I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time." This Bill, as the Title indicates, covers a number of financial provisions, varied in character, for which it is essential that we should have the approval of the House. Most of the provisions are, I think, fairly clearly set forth in the finan- cial and explanatory memorandum, and I hope that will lessen the amount of explanation which it is necessary to give from this Box. Some of these provisions, of course, arise out of the fact that we have just emerged from six years of desolating war, and there are a number of things to be tidied up. This Bill provides for the tidying up of some of them. Clause I gives additional powers essential to carry out the provisions of the Bill, and partly continues and partly extends the borrowing powers of the Government. As to the continuation of the powers which already exist, the House will remember that each year from 1939 onwards it has been necessary to pass a National Loans Act to give the Treasury power to borrow sums necessary to meet the Supply which this House has granted to the Government. That, of course, was necessary at that time to meet, in effect, the Budget deficit. Subsection (I, a), of Clause I gives these powers for the next financial year, that is, 1946– 47, and, as in previous years, the power is to borrow up to the amount of the Supply granted for the financial year. We shall not, of course, require the whole of the money, but, as in years gone by, these powers have been taken, if necessary, to raise the whole of the sum voted in the Committee of Supply. The actual figure to be borrowed will be disclosed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he opens his Budget in April next. Also, as in previous years, we desire to take power to borrow an additional–250,000,000 in order to cover any possible gap that might occur between the end of the financial year 1946– 47 and the next National Loans Bill, of whatever Bill is introduced in order to meet the need. Subsection (2) of Clause I is necessary for technical reasons.

As the House is aware, when the discussions took place in Washington last autumn a settlement was reached between the two Governments as to claims in respect of Lend-Lease and reciprocal aid and other matters which arose out of the joint running of the war. Under that settlement, as the House will remember, the United Kingdom undertook the liability to pay a sum approximating to about 650,000,000 dollars spread over a period. Although that particular form of liability— payment over a period for goods and services received— is clearly in 'the nature of borrowing, it is not tech- nically covered by the existing National Loans Acts, and, therefore, this Subsection is thought necessary to give the Treasury power to meet the liability in the same way as it would meet any liability on cash borrowing under those Acts. Then it is also possible that some similar arrangement may be made with the Canadian Government. In fact, we have people over there now discussing the matter, and, therefore, this Subsection will not only cover Lend-Lease arrangements come to with the United States, but it will cover also any arrangement with the Canadian Government and, in fact, with any other Government should similar settlements be made.

Coming to Clause 2, which deals with war damage payments to be made out of the Consolidated Fund, may I say to begin with that this Clause does not in any way affect the amounts or conditions of such payments in individual cases. As the House knows, under the War Damage Act, 1943, powers are taken and schemes laid down, and the powers taken in Clause 2 do not in any way affect or alter those schemes or the financial basis of those schemes. They remain unaltered. The present Clause merely alters the source from which war damage payments' can be made. The Act of 1943 provided that they should be paid from the annual Votes, and in fact, they have, during the war in so far as they have been paid, been paid out of Votes of Credit. That was in the circumstances a reasonable and convenient way to deal with such payments as had to be made during the war, when 50 per cent. at least of the amount of our annual expenditure had to be met by borrowing. In the years to come it is hoped. that we shall attain more nearly to balance or approximately balanced Budgets over at any rate a fairly narrow period of years, and I think the House will, therefore, agree that it would be unfair to try to meet out of Revenue the very large payments which will fall to be paid for war damage of one kind or another. I think the House will agree that it is in the nature of capital expenditure. That being so, it will be appropriate and reasonable that the very large sums we shall have to raise during the coming years shall be met from borrowing and not from annual Votes. This Clause gives power to make that change and to borrow in that way. I might perhaps add that this fact will in no way diminish the power or the right of the House to query or discuss the administration of the War Damage Act. This can still be done on the various Votes dealing with the Board of Trade, and the War Damage Commission.

Subsections (2) and (3) of Clause 2 provide, as the House will see, that full accounts of war damage payments shall be prepared and audited and presented to Parliament in the usual way. Clause 3 deals with the Civil Contingencies Fund, and it may well be that the House would like to have a fairly full explanation of what we intend by the amount asked for today, and why we should ask for a sum of£ 250,000,000 under this Clause for this Fund. The primary object of this Fund is to meet temporarily any urgent unforeseen needs in anticipation of Parliamentary authority for the expenditure. The Government must come to Parliament, even though it may be after the event, for a Vote to repay such expenditure to the Fund. In other cases in the past, the Fund has been used to meet expenditure which, in due course, came under the authority already given by Parliament for recovery out of receipts of one kind or another.

The amount of the Fund is at present limited to£1,500,000, and in the conditions of the next year or so such a sum is quite inadequate to meet the demands which may be made on the Fund. After the 1914–18 war—in 1919—statutory authority, in the same way as we are asking for it now, was given to increase this Fund to£120,000,000 for about½ years. This time we think that£120,000,000 might not be sufficient, as the needs of the Fund, under present conditions, are very different from what they were at the end of that war. We are, therefore, asking the House to give us powers to borrow up to£250,000,000, so long as such increases are repaid to the Exchequer by 31st December, 1950. This power, of course will be used only when it is absolutely necessary, and there is no question of setting aside the whole of the£250,000,000 at once.

The purposes for which this Fund, when so increased, may be used are set out fairly clearly in the Clause. They fall under three heads. As from 1st April, Parliament will be asked to grant all supplies on ordinary Votes, and it will do so for some services for which, frankly, it is difficult, in the present disturbed conditions, to estimate requirements a year ahead. Some such Estimates are large. For instance, the Ministry of Food Estimate is£ 248,000,000, and that for the Control Office for Germany and Austria, is£80,000,000. The money for these services and others may be agreed on the original Estimate, but may fall short of the actual need as the year proceeds. Therefore, it has been thought appropriate—and we hope the House will agree—that we should have, as it were, a margin which can be used, although, of course, Parliament will keep full control of how that money has been used, and it will be essential for the Government to come back to the House and explain, and get authority for, what they had spent.

In addition, the Fund will, in effect, provide working capital for those Departments which, under statutory or other powers, already carry on trading activities. Examples are the Ministry of Food, again, the Ministry of Supply, and the Board of Trade. For any such Department Parliament may be asked, on an ordinary Vote, to vote a net sum for their activities during any year. This sum will represent the estimated excess of the Department's trading outgoings over their trading receipts. But at any given date during the year a Department may have to lock up in stocks a much larger amount than the net amount of its Vote for the year, because its receipts will only come in slowly as the stocks are actually sold. Departments must have some source from which they can draw some temporary working capital, and the Civil Contingencies Fund, in our view, is the appropriate source. If, over the whole year, as the months go by, Departments need to invest in their trading a net sum greater than has been voted by Parliament, the Government will have to come to the House and seek authority for a further grant. I would emphasise here that the Clause does not confer any new authority on any Department to engage in trading activities. They will have to work within the limits laid down by Parliament, (or which the activities have already been agreed.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether capital expenditure contemplated by the Ministry of Fuel and Power on mechanisation— £150,000,000 to£300,000,000—when the coal industry is nationalised, will come under this Clause?

No, for one thing the Coal Industry Nationalisation Bill is not yet through the House and we cannot legislate in advance for something which may never happen. As I understand it, the financial structure underlying the Coal Board which is to be set up will work in a rather different way from the trading activity of Departments like the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Supply, and the Board's activities will not, in the same sense, be direct Government trading. In any case, we are not contemplating making advances to the National Coal Board from the Civil Contingencies Fund.

As I have just said, this Clause confers no new powers on a Department to engage in new trading activities other than those for which the House has already given its sanction. This Fund 'Will help to provide large working balances which some Departments necessarily have to keep in all parts of the world. Those balances, in our view, are much likely to be higher during the coining year than they were in the years before the war. Any expenditure under these heads will be brought to account in the Appropriation Accounts, in due course. It is very difficult to estimate the global sum that we may need under these three heads.

Can the hon. Gentleman give some examples of the Departments which want large working balances, apart from the trading Departments?

We have troops all over the world and trading missions, or we did have. We had a mission in Cairo, of which the late Lord Moyne was the head. Working balances will be wanted in India, and in other places. In the early post-war years there has to be a good deal of bulk buying of one kind and another, owing to the food situation. Without going into too great detail, I am sure the House will agree that these contingencies arise all over the world, and that it is essential that the Government should have working balances in order to meet the outgoings which may occur from time to time. Although under these three heads it is difficult to estimate just how much will be needed, we feel that the£250,000,000 asked for will be enough. But if it proves to be insufficient the Government will have to come to the House, and explain the circumstances and ask for an increase. As I have said, any moneys advanced in this way must be repaid by December 1950.

Clause 4 deals with the Defence Loans Acts, passed just before the war. Those who were Members of the House at that time will recollect that moneys borrowed for defence purposes were borrowed under what I may perhaps term somewhat unusual conditions. For instance, it was agreed that the moneys borrowed should be repaid to the Exchequer in the shape of annuities, spread over 30 years. It is felt by the Government that it would be rather illogical if now, having spent vast sums on the prosecution of the war, these Defence Votes continued to be liable to repay the relatively small sums borrowed under the Defence Loans Acts passed before the war. Therefore, we propose to relieve the Defence Votes of this liability, and I trust the House will think that it is reasonable, and agree to the change.

Clause 5 deals with a very different matter—the salary of the Comptroller and Auditor-General. The position of this officer is particular and peculiar. His salary is borne not on an annual Vote, as is the case with the salaries of most other officers and officials of the Civil Service, but directly on the Consolidated Fund. For many years his salary has been similar to that of the permanent head of a first class administrative Department. Recently, it was decided that the salaries of some of the higher officials in the Civil Service should be increased to£3,500. The salary of the Comptroller and Auditor-General was fixed, in 1921, at£3,000. It is felt that it is only right and proper that his salary should be brought up to the same level as that which the House agreed should be accorded to the permanent heads of Departments. Clause 5 will permit that to be done.

This is a complicated Bill which it is not easy to understand. We are grateful to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury for his explanations. I had hoped that perhaps he would feel himself able to deal with some of the wider issues raised by the Bill. This is, I think, the first time the hon. Gentleman has conducted a Bill through the House without having the threatening shadow of the Chancellor of the Exchequer beside him, and I hope that today he will be able to give a free run to his natural inclination to give the House as much information as possible on these financial matters. I hope that, in his reply, he will be able to deal with some of the wider implications of the Bill, which we intend to raise.

With regard to the general principles, if one can talk about general principles in a Bill which collects together a number of miscellaneous provisions—in regard to the trend of the Bill, hon. Members on this side of the House recognise the necessity of the Measure and certainly will not feel called upon to vote against it, but we are not so happy about some of the details, and even after the hon. Gentleman's explanation, we still feel a certain amount of anxiety. As the hon. Gentleman told us, Subsection (1, a) of Clause 1 repeats what has been common form annually during the war, although before the war it would have been regarded as a terrible financial heresy. It gives unrestricted power to the Government to borrow up to the full amount of the services needed for Supply. During the war, obviously it was impossible, when the House was asked for that authority, to give any estimate of how much they were being committed to, because, although theoretically this is for the whole amount of the Supply Services, of course, the sum is reduced by that amount which is raised by taxation. But, surely, in the first financial year after the war, it is a great deal to come to the House and ask hon. Members, in advance of any Budget statement, to provide unrestricted authority to borrow up to the full amount for the Supply Services.

Once this Bill has been passed, it would be possible for the Chancellor to come to the House in April and say, "I propose for this year to suspend all taxation altogether." The result would be that the whole of the£4,000,000,000 represented by these Estimates for the Supply Services would then, on the authority of the House, given in the Bill, be raised by loan. Now that we have passed into peace-time, it is a great deal to ask the House to part with powers on so little information. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, when he replies to the Debate, will be able to give some indication of the sort of proportion of the sums needed for Supply which it is proposd to raise by taxation and which, therefore, will reduce the liability which the House is incurring by the passage of this Clause. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will not think that his right hon. Friend the Chancellor will have any petty feelings, and will not in the least mind his anticipating a statement which his right hon. Friend may be making two months later, because it will always be possible to tell the Chancellor that the House really feels that the moment it is passing his authority is the more appropriate moment for a general survey of that kind.

I am not happy about the excess of£250,000,000. We have been told, as is true, that it has been included in every Bill during the war, but, of course, the hon. Gentleman will not bow to a precedent. He belongs to an iconoclastic Government. He has only to see a precedent to want to smash it. Surely he will give us some better explanation of the need for putting in£250,000,000 than the statement that it has appeared in previous Measures brought forward by previous Governments. He told us it has to be put in. because there may be an overlap. We have already dealt with the whole of the money that can possibly be required up to the end of this financial year. This amount of£250,000,000, which in the old days would have been considered a pretty substantial sum—between one-third and one-half of the total Budget with which we dealt when I first came to the House— is thrown in as a makeweight because, the hon Gentleman says, it may not be possible, before the end of the financial year, for the Government to make up their mind on what they want to do during next year and to come to Parliament for the necessary authority. I think that is really throwing about a little loosely an enormous sum of money. Surely, it is not too much to say, when dealing with a matter of this magnitude, that the Government should and must make up their mind, and come to the House again before the end of the financial year and before the other money voted in this programme has been expended.

I agree that in time of war the Government could never be quite certain. There might have been some terrible catastrophe involving the destruction of life and buildings which might have made impossible the sitting of the House at the time when it was proposed to ask for this money. But that, we hope, is a thing of the past, and surely the greatest danger we have to envisage in the next years is that either the Chancellor or his able deputy might suffer from influenza. Therefore, I feel that the Government are asking the House for a great deal when they ask it to vote£250,000,000 simply in case they cannot make up their mind before next April on the financial proposals they wish to make for the following year.

With regard to Clause 1 (2), I have no comments to make on the necessity for such a Clause. I should like to know whether any financial arrangements which might be necessary if we were granted the American loan would come under this Subsection? The hon. Gentleman referred to the American settlement of lend-lease, but that, of course, was an agreement made before the passing of this Measure. This Clause also deals with agreements that may be made after the passing of the Act.

It does not deal with the American loan at all, but simply with the arrangement for the settlement of Lend-Lease which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, is quite distinct from the actual loan, which may or may not be granted.

The only thing which aroused my doubt was that the settlement of Lend-Lease was made before the passing of the Act, whereas Clause 2, Subsection (2), refers to any agreement whether it is made before or after the passing of the Act, and we on this side should like to know what were the reasons for putting in the words "after the passing of this Act" which must presuppose that it will apply to some agreement other than the one to which the hon. Gentleman has referred.

Clause 2 deals with war damage payments both for property and for capital. It is perhaps fair that any future payments under this head should be regarded as capita] expenditure, certainly as far as house property is concerned. I am not sure whether it is equally fair to regard payments under the chattels damage scheme for the replacement of furniture as capital expenditure, but we were certainly delighted to hear, in view of some of the things we have heard occasionally from hon. Members who sit behind the right hon. Gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the Budget is to be balanced, and that after what I think he called "a very narrow period of time." It will give a great deal of comfort to people who fed that, if we are not going to try to balance the Budget now, in times of full employment—as we were told in the Debate yesterday—then the whole basis of the suggestion made in the White Paper on Employment of the late Government of a balanced Budget during good times in order to have an unbalanced Budget and borrowing to stimulate industry in bad times, falls to the ground. If we balance the Budget in good times, we are left with the leeway on which to relax when times become bad, and we are very glad to get that pledge of financial orthodoxy from the hon. Gentleman.

Next we come to the most difficult— though not the most important—of the Clauses of this Bill, Clause 3, dealing with the Civil Contingencies Fund. All of us have been familiar for years with the very useful though comparatively small work done by this Fund. It was limited to£1,500,000 and gave Departments an opportunity for immediate expenditure of money on a service which had not been covered by Estimate on the understanding, of course, that it would eventually be covered by a Supplementary Estimate. The sort of thing I have in mind where the Fund proves so useful relates to the Colonial Office. If there was, for example, a hurricane which did a great deal of damage in the Colonies, and it was desired to give immediate relief, there was no parliamentary authority for it, and to have awaited the vicissitudes of parliamentary time might have meant that it would have been a month, six weeks, or even two months before parliamentary authority could have been obtained, and by that time the relief would have been too late. This provision undoubtedly was of very great value. But when we look at the difference between the£1,500,000, which was all that was necessary to cover this kind of useful provision in the past, and the£250,000,000 which is being asked for now, it is clear that a wholly new character has come over the Fund and my hon. Friends and I wish to inquire whether it is really necessary to deal with all the matters to which the hon. Gentleman referred by an overall provision of this kind, where the House has to part with authority in ad- vance although, ex post facto, its authority has to be obtained.

The hon. Gentleman gave three classes under which these new amounts were going to be found necessary. The first was that of certain Government Departments who found estimating now very difficult. He mentioned the Ministry of Food, and, I think, the controls in general, and said that because the estimating was very difficult. then they ought to be able to make use of this Clause. Frankly, with that kind of case, I do not see any need for the use of this procedure. It may well be that in the years after the war certain Departments will find estimating very difficult, and none of us can expect to return immediately to the extraordinary standard of estimating by Government Departments to which we were used before the war. But if a Department has estimated wrongly at the beginning of the year, the fact becomes apparent inside that Department long before the expenditure authorised by Parliament has been exhausted, and it is perfectly simple for it then to come back to the House with a Supplementary Estimate. In this way the House will have the opportunity of looking at the difference in the Estimates before the money is voted, instead of voting the money first and only having an opportunity of looking at the difference afterwards. I cannot see that in that kind of case the Government Department would be handicapped in anyway, and I think that it would preserve to the House the power over Estimates and Supplementary Estimates of which it has rightly been so jealous.

