I have to inform the House that I have received Messages of Congratulation upon the Victory in Europe of the Allied Nations, from the Presidents of the Chambers of Egypt, Guatemala and Costa Rica, and have caused appropriate replies to be sent.

Hear, hear.

The House will have learned this morning of the new distinctions which have been created by His Majesty for service in the war. It is now some 14 months since we debated this subject, and hon. Members will have noticed, in that interval, one or two events which seem to call for recognition.

The new campaign stars are six in number—the Atlantic Star, the Air Crew Europe Star, the Italy Star, the France and Germany Star, the Pacific Star and the Burma Star. They will commemorate the feats of arms, the endurance and the courage of our Forces by sea, land and air and of our Merchant Navy in the main theatres of war. Two new stars for operations in the East will also mark the service of those who have gone out, or go out in the future, to finish the war against the Japanese.

The ribbons are now being woven with full priority and issues will begin within a very short time. The stars have not been struck, but I will with Mr. Speaker's permission put a case containing all the ribbons in the Tea Room if it is thought that that would be of interest to Members who would like to see them. The troops are particularly pleased to be able to mount them.

The currency of the 1939–43 Star has been prolonged until this month and the award will be described for the present as the "1939–45 Star," that is to meet the time involved. At the same time His Majesty the King has approved the award of this Star and the African Star to the same individual. Hitherto only one or the other could be worn. The maximum number of stars granted to any one recipient will be five.

His Majesty has also instituted a gilt rose emblem to be worn on the ribbon of the 1939–45 Star for air-crews of fighter aircraft engaged in the Battle of Britain between July and 31st October, 1940. The ribbons of these Stars will be coming out now, but I cannot promise a date for the actual stars to be struck. They have been most carefully considered so that every difficulty that we can foresee has been dealt with. The matters were of extreme complication, but we have tried to meet all objections. No doubt there will be some improvement which can be suggested later, and I do not say that anything is absolutely final in the sense that a reasonably hard case could not conceivably be considered.

The Defence Medal is intended to recognise the service here of Forces from the Dominions which stood by us in a time of the gravest need, and it will also be awarded, subject to a three years' qualification, to those citizens of this country who, during the years of danger, served here in the Forces, the Home Guard, the National Fire Service, the Police and Civil Defence. This medal will touch about 7,000,000 people, and recognises the struggle against the enemies' air and bomb attacks.

His Majesty has given much time to the subject and has considered and designed all these ribbons himself, but, of course, on all questions likely to involve controversy, I am the responsible Minister. If there are any complaints, they should be addressed to me, and I shall be very ready to deal with them. Many of the decisions that have to be taken will undoubtedly raise points of difference as there are always border-line cases. A substantial and complicated White Paper, every word of which has been the result of prolonged discussion by an expert committee, sitting through all these months, and on which all the Services have been represented, is now in the Vote Office.

The right hon. Gentleman's statement will of course give widespread satisfaction. But does he recall that in the Debate, great insistence was placed on the claims of the anti-aircraft units in Great Britain, many of whom were embodied before the outbreak of war and who have given long and consistent service of quite a unique, character? Has it been found impossible to include their claims in these recommendations?

No, Sir, they are all eligible for the Defence Medal if they have served for three years.

Is it not the same distinction as is given to civilians? Has it been found impossible to give any special recognition to these units who did fight in the Battle of Britain?

There will be a great many people who will come into this Defence Medal, and of course service abroad will be additional to that. It covers all those who took part in the Battle of Britain, both at the time and afterwards.

I am sure that the nation and the Forces will be grateful for and satisfied with the statement made by the Prime Minister, particularly in regard to the Defence Medal for the service rendered by Forces of the Dominions. I want, however, to ask a question which is troubling the minds of many and perhaps this is an appropriate occasion for the Prime Minister to deal with the point. It is whether the Home Guard are to be recognised in this respect.

Yes, Sir, the Home Guard will come into the new Defence Medal. I might easily get into trouble in answering these questions, and I give this general warning that any questions I may answer wrongly will be corrected by the document which should now be available in the Vote Office; but the Atlantic Star is

"intended to commemorate the Battle of the Atlantic and is designed primarily for Convoys and their Escorts and Anti-Submarine forces, as well as for fast Merchant ships that sailed alone. The Atlantic Star is to be granted for six months service afloat, in the Navy, in the Atlantic and Home waters, since the 3rd September, 1939, and until the 8th May, 1945, the date of the end of active hostilities in Europe and the Atlantic."

It can be worn in addition to the 1939–45 Star.

May I ask my right hon. Friend, subject to the proviso he has made, whether Army Welfare Officers who have given unpaid service for many years are to be included in the home Defence Medal?

Among the services eligible are the following: Wardens Service, Rescue Service, Decontamination Service, Report and Control Service, Messenger Service, Ambulance Service, First-Aid Service, Rest Centre Service, Emergency Food Service, Canteen Service, Emergency Information Service, Mortuary Service.

Are the W.V.S. who worked in close co-operation with Civil Defence to be included?

Under head ( p ), will be seen:

"Women's Voluntary Services for Civil Defence. Members of the W.V.S. may qualify if ( a ) they are enrolled in an eligible local authority Civil Defence, ( b ) they perform duties analogous to those of one of the eligible local authority Civil Defence Services and the section of the W.V.S. to which they belong is one which functions operationally during or immediately after enemy attacks."

The right hon. Gentleman will remember that after the last war many who were disabled and honourably discharged and who received a pension, received also a certificate, which is to be found in many homes. There is an agitation now for mothers to receive better pensions or a differing rate, but they have no certificate, no document, nothing with which to exhibit the pride or sadness they feel, nothing to display in their homesteads. Is any certificate likely to be issued, apart from the other argument concerning pensions for mothers who have lost their sons?

I would like to look into that. My memory is that when I was Secretary of State for War after the last war, I signed a great number of certificates which were hung up in the houses. I certainly think that should be considered, if it has not already been considered, but so far we have only approached this complicated question of medals, in which soldiers take such a very keen interest. I have not been able to consider the certificates. I also think a matter which ought to be considered is the appointing of certain days when persons entitled to wear medals should wear them on their civilian clothes, certain days of ceremony and holiday; otherwise in the case of those who have not uniforms it will hardly ever be known what they were. We must never forget these medals are the poor man's escutcheon.

Is the Prime Minister aware that the decision to withhold an operational Star from the Ack-Ack Command in this country, who took a substantial part in shooting down German bombers and a major part in shooting down V.I, will arouse most bitter disappointment? Will my right hon. Friend reconsider that decision?

I do not think it is so. The home Defence Medal is an operational medal. For a long time I thought it would be impossible to meet the claim of the Ack-Ack batteries, much though I desired to do so, but owing to the institution of this new medal they can receive a decoration of very great honour. As far as the casualties are concerned, the rate of casualties in the fire brigades far exceeded that in the Ack-Ack Command.

Will part-time Civil Defence workers qualify, and if men were wounded and invalided out after serving less than three years in Anti-Air-craft or Civil Defence, will they be included?

My impression is that with all these Stars which have any time-limit attached to them, if a person has to leave the Service through having a wound, he gets the decoration. I am not quite sure about the part-time people.

May I ask my right hon. Friend whether, in calculating the time for the Air Crew Europe Star, he will take into consideration the fact that on 10th May, the prescribed date of the opening of the Battle of Britain, about half a dozen fighter squadrons fought very gloriously against tremendous odds at the end of the Battle of France, and could not they wear the Silver Rose Emblem?

I should think they certainly would be included in the wearing of the Silver Rose Emblem. I think I shall have to consider that, because we are keeping the Battle of Britain as such very closely to those who actually saved the State.

Is there also to be a general service and Allied ribbon in addition to the Stars and Medals?

We must not get our firmament too full. The limits of the human breast also introduce cautionary ideas, but I should think there would be a United Nations Medal at the end of the war. I think the Defence Medal will probably complete the story as far as Great Britain is concerned. Over 7,000,000 are affected by it.

With further reference to the point made by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Keeling), may I ask the Prime Minister, with great respect, to bear in mind that the White Paper does distinctly describe the Defence Medal as non-operational—it emphasises the word "non-operational"—and could he not consider a special category of the Defence Medal for men and women in the Ack-Ack Command in coastal areas, who were very strictly operational in their work?

The same fight might begin again over that. If they had a letter, an initial, or some small badge or emblem on their ribbon, I suppose all the non-flying personnel, amounting to hundreds of thousands, might ask for it also; but if I thought it could stop there, I would be very glad to do something. I will consider the matter.

I wish to ask you a question, Mr. Speaker, about the report in HANSARD of the proceedings yesterday when this House attended at the Royal Gallery to present an Address to His Majesty and receive a reply. There is what appears to me to be a rather inadequate report of the proceedings. The statement in HANSARD reads:

"Mr. Speaker and the House went to attend His Majesty…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th May, 1945; Vol. 410, c. 2595.]

It does not state where. It does not state anything about the proceedings, or give any description of the proceedings; whereas on the occasion when the House attended to give thanks at St. Margaret's, not only was there a description of the proceedings, but the whole of the Service was incorporated. I venture to suggest that HANSARD might be improved if a full report of the proceedings which occurred yesterday were given in it.

First of all the speech. We cannot record speeches in the House of Lords, and the Lord Chancellor's speech was made with the other place sitting. Our proceedings are recorded in the OFFICIAL REPORT either the day before or yesterday. The hon. Member says that the report does not mention the Royal Gallery, but the day before we had received His Majesty's Command to attend in the Royal Gallery, and this was recorded. Naturally we went there and not anywhere else.

May I submit further, with all deference to what you, Sir, have said, that it would be worth while on this very historic occasion to have a full statement in HANSARD recording the proceedings of what actually happened, including the Royal Gallery? I do not know whether I may refer to the report of proceedings in another place, but they mention that their Lordships attended in the Royal Gallery. I think we might do the same.

There is a reason here, I fancy, because another place did not sit on Wednesday, so they had no way of recording where they were directed to meet His Majesty. So they recorded that they had met in the Royal Gallery.

Would it not be most undesirable to depart from ordinary procedure? The hon. Member said this is a unique case. It is nothing of the sort. We have done so on other occasions in the past. We did after the last war and have always had a proper way of recording it in HANSARD. I hope we shall not depart from that.

There is one omission. The Prime Minister gave three cheers for His Majesty. I wonder if that could be included.

I did so, after taking very high constitutional advice from the Lord Chancellor.

I should like to raise some questions which very conveniently fall between the two hon. Gentlemen the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information and the Under-Secretary to the Foreign Office, who are now sitting opposite me. I am very grateful to them for being in their places to-day, and if I say that the matters that we are discussing can only be considered at Cabinet level, they will appreciate that the absence of the Cabinet Ministers, though I understand the reason for it, makes it a little difficult for us to obtain the kind of reply which we want. I say this question falls between two Departments, but it may fall between many others. Hon. Members in many parts of the House are supporting me; and others went away last night like the hon. Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Bartlett) who would otherwise have spoken. Most of us for some reason or other have been privileged to visit other countries for a short period during the war, and we have all been impressed by the very high prestige which the British Broadcasting Service has achieved in all those countries. There are many stories which we could all tell. I recall one little incident in Paris about two months ago. I asked a professor of the Lycée at about quarter to nine whether we could listen in, as there was a Division in the House. He said: "Of course. This is the normal thing to do. Incidentally, when during the war we found criticisms being made even of your Prime Minister, and still more heard him coming back at his critics to the House of Commons, we breathed again because we knew that liberty was alive." That is a feeling which has been expressed very widely all over the Continent, and it is not confined merely to broadcasting, although in war-time that was the main instrument. The fact that we are going to have an early Debate on the international situation makes this question even more important.

We are concerned with foreign overseas publicity, whether it is rendered by the British Council, the Ministry of Information, the Foreign Office publicity service, or by the Foreign Languages Department for Overseas Broadcasting, which is somewhere between the Ministry of Information and the B.B.C. I want to make it absolutely clear that we are not concerned with the domestic problem. I should like to see the regional and local information committees abolished forthwith. I see no point in their remaining. I say so as one who had one of the best war commentaries in Kilmarnock, but I think the time for that is finished, and we are in no sense supporting a continuation of the Ministry of Information on the domestic front. We are concerned, however, with policy at Cabinet level, and we would stress that this question is essentially inter-Departmental.

May I give a brief historical sketch, because we want to know where we are? It was not until the thirties, when the shadow of war was looming, that the Government began to enter the field of foreign publicity, in which the Governments of other Powers were already acting. About 1934 the British Council was created, and later, I think after Munich, there was broadcasting of news services in German, Italian, French and Arabic. It was only when the war started that we went into this business with great seriousness. The Government collected a first class staff, and I appreciate that those men and women could not necessarily be gathered together in peace time. The work was co-ordinated and, as I understand it, there were three Departments concerned, the Ministry of Information, the Foreign Office, and I believe the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Three highly placed civil servants acted for Ministers. We wish to make it clear that that position was unique. That was war.

We do not expect that organisation to continue after the war. Obviously conditions have changed, but there are different sections of publicity which I think can be distinguished. There is purely political warfare, which I hope will be discontinued, there is propaganda, there is publicity, there are what are called cultural contacts, library service and so forth, and there is the work which is now being done purely by the British Council. The reason why we are anxious is that we see signs of curtailment in all three, and possibly something more serious. Let me take the work of the British Council. We understand that a limit has been set to its budget. We understand that a Committee has been sitting for three months, that the governing body of the British Council has not yet been allowed to see its report, which seems to be an extraordinary thing, and therefore the atmosphere within the British Council is one of complete uncertainty. To my personal knowledge many distinguished people have already gone back to academic life, because they have to think of their careers, and unless you have first-class people in this organisation, it is impossible to keep up the standard which has been secured, particularly during the war, because before the war the British Council was only a very small instrument.

Therefore, we would like to have an assurance that the Government have thought out the future of the British Council. It is impossible to think of it separately from the other services. Let me take an example. It is said now that no directives in foreign broadcasting are necessary; that European countries can do their own broadcasts; that this service has no connection with the domestic listeners' licence, that is to say, when people pay their 10s. they are not paying for some overseas service; and that it is dangerous to make the broadcasting service the mouthpiece of the Foreign Office. I have referred to the British Council and to the overseas broadcasts, and my hon. Friends on the Government Bench may ask which of these I am really considering. I cannot separate them. Again, it would be a calamity if the British Information Services, which some of us have seen in the United States, were closed down. I understand that the right hon. Gentlemen who have just been to San Francisco share that view. Therefore, we are fortified by powerful and independent views.

Why have these foreign services risen to the heights they have? I suggest that it is because in every case they have stressed the truth. It has not been in the ordinary sense a propaganda service. It was said to me yesterday that any commercial body would buy the goodwill which has been built up for millions of pounds. I do not believe there is to be an immediate closing down, but I understand that in broadcasting there is to be a curtailment from 23 languages to, possibly, three or four. I have information that in certain countries in Europe, which are small and in some cases less known, the demand for more objective news has to be seen to be believed. I have a letter from a friend of mine in Greece, and he says that when an offer was made to teach English to the children, 14,000 immediately asked for it. In other cases they want a radio service in English. We cannot make distinctions between radio and lecturing and films, for these are all media which are used by different Government Departments. In another country, which I will not mention, apparently there is a great demand for a radio English teaching service. The Minister said in his reply to me yesterday that there was complete co-ordination between these bodies. I do not want to quote persons who are employed, but I have had some connection with all three of these in different capacities and at their invitation, and I find that the co-ordination is not quite in accordance with my right hon. Friend's answer.

It does seem to me that this is the time of all times when we ought not to throw away the goodwill that has grown up. I do not know whether hon. Members really think that the war, apart from the fighting, is over in Europe. I do not see, looking across Europe at the present moment, the sudden spectacle of peace. It is not for me to speak about other parts of the world, for hon. Members here have been to the Pacific and the Middle East, but I do know that in these coming months the voice of Britain ought more than ever to be heard very clearly.

My hon. Friend has just mentioned the Pacific and the Middle East, and I want to be clear how he relates his earlier remarks about the curtailment of services and languages being reduced from 23 to 4. Was he then discussing the European service, or is he now suggesting that there is to be a world-wide curtailment?

I will come to that in a moment. Our broadcasting service, I have been told by a number of foreign nationals, has meant more to them than their own radio services. That is a big thing to say. Apparently they have learned something from our technique. I have always been interested in the education section. I have thought that it would be rather an invasion to suggest that we should do work from our school section in other countries, but I understand that the invitation has come from other countries. I do not know whether hon. Members realise that in Greece, France and Belgium there is a chronic shortage of books and equipment. In Malmedy the Germans have nazified a whole mass of children. After eight months, we have not yet got books into Paris. I made inquiries to find whether books have gone, and I understand that W. H. Smith's shop in Rue Rivoli has been empty for the last three or four months. I do not know who is responsible for this, but it falls apparently between the British Council, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Information Foreign Department.

