I crave your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House if a sore throat makes me very difficult to hear.

I believe this Motion which has just been moved by the Government to be very unwise in our present circumstances. I cannot think that either the national interest or the interests of our Parliamentary institutions—both of these are bound together—are well served if, at a time of great public anxiety, the Executive Government are freed from all control by the House of Commons. I think that hon. Members in every quarter of the House not only feel great anxiety themselves, but are aware of the anxiety, and the very proper anxiety, of their constituents. They know that on the wisdom or folly, the courage or the cowardice of the Government in the next few weeks our survival may depend. I cannot think that, in those circumstances, we are serving the national cause if the Government are freed from all control by this House.

Let me say at once that that would be my attitude if I were a supporter of the Government, and thought it an excellent Government. It is still more emphatically my attitude, taking the view that I do of their capacity as exemplified by the speeches of Ministers in this short Session. May I say, however, in case the Government will tell us what their intentions are, that I realise, of course, that it is within the Government's power to suggest to Mr. Speaker that the House should be brought together, notwithstanding that we accept this Motion which has just been moved by the right hon. Gentleman. But I should like to know a little about the circumstances which they feel would justify them in recommending to Mr. Speaker the summoning of the House. I know, of course, that if they contemplated some necessary legislation, they would have to summon the House; I know also that, if they thought it in the interest of the Government to summon the House, they would do so. But I suggest to them that they might well do so in another case also, and that is, if any important section of this House desired that the House should meet. In that event they should call the House together.

I say that with the more consistency since, on 2nd August, 1939, I made the same plea to the then Prime Minister in the event of the then Opposition, the Socialist Party, desiring the House to be brought together. I believe that, if any important section of this House, or even a section of the Government's supporters, acting in accordance with what they felt to be their duty as Members of Parliament, desired that this House should sit, that is really a ground that His Majesty's Government might well consider a proper one for asking for this House to be called together.

I do not wish to labour the matter further, but I would beg the Government to consider whether they are really serving the public interest in proposing this long Adjournment, in any event if they are not prepared to give the undertaking that, if any important section of this House desires that the House shall meet, they will advise Mr. Speaker that the occasion has arisen for summoning this House.

11.9 a.m.

I think that it is, at the least, inappropriate that a Motion of this sort should be moved without any explanation or assurance from the Government in view of the present circumstances. I am certain that people outside simply do not understand the proposal that the House of Commons should adjourn for four and a half weeks in the present international situation. I think that the least that we are entitled to demand from the Government is a perfectly clear statement of their intentions in connection with the recall of this House.

We are particularly entitled to make that demand, and, indeed, to insist upon it, because, through nobody's fault—certainly nobody's fault in this country—it is none the less the fact that we have not yet had the opportunity of hearing the Foreign Secretary on the Moscow conversations and the Berlin negotiations. No one, least of all me, would seek to put any blame upon His Majesty's Government for that, but it remains a fact, and it seems quite wrong that we should deny ourselves for what in the present circumstances is a very long time the opportunity to discuss this matter. It is not simply a question of being kept informed; I hope the Government will do that. It is a question not only of hearing the point of view of the Government, but of the House of Commons—all parties in the House of Commons—being given an opportunity to express their point of view to the Government as to the right steps to be taken.

I do not think in justice to the duty which each one of us owes to our constituents that we can possibly consent to be dismissed for four and a half weeks without some assurance along those lines. Certainly our constituents would not feel that we were doing our duty, nor do I feel that any of us could feel in our consciences that we were doing our duty at a time like this if we were simply to hand over to the Government for four and a half weeks untrammelled and uncriticised control of the affairs of this nation. I say that, as my hon. and learned Friend said, regardless of whether one feels confidence or lack of confidence in the Government. The ultimate responsibility rests upon Members of this House, and I cannot see how we can discharge that responsibility if we passively allow ourselves to be sent into Recess for four and a half weeks during which time many grave events may develop.

11.12 a.m.

I should like to support the protest which has been made and the resquest which has been put forward by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. H. Strauss). I think it is a common experience of Members at the present time that rarely can we remember such feelings of disquiet as are expressed to us on every hand as we move about among our constituents and our friends. The members of the public expect Members of this House to have rather special knowledge of what is going on, and I, in common with many colleagues, find myself at a loss to give the assurances and the kind of information to my constituents that I would like to be able to give. The public look to two sources of information in times like this. They look to the House of Commons and they look to the Press. For the next four and a half weeks the House of Commons will not be in a position to impart any guidance to the public, and the public may feel, as they are entitled to feel, that the Press, while exercising the restraint for which the British Press is well known under these conditions, is concealing something in what they believe to be the best interests of the public.

If the Government are confident of their own handling of the present situation, they have failed to convey that confidence to the public, and it is for that reason that I join with my colleagues in urging that the Government should give some further explanation why they feel that at this time it is possible to adjourn for such a long period. In addition we would like some assurance that we shall be called together at the shortest notice if the need should arise.

11.14 a.m.

I only wish to add a few words in support of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. H. Strauss). The speech of the Foreign Secretary alone surely indicated not merely that he was able to tell us very little when he spoke to us the other day, but also that he expected in a few days to be in a position to say more. In addition, the speech of the Secretary of State for War last night surely indicated that he did not feel there was sufficient time to answer all the points raised in the Debate.

I should have thought that in view of the very grave disquiet—I put it no less than that—which exists in the country at the present time, the Government would only be acting in accordance with what they said in the Debate on the Parliament Bill if they were to give hon. Members an opportunity, either from the Opposition Benches or from the Government Benches, to ask the Government to arrange for our recall before four and a half weeks are up. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, said that the House of Commons is the only voice of the people. I am not altogether in agreement with that view, but, nevertheless, if he uses that argument, surely he should be the first to admit that the people who are disturbed as to our situation would like us, if only to earn our pay, to be in a position whereby we could call upon the Government to bring us back before four and a half weeks are up.

11.16 a.m.

I wish to say that there are many thousands of people in Scotland who feel just as strongly on this question as my hon. Friends who have spoken. There is very strong feeling in Scotland at this time. Many people have written to me and many have spoken to me personally, and I know that that experience has been shared by my colleagues. I think it is a terrible thing that this House should have been called together for the purpose for which it was summoned and should not be called together to discuss infinitely more serious and dangerous matters.

11.17 a.m.

I make no complaint whatever that hon. Members should have initiated this short discussion. There is anxiety about a number of things, and it is a fair point to raise. I hope hon. Members opposite will forgive me if I do not go into the party points which incidentally came into the argument, but I agree it is reasonable that they should raise the point that the Government should exercise the power to make a request to you, Mr. Speaker, to call the House, with a sense of responsibility, which of course we will exercise, and with a sense of taking into account the views which other people outside our own ranks may hold. I can only say that, as hon. Members know, it is by Standing Order provided that the Government can make representations to Mr. Speaker with a view to the House being recalled, and we will watch the situation. If in our judgment it should so requite, we shall not hesitate to make representations to you Mr. Speaker.

There is only one other point. It has been urged that if the Opposition re- quested the Government to recall Parliament we should so act. I cannot go as far as that. I do not recall that that was ever conceded. It must be a matter for the judgment of the Government of the day to make representations, but this I will say, that if the Opposition should feel that the House should be recalled, although I cannot promise to act on their opinion, certainly we shall take into every consideration representations which the Opposition or others may make. I think that is all I can say.

We are, of course, adjourning for a month. We have had this break into the long Summer Recess and we all, including the Government, have co-operated in discussing matters of urgent public importance. It has been a useful short Session, I think. Therefore, I can only say that we shall certainly take every consideration into account, and, having considered the matter ourselves and taken into account any representations that others may make, we shall come to a conclusion whether the House should be recalled or not.

We shall have to see how things go, but that must not be taken as a commitment. The conclusion must be one for the Government in the first place, and for Mr. Speaker in the second. I would only say that I make no complaint about the point being raised. It is a fair point in the circumstances in which we are adjourning, and in that spirit we ask the House to pass the Motion.

11.20 a.m.

I should like to thank the Leader of the House for the spirit in which he has met the very reasonable and proper requests made by my hon. Friends. These matters about which we all feel such concern are matters of national importance, and we know that the Government would call the House together in circumstances which we hope will not occur but which if they did occur would make it essential that the House should meet. I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) indicated that yesterday in connection.vith Business, and the Leader of the House in effect accepted that position. He has now restated it in a more precise form, and I hope the House will feel that hey should accept his leadership in this matter.

There is one further point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington raised yesterday. If there should be a situation which does not require the meeting of the House but does require that Members should be precisely informed about long and complicated negotiations, I hope that the Lord President will remember what was said yesterday about the possible publication of documents for study during the period. Beyond that, having put forward once more our view—and in doing so my hon. Friends have done good service—we must and do rest content with the pledge of the Lord President, which we must accept and do accept in the spirit in which he has made it.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved: That this House, at its rising this day, do adjourn till Monday, 25th October. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—( Mr. Whiteley. )

It has been very noticeable during this short Session that there have been a large number of speeches about Malaya and questions about Malaya—a great number of questions. Last Wednesday week the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the long statement that he made, included several remarks about Malaya. These were in reply to several questions asked from these benches. Then we had the rather extraordinary spectacle of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster coming in, and with great levity and with no sort of knowledge saying, "Oh, these matters will all be looked into," and refusing to answer in more than about two sentences the questions which had been asked. It is that sort of levity, that sort of way of handling Malayan questions by Ministers, that has provided the series of shocks for ourselves here and for others in many parts of the world and led to the Government's noticeable failure in matters connected with Malaya.

However, the whole question has been raised to an entirely different level by the statement of the Foreign Secretary and I shall quote one or two passages from his speech. Referring to some remarks made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden), he said: The right hon. Gentleman was nearer to accuracy when he said that throughout the whole of South-East Asia there is a Cominform and Communist plan to eliminate from that territory every Western association of trade and of everything else …I would remind him that this problem has been in existence ever since the Marxist-Leninist theory was adopted. It has existed not only in Malaya but elsewhere. A clear indication that the Government knew and were aware that this was a Communist move. Then he went on: It is quite true that His Majesty's Government have known for some time that this policy on the part of the Communists of the world was working, but no one knew exactly in what form or where it was going to break out. Even if we suppress it in Malaya, as we shall, it may break out in Africa or somewhere else tomorrow. It seemed to me that that particular statement had a sign of weakness in it, a sign of hopelessness and despair, as though the right hon. Gentleman—following history—had stopped up with his finger a great flow of water about to burst through the dam and found he had not enough fingers for the job. He went on rather surprisingly: I think that the way in which His Majesty's Government have tackled the Malayan position does great credit to them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th September, 1948; Vol. 456. c. 91–93.] I note that here, according to the OFFICIAL REPORT, the hon. Member for Bury interjected the word "Nonsense," with which I entirely agree.

It is established by these quotations quite clearly that the whole aspect of this problem has changed. Hitherto, a great many of us thought that it might not be entirely a Communist problem. We thought it might be a spasmodic outbreak of lawlessness following the disturbance of the war. But who should be more acquainted with the facts on Communist methods than the Foreign Secretary, and who can speak with greater authority than the Foreign Secretary? How can we contradict him? I thought at first that he was looking for a neat exit for himself and his friends from the troubles of Malaya a sort of Malayan rope trick, throwing the Communist rope high into the sky, saying "Gentlemen, this is Communism," and then climbing up it with agility to disappear in a cloud of verbiage at the top. But the right hon. Gentleman said that it is an old-established thing.

Mr. Malcolm MacDonald used the word "insurrection" in the first week of August, altering the whole status of the movement, and calling for further action and new legal powers. Why did he say that? Let us examine the reasons he had in his mind. At the end of the war Indonesia was one of the greatest scenes of unrest, and it was our troops who finally reconquered part of Indonesia. We sent an observer there, a mediator, in the person of Lord Killearn, who did excellent work. That unrest spread across the Straits of Malacca. As I have pointed out in the last few years, there was a Communist movement which associated itself with the nationalist movement in Indonesia, for which a great many Members had some sympathy. That is the well-known Communist technique. How often has the entry of the Communist wolf been made in Socialist sheep's clothing?

Communists associate with a movement which, in itself, may have great merit, and for which a great many people have sympathy, and then, gradually, and by methods we all know, they turn that movement into something very different. We saw it from 1945 onwards in the perfectly good example in Indonesia, close to Malaya. We saw all that was happening. We knew it perfectly well in Malaya. I went to Malacca in the past year to address a meeting and study the movement. We knew this thing in Indo-China, where Viet Nam has changed its character very largely from what it was originally. We have seen it in China for years since the days of Borodin. In Burma, the warnings were sounded from this side of the House. A new Government was set up there which contained men who had been actively engaged against this country in the war. That was the "Come-on" sign to the Communists in Burma. We observed in Indonesia; we contributed in Burma; and we connived in Malaya. We connived by failing to take action in time—the quite simple action that anybody who knew anything about the situation knew was absolutely necessary.

What did happen? Let us go back to Malaya after the re-occupation, re- membering always that it was a re-occupation not by force of arms: it was a re-occupation caused by bombs dropped in Japan. Therefore, in the eyes of the local inhabitants there was something rather "phoney" about it. We were forced out by Japanese arms, but came back through what might have seemed to the local inhabitants the result of some "under the counter" arrangement. To what did we devote our main efforts in Malaya after the re-occupation? We erected a fine democratic constitution. We started it; then we had to alter it; it went through its growing pains. Admirable as it was in itself, was that really the first thing to set about doing in the country? Was not the first thing to do to ensure law and order? That certainly was not done.

We knew perfectly well when we went back there that there was a considerable quantity of arms in the country introduced by ourselves. We had trained men to use those arms. There was Force 136. I was attached to it from its inception in India. That Force took the risk of sending the first men over to Malaya, in Dutch submarines; and risked boarding native fishing boats in the Straits of Malacca and so at last landed in Malaya; we would hear nothing of them for months; and they got wireless contact with men in Malaya who were carrying on with the Resistance. The commander of that Force, Colin Mackenzie and his assistants have not been properly rewarded, nor has their work been recognised. But what has happened? Everybody says now that that work was the root and cause of the present troubles—quite wrongly.

I should like to ask one or two specific questions on that, taking always as the background the Foreign Secretary's statement that this was a big Communist movement, and that, therefore, everybody concerned should have been particularly alert and particularly on the watch to stop the small, insidious beginnings which grow so rapidly in a country like Malaya. May I ask if there was a round-up of arms and dangerous men? There were many of the officers of Force 136 and other organisations of that sort who were left in Malaya. Were they consulted? Was a real effort made to seize arms which were known to be in the country? Was there not, on the contrary, a great deal of complacency because the arms were not used immediately, and did not fear of that danger die down too easily, because too much attention was being devoted to constitution-making? What about rapid demobilisation of local Forces, including police forces, and their under-payment?

Let us come to the question of the police. Were the police armed and reinforced in time, when these dangers began to make themselves apparent? I have seen in the local Press, and have been informed from local sources, that His Majesty's Government did at the beginning of this year, before this had taken on its present magnitude with the power which is behind it, offer to the local authorities a large number of Palestine Police, and they were refused. Is that so or not? I hope to have an answer to that later in the Debate. Were arms, which were easily available here, sent out, and, if so, when? We have had very vague phrases by the right hon. Gentleman that now big quantities of arms have been sent; that now the police are being reinforced. We were given considerable figures. The point is, when? Now we are in for an expensive cure when we could have had a less expensive prevention. That is the onus of the charge we are bringing against the Government.

Was anything done about the secret societies and the fact that Malaya was being used as a fighting ground between the Communist and anti-Communist Chinese? Was anything done about that? Was any notice taken of the Communist organisation in Siam? The Soviet Embassy in Siam has swollen and increased to a size which cannot be necessary for the justified activities of an embassy. Quite the opposite. There were obvious sources from which a great deal of Communist activity was being poured into Malaya, in trained men, arms, gold and everything else. Was anything done about that, while we were always receiving the sort of complacent statement that His Majesty's Government had tackled the Malayan position with great credit to themselves?

We come now to an even more difficult and ticklish question. Not long ago we were paying justified tribute to Sir Edward Gent, that devoted public servant, who gave in the armed Civil Service many years of his life to public service, and who worked extremely hard in a most selfless and disinterested way. Having paid that tribute, we must ask this question: Why was it he came back? Was there disagreement? Was it because action had been taken here which he could not accept, or was it that such action had been taken there? We are entitled to know. I have been informed this morning, on the best possible authority, that one of the reasons why he was coming home was because the measures for which he had asked authority to bring into action against Communism in various forms had been refused him by the Colonial Office—that "valley of indecision."

Is that a correct charge or not? It is very important that the House and the country should be told. May I say en passant that there is one thing in which all Members would join with me, and that is in wishing well to the new officer who is taking on the appointment. Sir Henry Gurney who is going out, has accepted a task which he knows is onerous, difficult, probably thankless and most certainly dangerous. One thing which we can all be unanimous about is that he has from this House our very best wishes for carrying out his difficult task, and the certainty that he will receive the fullest possible support in any measures which he may wish to take, to grasp and grapple with the appalling problems which he has before him.

I shall want replies to these questions. There are many others which were put in previous Debates still awaiting replies. I will come later to one of the economic questions. I had hoped to omit it together, but owing to the extreme woolliness of the statement made by the Secretary of State for Colonies on Wednesday, I shall have to come to the insurance question later. Meanwhile, knowing what the situation was, were extradition orders brought in? Were they used? Or was there any difference between the Governor of Kuala Lumpur and the Governor of Singapore on the use of extradition?

Has this difficulty arisen as one of the effects of the new constitution on which so much time has been spent during the last three years? There were differences of opinion between the two Governors on this. Even today, there is a difference of opinion on a number of points. The Governor of Singapore has quite recently pointed out that insurrection may seep into Singapore. He may have to take certain powers which he has not taken up to date. One curious effect of the whole constitution which has had its effect on this Communist impelled movement has been the exclusion of Singapore and Penang from the Federation of 600,000 to 700,000 Chinese. Was not that a hot-bed for breeding malcontents—fodder for Communists to take over everywhere?

We have seen this morning how grave the situation may become from the news in the stop-press that a Communist insurrection of a major order has broken out in Java itself. That certainly does not throw a very much more rosy glow on the situation in Malaya than there was before. We want answers to these questions, and we also want to know when something is going to be done, so that we can have at least put an end to the ridiculous situation in which the Singapore mind and the Kuala Lumpur mind remain apart; the Singapore officials thinking one thing and the Kuala Lumpur officials thinking another thing, with clashes and delay. That provides one of the greatest dangers of all—the slow-motion functions of democracy compared with the quick action taken by the Communists. That is always dangerous, because it sets up in mens' minds the idea that democracy may not work quickly enough in present situations. The greatest monument erected to the efforts of the right hon. Gentleman is that on the causeway between Johore and Singapore there is a Customs post. At this moment, to be erecting customs barriers between countries where they did not exist before, instead of knocking them down, seems to be a curious commentary on the Government's efforts in Malaya.

Let us turn to something infinitely more serious. I think that it will be up to the Government to show whether they really did take the necessary action in time to stop this menace growing into what it now is; whether, realising the Communist peril and that it was the backdoor to all the European countries where Communism is a danger, including this country, that peril was taken seriously enough, and whether the police were reinforced and rearmed in time.

Let us examine what is happening at the present moment. I believe that there is an extremely dangerous complacency on the Government's part in feeling that they have solved the problem by sending a Guard's Brigade, even if the men have only had six months training, as we were told in the Debate yesterday. This cannot bring about an early or easy solution. The men need training in jungle warfare; they need special equipment and medical protection. Anyone who has taken part in that sort of campaign knows that. Inner lines of communication are an enormous advantage and the Communists will not be stopped until something happens of which there is no sign at the moment—until the people in the Malayan towns and villages are willing to give us information, whether to representatives of the military or civil authorities, as to what is happening in their area, where arms and men are being hidden, and whether a man who is possibly working as a trader is not, in fact, head of a local gang. Until this is done we shall not clear up this serious menace, however many troops we sent out.

