I beg to move, That on and after 3oth April, the Order (Sittings of the House) of 15th August, shall cease to have effect, and during the remainder of the present Session, until this House otherwise orders— (1) Standing Orders Nos. 1, 6, 7, 8 and 14 shall have effect as if, for any reference to a time mentioned in the first column of the following table there were substituted a reference to the time respectively mentioned in the second column of that Table:

(2) The following Order shall be substituted for Standing Order No. 2— 2. The House shall meet on Fridays at 11 a.m. for private business, petitions. orders of the day and notices of motions. Standing Order No. 1 (as amended by this or any other Order) shall apply to the sittings on Fridays with the omission of paragraph (I) thereof and with the substitution of references to 4 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. for references to 10 p.m. and 10.30 p.m.'

(3) Standing Order No. 25 shall apply— ( a ) to sittings on days other than Fridays, with the substitution of references to half past seven and half past eight for the references to a quarter past eight and a quarter past nine; and ( b ) to sittings on Fridays, with the substitution of references to a quarter past one and a quarter past two for the references to a quarter past eight and a quarter past nine. (4) In the paragraph substituted for paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 7 by the order of this House (Business of the House (Questions to Members)) of 22nd March, 1946, for the reference to 2.15 p.m., there shall be substituted a reference to 2.30 p.m.

It will be recalled that the time of the sitting of the House before the war for many years was 2.45 p.m. to 11 p.m., and, indeed, those times are set out in the ordinary Standing Order. During the war, however, it was obvious that there would have to be changes, and the House then tended to meet at II in the morning and to go on until some time in the afternoon related to the hours of darkness, and somewhat related to the activities of the enemy. But Parliament kept going and of that we are all very proud. It then became necessary, when that situation terminated, for the House to reconsider the matter and changes were made. For some time it has been the practice of the House to meet at 2.15 p.m. and for the ordinary termination of the sitting to be at 9.15 p.m., with an additional half hour for the Adjournment. That practice has obtained to this day. Nevertheless, it has been necessary on fairly frequent occasions—necessary in the sense that it met the general wish of the House—to suspend the Rule for one hour, making the time 10.15 p.m. There have been other suspensions of a more drastic order, complete suspensions which sometimes have led us to late sittings, but in other cases have turned out not to be necessary. Representations were received, and the Government had to consider, as was their right, their own convenience with regard to the hours of sitting, and the result is the Motion which I have moved.

It proposes that the House should meet at 2.3o p.m., which is 15 minutes later than at present, and that it should go on until 10 p.m. We consulted various parties in the House, but there was an error in regard to the consultation with the Government's own party, for which the Chief Whip and I are sorry. They were not consulted by the time when I first made an announcement to the House owing to some mistake in internal party administration.

Another slip up.

Yes, and the Chief Whip and I have expressed to our friends in their own gathering, and again here and now, our regret that that should have happened. It is understood that the official Opposition are favourable to the change. I gather that the Liberals favour it also, and I have now adequately and properly consulted my hon. Friends on this side of the House. By a majority they also are in favour of the change that is the decision of the Labour Party. But I ought, in fairness, to say that there is a minority in the Labour Party that does not favour the change. It is only fair that that should be said, because in any future discussions that must be taken into account. They think it is better that the hour of meeting should continue to be 2.15 p.m., which would give enough time for lunch, and that they consider that 9.15 p.m. is late enough for the rising of the House. They are entitled to their opinion, of course, but the view of the Labour Party, as expressed by their own decision, is that this change should be supported. I thought it fair and right, however, to say that there is a substantial minority opinion which takes another view.

The case for the change can, I think, fairly be stated in this way. 2.15 p.m. is in the experience of many Members a rather early hour at which to have to get here. That is the case with a considerable number of back bench Members; it is also the case with Ministers, whose convenience, I am sure, the House would wish not to ignore. We have many Cabinet and Cabinet Committee meetings. They take time, and they ought to take reasonable time, because business should be carried out carefully and adequately. There are times when we have to continue until fairly late, which means that luncheon is a rather rushed affair. I do not think it is good for Cabinets or Cabinet Committees to feel that they are being unduly rushed, or for the luncheon period of Ministers to be unduly shortened. Moreover, there are occasions when Ministers must discharge official duties at that time, and this point has to be taken into account. I do not, as I say, believe it is good that Ministers—for whom life is rather hard—should be unduly rushed.

With regard to back benchers, then interests vary. Some devote their whole time to Parliament, and it is a very good thing that there should be a proportion of Members of the House who do so, especially in view of the considerable number of Standing Committees now operating. On the other hand, there are Members who have other things to do, business to attend to, professional duties to perform. On both sides of the House there are men of business, and there are some who are farmers. How they fit in their farm work I do not know, but no doubt they do some business from London. Then there are lawyers. The convenience of the lawyers varies a good deal. Some, no doubt, have diminished their practices, some may have given them up, and it is a moot point whether that is a good thing or not. Nevertheless, there is a considerable number of lawyers, both members of the Bar and members of the Law Society, who have their business to do; there are also technical people, journalists and so on. It is possible to take two views about this. It is possible to argue that we should all be full-time Members of Parliament, and do nothing else, so that we could then work office hours if there were no Standing Committees upstairs. But we could not do so under the present Standing Committee system. I think it is desirable that a proportion of Members should have nothing else to do, but it is a dangerous principle to apply all round. We do not want the House to become isolated from the day to day life of the nation, and to tend to become a monastic institution. Therefore there is a substantial number of Members of the House for whom the hour of 2.15 a.m. is rather early, and for whom another quarter of an hour would be of great convenience.

The other change proposed is in the time of the termination of the House's sittings. For many years we went on until 11 p.m., and those of us who were in the Government and in the Opposition in those days, stood up to it quite well. But it is thought that in modern conditions it is desirable to avoid getting back to the 11 o'clock rising if it is at all possible, and we are not proposing to go back to 11 o'clock. On the other hand, from the point of view of the general convenience of the running of the House, and the arrangement of Debates, 9.15 p.m. is on the early side, for the following reasons. If we can get rather more time into the sitting, it will give a little more time for back benchers; one or two additional back benchers will be able to speak in the Debate, and that seems to me to be all to the good. If, in the winding up of Debates, one right hon. Gentleman from the Front Opposition Bench and one from the Government Front Bench speaks, and if they are to take the average time that they take at present, it means that the start of the winding up of a Debate has to be unduly early if the sitting is to finish at 9.15 p.m. It is not good for the vigour and health of the Debates that this should be so. Therefore, from that point of view, this alteration will be a convenience. I think it will improve the general Debates of the House at that time. Further, on important occasions when we know that there are many hon. Members who wish to speak, the Chief Whip and I have not been unwilling to have a suspension of the Rule until 10.15 p.m. That has often been done to meet the general wish of the House, and we were very happy to make the arrangement. On the other hand, if we can sit until ten o'clock, it is reasonable to hope that suspension for an hour to 10.15 p.m. could now be avoided except in the most unusual circumstances, and this would be a gain to hon. Members. They would finish a quarter of an hour earlier and we would be saved the suspension. It is proposed that Fridays should remain as they are, or at any rate substantially as they are.

I hope I have commended the Motion to the House in a reasonable and friendly spirit. We have taken the most exhaustive steps to consult everybody in all parts of the House, and in the circumstances I hope that the House will be good enough to agree to the Motion.

11.17 a.m.

As one of a considerable minority, I rise to oppose the Motion on the grounds that it is neither desirable nor necessary. As my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council pointed out, there are two categories of persons in the House, those who have business outside the House, and those who give the whole of their time to the work of the House. I think it is desirable that it should be so, and I do not complain about that. It is a very good thing that we are not all wrapped up within the precincts of Westminster, and that there are people who have experience outside the House, in the business world, the trade union world, the factory world and on farms, although I cannot believe that the farmers come up from their farms to Westminster every day and go back every night. That seems very unlikely. On the other hand, it would be impossible to carry on the work of the House if there was not a large number of people who are prepared to give the whole of their time to the business of the House, and I think the convenience of those people ought to be studied as much as the convenience of the people who find it unduly early to meet here at 2.15 p.m.

What is the position of hon. Members like myself, and many other hon. Members on this side of the House? We are people who have no other source of income and we have to be here very soon after 9 a.m., because we cannot afford to have secretaries to do our correspondence. At 10.30 a.m. we go into Standing Committee, and the Members of Standing Committees go to Committee after Committee, working from 10.30 a.m. until one o'clock, sometimes two, and very often three, mornings a week. The Standing Committee over, we go down to lunch. I find that an. hour and a quarter is plenty of time for my lunch. I could not go on eating all that time however much there was in the dining room. I find time to take a walk on the Terrace or in the park, and be in the House to Prayers nearly every day of the week. I should find another quarter of an hour a considerable waste of time in the middle of the day, and I should resent that loss of time very much indeed. I should not know what to do with a quarter of an hour. My day is scheduled out very completely at the present time. I do not want to go up to the little attic at the top of the House, which I share with other Lady Members, to sign letters or to start on correspondence for that quarter of an hour. I think it is quite undesirable and unnecessary that we should have to hang about for another quarter of an hour because Cabinet Ministers cannot get here until 2.30 p.m.

The Lord President of the Council made an excellent case for back benchers who want to speak in Debates. I could suggest a much better way than he has suggested. It is that Front Bench Members, instead of reading long, boring essays to the House, should cut down their remarks considerably. That would meet the convenience of the back benchers, it would get a great deal more vigour into the Debates, there would be much more cut and thrust, and it would prevent a great deal of boredom in the House. The life of a Member of Parliament who gives all his or her time to the House is truly a monastic life. Here soon after 9 a.m. and home sometimes at 11 p.m. or midnight, or one, two or three o'clock the next morning—what time do we get for reading? It is all giving out; there is no time to take anything in. The only thing I read is HANSARD. I take it to bed with me every night, a somewhat austere companion. It is the only thing I have time to read. I hope that there will be a very strong expression of the opinion of those hon. Members who give the whole of their time to the business of the House, and who do not feel that 2.15 p.m. is unduly early to meet, when they are here soon after 9 o'clock every morning. I hope they will express their opinion against the Motion.

11.23 a.m.

May I express my condolences with the hon. Lady the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) on the fact that she does not know what to do with a spare quarter of an hour? I fully endorse everything that was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Lord President of the Council. For many reasons, I think this Motion is a reasonable and a sensible one. I am afraid of the time when, possibly, this House will be composed merely of professional politicians. That will be a bad time not only for the House, but for the whole country. The strength of the House lies in the fact that it draws its experience from all kinds of people, engaged in varying occupations from one end of the country to the other. The most effective speeches in the House are those of the men who know their subject and can tell the House their experience. Some time must be given to that kind of person to earn his living, and he should not have to devote the whole of his time to the House. This House is being overworked. It is being overworked not only with business on the Floor of the House, but more Committees have been set up during this Parliament, and that means that hon. Members have to be here somewhere between 10 o'clock and half-past 10, and are in full occupation from something like 10 o'clock in the morning until about 11 o'clock at night.

Then why extend the hours?

The reason for extending the hours is to allow more free discussion in the House. I would much prefer to shorten the hours in the Standing Committees and to allow much more time in the House. Another reason I support this Motion is that there should be more time for Ministers to devote to their offices and to their consultations. I am quite sure that there are occasions when they have to cut short many of the things they desire to discuss in order to be back in this House in time. I think the main basis should be the need for wider scope in these matters in the House and the need for Ministers to have more time for consideration of their affairs.

11.25 a.m.

I have listened very attentively to the speech of the Leader of the House, but I think that he has made out a very weak case. First, he makes the plea that the Cabinet have not sufficient time to do their business; they have to hurry away from Cabinet meetings. I agree that that is a very undesirable thing, but is it not possible for the Cabinet to meet a quarter of an hour earlier? They are asking the House to do so. A special Committee of this House is charged with the duty of devising ways and means whereby the Business of the House should be done more expeditiously. In considering these proposals they had to take into consideration the fact that the available manpower of this House is restricted because a considerable number of the Members have other business and occupations. Because of that, quite a small proportion of the Members of this House are called upon to serve on the six Standing Committees that have been set up. They are expected to be here at 10.30 in the morning. If they are to attend to their correspondence they have to be here round about 9 o'clock Under the ordinary Rule governing the sittings of the House, the business concludes at 9.15 and the Adjournment goes on for another half hour. If they remain to the end of the Adjournment Debate it is a quarter to 10 before they can leave this building. Many of them have journeys of an hour, to an hour and a half, to get here in the morning and to get away at night. It may be very convenient for those who have had the fortune to obtain accommodation in close proximity to this building. However, quite a large number of the new Members have to go to the suburbs for accommodation. I have been in this House since 1923. I have always lived in my constituency. I have had the unfortunate experience four nights out of five of arriving home at 1 o'clock or 20 minutes past 1 in the morning owing to the extended hours of this House. Any hour beyond a quarter to 10 from my point of view is a retrograde step.

My experience in this House has taught me that there is very little useful business done after 9 to 9.3o at night because there is a considerable repetition of speeches. There is very little force or debate brought to bear after that time, because all that it is possible to say has been said, and in nine out of ten cases the Minister charged with the responsibility of winding up the Debate has to repeat material which has been given earlier in the same Debate. It may be inconvenient for those who have business to attend to to get here at 2.15 and if they have Questions on the Order Paper they have to make a special effort to be here. However, I find that quite a large number of those who are engaged in business seldom have Questions on the Order Paper, but if they should happen to have a Question down they make a special effort to be present. I do appeal to them to consider the position of those who have long journeys to make, and who have to get home at 11.30 at night or midnight and have to be here on Committee business in the morning. Because of them it is unfair to extend the hours beyond the present hours.

11.31 a.m.

I am very glad that an agreement has been confirmed between the Government and the Opposition parties on this matter. The discussions which take place through the usual channels are of very great importance to the smooth working of the House, and it would be a great pity if such discussions took place arid afterwards the conclusions reached had to be thrown over. That would vitiate and obstruct to a certain extent that admirable method of working, which has done so much to keep the course of public business smooth and, in a way, to promote the corporate sense here. I am glad that the Government have discussed the matter very fully with their supporters, and have adhered to the view which they expressed last week through the Leader of the House. Of course, this is a matter in which everybody has striven to aim at the greatest good of the greatest number, and to fit in as far as possible all the different obligations which we have to discharge. I certainly agree with the Leader of the Liberal Party that it would be a disaster if we became whole-time professional politicians in this House. We are very experienced politicians but we are not professional politicians, in the sense in which that phrase is used in some other countries. We are representative British worthies, chosen by universal suffrage, and long may it be so that the House is a good representation of the wishes, the feelings, the character, and the diversity of the nation at large.

The business of the House of Commons and the business of the executive Government are matters of the utmost consequence. As tar as the executive Government are concerned, the hon. Member who spoke last has long experience of this House and his opinion is mature and wide in these matters, but it is a long time since he was a Minister and things have got much more severe since then. I am quite sure that the burden of pressure on Ministers is all that they can possibly carry. It was so in the days of the Coalition Government during the war, and I have not the slightest doubt that now, with this immense pressure of legislation, from which Ministers do not seem anxious to relieve themselves in any way—though we would be pleased to enter into some discussions on that through the usual channels—the work must be enormous. Ministers have to deal with Questions and often the Questions go back to Departments for further information so that answers can be given.

I understand that, except in cases of emergency, the Cabinet meetings are now held in the morning. The Government work through committees whose meetings are not chronicled, but without which it would be impossible to carry on the infinitely complex work of the modern State. I do not think that the mere urging of Ministers to get up earlier in the morning, to have their Cabinets a quarter of an hour earlier or anything like that, would be useful at the present time, because I am sure that they are busy from the time they wake until the time they go to sleep—and that sometimes used to be very late in time of war. I think that the process of the executive Government must be carefully secured, but how about the House of Commons? We have an immense mass of legislation which can only be dealt with by the fullest use of the Standing or Grand Committees upstairs, and I am anxious that the Standing Committees should have their full chance, should be fully interwoven with the life of the House, so that the House can judge after a little more experience, in another year, what changes, if any, are required in its procedure.

I have always believed that the work of the Standing Committees would greatly accelerate the business of the House, but we must give the Committees a chance. If they sit all the morning and disperse at 1 o'clock, there ought to be some interval before hon. Members are expected to be back in their places to take part in what is, after all, the most lively part of the Parliamentary day and one most characteristic of the House of Commons, namely, Question time. An hour and a quarter is not very long in which to get lunch, and surely hon. Members ought to have a little rest before immediately addressing themselves to new tasks. You cannot get good, patient consideration of grave public matters by men who are hustled and rushed round on a closely cut schedule from one point to another in the course of the day. Tempers are apt to get frayed, digestions may well be affected, and the course of public business is neither satisfactory nor agreeable.

Therefore, I think that, although this is a very small change, it is a very helpful change. We gain half an hour a day of Parliamentary time; we get a quarter of an hour more interlude in the middle of the day. There are many countries where the middle of the day is a time of repose, and it may well be that the human race would consult its health and advantage if it lived more in the natural manner, breaking the day by short intervals for repose, reflection and refreshment, instead of working from morning to night. I think it is not really very much to ask that a Member of Parliament, who has important questions to ask and business to carry on in the afternoon, and who has sat till one o'clock on a Committee upstairs, following it with great attention, should now have an hour and a half in which to prepare himself, before he is again called upon to discharge his important tasks.

The hon. Gentleman who spoke last said that he never knew of any good business being done after 9.30, and that was his experience in the House. I certainly remember that the great Debates of former days took place between 10 and 12 at night. On those occasions the Leader of the Opposition spoke for an hour and the Leader of the Government wound up, in speeches every word of which was studied with the greatest attention by the very keen political classes who followed their affairs. In those days politics largely took the place of football. Public men had their attendant troops of fans and backers who knew their form to a turn. Consequently these Debates created great interest and were a fine exposition of what had occurred sometimes in a two days' or three days' Debate. This again led to crowded Houses, a great deal of excitement and, as I have several times pointed out, this House of Commons lived upon its vivid moments and often even upon its scenes. So we should never get too mealy mouthed or frightened about little tiffs that occur in the course of our affairs.

I saw very good work done then in educating the country and in forming opinion in the House. When the Budget Debate was wound up last night by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Bristol (Mr. Stanley) in a most witty speech, and when it was replied to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a speech of his usual lucidity and rather less than his usual party asperity, and both speeches were most informing and instructive and formed a very vivid close to the Debate, where were the Members? The House was nearly empty, or at least much less full than it is now for long periods in the day.

It would be less full an hour later.