My Noble Friend the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) asked whether I was referring also to the Pacific and Middle East. I cannot make a distinction between different parts of the world. It is largely a question of organisation, and actually distinctions have to be made. I believe that North America, which includes Canada as well as the United States, comes under one branch in broadcasting, but I do not understand why Turkey is lumped in with the Pacific. Other European sections are dealt with in another branch. It is a question of organisation. I am considering the worldwide putting across of the British point of view. The Noble Lord the Member for Horsham and Worthing (Earl Winterton) was speaking to me about this earlier, and I would like to make it clear to him that I am not in favour of what is called a totalitarian or Government Department running the overseas news service. There was an excellent article in the "New Statesman" last week suggesting one sort of set-up, and I thought it a good one. It said:

These are my points. First, there must be a policy. We have the best news service of Europe and the world at the moment. Other countries have not even the technical facilities. Do not let us throw that opportunity away. Second, I think we still have a point of view in this country which is very important. I hear every other point of view put across in Europe, but we have only a few odd lecturers. My hon. Friend the Member for West Leicester (Mr. H. Nicolson), who knows France so well, gave two or three lectures which were crowded out. There are many other things that can be done. There are many men and women in France who, at the risk of their lives, looked after our airmen. I would like to see these people brought here and given some recognition. Whose job is that? Our soldiers, sailors and airmen have done a clean job of liberation, and I want that to be followed up by making known both to Europe and elsewhere the kind of views which most people, irrespective of party, in this country share, whether by films, radio, books, exhibitions or lectures.

La Lutte Scolaire in Belgium, La Jeunesse in France—I did not know those were such live questions. My hon. Friend knows how real they are. They are interested in the A.T.C., etc.; I did not know they were. They are immensely interested in the solution of our religious problems in regard to education. All I want to see is that the right organisation is set up, that it is not purely bureaucratic, that we get the best staff and that we have a guaranteed budget from the Cabinet. Whether a portion of it goes to the British Council and a portion somewhere else, is not the question at the moment; it is for the Government to show us their proposals. What we demand is a policy, and a policy before it is too late.

12.46 p.m.

I believe by far the best exportable commodity that we possess in this country consists of the facts concerning our way of life and our war effort. The trouble is that owing to a multiplicity of authorities that exportable commodity is becoming a little too invisible. All over liberated Europe and throughout the Middle East there is an intense desire to learn more about us. That desire in the Middle East is based largely on the great admiration which our feat of arms has won. In Europe, being in closer proximity to us, it is based not only on admiration for our feat of arms but upon a deeper gratitude, because in every recently liberated country those who lived under German occupation realise that in 1940 and 1941 when we were alone it was only our island and our overseas Dominions who stood between them and Nazi domination for generations to come. They want to know much more about us than we have been able to tell them up to now, whether by the B.B.C., the British Council or by the British newspapers which we have despatched overseas. They are extremely curious about us. They want to know how it is that we are so free and yet so well disciplined, so progressive and yet so careful of our ancient customs, so efficient with particular reference to our war effort and yet so unwilling to blow our own trumpet.

I would suggest to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who is to reply, that at an early date we should make an attempt to send into liberated Europe and the Middle East pictorial records of our war effort. What a story we would have to tell, of London in the blitz, of the Atlantic and Russian convoys which crossed, and of the men and women in the Services. But I do not think we need stop at our war effort. There is something more permanent and lasting that we ought to put across to them. It would be well for us to remember that over a very large area in Europe, for millions of people the only form of social services which they have hitherto experienced have been those social services which have been imposed upon them by dictatorship régimes. We might tell them that our social services in this country are unsurpassed anywhere in the world and are equalled only in those countries where English is spoken. We might tell them far more than we have hitherto told them, of the great Measures for education, family allowances, health and national insurance which are now before this House. I recollect that not many months ago when the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary was in Rome he made a very great impression on the Italian Ministers by his description not only of our war effort but also of our social services in this country. Now is the time to strike—now, and not to-morrow—because there is this tremendous thirst for knowledge of Britain, and we should do all we can to quench this thirst without undue delay. Above all, whichever is the best method of projecting our way of life, let us avoid weakening that projection by too many Government Departments. Let us canalise it under one main authority so that it will operate at its fullest strength.

12.52 p.m.

We all welcome the opportunity of considering the excellent case which has been put to the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay). He has expressed a view of which the House must take note. I hope the Government will regard this problem in the same comprehensive manner in which he has put the facts. Now that the Ministry of Information is in process of dissolution and the British Council is being reorganised, I hope the Government will produce a policy and some organisation which will preserve the very excellent work which has been built up during the war, in order to carry further the purposes which a great deal of that effort was designed to serve.

I would refer briefly to several pieces of work by the organisations which have been referred to, because at the moment there is great danger that this work may be brought to an end. I wish, first of all, to speak about the British Council before talking about the overseas work of the Ministry of Information. No one has been more critical of the constitution of the British Council or has pleaded that it should be more broadly based with a wider conception of British culture and of the British way of life than I have. Nevertheless, I think the possibilities of that Council, with machinery which is better adapted for its purposes, are enormous, In view of the fact that the machinery has been outstripped by the functions which are performed by that Council, I hope the Report which has been submitted to the Government will be very carefully considered, not with a view to curtailing the kind of work which the Council has been doing but to secure a better type of organisation and to make that body much more effective for the work it has to do. I gather that the House will have an opportunity of hearing in due course the views of the Government upon the Report which has been submitted to them. I also gather from the reply which has been given by the Minister that the House will be able to debate the future of the Council.

I would point out that at the moment there is not only a feeling of great resentment in the Council that it has not had the privilege of studying the Report which has been made as to its future, its working, its scope and its purposes, but also a feeling of uncertainty among the officials. As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock has pointed out, there is real danger that some of the men who have played an effective part in the work of the Council may be obliged, because of that uncertainty, to seek employment further afield. It is therefore of importance that we should know, at an early date, what the intentions of the Government are. At the moment the work in regard to Europe is not going ahead as rapidly as it should. The Council's budget is being very severely curtailed, and so far as bringing Britain and the British way of life to the closer attention and knowledge of our Colonial Dependencies is concerned, I understand considerable cuts in contemplated expenditure and plans are being made. It is because of this uncertainty that the Council cannot get on effectively with the work which it wants to do. The matter is troubling us, and we would like the Government to address themselves to it.

I hope that the Government will be able to tell us very soon what, in their judgment, is the kind of machine they wish to evolve for this work. The Government know that, while they must be severely critical as to the necessity for economy in expenditure, the purposes which the Council is fulfilling are vitally important and that excellent work has been done. There are great possibilities, if the Council is broadly based and if a broad view of its reponsibility in the wider field of what may be termed the British way of life is taken. Meantime, the work is being curtailed, and I hope that not only this House but the British Council itself may have an opportunity of studying the proposals of the Government in regard to any new constitution and duties.

The second point to which I wish to direct attention is the position of the Ministry of Information in the United States. British Information Services there have done a remarkable piece of work. Those of us who have had the privilege of seeing that office, whether in New York, Washington, Chicago, or wherever it may be, have left very happy that an organisation of this type has been at work. It has fulfilled its duties with a high sense of purpose on behalf of this country, and it has brought into that service men and women admirably equipped for the kind of work which needed to be done. They have built up a service of immense importance not only to this country but also to America—whether it is the library, or giving out information regarding the economic problems of this country or the social and political development of Britain or of our social services, or whether in regard to films, or the various activities in our own public life. In all those respects a magnificent job has been done. The information goes out day by day and week by week to the American Press and to all types of organisation, voluntary bodies and others, functioning in the United States. It would be a thousand pities that an organisation such as this, with its experience, its contacts and its knowledge of American feeling and American life, should be brought to an end because of the demise of the Ministry of Information.

I would therefore urge that this point should receive the most careful attention of the Government. I have my doubts whether this kind of work can be satisfactorily performed even by the Foreign Office, because possibly a great deal of the work might become tainted with the suspicion that Britain is concerned with propaganda. A great deal of the present work has been done by people who have been specially trained to do it; they have brought to it a tremendous enthusiasm—too often not found in embassies and legations overseas—together with a knowledge of the public and of the ramifications of the various classes of society in the countries in which they are doing their work. They have thus done an excellent job, and I doubt whether the Foreign Office machinery itself could have done it as well.

To illustrate this, one has only to see how the work is performed in a centre such as Chicago, where it is very important that an understanding of British life and policy should be built up, and where a great deal of propaganda is done through the Press at our expense. You see the British Information Service functioning there alongside a section of the Foreign Office. I am certain that the job would have been very badly done if it had been left to the Foreign Office representatives. We have in Chicago Ministry of Information men who know how to make contacts, who know the kind of information which America seeks and what contacts should be utilised to our advantage in various parts of the country. All that has made our work in Chicago extraordinarily successful. I mention it to show that it is bad for the Ministry of Information to go out of business and just hand over a few of its remnants to the Foreign Office and hope that our legations and embassies will pay proper attention to them. I doubt whether the embassies would take the trouble to engage the right people or make the kinds of contact on which the success of the work so largely depends.

I would also point out another section of the work of the Ministry of Information which has also been of great value in a field in which I am particularly interested. There is a film unit in regard to the Colonial services where, in order to bring a knowledge of British life to the notice of native populations, a very special technique has been built up in the making of films. A unit of exceptional efficiency has been created. Is that film unit to go out of business and the excellent work it is performing to cease? Is the technique that it has evolved as a result of very close study of native audiences no longer to be followed? It is important, because of our responsibility to the Colonial peoples and of their thirst to know something about Britain, that that work should go forward.

I therefore hope that the plea which has been put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock will be heeded by the Government and that we shall be given a full assurance that the good work built up during the war will not be lost but continued and developed in the days of peace.

12.5 p.m.

The whole House is much indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) for arranging this opportunity to discuss this very important matter today. It seems hardly necessary to add one word to his admirable speech, because if I may say so, he put the whole position very clearly, and with great vision. There is however just one issue which I would like to develop briefly. I believe that the future peace of the world depends very largely on building up international understanding between the peoples of all countries. In the past we have made the mistake of relying almost entirely on diplomatic levels, and to some extent commercial levels, from the pure angle of commercialism, and we have entirely failed to try and bring together the ordinary people of all countries with a view to obtaining a real knowledge of each other's problems and aspirations.

I had the great good fortune, through an invitation given to me by the Minister of Information, to visit China, Afghanistan, India, Persia, Turkey, Malta and North Africa, and to make as many contacts with the peoples of those countries as was possible in rather brief visits. As all the other speakers to-day have said, one realised the tremendous desire in all those countries for an interchange of knowledge. It was very impressive in China to visit refugee universities to which students were pouring in from occupied China, studying under most difficult conditions, with no equipment, with no books, under very bad conditions, and to find the real interest there was in what was going on in Great Britain, and the purposes for which Great Britain stood in the life of the world. As I see it, if we in this country can bring the peoples of other nations together, we shall indeed make a contribution to the future. The British Council, for which I have always had a great admiration, has arranged, over a period of years, to bring to this country various groups of people, and for various groups of people from this country to visit other lands, maybe from the scientific world, the educational world, or the industrial or the professional world. There can be, I am certain, no better way to obtain an interchange between the nationals of other countries and of this country than by bringing over these groups of people. I found it extremely inspiring to meet in China young men and young women and people of professional status, who are anxious to come over here and get to know our way of life.

The moment to prepare our organisation is now. There is so much good will towards Great Britain throughout the world that to dissipate it seems to me to be sheer madness. One realises, of course, that the Departments concerned, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Information, and the Ministry of Education—various Government Departments—are very much occupied with major schemes relating to international and home matters, but it seems to me that we are in danger of letting go some of our most valuable friends, and that once those contacts have been broken we may never be able to re-establish them. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock referred to the necessity for bringing over groups of people from France who have done great service to the Allied cause as well as to their own country. They should be brought over here because they have developed a passionate interest in the way in which we run British affairs in this country. Some of them have, as my right hon. Friend no doubt knows, already been over. Certain selected leaders of French Resistance have been to this country. They have been the responsibility particularly of the Ministry of Information, particularly of the War Office, and particularly of one or two other unspecified Government Departments, but unless there is some co-ordinated body built up there will be no method of organisation in the future, except voluntary organisations. I think the British Council has a great part to play in making these world-wide contacts with professional, industrial and educational people, as well as those who have been engaged in resistance to the enemy, and in seeing that they are, at any rate, provided with a background of the way the British Empire functions.

I was particularly struck at a conference I attended in Paris, at which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock made a most excellent speech. It was the first occasion on which French teachers of English from all over France had been gathered together after French liberation. One gained a great inspiration from realising the passionate interest those teachers took in our new Education Act, the purpose behind that Act and the fact that during the war we have been able to turn our minds to putting on the Statute Book a Bill of this calibre. As I have already said, I need hardly add one single word to what the hon. Member for Kilmarnock said, but I find it very disappointing that at the very time when there should be an expansion of the British Council their work should be curtailed because a reorganisation is being carried out. It seems to me to be the wrong time for that and it is most regrettable that such a delay should have taken place, that all over the world the friendships which we have made in resistance to a common enemy should be dissipated while we at home are discussing questions of reorganisation. It would be very well worth while for a quick decision to be arrived at, and I suggest that in no circumstances should this valuable work be curtailed. I do not like to call it overseas publicity, because it is not publicity in that sense, but the putting across of the spirit which has defeated the enemy in Europe and will defeat the enemy in Japan. There ought to be no curtailment of the activities of the organisation which I believe will, in future, build up a common understanding between all countries, and out of that understanding we may hope to build a real and solid peace in the years to come.

12.16 p.m.

I feel that this is a matter of transcendant importance, and I am delighted to think that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) has raised it. The sun is setting on the Ministry of Information, which in a short time will be just a fragrant memory, and it would be a great mistake if that should disappear without some organisation being set up to carry on this vital work of letting the world know that our country is as great to-day as ever it has been. For the past 10 years the world has been saturated with poisonous propaganda against us, and very little effort has been made to counteract it. My war-time work for two years and seven months with the postal and telegraph censorship taught me a great deal, and gave me an idea of what people not only in the British Empire but in foreign countries, including enemy countries, thought of us. They had a very distorted view, even during the early stages of the war, of what the war was about, and quite a large number thought we were actually to blame for this second major war in our lifetime.

I hope that too much reliance will not be placed on broadcasts by the B.B.C. I am one of those who believe that the power of the printed word is as great to-day as ever. That has been demonstrated by the delightful clamour there is for newspapers and books, and we ought to make sure that we have the necessary printed booklets and pamphlets to put forward the case of Great Britain. Whatever broadcasts we may listen to we know that it is a case of "Out of print, out of mind." If we have not seen the thing in print we are inclined not to think any more about it. I hope, too, that this work will not be entrusted too much to civil servants with a Whitehall complex. It may be a matter for advertising specialists, men who are skilled in publicity work and can handle it in the spirit which the man in the street will appreciate. Whether he is in America or South America, China or Japan, the man in the street is the same as he is in this country, and likes a case put to him in simplified language and in a way that he can understand. It would be a mistake to entrust this work too much to men with academic qualifications. Such learned men do not really put over the case at all. I hope that these points, which I have rushed through so as not to detain the House, will be taken into consideration at some future date.

12.20 p.m.

The case we are discussing, that of the projection of Britain, so to speak, is very important, and many interesting things have been said, but in the position in which Europe now is there is not only a positive side to it but a negative side, and I should feel more at ease about the present policy of His Majesty's Government if we had not seen some of the really surprising things which have been happening since the surrender of Germany. I refer particularly to the Flensburg radio. That showed that even yet His Majesty's Government do not fully appreciate the power of the new technique of publicity. I can imagine nothing which has done more harm to our case than allowing Doenitz to have access to the radio and to broadcast at large to the German people the beginning of the build-up—that the German army was not defeated, and that the noble German nation will yet rise again. I am thinking particularly of its effect upon our Soviet Ally. It is the sort of thing that produces the uneasy feeling that perhaps there is something to be said for the view that there is some collaboration in existence or intended between hidden forces in various countries. We all know here that that is not so. We all know that it is the fault of, I would not like to call it incompetence, but perhaps incoherence would not be too strong a word, a case of the right hand not knowing exactly what the left hand is doing. But the damage has been done, and the danger that the Government are not fully aware of the power of these techniques is manifest in that single instance.

Take another instance. The censorship, of course, has been lifted here, but a censorship of some kind or other has obviously been established in Germany. How? There is a head censor, no doubt from this country. What are his relations with the other censors now that Germany is a country under several Governments? Who is he? My information is to the effect that one gentleman prominent in that position is a war correspondent who was previously very closely in touch with the German leaders. Nobody denies that a Press man has to be in touch with the people whom his assignment covers, but this man will have to work very closely with his opposite numbers, and those of us who have travelled in the Soviet Union will realise to the full the intense uneasiness and suspicion which exist in that country. It is to some extent due to ignorance of affairs in the West, but the existence of the sentiment is something which all of us who are interested in the preservation of good relations will have to take seriously into account.

Surely the right hon. and gallant Gentleman will agree that it is not fair to say that it is all one-sided.