At present, it is obvious that the man in the street in Malaya does not think that we are on the winning side. Recently, the High Court of Appeal in Kuala Lumpur increased the sentence on those who refused to assist His Majesty's Government and their representatives out there. That is most significant. The local people do not see us with sufficient forces, they do not believe there is sufficient hardness of purpose and ruthlessness behind our Armed Forces there, who must learn to throw the bomb before it is thrown at them.

That belief arises very largely from one thing: final responsibility is undoubtedly with the Colonial Secretary. I compare him best with something that most of us have forgotten and only dream about—a pre-war chocolate, smooth and sweet on the outside but soft centred. There is a soft centre of kindliness and good will in the Minister which, nevertheless, is entirely out of place when we have to deal with the lawlessness and banditry of those who disguise themselves in a nationalist movement, or any other movement which suits them for the moment. We have been told, and shall be told probably, of the impressive number of police on the job, and about the troops, whom we can ill spare at present, who have been sent to Malaya. The cost of all this is being laid on the shoulders of Malaya, and there is strong feeling about it. We take dollars from Malaya to buy food and raw materials for ourselves. If she could keep her dollars she would have an enormous advantage, yet we saddle this cost on her before the war damage and insurance payments following the recent war have begun to be paid.

We are putting this enormous new burden on to Malaya to meet something which is part of the resistance to the general Communist effort against the rest of the world. This is entirely unjust on the part of His Majesty's Government. It is important to realise the economic disaster which would follow in Malaya, and the even greater spread of the Communist menace which would follow, if the supply of tin and rubber ceased altogether. It would be a major disaster from every point of view. That may occur if this continuous vacillation and weakness is continued.

What has happened on the question of insurance? The Minister knows that this question of whether people in Malaya are insured or not arose following a speech by Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, in which he used the word "insurrection." This led people to think that they were not covered by insurance, and the matter was taken up with the Government five or six weeks ago. It was asked that cover should be given by the Government for a proper premium, and that that cover should be retrospective. I believe it was favourably considered here, but when it was sent back to Malaya the danger was not realised, as has happened so frequently in these matters, and a reply was received from the local authorities that it was not really necessary. However, the matter was sent back here again and we heard yesterday that there had been some advance. I liken that to a cinema designed to provide the maximum number of emergency exits. Is it likely that any commercial firm taking the maximum risk without cover will continue to do so unless a rapid and swift conclusion to this problem is reached?

Before we rise today let the right hon. Gentleman, who knows I am speaking on behalf of all associations which have anything to do with Malaya—the large and small producer and the man in the street—say "Yes, we will underwrite this risk but details are not yet complete. We will underwrite as from the 12th July, when a state of emergency was declared locally. We will do it from then so that everybody will know where he is." If the right hon. Gentleman does not do this he will open the door to further Communist activity. It will be said that nobody is insured, and that this will be just the moment to disrupt the economic machine which, as the Foreign Secretary said, is the Communists' objective.

The Communists will think that they need only light a few fires, throw a few bombs and destroy a few houses and the whole machine will be wrecked because the Government have not covered the insurance. The right hon. Gentleman can do this if he will abandon his policy of vacillation. If he will do it and say that from a certain date it will be done, he will begin to redeem himself in the eyes of a great many people. But if he puts up the usual argument, with all its escape clauses sticking out a mile, our present opinion of him will be confirmed.

It is not for our own sake, even to reestablish our prestige, that Malaya is important. Its importance has been spotlighted by the Foreign Secretary. In the whole of the Far East the only possible place in which there can be a steady platform, and based on which there can be reconstructed once again a decent order of things, is Malaya. It is not for our sake alone, but also for the sake of those responsible in Indonesia, China, Burma and Siam that a supreme effort and good example must be produced in Malaya. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give a clear cut reply to these questions, especially about insurance, and will declare with infinitely more conviction and firmness than has been shown in the past that the Government are determined to stamp out Communism in Malaya to push it back visibly in the eyes of the world from the areas into which it has penetrated.

11.50 a.m.

I listened carefully while the hon. Member for Bury (Mr. W. Fletcher) analysed the position in Malaya. He appeared to attribute most of the trouble to the Communists, and he asked for concerted action by the Government in putting down the insurrection. I would remind the hon. Member that there were Communists in Malaya prior to and during the war and that action could not be taken against that Communist Party or against any individual Communist as long as their behaviour was legal. During the war, those Communists contributed to the work of fighting against the Japanese.

We armed them.

Yes, we armed them. We dropped arms to them, and also officers to help to train them. The hon. Member for Bury complains that the men who are in possession in Burma at the present time fought against us during the war, but the Communists in Malaya fought with us in the war. I do not want to justify the action of these Communists at the present time in creating an insurrection. I am trying to point out that the Government could not have taken action against the Communists until the Communists did something which was illegal. Immediately the insurrection started and the Communists began illegal tactics, the Government took action against them in order to suppress the insurrection.

As I listened to the hon. Member I thought he might say something about the human element in Malaya, about the workers, but he said practically nothing about them. He talked about the levity of hon. Members on this side of the House when discussing the position in Malaya during the past week, but I contradict that. Hon. Members on this side of the House take a serious view of the position in Malaya and are doing what they can not only for the people who have their money invested in tin and rubber, but for those who are employed in the industries in Malaya.

At the present time there are three ways of governing Malaya and I want to say a word or two about each of them. The first method is that which has been adopted by capitalists in the past. May I call it the method of benevolent imperialism? The second method is the totalitarian, which the insurrection is endeavouring to establish. The third method is the democratic, which His Majesty's Government are trying to pursue at the present moment. The capitalists, represented by the party opposite, have been in Malaya for many years, endeavouring to carry out their policy and their principles. The Tory Party in this House have always been true to type, character, and nature, in defending the capitalist system, whether in Malaya, in this country, or anywhere else in the world.

The hon. Member really must not make statements which are entirely contrary to the fact. Time and time again I, and other hon. Members besides myself, have stated that the main production in Malaya is native production and have spoken on behalf of the native, urging that the native should get the fullest possible protection.

If the hon. Member for Bury had allowed me to develop my argument he would have seen that I was coming to the question of the native planter, the man who has a small plantation and has to sell his rubber to a local broker. There is great dissatisfaction not only among the workers in Malaya, but among smallholders who are unable to sell their rubber or to make a decent living.

The firm for whom I work exports native rubber more than anything else, and I therefore deny absolutely what the hon. Member says. I will give him proof, that 90 per cent. of the natives who dealt with the firm before the war have come back to them and deal with them again. That is a much greater proof than any thing the hon. Member has said, which was entirely untrue. The price we pay is within one-sixteenth of a penny of the price in London or Singapore.

I would remind hon. Members that we are a long way behind time and that if we are to get in the last Adjournment Debate, hon. Members must be fairly short with their speeches.

Yes, Mr. Speaker. I repeat that, from my information the smallholders in Malaya are dissatisfied. If the hon. Member for Bury will read a book published by the London School of Economics about the rubber industry he will know something about it. The hon. Member emphasised a point about the American dollars we are getting from Malaya. I suggest that the hon. Member and the firm that he represents are not concerned so much with American dollars as with the dollars they are receiving in profits and dividends from the various concerns. His party has consistently defended such people. I hope hon. Members on this side of the House will be as loyal and faithful to the people they represent as are hon. Members opposite.

I will cut short my remarks on your suggestion, Mr. Speaker, in regard to the method followed in governing Malaya in the past. We cannot go back to it. Developments in the world will not allow us in Malaya or anywhere else to go back to conditions which existed there prior to the war. If we cannot go back, we must go forward.

I would say now a word about the methods suggested, and sought to be adopted, by the insurgents. They had an anti-Japanese army. We heard something about it during the week. That army fought strenuously in the jungle against the Japanese. It has now become not only anti-Japanese, but anti-Government, anti-European, anti-capitalist and anti-democratic. That is the reason why we cannot agree to the work of the insurgents. They are men who, after the war, tried to capture the local trade union movement and use it to establish their principles in Malaya. The Government in Malaya prevented that from happening. True to type and to method, those men turned their attention from legal methods of achieving power for the trade union movement, to insurrection. Then the Government had to step in. At the beginning of my speech I praised these Communists who worked for us during the war. Now I condemn them for the action they are taking at the present time. It resembles the strategy of Communist parties all over the world, in Germany and elsewhere. They try infiltration. When infiltration fails they try force. They have done this in Malaya—infiltration, intimidation and then insurrection.

Whenever I hold meetings in the country Communist questions are put to me about our action in Malaya and the im- prisonment of trade unionists. The Communists are giving close attention to Malaya, because it is a dollar producing country and because they want to strike at the economic roots of this country. They have flung down a challenge to the Government. The Government have had to take it up and to defend their position in Malaya. I think the Government are doing the right thing. We must not forget, however, that we may drive the insurrectionists underground. We want to do something better than that. We want to drive them up, and that can only be done by establishing something which is better than the totalitarian method.

Now I come to the third method, the one which should be adopted in Malaya. The policy of His Majesty's Government is democratic with regard not only to the 2 per cent. of Europeans in Malaya, but with regard to all the Malayans, Chinese and Indians who are in Malaya. We have to recognise the trend of events in the whole of the world, when we are carrying out this development. Our task is not only to drive out the guerilla forces, but to introduce in their place a true and real democracy as quickly as possible. The driving out of the insurgents must be followed by the righting of the wrongs of the workers in the industries concerned and the smallholders. We must tell the Malayans that the ultimate object of this Government is not the exploitation of tin and rubber but the establishment of self-government for the people as quickly as possible. We must be careful that we do not substitute an imperialism of a benevolent type for one of a totalitarian type. We can only destroy the insurgents and remove banditry by putting something better in their place.

The first task of the Government then is to destroy banditry and establish democracy. This is being done by the establishment of the Governments in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. I had hoped that the time was not far off when Malaya would be considered a part of the peninsula. That will come. A start has been made. When I was in Singapore some time ago elections were taking place for six members of the Constituent Assembly. That is not very much but it is a step in the right direction and I hope that in a very short time the whole of the Constituent Assembly will be elected by the people of Singapore. No member in Malaya is elected in a democratic manner. I hope that this principle will be applied also to the Constituent Assemblies in Malaya and Kuala Lumpur and that they will be elected by the people. It is up to the Government to do whatever they can to end the present system and to build up something better in its place.

12.3 p.m.

With your approval, Mr. Speaker, I will now take the Debate from Malaya to the Gold Coast, where there has also been trouble. I understand that the Secretary of State will reply about both countries a little later. Last winter there were riots in Accra and other places, with the result that 29 people were killed and 200 injured and an estimated £2 million of property was destroyed. A Commission of three was sent out in March. The hon. Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) suggested at the time that the Commission should consist of trade unionists. I do not know whether the Government paid close attention to the hon. Member's proposal, but they were not entirely put off by it, because one member of the Commission was an ex-official of the Transport and General Workers' Union. The chairman of the Commission was a K.C. who had been a Labour candidate. The third member was the Rector of Lincoln. They reported at the end of July and simultaneously the views of the Government on their Report were published.

May I interrupt to say that I had absolutely no knowledge as to the politics of the chairman or that he had been a Labour candidate?

I was merely stating it as a fact. I thought it would interest the House to know the antecedents of the members of the Commission. The terms of reference to the Commission were wide. They were asked to report not only on the disturbances, but on their underlying causes, and to make recommendations. The terms were so wide that the Commission could not possibly exceed them, nor did they; and the proposals they made ranged far and deep. However, many of them were very strongly criticised by the Government in its statement. It must be rare for His Majesty's Government to make such trenchant strictures on a child to which it has given birth. I cannot help feeling that the Government must now regret that the Commission did not include one member at least with a longer experience of the Colonies than any of the members possessed.

One very satisfactory thing about the Report is that the Commission exonerate the Police and the Governor. Indeed, they praise the Police and the Government for the manner in which they dealt with the disturbances. Their only criticism was of an emergency regulation which denied any right of access to the courts by the six politicians who were removed from Accra. I have no time to deal with that point now. The hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr. Byers) announced his intention fully six months ago of raising the matter on the Adjournment. I hope he will do so, because a very important constitutional problem is involved.

While the Commission praise the Colonial Government, they severely castigate the working committee of the so-called United Gold Coast Convention. They say that this committee was inspired by an African named Nkrumah, a Communist who avowed his aim to be revolution and the setting up of a Union of West African Socialist Soviet Republics. The Commission say: The working committee were eager to seize power, were indifferent to the means they used, and were active in promoting agitation and in exploiting every form of complaint likely to inflame and incite the populace or calculated to weaken orderly administration. These are serious charges, and the Government of this country seem to have accepted them as well-founded. I therefore ask: Are criminal proceedings to be taken against these men? If not, they will certainly be encouraged to think that violence pays. The strange thing is that the very people who fomented the disturbances were the people on whom the Commission partly relied in framing their proposals for constitutional change.

I now come to those proposals. The Commission blame the 1946 Constitution, which they say was regarded by educated Africans as mere window-dressing. The Government, on the other hand, say that that is an entirely wrong view. They point out that the 1946 Constitution, for the first time in African colonial history, gave the Legislature an unofficial majority, an elected majority, and an African majority. The Gold Coast was singled out to be the pioneer of political advance. So far from being regarded as window-dressing, the 1946 Constitution was hailed with enthusiasm by the people. I can testify to that from personal experience. After the Commission had been in force for fully six months I was a member of a Parliamentary delegation which went to the Gold Coast. To the best of my knowledge, we did not hear a single word of criticism of the 1946 Constitution. The Government take the matter to a later date, because they say that for the two years between the introduction of the Constitution and the time of the riots no demands were made for further constitutional reform.

In paragraph 118 of their Report the Commission disclaim the intention of drafting a Constitution, but they proceed to do so in two-and-a-half closely printed pages. One of their principal proposals is that a Cabinet of nine Ministers responsible to the Legislative Council should be set up and that five of the nine should be Africans. The Government in their statement have accepted this proposal, subject to discussion locally, and with the reservation that they think these nine people should be called not Ministers but members of the Executive Council. However, even before the local discussion takes place they have offered that two African members of the Executive Council shall be responsible for a group of departments. I understand that when this proposal was put before the Legislative Council a few days ago it was not accepted. Now of course it is right that Africans should sit on the Executive Council if qualified men can be obtained, but surely before introducing a Cabinet system it would be better to give the constitution, set up only two years ago, a longer trial. I hope that the Committee in the Gold Coast which is to consider the Commission's proposals will come to the same conclusion.

I now want to say a word about the chiefs. The Commission propose that a radical change should be made in the position of the chiefs, but they do not make any definite proposals. The Government strongly criticise this suggestion of the Commission, and they point out that the members spent most of their time in the towns and not enough in the rural areas; in other words they listened too much to the intelligentsia. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] The Parliamentary delegation to which I have referred, unlike the Commission, spent more of its time in the country and less in Accra, and I for one was impressed with the wise leadership of the chiefs. I think we all found everybody we met—the chiefs, tribesmen and townsmen—most delightful people to talk to. But the tribesmen would be lost without their chiefs. To undermine their authority and push them into the background would, in my opinion, shatter the foundations of African economic and social life and would not promote but would retard progress.

Of course the desire of the intelligentsia to weaken the position of the chiefs is understandable. The Commission are quite frank about this. They say, We have no reason to suppose that power in the hands of a small literate minority would not be used to exploit the illiterate majority. Those are the words of the Commission. Of course it may be asked, are not these chiefs autocratic and irresponsible? The answer is most emphatically, no. Among the Gold Coast tribes sovereignty lies in the people themselves, who elect and can depose their chiefs. One head chief has said, "When you are installed as a chief you become the humble servant of the State." Finally, do not let us forget that during the war it was the chiefs who rallied their people on the side of the Allies at a time when the Gold Coast was surrounded on three sides by the Colonies of Vichy France. I certainly consider that we ought to think twice before we weaken the authority of the chiefs.

Far and away the most pressing problem in the Gold Coast today is not the constitution, or the disturbances, but the swollen shoot disease of the cocoa tree; and the mealy bug which carries the virus is a far more important animal at the moment than any Communist or other politician. Unfortunately, the politicians do not recognise this fact. It has been estimated that this disease, if unchecked, will in 20 years destroy the whole cocoa industry, which before the war furnished 98 per cent. of the agricultural exports of the Gold Coast. It is mainly because of this disease that those exports have fallen in eight years from 300,000 to 200,000 tons. What is to be done? Scientists are agreed that only one remedy has yet been found, and that is to cut out the diseased trees. The Government, accepting this opinion, took powers to cut out compulsorily, and last year, 1947, they began to use them.

Unfortunately, the cutting out was strongly opposed. That was partly due to ignorance and partly, I regret to say, to political agitation in which Dr. Danquah, who is called by the Commission "the doyen of Gold Coast politicians" and who, incidentally, was one of the six gentlemen removed from Accra after the disturbances—took a leading part. I have here a recent issue of the "West African Review" in which he has an article entitled "This nonsense of swollen shoot." These politicians have spread malicious and lying stories. For instance, they have said that the United Africa Company wants to see the cocoa industry of the Gold Coast ended because they are planting cocoa trees in East Africa. Not only have malicious stories been spread but there has been violence. Stones have been hurled at Government inspectors and working parties, with the result that last April the Government threw in its hand. They suspended compulsory cutting out and are still suspending it. The result is that although there is some voluntary cutting out, the disease is gaining ground rapidly. Today 40 million trees are believed to be infected, which is 10 per cent. of the total, and the rate of infection is about 15 million trees a year. It seems to me that the estimate that the whole industry may be destroyed in 20 years is, if anything, rather optimistic.

It is most regrettable that the Government have given way to clamour and suspended the operation of the law. Compulsion ought to be resumed, without waiting for the report of the U.N.O. experts who have been called in; and the police ought to be reinforced to any extent necessary, in what is a matter of life or death for the Gold Coast. The longer the delay, the more trees will have to be cut down and the greater will be the difficulty of enforcing compulsion. Last July, in this House, the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies made this remarkable statement. Unless the inhabitants of the Gold Coast will agree … to a big cutting-out campaign, … most of the trees on the Gold Coast will go, … one can imagine what a bar of chocolate will Cost…"[OFFICIAL REPORT. 8th July, 1948; Vol. 453, c. 702.] If one wants to consider the effect on Great Britain of letting the swollen shoot disease go unchecked, surely the loss of dollars—for cocoa, like rubber, is a great dollar-earner—is far more important than the price of a bar of chocolate. But it would have been more appropriate if the Under-Secretary had spoken of the disastrous effect of inaction on the whole economy of the Gold Coast, on the very existence of the people.

Of course compulsion should go hand in hand with persuasion and propaganda. The increased compensation approved last week is all to the good, but unfortunately its announcement coincided with an announcement of a higher price for cocoa. I do not say that was wrong, but obviously it acts as a deterrent to cutting down diseased trees which may yield one or two more crops.

The Commission say a great deal about economic grievances, which I think were probably a far greater cause of the disturbances than political grievances. I have no time to deal with all their suggestions; I mention only one. The Commission advocate the development of secondary industries, partly in order to furnish employment for ex-Service men, who were prominent in the disturbances. That reinforces the plea I made in this House a few months ago for the encouragement of West African furniture-making. It is excellent furniture. What prevents a big increase in its production? The answer is the Board of Trade. The Board of Trade prohibit the importation of any furniture which is better than British utility furniture and, as West African furniture is much better than British utility furniture, in effect that Board of Trade rule is a ban on the import of West African furniture. In that Debate I asked when the Colonial Office were going to take up the cudgels on behalf of West Africa in this matter. It is idle for the Colonial Secretary to say, as he has said, that the economic development of the Colonies is inherent in our principle of trusteeship, if he allows the Board of Trade to betray that trust in the supposed interests—I think the mistakenly supposed interests—of British manufacturers. I believe the Colonial Secretary agrees with me, and I ask him to say today what he is going to do about it.

12.22 p.m.

As a representative of a cocoa constituency I am naturally very grateful to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Keeling) for raising this serious question. He has covered the ground so thoroughly and we are so pressed for time, that all I need to do is to stress the need for a much greater sense of urgency on the part of the Colonial Office in dealing with this problem, not merely in the interests necessarily of chocolate consumers, nor of manufacturing interests, nor because of the great dollar earning capacity of cocoa since the war that is admittedly very great—but in the interests of the natives of the Gold Coast themselves. The major industry of the Gold. Coast is the cocoa industry, and unless something is done to control quickly this swollen shoot disease the Gold Coast is heading for ruin very fast indeed.

I have read and discussed and studied very carefully the reports of scientists on this swollen shoot disease, and I now accept quite readily their statement that there is no other known remedy for dealing with this disease than to cut out the diseased trees. I accept that now quite readily after having been very critical about it. But it is naturally very hard to convince the natives of that. Many and varied attempts have been made to convince them but they are still unconvinced, and I do not think we shall get any further if we adopt the suggestion of the hon. Member for Twickenham of merely reintroducing compulsory cutting of diseased trees, for that would probably lead to violent disturbances.

We have to do something more than that to carry the natives along with us, and I therefore make two suggestions to the Colonial Secretary which I feel merit his serious consideration. First, I think he should expedite the journey of the three experts who have been nominated by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation so that they may go to the Gold Coast and investigate and report quickly. I do not think that is going to be easy. It is not easy to get three distinguished busy scientists from different parts of the world to find a mutually convenient date to go to the Gold Coast. If it is found impossible to get them out very quickly, I suggest that the Colonial Secretary should arrange that one of them or two of them should visit the Gold Coast so that a report may be obtained as quickly as possible because of the wasteful delay in satisfying the natives about the treatment of this disease.

Secondly, there is the question of compensation, which is not of course the right term because it is the natives' own money. This question should be tackled much more imaginatively. We are very pleased that since the war the price we are paying to native farmers for cocoa has been raised considerably and we are glad to see that in spite of that increase we have raised the price last week still another 30 per cent. at the collecting stations. That is all to the good, but merely to offer a higher price for cocoa will not of itself necessarily make the slightest contribution towards combating the disease. Indeed, I am afraid it may have the reverse effect, because if we offer a higher price for cocoa to a farmer with diseased trees which are bearing cocoa and will continue to bear cocoa, he is not likely to agree to cut them down. That seems self-evident. If we want him to cut down trees we must make it worth his while, and we can only make it worth his while by offering him a higher price for cutting down the trees than for keeping them alive.

More imagination should be displayed in this offer of compensation and we must not imagine that by offering a higher price for cocoa we are making the slightest contribution towards combating the disease. I hope the Colonial Secretary will give these suggestions careful consideration. Only if he does something on these lines could he consider reintroducing the compulsory cutting out of diseased trees, for he would be acting then as a true trustee and in the real interests of the natives of the Gold Coast.

12.28 p.m.

The disturbances on the Gold Coast differ from those in Malaya, which we have been discussing, in that they came like a thunderbolt from an untroubled sky. When I was in Malaya last year I was given ample reason to believe as were other hon. Members, that there would be serious disturbances there and no one can say that they were unexpected. When I was in the Gold Coast, a few weeks later, I formed the opinion that it was our model Colony. It was wealthy, the people were generally contented, there was very little dissatisfaction with the British connection, and when I went on an expedition with the Governor, Sir Alan Burns, into the interior there was a spontaneous demonstration of affection for him as the representative of the King. It was quite spontaneous, because our visit was due to the non-arrival of my aircraft. But the bush telegraph had been working and the crowds were most enthusiastic, including those at Koforidua, which was one of the scenes of the recent disturbances.

These incidents were equally little expected by public servants in the Gold Coast, some of whom had spent 20 years or more in the territory, and the disturbances took them completely by surprise. That has a bearing on the Report of the Commission of Inquiry which went out to the Gold Coast. This Commission of Inquiry has done very good work in many directions and if I had time I should like to have dealt with many of its suggestions. But in its political and constitutional recommendations I am sure it has gone very wide of the mark and done a disservice to the orderly constitutional progress of the Gold Coast. I hope that His Majesty's Government, who are obviously fully conscious of the weakness of those recommendations, will not be led into giving effect to them at this stage. In my view the Commission began reading the book from the wrong end. It has leapt ahead by about 50 years or so, and I am quite certain that if the Commissioners had spent a longer time in the territory or had had a deeper acquaintance with it they would not have made the constitutional recommendations which they have in fact made.

I shall give just one example in support of what I am saying. On page seven of its Report the Commission placed among the proximate underlying causes of the disturbances: A failure of the Government to realise that with the spread of liberal ideas, increasing literacy and a closer contact with political developments in other parts of the world. the star of rule through the Chiefs was on the wane. This subject of indirect rule and the position of chiefs in British territories had been the main subject of discussion at a summer school on African administration held in Cambridge the previous August. The Gold Coast was represented at that conference by 10 persons, including the Chief Commissioner of the Colony, and the discussions would of course have been fully known to the Government of the Gold Coast. This question has been under discussion in the Colonial Office for a long time and the Commission have accused the Government of the Gold Coast of something of which it is certainly not guilty.

The Commission makes a great point about Africanisation. We are all agreed on the need for the Africanisation of the public service as rapidly as possible, but I must point out that that depends primarily on the Africans themselves. We cannot hurry the pace without great danger. It depends on the willingness of Africans to educate themselves, and on the attainment of the educational standards and standards of integrity that are needed in the public service, and it is impossible to hurry that process beyond the extent to which Africans themselves are able and willing to assume the burdens of self-government.

It is not so long ago that this House was very much troubled about the sacrificial murders in the Gold Coast. Have they been so soon forgotten? They were a grim reminder to us of how thin is the veneer of civilisation in some of our territories. They were a warning of the fact that if we probe only a little beneath the surface we come across the darkest passions of mankind. This process of the achievement of self-government is one that cannot be hurried overmuch without great danger. The Constitution which came into effect in 1946 made a tremendous advance. For Africans to have an elected majority on the legislative council was the biggest step forward yet taken in any of our African territories.

I certainly think that that constitution should have been given a fair trial, but I recognise that His Majesty's Government have been placed in a difficult position by the recommendations of the Commission. I urge upon them to go slowly in this matter because by so doing they will probably be able to make more progress than would otherwise be the case. With regard to the position of chiefs, the Commission is right, but it has jumped too far ahead, as I have already said. It has paid too much attention to the articulate intelligentsia of the Gold Coast. Such men as the late Sir Ofori Atta and Sir Tsibu Darku IX at the present time will have a big part to play in the Gold Coast for a long time to come.

I should like to express my sympathy with my right hon. Friend and late chief, the Colonial Secretary, in having to deal with these grave problems in Malaya and the Gold Coast. He has achieved great things at the Colonial Office. He has been responsible for the initiation over a wide area of vast schemes of constitutional, social, educational and economic advancement for which he had been preparing himself all his adult life. He is the most pacific of men and my sympathy goes out to him at this time in having to deal with these grave disturbances in these two British territories.

12.36 p.m.

I have a great deal of ground to cover in reply to the Debate and it may be that I shall not have time to answer some of the questions put to me and that I shall not be able fully to meet certain of the criticisms made. I would begin by making it perfectly clear, in view of the criticism of Government policy which has frequently been made in recent months that there is no desire to confuse legitimate political and economic agitation in our territories with Communism. At the same time, we are conscious of the Communist menace and are determined to meet it in every possible way and make it an ineffective political force in the life of our territories. I also add that the Government's policy is not designed in any way to suppress nationalist movements or trade unionism or workers' organisations. Indeed, all the evidence is in the opposite direction and we shall give all the support we possibly can to building up responsibility, to improving the economic conditions of the people, strengthening their organisations and helping to raise their social standards.

For convenience I had perhaps better deal with certain of the points which have been raised in respect of the Report of the Gold Coast Commission. It is true that the disturbances did somewhat surprise those of us who had hoped for a period of continuing progress and development in that particular territory. All of us were aware of the constructive work which the late Governor and his Government had done, and of the immense strides which were being made in regard to social services and economic development.

When the Commission was appointed following the disturbances, it tackled its work with despatch and energy. It can also be said that the Government in London did not delay in producing its own Paper on the recommendations which the Commission had made. It is quite true that the Commission gave a wide interpretation to its terms of reference but its object was to discover the grievances which existed in the Gold Coast and to offer recommendations as to how those grievances might be met. It may be that the list set out in the first chapter of the Commission's Report contains a medley of grievances perhaps stated with some little disproportion. But the Commission was anxious to make it clear what their discoveries were which, in their judgment, had produced the disturbances which had startled so many people in this country as well as elsewhere.

As the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Keeling) has pointed out, the Report vindicates the authorities in the action which they took. Many wild statements have been made that the authorities were engaged in a task of shooting down agitators and others. I notice that there is to be a protest meeting this week in London in which such wild statements will be repeated. The Commission makes it perfectly clear that the authorities behaved with tremendous restraint and circumspection, and that the result of the courageous way in which the problem was tackled led to the saving of life which otherwise might have been destroyed.

It is true that the 1946 constitution was heralded as a big step forward in constitutional development in British territories in Africa. The Ashanti had been brought within the terms of the constitution in an effective way, and the Africans were to enjoy a new and unofficial majority. I would agree with what has been implied in some of the criticisms made of the Commission's recommendations. Perhaps they paid too little attention to the structure of African society and the place in the life of the African people of the chiefs and their councils, and also perhaps that they did less than justice to the system of native administration which has been built up under British direction over the past few decades.

But I think that all of us in this House recognise that there are limits to the system of indirect rule, and do see the importance, in the changing conditions of West Africa, of re-organising local government, and particularly, in the urban areas, of meeting new administrative needs. We shall carry through the changes contemplated with full regard to the structure of African society and the place of the chiefs but at the same time we hope to extend the basis of local government, not only widening representation in local government, but also building up a more effective responsibility so that the people can play a more direct part. The Government have made it clear in the White Paper published at the time of the report what they propose to do, or what they would seek to do, in this field.

They recognise that the Commission's report made recommendations of a very far reaching character. They also recognise that, at this stage in the political development of the Gold Coast, such far reaching recommendations could only operate, if operate at all, to the detriment of political development. Accordingly, while it is sought to increase the responsibility of African members on the Executive by associating certain of them with some of the duties of the Executive it is proposed that the Report and the suggestions of His Majesty's Government should now be studied by a public committee in the Gold Coast and that, in the light of the recommendations, suitable amendments as to constitution should be considered. I would only stress that it has always been a lively part of British Colonial policy, certainly over quite a number of years, that we should never regard a constitution as necessarily static. Changes are always going on which require continuous adaptation of the political institutions and it is in that spirit that we shall approach the needs of the Gold Coast so far as its constitution is concerned.

At the present time of course, the whole economic basis of the Gold Coast, or a very large basis of that economy, is cocoa. We are seized with the vital importance of preserving this industry and checking the growth of disease in all possible ways. But obviously this is cultivation by peasant farmers, and there are limits to the degree of compulsion which can be applied if trouble is to be avoided in the territory. Reference was made to the difficulties which have already been experienced as a result of the application by the authorities of compulsion in regard to the rooting out of certain of the diseased trees.

It is necessary to break down the suspicion which is entertained as to the purpose of the Government. In spite of all our educational efforts, and our powers of persuasion, we have not induced the farmers to see reason in regard to that, we have agreed that the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations should nominate experienced scientists themselves to study the matter so that there shall be available for the Africans an impartial report as to the way in which this problem should be tackled. My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Corlett) drew attention to the importance of expediting this international inquiry. I can give him that assurance. We regret that at the moment we have not been able to secure the services of the persons who have been approached. We are of course in communication with distinguished scientists. We are fully aware that such a problem cannot just wait and that definite and decisive action must be taken.

Reference was also made by the hon. Member for Twickenham and the hon. Member for York to certain schemes suggested for encouraging the Africans to allow their diseased trees to be cut out. I have noted what has been said in regard to the problem of compensation. The views expressed have been very much in the minds of the Gold Coast Government. We hope that there will be some compensation arrangement associated with the efforts to tackle this disease, it would give some encouragement to the farmers.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman one question? He said that there were limits to the degree of compulsion which could be applied in the cutting out of diseased trees. Was that a euphemism for saying that the limit is zero, and that there will be no compulsory cutting out?

This is a very delicate political matter.

Yes, but what does the right hon. Gentleman mean?

As far as possible, the African peasant farmer must be carried with us in any policy which we seek to operate.

I only want to know what the right hon. Gentleman means by "limits to the degree of compulsion."

I seek to make it clear that we tried compulsion and we encountered an enormous amount of opposition. We are now trying to overcome that opposition. We do not want to have to resort again to compulsion, if it is a method which may produce no result, when possibly by the exploration of another method we may get the desired results.

There were other points raised in the Debate with which unfortunately I have no time to deal. On the question of encouraging secondary industries, I entirely agree that we must get a much more varied economy in the Gold Coast. The creation of the Gold Coast Industrial Development Corporation is a step in that direction. I also agree that we must try to deal with some of the economic discontents which were contributory to the disturbances. We have been making available to West Africa a larger supply of consumer goods. We have been trying to encourage Co-operation, and the suggestions about price levels made in the report of the Commission are being studied. Finally, all of us in this House realise the importance which the Commission attaches to building up confidence in the African population, and securing their goodwill and understanding.

I pass to the problems which have been raised about the Malayan situation. I say with all the emphasis at my command that there is no complacent feeling anywhere about the present situation in the territory. No complacency has been shown, and I assert that we have pursued a firm and strong policy. We have been conscious of the consequences if any policy of vaccilation and weakness was shown. I want to meet right away the criticisms of the hon. Member for Bury (Mr. W. Fletcher) that this Government, instead of dealing with certain fundamental and essential needs in Malaya, became involved in constitutional issues to the neglect of the first principles necessary for orderly government and stability. The Colonial Office took over from the military administration. A civil government needed to be set up. The disturbances that had occurred, the legacy of disorder from war, the restoration which was called for, necessitated, as had been recommended over a period of years by those who knew anything about Malaya, some strong central government with due regard to the local government needs of the respective States and Settlements.

Further, the situation required that in the political life of Malaya various elements should be properly integrated in order that all should share in the responsibility for the government of the territory. Whether we liked it or not, the political problem had to be tackled at the outset when government was taken up by the civil authorities. It is really ludicrous to suggest that the civil authorities, once civil administration had been assumed, limited their activity to the making of the new constitution to the prejudice of the requirements of law and order. Indeed, since the war, economic recovery in Malaya is one of the spectacular events which have happened in the world. The Government proceeded immediately to lay down a basis for sound administration, to reorganise the police and to get a continuous flow of the foodstuffs which were essential to keep the population alive.

The Government played their part in the restoration of the economic life of the territory. They did their' utmost to revive the rubber, tin, copra and other industries. They tried to restore the social services—education, public health and housing. They did everything they could to establish in Malaya settled life and better economic conditions. It would have been sheer folly, in view of the Communist menace, if there had been no effort on the part of the Government to attack the economic discontents and to make it possible for steady life to come back to the people. Therefore, I utterly repudiate the insinuation that the Govermnent were primarily concerned with the making of a new constitution to the prejudice of all the other important operations and features to which a Government must give attention.

Instead of indulging in these phrases which we have heard on many occasions before, will the right hon. Gentleman answer specifically the questions that have been put about the police, taking into account the fact that the previous Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies has stated today that it was known that these troubles would break out? What was done about it?

I will come to the hon. Member's point before I sit down, if time permits. It may be that I am getting under his skin—

There is plenty of room for that.

—in repudiating completely the allegations he has made about Government policy. I say that Government policy was balanced. It was concerned not only with political growth but with the economic and social requirements of the territory. The hon. Member suggested that little or nothing was done to secure the restoration of order. I would point out to him that effective work was done in regard to the reconstitution of the police force, not only were bandits, groups of fighters who had played some part during the occupation, disbanded, but there was also a considerable seizure of arms and every effort made by the civil administration and the police to secure what arms and munitions they could that had been brought into the country during the war years.

At Question time on Wednesday I drew the right hon. Gentleman's attention to a description in the "Observer" of last Sunday of police activity and the burning down of a native village. Has the Minister investigated that in order to avoid the criticism that it is necessarily a part of the policy?

At this point I do not want to be drawn into a discussion of the methods now being employed for dealing with the troubles in view of statements I have already made to the House. I return to the point. The Federation Government were fully alive to the necessity for getting the basis of sound law and order in the territory by the activities they pursued, by bringing under control certain of the lawless groups, and by trying to attack at the base the contributory causes of economic discontent, while at the same time giving encouragement to a sound and healthy trade union movement. It is suggested that we paid little attention to the warnings which were given. I only point out that as a result of the energetic action taken by the local administration, by the beginning of 1948 there had been a definite recovery in stability and the incidence of violent crime had markedly decreased.

It is said that when the Communist menace became more obvious to the world, certain difficulties were put in the way of the administration by the Colonial Office. It is now rumoured, according to the hon. Member for Bury, that even Sir Edward Gent was recalled because of his protest against the difficulties put in his way. I most emphatically repudiate that suggestion; it is absolutely untrue. Difficulties have not been placed by London in the way of the Malayan administration in the discharge of its responsible duties for building up sound law and order in the territory. Indeed, they are the first to admit that they have received every encouragement and support from London. It is untrue for anyone to suggest that we have prevented the Malayan administration from fulfilling the normal job of government.

I wish to deal for a moment with the Communist menace. I said that at the beginning of this year there was an improvement in the situation, but it is true that the Communists were determined to disrupt government and production, if they possibly could, to make the maximum amount of trouble for the authorities, and to capture the trade union movement. That menace, the first phase of Communist activity, was faced, and they were completely defeated in their efforts to capture the trade unions. It was because of their failure to do that, as a result of the policy declared for South-East Asia by the Communist international leaders, that the other method, the resort to violent activity of the kind which we have known in this second phase, was adopted.

There was a conference of the Malayan Communist party in March at which—conscious that they were losing their hold over the organised workers' unions as a result of the policy pursued by the Government—they altered their tactics, and, in line with the general Communist practice in South-East Asia, the new policy of violence was adopted for the purpose of embarrassing the Government, and contributing to the difficulties of His Majesty's Government at home. This new policy was pursued—

If that was so, and if it was known to the Government from July, 1947, why did they steadily refuse to have a Debate in this House when it was obvious that great help could be given to them by having such a Debate?

I do not accept the statement which the hon. Member makes. It was a matter which could quite well have been arranged through the usual channels. If the Conservative Members felt strongly enough that such a Debate was required, they could quite easily have arranged it through the usual channels.

It was refused five times. [An HON. MEMBER: "By whom?"] By the Leader of the House.

The arrangement could have been made with the Leader of the House, and I am not so stupid as to suppose that Conservative Members of Parliament are so inept that when they want a particular Debate, they are unable to get it. I need hardly restate the steps which have been taken during the past year to meet this menace in Malaya. I have given a number of reports to the House in regard to it, and because of the limits of time, I must leave it there.

A question was raised about insurance. I am aware of the urgency and the gravity of this particular problem. I must point out, however, that it is a matter which is being actively discussed at this moment by the Government with the insurance and commercial interests in Malaya. Discussions have also been proceeding in London, and all of us are possessed with a great sense of urgency and know that a conclusion should be reached, and possibly alternative arrangements considered. However, while these discussions are actively going on, it is quite impossible for me to make a statement to this House. It is not a matter of vacillation by the Government; we have energetically pursued this problem. All the interests involved are engaged in the discussions, and, as I have said, it would be wrong for me at this point to make a public statement as to the stage which these discussions have reached.

In conclusion, I want to say that, although there has been some improvement in the Malayan situation during the last week or so, we are not taking a complacent view in regard to it. We shall energetically drive our policy forward. As I said on Wednesday, we are taking the offensive, and we are breaking down the organisation of the bandits and the Communists.

And burning the villages.

There is a great deal more I should like to say. I appreciate that this problem cannot be solved in the course of a few weeks or months. It will necessitate a long drive on the part of the authorities in Malaya, and we shall continue our attack on Communist propaganda and agitation until we have completely defeated their efforts to destroy our administration in the territories for which we are responsible.

1.7 p.m.

I do not wish to interrupt for more than a few moments the agreed flow of Debate on the Adjournment as we are already a few minutes behind our timetable. I only rise to express a certain sympathy with the Colonial Secretary. For many years he was a keen critic of the Colonial Office. When I was there, he used to put down very searching and sometimes, we thought, mischievous questions. Now he is in the embarrassing position of the critic charged with responsibility. He was a very good poacher, but I do not think he has been as good a keeper. Nevertheless, this is not the occasion on which I can indulge at length in any criticism of what he has told us. My purpose in rising is merely to reserve the position of my hon. and right hon. Friends by saying that we think his explanations on both these questions, but particularly on the Malayan question, wholly unsatisfactory, and that we shall certainly raise these matters again at the earliest possible opportunity in the next Session.

I wish to thank the Chair for the opportunity extended to me and to other hon. Members who are anxious to return to this question of the proposed termination of the United Nations Appeal for Children. As I have already expressed myself very fully on this matter, and as a number of hon. Members on both sides of the House are anxious to express themselves on it today, I do not propose to repeat the arguments which I have already submitted to the House.

I wish to ask the Parliamentary Secretary one or two questions about this matter. This decision of the Economic and Social Council has certainly caused considerable consternation not only throughout this country, but throughout other countries as well, and I have not yet come across anyone who has been able to suggest any substantial reason why that decision should have been taken and, above all, why it should have been supported by our own Government. A few months ago when the question of a contribution from the Government to the International Children's Emergency Fund was raised, there was no question as to the feeling in this country about this great effort which was being made through the United Nations. Therefore, the Government could have been in no doubt that the people of this country generally were behind them in anything they did to assist that Fund through the continuation of the Appeal.

There is no doubt either as to the attitude of the non-governmental organisations associated with the Fund, or of a large number of the Governments. As I pointed out when I previously spoke on this matter, the decision was taken with eight votes in favour, seven against and three abstentions, and it is not at all clear that those who voted against or those who abstained knew precisely what the interpretation of the decision was going to be eventually. Therefore, it cannot be that the Government thought there was no public backing for the Appeal.

I should like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary whether the Government have found that the Appeal was ineffective. That I cannot believe; I have found no evidence of that. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that the Fund has had remarkable results which I have already described in a previous speech. Indeed, since the Motion which was put on the Order Paper by approximately 200 Members of the House—I do not know what the latest figure is—was tabled, and a letter which I myself addressed to "The Times" on the matter was printed, I have had letters from different parts of the country expressing indignation at the decision that has been taken, and even now I am receiving cheques from various people and groups of people as contributions towards the Lord Mayor's Fund which is part of the Appeal. Yesterday I received a cheque for £6 from a girls' school which I am passing on to the Fund. That is evidence of the popular interest and enthusiasm which is behind the Appeal.

If the Government reply that the Fund is going on in any case—because I understand they have supported the continuation of the Emergency Fund while opposing the continuation of the Appeal—and that the voluntary organisations in different countries will continue to make their collections for the Fund, then I say that they are omitting to recognise the important psychological value which the United Nations' Appeal has. If it is true that the Government's international policy is based upon the United Nations and the success of the United Nations, there is nothing which will contribute more to that success than a recognition by the common people of all countries that the United Nations is an effective organisation affecting the daily lives of everyone in the world, and that it is not simply a remote forum for political recriminations amongst a small group of rather remote politicians.

That kind of impression is precisely what this Appeal is calculated to destroy. It is, in fact, the only activity within the scope of the United Nations where the ordinary humble man and woman of any country, of any creed and of any politi- cal colour throughout the whole world, is able to make some personal contribution to this great world effort of co-operation and to realise in making that contribution that it is something which infinitely and intimately affects himself and something which is, therefore, vital to his own survival and the survival of world peace and world co-operation.

Therefore I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to give us some very substantial reasons why this Appeal should be terminated, and to say what advantage he expects will be gained by the termination of the Appeal before we are prepared to accept such a decision. Without saying any more, because I realise that time is short and many other Members wish to speak, I will leave the Parliamentary Secretary with these questions. I hope before the Debate is concluded that we can have an assurance that the Government, in the light of the discussions that take place here and in the light of other representations which have been made, will at least reconsider their decision before a final decision is taken at the Assembly.

1.15 p.m.

I am aware that there are other Members who wish to speak, and the value of this Debate is that speeches come from all sides of the House. Therefore, I will try not to continue further on the ground which has been well covered by the hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. J. Hynd) and the hon. Member for Luton (Mr. Warbey) in their speeches last week.

The "Manchester Guardian" very wisely pointed out the other day that one of the weaknesses about international organisations is that they are not submitted to the kind of informed criticism which our Parliamentary institutions provide in this country through the invention of His Majesty's Opposition. Our delegates go off to Geneva and Lake Success with a Foreign Office brief, and unless some conscientious Member follows the course of the discussions we know nothing because the reports in the Press very rarely give us the inside story of the Debate. Often there is no response at all in the British Press, whereas it is very different in the United States of America. That is no criticism of the British Press, but in the United States there is complete discussion every day on these questions.

Some of us got wind of the impending discussions at Geneva, and last Summer before we parted a series of questions was put down which I should have thought would have made known the views of Members of this House very clearly to the Foreign Office. When the discussion came up I am informed that the Minister of State did not take part. A civil servant in the Foreign Office was the spokesman, and I take leave now to question some of the statements which were made on that occasion. The fact remains that our spokesmen both at Lake Success and Lake Geneva have failed to appreciate the volume of opinion in this House and in the country on the subject of children.

I had the good fortune to be at Lake Success last year when the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Mrs. Paton), who I hope is going to speak, was, I think, from time to time in a difficult position. At Paris we have got the hon. Member for North-West Camberwell (Mrs. Corbet), and her declared interest in matters affecting children is well known to every hon. Member opposite. When the matter comes up before the Assembly we expect a very different attitude from the attitude at Geneva. We wish to see the vote of seven-eight reversed—a vote which we helped to manoeuvre at Geneva. Do not imagine that public opinion in the United States is all with the United States spokesman at Geneva. I have a volume of correspondence here, including extracts from the "New York Times" and elsewhere, urging the United States Government to go further with this matter. Incidentally, I do not see why we should not support the lead of Australia on this occasion. It is a matter of great joy to some of us that Dr. Evatt is now chairman, although we shall miss his voice as an advocate.

I want to restate the problem in very simple terms. In the United Nations Organisation there is an overall responsibility for children and children's welfare vested with the Economic and Social Council, but the actual administration is rather confused between a number of bodies. The hon. Member for Rushcliffe will know the bodies to which I refer. I should think there are half a dozen bodies concerned with children, not only the International Children's Emergency Fund and the United Nations Appeal for Children, but a Permanent Social Commission which is a sort of special organ of the Economic and Social Council, and also a number of international voluntary organisations. All this was known a year ago. I wrote an article on this very question. I discussed it with officials at Lake Success, and again this Summer, and the proper job now is to sort out and define responsibility.

But there has been no leadership. The departmental jealousies and personal differences of bureaucrats—we may as well be frank about this, because international bureaucracy needs an international inquiry at this moment—grew until such chaos ensued that our representatives washed their hands of the whole business. That is what has happened. I have been pleading for three years for a children's Nansen, for the appointment of one man or one woman with defined responsibilities to take hold of this whole problem with the support of all the nations. What a chance we have missed! And not for the first time. In the last three years this country has had the ball at its feet in international, social and educational affairs, and it has lost world leadership. What is wrong with the Labour Party on this? I never expected this would happen; and I believe that a large number of hon. Members on that side agree that there is something wrong. Nobody can deny the existence of the problem—nobody who has seen Europe or China. The orphaned, tubercular, undernourished, fear-ridden children of Europe are staring us in the face, and there is no iron curtain to conceal these facts. Here, more than anywhere, there was a chance to appeal over the heads of misunderstandings and ideologies to human sympathy to deal with the facts.

There are two problems. One is the short-term, immediate, urgent problem—the problem of salvage; and the other is the long-term problem of social, medical, and educational reconstruction. It is my considered belief that these two tasks are each a part of one problem which is preeminently suited to international treatment by governments in co-operation with voluntary organisations. That has been questioned, I believe, by the Canadian representative. However, I do not believe that in his heart of hearts—because he is a very distinguished expert on social and child welfare matters—he really thinks that this work can be done by voluntary organisations alone. This summer some of my friends have organised at Prague a World Council for Early Childhood. No difficulties were found over ideologies, because these people were discussing technical problems. If I were Secretary-General of U.N.O. at this moment—and we have to put ourselves in his position—or head of the Economic and Social Council, or British delegate in Paris, I should form one body here with responsible representatives from the World Health Organisation, from U.N.E.S.C.O., and from bona fide voluntary bodies working in this field, including the Save the Children Fund and others, and charge it with the responsibility for children throughout the world.

I would suggest—and I would not do more—to each country varying forms of organisation. There would be no question of dictatorship. I would leave them to make their own decisions. The beauty of this organisation is that we have an international organisation with a varying national appeal. Some countries might give up a whole day's earnings. That has been done in some countries. It does not appeal to America. There are different types of appeal there. I would make the children's appeal an annual effort for each of the next five years and supply the means, for money is absolutely vital. In other words, I would have a continuing appeal. This would give millions of people a chance to take a continuing interest in one most effective form of practical help and to take an interest in U.N.O. as a body.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Attercliffe has just said, this is the way to make the United Nations come alive to people, because this is a human, practical problem. Otherwise, it is a very remote organisation. As anybody knows who has been speaking on U.N.O. platforms in this country, it is extremely difficult to awaken interest if people think it is a remote organisation. The whole question of the propaganda for the United Nations, and of spreading information about it, needs consideration, as my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. F. Noel-Baker), who has just started an excellent magazine to help in this work, will readily appreciate. The cost to this country of support for such a body would be nearer £10,000 than £20,000. It is a mere trifle, a bagatelle, compared with the money wasted—as I could prove—on other international bodies, and compared with the money spent on defence.

Therefore, I make this suggestion to my hon. Friend who is to reply to the Debate, that he asks our delegate at Paris to consider the throwing together of all those bodies connected with children and children's welfare, the formation of one central organisation, defining its responsibility, and giving the responsibility to one man. I have reason to know that support for such a venture would be forthcoming from many countries that voted at Geneva the other day—I think in misapprehension—against the continuation of the Appeal. In the United States, it may not be generally known here, no less a person than General Eisenhower himself is interested. I heard him speak the other day in New York on this question. He is President of the Appeal as well as President of Columbia University. In Canada, I believe, similar sympathy could be expected, and I believe the same is true of Western Europe.

There is no political capital in this. I made a reference to the Labour Party just now because I thought the Labour Party would take this matter up. I want them still to do so. However, there is no political question here at all. I think the Under-Secretary of State is young enough, if I may say so, to believe in an imaginative and planned approach to this question, as the other night he was ready to believe in the empirical approach to another question. I want him not to get up at that Box today and refer to the past. Let the past bury the past. I want him to reflect on the speeches made today by the hon. Members behind him, the correspondence in the New York "Times" and the excellent letter in "The Times" of London the other day; and I want him to speak on this question today as a British Minister with a wider vision than that of a Foreign Office brief.

Let him give this definite assurance, that he will reconsider at Paris, not necessarily my suggestion, although I have made a constructive suggestion, but all these suggestions which have been made. It would be a great relief. If he did there would be a great sigh of relief that something had come of the hundreds of resolutions passed on to the Economic and Social Council, and that there had emerged British leadership. A great many people all over the world would respond to that leadership. There would then be, at any rate, one small good deed done in what looks like proving a very complicated Assembly at Paris for many months.

1.28 p.m.

I speak now on this subject because I feel I must. Last year I was the Government delegate to the United Nations and sat on the Committee which dealt with the Children's International Emergency Fund and the United Nations Appeal for Children. I want to say that, all along, I have been very sad about this issue. I did not like the instructions given me and last year I expressed my disappointment. I felt that we, ought on this issue to be quite clear about our support for a great humanitarian effort like this. The unanimous decision of the whole Committee on this question was in great contrast to the decisions of many other Committees, in which there was a great amount of wrangling. Here was a session which was delightful to attend because complete harmony prevailed. I am really surprised at the developments recently and to find that by seven votes to eight the decision to end the United Nations Appeal for Children has been taken, because I cannot reconcile that decision with the atmosphere of unanimity and of enthusiasm which was present on the part of the whole of the 57 nations when I was at U.N.O.

It was this feeling of the realisation of all the delegates assembled at the United Nations of the universality of this appeal, and of its effect upon the nations of the world in bringing men and women to a realisation of what the United Nations stood for on the healing and constructive side—it was because of that, I feel sure, that unanimity was present. The discussions on it made one realise that every delegate there understood the enormous universal need of the continuance of the U.N.A.C. It was a most impressive event, which moved one very deeply indeed.

I am certain that, as a whole, the nations of the world want this Appeal to go on. It is a unifying agency. Here, this week, we have been talking about the sad developments which have taken place with regard to the international situation. We have talked about the wrangling and quarrelling on political matters. We know that in the political sphere there is no agreement; but here is a sphere where there is universal agreement—where there is a bridge by which the nations of the world can still meet and co-operate on behalf of the world's children.

I feel that for the Appeal to be discontinued would be a sad blow to millions of people in the world who have come together for the special purpose of realising how great is their work in connection with the healing among children which we want to take place. We have reached a stage in which there are many children in the world who want immediate help, apart from the long-term help to which the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. K. Lindsay) referred. I believe that Mr. Chester Bowles, who came back from a tour some months ago, said that there were 300,000,000 children in need of immediate help, if they were not to grow into stunted adults, whose life would be injured or harmed permanently without it. In Europe alone, it is estimated that there are 10,000,000 children in need of help immediately and, of course, for long periods.

This work, in my view, cannot be done purely through voluntary agencies, because these agencies need the backing of their Governments, their encouragement, information and knowledge, and all the other help which they can give in a hundred and one ways if the Appeal is to be continued and the work carried on. That is not to say that I think that the voluntary agencies should go out. On the contrary, I am convinced that the work of the U.N.A.C., done by voluntary agents with Government help, is one of the means by which we can make the United Nations a really live organisation and a really live issue in the minds of the ordinary men and women in the street.

I have been to meetings where one can talk about international affairs and the work of the United Nations, and the thing which strikes me most is that many people have so little background on these issues that they find the whole thing very puzzling, and it becomes a great trouble for them to understand it. If we bring it down to practical things, and say, "Here is a constructive job in which all the nations of the world are united to make the future of the children of the world better than in the past, to heal these children and bring them up to healthy citizenship and healthy adult life," there is something which catches the imagination. There is something for the ordinary persons who go to meetings and want to understand which attracts them as by a magnet into this great United Nations organisation, so that they can take part themselves in this great constructive job.

Now we are told that this Appeal, which has done a magnificent job already after only one year of effort, is to end and that our Government are supporting the ending of the U.N.A.C. I wish to make a special appeal to the Government. I feel that they are making a mistake. I feel that it is a matter of our prestige, and that there are people who cannot understand and will not be able to understand why it is that a great humanitarian British Government, such as this Government is, and a great humanitarian British people, such as this people is, can give support to closing down the work of a great organisation like this. I make this appeal because I know it is widely felt that we ought not to do it. I cannot understand the difficulty, and why the Government cannot go on with their support. I appeal to the Under-Secretary to tell us why they cannot.

I agree with the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities that other agencies dealing with children are not the same. I agree with his point that it would be a grand thing if we could get one great organisation, with some great figure at the head, which could deal with children alone. This is one great problem by itself which cannot be linked up with, and be part of, other problems. It is so big and immense, and its possibilties for good are so great, that there ought to be one unifying organisation of all the agencies for children working as a world unity with its branches in all countries.

I know that the Under-Secretary is personally sympathetic, and I appeal to him to try to persuade the Foreign Secretary or whoever has taken this decision on the part of our Government, that it is a mistake, a going back, and that it will not cost us so much that we cannot find a way out and be able to continue this work in the future. I ask him to make this request known. I know that the delegates of the United Nations want this Fund to go on. There has been a terrible change since last year if that is not so. It has been expressed to me that people were surprised that the Government did not give it the backing last year which we wanted them to give. I feel that there will be enormously tragic consequences, which will be far greater than we realise, if our country does not give its support to the continuation of the United Nations Appeal for Children.

1.38 p.m.

I have been glad to listen to the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (Mrs. Paton) and others who have spoken as experts on this great humanitarian work for the children of the world. I am no expert. I am the sort of individual whose imagination is caught in the way which the hon. Lady described. I am absolutely certain that my reaction is the same as the ordinary individual's reaction, and that is one of interest and recognition of the importance of the work which she has described, and, above all, of the importance of the United Nations taking part in this work.

I do not want to speak at any length or to put any small technical points about what the hon. Lady was saying, but she confused me a little because she kept referring to the Fund, and not to the United Nations Appeal for Children. As I understand it, the International Children's Emergency Fund is continuing and has the support of the majority of nations on the Economic and Social Council. It is the United Nations Appeal for Children which we are discussing here. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not try to ride off in his reply to the Debate, on that point.

I am certain that everybody in the House must have been touched by the success, large in some places but small in others of the United Nations Appeal for Children during this year. I hope the Government will tell us that it is not as the result of the experience of one year of that appeal that they have turned against it. I can tell the hon. Gentleman, from knowledge of my own constituency that there was far too little time for people to understand what the appeal was about, or why it was that they were asked to provide money out of their own pockets for children of the world when they thought it was a Government job.

I have always looked to this appeal for children mainly because it brings into each house and to each family the importance of the work which the United Nations can do. But although I have placed emphasis on the value of that point that aspect of the matter did not reach enough people in the country. That it had an effect can be seen from reports from small villages one of which, in Derbyshire, I believe, contributed over £1 per head. But in other places, such as in my constituency, for instance, only comparatively small sums were collected. am certain that, given time, that appeal would catch the imagination of everyone. I cannot understand why His Majesty's Government, who supported the Appeal and let the Foreign Secretary broadcast a full, enthusiastic and most humane appeal on its behalf, should allow their representative to vote against it at Geneva.

The hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. K. Lindsay) made a grave charge when he said that the vote which was given against this Appeal was manoeuvred by us. Is that really what goes on when the Economic and Social Council are considering matters of world humanitarian values such as this? If so, it is a shocking thing. I hear from friends of mine that things like that happen, and I hope the Under-Secretary will tell us that that sort of thing will never happen again. The object of this Debate, however, is to get from the hon. Gentleman a statement that all that is forgotten, and that when this matter is raised in the General Assembly, as we understand it will be, the spokesman for His Majesty's Government will support the continuance of this appeal for at least another year and, we hope, for five years.

1.43 p.m.

I am sure that every one of the 174 Members of the House who put their names to a Motion which we are not able to discuss now will be grateful to you, Sir, for giving time to Members on all sides to raise this question today. I want to appeal straight away to the Under-Secretary and to the hon. Member for Faversham (Mr. P. Wells) to report, when they next see the Foreign Secretary, on the very strong feeling there is in all parts of the House about the disastrous decision of the Economic and Social Council to terminate the United Nations Appeal for Children.

The hon. Member for the Combined English Universities (Mr. K. Lindsay) and the hon. Member for North Blackpool (Mr. Low) went a little further than the immediate issue about which we want an answer today. I have great sympathy with the views of the hon. Member for the Combined English Universities, but we are now concentrating on one point only: whether the British delegation in Paris will be instructed, when this subject comes before the General Assembly, to press for a reversal of the decision taken at the Seventh Session of the Economic and Social Council. The wider aspects of the United Nations work for children, or the success of the appeal in this country, can be discussed, but those are matters which are wider than the one we are now bringing to the attention of the Government.

We have often heard from the Foreign Secretary about disappointments and setbacks on the political level in U.N.O., but also of the many successes which have been achieved by its specialised agencies. Indeed, my right hon. Friend restressed that point only a few days ago. We remember that when he and the Under-Secretary were defending the totally inadequate contribution which the British Government were making to the Children's Fund he put it forward as a justification that the money ought to be raised by voluntary effort in this country and elsewhere. That is precisely what the United Nations Appeal for Children is designed to do. Even if the results have not been spectacular they have been heartening.

In many parts of the world no appeal has yet been put forward, but the results so far show that 52 countries and 30 dependent territories have joined the appeal. Final results from seven campaigns have gone to the Appeal office at Lake Success; another 17 national cam- paigns have sent in intermediate reports; 26 campaigns are still going on, and 18 are expected to take place in the autumn. The effect of the resolution passed at Geneva by the Council will be to destroy the international machinery which exists for co-ordinating the unofficial voluntary appeals which are being launched in different countries. Voluntary efforts, organised on an international scale, will not be able to proceed if this organisation is scrapped.

I cannot understand what the motives of the British delegates at the Council were, or whether they understood what they were voting about when the matter was being discussed. When the vote was taken it was carried by eight votes to seven with three abstentions, and immediately afterwards there was a long scrap' during which the chairman gave a ruling. His interpretation of the resolution did' not accord with the views of a great number of the delegates, who said that if they had understood what they had been voting about, they would have voted the other way.

I want to ask a series of specific questions. Is the Under-Secretary satisfied with the line the British delegates took at Geneva, and with the procedure when this question was discussed? If so, why was that delegation given instructions to vote against a continuation of this Appeal? If it was for reasons of economy, is he aware that the total cost of the appeal, which is being paid not out of the money raised by the various national appeals, but out of the United Nations budget, is only I per cent. of that budget? What is to be the attitude of the British delegation at Paris when this question is raised again?

The most disturbing feature of this whole question, however, is that while, in some countries, the Appeal is going ahead, in a great many parts of the world it has not yet got going. If the resolution of the Council is endorsed in Paris it will scrap the machinery which exists for coordinating various national appeals; it will abolish the international headquarters of the Appeal, and prevent the Appeal: from going ahead in a great many countries. I want my hon. Friend to assure the House that he will give the instructions which the majority of people in this country desire he should give. I hone no political differences or ideological quarrels will stop this great and inspiring humanitarian work, which started with such success when the Appeal was first launched.

1.50 p.m.

I was very sorry that it was not possible for a Foreign Office spokesman to be here to reply to the speeches made on 14th September on this subject by my hon. Friends the Members for Attercliffe (Mr. J. Hynd) and Luton (Mr. Warbey). I am glad to have this opportunity of making clear the Government's attitude on this subject of U.N.A.C. It would be useful for me, not as a means of riding off on the question, but for the enlightenment of Members of the House who are not here now, and of public opinion outside the House, if I made clear the distinction between the fund on the one hand and the appeal on the other.

The International Children's Emergency Fund was set up by the General Assembly on 11th December, 1946, with the support of the United Kingdom. Its purpose was to supply supplementary meals to children in need and to buy for them clothes and medical supplies. The United Nations has done that with success. It has helped a large number of children in the most effective way. The United Nations Appeal for Children was set up on the initiative of the United Nations Secretariat, following a personal proposal by the Norwegian Delegate Dr. Ording, who has given to this work the most devoted and effective service. He started off the one-day's-pay scheme under the United Nations Appeal for Children.

The appeal, of course, is distinct from the Fund. The Appeal's job is to do publicity, to co-ordinate appeals run in different countries and to canalise as well as possible the funds raised. There is a most important distinction to be drawn between the fund and the appeal. Even the hon. Member for North Blackpool (Mr. Low) slipped when he suggested that my right hon. Friend had broadcast for the Appeal. In point of fact, the broadcast he made was for the Fund and not for the Appeal. It is not inconsistent to support the Fund and to suggest that the Appeal should be wound up.

I think that statement is mistaken. I thought it was on the last day of the Appeal that the Foreign Secretary went to the microphone?

Perhaps—without notice I will not press this matter—but I certainly wish to stress the clear distinction between the Fund and the Appeal.

What is to happen under this resolution of the Economic and Social Council? The effect of the resolution will not be to wind up the fund in any sense or in any sense whatever to discourage national appeals. The effect will be to wind up an administrative side of the United Nations Secretariat concerned with the Appeal.

Why?

Perhaps I might quote a Section of the resolution of the Economic and Social Council in which it is stated: The Economic and Social Council invites the co-operation of Governments in giving every possible assistance to national committees which are continuing to engage in activities concerning the Appeal, and draws to the attention of Governments and of national committees the desirability of continuing the policy contained in General Assembly and Council's decisions of recognising the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund as the main recipient of the proceeds of the national appeals. In those words the policy outlined by the Economic and Social Council is made clear. It wants the Fund and the national appeals to continue but it has, in effect, wound up the work of the Secretariat of the United Nations on the Appeal.

Why?

Let me point out that this is not a sudden decision of the Council. In February the Economic and Social Council asked the Secretary-General to bear in mind the necessity of reducing the administrative cost of headquarters and regional activities by progressive steps as expeditiously as was practicable. In July of this year it set up a special Committee which informed the Director-General of the United Nations Appeal for Children that he should cease—I will come to the reasons later—trying to form additional national committees to take part in the appeal, and gave its opinion that this was not likely to deprive the appeal of substantial benefits.

I should here like to point out in reply to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. F. Noel-Baker), that a long time had ensued without certain countries setting up national appeals and that great encouragement had been given in vain to those countries to set up appeals. The Committee concluded that the promotion work could not be carried on by the Director-General of the United Nations Appeal. Dr. Rajchman, who is Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Children's Fund, told a Committee last month about the misunderstanding about the promotion of the Appeal for children, and explained that the Appeal could continue in effect under the different administrative arrangements. Several countries had already announced their intention of continuing their national appeals.

We were greatly influenced at the Economic and Social Council by the attitude of the Secretary-General himself and by the report of the Director-General, Commander Jackson—

Who is no longer there.

—He was speaking on behalf of the Secretary-General. There was no reason to suppose that he was not putting forward the views of the Secretary-General.

What about our views?

This is a point of fact. Commander Jackson was not in fact speaking for the Secretary-General. He was speaking for the specialised agencies who afterwards protested that he did not adequately represent their point of view.

If the Committee will allow me a moment I shall have to look up the particular reference. In document E/SR. 197 Commander Jackson is reported as saying: Naturally the Secretary-General and all his staff would support and do everything in their power to assist any endeavour to raise funds for children. The Secretary-General did not wish to influence the decision of the Council on the future of the appeal in any way, but he did ask the Council to take into consideration his previous statement, that the administration of the appeal by one organisation within the United Nations, and not by two, would be welcomed by him, especially at a time when the Secretariat was under serious strain of the assumption of more and more operational functions, as in Palestine. It was the Secretary-General's hope that the appeal would continue with full success. But anything done by way of greater decentralization on to the national level would be welcomed as lightening his heavy administrative burdens. That was Commander Jackson speaking for the Secretary-General.

I hesitate to interrupt again, but whatever Commander Jackson may have said in the speech the fact is that the specialised agencies expressed a wish to speak, and finally accepted the suggestion from Commander Jackson that he should speak for them. When he had done so, they protested and said that he had not adequately represented their views.

I can only quote from the Official Report of the Council. I do not think the House wants me to go further into the details of this matter, but, before Commander Jackson made his statement, the Chairman extended a welcome to Commander Jackson on his first appearance at a plenary session of the council as the new Assistant Secretary-General. Then Commander Jackson, speaking as Assistant Secretary-General, expressed on behalf of the Secretary-General his appreciation, and so on. I rather think the House should take notice of 'that statement from the Official Report. We were influenced by the statement of Commander Jackson on behalf of the Secretary-General on this point and also by the arguments put forward by the New Zealand Delegation. We were asked to follow the Australian lead, but the New Zealand Delegation expressed a view with which we have sympathy—[HON. MEMBERS; "Why?"]—I am explaining that we wished to support the Secretariat. We have been attacked by hon. Members on the ground that we are not in the picture, so far as the Secretariat is concerned. It was said that our representatives went to Lake Success without taking a sufficiently close and active interest in the work of the Secretariat and its co-ordination and that money was being wasted at the United Nations in this connection; but we had, in fact, taken an extremely keen interest in the work of the Secretariat and in trying to get efficient administration there. When the Secretary-General asks for support we feel that it is fair to give it.

Mr. K. Lindsay rose —

I have already given way several times.

The Minister has to speak for the Government and not to take the views of the Secretariat.

It is important to look after the efficient functioning of the United Nations Secretariat. We have played a great part also in the second point to which the hon. Member referred, the co-ordination between the specialised agencies. I would like to give further consideration to the plans he has put forward, but already, thanks a great deal to British initiative, there is a coordinating committee which brings together the directors-general of the specialised agencies for the purpose of co-ordinating the work of the specialised agencies.

A meeting was held. I have seen the report. Mr. Trygve Lie called together the heads. If the hon. Gentleman cannot say any more and the decision is not going to be reversed, we are getting nothing from the Debate.

Then I will not pursue the plans the hon. Member put forward for co-ordinating the work of the specialised agencies because that lies a little outside our field. I was going to suggest that this co-ordinating committee might be the basis of some such idea as he suggested, but I would like to look into it further. A further reason put forward was that the greater part of the work of the Appeal was of an informational kind and a great deal of the appeal has been launched. The I.C.E.F. has been put on the map and a great deal of the United Nations initial promotional work has been done. This year it cost 550,000 dollars and in future years on the same basis the cost will be 239,000 dollars.

The view of the majority on the Economic and Social Council was that we should consider the financial results of the Appeal—all the contributions are not yet in and collated—before further action is decided. However, I know that my right hon. Friend appreciates the depth of feeling in the House on this issue and I undertake to represent to him the views of the House. There will be further talk in the Assembly. I give no undertaking that we shall find it possible to change our mind on the point. All I say is that I will be glad to represent the views of the House to my right hon. Friend when I see him in Paris next week.

is the hon. Gentleman aware that the official report on what Commander Jackson said, quite apart from the fact that Commander Jackson is now no longer a member of the Secretariat, does not support the point of view that he was putting out? There is nothing in Commander Jackson's statement to say that in the Secretary-General's view he should get rid of the United Nations co-ordination of all national appeals. It was only a plea for lightening the load slightly and not a plea for throwing the whole thing over. There was nothing to suggest that the co-ordination, which is the important part, should cease.

Before my hon. Friend answers that, may I ask him one thing after the rather astounding speech and explanation which he has given? When our delegates go to the United Nations on this and other matters, will they go with a policy from this Government and not with instructions to follow anything which the Secretariat recommends?

Of course we make up our own minds and go with our own policy but this is an administrative matter and we are bound to take into consideration the views of the United Nations Secretariat.

Before my hon. Friend sits down, I would like on behalf of a number of my hon. Friends to express our great disappointment. We have found his statement entirely inadequate and profoundly disappointing, and we very much hope that he will think again.

I am very glad to have this opportunity of raising the question of the British Council, which is doing extremely valuable work on behalf of Britain and which is very often little understood partly from lack of information and partly from the direct misrepresentation which occurs in the Press. The British Council is not a party concern, and I think that hon. Members opposite will a little later on bear me out in showing their interest in the work of the Council.

However, there are one or two specific matters with which I wish to deal. Firstly the comments which are continually appearing, in one section of the Press. These comments deliberately misrepresent and falsify the Council's activities. I want to give just one instance of these though I could quote a hundred. The "Evening Standard" of 10th September published this statement in the Londoner's Diary: One of the activities of the British Council (financed by the joyful taxpayer) is the publication of the monthly entitled 'Britain Today' now seeking circulation in the U.S.A at 1s. 3d. a copy. For their money such Americans as send dollar subscriptions receive a magazine of 50-odd pages. This magazine, I now learn, is refusing to lighten the drain on the taxpayer by accepting advertising from the United States paid for in advance in dollars. That is completely inaccurate. What is more, a correction was sent—I can say officially that it was sent because I happen to be one of the vice-chairmen of the British Council—pointing out that there was a full-page advertisement in the September "Britain Today"—if hon. Members want visual evidence, here is the advertisement—called "British Gifts in America this Christmas." That will bring in dollars not only by reason of the payment for the advertisement but also through the dollar earnings of the gifts which are bought in America. The "Evening Standard" went on to say that a similar advertisement had been offered for a year. I can only say that no one in the British Council had any cognisance of this matter. I bring this up merely because it is an indication of the sort of deliberate misrepresentation which goes on week in and week out in the Beaverbrook Press and misleads Members of Parliament and members of the public as to what the British Council is doing and can do.

I want to bring up two other matters also where there really is inefficiency and unnecessary cost to the taxpayer on account of the British Council but not through any action or fault of the Council. The Government have laid down that British Council publications shall be dealt with by the Central Office of Information. They have also laid down that books and publications bought by the British Council either for this country or overseas shall be purchased through His Majesty's Stationery Office.

I want to show that both these things are inefficient because long delay loses sales and costs the taxpayer money unnecessarily in the name of uniformity. I have no doubt it is an excellent thing that Government Departments should have their publications issued through the Central Office of Information, but the British Council is not a Government Department and it is run on entirely different lines. Most Government Departments have sporadic publishing, which is possibly better carried out by a central office, but the British Council has to have a permanent publications department because some two-thirds of its publishing work is overseas. Therefore the Central Office has nothing whatever to do with it. So the Council must keep this department going with its salaried experts. The result is that publications in this country are produced under the dual responsibility of Council experts and officers of the Central Office of Information who have no expert knowledge of the Councils' productions.

I should like to give the House a picture of one publication to indicate what I mean. There is a publication coming out called "The Year's Work in Music." It is particularly welcome in many countries and is very necessary from the point of view of the Council. Instead of the Council being able to publish that, what happened was this. Two experts in the Council—the expert on publishing and the expert on music—got together to discuss who would be the most suitable person to edit the work, and came to a decision. Instead of being able to submit to the editor a proposition, all they could do was to ask him to come and discuss the matter with them. He decided that he would like to do it and instead of getting on with the publication the author then was obliged to go to the Central Office of Information and discuss the whole thing all over again thus wasting a great deal of time.

It happens with all publications but in this case there were nine stages, taking from August to November 1947 when the Director of Publications first started sending forward the idea. First the music committee approved it. Then it went forward to the publications department of the C.O.I. and finally, on 24th November, the Central Office of Information asked for copies of other minutes dealing with the matter, and correspondence. On the next day the information was sent. Now in 1948 the Central Office of Information are presumably still getting on with the issue of that work. There has been endless delay and, by the time the work comes out it will be 18 months to two years after the year described in "The Year's Work in Music." So that the whole thing will be quite out of date.

I suggest to the House that this delay costs money. It obviously costs sales, because many people overseas who wanted the publication to time have not been able to get it. To show what happens when the Central Office of Information is not brought in, there was a demand for a brochure which had a pretty big sales demand to be reprinted quickly. That brochure was issued in the numbers required by the litho-photography process quite cheaply in six weeks by the British Council and sent out to the places where it was wanted. The other method leads to many difficulties. In the first place the authors do not like it, the British Council does not like it and, with all respect to the Central Office of Information, their man obviously cannot be anything like as expert on the point of what the British Council needs as its own experts who are doing the work all the time.

There is another aspect of the same matter, the question of British Council book buying having to be done through the Stationery Office. There is no saving in staff, there is no financial saving; indeed, I think there must be a definite financial loss, because the Stationery Office service charges are 12½ per cent. That money is not paid by the British Council. Somebody has to pay it, and therefore I presume that the British taxpayer is paying it. Meanwhile, there is delay and loss of goodwill between the publishers and the expert publisher in the British Council. I submit it is important for the British Council that these things should be done much more directly.

The third Report of the Select Committee on Estimates dealt with the British Council. Everybody will agree that it is a high-powered Committee of this House. It sat a long time, it took a great deal of evidence, and obviously its members drew up their report and recommendations with the greatest care. After going into details, they stated specifically that: They see no justification for abandoning, in favour of the Central Office of Information, the former system whereby the Council were entirely responsible for publishing their own brochures. They went on to say, on the question of buying: Unless some substantial financial saving can be attained, they deprecate the decision of the Treasury, that, after 1st April, 1948, the Council must buy most of the books they need through H.M. Stationery Office and not direct from the publishers. Obviously there could be no better or more impartial Committee to make valuable recommendations on the work of the British Council, and some six months ago they reported on important matters concerning it. As far as the British Council know, as far as I know, and as far as the public know, no attention has been paid by the Government to those recommendations. Since, in the interests of the efficiency and economy of the working of the British Council, these things are vital, I ask the Government to take note of those recommendations and to act on them immediately.

2.15 p.m.

In these days of tension and anxiety it might at first seem almost irrelevant to raise a matter such as the British Council, but for my part I am grateful to the hon. Member for North Hendon (Mrs. Ayrton Gold) for having done so. I am grateful for two reasons. The first is the domestic aspect. It seems to me a matter of great importance that when a Select Committee appointed by this House, composed of hon. Members of all parties, reports to this House, prompt and proper attention should be paid to that Report by the Minister or Departments concerned. Further, unless that Department can give a very convincing reason why some other course should be taken, the House should strongly support the recommendations of its own Select Committee. It is one of the traditions, and not the least important functions of this House, to exercise a vigilant and continuous check on the natural proclivity of any and every executive to neglect, and possibly even to usurp, the responsibilities of the Legislature, and unless we support our Select Committee who deal with these matters, that dangerous proclivity may go too far. I think it true of Governments, as of lesser mortals, that, having been a little chastised, they may be greatly rewarded. I hope therefore we shall support our Select Committee.

My second reason for being grateful to the hon. Member for raising the matter is quite different. As means of composing international differences, economic, political and military considerations are certainly important, but there are other factors of almost equal importance—religion and ethics. They are not matters I can discuss today. There is, however, another factor which, under the perhaps clumsy, but none the less convenient, term of cultural activities, can perform a really valuable function in promoting mutual understanding, common interest and, I believe, joint endeavour amongst peoples of wholly diverse languages and traditions. It is because, not always successfully, but on the whole successfully, the British Council performs that function, that I hope and believe it will receive certainly the watchful, but also the continuous support of this House.

My personal connection with the Council is of much too short duration for me to pontificate in any way on its activities, but there are two points I wish to make. I believe the abiding effect of the activities in which the Council engages is in inverse ratio to the publicity appeal of those particular activities. Perhaps it is an insular view, but one which I hope and believe many hon. Members will share, that it is a work of real value to promote a wider knowledge of the English language throughout the world. That is a work which, quietly and unostentatiously, is carried out by the British Council in many lands. I cannot help thinking that there will be no divergence of view on the value of making British books available throughout the world. The Council not only maintain many libraries, but also try to get into the hands of professors and students alike books on different subjects—they may be artistic or scientific—which are difficult to obtain. They also succeed in arranging a dissemination of scientific journals, which enables those engaged to keep abreast of current activities.

Those are not in the least works which appeal to the publicity hound, if I may use that term. The work they do in connection with smoothing the way for visitors and serious students to this country is also not in the least glamorous, but has effects of untold value. Naturally, the work the Council are seeking to achieve cannot produce obvious and immediate results, but it will have long-term results and anyone who has planned long-term activities knows the need for long-term finance to carry them out.

Under Treasury control, the British Council never know from year to year how much money they are to have to spend in the following year. They begin every year with a large portion of their budget committed and earmarked to activities which have been started in the previous year. It should be possible, if the Government believe that its work is useful, for the British Council to know in advance, within a small margin, the sums which will be available for a period of two, three or possibly five years. If that could be done, the work of the Director-General and the staff would be immensely eased.

This work is carried out by large numbers of anonymous individuals, male and female. I do not think they have quite the security of tenure in their jobs which the importance of their work justifies. Efforts have been made by the British Council to secure the support of successive Governments to improving the position of those employed by the Council. They have not got very far yet. I hope the effort of the hon. Member for North Hendon, who raised this matter, will do something to speed up the process of securing the tenure of people who do this valuable but unpublicised work.

2.27 p.m.

The British Council has now been in existence in one form or another for 14 years. I believe it is the general testimony of all who have seen its work, whether at home or abroad, that during those 14 years it has performed a very important and useful service. One need not go so far as a Colonial witness who appeared before the Select Committee and expressed the view that it was an instrument almost justified by Providence. I do not know whether that is intended to be idolatry of the Council, or a reflection on Providence. I much prefer the more modest view of the Foreign Office that it performs a useful function.

There is no doubt that it has a very important function of bringing people from distant parts of the world to this country and enabling them to see, in different forms, the way in which we live. They are able to undertake a task which the Government, in a more direct form, could not possibly undertake. They are free, or should be entirely free, from the direct policy of the Government of the day, and the object of the Council is to bring the peoples of the world to an understanding of different levels and different classes and people with different interests to see how the people of this country live and to give them a direct knowledge of our form of civilisation. That is a very important thing. It is all the more important because we believe in a free society and the people of the world should see how a free society lives.

The set-up of this instrument is a matter of some importance and I wish to ask a few questions about it. The Select Committee inquired into the financing of the Council and made some recommendations. Apparently, at the moment, the British Council draws its finances from separate Government Departments. That has its difficulties, and important difficulties, which have been experienced this year when the British Council was instructed to cut down expenditure by 10 per cent. In cutting down the expenditure by 10 per cent. it did so uniformly, dividing the cut between two Government Departments.

It may very well be more important to spend money in one specific direction than in another. For example, the bringing of people from the Dominions and Colonies here can be done in some years more effectively than the bringing of people from say countries in Eastern Europe. That it should not be subject to uniform Departmental cuts is very important when money might be more adequately and efficiently spent in some Departmental spheres rather than others. The making of a uniform cut is a very unfortunate method to adopt. The Select Committee has made a recommendation that that should no longer happen, and I should like to know from my hon. Friend who is to reply, what the Government propose to do about the recommendation of the Select Committee in that matter.

A recommendation was made by the Select Committee that the executive body of the Council should not be composed merely of distinguished people representing different interests and walks of life in this country, but should also have upon it members from our Dominions and Colonies abroad to give it assistance and advice. What is the Government's position in regard to that? I wish to draw specific attention to the regional panels in that respect. There is a good strong regional panel in Wales which is presided over by the noble Lady the Member for Anglesey (Lady Megan Lloyd George). It would be helpful to have upon that panel also people in the Dominions or Colonies who have Welsh interests and who know Wales, to join their advice to that of the present members. The recommendation of the Select Committee should apply not only to the general executive but also to the regional panels. Contrary to the evidence of the Colonial Office witness, the instrument is far from perfect, but that does not mean that it should be scrapped. What is important is that the work of the British Council should be developed and that the nations of the world should be brought to closer understanding of one another.

2.33 p.m.

I am sorry that I feel compelled to strike a discordant note in this discussion on the work of the British Council. The facts that have been referred to and the com- ments made by the Select Committee on the work of the British Council have tended to confirm in my mind the impression that has been there for some time, namely, that a lot of time and money are being wasted to no purpose. I hope that as a result of the comments of the Select Committee steps will be taken to ensure that at least we get value for the money that is being spent in connection with the activities of the British Council. I do not happen to have with me the last report of the work of the Council, which I believe was circulated to all Members of this House. It is unfortunate that there does not appear to be a copy of that Report in the Library of this House.

It has been mentioned that one of the objects of the British Council is to bring people to this country and thus enable them to understand our way of life. Another form of the Council's activities is to spread English culture overseas. When I reflect upon the time and money that have been spent on the dissemination of British culture in Egypt, the Argentine and one or two other countries which it is needless to mention, I begin to ask myself what result if any has been achieved. I know and I am fully prepared to admit that it is difficult if not impossible to measure scientifically the cultural impact upon the mind of the student in Cairo or in the Argentine of what it is we are trying to do but I should like my hon. Friend who is replying to the Debate very seriously to consider whether we are really getting value for money, whether it is not possible, if we are to indulge in some kind of political or cultural warfare throughout the world, to ensure that whatever it is we are trying to do through the British Council does make some impression which can be measured and appreciated by the people of this country who have to find the money.

2.36 p.m.

I too am grateful to the hon. Member for North Hendon (Mrs. Ayrton Gould) for having raised this matter before the House today. In spite of what the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) has said, I am convinced that the British Council is doing an extremely good job of work and that, generally speaking, the British taxpayer gets full value for the large expenditure which is incurred. If anybody doubts that, the best way to judge is to go overseas to a country in which the British Council is operating and see for one's self, as I had the opportunity of doing in China nearly twelve months ago.

I agree with the hon. Lady in deploring the rather vindictive criticism of the British Council which is the policy of a certain group of newspapers. Just over two years ago, when General Sir Ronald Adam was appointed as Chairman of the British Council, I was exceedingly sarcastic in this House about that appointment, basing that, in my opinion, quite justifiable criticism upon his branch in the Army in the Great War. I should like to take this opportunity of saying that from my information, he has done extremely well in his appointment in the last two years, and I should therefore be ungenerous if I did not take this opportunity of saying that I am prepared to withdraw the criticism I made of that appointment two years ago.

There is one point about the organisation and administration of the British Council which I feel should be considered. I refer to the lack of security given to the home establishment of the Council. As this House knows, members who are on the foreign establishment of the Council have security of tenure and pension rights, but those who administer the Council at home have no such security. Although I do not propose to criticise the membership of the home establishment of the Council it is perfectly clear and obvious to everybody that one gets a much wider pick for one's personnel if one gives them some security instead of just taking them on a short-term contract.

There is a second point which results from that, namely, the lack of integration between the members of the Council who serve abroad and never serve at home and the members of the Council at home who administer those who are abroad but never themselves serve abroad. In the old days members of the Diplomatic Service had from time to time to take a tour of duty at home in the Foreign Office. I do not doubt that it is the same now, although I have no recent information. Members of the Colonial Service abroad have from time to time to do a tour of duty at the Colonial Office. It is perfectly obvious that it does not make for the best efficiency if members who serve abroad are administered by entirely different establishments of personnel, who, themselves, have not had the experience of serving overseas in the conditions of the people whom they administer. I hope that that also will be looked into.

2.40 p.m.

I am much obliged to the Under-Secretary of State for Common-wealth Relations for giving me the opportunity of saying what I think about the British Council. It is just exactly 10 years ago to this month since I made my first speech in support of the aims and objects and achievements of the British Council. Although we were then voting only £200,000 or £300,000 for the Council, and today it is some millions, at the same time I think that the requirements of the British Council are more than ever necessary.

We emerged from this war materially strong, the leaders of the world with the world gratefully rejoicing in our leadership. Then, due to circumstances into which I do not propose to enter, we have lost that tremendous material prosperity and leadership which we then had. Today, I believe that we have a cultural leadership. At any rate, we have the opportunity. The British Council is an instrument by which that cultural leadership can be maintained. I believe, therefore, that if we give our wholehearted support to the widespread activities by which this British Council are endeavouring to teach the world our British way of life, we shall do something to balance out the loss of material leadership. Therefore, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel, at any rate, that he has some very substantial support from this side of the House for his prospects.

2.43 p.m.

I should like to thank the hon. and gallant Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir 'T. Moore) for his support and good wishes. I wish to make one point clear, namely, why I am replying to this Debate, because the British Council normally comes within the sphere of the Foreign Office. It is only because my hon. Friend the Member for North Hendon (Mrs. Ayrton Gould) was good enough to intimate that she was going to raise a question about the C.O.I and the Stationery Office. Therefore, being a question of the administration of the Information Services it falls in the province of the Lord President, and he asked me to speak. If anything else should arise the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs will deal with it.

I would associate myself wholeheartedly with the speakers who—with one exception have praised the work of the Council. It is unquestionably of great value to this country although in reply to the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) I would say that it is hard to measure it scientifically. I think there is no doubt whatever that great and important effects are achieved both in the struggle for world peace and international understanding and also in our direct national interests. One particular advantage which I hope will appeal to my hon. Friend is that by helping to finance the visits of students to this country, people of an economic class are enabled to come to this country who, otherwise, would not be able so to do. There are many other great advantages and benefits of the British Council, but I do not think that I need to traverse the same ground, except to echo what was said by a number of speakers.

The first part of the speech of my hon. Friend and in part of the speech of the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. M. Lindsay) was not directed against the Government but against the Press. With that part of those speeches I should like to associate myself. I think that parts of the Press are quite unscrupulous in the way they deride and make a mock of this thing, which is of great importance and which they make no effort whatever to understand. When I come to the point of British Council brochures and the publication of books through His Majesty's Stationery Office, I am afraid I cannot altogether go all the way with my hon. Friend the Member for North Hendon. I do not think that she expected me to do so. The Select Committee on Estimates did report on 24th March, 1948, very clearly on the side of the British Council. A report of a Committee like that has to be given great weight and it has been very carefully considered.

The intentions of the Government were re-examined in the light of this Report. I do not think that the British Council is unaware of the really close attention which has been given in the last month or so to this matter. They may not have told one of their vice-chairmen, but a great many inquiries have gone on with them and other people concerned, and we have given very close attention and great weight to the views of the Select Committee, as is only right and proper. But the Government have to fit this problem of the British Council publishing its own brochures into the complete information policy for which they are responsible—

Censorship.

—because they are responsible for the information policy of the country. I do not mean by that that they have dragooned it but when thinking about the matter the Government have to consider the repercussions of anything done in this field.

That is quite sensible.

It has to integrate all organisations. It has nothing to do with what is said, or who shall publish a book, for example, or censorship at all. These are the major considerations which the Government have to bear in mind in trying to come to a decision on this difficult problem of organisation. There are certain inconveniences of centralised production of books and brochures but there are certain great advantages in it. One is the unquestionable economy in overheads when applied to the whole field. Secondly, it provides a means of sorting out priorities to some extent and, with private publishing concerns trying to get scarce materials, it is very important to have these things sorted out. The alternative is that every single Department would have to get its own material and scramble in the market.

When the hon. Member speaks of sorting out priorities, suppose the Central Office of Information gave an extremely low priority to British Council publications, would not that involve censorship?

I do not think it would, because the Central Office would have to be doing what it is always doing—trying to cope with more demands than can be met. The alternative is not having centralisation in that way and many of the Departments, including the British Council, would have a greatly increased expenditure on information, and that is a thing we cannot allow to happen.

Is it not a fact that all the British Council publications have to be accounted for to the Treasury and is it not a question of a general overall cost to all Departments including the British Council? In any case, they have a subvention to which they have to keep their publications and everything else, because that has to be certified.

I quite agree, but it is not only a question of money; it is also a question of the use of scarce materials and making use of these things and balancing, for example, the advantages of say, a booklet about the Health Service with something which is going to do great good when it goes overseas.

And disadvantages and delays.

There are disadvantages certainly, but we are not absolutely rigid in planning this. All we say is that if there is a deviation the onus should be laid on those who want the deviation.

There has been an attempt to present what has happened to the British Council as a great invasion of principle. What the British Council is, in fact, asking is a deviation from a principle and it is very important that the onus of proof should lie on them. I am sorry that this Debate came just before we were complete in our views. We have not completely made up our minds on this matter, but it would be wrong of me to conceal that our views are not moving in the same way as those of my hon. Friend the Member for North Hendon. We feel that the case is not really strong enough to justify deviation from this principle although it is possible that some adjustment of detail can be made in the working of it. That is now being carefully looked into.

I have been talking about the principle. I will now say a few words about the brochures of the British Council. I think that some improvement can be made in the way in which this work is divided between the Council and the C.O.I. I think that the present system is bad. It involves a division of responsibility. One cannot publish, or for that matter do anything else, when there is a division of responsibility. The question is where we should put the responsibility. The British Council advances some very powerful arguments on its side, but there is a Cabinet decision taken in February, 1946, that these things should be done through common service agencies.

On the whole, I do not think that a strong enough case has been made out for departing from that decision. I consider that the editorial and publishing part of this work should be laid firmly on the C.O.I. and that they should have the responsibility for it. In other words, it should work in connection with the British Council as it works with other Departments. The point about the Stationery Office must be taken as settled. There is no question but that it is better to do bulk purchase through the Stationery Office in this matter. This system has been carefully thought out. I cannot hold out any hope of that part of the decision being reversed.

I will now deal with one or two special points. The hon. Member for St. George's (Mr. Howard) and the hon. Member for Solihull raised the question of security of tenure. On the whole, I agree with that. We have looked into the matter and we shall consider it again. I cannot undertake that the whole of the people can be established or anything like that. Though there are some financial difficulties, there are merits in a long-term budget. We shall look with sympathy into the question.

The expenditure in the three Departments which was mentioned by the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Hopkin Morris) is very important. I agree that the cut worked somewhat hardly by being imposed on all three Departments simultaneously. There are now better means than there were for the Departments to co-ordinate their activities in this field. If one looks at the question from the point of view of the British Council, one sees a failure to integrate, but each of these Departments regards the Council as part of its general information service. There can be coordination either way, but, whichever way it is done, there will be some difficulty.

I hope that the three Departments are now better co-ordinated and that there will not be another cut, so that this problem will not arise again. The question of a Commonwealth representative on the British Council is most difficult. This is a United Kingdom instrument. We cooperate very closely with the Commonwealth, but I am not at all sure that it would be possible to have a representative of a Dominion Government on the British Council. Finally, I should like to endorse all the kind things which have been said about the British Council. It is certainly the intention of the Government to give the work every support. The Government regard this as an extremely important part of our information work overseas.

We have had today a series of harmonious Debates quite free from any party aspects, and I do not wish to do anything to disturb the love feast. But I intend to be critical of the Government and I can torpedo in advance any reply which the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport might make that it was due to his predecessors, by saying that what I will say to him I would equally say to anyone holding his office today. The scandal of the signs on our roads is something for which all Governments must bear responsibility. I have called my subject "the scandal of road signs" and I do not think that the word "scandal" is too strong a word to use.

To my mind, our's is easily the worst signposted country in Europe. The signposts on our main roads or our secondary roads are far worse than those in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Spain or Portugal. The other day, two hon. Members and myself motored in our own car to Vienna and back. The only place where we got lost was between Dover and Folkestone. The point where I blame the Government is that after the war, when we had a chance to put up good signposts, we might have done something. The Government have lost that chance. All the old signposts, unsatisfactory as they are, are being put back.

I think that there are four scandals, if I may put it in that way. The first is the scandal of the trunk roads. There is no uniformity about destination on the signposts. Take, for example, the Portsmouth road. At the start one may see the word "Portsmouth" but one may never see it again on the whole of that trunk road. One may find that the next signpost mentions the next town, and then one may never see that again because the next signpost may mention a village which no one else has ever heard of before. It is true to say that, without reference to a map, it is impossible for a traveller who does not understand our roads to go along without having constantly to ask his way.

Not only are the signposts difficult to understand but there is no uniformity about the type of signpost, their height from the ground or their colour. Many of them are still parallel to the road. That means that a motorist has to twist his head to see where he is going. Most of the posts are far too high. They date back to the days when we had stage coaches, high dogcarts or coachman's boxes. The fact that they are too small, that they are in the wrong place and too high is responsible for many thousands of accidents in the course of the year throughout the country. They happen when drivers of cars suddenly see a signpost and perhaps switch round quickly to go along another road. That is what I describe as scandal number one.

Scandal number two concerns the sign-posting of the towns themselves. There is only one word which will describe that position and that is the word "frightful." Most of our towns are simply not signposted at all. I do not know whether the Minister has ever tried to motor to Cambridge, but I would wager him £5 that he could not go from this House to the Cambridge road, unless he knew it, without getting lost at least twice. As for a foreign visitor to this country coming in say, through Dover and trying to find the Great North Road, that would be literally impossible. There is nothing marked in the centre of London, or, for that matter, on the outskirts. Then there is that frightful place the Elephant and Castle, where a man may go round and round until he has exhausted his petrol ration before he can discover the way he wants to go. Many towns are not marked at all. When one arrives at a town one cannot see which is the way out. For a foreign visitor to be landed up in some of our provincial towns and never able to get out is certainly no advertisement for visitors to come to these shores.

Scandal number three is that hardly any towns in this country are marked with their name. One may arrive at a village and never know its name. Very few of them have taken the trouble to say that this is such and such a place. In fact, one of the few places in the United Kingdom where a traveller can know where he is is when he crosses the border at Gretna Green. There one sees an enormous sign, "This is Scotland." Whether that is meant as an invitation or a warning, I have never quite discovered. I notice that England is far more modest on the return trip, because there is no sign which says, "This is England." I do not know why we should not encourage towns to put up their own boards. It is one of those things which would cause little cost to public funds and, with a little inspiration from the Minister, I believe that local people would do that.

The last scandal is one which may seem to be small but I think that it is important. I refer to the signposting of footpaths. Unless our footpaths are to be lost, we ought to erect signposts saying that they are footpaths and we also might say sometimes where those footpaths lead. Why has nothing been done about all this when what ought to be done is not in doubt? We had this report of the Departmental Committee on traffic signs in 1944. The Minister, and, I think, his predecessors, accepted that report, but very little, if anything, has been done.

I hope the hon. Gentleman is not going to trot out the old stuff such as, "We are short of staff," "We hope to get this done in due course," or "Active consideration is being given to the matter." Surely, this is not a monumental work in terms of staff. Many of the local authorities are doing far less road work today than they were doing before the war. I should have thought they might have given some attention to this matter. The motorists, in all conscience, are paying enough, and they ought to be given a decent set of signs. if there is any proof that the job cannot be done, although the will is there to do it, may I tell the House, if they do not know it already, that during the last few years the Royal Automobile Club has put up over 75,000 road signs throughout the country, and, what is more, paid for them.

During what period?

During the last 10 years, I believe. Incidentally, I could never see why the R.A.C., which is a motoring organisation, should be expected to pay for signs which the Government should put up, any more than one would expect trade unions to subsidise employers in providing lavatories or canteens when they are things which employers should provide. In the same way, if motorists pay an enormous sum to the Road Fund, I do not see why they should expect their own club to provide the signposts. I suggest that what are lacking today are drive and energy. The Minister is directly responsible for the main roads although the job is put out to local authorities. If he cannot do it himself, he should hand it over to the R.A.C. or the A.A.—and pay them for it, of course—who will certainly get on with the job. I hope that this afternoon we shall receive an assurance from the hon. Gentleman that before the next tourist season we shall have a system of signposts on our main roads, certainly from our ports, which is worthy of this country and is likely to attract visitors to it.

I only wish to add one thing to what the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Gammans) has said. Will my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary also consider placing on the signposts the distance in miles from one place to another? One sees that on some signposts, but not on others. If this were done, it would tremendously help all kinds of people moving about this country.

3.3 p.m.

I wondered, when I saw the title of this Adjournment Debate, "A scandal of Road Signs," whether the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Gammans had invented a new collec- tive noun, like "A pride of lions," or, as we sometimes say, "A bunch of Tories." I see that he has in fact, found four detailed points on which to concentrate his fire this afternoon. He started by claiming that we have the worst signposted roads in Europe. I noticed that he specifically said "Europe." Perhaps he was remembering his earlier experience in Tokyo where, he will doubtless recall, they have the charming habit, when they start to build a series of houses in an empty road, of calling the first house No. I and the second house, wherever it is built, No. 2. If they put up another house, even though it is half a mile down the road, it is called No. 3. Eventually, they have a series of numbers which bears no relation to the way in which the houses run.

It is not a Government responsibility.

This is not a Government responsibility either, and if the hon. Member will contain himself for a little longer he will find that that is part of my defence this afternoon. The position here is complicated in this country by the fact that this is not a Government responsibility, except of course' in the case of trunk roads. The highway authorities themselves are responsible, under the encouragement, advice and guidance of the Minister, for signposting their areas.

I am bound to say when my attention is invited to it by the hon. Member for Hornsey that it does not seem to me to be particularly tidy or likely to give the best results if we say to the metropolitan boroughs, "Look here, your job is to get together and find the best route out of London to Dover; now work it out and get your signs up," because I rather feel at first blush that if we say this to half a dozen different authorities through whose areas these very crowded roads go, we shall have six people sitting round a table who will find it very difficult to agree. I have no practical experience of this but it appears to me to be rather a difficult thing.

Therefore, at this stage, in view of the importance of what I would call area signposting—getting the best out of an area, and selecting the best routes—I wonder whether we might consider some alternative way of overcoming what I readily agree is an extremely unsatisfactory situation. Area signposting, which I suppose comes under the heading of scandals 2 and 3, would I think overcome some part of the difficulties, and if we can devise some means to do that I should like to see it attempted.

Before we leave scandal 1, surely the hon. Gentleman has got not only all the power in the world but the obligation under the 1936 Act to look after trunk roads? Under the 1946 Act that power was extended to certain roads in the county of London. Why does he not get on with the job in the case of the trunk roads?

If the hon. Gentleman will be a little patient he will find that I shall deal with that point in due course. Of course, we are responsible for the trunk roads. I am not dealing with his scandals in any set order. I am taking up the points in the order in which they seem naturally to call for a reply. I. was dealing with this question of area signposting. I think the highway authorities have had considerable difficulty in what they have had to do. They have been short of steel and money. It is not a question of shortage of staff in this case. It is a shortage of the essentials that go to make up the signposts, that is all, and that is the most important thing.

Because of the comparatively small allocation of steel for this purpose, they have had to wait for some months to have their orders fulfilled. Some of them tried to get ahead a considerable time ago and placed their orders for new signposts of this sort, and they have not got them yet. I think it is extremely unfortunate that they have not, but we have got to reckon out how much steel we can afford for signposts and how much steel we want to put into the new steel works at Margam. That is one of the advantages of doing these things centrally, so that these matters can be planned and we can decide which priority comes first. It is because of that that many highway authorities, who are certainly doing less road work than they were before the war, have not been able to get ahead as fast as they would like, and certainly not as fast as the Minister would like.

I think it is the general experience of hon. Members that the signposting of trunk roads has improved tremendously, particularly during the last 12 months. This, of course, is a recent development. I should say that the production of these posts has really only got going a comparatively short time ago. Now they are being produced and being put up on all roads, not only trunk roads, at the rate of something like 50,000 a year. I would not bind myself to that figure because it is only a rough estimate one can make; but it is something like that. I was interested to hear that the A.A. and the R.A.C. have put up 75,000 signs in the last 10 years. I think they do extraordinarily good work in temporary sign posting. It is something, no doubt, they felt to be valuable to their members; and, no doubt, they started to carry the work out as a service to their members. However, it is a service for all the public, and the Ministry have an amiable arrangement with them as to the conditions under which the signs should be put up.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the great variety in the types of signposts, to their heights and widths, and the angles at which they should be placed, and so on. I think he is quite right. Certainly it is the case that there is a great deal of work to be done in putting matters right. We have the "Bible" on the subject here—the Report of the Departmental Committee on Traffic Signs. If it were implemented as to 100 per cent. it would remove a great many of the objections. The designs of the traffic signs, the kind of lettering for them, the height above ground level, the relation of the width of the sign to the height—all these questions have been gone into with very great care, and I think we are indebted to the Committee, which was made up of a number of experts, including representatives of the Transport and General Workers Union, the Automobile Association, the City engineers, the Pedestrians' Association, and many others. It did a magnificent job of work.

I hope the time will come when our roads will measure up to what is set out as the ideal in this report. It was, of course, brought to the notice of local authorities, and of highway authorities generally, at an early date. Although it was produced in 1944 it was not until March, 1946, it was brought to their attention—for fairly obvious reasons, I suppose. Immediately afterwards they got down to the job.

The question of the putting up of the names of towns is a matter which I should have thought was extremely important. It would be very helpful if all towns had their names up. I am surprised this posting has not been done more than it has. I would commend the hon. Member's suggestion to every local authority, to put up on their boundaries who they are and what they are proud to represent. As to footpaths, my personal sympathies are entirely with the hon. Gentleman. It would be a great pity if a footpath were allowed to disappear because nobody knew where it went, or whence it came, or even that it existed. The Minister is interested in this problem. He is taking a personal interest in it, and I can tell the hon. Member and the House that he is at the moment reviewing the progress that has been made by highway authorities in this particular matter. He is to see whether there is any further speeding up or changes of administrative machinery that can be effected.

Would it be unfair to paraphrase what the hon. Gentleman has said, by saying he more or less agrees with what I said but holds out very little hope that anything can be done in the near future, and that certainly no priority whatever can be given to the roads coming from the coast?

What the hon. Gentleman suggests as a paraphrase only further convinces me that a paraphrase never represents the original statement. To sum up, I think the existing position is unsatisfactory and has been unsatisfactory for many years. I think we have a detailed statement showing how it can be put right, that new road signs, in accordance with the detailed statement, are being produced at the rate of 50,000 a year, and that there is a deal more to be done before we can claim that the position is satisfactory.

3.15 p.m.

I am bound to say that the Minister's reply seems to be extremely unsatisfactory and to confirm everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Mr. Gammans) said about the lack of drive and energy on the part of the Government in solving this problem. The Minister spoke of the improvement in the road signs on the trunk roads during the course of the last 12 months. I can assure him that I go to my constituency as regularly as the Minister of Fuel and Power will allow by car, and I have certainly not seen any new road signs on the 100 mile stretch between Melton Mowbray and London during the course of the last 12 months or for that matter three years. And, if I may give another example, when I went to speak at the Gravesend by-election and followed the trunk road signs to the letter, I ended, first, in a farm yard, and, secondly, in a ploughed field, entirely as the result of these signs. No doubt this was one of the reasons why we lost the by-election.

The Parliamentary Secretary went on to talk of the shortage of materials. I do not know who is responsible for putting up these utterly nonsensical road signs, whether it is the local councils or the Government who put up these ridiculous signs, saying, "Hendon welcomes safe driving," or "Mind how you go." These enormous placards must take up quantities of timber and steel.

Not steel—paper.

Presumably the backing is not paper but timber, and presumably the supports are of either wood or steel or some form of metal. If there is a shortage of material, why did the Government concentrate on this ridiculous road safety campaign which, in its present form, is designed to make me, at any rate, want more than anything else to drive on the wrong side of the road at the fastest speed? If there is a shortage of materials, why did the Government or local councils concentrate all their efforts in putting up this ridiculous stuff? Why did they not spend a little thought, time and trouble and material in signposting the roads in the manner suggested by my hon. Friend?

I have no right to reply, but perhaps I may say that the hon. Gentleman ought to make sure at what target he is aiming before he speaks.

I am speaking to the hon. Gentleman.

I am glad to have the opportunity of raising a matter which is of a rather different order from the discussions we have had hitherto today. At first sight, it is a matter mainly of local concern, but I think it is not without its wider significance. I refer to the flying operations carried on at the air station at Horsham St. Faith in the county of Norfolk, and the effect of these operations on the many thousands of people who live nearby. This matter has been raised in the House before, but I suggest that an entirely new consideration has now arisen as a result of the invention of jet-propelled aircraft. What was previously an inconvenience and a disturbance is now becoming a very grave interference with the ordinary way of life of the many thousands of people who live between this air station and the centre of the City of Norwich.

The request which I make to the Minister is that even at this advanced stage in the life of this air station, his Ministry might consider the possibility of moving the operations from this air station to one or other of the available air fields in the remainder of the county, or, if that is quite impossible—and we realise what an enormous amount of money has been sunk in this particular station—that the utmost possible steps should be taken to ameliorate the conditions of which we complain.

I admit at once that in the light of the international situation, or, should I say, in the darkness of it, this may not seem to be the most suitable moment to ask for the movement of an important operational air station. But it is, of course, the increased activity now being carried on at this station which is the cause of the accentuation of the criticisms which my constituents now make. Lately, there has been a marked increase in the number of flights made to and from this station. People who live on the northern side of Norwich ask, and, I think, properly, why, once again, they should be exposed to the increased hazards which result from the placing of a great air station alongside a thickly populated area?

I want to make it quite clear that in no sense whatever are these criticisms directed at the Royal Air Force. People in Norfolk are fully seized of the fact that upon the Royal Air Force, based on its stations throughout this country, rests the primary responsibility for our defence, and may be even our very existence. These residents also realise that pilots and other airmen are running daily risks to their lives in training for what may lie ahead.

We have no wish to make any request which would embarrass the Air Ministry in the great responsibilities with which it is now faced, but we say that a grave mistake was made in the original siting of this air station. If only this station may provide a lesson for the future we shall have been justified in raising the matter, because it is not only Norfolk, and Norwich in particular, which are affected by this problem, but many other parts of the country as well. This is in no sense a party matter, because the decision to site this airfield was not made by the present Government, but was taken before the recent war. Norfolk is the third largest county in the whole of England, and in view of the vast expanse of ground in the county which is suitable for airfields, why this particular site should have been chosen on the very fringe of the city passes comprehension. To the layman it does not seem as if this site has any particular tactical advantage over the many others that could have been chosen, and I suspect that members of the Royal Air Force themselves would prefer not to have to operate so close to a built-up area.

We are all familiar with the disturbance caused by low flying aircraft, and the problem becomes one of degree. If aircraft are flying too low and very frequently, and in too great numbers, a point is reached when living conditions become quite unbearable. Aircraft come over the houses in the district known as Hellesdon, which is a large suburb of Norwich, at a surprisingly low altitude. The noise is deafening, as they fly not only singly but often in twos and threes. There is great interference with school lessons, doors and windows have to be shut during the hottest weather, workers on night shift, trying to sleep in the daytime, are disturbed, as also are patients in hospital, and perhaps most of all, the children. I am told that at times it is not possible even to hear the radio. I am not sure whether this is in fact a disadvantage, but I understand that there are few more difficult domestic situations than that which is created when the roar of passing aeroplanes drowns the decisive moment in the Dick Barton exploit of the evening.

There is one incidental point on which I would touch but upon which I will not enlarge. It is our contention that the vibration of the aircraft is the cause of ceilings cracking and plaster falling in the houses in this neighbourhood. We know how difficult it is to prove a matter of this kind. The Ministry has not found it possible yet to accept any responsibility, but we hope to return to this point later with evidence which we think will convince the Minister. One further point in connection with the properties themselves is the serious depreciation in value which has resulted from this recent development of which we complain. People are not anxious to move into a district where the noise and the interference with life is becoming so notorious. I would assure the Minister that it is the considered opinion in the neighbourhood that there has been a definite and ascertainable drop, in terms of figures, in the value of the properties within range of this airfield.

I would ask the Minister if he will consult with his colleague the Minister of Town and Country Planning at some time in order to see whether there is some way by which people who have already lost by the fall in the value of their property might be compensated under the Town and Country Planning Act or in some other way. The whole matter is very much one for the Minister of Town and Country Planning, because a more impossible example of planning can hardly be imagined than the placing of a great airfield alongside this city. With the whole county of Norfolk to choose from, with its 1,250,000 acres the authorities responsible chose to place this airfield next door to the only city within 100 miles. The Air Ministry is not unmindful of the needs of the public and of their convenience and I am sure that the Air Minister and his colleagues are not happy about this situation at Horsham St. Faiths which is causing discomfort and hardship to many thousands of people in St. Faiths and in the surrounding district. Aircraft are becoming larger and noisier and these residents are asking themselves what the situation will be like in five years if it is as bad as it is today.

I would urge the Minister not to close the door but to do as we ask him. Let him re-open this matter. If it is at all possible I suggest that he or even his colleague, the Secretary of State himself should come down to this district of Norfolk and see—and hear—for themselves what it is we complain of. I feel sure that he will see the necessity of giving some reassurance which will bring a ray of hope to the many thousands of people who are suffering the deepest concern because of this interference with their way of life.

3.30 p.m.

I make no apology, unlike the hon. and gallant Member for East Norfolk (Brigadier Medlicott) for detaining the House for a minute or two on this very important question. Although it is a local matter, the question has a very wide significance for the country as a whole because similar complaints are arising in small built up areas. The difficulty is of very long standing. For more than two years the hon. and gallant Member and I have raised this matter both by private representation to the Department and by frequent Questions in the House in the hope of getting something effective done about it. We have always been extremely sympathetically received and we have always received soothing answers but unfortunately, except occasionally for short spaces of time, nothing effective has been done.

With the coming of the jet aircraft and the necessary intensification of air training, the noise and disturbance which were formerly a serious nuisance are now threatening to become a completely intolerable nuisance. The hon. and gallant Member for East Norfolk mentioned that at Hellesdon in his constituency there are frequently such happenings as ceilings collapsing, sometimes to the great danger of young children, in such numbers that it is quite inconceivable that the long arm of coincidence stretches so far that all the ceilings in Hellesdon threaten to collapse for some undetermined and unknown reason unconnected with the aircraft.

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that the almost constant vibration to which these houses are subjected by the numerous flights over them at low level is responsible for the damage, and I am convinced that sooner or later the Air Ministry must accept that responsibility. Not only is the situation made worse with this intensification of flights; there is an accompaniment which is almost inevitable when one remembers the kind of young men we must attract as pilots. There is a considerable amount of aerobatics and stunting for which I do not in the least blame the officers as it is a completely inevitable accompaniment, and may be an extremely necessary accompaniment, so that one cannot complain. Nevertheless, the effect is very gravely to intensify the nuisance.

Not only is there the question of the damage to property; there is also the very considerable danger to persons. I am not thinking merely of the constant nerve-wracking strain resulting from this almost intolerable noise but the actual danger from the great number of flights over this built-up area at the extremely low levels at which the aircraft fly, as a result of which the element of danger is thereby very greatly increased. The hon. and gallant Member mentioned that education had been interrupted in Hellesdon and in the City of Norwich. I recently received representations from the Director of Education of the City of Norwich as to the tremendous nuisance being caused and the great interruption of class work. It is a fact that on very many occasions in the course of the working day in the schools class work comes to a stop for minutes on end, because it is quite impossible for any teacher to make her voice heard above the din. We must also remember the effect of these sudden roaring noises upon nervous children in our classrooms. I am certain that as a result of it there is a considerable nervous deterioration on the part of some of the children.

In the area of Hellesdon there is a mental hospital. When I have visited that hospital I have seen something of the effect upon the patients of the very alarming noises which come from low flying planes. For all these reasons, therefore, it seems to me that the nuisance of which we have been complaining during the last two years has now reached the stage at which it has become almost intolerable.

The ancient and noble City of Norwich of which I have the honour to be one of the representatives, was one of those cities which suffered great material damage during the war. Much of its property was destroyed by German bombs. Some hundreds of its citizens were mangled or maimed by these German bombs, and I say to the Minister quite frankly that it is intolerable that these people, with their living experience of the grim and tragic times of the war, should now have those memories continually revived, and be haunted again by those old dreads, as a result of the nuisance caused to them by the siting of this aerodrome right upon their doorsteps.

I am not in the least afraid, as the hon. and gallant Member seemed to indicate, to embarrass the Air Ministry on this business. It is my job to embarrass the Air Ministry until the Air Ministry does something effective about it. I shall not plead with them to keep the door open because I am perfectly certain that, if my hon. Friend tries to shut it, he will find it impossible to do so. The people in those areas of which I am speaking will not lie down under this nuisance for ever, and the Air Ministry will have to make up its mind sooner or later that that aerodrome has been planted in a position which cannot possibly be maintained and. in the long run, they will have to take the necessary steps. What I am inviting the Minister to do today therefore, is to take the step sooner rather than later.

In what I am saying I am making no criticism of the Minister who has to reply. To me, as to other hon. Members in this House, he is one of the most helpful junior Ministers in the Government. He is not responsible for the policy and is not, therefore, the subject of this criticism. I am talking to him as the representative of his Department. Neither do I blame the officers commanding this aerodrome. I think it is true to say that they have been as helpful in trying to mitigate the nuisance as possible, but it is quite impossible for them to make any appreciable difference because of the situation of the aerodrome.

The real truth is that this aerodrome should never have been put there at all. It is not only in the wrong situation but I am informed—I have mentioned this in the House before without denial—that the runways are so sited because of the wind conditions prevailing in that area, that it is only possible for pilots to gain or lose height by manoeuvring over the City of Norwich itself. That seems to me to be incredible stupidity on the part of whoever is responsible, and that is one of the main reasons why the Ministry must make up its mind that, amelioration being impossible, the only thing to do is to face up to the problem of ways and means of getting this aerodrome removed altogether.

It will be no sufficient reason for the Minister to tell me that this would lead to grave inconvenience, or that we spent a lot of money on St. Faith Aerodrome. Of course we have. I am told it is in the neighbourhood of about £7 million, but a large part of that sum was spent in the necessary extension of the aerodrome during the war. It was really a war expenditure. Only a few miles out in the country we have in the sparsely populated areas of Norfofk several aerodromes which, with a minimum of expenditure, could probably be made to give as efficient service as St. Faith does now. Therefore I say to the Minister that we do not want today bromides or soothing answers. We have had enough of that in the past. What we want now is evidence from the Ministry of the desire to get rid of this nuisance once and for all by taking effective action to end it.

3.40 p.m.

In the two and a half years I have been at the Air Ministry I have dealt at this Box with many questions and in the Ministry with many letters from the two hon. Members who have spoken on this problem. Their activity on behalf of their constituents, I see from the files, goes back to the time of my predecessor the present Minister of Food.

We must all recognise the disturbance caused to the people of Norwich by having their city in what is the flying circuit of a station operating jet aircraft. I will deal with the point about low flying. Deliberate and unnecessary low flying is seriously punished in the Royal Air Force. The usual penalty for an officer is cashiering, and for one who is not an officer, discharge from the service. The hon. Members who have spoken have not claimed that there has in fact been unnecessary low flying, and I am therefore in this Debate spared the task which I so often have to perform of explaining that the laws of gravity, overruling as they do any Air Ministry Order, however carefully drafted, make it impossible for an aircraft either to gain operational height, or to land, without at some time going through a period when it is flying low—that is an elementary fact—although the pilot is not guilty of "low flying" in the technical sense.

Knowing that Norwich is called upon to bear more than its fair share of the burden of peacetime inconvenience which is necessary if we are to have an up to date efficient Air Force, the Air Ministry and the station Commander at Horsham St. Faith have done a great deal to mitigate this nuisance. I know this is not an answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich (Mr. J. Paton) who said that it would not satisfy him, but I will outline what steps have been taken in mitigation. First, about two years ago, hon. Members who are concerned will remember our fighter squadrons were being re-deployed and we took into account the special position of Horsham St. Faith and replaced night fighter reciprocating engined squadrons by day fighter jet engined squadrons. The replacement of night fighter by day fighter squadrons caused us to receive at least one testimonial from Norwich which preferred the disturbance of jet by day to the discomfort of reciprocation by night. Secondly, the station commander, at considerable inconvenience to his officers and men, lays down that such night flying training as is necessary for a day fighter squadron shall take place in the early hours of darkness; that is, before most people are in bed. Thirdly, the Director of Navigation at the Air Ministry, in the first week of this month, long before I knew I would have to answer at this Box today, wrote to all Commanders-in-Chief a letter headed "Flying over Norwich," which sets out, among other things, the fact that much of the activity over Norwich is unavoidable due to its close proximity to Horsham St. Faith airfield and goes on to say: I am to request Commands … to avoid routing aircraft on training flights over this city and to take such other steps as may be possible to discourage aircraft belonging to units of their Commands from flying over Norwich at any time, at heights low enough to make the noises from the aircraft or engines a disturbance to people on the ground. That is the Director of Navigation at the Air Ministry writing to all commands—

On what date?

On 9th September, 1948. The hon. and gallant Member for East Norfolk (Brigadier Medlicott) asked if I would consult with the Minister of Town and Country Planning to see if we could pay compensation for the depreciation of the value of property caused by the nuisance of this noise. There is certainly no Act of Parliament under which we could pay compensation. Of course we cannot discuss legislation on the Adjournment, but I think that the hon and gallant Member will agree, as will anyone who has studied the law of nuisance, that the noise of a jet aircraft is really only one form of nuisance and it would be extremely difficult to cover it by legislation.

On the more practical and definite point which was raised by both hon. Members who have spoken—

Before the Under-Secretary leaves that point may I point out that I was rather suggesting that it was through the medium of the Minister of Town and Country Planning that compensation might be paid? I am not saying that there is a Clause in the existing Act which covers this kind of case, but rather that it should be the subject of compensation under any properly conceived scheme of town and country planning.

My point was that we cannot deal with legislation on the Adjournment. I will pass the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member over to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Town and Country Planning but I was saying that it seems to me a difficult one to cover by legislation because of the nature of nuisance itself.

On the question of compensation for actual damage, physical damage, caused by vibration, the position is much clearer. We are under no obligation to pay either under the Air Navigation Act or even under the Crown Proceedings Act of last year, but I give the assurance on behalf of my right hon. Friend that we will always pay ex gratia for damage which is proved to have been caused by aircraft vibration. I await with interest the evidence which the hon. Member said he would bring. I should add that so far we have no evidence from any part of the country that vibration of aircraft can cause such damage but we wait with an open mind.

On the question of noise, our scientists are trying their best to reduce it. At the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough and in the acoustics section of the National Physical Laboratory they are working on it, but I do not hold out much hope of success. Aircraft propulsion depends upon the transfer of energy to a stream of air and that in the nature of things causes noise.

Has there ever been a case in which it has been proved that damage has been done by aircraft vibration?

There has not.

What is the quality of proof which is required by the Air Ministry?

It is that required by a court of law. We are not above the law.

Surely this has never been tested nor could it be tested in a court of law since no case could lie? The compensation about which we have been talking is ex gratia payment, because, as the Under-Secretary has said, there is no legal liability on the Air Ministry in matters of this kind.

That is perfectly true, but I refer to the same degree of proof as a court of law would require. We are quite prepared to consider evidence. There may be such proof but in the past we have not come to such a conclusion, although we might well in the future.

I wish to take up the point made by both hon. Members that there are many airfields in Norfolk. That is true. Through its geographical position, Norfolk is at least as important as any other county in the air defence of the United Kingdom. This means that in recent years we have repeatedly examined the airfields of Norfolk to see if we are making the best use of them. We are satisfied that we are. We must not forget, in talking of the many airfields in Norfolk, that most of them have neither concrete runways nor permanent buildings. They are grass airfields. It is tempting to go back 11 years to the time of a Conservative predecessor at the Air Ministry and comment upon the wisdom of building this fighter station in 1937 on the outskirts of a great city like Norwich. I shall resist the temptation because it does not really help us to solve this problem today.

Here in 1948 we find ourselves in this position. Horsham St. Faith is a fighter station excellently sited for the air defence of the country having three concrete runways suited to the latest and fastest jet fighters. It is a station with first rate technical buildings and one of the few stations having good permanent housing for both officers and men. Hon. Members will have heard the Debate yesterday on Defence. It is no secret that if we have as many stations as good as Horsham St. Faith our recruiting problem would be very different. This station is one of the few with good permanent buildings to house both officers and men. Furthermore it represents a huge capital investment. The amount of labour and materials locked up here—used for the construction of the runways and buildings—can be imagined when I say that they cost a million and a quarter pounds.

I regret that there is no possibility of abandoning Horsham St. Faith. What flows from that? That there is no possibility of moving the jet fighters. The fact is that jet aircraft are no longer something rare in the Air Force. The reciprocating day fighter is no longer even used in Fighter Command on interception. Already every single interception day fighter squadron in Fighter Command fly jet aircraft. I can only give this assurance, and it is in answer to a direct question by the hon. and gallant Member who raised this matter. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Air or I will visit this station very soon and see for ourselves if there is any possibility of doing anything to reduce the noise and disturbance caused to the people of Norwich by this station. We recognise what the people have to put up with and we will do all we can to diminish it.

Although the subject which I wish to raise, the shortage of points goods, may sound a little critical and unfriendly, I want to begin by assuring the hon. Lady that I have not come here this afternoon to take up her time and the time of the House by throwing out irresponsible and unco-ordinated complaints about the shortage of this and that. I fully appreciate the difficulties under which her Ministry is working, and I believe, in view of the world problems with which it has had to deal, that the Ministry has done an efficient and imaginative job on behalf of the consuming public of Great Britain. It is on the content of those difficulties that I wish to speak. In return I do ask the hon. Lady not to ride away from my questions and my case on a mournful reiteration of the refrain of "no dollars." After all, Marshall Aid is now a reality. Dollar goods are coming in, either as a result of direct shipment or offshore purchases, and the House is entitled to examine the position and see what the effect will be on our standard of life and how those dollars should be spent.

Last Autumn when the dollar crisis broke, we all of us frankly expected a belt-tightening period during the winter months. I, personally, thought we should be up against a food stringency very much worse than we had had at any time before. But thanks to the Argentine Agreement and Canadian generosity, and presumably thanks also to the stocks of points goods held in this country, last Winter we did not do so badly at all, and our supply of points goods was reasonably fair. Unsweetened evaporated milk, for example, that great standby of every housewife, was still to be obtained at two points a tin and there was no great shortage of dried eggs, baked beans or other protein goods which are invaluable to the woman who has to plan savoury and nourishing meals for her men folk.

But it was during the summer months that our points crisis really broke. We have had a lot of questions in this House during the past week about the shortages of points goods in rural areas, but I can assure the hon. Lady that this situation was pretty general throughout the country. It was not only in rural districts that the housewife found at the end of her points period that she had very great difficulty in disposing of her points at all because she could not get in the shop the things she wanted to buy. I personally more than once, on those last fatal hours of the last day of a points period, have been driven to accept tapioca and treacle when I had not even enough milk to make a pudding. The alternative would have been a tin of imported grapefruit marmalade—very attractive no doubt, but hardly a substantial meal for a hungry man when he comes home from work.

We did not worry even then, because we knew that there would have to be a time-lag before Marshall Aid could make itself felt in our larders. We know perfectly well that the protein goods—and it is to them that I refer particularly—the baked beans, canned fish and canned meats, and so on—largely come from the United States, Canada and the Argentine and need dollars to buy them. Therefore, we knew that it would be some time before they would reappear in the shops.

What I want to get clear this afternoon, and what I want to take up particularly with the hon. Lady, is the question of what is the effect now on our diet of Marshall Aid shipments. I am very strongly under the impression, both from my personal experience as a shopper and from studying the Trade and Navigation Returns, that this Winter we shall be more short of protein foods than we were last Winter when the dollar crisis was supposed to be upon us in all its full effect. I ask the hon. Lady whether I am correct in that assumption? It is true that the complete famine of protein goods has now been checked to some extent. For example, we can now get the unsweetened evaporated milk once again in the shops but the points price of that milk has doubled. We have to pay four points instead of two. My experience is that baked beans are still in very short supply, canned salmon is totally unobtainable and, as for canned meats it takes a prince's ransom in points to buy a tin even if one is lucky enough to find one.

I was shopping the other day and when the shopkeeper offered me a comparatively small tin of pork ham, or something of the sort of the spam variety, I felt like Christopher Columbus discovering America. But I had rather a shock when I discovered that out of my personal monthly allocation of 24 points that comparatively small tin would cost me 27. As there are only two points books in my family, I leave it to the hon. Lady's generous and vivid imagination to imagine the state of our diet for the rest of the month.

I do not want merely to argue personally about this matter, and I have gone to some trouble to try to examine import figures from the Trade and Navigation Returns. I want the hon. Lady to correct me if I am wrong when I say that they seem to show two things. They appear to show not only that our imports of these protein points goods during the first eight months of 1948 were considerably less than they were in the first eight months of 1947 but—and this is the significant thing—that the imports for last month, August, 1948, are only a fraction of the import figures for August, 1947. That appears to me to demonstrate that Marshall Aid means to this country that there will be no restoration over a large section of our food front of our predollar-crisis level of consumption. This is a serious point which we shall feel more sharply as the Winter advances.

Let me give the hon. Lady one or two examples. If we take tinned meats, for instance, on which housewives count so much as a supplementation of their meat ration—tinned beef in various forms, ox tongue, corned beef and so on—we find that the imports of these commodities for the first eight months of this year were less than one-third of the imports for the corresponding period of last year. What is more, the latest monthly rate, that for August this year, is lower than the monthly rate for the first eight months of the year. In other words, the import rate is actually going down.

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

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn."—[ Mr. Snow. ]

De imports of this tinned meat from the Argentine, who have always been our biggest suppliers, were in August this year only one-seventh of what they were for the corresponding month last year. Marshall Aid, therefore, has not helped in restoring the purchases from that source. If we take dried beans of various kinds—haricot, butter, and so on—we find, once again, that during the first eight months of this year we imported less than one-sixth of what we imported in the corresponding period last year. As far as I can make out, there is still none coming from the United States, Canada, or the Argentine, from where the bulk came last year. The August rate of import is half what it was for the corresponding period last year.

Dried eggs, again, show a shrinking import rate. During the first eight months of this year we imported less than one-quarter of what we did in the corresponding period of 1947. Even the supplies from Australia, a non-dollar area, have been reduced this year, and I would ask the hon. Lady the reason for that. The monthly rate for August, 1948, is one-eighth of the monthly rate for August, 1947. There, again, we have a picture of a continuing drop in the rate of imports. Far from Marshall Aid gradually building up our supplies, our imports seem to be shrinking. Therefore, the prospect for the future is not very rosy.

With regard to canned salmon, as far as I can make out, we imported none at all in June or August this year, and only 14 cwt. in July. Does the hon. Lady tell the House that it is not the intention of the Ministry of Food to import any more canned salmon at all, or can she give us some idea when the imports will be resumed? I am putting these facts before the House because we have yet to appreciate in our own homes and in our constituencies just what the cumulative effect of these shortages is going to be.

Here I wish to pay a tribute to the Ministry of Food for the steps they have taken, where possible, to increase imports of other foods which are very useful to us. As far as I can make out, we imported 10 times as many sardines in the first eight months of this year as in the corresponding period last year, and the monthly rate is much higher. I find sardines one of the most elusive fishes of all, and I would ask the hon. Lady to tell us where this larger supply has disappeared to, because none of these sardines have found their way into my grocer's shop.

With regard to olive oil, I want to thank the hon. Lady for the increase in imports, which have helped enormously, but I want to ask her, in view of the high cost, whether it would be possible to import more of the other vegetable oils, most of which are cheaper to buy. In the matter of currants, we are now importing twice as many as in the first eight months of last year, and actually more than before the war. They will be very helpful for Christmas. Then again, the Ministry have treated us very generously with regard to oranges, and our supplies are actually higher than they were prewar. In view of the fact that our largest supplier is Palestine, I would like to know whether the hon. Lady can tell' us what the prospects are likely to be of continuing these imports.

I am far from saying that the Ministry have been sitting down on the job, I think they have tried to supplement this shortage of protein goods in as many ways as they can. Nor am I even blaming the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I do think the country should be aware of this simple fact. I think it comes as a surprise to many of us that Marshall Aid, far from giving us a rise in our standard of living—which no one expected, of course—apparently is going to stabilise it, not at the 1947 level, but at a new level which is even lower than that which obtained immediately before the dollar crisis hit this country. Apparently all it has done is to maintain us at a dollar crisis level. That was the situation before the rearmament programme was announced in this House—a programme which will divert further production from exports and reduce our resources and, therefore, will make our purchasing problem still more difficult. We can, therefore, assume that rearmament will mean even greater stringencies. I wonder whether the United States of America realise that the level at which Marshall Aid has stabilised our consumption in this country is one which involves us in continuing hardship of an even greater degree.

Finally, I should like the hon. Lady to ask the Minister of Food at the beginning of next Session to make an early and full statement to the House on the whole of the food situation prospects in the coming winter months. Will he come to us and say quite frankly what food imports he intends to make, and whether he can give us some hope that the recovery of Europe in the near future will enable the shortages of foods from dollar areas to be balanced by increased supplies from elsewhere.

4.8 p.m.

I welcome the opportunity which has been given to me by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) of explaining to the House why it has been difficult for housewives to obtain the points foods which they would have liked during the last few months. I do not disagree with my hon. Friend. I know, as is known by all women who have to feed a family, that at times it has been difficult to obtain the particular food that we would like, but I must remind her that while there is a wide variety of the commodities which are pointed, there are not enough to guarantee a ration of each one for every family.

I hope during the coming months the position may be a little easier. I can only say "a little easier," because we are now about to change our method of distribution. For the first time we are allocating the most popular pointed foods—I think I am right in so describing them; I refer to canned meat, canned fish, canned fruit and canned milk—on the basis of registrations. Furthermore, of course, we try to equate supply with demand. The hon. Lady has just mentioned the points value of canned meat. The reason why the points value of certain foods goes up at the end of a period is because there has been a run on those foods, and we increase the points in order to persuade people to take something else which is in greater supply. The hon. Lady is quite right when she says that the pointage of canned tongues and briskets is very high. It is as high as 48 points a lb. for some of the qualities, but the average number of points needed for a lb. is about 24. Yet demand is still in excess of supply. However, I would remind her that altering points values and adjusting our methods of distribution will not solve the problem.

My hon. Friend said that she hoped I would not talk about dollars. I forget what her expression was. I think it was that she hoped I would not "moan about dollars." Surely her memory is fresh enough to remember last week's Debate? Because this is a speech which should have been made last week.

That is not my fault.

I know she admires the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is what he said last week, when the whole House applauded him, when the hon. Member on the Opposition side who followed the Chancellor said it was a magnificent achievement and our hon. Friends on this side of the House cheered. He said: The reduction in imports has entailed some sacrifice to the people of this country, who have forgone desirable goods, particuarly those types of foodstuffs from the Western Hemisphere which provide variety in the diet; but they have the satisfaction of knowing that by their action they have contributed largely towards the solution of our dollar problem and what perhaps is more important, have strengthened the position of sterling in the world."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 16th September. 1948; Vol. 456, c. 254.] In other words, I must say to my hon. Friend that one cannot have one's cake and eat it. We cannot on the one hand settle the difficulties of our overseas payments and at the same time enjoy those foods which come from dollar sources.

She is quite right when she quotes some of the figures in the Trade and Navigation Returns, although the Trade and Navigation Returns are not always a sure guide to hon. Members. She has not mentioned sugar. For instance, the Trade and Navigation Returns, so far as sugar is concerned, would indicate to the uninitiated that we have colossal stocks in this country. Of course, that is not the correct interpretation of the Returns. In fact we have sugar belonging to other people which we have brought to this country to refine. To say we could call upon those stocks would be quite wrong. It would be like saying, if one took in the washing of somebody else, that that washing was one's own, whereas it is the customer's.

However, the figures the hon. Lady has quoted are, in the main, correct. The fact is that foods she has mentioned, which have come from dollar countries in the past, have not been imported since August, 1947. I must emphasise the point of the Chancellor's speech. I am sure she will agree with me—and she is second to none in her admiration of my right hon. and learned Friend—that in the light of that speech we cannot expect to go into the shops and find the shelves crowded with dollar foods or the goods she would like to have in her home.

I have made some notes of the different items of food which are in most popular demand, because I have no desire to run away from the details of this question. So far as canned meats are concerned, before the dollar cuts supplies were running at about 13,000 tons per four-week period. They are now down to 4,000 tons. I cannot hold out any hope that those particular meats—popular meats—will be increased shortly. However, of course, all the time we are examining the possibilities of getting foods from soft currency areas in order to replace the dollar foods.

I agree with the hon. Lady that canned salmon is a very popular fish in this country. The decline in supplies of canned fish is the result of dollar cuts, although it is not so serious as that in the case of meats, for we now have 2,000 tons per period, as compared with 3,000 tons before the cuts were imposed.

Does that mean that there is some canned salmon available?

The canned salmon which people have been getting recently is from stocks. Now we are trying to find canned fish in other countries which will replace canned salmon. I mention a fish to the House which, in the past, has provoked a certain amount of amusement—snoek. It is an example of the efforts which my Ministry makes to replace canned salmon from Canada by another canned fish from another country. Unfortunately, snoek had an unpleasant name, and the first cargo gave it an unpleasant reputation, but it has lived all that down, and snoek, I am pleased to say, is now a very popular food in this country, and housewives are demanding it. I am hoping that we shall be able to maintain supplies. I would remind the House that it is highly nutritious, and it can very well replace canned salmon.

The hon. Lady did not mention pilchards. Pilchards are popular, and in the past we have obtained them from California. Unfortunately our imports of pilchards have had to stop, and we are now trying to make a deal with South Africa in order to replace the Californian supplies. I was asked about sardines. Portugal is the main source of supply of sardines, and, as a result of the recent agreement, we hope to maintain supplies. throughout 1949.

Christmas is approaching, and I know that most of our women constituents are anxious to know whether they are to get fruit for their Christmas pudding. The House must realise that 30 per cent. of the dried fruits came from the United States. The loss of those supplies deprives us completely of prunes and apricots, although we may be able to get a few prunes from Chile. We are now looking to Turkey and Greece for our supplies of raisins and sultanas. There has been a better crop in Turkey this year, but supplies may be short in Greece. I am pleased to say that we think that in 1949 there will be a slight over-all improvement. I am sure that hon. Members will be interested to know the amount which is to be issued in October. No dried fruits have been issued for the last 12 weeks, and that is why women have found it difficult to get dried fruits during the summer months, but an extra large release of 22,000 tons is being made for Christmas. I think that it will be actually released on 10th October.

Another popular food in Britain is rice pudding. I remember that a Whip on these benches told me yesterday that it is his favourite food.

Is that what Whips live on?

He was very shocked to think that, although we had hoped to distribute more rice, we were now having to reverse our policy. I feel that all those hon. Members who do not feel friendlily disposed towards the Minister of Food will at least accept the explanation that we are not responsible for the political upset in Burma. During the first six months of this year, rice was coming in very well, but, unfortunately, during the last few months, the shipments have been reduced, and we have had to hold up stocks in Britain instead of distributing them. We shall hold them up until we know what the position will be.

There are alternatives to rice—sago, tapioca and farina. The hon. Lady has not mentioned those things, which I think that she will agree, from a nutritional point of view, provide an adequate alternative variety, and I have not heard that they are in short supply. I tremble a little when I see my hon. Friends on these benches, who are such good cooks, looking at me and preparing to jump up at any moment to contradict me. I am, therefore, glad that the hon. