his constituency. I will pass the points on to my hon. Friend. I need not say much to my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman), because we have had some correspondence. When I get the information I have asked for I will do what I promised and give it consideration. This is not a problem that is new to us and naturally, by heritage, I am one of those who take a keen interest in fishermen. My father was a fisherman, and it is not because of any lack of good will on the part of the Ministry of Labour but because of conditions which really lie in the nature of the industry that more is not done for it. The hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Tinker) and the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. G. Macdonald) raised the question of the men of 50 and asked whether there were any bar to their employment. There is now no upper age limit for temporary employment in Government factories or establishments. Industrial suitability and not age is the only test. If the hon. Members find that that is not widely known perhaps one of them will put a question to me in the new Session, and I will be glad to give a fuller answer so as to make it clear to the elderly men that there is no bar.
I am trying to find out how many of these men there are and the proportion to the whole establishment. It is difficult for us to do that, and it would be much better if the Minister could help us in that direction.
The hon. Member is asking me to do a big job, and I do not know whether I ought to divert the efforts of the Ministry to it now. Perhaps he will let me think it over in the light of what we hear is happening, so that we can find out whether these very fine men are really getting their chance as it is intended they should do. The question of drainage in South-West Durham was raised by the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street and the hon. Member for Barnard Castle. The Commissioner paid for the cost of the survey and stimulated interest in the matter. What is now required is a scheme under the Mining Act, 1920, and that, of course, is a matter for the mine-owners because the Commissioner has in general no powers to give assistance to undertakings carried on for gain. I was asked what was being done to make small firms aware of their opportunities for changing over from peace work to war work. The Ministry of Supply are setting up area boards and area committees in co-operation with industry to survey the existing capacity in their localities and to see that it is fully utilised in the national effort. The Minister of Supply informs me that in the last fortnight 420 new firms have received contracts.
With regard to recruiting, the right hon. Gentleman has rather passed over the question I raised about the method, which is that employers must apply to the exchange for a certain percentage of the men they want on certain contracts.
That is the next note I have here.
With regard to the committees which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, is it not a fact that they are merely advisory and have no executive power, while in the last war the local munitions committees had large executive powers and proved of great value?
I will not be led into discussing that. The hon. and gallant Gentleman must raise it with my right hon. Friend who is responsible. I am only trying to help the House by answering questions put to me with the knowledge that I have. This has been done with an eye to what happened in the last war. There are many things we have avoided. I cast no reflection on what happened then, but I think we have avoided a good many things that happened.
There were two questions asked with regard to recruitment. If the reference is intended to the work of construction, the answer is that contractors are required to notify vacancies but are not compelled to fill vacancies through the exchange. If it is a question of an engagement for work in the factories there is the closest co-operation between the factories and the exchanges, and any persons who desire such work ought to keep in close touch with their local exchanges. It is our rule that the local man has the first chance if he is suitable, and we shall do our best to see that that rule is carried out in the new conditions. The hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Butcher) said that excessive overtime ought to be avoided, and I think the whole House will agree with him in that, because as the last war showed, and as all industrial experience proves, there is a point at which the law of diminishing returns comes into play. He asked whether I could spread out the work, and I have pointed out that we are busily engaged in doing so. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Camlachie (Mr. Stephen) for the tribute which he paid to the staff of the Ministry of Labour. The Ministry always appreciates such a tribute, and especially in present circumstances, because in recent months it has had to take over new and unexpected tasks, and it is a good thing to know that so constant and so keen a critic of all problems should have gone out of his way to pay that compliment tonight. I regret that I did not hear it myself. He and a number of other Members also raised issues with regard to the wider problem. With regard to allowances, I have already stated that the question of the cost of living in that connection is under the earnest consideration of the Board, and the House will be informed immediately a decision is reached. With regard to benefit, that is in process of being considered by the Statutory Com mittee. All those concerned have an opportunity to put their various points to the committee, who will make a report to me in the usual way. I have to apologise for having been so long, but I trust that, as was the hope at the beginning, this Debate has thrown some light upon the problems with which we have to contend, and I have done my best to show the House the present trend of affairs.9.37 p.m.