I do not deny that. I was merely saying that there were uneasiness and suspicion on the far side of the Elbe, and I would certainly say that there was a good deal of uneasiness on this side of the Elbe too. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have indicated that there are many practical matters which will have to be debated and threshed out, but feeling is intensified by such instances as that of the Flensburg radio. In these days one might almost define sovereignty as the possession of a radio station of one's own, and the passing of that test of sovereignty by the new Germany is a very disquieting thing to those who are most determined that this vampire shall not arise again. The danger that we may not have a negative policy as well as a positive policy is very great. There will be a great battle in Central Europe. Many radio stations controlled till a few days ago by the English régime are now free from that régime. Many in Germany itself will be subject to some form of censorship by the Allies and to that extent by this House. I do not know what is the policy of His Majesty's Government in that respect, what arrangements there are for skilled broadcasters to be in charge, for a good monitoring system to be operated, and for a prompt, a very prompt, protest to be made if any of these stations begin to deliver, as they may easily deliver, that subtle propaganda of which the Flensburg radio was the first example.

I do not know, also, what is to happen about new wave-lengths; but these are all matters to which His Majesty's Government will need to give the closest and most immediate attention. I would not have raised these matters this morning had it not been that in the last few days we have had a very glaring example of a slip-up by those in control of power in this country or by those who were planning for power to be exercised when the victory over Germany took place, and I beg the Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, if he cannot make a reply on this occasion, seriously to consider these matters and to represent to his chief, the Foreign Secretary, the uneasiness which is felt in this country on this subject.

12.27 p.m.

This is no time to demobilise the tremendous power of broadcasting from this country to Europe and the rest of the world. We should intensify our use of this power. It is the most valuable power we have at our disposal for dealing with the problems of peace, as it was, to a large extent, for dealing with those of war. I do not intend to talk about the British way of life or the desirability of putting over to foreigners our admirable methods of conduct and behaviour, but to deal very shortly with one or two as it were business and practical points. Take the foreign broadcasts as they go out from this country. In many countries there is an audience for them who assemble at a definite hour, just as we switch on our home service at a definite hour. Those people are waiting for something from this country. They were getting it during the war, and the value of what they got from this country is due, I believe, to the simple fact that they have realised by long experience that the information in our news services was true and accurate and an expression of free opinion. We ought to continue with that.

During two visits which I have paid to the Continent of Europe since January this year, to France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, I have been struck not only by the physical disasters which were inflicted on those countries but by the moral disasters inflicted by the German occupation. We have to contend with what someone in this Debate has already described as the "nazification of the children." How better can we do that, or more effectively or more easily, than by having regular broadcasts directed to children and young persons and to families, putting forward the kind of news and views that are put over for our consumption by the B.B.C. in this country, adapted, of course, to the conditions of life of the country to which the broadcast is directed? When one realises what an enormous power there is in broadcasting the idea of demobilising that power and throwing it away really makes one wonder what has got into the minds of those responsible for making that decision and from what mental trouble they are suffering.

It may be necessary to come to decisions to restrict, and to alter, what we have been doing during war time. But this is not the time to make a hasty decision to bring it to an end. A decision should be put off till we can see what the actual circumstances are. Think of the difficulty of communications. Take France alone—broken railways, few railway trains, poverty, lack of food. Think of the conditions in Belgium. Think of the conditions in Holland. I will not expand that further, but it would be a disaster if we did not keep in close touch with our friends in those countries, and with our friends in the Soviet Union, to whom we should broadcast facts and opinions.

We talk about re-educating the German people. Surely we are not going to be parties to allowing German broadcasting stations to broadcast Nazi news and views again? That would be nonsensical. Surely we are going to take command of the radio in Germany, and to broadcast from this country definite views, in order to destroy the disease of Nazism. Our propaganda to Germany should be definitely of anti-Nazi and anti-Fascist views. Unless the German people hear something very clear-cut they will not believe that we are serious; they will listen to some of their own German broadcasts, which probably will be very cleverly done, and the whole stupid business will then begin again. Broadcasting is an immense power. We must use it to tell the German people what is really going on, and not allow them to be deceived by their own broadcasts. We must not demobilise this immense power, but use it for the constructive purposes of peace, for which it is our most effective and most convenient instrument. It would be criminal not to use it to the full.

12.32 p.m.

The hon. Member for Wallsend (Miss Ward) pointed out that groups of people had been coming over here, and had been looked after by the British Council. What about the still greater number of people who have been here since the early part of the war, who were forced to come here as refugees, and who have joined the British Forces? Now they have to go back. Many have been looked after very well by the British Council and by other bodies. I wonder if, when they go back to their own countries, we shall have a proper organisation to keep in touch with them. Before the war, when I travelled abroad, I used to meet people, particularly in Serbia, who had been here during the last war. We lost touch with them after the war. In the early '30's, when we started to try to make friends with foreigners, we found many of them longing to be friendly, but it took ages to link up with the friends whose friendship had been achieved naturally and spontaneously in the last war. I hope that that friendship is not going to be lost again after this war. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) has put his case very well, and other Members have covered many points. If I do not mention them it is not because I do not agree, but because I want to put one other point. That is the business side.

This country must do all it can to get back its export market, and to get foreign currencies to this country too. I think it is not always realised that one of the reasons for starting the British Council was the fact that in 1931 and in 1932, when our unemployment was so bad and we were believed to be degenerate, people in Europe and in other parts of the world were unwilling to place orders here. One or two people were sent out to explain the position in this country, and out of that beginning the British Council arose. The British Council has been described to-day as being purely cultural; but culture goes with industry. Their job, I think, should be to explain our inventions and the wonderful things we have been able to do in this country, especially in the chemical industry, during the war. I am not entirely happy about all the people in the British Council. In India there are people working, not necessarily in the British Council but in the Ministry of Information and in the B.B.C., who were put there because they had lost their jobs with the fall of Singapore. They did not come from this country. They have to broadcast to China and the territories liberated from Japan about Britain. We have to pay far more attention to the type of people employed in this organisation. Many of our best friends will be people who have been recently to this country. France and Germany had their great followings in other parts of the world, especially culturally, because so many people were encouraged to go to those countries.

Therefore, I feel that another group of people will have to be considered here. The B.B.C. will have to broadcast about the attractions of this country. We must have a properly organised tourist industry in this country, to look after the people who come here. I want people to be able to come here in large numbers, and to do what they would like to do when they come here and not be organised by the British Council. We must take the greatest care to have tourist organisations all over the country, which will bring the standard up to what it was before the war in France and Germany. Let us realise that there are five or six branches of Government work and of private enterprise which have been brought into this. It is tragic to think that before the war next to nothing was known about this country. We have gradually developed knowledge about this country during the war, and now, in rather the same way as our Empire Marketing Board was got rid of in 1931, because of economy measures, we are going to destroy what we have built up. We should be trying to build on what we have done already, rather than cutting down.

12.37 p.m.

I first became aware of the potency of the B.B.C. as a world influence at the outbreak of the civil war in Spain, where I happened to be at the time. In the midst of the babel of the conflicting Spanish stations I found the whole population crowded around the B.B.C. to get authentic information. Another impression I formed was that the best spokesman we have for this country is Big Ben; and I would like to pay a tribute to the person who thought of introducing the 9 o'clock news with the strokes of Big Ben. Yet another impression that I formed then was that the calm measured tones of the B.B.C. announcers, so often derided at home, are very much valued abroad. They give a true impression of this country, which amid all storms of life has stood so firm. That impression of the potency of the B.B.C. has been considerably increased in the present war, when I have had some connection with our overseas publicity. The European service has had a success such as few people realise. That is partly due to one of the strangest administrative decisions of which I have heard, the decision to treat all our European broadcasts as secret. I still cannot find any reason for that decision, except a desire that they should not be a subject of criticism in this House or elsewhere. It is, however, well known to those who are concerned with this branch of the British Government service that the overseas service of the B.B.C. has been a most potent instrument in the war. I would give the palm to the French service. It was a wonderful achievement, and a most effective instrument of war. Indeed, I would say that the B.B.C. have had as much to do with the re-creation of France as anybody or anything else. In the Italian service a great work was done by Colonel Stevens, to whom many thousands of people listened daily at the risk of their lives. Week by week further items are coming in from liberated Europe to show the value of this service. I agree so much with what my hon. Friend the Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest) said that I must have misunderstood him when I thought he said that there was no need for a decision immediately.

An adverse decision, I meant.

In my opinion, there is urgent need for a decision, because the dangers of which my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones) and Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) have spoken are present. This overseas service of the B.B.C., which has done so much, is in great danger of disruption. It is not only that leading broadcasters may leave the service, but that they are in fact doing so. I hope I am not out of Order in referring as an example to the diplomatic correspondent of the B.B.C., who is so good. I believe that he is leaving. These are very real dangers, because the success of broadcasting depends on the broadcasters. A very small team of able men can do, at very small expense, all that is required. Here I would interpose a plea that between the responsible Minister and the man who does the work at the microphone there shall not be a host of officials, under the name of the Planning Committee and what not. It is the man at the microphone, with the help which is given to him by directives, who does the work. The European service is now in a difficult position. After its brilliant successes, it is floundering. One of the reasons is the present uncertainty. Among other reasons I regard it as a major disaster for that service that Mr. Newsome, its European director throughout the war, has been removed to the relatively minor post of running the Luxembourg Radio. Much of the success was due to the daily directives which he issued, and it does not help the B.B.C. that his vitalising influence has been removed.

We have to make a decision on two points. We must get the Government to realise the importance of this subject, which I do not think is realised yet. I think that if it had been realised this Debate would have been held when it was possible for more Members to attend, and in particular for the Foreign Secretary to attend—I quite understand that he cannot be here to-day. If I may be so bold, I will say also that we have among our number several members of the British Council, who ought to be here. We have the chairman; I submit that he ought to be in his place unless there is a very good reason for his absence. Of all the Members of this House who are on the British Council I can see only my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. I trust that at an early date we shall have an opportunity of discussing this matter more fully when the Foreign Secretary can be in his place and when all Members who ought to be here will be. I am glad to notice my hon. Friend the Member for West Leicester (Mr. H. Nicolson), a Governor of the B.B.C., in his place. We must bring home to the Government the importance of this subject. If they do not realise it, let them study Fascist propaganda, Nazi propaganda, or even Soviet propaganda over the last 20 years. Soviet propaganda has been most successful in producing that tremendous enthusiasm for the Soviet Union which exists to-day throughout the world. Why cannot we mobilise similar forces on behalf of Great Britain?

The second decision we must take is on the question of machinery. At present British publicity is in the hands of four agencies. There are the Press Attachés at our Embassies, the British Council, the Ministry of Information and the Overseas Services of the B.B.C. It is necessary to co-ordinate, tighten and strengthen that machinery. I take, myself, a view different from that expressed earlier in the Debate. The Foreign Office cannot be dissociated from this work. Inevitably, the Foreign Office must have the last word in overseas publicity, because it is so closely dependent on foreign policy. I do not, further, take the view which has been expressed about the staff of the Foreign Office. Even if what has been said were true, it would be an argument for bringing new blood into the Foreign Office rather than for excluding the Foreign Office from this work.

In my view, which is not unbased on experience, the staff of the Foreign Office will compare favourably with that any other Government Department, and I have found that they have a very fresh mind on this subject. In its dealings with the Press, the Foreign Office is certainly far better than any other Government Department. Who are the staff of the Foreign Office? They are such persons as the hon. Member for West Leicester, who has been cited as having given such brillant addresses in Paris, and the hon. and gallant Member for Windsor (Major Mott-Radclyffe), who has spoken so acceptably in this Debate. The Foreign Office is really very well adapted for this work. It must in any case have the right of veto, and I think it would be far better that these agencies should be put openly under the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, rather than that some power of veto should be exercised in the background. In the reorganisation of the Government services that will be needed after the war, the Foreign Secretary may very well need quite a bevy of Ministers to assist him. He has already the Minister of State and the Under-Secretary, and the Secretary to the Department of Overseas Trade. The kind of machinery I should favour myself, and I hope it will commend itself to other hon. Members, is a semi-detached body, like the Department of Overseas Trade, set up under its own Minister, himself subordinate to the Foreign Secretary and solely responsible to this House for his Department. I hope we shall not go back to the days of which the hon. Member for Kilmarnock has spoken, the days when we had three Ministers in charge and the result, of course, was that no one was really in charge.

I do not wish to speak at any greater length on this subject, because we are waiting for the Minister to reply. I think it is most satisfactory that no one in this Debate so far has challenged the need for strengthening, rather than for diminishing, our overseas publicity, and I hope that an early decision will be made before that good will which we have won in the world is lost and before the staff is dispersed.

12.49 p.m.

I wish to support the admirable speech made by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) and to amplify his remarks in regard to the value of the news to the people of Europe. I myself was a subject of German propaganda and, although I knew that the propaganda was absolutely false, even on me, there was an effect on my mind. Everywhere one looked in France, on every hoarding, there were notices, "If you are hungry, remember it is because of Great Britain. Go and work in Germany and help to break the British blockade." In everything broadcast from Vichy, from Paris and from the German stations no opportunity was lost to create Nazi propaganda, no opportunity was lost to decry the British effort, to call us a Jewish plutocracy, and to declare that all the ills of Europe were caused by our contest with the Nazis.

Everywhere, in the papers and in the broadcasts, every single means of propaganda was used by the Nazis to create a favourable view of their policy. The German Government published three very excellent magazines—"Signal," "Wehrmacht," and "Eagle," which extolled the aims and objects of the Nazi Air Force. These papers were published in many languages, and I saw them in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German. They were published free and had a huge circulation. The Vichy Government, under Nazi control, did everything possible to point out to the French that all their ills were caused by Great Britain. The effect on the French was electrical, and it was only through the propaganda of the B.B.C., which published to the whole world, and especially to France, that this country had the will to win, was completely unbeaten and un-cowed, that the resistance movement started. Without such knowedge, what was the use of a resistance movement? The Germans knew this and they used every power to break British propaganda. Anyone who listened to the B.B.C. was shot, and not only were they shot, but their whole families as well, in order to break any British news which was circulating through Europe.

I do impress upon the Government the great power of propaganda, and I wish to reiterate that even I, who hated the Nazis and saw some of their diabolical deeds with my own eyes, had this propaganda dinned into my ears all day in such phrases as, "Stand behind Hitler, who will lead you to peace." Even on myself, when I read and heard of the bombing of the French harvest, the sinking of the French Fleet and various other matters mentioned in Nazi propaganda day and night, there seemed to be an effect on my mind. I could not help it. What effect must it have had on the minds of the French, Spanish or Portu- guese? Surely now is the time to dispel the Nazification of Europe, especially of the children, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for North Islington (Dr. Haden Guest). I ask the Government to use every means, and not to be niggardly in the matter of money, for not only is this money spent for our good for the propagation of British ideas of liberty and democracy, and even of British business, but, surely, it is essential that the horrible ideals of Nazism be killed and defeated as soon as possible.

12.55 p.m.

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend opposite for raising this matter, because I think it has not received anything like the attention that it deserves. Indeed, I have a bee in my bonnet about it, and I feel that our telling of the grand story of Britain in the beginning of the war was pitiably inadequate, and, even at the peak, had not reached what we should call adequacy. I wish to draw attention to one aspect of this matter. Some time ago, I was travelling in Iraq, Persia and the Middle East generally, and I came into contact with the Ministry of Information and the British Council. I have no axe to grind with either of these institutions, which are doing a grand work, but, in any remarks that I make, I shall lump them together, though it is the Ministry of Information which gives out the news, and the British Council which propagates the British way of life.

At close quarters, I saw these institutions at work. They are doing a wonderful and indispensable job with the most inadequate resources at their disposal. They produce a daily newspaper in places like Teheran and Baghdad, magazines weekly and monthly, they have reading rooms widely dispersed, travelling cinemas and even supply educational films to the schools. They do a tremendous work, and I am deeply despondent to hear that there is a prospect of scrapping it. It would be a tragedy and a blunder of the first order, and, if somebody says "We will not scrap them all, but pay rather less for them, and cut them down," I reply, "Do not cut them down, but give them more, because they are pitiably inadequate at the moment." Our production of newspapers in Teheran and Baghdad is a great achievement, but it could be a little better. It is poor because of the inadequate resources. They have to set their type with pairs of tweezers, and it is often done by men who have no knowledge of what they are setting. The paper is often a one-man concern—more credit to the one man—but this sometimes leads to slips such as one I can recall when an Oriental, writing his powerful leader for the next issue of his paper, produced this:

12.58 p.m.

I should like to assure hon. Members that this Debate is welcome, because decisions have to be taken, and this Debate will give the Government an opportunity of learning some of the views of the House before those decisions are made, and, therefore, we are glad that it is taking place. As the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) said in opening his speech, the questions we are discussing are interwoven as between the British Council and the Ministry of Information, and, for purposes of convenience, I propose to deal with points about foreign language broadcasts and the British information services and leave to my right hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the matters which may, more properly, be connected with the British Council.

Having made that division, I would like, at the outset, to refer to some remarks made by the hon. Member for Shipley (Mr. Creech Jones). First, I would like to express the gratification which I am sure our British Information Service in America will feel when they read the warm tribute which he has paid to them for the most excellent work they have done. According to our information, they richly deserve that tribute, though they do not always get it. I think he made the point—at any rate it is an important point to make—that that is an information service. It is not a propaganda service. We have never been concerned with propaganda in the United States of America, but merely with the distribution of sound information. I would like to assure my hon. Friend that there is no intention, as I understand it, to dispense entirely with these British information services which have been created in various parts of the world. How they are to be controlled in the future and on what scale they will be carried on, are matters for decision. It may not be on the scale on which they have been carried during the war, but I think he may rest assured that the service, as a whole, is not to be scrapped in any ruthless fashion.