I do not think that is so at all, and I am sure that the choosing of the time for winding up speeches between 7.30 and 9.15 does not give a chance for the case to be stated on both sides as it ought to be stated at the end of a long Debate. I believe this extra half hour, which is fully justified by the improvements of communication which have already occurred, and which will increasingly come back to us, will be very beneficial in that way. I am glad the Government have been able to take this course. I think there is a great deal of advantage in trying to work in the House as a whole. I know quite naturally there will be differences of opinion on these matters of personal habit and convenience but, broadly speaking, I am sure the course that is proposed by the Leader of the House is one that will commend itself to the great majority of the House on both sides, and that it is one which will conduce to the continued efficiency and swift progress of our vast affairs at home and abroad.

11.41 a.m.

I hope the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition did not mean in the last part of his speech to convey the impression that public interest in the affairs of this House today is less than it was in the years to which he referred, when the hours were vastly different from the hours that operate now.

I think it is much less.

The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken, if he will allow me to say so with great respect. He ought to go outside this Chamber now and look at the long lines of the public waiting for vacant seats in the gallery. That has been the case ever since this Parliament assembled. The accommodation in this House is inadequate for members of the public who are following our affairs with great interest, but the demand for such accommodation as there is, even in the very great days to which he referred, was nothing like so keen as it has been since the commencement of this Parliament.

The hon. Member is much too young to know. There was a much bigger crowd in those days.

I am not as young as I would like to be, but I admit that my experience is only 10 or 11 years in the House. However, I feel sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that he is thinking of the great occasions of the past, of the great Debates, of the great historic moments. I am not talking about the great Debates and the great historic moments; I am talking about the sustained day to day interest in our day to day affairs; and I say that there never was a Parliament which was followed so carefully and so keenly and with such interest as the work of this Parliament has been followed since last July. Therefore I think I am entitled to say that any argument in favour of the change directed to the necessity for increasing the interest of the public in the proceedings of the House fails for there is no lack of fuel for any conflict of interests.

If you look at it from the other point of view, not of the point of view of the interest of the public outside, but of the progress of our own business inside the House, is any case made out for a change? Surely the answer is, No. I do not know what the latest figures are, but the ones I have are about so days or a fortnight old. There were in the course of this Session put upon the Statute Book, with the Royal Assent, 43 Acts of Parliament. Fifty-eight had then been 'presented, and 43 had received the Royal Assent. I think that the figures are now much higher. I would like to ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite whether they think that the process of legislation has not been fast enough in this House. I thought that their complaint was the exact opposite. I thought that their view was that we were passing legislation too fast, so there cannot be any complaint about that. The latest estimate is that by July we shall have added to the Statute Book, in one Session, no fewer than 100 Acts of Parliament. It cannot be said that our work has been skimped or scamped, or that we need an extra half hour a day in order to do more business. Indeed, that claim has not been made.

The claim is made, not in order to do more business, but to give business more prolonged attention.

I was coming to that point. I see that the right hon. Gentleman agrees with me as far as I have gone, that it is not contended that we have not done enough business.

I now come to the other point of whether it would enable us to give more attention to the business before us, to examine it with greater care, to give it more prolonged attention, to make sure that it gets the full examination it needs. Is it really suggested that that will be achieved in the half hour at the end of the day that is to be added under this change in the Standing Orders? Is that when legislation is examined? Nothing of the kind. The right hon. Gentleman was right when he said that what was needed was better and more prolonged examination of Bills in the Standing Committees. A reasonably large part of his speech was devoted to praise of the work of the Standing Committees and to insistence on the necessity of them. My right hon. and learned Friend who sits with me on the Select Committee on Procedure, signed with me the first provisional interim Report we made. What was its principal recommendation but to increase the number of Standing Committees sitting in the morning, and to increase the length of time for which they sat? How can that be improved by adding three quarters of an hour to the end of the Parliamentary day? That does not improve the Standing Committees.

There are two aspects to this proposal. I understand that one is to give an extra quarter of an hour between the rising of these Standing Committees and the opening of Question time in the House. The other a little consequential upon that. A quarter of an hour has to be paid back. The proposal also gives an extra half hour for Debates. Those are the two objects in view.

I am sure it is my fault, but the right hon. Gentleman is not addressing himself to the point I made. I say there is nothing in this proposal which can assist the Standing Committees to do their work better. That has not been claimed, and the right hon. Gentleman, in the intervention he has just made, did not make it. It is not pretended that a quarter of an hour is to be added to the hours of sitting in Standing Committees. On the contrary, it is intended as an addition to the break between them and the sitting of the House. I quite see the force of the argument for what it is worth. The three quarters of an hour at the other end of the day also has no bearing on the Standing Committees, except that it makes it more difficult for Members to attend them next morning, and in the proper spirit they should bring to bear upon their proceedings.

The right hon. Gentleman has talked about the necessity of the House honouring agreements reached through the usual channels. I do not know. I should have thought that this was not a party point at all but a purely Parliamentary point. If ever there was a point in which Members of Parliament ought to exercise their own private discretion—

I thought when I made my original statement that I was under great pressure from this side of the House to do the very thing which my hon. Friend is deprecating, namely, to consult the party. I did so. The party had a right to be consulted, and it expressed a point of view.

What happened was that my right hon. Friend announced in this House that the change had been decided upon after consulting everyone interested. When it was pointed out that no one on this side of the House had been consulted at all, my right hon. Friend said that steps would be taken to consult them. It is perfectly true that a motion was made at a party meeting. My right hon. Friend has referred to it and I do not know how far I am entitled to go. He referred to the fact that there was a majority. He knows I am not worried about any dangers he may have in mind, but I am entitled to say that it was a very small meeting of the party, and that this proposal was carried by a very small majority. I still say, as I was saying when my right hon. Friend intervened, that if ever there was a point on which Private Members, back benchers, ought to exercise their own native discretion and their own individual judgment, it is precisely a point of this kind. No question of party policy or principle of politics is involved. It is a question of how we will better do our work, whether under the old system or under the new.

I wish to address myself to some of the arguments that have been adduced. It is suggested, first, that it is a good thing that some Members of Parliament should have non-Parliamentary interests, and should be encouraged to pursue them. I do not dissent from that point of view. It would be a great pity if all Members of the House of Commons did work in the House of Commons and no other work, and had no other contacts anywhere. How are we assisting them by giving them an extra quarter of an hour in the morning? Will an extra 15 minutes in his office assist the business or professional man very much? The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition suggests that he ought not to spend it in the office in any event; he ought to spend it resting. So that provision has nothing to do with the practice of a profession or the conduct of a business or looking after affairs in an office. It does not help in that respect, and it has nothing to do with that.

He regains his poise.

I have not always seen eye to eye with the right hon. Gentleman, but in the 10 years I have been in this House, only very rarely have I seen him lose his poise. I do not think that a quarter of an hour added to his lunch time will have anything to do with that. If reports are true, the right hon. Gentleman himself called more Cabinet meetings at 2 o'clock in the morning than ever he called at 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

I was a very early riser.

But what is the effect on Members who devote their whole working time to the service of the House? It is granted that there must always be a considerable number of people who do so devote their whole working day. I would deprecate and resent calling them professional politicians. I do not think they would be professional politicians. Everybody concedes that in the way we now conduct our business—and we can see no immediate prospect of changing it; I would not desire to change it—our work could not be done unless a considerable portion of the Members of this House gave their full time to its service and had no outside professional interests. Otherwise, our work would not be done at all. What is the effect of prolonging these hours in this way? It is just as necessary, indeed it becomes all the more necessary, if hon. Members have no outside interests that they should not be confined within these walls for the whole of their waking life. Then indeed we would get a monastic institution, a rarified atmosphere, a House of Commons less and less in touch with public opinion and with the atmosphere and weight of opinion outside.

At the moment, a man who devotes his full time to the service of this House, Is has been said, must come down here at nine or 9.30 in the morning and, under these proposals, in the great majority of cases he will never be home before midnight. I ask my right hon. Friend what trade union Members of this House ought to join. If he is not so experienced in that matter, perhaps he will consult his right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary—

That would be professional politics.

I think the conditions and hours of work of Members of Parliament ought to be protected just as much as any one else's.

Really?

Certainly they ought. Why ought they not?

What about the salary?

The right hon. Gentleman ought not to talk like that. I understand that he made that point elsewhere. I thought it was a very unfair point to make. I hope he will not repeat it today. I do not think he can complain of the work done by Members of Parliament.

May I ask whether we back benchers will be allowed to join this discussion?

Personally, Mr. Speaker, it would delight me immensely to hear some back bencher support these proposals. So far, they have been supported only by leaders of parties and by front benchers on one side or the other. Not a single back bencher has so far said a word in favour of them. I do not think my right hon. Friend can complain of the way Members work. When it is necessary to sit late, we all sit late. When it is necessary to sit all night, we all sit all night. I think the attendance in this House on the all night sitting recently was probably higher than that of any other all night sitting within my experience—

Not within mine.

It is within my ten or 15 years' experience, all the same. I do not think my right hon. Friend can complain. There is no advantage whatever to be gained except to enable the hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite to go to the theatre or attend a dinner party—[ Interruption .] Certainly, that is the case, and they can still come back in time to cast their votes in a Division after a Debate which they have not heard. I agree that is very awkward at 9.15; it will be less awkward at 10.15. I can see no other purpose to be served, no other advantage to be gained, and I do not believe that hon. Members are justified in supporting this change.

11.59 a.m.

it seems to me the House is in danger of getting the worst of both worlds. I can see very strong arguments for the hours of sitting which were in force before the war. These arguments are very strong indeed. I can also see strong arguments in favour of extra hard work in the Committee system, and an earlier hour of rising in the evening. Is it not possible, however, that we are, as I say, getting the worst of both of those systems now? The House is being worked to death in the mornings. It is now proposed that a small slice should be nibbled off our hours of repose at night. I believe sleep is necessary for the human race. Members of Parliament are seldom so harmlessly or so profitably employed as when they are asleep. The plea for extending the hours has been made on two grounds, first, that it will enable more necessary work to be done, and secondly, that it will allow more back benchers to make speeches. With regard to the first point, surely the system we work under now is very flexible compared with that of a few years ago. When there is more work to be done the Government, by agreement with the Opposition Front Bench, can extend the hours of sitting by one hour or more. I believe it is a mistake to make these gradual encroachments on Members' rest, and to make them a general rule. I should have thought the Rules of Order were flexible enough to meet the case when necessary.

As for the other plea that more time will be allowed for back benchers' speeches, when the Lord President said that, I thought I had never seen such an example of crocodile tears in my life. If Front Benchers want back benchers to make more speeches, the remedy is entirely in their own hands. Let us go the whole hog one way or the other. If all important Bills are to be taken in Committee in the mornings—

That is a very dangerous principle.

But it is sometimes a good dialectical point. If all important Bills are to be taken in Committee for 2½ hours on three or four mornings a week, then let us have a reasonably early hour of rising. If, on the other hand, it is concluded—I myself think this would be the wiser course—if it is concluded to go the whole hog and return to the position as it was before the war, I, for one, will welcome it. But this niggling way of getting the worst of both worlds seems to me profoundly unsatisfactory. I agree with the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman). One thing I am certain of is that this is purely a House of Commons matter, and not a question of party loyalties. I hope hon. Members will vote according to what they judge right, remembering the only possible criterion, which is the efficiency of the House.

12.2 p.m.

The hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) expressed the view that if we went back to the old hours that would be an improvement. It seems to me that there is some necessity for changing traditions. I am a new Member of this House with very little experience. I must say I am shocked to find what is expected of a Member of Parliament under the conditions in which we have to work. For 25 years I have been accustomed to business in an office, working for an employer. I had to be at my task at 8.30 in the morning and I always had time during the day to read the papers and to become accustomed to what was really happening in the country. I find the position is very different when one becomes a Member of Parliament. The hon. Lady the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) suggested she had to take HANSARD to bed with her. She is very fortunate. I heard some Members of the House say during the last few days that they have neither time to attend the Debates in the House in a manner which they consider adequate, nor time to read HANSARD. Therefore, if they wish to know what is really happening in the House of Commons they usually look at "The Times." It appears to be rather a reflection upon Members of this House if we feel that conditions are such that we cannot devote the time that is necessary to do our work properly.

The Lord President of the Council on a number of occasions—and it has been reiterated in this House—has suggested that it would not be desirable for Members of Parliament, as a general rule, to devote their time wholly to this House. I cannot accept the view that because a Member of the House takes another major position for which he is paid, as a barrister or in any other capacity, he has a better contact with the country than a Member of Parliament who devotes his whole time to the job. Some of us have felt it necessary to devote even more of our time to the job, that, in fact, we cannot do the job adequately within the hours that are prescribed. Those of us who take this job seriously, feel that we ought to consult our constituents frequently. We have advice bureaux, we have to keep in contact with them and, therefore, it is wrong to suggest that we are not doing our job as we ought, unless we take on some other paid job. I say to the Lord President of the Council that, although it is very useful to have other contacts, it is wrong to give an impression to the country that to be a good Member of Parliament, one must take another major paid post. If the conditions and salaries of Members of Parliament are to be reviewed, the public will be entitled to expect some value for the extra money involved.

Quality—not quantity.

I sympathise with Members of the Government. I realise the amount of work they have to do. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) wants us to go back to the past and to the days when political interest was not so great.

No, I do not want anything but this Motion.

At any rate, it is a step towards the traditional past for which the right hon. Gentleman has always argued. I think it is obvious that there is a greater interest today than ever before in national politics. The result, of course, has been the election of the Labour Government. I would have thought that was a sign of the awakening of political consciousness in this country. What I am disturbed about is the lack of time to devote to the necessary reading which is essential if Members are to become really good representatives of the people. I hive been informed that Members of the Cabinet have so much reading to do that usually they cannot get to bed until two or three o'clock in the morning. If that is so, I think it is a very serious matter. If we have a long legislative programme to get through, how on earth are Ministers to do justice to the job if they have to work like that? To add at the end of the day half an hour or three-quarters of an hour to the sittings of Parliament seems to me to be making the position worse. Generally speaking, I think Ministers—or some of them, at least—should want to be close to the House at the end of the sittings. If the hours are made longer we add to the difficulties of Ministers, and their period of reading in the early hours of the morning will be extended.

I view this proposal with grave misgivings. It is a matter which this House ought seriously to consider. I hope if this Motion goes through, the House will consider at some not far distant time its working and its effects. I think it will be serious for many of us who wish to devote our whole time to the job, not in a professional capacity but in a desire to render the best service we can to the people. That is why we are elected. We are being driven hard, as has been said on more than one occasion. We do not want to be dragooned. We want this new House of Commons to function in accordance with modern demands. It we want speed in legislation we must also have the proper time in which to consider all the implications of that legislation.

12.12 p.m.

I had not intended to intervene in this Debate, and I rise only because of the challenge implicit in the words of the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) who suggested that there was no back bench body of opinion in favour of this Motion. I understood the hon. Member to say that all the support had come from Front Bench Members I rise merely to show that there is back bench opinion in support of the lengthening of the hours of sitting of this House. I support the Motion on a simple ground. I support it on the ground that it is in the public good that there should be an extended period for discussion. We have heard a good deal this morning about the convenience of the Executive and of Members of this House. Those may be important considerations, but they are less important than the principle that we should have the maximum possible opportunity for discussion of what affects the public interest. Members of Parliament should be the last people to set themselves up as a pampered class within the community. Nobody compels any hon. Member to seek election to this House. Here, at least, the principle of contracting in is universally applied, and if the hon. Member for Nelson and Come or any other hon. Member does not like to devote long hours to the service of the community and the House of Commons, the remedy is in his own hands.

I am sure the hon. Gentleman does not mean the implication which lies behind his remarks. Nobody who is against the present proposal ought to be regarded as taking that view because he does not want to give long service. For my part, I gave up my profession entirely so that I could devote myself to the service of the House. The only question is how one can do it most efficiently.

I am obliged to the hon. Gentleman. The point I was seeking to make was that inevitably discussion of the business of this House imposes long and exacting hours on the Members of the House, and that consideration ought to be in the mind of every hon. Member when he seeks an answer from his conscience as to whether or not he should put himself forward for election. I think the hon. Gentleman will agree with me in that statement of a general principle. In any event, the hours are likely to be long and exacting. The point that is put by the critics of this Motion is that any extension of the hours would diminish in efficiency what they would add in length of time. From that proposition I dissent. I think we should look at the hours that are available for discussion from the point of view of whether or not they afford a full opportunity for the canvassing of all points of view on any particular subject [ Interruption .] I do not think it necessary to deal with that sort of interruption from my hon. Friend. [HON. MEMBERS: "What was it? "] My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson) suggested that we might as well sit for 24 hours a day. It was an interruption which I did not think it necessary to deal with.

I must interrupt my hon. Friend. This is a discussion about the hours of sitting, whether they should be extended or whether they already afford ample time for what I think he called canvassing the different points of view. Pushed to its logical conclusion, such a view of our hours of sitting would mean our being in almost permanent Session. The only criterion must be the efficiency of the House. If we extend hours of labour beyond a certain time, we get a drop in efficiency. I suggest that with the heavy work we already do in the mornings, and the high pressure at which we work now, a drop in efficiency is to be expected if we extend our hours in the evening.

I have already stated that we must adopt a high standard of efficiency in these matters. I think that the House of Commons formerly sat for very long hours. It would seem to me that Members who compose the present House of Commons ought to be capable of doing good work with extended hours.

In the days when the House sat for longer in the evening it did not have Committees sitting three days a week, nor did those Committees sit for so long.

I am within the recollection of the House when I say that I think it is still regarded as exceptional for Standing Committees to sit on three mornings of the week. The normal number is still two. It is the exception for Committees to sit for three mornings in the week. I do not think the hon. Member should found an argument on that exceptional case. Anybody who has sought to take part in big Debates in this House surely realises the great difficulty there is for back bench Members to express their points of view. Anything which extends the hours therefore extends the possi- bility of contributions by back bench Members. I took the trouble recently to analyse the time left for back bench speeches in some of the major Debates. In some cases there was as little as two hours 35 minutes left for back bench Members to make their contributions. That kind of thing is happening on major topics, and on most of the major Bills.

Of course, as the hon. Lady the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) said, perhaps we could have fewer or shorter speeches from the Front Bench, but representatives of the Government need reasonable time to state their policy, and my right hon. Friends who sit on the Front Bench on this side of the House are bound to take up a certain amount of the time of the House. That leaves you, Sir, with the problem of putting the gallon into the pint pot. It should commend itself to the House that we should try to see whether we can lengthen the hours of discussion, so as to afford a better chance to back bench Members on all sides of the House to contribute their views. It is with that idea in my mind that I support the proposal.

12.20 p.m.

I find myself in the very difficult and unpopular position of being a back bencher who supports the Government on this matter, and I propose to give my reasons for doing so, although I listened with the greatest sympathy to—and was, indeed, almost persuaded by—the eloquent and forceful appeal of my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning), and to the always relentless logic of my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman).