This Debate has ranged over a wide variety of subjects connected with unemployment, and the Minister has covered very largely the specific points which have been raised. May I begin by reminding the Minister, because I think it is necessary to do it after listening to his speech, that the real object of the Debate was to call attention to the fact that there are nearly 1,500,000 unemployed persons in the country? We initiated the Debate in the hope that we should hear from the Minister some plan to mobilise this rusting human labour in the service of the nation. The Minister last spoke upon unemployment in a Debate in this House just before we rose for the Summer Recess. He then prophesied, as he has prophesied to-night. May I remind him of what he said then? My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall), who opened that Debate, dealt very largely with the problems of the future and of planning for what we then thought might be possible—much of which, I admit, is not possible now—and that is what was to happen after the termination of the rearmament programme. The Minister said then:
The autumn is here, and although there may be some jobs waiting for some men, there are still 1,400,000 men waiting for jobs. I think I am entitled to make the complaint that, apart from a reliance upon the momentum of the rearmament programme to absorb men, there seems to be no plan of any kind to absorb them into employment. Generally speaking, the Debate has ranged around two aspects of the problem, and I want to deal with both of them, one very briefly and the other at great length. First of all, there is the question of the unemployment caused by the dislocation of the war. Referring to this aspect of the matter, the Minister used these words:"The fact is that at the moment my Ministry is much more concerned with the problems involved in what the economists call full employment than in the problem of unemployment…by the autumn of this year we shall as a nation be facing the problem of full employmentgwhen we find that we have jobs waiting for men."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd August, 1939; col. 2602, Vol. 350.]
Did the right hon. Gentleman use those words?"This is the kind of unemployment which no amount of planning could have avoided."
indicated assent.
The Minister agrees. If there is one thing that the war has proved, it is something that was contended for a long time in this House. It is that the time would come when we should pay a very heavy price for the complete lack of planning in this country. I have been in this House for three and a half years, and on the average there have been six Debates each year in which we have urged upon the Government that the time was overdue for the State to take a hand in controlling the distribution of industry, which determines the distribution of the population in this country. Now, the Minister says, there is a drift away from the large towns, giving rise to problems of evacuation. For the last 20 years, during the post-war period, we have allowed tremendous new industrial areas to grow up without any kind of planning or authority. We have allowed the speculator and the profit-finder to build enormous new areas, which are now a problem of very great magnitude. I suggest to the Minister, when he says that the problems of the dislocation of employment and the problems of unemployment caused by the war could not have been avoided by any plan—I am not suggesting for a moment that any plan could have avoided them completely —that it illustrates and illuminates, as my hon. Friend the Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) said at the beginning of the Debate, the problem which we have raised times without number. It is that, if the national interest is to predominate, the State must take hold of this question of determining the location of industry and so avoid the kind of problem which we have had raised in the last few weeks.
The Minister referred to the country from which I come. He said that there is a flight to Wales. The flight back to Wales is a consequence of the flight of industry from Wales. I would urge upon the Minister that it is not industry that is flying back to Wales, but merely the people, the women and the children, who are coming back, some officially and some unofficially. They are coming because the Government failed to plan to provide work for the men in the places where they resided and so compelled them to move to those parts of the country. For these reasons, I urge that this report of the Commission on the determination of the location of industry should be published. The problem should not be pushed off until the end of the war, but should be discussed now. I hope, therefore, that the report will be published and that there will be opportunities for Members of this House and the people of the country to sift the evidence that was presented and to examine whatever conclusions were come to. This problem must be faced now in the light of our experience in cities like Bristol. The State must now take unto itself the power, in the interests of the nation, to determine where industry shall be located, and must not leave it to the free play of competitive enterprise. There is one other aspect of this temporary problem, as the Minister calls it, of the dislocation of war. The unemployment due to war dislocation has, in part, been added to and aggravated by the policy of the Government. When war broke out there was a panic decision to abandon overnight all public works, even if they were half way completed. Housing schemes, road schemes, and bridging schemes were stopped overnight. This indicates lack of co-ordination. If the Minister expected that there would be unemployment caused by dislocation, surely if there was proper co-ordination the Ministry responsible could have held their hand for the time being instead of suspending overnight all these schemes and creating these new problems of unemployment which had been referred to. May I refer to my own part of the country? In the summer of this year we had presented to us by a Commission appointed by the Ministry of Health a report which we discussed in this House. It dealt specifically with the problem of anti-tubercular services in Wales. There followed a survey which showed that there existed in the rural areas of Wales housing problems which really shocked people when they became aware of them. We were expecting this winter and in the summer to come there would be a serious effort to deal with at least the worst of these cases. All that has been stopped, and I say that there is no justification for stopping it. As I have said, it was a panic decision. The hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) has referred to the primary industry, the one big industry upon which they depend in Wales, namely, the slate industry, which employs 10,000 workmen and which is now very rapidly coming to a close. In my view, which I think is shared by many of my colleagues, there is not a working class district with a better standard of general intelligence than Blaenau Festiniog, yet all around it are these sores, these barren houses. Here are the men to produce the slates. In quarries nearby they are producing stone which can be useful in the way of building materials; yet all around you have unemployed persons existing on unemployment benefit and allowances, and the very people who can produce material for building the houses are unemployed. That problem should be dealt with.If I may, I would like to interject one word here. The hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon (Major Owen) and the hon. Member for West Rhondda (Mr. John) are arranging for the Welsh Members to meet me. I did say to the hon. and gallant Member for Carnarvon, who had to go before the end of the Debate, that I hoped he would give me some information about slate and asbestos and the amount of timber required in their use. I hope that what I have said is of interest as showing the comparison between slate and asbestos. I just wanted to say that before the hon. Member continues, because it really is important.
