May I ask the Deputy Prime Minister whether he can make any statement about the Business for the next series of Sittings?

The House will have understood from the Business statement made yesterday that we expected the Debate on the war situation and foreign affairs to take place on the third and fourth Sitting days of the next series of Sittings. I have to inform the House that we are unable to do so, and therefore it will be necessary to rearrange Business for the next series of Sittings as follows:—

Second Sitting Day.—Conclusion of the Debate on the Address.

Third Sitting Day.—Remaining stages of the Expiring Laws Continuation Bill and of the Local Elections and Register of Electors (Temporary Provisions) Bill; Motion to approve the Supplementary Pensions and Unemployment Assistance (Determination of Need and Assessment of Needs) Regulations.

Fourth Sitting Day.—Second Reading of the Disabled Persons (Employment) Bill.

Two days will be set apart later so that the House will not lose any time and will get a full opportunity for the Debate on the war situation and on foreign affairs which was promised. It is necessary that we should conclude the Debate on the Address. The House will understand that the reasons are beyond our control. We should have wished to have had that Debate during the next series of Sittings, but circumstances make it impossible.

Will my right hon. Friend make quite clear to the House that Members will have an equal opportunity in time to discuss the subject they would have discussed on the Address if we had continued to discuss the Address for the remainder of the next series of Sittings?

Yes, that is what I said. There will be no time lost whatever. There will be a full opportunity.

Would my right hon. Friend make it clear—I was not quite clear—about the point as to whether the Debate on the Address will conclude on the second Sitting Day and that the proposed war Debate will be entirely apart from the Address, presumably on the Adjournment?

Yes, Sir.

Has any definite decision been come to as to whether it is desirable there should be a Debate on the announcement made yesterday by the Minister of Labour?

No. No decision has been come to about that yet.

With regard to the second Sitting Day, will there be any further Amendment called, or will it be a continuation of the general Debate?

When the right hon. Gentleman made his statement he did so rather in a manner as though he was well aware of what he was saying and that the House was, but I am not quite sure now in what form the subsequent Debate to which he has referred will take place.

Unless there is a request for a different method, it will take place on the Adjournment. The point I was dealing with was the point of time. Hon. Members will not be deprived of time. They will have full opportunity.

I would like to be clear on this point. Some of us have Amendments on the Order Paper. We were under the impression that if any of these Amendments were called, they would be called during the last two days of the Debate. Am I to understand that that will still prevail and that the two days Debate will come on later? In any case may we take it for granted it will be before Christmas?

Yes. I think the hon. Member is mistaken. The days that are postponed were days on which we were to revert to the general Debate, not to dealing with Amendments.

Will the Debate take place before Christmas?

Yes, Sir.

Are Amendments to be taken on the second Sitting day? I think, Mr. Speaker, you said yesterday that that would be announced to-day. You dealt yesterday with the Amendment on the first Sitting Day but not with the Amendment on the second Sitting Day.

I promised that I would make a further statement to the House to-day about the Amendments which I have selected for the second Sitting Day of the next series of Sittings. The first one I shall call is that standing in the names of the hon. Members for Barnstaple (Sir R. Acland) and Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton):

"But humbly regret that the Gracious speech indicates that Your Majesty's Ministers do not realise that private ownership of all substantial resources must now be supplanted by common ownership if future wars and poverty are to be eliminated and human brotherhood more nearly approached."

Then I shall call the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. and gallant Member for North Newcastle-on-Tyne (Sir C. Headlam) and other hon. Members:

"But humbly regret that there is no mention of any national policy for a better location of industry, designed to prevent so far as possible a recurrence of the unemployment which prevailed in the period between the two wars, in areas mainly dependent on the heavy industries."

Finally I shall call that standing in the name of the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton):

"But, while welcoming in particular the references to the training and employment of disabled persons and the reinstatement in their civil employment of persons discharged from the armed forces, humbly regret that the Gracious Speech does not announce the principles upon which the demobilisation of the armed forces at the conclusion of hostilities will be based."

I understand the House will be asked to agree to a limited suspension of the Standing Order, so as to give adequate time for debate on these three Amendments.

I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add:

"But humbly regret that Your Majesty's Gracious Speech makes no proposal for raising the pensions of retired State servants, for example, civil servants (Home and Colonial), officers of the Armed Forces, teachers, local government officers, etc., to a level corresponding with the increased cost of living."

In moving this Amendment, which stands in my name and the name of some 140 Parliamentary colleagues, I feel that the first words I should say to-day are words of appreciation that the opportunity should have been given to me to ventilate the case with which this Amendment deals. I have desired that opportunity ever since I returned to the House some 18 months ago, and it is a matter of great gratification that the opportunity is now afforded. The second thing I should like to do is to express my grateful thanks to the hon. and gallant gentleman the Member for Petersfield (Sir G. Jeffreys), who is to second this Amendment, and who brought to the aid of my somewhat tattered battalions the disciplined cohorts of his Committee's adherents. Finally. I should like to express my gratitude to the 140 colleagues who have associated themselves with me in this matter.

I wish to-day to plead the case of the forgotten men, the men and women of yesterday, who have served this country in one branch or another of the public services, but who now, as the result of old age or infirmity, have retired from active work, and are living upon such pension or allowance as the State may make to them. Among these are civil servants, who, during their official life, carried out the work of administering the legislation adopted by this House. There are ex-officers of the Armed Forces, and particularly of the Army and Navy, who, having fought our battles in different parts of the world, are now on retired pay. There are humble ex-policemen and prison officers who, during their lifetime, have safeguarded our persons and our property. There are teachers, who have discharged what I regard as one of the highest possible functions in the community, the task of rearing the next generation of men and women. There are our Colonial administrators, who have borne the burden of government in different parts of the Empire, and who have now returned to live in this country. All these, and possibly other, categories come within the scope of the Amendment.

It is not my purpose to attempt to cover in detail all those cases. We have arranged, subject to your approval, Sir, a division of labour on this Amendment. It is felt that all these cases are in principle the same, and that therefore a statement which covers all of them in principle should be made. But inasmuch as the impact of present conditions upon these various categories differs in its incidence, it is necessary that something should be said about each of the main categories. I shall limit myself to that section which I know best, namely, ex-civil servants, and my hon. and gallant ally the Member for Petersfield (Sir G. Jeffreys) will deal with the case of the retired officers—if ever his party and mine combine, the combination will be irresistible. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove), whose long connection with the teaching profession is known to all Members, will speak for the retired teachers. And other Members will deal with other categories covered by the Amendment. I think there is no direct representative of the police in this House, so I will take them under my own comprehensive wing.

I want, first, to state in a simple sentence the case which it is our desire to impress on the Government. Our case is that the rise in the cost of living in recent years has made deep inroads on the purchasing power of the pensions of retired State servants; that, as a result, thousands of them have been reduced to abject poverty; that on three grounds, of equity, humanity and precedent, we ought not to leave that situation untouched; and that what this House should do is to press upon the Government the necessity of adjusting those pensions in the light of the increase in the cost of living. All that I subsequently say will be directed to establishing that case and to answering some of the arguments which have been advanced against me, here and in other places, as justification for the Government's inaction on this matter.

I must begin by describing the impact on these pensions of the rise in the cost of living. Here I must distinguish between the cost-of-living index figure and the cost of living. If one assumes that the cost of living in July, 1914, was represented by a figure of 100, it had risen in 1920 to 276. There had been an increase of 176 per cent. in the cost of living. From 1920 onwards the cost of living fell fairly steadily, and in November, 1934, it had dropped to 144, compared with 100 in 1914. That date, 1934, represented the nadir of the curve in the cost of living. From 1934 onwards the cost of living has gone steadily up. In 1935 it was 147; in 1936 it was 151; in 1937 it was 161; in 1939 it was 169; in 1940 it was 192; in 1941 it was 200; in 1942 it was 200; and in October of this year, which is the last figure I can get, it was 199. To make the calculation simple, let us call it 200, and contrast that with 144 in 1934. That is an increase of 56 points. That is the Ministry of Labour computation of the rise in the cost of living since 1934.

I do not think any Member will disagree with me when I say that between that figure of the Ministry of Labour and the concrete experience of life there is a considerable gap. The reasons are manifold.

One great reason is that the index figure is based upon budgets comprising a typical working-class family's expenditure in 1904. Any current figure of cost of living which bases itself on budgets collected in 1904 must obviously ignore the whole change in the way of life and the distribution of expenditure which has marked our domestic life in Britain during the last 40 years. The index figure, I submit, is not a true criterion. What is a true criterion I do not know. My friend Lord Beaverbrook, with whom I discussed this subject recently, gave it as his own estimate that the cost of living was 100 per cent. higher, as against the 30 per cent. of the Ministry of Labour's figure. I do not know whether Lord Beaverbrook is right or not. He has an astonishing habit of being right from time to time.

Does he mean an increase of 100 per cent. since the war began?

Yes. That is the estimate of one person who has many sources of information at his command. I am content to say that if the cost-of-living index figure had risen by per cent. it would much more closely correspond with our own experience of the rise in prices than the figure of 30 per cent. put forward by the Ministry of Labour. An inroad of 50 or 60 per cent. into the purchasing power of the State pensioners of various categories is an extraordinarily heavy and serious inroad. On three grounds, equity, humanity, and precedent, we must do something about that situation. I think it will be for the convenience of the House if, in illustrating how this thing has worked out on grounds of equity, I take the category of pensioners with whom I am most familiar—the ex-civil servants.

It is a common feature that all the pensions we are talking about now are governed by one thing, or a second thing, or a combination of both. One element which goes to determine pension is the rate of pay, or, in the Armed Services, the rank which the person was holding at the time he retired from the service of the Crown. Another element is the number of years of approved service that the servant had put in at the date of his retirement. In the case of the civil servant, what a man gets when he retires is one-eightieth of his retiring salary for each year of approved pensionable service.

Here I want to bring in a point on which this House is not well informed, and on which I think it should be better informed than it is. There is no necessary connection, in the case of the Civil Service, between the number of years a man puts in, and the number of years approved for pensions purposes. A man may put in 40 years' service, and not a single one of those years be regarded as pensionable. I have a case under discussion with the Chancellor at the moment, upon which justice shall be done, though the heavens fall. It is the case of a man with 53 years' service in the Ministry of Supply or its analogues. Let me put it more broadly and say 53 years in the public service. That man is going out shortly, unless the Chancellor changes his mind, without a penny of pension.

Why?

Because his service has been unestablished. It is only established service that counts. A man may remain unestablished for 20, 30 or 40 years, or never even be established at all, though his beard is trailing down to his boots.

During the last war there was an increase in the cost of living from 100 points in July, 1914, to 276 in 1920 and as a result of that rise, there was a series of ad hoc increases in Civil Service wages, flat-rate increases. In 1920, a Committee upon which (I speak from recollection) I served as a very young junior with the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, considered a more scientific scheme for adjusting wages to prices. Under this scheme there was to be a cost-of-living bonus, which would rise or fall every six months according to a rise or fall in the cost-of-living figure. The Government then had to consider what was to be done about the pensions, and they provided increases for those who had already gone out of the Service.

The Government then came to this House with a proposal to regulate the pensions of men and women who were to retire after that date, and I invite the House to note carefully what happened. The Government recommended to the House that for purposes of computing pensions, they should take 75 per cent. of the bonus that the man was getting when he retired, and should add that to his substantive pay, and then base the pension upon the combination. The Government got a bad House on this proposal. The House of Commons would not have it. I would like to quote to the House an extract—only one of many which I might quote but one will establish the point—from a speech made in that Debate by Sir Donald Maclean. He said:

"I put this one specific case, of a person with, say, £1,200 a year,"—

I may say that in the Civil Service that is an astronomical figure. The men of whom I am speaking usually get not more than £3 or £4 per week. However, this was the case as it was put:

"retiring within the next four or five months. He gets a war bonus of £750. He is allowed 75 per cent. of his war bonus, which amounts to £562 10s. That, added to his £1,200, makes a total of £1,762. He gets half that—£881—for the rest of his life, fixed and unalterable. It does not even vary with the sliding scale according to the rise and fall in the cost of living."—[OFFICIAL. REPORT, 18th March, 1921; col. 1986, Vol. 139.]

He demanded, "what justification there was for that" and said that "it was an amazing position." Many other speeches were made on that line, and as a result the Government withdrew that proposal. They abandoned the idea of having pensions that were fixed, and they introduced, by Treasury minute, a new scheme, under which pensions in respect of basic rates would be fixed, but pensions appropriate to bonuses would vary up and down as the cost of living varied. Let me emphasise this point. This House, in 1921, insisted that if the cost of living fell, pensions should also fall. I submit to this House of Commons that it cannot refuse to support the claim that pensions should go up when the cost of living rises. Having done the one thing, it seems quite incredible that we should not now do the other.

I have already mentioned that the cost of living fell steadily between 1920 and 1934. During all those years, the size of the Civil Service bonus went down, and corresponding to the size of the bonus the bonus pension also went down. Then, in 1934, somebody at the Treasury had a bright idea. That is not an everyday occurrence, and so perhaps I may be forgiven for commenting on it. The bright idea was that from that point onwards the cost of living would probably rise. "And," said the Treasury, "if we consolidate bonus with basic rate now, and therefore bonus pension with basic pension, when the cost of living is at its nadir, what a lot of money it will save us when the cost of living begins to go up." So, jug at the very point when the cost of living was at its lowest, there was consolidation, against the protests of the Civil Service Unions. The cost of living has gone up ever since in the way I have described; and not a penny by way of relief has been given to these men. I argue, first on the ground of equity, that that is quite wrong. How are we to regard the pension? I maintain that the Civil Service pension is a form of deferred pay. It is part of the pay which is withheld from the civil servant's current remuneration in order to provide for that pension at a later stage of his life.

Would the hon. Member be kind enough to develop that argument about deferred pay?

Yes, I am going to, and I trust I may make the point as clear to hon. Members as it is to my own mind. Whenever there is an argument about Civil Service pensions and pay—and I myself have engaged in thousands of them in the last 30 years—and it does not reach an agreed conclusion, we go before an industrial court for an independent arbitration. The Treasury, in its counter-statement to the tribunal, never fails to point out that the court must not only look at the normal wages of the grade, but it must also have regard to the fact that the grade enjoys pension rights, which the Treasury assesses as being worth 12½ per cent. of the basic pay. In other words, the Treasury gives lower pay than it would do but for the existence of the pension right, and it points that out to the court when cases have to go there for arbitration. I submit that, morally, there can be no question in these circumstances, that pension represents deferred pay; and that it is a breach of equity to pay that portion of pay which is deferred, in pounds which have depreciated to the extent of one half, or even more, in their purchasing power.

On the ground, therefore, of plain equity it is monstrous that nothing should be done to increase the size of these pensions, which represent deferred pay.

Arguments about equity are sometimes inconclusive. I would like the House to realise, if it will, what are the consequences, in terms of hardship, which has been created by the refusal to do anything on this matter. I take these cases not because they are exceptional. I can produce hundreds and thousands more like them, and I believe that every Member of this House probably could produce cases that correspond. Here is a man who retired from the Civil Service at the age of 65. His pension is 12s. 6d. per week—50s. a month. He is one of those men who put in long service, but only a tiny part of it is counted as his pensionable service. He goes out with 12s. 6d. a week. The purchasing power of that 12s. 6d. has been reduced to-day to probably something less than 6s.! Here is a man from the Inland Revenue Department, who retired in 1935, just about the time when the cost of living was at its lowest; 65 years of age, 43 years service, pension £65 5s. 1d. per annum.

What was the salary?

He does not give me that, but I can give cases where they do give it. It will be seen at once that that pension is of the meanest possible description, something just ever 21s. per week. Now to-day, as the result of the rise in the cost of living, it is worth probably only about 10s. or 10s. 6d. A civil servant invalided out of the service with 30s. a week pension writes to me, with some bitterness in his heart, that he understands that 30s. a week is the amount allowed by the authorities of the Zoological Gardens for the Great Ape.

There is only one of them.

I do not think that the qualitative merits of this case are in any way affected by the number of the people—or apes—involved. Here is a retired postman with 44 years' service, pension 18s. 6d. a week. I do not know whether the House is aware of it, but it costs vastly more to maintain men in prison or in public institutions than the pensions of thousands upon thousands of men who have rendered great service to this country. Next is the case of a man from an ordnance factory, 50 years' service, less three months. Pension on retirement £94 15s. 8d., which to-day is worth probably not a penny more than £45. A retired schoolmaster, after 40 years' service, is awarded a pension of £98 15s. This relates to a man who, during the last war, served as a lieutenant, then as a lieutenant-colonel, and was later created a C.B.E. He is now 71 years old, his wife is 68, and the purchasing power of his pension has been reduced from £98 to probably something under £50. I could go on for hour after hour quoting these cases, but Members must know, in their own experience, that this is the sort of thing which is happening in every division, and they must know about them. That is the second ground that I urge—the ground of humanity. We cannot dispossess ourselves of responsibility for the situation. In the last resort these men and women are not servants of the Crown; they are not servants of the Government; they are servants of this House. And this House is responsible for seeing that they get a reasonably fair deal.

I would now like to turn to some of the alleged justifications that have been given to me in various places for the Government's inactivity in this matter. I have heard four or five main arguments directed against this claim, and in case the Chancellor should use them to-day—which I hope he will not do—I would like to anticipate them. The first one is, that it is not part of a civil servant's contract of service that his pension should be related to the rise and fall in the cost of living. That is true, in the sense that there is nothing in the letter he gets from the Civil Service Commission, who appoint him to his job, and nothing in the superannuation Act which covers his pension, which specifically provides that there should be an adjustment in the light of rises or falls in the cost of living. But if there is no legal contract, there is a very strong moral contract. There is a moral obligation on the State not to pay pensions in pounds which have no relation, as far as the purchasing power is concerned, to the pounds taken into account as wages.

A second argument has been that it is unnecessary to increase these pensions, because many pensioners have emerged from their retirement, and are back doing work in Government offices. The first answer to that is, that there are two categories which have not returned to employment. The first category is that of the very old, and the second is that of the men who went out on medical grounds and remain unfit. It will be plain to the House that no argument the Chancellor may use about men who have returned to work can possibly apply to the two categories I have just mentioned. But what happens to the man who goes back to work from retirement? He resumes work at the rate of pay be was getting when he left, but from that the Government deduct his pension. Suppose this House insisted that pensions should be increased by 50 per cent. As far as these men are concerned, it would not cost the State a single penny. The pension would be increased, and so would the size of the deduction from their pay. And, therefore, this argument just fails to connect with the concrete situation with which we are dealing.

The next argument is that it is undesirable to relate pensions to the cost of living. I hope I may be forgiven for a digression. I have noticed about the Treasury, for the last 30 years, that whenever a rule which it has established begins to operate to its disadvantage, it invariably changes the rule. They remind me of nothing so much as an incident which occurred when I was a lad at school. In those days schools were not provided so well with facilities for sport as they are now. And I remember the headmaster trying to get up a cricket team. He said, in the class, "Has anybody any wickets?" and somebody had. He said, "Has anybody a bat?" and somebody had. Then he said, "Has anyone got a ball?" and somebody had. So, by one means or another, he obtained the necessary material and got the game going on the sports field. Having started it off he left the boys, and went to talk to a passer-by at the edge of the field. After a time he became aware of a row going on on the field, and then a little boy ran up to him, panting, and said, "Please, Sir, Bill Smith is out." The teacher said, "Oh, what about it?" and the little boy replied, "Bill Smith won't come out." "Why?" asked the teacher, and the little boy replied, "Sir he says it is his bat!" You can knock down the Treasury's middle wicket, you can knock down their offside stump, and their onside stump, and you can send their bails flying. But it is their bat! That is what actually happens in these matters. The Front Bench that opposes me to-day—I hope it will not—is not the same Front Bench in terms of personnel as it used to be, but it is the same in terms of continuity and outlook. It is the same Front Bench that in 1922 decided that pensions must come down with the cost of living. Now pensions must go up with the increased cost of living.

In almost every other sphere of life we have been compelled to do something about this cost-of-living problem. During the life of this Parliament, we have increased the allowances of wives and dependants of serving men—not as much as I should like to see, but, nevertheless, we have increased them. We have increased supplementary allowances to old age pensioners. And last night we heard on the wireless that there are to be further increases in that area. All to the good! We have increased the size of Assistance Board grants, and unemployment and disability pensions, and at no distant date we increased the salaries of Members of Parliament. It is true that none of the increases to which I have referred was specifically and in terms related to the rise in the cost of living. But they were, in fact, given because of the increase in the cost of living. That is to say, they were given because the old amounts, unadjusted, would not have enabled the allowances to do what they were supposed to do, namely, meet the increased cost of living. Still more striking, during this war there have been six increases of pay to serving civil servants, the last one two days ago. Why? Because of the increased cost of living. Again, they were not specifically related to the cost of living, but the increases became necessary because of the rise in the cost of living. And to say that we cannot do for retired civil servants what we recognise we must do for civil servants who go on serving is utterly wrong.