He mentioned the films which are doing such excellent work in the Colonies, and here again, without being able to say anything very specific, I can give him an assurance that that side of our activities is not going out of business. As far as the films for the Colonies are concerned—and I know that the Colonial Office are very appreciative, as most people are, of the most excellent educative work these films are doing in our Colonial possessions—I think there is every likelihood that, in some form or other, that activity will be carried on.

I would like to say a word in reply to the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) who raised two quite important points—the control of the Flensburg radio and the censorship which is going to be carried on in Occupied Germany. These are two very important points, but I respectfully submit to him that they are not matters with which the Ministry of Information or, indeed, the British Council, can be held to be concerned. They are really matters for the Allied Military Control—the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, S.H.A.E.F., to put it more briefly.

I am interested to hear my hon. Friend say that, but that is while they remain there. Is there not to be a civil administration set up later? Surely, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs is closely connected, through his Office, with the new administration which will come into being at no very great distance of time in the occupied territories.

There is no doubt that, in time, there will be an Allied Military Government which will take the place of Supreme Headquarters, but, for the time being, it is the Supreme Allied Military Control which is the effective authority. If a mistake is made, for instance, in allowing these broadcasts to be made on the Flensburg Radio, then that could not be laid to the responsibility of either the Ministry of Information or the British Council. It must rest with the Allied Military Control.

Is it not a fact that, at the present moment, an Allied Military Government is actually being set up? I saw it myself two weeks ago.

The beginnings of that may exist, but it would probably take some time before it comes into effective authority. All I am saying is that, at present, the responsibility rests with the Allied Military Control.

I turn to the more important matter with which I am concerned, the question of foreign broadcasting. I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and others for the tributes they have paid to the effectiveness of our foreign broadcasting. There is no doubt that our foreign broadcasting was done very effectively and was an immense help to the oppressed peoples. As my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Ivor Thomas) said, more and more, now that those peoples are being liberated, we are learning how potent its influence was in keeping up their spirits and inspiring them to struggle against the oppressor. Either my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley or my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock made this point—and it is a very important point—that our effective propaganda was based upon truth, which, I think, is somewhat unusual in propaganda; and the B.B.C. did prove, in the course of the war, that telling the truth can be more effective than any calculated lying. I heard one magnificent tribute paid to the B.B.C. in that connection by a member of the Finnish Diet. This was while the war with Finland was still going on. He explained that one of his own lady constituents had said to him that she had long since ceased to believe in anything but the Bible or the B.B.C.

We are concerned, however, not with the past, but with the future of foreign broadcasting, and I am being asked to say, on behalf of the Ministry of Information, to what extent it is going to be carried on. I can only say, as my right hon. Friend said in the House the other day, that it is too early to make any definite statement. The matter is receiving the most careful and earnest consideration of those responsible but, at the moment, no decision has been taken. But I can assure the House that it is the desire of the B.B.C. to produce news and a feature service representative of the point of view of Britain in accordance with the highest standard set during the war.

There have been claims this morning that the broadcasting ought to be carried on almost at the level of the war-time broadcasting. I submit that it is somewhat unreasonable to ask that we should continue foreign broadcasting on that scale. The immense organisation which we built up during the war arose out of the necessities of the war. There were vast areas of Europe which were cut off from us and which could be reached only in this manner, and it was because of that, that we had to build up such an enormous and effective organisation. For nearly five years it can properly be claimed that this foreign broadcasting of ours was the one effective link between our country and the oppressed peoples of Europe. But now we have a different situation. All these people have been liberated and the B.B.C. is not now, by any means, the only link between them and us, so that there will have to be, inevitably, a cutting down of the broadcasting arrangements as far as Europe is concerned.

Even if there were no desire to cut down those arrangements, there is, I understand, one serious technical difficulty. I am not a technician, but I speak according to the book, and I understand that there are technical considerations, particularly the lack of wavelengths, which would make it impossble to carry on a service to Europe on anything like the present scale. It apparently seems unlikely that no long wavelength will be available to this country in order to broadcast to Europe. The short wave service to Europe is very unsatisfactory, and most of the short waves now used by the B.B.C. must be given up. Medium waves, if any are available, have only a range of 200 miles by daylight, and 800 miles in darkness, which latter, of course, would cover Europe; but unless we get a relay station in Europe, the post-war B.B.C. European service must be on a greatly reduced scale. I just put that technical consideration before hon. Members in order that they may realise that there is a serious difficulty.

That is not a technical, but a political difficulty. The wavelengths are there, but somebody else has got them. There is no technical difficulty about it at all, and the political difficulty is the one we expect my hon. Friend to solve.

My right hon. and gallant Friend may say that it is only a political difficulty, but there has to be an agreement between the countries on the use of wavelengths. He cannot imagine that we are going to be able to assert our claims to all that we want, if those claims conflict with the claims of other countries. There has to be give-and-take.

What my hon. Friend was suggesting was that the short waves must be given up, but we do look to his right hon. Friend to carry on the negotiations with the robustness which we associate with the Minister of this great service.

In so far as these matters are dependent on negotiations, I can give my right hon. and gallant Friend an assurance that our point of view will be very vigorously pressed, but it is as well that we should realise that that is a factor in considering this matter. There are also a number of considerations to be taken into account when a decision is made. Someone has mentioned finance. Finance is not really an important consideration. It would be "penny wise and pound foolish" to seek to economise on this particular service and, therefore, that will not be a primary consideration. But there are other important considerations; for example, we talk of broadcasting to these various countries which are now independent countries, with views of their own, and we have to take into account, in any programmes we arrange, the susceptibilities and wishes of the people to whom we are broadcasting. It would certainly be ill-advised for us to transmit programmes to any given country in Europe if that country were resentful of them. There has to be understanding with the countries whom we are seeking to reach, and, also, in the same way, I think hon. Members will agree, in so far as we can reach agreement with other third parties, we want to avoid having the air plugged, as it were, with a mass of conflicting propaganda. We want, if we can, to reach agreement with other countries, so that that does not happen, and that is a consideration which has to be borne in mind in thinking of this decision.

There is another point. There has been a lot of talk this morning about the British point of view. I would submit to hon. Members that it is rather an over-simplification of the issue to speak of the British point of view in that way. I am thinking now of peace time. While we were engaged in the war we had a National Government and there was complete unity as to what was the British point of view, so that the B.B.C. would be putting forward what was essentially a national point of view. We are thinking of peace time and it is quite certain that, as we get into conditions of peace, there will not be that same unanimity of outlook, and the British point of view will not be just one point of view but numbers of conflicting points of view. The best way you can get that conflict put before foreign people really is by means of the ordinary channels of propaganda, that is to say, by means of news agencies, foreign correspondents, British newspapers, periodicals, books and news, and feature broadcasts by an independent B.B.C. In that way, if there are differences of opinion in this country you will have them reflected; if there is unanimity you will have that unanimity reflected also. That needs to be borne in mind. The danger is that an official service would, I think, be expressing an inevitably official point of view, and that would not necessarily be a true reflection of the state of opinion in this country, as in the case of the points of view set forth by the other agencies I have mentioned.

Those are just two of the considerations which should be borne in mind. As I understand it, the House is all against the continuation of the M.O.I. organisation in this country for home matters, because it feels that would be an intrusion of political or governmental propaganda into a field which ought to be left to the free play of opinion from the competing points of view. I want to suggest that, within limitations, that sort of argument has some force in the field of foreign broadcasting.

I hesitate to interrupt, but my hon. Friend is at the very crucial point. Both I and my hon. Friend behind me made it clear that we were not in favour of that totalitarian view on the home front and also we both made it clear that there was difference between the home and the overseas service—that we would not carry forward that argument into the overseas service. There may be at times a British point of view, but you can reflect a great variety in putting across that point of view, as you do indeed when you broadcast the views of this House. You give both sides, and that is what the overseas countries liked in war time.

I was careful not to suggest that there was a complete parallel between home and foreign propaganda, but I suggested that, to some extent, the argument which applied to home propaganda might legitimately be applied to foreign propaganda also. However, I merely say that these points are some which have to be taken into consideration when a decision is reached. Before I sit down, I would like to repeat the assurance which my right hon. Friend has already given to this House, that the matter is receiving the most careful consideration and that in due time, when a decision is reached, it will be made known to the House. I would say, finally, there can be no question of the Government's desire to see that the British point of view is made known effectively throughout the world, or of its determination to see that this is done. What is under consideration at the moment is the most effective way of achieving this.

Before my hon. Friend sits down, will he say something about broadcasting to Germany? What is the policy with regard to future broadcasts to Germany?

I think that policy is perhaps more a matter for the Foreign Office than for the Ministry of Information.

Is not the matter much more simple than my hon. Friend supposes? Is it not the British point of view that on any question there are always several points of view?

1.20 p.m.

It is not usual that an hon. Member of this House gets two subjects for an Adjournment Debate so closely related as did my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay), and as they are so closely related between the Ministry of Information and the British Council, for which the Foreign Office is primarily responsible, the House will not regard it as being out of place if I take just a short time to reply to some of the points which have been put during the course of the Debate.

From the British Council angle I can say that the Debate has been a very useful one, in the sense that there has not been a single dissenting word against the work of the Council. In fact, the apprehension has been that there is to be some curtailment of the work, and the urge is that the work should be considerably expanded from what it is at the present time. I am not sure that my hon. Friend and some others did not think that the inquiry into the work and the future of the British Council conducted by Sir Findlater Stewart was for the purpose of interfering with that work in some way. May I call the attention of the House to a statement which was made some time ago as to why the inquiry was being held? For some time the Government have been concerned about the future of the British Council, the reasons for which I will give later on, and after consultation with the Chairman of the British Council, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and the Chancellor of the Exchequer thought that it would be very useful if an inquiry were to be held. Sir Findlater Stewart was appointed to conduct that inquiry into the work and organisation of the British Council, to recommend what the future scope of its activities should be, how its purpose could best be fulfilled and what its relationship to the Central Government should be. That was the purpose of the inquiry and, as I said, that has been under consideration for some time.

At the time of the discussion with Sir Findlater Stewart, it was felt that it should be entirely a departmental inquiry, more of a domestic affair, and that a report should be submitted to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs for their guidance. May I say at once that at the time when the announcement was made in the House, it was made quite clear that this decision implied no reflection whatsoever upon the work of the Council, and, indeed, it might well be said that the Council was not in any way in the dock. It was not an inquest. If I might follow that up, I can say that the British Council need have no apprehension that it ought not to continue its work with its full energy.

Could my right hon. Friend say why the rumour is widely spread that there has been a sealing up of its finances by the Treasury, which means limitation in its expansion on last year?

I am coming to that point, because it is very important, and I am sure that I shall be able to satisfy my hon. Friend that the statement is not true. It was explained at that time that the report was to be a confidential document, and an assurance was given that such proposals as His Majesty's Government may have to make upon the reorganisation of the Council, in the light of the report, will be discussed with the governing body, that a full statement concerning the Government's proposals will be made to the House of Commons and that, if necessary, an opportunity will be provided for debating that statement.

That is the position. It is not that we want in any way to interfere with the work which is being carried out by the Council. I am sure that my hon. Friends who have been closely interested in it will realise that the tremendous increase in the expenditure and the importance of the work really called for an inquiry such as that which we have had at the present time. It may not be fully realised what this work has been. The first grant-in-aid, which was given to the British Council in 1935–36, was just £5,500. By 1940 that amount had increased to £460,000, and by 1944–45 the grant-in-aid had amounted to £3,500,000—a tremendous expansion. There is no evidence of any curtailment of the work during that period. As to the ramifications of this work, the Council now operates in no fewer than 38 countries, in nine of which the activities are well developed, and semi-developed in eight, while the Council has some activities in another 21 countries. This does not include the liberated countries in Europe, where activities have already been commenced. In addition, the Council has had increased activities in this country due to the war, but these are likely to decrease with the departure of the Allied troops. One of my hon. Friends made the point that this work should be followed up. We are hoping it will be possible that some activity of the British Council will be established in countries from which, in the main, Allied troops were drawn, and I have no doubt that the suggestion made by my hon. Friend will be borne in mind.

Concerning the limiting of the budget, the grant-in-aid last year was, as I have said, over £3,500,000. That amount was under-spent by a very substantial amount, and I think it can be said that no work of the British Council has been curtailed for the lack of money from the grant-in-aid. I do not want to take up time by explaining the amount that has been under-spent, but I can say it has been considerably underspent. It is true that an estimate was submitted to the Foreign Office and to the Treasury for an amount largely in excess of the grant-in-aid given for the last financial year, but the Treasury, in consultation with the Foreign Office, felt that as the grant-in-aid had been so much underspent there was a considerable amount of leeway to make up. It was said, however, that in the event of additional expenditure being required as a result of the findings of the Findlater Stewart report, a Supplementary Estimate would be considered by the Treasury. I think one ought to say in all fairness to, or in defence of, the Treasury, if there is a rumour such as that which was mentioned by my hon. Friend, that the Treasury have been very generous in view of the tremendous increase in expenditure which has taken place in the work of the Council.

May I put this point? It is generally understood that many schemes which the British Council are being encouraged to put forward are now likely to be curtailed because a ceiling of expenditure has been imposed, that is to say, that in many respects expenditure figures up to last year will not now be exceeded, because the Government insist that the plans should not now mature.

I have had an opportunity of discussing this matter with the officials and Chairman of the British Council, and I understand that they were satisfied with the position in view of the fact that there was a promise from the Treasury, such as I have indicated.

Several other points have been mentioned in the Debate. Concerning the question of sending books to France, that was not entirely or, indeed at all, the fault of the British Council. It was because some understanding had to be arrived at between the Council and the French Government. That has now been arrived at, and we are hoping that the books will now be forwarded. May I say that it is very timely that these questions should have been put to-day, in view of the discussions which are now proceeding between the Foreign Office and other Departments, and that they will, of course, be fully noted? The Adjournment Motion is not an occasion for a Debate on the British Council, and it is possible that a full Debate will be asked for on the work of the Council. What I have to say could be left over until that occasion, except this. I had the pleasure and privilege, not long ago, of visiting certain capitals in Europe and seeing for myself the work which has been done by the British Council. It is rather a pity that more Members of the House and of the public cannot see that work, which, though hidden away in the capitals, is spread over almost all the world. Those who have seen it know the valuable work which has been done by this organisation, and can understand why people are anxious to learn the English language and all about the British way of life. "Cannot you do more?" was the demand wherever I went. The work that is being done is long-term work, but is very very important and it is not the intention of those who are considering the recommendations of the Findlater Stewart Report at the present time to do anything to damp down the work which has been so well done.

Mr. Driberg.

Has my right hon. Friend anything to say about broadcasting to Germany?

Two Ministers have replied to this Debate, there have been a great many interruptions of the second Minister, and I have just called Mr. Driberg.

With all respect, Sir, my right hon. Friend said nothing about broadcasts to Germany which, surely, is a vital matter.

I left that to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Information.

Who said that he had left it to my right hon. Friend.

Broadcasting to Germany is, at the moment, the responsibility of the Ministry of Information, but I can tell my hon. Friend that the matter will be considered.

Very unsatisfactory.

May I just say a word to—

If this goes on it will become impossible for other Members to get their chance in the Debate, but I will allow the hon. Gentleman to make one more point.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest) asked about policy in broadcasting to Germany, and I said that policy was a matter for the Foreign Office.

I must congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay) on having elicted a double Ministerial reply, followed by the very interesting episode of "double-talk" at the end. I felt strongly tempted to join in the discussion of the very important matter which he raised, but if I had done so I should have forfeited my right to speak now, and that would hardly have been fair to my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who has been courteous enough to meet me to-day for a discussion on the question of the franking of the mail of Members of Parliament. I am not raising this in any spirit of hostility to the Treasury, but simply as a matter of general interest to all Members of Parliament and their con- stituencies, and one which, I think, may well be ventilated. It may be asked why such a matter as this should be ventilated in what is, in effect, a dying Parliament. Is this the right moment to suggest some such reform as this? I submit that it is the best possible moment to consider a reform of this kind, since it can hardly be said that we are thinking selfishly of ourselves alone. If such a reform were accepted, quite clearly we should be benefiting posterity and not necessarily all of ourselves.

I think the public does not always realise the position of Members of Parliament in regard to expenses. They know of the £600 per annum salary, or whatever it is called, that we get, and some of the public may even think that we do quite well out of the job. They do not realise the very heavy burden of necessary expenses which falls upon all Members of Parliament. All Members realise that the few privileges which we do enjoy are not attached to us as persons, but in order to enable us to perform our representative function more effectively. An instance of that, of course, is the free rail pass between London and our constituencies: I think there is a great deal to be said for making that universal and not only between London and our constituencies, because I know of many Members who do not live in or near their constituencies, and to whom travel must be a considerable burden.

But that is by the way. I mention it merely to indicate what I have in mind, because I do not expect this particular point of the franking of mail to be dealt with in isolation from other questions of the pay and expenses of Members of Parliament. At the same time, it does seem to me a good example of the kind of privilege which we might have, and which would really enable us to do our work more efficiently. At one time, I gather, Members of Parliament did have this privilege. Unfortunately it was abused. I think some Members sent out thousands of circulars, and that kind of thing, and, therefore, the privilege was withdrawn. But the mere fact that a good thing is subject to abuse is no argument against the thing itself, and I suggest that it ought to be possible to devise some machinery whereby at any rate a reasonable proportion of Members' mail could be franked—machinery which would not be subject to abuse.