Reference has been made in several speeches to the "full-time" Member of Parliament. I agree that Members of Parliament should, and must, do a full-time job now. A much larger proportion of hon. Members do so in the present House than in any previous House, and I think that Parliament is better for it. None the less, there are those who can, so to speak, work full time and a half, giving their Parliamentary job absolute priority but keeping as much in touch as they can with their outside interests; and there is something to be said for the contribution that they make. Only this week I have been having discussions with an hon. Member who is very much a full- time attender in this Chamber. He is also still an active trade union official—and his experience of trade union organisation at this moment of history has been of considerable benefit to this House in recent Debates. This hon. Member has made several speeches in the last month or two, putting the case of the workers in a particular industry. That does confirm to a great extent what my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council said.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne said, quite rightly, that no great issue of political principle is involved in this matter. There is no issue of party policy, and therefore we can all consider ourselves completely free to vote as we like about it. I speak with great diffidence and genuine respect for my hon. Friend, who is an older and more experienced Member of the Labour Party than I am, but I would put it to him that, if the Labour Government take a considered view and come to the House and say that they need this Motion for the more efficient conduct of business, that is a point which must weigh considerably with all their supporters.

Another point which has been made in many speeches and was made by another hon. Member much senior to myself, whom I respect, is that no useful business is done late in the evening. There were several interjections about the unpopularity of the night shift. It entirely depends upon the kind of work you are doing whether the late evening is good or bad for serious business. Certainly the night shift is unpopular in industry, but I suggest that for the kind of business we do in this House—Debate, discussion, argument—the evening and, indeed, the late evening, are the best time of the day. I have always found it so and I therefore differ from my hon. Friend in that respect.

I agree that the case for the extra quarter of an hour off in the middle of the day is less strong than the case for the new evening arrangement. The Lord President of the Council spoke about Ministerial convenience and about Ministers having to get here at 2.15. It is not every Minister who has to get here at the beginning of Question time every day. One Minister has to be here at 2.15, and the others can come in later during Question time. I do not think the case on that part of the Motion is so strong as on the other. On balance. I feel that the extra half hour in, the evening is good for the House and good for the individual back bench Member. I do not think that any hon. Member who has attacked the Motion has taken any notice at all of the very important point made by the Leader of the House in introducing it, the assurance—I will not call it an absolute undertaking, because it could not be that —given by the Leader of the House that the Government will have to move far less frequently the one-hour suspension. I think that is a point which should be borne in mind.

I agree with the Lord President that the extra half hour will, in many Debates, give an opportunity to two or three extra back benchers who would not otherwise be able to get in. Despite what my hon. Friends have said about the argument being exhausted, I am sure they will remember that on many occasions, in important Debates about food for Europe and many other subjects, there have been as many as a dozen or more frustrated back benchers still standing up and trying to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker, when the Minister rose to wind up. That is a very common experience. Therefore, I welcome an extra half-hour for two, or possibly three, extra back bench speeches. Alternatively—and here again I part company with the hon. Lady the Member for Epping—I would suggest, with respect to our Front Bench, that the Minister winding up might occasionally rise to wind up just a little earlier, and so deprive himself of the excuse of that despairing gesture at the clock, as a technique for dodging a full reply to points made during the Debate and not giving way to interruptions On either consideration, it seems to me that the balance of the argument is in favour, of this change.

There is a real anxiety on this side of the House among many hon. Members who will have difficulty in getting home at night. This does not affect me personally; at the worst, I have only 20 minutes' walk, and that does not worry me. However, although public transport has greatly improved, it is not yet back to a normal peacetime condition. There are hon. Members who live in the suburbs, and perhaps in the outer suburbs, who simply cannot get accommodation in Central London. I do feel that something more should be done for them than has yet been indicated or referred to this morning. Towards the end of the last Parliament, as I think the Leader of the House will remember, the then Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of War Transport gave an undertaking to this House that, when we went back to the later times of sitting from the daytime, wartime hours of sitting, if he could be provided with lists of the names of hon. Members who found difficulty in getting home after late sittings, he would arrange transport for them. I would like to ask the Leader of the House, whether that arrangement still holds good, as I presume it should.

Order, order. Hon. Members should not throw papers across the Floor of the House.

I beg your pardon, Mr. Speaker. I did not intend any discourtesy.

If we are to have hon. Members on one side of the House throwing missiles across the Floor of the House, it may lead to all sorts of irregularities.

It was a note. Mr. Speaker; it was not a missile.

I was just asking the Leader of the House whether the undertaking given by the Ministry of War Transport in the later stages of the last Parliament will hold good, and whether it can now be implemented for the benefit of those hon. Members who have a genuine difficulty in getting home. I believe that if that could be done there would be considerably more disposition among some hon. Members who have spoken in opposition to this Motion to support it, as I. for one, am glad to do.

12.30 p.m.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford (Mr. Walker-Smith) I am one of those on these benches who support this Motion. The hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Silverman) had absolutely no right to single out the Standing Committee stage of Bills and say that, because no time was given by this Motion for extra consideration upstairs, that was a reason for not passing it here. We have to do with many other things besides the work that goes on in Standing Committee. It is quite true that Bills receive their detailed consideration on the Committee stage, but, after all, there are Second Readings, Report stages and Third Readings and there are the Debates on large topics for which the Government find time. We have had from the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne the taunt that this Motion was deliberately framed in order that the Tory Party could go to dinner and to the theatre. Does he really suggest that the Leader of the House, supported by a large majority of the Labour Party, devised a Motion in order to enable us to go and eat sumptuously in a private house, and to attend the ballet and the cinema? Of course that is not the case. If there is justice in his claim, it applies equally to his side, perhaps more so, because it is a fact—and I instance it in support of what I am saying—that the only two right hon. Gentlemen who have appeared in this House in evening dress since the beginning of this Parliament were the Lord President himself and the Home Secretary.

I assure the Noble Lord, I have no contempt but the greatest respect for dinners and theatres. I said that the only practical advantage I could see in this Motion was that it enabled hon. Members to do that, but I thought it was not a sufficiently compensating advantage.

Are hon. Members really prepared to vote against this Motion?

Oh, yes.

I do advise hon. Members to think seriously about this. We are just about to vote ourselves an increase in salary. There has been some doubt and heart searching upon the subject. I think our constituents will expect from us a very high standard of output if, indeed, we do vote ourselves the increased salary. It seems to me that if we do not show them we are willing to spend even half an hour longer on our work, then they will conclude that those salaries have been unjustly accorded.

Is the Noble Lord really suggesting that hon. Members who intend voting against this Motion should refrain from doing so because of the fear that their constituents would think they were asking for an increase in salary for half an hour's extra work? If so, that is a very poor argument, and a very wrong argument. The arguments which have been put forward from this side have come from hon. Members who are not earning another salary, and who are, indeed, on practically every day of the week working in this House for 12 and 14 hours.

All I am trying to say is that the Debate today on hours and the Debate which will take place after Easter on the increase in Members' salaries are bound to be linked together in the public mind. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I hope hon. Members will consider the unwisdom of voting against this Motion today in the light of the forthcoming Debate.

Not on those grounds.

I do not differ from the Lord President in much that he said. However, there was one remark he made at the end of his speech which, I think, vitiated a good part of it. About one-third of our Debates are accompanied by the suspension of the Rule. The Lord President said that as a result of this extra three-quarters of an hour's Debate it would not be necessary to move the suspension of the Rule for one hour. I would ask him to think about that again, because if we do not pass the suspension of the Rule as we have done in the past we shall, in fact, find that at least one-third of our Debates are automatically shortened by a quarter of an hour. I hope that he will agree to move the suspension of the Rule, if not quite so frequently as in the past, at any rate fairly frequently.

There is one small point I should like to make, about the printing of HANSARD. HANSARD now goes to press at 10.15 p.m. and consequently the proceedings of the House which occur after 10.15 p.m. appear in print 36 hours later. Could the right hon. Gentleman ensure, through the proper channels, that this extra quarter of an hour's Debate is printed in the following morning's HANSARD? Having made those observations, I would say that I support the Motion.

12.36 p.m.

I agree with the view that the proposed alteration in hours would not facilitate the work of the House. Appeals have been made during the Debate on the grounds of experience. I sat in the 1929–31 Parliament, in the war Parliament, and I have sat in this one. The hours have been different in all three. In the 1929–31 Parliament we sat till 11 p.m. and, not infrequently, all night. During the war we sat until 5.30 or 6 p.m. according to the season of the year. And now we are sitting until 9.15 p.m., or, with the Adjournment Motion, until 9.45 p.m. I do not think the appeal to the past helps very much here, for the conditions of the 1929–31 Parliament, for example, cannot be compared in any way with those of the present Parliament either as regards the pace of legislation, the number of Committees at work, the size of the post bag, or the calls upon hon. Members' time. If we go back to those hours by reference to the conditions prevailing in previous Parliaments, I think we shall be making a very bad mistake indeed.

The real trouble here is not the hours of sitting at all. The real trouble is that the Government have a programme in mind. They, first of all, decide upon that programme and then fit the hours to suit the programme, instead of making the programme fit Parliamentary time. I am perfectly certain that the results are bad. They are beginning to be bad from the point of view of hon. Members, and from the point of view of Ministers. The Ministers are obviously overtired; they are sometimes so tired that judgment deserts them. We had an example of that yesterday, when the Lord President, for ten minutes or so, attempted to reduce this House to the level of the Reichstag. The real trouble is that the Government are trying to drive the machine much too hard, and, in order to permit of it being so driven, are proposing various alterations in hours. As far as I can judge, the Parliamentary tactic is to get as much of the programme on to the Statute Book as possible, while the going is good.

All the programme.

Well, that is all right if one has a poor view of the Party's prospects, if the outlook is gloomy and dark, and if the clouds are beginning to lower. If one takes that view, then there is a great case for getting the legislation on to the Statute Book as soon as possible—in the next 18 months or two years. But I doubt, after yesterday, whether the Government will last as long as that. I prophesy trouble to come, and I do riot think it can be put right by extending the hours. Personally, the change will not affect me, because I enjoy the privilege of my own transport, but I have a great feeling for hon. Members who are not in the same happy position as myself. This Parliament cannot be compared with that of 1929. Every hon. Member is on Committees, and post-bags are bigger than they used to be. Hon. Members, both men and women, are here from ten in the morning to ten at night, by which time they have done a good day's work. And one does not improve the result by driving them still harder.

I suggest to the Lord President that he should look not so much at the hours of the House, as at the programme. He can only carry through that programme if he makes a Reichstag out of this House, and one or two hon. Members do not intend that he shall do that. Some of them are on his own benches, too. Hon. Members on the Government side of the House have discovered in thecourse of time that Members of Parliament have some rights, and that Parliament has some rights vis-à-vis the Executive. I do not think that this proposal is going to improve the temper, the legislative ability or the Debates of the House, not even to the extent of having more speeches by back benchers at night. The reason why we do not hear enough from back benchers, is because the front benchers take up too much time. No front bencher thinks he has spoken at all unless he pontificates for an hour. That is the real difficulty and, what is more, they commit the unpardonable offence of reading their speeches—and dreadfully dull they are. On all these grounds, I shall vote against the Motion.

12.40 p.m.

When I saw the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. W. J. Brown) come in half way through the Debate, I had an idea that he was on mischief bent, and that he would take the opportunity of doing his best to get back at me for the little interchange we had yesterday.

I beg the right hon. Gentleman to believe that my observations just now were not an answer to what he said yesterday.

I repeat that when I saw the hon. Member come in half way through the Debate I thought he was on mischief bent and that he was going to follow the spirit of la revanche for what I said yesterday and would threaten me with more to come. One tries to be ready for and equal to the hon. Member for Rugby, if that is possible. He has accused me of trying to make the House of Commons a Reichstag. Perhaps that is a rather heavy retort for my having accused him yesterday of trying to reduce the arrangement of Parliamentary business to that of the postal ballot. I do not complain, but I think most hon. Members will agree that I have treated the House and its convenience with as much respect as Leaders of the House of Commons have done in the past. The hon. Member will have his little joke, and we will treat it as such and enjoy it as best we can.

The Debate has been a good tempered one. It is perfectly true that the opinions and the convenience—the perfectly legitimate convenience—of hon. Members in various parts of the House are bound to differ. Some hon. Members have strong opinions about the matter and have expressed themselves accordingly. But, as I have said, it has been a good tempered discussion, I do not know what I can do for my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) with regard to this other quarter of an hour which is worrying her. She does not know what she is going to do with it. She will have more than a quarter of an hour for working purposes as I gather that she usually lunches at the House, and I hope she will find suitable use for it. There is a tendency, perhaps, for a number of hon. Members who usually lunch in the House to base their case upon their own experience. Of course, they can get their lunch much more expeditiously. They can come from Standing Committee—if they are on Standing Committee—go straight to the luncheon room and, with good luck and good service, get through pretty quickly. I agree that they have time on their hands. I agree also with the Leader of the Opposition, that a little quietness, meditation and repose after lunch is not a bad thing, even if it is a question of sitting down in the dining room and talking to fellow Members of the House of Commons. I am not sure that rushed lunches are good for people in responsible positions, although that may be a matter of controversy; but this remains a free country.

That is about the only respect in which it is a free country.

The hon. Member is suffering from an inferiority complex this morning, which for him is a most unusual experience. Many Members like to go out to lunch, and it is not a bad thing to get off the job now and again and to have your lunch outside. I have had as much experience as anyone in eating on the job. With others, I did it during the war. When I was Home Secretary and Minister of Home Security I lived, slept and ate on the job as much as anyone. For a time it was quite exciting and interesting, but there came the time when I was glad to get out of the place and see the back of it. I do not think it is a matter of censure if Members of Parliament prefer to go out for lunch and have the break in continuity of attendance in the House. In their case, one and a half hours is not too much time. They have to go to the restaurant, eat their lunch and then get back again to the House.

There is one point which I forgot to make. When I gave evidence before the Select Committee on Procedure, to which the hon. Member for West Willesden (Mr. Viant) referred, the point was raised, that if Standing Committees are to continue in fair numbers, as they are, there would be great difficulty for those shorthand writers in tidying up their reports of Standing Committees in time to get to work in the Chamber. Hon. Members who served on that Committee will recall that that was perhaps one of the most important points of practical difficulty put to me in the course of my evidence. They also must be considered, and undoubtedly this arrangement will be a considerable advantage to their work.

There has been the tendency on the Conservative side, and it does not surprise me, which was echoed also by the Leader of the Liberal Party, and, I am sorry to say, there has been a slight tendency among some of my hon. Friends as well, to allege that Parliament is being worked unduly and excessively hard. I think that we should have a sense of balance about this. I agree that the House is working hard, and I am very grateful to hon. Members for the work they are doing. I agree that the legislative programme is a considerable one, but I do not admit that in this Session we are asking more from Parliament than is reasonable or desirable in the public interest. If we are not careful, we shall play into the hands of reaction, if we accept without comment this tendency to allege in various quarters that the House is being driven too hard, for there are many people watching this House and the Government who wish very much that we should deal with half the Bills we are introducing. We must keep a sense of balance, or else we shall be playing into the hands of certain political views, which we do not want to do.

I did not use that argument. I did not say we were working too hard.

With great respect, I did not mention my hon. Friend. I was not thinking about him.

No one on this side of the House said so, but my right hon. Friend the Lord President said, "hon. Members on this side of the House."

I was not referring to my hon. Friend, and I do not know why he has got up, because I was not thinking of him. I thought that there was among some of the speeches on this side an implication in that direction which might be quoted against us in the future, and I was endeavouring to make sure that this would not happen. I admit that Parliament is working hard, but if there is anything which this Parliament came to do it is to work hard and get the programme through. We are very ambitious to get it through, and we can only do it if Parliament works hard, and I hope that all hon. Members, and all of us, will work hard and as cheerfully as we can. I noted the point coming from Opposition Benches, and I thought I had better say that in case the argument was utilised against us.

The Leader of the Opposition spoke from rich and long Parliamentary experience, and he obviously has an affection and liking for winding-up speeches late at night, starting sometimes at 10 o'clock and finishing at midnight, with which view there is not so much sympathy on this side of the House. Nevertheless, do not let us under estimate the Parliamentary and public importance of the right setting and atmosphere for the winding-up of Debates. The final tussle between the spokesmen of the Opposition and the Government on important matters is a great Parliamentary occasion. By terminating the sittings of this House at 9.15, we are tending to kill these great occasions, because it is impossible for the first of the last two speakers to make the most of himself if, inevitably, there is a moderately attended House because Members have to have their dinner. Therefore, y attach importance to this winding-up, which is part of the life of the House, and is part of its pulsating, human and emotional existence.

If we reduce the winding up of Parliamentary Debates to the level of a town council, it will be a very bad thing for our Parliamentary institution. That is why some of the observations made about the front bench were, I thought, a little unkind, although we expect to be knocked about a bit. Allegations that front bench speeches are dull, dreary and too long is a matter upon which opinions may be held, but I thought it was a bit rough. If back benchers are going to have a drive against the quality of front bench speeches, the front bench might retort in kind, and we should have a bad time. But we are not going to do that, and I am not asking for trouble in that direction. On many occasions in the past back benchers have complained that front bench spokesmen have spoken too long, and observations have often been made upon their speeches, but one of the roughest things is to be accused of having used a brief when, in fact, you have not used one.

I did not accuse the Minister of that.

I was not referring to the hon. Member. I cannot say anything without the hon. Member becoming a party leader for all sides of the House. However, I take no offence, because it takes much more than that to offend me, but I can assure hon. Members that we shall do our best to stand up to it at any time. I wish to emphasise that point, because the House is in two moods. Some think that winding-up speeches are not as good as others. The atmosphere may be wrong and hon. Members may have opinions about the speakers even, but nevertheless, when all is said and done, nobody enjoys the good winding-up of a Debate more than all the back benchers who sit around interrupting and so on. The point which is really important is that the 9.15 Rule makes it difficult to put adequate style into the winding-up, and the change to 10 o'clock will help us in this respect. I agree with the spirit of what the right hon. Gentleman said, although not exactly with his clock. He was quite right to refer to the problems of Ministers and Cabinets who, I can assure the House, are driving themselves very hard, as indeed they must in this transition period. I notice his advice about hours, the midday spread and the rest when you can get it. The right hon. Gentleman has a great experience of times of Cabinet meetings and he has his own ideas about how to spend the middle part of the day. I wish we could all follow his example since sometimes there is a lot to be said for it, but, although the Cabinet now meets more in the day time than formerly was the case, it is nevertheless a real point of difficulty.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberģ) mentioned the point about the Ministry of Transport and public transport at this hour. I am told by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport that they will certainly do all they can in that respect but that generally speaking, as regards underground and bus services, there is as much rolling stock in operation around 10 p.m. or 10.15 p.m. as earlier, with the additional advantage that the peak traffic of people getting away from theatres has by then worked itself off. I do not think hon. Members are so worried over the question of changing the hour to 10 o'clock or even to 10.30. The difficulty arises when the House rises later than that, and therefore we shall do what we can in that respect. I have taken note of my hon. Friend's observations but I think that there should be no complaint generally speaking on the subject of rising at 10 o'clock or 10.30.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman) made several points and had his views about the full-time Member of Parliament and upon a number of other matters. He pointed out that he himself had given up his practice and was devoting his time to Parliament. I should not like my hon. Friend or anybody else to misunderstand what I said; I thought I made it perfectly clear that I considered it desirable that a reasonable proportion of Members of Parliament should be devoting their whole time or substantially their whole time to Parliamentary duties, and that indeed I was very grateful because it helps us to man the Standing Committees. I accept my hon. Friend's point in that respect. I did not want to be driven by any implication to condemn the Member of Parliament who devotes his whole time to the House, but I was resisting the other argument which has been very frequently made outside—certainly against me at elections from time to time—that all Members should make Parliament a full-time job. That is the converse of the argument. I have never done it myself except as a Minister, which certainly is a full-time job. I have always had something else to do and I honestly believe it was better for me and for Parliament.

For example, my friends of the great trade union movement have an increasing practice of debarring their officials from continuing their trade union duties when they become Members of Parliament. I know that they have practical difficulties and that in many cases this is unavoidable because of the impossibility of adjusting one job with the other in respect of hours and so on, but they have become very rigid and sweeping in this rule that once a trade union officer becomes a Member of Parliament he shall cease to be an industrial officer. I am very doubtful whether the rigidity of that rule is a good thing for Parliament or for the trade unions. I think it is good that there should be in Parliament a certain number of responsible trade union officials dealing with current industrial problems and with the difficulties of the workshops and the mines, for instance. It is a good thing that Parliament should be enriched by their knowledge and experience. [ Interruption .] I am sorry I did not quite catch the point the hon. Member is trying to make.

We asked the right hon. Gentleman yesterday for time to discuss a trade union problem and the request came from a trade unionist of knowledge and experience.

I am slow on the uptake —I might have known that the hon. Gentleman had gone back 24 hours or thereabouts. I think also that it would be a very good thing for the trade unions that spread among their responsible leaders there should be a number of Members of Parliament. The point I am making is that I do not want Parliament to become exclusively a body of full-time Members of Parliament. I believe it is a good thing that a substantial section of them should have current, continuing outside interests and experience, because the nature of Parliament is that it is a body of citizens freely elected by their fellows, who come here to represent not only political opinions but the pulsating life of the nation as it goes on day by day and week by week. If Parliament ceased to be such a body, this would not be good either for the corporate life of the House or its representative character from the point of view of the constituencies.

The Noble Lord the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Hinchinģbrooke) asked me to clarify what I have said about the suspension of the Rule for an hour. It is, of course, my business to try to be the servant of the general will of the House when I know what it is.

We told the right hon. Gentleman yesterday what the will of the House was in this connection.

The hon. Gentleman is not the will of the House even with 200 proxies in his pocket. We do our best to find out what that will is, but I think

it is fair to my hon. Friends, particularly those who have views on the matter, that if we make this change it should be understood that it would be exceptional rather than the fairly common rule for important occasions for the Rule to be suspended. I think it reasonable to say in the circumstances that the change to 10.15 very much diminishes the need for suspending the Rule and that we should, therefore, try to avoid it. With regard to the point about HANSARD which was made by the Noble Lord, we have taken note of this matter although it is not one for the Government but for the House authorities, by whom I am sure it will be looked into.

As I said earlier, I am very grateful to the House for the good temper of the Debate, and particularly to my hon. Friends on this side who have strong feelings on the matter. We have tried to meet the general view of the House. We have to live together in this place and to give and take as best we can according to the general convenience. It is my belief that the Motion on the Paper represents the closest approach to the general will of the whole House that we have been able to obtain. We have been most careful to consult all elements in the House, and, there having been a welcome and free discussion on the merits of this mattes, I should be grateful if the House would be good enough to support the Government in approving this Motion.

Question put.

The House divided: Ayes, 174; Noes, 17.

Resolved: That on and after 30th April, the Order (Sittings of the House) of 15th August, shall cease to have effect, and during the remainder of the present Session, until this House otherwise orders— (1) Standing Orders Nos. 1, 6, 7, 8 and 14 shall have effect as if, for any reference to a time mentioned in the first column of the following table there were substituted a reference to the time respectively mentioned in the second column of that Table:—

(2) The following Order shall be substituted for Standing Order No. 2— 2. The House shall meet on Fridays at 11 a.m. for private business, petitions, orders of the day and notices of motions. Standing Order No. 1 (as amended by this or any other Order) shall apply to the sittings on Fridays with the omission of paragraph (1) thereof and with the substitution of references to 4 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. for references to 10 p.m. and 10.30 P.m.

(3) Standing Order No 25 shall apply— ( a ) to sittings on days other than Fridays, with the substitution of references to half past seven and half past eight for the references to a quarter past eight and a quarter past nine; and ( b ) to sittings on Fridays, with the substitution of references to a quarter past one and a quarter past two for the references to a quarter past eight and a quarter past nine. (4) In the paragraph substituted far paragraph (4) of Standing Order No. 7 by the order of this House (Business of the House (Questions to Members)) of 22nd March, 1946, for the reference to 2.15 p.m., there shall be substituted a reference to 2.3o p.m.

UNITED NATIONS [MONEY]

Resolution reported: That for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to enable effect to be given to certain provisions of the Charter of the United Nations it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of any expenses incurred by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom in applying any measures under Article 41 or the Charter of the United Nations signed at San Francisco on the twenty-sixth day of June, nineteen hundred and forty-five.

I beg to move, in page 2, line 8, at the end, to insert: (5) Any expenses incurred by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom in applying any such measures as are mentioned in this section shall be defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament. In view of the strictures which my hon. Friend the Member for Epping (Mrs. Manning) addressed to the Front Bench, earlier today, I shall try to be brief in moving this Amendment. It makes essential provision for any expenses, incurred by the Government in the United King-don in applying such measures as are covered by the Bill, to be defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament. I hope it is clear that if obligations undertaken under Article 41 involve, for instance, providing control services and increasing the number of officials for such services, there would be some expense which the Government would properly have to meet.

Amendment agreed to.

Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, with an Amendment; as amended, considered; read the Third time, and passed, with an Amendment.

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

May we have an explanation of this Amendment?

This is a drafting Amendment. All that it seeks to do is to remove an obscurity in the Bill with regard to the transfer of property to the forces which are combined by virtue of an amalgamation scheme when that property is in the possession of a constituent force which is one of the constituent forces of a joint force amalgamated under the Defence Regulations. This Amendment makes clear that the property which is used for police purposes by a joint force, whether it be the property exclusively of a constituent force or whether it be joint property, shall be transferred.

CLAUSE 5.—( Constitution and powers of combined police authorities .)

Lords Amendment: In page 5, line 17, at end, insert: (2) Provision may be made by an amalgamation scheme for applying, in relation to the constitution and proceedings of the combined police authority and in relation to the officers of that authority, any of the provisions of Parts II to IV of the Local Government Act, 1933, subject to such modifications as may be prescribed by the scheme.

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

This also is a drafting Amendment. It attracts the provisions of Parts II to IV of the Local Government Act, 1933, to a police authority in the regulations which may be made in any of the schemes.

CLAUSE II.—( Chief constables .)

Lords Amendment: In page 10, line 30, leave out "police" and insert "constituent.''

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

This drafting Amendment makes it dear that the first half of the Clause shall relate only to chief constables who are chief constables of a police force merged by virtue of Clause 1 of the Bill. The second part of the Clause makes it clear that the chief constables there referred to are all the other chief constables who may be affected by the Bill.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

The object of this Bill is to enable the Post Office to borrow the money necessary for the development of the telephone, telegraph and postal systems. The details of the services are set out in the Financial Memorandum attached to the Bill, and it will be seen that of the total of £50 million required £46 million is for the telephone system. The Bill is similar to previous Bills which have been presented at intervals of two or three years. In 1937 the amount authorised was £35 million; in 1939, £40 million and in 1942, £35 million. There is a balance from the last Bill which according to present indications, will last possibly till September, 1946. The amount authorised by the last Bill in 1942 was used solely for developments directly connected with the prosecution of the war, including telephone facilities needed for Civil Defence services and the vast industrial activities associated with the war effort. During the war supplies of labour and materials have been severely limited, and as a result ordinary civilian requirements had to be set aside in the field of Post Office activities as in many other fields. The result is that a mass of arrears of work has accumulated particularly on the telephone side. This explains why the amount asked for in this Bill is larger than that asked for on previous occasions. In addition, the Post Office will take over a certain amount of the plant which was constructed for direct war purposes. The borrowing powers of the Bill will be used to the extent of this absorption of war plant for civilian use.

There are certain difficulties which the Post Office has experienced during the war period, which it is still experiencing and which unfortunately will not disappear for some time to come. A few moments ago I referred to the fact that during the war ordinary civilian needs had to be neglected because of the labour and materials shortage. In the Post Office the labour position was very acute. There was an enlistment of over 80,000. From the engineering staff of 41,000 no fewer than 16,000 enlisted in the Forces, and it was never possible to obtain more than 11,000 temporary recruits to replace them. The result was that thousands of applications for telephone service could not be met, and there is now a waiting list of over 300,000. With the cessation of hostilities demands for telephone service poured in at an increased rate. During the prewar days the average applications per quarter were 105,000. In the first three months of this quarter the number of applications is just double that amount, 210,000. In addition to the accumulated arrears of the war years, present applications have added to the list, and we are now facing a good number of arrears.

We have to make up considerable leeway. In many localities plant in the exchanges and underground cables has been used up and it will be some considerable time before we can tackle the problem of those areas. The borrowing powers of the Bill are necessary to enable us to get the plant and equipment for meeting the waiting list and improving the telecommunication service as quickly as possible. Of the £50 million authorised, at least £17 million will be spent each year, and as far as it is possible that rate of expenditure will be increased in order to improve services more quickly. As a matter of fact, we have already set about the task. During the past few months the Post Office has been installing telephones at the rate of 50,000 per month, or nearly 50 per cent. more than the prewar rate of 36,000. During the next few weeks we expect to reach what is a landmark in this country. We shall instal the four millionth telephone. This is a notable and commendable achievement when we remember the large number of highly skilled engineers who are still with the Forces, and the considerable amount of extra work thrown upon the staff by storm and flood damage.

Fifty thousand telephone installations per month is a record, but the Department plans to do even better and hopes to provide telephones at the rate of 700,000 per year. People today are telephone minded, and we are anxious that the telephone should not be merely a business luxury or a business necessity, but an ordinary domestic amenity. While, therefore, we shall make every effort to improve output, it must be remembered that to provide every subscriber with a telephone there must be a separate pair of wires from his premises to the exchange. This means providing ducts, underground cables and exchange buildings in many cases, and for this class of work, unfortunately, the Post Office is in competition with other Departments and with the building industry generally. Notwithstanding this, the work of providing ducts and cables is already going on and in over 200 towns the work has begun well and plans are in preparation for work in a large number of additional towns. Contracts are ready to be placed in over 100 towns as soon as the contractors can take them, and we are making arrangements to obtain prisoner of war assistance for contractors. The rate of expenditure on ducts and cables will lump from £1½ million per year to at least £4 million per year. Side by side with the laying of cables is the necessity to provide new plant in the exchanges, and already close on £3 million worth of plant has been ordered' from the manufacturers, which will provide some 300,000 subscribers lines at 360 exchanges.

This work will be delayed for some time because the supply of labour is linked with demobilisation, but we are expecting back a constant flow of skilled Post Office engineers into the work of the Department, and we hope that there will be an acceleration in the rate of progress to shorten the period. In the meantime, we have made arrangements for the release of skilled engineers under Scheme B and a number of them are already back in the Post Office service. Side by side with these steps the training of additional men is proceeding, and the services of as many additional trained men as can be spared from the Army Signals personnel have been borrowed. As a result of all these steps, the engineering rank and file staff, which before the war amounted to 41,000 men and at the end of the war was 36,000, will in a short time reach the figure of 45,000. I mentioned earlier that the Post Office will be able to absorb a considerable part of the plant laid down for war purposes. The defence Services have already surrendered a considerable number of trunk circuits, and there are now in use for the public more than 12,000 circuits over 25 miles. That compares with 7,000 in prewar years.

Inland telegraph traffic during the financial year ending 31st March, 1946, was 29 per cent. higher than in 1938–39 the last complete year before the war. This indicates the increase in traffic which has been a constant feature of the war years. During the war it was necessary to introduce as an emergency measure the decentralisation of the telegraph services, and this was done to safeguard our communications against damage from air attack. It had the effect of increasing the number of transmissions per telegram, and the service is handicapped still further by the destruction of the Central Telegraph Office in London as well as the offices in Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Exeter and Plymouth. All these places were vital centres in the telegraph service. We now contemplate reconstructing the telegraph network by the introduction of switching methods, which will be completed in 1947. However, we hope by the end of 1946 to have made sufficient progress to enable us to give telegraph services comparable with our pre-war standards.

In conclusion, may I stress the very high output which the Post Office as a public enterprise, charged with the duty of providing telephone and telegraph services for the community, has succeeded in obtaining in eight months after the conclusion of hostilities. Compared with prewar days, the Post Office is carrying 30 per cent, more telegrams, handling 90 per cent. more long distance trunk calls and is connecting up to 50 per cent. more telephones each month. It will be readily realised that this has meant hard and continuous work by the whole of the staff, and very briefly but sincerely I desire to express my appreciation of the efforts made by the staff during the six years of war, and to state that they have now turned with equal zeal to the tasks of peace so that the public may have the service to which it is entitled and which it is the desire of the Department to provide.

1.35 p.m.

I should like my first words to echo what has just fallen from the lips of the hon. Gentleman as regards the staff of the Post Office. The opportunity does not often present itself, but I would like in this House to pay a tribute to the fine work which from my own experience I know they did during the war. I would also like to tell the hon. Gentleman that I am sure that for any lead which he may give to that staff he will get a response.

He has given us a catalogue of what has been done, and I know the difficulties of his Department very well indeed, particularly at this time. It is true to say, I think, that there is a perceptible improvement both in postal and telephone and telegraph services. However, I was very disappointed in the remarks that he had to make on this Bill. He gave us no views as to the future standard of service which the Post Office should give to the public. I think he had a magnificent opportunity on this occasion to paint on a broad canvas some idea of what are the future plans and how the service can be expanded in a manner in which it can best serve the commercial and private interests of this country-in the time which is coming when those interests will want all the help they can get.

The amount of some £4. million which is being asked for the postal services seems rather small, and I would like to know some more about that. I would give the hon. Gentleman the reason why I consider it seems to me rather small. Perhaps I may recall an incident that happened to me during the war. An American over here, whom I met upon a semi-official occasion, said to me," Well, we will give it to you as far as your postal services are concerned in this country, but your telephones—" and he shook his head. At that time all I could tell him was that the telephone side of the Department was fully occupied in providing the immense amount of work necessary for the defence Services, and that he should not judge by our telephone system in wartime what we hope to make it in the future. Even in wartime, however, he said our postal services were far better than the American. That is merely by the way, to give an outside opinion. I want to know what the Post Office have in mind with regard to the future postal services. I believe it is an axiom, and I think it is a right one, that you want of the postal services three things: first, regularity; second, speed; and third, cheapness, with the priorities in that order.

I believe the best target to go for would be a postal system whereby a letter can be posted anywhere in this country round about six to seven o'clock in the evening, and be delivered anywhere else in the United Kingdom by first post the next morning. With modern methods—with aeroplanes, helicopters, speedier trains, motor transport and the rest of it—that should be possible, but it means considerable capital expenditure and probably the rebuilding of sorting offices and so on. I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman made no mention of what he has in mind with regard to the future postal services. If the scheme that I have adumbrated is in mind, it will call for a good deal more expenditure than that provided in this Bill, and that makes me ask what he has in mind with regard to the development of the postal services.

I turn to the telephone side. I do not want anything I say here to imply any censure on what is being done by the staff of the Post Office in trying to catch up the leeway to which the hon. Gentleman referred. There is a lot of leeway to be caught up. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not give us any vision of the future. Is the ultimate object to be a trunk demand service over the whole country and, if so, has he any idea when that can be brought about? Also, has he any idea what the density of the telephone service is to be? In future, are the telephone ducts to be put down with the drains and with the water services, with the idea that almost every house will have a telephone if it is wanted? Is he looking as far ahead as that? Again, how much is being done in the way of scrapping old plant in order to put in new plant? In ordinary commercial enterprise there is a far more forward scrapping policy than there is with the Post Office, and the reason is probably not very far to seek. It lies in these words which occur in the Bill: The programme of expenditure and the works to be carried out in each year are subject to the approval of the Treasury. I do not think the Treasury likes to see plant scrapped until it has run whatever was its projected life of service, notwithstanding how obsolete it becomes, and I do not believe you will be able quickly to arrive at a really efficient and widespread telephone service unless the Post Office is prepared to scrap rather more freely than it has done in the past.

There are one or two other points on which I do not ask for answers today, for there will be another stage of the Bill when the hon. Gentleman can reply. I would like to know what proportion of this £46 million will be applied to taking over plant which was installed under the Vote of Credit. During the war a trunk line system equivalent to the whole of the trunk lines system which existed before the war was laid down for the defence Services, so there is already to hand on the main trunk routes a tremendous amount of plant which will be useful for postwar development. On the other hand, there had, of necessity, to be a great deal of work done in remote places, to aerodromes and so on, which will never be of commercial use, or very little. Can the hon. Gentleman give me any idea what proportion of this £46 million will be wiped out simply by taking over plant laid down under the Vote of Credit?

There will be great difficulty for some years to come in getting the buildings that are necessary, and I should like to know how far the question has been explored of using temporary buildings, and possibly of taking over any sort of building which can be given up by the Service Departments, in order temporarily to house the new equipment required for rapid expansion of the service. It always used to be said to me that the trouble with the Post Office was that it could never do anything unless "it put knobs on." That, by and large, is good in ordinary times, but in times like these some "knobs," so to speak, may have to be sacrificed in order to get the service going, leaving the "knobs" to be put on later. I was glad to hear what the hon. Gentleman said about the telegraph switching service, and of the progress made there. I hope that that will shortly be completed, and I have not the slightest doubt that it will result in a much improved telegraph service.

I would stress that at the present time we are living to some extent in a fool's paradise so far as our trade is concerned, because it is a seller's market. One has only to make any old thing in order to sell it. But the time will come, it may be sooner or later, when we shall have to compete in the world and sell our goods in competition with others. There is not the slightest doubt that an efficient postal, telegraph and telephone system in this country can contribute very largely to help our exporting firms and our other firms which also have to meet competition. I hope that the hon. Gentleman and his noble Friend are looking ahead and will not be content, as it seemed to me was a little implied in his speech, with just making up leeway. The hon. Gentleman talked at one moment of restoring prewar levels. We shall have to go further than that. We require a postal service in this country, on the lines I have laid down, which will be second to none. We must certainly have a telephone service which is as good as, or even better than those in America, Sweden and other countries. I hope the hon. Gentleman will not be content with catching up what has been lost during the war, but that he will plan ahead for the time when we shall need the best and most efficient postal and telegraph service we can get. If he and his Noble Friend will give a lead, it will be readily followed by the excellent staff which he has at his command in the Post Office.

1.48 p.m.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the staff of the Post Office will respond to a lead. They will certainly respond more readily to a lead coupled with imagination. I know of no institution on which the nation depends so much for efficiency in so many directions as on the Post Office, with its many services—telephone, telegraph, postal, counter and social. I was glad to hear the tributes paid to the staff. They are deserved. I shall not be influenced by what the American, mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, said unless I know, for example, what the American letter carrier had to say about the American's views on their letter services. I am not attracted by persons who visit a country for a week, and then come back and tell one all that there is to know about it. I have been about this country a good deal. I know some towns very well, but I would not like to say that I know everything about them. I am reminded that in the 1929–31 Parliament we heard a lot about the wonderful Americans. When everything is taken into account, I doubt very much whether from the point of view of equipment, maintenance and length of service, their telephone service is so good as the British system. My recollection is that we invest much more capital, and that in consequence our community has a much better telephone system. That is not to say that it cannot be improved.

My hon. Friend indicated that the money he seeks to obtain through this Bill is not the last word. It is an instalment. As I understand it, this sum of money will meet requirements until June, 1948. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) spoke of there being a seller's market. He wants vision. So do I, but I think that we have to look at this proposal within the limits indicated in the Bill, and its immediate requirements. My hon. Friend gave indications that there was vision on the part of the administration. Indeed, since the war, there are good sign of the right approach to these problems.

As regards the telephone system, I agree, judging from letters I receive from my constituents, that there is indeed an urgent demand for improvement. I am glad my hon. Friend has given indications that his Department appreciate the urgency of that demand, and are endeavouring to meet it on a scale superior to that of prewar. I agree with the hon. Member for Westbury that we do not want the prewar standard to be the limit or the basis of development in the future. An ex-Service man coming home may start up a motor car business. The success of it will turn upon the man having a telephone. The same is true of small tradesmen, etc., but I want to put in a plea for a person who is very rarely mentioned in these discussions of the development of the telephone system. I referred to this matter in the 1929–31 Parliament, and I hope that my hon. Friend will find it possible to give some attention to this aspect of the question. If there is one place in this country which needs the telephone, it is the home of the working mother. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will endeavour to see that the telephone is put into the home of the worker in this country. I would like to see the rental reduced, but I appreciate that that may not be possible. I would like my hon. Friend to give some consideration to whether we cannot devise some easier method of payment of the charges. I am satisfied that the working mother of this country has much need of the telephone, and I hope we will see development in that direction.

The hon. Member for Westbury referred to telephone density. We want to see many more telephones. I would like to see that density increased in the country and rural districts. If the telephone service is developed, as I hope it will be, it may be possible to accelerate the disposal of telegrams, and improve that aspect of the service, about which some hon. Members were complaining the other day. I feel that not enough has been said about the postal side. No doubt my hon. Friend will be saying something later, or on another occasion will be able to deal with it in more detail. I remember that after the last war the administration's plans for development and building lacked imagination, and were too small. Often a building which had been designed by an architect was out of date before the builder was ready to erect it. I, therefore, hope that buildings will be on a large scale. I am not so sure that temporary buildings can be converted into buildings which are suitable for use by the Post Office. They can be used, but very often the temporary building is a waste of money.

After the last war sometimes so much time elapsed between the drawing up of the plans and the time when the builder got to work that opportunities were lost. I hope my hon. Friend will get an improvement there and, if he has to talk to the Treasury, I hope he will talk pretty strongly. I make bold to say, and I put it very modestly, that hundreds of thousands of pounds were lost to the community as a result of the delay among the several Departments. I wish that the Postmaster-General had greater power and was able to act quickly in the interest of the community and for the speedier development of the services.

On the postal side they use millions of mail bags. Mail bags get into a very filthy condition. It is not possible to say to what extent that condition contributes to the sickness which arises among the staff. I know what the dust from bags does to the temper of the wives of the men when they go home after handling for a day dirty, filthy bags. A system is needed by which mail bags can be cleaned frequently and periodically. I think perhaps the secret lies in the erection of suitable laundries. I hope my hon. Friend will keep in mind this much needed improvement. I am told, for example, that laundries exist in Germany for this purpose and I believe the Germans were ahead of us in the methods employed for cleaning mail bags. I was told that the German Post Office made quite a reasonable revenue out of the by products resulting from the cleaning of mail bags, the dust and so forth. That sounds strange, but I was assured it is correct. I suppose science can make use of anything.

I want to emphasise that if there is one thing the staff would appreciate it is that a real serious attempt should be made to deal with the cleaning of mail bags. I believe the solution lies in the utilisation of money for the erection of laundries in which these bags could be cleaned periodically and frequently. If necessary, I hope my hon. Friend will have the courage to experiment. The staff would cooperate and I am sure the experiment would succeed. If my hon. Friend could be the first to bring revenue to the British Post Office from the by products resulting from bag cleaning, I think he would earn a place in the memory of the staff.

Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Westbury and my hon. Friend the Minister for their generous references to the staff of the Post Office and the service they gave during the war. During that period there was one thing you could always rely upon in London; postmen turned up in the morning with the letters though the enemy had blitzed us like hell all night.

1.59 p.m.

Happily, I am not tied by past or present service in the Post Office to withholding any criticisms that I may seek to make in respect of the telegraph or telephone services. I think the Minister made a very persuasive speech but it was obviously an ex parte state- ment. The only criticism I could make of it is that it lacked a sense of urgency. It is a sense of urgency that should bestir every Government Department today. In perusing this short and apparently innocuous Bill, the first word that I have to criticise is right in the first line—the word "development." That does not seem to me to be a suitable word for this occasion. One can develop a bad habit, a cold or a disease. Many bad habits have been developed in our public telephone service. I would suggest that the Minister and the Parliamentary draftsmen should think again and put in the word "improvement" and then let them read the Bill. How much more convincing and comforting to this House and to the public it would be. It would then provide for, raising capital for the improvement of the postal, telegraph and telephone systems. I propose to put down an Amendment to this effect in Committee and so my remarks today will give the Minister an opportunity of anticipating my efforts.

It seems to me we are rather fortunate to have this Debate today. It gives the House an opportunity of discussing the original example of this odd, but now very prevalent, policy adopted by the Government, of nationalising our industries. Here we have the original nationalised service. I would have thought that the Government, with this example in front of them—or possibly, behind them—would think twice before embarking on further nationalisation proposals because, believe me, the postal, telegraph, and telephone services are by no means as satisfactory as the Minister tried to show. I do not know whether he studies the daily Press or whether he receives the average number of letters sent to Members of Parliament. If he does he will have got the same impression as the hon. Member for East Walthamstow (Mr. H. Wallace), namely, that all is not well with the telephone, telegraph, and postal services in this country. I am not going to deal with the Post Office itself because, although it leaves much to be desired—particularly as regards pens that will not write and blotting paper that will not blot—it passes muster: I should say that during the war we have not had much to complain about. A considerable amount of vision has been shown especially in regard to airgraphs. The introduction of airgraphs showed great vision and imagination. It brought happiness and comfort to many thousands of people at home as well as abroad. Apart from that, I think the Post Office has been a little weak in the development —or the improvement, to come back to my own word—of our system.

pass to the telephone system, and on this I have something to say. I think the system is simply deplorable, especially if compared with the United States of America. Let us examine it under its various somewhat lamentable headings. I was not convinced by the Minister when he used those usual parrot-like cries about "labour" and "material." The war has been over for eight months now. With the present Armies of Occupation on non-operational duties throughout the world, we do not, we cannot, use all the signals staff who were torn from the Post Office and telephone services and deposited in the Army and Navy. They cannot be needed there now. They must be getting back their skill and training and returning to their old jobs. The material for the telephone instruments cannot be in very short supply. Where are the instruments released by the Forces? I know they are not of quite the same type but they would serve a very useful purpose distributed among the homes of our people. Let us consider the question of instruments. In the average hotel or boarding house in this country—I will not deal with homes—there is one instrument on the ground floor. Suppose a call comes through for a visitor at that hotel when lie is shaving, dressing or having his breakfast. Some little time elapses until he gets downstairs to the instrument. Many things happen during the interval before he reaches the instrument. First, the call is cut off. Then the young lady who wields all power at the exchange gets tired. Then the caller gets tired. Then a trunk call intervenes, and finally the unfortunate usee "—I can think of no better, or worse, English—has lost his breakfast, has missed his bath and, incidentally, has lost his temper too. In America, where I had the privilege of spending a month or two before the war, there are instruments not only on every floor, but practically in every room and, generally, there is a portable instrument on every breakfast table. The hon. Gentleman will, no doubt, repeat that he has all these wonderful plans for supplying millions of instruments, but we want them now.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman will agree, I think, that the usual planning, time in factories before the war was at least eight months from the time of starting to plan, until the article was produced.

I thought I had dealt with that point a few moments ago when I referred to the vast numbers of instruments which must have been released from the Services. I should say there are thousands of them; I do not know what they are doing.

Then I come to the vexed question of wrong numbers. Why should there be wrong numbers now that the automatic dialling system is in force nearly everywhere? Last winter I asked the Minister a Question on this point, and he complacently answered that only 1.5 per cent. of Londoners, and slightly less outside London, had to suffer this inconvenience. Well, I had five wrong numbers the morning I put that Question down, and so I was somewhat hesitant to accept his answer. But suppose we do accept it as approximately accurate, what is the result? It means, on the assumption that one-third of our population—that is, about 15,000,000—are telephone users, there must be 5,000,000 wrong numbers annually. That is a fantastic figure which I do not believe any Postmaster-General can justify. Then I raised another question with the hon. Gentleman, and asked who paid for these wrong numbers. Of course, he could not answer, because with the dialling system the Post Office cannot possibly know when there is a wrong number. The result is that the Post Office today are raking£40,000 a year into their coffers, to which they are not entitled and which we pay.

I am afraid the hon. and gallant Gentleman is on a wrong number now. He cannot deal with the charges which are made.

I thought that I was probably straying, and I will not pursue the matter. However, the Minister might bear those points in mind and refresh his memory about the questions that I raised last year.

There is one other point to which the public attach some importance and which this money is obviously designed to cover, and that is the issue of charges. As hon. Members know, one receives monthly a yellow form with a lot of hieroglyphics on it which mean nothing to the recipient, and, I imagine, very little to the sender.

Again the hon. and gallant Gentleman is out of Order. He cannot deal with charges.

Then I will have to develop the argument on other lines. Might I, therefore, refer to the present system by which a subscriber endeavours to get a toll call, a trunk call, or that very golden voiced operator who is secured by dialling "O "? I must say the Post Office choose their voices well. They are always very pleasant voices to listen to, but the result is not always as satisfactory or pleasant as the voice. What I want to bring to the notice of the House, and what the country want to know, is why, if one dials "TOL," "TRU" or "O" the result in each case is precisely the same—silence. Possibly the Minister could give me some explanation of that queer happening. Of course, sometimes one hears those girlish voices discussing events of the previous evenings with their boy friends. That is a diversion—

It is a diversion into which the hon. and gallant Gentleman cannot go any further.

I accept your Ruling, immediately, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and I would not for a moment consider taking advantage of your kindness. It may appear that I have stressed the lighter side of these complaints and troubles from which the public are suffering, but I wish to impress on the Minister that this deficiency—I am afraid one must regard it as such—in the present telephone system occurs at a most critical period in our history when, as the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) said, we are trying to re-establish and recapture our foreign and even our own domestic trade. The telephone is a fundamental channel by which this trade can be recaptured and re-established. The Post Office is an important channel, but I think the telephone is more important. Therefore, I ask the Minister to pay attention to that phrase which I used at the beginning of my speech—" a sense of urgency "—because it is by the result of his efforts that this country will more quickly feel the warm winds of prosperity than by any other.

2.13 p.m.

I propose to detain the House only a few minutes to put forward what I regard as an item of priority in the spending of this money which we are now considering. Those of us who occasionally get leisure to go to the cinema or to the theatre are often highly amused when we see a character making a telephone call. On dialling a number, he is immediately connected with the person with whom he wishes to speak, and it has often occurred to me that he cannot possibly be dialling some of the exchanges with which I have the misfortune to deal. I live—and I am now speaking from bitter experience—in a borough which is partly covered by the Tudor Exchange. I hope the Minister will take notice of that name. I also have the honour to represent a constituency which is served—or not served—by the Clissold Exchange. Would the Minister please write that name down, too? Those two exchanges are on the manual system still, and there is no doubt that we do not get anything like the same efficient service from those manual exchanges that we get from the automatic exchanges. The Minister will have had a resolution from the Hornsey Borough Council, passed unanimously, complaining about the system at Tudor Exchange. I hope he will be able to give some priority to the changing over of that and the Clissold Exchange to the automatic system.

In criticising the manual exchanges I am not criticising the staff. I have taken the precaution of seeing for myself the automatic and the manual exchange systems at work. It is clear to anyone who does so that defects are not the fault of the staff. The way in which the numbers come up on the illuminated panel at a manually operated exchange do not give the staff the full opportunity of connecting subscribers. That is entirely the fault of the system. The sooner we can get all exchanges, in London at any rate, made automatic the better it will be. The change is essential.

During the war, London was very well served by its telephone system, which was the nervous system of the capital. As a very humble cog in the Civil Defence system in those days, I developed a tremendous admiration for the telephone system and for the postal service.

The telephone system was one of the wonders of the war in London. I cannot speak for any other part of the country. It saved us many times. It saved many lives during the raids. The weak spot always was that in our district we had to use an out of date exchange. We could never depend upon getting the response, which took very much longer than upon the other system. I almost feel a bit suspicious because of the way the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore) is agreeing with me. I had better say something on which I do not agree with him. From what I have already stated, hon. Members will believe that I developed a tremendous admiration for the postal and telephone services during the war. Contrary to what the hon. and gallant Member said, I regard that admiration as a very good argument for the efficiency of a nationalised service. Now we know where we are. Perhaps we are not entirely in agreement.

I agree with the hon. and gallant Member that the telephone has become something more than a luxury. It is now a necessity in every home. I do not go so far as to say that the instruments which were used for war purposes could be utilised. It is not easy to imagine some of the mothers of the country operating field telephones. Nevertheless, the sooner we get telephone instruments in every home the nearer we shall get to being a civilised nation. In supporting the spending of this money which we are asked to authorise, I urge the Minister to spend some of it in converting the Tudor and Clissold exchanges into automatic exchanges as early as possible.

2.19 p.m.

I add my plea that a reasonable portion of this money should be spent upon the development of the telegraph and telephone services, particularly in rural districts, where the population is very spread out. I am convinced that the Post Office could do a very great deal that has not been done in the past. I understand the difficulties of the Post Office. They are the same as the difficulties of other Departments and undertakings. Nevertheless, the time is coining when we must look forward. I, in common with one or two other hon. Members, was disappointed that the Assistant Postmaster-General had not more to tell us about his plans for the future. We need to look again at the Post Office and to get, once again, the Rowland Hill mentality.

I put a Question the other day to the Assistant Postmaster - General as to whether he was willing to raise the weight of parcels accepted by the Department. At present the limit is 15 lbs. When the parcels post was first introduced in 1878, seven lbs. were allowed. Since then, there has been an increase of only eight lbs., contrary to the practice of many foreign countries. I understand that a parcel weighing 22 lbs. can be sent abroad. I cannot understand, therefore, why it is so difficult to raise the weight of internal parcels above 15 lbs. The matter is of importance to people who live in country districts an extremely long way from the nearest railway station. If things are sent to them by rail, all kinds of complications are caused. If they can receive heavier parcels by post they would be able to get things delivered to their doors in a much more convenient way. The change that I am suggesting would be an enormous help to them. In these days of motor vehicles I do not see why it should not be possible. I hope that the Assistant Postmaster-General will give the matter further consideration.

Another important matter is postal delivery. I hope that some of the money will be spent upon the postal deliveries. In the hamlet where I live, my letters are delivered at 11.30 in the morning by an unfortunate postman who has to traverse an enormous area before he reaches me. I can see absolutely no reason why that man should not have either a motor cycle or a van. He would be able to accomplish his job so much more efficiently. I hope this will be the kind of development which the Assistant Postmaster General has in mind.

Has the hon. and gallant Member considered trying to deliver letters, or even groceries, from door to door in a rural area, using a motor cycle or a van, as compared with using a foot cycle? May I ask also whether the hon. and gallant Member thinks it is going to be easy to deliver these 22 lb. parcels he is asking the Department for?

This is a different question. The Minister has not yet agreed to increase the size of parcels. Postmen to whom I have spoken agree that it would be very much better. I should like to read an extract from a local newspaper: The postal arrangements of this town are most unsatisfactory. We do not get our London papers and letters, even by sending for them, until after 10 o'clock, and the Northern letters do not reach us until the second day after they have been posted at Birmingham, Cheltenham, etc. The newspaper goes on to say that representations have been made about the matter. The Assistant Postmaster-General may think that we have nothing to complain about, that it is reasonable to have to wait two or three days before we receive our letters. Let me tell the Assistant Postmaster-General that this newspaper cutting is exactly 100 years old. It is dated 1846 and is from the "Western Gazette." Surely the Minister ought to set himself a higher standard than that today? The time has come when the Post Office has got to look forward again. In 1846 Rowland Hill's reforms had just been introduced. The time has come to look forward once again and see whether, in the light of modern developments, we cannot do a little better.

Only yesterday a Question was asked on the subject of telegrams. A custom, about which I had not heard before, is developing in rural areas, whereby telegrams are received by post the following day. If somebody wished to communicate by post they would, presumably, send a letter by post. If they send a telegram it means they are in a hurry. I hope that this practice, which might conceivably have been justified in wartime, will stop at once, because it is most unfair and causes the greatest hardship to a number of people.

In regard to postal and telegraph services, I am a little disappointed that only £4 million out of £50 million has been allocated for development. With the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore), I hope for improvement as well as development. In comparison with the £46 million which is being set aside for telephone development, million seems to be very small. I hope we shall hear more about this, because I am perfectly certain there is room for a great deal more improvement. I am very glad that £46 million is being set aside for the improvement of telephones, because we get uni- versal complaints about them, particularly in the country. They are constantly going wrong. I know that in many cases it is due to the fact that the lines have been neglected during the years of war. However, we do now need a higher standard.

The time has come when every village and hamlet is entitled to a public call box. As has been said on the other side of the House this afternoon, quite rightly, the public is much more telephone minded than it used to be. There is a very real demand for the services of a telephone. In my village I am the only person who has a telephone. I know, from the number of people who want to borrow it, just what that demand is. I understand that a public call box cannot be installed in a village until there has been some kind of guarantee by the local authority that it will pay, or something of the kind. I hope the Assistant Postmaster-General will correct me if I am wrong. If that is the case, I think that restriction should be removed. The people of this country, even if they live in isolated places, should have the advantage of being able to go to a public call box. I am convinced that in the long run, so far from being a heavy charge on the very large profits of the Post Office, it would pay.

I hope that when the Assistant Postmaster-General is deciding how this money is to be spent he will bear these developments in mind, that he will use his imagination, and that he will think of the unfortunate people who live far from any town.

2.29 p.m.

I am very glad indeed that my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General and the hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) have used the occasion of this Debate to express their appreciation of the war work of the Post Office staff. I am quite certain the staff of the Post Office will welcome this recognition of the work that they have done. I must admit that I can understand the impatience of the public at the present time at the very low standard of telephone efficiency, compared with what it was before the war. There is also impatience at the long delays in getting new telephone services. I must say, however, that some of the criticisms are very wide of the mark, and the remarks of the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore) were, I think, a complete travesty of the situation. He urged the Assistant Postmaster-General to have a sense of urgency. Time and time again I wanted to interrupt the hon. and gallant Member in order to ask him to have a sense of proportion.

I would like to show the House how these difficulties appear to me, looked at from the angle, mainly, of the engineering personnel of the Post Office. What was the situation? At the outbreak of war the engineering department lost about a quarter of its staff from the word "Go" because such a large proportion of them were either in the Reserve, or in the Territorials. It was only after a time-lag of some two years that the department began to replace the men who had gone by women, and to train them for skilled work. I do not think it is commonly appreciated that the Post Office has provided for the Armed Forces and the Civil Defence Forces all their communications in this country. The engineering and telecommunications branches of the Post Office have done, here in Britain, what would have been done by a corps of signals for an expeditionary force. Is it commonly known that the communications for Bomber Command, Fighter Command, Central R.A.F. Station and the so-called Whitehall "Q" station were all maintained exclusively by Post Office personnel? What does this mean? It means, that during the war the Post Office was concentrating the whole of its efforts on providing communications for the Services and for other essential war purposes. It would have been quite impossible for that to have been done without the ordinary subscriber being sacrificed to some extent.

The concentration on war work means that there is a tremendous leeway to make up. During the years of the war, development—by which I mean the expansion of the telephone service—was impeded. Apart from the new lines necessary for war purposes no ordinary development was proceeded with at all. It therefore follows that we cannot overnight, nor in a relatively short space of time like eight months, make up for the six years during which time the ordinary work was suspended. That is a point that hon. Members who make criticisms must remember. Do not expect the impossible. Do not expect because war has come to an end that, therefore, automatically it is possible to put in hand all the work that would have been done, had there been no war.

I think, too, we should recognise that there is an acute shortage of equipment and plant of various kinds. We should understand that, not only was the Post Office concentrating on war work, but the makers of Post Office equipment and the contractors were doing the same. Not more than 20 per cent. of the output of the manufacturers' equipment was forthcoming to the Post Office during the years of the war. The quicker the manufacturers are able to turn over to ordinary peacetime production and give the Post Office a substantially increased output of equipment, the sooner we can look for improvements in some respects.

Without being able to develop the matter in detail, I would point out that the Post Office has in front of it, if it uses this money wisely and properly, tremendous technical opportunities. There is no reason why we should not proceed to make the telephone system completely automatic. There is no reason why, as the years go on, we should not increasingly work towards the idea/ of having only one operator for each trunk call, whatever the distance involved. There is no reason why we should not extend direct dialling so that we can achieve that aim. There is no reason why we should not increasingly use co-axial cables and multichannel carrier circuits. Expensive equipment is needed, but this equipment gives much more effective results and will, in the end, save money. If we take advantage of the opportunities now presenting themselves to us, not only can we look forward to an increasingly fine service in this country, but we can also expect that British telephone standards will hold the field in many parts of the world.

To compare Britain with America is most unfair; it is to compare a country which has been in the front line of the war with one which has been nowhere near the front line. Had it not been for these last six years of war, the service would have been improved almost out of recognition. The energy and enthusiasm which went into the work in the years before the war can now be put into the work again. If, however, we are to spend this money as wisely as I think we should, we must see that a fairly substantial proportion of it is devoted to research, because we cannot continue to live on the past. Our equipment must be brought up to date, and I would urge that more money should be spent on the research side.

I am, I think, in a position to say that any words of praise spoken about the service of the staff during the war are not misplaced and that in the Post Office there are thousands of good, keen workers who are proud to work for the State and are ready to play their part in the development of this fine service.

2.37 p.m.

I will not detain the House long, because, like other hon. Members, I am interested in the discussion which is to follow. This however is a fascinating subject and many of us would have liked to spend more time on it. I would add my word in support of the congratulations already offered to the Post Office staff. It is inherent in the type of equipment used in automatic exchanges that continual and careful maintenance is necessary. The reason why there has not been that maintenance is, as has been said, because we have not had the people. I am sure that when the men get back on the job, we shall see the telephone department giving us the good service which we got before the war.

The Post Office is the largest Government monopoly up to now. Our Government have the finest chance in the world to show what a good Post Office service can be like. I hope they will make full use of this opportunity to prove that a Government monopoly can give the public a fine, cheap and efficient service. We can do many things with the Post Office that have not been done in the past. When the building situation is a little easier, why cannot we make the post offices of all our main towns the finest buildings in those towns, and why cannot we make the internal arrangements of our post offices a means of serving the public cheaply and efficiently? These things involve research into new methods for handling and training Post Office staffs. Here is a wonderful field of opportunity for the Post Office. As to sub-post offices, these, as' a rule, are run by private shopkeepers. Why should they not be brought up to date? Why should not the Post Office allocate labour and money for bringing these small shops up to date and making them brighter and more cheerful centres of their small communities?

Now I would like to deal particularly with the telephone and telegraph services. At the moment, as the Assistant Postmaster-General said, the accent is on production and new apparatus, but I think he will agree with me that in a few years from now, sales are going to be the real need because the cost of a service of this description depends on density. In order to get density we must go out and "sell the Post Office" to the community. We want to see a telephone in every home; we want the public to become telephone and telegraph minded. I would like the Assistant Postmaster-General to tell us what are the future plans for doing this. Is he making market surveys, or preparing to make surveys, in order to find out what kind of telephone service people want, and what they are prepared to pay for it? What is he going to do to ensure that every household in the country becomes telephone minded and wishes to have the telephone installed? To do this we have to find out the facts, and to find out the facts we ought to prepare market surveys now, so that, in the long run, we can get the best and cheapest telephone and telegraph service in the world.

2.42 p.m.

I rise to participate in this Debate only because of the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. John Edwards). I represent a provincial constituency, and the fact of residing in London causes one to feel a great sense of gratitude and a great admiration for the remarkable work done by Post Office workers during the difficult days of the war. One appreciates how they overcame difficulties despite some of the foolish criticism that came from hon. Members opposite. I did not hear the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore), but I did hear in this House the other day a comment about the delay in getting telephones installed. If the Assistant Postmaster-General wishes, I could let him have a collection of letters of appreciation which I have received from people who have written to me on the subject. I do not know that he favoured me particularly—although I must bear in mind that we are both members of the same trade union. But, frankly, I have wondered how on earth the Post Office have done it. I can only believe it is because of the experience which has been gained and the improvements which have been made during the war years. With a much depleted staff, the Post Office have been able to appease the most aggrieved of our constituents who write letters because they cannot get a telephone installed overnight.

Having said that, I come to the difficulties of the villages. I feel that the hon. and gallant Member for Western Dorset (Major Diģby) struck the right note when he referred to the fact that his home is pestered by people knocking at the door who wish to borrow his telephone, because it is the only homestead in the village that has one. That is socially wrong. There should never be a test applied by the Post Office as to whether a village should have a telephone for its residents or not. The test should be: Do people live there, and are they entitled to a service? I would carry the matter a stage further and recommend that some of the money should be spent in educating children in elementary schools in the use of the telephone. With the dialling system, and all the other different contraptions that are coming along in telephone kiosks today, it would not be a bad thing to see that when a child reaches the age of 11 plus some section of its school lessons should include instruction in the use of the telephone service. It is not that it is unduly complicated, but a lot of people seem to find difficulty and make mistakes, which delay others who wish to use the telephone.

I should like to mention also the arrangement whereby the village grocer acts as a postmaster It is an unearthly mixture and mess up, in these village post offices. I see no reason why the postal service should be cluttered up to such an extent that it is difficult to find the right counter at which to buy stamps. Remembering what can be done by the Department in other directions, I ask the Assistant Postmaster-General why research cannot devise a suitable type of counter which could be mass-produced, which would greatly add to the efficiency of the service. Such a scheme would be to the advantage of the village grocer, and would help him to run the sort of service we expect. I believe that it would be a good thing if we could mass-produce counters, tills and registers, and the various other equipment which are essential in running a post office.

Earlier today, reference was made to the services of the London Passenger Transport Board. During the last six months, the extension of the service in the London suburban zone has been amazing, but I cannot say the same thing so far as despatch and delivery of mail are concerned. I believe that we are back in 1893 in our deliveries. There is nothing on which to commend the G.P.O. corps, when, during weekends, in order to send a letter 12 miles from Charing Cross to a town of 70,000 inhabitants, you have to post at 3.30 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. We did not have that 20 years ago. The Home Secretary, who resides a few miles from my home, would have to make a long journey to get rid of his correspondence so that it will get into the post for his constituency. I am referring particularly to Sundays, because we do not have a chance to clear all our letters during work days. I make this appeal, because there are many people like myself who consider that we should have late collections at 5.30 or even 8 p.m.

2.47 p.m.

I too should like to pay my tribute to the work which has been done by the Post Office during the years of difficulty. I want to put in a very strong plea for the prewar two deliveries a day for the country districts in Northern Ireland. This is required, especially by the factories throughout the Province. I believe that two deliveries a day as well as more frequent collections of mail would go a long way to stimulate trade between Northern Ireland and this country. I cannot associate myself with hon. Members opposite who would like to divorce the Post Office from the grocery shops, which are such a feature of our villages. We look forward to the clay, not so far distant I hope, when we shall be able to buy acid drops and bull's eyes at the same time as we buy our postage stamps.

2.48 p.m.

I have been rather interested in the criticisms which have been made regarding the Post Office, from various parts of the House. I do not say that they have been unduly harsh, but the thought has struck me that as yet, this House has not laid down that the postal services are to be run as a service—and what I mean by that is, run to serve the needs of the community. When I was at the Post Office, we could establish a call box in a village only when we gave justification to the Treasury for its installation. In short, every service, telegraph, telephone or postal, had to show an economic result. Up to now, the House has not passed legislation laying down that the Post Office is to give service irrespective of economy. The Department has been cribbed and crabbed by the fact that each installation had to give an economic return to the Treasury. Since the findings of the Bridgeman Committee, there have been modifications in that regard, but until some change is effected in the conditions in which the Department can serve the State, there are bound to be opportunities for criticism. It is impossible to develop a service in villages, or in areas where the population is small, except with the cooperation of the ordinary private trader. We are bound to use their establishments for postal services.

I ask the Assistant Postmaster-General to give us some idea, if he can, as to the intentions of the Department in regard to the development of the telephone service. I have a letter from the local chamber of commerce, in my constituency, protesting strongly against the inadequacy of the service. We have a dual service, the manual and the automatic. Since the manual service depends upon the human factor it was inevitable that there should be a deterioration during the war, because the best servants were taken for more important duties and apprentices and novices had to be brought in and trained. I hope that we are now getting beyond that and that we may have some hope of the automatic service being more fully and thoroughly developed.

In the opinion of many hon. Members who have spoken—including myself—the automatic service is much more deplorable than the manual service.

No.

I beg to differ from the hon. and gallant Member in that regard. On every hand I have heard nothing but praise for the automatic service, as compared with the manual service. The auto- matic service is far in front of the manual service, and I hope that the Department will not hesitate in pushing forward its development. I have heard comparisons between the telephone service in this country and that in America, but it is no use comparing the American service with ours. I well remember when I sat on the Front Bench and defended the Department. In those clays the Liberal Party had brought out the "Yellow Book" advocating the development of the telephone service as a palliative to the unemployment problem, and almost every clay it was my duty to answer questions at that Box in regard to the service. Often I had Norway, Sweden, and America quoted by way of comparison. If our service could have been installed as the Norwegian service was installed at that time, we could have run it at a very much lower cost.

If comparisons are to be made with the telephone service in America, let us consider the conditions there. A study of them will reveal that from the very beginning the architects and builders of that country set out to assist the telephone service to make the general public telephone conscious. In the development and setting out of their buildings they devised ways and means by which the telephone could he installed at a minimum of expense. In addition, the public authorities made provision for the laying of telephone cables, whereas here we have to split up concrete roads and paths for the purpose, and, in these days of reinforced steel construction, even to cut through steel and concrete. Having mentioned that, I would appeal to the Assistant Postmaster-General to look ahead. I ask the Postmaster-General himself to confer with the architects and builders of this country to see whether it is not possible, even at this late stage, to introduce some procedure similar to that adopted in America. This would cut down the cost of installation and reflect itself economically in the charge for telephone service.

3.0 p.m.

I appreciate very much the kindly expressions of good will and appreciation of the services of the Post Office in the past which we have heard and I am sure the staff will also welcome them The hon. Member for Westbury (Mr. Grimston) said he thought we were a little complacent, that we were not looking far enough ahead, and that we lacked vision.

He wanted to know all about the telephone service in the years ahead, what plans we had, and whether we were going to set as our ideal a telephone in every home. That was also the burden of the remarks of one or two other hon. Members. This Bill is not planning the millennium; it is only asking for £50 million for the next two years. I concentrated on telling the House, because I thought it was necessary, that our immediate problem was to get over the arrears that have accumulated and to effect such development—or if the hon. Member prefers, improvement—of the service as was possible—not merely to return again to prewar standards but to improve upon them. That is a task which will take up the whole of the next two years with the supply position, both of labour and materials, as it is at the present time. The hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir T. Moore) said, "Why talk about labour supply and materials? That is a parrot cry." Unfortunately it is not —it is a very great reality. The hon. and gallant Gentleman knows something about the book trade, I believe. I tried for a long time to order a certain book, and I am still waiting for it after six months.

Give me the name of the book.

I will get the book, but not until the labour and materials are available.

The hon. Gentleman is not perhaps dealing with the suggestion I made that there must be many thousands of instruments released by the Ministries and Service Departments that could be used at least as a temporary measure.

I will deal with that a little later. I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that in the case of the telephones, it is not the instruments that are wanting. We could give him half a dozen instruments and he would not be able to ring up anybody. If his instrument were out of order as often as he is out of Order in the House, it would not be of much use to him. The hon. Member for Westbury said that he thought I should say more about the postal services, and he said that we needed speed and regularity of service.

I put regularity first.

He said that we ought to set ourselves the ideal of posting at 6 o'clock anywhere in the country and delivering the letter the next weekday morning anywhere else in the United Kingdom. The plans that have already been announced in the House will go a long way towards that, but there again, it is not a question that we ourselves can decide. We can collect letters here in London, but unless the transport services can be made to fit in, we cannot deliver them at the far end of the country. Our plans have to be made to fit in with the plans of other services. The hon. Gentleman said that we ought to spend a lot of money on helicopters. Those are things that we cannot get in five minutes. They have to be made, the planes have to be bought. He said that we are spending only £4 million on the postal services. As a matter of fact, it is a sum of only £2,250,000 But the postal service does not mean capital charges, except in regard to buildings, and for the next two years buildings are out of the question. The hon. Member said that the Post Office seems to want "knobs" on buildings. We have not got the buildings to put knobs on, and we cannot get them. That is the real difficulty, and that is why the amount for the postal services is small as compared with the others. We are not content with things as they are, and we shall try to get the improvements made as quickly as possible. The hon. Gentleman asked how much of this money might be used in absorbing the lines from the services. The amount is not known exactly, but discussions are going on. The amount may be anything from £10 million to £15 million. I was very pleased to hear the tribute to the Post Office from the hon. Member for East Walthamstow (Mr. H. Wallace). He said that we ought to have a telephone in every home, and with that, of course, as with other ideals, I quite agree. I mentioned that in my earlier remarks. The hon. Gentleman knows that, on the question of bags, he was in communication with me some time ago, and I have promised to look into the matter.

I have to some extent dealt with the remarks that were made by the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs. He told us what is happening in the United States of America. I cannot speak with experience of the United States, because I have not been there. It must be a very impressionable place, or some of the people who go there must be very impressionable. One has to remember, in comparing the United States with this country, that the United States have not been knocked about as this country has been for the last six years, and did not have the same experiences in the last war. The United States have been able to go on with their improvements and to carry on their work very largely without wartime interruptions. When one goes round our blitzed cities and sees what an enormous amount of work has to be done before we can talk about planning for the future, one realises that America is in a very fortunate position. I understand that they have concentrated on telephones, which are their speciality; but there are other things concerning which we can tell them that we are far superior to them.

The hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs again raised the question of wrong numbers. When people get wrong numbers, it is not always the fault of the operator; it may be the fault of the person making the call. The hon. and gallant Member said that there must be a considerable number of wrong numbers in the course of the day. Let me remind him, however, that at the present time, with a much reduced staff, they are putting through 189,000,000 trunk calls a year, with a staff which has not had the experience of the prewar staff. If occasionally there is a wrong number, I beg the hon. and gallant Gentleman to remember the many occasions when he gets the right number. It is, unfortunately, true that many people tend to concentrate on the odd time when things slip up. If some Bill Sykes murders some Nancy of the slums tonight, all the newspapers will blazon it forth tomorrow morning, and forget about the thousand and one feats of kindness and mercy done in those places. It is the same with the telephones. We hear all about the wrong numbers, but we seldom hear about the good work that is done.

With regard to the automatic dialling system, is there any human element that enters into the working of the system? How does a wrong number occur with the automatic system?

The machines that work the dialling system are extremely sensitive. They ought to have a good deal of attention and maintenance. During the war they have not received it. I am not a technician, but I understand that the slightest particle of dust will upset the arrangement. Hon. Members know what has been happening in buildings around this place, with the breaking down of concrete walls, and so on. It might very easily be that the reason the machines are not as efficient at the present time is that people have been concentrating on another job, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. John Edwards). The hon. Member for Central Hackney (Mr. Henry Hynd) asked me to say something about the "Tudor" and "Clissold" manual exchanges. I know the problem there. It is a problem of catching up with arrears. If the war had not broken out, there would have been very few manual exchanges in the country. Most of them would have been automatic. We have reached the point where 66 per cent. of the exchanges are automatic. Here, again, the problem is to set about making more of the exchanges automatic. It is not only a question of finding equipment, but a question of buildings, and in the case of the "Tudor" exchange it may be that, with the best will in the world, we may not be able to solve the problem until we can get building labour. It is not a question of unwillingness, but of sheer inability to do anything because of the physical facts.

One hon. Member suggested that we ought to have brighter post offices in villages. I agree, but consider for a moment all the things that are wanted out of £50 million in two years. One hon. Member wants motor cars and motor cycles to deliver telegrams and heavy parcels. Another hon. Member wants automatic exchanges in place of manual exchanges. Brighter post offices are wanted. One hon. Member wanted a telephone in every village and hamlet. Wherever there is a post office there is a telephone, and wherever the village is not large enough to carry a telephone it is necessary to ask the local authorities not to guarantee to bear the loss, but to make a contribution, otherwise we should be in this position, that wherever there is a cluster of houses the people would say "Give us a telephone." It may come to that finally, but at present we have to ask ourselves,

Is there really a justification for an installation, arid will there be a sufficient call on it? How do we measure that? Not by asking the local authority to bear the cost of it. But to show that they are satisfied with the demand we ask them to pay us over a period of four or five years a maximum of £20, which is only the cost for one year. It is to make perfectly certain as far as we can that the expense is justified. It does not recompense us for the telephone.

The hon. Member for Doncaster (Mr. Walkden) wanted special counters and tills in grocers' shops. There again to meet all the requirements would be impossible at the moment with the shortage of materials and so on. If the hon. Member wants a post office in every village then it would not be £50 million for which we would be asking for the next two years, but an amount much beyond that. I am afraid we must confess that it is impossible to have a Crown post office if that is what the hon. Gentleman has in mind in every village. It cannot be done. I have listened with a great deal of sympathy to the suggestions made by hon. Members. I am certain that as far as the circumstances allow, they will be taken into account. We will do what we can to give the fullest possible service to the people. We are not by any means content, but we do want the service to be as efficient as possible. In this Bill we are setting down what we think we can immediately tackle in the space of the next two years to restore the service and to put it in the way of becoming the efficient service we want it to be.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Committee of the whole House for Monday next.—[ Mr. Joseph Henderson. ]

POST OFFICE AND TELEGRAPH [MONEY]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 69.

[Mr. VIANT in the Chair]

Resolved: That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session, to provide for raising further money for the development of the postal, telegraphic and telephonic systems and the repayment to the Post Office Fund of moneys applied thereout for such development, it is expedient— (1) to authorise the payment out of the Consolidated Fund of such sums, not exceeding in the whole fifty million pounds, as may be required for the purposes of such development or of such repayment; (2) to authorise the Treasury to borrow, Dy means of terminable annuities or by the issue of Exchequer Bonds, for the purpose of providing money for sums so authorised to be issued or of repaying to the Consolidated Fund all or any part of the sums so issued and to authorise the payment into the Exchequer of any sums so borrowed; (3) to provide for the payment of such terminable annuities, or of the principal of and interest on any such Exchequer Bonds, out of moneys provided by Parliament for the service of the Post Office, or, if those moneys are insufficient, out of the Consolidated Fund."—( King's Recommendation signified. )—[ Mr. Burke .]

Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

ESTIMATES

Professor Gruffydd discharged from the Select Committee on Estimates; Mr. Horabin added.—[ Mr. Joseph Henderson. ]

SUNDAY CINEMATOGRAPH ENTERTAINMENTS

Resolved: That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending Section r of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the City of Leeds, a copy of which Order was presented on 5th April, be approved."—[ Mr. Ede .]

Resolved: That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the County Borough of Gateshead, a copy of which Order was presented on 5th April, be approved."—[ Mr. Ede. ]

The question to which I wish to draw the attention of the House is one primarily of long-term importance, although some of its aspects are of great urgency. It is the question in the broad sense of the financial provision for university education. The Government's broad and comprehensive plans for reconstruction of this country and for development in the Colonial territories will make essential the provision of a larger number of trained specialists and personnel than the country has ever had in the past. As reconstruction and the development plans are carried through, the need for specialists in medicine, architecture, town planning administration and many other fields will become increasingly clear. Already in some fields the immediate shortage is making itself felt. For example, we have to deal with the recruitment of teachers on an emergency basis. To take another example, in matters of Colonial development long-term plans are being held up now because of the shortage of personnel capable of carrying out the preliminary investigations. The first annual report of the Colonial Social Science Research Council published last year makes reference to the great difficulty of organising research, because of the present shortage of personnel trained for investigation in social problems, and says: This is not merely the result of the war, but is partly due to the fact that before the war provision for research and social science was less adequate and less well organised than it was in comparison with natural science.

On a point of Order. Would it not be appropriate for some Minister to be on the Front Bench to answer the points raised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman?

I am here for that purpose.

That example from the report of the Colonial Social Science Research Council can no doubt be paralleled by other hon. Members from other fields who can give examples of projects which are of essential importance and which are held up by the shortage of skilled, specialist personnel at the present time. Both as institutions of higher training, and as centres of research, the universities of this country are clearly of key importance, and the first question I would like to ask is, What is the machinery, if any, for relating the expansion of the universities to the continuous long-term needs of the country for these specialist professional and technical personnel?

There is, I am sure, no desire on these benches or in any part of the House to diminish in any respect at all the independence and the freedom of the universities but, at the same time, it is clear that it would be of value to the universities, to the students, and to the community as a whole if some machinery could be devised for ensuring that there is an adequate relating of the long term needs of the country to the expansion of the universities. All kinds of reports bearing on this are being issued at the present time. We had one a few months ago on higher, technological education, another on agricultural education. Many of us are now awaiting with considerable interest the report of the committee under Professor Sir John Clapham. Are we to have any survey of the field as a whole, or is the approach to this matter to he purely piecemeal? Such a survey is very necessary if we are to avoid hampering ourselves in the future by shortages which cannot be easily and quickly overcome, because they will be shortages of people who must have a long period of training, and who must acquire experience in addition.

We have already, as a piece of administrative machinery, the University Grants Committee, standing between the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the one hand, and the universities on the other. I have no desire to criticise the activities of that Committee within its present terms of reference and in fulfilling its present functions, but are the Government satisfied that those functions are adequate, or does the University Grants Committee need to have its functions expanded, or should there be devised some other piece of machinery for carrying out these purposes that I have mentioned? The obvious and most straightforward form in which the question can be put is to ask how many students at the universities the Government anticipate there will be in the immediate future, in five years, in ten years, and so forth.

The proportion of university students to the total population in peace time in this country was appreciably smaller than the proportion in other advanced countries. That is a most important fact to be taken into account. The Chancellor told us in December that he hoped for a substantial increase in the number of students. Can we he given any indication of the measure of the substantial increase that is to be expected, bearing in mind that, generally speaking, those who enter the universities next autumn will not take their degrees and so will not complete their training until 1949? This is a matter on which, taking the period of time involved into account, we must plan carefully and well ahead. -If we cannot have any specific figures on this matter, can we at least have an assurance that it is being seriously considered?

Now it follows from any intention to increase the number of students in the universities appreciably that the question of access to the universities has to be taken into account as well, because we want to effect this increase without lowering the quality of the university population. Such investigation as has taken place into this matter suggests that it can be done. Many Members will be familiar with the very careful investigation on this matter which was undertaken in the years before the war by Gray and Glass. They will be familiar with the much more recent investigations under the auspices of the University of Manchester, which suggested that a trebling of our university population was possible in this country, without any lowering of the standard, provided that genuine equality of access to the universities was secured. It is true there has been a great improvement over a period of time, and that something like one-quarter of the male undergraduate population begin their education in public elementary schools. But that does not look quite so impressive when it is borne in mind that the overwhelming majority of the population—appreciably more than a quarter—begin their education in public elementary schools. On the question of access the Government must take into account the disparity between the number of women and the number of men in the university population.

Both university numbers and access to the universities depend on finance, taken in its broadest sense. The direct Government grants to the universities are of two kind', those for capital expenditure and those for recurrent expenditure. So far as grants for capital expenditure are concerned, I think that all of us, on both sides of the House, would wish to express a warm welcome to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's pronouncement on policy on this subject made in February in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for the London University (Sir E. Graham-Little). Not only did he indicate the substantial grants he was prepared to make; even more satisfactory was his announcement that he had told the University Grants Committee that lie would be prepared, if good cause were shown, to ask Parliament to vote even larger capital sums. While cordially welcoming this pronouncement, I should like to ask whether consideration might not be given to furnishing us with a good deal more information about the expenditure of these grants within the universities. Before the war it was the practice of the University Grants Committee to present annual statistical statements and also to present quinquennial reports, which were much more comprehensive, and which were admirable and useful documents to those large sections of the public who are interested in the general policy being pursued in the universities as a whole. Could not consideration he given to some form of publication of reports from the University Grants Committee? It is obvious that some of the material supplied to the Chancellor is not of sufficiently general interest to merit publication, but more information than it appears we are to get, so far as present announcements indicate, about the expenditure in detail and how the policy Of the University Grants Committee is implemented, would be very welcome.

Lastly, I turn to recurrent expenditure. Here, I would direct the attention of the Government to the fact that fees of one kind and another in colleges throughout the country are showing a marked tendency to increase. The latest information I have, which was compiled some months ago, shows that at that time 14 colleges had increased or were considering an increase in fees, 17 had increased, or were considering increasing, their charges for accommodation, and seven were increasing their fees for both accommodation and tuition. Now, those increases make it more difficult for students of working class, lower middle class, and middle class families to get the benefit of university education. That education often involves a very great sacrifice to many families in spite of the financial provision which has already been made by way of scholarships from universities and local education authorities. I hope the Government will keep this matter of the rise in fees very closely under review and will not leave it out of account when making up their budget for the University Grants Committee or when exercising influence on the policy of local education authorities.

Clearly, there are many problems which it has not been possible in this short space of time to touch upon. These include the question of the relationship of the universities to adult education, and of whether any extension in the universities should be concentrated in present university institutions or whether the Government ought to consider the foundation of one or more new universities. There are many other matters which I am conscious that many hon. Members in this House wish to discuss in relation to university policy in the broadest sense. Accordingly, I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will consider, with the Government, the possibility at a later stage of considerably more time, perhaps a whole day, being allotted to the discussion of this subject. I can assure him that there are many hon. Members who wish to contribute their views on the matter. Above all, I hope that the guiding policy and principle of the Government will be that the provision of university education should not be an opportunity for a relatively small section of the population to acquire a social veneer, but should be an opportunity for those who are most fitted to benefit from it to secure training to serve the community in the way in which they are best fitted to serve it.

3.33 p.m.

I think it is rather fortunate that we should be discussing this matter in Budget week. We would all like to congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the very generous provision he has made for university education. We are now reaching a stage when it will no longer be possible to level the reproach at us as a nation that we are not university minded. I must confess that I have always been puzzled at the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be the Minister responsible for university education, and that the University Grants Committee should be an outpost of the Treasury. And, quite frankly, I am mystified at the secrecy which surrounds the whole question of university finance and the University Grants Committee. I would not for one moment dare to suggest that we should remove these duties from the control of the present Chancellor. We on this side of the House at any rate are so delighted with him that we would do nothing in any way to take any powers away from him. We think he is pre-eminently suited to the task of looking after the development of our universities on modern lines. We have no suggestion that he should no longer be the Minister for university education.

I am not so happy, however, about the machinery with which we have provided him. We are all aware, of course, that the machinery of the University Grants Committee came into existence after the last war. Our idea of university education in those days, and certainly our conception of the financial contribution that the State should make, was very different from what it is today. I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be asked to look again at the constitution and the functions of the University Grants Committee. It is very necessary, and there are many reasons why he should do it. There is, first, the financial reason. The State and the local authorities are making increased expenditure to the universities. It was stepped up to one-third; it is now two-thirds, and there is no doubt from the promise of the Chancellor that it will be much higher in future. This House arid the public will want to know whether that money is being spent wisely. I do not think there is any possibility of knowing that unless we know how it is being spent. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester (Capt. C. Smith) that, from looking at the University Grants Committee's Report and asking questions in this House, one does not get the sort of information which one would require to satisfy oneself that this money is being spent to the best advantage. In fact. I do not know of any public money which is spent with so little inquiry into its expenditure. That is one reason why the Chancellor should look into this question of the University Grants Committee.

Another reason is that it is not merely a matter of spending more money on the universities. That might be a good thing in itself, and it might not be, but we are providing for extensive university development, which is an entirely different matter. Who is planning for it? We know there is to be development in some form or other. We know local authorities are being encouraged to send to universities not only youngsters with State scholarships and major scholarships, but to consider sending every student in their schools who shows a particular aptitude. That means an increased supply of students to universities, but where are they to go? Many of them, for social and educational reasons, will want to go to the older universities, but surely the older universities have now reached their maximum size for development. It is difficult to realise what is the maximum size for development, but there must be a law of diminishing returns for universities.

I believe that one of the reports of the University Grants Committee dealt with this question of size and accommodation in relation to one of the universities. The reply received from the university was that it should be "slightly more than we have now." That is very understandable, but not very satisfactory. It does not suggest that there is any form of real planning of what should be the size of a university. Further, it is not desirable, even if Oxford and Cambridge could take these students, that they should take too large a proportion of the most able students in the country. It is not fair to the older universities, or to the provincial universities, or to the students themselves. Some overall planning must be devised whereby we can cater for all students who are going to universities, and at the moment we have not got that planning either with regard to numbers or quality.

With regard to the question of quality and who should go to the universities, one would have thought that the principle should be to send to universities only those who can profit from their attendance, and that those who cannot profit from their attendance should be excluded. But neither of those conditions obtains at the moment. We must devise some sort of scheme whereby we can be absolutely sure that all who can benefit from university training should go to universities, and that only they should go. The strange thing is that throughout the whole of the educational system as we know it today, we take steps to secure that position. We have a new education Act under which we plan in great detail. The authorities are asked to provide detailed development plans. and they are asked to look at every child of 11- plus in their schools and say which type of secondary school he should attend, according to his aptitude and ability. That is very necessary and wise, but why not do it at 18- plus too? If we are to plan at 11- plus , why when we come to the very top—the coping stone—do we make no attempt to secure that the only students who enter universities are those with aptitude and ability? There is every reason why.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Colchester said that there should be an overall plan. Today it is all piecemeal. The University Grants Committee have taken considerable trouble to get the facts in these matters. They go round to the universities and ask them what they would like. Individual universities put forward their plans and the University Grants Committee do their best to satisfy the requirements, but that is merely leaving the initiative to each university. It is not an overall plan. Other aspects are dealt with nationally, but again piecemeal. There are the Barlow Committee to consider training of scientists, the McNair Committee to consider the training of teachers, the Good-enough Committee to deal with fees of medical students, and the Teviot Committee to deal with dentists. I would not mind this piecemeal business if it were all dovetailed into an overall plan.

I suggest that the Chancellor should look at the matter very carefully. I would not suggest for a moment that he should be limited in his choice, because we have confidence in him and his choice should not be taken from him. I agree too, with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Colchester, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the University Grants Committee would not dream of interfering with the autonomy of the universities collectively or individually. Universities can only retain their vitality in an atmosphere of freedom. University autonomy is a principle of peculiar sanctity. We should hesitate for a very long time before we tried to interfere with it in any way. We have seen too much of that taking place in other countries to want to do it here. I would like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to overhaul this university grants system, to modernise it, and to streamline it, if he likes. Only in that way will universities be able to play their proper part in the new world which we all envisage.

3.43 p.m.

I did not know till half an hour ago that this subject was to be raised upon the Adjournment. I cannot therefore pretend that I have any considered observations to make. At the same time, as I believe I am the only University Member in the Chamber at this moment, I think it is incumbent upon me to add a few words to what was said by the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester (Captain Smith) and the hon. Member for York (Mr. Corlett). Those two speeches have made clear how vast a subject has been opened up. We have to remember that the output under the Education Act will be great, when it is in full operation, and that it must inevitably stimulate a great flow, if not actually of university entrants, at any rate of potential university entrants. There will be a demand for greatly extended accommodation in our universities. That will raise, as has been stated, the question of whether the aim should be to enlarge the existing universities or to increase the number of universities. Probably the answer to the question is that both courses must operate to some degree. I was very glad to hear the hon. Member for York emphasise the importance of limiting entrants to universities before the numbers got too large to be handled effectively. That position has been reached at Cambridge. It is felt that an undergraduate population of 5,000 or 6,000 is quite as large a society as can profit by the opportunities available. On the scientific side, in particular, laboratories will become hopelessly inadequate and have to be extended, if the number of scientific students is to be largely increased.

On the other hand, there is the geographical aspect of the distribution of universities. The South West of England, for example, is ill provided with university opportunities. There is, of course, the University of Bristol, but there is a strong case, as it seems to me, for elevating the University College of South-West Exeter into a university that will serve Devon, Cornwall and other parts of the Southern counties. These large subjects must, as the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester said, be adequately surveyed. At the same time, I think it would be a pity for this House to receive the impression, and still more a pity for it to create the impression outside, that there is anything really seriously amiss with the arrangements which at present exist.

Oh, yes, there is.

The University Grants Committee is a body which, as far as my knowledge extends, is doing very admirable work. Hon. Members opposite have expressed themselves as well satisfied with my eminent constituent, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor has said he is well satisfied, as he clearly is, with the University Grants Committee. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] If, as I believe, the universities themselves are also well satisfied with the University Grants Committee, then I do not think there can he anything very seriously wrong in its working. At the same time, there are certain obvious difficulties in the situation. We have here the usual problem of wedding private enterprise to Government assistance, and a certain amount of supervision. After all, the universities of this country are, in a sense, private institutions. They have arisen through very splendid private benevolence. That applies to not only the older universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but to the modern universities which are doing such admirable work. One has only to think of the name of Wills in connection with Bristol University, or of T. R. Ferens in connection with the University College of Hull, to realise what contributions successful business men have made, by their benefactions, to higher learning in this country.

It is a very delicate matter for the Government to give the necessary assistance without impinging, to some degree, on the freedom of the universities, on the importance of which the hon. Member for York has so rightly laid much stress. That is one of the problems which will have to be solved when this whole question is surveyed afresh. It is true that the fees of, I suppose, all universities have been raised recently. I know that has been done very reluctantly, but it has been quite inevitable in that sphere, as in all spheres. The salaries of professors at Oxford and Cambridge, and no doubt other universities, have been necessarily increased. Other kinds of expenses, such as the wages of the college servants, replacing furniture and expenditure in regard to necessary rebuilding, have all increased. As the accounts must be made to balance, it has been necessary, with however great reluctance, to raise the fees of the students. In some cases that makes little difference. The holders of State scholarships are provided for completely, no matter what the fees may be. It is a change that falls most heavily on those parents who send their sons to universities without any assistance whatever. They have to pay what is, in itself, a very large sum, and which, when it is recognised what has to be earned to find that sum with Income Tax at the present level, is a very serious burden indeed on those families. Therefore, the question of any further contribution the Government can make which will enable the universities to keep fees within a reasonable limit must, of course, be very fully and very carefully considered.

Is the hon. Member in a position to enlighten us on this point? It is at the moment thought that Cambridge University has not taken the initiative at all in asking the University Grants Committee to include in their block grant some provision for maintenance grants to students as a whole. Therefore, the university which the hon. Gentleman represents is not taking any action at all in this vitally important matter.

That, of course, is a very arguable matter. I am not clear how far the University Grants Committee undertakes, or should undertake, to make grants for the maintenance of individual students. It seems to me that provision for individual students is better made, as it is being made now, from State scholarships and grants from local education authorities and so on. My information is that the work of the University Grants Committee consists, rather, in making provision for better scientific equipment, for better teaching facilities in universities, for the foundation of a chair in a particular subject, and so forth, and I am not at all convinced that the maintenance of individual students would be within its proper sphere. I say quite frankly that it is not a matter on which I am fully informed, bat I will certainly make inquiry into it.

When we consider a subject of this kind, it is inevitable that we should tend to take to some extent a utilitarian point of view. We recognise the need of this country for trained industrialists, technicians arid administrators. But let us not lose sight of the function of the universities in providing a humanistic training which will qualify men, not merely to be good engineers or good lawyers, but to be good citizens. After all, an education which teaches something of the democracy of ancient Athens is not a bad preparation for those who have to operate a democracy today. The study of ancient languages has its value, and the study of modern languages equally has something of a more than merely utilitarian value. When it comes to history and economics, the teaching on, these subjects is useful at least in the making of Members of Parliament, if for nothing else. That is one of the considerations which must be taken into account when this survey is made. There are the financial side and the question of the distribution of universities, their size and the content of their education. I cannot help feeling that the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester has done a good service in raising this question today, and I hope that this necessarily brief discussion will be only a prelude to a longer and wider Debate over a larger field.

3.52 p.m

Like most other hon Members, I am grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester (Captain Smith) for having raised this vitally important subject. We must all agree that the question of the universities and the right of access to them by those who are qualified to have such access, is something which touches the core of our democracy. If I do not follow the lion and gallant Gentleman in the major issues which he raised, it is merely in order to draw added attention to one particular aspect which I have wished to raise ever since I was an undergraduate. We all know that, particularly in the older universities, the undergraduate who comes from a workingclass family arrives at the university by a very long and arduous route. Humbert Wolff once referred to the "upward anguish" of the workingclass child who ultimately arrives at a university from a grammar or secondary school. We must recognise that, despite the many improvements which have been made to facilitate the journey from the elementary school to the university, the workingclass child still has an extremely difficult and painful task. He begins at an elementary school with access to a secondary school which is now much easier than it used to be. But when he arrives at a university, it is only by scraping together scholarships which, though enlarged during the last few years, are inadequate for him thoroughly to enjoy the opportunities, particularly those which the major universities can offer.

Every person who has been to Oxford or Cambridge is familiar with the hermit of the upper attics, the person who, having come from a secondary school, finds himself deprived, through lack of,funds, of the opportunity of taking part in the multifarious activities of a university. Such an undergraduate finds himself compelled to study unduly hard. I think we all agree that a university is not merely a place for concentrated study; it is a place for enjoying the amenities to which the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Wilson Harris) referred. At a university, a person should have the opportunity of joining clubs and taking part in social life, associating with other persons in the university both as an economic and as a social equal. In short, I feel that we must achieve what was achieved in the Army during the war, namely, the democratisation of an organ of public life which is vital to the community.

In order to do that, in the past, we have given a secondary schoolboy or schoolgirl something of the nature of £230 a year with which to go up to Oxford or Cambridge, but I believe that there is a sort of means test after a schoolboy or schoolgirl obtains a State scholarship. If that sum, before the war, was inadequate to enable an undergraduate to take part fully in the life of the university, and was only enough for him to live on, to pay his fees and confine himself in his room, working hard and ultimately trying to get a first in tripos, then it is clearly not enough now. I suggest that the amount is increased by whatever agency it is, whether it is the University Grants Committee, the local authority, or the university itself by subvention in some form or another, so that the undergraduate may have something nearer to £260 which, at least, would be a reflection of the rise in the cost of living, and would give him a chance to take a greater part in the life of the university. Only the other day, I had a case in my constituency of a brilliant youth who has just won a scholarship to Cambridge. His mother is a waitress in a British Restaurant, and his father is unemployed. As a result of this youth obtaining a scholarship, the father's unemployment benefit is being reduced. I make serious complaint of that, although is it a matter not directly related to this discussion. If that boy is to reap the benefit of going to the university, and is not to emerge as some kind of babu clerk crammed with book learning, ultimately obtaining a degree, he must not be a burden on his parents. He must go there as an independent person who can pay his own way; thus, when he obtains his degree, he will have the satisfaction of knowing that he was no charge on his parents.

Whatever is the restriction on the number of people sent to the universities, it is our responsibility to see that they do not go there without the opportunity to live fully and freely. I believe in that way we shall really be able to have a democratic university system. I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge University, when he said that a technical degree is not in itself a guarantee that the university has fulfilled its major purpose.

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." — [ Captain Michael Stewart. ]

The major purpose of the university is to provide an education in living, and not merely an education in the application of tools. Although I think that the courses of our universities could be brought more in line with modera needs, and that technical education should be further developed and associated with the practice of industry through a link-up with industrial firms, or even with organs of the Government, I still believe that the basis of our education must remain classical and liberal. It is by a combination of this tradition of voluntary universities—and I agree that the voluntary quality of our universities is quite as important as that of our hospitals—associated with the benefits which the State can offer that we can achieve, in our own time, the fulfilment of that liberal and democratic education which was the aspiration of ancient Athens.

4.1 p.m.

I intervene only to congratulate the two hon. Members who raised this very important subject on the Motion for the Adjournment this afternoon. I should like to assure both hon. Members that on this side of the House there is a very large measure of sympathy for the proposals which have been suggested during the discussion. I apologise to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury because I did not realise that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was more responsible for the University Grants Committee than the Minister of Education. I should have been glad had the Minister of Education been on the Front Bench because this question of facilitating the march from the humblest state—if intellect and character justify—to the highest opportunity the nation can offer is something which concerns him even more than the Treasury.

I believe that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer made a very forward move in his provision to facilitate research and to release from the imposition of taxes certain contributions made to the development and expansion of university and technical school life, both in technology and on the humanistic side. This has been referred to by the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Wilson Harris) and by the hon. Gentleman opposite. I think that as the result of the former Chancellor's action, which is supported by the present Chancellor, a very substantial contribution is now being made by the State to the realisation of that objective which we all have in view. We on this side of the House are largely in sympathy with the proposition made this afternoon by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and endorsed by the hon. Member for Cambridge University. I am certain that the Parliamentary Secretary, in making representations to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, can say that he has the full sympathy of the House of Commons in every step that may be taken to develop and extend opportunity in this country to enable the humblest boy or girl in the land to achieve a high place in our educational system. It is a great pity that this subject has been brought forward on a Friday Adjournment. I wish we had had the Debate in a full House, for I am sure that the two speeches which have made so much impression upon me would have made the same impression on other hon. Members.

4.4 p.m.

The first point I wish to make is that nobody who has discussed the matter of technical education has, as far as I know, suggested at any stage that all education should he technical. No one has ever suggested that one should concentrate on science to the exclusion of any other branch of human knowledge, but I think it is generally agreed—and I hope it will be recorded by the Committee sitting on the matter—that it should be accepted as a principle by the Government that the number of technical and scientific graduates turned out by the universities should be doubled in the next 10 years.

Secondly, I should like to refer to the question of maintenance grants for students. As was mentioned by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Colchester (Captain C. Smith), to whom the House is so much indebted for raising this matter on the Adjournment, it is a fact that Manchester University has recently conducted a kind of poll of the people who are being educated there, and have produced what they describe as an intelligence quotient of their students. The inquiry has been conducted very carefully by properly qualified people, who have found that one half of the students at Manchester University have an intelligence quotient of 127 or more. This is the standard for a fairly good science degree. The number of young persons of this standard in the age group of the population as a whole is no less than six times as great as those at the universities. In other words we are succeeding in educating at the proper standard only one boy out of six throughout the country. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply will be good enough to give some indication of Government policy in this sense, and will say that the Ministry of Education and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who clearly have to work as a team in this matter, are prepared so to adjust the system of secondary school education, maintenance allowances and scholarships that a much larger proportion of the best children will be made available for uni-

versity education regardless of the means of their parents.

4.10 p.m.

I shall detain the House for only a few minutes, because I feel that some of the ground has been fairly adequately covered and that in the time at our disposal, we are not in a position really to deal with this subject adequately in every sense of the term. There are one or two points that might usefully be considered by the Government, and while thanking the hon. and gallant Member for Colchester (Captain C. Smith) for having raised the subject, I want also, if possible, to assist him in the appeal which he has made.

As we have heard, the University Grants Committee is in a position to recommend the extension of grants, and on the application of universities, which present their needs and requirements, together with details, they do in most cases consider the applications very favourably. It is, however, a fact that they cannot have before them the full picture of the requirements of the universities in so far as the general public might wish, and in so far as the population outside the immediate circle of the respective universities themselves would consider essential if sufficiently informed. Some little time ago, I raised the question whether there was any possibility of the House providing that the particulars of the grants for which the respective universities had applied could be examined by Members or by others with a view to seeing if the good sense and knowledge of the House and of the those outside the House could be utilised for the purpose of making suggestions to assist the universities in the conduct of their work and in the extension of their activities. It is unfortunate that these applications are treated as of a confidential nature and that even Members representing universities are unable to see such applications or to examine them in any way. I wonder whether some system could be devised whereby we could have an opportunity, either in some committee or in some other place, of seeing these very important details, so that we might possibly add our own contribution towards the advancement of the universities.

Could we ask that these accounts should be sent for examination to the Public Accounts Committee?

That might be one method, but I rather gather that the Public Accounts Committee check expenditure in order to reduce the same, rather than in the sense of creating new expenditure. In those circumstances, perhaps it would be hardly appropriate for the Public Accounts Committee to deal with a matter of this description. It might be that another committee more appropriate to the purpose could be found. This is where the difficulty arises no doubt with regard to the question of maintenance. I doubt whether any hon. Member knows whether any university has applied for maintenance grants. That they are essential, there is not the slightest doubt, but it is hardly fair that my hon. Friend who represents one university should be asked a question about this matter. First of all, I do not know whether he has access to the documents to be presented by his university—

The answer is in the negative. Moreover, I think the applications by the universities are not as definite as the hon. Member suggests The initiative lies much more with the University Grants Committee.

It was, in fact, recornmended in January, 1915. by a very important committee of the Royal Society that the procedure to which I have referred should be accepted, and it was recommended by them that the university should make application in that sense to the University Grants Committee.

May I remind my hon. Friend that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an answer to him on 26th March, pointed out that the procedure is for the universities to put in statements of their estimated revenue and expenditure, and, in the light of these, and of the total resources at their disposal, the Committee fixes the grant.

I hope my hon. Friends will refrain from interrupting further, so that I may proceed with my remarks. What has been overlooked is that it is the universities themselves which make the respective applications individually and, consequently, even they cannot perhaps fully see the whole field of the activities which are essential for the purpose of promoting university education in the country. I agree too that the humanistic side is highly important, but we need advancement on the scientific side as rapidly as possible I think the community as a whole realises the importance of this, and is prepared to support that steps be taken in that direction. I hope that, in spite of the increased allowances which have been made to the universities, this will be kept in mind at the present time, and that the Government will assist to the fullest extent financially and otherwise in promoting that very important aspect of university education.

May I speak for a moment of the university college in my own constituency? Its history is typical of that of a number of provincial universities. The building of provincial universities and their general rise are often due to the benevolence and assistance of worthy citizens and the assistance they receive from the coffers of the town itself. Leicester stands high in this regard.

Take this University College. About £250,000 was contributed by the Leicester citizens, and, in addition, the college buildings and site, which are worth approximately £160,000, were given by the late Mr. Fielding Johnson. Then there was a grant of 1d. rate from the local authority. From 1918 to 1944, 110 application was made to the University Grants Committee, but in 1944 such an application was made. Whilst it is perfectly true that a fairly generous allowance was made by the Committee, the University College has before it in the near future a very large expenditure, for the college needs hostels, a union building, new equipment, more staff, more classrooms and the hundred and one things essential to make it fit the needs of a large industrial city like Leicester, a centre which requires not only a university college but, in my respectful submission, a full university. These needs are all essential and I have no doubt that in the near future applications will be made for the purpose of meeting these requirements.

There is one other point I should like to raise. Competition arises between the universities and industrial concerns for staffs. The universities must be placed in such a position that they can command the services of men and women of the highest and best scientific knowledge and experience in teaching. In order to do that, the universities must not be stinted or starved, but they must be given sufficient funds to enable them to pay proper and adequate salaries. By means of the services of these teachers we shall train the scientists, technologists and classical students who are best suited to the country. I hope that the Government will take full notice of the points raised and I am sure they will have the support in so doing of all parties in the House.

4.17 p.m.

I hope to condense into two or three minutes a few remarks on this very interesting subject for the raising of which we are indebted to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Colchester (Captain C. Smith). The universities of this country have had a long and honoured history and enjoy a very high reputation among academic institutions throughout the world, but they have become and to an increasing degree are becoming matters of national concern and national importance. Therefore, His Majesty's Government must show an increasing interest in them and take an increasing initiative in the lines of their future development and expansion. I want very briefly to focus the mind of the House on the point which was emphasised by the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Colchester, the necessity for devising appropriate machinery for dealing with this matter. The importance of the subject has been dealt with at length, but if one may crystallise it, there are two distinct aspects. On the scientific side, it is probably true to say that the economic and industrial future of this country in the next few years depends upon increased facilities being made available at the universities for scientific education and producing properly trained industrial leaders. As the Percy Committee reported: The position of Great Britain as a leading industrialist nation is being endangered by the failure to secure the fullest possible application of science to industry, and this failure is partly due to deficiencies in education. The other aspect is the cultural aspect. In my view thee conception of a Socialist community does not make sense without provision for greatly increased opportunities for university education for the young people of this country. The deficiency compared with other civilised countries is already very considerable.

That being the problem—on which we are all agreed—what is, if any, the machinery which exists to solve it? Whose responsibility is it to plan ahead in this matter? There is a division of function between the Ministry of Education and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The responsibility of the Ministry of Education for the educational system of the country stops short at the university stage. The Chancellor's function in regard to the universities seems to be merely to grant a sum of money. Quite rightly there is very little control over the administration by the universities of their affairs; they cherish their independence and autonomy and may it long be preserved. I hope that as a result of this Debate His Majesty's Government will devise better machinery, either by extending the functions of the Ministry of Education, or otherwise, to see that the initiative of extending university education is not left to the universities, but is assumed as a Government responsibility.

4.21 p.m.

This Debate, raised by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Colchester (Captain C. Smith) has brought out so many important points that I am quite certain itneedsnot only one day's Debate but many days' Debate to find a system suitable for the needs of the day. There is the question of the shortage of personnel, as to whether the universities should be the key to supplying scientific, industrial, and all other avenues of manpower for the country. From that point of view I think it can be regarded as a very important matter for discussion on some future occasion.

As the hon. Member for East Islington (Mr. E. Fletcher) said, it is really a matter of machinery. The position at the present time is that the financial provisions for the Universities are voted as a grant in aid, and this is paid into a deposit account and left entirely to the discretion of the University Grants Committee. During the war there has been an annual grant of £2,140,000 but of 13th February last the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Anderson) increased the sum available for recurrent grants to £5,650,000. As regards capital development, he himself accepted the estimate of the University Grants Committee and the Inter-Departmental Committee on Medical Schools. Now these estimates amounted to £28,750,000 at prewar prices. He recoģnised that a very substantial proportion of the money for capital development would have to be provided by the Exchequer but, as the war was then still in progress, only £250,000 was provided for capital grants in 1945. The total provided in 1945 was thus £5,900,000. On 21st February this year my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced that the sum to be provided for 1946 would be £9,450,000. That is made up as follows: There is the provision for recurrent grants, as promised by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Scottish Universities, of £5,650,000. To this is added, for dental education, £100,000. The present year's grant will not be fully required, but to the extent to which it is not issued Parliament will be asked to re-vote it, to the sum of £1,200,000, and there is the provision for capital grants, £2,500,000 —a total of £9,450,000.

It is true that this is a question of machinery, and how best the machine can be fitted to meet modern conditions. Reference has been made from time to time to the new Education Act. That Act is for the purpose of giving every boy and girl the opportunity of a secondary education. Naturally if and when we are able to do that, we are bound to develop a system whereby there will be more calls on the universities in the future, because no one in these days will be anxious to reduce the number of students, or even to get back to the prewar figures. It is in the minds of everybody that the figures should go well beyond those of prewar days and increase the university population to a considerable extent. Here, again, one encounters the same difficulties as exist in other directions. Professors and lecturers are required, and there is a shortage of them. Until university accommodation is increased, and probably until our review is made of how we are to spread our university population in the future, and obtain the necessary manpower to deal with the students who will come along from time to time, these difficulties will continue and it will take some time to deal with them. It is one of those things that must be considered at the earliest moment, if we are to do what we have set out to do, for the young population of this country.

University education for all is an ideal, but we have a long way to go before we can get that. First, we want, while we are increasing the university population, to get into operation the machinery for ensuring that every boy and girl has an opportunity of the best secondary education that can be provided in this country. We must also keep in mind those students of high capacity and ability, who, because of want of means, might miss a real opportunity in this direction. Therefore, the development of scholarships in the future must be concentrated upon, in a far different sense from that in which it has been dealt in the past, in order to see that no boy or girl who has ability and capacity misses an opportunity, for want of the necessary money for university education.

Many other points have been raised of which I have notes. I will convey these to my right hon. Friend. I hope that as a result of this short Debate there may be opportunities in the future for further Debates on this important matter, and that we may be able to establish machinery that will give a real opportunity for an increase of our university population on right lines, with full opportunities for university life, so that they may become real citizens in the future.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-nine Minutes past Four o' Clock.