The last argument I want to refer to is the one that there are many others in Britain, living on fixed incomes, who have had no relief because of the increased cost of living. That same argument was used in the Debate in 1921, in this House. And that argument, by the then Financial Secretary, now Lord Baldwin, was met with a withering rebuke. He said it was true that a lot of people in Britain had not received any relief for the increased cost of living, but that they were people to whom the State had no responsibility. He said we could not shirk from our duty to those to whom we had responsibility, by referring to the condition of those to whom we had no responsibilities. I submit that the State has a clear responsibility, as an employer to employed, in relation to the people I am taking about to-day.

What I have said about civil servants applies to the police, teachers, Army officers and the rest. The incidence is different, but substantially the case I have made applies to all the people covered by this Amendment. I can assure the House with sincerity that there is grave, unjustifiable and abominable hardship existing which the House ought to put right.

I would like to appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I have dealt with the right hon. Gentleman in the Civil Service field for something like 25 years. We have sat together on a good many committees and have taken part in a good many negotiations together. I have always found him a hard man, but a just man. He has never given away a penny unnecessarily. That would have conflicted violently with the inherited characteristics of the centuries, and would not have agreed with his Scotch origin. But I found him a just man, and when convinced by argument he acted upon it. Some time ago I found myself at odds with him. When he was Minister for Home Security I thought his policy about tube shelters was wrong. In a conversation I had with Lord Beaver-brook I said so, and criticised the right hon. Gentleman. Lord Beaverbrook's reply was, "You may be right about policy, Bill, but you are wrong about Anderson. Anderson is a very able and big man, and one day you will be glad you have him in the public service of this country." I hope very much that that day will be to-day.

I have been for 30 years dealing with the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors, on Civil Service pay, and I have noticed one deplorable thing. In all these years I have never known the Treasury adjust a rate of pay without being pressed to it. It cannot be because all the rates of pay were right, because I have taken scores of cases to the Board of Arbitration, and obtained verdicts for improved rates. The Treasury never give anything unless they are compelled to do so. It is said that I have extracted more millions of pounds in the Civil Service field from the Treasury than any civil servant, past or present. I want to tell the right hon. Gentleman that by an expenditure of half the money I have extracted unwillingly from the Treasury, they might have built up and accumulated a fund of good will and good relations.

I hope we shall not have to make this Amendment a matter of pressure. I hope the Chancellor will decide on it on its merits. We are divided here by political lines. But I am sometimes inclined to think that we make bogies out of each other and then attack the bogies we have created. It is thought on this side that those on the other side are hard-faced capitalists, and it is thought on the other side that all the fellows on this side are wanton incendiaries. On both sides I think they are bogies. What surprises me is not the political perversity of men; it is the personal goodness and honesty of men. It is to that personal goodness that I would appeal, in Members on all sides. Here is an area for which we are responsible. I beg that the House will see to it that justice is done.

I want to make it plain that there is no desire on this side of the House to force this Amendment to a Division. I want to make it plain that this is not a political vendetta against the Government. To-day I am out for duty, and not for recreation. I am anxious to secure justice to a body of men for whom I have a responsibility. He gives twice who gives quickly; and I hope the Chancellor will give us the case straight away. If he cannot do that, and if he will agree to an inquiry by a Select Committee of the House, or by a Special Committee, or some other form, no one would be more delighted than I should be to withdraw the Amendment. In any case I am glad to have had the opportunity of stating the case for these men, and I hope very much that their hearts will be made lighter tonight than they are at this moment.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I and some of my friends who are specially interested in the case of retired officers of the Armed Forces have at the same time been studying the case of retired civil servants because it appeared that between the two cases there were various points of close resemblance. I myself asked a series of Questions of the late lamented Chancellor of the Exchequer regarding Civil Service pensions with a view to obtaining particulars on which to base comparisons between the two sets of cases. As a result of the information given me in answer to those Questions, I came to the conclusion that, while the two cases were not comparable as regards details and the method of the calculation of pension rates, yet in principle they were comparable, because in each case reductions were effected on account of the fall in the cost of living, and the rates were stabilised when the cost of living was almost at its lowest point, so that when subsequently it rose very steeply there was no corresponding rise in the rates of pension. Having said so much and having, I hope, made it clear that I and my hon. Friends support the case of the civil servants, I think it would be right that I should state that my own retired pay, which was granted under an Army Order of 1938, which was not retrospective, is not subject to the conditions of the Royal Warrant of 1919. I am therefore not personally affected, and my plea to-day is on behalf of my less fortunately situated brother officers.

The special points that I want to make are as follow: The basic rates of pension of 1919 were reduced in conformity with the fall in the index figure of the cost of living. When the cost of living rose there was no corresponding rise in the rates. They were in fact stabilised at 9½ per cent. below the basic rates of 1919, and we are not asking in the ordinary sense for a rise in pension rates but for the restoration of the 1919 rates and the fulfilment of the terms of the Royal Warrant of that year. In 1919 revised and increased rates of retired pay were laid down for all three Services, and in each case it was provided that these rates would be subject after five years to revision either upwards or downwards to an extent not exceeding 20 per cent. according as the cost of living should rise or fall, and thereafter there was to be a revision every three years. These conditions were observed so long as the cost-of-living index figure fell, and actually between 1930 and 1934 the rates of pension were reduced by as much as 11 per cent. But when in 1934 it showed signs of rising, and did in fact rise to a small extent, the Government considered that these fluctuations were, no doubt, highly inconvenient, and decided to stabilise the rates of pension at a low figure. They did in fact in 1935 stabilise Service pensions at a rate corresponding to the cost-of-living figure of 55, that is to say, a reduction of 9½ per cent. below the basic rates of 1919. These new consolidated rates came into force on 1st July, 1935. That is a brief history of the Services' retired pay between 1919 and 1935.

As we have heard from the hon. Member, this decision to stabilise applied also to civil servants. It was in each case a one-sided bargain imposed by one party to it, and that was the Treasury, and the other party, the pensioners, had no say whatever. Retired officers relied on the Royal Warrant of 1919, which laid down the following in paragraph 1:

"The rate will be subject after five years to revision, either upwards or downwards; to an extent not exceeding 20 per cent. according as the cost of living rises or falls. After 1st July, 1924, a further revision may take place every three years."

The official cost-of-living figure at that time was 115. Those terms were identical for all three Services. In the case of the Army the Warrant bore the signature of the then Secretary of State for War. It was a signature which was then, as now, a guarantee of good faith, and in which there was the utmost confidence. It was "Winston S. Churchill." Can there be any doubt as to either the provisions or the intentions of that Royal Warrant, is it to be wondered at, in view of the terms of the Warrant, that the Government's action in stabilising retired pay at 9½ per cent. below the basic rate was regarded by retired officers as definitely a breach of faith and that much discontent and a good deal of hardship were caused thereby? Serving officers too are wondering, if that is the way the Government can treat retired officers, what guarantee they have of receiving any better treatment when their time comes.

After the stabilisation in July, 1935, as has been pointed out by my hon. Friend, the cost of living steadily increased, and on 4th August this year the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in answer to a Question which I put to him, replied that the index cost-of-living figure in July, 1935, was 143 and that the corresponding figure in July, 1943, was 200. Actually the new rates of July, 1935, were based on a figure of 55, that is to say, 45 points lower than the figure of to-day. I have stated that this 9½ per cent. deduction on the 1919 basic rates of pension constitutes a real hardship on many retired officers, especially those drawing the lower rates of retired pay, and particularly those who joined the Services in the last war somewhat late in life as compared with the ordinary age of joining. It particularly again includes those promoted from the ranks or the lower deck who mostly were commissioned when several years past the normal age, and who, in the greatly reduced Army and Fleet of the 1930's, often found themselves in middle age with no prospects and obliged to retire on a junior officer's exiguous pension. Moreover, the cost-of-living figures are calculated on presumed items of working-class expenditure. They make no allowances for many necessary items in the cost of living of retired officers and civil servants, such as, for instance, to mention only a few, rents, education, medical fees, repairs and insurance, all of which have risen to a considerable extent. Last, but not least, Income Tax is now double what it was in 1935, and whatever other omissions the Treasury may make it does not omit to collect Income Tax at the due date. It is a bleak prospect for the old soldier or sailor retired at an age when he is too old to earn much, too old to make a fresh start in life, who often has children to educate and is always striving to keep up appearances.

The retired officer's case is in some respects even more deserving than that of the civil servant, for, unlike the civil servant, he can seldom serve up to the full age of retirement or serve long enough to qualify for the maximum pension. There are, as in the case of the civil servant, two elements in the pension; one rank and the other length of service. It is seldom in the Army that an officer can go to the full age for retirement of the highest ranks. Moreover, during an officer's service he seldom knows what it is to have a settled home. He has had to serve in all probability all over the world, regardless of the expense of moving his family or of separation from his family, and his health is not infrequently impaired by wounds or disease or as the result of climate or exposure. There is no Employer's Liability Act or anything equivalent to it in the Army. As in the case of the civil servant, the officer's pay while serving is never on a generous scale, and he regards the retired pay to which he can look forward as a form of deferred pay. While I am not able to quote the occasion, I think I am right in saying that it was referred to in this House some years ago by the late Mr. Chamberlain when Chancellor of the Exchequer as deferred pay.

As regards the cost per annum of restoring the 1919 rate of retired pay of the Services, the late Chancellor stated on 20th July, in answer to a Question which I put to him, that it would be about £500,000 per annum at present, increasing to £850,000 after the war; that is to say, when some officers now serving under that Warrant come back and when some of the re-employed officers whose pay is treated similarly to the manner mentioned by my hon. Friend also come back. Assuming that we are spending £13,000,000 per day on the war, £500,000 per annum would be about a twenty-sixth part of that amount. If the basic rates were restored the Treasury would not omit to collect Income Tax on the amount restored, so that the net cost to the country would be much less than the sum I have quoted. The Treasury attitude hitherto has been exemplified by another answer of the late Chancellor given to me on 4th August, 1942. I will quote the words of the Question and answer:

"Sir G. JEFFREYS asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether, when considering the question of the pay of officers and men of the Services, he will, at the same time, consider the desirability of restoring the full rate of retired pay to those retired officers whose pensions have been stabilised at nine and a half per cent. below the basic rates?

"Sir K. WOOD: Service retired pay was stabilised in 1935 at the level then ruling in pursuance of the Government decision that the pay and pensions of Crown servants in general should no longer be subject to cost of living adjustments. In view of the losses which war has inevitably brought to many other sections of the community I do not consider that State pensioners as a whole, or retired members of the Forces in particular, should be selected for exceptional treatment."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th August, 1942; column 873, Vol. 382.]

Since then various hon. Members who have asked Questions have been referred to this answer. On one occasion when I asked a Question myself, I was referred to it. It had apparently become a classic. For instance, the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore), the hon. Member for Abingdon (Sir R. Glyn) and the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne) asked Questions on the subject and were referred to this answer. We are not asking for what the late Chancellor called "exceptional treatment." We ask that the undertaking given in 1919 should be honoured, that at least the basic rates of 1919 should be reverted to, and that the rates should rise as well as fall with the cost of living. If stabilisation was desirable, and there is no doubt a great deal to be said for it, it should not have been effected at almost the lowest point to which the cost of living fell but at the basic rate of 1919. What would we in this House, what would the world in general say if there had been an agreement on the part of the comparatively small body of ex-officers with one or more of the great insurance companies in which there was a definite bargain, a definite undertaking that the rate, shall we say of annuities, should be on a certain scale and should rise or fall in certain circumstances, and if the insurance company or companies were to say "It is very inconvenient to have these fluctuations. We regret that we cannot preserve the provision of the original agreement and we are going to stabilise the rates at a figure which suits our convenience and that not a high one"? What would this House have said about that? What would the courts have said about it, in the actions which must inevitably have followed any such decision?

Moreover, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer in his answer to me spoke of the losses which the war had brought to many other sections of the community. No doubt that is perfectly true, but those are, I venture to say, a small minority of our whole population now. To the great majority, the war has brought increased earnings in terms, at any rate, of pounds. I do not think there is any doubt about that. I would also join with my hon. Friend the Mover in pointing out that the State has direct obligations to its own retired servants, moral obligations and I think actual obligations as well. However unfortunate may be the lot of those who are subsisting on fixed incomes, it has no similar obligations to them. I am encouraged to think that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will look favourably on this appeal, not only because of his essential fair-mindedness but also because of his sympathetic attitude in the Debate on disability pensions on 20th July last. I will, with the permission of the House, quote from Hansard what my right hon. Friend said on that occasion:

"I confess that I did not know, until I came to look into this matter, that the rates of pension under the existing Warrant are, in certain respects, less favourable than the rates in the last war. It came just as a little bit of a shock, as I daresay it did too to a number of people. I looked into it and found there was nothing seriously wrong. The rates at present granted are related to a lower cost of living than the rates which were stabilised after the last war, and that is the explanation of the difference, but the difference is small and not worth retaining. If it is a source of dissatisfaction, then let us get rid of it. There is no difficulty about that."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 20th July, 1943; col. 723, Vol. 391.]

If that was my hon. Friend's attitude as regards disability pension rates, surely, he can hardly adopt a different attitude as regards these service pension rates. If disability pensions are based on the 1919 rates, should not service retired pay also be at the 1919 rates? Actually the war-disabled Regular officer now draws retired pay at 9½ per cent. below the 1919 rates, but under the new Warrant, which was the result of the Debate from which I have just quoted the remarks of my right hon. Friend, he can draw a disability addition to his retired pay at the 1919 rate. It seems to me that that is an obvious anomaly.

I hope I have said sufficient to show how strong is the claim of these old officers in this matter. I cannot believe that my right hon. Friend can fail to see the justice of their claim. I hope that he will be able to give a favourable answer to-day, but failing that, I hope that he may agree to appoint an impartial committee—I hope it will not be a Departmental Committee—to go into the matter, as was suggested I think indirectly by my hon. Friend, in which case I, for one, should have no doubt of the result. At the same time such a committee could go into various pension grievances, which I refrain from going into to-day though many of them have been brought to my notice—such things, for instance, as the miserable pittance allowed to the widows of officers killed in action; the terms for the commutation of pensions which, in many cases, are very unfavourable to the officers who commute and the terms under which pensioned officers are re-employed, by which they get only 25 per cent. of their retired pay in addition to the pay of their rank. That is very good business for the Government, because retired pay is, as I say, deferred pay. Even pre-1914 pensions might, I think, be sympathetically reviewed. There are very few of these pensioners left. They are a small body and they are all old men now, those who joined, shall we say, in the 90's of the last century and who retired just before the last war and are drawing pensions on the terms of the Warrant under which they joined. Their pensions vary according to service and rank. A lieutenant-colonel of those days retired on £420 a year but in Edwardian days that was, at any rate, £420 and represented 420 golden sovereigns' worth. Now, £420 is a very different thing. If I may quote an old proverb:

"Pounds upon paper and pounds in the pocket are very different things."

These are real grievances, but I will confine myself on this occasion to what I regard as the essential matter of the disregard and throwing over of the terms of the Royal Warrant of 1919, and the stabilisation of retired pay at 9½ per cent. below the 1919 basic rate. I hope that we may have a word of encouragement from the Chancellor as to this matter. It is a very distinct grievance, and we ask for the rectification of a wrong that was done to retired officers when the terms of the 1919 Warrant were, in effect, thrown over.

I rise to support the Amendment which has been so ably moved and seconded by the two previous speakers. On the general case I feel that probably I could not add very much to what has already been said. It is perfectly clear that there is much suffering in the ranks of those pensioners whose case has been put forward by the two previous speakers, and most certainly there is among those for whom I particularly speak. I do not want to worry the House with a great deal of detail, but there are probably hundreds of teachers getting pensions of only 25s. or 30s. a week, and there is undoubtedly serious hardship throughout the ranks of retired teachers, just as there is throughout the ranks of retired officers and civil servants. Therefore we have among what one might call the salaried class a united demand upon the Government to meet these hardships and remove these grievances. I should imagine that if the Chancellor responds to the undoubted feeling of this House he will readily agree to what we are asking. There is no doubt that hon. Members from all parts of the country are aware of the very serious situation in which these people find themselves.

I should like the Chancellor to answer this question, which seems to me to go right to the heart of the matter as far as the Treasury is concerned. How can the Chancellor justify a bonus upon salaries to met the cost of living and deny a bonus to pensioners? Take the teaching profession. There you have stable salaries, which have been agreed upon. As a matter of fact, the tendency in the professions has been more and more to stabilise salaries and so to keep them more remote from fluctuations in the cost of living. Long-term agreements have been made in order to give those in employment a sense of security. The tendency for some years has been to remove the fluctuating factors in salaries and to get them on to a more stable basis. It is exactly the same with pensions. What has happened during this war? I speak for the teachers. What has happened is not that the basic salary has been touched but that the Government have agreed—because I take it the Treasury will have agreed to any bonus that has been given to teachers or to civil servants—An the present abnormal circumstances, with the increase in the cost of living, to sanction a bonus on teacher's salaries. For the life of me I cannot understand how the Treasury can justify a bonus on stable salaries and deny a bonus on stable pensions. The Treasury has to answer that point if it is to meet the wishes of the House and meet the grievously, hard conditions of these pensioners.

It has been said over and over again that pensions are deferred pay. When we were in Committee upstairs on the Teachers Superannuation Bill in 1925 I remember that Lord Eustace Percy, who was then President of the Board of Education, laid it down quite clearly that pensions, for teachers anyhow, were deferred pay. I speak subject to correction, but I think there is one difference, and that is that the teacher's pension is a contributory pension. The teachers pay 5 per cent. of their salaries and the local authorities find 2½, per cent. and the Government 2½, per cent. What is being done under the contributory scheme? You are taking a certain amount of money from the teachers in a given year when, for instance, the cost of living may have been much lower than it is now and when Income Tax was certainly much lower than now. You were taking, say, £10 a year ten years ago when Income Tax was lower and when the cost of living was lower, and you were storing it up. The teacher does not voluntarily store it up; he is compelled to store it up. Retirement has been made compulsory by the State which says "You must go at 65," and a number of local authorities have said "You must go at 60."

Then along comes the period for which these people have saved up this money, this part of their pay—the period of retirement. What happens now? Income Tax is much higher and the cost of living has gone up, but what about the pension? I agree with the answer of the Treasury that the pension is fixed, it is immovable, but the value of the pension is not fixed. The value of the pension is fluctuating, in the main on account of the increase in taxation and the rise in the cost of living. I do not know how the Chancellor can justify a refusal to meet such a situation. I remember when the Widows and Orphans Pension Act was before the House the question arose as to whether teachers could have a double pension. First it was ruled that they could not and then that they could—that they could have the old age pension and the teachers' pension. Pensions for officers, pensions for civil servants and pensions for teachers are essentially service pay. They are in a different category altogether, because being pensions for service they are directly related to the principle of their being deferred pay.

While joining my hon. Friends with these few remarks, I do not want to prevent the House from hearing the Chancellor. I am anxious to hear him. I believe his heart is softening, and I hope he will meet these cases. The grievances among pensioned officers, among civil servants and teachers affect not only those who are already retired but those who are at present working. There is a reflex action which causes disgruntlement and dissatisfaction, creates the feeling "When we get old we shall be thrown on the dustheap." The State ought to be not only the model employer but the model pensioner, and I hope the Chancellor will meet the wishes of the House either by giving us some hope of an immediate increase or by promising some Committee to go into the matter and come speedily to a decision.

It may be for the convenience of the House to have at this stage of the Debate some indication of the attitude taken up by His Majesty's Government in this matter. I certainly have no reason to complain of the tone of the three speeches to which we have listened, and I will endeavour to attune my own remarks to the tone of those of previous speakers. In looking at the terms of the Amendment which has been moved, there is one point of detail of which I should like to dispose at the outset. The Amendment is in very wide terms. It includes a reference, in addition to civil servants, officers of the Armed Forces, teachers and local government officers, to officers of the Colonial Services. Colonial pensions are granted by Colonial Legislatures and paid out of Colonial funds, and while it might be that the attitude taken by His Majesty's Government in regard to the various classes whose pensions are provided, in whole or in part, by the moneys provided by Parliament may influence action in regard to Colonial pensions, I do not think it would be proper to deal with such pensions in this present connection.