All I have said is that if there is the will I am sure those technical difficulties can be overcome. Between now and next Tuesday, when the Minister will kindly receive this deputation, I hope he will be able to consult with the Ministry of Health There should be full co-operation and co ordination in order to assist that industry as well as improve the social amenities and the housing conditions in that part of the country. Apart from those temporary conditions of unemployment to which the Minister has referred this evening—caused by the re-distribution in various parts of the country—there is still another problem to which I desire to refer. That is the problem of this—the Minister objects to the term "army" of unemployed, and perhaps it is not an army— this hard core of unemployment. We had been expecting to hear from the Minister to-night some suggestions as to how this army—after all, it is an army; you may juggle with figures, but here they are; there are well over a million of these people—-would be dealt with. Some have been unemployed for years. Some 500,000 have been on the books of the Unemployment Assistance Board. They have been there because they have been unemployed so long that they have exhausted their right to benefit.
There will be other opportunities in the near future of discussing the problem of unemployment, and all these problems will then be raised again, because we are convinced that it is not in the interests of this nation to leave these people unemployed at a time such as this. We hear talk about mobilising the resources of this nation for the purposes of a national effort. Fundamentally, the resources of this nation are the capacity and the skill of its workpeople, their capacity to produce goods, their capacity to produce services. This nation must be, in peace and in war, much poorer if it fails to utilise the services of all the people who have services to give. We, therefore, urge that at this time there should be a bold effort to utilise the services of all these people for the benefit of the nation. Let me finally refer to one or two aspects of the problem: first of all, the very large number of young people still unemployed. Last year the Unemployment Assistance Board made a very careful survey of the problem of the young unemployed of this country. They described as "young unemployed" all under 30 years of age, and they found that 58 per cent. of those on the books of the Unemployment Assistance Board were under 30 years of age; men in the prime of life, men at the beginning of life, many of them young lads in their teens, many in their twenties, many of them young men who had accepted the responsibilities of family life. That is a colossal waste of the young people of the country. It is time that a real effort was made to face up to the problem of re- claiming these young people for the State. We claim their all. We claim their lives. We claim that the State has the right to ask them to defend the nation. If we ask that, surely they have the right to ask from the State, not charity, but the chance to find a niche in life. It is a national reproach that we should still allow these young people to be a festering sore in our towns and cities. I want also to say a word about the elderly unemployed. The Minister will remember that it is now just over two years since he paid a visit to South Wales in order to investigate this problem. He will remember what he said then. He made a public statement in South Wales —I believe he made similar statements in other parts of the country which he visited, and he did so in this House— that this problem of the elderly unemployed would be dealt with. I feel a great deal of reluctance to use the term "elderly unemployed." There are men of 45 and 50 who have not had a job for six years—some of them, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdare (Mr. G. Hall) has just said to me, for 10 years. I find from the report of the Unemployment Assistance Board that there were on their books 268,000 between 45 and 64 years of age. What effort is being made now? Is any real effort being made to provide a nitch in life for these elderly men? Are they to get a real chance in all this work which is being organised by the Government? May I remind the Minister that at the moment he has forgotten what the Unemployment Assistance Board said in their report of 1938? They urged the Minister that there should be inserted a special provision, in contracts for publc or defence works for which the Exchequer is bearing the cost, a condition requiring the contractor to engage the greater part of his men through the Employment Exchange, and that the exchange be compelled, so far as unskilled men are concerned, to afford greater opportunities of employment for men who have been for so long unemployed. I do not agree with all the recommendations of the Unemployment Assistance Board, and the Minister very often takes up some of the recommendations in which we do not believe with a great deal of alacrity. What about this recommendation? What is to prevent the Minister from determining that, in works for which the Treasury is providing the bulk of the money—rearmament work and defence work—the contractors shall seek their labour through the Employment Exchanges, with an instruction that the older and long-termed unemployed should have the first preference? That should have been done. It is a reproach that it has not been done. I hope that the Minister will consider that these men should have that opportunity. These workers are at both ends of the scale, 500,000 men who have been unemployed for very long periods and have exhausted their rights and have been seeking but have not been able to get jobs. If we cannot at this stage mobilise the services of these men in work of this kind, what chance will they have at any other time? The Minister has spoken about the dislocation and the unemployment created by the war, but I want to say a word or two about the opportunities that the war may give. If the war gives us any opportunity to