The second kind of case to which the hon. Gentleman referred was that of the trading Departments. This was not a question of bad estimating or of spending more during the year than they thought at the beginning, but a case similar to that occurring in other businesses where, from time to time, more working capital has to be locked up than anticipated. This capital is not locked up permanently, and does not appear finally as a debit; a time will come when it will be liquidated again. We agree that that kind of case is certainly one that should be dealt with by this means. The method that I have suggested for the other case, that of Supplementary Estimates, would be wholly inappropriate to this case because the Supplementary Estimate or increase of working. capital can be made in the knowledge that in a month or two the extra money will again become redundant. Therefore, I have no complaint to make on the proposal that if there are to be Government trading departments they should be able to obtain excess of working capital by these means.

There are one or two other points in connection with this which I would like to put and which perhaps relate in a way to all three Clauses. Some of my hon. Friends will have something to. say on the question of whether indeed it is wise to continue on such a scale the activities of the trading Departments for which this provision is made, but I will leave that to them. I will say, however, that if we are to give this power to trading Departments, as I think we must, in return the House of Commons is entitled to ask that in future, as in the past, we should be given at the end of the year appropriate trading accounts of the Departments concerned. It could not be done, for security reasons, during the war. If the trading account of the Ministry of Food, for example, had been published, it might have conveyed very valuable information to the enemy. I cannot see any other reason than that of security for not publishing these accounts. That security reason has now gone, and we are entitled to ask that annual accounts should be presented to Parliament in future.

The third case to which the hon. Gentleman referred was that of Government Departments which had to carry unusually heavy balances abroad. This case is quite different from the last one, because these balances have ultimately to be expended. These are not trading Departments. The hon. Gentleman put them in quite a different category. They are spending Departments. Their extra balances will ultimately be expended, and will have to be voted by this House. I feel the same about these Departments as I did about the first lot. I cannot see why it is not possible to anticipate in time the exhausion of the balances. If the amount has been wrongly estimated, the Department could come to the House in plenty of time for a Supplementary Estimate, as in the old days.

Covering all these three together, 1 would like to ask why it is necessary to put in a repayment date as far ahead as five years. It is obviously unnecessary for the first case, in which a wrong estimate was made at some time during the war. The Departments will have to come back here with a Supplementary Estimate, to enable the money to be repaid from some other source. It is quite unnecessary for the third case because there again, sooner or later, there must be a Supplementary Estimate and the money must be repaid. Nor can 1 see that it is appropriate for the case which the hon. Gentleman made in the second category of the trading Departments. He spoke of the locking up of capital in stock. and the sudden need for more capital, a need which liquidated itself. Surely, he is not expecting that these trading Departments are to expend exra working capital by locking it up in stock which will not Le liquidated for five years. We are entitled to some explanation of why it is necessary to have such a very long repayment date. With regard to Clause 4, we have no complaint to make. The provisions which are to be repealed by the Clause were a salutary financial check at the time they were made. They provided for certain definite periods of repayment, but they became submerged, of course, in the enormous munition expenditure of subsequent years. I agree with the hon. Gentleman it would be a bit of financial pedantry to retain the Clause, however valuable it was at the time it was passed.

Finally, I think all of us agree most heartily with Clause 5. Not only do we feel that this gentleman had the right to share in the increases of salary which were given to other civil servants of similar grade—I gather that the only reason it is put down in this way is that his is the only salary which does not appear upon a Vote—but he will be the man who has to look after and report to the country on the finances of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. We feel that he is in for a very heavy time.

We shall be very glad if, in the course of the Debate the hon. Gentleman can answer some of the questions which have been put to him. We are prepared to allow the general principle of the Bill to pass without challenge.

I agree with the right hon. Member for West Bristol (Mr. Stanley) that it was obvious during the war that we should be able to make more effort than has been possible since the war. 1 have to confess that this period of time is not very stable, and that many difficulties lie ahead which it will not be easy for the Government to estimate during the next 12 months, or perhaps even longer. The Government are justified in asking for this Measure, in view of the obligations, seen and unseen, which will confront them in the immediate future. I was very interested in the question of war damage. Here again I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that war damage to property should be related to compensation. It is very difficult to estimate in the immediate future the exact amount of war damage ' compensation which has to be paid. It would be harder to endeavour to budget when an assessment can be obtained. It is not so difficult in regard to goods and chattels. Here again, as the market expands, people will make heavier demands for goods and chattels. Because of that we shall be unable to budget in advance.

I was also interested to hear the hon. Gentleman refer to our commitments in relation to services abroad. I do not know whether we should fix our attention upon waiting for Budget Estimates in this respect. I rather feel there are circumstances which have to be provided for, because difficulties have arisen which will have to be met, even before we can estimate them. Despite the fact that these things have been looked upon rather as in the nature of war measures, we are justified in suggesting that, in view of the uncertainty and in order to tide us over the difficult period, the House would do well to give a Second Reading to the Bill. The House should support it because it is necessary that the Government should be in a position to meet their liabilities. The Bill is only a continuation of the policy of the past few years.

At first blush this Bill appears to provide us with a purely technical piece of accountancy machinery. Hon. Members will, I think, however agree that the longer we study the Bill—and, may I add, the longer we listened to the Minister's introductory remarks today—the more we realise that there is something a good deal wider than that involved in this piece of legislation. The Financial Secretary was mildly revealing in one or two interesting directions. First of all came the observations, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Bristol (Mr. Stanley)has already referred, respecting an early return to balanced Budgets. I thought I detected a somewhat wistful smile on the countenance of the hon. Gentleman when he made that statement. I could not help recalling that in connection with the Interim Budget in October last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer declared himself in favour of a policy of balanced Budgets over a period of years. The hon Member may recall that on these benches we endeavoured to discover over what period of years the right hon. Gentleman would achieve that balance, and that we were unsuccessful in our investigations However, the hon. Gentleman has lifted perhaps one corner of the curtain concealing the Budget proposals which we shall be discussing in a few weeks' time.

The hon. Gentleman said something else which interested me, and I thought it caused a certain raising of eyebrows on benches opposite, namely, when my hon. Friend the.Member for Stockport (Sir A. Gridley) asked him whether the financial arrangements of the National Coal Board would be covered by the machinery of this Bill, and the hon. Gentleman replied to my astonishment, "One cannot legislate for contingencies which may never happen." I do not know what has been going on inside the Cabinet, but I imagine that when hon. Members representing mining constituencies face their weekend audiences, who have read this declaration, there may be some questions asked.

The more I listen to the hon. Gentleman—I have done so now for a number of years—the more I admire his many qualities, and the more I become convinced that he is engaged in preparing to understudy Miss Jean Capra in the role of "Naive " in that excellent entertainment "Itma" which frequently cheers me on Sunday evenings. The hon. Gentleman has an ingenuous manner which I am bound to say is beginning to arouse some suspicion on this side of the House. He skated lightly, I thought, over the main reasons why the Government require this power. He did not have much to say to us on the general subject of bulk purchase which, of course, will be financed to a large extent under this Measure. He referred to the trading activities of the Ministry of Food very briefly and it is rather important that, when we are going in for State trading in a big way, as we are now in many directions and particularly in food, this House and the country in general shall have a perfectly clear picture of what the financial consequences are as we go along the road. When all has been said and done, food may hot be the end of the matter. One does not like to cast too much gloom over the House, even on a Friday, but if the Minister of Fuel continues on his downward course, who knows when we may not be importing coal in large quantities as a further piece of Government machinery?

I gathered from the hon. Gentleman that he is not going to deal with the financing of the nationalised industries when they come into being under this Bill. I am not so pessimistic about this Government as he is. I believe they will hold together long enough to get some nationalisation legislation on the Statute Book, but the financing is not to be done in that way, but it is rather important, when we are in the market for such commodities as wheat, that the Government should not pay too high a price. We are badly off for dollars anyhow. This House should have at its disposal information showing whether our State purchases are being conducted efficiently or not. May I put it this way? So far, to my.mind, there is every indication that this much vaunted planned economy is, in fact, being interpreted in terms of planned extravagance. That is my view having watched hon. Members opposite in operation now for the past seven months.

May I add my support to what was said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Tolley) about war damage? I think we shall all be pleased to see, at any rate, the apparatus being set up for war damage payments to those people who have been waiting so wearily for them. I hope they will not have to wait very much longer. I agree with him as to the accounting method of doing it, that the war damage payments should be a capital charge, and I agree with my right hon. Friend that chattels raise rather a different matter and should be dealt with otherwise.

I am. glad to see that the Auditor-General is to get a rise, for I think he is a very overworked official. As my right hon. Friend has just remarked. he is likely to put in a great deal of overtime during the coming months but, as we have a Socialist Government now in office, what about his staff? Is anything to be done for them? Are they getting an increase, or does the Socialist Government merely cater for the higher income levels? I am hoping to enlist the support of hon. Gentlemen opposite when I suggest that civil servants are not overpaid. I do not know whether they will be overpaid as many more of them come into the Service but, at any rate, as we heard on the Prayer last night, many of them are very anxious to escape from the Civil Service. May I put in a plea that the Financial Secretary should not Harden his heart too much towards the lower grade workers who are reputed to have put this Government in office?

Finally, I am sorry the Chancellor is not here as 1 should have liked to say this to him: The Treasury are at present busily engaged in what they describe as "cleaning up the City." It provides material for a number of excellent week-end speeches—not always well informed, if I may say so—by hon. Members opposite.. One thing which is being dealt with under another Measure is the question of the borrowing powers of private individuals. I think the Government should, to a certain extent, set an example in these matters. They are anxious to see that ordinary businesses are run on proper financial lines. that a proper control is kept over malpractices. Yet this Bill does not set a particularly good example by His Majesty's Government. Here they are asking the House of Commons for huge borrowing powers in advance of the approval of Parliament.

I suppose the hon. Gentleman is relying, having taken action on these lines of borrowing in a big way, on coming down to the House of Commons perhaps late at night or on a Friday, and if any voices of disapproval are raised from these benches, he will immediately ring the bell and fetch in his huge battering ram of a majority from the smoking room and the terrace bar. That is not my view of the proper way in which our national finance should be conducted at this grave moment. If we are to be told that there must be the most careful supervision of the financial conduct of private firms and huge businesses, let there also be no concealment of the nation's trading operations, and let us have the strictest accuracy in the national accountancy.

I would like to start by endorsing what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Holderness (Lieut.-Commander Braithwaite) said about the staff of the Comptroller and Auditor-General. I must not reveal what is going on upstairs in the Select Committee on Procedure, but I can give my own opinion, which is that the result of nationalisation on a large scale will mean that a very large organisation associated with the House of Commons will have to be set up to deal, in extenso, with public and semi-public accounts, something very much more elaborate than we have had at any previous time. Therefore, I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he will not consider the question of increased salaries for the staff of the Comptroller and Auditor-General in anticipation of the setting up of this organisation.

I would like to ask a question about the Clause which deals with war damage. I do not know whether it would be proper here to ask the Financial Secretary whether he can tell us whether an Amendment to the War Damage Act is intended. I have had many cases raised in my constituency by people who find that the value payments made are quite insufficient, at present prices, to enable them to rebuild their houses. Those people who have got a cost of works payment are in a much better position. Subject to a building licence, such people can get their houses rebuilt, but those who have been given a value payment, which is based on the 1939 figure, are not in a comparable position. I hope that in winding up this Debate, the hon. Gentleman will say that some amending Bill is at any rate in contemplation by the Treasury.

Like my right hon. Friend, I feel that the Clause which deals with the Civil Contingencies Fund needs some further consideration and explanation by the Financial Secretary. This Clause will obviously be used by the great spending Departments as a kind of well, out of which they will draw to reimburse them- selves against the adverse balances which they will have incurred at the end of their trading year. Surely it is not proper to use a capital fund of this kind, set up under a non-recurring Act, in order to adjust the expenditures of Departments at the end of the year.

What does the hon. Member mean by adverse balances?

Losses: The Ministry of Works, for example, is going in for State trading to a considerable extent. The Financial Secretary said that this Clause did not give any power to extend State trading. I quite agree with that, but at least it gives power to Departments to call upon the Contingencies Fund to meet their losses at the end of the financial year.

With all due respect, an adverse balance cannot be interpreted as a loss on trading. If the hon. Member is referring to a loss on trading he should say so. We should know precisely to what he is referring.

I mean an adverse balance on trading, and also an adverse balance on capital account. In so far as the Ministry of Works fails to meet its expenditure at the end of the financial year whether on capital or income account it will, as I understand it, among other Departments, have recourse to this Fund. I do not think it is proper to set up a Civil Contingencies Fund of£250 million and expect Departments to draw on it to meet their current expenditure.

Clause 1 embodies the most important feature of the whole Bill. Is it the case that we are now abandoning the procedure, which applied during the war years, and extending the National Loans Act annually by a Resolution at the end of the Budget? Could the Financial Secretary answer that question now? It has been the practice during the war years to extend the provisions of the National Loans Act annually by a resolution, coming at the end of the Budget Resolutions Can I take it that this Bill abrogates the whole of that procedure, and that no such Resolution will be put in the forthcoming Budget?

Perhaps I might deal with this matter a little more if, by per- mission of the House, I am allowed to reply to the Debate. Shortly, the answer is "Yes."

In that case it really means that this House is today taking a decision which will result in powers being given to the Government to borrow, without further debate in this House, an enormous sum up to the end of the financial year 1947.

I suggest that we have got into an extraordinary position with regard to these financial matters. We spend days and days upon the Budget. The Chancellor comes down and makes an important speech to a full House, the Budget Resolutions follow, and the Finance Bill follows upon that. The question of taxation, the ways and means of getting revenue for the State are discussed in the greatest possible detail, and the Budget itself is a grand national occasion. Yet almost as much as what the Budget provides for is now taken by the State in borrowing, and that is going through, this morning, in the course of a few hours' Debate in a thinly attended House, with only a Financial Secretary in charge. The figures are startling. The last financial White Paper shows that central Government net borrowing total£2,760 million. That is the sum which, though it is not mentioned in this Bill, is, in fact, what we are providing for this morning, together with an additional£250 million to cover contingencies. As against that the Budget, which we debate at the greatest possible length, amounts to£3,154 million.

The Debate this morning ought to have been treated by the Government as an occasion of equal importance to the Budget. The Chancellor ought to have come to the House and made a wide survey of the picture of the national finances to a fully attended House. There ought to be an extensive Committee stage on this Bill, with every opportunity for members of all parties to call for a detailed explanation as to why Government expenditure is not being cut down. All that should be done before the House grants these powers. I do not quarrel with anything that has been said on this side of the House about not voting against this Bill this morning because there are some provisions in the Bill which we endorse, but I suggest that we have got our financial arrangements altogether out of line, and by way of protest at what is taking place I should hope that. Members on this side would be prepared to vote in the Committee stage against Clause 1, in order that the whole issue may be raised.

I should like to congratulate the Financial Secretary on the lucidity with which he explained this Bill in a very short time. When he was dealing with the salary of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, I thought that the House ought to consider whether the Financial Secretary is under paid, having regard to the vast amount of work he is called upon to do, and which is likely to increase substantially during the next two years. I wish to test his capacity a little further.

I would like to refer to the short speech made by the hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Trolley), who is no longer in his place, in which he referred to the War Damage Act and the treatment of war damage as capital. The Financial Secretary will know that those who have had to make contributions annually to the war damage fund have never been allowed, in their trading accounts, to treat that item of cost as other than capital. It has not been allowed as a working expense to be included as one of the annual costs of running one's business, but has had to be taken out of that account altogether. Therefore, it has been recognised as a capital item. If industrial undertakings have had to deal with the matter in that way, I think the Government are bound in their turn to do likewise.

In considering particularly Clause 3 of this Bill, I was a little surprised at the answer the Financial Secretary gave to my brief intervention, when he said that, of course, one could not take into account the position of an industry the ownership of which was to be altered under a Bill yet to be passed. I do not know what has happened in Standing Committees upstairs which have been attended by the Financial Secretary, but I can enlighten him by telling him that Amendments to the Coal Bill for the protection of the railways, gas and electricity undertakings, in order to ensure that they shall get their proper supplies of coal of the right quality in the future, have been dismissed airily by the Minister—

What happens in Committee is entirely unknown to this House, and may not be mentioned until the Committee have reported to the House. One cannot quote from a Committee upstairs.

I entirely misunderstood the position, Mr. Speaker. HANSARD reports every day the proceedings of Standing Committees. Therefore, I thought I was entitled to refer to them. Am I still out of Order?

I am afraid until the Committee has reported to the House we officially have no knowledge at all, even though it may be reported in HANSARD for the information of Members of the Committee only.

Well, Sir, then we have to shut our eyes to what is reported in that way. I must plead guilty to having misunderstood the position. I am not sorry I have raised the matter, because I think probably a good many Members of the House were as ignorant as I was of the disorder for which I have been responsible. I will, of course, leave that point.

I come now to what the Financial Secretary said about trading. Various Departments of the Government already have very widespread trading powers. For example, we were' told, I think yesterday, or the day before, at Question Time, that the Ministry of Supply was now embarking on the manufacture of house fittings in Government factories. I think few of us were aware of that fact until it emerged at Question Time.

That may result in grave interference with private enterprise engaged in similar industries. The Financial Secretary also referred to the contracts being made by the Ministry of Food. During the work of the Select Committee on National Expenditure in recent Governments—I hope I am not out of Order in referring to the work of that Committee—it was the duty of some of us to examine the activities of the Ministry of Food. We found that the Ministry was engaged, quite rightly in time of war, in immense bulk purchases. For example, if my memory is accurate, I think at one time the Ministry of Food was purchasing the whole of the tea produced throughout the world. That arrangement may still be in operation. By agreement with other Governments that Ministry was parcelling out these tea supplies, so many million pounds going to Russia, so many million pounds going to the U.S.A., and so on. That may have been all right in time of war, but ought not the House to have more information now in time of peace as to the activities of the Ministry of Food in such matters?