In the course of his very interesting and at times amusing speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. W. Brown) gave the House a summary, not at all an unfair summary, of the arguments for and against what he is now asking the House to agree to, which had come to his notice in the course of his recent experience. If I may, I would like to summarise those arguments for myself. As the House is aware, the matter was considered by my predecessor. Various representations have been made from time to time by associations and by individual Members of Parliament, and my predecessor, I think it was in June last, after receiving representations from a deputation from the Trades Union Congress, the National Union of Teachers and the Educational Institute of Scotland, gave a decision adverse to the proposal that pensions should be increased in the light of the increased cost of living. He took the view, as the records show, that at that time the arguments for and against were fairly nicely balanced. In favour of an increase, it could be said that there was precedent in the Acts of 1920 and 1924. It could be said also that the principle of assistance to meet the higher cost of living is recognised by war bonuses awarded to serving officers in, the Civil Service, in the local government service and in teaching. Indeed, pensioners of the Crown Services are, I suppose, almost the only class receiving assistance from State or quasi-State funds who have not had some increase, in recognition of the higher cost of living. For example, the scales of disability pensions, and supplementary pensions to which my hon. Friend referred, as well as allowances paid in connection with other social services, where increases have also been given.

There may be room for some little difference of opinion as to the extent to which the cost of living has increased. My hon. Friend cast some doubt on the validity of the index figures commonly used and said that they were based on budgets that had been extracted in 1904; but actually, as he perhaps is aware, there was a very comprehensive and searching and close inquiry in 1936, with a view to seeing whether some better basis could be found. The result of that inquiry was to confirm the validity of the index figures as they have, for a long period, always been calculated; to confirm them, that is, in so far as the items which are included in that calculation are concerned. My hon. Friend gave detailed figures showing how, according to the generally accepted index numbers, the cost of living has varied over a long period from 1914 to October of this year, and the figures he gave were I believe perfectly accurate. There has in fact been, as compared with the cost of living just before the war, an increase of approximately 30 per cent. That is, one must recognise, a substantial increase. Then it has often been argued, in the course of representations received by the Treasury, that as existing pensions schemes result, in many individual instances, in the award of pensions of quite small amounts, the increase in prices that have taken place must inevitably result, if there is no increase in the pension, in a considerable degree of hardship. That I think is not an unfair summary of the arguments for doing something. Those are the arguments, I know, which appealed to my right hon. Friend the late Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Against those arguments, on the other hand, there were other considerations which he also was bound to take into account. There is of course at once the very striking fact, to which the hon. Members who have spoken referred as a precedent, that in the case of the last war the first Pensions (Increase) Act was not passed until 1920, when the cost-of-living figure was 155 per cent. above that of 1914. The second Act was passed in 1924, when the cost of living was between 75 and 80 per cent. above that of 1914. Then it was argued with considerable force that many of the increases which had been given in other cases, for example in current rates of remuneration, were given for reasons which are not at any rate fully valid in the case of pensions. In regard to what the hon. Member for Aberavon (Mr. Cove) said, I would like to comment in passing that there is a considerable difference in the approach that one makes between current remuneration and a pension which is paid as the result of a contract or quasi-contract which has come to an end.

Pension is part of current remuneration.

The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his opinion. That is how it appears to me. Current remuneration has not only the cost of living to take into account but general wage tendencies within and outside State employment. There is the final argument, to which my hon. Friend also alluded, only to brush it on one side, that hardship is by no means confined to State pensioners but to other sections of the community, people living on small incomes derived from investments or whatever it may be and who have no opportunity of improving their position as persons who are in active employment, who can get the advantage of the state of the labour market and can supplement their incomes. It was on a balance of those arguments that the Government last July decided against taking any action at that time.

Within the last few weeks, His Majesty's Government have given further consideration to the whole matter, and while it seems to them that the arguments are still fairly evenly and nicely balanced, they have come to the conclusion that there is on the whole a case for doing something now. The exact form of the legislation which the Government will introduce, I hope in the fairly near future, as soon as is practicable, is still, in certain respects, under consideration. The position is not free from complexity. Many different cases have to be considered, as the speeches to which we have already listened indeed showed. There is the civil servant in ordinary circumstances, there is the teacher, who has a contributory pensions scheme, there is the policeman, who contributes under yet another scheme, and there is the whole range of Service pensions to which my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Petersfield (Sir G. Jeffreys) referred.

Before I indicate, not in detail but in somewhat general terms, the approach which the Government propose to make to a solution of this problem, there are two arguments which have been advanced by previous speakers to which I must make some reference. It would be wasting the time of the House if I attempted to deal with every point of detail that has been raised because, as I have said, legislation will be introduced, and hon. Members will realise that there will be the appropriate opportunity of going into all matters of detail at a later date, but I think I must first refer to the question of deferred pay. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby, and certainly the hon. Member for Aberavon, laid considerable stress on that supposed character of Civil Service and other persons as deferred pay. I do not know whether it is the case or not that Mr. Neville Chamberlain in this House on one occasion definitely accepted the view that pensions are deferred pay. I want to say straight away that I do not accept that view as applicable to the whole range of pensions. Pensions are obviously a deferred benefit, but some pensions partake much more of the character of deferred pay than others. The Federated Universities' Pensions Scheme, under which a contribution is made based on salary for each year of service and these aggregated contributions mount up arithmetically to provide a pension, is a case of deferred pay; but the ordinary Civil Service pension under which pension is paid, which is based on length of service and rate of retiring pay, irrespective of the course of pay during the period of service, cannot properly be described, in my opinion, as deferred pay. However that may be, I was a little surprised that my hon. Friends should have sought to rely on that argument in this particular case, because I think it does in fact tell against them. If pensions are deferred pay, then surely the measure of the pension would be the amount of the deferment. More particularly when the pension is contributory, I think it is very difficult to argue that there is an inherent claim on the part of the pensioner to be given an addition when the cost of living goes up.

That is the first point to which I wished to refer. The second point I must refer to in the interests of accuracy. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby described to the House the course of events in regard to bonuses on pay after the last war. He told us that, I think he said in 1920, the House bad taken an unfavourable view of certain proposals that had been submitted, and that the Government withdrew their proposals and substituted others. The fact is that the Government and Parliament dealt quite differently after the last war with the two cases of bonuses on pay and the making of these bonuses pensionable, on the one hand, and additions in respect of the increased cost of living to existing pensions on the other hand.

I made that clear.

I beg my hon. Friend's pardon. I am afraid that escaped me. I think I ought to remind the House quite briefly of the course of the legislation passed after the last war dealing with the second of these matters, additions to pensions already granted. The first Bill to be introduced was introduced in 1920 and was actually passed in August of that year, when, as I have already said, the cost of living was approximately 155 per cent. over 1914. The effect of that Bill was that where the pension did not exceed £50 a year the pension was increased by 50 per cent. Where the pension exceeded £50 a year but did not exceed £100 in the case of an unmarried pensioner, or £130 in the case of a married pensioner, the pension was increased by 40 per cent. Where the pension exceeded £100 but did not exceed £150 a year in the case of an unmarried pensioner or exceeded £130 but did not exceed £200 a year in the case of a married pensioner, the pension was increased by 30 per cent.

In 1924, when the cost of living was approximately 75 per cent. above 1914 as compared with 155 per cent. when the first Act was passed, a fresh Act was passed, the effect of which was as I am about to indicate. Where the pension did not exceed £25 a year, the increase was 70 per cent.; where the pension exceeded £25 but did not exceed £50, the increase was 65 per cent.; and where the pension exceeded £50 but did not exceed £100 the pension was increased by 50 per cent. By that Act the rates of increase for which provision was made were made compulsory in the case of all classes of pensions covered by the legislation. In the earlier Act there were pensions not payable directly from the Exchequer, such as the provincial police pensions and, I think, teachers' pensions, where the increase was left to the option of the local authorities. Those are the precedents. I have indicated the attitude which Parliament took up after the last war.

I want to say, as regards the action we propose to take now, that in the view of the Government attention must be concentrated on cases of real, grave hardship. That will be essentially the approach which the Government propose to make, that is, to take account, as in the legislation following the last war, of the position of the pensioner and to provide increases for the lower ranges of pensions in order so far as may be practicable to mitigate really severe hardship. We will frame our proposals with the utmost expedition and bring them before the House in the form of a Bill, and of course it will be discussed on its merits. I hope that in view of that assurance my hon. Friends will be content not to press the matter further to-day. We shall have, as I have said, an opportunity later on of going into the whole matter in detail. I do not wish by what I have said to convey the impression that I think the Debate on this Motion should necessarily conclude now, but I gathered from my hon. Friend that there was no desire to press this particular Amendment if the Government adopted what might be considered to be a sympathetic attitude, and it is with that in mind I have made the statement I have just made.

Before the Chancellor sits down will he answer one question? There is this point about the Colonial civil servants. The Amendment also refers to the Royal Irish Constabulary. Will they be covered?

As my hon. Friend might suppose, that has not been out of my mind. I do not in fact contemplate excluding the R.I.C. from consideration, though I made it clear that the Government have not decided on every detail.

I am quite certain that I am only giving voice to the opinion I have sensed in the House since this Debate began when I express my gratification at the operative part of the speech of the Chancellor. Before the Debate opened I had formed the view that this Amendment could only with great difficulty and only with scant attention to equity be resisted. The very able speeches to which we have listened to-day have strengthened my view and have strengthened, I am sure, the views of others who have listened to them. I therefore welcome most heartily the concession of this Coalition Government which the Chancellor no doubt took an active part in deciding and which he has given us to-day.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has given only a rather skeleton outline, hardly even that, because he has not signified the amount or anything which is in his mind as to the limits of the concession he is proposing. Therefore, I do not propose to attempt to fill in the flesh and blood which he himself has withheld from the picture, nor can the House be in a position to judge, until these details have been given, whether the concession to be made is a substantial one or whether It is only slight. My own feeling is, knowing the Chancellor of the Exchequer and what he has done previously, that the House has reason to suppose that he will give effect to the concession to which he has referred to-day not only in the letter but in the spirit, and that we shall get a substantial part at any rate of the proposals which have been put forward on this matter. We shall of course have opportunities when the legislation is introduced to go into these matters in detail, but there is, as the Chancellor has said, no reason why other speakers in this Debate should not, in view of what the Chancellor has said, set out in detail what in their opinion would be the right minimum requirement and not leave it entirely to the Government, so that the Government will have the views of the House before their legislation is framed.

There is only one other matter on which I wish to say a word. I am very glad there was one word the Chancellor did not bring into the picture to-day. The Treasury are very fond of using their famous word "repercussions". I was happy to notice that the right hon. Gentleman did not, I think, use the word "repercussions" once. I think for that the House and those who are to benefit by the concession are deeply grateful.

I do not think a Debate of this character would be complete without the ventilation of an Irish grievance, and that grievance has been emphasised by the last few words of the right hon. Gentleman that the Royal Irish Constabulary was out of his mind.

May I say that my observation was that the Royal Irish Constabulary had not been out of my mind?

I am very glad I said what I did, because now we have it emphasised that the Royal Irish Constabulary will be included. We have waited for years for a Debate of this kind, just because of the treatment of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and I have felt grateful to the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. Brown) for giving us this opportunity, as really it has been through him that we have the opportunity of ventilating this grievance. Now that the right hon. Gentleman has acquiesced that the Royal Irish Constabulary should be in his mind, I must admit he has spiked my guns. At the same time, I think it only right that I should impress upon him the absolute necessity of doing something for these old men. A magnificent body of men they were—men of brawn, men of brain, but men with sympathetic hearts for the weaknesses of the people among whom they moved. I do not think I could better put the claim of these men than as it was put by the late Lord Carson. He said:

"There has never been in the history of any country a force that has found itself in such a position as those loyal men. God knows, I ought to understand what they have gone through. They followed me day and night, in and out of season, when you were enforcing the law, as they have followed every Chief Secretary and every officer we have employed over there. … I hope that when the case of these men comes up it will be treated not on a precedent, but as an isolated case for which there is no precedent, and on which all our resources ought to be strained in doing simple justice."

Up to the present what is the position that has been taken up by various Home Secretarys and Chancellors of the Exchequer? In answer to a Question which I put to the Home Secretary in 1941, I was told:

"The pensions payable as a result of service in the Royal Irish Constabulary were increased in 1920 and 1924, and it has been stated by successive Governments that they cannot contemplate legislation to amend the Pensions (Increase) Acts, and that Royal Irish Constabulary pensioners cannot be treated differently from other pensioners who are within the scope of the Acts"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd October, 1941; col. 720, Vol. 374.]

Similar answers were given on several other occasions. Now that it has been decided by the Government that the other pensioners, under different headings, shall be kept in mind, and that it will be done now, instead of waiting for a Commission or a Committee, I am very glad that the Royal Irish Constabulary men will be included. In 1930 a Motion to a similar effect was proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Devonport (Mr. Hore-Belisha), and the attitude of the House on that occasion was generally that something should be done. But the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury put a spoke into the wheel of the old pensioners. He said:

"The Government are not going to ask this House to divide against the Motion, but I should not be dealing fairly with these prewar pensioners. … if I did not make it clear that what I said about the Motion should not be regarded in any sense as a pledge to make provision in next year's Estimates to make the changes suggested."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th November, 1930; col. 1744, Vol. 244.]

So the old Royal Irish Constabulary pensioners were put to one side, for the time being. Various Committees have been appointed from time to time to consider the matter. We do not want generosity: we want justice. We do not beg the Government to do something out of a big heart; it is simply common justice that we want. Various Home Secretarys and Chancellors of the Exchequer have answered questions about these men, whose pensions were increased in 1920 and 1924. I will give the House the effect of those increases. Take a constable, whose maximum pre-war pension before the additions was £42 a year. These magnificent additions, which were boasted of by various Ministers, increased the amount to £69 a year. I should like to compare that with the scale of pension given to constables who retired on the disbandment of the Force. A constable who left on the disbandment, having been in uniform until then, received a pension of £164. A sergeant, receiving £53 before the increases, had his pension increased after 1920 and 1924 to £80, but a sergeant who left on the disbandment received £195. A head constable, whose original pension was £69, received increases in 1920 and 1924 which brought the figure to £103, but on the disbandment in 1922 a head constable received the magnificent pension of £235. I would like to point out what Lord Carson said about these men. They were not in sheltered positions, they were not like the teachers—we do not grudge the teachers anything that may come to them—they were not in sheltered positions, like civil servants. They went out morning, noon and night, with their lives in their hands, enforcing the laws of the country in a way that no other servant of the Government was expected to do. The Motion proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Devonport in 1930 proposed:

"further, that pre-war pensioners should be freed from the restrictions in regard to age and private means, which do not operate in the case of post-war pensioners and which have the effect of depriving them of the benefit of their past service and thrift."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th November, 1930; col. 1695, Vol. 244.]

While the pensioned officers who were disbanded have no means test, and receive the sums I have mentioned, the men who receive the lesser sums are subject to an intolerable imposition. I will only say about that imposition that every year these old men have to sign a statement that their means have not increased. On one occasion one of the old pensioners omitted to include his wife's income. The Department which was responsible for deductions made on account of additional emoluments sent a letter, saying that the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury had decided that his pension of £42 per annum was to be suspended until the whole amount of the repayment had been made—and that whole amount was £154 5s. For some years that man was deprived of his little pension because of the means test. That means test is not applied to the men who were disbanded in 1922. That is another reason why we insist that something very special should be done for these men. Let me say a word about the widows. I could quote letter after letter from these old men and these old women. Here is a letter from one of the widows:

"I am the mother of ten children. I am left with a pension of 12s. 6d. a week. My house rent is 10s. per week. I have five children going to school, four of them girls and one a boy. My eldest son is somewhere about Cairo. … The little that my elder children can afford to send me barely pays for the milk for their little sisters and brothers. I have one girl crippled with rheumatism."

Here is another letter:

"I beg to state that I am the widow of a Royal Irish Constabulary policeman. I have a small annual pension of £30. He is dead for the last 16 years, and it leaves me in terrible hardship, with a rent of £21 per annum, and four children to do for with the very high cost of living at the present time. I trust you will do the best you can."

That is a sample of the letters I have received. Why have not these men been listened to since 1924? There is one very simple reason. They have no trade union, they have no shop stewards. I take up to-day's paper, and see that 17,000 nurses are to have an increase. I would just like to say, in passing, that those nurses ought to go on their knees and thank the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown) for those increases. Perhaps he has not got his reward, but he will get it some day. I see also that the teachers' salaries are to be increased. The people whom my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. W. Brown) principally represents are doing well. They are getting bonuses. Surely the time has come for these old men to be treated with British justice—that is all we want. When the right hon. Gentleman comes to look into that question, I hope he will receive evidence on what is absolutely necessary in order to put these old people into a position of comfort during the last few years of their lives. They were a wonderful body of men in the prosecution of justice in my country and in carrying out the laws that this country has given to us.

I am glad of this opportunity to speak these words for these old people, and I thank the hon. Member for Rugby for what he has said. It is not the first time that the hon. Member has referred to the case of these old members of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He was a Member of this House in 1930, and in a short speech he made at that time he referred not only to the old pensioners connected to this country but specifically to those of the Royal Irish Constabulary, and he did not forget them to-day, and we are grateful to him. There was just one thing I did not like about the speech. He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would appoint a Committee, but that would have meant that probably all these old men would have died before action could have been taken. The right hon. Gentleman went one better. He said that he would "do it now." One of the finest things that the holder of any office can do is to "do it now."

I had intended to refer to the claim of the pensioned teachers of Northern Ireland. We have a Department of Education in Northern Ireland which is at present in touch with the Treasury and with the right hon. Gentleman and that prevents me from taking any part with regard to their grievances. I believe their claim is sympathetically being looked into and I prefer, therefore, not to say anything more on that particular subject. We have had many communications from the pensioned teachers of Northern Ireland on the subject of the differences between the teachers in this country and the teachers in Northern Ireland. It is really a shocking state of affairs, but I will not say more, because I believe the question will be sympathetically considered between the two Governments and that the teachers will get that to which they are justly entitled. I thank the House for having listened to the few words I have said about the Royal Irish Constabulary. We are living in hopes that the result of to-day's Debate will free these old people from want and misery and the destitution from which they have suffered up to the present time.

We have listened to a most moving speech from Northern Ireland, and there certainly is no part of the British Empire which wants our help and sympathy, and which has our appreciation, more than the Northern part of Ireland. I wish we could say the same of the Southern part as well, but we cannot. I had prepared a very moving and finely organised speech if only I had come on before the Chancellor, but as he has now to a certain extent granted what has been asked there is little to say except to thank him. What we are going to thank him for, we do not know yet. I do not know that there is so much to that "doing it now" to which my hon. and gallant Friend referred. I recognise the importance of the Chancellor's own utterance, but I hope that it is a question of "Do it now." I speak with some confidence when I say that, if a Bill is introduced into this House for the purpose set forth in the Amendment, there will be no opposition at all, and it will go straight through without any loss of time whatever.

Provided it is good enough.

Provided it is good enough. I would like to comment upon one or two things that were said. The Chancellor said that when a pension in most circumstances was given the contract between the individual and the State was terminated, and then came the pension. But not in the case of naval officers, oh, no. The naval officer—and I speak for the Navy—and, of course, the Army officer, too, provided he is within the years of the age limit, can be called up for duty at any time by Royal Proclamation. This is not even referred to as a pension but as retired pay, and as such he receives it. I would like from the naval point of view to put my hon. and gallant and very distinguished Friend who seconded the Amendment, right on a few small points. A retired officer who is called up gets his full pay, plus 25 per cent. of his full pay, not 25 per cent. of his retired pay. Naval officers are not complaining about this sort of thing. You rarely hear the word "grievance" as far as the Navy is concerned. It is really not in the naval officer's vocabulary at all. There is no grievance, but that makes it all the more incumbent upon this House and those of us who represent the Navy in this House to see that they get a rightful deal in the matter. Most of my comments on this Amendment were chiefly framed, as I think were those of my hon. and gallant Friend, on the 1935 stabilisation of retired pay. That was really a bet between the officers concerned and the Government. I would very much like to know what the Treasury figures are and what has been the result of these eight years. How much have they made out of it? It was a fair bet or a more or less fair bet at the time, but my experience of making bets is that the bank always wins, and I think the Government have won on this occasion.

There is one more point I would like to mention. The officers who commuted their pensions were mentioned. They have a very bad time. Why on earth the Government, the Treasury and the Admiralty allowed so many of these officers to commute their pensions, goodness only knows. Certainly, in the vast majority of cases all that money has gone down the sink, and they are left with a reduced pension. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is at present representing the Government on the Treasury Bench, has a large sheet of paper, with pencil, on which he has written nothing yet, and I would ask him to note that the general terms of the commutation really in effect amount to this. The Government borrow money from me, among others, at 1½ per cent. and charge these officers who commute their pensions 5 per cent. for the same accommodation. That must be altered. I only ask that it might be noted down now that on an appropriate occasion there will be a strong demand for the revision of that old Act which makes that sort of thing possible.