In 1920 there was a Select Committee on the Expenses of Members of Parliament. I have been looking at the report of that Committee, which is extremely interesting. The Committee remarked that they were "impressed by the evidence of the difficult financial position of certain Members of Parliament." That, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, was in 1920. If that was true then, how much more true is it now? At that time, apart from anything else, Income Tax must have been of the order of 4s. or 4s. 6d. in the £, quite apart from many other burdens which have fallen upon us. That Select Committee considered three suggestions by which mail might be franked. One suggestion was that a franked envelope should be enclosed by a Government Department in reply to a communication from a Member concerning a constituency matter—a franked envelope in which that Member could forward a reply to his constituent. The second suggestion the Committee considered was the issue of a weekly supply of a number of franked envelopes to each Member. The third suggestion they considered was that the Postmaster in the Post Office at the House of Commons should be empowered to frank a certain number of Members' letters per week. The Committee added that there were objections to each proposal, but said:

Of course, 50 letters per week is not very many. It is difficult to strike what would be a fair average now of the number of strictly Parliamentary or constituency letters which each Member would have to write. I believe it varies considerably. For instance, an hon. Friend of mine who represents a London constituency tells me that he gets very few letters indeed, for the reason that he is accessible always to his constituents; he visits his constituency office once a week or fortnight, and his constituents go to see him about their problems. So, he gets rather fewer than the average. On the other hand, there must be many Members who get considerably more than 50 letters a week—

Many get 50 a day.

Yes, I sometimes do myself. I do not see that we can expect that all one's letters, whatever one chooses to hand in to the Post Office in the way of a vast bundle of envelopes, should be franked, but I think that some such suggestion as 50 or 100 letters a week might, perhaps, be a reasonable compromise. It was also suggested, alternatively, that there should be a special cash allowance to cover postage, but that seems rather less desirable. I think it would probably be fair to say that many Members now find that they have to spend as much as £2 or £3 a week on postage alone—not perhaps all strictly constituency case postage only, but postage arising out of their membership of this House; and, while there is no suggestion that the whole of that should be borne at the public expense, it does seem to me that to allow us to frank 50 to 100 letters per week would go a considerable way towards that difficulty.

The immediate reason for my raising this matter to-day is that on 20th and 27th March I asked one or two Questions of my right hon. Friend about it, and those Questions led to quite an interesting set of exchanges at Question Time. As a matter of fact, Mr. Speaker remarked that the subject could not be pursued further by question and answer, so I gave notice to raise it on the Adjournment. The first Question I asked arose out of a remark that had been made by the right hon. Gentleman himself in a previous week when, dealing with a Question about House of Commons stationery, he had let slip the remark that all letters written by hon. Members within the Palace of Westmister are assumed officially to be written for a public purpose. If that is so of stationery—although I realise the analogy is not precise—and if the Government provide us with free stationery for use in the House of Commons because they assume that all letters written here are written for a public purpose, I really do not see why one cannot draw some analogy in regard to the postage on the letters which we write and post in the Palace of Westminster. I do not, of course, suggest that franking facilities should be provided wherever we write or post letters. We could not expect to use them in our own homes in the country, where all our sisters, our cousins and our aunts might take advantage of the privilege when our backs were turned; I suggest it should be confined strictly to the post office here, and that some machinery should be devised to allow us to do it here.

On that occasion I obtained a negative answer from the right hon. Gentleman. Several other hon. Members asked supplementary questions, and one of them the hon. and gallant Member for Darwen (Captain Prescott), supporting me to a certain extent, suggested that the House of Commons Post Office might ascertain the number of letters received by an hon. Member and make provision for a corresponding number of free frankings. I do not think that would be really practicable, and I think that the rough justice of the compromise which I have suggested, and which was suggested by the Select Committee in 1920, although it was never ultimately put into effect, would be far better. On 27th March, as a result of some information which had come to me, I asked a further Question. I asked my right hon. Friend:

Mine were not.

That is precisely why I am raising the matter to-day. There is all this confusion about it. This intimation by my right hon. Friend came as a great surprise, evidently, to large numbers of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams), whom I see here, who also asked a supplementary question about it.

May I make a friendly interruption? I have perhaps had more experience of Government offices than anyone in the House at this moment. It would be a great mistake to suppose that all Ministers, even though they have a theoretical right to have their private correspondence franked, do it. I cannot recollect in seven years of office ever having had my private letters franked.

I am most grateful to the Noble Lord for his intervention. It shows that the practice should at least be regularised, if it exists. Many Ministers appear to be unaware of it, and others do it "as a matter of practical convenience." It would obviously be a matter of great practical convenience to all hon. Members to be able casually to throw a bundle of letters into a tray and know that they would all be franked. I do not wish to deprive Ministers of this modest perquisite, because I know that junior Ministers, in particular, are not at all well off financially. I understand they are not entitled to certain reliefs on Income Tax to which I think they should be entitled, and of course, they are not able to earn money outside by writing for the Press or in the other ways in which some of us can supplement our incomes. I do not want to deprive Ministers of this modest perquisite, but I suggest it should not fall to them in, so to speak, an irregular and surreptitious way. It should be made clear and plain if they are entitled to it; and, if they are entitled to the free franking of constituency mail, then I submit that the same privilege, in a way which will guard it against abuse, should somehow be extended to all hon. Members.

1.52 p.m.

I am glad my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg) has raised this question. I have raised certain aspects of it more than once. I addressed several Questions to the Prime Minister about the circumstances of junior Ministers. I am satisfied that the public has a completely false idea about the whole situation. The generality of junior Ministers get £1,500 a year. They do not get, as the public thinks, £600 a year as a Parliamentary salary. They are not permitted to deduct from the £1,500 a year one penny piece as expenses, either arising out of constituency representation or anything else. It is true that if a Minister makes a journey in connection with his Department, he gets first-class fare and expenses on a level which always leaves him out of pocket. As a Member of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, I had to make a number of journeys—fortunately, not too many—and I think that on every occasion my hotel expenses cost me twice as much as I was paid back.

The whole question both of Ministerial salaries and the expenses of Members of Parliament needs to be looked into. I am not one of the rich Members of the House, but I am not one of the hard-up Members; I am in an intermediate position, and I shall be able to carry on, unless I have bad luck, on the present basis; but I know the present basis is very oppressive indeed to many hon. Members, not of one political party, but of all political parties. There is a popular idea that all Conservative Members of Parliament are rich and all Labour Members poor. That is by no means the case. There are one or two hon. Members who normally decorate the Labour Benches who are very rich persons. There are some hon. Members who even more decorate the Conservative Benches who, I know, are very often very hard up. There is, therefore, no party issue in this matter.

When it was first decided, rather dishonestly, not by a Bill but by a Supply Vote, if I remember rightly, to introduce payment of Members, in the year 1911 or thereabouts, the amount was fixed at £400 per annum. At that time expenses were very much lower than they are to-day, and in most cases there was out of the £400 quite a substantial margin of what might be called net income. The cost of everything has gone up since then. I am certain that constituents write far more letters now than they did in those days. I have been a Member of Parliament since 1924, with a short break. I get about 60 or 70 letters a day, which is rather higher than the average, because my constituency has a large electorate. These letters are a very great burden. As far as I can recollect, I have been on balance out of pocket in my expenses, when compared with my Parliamentary salary, every year that I have been a Member of Parliament, and yet certain of those expenses which arise out of membership of the House are disallowed under the law as it stands. In nearly every year, except when temporarily the amount was reduced to £300 during the crisis in 1931, I have always paid Income Tax, as most other Members have done, on something which represented a loss. The public thinks the ordinary Member of Parliament has a universal railway pass, which is not true. The public thinks that automatically every Member of Parliament gets a pension when he gives up. As hon. Members know, the only pensions that are paid are subject to a very rigid means test, and the whole of the money comes out of the pockets of Members of Parliament themselves, and not one penny comes from public funds.

With regard to junior Ministers, I think their position is one of the very gravest difficulty. There is the monstrous anomaly that certain junior Ministers who have independent means have come to the conclusion that they will be better off if they take £600 a year as Members of Parliament, against which they can charge expenses, than they will be if they take the £1,500 a year, against which they cannot charge expenses. The whole situation is too preposterous for words. Any decent business provides its managers or managing directors with facilities for transport. In peace time, no Minister—with one exception—had facilities for transport at the public expense. There was one Minister who had a motor car, but I do not know which Minister. There are now some 20 or 25 Ministers who have motor cars at the public expense. I think that is right. It has never been properly sanctioned; it has come out of the Vote of Credit, from which a lot of things have come. We ought to regularise the position. It seems to me that the word "priority" on a motor car really means that you do not pay for the petrol that is used in it. I wish I had a "priority" label. Let us be honest in these things. Do not let us reward Ministers in a roundabout way. Every Minister of the Crown, like every Ambassador, ought to have an expense allowance about which there is no argument in regard to taxation. As for the remainder, he ought to have a salary which is subject to taxation in the same way as the income of the ordinary citizen.

I think that Ministers of the Crown are treated abominably to-day. Only those who have private means are able to carry on without grave anxiety. It is quite wrong that many Ministers should be in this exceedingly difficult situation. Ministers may be compelled in difficulty to ask their friends to help them. I can imagine nothing more contrary to the public interest than that a Minister should be dependent upon the charity of his friends. Especially when one contemplates the immense power which any Minister, even the most junior Minister has, he should be free in these matters. Many years ago, when this nation was much poorer in the sense that the national income was much smaller, we said that judges should have £5,000 a year and senior Ministers £5,000 a year. In those days that represented almost a princely income. Fifty years ago, with taxation as it then was, £5,000 a year represented a very high standard of luxury. At that time it was said that we must relieve men in these vital positions of personal anxiety in order that they might be able to approach all our problems without personal worry and anxiety. At the present time, I am satisfied that many Members of the Government are subject to personal financial difficulties, and I am certain it is not in the public interest that it should be so.

I have wandered outside the question of franking correspondence which was raised by the hon. Member for Maldon. I am satisfied there is a great problem to be looked into. There is a difficulty. We are judges in our own cause. We can vote this money to ourselves, and if we do so it exposes us to criticism; but I think there is a case for the problem being re-examined by a Select Committee, and I hope that the Financial Secretary will say that the Government are prepared to set up a Select Committee to re-examine the matter.

2.0 p.m.

I support what the two last speakers have said. The fundamental difficulty about payment of Members derives from the great problem of providing for unemploy- ment. It seems to me that that is the almost intractable problem of getting the best men, in all circumstances, into the House. I strongly urge the Financial Secretary to accept the proposal that a Select Committee should be set up to consider that matter in all its aspects. To keep to the simpler proposition of my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg), I have not read the Report of the Committee of 1920 but it has seemed to me that the most practical suggestion made—one which apparently that Committee did not accept—was that the Post Office should issue to hon. Members every week a limited number of franked envelopes.

The suggestion that the Committee accepted was that the Postmaster should be able to frank a certain number of letters a week for each Member.

I understood that, but I see considerable abjections to it from the point of view of the Postmaster and his staff, while I see very small objection indeed to being able to hand out to each Member, on request, a certain number of envelopes each week for the purpose of business correspondence. I hope the Financial Secretary will give some attention to that matter and see whether, pending the setting up of a Select Committee to inquire into the remuneration of Members and their expenses, something cannot be done to help them in that way.

2.4 p.m.

I think it is desirable, with a view of informing the public, that a little more should be said about the problem as a whole, with special reference to the suggestions of my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg). The hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir H. Williams) spoke about the House of Commons being judge in its own cause and, of course, it is invidious for Members of Parliament to advocate any advantage for themselves in respect of the franking of postage or anything else. But there is a considerable amount of misunderstanding among the general public about the conditions under which Members of Parliament carry on. I make the definite assertion that there is not a Member in the House who can live upon his Parliamentary salary. He simply cannot do it.

I can prove that by my own personal budget. It is invidious, I know, but I cannot help it and I think it desirable that the facts should be known. The £600, when taxation is taken off, amounts in my case, to £8 10s. a week. Out of that some Members have a postage bill of over £4 a week. Mine is a little over £2. In addition to that, especially since the times of the meeting of the House have been altered, and, as has been said, we have turned ourselves partly into a night club, there is a considerable increase of expense for meals. After all, you have not got milk bar charges here, and two meals a day inside the House of Commons is a pretty considerable expense, over and above what would be entailed in ordinary walks of life. Then there is the question of travel. Members have no free travel except to their constituencies. My extra expense, which I should not have if I were not a Member of Parliament, amounts to between 15s. and £1 a week and I think my extra expenses for meals here would be in the neighbourhood of £2 a week. One way and another, little odds and ends of expenses arise. In addition, you have constituency expenses. I pay £1 a week for secretarial and headquarter expenses in my constituency—and Members of Parliament are expected to contribute to things on a fairly generous scale. I do not mean football clubs—I rule that sort of thing right out—but there are such things as Mayors' funds for children and so on, and numbers of things, all of which amount to this, that in my own case my net income from Parliament is under £3 a week. One could not live if that was all one had. That is not a dustman's wage, yet the country expects first-class legislators and expects them to be here for 24 hours a day. There is as much nonsense talked about "absentee M.P.s" as about the question of salary. People do not know that the first duty of a Member of Parliament is not necessarily to be in this House. The House of Commons does not consist of this debating Chamber first. It is the body of the elected representatives, who have innumerable other duties, and the debating value of the House varies according to the nature of the discussion, Committee stage or whatever it may be. There is a lot of other work, including the reading of correspondence, for Members to do.

With all those facts taken into consideration it seems to me that the Treasury might very sympathetically consider my hon. Friend's appeal. From the standpoint of the nation's finances, it does not mean a great amount but it would mean a great difference to a large number of Members. One of the reasons why the House of Commons is as old as it is—I mean in respect of the age of its Members—is that large numbers of people, very reasonably, feel that they cannot afford to enter the House until they have established security for themselves. That is one of the reasons why you have in the House of Commons much older people than you would find on local authorities. In addition, there is the fact that Members have so many other responsibilities that, if you want an effective House of Commons, with the freedom from anxiety and care that is required of people who are handling the nation's business, or are expected to handle it as it ought to be handled, this meanness—because it is rather meanness to crib the activities of Members financially—should be relieved at least to some extent. We are not asking for increased salaries for ourselves. That would be an undesirable thing to do just before a General Election. I would not ask it for myself, because I am able to add to my income a little by writing, but even that can be carried too far. There was a leading article in the "Standard" yesterday which spoke of Members of Parliament becoming directors of public and private companies. There is a possible scandal in some directions there but, before you can call for relief in regard to a scandal of that kind, the whole thing must be put in order, and it can be put in order with a little generosity on the part of the Treasury.

2.10 p.m.

We have had an interesting Debate, which has ranged rather wider than the scope of it, as it was opened by the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg). It arises out of a Question which he put on 27th March relating to free postage facilities for Members of Parliament. The practice relating to Whips and Ministers was raised in supplementary questions, and it was raised not, as he assured us to-day, in any spirit of hostility or criticism but I think in a desire to promote the object that he has at heart, which is to achieve the right of free postage facilities for Members of Parliament in regard to what is rather loosely called their constituency correspondence. Such limited inquiries as I had been able to make in the short interval between seeing the Question on the Paper, and answering it a day or two later, had indicated to me that there were some differences of practice and opinion between Ministers on this point, and it was therefore not possible for me, in reply to supplementary questions, to lay down in precise terms what was the generally recognised principle. I was most anxious in the replies that I gave not to mislead the House, and to safeguard the position of my colleagues. I have now had an opportunity of making further inquiries, and moreover this matter of Ministerial correspondence has been considered by the Cabinet.

They have reaffirmed two clearly defined principles. First of all, the personal correspondence of Ministers should be—and of course normally is—duly stamped at Ministers' expense; and it goes without saying that similar considerations apply to long distance telephone calls, telegrams and things of that character. The second principle is that correspondence on matters affecting the discharge of a Minister's responsibilities as a Minister, or letters written by him in his position as a member of His Majesty's Government concerning the conduct of public business, are, and should be, franked at the public expense. It would clearly be wrong, and quite intolerable, that the discharge of a public office should involve calls on a Minister's private purse. There is, of course, when you get to what is loosely termed constituency correspondence, somewhat of a difficulty when the position of a Minister is concerned. My hon. Friend the Member for South Croydan (Sir H. Williams) on 27th March, when questions were put on the subject, said that when he was a Minister, he always paid postage unless a letter cam to him not as a Member of Parliament but as a Minister. It is not, of course, always perfectly obvious to a Minister receiving a letter in what capacity he is the recipient of it.

To take one extreme, I should rather surmise that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who must have a very large post-bag, gets few letters which begin, "Dear Mr. Churchill, I am writing to you as my Member of Parliament." To go to the other extreme in the Ministerial hierarchy, I do not suppose that the junior unpaid Lords of the Treasury receive many letters which begin, "I am writing to you in your capacity as Junior Lord of the Treasury." It is clear that between these two extremes an infinite variety of cases arise. Many letters written, even to comparatively junior Ministers, are written to them expressly in their Ministerial capacity as Members of the Government with collective responsibility for Government policy. On the other hand, there are equally clear cases of constituents with personal or individual grievances, who ask for the help of a Minister in his capacity as their Member of Parliament.