Again, they were buying oil seed in immense quantities, sometimes at very high prices which doubtless they could not avoid then. We ought to know what these trading departments of the Government are doing at the present time, and what they contemplate doing as a result of which they may have to be assisted by the provisions of this Bill.

We are told nowadays that the main priorities are food, work and homes. With that we all agree. Frequently we are also told that every one of us in the future is to be taken care of from the cradle to the grave. I, for one, do not want to see the time when Government Departments will feel it is necessary to provide cradles and bassinets for the newly born, prams for them to be carried about in, such as we heard of yesterday and for which the President of the Board of Trade took great credit because there had been an enormous increase in production. He was very careful not to tell us about the very poor quality of these perambulators about which mothers of today are complaining very bitterly. Our children may be riding about, when they get a little older, on Government-produced bicycles. We may have, as they planned in Germany, a national car to be brought within the reach of everybody When we have finished our work here we may be put into a Government hearse and eventually our ashes may be scattered in national crematoria.

All these activities may be possible it we give the Government such wide powers as are asked for in Bills like this. We were told in great speeches yesterday from the opposite side of the House that what the nation wanted above everything else was to have up-to-date facts constantly presented before them. It was said we could never be too fully informed. Here is an opportunity for the Financial Secretary to give us to-day further information for which we are asking now so that, although we do not oppose this Bill today, we shall have facts and information which will enable us to study carefully what Amendments it would be right, or wrong, to move when this Bill comes before Committee.

I think all of us on both sides of this House recognise the inevitable but none the less deplorable effects which war always has on accepted methods of financial control. We all hope that this Bill may be the last of this nature which it will be necessary to bring before this House. Because of the time at which it comes forward and the magnitude of the provision which it makes, it is important and desirable that the spokesmen of His Majesty's Government should make it perfectly clear that it is their desire and intention to return to the more normal methods of financial control at the earliest possible moment. Bearing that in mind, I would venture with some diffidence to suggest three propositions to the Financial Secretary with which I hope he will be able to tell the House he agrees.

The first is that close estimating is a very useful check on the' efficiency of financial management. Therefore, we should aim to get the closest possible estimate at the earliest possible date. The. second proposition is that sound. financial administration, although its effects may not be immediately apparent to all the individuals directly or indirectly affected, does in fact confer real benefits on all the members of the community. My third proposition is that borrowing inevitably adds to the total and final costs of any project, and should be avoided wherever possible. If the Financial Secretary feels that these are sound propositions, and His Majesty's Government will at the earliest moment try to come back to the practices of an earlier day, I think that will have a very valuable effect on the country. The Government should give a lead to industry in this matter of financial control. Unfortunately there has been a measure of careless and rather extravagant expenditure during wartime because in one way or another it has often been possible to set off some particular expenditure. We perhaps did not have to pay ourselves, and consequently there was not the same care which all should desire.

As to the Bill, obviously we Private Members cannot assess the actual amount of the provision which the Government must make, but I am surprised at the size of the amount which is set out in Clause 1. I hoped it would have been possible to make a smaller provision with reasonable safety. On Clause 2, I am not very impressed with the excuses made for the difficulty in estimating the amount that will have to be paid in respect of war damage. I agree that some difficult cases will occur, but we hope that all the war damage is now a matter of the past. Assessing the amounts which will have to be paid should not cause unnecessary delay. We have got into the habit during the war of accepting excuses for not doing what could be done simply because we were able to make out a case that there was something more urgent to be done first. That is not a very good excuse at any time. It is an extremely bad excuse when there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who may suffer quite a considerable degree of hardship if there is unnecessary or unavoidable delay in assessing war damage claims. As a result of the provision now being made for borrowing in regard to war damage claims I hope it will also be found possible to speed up actual payments of smaller claims which bear very hardly on individuals.

I admit I do not like Clause 3, which deals with the Civil Contingency Fund. The contingency item in our private lives, or in local government finance, is always one of which we are rather suspicious. If we happen to be the parties who are putting estimates forward, we usually try to put in as large a contingency item as possible to cover ourselves for what we have not foreseen. It surprises me that such a large sum as£250 million is needed compared with the one and half million pounds of prewar days. The Financial Secretary has given a partial explanation of this, but if he could be a bit clearer, I would be grateful.

When the Financial Secretary was speaking about the control of moneys which might be paid out under the borrowing power granted by Clause3, unless I took down his words wrongly, he said: ''Parliament will maintain full control of how the money has been used." Once the money has been used, how can one maintain full control of it? That puzzles me a little. In the happier days before the war it may be that even you, Mr. Speaker, or other hon. Members had the experience of a wife coming home with a new hat. The expenditure had been incurred. Theoretically the provider had full control over that financial transaction and I agree that theoretically the husband had full control of how the money had been used. Whether that control was really effective or not, perhaps the Financial Secretary will explain to us when he replies.

I rise only for the purpose of reinforcing in a few sentences, what my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Sir A. Gridley) said in regard to the question of war damage payments. 1 am sure the Financial Secretary will agree that it is manifestly unfair to treat war damage as a capital debt. I would like to put in a plea that these payments should be hastened as much as possible. People are suffering in their industries and in their lives from the failure of the Government to make payment in respect of war damage. I put in an urgent plea for greater speed in this matter. I do not think the argument that it would involve some measure of inflation holds good any more. It is time these people, who deserve their money, got their money, and I ask the hon. Gentleman for an assurance on that point.

My second point is, again, one which was made by the hon. Member for Stock-port, that we should be given more information about State trading. I was Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Food when the whole of this policy of buying up food supplies on a world wide scale was initiated. I think it can. be claimed that during the war it was, on- the whole, a great success. Why was it such a success? First, because we got the food, and, secondly, because we got it at remarkably economic prices in the circumstances. But that is not necessarily going to hold good in times of peace. Vast purchases on Government account in the absence of ordinary commodity markets are not necessarily going to mean that we are going to get food as cheaply as we otherwise could do in peacetime. I am not in principle opposed to bulk purchase by the State, especially when it is from our own Empire, and especially when it is part of a reciprocal trading agreement. We know there are export boards in Australia and other parts of the Empire and it may be convenient to establish corresponding boards in this country. But we must know all about it in this country and we must know what prices are being paid.

The whole future of the commodity markets is bound up with this and, of course, as I said just now, with the policy of His Majesty's Government with regard to import boards. When the Government come and ask for£250,000,000 to meet contingencies which may arise, they ought to give us some rather more authoritative pronouncement than that forthcoming with regard to their intentions both in respect of the ordinary peacetime commodity markets and in respect to the possibility of setting up import boards in this country. We on this side of the House are not in opposition to all forms of direct bulk purchase. Indeed, if we are going to make satisfactory arrangements with our Dominions and Colonies in the future, despite the American Loan, some form of bulk purchase is essential. The time has arrived when the House should know the intentions of the Government in this matter—what they propose to do with regard to ordinary markets, and, above all, the basis on which they propose to buy and have bought these commodities.

I have two small points to which I would like to draw the attention of the Financial Secretary and to which I would like him to give an answer. The first refers to the question of war damage. May I say, in passing, that I support very strongly what my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) has said about the importance of the Government paying quickly, and paying partially in some cases, the money due to our constituents in that respect. I can assure the Financial Secretary that I get a great deal of evidence that this matter is causing hardship among people, particularly those who are not at all well off. The point I wish to draw his attention to is particularly well exemplified by a city like Bath which has two factors which are special to it. First, there is the great and grievous war damage it has suffered and, second, it is a city which, above all, owes its beauty to a sound plan. It has carried that plan a stage further, and Sir Patrick Abercrombie has drawn up an extremely fine long term plan for the development of the city. This trouble about the difference between value payments and cost of works payments is particularly difficult in cases of that kind, because the Bath plan has clearly shown that, ultimately. there will be radical changes in areas which have been badly blitzed. The Bath City Corporation is faced with the dilemma that if it refuses cost of works payments for rebuilding, it is imposing a great hardship on the owners and occupiers of land, and, on the other hand, if it decides that it must let that. go through, it is imposing on the community, in the long term view, a most extravagant demand, because it means, ultimately, pulling down what is rebuilt as the result of cost of works payments. I hope the Financial Secretary will tell us that he will go into that question sympathetically and will try to meet what is a very serious problem for my constituents.

I would also ask the Financial Secretary to have a careful look at what I regard as a most important letter by Mr. Napier Baliol Scott which has recently appeared in "The Times" on efficiency audits for these new organisations which we have inherited from the war and which we are hard at work creating at the moment. One hon. Member opposite, during the Bank of England Bill Second Reading Debate, made the point that we should all be very interested to hear, from time to time, about what is, in effect, an efficiency audit of that organisation Similarly, in all these enterprises there will be, as well as need for a financial audit, a need for efficiency audits of some kind. I would like the Financial Secretary to say whether he will be considering the whole question of efficiency audits in such cases and will give the House the opportunity to discuss whatever new technique is desirable for meeting these new changed circumstances.

:I would like to congratulate the Financial Secretary on being in charge of such a very important Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Member for West Bristol (Mr. Stanley) and my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Hinching-brooke) said, this is an important and a major Bill, We on this side of the House are very alive to the anxieties of the financial situation, and we wish that there was more sign that hon. Members opposite, and particularly Members of His Majesty's Government, were equally alive to it. We feel that the Government are giving less attention than they should to finance and that some of the speeches made in the Debate yesterday and the day before showed lack of appreciation of the need to economise. We did not get any satisfactory reply to the suggestion that there were nearly two million people engaged in making munitions. That is involving the State in a great loss of money. It may be that there are difficulties in the way of a reduction of expenditure, but I could suggest many possibilities which might be explored, particularly the cancellation of wartime contracts which are still going on. Provision has been made in nearly all those contracts for their cancellation, but the matter is not being dealt with as quickly as it ought.

Do I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting the cancellation of war contracts without indemnity?

I was not suggesting anything of the kind.

There would be no economy if there was an indemnity to be paid.

There can be a great economy even if there is an indemnity. Each of these contracts has had a clause inserted in it to deal with this possibility, and advantage should be taken of those clauses. In any event, there is a great wastage of material and labour even where there is no considerable financial saving possible. I would ask the Financial Secretary to be quite sure to remember to answer the questions which my right hon. Friend the Member for West Bristol addressed to him. We are anxious to have some idea as to how much of next year's expenditure is to come out of borrowing. We are being asked to pass this Bill now, in advance of the Budget. Had this Bill come along a month or two later, one could have understood more exactly what the need was. I know that the Financial Secretary caanot give an exact figure, but he can give some indication and that, I think, we are entitled to have.

I would like to say a word in particular about Clause 3, the title of which is "Temporary Increase of Civil Contingencies Fund." I am very happy that it is temporary because it is clear that this method of finance would not do as a permanent arrangement, and I feel sure the Financial Secretary will tell us that the Treasury has no intention of using this particular method as a permanent means of financing State trading if State trading has to be indulged in. In connection with the money which is being asked for under this Clause, I want to make another appeal to the Government and to support what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) in the House this week. He stressed the need for a restoration of the terminal markets. We on this side of the House attach great importance to that. There are many reasons why that should be done as quickly as possible. In his speech winding up the Debate last night, the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade said

Where the real trouble comes, of course, is that deficit was made up in 1938, by invisible exports and those, as we all know, have Very largely disappeared today. That is the task, so far as exports are concerned, that we have to discharge—to make good the invisible exports by visible exports today."—

[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th February, 1946; Vol. 419, c. 2218.] I suggest that what we ought to do is to get back the invisible exports which we have lost, and there is no reason why we should not. Of course, we want to increase visible exports, but there is every reason why we should also get back our invisible exports. That would give great assistance to the Financial Secretary in balancing not only the Budget but in balancing what is even more difficult— the foreign exchange account.

There are other reasons besides the dollar position which make it desirable to consider the restoration of terminal markets. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary has considered the damage to the general structure of our economy by the non-functioning of those markets. I think it is more than possible—and I throw out the suggestion to the House— that the present food shortage would not be what it is if the terminal markets of this country had been properly working. We are asked in this Clause to find a great deal of money to meet contingencies which will involve the con- tinuance of State trading over a very considerable period. I do not know whether the Financial Secretary has a favourable or an unfavourable view of the commodity markets, but I do think the country is entitled to know what the view of the Government is. I think my hon. Friend the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) was quite right about that. We want to know what the Government's position is.

I suggest to the Financial Secretary that if he were able and willing to consult the right people, he would be able to find a means of restoring these markets and, none the less, maintaining for the time-being, at any rate, a considerable amount of the control which the present Government consider to be necessary. If these markets are not allowed to exist, there is a great danger that the facts of the situation are not clearly known. When there is no futures market, it is not at all surprising that great miscalculations are made with regard to the wheat supply in the world. All the various factors which come to the notice of dealers and traders in markets all over the world bring about a price, both for the present time and for the futures market, which gives an indication of the trend of supplies. No amount of statistical information accumulated in an office in Whitehall can be half as valuable as the information obtained in that way.

I suggest that there are likely to be serious world shortages of every kind until we restore our terminal markets. It may be that the Financial Secretary will tell us that the time has not yet come, but I think the time has come for him to make some announcement to the country of what the Government have in mind. We have other anxieties in these matters, because we know how necessary it is for the Treasury to maintain a strong dollar position. Anxiety has been expressed in this House once or twice about rubber, which is very germane to this, discussion, and we are anxious to know why the price of rubber sold in Malaya is only 10d. whereas the price of rubber sold in Ceylon is 1s. 6d. There may be some very good reasons, but, on the face of it, there is a very great loss of dollars which might be accumulated in this country. I do not wish to express a final view. I can think of reasons which might tempt His Majesty's Gov- ernment to fix a different price for rubber sold in Malaya than that sold in Ceylon. But we need an explanation of these things.

We on this side of the House, as my right hon. Friend has said, share the view of the Government with regard to Clause 5. None of us who has seen the work of the Comptroller and Auditor-General can doubt that there is every justification that his salary should be as high as those of the permanent principal officials of the great Departments of State. He is a servant of his House and not of the Executive, and it is our duty to see that he is properly looked after. On this occasion today, as my right hon. Friend has said, we do not intend to divide the House, but we do not want anyone to think that, because we do not vote against this Bill, we have not grave anxieties about the financial situation of the country. With that clearly understood, we will be glad to let the Second Reading of this Bill go through unopposed.

I speak again by leave of the House, and I will try to be brief. I think there has been a good deal of substance in some of the criticism made from the other side of the House this morning. We are asking for very large sums, and we do realise that fact very acutely, but I ask the House to believe that it is essential at this time, when we are clearing up after the greatest war the world has ever seen, that financial commitments of this kind, unforeseen in their totality, have to be accepted, and provision has, accordingly, to be made to meet them.

One of the troubles—I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol (Mr. Stanley) pointed this out— is that we usually pass the National Loans Bill after the Budget, and this year we are asking the House to reverse the process. We are today asking the House to give us the authorities set forth in this Bill, before the House knows what the Budget may contain. That is a difficulty, but it is an unavoidable difficulty since this time in Clauses 2 and 3 we are asking for additional powers and provisions which it is essential this House should pass before 31st March. That is the prime reason why we are coming to the House now, instead of later on in April, when far more will be known of the financial outlook than I am able to tell the House today. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol asked for some indication of the extent to which the powers asked for are going to be used. He, and none better, will recognise that it is impossible for me to anticipate what the Chancellor of the Exchequer will say when he opens his Budget If I did attempt—other hon. and right hon. Gentlemen asked this question, and perhaps 1 may answer them now—to give any estimate of what the gap next year is anticipated to be, it would be not only a guess but it would be taken as some indication of the actual deficit which may be, and probably will be, disclosed by the Chancellor in April. Therefore, it is impossible for me to give that. approximation, much as I would like to do so if that were possible.

I see the hon. Gentleman's difficulty, but I hope he also sees the difficulty in which we are placed. For the first time we are given no indication. We do not want to press it now, but I think in Committee we shall have to return to this point.

That, of course, is for Members opposite to decide for themselves. The House today is in a dilemma. I recognise that it is not usual to anticipate the Chancellor's Budget statement, or for a Bill to be put through in this fashion before that statement is made. I realise the difficulties, but I am unable to say more than that, and I hope the House will accept the position. With regard to what the hon. Member for the St. George's Division of Westminster (Mr. Howard) said, it is always possible for this House to stop supply if, when the Chancellor opens his Budget, the House comes to the conclusion that it is unsatisfactory. I do not say it is likely, but it is possible for the House, if dissatisfied with what the Chancellor had to say about his Budget, and its provisions, to stop Supply. That would be a check which some Members opposite seem to have overlooked.

Is that so? If we refuse to pass the Budget Resolutions, having already passed this Bill, would not the remedy of the Chancellor be to fall back on the borrowing powers we have already given him?

My advice is that that would not be so. Final control must, and does, inevitably rest with this House. During the coming year we are not going to get away from Supply Days. There will still be Estimates and Votes which will come before us, and the House will have full power to decide, as it should, how much money should be voted, and whether a particular Estimate is or is not correct.

Does the hon. Gentleman suggest that under the procedure in connection with Votes of Credit the House will have an opportunity of turning them down?

I thought it was generally known in every quarter of the House that Votes of Credit, which were essential during the war, will come to an end, and that we shall return to the normal method, which prevailed before the war. An Estimates Committee is to be set up, and Votes of Credit will cease.