I chiefly got up to air my views in this palatial Chamber. I have not spoken here before. I have usually been tucked away in the Gallery, but I am very glad to have this opportunity to speak for such a good cause. My constituents want to know why I did not speak on die Mosley case, and I said, "I am reserving myself for a far better occasion," and that is the chief reason, among others, that I have got up to-day. I can only say, on behalf of the Navy and naval officers—if I may say that I represent them—that I thank the Chancellor and hope that the Bill, when it comes, will be satisfactory and will do full justice to the retired officers of the British Navy.

The case for the Amendment has been admirably and forcibly put, but the Chancellor's sympathetic reply has changed the whole course of this Debate, and therefore I rise only to make a point or two in regard to a class of superannuated people directly covered and a class indirectly covered by the Amendment. I appreciate that we cannot expect the Chancellor to-day to anticipate further than he has done the proposed legislation which, he has indicated, will soon be forthcoming, but it is necessary to refer to retired local government officers, who are definitely covered in the Amendment, and another class who are at present, owing to State control, indirectly under the control of the Government, I refer to the superannuated railway salaried staff. I appreciate the difficulty with regard to local government officers. There are different employing authorities, but I would like to make the point that the National Association of Local Government Officers is taking a very keen interest in this problem. It has received many representations from its members in connection with it, and I hope that the scope of the legislation will be such as to make permissive or possible some increases as far as retired local government servants are concerned.

The Government control of the railways is a pretty good thing for the Treasury. It is making a handsome profit out of it, and I do not think that it is asking too much to ask the Chancellor that his proposals shall be wide enough to cover the case of retired railway salaried staffs. I am aware, having had some experience of the industry for a number of years, that the four big groups, as well as some subsidiaries, like the Railway Clearing House, now have fairly satisfactory superannuation funds, and I can say with a measure of pride that my old company, the L.M.S., led the way as far as a new consolidated superannuation fund is concerned. I want to pay tribute, incidentally, to the officers of the various companies for the way in which they have contributed to that very desirable end, but while there are these consolidated funds quite a number of people who retired before the new funds came into operation are still living, if it can be called living, on very small sums indeed The figures mentioned by the hon. Gentleman just now would be princely so far as some of the retired railway staffs are concerned, and we hope that at least some portion of the amount now flowing into the Treasury will find its way into the superannuation funds, if that is the way, to meet these cases. I assure the Chancellor that there is very real hardship.

It is not right to build up a general case from the particular. I could quote many cases, but I will mention only one instance because it is very near to my own personal experience. For many years I worked alongside a man whose one ideal was to see a consolidated superannuation fund established for his company. Unfortunately, through the passing of time, he was compelled to retire just six months before the new superannuation fund came into operation. He is still living, and if he has one vice—if it is a vice—it is that he is dearly fond of his pipe.

His pint?

No, his pipe. He was often bantered about his love of My Lady Nicotine. We had a letter from him the other day. He is still active in social life and, referring to that banter, said he had been compelled to limit himself to one pipe of tobacco a day. Well, that is a substantial reduction and a serious hardship for a man in his 70's who has always loved his tobacco. In conclusion, I want to thank the Chancellor for his sympathetic approach to the problem. I remember that the last time I spoke I had the pleasure of congratulating him on another matter. It seems that it is becoming a habit. We shall look forward with pleasure to the promised legislation, which should do something to meet what is a very serious hardship at the present time.

In view of what the Chancellor has said, I do not propose to speak for more than a few minutes. I wish to thank him for the announcement he has made of the change of heart at the Treasury, and to assure him that it will be hailed with relief and joy in many homes in the country. If, like previous speakers, I give illustrations from the profession I know best, I hope it will not be thought that teachers are indifferent to the lot of other classes mentioned in the Amendment or of other classes in the community. It cannot be made too clear that whereas teachers still in service have been receiving war bonuses since the early days of the war—and these have been improved on more than one occasion—nothing whatever has been done for those in retirement and on fixed pensions. The Mover of the Amendment, in one of the clearest expositions I have ever listened to in this House, made it clear that there has been a considerable rise in the cost of living, and the Chancellor accepted and confirmed his figures. Let me make it clear, too, that teachers who have retired over the last 20 years—and even those whose are retiring now—are the men and women who for a large part of their working lives had enjoyed only very small salaries and had little opportunity for saving. It may not be generally known that under the superannuation scheme for teachers it is not possible for any teacher to have a larger pension than half the average of his or her last five years' salary. Many do not reach that, for various reasons. I can assure the Chancellor that when he comes to investigate cases he will find poverty in many homes and actual hardship in some. I am also glad for another reason that he made the announcement he has made to the House. The President of the Board of Education has told us that he is hopeful of recruiting 100,000 new teachers to the teaching profession. Surely nothing should be done, and no injustice should be allowed to remain, which might have the effect of deterring suitable applicants.

I want to detain the House for only a brief time, and I certainly do not wish to say anything which may seem to strike a jarring note in this chorus of congratulation of the Government, but I am bound to say that I am sorry that there is no representative of the Treasury on the Front Bench, because he could have listened with profit to what speakers have said. It seems that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, like the Arab, has folded his tent and silently stolen away without even waiting to hear what anyone thought of his somewhat nebulous concessions. He has, however, left behind on the Front Bench one who, we know, has a very large and warm heart and who, I suppose, has been left there—I am sure the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will acquit me of any desire to be offensive—in his capacity of a sort of Government's maid-of-all-work.

There was one striking statement in the Chancellor's speech which not only Members of this House but pensioners throughout the country would do well to note, namely, his doubt as to whether a pension was, in fact, deferred pay. It has been an accepted fact for a great number of years that a pension is deferred pay, and it would be a very dangerous thing if it was now to be accepted without any question that a precedent had been established by what the Chancellor said to-day, namely, that a pension and deferred pay were not the same thing. I would like to reinforce something which was said by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chertsey (Captain Marsden), whom we are all glad to see back with us once more, and nobody more so than I, who have been trying to help in his constituency while he has been away. If I may say so, he made one slip of the tongue. He said he represented the Navy—

May I correct myself on that? I do not represent the Navy, but, with all due humility, say that I am a representative of the Navy.

My hon. and gallant Friend represents the Chertsey division and speaks for the Navy, and the Navy never had, nor ever will have, a better champion of its affairs than he. He raised the question of commutation, and I hope the Chancellor of the Duchy will now make a note that when this Bill comes in something should be done regarding the power of a pensioner to commute. I would like to see the commutation of pensions done away with altogether and instead some system instituted by which a man who desired to raise a lump sum of money for a business, or for some other good purpose, would be enabled to do so by getting an interest-free loan from the Treasury, or obtaining one on special terms, or something on those lines.

On the security of his pension?

Certainly not. If he was buying a business it would, no doubt, be secured on the business. All of us have come across cases of extreme hardship where officers and men have commuted their pensions and have then been met by the sharks which seem to abound in civil life and have lost everything they possessed. I welcome what the Chancellor said, but I am not so sanguine as the hon. and gallant Member who spoke for the grand body of men of the Royal Irish Constabulary. We do not yet know what we shall get. Another hon. Member on the other side of the House talked about the flow from the Treasury, but if the Treasury runs true to form it will be more of a trickle than a flow. Indeed, the Chancellor hinted at that. He is of course a past master at not going too far. He hinted that the Treasury would be concerned only with cases of extreme hardship. We are pleading not only for those cases but for pensioners as a whole. It no good saying that you are going to help one person, whose hardship is a disgrace to this country and to this House, unless you are prepared to put right what is, in fact, a wrong as regards all pensioner.

Another speaker referred to the effect of pension hardships upon those in the Services. This matter has indeed a great influence on officers and men who are serving and who see the fate of those who went before them and who are now no longer required with the Colours. It does not encourage them very much to wonder whether, when this time of stress is over, they will get the same treatment meted out to them as has been meted out to those who went before them. So I think this matter has to go a great deal further than cases of extreme hardship. I would like to ask my right hon. Friend to pay particular attention to this point: Many people think that the wife of a naval officer is entitled to a pension if her husband is killed in action. That is not so. I have heard hon. Members opposite complain about the operation of the means test. They are quite right. A means test, though logically an excellent thing, does not work out in human practice. Before the widow of a naval officer is given a pension she has to satisfy the requirements of a secret scale which is not published by the Admiralty. Nobody knows the amount of income above which a woman may not be granted a pension. I ask my right hon. Friend to make a particular note of that, because it is one of the things which will have to be considered when we get the Bill. I must say, too, that there was no indication as to how soon we were to get the Bill. I agree that, thank God, we are not to have a Select Committee or a Royal Commission. If we had we should never get a Bill at all. The Bill should be brought in as soon as possible because every hon. Member knows that his postbag furnishes him with the many bitter cases of grinding hardships which exist at the present time.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Petersfield (Sir G. Jeffreys) who, if he will allow me to say so, made one of the best speeches I have ever heard him make in this House asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the 1919 Warrant. That question has never been answered. One grievance we have about pensions is that whereas in 1919 it was laid down in the Warrant that the cost of living should influence the amount of the pension and that pensions would be reviewed from time to time, in point of fact unilateral action was taken by the Government who arbitrarily abrogated that agreement by stabilising pensions. Therefore when the Bill comes in I hope it will deal with all these cases and not only the cases of civil servants. One of the causes of the troubles of officers and men now serving is the system which has grown up in this war whereby a man who is normally employed by the Civil Service and then joins the Forces, gets his Service pay made up to the amount he would have been drawing had he still been in the Civil Service. I have heard of a case although I cannot vouch for it of a man on sentry duty at a cookhouse who was drawing £800 a year and who was a private soldier. He was relieved by a man who was not so fortunate in his civil employment and who had only his ordinary Army pay. In my constituency I have numbers of cases of that sort, men who have been in business who have lost that business owing to the war and who have been called up. They, drawing ordinary Service rates of pay, are serving alongside men who have been employed by local authorities or in the Civil Service and who having therefore had their pay made up are enabled to keep their wives and families going in comfort whereas the wives of their less fortunate colleagues are hard put to it to live at all. These anomalies should not exist. The root of much of the industrial trouble at the present time lies in the disparity of reward which this war has caused. In the Services officers and men realise that while they are getting barely enough to live on, for those employed in industry outside the rewards are infinitely greater. We now have an opportunity of doing something to put these matters right. If the provisions of the Bill are sufficiently wide and generous it will do what ought to have been done a long time ago. The pensioners of this country who in all walks of life have given such wonderful service will at last be put into a position where they will not feel that grinding bitter want which has for too long been their lot.

I do not know how far the Chancellor of the Exchequer will go in the legislation that we are to have, but I know that in the announcement that he has made to-day he has already gone further than any of his predecessors in this long-drawn-out battle for the rights of pensioners. I prefer, particularly in view of the very generous statement he has made of the case, to anticipate a Bill which will really deal with the hardships to which attention has been drawn. This matter is of special interest to me because my constituency has long been known as the Paradise of retired leisure. Retired civil servants and ex-officers have found in Cheltenham a home after their service. I know these people personally. I am familiar with the hardships they have to undergo and the circumstances of their lives, and I know that the service they have done for the country in all parts of the world has never received the recognition that it deserves. Their pay was inadequate. Their pension, too, has also proved inadequate, and during the war they have seen the men who are doing the jobs that they did receiving, quite properly and rightly, a much better standard of pay, and in almost every instance a bonus for the cost of living. These retired people have neither of these advantages and they naturally feel a sense of hardship and grievance. You will find them to-day doing unpaid voluntary service, in the Home Guard and in Civil Defence, and you will find their children and grand-children fighting the battle of freedom. Therefore I am glad that at long last we have been promised that legislation will be introduced to give them some measure of justice, because it is on the ground of justice that our plea is based. I know that every Chancellor of the Exchequer has to be a brute. Like Pharaoh of old he has again and again to harden his heart. But the present Chancellor has shown, at any rate, that he is prepared to be a just brute, and for that I am very glad to be able to thank him and to say that I look forward with hope and confidence to the Bill that he has promised.

I came here hoping to have an opportunity of adding my regret that the Gracious Speech makes no proposal for raising the pensions of retired State servants to a level corresponding to the increased cost of living. Much that I had intended to say need not now be said by reason of the assurances which have been given by my right hon. Friend, and which I know will be most gratefully learnt of throughout the country, but there are certain observations I should like to make. Many sections of the community have suffered financially as the result of the war, but none so much as those who are dependent upon a fixed income, and in that category come those on whose behalf this Amendment was tabled, retired State servants, teachers, local government officers, Post Office officials, and retired officers of the Armed Forces, those men and women who are expected to live upon a pension in these days, whose savings, if they ever had any, have in so many cases disappeared. In the ordinary course of things surely a pension which follows long and loyal service is intended to provide a reasonable and adequate standard of life, and for this purpose it must be related to the cost of living. What is the present situation?

My right hon. Friend referred to index figures relating to the cost of living, and statisticians will provide these in decimal terms, supported by elaborate computations. I should prefer to act upon the evidence of that very great citizen, one whose efforts towards winning the war are beyond praise—the ordinary housewife. She knows what the prices are in the shops, and she knows how much less far the housekeeping money goes now than it did before. We have all had representations from retired State servants in our constituencies. I have had many, in particular from retired Army officers. I agree with every word that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Petersfield (Sir G. Jeffreys) said. The appeal that has been made by means of this Amendment is a very modest and reasonable one, based on the grounds of justice to those who have served the State so well. There was general satisfaction with the Chancellor's pronouncement, but I sincerely hope that, when the Government come to formulate the provisions which will deal with the matter, they will not confine themselves to increasing pensions only in cases of real hardship, which I think is the phrase my right hon. Friend used. My feeling about the matter is that all these pensioners are entitled to have their pensions revised in the light of existing prices and the increased cost of living.

I beg to move, at the end of the Question, to add:

"But humbly regret that your Majesty's Government have given no indication of any specific measures to be taken in this country to deal with the world food shortages, now becoming widespread; and, in particular, of any steps to utilise fully the productive capacity of our fishing fleets and to maintain the quality of our flocks and herds."

I make no apology for raising the question of the world food shortages now impending, because I do not think the gravity of the position is appreciated by the public as a whole. There is at this moment a famine in China, in India, and in large parts of Europe; and there are serious food shortages in Russia. At the same time huge agricultural areas have fallen into the hands of our enemies, and I think we are sometimes apt to forget this aspect of the question. Another point that is often forgotten is that in the food-producing countries within the ambit of the United Nations, notably in South America and Africa, there is increased prosperity. This has led to a higher standard of life, and therefore to increased food consumption, in those areas. Therefore we have also to face the fact that many millions of people are consuming a great deal more food in those areas. I think that the facts as we can see them to-day—we do not yet know them all—give cause for very grave anxiety.

Food is the most elementary of human wants; indeed it is the essential basis of our existence. If food goes, all goes. Two problems confront us with increasing urgency. The first is that of immediate post-war relief to starving peoples, particularly those of Europe; and the second is the problem of producing enough protective foods in every part of the world to maintain a decent standard of nutrition for all when the war is over. The solution of either problem demands a very great increase in the food production of the world, and in particular of the United Nations. It also demands that each country should concentrate on the production of the food which it is best fitted by nature to produce. I want to ask the Government and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food what the Government are doing about this.

In the supreme emergency of 1940 and 1941 we were obliged to concentrate on crop production, otherwise we should have run a serious risk of starvation. But wheat and sugar are not, and never can be, cornerstones of British agriculture. The foundation of British agriculture is arable stock farming. We can produce all the milk, potatoes and feeding-stuffs, including oats, that we require; and the best herds and crops in the world. What is the present situation? First, and most serious, our soil fertility is deteriorating; secondly, the quality of our flocks and herds is deteriorating; and, thirdly, our livestock population is going down rapidly. Our head of cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry is far below what it could and should be. I think the hon. Gentleman's Department is more responsible for this than the Ministry of Agriculture or the Scottish Office. We have in my opinion pushed our crop production policy too hard and for too long; and we have overdone the reduction of livestock, a reduction which has been carried to the point of virtual elimination in certain cases. I think this policy calls for immediate revision, and the most careful thought.

Resolution 15 of the Hot Springs Conference, to which the Government are more or less committed as far as I can make out, says:

"Farming systems should be so designed as (1) to maintain soil fertility at levels which will sustain yields and ensure adequate return for labour, (2) to protect crops and livestock from major pests and diseases, and (3) to favour steady employment throughout the year."

Resolution XV says,

"These three ends, in general and save in exceptional circumstances, can best be assured by balanced, mixed rotation farming, and by avoidance of single crop production."

I want to suggest that the present price structure and system of grading has made it more profitable for farmers to feed rough, coarse, big-boned cross-bred animals than to go in for high quality beef production. That, in the long run, is a bad thing for our British agriculture. I want to ask my hon. Friend what he is going to do about it, because the Aberdeen Angus herd book of our greatest beef animal tells its own tale. We wait with impatience the long-term policy which the Minister of Agriculture has at long last been allowed to consider. I trust that at no distant date we intend to revert to livestock and leys, which have always been the foundation of British agriculture, as against single-crop production. I was reading the other day an interesting article in one of the provincial newspapers by their agricultural correspondent who is a well-known farmer, and I got out of it this sentence, which seems to me very true:

"On a long-term view, the bullock is the pivot on which a sane grass and grain policy must hinge; on the one hand, preventing grass from 'growing away,' and on the other, providing better than any other animal the dung on which fertility so largely depends."

I believe that to be absolutely true. I repeat that we have overdone the crop production policy to the great danger of the whole agricultural position in this country; and that we must now give far greater attention to increasing the head of population and also the quality of our livestock. I hope that we may have something encouraging from the Parliamentary Secretary on this point.

There are two other questions that I would like to put to him. The first is about agricultural research, which is more than ever necessary at the present time. The Rowett Institute in Aberdeen has done magnificent work, and is continuing to do it. But when I was in Oxford the other day I found that the position in regard to the Oxford Institute of Agricultural Research, under Professor Orwin, was far from satisfactory. There did not seem to be any good liaison between it and the Ministry of Agriculture; and they never knew from month to month whether the grant would be continued for the invaluable work they are doing. There never was a moment when research into every question of soil fertility, of production, and of nutrition, was more necessary than at the present time; and I hope that, so far from curtailing activities in that direction, the Government will expand them.

The second question I would like to ask is whether the Government are satisfied with the agricultural machinery position. Is anything being done about that? Had we enough machinery? What about the tractors? Are they the right size and of the right power? I was told the other day that we had over 800 different types of plough in this country. I cannot feel that that is an economical or good method of conducting our agricultural industry. I ask these questions because I believe that maximum food production is one of the most vital necessities of the moment, and that there is no time to lose. So much for the agricultural side, with which I hope my hon. Friend the Member for West Perth (Mr. Snadden) will deal in greater detail.

I want now to say a word about the other item mentioned specifically in the Amendment, the fishing industry. I want to deal particularly with the herring fishing industry, because it is the industry that I know best and of which my constituency is a centre. I do not think there is any need for me to tell the House that herrings are a very valuable and nutritious article of food. But what does give them a quite exceptional value at the present time is that they are one of the few articles of food that we are able to export; and we shall be requiring to export food to the Continent of Europe, and even to give food to the Continent, before the next two or three years are out. The House is probably familiar with the fact that there are two big fishings annually in this industry—the summer fishing off the North-East coast of Scotland and the autumn fishing off Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Neither lasts more than a few weeks. The autumn fishing has been abandoned during the war. The summer fishing is, therefore, the only big fishing that takes place in the year. It lasts for not more than five or six weeks. The House should know what happened this summer. The Ministry of Food were warned by many people, including myself, that there was likely to be a good fishing; but they took no steps whatever to deal with the situation. They contented themselves with imposing a number of extremely silly restrictive regulations on the industry, of which I will give one example quoted from the Press:

"Rather than dump his catch back into the sea, the skipper of a Fraserburgh fishing vessel disposed of boxes of herring direct to inhabitants and traders at Corpach, Inverness-shire. His action was contrary to Ministry of Food regulations, and the man, John Watt, aged 49, was admonished at Fort William Sheriff Court yesterday. An agent explained that if Watt had waited to return to Oban, according to regulations, the fish would have been unfit for use as there was no ice on board. The agent declared the Ministry of Food had very little to do in bringing the charge against Watt, who had taken a commonsense view in distributing to the people."