rehabilitate any industrial area in this country, we ought to take advantage of it with both hands. We are entitled to urge upon the Minister that what are called the distressed areas, which provide this hard core of unemployment, are the export areas. They were very largely the casualties of the last war and of the peace which followed the war. They are the casualties of the freezing of the trade of the world which followed the events of 1914–18 and of the peace that followed. I therefore urge upon the Minister and the Government that here and now is an opportunity which should be taken, first, to rehabilitate in part at least the export trade of this country. It is of vital importance. Speaking the other day, in a Debate on economic co-ordination, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that this country will be defeated if its export trade disappears, for it will not be able to pay for the things which it is essential to buy for the carrying on of the war. If that be true, as it is true, an increase, an improvement in our export trade will help considerably in the national effort that now confronts us. We have an opportunity now of assisting considerably the export trade. I refer particularly to the export trade of the coal mining industry. From 1914 to 1918 the export trade in coal was a very material factor in carrying the tremendous financial burden imposed on the country. The exports from this country assist to buy the goods, the food, the raw materials we need. One of the great problems that faces us now in this war is that the export trade position is not what it was in 1913. In 1913, we exported 73,500,000 tons of coal, and to-day we export only 40,000,000 tons. We sent coal to every corner, every market of the world. Now, that trade is substantially reduced. In the two months that have elapsed since the beginning of the war, our export coal trade has declined. There is an opportunity in this industry, and in other export industries too, to develop and expand a trade which is very important to the national economy and which would make a contribution towards solving part at least of the hard core of unemployment in areas like Durham, South Wales and other parts of the country. We have all the material that is necessary, we have the pits, and I believe the markets are there. I would ask the Minister to consult with the Secretary for Mines as to what is being done to prepare the coal-mining industry for what may be the one opportunity that it has had since 1926. From figures provided by the Secretary for Mines, I find that in the two years ending 30th September last 133 pits, employing 14,500 workmen, were closed in this country. Of those, 77 have been abandoned, and it may be difficult or impossible to reopen them. There remain 56 closed pits in the last two years that are not abandoned and could be reopened. Is any real effort being made by the Government to prepare this industrial equipment for what may be a glorious opportunity? Those 56 pits reopened would do more for the Special Areas than all that has been done in the last five years. I would ask the Minister of Labour whether he is discussing the matter with the Secretary for Mines, and, if not, I would urge him to do so. We have the men. In the last count there were 76,000 miners unemployed, 52,000 of whom were wholly unemployed. Many of them have been unemployed for a very long time. Here are the pits, here are the men, here is the coal. I believe there are opportunities now for us to win back some of the export markets we have lost, export trade which would be of enormous advantage to this country—the export trade to the Continent and to Central and South America, which we have lost and which I believe we could regain if we set our hands to the job. I asked a question the other day what was being done to deal with this problem. The reply of the Secretary of Mines was that the workmen and the owners were cooperating from the standpoint of increased production of coal, but that the problem of markets had been left very largely to the industry. This is not a problem for the mining industry. It is a problem for the nation. The problem of recovering our export trade in times like these is a problem which calls for the whole resources of the nation. Private enterprise in our export trade should come to an end. No industry can stand the test of competing and fighting for export trade in these days. It is a matter which calls for the resources of the whole nation. Here there is an opportunity of recovering something at least of the old vitality of the exporting districts of Durham and the North-East Coast, of South Wales, and of other exporting districts, and I hope that the Minister is really sitting down to the problem of preparing plans to deal with this problem. These are some of the things which have been occurring to us as matters which should receive the attention of the Government, this House, and the country. We believe there is work for these men to do in this country. We believe it is the duty of the Government so to organise the economic activities of the land as to provide each of these men the niche in life which they should get. Since the end of the last war there has scarcely ever been less than one-seventh of the industrial population of this country unemployed. Who can calculate the loss to this nation of allowing that skill and capacity to rust and deteriorate for 20 years It is still there, rusting and deteriorating. We urge the Minister, before we next discuss unemployment in this House, to consult other Departments, and the Government generally, and to bring before this House a really constructive plan for mobilising the services of the nation and thus give to these million and a half who are seeking and asking for work, the consideration by the State which they deserve.Question, "That this House do now adjourn," put, and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at Eight Minutes after Ten o'Clock, till To-morrow at Twelve of the Clock, pursuant to the Resolution of the House this day.