The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Bristol raised further points, with which I would like briefly to deal. He asked the meaning of the words in Clause 1, Subsection (2):

"… whether before or after the passing of this Act.…"

The explanation is that at the moment negotiations are proceeding with Canada, and it is possible that negotiations may be opened—I do not say they will—with other States. Nevertheless, the contingency has to be provided for. In addition to the settlement which has already been arrived at with the United States, negotiations are now proceeding, as I have just said, with Canada. That is why that form of words is used in the Clause. The right hon. Gentleman also asked why the increase in the Civil Contingencies Fund is to continue until 31st December, 1950. The short answer is that the period of five years has been taken as the limiting period during which many of the difficulties we are now suffering, because of the war, may continue, but during which, we hope, most of them will be cleared up. The Supplies and Services (Transitional Powers) Act, for instance, provides for a five year period.

Are not the payments out of the Fund for short-term borrowings, to carry over? Why cannot the repayment date be earlier?

Before the war the amount that could be borrowed was£1½million. The capital of the Fund was set at that figure. That is completely inadequate for the difficulties which will face us during the next four years. At the end of the last war when the Fund was increased powers to borrow were increased to£120 million. It might well have been that the Government should have said they wanted£120 million this time, and have assumed that that would be enough. But in our view it will not be enough, because of the greater difficulties we have to face now, as compared with 1919-20. It does not mean that the whole of this money will be borrowed at once; it may well be that the -total will not be reached. The power, however, is permissive, and is sought in order to assist the Government.

That is not quite my point.

These extended powers to borrow up to£250 million must cease by the end of 1950, at the latest. I think that is a reasonable date to fix.

I was asked about trading accounts, whether they were to be published, and whether the House would have an opportunity, from time to time, of looking at them, considering them, discussing them and, if necessary, voting upon them. The answer is, "Yes" We hope that full publication of the accounts may be resumed at a fairly early date. But there are difficulties of manpower and other kinds, with which the House is very familiar.

Can the hon. Gentleman say in what form the accounts will be presented to the House—as Estimates. or in a separate form?

It is expected that we shall go back to the system which existed before the war

The hon. Gentleman says that the accounts will be presented if the facilities are available, and there are no staff difficulties. Is he not aware that public companies have to present their accounts annually, whether they are short of staff or not?

I did not want to be pinned down to an exact date. Now the war is over the accounts will be published, but the Civil Service, as everyone knows, is grossly understaffed at any rate, in some directions. Nevertheless, we have no desire to keep information from the House; that is the last thing we desire to do. As soon as it is physically possible and things become normal the accounts will be presented in the ordinary way, as they were before the war broke out.

The right hon. Member for West Bristol and others raised a quite pertinent point about the War Damage Clause, and asked whether anything was to be done to meet the undoubted criticism in the country about the working of the 1943 Act. I do not want to answer in detail many of these questions, but it is quite true that there has been a great deal of criticism about some of the provisions of that Act. We have to remember, however, that it was an Act passed with the consent of the parties in the House during the war. It was, in some ways. a shot in the dark. We did not know how some of the provisions would work out. It may well be that in the next few years the feeling of the country and this House will be that some Amendment is necessary; however, it is not for me today to give any indication as to what the Government's policy on that is. All I can say is that they are aware of these difficulties and that a solution of them is by no means easy. The difficulties between the value payment and the cost of works payment and the difficulties. of the differences in cost to many people is something which has caused many headaches, but a solution is difficult. It is one thing to rebuild a house which will cost far more than the builder is ever likely to get under the 1943 Act, but, on the other hand, there might be some feeling displayed if it were discovered—as undoubtedly it would be if the wording were altered drastically—that a person was getting a new house at the public expense for a building which was nearing the end of its days. These are points which I think it unwise to enter upon this morning, and they are questions which can be dealt with on another occasion.

I can appreciate the hon Gentleman not being in a position to give details as to what is taking place, but can he say categorically whether or not the Government are considering the introduction of an amending Bill?

That is not a question that should be directed to me, but the Government are contemplating the introduction of an amending Bill. It is not, if I might hasten to add, a Bill which deals with this point. Utility companies are not yet covered by war damage legislation, and obviously a Bill will have to be introduced to cover that field. Whether or not it will be possible at an early date to deal with the outstanding difficulties under the 1943 Act which time has brought to light is frankly impossible for me to say this morning. The point was also raised by the right hon. Member for West Bristol as to whether it would not be better as far as chattels are concerned to pay the war damage out of revenue rather than out of capital. The short answer to him is I think that it is all war damage, whether building, furniture or plant, and that being so it does seem best to regard it all as capital expenditure, rather than meet part of it out of revenue and the rest out of capital. As the Financial Memorandum says the expenditure for the plant and chattels' scheme is about£100 million as against£400 million for building.

The hon. and gallant Member for Holderness (Lieut.-Commander Braithwaite) was anxious about the prices paid for the purchase of goods. The accounts are going to be published, and the hon. and gallant Member will be delighted to know that the Comptroller and Auditor-General goes through these accounts. It is always open to him at any time to criticise anything he thinks should be criticised, whether it is prices paid or anything else, and he would naturally, as he has done during the war, draw the attention of the Public Accounts Committee to the matter. I think the Noble Lord the Member for South Dorset (Viscount Hinchingbrooke) hoped that the Contingencies Fund would not be used to cover loss of trade. He may perhaps be satisfied when I remind him that the net loss must in any case be voted by Parliament, and that it will come before Parliament in any case during the year to be commented on. The hon. Member for Stockport (Sir A. Gridley) asked me for information about what the trading Departments were doing; he will be glad to know that it is proposed in the 1946 Estimates to show the net amount required for each group of commodities, and then the public and the House will have an opportunity of asking questions, while hon. Members can debate the matter when the Estimates are taken. The hon. Member for the Westminster, St. George's (Mr. Howard) put three propositions to me and suggested that I might be able to give an indication whether the Government think them sound. I cannot speak for the Government, but they certainly appear to me to be sound premises on which to go, and I hope this Government, like past Governments, will generally like them. I think that has covered the main points that were made.

What about the terminal markets?

It is suggested to me that I should answer the right hon. Member for West Bristol, and I hope I have tried to do that accurately. He put to me a question whether it would be a good thing to restore the terminal markets, and what information it will be possible to publish when dealings in future are reintroduced. I certainly agree with him that that is normally a very good guide as to what is going on, and perhaps to some people it is much better than statistics, which may be gathered from the four corners of the earth. The answer is that we are living in a period when that kind of thing is largely, if not entirely, impossible. Perhaps I go too far if I say entirely impossible, but there are difficulties which he knows only too well to prevent a return to the normal methods of prewar days. We do realise perhaps that one day—and we hope that it is not in the too far distant future—many of these things will be possible, and that being so I trust he, with the rest of us, will look forward to that time, and in the meantime will possess his soul in patience.

:Before the Financial Secretary resumes his seat perhaps he will deal very briefly with the point regarding the salaries of the staff of the Comptroller and Auditor-General?

It is only the salary of the Comptroller and Auditor-General which is borne on the Consolidated Fund. The reason for that is I think, as the right hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Assheton) said, that the Comptroller and Auditor-General should be in a special position as far as money voted by Parliament is concerned. His staff, however, are in a very different position. Their salaries are borne on the usual Votes, and such increases as are being given to other members of the Civil Service in their grades will naturally also apply to the members of his staff in the usual way.

May I thank the hon. Gentleman for his promise that the Government have in mind the restoration of the terminal markets, and may I also remind him that I attach as much importance to the dollar position, if not more, than I attach to the estimating of the future food position.

I did not say that the Government had in mind to restore the terminal markets. What I did say was I hoped something of that kind might in the not too distant future be restored, but that was merely a hope on my part as an ordinary Member of this House.

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time." Before the war a Public Works Loans Bill used to be passed annually. During the war such Bills have been less frequent, but we are now likely to find that the annual Bill will be necessary again. Ordinarily the main purpose of the Bill is to authorise a maximum amount which may be advanced to the Public Works Loans Commissioners for the purpose of local loans until the passing of the next Bill. In the present Bill this is done in Clause 2, which proposes a limit of£150 million. During the war years the amounts so advanced were very much restricted. Now that the war is over we may well expect that very considerable sums may be needed, because as every one knows local authorities are faced with large programmes of capital expenditure for reconstruction, for housing, for education and for services upon which they may embark. In the second place, as a result of the passing of the Local Authorities Loans Act, 1945, local authorities' borrowing has been largely concentrated, as the House knows, in the Local Loans Fund.

It is difficult, of course, to estimate the rate at which local authorities will call upon the Government during the coming year, but it is felt by us that£150 million should be adequate. If, of course, it is found that that amount is not enough, then we shall have to come to the House and ask for an additional sum. This Bill is also normally the occasion upon which, in accordance with the law, loans which are unlikely to be recovered are written off as assets of the Local Loans Fund. Clause 3, as hon. Members will see, writes off certain further loans amounting in total to some£50,000, which were made under the Agricultural Credits Act, 1923. It is a long list, but full details are given in accordance with a promise made to the House very many years ago that such details would be inserted. I think it goes back to 1900, when a late Member of the House, Mr. Tim Healey, asked that it should be done, and ever since then it has been done year by year, or whenever this particular Bill has been introduced. Although such loans are written off so far as this Fund is concerned, they are not written off so far as the Exchequer is concerned. The Exchequer does continue, in so far as it can, to press for liquidation of the debt outstanding. Clause 4 deals with one loan of the kind which it is now felt has finally to be written off, and for which there is no hope of obtaining any recovery.

To return to Clause I, it deals with the appointment of Public Works Loans Commissioners. An Act of 1875 provided that these Commissioners should hold office for five years. Accordingly, ever since 1875 every fifth year the Commissioners have been appointed by name in the Public Works Loans Acts that have been passed. The present body of Commissioners were appointed by the Act of 1941, and their term of office will expire on 31st March this year. We hope the House will agree this is a very cumbersome, not to say archaic method of appointing these Commissioners. It is felt—as Clause I shows—sthat we ought to lay down. a new method, a method similar to that employed recently in the Bank of England Bill, under which these Commissioners will be appointed by His Majesty. They will hold office for a term and retire in rotation year by year and in Clause I power is taken to provide for this. We hope the House will agree to the change as a reasonable one. These Commissioners receive no remuneration. They are a body of devoted public spirited men, and I think this is an occasion when the House would like to pay tribute to the work that they have done in the years gone by. They play a very valuable part in the financial relations between the Government and the local authorities. Undoubtedly during the coming years they are going to play an even greater part, and have even more work to do. I think it is only right and proper that we should recognise that and pay due tribute to their ability and the devotion with which they have served the State.

Could the right hon. Gentleman tell us in respect of these Schedules—because I think it is a matter of considerable interest in connection with agriculture—what was the total amount issued by the Agricultural Credits Act, and what ratio the successive losses each year bear to the original capital advance? It would be of interest, especially with reference to the case of Mr. Thompson.

Whilst the hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary has an opportunity of collect- ing from his officials the detailed information for which my right hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. R. S. Hudson) -has asked, and which naturally he has not immediately at hand, there are one or two observations which I should like to make on this Bill from the point of view of hon. Members on this side of the House. We do not intend to oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, but I am bound to tell the Financial Secretary that we are not altogether happy about Clause I. As he explained clearly, this Clause brings about a very considerable alteration in the method of appointment of the Public Works Loan Commissioners. I was always brought up to believe that the present method of appointment by Parliament was a "very desirable one, and only last year the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, my right hon. Friend the Member for the Scottish Universities (Sir J. Anderson), said:

"For over 100 years, the Commissioners who are appointed by Statute and are, therefore, independent of the Executive of the day, have been charged with the function of making loans to local authorities, and their primary duty has been to see that the security for such loans has been adequate to ensure public funds against losses on the loans."—

[OFFICIAL REPORT 24th January. 1945; Vol. 407:c. 911-12.] In the past these gentlemen have been directly responsible to Parliament and not to the Executive. Clause 1 of this Bill proposes that in future they should be appointed by His Majesty. Hon. Members will be aware, of course, that appointment by His Majesty means, in fact, appointment by the Government of the day. It was suggested by the Financial Secretary that the present method of appointment is cumbersome and archaic. I do not know what there is cumbersome or archaic about appointments being made by the House of Commons. For over 100 years these appointments have been made by the House of Commons. The arrangement may be an ancient, as it is a respected, one, but I do not think the Financial Secretary showed us that it is in any way cumbersome and archaic. Nor did he suggest that the gentlemen who had been appointed had not proved to be fully equal to the tasks they had to perform; indeed, he paid a great tribute to the devoted work which they had done, a tribute in which I and my hon. Friends would like to join. I warn the Financial Secretary, however, that, although we do not intend to oppose the Second Reading of the Bill, we shall consider the matter carefully before the Committee stage, and we may well ask for some amendment to be made in Clause 1.

As to Clause 2, the sum of money mentioned in it is, of course, very much greater than the sum mentioned in any previous Bill of this sort that I can recollect. I understand the reason is that, since most local government borrowing will now be canalised through this channel, the sum involved is naturally likely to be very much larger than it has been in the past. That is the explanation which the Financial Secretary gave, and it gives all the more weight to the argument I am putting forward concerning the Public Works Loan Commissioners. There is all the more need for them to be entirely independent of the Executive and to be able to exercise, on behalf of the House, that care and judgment in the scrutiny of these proposals which we all agree they have exercised in the past.

Clause 3 deals with the question of agricultural credits, and possibly, before the end of the Debate, there may be some reply to the points raised by my right hon.. Friend the Member for Southport; if not, I have no doubt the Financial Secretary will be good enough to give us the information at some later stage. It is interesting to see, from the long schedule of loans which have, unfortunately, gone wrong, into what a sad state our agriculture fell in the years gone by. We are all gratified to know that the prospects of agriculture are brighter than they were then. There are no other points that I want to make on the Second Reading of the Bill. but I would remind the Financial Secretary that he must come to the House prepared to give very good arguments to convince us that what he calls the present procedure in the appointment of the Public Works Loans Commissioners is cumbersome and archaic and that there is reason to change a system which has been really satisfactory in its operation for over 1oo years.

There is one minor but important angle of the policy of the Public Works Loans Commissioners to which I wish to call attention, and I think this is the appro- priate moment. I wish to refer to the extreme difficulty which certain very valuable bodies have had over many years, and are still experiencing, in connection with securing loans. I refer to housing societies and housing associations, with which I have been connected for a number of years, and in which I am still interested. I know from my own experience that there has been extreme difficulty in securing a reasonable amount of loans for associations which are essentially non-profit making associations working for the good of housing and playing a very important part in the national interest. There was never in Old Jewry the kind of atmosphere of help and encouragement which these associations deserve. I know that from my own experience in going there. It was virtually a matter of going there cap in hand, as if one had to pray for some benefits instead of being in the position of asking for assistance for organisations doing something very much in the public good.

I am well aware that the public interest has been served in regard to these loans, and I am well aware, also, that there must be adequate security in connection with them. The associations for which I am speaking have always had the greatest difficulty in regard to the valuation of their new work or properties. Although the schedule of loans available provided 75 per cent. up to 90 per cent., in actual fact the associations secured a valuation which was very much below that valuation, if one takes into consideration the actual cost. By securing local authority guarantee for principal and interest it was, and still is, possible on paper to secure 90 per cent. of the valuation of the properties of these. housing associations. That is all very. well on paper. The valuation, however, has been so very difficult and so very conservative that, in actual practice, the associations have found that it was something in the region of 70 per cent. or 75 per cent. of the actual cost of their schemes. In that way they were entirely hamstrung and were generally unable to proceed with their schemes unless they went elsewhere for their loans. I think that is very wrong, because the Public Works Loans Commissioners should see to it that such organisations have a square deal and every help and encouragement. To bring the matter up to date, one of these excellent organisations, the Gloucester Garden Village, Ltd., has just received a letter from the Public Works Loans Board which appears to be perpetuating this attitude towards these associations. This particular Association, incidentally, is already building houses and has been granted loans in the Gloucester area. The paragraph reads:

" I am, however, to point out that the Board's loans are based on value and the valuation for the long term loan would presumably be considerably less than present day costs—

I repeat those words—

" considerably less than present day costs, so that it would probably be necessary for the Society, in the event of the Board agreeing to make a loan, to provide a considerable amount of the capital themselves."

Although I realise the necessity for conserving public interests, I think that that is a most unhelpful attitude, and I definitely dispute the principle of assessing the percentage of the loan on a valuation of something considerably less than present day costs. The Government should take their courage in both hands and work on the valuation of present day costs. It is all very well to think of the future when valuation may drop steeply, but I have never heard of the reverse process operating. I have never heard of a loans board suggesting going higher than 90 per cent. when there were low building costs and the possibility of their appreciation in the future. I regard this attitude of parsimony as wrong and regrettable in the present circumstances of housing. I do not want to labour the point but I feel that it is one which should not be overlooked, and I would point out that the Gloucester Garden Village, Ltd., has at least got going on housing and is actually now producing, and has been producing for some time, at the rate of two houses a week. That may sound very little, but the Gloucester Corporation has not produced any. The Association wants and is able to go ahead increasing the supply of houses, but it is being cramped and held back by this policy, which I consider to be very wrong. I hope that when we have a reply from the Minister he will give some kind of assurance that non-profit organisations of this kind, doing a public service by helping in the housing problem of this country, will be treated in a much better way by the.Public Works Loans Com- missioners than seems to be indicated by what I have said and by the letter to which I have referred.