In other words, because Watt had the sense to dispose of the fish to the people of Corpach instead of waiting to return to Oban, he was prosecuted for breaking the regulations. The regulations would have made him take the fish to Oban, where it would have been landed in a stinking condition.

Before the summer fishing the Ministry of Food promised to consult the fishermen about prices. A day or two before the actual fishing began they sent for representatives of the fishermen to go to Glasgow, but when they got there they told them peremptorily that the maximum price was to be reduced from 100s. to 91s. per cran, and there was to be no argument about it. I do not know why the Ministry even bothered to send for them, because there was no question of consultation. The fishermen are the only primary producers in this country who receive neither a guaranteed wage nor a guaranteed price for their produce. Why should fishermen be singled out for treatment of this kind? What have they done? Having then fixed allocation lists of buyers, and a price schedule for curers which made it quite certain that no curer could possibly make a profit, the Ministry washed its hands of the whole affair.

The shoals of herring this summer were very dense off the North-East coast, and were close inshore. It was potentially the best summer herring season we had had in this country for about 20 years. The catches, considering the size of the fleet which had been greatly reduced for war reasons, were enormous. I said at the time, and I repeat now, that the Ministry of Food regarded it as a kind of blitz, to be endured with silent fortitude in a dugout. They charged a levy of 21s. a cran of herring landed, but what they did with it Heaven only knows. They certainly did not earn it. No special arrangements were made to deal with the distribution either of fresh herrings or of kippers. It is common knowledge that if you get a big season and have many herrings to handle at the height of the season, large quantities must be treated either by brine freezing or by curing. You cannot otherwise deal with tremendous gluts of catches. The Ministry of Food were warned that there was likely to be a big herring fishing, but what did they do? They made no arrangements whatever to deal with the heavy catches by means of either curing or brine freezing. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Jewson) will deal with the brine freezing aspect. With regard to curing, there was no sufficient supply of barrels or of salt; and, as I have pointed out, the schedule of prices arranged for the curers was absolutely fantastic, because it made certain that they could not make a profit and, therefore, could not buy the herrings.

Finally, there was no attempt of any kind at control or direction at the port of landing. I was there myself and watched what happened. It was not a question of telling the fishermen to "go to it." It was a question of simply leaving them to it; and the result was chaos. I have never seen—and I do not like saying this about my old Department—a comparable display of ineptitude on the part of any Government Department. I have never seen a clear responsibility so deliberately shirked. What happened? For 18 nights, at the height of this wonderful season, when there were herrings of magnificent quality in dense shoals just off our coast, the herring fishing fleet remained tied up in harbour. The Ministry of Food, who were bombarded with telephone calls, telegrams, appeals and screeches of every kind, remained in their dug-out. They did nothing about it until at the very end of the season they revised the curers' prices, when it was too late to do any good. By that they simply admitted that they had been wrong all the way through. Throughout they remained in a kind of trance. I got one letter from Lord Woolton, in the middle of the business, in which he said:

"The limiting factor has been the absence of demand."

I ask hon. Members whether they really believe that? How many herrings, fresh or kippered, find their way into the shops? Occasionally you can get them in the large centres; but in the smaller towns and country districts they are practically unobtainable. I want to ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary why that is the case, and why the Ministry have never lifted a finger to deal with the situation, or to improve the distribution of herrings. I think I know the truth. It is that the Ministry of Food, from the beginning, has made a mess of the fishing industry—at the very start it led to the downfall of one Minister—and I think that they now have got an inferiority complex about it. If they have not, they ought to have. And if we make the same kind of mess next year, when we shall undoubtedly be confronted by a starving Europe, and populations all along the Mediterranean coasts to whom a supply of cured herrings might make all the difference between life and death, we shall never be forgiven.

I want to make one or two suggestions for short-term remedies, something that the Ministry can do between now and the next fishing. The first is that there must be a minimum price to fishermen for all herring not cured into barrels as well as a maximum price. Both are necessary, for the one is complementary to the other. The maximum price prevents herring going too dear. The minimum would prevent them flooding the market too cheaply, and thereby knocking out the controlled price herring the following day. Why should not the herring fishermen get a minimum price? Why should they be the only primary producers singled out not to get a suitable price?

My hon. Friend really means a minimum price and not a guaranteed price?

I mean exactly what I say. I mean a minimum price, below which herring shall not be allowed to be sold except into barrels. My second proposal is that all herrings surplus to home market requirements should go to the curers at a fixed price, say, of 60s. I am not including the curers in my minimum price. My third proposal is that steps should be taken by the Ministry now to improve methods of distribution of herrings throughout this country, to ensure that adequate transport facilities are available, and to see that there is an adequate supply of barrels, of boxes, and of salt, so that none of this valuable food should be wasted again in the way it has been wasted in the past. My fourth suggestion is that the allocation lists of buyers should be revised; and particularly that those who do not buy when herrings are off control should be taken off the lists.

My fifth and final suggestion is that temporary retail licences might be issued to hawkers and cadgers during the height of the herring fishing season, instead of their being prosecuted as they are now. If these people were allowed to take herrings and sell them up and down the streets, you would get much better distribution than now. I am only talking of the height of the season, when there are tens of thousands of herrings to sell. If licences were given to these hawkers, distribution would surely be facilitated. When it comes to curing and freezing, you get to a larger question, which I leave my hon. Friend to deal with. It is a question for which the Government must take a direct responsibility. The Government should see to it that the curing industry has sufficient boxes and barrels and sufficient salt and sufficient labour to cure in adequate quantities for the demand which is certain to come next year. And the same goes for the kippering industry. Freezing is also a matter in which the Government alone can take the necessary action.

I have not been dealing with long-term remedies. The great tragedy in my view of the herring fishing industry was the failure of the Government of the day to implement fully the Duncan Report, one of the ablest State documents I have ever read. For that the right hon. and gallant Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) must bear his share of responsibility but he has now a great opportunity to redeem himself, and bring in a report which will surpass in ability and constructive power even the Report of the Duncan Committee.

The fishing industry—because what I have said about the herring fishing applies also in large part to the white fish industry—has always been the Cinderella of British industries. I do not know why. It is one of the most important; and it is a very large industry, much larger than hon. Members who have not come into contact with it may think; and it employs a great number of people. No section of the community, not even the miners, was worse treated between the two world wars. When war comes we want the fishermen, and we want their craft; but between the two wars they were left to struggle on as best they could at a rate of pay lower than, perhaps, any other class of the community. The miracle to me is that they somehow managed to survive. They were living practically on a starvation level for years. Yet they inspired Rudyard Kipling's best poem of the last war:

"Dawn off the Foreland—the young flood making,

Jumbled and short and steep—

Black in the hollows and bright where it's breaking—

Awkward water to sweep.

'Mines reported in the fairway,

Warn all traffic and detain.'

'Sent up Unity, Claribel, Assyrian,

Stormcock, and Golden Gain.'"

Then came the evening:

"Dusk off the Foreland—the last light going

And the traffic crowding through,

And five damned trawlers with their syrens blowing

Heading the whole review!

'Sweep completed in the fairway

'No more mines remain.

'Sent back Unity, Claribel, Assyrian,

Stormcock and Golden Gain.'"

They are still doing it to-day, and we should do better for these men than leave them on the brink of starvation during times of peace. I want to say very seriously to the Government that if the fishermen are not given a square deal in war, they will not expect a square deal in peace; and the younger men will not return to the fishing. That would be a tragedy and a disaster for this country and for the world.

I come, in conclusion, to the world food position. The International Food Conference at Hot Springs did not deal specifically with the immediate problem of relief caused by the spreading world shortages of food, but for the long-term period they laid stress on the necessity for a great expansion of food production, particularly of the protective foods, of which milk, meat, and fish are the most important. Are the Government alive to the gravity of the situation, and, if so, what steps are they taking to deal with it? A tremendous responsibility devolves upon this country, upon the British Empire as a whole, and upon the United States of America, because we have first of all to save the world from famine and starvation. We have then to lead the world back to prosperity through an economic policy of expansion, and of such a policy food must inevitably be the basis.

I beg to second the Amendment.

I cannot emulate the eloquence which my hon. Friend has shown, nor have I his knowledge, for one very good reason, that the industry in my present constituency has, for the time being, ceased to exist. This Amendment should not be regarded with anything but a friendly eye by those on the Government benches, for it has to do with two of the things described in the Gracious Speech as of primary importance, namely, food and employment. When we think of the quality of flocks and herds it must be obvious to all of us that, in the recent period when meat has been distributed by the Ministry of Food, and butchers have had to take what they were given and be thankful for it, just as one star differs from another star in glory so one piece of beef or mutton differs enormously both in palatability and nutritional value. It is of the most importance that our flocks and herds should be of the very best and nothing but the best.

I want, however, to address my remarks particularly to the question of the herring fishing industry, for the reason that I do not think the Government have ever realised the importance of this great industry. It is surprising that that should be so when we remember what has gone before in the history of our island. Only a few weeks ago the House was pleasantly startled when the Prime Minister made reference to a Treaty signed in the year 1373. That gave us a sense of the continuity of our story and an indication of what might grow out of present things, but, of course, the importance of the herring industry goes back to a date long before that. In the case of Great Yarmouth it is said to have originated in 495. There is no documentary evidence of that, but the herring is mentioned in the chronicles of the monastery of Evesham in 709: while in 1108 Yarmouth was made a borough on condition that it supplied 10,000,000 herrings per annum to Henry I.

In the seventeenth century the industry played a large part in the history of this country, while under the Stuarts and the Commonwealth the struggle with Holland for control of the North Sea fisheries was a main factor in the rise of the Mercantile Marine and, through Cromwell's navigation laws, of the British Navy itself. I hope that it will make a new mark on history when the story is written of what was done to feed the starving populations of Europe when the present war is brought to a victorious conclusion. Another reason for the importance of the herring fishing industry is that such huge supplies of this valuable food are available in the sea. That is not surprising when we are told that the family of one ordinary herring will number 30,000. I believe that in the year 1937 over 900,000,000 herrings were landed in England and Scotland, and of course there were many more still in the sea for the taking. In the bright days of the industry in Great Yarmouth and the neighbouring port of Lowestoft when there were some 800 boats, they discharged about 15,000,000 herring every day during the season, which unfortunately is a short one.

It has already been pointed out that the nutritional value of the herring is very high indeed. I do not think that is challenged, but if it should be the challenge could be refuted by reference to many Government reports. I came across a reference to it only last week in the Report to the Ministry of Health for 1932. If the herring is important, so surely are the men who catch the herrings. It has been said of our seafaring men that they are the first to offer their services to their country and the last to seek its aid. If a bold peasantry is a country's pride, as Goldsmith said, surely our fishermen must be the salt of the nation. We must remember that while in peace-time the womenfolk of our fishermen are used to feeling anxiety for their fathers and brothers on the sea, the fishermen themselves in time of war, besides facing still greater risks than in peace, have added anxiety for their wives and families at home because their homes are usually in places that are particularly subject to enemy attack. Our debt to them is therefore all the greater.

I suggest that it is of the greatest importance to these islands that this fine race of men should be maintained and should be encouraged. As a result of war their boats have been requisitioned. I do not know how many will go back to the fishermen, but in any case those that do go back will be largely worn out. Nets and gear after being stored so long will have deteriorated, and arrangements must be made for them to be replaced. The crews, and particularly the skippers, of course, will have to come back from the Navy, and we must see to it, as has already been said, that they are assured of a reasonable remuneration for their very important and very arduous work. That is a matter for the Government to consider on the lines suggested by my hon. Friend. The home market can probably be easily dealt with, but overseas markets must be for some considerable time to come in the hands of the Government. Indeed, the question of Lend-Lease will very largely arise, and therefore we must look to the Government to make the necessary arrangements to deal with the exports of this very valuable food. On the top of this, many fish-smoking and curing places have been blitzed and will have to be rebuilt. The question of priorities will arise there. I suggest that it is of the greatest importance that at the close of the war the biggest possible fleet should get to work at once and be able to fish to capacity in order to help to supply the world demand for food, and I think we are right in asking for a very high priority for these things.

I cannot follow my hon. Friend in the detailed suggestions he has made, because I have not his close personal knowledge of this industry, for the reason I have already mentioned, but, of course, I have very good reason to know how important it is, and I hope the Government, who are well informed through the English Herring Catchers' Association and the Herring Industry Board will give the matter full attention. In any case I hope I have said enough to convince any doubters, if such there be, that herrings, however red, are not a worthy subject of jokes, nor a device exclusively used by political opponents in debate, but are an immensely valuable potential harvest, the gathering of which brings out the finest qualities of our race and is worthy of every possible encouragement.

I hope the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Jewson) will forgive me if, in supporting this Amendment, I do not take up the question of herring and fishing, as I have no fishing industry in my constituency. I should like to refer to the question of world food shortages which is covered by the Amendment. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) stressed the need for maximum food production; he criticised the Government for their past policy in regard to what one might call the divorcement from milk in terms of beef; and he stressed the need for further research. In all these things I find myself in agreement with him. It may seem almost sacrilegious to suggest that anything good could spring out of the most bloody war in history, but I cannot help feeling that a lot of good has come to us. We have had to make sacrifices in this war, and I think we are the better for it. Among other things, we have been driven back to the fundamentals of life, for what the war has shown us is that a nation which commits the folly of neglecting its land and allowing it to decay will itself decay and finally perish. I cannot help feeling that in any post-war system which we may devise, in all the planning with which we are now engaged, everything will fail if we do not deal with the land first, even before the people, because food is the basis of human life and the people who work on the land are the root stock of our own country. Unfortunately, in the past both of them have been treated as of little account. I think we are wiser now, at least I hope we are, and it is a duty devolving upon hon. Members to see that neither is let down in the future.

Reverting to what the hon. Member for East Aberdeen said about Hot Springs, the policies of the past have all been policies of frustration, because they were based upon restriction, and the hope for the future, the hope of every British farmer, is that all this will be reversed and that a policy of expansion of production based upon producing everything our land can reasonably and best produce and of encouragement for the producer will take its place. Whether we like it or not, when the war is over we shall face a situation of acute food shortage, even famine, possibly, unparalleled in the world's history, particularly in those countries on whom the hand of war has fallen most heavily. Even here we shall have a job to feed ourselves, and we shall be confronted with the responsibility of helping other countries less fortunate than we are. It will certainly be our duty to help those people.

I want to address myself to two aspects of that problem, one at home and one abroad. In the first place, what about our own island? Here we have a tremendous lot to be proud of and a great deal to be thankful for. Under the spur of war's urgencies, and I am willing to admit under two capable Ministries, and above all because of the 100 per cent. response of a patriotic agricultural industry, our production has been raised by 70 per cent. due to a 52 per cent. expansion of the tillage area of Great Britain, and here we should remember that, according to report, more land has been taken over for military purposes than the total of land reclaimed and brought under cultivation. That is a tremendous achievement. We have 4 per cent. more cattle, which reflects the Government's policy in milk production at the expense of other types of cattle. One out of every six pre-war sheep has disappeared. We are 17 per cent. down in our sheep population, reflecting the encroachment of the plough on our lowland pastures. There are 51 per cent. fewer pigs and 24 per cent. fewer poultry, reflecting the drastic cut in the imports of feeding stuffs.

I am not afraid of a shortage of carbohydrates but what about protein foods—animal products? The Minister of Agriculture is reported as having said recently that we were short of cattle by 1000,000 head. He did not indicate in which types we were short, but little imagination is required to arrive at the conclusion that he was thinking in terms of meat. Otherwise, Lord Woolton would not have said the other day in Scotland that we shall be lucky if a year hence we can maintain the meat ration at 1s. 2d.

He said that 12 months ago.

He said it the other day, too. I was not a bit surprised at Lord Woolton throwing out this warning, because it has been obvious that, because of the Government's policy, of no encouragement since this war began to meat production, we should promote a downward tendency not only in numbers of cattle but in quality. The red light is appearing now. Some of us, including the hon. Member for East Aberdeen, ventured to point to that red light a couple of years ago in this House. It would seem, then, that one of the world shortages we shall face, and the sooner we realise it the better, is a world shortage of meat. If that is so, if my diagnosis is correct, everything possible should be done in this country to encourage and expand our production here. Nothing will upset the workers in the heavy industries more than a further cut in the meat ration. In spite of all the preachings of the scientific pundits of to-day and yesterday, the heavy worker and the miner craves for meat more than for any other food, and I am certain that the Minister of Fuel would have fewer sleepless nights if next week we could hand to the miners a double ration of meat in order to allow them to get on with their heavy work at the coal face. We cannot do it.

The problem cannot be cured over night. Nobody can cure it unless we do something about it now. The crux is the supply of the raw material. Therefore we in this country must do everything possible now to increase the supply of this raw material from our hills and from our glens. There are 10,000,000 acres of hill lands in Scotland alone. That is where we have to go to form this reservoir, For it is only by raising the head of breeding cows in our hills and glens that we can lay the foundation for the future expansion in numbers which the Minister desires.

I see the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland on the Front Bench, and I am aware of two excellent schemes already in existence giving assistance to this particular branch of the industry. I think it can be said that the Department of Agriculture for Scotland, and very probably for England too, are aware of this danger, but in my opinion the assistance now given is insufficient. Mere passive acceptance of the two schemes now in operation will not cure our ills. We must on the one hand, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen said, get down to this question of research. We have got to attack disease. We can do it in two ways. A lot of people talk about disease in animals only from the point of view of curing. We must get back to the soil, to improving our hill gratings, in order to prevent those diseases occurring. For that reason I would press the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland to do everything possible to extend the existing subsidies to veterinary research.

I will throw out a revolutionary proposal. In the vast hill areas of Scotland there are great ranges of hills on which there are cross Highland cattle and sheep. Some of them are far too remote. There is no supervision, and consequently our veterinary services do not know why these sheep are dying. We have to bring control closer. There may be regions in Scotland where it might be better to abandon the land to afforestation, because by so doing you will achieve closer supervision of disease and increase production. I do not know whether some of my hon. Friends will agree with my suggestion: abandon some of our remote areas to afforestation, concentrate your disease control nearer home, where the "vet" can go and spot what has happened, and you will increase production.

There is another thing we have to do, and it concerns my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food. Only by tackling this problem of a world shortage of meat at the business end, which is the killing centre, will you promote confidence on the part of the producer. That is what we have to do—get down to a real economic basis for killing, give producers enough incentive to make them plan ahead. Producers will not do it on subsidies alone. We must have something divorced from subsidies, because they are here today and gone to-morrow. That is why I was disappointed the other day when the Government announced their new prices. I take no exception to the increase in milk prices, because I know how very important milk is for the national health, but, having stepped up the price of milk by 1d. per gallon, the Government might have given more thought to the matter. They have not even given parity to Scotland. We are still the highest quality producers in this country but at the lowest price. What an absurdity. Having stepped up the price of milk, why should they step up the price of cows as well by 5s. a cwt.? Why could they not have stepped up the other side of the industry, the meat producing side? By so doing that would have been helping the most neglected section of agriculture and the one which will give us most trouble in the future.

For it is a world shortage of meat that is going to worry the Ministries of Agriculture and Food when the war is over, In the town of Stirling last week, if report is correct, not one fat beast was offered for grading. That is significant and it points to an extremely serious position after the war. There is another question which is of great importance to which I would refer. When sheer starvation has been alleviated in Europe the demands of nutrition will pass from hunger to maintenance, not from hunger to plenty as is often supposed. I am thinking in terms of gross deficiencies of proteins and vitamins which can be made good only from animal products. What is Europe's livestock position to-day? Owing to Germany's demands and from other causes, Europe's estimated losses are: 11,000,000 cattle, 3,000,000 horses, 12,000,000 pigs, and 11,000,000 sheep. Those fantastic figures are very likely to mount before hostilities cease. Anyone who is in touch with the livestock industry in this country recognises at once that those losses cannot be met through the importation of live animals from this country or any other country. To restore Europe's livestock will take many years, possibly 10 years and will depend upon the natural rate of regeneration within those countries helped by such things as artificial insemination—provided always that the female stock is there to be inseminated and that there is enough food for the animals to eat in those countries.

It has been calculated that, in the emergency period, Allied countries and neutrals will have to supply about 10 per cent. of the loss sustained, which means 1,000,000 cattle, 300,000 horses, more than 1,000,000 pigs, and more than 1,000,000 sheep. So far as we here are concerned, we shall have another problem and I hope the Government are thinking about it. We are going to have a strong demand from our own Dominions for replacement of stock. I know a man who has an order in his pocket for £30,000 of British pedigree stock for only a few clients in one of our Dominions. It is a fact that animals in Australia cannot be offered to-day because they cannot be replaced or sold. On top of the European requirements there will be a strong demand from our own Dominions who will want to build up their stocks, because for shipping and other reasons Australia and Australasia generally cannot be reached.

Looking ahead to the position that is bound to arise after the war, I come to the conclusion that very heavy demands will be made upon our home breeders here and abroad. They will be expected to play their part and I ask the Government what steps are being taken to bring this about. What is the Government's attitude on the general question of the export of British livestock to the devastated countries of Europe and to the British Empire and elsewhere? Some people think that the Government are not sympathetic at the moment. I want to know whether they are sympathetic or not. Are they going to inform us whether there will be any control of exports from this country after the war? Are they thinking in terms of tank landing craft, and other ships which have been built for invasion purposes, being used to mitigate the shipping difficulties in the way of replacing stock in Europe? It is no use telling us that there are no ships because there are plenty of tank landing craft that could be converted for cattle purposes. I would ask the Financial Secretary to the Treasury what provision he is making for finance. Is anything being done to meet the position of countries that are not able to pay for their imports?

It is very necessary that our stock should be worthy of our country. You cannot expect home breeders with competing demands from the Dominions to take unreasonably low prices for their stock. Yet the home breeder is keen to play his part in this business of European relief and it is vital that these flocks and herds should be replaced at the earliest possible moment. It is equally vital that our own people should be told what is expected of them. There is some anxiety in the minds of home producers lest our Government are unsympathetic to the general question of the export of livestock from Great Britain after the war. I believe the opinion is held that such a trade would run counter to the best interests of our livestock industry. I know a little about this matter. I hope the Minister will give an assurance that this is not so, and that every effort will be made to build up our foreign trade in every way to find new markets for us in Europe, and, when we have got them to help us to make them permanent. The production of livestock is a long-term business. It is also on record that British stock prosper in every quarter of the world, including Soviet Russia, where conditions are extremely severe. The Minister cannot put up the argument that European countries would find British stock unsuitable.

Our overseas trade has gone on for over a century. Before the war it reached formidable dimensions. I know it is a debatable point but I believe that the demand from overseas has provided the incentive for us to reach up to the very high level of excellence which we find in our pedigree herds. That applies to my own country of Scotland. If the export trade was taken away, as some people seem to fear, leaving the pedigree breeder, who is the backbone of the livestock industry, at the mercy of the commercial demand, a great number of our best and finest herds would in my view be driven out of business, because they could not exist on the home demand alone. We would thus promote a downward tendency in quality which is the very thing the Minister wishes to avoid. And so I hope the Government will encourage our home breeders and that some guidance will soon be forthcoming as to what is required of them in regard to this urgent question of the restocking of Europe. We are in duty bound to do everything we can to mitigate their sufferings, and the Government are likewise in duty bound to tell our home producers in good time what will be required of them.

I hope the Ministers on the Front Bench have enjoyed the able and knowledgeable speech of my hon. Friend the Member for West Perthshire (Mr. Snadden) as much as I have. I hope they will pay attention to the important points he has raised, because I feel that he is talking for the farming community. I am only sorry I cannot follow him, because I had a slight connection with the farming community during my temporary representation of Peebles and Midlothian. The powerful speech made by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) was an indictment of the Ministry of Food when he referred to the tying-up in wartime of vessels day after day. I have had years of association with the fishing industry. We looked with horror on the tying-up of boats in peace-time, but to tie them up in war-time, when people are short of food, very short of essential foods of high nutritive value, is a very wrong state of affairs. During the last war the then Food Controller deemed it essential not only to cure all the British herrings he could get and store them round the coast as a bulwark against hunger, but he bought all the Norwegian catch as well, amounting to hundreds of thousands of barrels.

What was a first essential in 1914 was completely overlooked in this war. What is the difficulty in getting containers and salt for cured herring? Was there any difficulty in getting cold storage space for those which could have been caught at the prolific time? We have been told of the Ministry of Food's great cold storage programme, and of all the new stores they have built. Were they all full to overflowing? Was any imagination brought to bear? Just as swallows come back at certain times, so the herrings shoal off the coast of Frazerburgh and Peterhead and East Anglia and other places on our coasts? Would it have been possible to leave certain stores available so that some fish could have been rushed there, frozen and cold-stored and brought out during the days of scarcity so soon upon us. Whatever credit the Ministry of Food deserves—and I think they deserve a good deal—I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen when he speaks of the pitiable show they have made with regard to the fishing industry.

So far the white fishing side has not been touched on in this Debate. I would like to say a few words in regard to it because in dealing with increasing production we must eliminate the one cancer—over-fishing. Steam trawling is only about 55 years old. It was only in the early nineties that the trade abandoned sailing craft, the fishing smack, which could not over-fish because in times of calm it could not tow its gear and in times of storm it could not keep its trawl boards on the bottom. In that way nature protected the fisheries. The steam trawler came along fishing night and day, Sunday and every other day and very quickly overtook production, and in 1913 a warning was shown. Banks were showing serious signs of over-fishing and while they were rested during the Great War a year or two years' intensive fishing quickly brought them back to the same state, in fact an aggravated state, of short supply.

That condition became so serious that very few North Sea trawlers were built in the intervening years before the present war. Only a handful were built. Enterprising trawler owners built bigger vessels and went to more distant grounds, firstly to Faroe and Iceland, then to Bear Island, and the White Sea in the north and to Morocco in the South. They had gone the limit. They had almost gone beyond the limit. They were nearly frantic to know where to go for a catch. Bear Island saved the industry from 1927 to the outbreak of war, but that veritable E1 Dorado was showing the first signs of over-fishing. Catches of cod averaging 71b, fish had fallen to 4 lbs. It is only a stage from that to all the evil effects of over-fishing.

The cure for over-fishing lies with this House. Not entirely, for of course the Government must get other Governments to co-operate with them. But was there ever a better opportunity than now, when so many of these Governments are in London? Is it not time to begin these conversations in regard to the North Sea and the Atlantic, which are a common heritage? The same problems beset the Norwegians, the Frenchmen, the Belgians and the Danes and I am certain they will meet us more than half way. If it is right to have a close season for salmon, is it not even more right to have a close season for cod and haddock, which are of so much more importance? Is it right to catch these fish when they are full of roe, instead of letting them perform nature's function of reproduction? I earnestly hope that the Minister representing the Ministry of Fisheries will take heed of that very important point, because it is the basis of any increase in the capacity of the fishing fleet.

May I ask the hon. Member whether he would say what months of the year he suggests for a close season?

I am obliged to my hon. and gallant Friend. Breeding seasons vary somewhat, and I am not sufficiently knowledgeable about them to give him an exact answer. That presents a difficulty, and it may well be that certain banks are normally inhabited by more than one kind of fish with different spawning seasons. I think that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fisheries will be able to ascertain that. But if a close season is not practicable, it is a very simple matter to put half or all of the Dogger Bank, or other fishing banks, out of action for three months during the time of breeding of most of the fish that normally inhabit it. I am glad of this interruption, because it reminds me to say something which I think will be of interest to the House about a similar experiment which has been arranged with great success. The American and Canadian Governments about ten years ago realised that the great Pacific halibut fishing was rapidly being fished out. They appointed a Pacific Halibut Commission with so many American and so many Canadian members. They divided up the Pacific, from Seattle to Alaska, into four areas. They said, "You will not fish for halibut until 1st March in any area. Once you have taken so many million pounds weight of halibut out of the Pacific, the fishing must stop." There are so many pounds allowed for Area 1, so many pounds for Area 2, and so many pounds for Area 3. That followed on the Fraser River salmon shortages. They saw the same thing likely to happen in regard to halibut, and took steps to prevent it. Not only has the diminution been arrested, but the catch is actually going up. You must give fish a chance of reproduction. I hope that my hon. Friend, who is particularly interested in this matter, will look into it, as a duty.

The other essential in regard to the white fishing industry is to face up to the fact—we have had to do it in war-time—that ice, which was so good as a temporary preservative to keep fish from the Dogger Bank edible, is utterly useless when fishing Bear Island, Iceland, and even Faroe. Before the war the average voyage was about 20 days to these distant grounds. About two-thirds of the time was occupied in going to and returning from the banks.

We have that expensive instrument, the modern trawler, with skilled fishing crews, and we keep them idle on the outward and homeward voyage, and heavily overwork them while fishing, and then we take this fish, which has meant so much labour, and so much sacrifice and endurance in winter-time, and we say, "Ice will do." Ice will not do. Fish will not keep wholesome and good for 14 days, nor yet for eight days or six days, on ice. Deterioration begins within an hour of catching. In 14 days the fish is something fit for a manure works, not for consumption. During the war we have eaten frozen fish, and we have enjoyed it. It has been infinitely better than fresh fish. It is infinitely better than the stale stuff we have had from Iceland which has given the Ministry of Food so much anxiety. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Thornbury (Sir G. Gunston), who has been out to Newfoundland, is aware that the great saviour of Newfoundland has been the change-over from salt fish to frozen fish. That has played its part in enabling us to maintain supplies here too. I would like this House to outlaw stale fish in ice. Prior to this war vested interests and timidity stopped the industry from facing up to the fact that the ice which was so good for short-distance fishing is useless for this long-distance fishing.

I would like to say a word in support of the noble efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen in regard to the herring industry. I admire his determined efforts and the splendid speeches he has made for these fellows, who are the salt of the earth. In the countryside which he has the honour to represent, they are the backbone of the Navy, and sometimes I think that their children are the backbone of Harley Street—they are to be found in all the professions. These people have been neglected. Their plight, I think, is due primarily to Russia going out of the world market for herrings. They took 70 per cent. of the total catch. When that happened we were faced with this huge surplus. There was no stable price. But we can make the price stable by improving our methods of curing and by freezing. The Herring Board is capable of saving this industry and of bringing a fine catch of very excellent food to the people at a cheap price. We want community effort, through the Herring Board. How that should be done—whether there should be a Yarmouth and Lowestoft Company and a Lerwick Company and a Peterhead and Fraserburgh Company—I do not know. But the State's money must be behind it to pay the capital costs in buildings and plant and to purchase the fish for storage. Sell fresh what you can, and can or freeze what you can't, But there must be somebody ready to buy it. It is the tail which wags the dog on such a question as this. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen pointed out, having the second day's supply going on the market before the first day's supply is sold, results in disaster. The way is to cure or to sharp freeze—I do not care how you do it; but if you take the right steps you will not only save the industry but bring much-needed employment to these neighbourhoods. I say to my friends on the Front Bench, "I envy you the opportunity you have to serve this industry and the country."

I make no apology for continuing this Debate on the subject which my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) has been discussing. I would like to follow him on one or two interesting points which he made. In supporting the Amendment of the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) and the hon. Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Jewson), I would point out that we have had a great deal said about the fishing industry on the East coast of England and on the East coast of Scotland, but nothing has been said up to now about that very prolific source of fish, the West coast of Scotland. My hon. Friends from the East coast will not deny that the Loch Fyne herring is the best herring in the world. It may not be so good for kippering as the East coast herring, but that is a matter to which I hope to come in a moment. In regard to this problem of the herring industry—for it is a problem—I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Food will not think, if I put forward a number of facts to show how the difficulties have arisen, that I am attacking his Ministry. Far from it; I realise, like all other Members, that the Ministry of Food have done wonderful work in this war. We have all been extremely well fed—if we had only had as many herrings as we might have had, we should have been even better fed.

I want to make it quite clear that I definitely meant to make an attack on the Ministry of Food.

I have written rather strong letters to the Ministry of Food. I have done my attacking that way, more privately. To-day I would like to mention one or two facts. We have had interesting and eloquent speeches from many Members about the fishing industry, and a few facts might serve to ram this question home to my hon. Friend and his Ministry. There has been a scarcity of fish in many wide areas of this country. That is well known. I am told by the Ministry that that is not so. It is not a question of housewives not liking herring nor that people who cook herring in blocks of flats are unpopular because they "smell out" the whole of the rest of the tenants. I would like to bring one or two instances to the notice of my hon. Friend. In the town of Hamilton, just outside Glasgow, there has, for a long time, been a constant complaint that they are unable to obtain supplies of fish in general, and especially herring. One of my constituents, a herring fisherman, happened to be visiting his sister in Hamilton, and she naturally said to him, "You are a fisherman. You say that herring can be produced. Come round the fishmongers' shops with me and help me to buy them." They went together, and no herring was to be found. In my own constituency, which is engaged very largely in the fishing for this product, there are burghs and villages and areas where you cannot buy a single herring. Herring are landed at Oban, carried from the trawler to the railway truck on the pier and sent away to Glasgow or London, but they cannot be bought in Oban. The same thing applies to Campbeltown; whence they are taken either by road or by steamer.

The hon. and gallant Member is not suggesting that this is in any way due to control exercised by the Ministry of Food? There is no control of distribution of herring.

I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon.

Herring was controlled until it was decontrolled for a week or two.

I said "control of distribution".

I hope to take up the point and that my hon. Friend will explain it later on. Whether it is the control from the Ministry of Food or from the Ministry of War Transport, or whoever controls it, I cannot say, but the fish is not to be had in the fishmongers' shops.

The only reason possibly is that the fishmonger does not buy them.

I am sorry that I have not the letters with me from some of my fishmonger constituents, but I will send them to my hon. Friend later on, and he will see that they definitely prove that they are not allowed to buy them. It is this fact which is causing a complete breakdown of the distribution throughout the country. Once or twice one has seen some fish and has asked the fishmonger where it has come from. It has not come from the West Coast fishing fleets at all but from Aberdeen and yet the Ministry of War Transport says that there is a tremendous need for transport and we must save transport. There is a misunderstanding and I hope that my hon. Friend will straighten it out. We cannot understand it ourselves in the north-west of Scotland.

I come to another problem which is rather similar. In the Outer Isles of the Hebrides it has always been the custom during the summer fishing season for the fishermen to salt a large number of herring to carry them through the winter to the next season; but two or three seasons ago they were forbidden to do it by the Ministry. Last season in Stornoway, although they were forbidden to catch herring themselves, they were able to obtain herring from Iceland to salt. Why should that fish be brought from Iceland? I hope my hon. Friend will go into that matter.

The question of dumping has caused great anxiety in my constituency in the past fishing season. Out of 4,800 baskets of fish landed at a certain port in the Clyde area, about 50 per cent. of them were thrown back into the sea, and yet there are many places where fish cannot be bought. It is said that fish is brought from Iceland and yet this local fish is dumped back into the sea. The question of dumping is one which other hon. Members interested in the industry and myself have discussed and protested against time and time again, and still the reply is always the same, namely, that there are seasons of glut and that when gluts arise you cannot expect the Ministry of Food to be able to deal with them. Here is a very valuable and nutritious form of food which is of essential value to the nation and, knowing that gluts are bound to happen—and they happen practically every year—some arrangement should be made to save that food which is otherwise thrown away.

I have here a copy of an Order which was issued in Canada containing new and stringent regulations for herring fishermen in British Columbia in order to safeguard the supply of canned fish. It prohibits herring caught anywhere in British Columbia waters from being thrown overboard, dumped or wasted. Thus in Canada it has been found necessary to make it a crime to dump herring, and I suggest that it would be a very good thing for the Ministry of Food to follow the example of Canada. It is rather an extraordinary thing that at a certain port in my constituency, all through the season, large quantities of herring have been dumped back into the sea and yet in the shops at the some port Canadian canned herring could always be bought. One of the reasons given by my hon. Friend's Department for dumping is that the fish have to be thrown away because there are no buyers.

I come to another point which is causing great anxiety in the West Clyde area. It is the question of buyers' allocations. In the port of Ayr in 1937–38, the year taken as the basic season for the allocation of buyers, there were 64 firms buying herring as they landed. This year only eight or ten of those firms bought any herring, whereas there are a large number of other buyers, simply crying out for herring, who are ruled out because they were not buyers in the essential year of 1937–38. It should be possible to go through this system of allocation and completely reorganise it. A lot of the old wood should be cut out of the plant in order to let in some of the new shoots and give these new firms a chance of showing their worth. I could give the names of one or two firms who at the time when herring were fetching very small prices bought thousands of baskets of herring for canning or curing, and yet, when the price goes to its controlled maximum price, these same buyers, who saved the fishermen during these weeks of poor prices, are not allowed to buy because they are not on this port's allocation list. I beg my hon. Friend's Department to go into this question of allocations, because it is causing a great deal of dissatisfaction. I feel that much of the trouble that goes with dumping might be removed if only this were done.

I would like to reinforce what my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham said about refrigeration. A great deal can be done, I am sure. I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland only this week whether any inquiries had been made into the small refrigeration and canning plants which, we were told, had been set up so successfully in America and in Canada. I was glad to hear him say that inquiries are afoot. We are hoping shortly to receive the report of a committee on the herring fishing industry in Scotland, presided over by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot). Another Scottish Commission is inquiring into the white fish industry, this Commission being presided over by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Major Neven-Spence). In Scotland we are doing what we can to arrive at a solution of our difficulties, but in none of this is there any push by the Ministry of Food. Lord Woolton once initiated a great potato campaign. Cannot we have a "victory herring," or some sort of herring propaganda? Cannot canteens, barracks, camps, hostels and other public places be induced to put on one meal a week of herring? In many ways, I feel sure that the demand for herring could be stimulated.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen referred to the export of herring. When they are properly cured there is no reason why stocks for exports should not be built up. In spite of all the difficulties of curers in regard to material and labour, I think matters could be improved.

The in-shore fishing fleets of this country have had a very raw deal in this war. They have been almost completely forgotten by all the Departments except one, and that the Navy. The minesweepers and patrol crafts that are on constant duty round our coasts are nearly all manned by our fishermen, and I think they might be given a better deal than they have had up to now.

I have several suggestions in my mind for the future, but I do not want to delay the House any further, except to express the hope that the Ministry of Food will give serious consideration to the many sound points which have been put forward by organisations with special knowledge, such as, for instance, the Clyde Fishermen's Association. I hope also that other suggestions from the North-East and other parts of the country which are concerned with this trade will be borne in mind and that the fishermen and the families of the men employed in fishing will be given a better deal.

It is very refreshing and welcome to hear and take part in, once again, a Debate upon herrings. I am reminded of the vigorous controversies we had in this House ten years ago when my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) and others of us day after day assailed the Government, of which at that time my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) was a distinguished member. I remember that at that time the Government were asked for almost precisely the same things that are being asked for to-day. It was as a result of our repeated agitation at that time that the Duncan Commission was formed, of which I am happy to see a member (Mr. Beattie) here to-day. I think my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen has done a service to the nation in introducing this Debate. This problem of food is absolutely No. 1 of all the tasks facing us in the future. We have an assurance of national security when the war is over. The Navy, Army and Air Force are present in great strength, and the men and women are ready. We have a tolerable assurance of shelter being provided for our people and a considerable assurance that clothing will be available. But for the assurance of food after the war we have looked in vain. Yet that comes a very long way before Beveridge or housing or almost any other post-war requirement, and, therefore, I am sure the Parliamentary Secretary will welcome this Debate.

We are bringing to the notice of the country to-day a problem of the first importance, which has not yet received the attention it needs or deserves. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for W. Perth (Mr. Snadden) made one of the most remarkable speeches I have ever heard on this subject. It was extremely interesting and helpful, and I would like to offer him my congratulations. As I was saying, we have had not only no assurance about food after the war, but the only statement of an official kind has been of precisely the opposite character. Lord Woolton warned us of a world shortage, and our problem is how to meet that shortage, for unless we can we shall undermine the life and the livelihood of our people. Looking around the world, we see that Australia is about to be put upon a meat ration and that America is in precisely the same situation. A meat shortage is to be found everywhere. Yet, when the war is over, these countries and others will be faced with the colossal task of implementing the resolutions of the Hot Springs Conference. Unless that Conference was a farce—and I do not believe it was—all these producing countries must unload their main supplies on the devastated areas of the world. But if they do, they cannot send supplies here in the quantities we need or have been accustomed to receive in days gone by, and so we shall be thrown upon our own resources. Our problem is how to develop our own resources of food production. We have in this country a climate and a soil and a people second to none from the point of view of food production. We can grow an even greater quantity than we are producing now, given the right conditions. I am not one of those who look to the Government for direction and control in every walk of life. I would rather avoid Government direction at all, but there are certain duties which lie upon the Government which it cannot escape and the principal one is to create conditions in which producers can exercise their personal enterprise and initiative. It is those conditions for which our farmers will cry when the war is over. It is more a matter of price than of anything else—price and security. If our producers of food can feel that they have the security necessary to give them the incentive for long-term planning, we shall get the food we want and maintain the people on the land to produce the food. And what applies to farming, applies to fishing and other industries. I have recently become, in a small way, a market gardener, and I am taking a good deal of interest in the business. I am amazed at what has been happening. There is no branch of food production which has shown so phenomenal an increase as market gardening in the last 10 years—the multiplication of producers and the immense increase of all kinds of glasshouse production is truly remarkable.