In the wide variety of circumstances which arise, both as regards the position of individual Ministers, and as to the type of letters which they receive, it must clearly be a matter for the Minister himself to settle into what category his correspondence falls. It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules in advance which would cover each and every individual case which may arise. Those are the lines upon which the Cabinet have reaffirmed what I believe to be the true doctrine in these matters, and I hope that those principles will commend themselves to the good sense of the House. They will certainly be useful both to Ministers and to their secretaries as a guide to their future conduct. I want to make it clear on that matter that no advantage is claimed for a Minister over the ordinary Member of Parliament in regard to what is properly constituency correspondence.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon raised the wider question of the free frankage of letters for Members of Parliament as such, whether they are Ministers or not. It is clear from the short Debate that we have had that there is no unanimity upon that matter. The hon. Member for Central Southwark (Mr. Martin) expressed some doubts whether it would be a wise innovation, and I did not quite gather from the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for South Croydon whether he favoured the suggestion or not.

A little more money.

I think that what he and the hon. Member for West Islington (Mr. Montague) have mainly in mind is that Members should be given an adequate salary or expenses allowance to enable them to discharge their responsibilities.

I was supporting the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg).

I thought that my hon. Friend's main plea was that Members of Parliament should get some increased remuneration.

The history of this matter is not altogether without interest. Up to 1840, as students of 18th and early 19th century literature will be aware—see, for example, the memoirs of that famous courtesan Miss Harriette Wilson, or the more refined books of Miss Jane Austen—Members enjoyed free frankage, and it was very grossly abused. In fact, it was abolished when Sir Rowland Hill introduced the penny postage in 1840. Nothing happened until the Select Committee of 1920, to which my hon. Friend referred. In 1911, the late Lord Lloyd-George introduced the payment of Members for the first time. In 1920, the Select Committee recommended, among other matters affecting the remuneration of Members of Parliament and their travel facilities, that a system of free frankage should be introduced. The Government considered the Report of the Select Committee, and on 11th May, 1921, Sir Austen Chamberlain-who was then the Leader of the House, announced that the Government rejected this recommendation of the Select Committee. There was a Debate in the House on 1st June, and Sir Austen merely said that the Government had rejected the proposal for free postage as it was obviously capable of great abuse, an abuse of which a Member might become an unwilling victim. In the course of the Debate, no Member rose to support the recommendation of the Select Committee, and no tears were shed in the House over the abandonment of the proposal. Until recently the proposal had not been heard of again.

That was a Parliament of hard-faced business men.

At any rate, the proposal was turned down by the Government of the day, for the reason that, in their view, it might be subject to very grave abuse. It occurs to me also, and I think it will occur to many hon. Members, that without severe safeguards and without machinery for enforcing them, abuse might creep in. I myself, for example, before the war used to send to my leading constituents at Christmas each year a very nice Christmas card. I should have sent much larger numbers if I had been entitled to hand them in at the Post Office of the House of Commons for free frankage. Again, unless there were severe restrictions, obviously the sitting Member could carry on what would, in fact, be a continuous election campaign, with a series of free postages at the public expense from the Palace of Westminster, very much to the disadvantage of the opposing candidates to whom similar facilities were not available.

Is it not to the advantage of the rich sitting Member as against the poor sitting Member, that he can afford to carry on such a barrage?

I cannot be drawn into the relative advantages and disadvantages of being either rich or poor at the present time. That would open up too wide an issue. I submit to the House, and I think it will be the general sense of the House, that the proper way in this matter is to give Members of Parliament a fair and adequate remuneration, and to allow the individual Member to spend that remuneration as he sees fit to the best advantage. I am sure that free frankage would have to be subjected to very severe restrictions and elaborate safeguards and checks of all kinds, which would prove burdensome in practice to hon. Members.

On the other question, which is a much wider question, whether or not the present remuneration of Members of Parliament is adequate, there are a number of considerations which hon. Members ought to have in their minds. It is clear from what the hon. Member for South Croydon said, that any change in the level of Parliamentary remuneration would have to carry with it a review of the junior Ministerial remuneration. That is perfectly clear. Otherwise, the existing anomalies would merely be exaggerated and the present drawbacks, as I am sure they are to some hon. Members, to taking junior office would be even greater than they are at the present time. In 1936, hon. Members will remember, there was a proposal, which was carried, for an increase in Parliamentary remuneration, but it was the subject of very keen differences of opinion at that time. It is a subject upon which the whole House would be keenly interested, and before the Government could initiate any proposal for a change they would have to be convinced that there was a strong desire on the part of a very large number of Members for some change to be made.

It ought to be made clear and emphasised that neither the hon. Member for Maldon nor myself advocated increased salaries. We are not asking for that, and we do not want it to go to the country and to our constituents that we are.

I am much obliged to my hon. Friend. I submit that, rather than add to the privileges in kind of Members of Parliament, it would a much better solution to add to the Parliamentary remuneration. I believe that that would be much the fairest method of dealing with this problem, but it would carry with it, as I have said, the necessity for a review of Ministerial salaries. We would all be agreed, however, that in the dying months of this Parliament this is a task which is not likely to be undertaken, and which would not commend itself to the electors if it were undertaken at the present time. Until a new Parliament has assembled, we do not know what the character of that Parliament will be. Moreover, we do not yet know at what figure the cost of living after the war is likely to be stabilised. I, therefore, suggest that this is a question which, though of considerable importance, which it is right and proper should be discussed at the present time, is one that will probably have to be deferred until after the General Election.

I hope that I have cleared up the position regarding Ministerial postage to the satisfaction of the House. I hope I have also succeeded in instilling some doubts in the mind of my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon as to the desirability of introducing free frankage for Members of Parliament's correspondence as such; and I have indicated that, in my view, a new Parliament will have to deal with this question of Members' remuneration. In those circumstances, I hope that my hon. Friend will be satisfied that he has done a good day's work in raising this matter, and will not press me further upon it.

I offer no apology for asking the attention of the House for a short period to the main features of the Report on the Severn Barrage and Hydro-electric Scheme, which was issued under the auspices of the Minister of Fuel and Power and published by His Majesty's Stationery Office, and which is now available to Members. I have no hesitation in raising the matter because I hope that I will convince those Members who are here that this Report relates to a matter of great national importance. I feel a certain special personal interest in it, because I know every inch of the country which is embraced in this scheme, and I was for many years connected with the greatest hydro-electric projects in the world on both the productive and distributive sides. It is interesting to look back and see how, for hundreds of years, people have been striving to utilise the latent power in the rise and fall of the tides. It is interesting to note that, in the early years of the last century, one of our greatest engineers, Telford, was commissioned by the Government of the day to examine the power potentialities of the Severn tides. When we think of harnessing the tides, we turn to the Severn with its great rise at maximum periods of something like 47 feet.

Nothing was done until a comparatively recent date, and it stands to the credit of the Baldwin Government that in 1925 Mr. Baldwin remitted to a sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Research a detailed examination of the latent power in the Severn estuary. That Committee was presided over by Lieut.-Colonel Moore Brabazon, now Lord Brabazon of Tara, and its report was issued in 1933. I wish hon. Members would read that report because it is one of the most masterly reports ever published by the Stationery Office. They recommended that there should be a hydrographic survey of the Severn Estuary; sanction was given and the Admiralty carried it out. This survey was carried out on the most elaborate scale, and it was completed. The Committee extended its field until it covered the whole ground and, with the sanction of the Government, it called in the services of a firm of consulting engineers to prepare a complete estimate with drawings and plans. When that report was issued by the Committee in 1933 it contained all the details for an early commencement of the work if the Government of the day had so decided.

I will not give the House any figures because they are not always very convincing, but the main features of the report were that it was found to be a practicable scheme; that it came easily within the range of engineering experience and knowledge and that it would have no prejudicial effect on the navigation of the river, either above or below the barrage; on the contrary it would rather improve navigable conditions above the barrage. This scheme was estimated to produce 1,610,000,000 kilowatt hours of electrical energy at a cost of only two-thirds of the comparable cost of steam production in a modern coal-fired station. Also to save a million tons of coal a year. When we take that figure it is significant to note that the price of coal—I do not wish to make my hon. Friend blush—was then 16s. a ton. One feature of that report which was not quite so desirable was that it embraced many ancillary projects—a new road across the Severn, a railway bridge, and a harbour and dock area above the barrage—projects which naturally brought in many authorities to be consulted. There were other influences, too, which were brought to bear upon its postponement, so that report, which was a comprehensive investigation into a great engineering project, joined the dusty heaps of buried treasure which encumber our archives. I make bold to say that very few hon. Members here have ever heard of its existence.

In justice to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Fuel and Power, I must pay this tribute to him, that when I drew his attention to this scheme and to this report in a letter to "The Times" newspaper he was quick to appreciate its importance and took immediate action to have the scheme re-examined. A most authoritative body of engineers was set up to examine this scheme in every detail and to submit a report. That report is now before us. It endorses in effect all the main conclusions of the earlier body, the Brabazon Committee, while applying modifications to embody the latest practice. They cut out the secondary storage scheme in the Wye Valley which was rather a cumbersome appendage to the original proposal. In many directions they acted with extreme wisdom. They left out questions of roads and railways because they wisely decided that they were subjects for separate consideration. They confined their attention entirely to the barrage and to the electrical machinery connected with it, and they designed a reasonable estimate for it. Although they were able to reduce the period of construction from 14 years to eight years, and the rate of interest went from 4 per cent. to 3 per cent., owing to the fantastic rise in prices the cost of the barrage work alone rose from £24,000,000 to £40,000,000. On the other hand, the output of energy was raised from 1,610,000,000 kilowatt hours to 2,365,000,000 kilowatt hours by cutting out the storage system. Capital costs and running costs are not in themselves the determining factors in a scheme of this sort. What is the determining factor is the cost of the goods delivered, and, on a careful estimate by these highly competent men, the cost of producing power at the barrage under these conditions and at this price is 0.199 of a penny per unit which is equivalent to coal in a modern station at 37s. 6d. per ton. In August last year the price of coal was 42s. 2d. a ton and since then there have been substantial increases. Those are the authoritative figures embodied in this report, that with coal at 37s. 6d. per ton the Severn Barrage would produce energy at a rate which places it on a parity with a modern steam station practice.

I think the House will agree that our views on this report will be very largely coloured by our views on the future of the coal industry in this country, and that must be a matter on which every man is entitled to his own opinion. I only express my own opinion for what it is worth. I view the coal position in this country with intense and increasing anxiety. Our industry was largely built up on an ample supply of cheap coal. I am not certain whether the coal supply will ever be ample or even sufficient in the future; it will certainly not be cheap. Therefore, if we take a broad and far-seeing view of the position, especially in relation to the work of prime movers in industry, we should develop our water resources to the maximum and follow every possible practice in the economy of coal. The Minister should, I suggest institute a scientific inquiry to determine whether we can afford to burn raw coal in the furnaces when there is this large and insatiable demand for the by-products of coal combustion.

I do not ask the Parliamentary Secretary to make any detailed reply or statement of policy, but I would put this to him. The report which is now before him is, so far as engineering experience goes, the most complete and authoritative report that he is likely to get, but that report is in some respects not as complete as the Brabazon Report because of its terms of reference. The report says that a new tidal model is required to determine the effect of the new siting of the barrage in view of the changed conditions. In that inquiry the harbour authorities in the Bristol Channel have a right to be consulted. There is no detailed project estimate with working plans as there was in the Brabazon Report. I ask my hon. Friend seriously to consider whether he and his Ministry ought not to fill up those gaps in that report so that this revised scheme may be complete in every detail. I would ask my hon. Friend and his Ministry to consider carefully the position of hydro-electric energy in comparison with steam.

I would not have hon. Members think because I was keenly associated with the development of hydro-electric power, that I have got water on the brain. There are certain disadvantages in hydro-electric power. One of them is that you have to incur your full capital expenditure before you can deliver a unit of energy, whatever the market for that energy may be. On the other hand—and it is an overwhelming factor—once your works have been constructed you can plan for 50 or 75 years ahead knowing well that never will the cost of the production of your energy vary, and that cannot be said of any steam station in this or any other country. What would not my hon. Friend and his colleagues in industry have given for 800,000 kilowatts of energy from a scheme of this sort during the difficult years of strain which we have experienced—energy independent of labour, transport, snow or ice? I beg the Minister not to look at this scheme from the small end of the telescope so that he sees all of its difficulties, nor to look through the big end and think that the scheme is a very small one. It is not. It is a great national enter- prise and one which could play a very big part in our industrial development.

May I say a final word or two? For a century British engineering led the world in railways, steamships, in the design of the Forth Bridge, in tunnelling the bowels of the earth here and in America and in the construction of our wonderful tube system. In the last few years everybody seems to have got the impression that America only is the land of big-scale enterprise. For 1,000 people who can tell you about the Grand Coulee and Muscle Shoals, not one can tell you much about the magnificent work of the Indus Barrage or the hydro-electric and irrigation works which our engineers have constructed all over India.

I would therefore ask my hon. Friend to look at this national enterprise, not only from its economic aspects, which I have attempted to indicate briefly, but as an opportunity of giving our own engineers a chance to show what is in them and to let the world see that they are not one whit inferior to the engineers of any other nation. Their professional skill is as high as any in the world. I think this House will agree with me when I say that if proof of this challenge is sought it can be given in one word—Arromanches.

2.46 p.m.

My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Sir S. Reed) need not apologise for having raised this very important subject. I can assure him he has a colleague in the Minister of Fuel and Power who is very keenly interested in the matter and who, I think, made his maiden speech on that subject. As my hon. Friend pointed out, in 1933 a report was issued on the Severn Barrage and for ten years nothing was done with regard to it. In 1943, a Question was asked, and there was correspondence with regard to the matter. My right hon. and gallant Friend appointed a panel of experts to look at the report and the proposals for a Severn Barrage in the light of later experience. The terms of reference given to that panel were: The panel of experts reported in October, 1944, and since then there have been discussions with the experts themselves and with other bodies who might be helpful in this matter. The matter is most complicated and technical, involving considerable expenditure and the proposals of the experts require consideration from various angles. I should explain that the proposals that the experts have put forward differ in several respects from those contained in the 1933 report. That report envisaged a barrage across the Severn which would be combined with a road and railway bridge between Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire. That report also contemplated that a large deep water area, created above the barrage might ultimately be developed as a dock area, and lastly, the 1933 Committee, impressed with the difficulties of the intermittent and variable nature of the output of energy from the barrage, proposed a system of pumped water storage, at a site adjoining the River Wye.

When the experts came to review the 1933 report they were already aware of a decision by the Ministry of War Transport to give the very highest priority to the construction of a bridge across the Severn, and therefore quite naturally they omitted from their considerations this question of a bridge. The experts also came to the conclusion that it was not necessary to provide pumped storage and that, in fact, the provision of storage for water above the Wye could not be recommended, because it would increase the capital cost of the proposals by about 40 per cent., and the pumping of the water to the storage would absorb so much of the energy generated by the barrage that the resultant cost of the energy with pumped storage would be greater than the cost of energy generated from coal-fired stations.

The experts began to consider various methods of utilising the energy made available from the barrage and they came to the conclusion that the most suitable method would be to connect the plant at the barrage with the grid operated by the Central Electricity Board and to regulate the output of the coal-fired stations which supply the grid in such a way that those stations, together with the barrage, would provide an output of electricity which would vary with the daily demand. If such a method of working the barrage were adopted, there would be no saving in the amount of plant which is required by the coal-fired stations and therefore the total capacity of those stations would remain just the same whether the barrage were constructed or not. The savings that would be effected by the barrage would be in the coal which would be required at the coal-fired stations to generate the energy which the barrage would produce. It is estimated that the operation of the barrage would provide a saving of about 1,000,000 tons of coal a year.

My right hon. and gallant Friend has not yet completed his consideration of the proposals of the experts, but even though no decision has yet been reached there are certain considerations which suggest themselves from the report of the experts. Perhaps I may be allowed briefly to develop these considerations, which are before my right hon. and gallant Friend. As an engineering project it appears quite clear that the barrage is feasible. The project is a substantial one and would involve an expenditure, estimated by the experts, of £47,000,000. My hon. Friend will agree that this is a very considerable expenditure to embark upon for one project, especially during the next few years when our resources in materials and labour for building and civil engineering will undoubtedly be heavy.

The main economic justification for constructing the barrage would be the saving of 1,000,000 tons of coal. As we are all very well aware, coal is a wasting asset, whereas tidal power is not. From this point of view therefore the barrage requires very serious consideration. If we have reached the stage when the saving of coal must be carried out at whatever the cost, then my right hon. and gallant Friend would no doubt find it necessary to examine all kinds of projects which have been put forward from time to time which have the merit of saving coal. In their report, the experts examined very closely the question whether, from the financial point of view, the barrage could be said to effect economies, and they have come to the conclusion that, with coal at a price of not less than 49s. 1d. per ton, the barrage would be economically justified for the first 15 years of its operation.