It is not only this one association that is affected. There are many others already at work producing houses in various parts of the country. Many are going to the Public Works Loans Board and others want to do so, but if this strange theory of pegging down the loans because of the present high housing costs continues, I think the public interest in the matter of housing is being seriously jeopardised and negatived.

If I may speak again by the leave of the House I will reply to the few questions that have been raised. I am grateful that the House has accepted this Bill as being on the whole a reasonable one, although I fully understand that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite may feel that some Amendments are necessary on Committee, and that they will do their best to press them. Briefly the answer to the right hon. Gentleman, the ex-Minister— I will not say the late Minister—for Agriculture is that the total loans made under the Agricultural Credits Act, 1923, amount to£4,700,000. Of that sum£2,500,000 approximately has been repaid. The amount in arrears and outstanding at the moment is v170,000. With regard to the point made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London (Mr. Assheton), it is felt that a change to the new method of appointing the Commissioners is desirable in spite of what he had to say. Parliament will still have as much control as formerly over the work of the Commissioners, but the old method of naming these gentlemen once every five years in an Act of Parliament is, in my view, and I hope in the view of the House generally, rather archaic. They will be none the less independent because of these new methods of appointment than they were in the past.

In these days when there are enormous calls for men of this calibre to serve on boards of one kind or another, it is essential that we should have a more flexible system than has obtained in the past. Now and again Commissioners leave the board and others have to be appointed in their place, and it is much better that the newer methods should be used rather than the old one, which, I agree, has obtained over many years. The new procedure does help us to get the right men for the right job, and as the Commissioners pass on to other work or feel that their work as Commissioners has come to an end, it makes it possible to fill vacancies in a simple manner. However, it will be for the right hon. Gentleman, if he feels strongly on the matter, to argue it out in greater detail on the Committee stage.

The reply to my hon. Friend who sits below the gangway is that these housing associations who seek loans usually desire—and I am not blaming them since it is perhaps natural and human—to raise a higher percentage of the value of the property than the Government think is reasonable. We have to see to it that we do not create a loss on loans that are made because that would mean that the taxpayer would have to bear it. In fact, the Inland Revenue Department are consulted in these matters. I agree that, as the hon. Member said, many of these associations quarrel with the valuation which is placed by the Inland Revenue on the properties upon which they seek a loan. I am afraid that I cannot hold out to him any hope that the procedure will not continue to be followed in the future because it strikes us as the commonsense one and as the one which the taxpayers generally would want us to adopt. We do not want heavy losses. As the House has seen some now and again are inevitable, but we have, if we can, to proceed with a proper regard to the fact that we have to safeguard the taxpayer's interests. Short of that, I think the hon. Member will find that in the future the Commissioners will be anxious to help housing associations such as he has mentioned in their efforts to build what are after all the houses which the people need so badly and which they should have in the coming decade.

I beg to move, in page 1, line 8, leave out, "fifth day of February, nineteen hundred and forty-six," and insert:

" thirty-first day of July, nineteen hundred and forty-five."

It will probably be for the convenience of the Committee if we consider the Amendment in connection with the next Amendment upon the Paper, in page 1, line 18, leave out from "the," to end of Clause, and insert:

" calendar year nineteen hundred and forty-three."

No.

There appears to be a difference of opinion as to the convenience of the course suggested by the hon. Member.

Upon closer examination of these Amendments the hon. Member will find, I think, that the second Amendment has little or no relation to the first. They relate to two totally separate subjects.

We shall see as we go on what connection they have. Let me explain the effect of the Amendment which I am moving. It proposes to put back to 31st July, 1945, the qualifying date on which the payment of£2 per acre would be given in relation to the ploughing up of temporary grass which had been sown for three years. I am glad that the Minister himself is here, because this is an important discussion. We do not feel that the Bill is likely to be an effective instrument in getting more grain grown for the harvest of 1946, but we want, if possible, to make the Bill a fair instrument in operation.

In our view, the Bill, and particularly Clause 1, will not operate fairly. We should like to know why 5th February has been chosen as the qualifying date. It is the date on which the Minister of Food and the Minister of Agriculture woke up and told the House how very serious our food prospects were. I am not sure that that is a good reason for commemorating 5th February in the Bill. Farmers do not work to the awakening of Ministers but to cropping seasons. We take 31st July as the end of one cropping season and 1st August as the beginning of the next cropping season. That is why we suggest in our Amendment that the qualifying date should be alter 31st July, 1945, so that all farmers who ploughed up temporary grass that has been sown for three years, for tillage cropping in this season, should qualify for the£2 per acre payment.

If the Clause as drawn by the Government is allowed to stand it will mean that the most progressive, patriotic and far-seeing farmers will be disqualified, while laggards who were rather hoping that they might leave their temporary grass fields down for another season without the job of cropping them for this year, are being offered a present of£2 per acre. In my part of the country we farm to a high standard. I think that is true also of other parts of the country, that feu leys are considered good enough to leave down for more than two seasons. We plough them up in July, August or September and so bring them round for the next harvest. That is what the farseeing farmer has done. He is a man who is not only fanning to a high standard for his own cropping, but the man, who, in this very difficult juncture, is serving the country best. He ploughed in those leys in the late summer or the early autumn and is now going in for wheat, growing the grain from which this country will need her harvest in 1946.

The Minister has not been at all consistent by choosing 5th February as the qualifying date. We had some little discussion in our agricultural Debate about the possibility of restoring the 4 per acre grant for wheat, particularly to spring sown crops. A good many of us on these Benches felt there would be little response to the Minister's appeal unless the farmer who did put in spring wheat was assured that he had at least that£4 per acre payment. The Minister, speaking in that Debate, said that he could not possibly suddenly, in the middle of the season, alter the wheat price, because it would be most unfair. He also said:

" First, it will have to apply, to be fair, to all farmers who responded to our appeal in the autumn of last year, to make the same acreage payment that we make to anybody who sows wheat in the spring. We have to be fair. all round, to those who respond on every occasion an appeal is made."—

[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th February, 1946; Vol. 419, c. 673]. In the same Debate the Minister was at pains to tell us that he had, through the autumn and repeatedly in December and January, asked farmers to grow wheat on all suitable land. The man who by this clause is debarred from the£2 per acre ploughing payment is just the man who responded to the Minister's call. The Minister must be a little bit more consistent. Either it is right to give the£4 per acre to all wheat grown for the 1946 harvest, or, if that is not right, the present proposal cannot be right to give suddenly from 5th February,£2 per acre for ploughing up temporary grass sown for three years, but not from the beginning of the cropping season.

It may be said that the Amendment would cost the Treasury a great deal of money if the period were extended back to the beginning of the cropping year, 31st July, 1945. In the explanatory Memorandum to the Bill I see that it is stated:

" The increase attributable to the Bill in sums payable by way of ploughing grants is expected to be of the order of£½smillion during 1946."

One and a half million at£2 per acre is 750,000 acres to be ploughed up. I think most practical men would question whether the present policy of the Minister is likely to result in 750,000 acres of temporary grass being ploughed up this year. I see no signs of it happening in my part of the country. I wish I did. I suggest, therefore, that if the country is prepared to lay out£1,500,000 on this project this year, that money should be used fairly by making these ploughing up grants retrospective to July 31st, 1945. The Treasury may have some other argument, but I hope the Minister will reply that he can accept this Amendment, if not now, perhaps at a later stage, because there are a great many farmers who feel that this is not only an inadequate but an unfair measure.

1 rise to support this Amendment, which I hope the Minister will accept. If he does, he will only be following the same principles that he has already accepted through the Forestry Commission in their latest instruction about the Dedication Scheme for woodlands. If he accepts the Amendment, he will only be ensuring that those who get off the mark quickly do not receive fewer benefits than those who are slow to respond to his call or to the calls of good farming.

Secondly, I hope he will accept our date rather than that which stands in the Bill because it is nearly always, if not always, undesirable in the farming world to accept dates for administrative purposes which mean little or nothing to a farmer. I tried to think why February 5th has been chosen. 1 did not arrive at the same conclusion as my hon. Friend. I thought the Minister had probably tried to choose the ancient customary date of Candle-mas and had got it three days wrong. However, if he had, it would have been of little interest to farmers because Candlemas is not an important date in the ploughing calendar if you take England as a whole. I know that in the industrial world and in particular in the industry with which the Parliamentary Secretary has the honour to be connected, it is a practice to make timetables and to expect your trains to run in accordance with those timetables. In Industry this can be done, but when it comes to agriculture, I beg the Minister to choose for administrative purposes those dates which mean something in the farming year and which will simplify the immense administrative problems which now face the farmer.

I rise to support this Amendment and to support my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd). I also am puzzled by the extraordinary date of 5th February, and I cannot see why that particular date should have been selected. I feel that all hon. Members on all sides of the House should support this Amendment, as it concerns the man who has had the foresight, which His Majesty's Government have not had, to foresee the acute food shortage which was likely to occur and therefore ploughed up his land last July. Surely that enterprise should be recognised by His Majesty's Government? I hope the Minister will agree that the farmer in Cornwall has had to make superhuman efforts, in face of the shortage of labour, in order to produce our food and that this foresight which he has shown, should be rewarded by amending the date to July, 1945.

The purpose of this Amendment is not to defeat the objects of the Bill in any way but to improve the Bill. It is described as an Agricultural Development Bill, but its immediate purpose is the production of more home-grown food. Now, admittedly an increase in the acreage could bring about an increase in home-grown food, but how much more would that be so if it were allied with good husbandry and good farming. In all our discussions and debates about agriculture I think we all agree that ultimately and at all times farming must be efficient. Subsidies of one kind or another are probably necessary at present but, in the end, farming will have to stand on its own feet and be self-supporting. Its ability to do so will undoubtedly depend upon its efficiency. To do those things which should be done at the time they should be done, and not to do things which are unnecessary, would be my definition of efficiency, either in business or in farming. Now the Minister of Agriculture must, of course, try to encourage farmers to put more acres under the plough, but early ploughing is the prerequisite of a good seed-bed, of a good crop, of an early harvest, and I think that if we are to encourage the farmers at the present time to grow more food, the question of fair play must be considered, for it is undoubtedly at stake Those of us who are asking the Minister to accept this Amendment are pointing out that the farmer should get ahead. with his ploughing in the early autumn, and the farmer who, in his wisdom, realised that there would be a shortage of home-grown food is the man who deserves encouragement, just as much as the man who is encouraged now by this bait of£an acre to plough up a few more acres.

I am, perhaps not unnaturally, deeply. concerned about this matter, coming as I do, from the North of Ireland where we have a very heavy rainfall. We have a 36 inch rainfall in the year, and it rains on 220 days as compared with 188 days in England and Wales and 211 in Scotland. Therefore, the planning ahead of our agriculture is very important, and this Amendment applies very much to Northern Ireland. In supporting this Amendment I am backing those farmers who, by their foresight, have ploughed up more land and who can get the crop in, on time.

I realise that in saying these things and in drawing attention to the heavy rainfall over there, I am probably getting myself into sore trouble with some of the other interests over on the other side, but I hope it will not scare any of my farming friends in different parts of the House from coming over to see us. There may be a lot of rain but, if they come, we will see if we cannot put something into it; we are a great people over there for brewing a good pot of tea. After all, the rainfall has gained for us the very picturesque title of "The Emerald Isle ", and it is accountable for that extraordinary greeness of which I, as a new Member of this mighty Parliament, am probably a very good example, as I am only too well aware. I would ask the Minister of Agriculture to consider this because in Northern Ireland, which is essentially a milk producing country, the acreage under the plough has been increased to 900,000. It is at the present time shipping enormous quantities of food to this country, although we are on the same ration basis as you are over here, and I hope and believe it will do more. It is interesting to realise that in the winter months we are shipping in liquid milk over 3 million gallons to this country, as well as 150,690 fat cattle. I could go on quoting other instances of that. I feel that now the momentum is up it should be maintained.

So, without wearying the Committee with a lot of figures, I will end my remarks with an Irish "bull ". It is that we are encouraging 'the Minister to go forward, while we are asking him to go backwards as far as July, 1945, because we believe that in so doing he will be giving fair play to those who deserve it, that he will be encouraging good husbandry, and that the industry will be animated by a sense of good will, which it will lack unless fair play is granted to all farmers who ploughed in the autumn, as well as those whom we hope will plough in the spring.

Those hon. Members who are putting forward this Amendment seem to have quite overlooked what is the object of this Bill. It is not designed to make a handsome present to any one, it is not designed to make a handsome present to a farmer, to an efficient farmer or any other sort of farmer. It is designed in order that we as a community should get something which we would not otherwise get. The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd), who moved this Amendment, said that the best farmers only left their leys for two years, and probably ploughed them up after that time. Be that so, they have ploughed them up, but some farmers decided to leave them a little longer. They decided to do that, I presume, because they think it pays them to leave it a little longer, and since we want more ploughed up land we want to give them an inducement to plough up. The farmer who has already ploughed up has taken his decision for his own reasons, because, as the hon. Member has said, he considers it good farming to plough up after two or three years. He has not done it because of the Minister's advice, but because he considers it to be good farming. There is another man who thinks it will pay him best to leave land under grass longer, and the object of this Bill is to try and make him change his mind by offering him an inducement to do so. The Government and the Minister think that it is worth paying him£2 an acre to induce a certain number who have made one decision to change their mind and take another decision. That is the object of this Bill, and this Amendment seems entirely. to forget that.

The previous speaker suggests that this subsidy for ploughing up leys is in no way a present. I agree with that. It seems to me to be a very lucky dip for some farmers who plough up after 5th February, and not earlier in the season. I rise to support the Amendment because I feel that the whole agricultural policy is wisely and essentially a long term policy, as it must be in all farming. It is most unwise to change policy suddenly, in little snippets here and there. We have already seen the Government doing that in the withdrawal of food coupons for pigs and chickens, and causing great hardship to people setting up in poultry farming after the war. It seems to me a rather pettifogging policy, and not a broad policy such as we all welcome for agriculture. I come from Cheshire, which is renowned for its fine milk pastures. Before the war there was very little ploughing, but owing to patriotism—I think we still have some patriotism in Cheshire—we are not hard-headed farmers, because we lack some Northamptonshire farmers—and to the directions of the Minister of the time, a large amount of ploughing up was done during the war. Three or four year leys have been put down. I know quite a number of farmers who have this winter ploughed up their leys because they felt it was the right thing to do. Throughout last autumn the Minister urged people to grow more wheat. Not only once or twice but continually, he urged farmers of this country to grow wheat on suitable land. At Norwich, on 26th January, he is reported to have said:

" We still want plenty of wheat to be grown In view of the strain that is going to be put on the world's food resources this winter, this is a serious matter."

He went on to appeal for more wheat.

Would the hon. Member quote the Minister's first statement of last autumn, regarding the growing of wheat?

Which statement?

I understood the hon. Member to say that during the autumn the Minister had exhorted the farmers to grow more wheat. Could he quote the autumn statement, not the January one?

I cannot quote that statement, but I will quote one which was reported in the Press on 5th December, when the Minister gave a serious warning. He is reported to have said:

" The food resources of the world are going to be taxed to the uttermost limit. To meet the world's needs, both during this winter and the next, the maintenance of wheat supplies is therefore vital. Not only is there an urgent need for all the wheat which can be grown, but a sure market for it as well. I therefore appeal to farmers most strongly ' Grow as much wheat as possible on suitable land where it can be fitted into the rotation '."

I submit that in response to that, and to many other earlier appeals on the part of the Minister, who made them so eloquently at that time, many people in my part of the world tore up good young leys which otherwise they would not have done. I submit further that in view of that they should have the benefit of this small amount of subsidy under this Bill.

1 would submit to the Committee that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) founded his speech upon a fallacy. He tried to put it across to the Committee that all farmers ploughed in the autumn and that no cultivations are reserved in any part of the country until the spring, and, therefore, that land that was not ploughed up by 5th February would not be ploughed later I do not know what has happened to Northampton. Before the war they never knew there what a plough looked like. Therefore, some of his fallacy is due to the fact that before the war ploughing was not carried out very much in that great hunting county.

If the hon. Gentleman will pardon me, I did not suggest that the Minister made the statement in October. I was trying to obtain from the hon. Member the exact date when the first statement was made. I shall be glad if the hon. Gentleman can give me that.

I think the first statement was made in reply to questions on 15th October when the Minister said the growing of wheat on unsuitable land would be quite unjustifiable. He said that in reply to a question by me and also in reply to a question by the hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher). He made a very similar remark which I would not like to quote because I have not got it in detail. It was to the same effect, that he was discouraging farmers from growing wheat on unsuitable land. Other farmers in the country were looking round and seeing what was happening. They heard about the great drought in Australia and the Argentine. They realised that we had to feed the great liberated countries of Europe and they woke up to the fact rather earlier than did the Government. For that reason they ploughed up, not merely for the money motive put forward by the hon. Member for Northampton but for patriotic motives.

I think the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture will agree that during the war farmers have acted from patriotic motives. The farmers realised what this country requires of them and they have tried to fulfil that requirement. It does seem to be odd. I tried to think of a parable in the Bible that would be appropriate. It is not quite a case of the labourers in the vineyard. The appeal is made at the first hour and some farmers go to it. It is continued, and at the eleventh hour those farmers who then answered the appeal do not get the penny reward similar to the labourer of the first hour; they get in addition the£2 subsidy which the others do not get. I am quite certain if that parable had been put forward it would have carried even greater weight than that even greater parable of the vineyard.

I suggest it would be very unwise to limit these words to the 5th February. I should have thought that it was very distasteful to the Minister and that it would have been a black day in his diary, the day when he and his colleague had to comedown to the House and confess to a gross miscalculation. I should have thought that he would far rather wish that. it was forgotten. I do not know if ever there was any precedent in any Act of Parliament for dating the subsidy on a confession by a Minister of a mistake he has made. I think it is the first time this has happened. The normal way for subsidies is to date from the cultivation year. For that reason my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) has suggested the insertion of 31st July, 1945.

There does seem to be a little difficulty about this. If this Amendment is carried, as I hope it will be, it will follow that some alteration will have to be made to paragraph (b) at lines 15 to 20. I want to draw attention to that because the Minister in an interjection earlier, when we were moving this Amendment, seemed to imply that no such alteration would be required. If this Amendment is carried then, unless we put an alteration in lines 18 and 19 it would mean that certain farmers would be able to get a subsidy in respect of ploughing of a one year ley while others would only get it for a two year ley, dependent on whether the ploughing was carried out in the calendar year 1945 or the calendar year 1946. I wish to make that point now so that the Minister in his reply—

I do not agree with the interpretation of my hon. Friend. I think I have already said that there is a distinction between the two Amendments. One is expansive; the other is restrictive. I will deal with that second Amendment when the times comes.

If this Amendment is carried the Committee later on will have to make some alteration to paragraph((b.) We will have plenty of opportunity later in the afternoon to discuss that.

There is one other point I wish to put to the Minister of Agriculture, and I hope when he replies he will deal with it. This Clause is phrased in relation to "the ploughing up of land after the 5th February, 1946." What is to happen in the case of a field where the ploughing began before 5th February, 1946, and is not completed until after that date? Under this system is that going to qualify for subsidy? After all, certainly in the hill land where labour is not easy to obtain and ploughing. takes a long time, I know of many fields where ploughing was begun in November and not finished until February. The work is also dependent on snow and frost. I was watching a farmer ploughing such a ley only 10 days ago when it was borne forcibly to my mind and I said, "Are you going to qualify for this new subsidy? "He said," Well, I began this some time ago but I am hoping to finish it in the course of this week." I hope the Minister will deal with that point. It is a point that should not arise because the subsidy should be based on cultivation years. If we have some artificial date such as 5th February, this will be a point which will frequently arise. I hope the Minister will realise that there is considerable force in this Amendment which was very clearly put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury. I hope the Minister will recall his own words, which have been quoted, that he wants to be fair to all and those who have responded early to his appeal should get the same reward as those who respond at the eleventh hour.

I had no idea until a few moments ago why the Minister fixed on 5th February as the date when this should begin to operate. Now we all know; it was "Confession Tuesday". It does seem a very funny date to choose. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton). I should have- thought it was a date the Minister would have been more inclined to forget, if possible, than bring constantly to his memory, because it was a black day for His Majesty's Government. The answer to the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) is that of course the fundamental reason for introducing this Bill is the gross miscalculation made by His Majesty's Government. If the Government had not miscalculated to the extent they did, and misled the country, then there would not have been any necessity to bring in this eleventh hour inducement. The country was misled particularly by the Minister of Food. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture is a little more innocent than the Minister of Food—not much, but a little. "Inducement" was the word used. by the hon. Gentleman, to get people to plough up before it is too late. I do not like these eleventh hour inducements.

Surely there is a little inconsistency in this argument. On the one hand it is said that farmers should be rewarded because they want to co-operate with the Government and follow the Government's advice that more wheat should be grown, and on the other hand it is said that the Government did not give sufficient warning.

The answer is that the Government did not issue sufficiently grave warnings. Certain farmers had prescience to ignore the attitude of gay optimism taken up by the Minister and did the thing for themselves, and did it in time.

Does the hon. Member mean to say that the Government before last July did not issue directions in time, since he is supporting an Amendment which only deals with events after last July?

No, I am only pointing out that His Majesty's Government did not issue sufficiently serious warnings, either to the farmers or to the mass of the people.

Before July last or after?

Both. It was perfectly clear long before July last, when I was in the United States of America, that the food situation was getting very serious even then. I do not want to waste the time of the Committee in speeches of my own invention, but I have a letter here from one of my constituents in Turriff, which is one of the best agricultural districts in the best agricultural county in the best agricultural country in the world. It says:

" It means that an enterprising and forceful farmer, who has made the best of the open winter and has all his third year's grassland ploughed before February 5, gets nothing; whereas his more leisurely neighbour gets£2 per acre for what he ploughs now that spring is here.

It is going to be the case of the early bird missing the worm with a vengeance.

And what is going to happen when a farmer claims the subsidy for the portion of a field? Is his calculation of the remnant to be taken for granted or is some paid official going to be sent to measure it? "

What is going to happen to the farmer who, owing to the weather, was necessarily delayed in ploughing up his land, and where some was ploughed up before 5th February and the rest afterwards? That very fact makes nonsense of the proposal. The Minister will be well advised to give to all farmers, the early birds and the late, the same reward. It is in any case not a very grand reward for the labours with which they are now expected to save the Government.

I want to support this Amendment. This is an emergency Measure and as the hon. Member for Aberdeen and Kincardine, Eastern (Mr. Boothby) and other speakers have already shown, it is based on a miscalculation of the Government's. It seems a very dangerous precedent to contend that this comparatively small sum is being offered to agriculturists who change their mind late in the season. It is altogether wrong that the reward whatever it may be should go solely to those agriculturists who are late in their ploughing. My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) has already said that the agricultural year is the cultivating year. If owing to a miscalculation by the Government it is necessary to get more land ploughed, it is our contention that the subsidy should be given to all farmers irrespective of the date they actually ploughed their land.

I think we ought to get this question from the background of the Order which took off the£2 per acre in the early part of last year. That is when the first mistake was made, and not when the Minister made his pronouncement in February this year. The reduction of the wheat acreage last year gave farmers the impression that wheat growing in this country had now become rather restricted. When farmers began planning last autumn, they were still under that impression. I tried to obtain from hon. Members opposite the date when the Minister first made his appeal to farmers to grow more wheat and the first date was 5th December. The statement made that the date was 15th October was in relation to a question when the answer advised farmers not to grow wheat on marginal land, which is a different thing altogether.

Farmers in their cropping plans plan to grow a certain amount of wheat in rotation and they would grow another crop in place of wheat. In many cases they have sown barley which will bring in a greater amount of money than will wheat. Those who grow the barley, in addition to the larger amount of money they receive for the barley will get the wheat payment of 31st July. I could have understood the Amendment if the date had been put to the time when the Minister first made his appeal. If it was in December, I could have understood the Amendment if from that date farmers who responded to the appeal could have received the£2 wheat acreage payment. But I cannot understand the Opposition desiring to put the date right back to 31st July. I hope the Minister will resist the Amendment.

1 wish to add a word in support of the Amendment. There is no doubt that in the country as a whole amongst the farming community there will be a feeling of unfairness unless the right hon. Gentleman accepts the Amendment. I was in the same form at school as the hon. Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) and followed his career with interest. I find myself in this case considerably in disagreement with him. I am surprised at the attitude he adopted and the arguments he put forward. The Minister has the precedent in the retrospective grants to be made in the case of forestry. We are not trying to drive him but to enable him to keep faith with the agricultural community.

I merely rise to support the Amendment so ably moved by the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd). It is quite clear that what the Government propose not only looks unfair but is unfair. I am very sorry for the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture. I believe he is simply taking instructions from the Treasury in this matter. He knows it is wrong, and that we are just perpetuating another of those terrible meannesses concerning the farming community of which there have been too many over the years. If it is right to have the wheat, it is only right to do justice to those who grow it, and if they grow it before 5th February they should be treated in the same way as if they grew it after 5th February. I cannot see why a plan cannot be sympathetically considered both by the Minister and this House. I feel that the farmers, who throughout the war years have given of their best, are not being given a square deal by the Government today. I will not detain the Committee any longer except to say that I consider that the attitude of the Government is a monstrous breach of equity.

I had just made up my mind to compliment the hon. Gentleman the Member for Evesham (Mr. De la Bère) on his very modest intervention, but my thoughts ran faster than they should have done. It seems I was a little premature in believing that he was going to be pleasant about it. It appears to me that the Opposition this afternoon have turned themselves, after some little organisation, into a team of Micawbers, and yet I am rather surprised at their modesty. If they ask for the date to be fixed in July, 1945, why not in 1940? The logic of most of the arguments advanced by hon. Members this afternoon appears to me to be equally applicable to 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944 as to July, 1945.

First of all, I want to give the reasons why the date 5th February was selected, and then I will try to reply to some of the alleged arguments that have been used. The 31st July. 1945. seems to have been chosen very carefully by the hon. Gentleman who put down this Amendment. It was about four days after my right hon. Friend left Office and two or three days before I took Office. I do not think that I ought to step back into that neutral territory because, if there is any logic in the claims advanced this afternoon, then, clearly, the last Government were wrong in not having made ample arrangements for payment of a ploughing-up grant for three-year-old grass before the end of last July. However, I do not think the Government were wrong, and I will give my reasons in a moment. Prices for the harvest this year were fixed in February of last year. Therefore, the farmer who ploughed up any grass at all, either in July or later than July last year, did so according to the plan that he himself conceived to be in strict relation to good farming policy. I rather suspect that the good farmers, instead of welcoming, would rather resent hon. Members asking for something for nothing on their behalf In any case, this is not the first time that a similar proposal has been submitted. In May, 1939, I think, there was a proposal to provide for a ploughing-up grant The date fixed was somewhere in May, but, as today, so at that time, efforts were made to try to get an ante-dated period for the payment of the grant. The then Conservative Minister of Agriculture resisted and said he could not accept the proposal because it would not be sound business to make the grant retrospective beyond the date fixed. I am simply pursuing the good Conservative policy of 1939. It is almost certain that I would have supported the Minister in doing the right thing then.

Why did we make the change which brought about this small Bill? The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that it was the intention that the year 1946 should see a reduotion in our tillage acreage of about 450,000 acres. On 5th February—this is an anwer to the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby) and many other hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon—the policy was reversed. It was decided to maintain in 1946, by a ploughing-up policy, the same tillage acreage that we had in 1945. Therefore, to help those who from the 5th February were called upon by direction to plough up young leys to maintain the same tillage acreage as in 1945, the scheme of paying a£2 grant for ploughing up grass land from three years upwards instead of seven years was produced. One hon. Member said that some grass will be ploughed up that would have been ploughed up in any case and that the farmers will get the£2 grant, so why not go back to July, 1945. That does not seem to me to be a solid argument at all because, whatever date in whatever year was fixed for the payment of a grant of this kind, it is clear that the ploughing up would be bound to take place.

Might I inform hon. and right hon. Members opposite that the National Farmers' Union agree with our policy? They have not made any request for a retrospective date to July, 1945. They think that this is one form of helping the Government to achieve the objects of the Government, and they have not gone beyond that. Therefore, I cannot believe that hon. Members are really serious in asking us to go back to July, 1945. [Interruption.] Perhaps I had better not enter Into that argument because the hon. Member who moved this Amendment will remember who was in office in 1931 and all the subsequent years when all the depression he referred to developed. I blame no one. It was a House of Commons failing, and this country nearly paid a heavy price for it. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Newbury (Mr. Hurd) said—and I ask hon. Members to pay particular attention to the logic of his argument, if any, which I doubt—that the policy, in any case, will not be effective as we are not likely to get the acreage anticipated. Therefore, since the policy is not going to be effective, let us do the best we can by paying for work already done. I do not quite understand that kind of argument.

I should like to remind the right hon. Gentleman that I said that this was an inadequate instrument and unfair.

In other words, the policy will not be effective, so let us pay a sum of money back to July last year. Really, that is an extraordinary argument. The hon. Gentleman said the Minister must be more consistent—he would not change the acreage payment because he did not want-to break into the price-fixing system.

rose—

Perhaps the hon. Gentle man will allow me to continue.

But the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Treasury, and I want to say something about that.

The. hon. and gallant Member for Antrim (Major Haughton) made a very pleasant suggestion, and I am happy to be able to inform him that the one part of the British Isles which will benefit very materially under the terms of this Bill will be Northern Ireland.

Because they are the slowest.

I will leave hon. Members to argue that out for themselves. Northern Ireland farmers are expected to derive substantial benefits under the terms of this Bill because it is their practice to sow a good deal of their corn and to do a good deal of their ploughing up in the Spring. On the basis of the 750,000 acres, it is anticipated that Northern Ireland will plough up no less than 200,000 acres. So that I can assure the Committee that Northern Ireland will derive a good deal of benefit from the Bill as it now stands without the Amendment at all. The hon. Member for Westmorland (Mr. Vane) and the hon. Member for Bodmin (Mr. Douglas Marshall) were puzzled as to why we had fixed the date of 5th February. I am not surprised at that. A good many hon. Members in this House, including myself sometimes, are always suffering from some disease called "puzzledom." I have already explained that the date 5th February was the date when the announcement was made that the world food situation had deteriorated rapidly. It was on that date that the Government made up their minds that something must be done to help us restore our tillage acreage, and that was the date fixed for the commencement of the payment of this subsidy

The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Sir J. Barlow) said that what they were asking for was not a present. I do not know what the hon. Gentle man means. If he is not asking for a present for those who ploughed up grass from 31st July last year to 5th February, for what is he asking? The Government, in February last year, provided the prices for this year's crop, which included the ploughing of any grassland last year, that would meet the cost of the ploughing up of any grass ploughed up between July and 5th February. So that if he is not asking for a present of this extra£2 per acre for land ploughed up since that date. for what is he asking? It is just a present from Heaven that he is asking for, and I really cannot concede his point. Some hon. Members have said that since 1 appealed on 5th December—one hon. Member quoted the date—for the maximum wheat on suitable land, why should I not compensate those who ploughed up their land after July last year? Clearly there is no relation between the two dates, and I cannot see why, because I made an appeal six months after July, we have of necessity to go back to last July to start making payments for land that was ploughed up.

I think I have pretty well answered most of the questions that were sub mitted. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton) said that I made an appeal to farmers to grow wheat on suitable land, or not to grow wheat on unsuitable land, as the case might be. But that was months after July. Surely, he cannot tell me with reason, because we now are not prepared to pay this£2 ploughing grant back to July of last year, that we are acting unfairly? The farmers themselves do not think so, neither do the farmers' representatives. As to the charge of gross miscalculation made by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen, if there was any gross miscalculation before 31st July last year, it was neither the present Minister of Agriculture nor my predecessor who was responsible, because our policies were determined in February as to the 1946 harvests, and they involved ploughing up any grass that may be ploughed up. So that there was no miscalculation in December, January or February that could affect last July, August, September or the succeeding months. I would have expected in a Debate of this description that the hon. Gentleman the Member for East Aberdeen would lend his charm and cheer to the Amendment which has been moved, whether it be good, bad or indifferent, logical or illogical. I make no complaint. I have done that sort of thing myself when I sat on the opposite side of the House.

The hon. and gallant Member for Barkston Ash (Colonel Ropner) said it was a very small amount that we were offering. 1 could have understood him saying that£ 2 per acre for grass ploughed up from now henceforth is not quite what it ought to be, but I can hardly appreciate his argument if he thinks£2 per acre is not enough for land ploughed up sub sequent to July of last year. The hon. and gallant Member for Salisbury (Major Morrison) could only refer to the possibility of unfairness. I do not think hon. Members really believe in their heart of hearts that there is any unfairness attached to it. [Hon. Members: "Yes."] Farmers who ploughed up grass after last July did so because it was sound policy. They knew the price had already been fixed for their produce. Therefore, acting like good farmers, they did the thing in the way in which it should be done, and I do not think they are now asking for compensation. I certainly do not think they will charge the Ministry of Agriculture with anything approaching unfairness. As to the scandal in the mind of the hon. Member for Evesham this is only one of many.

Hear, hear. I could not agree more.

I would add that I am forced to the conclusion that this, like so many other scandals in his mind, is a fictitious one, and I hope that neither he nor his hon. Friends will stress the point that there is any unfairness—

If the Minister will allow me, I would like to say a word on that. I want to tell the Minister what is in my mind on that matter. What I did imply was that the Minister is absolutely ruled by the Treasury and cannot, there fore, always carry out those policies which he and his party would like to do. Treasury rule is very often unfair to agriculture, and I make no apology for saying that.

I can only say that I disagree with every word uttered by the hon. Member.

I would have been surprised if the Minister did not. My constituents would have been disappointed.

All I have to say in conclusion is this. If the Government had not produced this Bill to provide a£2 per acre grant for the ploughing up of grass between three years and seven years, there is not a solitary hon. Member opposite who would have asked for the£2 grant to be paid for grass ploughed up between July last year and February this year. There is not an hon. Member in the Committee, on the other side or indeed anywhere' else, who has asked the Government that question In any form whatsoever, namely, to pay a grant of£2 per acre for having ploughed up grass from three to seven years old between July last year and February this year. It is only the introduction of this Bill, as an urgent measure to help the farmers themselves to plough up leys perhaps earlier than they would have done, that has given rise to this Amendment this afternoon. I hope hon. Members will no longer charge the Government with any thing approaching unfairness in this matter.

I do not want to detain the Committee long before coming to a decision. However, I really do not think the right hon. Gentle man has adequately replied to the point about inconsistency. Surely, if he casts his mind back to the Debates that took place in the middle of February he will remember that the Government were accused from these Benches of having acted too late, of having delayed too long in warning the country of the perilous situation in which we found ourselves regarding food, and delayed too long in appealing to the famers to grow the maximum of wheat. I still believe that accusation to have been justified. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Food in the Debate on 14th February and the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Agriculture in the Debate on 15th February both attempted to justify their position by saying that in fact they had issued warnings. The Minister of Food said that as long ago as 26th October he had issued warnings in a Debate in the House about the very serious wheat situation that would face us during the winter. He was turning down a suggestion that we should make some contribution from our stocks towards the starvation diet of the Continent. He said it was essential that we should make the maximum use of, and get the maximum amount of, home grown wheat, and should not use grain capable of human consumption for feeding livestock.

So are we.

We, as Members of Parliament, are trying to keep that in view. When we see an obvious piece of unfairness, as we think, being perpetrated—it does not matter against

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment." The House will recollect that when this Bill was going through Committee certain Members raised a point with regard to these rather historical bridges. We were then unable to meet them, because certain financial assurances were necessary, but arrangements were latex made to insert this Amendment in another place, and I now ask the House to give it their approval.

I am sorry that the Minister of Agriculture has not seen fit to remain behind for this Debate on the fishing industry, although I am sure that his hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will do his best to answer the questions which I shall put to him. I was disappointed that so little was said about the fishing industry during the recent food Debate. I tried myself to catch Mr. Speaker's eye, but without success. In view of the grave food shortage in the country I should have thought that the Government would have immediately turned their eyes to a supply of food which is on our doorsteps, around our shores, and which is there for the want of catching. Not all is well with the fishing industry, and the Government should now do what they can to help the industry in the crisis that has arisen over the shortage of food. The Cinderella "of all industries is the fishing industry. After six years of reduced fishing, there is a great quantity of fish in the seas around this island. I would like, how ever, to offer a word of warning, that because of the under fishing during the war there should be some control now in the fishing areas to prevent over fishing.

At the moment, we see trawler skippers, engineers and mates walking the fish markets, unemployed. They are men who fought in this war as commanders of minesweepers and other naval craft. The same does not apply to deck hands and others, but it does seem to be wrong that the men I have mentioned should be now out of a job.

I blame this Government, and past Governments, for the lack of interest that has been taken in the fishing industry. It has always had a raw deal. It was referred to in the Gracious Speech, but nothing has since been said or done about the industry as a whole, except inshore fishing. Vessels are getting very old indeed. I am told that the average age of steam trawlers and herring drifters from this country is over 30 years, and vessels have been maintained under great difficulty. There are now building in this country 50 large steam trawlers, of which 38 are for export. It may be a good thing for the President of the Board of Trade to export, but I suggest that for the first few months or years after this war we should feed our people to the best of our ability, and then export. I am sure that in the long run they will work better if they have more to eat.

Vessels were released last August, both trawlers and steam drifters. They are still not reconditioned. They have taken as long now to be reconditioned as the time in which a new vessel could be built before the war. Why should this be so? I suggest it is lack of co-ordination between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Admiralty. I know I shall be told that the Admiralty have given assistance in this matter. I suggest they should give more assistance, down tools with naval vessels for the moment, and get these fishing vessels serviceable and to sea.

I am very concerned about the future of this industry—the long-term policy. We shall not get the supplies we want un less we build new vessels in sufficient numbers. It costs today something like£25,000 to build a steam herring drifter and about£50,000 to build a 135 ft. North Sea trawler. Before the war the owners of these vessels, particularly of the herring drifters, usually made a loss. If they made ends meet, they were very fortunate. Consequently they were unable to put away any money in reserve against depreciation, or for a rainy day, and small owners have not the money to build new vessels. It may be argued that during the war years those fortunate enough to have vessels fishing made big profits. They have made big profits, but they were without a prewar standard, and when a profit of£3,000 was cut, by tax of 10s in the£ to£1,500 there was little left to put aside in order to build new vessels.

I am afraid that when the food situation, I hope sooner than we think, has been solved, and there is plenty of food in Europe, the fishing industry will again slide back to where it was between the two wars unless something is done. I suggest it is just as costly in proportion to build a steam fishing vessel as it is to build a house, and the Government should give real support by giving financial aid to these steam fishing owners. The herring industry is a very important one. I should like to see the Ministry of Food popularise the herring and encourage people to eat them. I am told that one herring is worth five eggs, not dried egg, but the real thing. That is a food that we can land by hundreds of tons. If the Government will see to the question of refrigerated space and distribution, we can improve our diet enormously throughout the country, and, in turn, even help the distressed people of Europe with a food they like and en joy—salted herring.

Herring nets are very short. The President of the Board of Trade has given a small extra allocation for inshore fishing, but nothing has been done to enable net manufacturers to get busy making nets for herring drifters. He should do this right away, because there are vessels waiting to go to sea but which have not got the nets. I know of one ex-skipper of the R.N.R. who bought a 35-year-old vessel two months ago for£3,000, and who is unable to take it to sea because he can not buy any nets. If we have to wait until July before the cotton is allocated, then the nets have to be made, they have to be tanned and processed, and they will only just be in time for the autumn fishing. I beg the Government to get busy on this point right away. It again points to lack of co-ordination.. There is the Minister of Food, the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. These three should work together as a team, and not allow these points to come up months afterwards, when it is too late, and we have missed our chance to get all the fish available.

Likewise I should like to see transport facilities improved to get the fish away from the docks quickly, and brought to the people while it is fresh. Quite recently at Grimsby 14 vessels were delayed for 24 hours in landing their supplies because the fish dock lumpers, the men who help to get the fish out of the boats, were not available. One day's fishing of 14 vessels represents approximately 50 tons of food, which is what the Minister of Food is expecting to import from Holland weekly. We ought not to lose valuable time in this way. The Government should get busy to see that labour is available at the place where it is required.

I would like to see more licences given by the Ministry of Food for opening wet fish shops, particularly to help ex-Servicemen. I am told that a licence is never refused, but I know of a case where one was refused. I should also like to see mobile fish shops, made by the conversion of some of these hundreds of lorries which we are told are parked in the Midlands, so as to get fish into the rural areas, where people are unable to buy it. In Congleton, a town in my Division, women have to walk 2½ miles to buy fish, and are lucky if they get it when they get there. They queue and they catch colds or the 'flu and there is more trouble in the family. I should like to see marketing improved throughout the whole country.

I ask the Government to treat this matter of the fishing industry—and if they do they will be the first Government that have done so—in a really businesslike way. There is a great opportunity here for them to show what they can do. A long term policy is needed. It is no use looking six months ahead. Give the fishing industry a policy covering 10 years ahead at least, and then these fishermen will play their part. Fishermen have done a tremendous job during the war, as they did in the last war. They have never grumbled; we never hear of fisher men striking. They work hard; their life is a pretty rotten one. We are often told about the lot of the miner, and I do not disagree, but the North Sea fisherman has eight or nine days at sea and is in port for a night. Most of the time he is at sea his clothes are wet, and he gets very little comfort. We should give him the encouragement which he and the small owner deserve and they will not let us down.

I am very glad to be able to say a few words about the fishing industry today and in particular to associate myself with many of the things that have just been said by the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air-Commodore Harvey). At the same time I hope that the Government will not consider that this necessarily short Debate, late on a Friday afternoon, is an adequate allowance for the questions arising in the fishing industry at this time, when there are both urgent immediate problems and long-term problems which require full discussion.

I agree with most of what the hon. and gallant Member said. I agree with him that to a very great extent the fishing industry has in the past been a "Cinderella "—I think that was a phrase used in a Debate some time ago by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby), whom I am glad to see present now. At the same time, there is an aspect of Government interest in the fishing industry to which I would call attention. It is that the industry does not always welcome Government interest. I would remind the House of a remark made by the Commissioners who reported on the herring industry in 1936. They said:

" The industry do not desire regulation, re-organisation, or planning of business upon an economic basis. What they desire, and have repeatedly asked for, is that they should be enabled to continue on their old uneconomic lines and that the losses consequent upon their so doing should be met by Treasury grants and subsidies which ultimately fall upon the general taxpayer."

I have no doubt that that spirit to a large extent has departed. The war has made a difference to the outlook of many people. At the same time, it is within my own short experience of the fishing industry that that outlook is not yet entirely dead. I am not sure that it is recognised in the fishing industry that assistance from the Government also implies on their part the readiness to accept some degree of control and reorganisation. Moreover, quite apart from the question of what might be called Government interference, the industry itself has been extraordinarily slow to agree within its different branches on the necessary measures for reorganising and rationalising their operations. There fore, I would like to make one first plea to the Government that they should appreciate that, in the matter of putting the fishing industry on a sound basis, the initiative must lie with them. They will have to supply the drive because there will be many people still in the industry who will simply cry "Hands off" in any matter except in so far as the Government seems prepared to give them some financial protection against competition from the foreigner.

My second plea is that the Government should regard the industry as a whole. Right from the fishing grounds to the breakfast table it is one industry, and I think that is probably what the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield had in mind when he spoke of the necessity for coordination between the various Minis tries. As I understand it, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is, if one may use generalities that are roughly accurate, responsible for the production side, where as on the distribution and marketing side it is more the Ministry of Food which is concerned. It must be appreciated that, in order to provide the right incentive and conditions for the production side of the industry, it may well be that the Ministry of Food can take more effective measures than can the Ministry of Agriculture. I do hope that the Government will take some steps, and, if necessary, set up fresh machinery, which will enable them to treat the fishing industry, as one singe operation from the catching of the fish to the eating of it.

There are two aims which Government policy must have. The first is to provide a steady reward and decent conditions for the men who actually catch the fish, and the second is that they must supply a good quality of fish at a cheap price to the housewife. Between these two, the fisherman and the housewife, there are, of course, a great many interests. Some are the legitimate interests of persons having to make their living, but I would ask the Government to regard them as secondary to those of the producer, on the one hand, and the consumer, on the other. I am not at all satisfied that all the many hands through which the fish passes are necessarily useful hands. There is a good deal of rationalisation that might usefully be done.

In the days before the war the fisher man could not count upon a regular reward for his services, nor could he count upon a regular job. He was unorganised and unprotected. Many a skipper found when he came in from a voyage that he had been fishing for nothing—through no fault of his own, but through the ill luck that heavy catches had come in just before and that the bottom had dropped out of the market. Moreover, he was unprotected at that time by any form of organisation, and if he made a complaint he might have found himself kicking his heels ashore for six months. These conditions really only changed when the scarcity of men arose during the war and when the trawler-men's pool—not a very popular institution—began to take an interest in the conditions of employment, and indeed of un employment, among trawlermen. I have no doubt that the time has come when we may legitimately consider whether the purposes for which the pool was instituted no longer exist, but I would ask the-Government, before the pool system is abandoned, to ensure that its more helpful aspects—those aspects which gave some stability and security to the fisher men—are replaced by another satisfactory arrangement and that they will not allow their controls to go until something else has been put in their place.

Fortunately there is one new element since the war, which, I think, will be found to make a difference in atmosphere. It is the increase in trade union organisation. I regard it as one of the most hopeful signs that for the first time the fishermen and dockside labourers— "lumpers" as they are called in Grimsby—are fully organised. They have some force at their back and someone to protect them. I do not wish to throw stones unnecessarily, but I do not doubt that they need protection. There are many owners, of course, who are very interested in improving conditions, and, as new ships come into use and others are released from naval service, they are doing their very utmost to improve the conditions of the men. Nevertheless, I do not think that the conditions of fisher men are as yet keeping pace with the improvements of working conditions in other branches of industry. When I was in the United States recently and was able to make some inquiries about conditions in New England, I was satisfied that there were some aspects in which the Americans are well ahead of us. I will mention just one which is not generally accepted in this country, even among progressive owners. In the United States the crews of trawlers are sufficiently large to permit the fishermen to work In shifts. In this country, from the moment when fishing starts to the moment when it finishes, the process is continuous The haul takes place every two, three or four hours, according to conditions, and certainly in most trawlers the crew is not adequate to allow the men to have a break. They may have to be on deck almost continuously for as many as 12 hours. Some times they snatch an hour's sleep when and where they can. When I told that to the trawler owners in Boston they were astonished and said that such conditions did not exist in America and that certainly their trade unions would not stand for it.

I do not know whether the hon. and gallant Member has ever been out in a steam trawler. I have myself and I would like to refute the re mark he makes that the men do not get time to sleep. In my experience they get three or four hours in their bunk in the back of the vessel and always have.

That may be true of certain trawlers, but in the one in which I went out it was not so. All available hands were required on every haul and, although on one or two occasions when a man was especially tired he was allowed a haul off, there was no system to allow them to have time off. All the fishermen, including very many experienced skippers, tell me that it is the practice that there should be no regular system for shift work. I feel sure that if the Americans can do it we can, because I am bound to say that from what I saw in America it seems to me that our industry has nothing to be ashamed of. I do think that that type of improvement is one that we shall have to make before long.

There is no time to go in detail into the other factors which made the fisher men's life so insecure before the war. One point was the fluctuation in prices which left him at the mercy of gluts of fish, and that I think is the thing that has aggravated fishermen most. The bottom drops out of the market and the price slumps for a day, two or three days, or a week. He suffers, and has to bear almost the whole of the brunt, while the housewife receives no corresponding benefit at the consumption end.

One of the first things that happened to me after being elected to this House was that I went down to Grimsby, where a brief strike was in progress. It had been caused by a slump in prices over August Bank Holiday. I found that the rewards for the fishermen for a day or two had dropped heavily, by more than 50 per cent., but the prices of fish in the shops had not dropped by a penny. I made inquiries and I found that the merchants had bought fish on the quayside, at knock-down price, had kept the fish until the price position was restored and then had sold it at the price based upon maximum quayside prices. We cannot expect fishermen to understand or accept that kind of practice as even an approximation of justice. If that sort of thing is to be remedied it must be by action on the part of the Minister of Food, although I have no doubt that the Minister of Agriculture can exercise a good deal of influence in seeing that such a state of affairs is put right.

I hope that, in accordance with what has always been the declared policy of the Labour Party with regard to the fishing industry, the Minister will encourage the setting up of refrigeration plants under public control so that fish will be there and can be released in order to pro vide stability and prevent any rigging of the market or the making of profit for particular people. I should like to associate myself with the request for the speedy return of trawlers from the Admiralty, the speeding up of reconversion, and if possible some additional allotment of the 50 new trawlers of which mention has already been made. It is certainly true in my constituency that skippers and mates who have done good work during the war are unemployed. Whether we shall be able to find employment for them all I cannot say, but certain it is that we can find employment for some of them if we can get the ships. There is plenty of fish to be caught, and the fish is badly needed.

Finally, I feel certain that there is plenty of good will and talent in all branches of the industry. I do not want to give the impression that the Government will find ill will but I am convinced that those who are progressive and looking ahead will need assistance from the Government. There are still prejudices and old inertias to be broken down before the industry is put in order. I am also sure that it is the Government who must provide the drive. If they will do so, this industry will provide a first rate living for the fishermen and first rate food for the people.

I was very sorry to see the Minister of Agriculture drifting away when the subject of fisher men came up. I was very glad to see him here when we were discussing agriculture, for 1 always regard him as a conscientious Minister. I am glad that the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scot land is with us, but he has no responsibility in regard to England, and still less in regard to Cornwall. The more I learn of the fishing problems of Cornwall, the more I feel I would like us to have an Under-Secretary of State for Cornwall, or even a Secretary of State.

I intend to speak of a matter of great urgency. The position is very serious indeed and threatens the livelihood, and even the existence, of our fishermen. I refer, of course, to inshore fishermen and not to those who work on the large trawlers, and whose case has been well represented by the speeches which we have already heard. I would remind the House once again that the inshore fisher men are the people who own their own little boats and who go out for 40, 50 and even 100 miles in this vocation, which is full of hazards. They are the men who manned our minesweepers and our patrol boats and did work which was of the greatest value to the security of our country.

I understand that prices are now being fixed for fish. Usually it is the fisher man who gets the minimum price, and the woman queueing up in London at the fish shop who has to pay the maximum price. The prices which inshore fisher men themselves have to pay have been going up for such things as oil, nets. The increase has been in some cases 100 per cent. We had an admirable Inshore Fishing Bill, but it must be re-emphasised that the cost of building boats such as I have in mind has gone up from about£3,000 to£7,000. In other industries, although prices have been rising, remuneration has been rising also to keep pace with rising costs. In the inshore fishing industry that has not been so.

That makes me all the more sorry at what is now proposed by the Government. Let me examine some of the prices that are put forward. First of all take mackerel. Before the war, the inshore fishermen received 3s. ' a stone for mackerel. I note that the very same price of 3s. a stone is proposed. In view of the rising costs, that price evidently will not do. The matter has been discussed by the fishermen, and I am sure that the men are right in saying that the price should be at least 4s. 6d. or 5s. a stone.

Then there is the question of ray and skate. Unhappily when prices are fixed for those fish the matter is considered only from the point of view of the large trawlers to whom ray and skate do not matter very much. Those fish matter very much in the total intake of the in shore fishermen. What is now proposed, 4s. 5d a stone is lower than the price to the inshore fishermen before the war. It is a very modest request that the price should be at least 5s. 6d. a stone. The men are dissatisfied at the suggested tanking price, for pilchards, of 2s. a stone, and say that 2s. 6d. a stone is the very least that should be suggested.

It is often stated that the inshore type of fishing is dying out. That is quite untrue. The fisherman himself wants to fish. Young men want to come into the industry, but they will not come in at prices such those now proposed be cause they will know that there is no future for them in the industry. We as a nation will lose the services of men who have kept us safe and who can bring us much-needed good food.

In consideration of the number of other hon. Members who desire to speak in this Debate, I propose to be brief and to deal with only one aspect of this very complex question of the fishing industry. I do not think there is very much wrong on the production side except temporary evils which in time, and I hope very shortly, will be removed, such as the provision of boats and adequate gear at a lower cost than the present very high cost of both those essential elements.

I shall confine my remarks to the question of distribution, because I think that is the deadweight on the fishing industry today. There is far too great a gap between what the fisherman receives for his hard work in producing the fish com pared with what the housewife has to pay for it, and if there is one thing I would like to direct to the attention of the Government it is that they should try to narrow this gap between the price received by the fisherman and the cost to the consumer. If the Government can do that, and I think it is possible, then we shall bring a measure of security and encouragement to the industry which hitherto has been completely lacking.

I would like to deal with the inshore fishing industry in my few remarks. It is a known fact that the fish caught by the boats which return to harbour every morning or every afternoon is prime fish. It is a far better and higher quality food than the fish which may lie in the trawler's holds for anything from 10 to 14 days. I charge those who run the deep-sea industry with destroying the demand of the British people for good fish because of the long periods in which trawlers are kept at sea without landing their catches. In contradistinction to the trawlers in the deep sea fishing industry the inshore fishing industry lands its fish within a few hours of the time it is caught, but there are a number of people who become very interested in the fish when it is landed, apart from the consumer. There are, I think, three or four, sometimes even five stages of distribution, and that is a dead weight on the industry.

I represent one of the Scottish constituencies where we have had a very flourishing inshore fishing industry in the days before the great war, and up and down the coast of Scotland one can see derelict fishing villages which once were inhabited by enterprising, thriving communities of people. I hope that this Government, by the action they take, will develop the inshore fishing side of the industry. I am sure they will take that action because, as an earnest of their intentions, they have for the first time given some assistance to the inshore fishermen through the Inshore Fishing Industry Bill. I see no reason why at least 40 per cent. of our catches should not be inshore fishing. It will be necessary for us to go further a field in this matter and see that the waters of the inshore fishing fleets are protected to a much greater ex tent than they are now.

I now come back to my first point, that unless we can narrow this gap between the producer and the consumer, any form of subsidies, any form of Government financial assistance, will not bring any lasting prosperity to the industry unless we are able, and I think we shall be able, to tackle this vital problem of bridging that gap between the purchaser and consumer.

We are all grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Air-Commodore Harvey) for having chosen this subject. It must be quite obvious from the course of this Debate that the sooner we have a whole day to discuss the fishing industry, the better. My hon. and gallant Friend drew attention to the long term and the short term aspects of the fishing industry.

I do not intend to refer to the replacement of the trawler fleet, though the need for this came very vividly before me when I was the chair man of a committee investigating the fishing industry in Scotland. At least two hon. Members have referred to the question of the price of fish. I agree with the hon. Member for Berwick and Hadding-ton (Mr. J. J. Robertson) about narrowing the gap between the producer and the consumer, as far as that can be done, though I think the Government have had enough experience during the war to know what is possible in that direction. What really does matter is the price which the producer receives. I am rather alarmed at rumours that the Government propose to make a pretty severe cut in the price of fish in the course of the next week or two. This happened last year. That cut cost the inshore fishing industry in Scotland alone£97,000. If the rumours I have heard are correct, the proposed cut will cost them about£175,000. The industry is not in a position to stand a decrease of that order. I am alarmed and suspicious about the Government's intentions towards the primary producer. One has seen what is going on in Malaya, and now there is this proposal to cut down the price paid to fishermen here Surely, if we have> learned anything between the two wars, we should have learned the lesson that this country, with its dependence on manufacturing, can never prosper unless the primary producers are given an adequate return for their fundamental work.

The only other point with which I in tend to deal concerns the inshore fishing industry. It is a grievance which a large number of us have been trying to get put right for a long time. It has been well ventilated by questions in the House, but we have still got no further ahead with it. It is the case of men who have had their boats requisitioned, and have had them lost while in service, or whose boats have been requisitioned, taken abroad and acquired from the men instead of being sent home again. I want to bring this clearly before the House: I am sorry that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has gone, as he might have kept my arithmetic right. Let me take the case of two fishermen, each owning a boat worth£1,500 when the war broke out, whose boats were requisitioned, and who were paid at the usual rate of£22 a month, or, say,£250 a year, for the hire of the-boat. The first man has his boat hired for four years at£250 so he receives£1,000. He gets a payment for reconditioning which may vary from£1,500 to£2,500, say£2,000 on the average. He then has a boat which he can sell immediately for£3,500 Take the case of a second man with an exactly similar boat. He loses his boat after one year's hire, for which he has received£250. The maximum compensation he can get, and the compensation is tied down to this figure by the Compensation (Defence) Act, is£1,500. He is left with£1,750 with which to equip himself with a new boat, and it will cost him at least£3,500 to get that boat. There are many other glaring anomalies. I have checked up on this and all the sums work out in just about the same way, whether it is a large or a small boat which is concerned. It may be said that these men can get restitution under the two Acts, the Herring Fishery Industry Act and the In shore Fishing Act. These men do not want to acquire debts. There is nothing a fisherman dislikes more than being in debt for his boat. He will do his best to keep out of it. I do not think it is fair to throw those men back on to the Acts, useful as they are. I hope that very wide use will be made of them. This is a particularly hard case, and it is not a particularly large number of men who are affected. I am trying to get hold of the total number of boats that have been lost.

I would suggest a practical way out of this difficulty, a method which I hope the Government will adopt. It may not be absolutely ideal from the fishermen's point of view, but the thing to do with these men is to give them first priority for the motor fishing vessels which have been built by the Admiralty, to give them these vessels in return for the sum they have been paid for hire and the amount of compensation offered, which is the value of the boat at the time of requisition. That should be the sum they have to pay. The men then have a boat with which they can start to fish right away. I want to reinforce the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Macclesfield and support his plea that the Government should be seized with a sense of urgency about this matter and should prepare in time.

I am not satisfied in my own mind that we did all we could about getting herrings over to the Continent of Europe last summer. I raised the question at the time and I was told that shipping was not available. That may or may not have been true, I do not know. There should be no mistake about it this time. I asked a question the other day of the Minister of Food as to whether herrings were to be exported to the Continent and he replied, "Yes, provided the herrings are there." The herrings are there. They have always been there. We have never been able to take all the herrings out of the North Sea, and we never will be able to do that. The whole trouble is we have not got the catching capacity. That is why we have been putting down questions on this subject about nets and urging the President of the Board of Trade to make a practical approach to this problem, and to see that our men who are waiting there to fish are provided with the gear which they must have if they are going to do the job.

If they get the nets, they can catch the herrings and we shall have all the herrings we want in this country. I expect we want a lot of them. I am very glad to know that the Herring Board are going ahead, especially in my constituency, putting up quick-freezing plant. There is a possibility of herrings being brought straight to London by sea this summer. I think people will find then that they are getting a class of herring they have never known before. In conclusion, I would say that I hope the Government are made to appreciate that this is a big subject for which the House needs a whole day.

In the space of one or two minutes I want to support the plea that has been made for the inshore fishing industry. In addition to the nets which are in short supply, there is also the question of protective clothing, oil skins and rubber boots, which are difficult to obtain. I hope the Minister will impress upon the President of the Board of Trade that however important the export trade might be—and it is important—it is equally important that these people should have protective clothing. I want to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to convey to the Minister the point that when he is looking at the fishing industry he should not think only in terms of the big ports. There are small, well outfitted and capable ports. I have the honour to represent one of those in this House. They are capable of making a substantial contribution to this industry and of helping to relieve the present shortage of food. I would suggest to him that, in consultation with the Minister of Transport, he should look at the problem of conveying the fish by the quickest possible method to the big centres of population. Before I came into this House I was employed in the railway industry. I know that there are difficulties and that the fish is not always in its best condition when it reaches large centres of population, because the best transport facilities have not been available.

I wish to raise two small points, and I am sorry I have not been able to give the Minister notice of them. There has been standing in Hartlepool Dock for four or five months a Danish vessel which, with some small conversion, could be used. The local authority have been in consultation with the Admiralty who referred the matter to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. Five months have elapsed, and no reply has been received to the representations. I want the Minister to look at another problem. On 19th January last year two up-to-date motor fishing vessels were sunk in Hartle- pool Dock by the breaking loose of a cargo steamer. I and others have tried to get this matter settled. These fishermen are now employed as auxiliary porters on the quayside. Their gear is standing there rotting because they have no boats, and the question of compensation has not been settled. They are anxious to go to sea again. I hope the Minister will look into these points. I believe the industry can make a substantial contribution to the problem of food during the present shortage.

There are many points I would like to touch upon, but I will confine myself to two, and hope the Minister can deal with them in due course. I wish to reinforce the arguments about stabilisation of prices. I am convinced that for the inshore fishermen, for whom I speak, stabilisation of prices is the only method of saving the industry. There is no doubt that the industry is going down in spite of what the hon. Member for St. Ives (Mr. Beechman) said, because of the question of prices.

In nearly all other industries there have been rises in wages but in the fishing industry there have been none and the men have to depend on their own efforts. If their catch is small, they get low wages, whereas in other industries there are continual improvements. The inshore fisherman has no trade union to help him, and no organisation. I urge the Minister to consider the stabilisation of prices and I would remind the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food that I put a question to the Minister on this subject six months ago. The Minister replied that he was conferring with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture and carefully examining the question. But that was six months ago. It is no good having maximum prices, if we do not have a minimum price. I would suggest that not only should there be provision for freezing fish but for canning fish. If the Minister of Food will link canning of fish with canning of vegetables and fruit in the country we will have an industry which will benefit both fishermen and agriculture as well.

I only want to ask two questions of the Minister before he replies. I am not going to mention prices in connection with the inshore white fish industry because the Minister of Food has kindly promised to receive a deputation on that matter. In a recent reference to long-term policy, the Minister said that the Government were going to hold an international conference. I believe this is by far the greatest hope for the long-term future of the white fish industry. I want to ask when this Conference is going to be held; and whether the Minister will press most strongly for the protection of the fishing grounds, and, particularly, for the closing of the Moray Firth and the Firth of Clyde to all trawlers, because these are great spawning grounds My second point is with regard to herring fishing. We have made some progress of late in getting nets, boots, oilskins and craft, after most strenuous efforts; but we still have to make a great effort over markets. In this connection I believe it will be necessary for the Herring Industry Board to have more powers, in the long run, than they now seem to possess—powers to purchase and negotiate the sale of herrings. If it should prove to be necessary, in order to give the Herring Board more powers, for the Government to bring in a one-Clause Bill, I am sure I can say on behalf of hon. Members on this side of the House that we will do everything to facilitate its speedy passage.

I am sure the House is indebted to the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Macclesfield (Air-Commodore Harvey) for introducing this subject on the Adjournment today. I share the view which he and other. speakers have expressed, that it is unfortunate we have not more time to discuss the tremendous implications of the questions that have arisen in the Debate and which certainly do arise to anybody who has actively in mind the problems which face this industry, particularly because of the tremendously important part which it plays, and, I hope, will increasingly play in the future, in regard to the whole food production of this country.

Because of the little time available, 1 want to jump very quickly to the number of points raised in the Debate. First, may I say a word or two about the matter of the trawling side of the fishing industry. Before the war there were in this country about 1,472 trawlers, either fishing or available for fishing. During the war, we lost no fewer than 383 of those trawlers with, of course, casualties to the crews and skippers who manned those boats. That would leave us, prospectively, about 1,089 of the prewar vessels which remain available for the trawling side of the industry.

Many are redundant.

That, of course, is leaving out of account altogether the amount of new building going on. Out of that number, there are about 300 boats which are still either in the process of conversion or on Admiralty service. At this moment we are aiming to keep on the stocks undergoing conversion roughly about 200 a month. We are also trying to get as many as 30 a month coming off the slip-ways. At the moment the number of trawlers operating is, approximately, half the prewar number. That is the position on the trawling side.

Quite obviously, the one thing to be done immediately after the war was to try to deal with the productive side of the industry—in other words, to get boats back and to do everything possible to increase the volume of production. We have not been altogether unsuccessful in this matter. We must keep in mind the fact that the volume of fish production during the war went down on the average to less than 20 per cent. At the moment we have got it up to well over 50 per cent. I am talking now about fish caught by our own British fishing fleet. The last figures available, those for the week ending 23rd February, show that British landings alone amounted to 61 per cent. of the prewar figures. If we also take into consideration the foreign landings, we are now up to 74 per cent. of our prewar figures.

May I now deal briefly with the points which have been raised specifically by the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield? With reference to the herring side of the industry, I have not the time this afternoon to explain the developments which are going on. Everybody who is familiar with this problem knows that one of the difficulties has been the refrigerating of the fresh herring, so that when we have gluts the herring can be kept in good condition and, of course, in turn distributed when the gluts are no longer there. That, as everybody knows, has been a fairly big problem which the industry has had to face. Experiments have been going on at the experimental stations to try to perfect the method of refrigerating fresh herrings, so that they can be kept in good condition and so that the country can be supplied with what is accepted by everybody as being a particularly good food. We obviously want to get the maximum distribution possible of such good food as that. There is reason to believe that on the refrigerating side, the experiments that have been conducted have become increasingly successful, and I hope ere long we shall be in a position to bring it to the stage of the utmost perfection and thus help to solve this problem of distribution.

May I put a brief question? So far as herrings are concerned, will the hon. Gentleman also see that we retrieve the markets which we had before the 1914 war—Russia and Central Europe?

I am certain, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman knows, that the Herring Board, which was established by the previous Act, has quite a lot of power, although perhaps it has not as much power as we would like it to have. Here I would say that I appreciate the point made by the hon. Member for East Aberdeen (Mr. Boothby). There may be very much in it, and I assure the House that. this is under very active consideration. I hope that in the modernisation arrangements of the herring fleet we shall be able to do something to meet the point which hon. Members on both sides of the House have made, and that is to get a far better distribution offish all over the country, in the villages and elsewhere. We accept the need for that. I think it is worth noting, because here the railway transport part of it comes into question, that the zoning scheme has been operating. It was necessary under war conditions, but the need for it has now gone, and it ends tomorrow. With the zoning scheme gone, there should obviously be better facilities for dealing with the distribution side. On the question of refrigerator vans and the distribution of the fish about the country, everybody knows the problems which the railways have had to face, but I understand that the railway companies have plans for refrigerator vans and all the rest of it, so that the distributive side of the problem can be properly tackled.

The hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield also made a point about the opening and licensing of wet fish shops. I completely share the point which he made, and if he will draw attention to any specific case of which he knows where there has been any real difficulty, I assure him that we shall go into the matter with the utmost diligence with the one aim of trying to give satisfaction, because we accept, by and large, the case that he made. The hon. and gallant Member for Grimsby (Major Younger) made a most interesting contribution to this Debate, and I am sure the House is indebted to him. I have noted particularly many of the interesting points he made. When he spoke about making one operation of the catching of the fish and the use of it inland, I was rather reminded of the gull which catches the fish and gets rid of it at the same time—a single operation. There is much to be said for that in connection with modern marketing processes. The more the production of fish and its distribution can be co-ordinated on most modern lines, obviously, the greater the advantage to everybody.

A point was made about the places where there is difficulty with the labour supply in the fishing industry: We are conscious of that. I know that the hon. and gallant Member who raised the point appreciates there are places in many parts of the country where there is an ample number of skippers, an ample number of engineers, but where there has been a dearth of deck hands. That dearth of deck hands has been a bit of a problem. With regard to the question of nets, very much the same position arises, namely the question of production and the question of getting men. The House has heard on many occasions about the difficulty of getting labour in the cotton industry, and as the nets are made very largely from the raw material of cotton there have been certain difficulties, which I quite readily recognise. In accordance with the state- ment which I think the President of the Board of Trade made earlier in the week, that matter is being looked into in harmony with the points that have been made. We shall note particularly the points that have been made in today's Debate on that score.

The hon. Member for East Aberdeen mentioned the question of a conference. I am glad to tell him that the Government have given attention to this matter and have already called a conference, which is to be held in London on 25th March. It will of course deal with the one very important matter, the question of over-fishing, about which everybody who knows the fishing industry has knowledge. Trouble occurred after the last war when over-fishing was indulged in on all sides. We hope this conference will get down to the question of over-fishing.

What about inshore fishing?

The question of inshore fishing has been raised on various sides of the House. The hon. Member on this side of the House who talked about getting inshore fishing up to 40 per cent. of the total was a wee bit optimistic. I appreciate there is very much to be said for that. I think it will be recognised that the Government and the House have not been altogether indifferent to inshore fishing. After all is said and done, the provisions of the Inshore Fishing Act, as all Members from the ports know, have been and will be of increasing assistance to the inshore fishermen; if anything practical can be done with regard to the point raised it will be done.

What about prices?

I know the difficulty of the prices. I am sure the difficulties are well understood by the Members who raised this point. There is much to be said for some of the points that have been made. I am quite appreciative of those points and the House can rest assured that we will give that matter the utmost attention to see if there is any practical way of meeting the difficulty to which they have referred. We want to be as helpful to the inshore fishermen as we want to be to the trawlermen, to the mid-trawler men, and to the whole fishing industry. The one thing we want to do is to bring the output of fish in this country to a far higher figure than hitherto, and to arrange a far better distribution of fish than we have ever known. I share the view that there may be very much to be done on the marketing side. I assure the House we shall give the most earnest consideration to the points which have been made in today's Debate. If there is any point I have not had time to deal with in these few minutes I will see that the hon. Member gets a precise reply to the point he has raised.

:There has not been a precise reply to one point. Will the Minister undertake to deal with the question of compensation, which has been a running sore for four years now? It has caused the greatest possible discon tent not only to the men who suffer from these losses but to everybody else.

:I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that it is almost impossible here at this time to deal with a complicated question of that kind, but I will certainly deal with it if he will be good enough to let me have precisely the whole problem that he has in mind, because obviously it may have to be referred to the Scottish Office. I can tell him that, whether it comes within my Department or the Scottish Office, the matter will be dealt with.