What about transport? Tomatoes and other things failed before the war because there was no transport.

No doubt there is something in what the hon. Baronet says. If I may pursue the point with which I was dealing I would say that we have in the last 10 years, particularly in the last three years, built up a section of the food production industry of special importance for nutrition. It will be a calamity if, because of the lack of Government policy, we destroy that immense improvement in market garden enterprise. There is only one way to keep that industry flourishing and that is to give producers the security in markets and prices so that their work shall be profitable. So, price and security are the essentials of prosperous agriculture when the war is over.

I have spoken so much about herrings in the days gone by that there is little that I need say now. The hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) is quite right—we have in the herring a food of immense value. We have an industry employing men of peculiarly high character. In pre-war days the hon. Member for East Aberdeen and I day after day stressed the importance of these men to the national security, and yet we failed lamentably to impress the Government (Interruption). I do not want to use un-Parliamentary language but I agree it seemed that no one cared a damn. This war has shown, as the last did, that these men are vital for the defence of the nation and, if national security is to be the prime concern of the nation after the war, their interest must be safeguarded.

Much has been said about dumping. It is a very difficult problem. The problem of gluts is not so easily solved as the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Argyll would have us believe. You do not know where the glut is to be, on any day or at any hour. It may be in the Shetlands to-day and in the Western Isles to-morrow, and it may be in such vast quantities as completely to overwhelm whatever plans you may have and whatever stores you may have in preparation to deal with it. I am looking to my right hon. Friend's report for some answer to it.

I hope, too, that the report will deal with that other immensely important problem in connection with our fishermen—the type of boat. I know, from 10 or 11 years' close association with the industry, that if the men in East Fife had a better type of boat, so that the same boat, properly constructed and economical to run, could be used for herring or white fish, inshore or a little further out, taking the seasons as they come, that would make a very great difference.

This, I hope, is not the last of our food Debates. I hope we shall continue pressing the Government. If we could concentrate a quarter of the energy that has been put into Beveridge, upon food production when the war is over, it would be infinitely better for the nation. I take my stand first and foremost on the side of the food producers. If you could put that class of the community on its feet, the future of the country would be safe.

I am sure it is a good thing that in this hectic week, in which we have discussed some red herrings of a different kind, we have come back to the grim realities of the situation. Those realities have to be faced both by the occupants of the Treasury Bench and by all those who represent interests which have to look to the future in terms particularly of the trinity—food, houses and employment. Food is of paramount importance. I cannot claim to speak for any catchers of fish, but I can speak for a few sellers of fish, and for thousands of consumers. Our complaint is that there is something seriously wrong with the marketing of these commodities when they, have been produced or gathered by those who harvest them, whether from the land or the sea. A friend of mine, a very responsible person, told me that one-tenth of the herring caught in any year during the last 10 years have been thrown back into the sea.

The hon. Member must not forget the number of herring deliberately left in the sea and never taken out of it.

If we examine the various suggestions that have been made, that statement must be examined, but something else must be examined and that is the stewardship of the Department which claims to deal with the problem. I am not at all satisfied that the Ministry of Food, or the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries if you like, have mobilised the nation's resources sufficiently to handle this very difficult problem. Why is it, for example, that the citizens of London, or Doncaster, or Huddersfield, complain that they cannot buy herring when the newspapers say there is a plentiful supply? Why is it that when herrings appear in the shops people refuse to buy them? It is because they stink, and nobody will look at them, or people hurry past the shops. When they discuss with the fishmonger what has happened he usually provides the explanation. It is the Ministry of Food. They have failed to mobilise the nation's resources to handle a commodity which is in plentiful supply and would be in good demand if they had done their work properly. I am making this a claim because I do shopping regularly. I like herrings, and I am a herring eater. I complain because if I stay at a hotel and ask for kippers or herrings the proprietor looks at me almost with astonishment at the audacity of an ordinary humble sort of fellow like myself asking for such a thing.

Let us contrast this with what we see in plenty in grocers' shops. I remember a firm called the Tyne Brand Herring Company. I do not know whether they still exist. About 15 or 16 years ago they endeavoured to compete with Canada and other markets in supplying canned herrings, but it fell flat. If you go into a grocer's shop, however, you will find thousands of tins of herrings from Canada and other places which have been brought across the seas, through the docks and warehouses, and handled by labour ten times over to bring them into our shops. If you ask the grocer to supply you with English or Scotch herrings he will say he has never heard of such a thing. We in the distributive trades cannot understand this. The right hon. Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) and other right hon. Gentlemen are presiding over committees discussing these problems, and we as consumers say that if they, sitting on these committees month after month and year after year and hearing allegations such as are made by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) and other Members, cannot find a solution sufficiently convincing for the Ministry of Food to put into operation, it is time they got out of the way and gave somebody else a chance. I believe that the real blame belongs to the Ministry of Food, where there is a timidity that passes all human understanding. They are halfhearted on certain problems. They are half-hearted about turkeys and half-hearted about herrings. They do not know how to get down to the subject or how to adopt useful suggestions which are made in all sincerity by those who understand.

Looking into a big grocer's shop yesterday, I noticed cans of jam. It may be asked what this has to do with the Amendment, but it has a lot to do with it. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether he feels satisfied about the importation of jam. It means the use of thousands of tons of shipping space, and it causes men to risk their lives going to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to bring the jam into our grocers' shops in the fifth year of war. The Ministry of Food are advertising that people can have extra supplies of jam or sugar in lieu of jam. They have risked sailors' lives needlessly over this jam. Why have they done it when they know that jam factories have not been working to 100 per cent. capacity for the last two or three years? Within 20 miles of London workers in a jam factory have been switched over into other industries although there were fruit, sugar and labour available. The Ministry have preferred to use shipping space to bring jam here. There is something seriously wrong in the Ministry when they do this. They have the organisation if they will tackle the job properly, but there must be fundamental changes of policy based on the best possible advice.

Another subject that has been raised is that of marketing and the price margins. It was raised in a Question last week, and there was the usual stock reply by the Parliamentary Secretary. It has to do with the old argument that £650,000,000 worth of food is produced, and, in order that the consumer can buy it, the Ministry pay £1,500,000,000 for it. The Parliamentary Secretary and the Noble Lord usually reply, "You have not taken into account all the different processing that there is in connection with food, and that explains most of the margin." I am sorry that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture is not here, because I would like to ask him what his Minister feels about the existing marketing system in general produce. Everybody knows that it is wasteful and uneconomic and that the whole system was condemned by the Linlithgow Committee years ago. Everybody knows that if there is a social crime in this country, it is to be found in the markets in the centre of London. They are an economic waste and are very unpopular. When we have asked the Minister of Food why he does not do something about it, he usually offers the excuse that it is not his duty to make fundamental changes with the distributive system in war-time and that he has no intention of doing it. When the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture was asked a certain question, not in the House but elsewhere, on this subject, he offered an explanation the other way round. He said, "While you congratulate us for what we have done, distribution is not our responsibility."

This Amendment focuses attention on the need for fundamental changes in the marketing system, and it must be examined and remedies must be found. There is advice available to the Ministry and suggested alternatives in the Ministry. I make that challenge with no bitterness, but with a feeling that there is a half-heartedness always running through the Ministry and a hesitancy to do something to meet fundamental needs. I put it to the Minister in the name of my colleagues and others associated with me in the distributive trades that unless he tackles the problem of distribution he will not be able to solve the other kindred problems which have been raised to-day.

I hope my hon. Friend will excuse me if I do not follow him in the line he has taken to-day, but I should like to say how sincerely I hope that the speech of the hon. Member for West Perth (Mr. Snadden) will receive the consideration from the Ministry of Agriculture which it so highly merits. Personally, I think it a privilege to have listened to so well informed and knowledgeable a speech. We have been warned of a probable shortage of food after this war. May I say that unless there is a change of heart on the part of the Government and on the part of the Minister of Agriculture toward the farming industry a shortage of food is not only probable but is absolutely certain, and it will be unnecessarily great. The hon. Member for West Perth stressed the tremendous importance of protein foods, and I do not think any branch of modern knowledge of food questions will deny that milk, fish, eggs and meat are the most important foods. But there is no one who has the smallest connection with farming who does not know that there is no more exhausting branch of agriculture and no branch of agriculture that calls for so much work and human endeavour as the tending of livestock.

I deplore in conjunction with other hon. Members that we have not had long ago some indication of constructive long-term policy for agriculture. With the hon. Member for West Perth, I very sincerely regret the prices for agricultural products which have been announced lately. There is a very general belief in the country, fostered I think most unfortunately by the Minister of Agriculture, that the farmers of this country are to-day in a fortunate financial position. If figures are produced to show that that is the case, may I say that they are founded on false premises? It is quite true that farmers, on paper, are better off to-day than they were some years ago, but to what is that due? First of all, we have been benefiting from the stored fertility of the soil on which we have made very heavy demands. I am perfectly certain that in the years to come we shall appreciate that we have made perhaps too great demands on the stored fertility of the soil. Secondly, we have had a series of very good harvests, and thirdly, not only many farmers but many of the farmers' wives and families have worked hours out of all proportion to what should be demanded of any class of people in this country.

The farmer has had to work these hours because if he does not fulfil the demands made upon him by the Ministry of Agriculture and the county war executive committee he will be classed as a bad farmer, and his farm may be taken from him. Sometimes I wonder how many of the farmers of this country who have been classed so glibly as bad farmers are only in the position of being called bad farmers because for years they have been deprived of the capital necessary to enable them to keep efficient and up to date. The farmer, moreover, has in very many instances been assisted by what is actually unpaid labour. Hundreds and thousands of farmers could not have carried on unless their wives and sons and very often their daughters had worked literally intolerably long hours with small thought of reward. The hon. Member for West Perth has stressed the importance of increasing the live stock of this country, and Heaven knows that it is necessary. The hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) said the climate of this country was ideal for farming and for stock raising. But that is only so if you have adequate buildings in which to rear and house stock.

It is absolutely essential, if you are going to raise stock as you should raise stock on your farm, that the farm buildings should be in really good repair and kept in an up-to-date condition. Is there a single one of us who does not know that farm buildings were in a scandalous state of repair before the war because of the financial condition of the farmers and that owing to the exigencies of war no money has been spent on them since? But no allowance is made for depreciation of buildings and fences, nor for the deterioration of ditches which the farmer has been unable to look after during the war, when the Income Tax demand is made on the farmer. The Minister of Food and the Minister of Agriculture have built up great reputations for themselves in this country, but I sometimes wonder if they fully appreciate or give full credit for the fact that their reputations have been built on the sweat and the loyalty and the guts of the farmers of this country. Too small real tribute has been paid to the farmers. It is no good for the Parliamentary Secretary to shake his head. He knows it is true.

I think the hon. Lady will agree that both the Minister and myself whenever we have made utterances of any sort or kind have been just as generous as our funds of words would permit in expressing appreciation of the farmers.

The Parliamentary Secretary is always gracious, always courteous, always generous to friend and foe alike in the House. In the 12 years that I have been a Member he has expressed a courtesy all his own, and I know his appreciation is sincerely meant. Most certainly I do not say the same of the Minister of Agriculture. Do you think the farmers of the country feel that the Minister of Agriculture is their true friend? If you do, you are sadly mistaken. He has built up a great reputation for himself as Minister of Agriculture by, I repeat, the farmers' loyalty, by their sweat, and by their guts. Certainly he is an able Minister. He is an exceptionally efficient, competent, able man, but he is not a man who really loves the land or really understands the land or farmers. I know that he has farmed since the beginning of this war under peculiarly fortunate circumstances, with peculiar advantages. Unhappily, he therefore thinks he knows everything there is to know about farming. But you cannot know everything there is to know about farming unless you farm in good days and in bad, not as the Minister of Agriculture has done, only in good days. Unless you make full financial allowance and appreciate the real position of the farmer financially and the difficulties which he has to face over a long term you will have a shortage of food in this country much more acute than it need be. Guts and work and loyalty cannot carry on against insuperable odds for ever; there must be greater appreciation of the financial and other needs of agriculture and the immense difficulties with which the farmer will be faced if he is to be asked to increase his livestock as he should do. There will be a shortage of food, that is certain, but if it is greater than need be then let the blame be placed where the blame should be—on lack of appreciation on the part of the Government and of the Minister of Agriculture of the difficulties of the farming community.

Last Tuesday was St. Andrew's Day, and along with other Scottish folk I listened to the broadcast of our St. Andrew's night programme. I was thrilled by our national music which was sent to our brothers across the seas and the music we had from our brothers throughout the Empire. The tailpiece of the broadcast came when the Secretary of State for Scotland broadcast a message to Scots at home and overseas. The phrase that stuck in my mind was a simple one. He said, "Surely it is not outwith the wit of man to devise some means of dealing with the surpluses of production which occur from time to time." That is really the crux of the whole situation to-day. We read of herring being thrown back into the sea, of over-production, and of waste generally. To-day the scientist is finding the answer with incredible speed to many problems put up by the enemy, like the magnetic mine for instance. Scientists are finding improvements for protecting our gallant boys and girls in the Fighting Services, and I venture to suggest that scientists will have to be put on to the job of food preservation immediately after the war. Canning and dehydration are all very well. I should like to pay a tribute to the way in which the members of the canning industry have applied themselves to their problems during the war. I should like to think the scientists have found out all there is to know about dehydration. Dehydration is all right in war time and some form of it will stay after the war. I have tasted potatoes which have been dehydrated. By the application of boiling water one can have very good mashed potatoes. They are very good.

There are other ways of food preserving. The hon. Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) referred to refrigeration. Before the war there existed in America a system of "quick freeze" which marketed vegetables, fish and produce of all kinds, making these available to the community. It was coming into evidence in this country just before the war. There are certain patent rights concerning this particular method, and of patent rights, and of international ones in particular, I am a little scared. I want this particular method of food preservation to be available to all classes of the community in this country. I want the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Minister of Agriculture and the Minister of Food to get together and say that in the public interest the Government should be recommended to buy the patent rights from America; and having got them, the British Government ought to allow firms to use them by licence, right from the refrigerating end to the marketing end. There is no earthly reason why the woman in the little shop in the smallest village should not have one of those refrigerating cabinets displaying all kinds of fresh food ready for cooking. Before the war I used to see automatic cigarette machines, which are of considerable value, outside even the smallest shops.

Reference has been made to the Sea Fish Commission. I had the honour of being a member of that Commission. I have to thank my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) for putting my name forward for that Commission. I learned a tremendous lot on it. When I suggested to him that I did not seem to be a very appropriate person to go on it, he said, "Wait a little, and you will soon find out that there is some connection between the loaves and the fishes." And it was so. The Commission was set up just ten years ago, and we had our first meeting one month later, in January, 1934. We were told by the Government to make a Report on herring first; the purport of the message was, "Get going, and keep going until you have that Report done." We visited almost every port in Great Britain, I think, and inland markets as well. We got a lot of information, and in due course the Herring Report was produced. I can tell you that that Report was the seventh revise and no one of the secretariat put in a single comma or period. It was the work entirely of the members of the Commission. If the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Minister of Food and the Minister of Agriculture are in any difficulties about things let them read that Report and they will get most of the answers.

What did we find when we got to work? We found depression and distress, but we found also this remarkable thing, that 500,000 cwt. of Norwegian herring were allowed to come into the country. Think of it. Why? Because of that thing called "balance of trade," in order that coal might go from this country to Scandinavian countries, to whom it was sold at a cheaper rate than our industrialists were getting it. Never let that happen again. Never set up a Commission to find out what is wrong with an industry and let it find that there is a backdoor through which 500,000 cwt. of herring are coming into the country. Across the fjords booms were put down and the shoals of herring caught behind them. The Norwegians waited to see what the London market was like. Then they sent in trawlers and scooped out the herring and popped them on to that market. People often thought they were Loch Fyne herring. I heard my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Argyll (Major McCallum) talking about Loch Fyne herring. On page 30 of our Report there is the statement

"We found that even kippered Norwegian herring, we were told, have been sold as Loch Fyne herring."

When we went round the ports we found boxes marked "Loch Fyne Herring" and "Loch Fyne Kippers." We must do something to stop that. There must be a national mark. The Commission pleaded for that. I want to see a national mark, so that other herring, wherever caught, either abroad or elsewhere, shall be properly marketed. What else did we find? We found "a pretty kettle of fish." I think of the distress that we found; I think of Buckie, of Fraserburgh, of Peterhead; I think of the forest of masts in Buckie harbour; the boats not going out and 10s, a week being charged for harbourage; of the houses of the fishermen, the finest men in the world, mortgaged up to the hilt. There was debt and depression. That must never happen again, never.

I remember too our export to Russia, Poland and Germany. Russia faded out of the market, of course—I am talking about pre-1914. To Germany and to Central Europe we gave cured herring. We found that the Germans had started a herring fleet on their own after the last war. I am not blaming them particularly for that, but what they did was that they were determined to have sea sense in 25 years. Our fishermen, who are the salt of the earth and the ocean, have had sea sense for centuries, and the Germans realised the value of sea sense, and have done all they can to get it. Then there was the Dutch fishing fleet. They also were supplying central Europe. It is the responsibility of the Government to find considerable markets for our fishing folk after this war.

Another point that we must never forget is our loyalty to the fisher folk. I want to emphasise that point. The hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) knows what he is talking about. I remember seeing him coming in from a night's fishing with the fishermen, which he did to get a knowledge of this industry on his part of the coast. It is true the boats were not always so good as they should be. Let me tell the House a story about boats and loyalty. There was a fishing family in the north among the many fisher families ranged throughout the length and breadth of our coast. There were three brothers, and there was a sister, as well as the father. The little girl was at school. When she left the local school or was about to leave, the headmaster came to the family and said, "Do you know that this little girl is very brilliant? It is a pity to let her go. Could she not go to the Academy?" They said, "Well, all right, we'll get the money." They were maybe hard up, but they sent her to the Academy. We know what that means; every member of the family had to sacrifice something, a not uncommon happening in Scotland. When she was about finished at the Academy, the rector of the Academy said, "This is a really brilliant girl. It's a great pity that she should leave. Will you send her to the university?" They said, "Yes," and to the university she went, and she passed with honours in every conceivable subject, medicine particularly. That secured her a good post out in the East.

A few years later there came a letter from her saying, "I have saved some money. I have never forgotten your kindness, and I would like to provide the finest boat that you can buy, in order that you can get a good living." She sent £4,000. The boat they bought sailed the sea and did great work. It is a well-known boat in the North. I will tell the House its name in a minute. I was very proud of seeing that boat. One night, not long ago, I was sitting comfortably in my home while it was blowing outside and was pretty cold, when I heard the announcer on the wireless say, "The Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of H.M. drifter 'The Girl Helen.'" That was the name of the boat and the name of the girl. That is a story which should not be forgotten because it typifies the loyalty of the fisherfolk.

I would like to take up the question now of distribution. Behind the scenes the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food and myself have had a small difference of opinion on this matter not long ago, concerning the covering for herring in transit. We came to a satisfactory conclusion, and now herring is transported by rail with lids on the boxes. Since I came into this House to-day I have been given information that Messrs. Duncan McIver, of Stornoway, one of the biggest kipperers, have had to tell their customers that the Ministry of Food have said they are not to purchase any more wood for boxes. The trade must therefore cease. Good heavens; the trade in kippering must stop! There must be an answer from the Ministry. I am told that there is plenty of wood for boxes in Aberdeen. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will have a complete answer. If not, I suggest that he goes to his friend the Minister of Supply, who will no doubt give him the wood, because that Minister, who was also Chairman of the Sea Fish Commission, has a great affection for the humble herring.

I sometimes think the Ministry of Food are leading us into a fools' paradise. We are told that fish are available when fish are not available. Let me give an example. A wholesaler in Glasgow before the basic period had a certain number of customers. The total number represented, say, 1,750 points. After the basic period his retailer customers were cut down, but he still had the same number of points. He was allocated different fishing ports from which to draw his fish. That sounds very good on paper, but two of those ports are closed for six months, and half of his supply does not come, so the retailer customers cannot get their full supply of fish. That comes right back to the canteens in the factories, where the workers cannot get fish. There is something fundamentally wrong in that situation.

Helensburgh, on the Firth of Clyde, used to draw its fish from Glasgow. To-day it draws its fish from Wick. [Laughter.] Yes, it is supposed to save transport. Recently the Minister of Food wrote a letter to a little fried fish merchant in Helensburgh saying that a consignment of fish which had been despatched to him from Wick had arrived at the Ministry of Food in London and as they thought it would not keep until it arrived at Helensburgh they were sending it for salvage. That showed that the fish comes from Wick, What is more, and what they should take notice of, is that the heavy lorry which used to take fish from Glasgow to Helensburgh now goes there empty and brings back fish guts to Glasgow. I think the Minister might just have a look at that matter. If there is any point that I have raised that is not applicable to the Ministry of Food, I do not want the Minister to fall back on the words of the old comic song, "The other Department, if you please, straight on and up the stairs." I do not want the Minister to throw the onus upon other colleagues of his on the Front Bench, but rather to promise to consult with them.

I agree very much with what was said by the hon. Member for East Fife (Mr. Henderson Stewart) when he said that it was a good thing that the attention of the House had been concentrated to-day on the subject of food. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) is very skilful, and he concentrated the attention of the House on food in a particularly cunning way. His Amendment clearly in the first part of it builds a very wide road in order to enable him to drive a very narrow vehicle down it. He has talked about herrings, he has talked about livestock, and it is very evident, I think, to the House that many matters with which he has dealt and with which other Members have dealt are not primarily the concern of the Ministry of Food. Indeed, if I may say so, there has been much competition between the Ministry of Agriculture, the Scottish Office and the Ministry of Food as to who should have the honour of replying. The competition has been rather in the manner of Kai Lung.

Could we have a reply from all of them?

I should perhaps be happier if that were so, but as I was saying the competition has been rather in the manner of Kai Lung. Each in turn has protested his own unworthiness to deal with such an eminent and distinguished occasion. In the end the other two Departments succeeded in bowing me on to the stage. As I am here, the House will expect me perhaps to deal particularly with that part of the Amendment which is primarily the concern of my Department, the Ministry of Food. Before doing so, I should like to say, having read the King's Speech again with considerable care, that it does not seem really there is much reason for my hon. Friend to regret the emphasis in the Speech on the subject of food. The importance of food in the transition period has been emphasised; indeed it has been emphasised outside, and no one, I think, would be more surprised than the hon. Member if there had been a particular gloss on the matter of food relating to herrings in detail.

The Ministry of Food is concerned with providing food for this nation, and in the search for food the world is its parish. It is necessary for the Ministry of Food to think of food internationally, and it is very conscious of the difficulties that exist now and which are likely to increase to secure supplies adequate and sufficiently varied for our needs. It is very interesting to recollect that in the series of Food Facts which is reasonably well known Food Fact No, I emphasised the shortage of shipping, To-day, as has been evident, it is well known to hon. Members of this House that Food Fact No. 1 is the shortage of food. Again the House will have observed that my Noble Friend the Minister of Reconstruction during the latter part of his term as Minister of Food played a leading part, indeed one might say the leading part, in impressing upon the people of this country the fact that they must look forward to a continuance for some time after the war of food shortages at least as acute as those we have experienced during the war. Perhaps it might not be going too far to say that the House and the country are beginning to derive a sense of the importance of this question, not a little from the utterances of my Noble Friend.

I think if any evidence were needed of the determination of the Government to pay close attention to this problem, it could be found, and these doubts could be allayed, by the very fact of the appointment of a Minister of Reconstruction charged with the task of providing food, work and homes in that order as his first responsibility. I really do not think it can be claimed that the Government of this country nor the Governments of other United Nations are slow to recognise this important fact. [Interruption.] No, not in words, in deeds, In preparations detailed and specific for the post-war world those concerned with food can claim that they have got off first. It is not that Parliament or the people are pressing upon the Government that attention should be given to these matters; it is that the Government have gone out of their way to warn the world. They have done a great deal more than warning the world. They have initiated action. Other Members have referred to the first important action in the international field. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen particularly referred to the Resolutions of the Hot Springs Conference. These Resolutions urged that production throughout the world should be increased. The hon. Member read certain Resolutions or certain parts of certain Resolutions which are important Before I sit down I shall call the attention of the House to certain other Resolutions. It has been made plain that the machinery of the Combined Boards and the London Food Council, which now succeeds the London Food Committee, is to be used to secure that when the war is over there shall not be a scramble for the world's food supply.

It is vitally important that the food supplies of the world should be allocated to the nations of the world in accordance with determined needs, and one of the principal tasks of the Ministry of Food is of course to secure that in various exporting countries the production so far as we can help it should be stepped up to the highest possible extent. There has been meeting at Atlantic City the Council of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Other Members have referred to that particular aspect of the work. They have, rightly, said that there will be devastated areas and hungry areas and other parts of the world to succour. This country is certainly playing its part in making available to U.N.R.R.A. resources to enable that task to be carried out. Indeed, I think that in the international sphere it is very evident that this Government and the other Governments are taking early action to do what can be done to meet the food shortage which this Amendment foreshadows.

But this Amendment particularly refers to what is being done here at home. Many Members who have taken part in this Debate know a great deal more and in greater detail about agriculture than I would claim to do, and many of them know what has been done. The hon. Lady spoke with great fervour about the work of the farmers. I think that the work of the farmers is very generally recognised throughout the House, and not only by Members representing agricultural constituencies.

In words.

I do not see how you can recognise anything other than in words and in thought.

You can make proper financial provision for them.

But that is not recognition.

It is the only kind of recognition I want.

I am talking about the knowledge of the people of this country about what the farmers have done. [An HON. MEMBER: "South of the Border."] The problem of food shortage has been with us for four years in this country and there can be no doubt that the Agriculture Departments and the farmers together have stepped up agricultural production in this country to a point few would have believed possible before war broke out. As compared with pre-war years, the tillage area has increased up to 1942 by 53 per cent. I am informed that the total net output of agriculture, allowing for the big loss of imported feeding stuffs which agriculture has suffered, had gone up by 70 per cent. up to 1942, and that when the figures are revealed further important progress will be shown for 1943.

Would my hon. Friend say that 53 per cent. is the increase in the tillage area, in view of what the Air Forte and the Army have had to take over?

It is strange but true that 53 per cent. is precisely the figure for the increase in tillage. The Hot Springs Conference, in Resolution 12, urged that until the danger of actual hunger had been removed there should be concentration on the maximum acreage of human food crops. It recommends that:

"As a first step in overcoming the general shortage of food, every effort should be made by countries whose agriculture can be expanded in the short-term period, so long as this is required and so far as the conditions of individual countries require or permit, to increase the acreage under crops for direct human consumption, and even to hold back the rebuilding of depleted livestock herds."

Until the danger of actual hunger is past there should be a concentration on the maximum acreage of human food crops, even if this means postponing the restoration, of depleted livestock herds. So far as the production of such crops—bread grains, sugar beet, potatoes—is concerned, our effort is at full stretch, and we must maintain the high level of output that we have already reached. That does not mean that we should not take steps to move in the direction that my hon. Friends the Members for East Aber deen and West Perth indicated. What they were saying was comforting to me and to my right hon. Friends here, because it was evident to us that they were knocking at open doors. While it will be difficult, there will be opportunities from now on at least, of taking the first steps towards the restoration of our livestock output, which, as hon. Gentlemen have said in this Debate, has inevitably declined during the war as a result of the shortage of feeding stuffs. There can be no drastic change, no great increase in the herds, so long as the feeding stuffs situation remains as it is. In this respect, there is no real prospect of any great easement for some time to come. There can be no question of encroaching on human food crops, but there are means known to those who know agriculture whereby it will be possible to increase the herds to the extent that new leys will call for an increasing head of livestock; and in other directions the Agricultural Departments intend to take the first steps towards the restoration of the livestock output.

Supporters of the Amendment have laid emphasis on the question of quality of livestock. The hon. Member for West Perth, particularly, referred to the necessity of maintaining the quality of our breeding, and spoke of an export trade to the continent of Europe. The Government are very fully alive to the importance of high-quality stock for securing maximum production, and the improvement of breeding stock is one of the essentials of the agricultural policy of my right hon. Friend. But that does not mean that we can do what I believe my hon. Friends want now. They desire to encourage those who go in for high-grade livestock by altering the method of grading and the price structure. At present we grade up to 58 per cent. killing-out weight. In Angus, for example, if they are able to lay hands on the appropriate feeding-stuffs they can produce a better killing-out percentage. My hon. Friend the Member for West Perth referred to the meat ration. It is necessary for us to do all we can to produce meat. Therefore, we have had to concentrate on quantity and not quality. We have had to do the best we could with the feeding-stuffs at our disposal. There is no doubt that we could produce a better killing-out percentage than 58 per cent., but we could not get the quantity, and we could not confine it to one particular breed of cattle.

In the short run.

We could not prevent anybody else using these feeding stuffs in order to get a better killing-out percentage in a relatively short time. But we are helping the producers of high-grade beef cattle by making the special grade for 58 per cent. cattle operate in future from January to August, whereas in the past it has operated only from March to June. If my hon. Friend will accept that as some small assistance, I shall be grateful for his thanks. There is no reason to suppose that the present producers of high-grade beef cannot operate with advantage. They can make the output grade far more easily than the other producers of cattle. Let us only hope that we shall get back as soon as possible to the kind of assistance that my hon. Friend desires.

I have to skip about rather, because, although the first part of the Amendment is in very wide general terms, I have to deal with certain matters which are distinctly detailed. That makes my task more difficult. I want to turn to herring. There are always all sorts of rumours about the dumping of fish. Anyone who knows the trade knows that fish is often dumped because it is not in good condition on arrival. The hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. E. Walkden) mentioned a figure of dumping, which enables me to give precise figures for herring for the season 1943. I am sure he wanted to be told that what he was saying was not correct. I am glad to be able to do so.

That was my object.

I know. The hon. Member said that there was a rumour that 10 per cent. was dumped. In the season ending 31st October, 1943, the percentage dumped was .364 of 1 per cent.

Can my hon. Friend give any estimate of the percentage of herring, not dumped, but lost because the fishing fleet did not go to sea on 18 days?

Who can number the fish of the sea? I would not give an estimate of the number that might have been caught.

Does that mean that the only herring dumped in the fishing ports were dumped because they were in too soft a condition to travel?

No, the total number dumped in Scotland in 1943 was .364 of 1 per cent. from whatever reason, whether they could not be sold or were in bad condition.

Is that the percentage of the total?

Yes, Sir, that is my information from the Scottish Office and if it is wrong—and I do not believe it is—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State must take the responsibility. It would mean something if it were 10 per cent., so it may be given some significance as it is considerably less than 10 per cent. The hon. Gentleman when speaking about herring was not speaking really to the Amendment. I was not asked by him in his speech to say what we are doing about herring in the future. He made instead particular reference to herrings this year. He is right when he says that the herrings were in abundant quantities in the sea this year but he knows too that not until the herring season began were certain grounds released to the catchers and that the Ministry of Food had no reason to know that those grounds from which the herrings were taken were going to be released. He knows that in the early days the herrings were not being caught in such quantities and he probably knows that in nine weeks more herrings were caught than in the preceding 28 weeks. That created, naturally, a difficulty and then came the matter of prices.

The hon. Member has challenged me. If the Ministry of Food did not know that the Admiralty were going to make these grounds available, why did not they know and why did not they request the Admiralty long ago to make them available as it was their duty to do?

We do our best and, as my hon. Friend knows, when he made a request that certain other grounds should be made available, we at once passed forward the request and it was turned down.

This is a vitally important point. The hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) made his case so clearly that a very large fleet of herring drifters were tied up at the quayside day after day because there was no market for the fish, and it ought to be answered.

I think the hon. Member is anticipating me. Then came the matter of prices. The maximum price of herring was 98s. a cran. On examination the returns justified a reduction to 91s. a cran. The hon. Gentleman is right, there was inadequate consultation with the herring fishermen. We admit that; we admitted it at the time and we can wipe that away. A price of 91s. a cran is still, in our opinion, a price which gives a very fair return. We have said throughout that, if there is objection to that price on the ground that it is inadequate, the Ministry of Food is prepared to institute an inquiry on two conditions, first, that the inquiry shall be public and secondly, that the accounts shall be revealed. What happened. The herring were caught in much greater quantities than were anticipated and, not only did the price drop, but the herring fishermen determined that they would limit their catches. We did what we could, though there may be those that think it was inadequate. At that time there were only two restrictions on herring. Let me digress to emphasise that herrings did not come within the fish zoning scheme. What were the two restrictions? We do not pay carriage from one port of landing to another. We will not pay for sending fish from Fleetwood to Grimsby. The other restriction was that we limited the purchases of catering establishments. On 23rd August, in order to help the situation, we withdrew these two restrictions.

Far too late.

It was when the glut was at its height.

It was ending.

So much for the conditions this year. It has always been the objective of the Department that herrings should be eaten fresh. There has always been a limited demand in this country for cured herrings. The cured-herring market, as hon. Members have said, was overseas. One hon. Member suggested that the Ministry of Food might institute a campaign on the lines of "Eat more potatoes" and that it should say "Eat more herrings". We know to our sorrow what would happen if we were to say "Eat more herrings"; there would be no herring. It is not an article of food, the supplies of which are certain, as in the case of potatoes. Herring is in an almost unique position among the food supplies of this country. It is the only article of food that we commonly export in substantial quantities. My right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) is at the present time Chairman of the Committee on the Herring Industry and I have no doubt that he will produce solutions of some of the post-war problems. The post-war position of herrings is clearly going to be important in the feeding of Europe and we must do what we can.

I am very glad that this Debate has taken place to-day. People are making speeches about the brave new world in which there shall be freedom from want, but a great many people seem to forget the basic want, which is food. A world of white and glowing civic centres will, be little satisfying to people who still remain hungry. It is therefore notable that the Prime Minister, in his recent speech in the country with his peculiar instinct for putting first things first, and His Majesty in the Gracious Speech should give pride of place in their forecast of post-war plans to food. The world has never been fully nourished. That is stated plainly in Resolution 3 of the Hot Springs Conference, and the Conference made plans to secure that the world is fully nourished. If that is to be so, there is implied a vastly increased pressure on the food supplies of the world, and that means we are going to need a vastly increased production. Whatever we do we shall need imports of food. We shall not get these imports of food given. We shall have to produce in return for them what our suppliers want at prices they are prepared to pay. We shall in short have to work for our food. That is why there is such force in the Amendment, in its stress on the need for us to do our best to secure from our own resources what we can to obtain for our own people, with our own hands and from our own fertility, as much as we may to satisfy those needs.

I should not like to give the impression that I am satisfied with the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary in any way. Nevertheless, despite that fact, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

I want to take up the time of the House for only a minute or two, Mr. Speaker, with regard to the attendance here to-day. I have taken no part in the proceedings of the two important Debates which have been going on but from what I have been told they have been poorly attended.

The poor attendance arises for a very simple reason. Hon. Members, on the assumption that we should not be sitting here to-day, weeks ago made their arrangements to be elsewhere, and I want to appeal to the Patronage Secretary—who has given this extra day so that Members could have more time for the Debate on the Address—to see whether he can give hon. Members longer notice. It is not in the public interest that the Press should be in the position of being able to report that the House to-day was very thin. You cannot blame hon. Members, because many have to make engagements a long way ahead Therefore, I hope it will, be possible to, arrange, through, the usual channels, that when it is decided that it is in the public interest that there should be a fourth Sitting Day as long notice as possible should be given so that Members who might wish to be present for important Debates could be present. We know what a difficult task the Chief Whip has, and we all recognise the delightful and competent way in which he discharges it. I am not saying what I have been saying out of any hostility; my only desire is to be helpful. We all know the kind of stuff that newspapers say about a poor attendance here, and I think it is just as well that I should make the point I have made.

Further to what my hon. Friend has said, I think we might have had a larger attendance here to-day if we had had the honour of a larger attendance of Ministers. I do not think that is asking too much that at least one Minister of Cabinet rank should appear in a Debate as important as the food Debate we have had to-day. That Debate went on for three hours, and so far as I know at no part of that time was the House honoured by the presence of the Minister responsible. Parliamentary Secretaries do their best, and they do very well, but nobody expects an announcement of great importance to be made by a Parliamentary Secretary in a Debate such as we have had. The Minister usually reserves that to himself. As I have said, I think we might have been honoured by the presence of at least one responsible Minister during that Debate.

I would like to associate myself with most of the remarks which have been made on this point and with the remarks the hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams) made about the Patronage Secretary, who, I think, performs, and has performed during these last few years, a most difficult task in a wonderful way. I think the small attendance here to-day is due to some extent to the fact that old tradition about Fridays is still hanging about the House. They used to be Private Members' days, and while I hope that we shall have more time in the future for Private Members I have always recognised that we must use that time in a more satisfactory way than it has been used hitherto. This poor attendance is, a survival of that old Friday tradition, when we came along in our sports clothes and kept looking at the clock to see whether we could catch the one o'clock train.

It is an extraordinary thing that we should have an attendance which at any time could be counted on the fingers of two hands, as compared with the tremendous House that persisted all day on Wednesday, when we were discussing a matter which, though of considerable constitutional importance so far as its immediate application is concerned, was of a most trivial kind, whereas the subject to-day has been of fundamental, long-term importance. Those who took part in the Debate need feel no regrets about it. Their speeches are there on record and will, no doubt, make some impression on the Government, though I know that is hoping for a good lot. I do not think that hon. Members suffered from the fact that they had not a crowded, excited, hysterical audience to take them off the main trend of their addresses or to goad them into saying things which, however clever, would have been no addition to the sum total of our knowledge. I also associate myself with what the hon. Member for South Croydon said, that, if we are going to have four-day weeks, we should have as much advance knowledge of it as possible, and I want the Parliamentary Secretary to consider, if we are going to put in an extra day, whether the beginning of the week is not better than the end.

I should like to associate myself with those who have spoken and to draw particular attention to the fact that this Debate primarily concerns the production of food at home by the British fishing and farming industries. That is not the direct charge of the Ministry of Food. Both industries are the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. I am particularly interested in the fisheries part of it, and I spoke on it, but the representative of the Government did not say a word about the white fishing industry, which is infinitely greater than the herring industry. The Parliamentary Secretary came here to-day with a prepared brief which he read to us and I say in the kindest possible fashion that it bore no relation to the actual Debate.

It is not in Order to go back and debate the question that we have already decided. On the Adjournment we cannot go back to what we have just been discussing.

I defer at all times to your Ruling, Sir, with the greatest respect, but I am bound to join in that protest, particularly in regard to the fisheries. No one could say that it claims too much of the attention of the House. I sometimes wonder whether, if I hailed the Minister of Agriculture as the Minister of Fisheries, he would realise that I was addressing him, because we do not spend any time on that great industry. It is a matter for serious thought, and I appeal to my hon. Friends on the front bench that, in discussing the important matters that have been discussed, we should have the attendance of more representatives of the Government than the Parliamentary Secretary of a Department which is not directly concerned with food production.

I should like to thank my hon. Friends for all the things they have said about myself. I assure them that our desire is, and the Government's desire is, to meet the convenience of the House as far as possible. As to the Debate to-day, I am not going into anything to do with the Amendment, but I think it is only right to say that the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby), who moved it, asked that a representative of the Ministry of Food should be here. The Minister of Food himself would no doubt have been here, but that was not possible because he is away attending an important conference elsewhere. With regard to the length of notice, the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council, in the opening speech on the Address, warned the House that Business might make it necessary for us to sit on additional days in this Session, and he went into some detail as to Business arrangements which I need not deal with now. The actual notice of our intention to sit to-day was given on 25th November, that is, eight days ago.

With regard to the future, I think that when we have embarked on the work of the Session we shall be able to see a little more clearly, and I will certainly remember the desire of hon. Members to have the longest possible warning. With regard to the suggestion of the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) about the additional day being on some other day, I can only repeat once more that the Government wish to meet the convenience of hon. Members. I think that to most Ministers it would make little difference as to which day of the week we sat upon. Those days to which the hon. Member referred in the piping days of peace we have put behind us. We do not think of that sort of thing any longer, even though we may regret it sometimes. I will bear in mind what hon. Members have said. My hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Robertson) will understand the reason for the absence of the Minister of Food. The other Departments were well represented by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture and the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland. We were informed after a discussion that, generally speaking, this Debate was an affair for the Ministry of Food, and that is the explanation of the manner in which it was handled.

The Patronage Secretary has made an admirable and characteristically courteous speech. I have risen to ask him not to consider the request of the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Maxton) as representing the unanimous view of the House. I say that from knowledge after having tried to ascertain what were the views of hon. Members who have long distances to travel. I am not prejudging the matter, but I only wish to make it clear that there are differences of opinion upon which should be the extra day upon which the House should sit.

I wish to assure the hon. Member that we will have discussions on these matters, and I think they will be very prolonged ones.

I hope that the Patronage Secretary will appreciate that I was only endeavouring to speak for myself and not for anybody above the Gangway.