Though the price of coal for electricity undertakings has unfortunately risen substantially during the war, it has not reached the price of 49s. 1d. per ton, and it is the hope that now that the war has ended it will be possible to look forward to a period when the price of coal may begin to decrease, rather than to increase. I personally hope so. I think the tendency will be for the price of coal to come down. I want to assure my hon. Friend that this proposition has not been shelved. It has been considered very thoroughly. My right hon. Friend has consulted all those who, he feels, can be helpful in the matter and although at the moment no decision has been taken on the matter by the Government, when it is taken my right hon. Friend will tell the House, whatever it may be.

As regards the development of water power, we are alive to all those possibilities and we shall do all we can about it. I knew that my hon. Friend would not wish me to go into the question of the more scientific utilisation of coal resources, interesting as it would be. That consideration will have to remain till a later date, till when, I can assure my hon. Friend, the matter is not being neglected.

Would my hon. Friend kindly make clear the difference between my figure of £40,000,000 and the figure he has given of £47,000,000? Possibly my hon. Friend has included the transmission factor.

We can go into that matter later, when the figures have been discussed.

I am very grateful to the Minister of Works for making it convenient to be present himself on this occasion. I appreciate what a tremendous burden of responsibility he carries, and I hope the contrast is noted with the Minister of Fuel and Power who, although an hon. Member gave him notice of intention to raise a series of questions, has not taken the trouble to be here to-day when he should have been. I am, therefore, all the more grateful to my right hon. Friend. I do not think the question at issue is really one which cannot be resolved, but although it is a comparatively narrow point, it is one of some constitutional importance. It concerns the responsibility of the Minister to the House for giving explanations about transfers to the Ministry of those who have not previously been employed in it, and who, on the face of it, would not appear to have any special knowledge of the work to be done. We are aware in this House of the ordinary rule which has been so admirably stated, that it is not right or proper that Ministers should be asked any question as regards promotion or demotion, whether or not it applies. I maintain that it does not apply.

I would like first of all to pay my tribute both to the Minister and to Brigadier-General Sir Frederick Pile. Having had the privilege and the advantage, largely owing to the kindness of the Minister when he was in a different Ministerial position, of seeing the wonderful combination between him and Sir Frederick Pile, I can say the country is under a debt of gratitude to them for the part they played under A.D.G.B. In the circumstances, my right hon. Friend was fully entitled to say: "I have worked with Sir Frederick Pile and I know him to be a man of great ability and character." Many of us are aware that he is not in his first youth. I think he is near the ordinary retiring age of the Civil Service. I think the Minister could say that it was right to put him where he has been put in that Ministry, but I want a rather fuller explanation than it has been possible to obtain from the Minister at Question Time.

I take the view that the right of Members to raise questions on the Motion for Adjournment is not confined to those circumstances suggested in the jargon which we have adopted in this House "owing to the unsatisfactory nature of the reply." The Adjournment Motion should be used to discuss more fully matters which one raises at Question Time under the ordinary Rules of the House, and it is in order to get a fuller reply that I raise this matter now. A careful perusal of HANSARD of 9th May will show that the questions largely related, not to Sir Frederick Pile, so much as to the lady and gentleman who were brought in as well. The Question was, Sir Frederick Pile, a brigadier and a junior commander A.T.S. had come to the Ministry, apparently at the same time as Sir Frederick Pile. My right hon. Friend said: To which the Minister replied:

I turn to a much wider question with which this matter is, to some extent, connected. I do not know what line the Minister may take in reply. He would be entitled to say "I have a Ministry which has a most pressing and urgent job on its hands, a Ministry which necessarily has to be extended in order to deal with one of the gravest emergencies in housing we have ever known, and I must, therefore, strengthen the Ministry by bringing in people from outside, even if they have not technical qualifications, because I want more personnel, and good personnel at that." That would be a reasonable reply but I think this question has to be dealt with on a rather broader basis. I can remember—and I think my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Kelvingrove (Lieut.-Colonel Elliot) will support me in this—what occurred after the last war. Ministries that had been created during the war were continued on a peace-time basis. Personnel were transferred to them, often in a most unsatisfactory way. Rejects of other Departments, people for whom Permanent Under-Secretaries had been trying for years to find some job which they did not hopelessly muddle, and who, owing to the conditions in the Civil Service, by which an incompetent person cannot be got rid of if he is high enough, were frequently sent there.

I would not suggest it is so in the case of the present Government, but there were such cases as, "Would it not be nice to give Mr. A. an Under-Secretaryship?", Mr. A. being known to be not much use in answering questions, or in making a speech. "Let us send him to the new Ministry," and so the new Minister found himself with Mr. A. as his Under-Secretary, and with a staff partly of rejects of other Government Departments. I hasten to say there are no such people in the present Government. All of them, particularly the Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, are quite admirable at answering questions. I am referring only to what took place in the past. That was a very unsatisfactory state of affairs, which had a bad effect on administration. My right hon. Friend would be entitled to say, "Your own argument is really supporting my case, because I want to avoid what happened in the last war by strengthening my Ministry, by bringing in men, not from other Departments but from outside, who are really suitable for the job." If that is so I do not see any reason why the Minister should not say so. At any rate he should give some further explanation than he has given.

I hope that the principal adviser to the Prime Minister on this subject of the Civil Service will do his best to avoid those mistakes which occurred after the last war. In many cases it would have been far better to have pensioned off those to whom I have referred, and to have brought in ex-Servicemen and had them specially trained, and even put them above civil servants. I hope I shall be able to claim the Minister as a supporter of my argument. As a Minister with great responsibilities on his shoulders he is quite entitled to strengthen his Department as far as possible. All I ask is that some explanation should be given. What alarms me is that if the rule enunciated by the Minister is applied, other Ministers may say, "I take the same line as the Minister of Works. I am not going to answer any questions about who is being brought into my Department. I am going to say that this is not a matter in which I, as Minister, propose to discuss qualifications." That might lead to the condition of affairs to which I have been referring. Quite unsuitable people might be brought in, or rejects of other Departments, and the Minister might say, "I am not going to discuss whether this man is competent or not. The matter rests solely in my hands." No one can accuse my right hon. Friend of being other than an efficient Minister. It is merely a question of a common-sense approach to a problem which has, I think, some constitutional importance.

3.10 p.m.

I am sorry that this matter should have been raised until the appointment had been proved undesirable. I think that there are three important fundamentals involved. First, has a Minister the right to choose his own assistants? If not, who is going to do it for him? Is this House going to be responsible for all the assistants a Minister has? The Minister must be responsible, and if the work is not satisfactory he has to come before this House, and take the consequences.

There is such a thing as the Civil Service. A Minister is not entitled to say, "I will not use the Civil Service; I will bring in 100 people from outside." That is the American system, not ours.

If the Minister can convince the House that the Treasury are prepared to sanction his appointments, I think we should await indications of the success or failure of the appointments before raising them in this House. The second point is the criticising of civil servants by name in this House. This military officer, the subject of the matter under discussion, has become a temporary civil servant. It is unfortunate that we should have taken a man who has done great work in the country, and criticised him here. We should not do so, certainly until the results of his work become apparent.

I hope my hon. Friend does not accuse me of criticising him. On the contrary, I said that his appointment was fully justified. Who is criticising him? Will my hon. Friend answer that question?

If the Noble Lord is not criticising him, what is he doing? I think we are interfering very largely with the prerogative of Ministers. If we change that principle, where are we getting to? My last point is to ask, Have the Government the right to permit the seconding of a man of proved ability from one Department to another? We are all agreed that the temporary civil servant under consideration has proved that he is a very fine soldier. In the building industry, I can say, with possibly a limited amount of experience—I will not put it higher than that—that everybody to do a good job does not necessarily have to be a bricklayer, although this morning we had a fine demonstration from a bricklayer, when we saw a man aged 74 put up 200 bricks in 58 minutes. We have a national habit, the system in fact that is employed in selecting men for the Cabinet, of suggesting that a man, because he has proved he possesses the ability to make sound judgments, is capable of performing many sorts of work. In all great building operations there is a whole lot of organisation needed, and without this power of organisation we shall not get the results which are certainly needed in the national housing drive. Here in the appointee under consideration is one who has proved himself the possessor of great organising power. No one will dispute that—in fact, my Noble Friend has just agreed that that is so. Therefore, I think my right hon. Friend the Minister is perfectly right to appoint whoever he wishes, if the Treasury agree to the appointment. I think that we should not criticise civil servants, and that the Government must have a right to second men from one Department to another. For these reasons, until we see that the result of such procedure is not giving satisfaction, I feel it is unfortunate that this matter has been raised.

3.15 p.m.

My Noble Friend who raised this question, as he has a perfect right to do, described it as a narrow constitutional point, so far as the appointment of General Pile is concerned; and he went on from the appointment of this distinguished officer to the general question of the staffing of new Ministries which, of necessity, have been established as a result of the war. On the narrow constitutional point, I gathered that my Noble Friend would have had no objection to General Pile and his assistants being transferred to the Ministry of Works if they had been members of the permanent Civil Service. I would venture to remind him however that in this housing problem, time is the essence of the contract, not only in relation to the repair of bomb damage, the laying out of sites, the importation of prefabricated buildings, and the building of temporary houses, but indeed in relation to our permanent long-term housing policy. As for the narrow constitutional point, what is the complaint? It appears that General Pile is an officer on full pay, borne on the Army Vote in this House. He brought with him to the Ministry Brigadier Pugh, whose main qualification for the position he held in A.A. Command was outstanding administrative ability. He also brought with him to assist in what was a new job, his personal private secretary. This House is as anxious as my right hon. Friend the Minister is to place every facility at the disposal of General Pile, to make his job a success and to enable him to discharge his duties with the utmost efficiency. The qualifications of General Pile were not claimed to be those of a technical character or of one who has been a long time in the building industry or who was a qualified architect; they were administrative qualities. Everybody knows that my Noble Friend would be the last Member of this House to criticise the political head of a Department.

I am sorry that both my hon Friends, who seem to have come down with prepared speeches, are attacking me for statements that I have not made. I am not criticising the appointment. I merely want to see it justified, because I do not want to see the introduction of the American spoils system, by which you can bring in any number of people if you want them in the Department.

I did not come down here with any prepared speech; all I have ventured to do is to make a few notes on a piece of paper, of the points in the speech of my Noble Friend. His interruption is rather inconsistent. He says that he is not criticising the appointment, but that it has not been justified, and this officer's qualifications have not been given to the House. What is that if it is not a criticism? The very fact that my Noble Friend is raising the question is in itself a criticism.

What the Noble Lord is criticising is the principle, not the personalities.

Then let me deal with the matter on the basis of principle. I am always ready to accept my Noble Friend's point of view, because we know that there is always only one motive behind what he says, and that that is a very high sense of public duty. What are the qualifications? I am sure that my Noble Friend and the House will recall that when this country was subject to what was known as the V1, and, later, to what was known as the V2, attack it was necessary to reorganise and move the whole of Anti-Aircraft Command. In connection with that reorganisation, the very large personnel coming under the command of General Pile had to be transferred from isolated sites all over the place and concentrated on sites in other parts of the country. It entailed a vast housing problem to start with. Sites had to be found and laid out, roads had to be made, water laid on, heating and lighting provided and the actual hutments had to be erected. What did General Pile do? He did not "pass the buck," if I may use such an expression, to the Ordnance Corps or another department of the War Office. He took over the whole responsibility himself, planned the whole of this operation, and, under his personal direction, assisted by Brigadier Pugh and his personal secretary, who was a very efficient member of the A.T.S., he had the whole complicated job done in record time. That, in itself, I submit, is proof, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that General Pile possesses the attitude of mind and administrative ability particularly suited to these problems. Surely we are not going to quarrel with the War Office because they have been generous enough to place the services of this distinguished administrator at the disposal of the Ministry.

Let me come now to the other question. If I may say so, I think my Noble Friend is right to address himself to the necessity of staffing these new Ministries, not with every "Uncle Tom Cobleigh" who is out of a job, but with qualified people who will discharge their duties with efficiency when such people become available. We have a permanent Civil Service which, particularly at the time when this appointment was made, was very much over-taxed. The people my right hon. Friend would, no doubt, like to have to assist him in his job, were not available. But, when we do settle down, I hope the country's gratitude, not only to distinguished officers, but to distinguished civil servants, who have rendered excellent service in other spheres of activity during the war, will not be recognised by placing them in appointments for which they are not suitable. I am sure that my right hon. Friend and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will, in the public interest, bear that in mind, and I hope that, on this occasion, we shall give all the support we can to this officer who, I am confident, will discharge his duties with efficiency, and so encourage a happy solution of this most difficult and complex problem.

3.23 p.m.

I am rather hazy why this matter has been raised to-day at all. I listened very carefully to the speech of the Noble Lord to hear if he would criticise the appointment of General Pile, but he has not done so. So far as I can understand, he raised what is purely a matter of principle—whether General Pile should be appointed to this position or not. About General Pile's technical qualifications to deal with housing, I think it is admitted that General Pile, in that particular sphere, has no technical qualifications, but I suggest to the Noble Lord that, when he became Under-Secretary of State for Air, he was not appointed to that post because of his technical qualifications for dealing with aircraft.

No, but the hon. and gallant Gentleman must know that there is a considerable difference between a Department and a Minister. If he does not know that, then he is most profoundly ignorant of our Constitution. Nobody would put him in the Foreign Office. Anybody more unsuitable for a civil servant it would be impossible to imagine.

I thank the Noble Lord for the compliment. If I might put it this way, I would say that the Noble Lord was not put into the Air Department because of his technical qualifications. He was obviously put in there for the drive and administrative ability which he could produce in that particular Department. I think that is why General Pile has been placed in charge of housing. He has obviously proved himself during the war to be a man of exceptional drive and with ability to take charge of the housing situation. God preserve us from putting an expert in that position. I would not like to see an expert put in that position, because he would obviously offend so many other experts who wanted the position. I would rather see a man put in who has proved himself in other Departments, or as a soldier of great ability, than an expert who is not going to get the support of his fellow experts. I have the greatest confidence that General Pile will do a good job. So far as the principle is concerned, during the war there have been a number of distinguished business men, and distinguished men of other services, who have been brought into the Civil Service as temporary civil servants and have done a grand job. I do not think the permanent civil servants will complain at all about these men being brought into these jobs, and I hope that General Pile will be given every opportunity to make a great success of his new appointment.

3.27 p.m.

I wish to try to correct a false line of argument which may lead the Minister off the track in replying to the Debate, but, before dealing with that, I want to say that this House would be unanimous in appointing, at once and without question, any man to that Ministry who will solve the housing problem. That is the issue. The Ministry of Works, or, as I call it, the pigeon loft on the other side of the river, has, from time to time, had men of great ability and personality, but the houses are not appearing. There was Lord Reith, a man of great drive and personality, followed by Lord Portal, another great personality and all the rest of it. The spirits were summoned by Glendower but they did not appear. There are other gentlemen of great merit, and I am wondering if the hon. Member for Maidstone (Mr. Bossom) is to be the next one in the drive. We have got a new Minister, but we have got to wait and see the fruits of the new appointment.

We have got a man, a Lieut.-General, who is going to do something about it. Now I want to tell the House not to worry too much about this, because he will not do it. I say that before he begins. Let us look at the arguments advanced by my noble enemy. [ Interruption. ] We are told that V1 was coming over here and that it was owing to the great drive of this general that so much was done. I want to warn the House about a false analogy here. That was a move to counter the Germans from bombing this country. It was a job which had to be done, and which had the entire support of the nation behind it. There were no impediments to the general in working out what was in his mind. If I thought no one at the Ministry of Works would impede me from building houses, I would take the General's job to-morrow. It is one thing to beat the Germans but another thing to beat the vested interests who are stopping the building of houses. I do not want this false analogy to be pressed too far. If this man was a man sent from Heaven, with the genius of an Archangel and of the hon. Member for Maidstone all rolled into one, he would not build houses. I will tell the Minister that now.

Why?

Because the vested interests will not allow him. It reminds me of the Irishman who was armed to the teeth. The Englishman asked, "Why not fight?" He said, "They will not let me fight." There are certain impediments to the building of houses which I do not mention, but which would prohibit any member of the Department from building houses. I have no objection to the Minister recruiting the best personality he can get, but I say to the House, Do not build on too much hope, because I know of impediments in the way that will thwart him, and the Minister and the whole of his Department, from solving the housing problem. It is all nonsense. The Ministry runs away with £6,000,000 a year, with a vast pay-sheet for a whole army of architects, and they produce the Portal house—and it disappears. What does the House think will happen next year? The abolition of this Ministry?

I say here and now that I do not care for discussing the Civil Service. It is very difficult to discuss a civil servant who cannot come to this House and defend himself, but there comes a time when the House must ask, when certain appointments are made, "What is the reason in the mind of the Minister for the appointment?" I look back over my experience of the last five years, and recall that I have been most intimately behind the scenes trying to do something towards winning the war—I have not received a medal yet. I know what I have had to contend with in various Departments, with great personalities appointed here, there and everywhere; but when I meet those big personalities I begin to think that I have undervalued myself for years. There is a danger—I do not say that it is yet in full swing in this country—which has to be watched, and it is the duty of this House to watch it. If there is a permanent staff of civil servants operating in any Ministry, there must be some good excuse advanced by the Minister responsible for bringing certain other persons into the Department. Nobody would challenge the Minister's right to bring into the Department, and more especially this Department, the most efficient people. But the question, "Why has someone else been brought in and what are his qualifications?" must be answered by any responsible Minister if he has gone beyond his immediate staffing.

Before I resume my seat, I want to refer to the point made by the hon. Member for Maidstone. A man who is able to lay bricks and build a house may have no administrative ability for controlling a vast building operation and might be quite hopeless. Not infrequently I have seen in this House men trained in crafts hopeless as Ministers in defending those crafts at that Box. There are two distinctions. There is the man with administrative ability, and there is the man who knows all about a craft, but, none the less, it is right to ask, apart from whatever personality or ability this General may possess, What are his experiences? There is no harm in asking that, surely. Does the Minister think that his Department will overcome the housing problem as the result of his services? If the House is robbed of that right then, believe me or believe me not, it will be the beginning of America's Tammany Hall in this country. If a Minister followed those lines I am sure the House would not stand for it.

I have made my interruption—I did not come with a prepared speech: I never do anyhow—and I have said what I have got to say. I am only sorry that, keeping strictly to the Rules of the House, I cannot mention the main impediments to housing, but I have been here long enough for the House to know what I mean, and with that I will resume my seat.

3.36 p.m.

Speaking as an ex-civil servant perhaps I mightary to bring the Debate away from the question of personalities, into which it has strayed unnecessarily, and back to the question of principle, which I will State in very few words. My right hon. Friend is the head of a Department which in times of peace is essentially and rightly a peaceful Department, and which during the circumstances of war has become an essentially dynamic Department. It is right and necessary for my right hon. Friend, in order to, render it dynamic, to bring in new people as a temporary expedient to deal with a temporary crisis. It is perfectly right—I am sure his judgment is absolutely correct—that General Pile and his two assistants are the ideal people for that Department. No one has questioned that.

Hear, hear.

The trouble would not have arisen if my right hon. Friend, in answer to the Noble Lord, had not seemed to assume that the Minister had, without question and without having to defend his action before this House or before the public, the right to put in whom he wanted when he wanted. My right hon. Friend has an absolutely perfect case. We are not questioning that. But if the ordinary routine of the Civil Service is to be interrupted by the spoils system, in trying to get the best people to do the work, then the Minister must come down and justify his action to the House, which it is quite unnecessary for him to do in this case. That is the simple proposition. As a general rule, if you are not going to get the Civil Service discouraged, frustrated, and subject to individual and political influences, you must maintain the rule that in normal circumstances promotion in a Department comes within that Department and is governed by those reservations, and that appointments must not be subject to the caprice of any individual Minister, however great his ability and however great is the confidence imposed in him.

Was not the Minister in these circumstances introducing the spoils system?

I am not suggesting for a moment that the appointment of General Pile was due to the spoils system. What I was saying was that unless you maintain the principle that the Civil Service is promoted, governed and chosen under its own regulations and by its own system, you will get a situation like that in the United States, where you have the spoils system. I hope that the House does not think that I suggested anything as unsatisfactory as that. I am sure that my right hon. Friend in choosing General Pile has done a public service, and I am sure it was the right thing to do, but he must explain it.

3.39 p.m.

First of all, may I thank my Noble Friend for the very kind remarks which he made about General Pile's and my own activities during the period when we both had a share in the arrangements for the defence against flying bombs. I was particularly interested in the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Leicester (Mr. H. Nicolson). He said that he was an ex-civil servant. As an ex-civil servant myself from the same Department to which my hon. Friend belonged, I entirely subscribe to the statement of principle which he made. He said that in normal circumstances promotion should be through the ordinary Civil Service channels from within the Department. I would agree with him that this is the normal procedure in normal times but I cannot accept for a moment that these are normal times or, in the case of the Ministry of Works in particular, that the situation is anything approaching normal. This Department, for which I am responsible, has recently taken on a vast new sphere of activity, and it must get reinforcements of its staff by altogether abnormal means if it is to obtain staff at all.

This Debate has arisen from the appointment to the Ministry of Works of General Pile as Director-General. The holder of this post is responsible for all the actual building activities, the physical, executive building activities of the Ministry. General Pile as Director-General is responsible for all that sphere. The other appointments about which I have been asked to make an explanation concern the Deputy Director-General, a post which has been filled by Brigadier Pugh, and a post of private secretary which has been filled by an A.T.S. officer.

Let me say straight away that I do not dispute, nor did I dispute at Question Time the other day, that the House is entitled to ask practically any question it dikes of a Minister in respect of the responsibilities which he is discharging and for which he is accountable to the House. All I said was that I thought, as a general rule, it was undesirable that there should be discussions as to the precise merits and qualifications of an individual officer or official. I do hot make a distinction—although my Noble Friend did so—between a civil servant and a military officer. I think in most cases it is undesirable that, when appointments are made, the Minister should be asked in the House to explain why he thinks that a particular officer was the best who could have been found for that particular job. In these appointments, particularly senior ones of a non-technical character, the considerations which have to be weighed are not such as can well be debated in public. The Minister who makes the appointment has to Judge a man's character, his capacity, his energy, his ability to get on with other people, and all those rather vague qualities of personality, which are, in most cases, far more important that what might be called paper qualifications It is easy to establish whether a man has the appropriate proficiency certificate, has passed some particular examination, or has so many years' service in the industry. That can easily be shown, but in the case of senior appointments those are not the things which matter most. Those are hot the things which ultimately decide the success or failure of the appointments.

The hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) went rather further than my Noble Friend and appeared to suggest that it was the business of the House to make appointments. I have made it clear that I recognise that the House has every right to ask for an explanation of appointments made However, it is my personal view that it should be only in exceptional circumstances that such questions should be put. My hon. Friend said that the House would unanimously appoint a man of General Pile's ability to a post in the Ministry of Works. That is going a very great deal further. It is surely a very well-established constitutional practice, based on Statute, that the actual appointment of officers and officials in Government Departments are made by the appropriate Minister, and that he is responsible to Parliament for what those officers do or what they fail to do—

I am sorry if in the rush of my language I put it that way. I meant that the House would support the appointment of such persons, implying all the time that the Minister had the power to make them; in fact, I said so.

It is fundamental that there should be a clear distinction between the functions of the executive and of the legislature in this matter and I am glad to know my hon. Friend did not wish to challenge that position.

As regards the specific issues which have been raised both during this Debate and at Question Time, there were two main points. First I was asked what were the technical qualifications possessed by General Pile which, in my view, made him a suitable person to be appointed to the post of Director-General at the Ministry of Works. The second point was that it seemed to be suggested that the transfer of a brigadier and of a junior officer in the A.T.S. to the Ministry of Works in some sense implied a tendency to militarise a civilian department and that some explanation was therefore required. So far as General Pile's qualifications are concerned I really think it was quite out of place for the hon. Member for Burslem to talk as he did in this connection, but I assume he did not wish to push his argument to the point of suggesting that anything improper had happened. His language was unfortunate when he talked about new Ministers coming in, bringing in their friends, taking "the fruits of office," and so forth. I assume that he was merely talking in a general way and that he did not wish to make any specific charge, so I am not proposing to take up that point.

I admit it would be quite wrong for my right hon. Friend to address himself to the personal point, but is it not rather undesirable as a general rule that when Ministers go to a Department comparatively newly, they should bring people with them from other Departments, or from outside, without giving reasons why they have done so? Will he address himself to that point?

I believe I understand the anxiety which underlies my Noble Friend's question, but if I had to give an explanation to the House every time I brought in a new person to the Ministry of Works during the next few months, there would need to be very constant explanations. Mine is an expanding Department which is taking on a large number of entirely new responsibilities. New branches have to be created and new people have to be found to staff them. There is no pool of regular civil servants upon which I can draw. Everybody in the Civil Service has been promoted to the utmost limit during the course of the war. Vast numbers of temporary civil servants have been brought in. There is a very great difficulty at the moment in finding staff. The whole trend at the moment is for temporary civil servants to wish to get out of Government Departments, to get back to industry, and to get back into their own businesses. There are very few people indeed outside the Civil Service, in business or in industry, who at the present moment are anxious to come into a Government Department at this stage of the war. Therefore, we are thrown very much upon the resources of the Armed Forces which are, at the moment, on the point of disgorging large numbers of very capable men. I make no pretence or apology to the House. On the contrary, I wish to make it clear that I am definitely on the look-out for capable men who have had administrative experience in the Army during the war—capable staff officers, many of whom have also had business and other valuable experience before they went into the Army. Those are just the sort of men we need. I am on the look-out for such men in order to fill a number of vacant posts at the Ministry of Works.

So far as General Pile's qualifications are concerned, I have never suggested nor has he that he has any technical qualifications whatsoever for this post. On the other hand, I consider he possesses all the qualifications needed for the post. But they are not technical qualifications. In reply to my Noble Friend at Question Time the other day, I said that the qualifications needed for this particular job are those of

General Pile has, of course, technical branches to deal with technical matters. It would be quite inconceivable that he himself could possess technical qualifications covering the entire field for which he is responsible. There are experienced architects, surveyors, engineers, production experts, and so forth, in the different branches of his Department.

At Question Time the other day I was asked what qualifications and experience General Pile had in the building industry. As I have already explained, he has no experience of the building industry. It would, of course, have been open to me to have found some leading figure in the building industry and to have appointed him to this position at the Ministry. I might well have done that. But I ask hon. Members, would there not have been criticism of another kind if I had? One of my predecessors at the Ministry of Works came in for a very great deal of criticism from the House when he brought in, as I think it was very necessary at the time, a number of persons who were leading members of the building industry. It was then asked, "Why these people? What is the justification for appointing men from the building industry? Is it right that men who are connected with the trade should be introduced into a Government Department?" It is very difficult to steer a middle course. As regards the suggestion that the remainder of the Department is in some sense being militarised because a brigadier and a junior A.T.S. officer have been brought in, I think that is a little far fetched. This brigadier is acting as a deputy director-general.

Who made that suggestion?

The whole basis of this Debate is the contention that because a brigadier and an A.T.S. officer have been brought into a Government Department, some explanation to the House is necessary.

indicated dissent.

I will tell the House what are the qualifications and background of these two people. The brigadier is not a Regular soldier. He was a barrister. Later, he went into business. He joined the ranks of the Territorial Army in 1938. Subsequently he received a commission and, through distinguished service, rose to the rank of brigadier and filled a number of responsible staff appointments. The A.T.S. officer was a private secretary in civilian life before the war. She joined the A.T.S. and has been a private secretary throughout the war in that Service. She has now come to the Ministry of Works in the same capacity, namely, as a private secretary. I put this to the Noble Lord. Let us suppose that the brigadier has suffered from ill-health, and had not served in the Army during the war, and let us suppose that this A.T.S. Officer had not joined the A.T.S. but had gone into some other civilian branch of war work. They would therefore both have been civilians. In that case, I do not believe that I should have been asked to explain my reasons for appointing them to posts at the Ministry of Works.

As the Minister appealed to me, I made no suggestion of militarisation, but I must make a comment on what he said. It is perfectly obvious now that these people are performing—and I think very well—a Ministerial function. I hate to say something wounding, but if the right hon. Gentleman had been provided, in this House or in another place, with a really efficient Parliamentary Secretary that Parliamentary Secretary ought to be doing the work which General Pile is doing.

I think that is a most uncalled-for remark. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works is doing work which bears comparison—

He is not doing it.

with the work performed by any Parliamentary Secretary, or by my Noble Friend when he was a Minister of the Crown. The Director-General's duties are quite a different type of work and it would be inappropriate for a Parliamentary Secretary to undertake those functions. There is no doubt that the reason I have been asked to make this explanation to-day is because the people I have appointed have military rank, and have come from the Army.

I ask the Minister to accept it from me that not for one moment did that sort of thing shadow my mind.

The hon. Member may talk about it not shadowing his mind, but the fact is that this Debate would not have taken place if these two people had been civilians.

Why does the Minister say that?

Would anybody have asked why a person who had been a private secretary in civilian life had been appointed to the Ministry of Works as a private secretary?

So far as I have followed this Debate, nobody is greatly interested in the private secretary. What interests hon. Members are the qualifications of a man appointed to a particular post, and Members would still be interested in inquiring into such a matter whether the man came from the Army, the Navy, commercial life or even Timbuctoo.

Is it not true to say that when the original question was raised at Question Time the whole sense of the House was that General Pile had been appointed as a regular officer of the Army and had been accompanied by a brigadier and an officer of the A.T.S., and that that is why they felt aggrieved about it?

I think that what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for South Cardiff (Sir A. Evans) has said bears out what I have said.

It being Four o'Clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[ Major A. S. L. Young. ]

It would be a poor outlook for people coming out of the Services if the mere fact that they have served in the Armed Forces of the Crown during the war is to be regarded by the House as in some way a disqualification for civilian employment in a Government Department. Ministers would hesitate before appointing such persons if they knew that they would be asked to make an explanation to Parliament.

In conclusion, let me repeat that I recognise without question that the House has a right to ask for any explanation which they think proper, but I maintain that by and large it is undesirable for there to be discussions in the House as to the merits and the personal qualities of individuals serving in or appointed to Government Departments. The Minister is responsible for the work of his Department, its successes and failures. He must be given a reasonably free hand to make such appointments as he thinks fit, and not be asked all the time to define and specify exactly what were the reasons which induced him to make a particular promotion, a demotion, a dismissal, or a new appointment. The only result of that would be to make Ministers hesitate unduly about making unorthodox appointments. It would merely strengthen the tendency, which I do not think is always good, invariably to promote according to seniority the man at the top of the list, to promote the man who has the right paper qualifications but who has not necessarily the right character or personality for the job. In fact, it will further tend to entrench the bad old principle of "Buggins's turn." On the contrary, the House should do everything it can to encourage those who have responsibility for making appointments to choose the best man for the job in the circumstances. This will be in the best interests of the country, and of the efficient conduct of our affairs.

4.4 p.m.

I do not want to keep the House for more than a few moments, but I would like to say something in favour of the much-abused citizen called the expert. We have heard in this House for month after month and almost year after year about the houses that are to be built. The present Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster spoke, when he was at the Ministry of Health, with pardonable pride about two cottages. I believe there was quite an expedition at one time to inspect them. Eventually he went the way of all Ministerial flesh. Then we had Lord Portal, who surrounded himself with brilliant and eager men who knew nothing about housing. The Portal house came and went, and Lord Portal went with his house. I would like to have the attention of the Minister to hear the point I am trying to make. I have the greatest admiration for my right hon. Friend, who I think, will do his job very well, and similarly, the Parliamentary Secretary—

I hope the Noble Lord is listening.

Ministers are paid to be criticised.

The Noble Lord is one of the greatest authorities on incompetence I know.

Once more we are training men in the business of making houses, but when is this process going to end? To use the Prime Minister's phrase, when are we going to reach the end of the beginning of this process of training non-technical non-experts, men of splendid character, to supervise the making of houses? I have the experience which we are all having of receiving the most heartrending letters from soldiers coming back to find no houses to live in. I have in my constituency a soldier who has lost both legs. He and his wife and children can only get a couple of rooms on the third floor of a house, and he has to climb the stairs. We pass letters to the Mayor. He cannot do anything and passes them back to us. They are put on the waiting list. What am I to say to this man without legs who asks, "Is it too much to ask of the country to give me any kind of place where I do not have to climb stairs?" Then we hear from the Minister, who I know wants to do his job well, that they are going to bring in General Pile, who has been an expert in the art of defending the country against bombing attacks. The very capacity that makes a man a success in one sphere of life often makes him a very wrong man in another. I do not know if that is true of General Pile or not, but I should have been far happier if the Minister had sent to the leaders in the industry and said, "Will you nominate your own man to do this?" There may be a flaw in it, but it seems to me it is very near common sense. "Will you nominate a man whom you trust? Shall we sit down at a table and see how swiftly we can bring the blueprint stage to an end and build houses?"

I remember, when I was a cadet in the last war, trying for my commission, a rather stupid incident the memory of which has remained with me all my life because of the degree of wisdom hidden in it, in spite of all its nonsense. The instructor said to us future officers, "You have a sergeant and 10 men with a flag pole 50 feet high. What instructions would you give for putting up the flag pole?" We all thought of different answers to the problem, and he said, "You are all wrong. I said you had a sergeant and 10 men. You say to the sergeant 'Put up the flag pole.'" I suggest that we should long ago have sent to the building industry and said, "Build houses." We have put a general in now, and perhaps we shall get them. There is in our life here a curious basic distrust of the man who knows his job. Even at the time of Munich, when Mr. Chamberlain realised that we should have to have some kind of Ministry of Information when war came, he chose Lord Stanhope. Later one after another man was chosen, on the principle, as far as one could see, that he was not an expert and did not understand his job until eventually we got a man who was an expert and who did the job well.

I hope that the Minister will go away from this Debate ready to clear away the obstructions, and to say, "Build houses," because without them all that this Government have done will be overwhelmed by the anger, resentment and frustration which are now far greater in the country than many of us want to realise.

Settle the land question first.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Ten Minutes past Four o'Clock, till Tuesday, 29th May, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of yesterday.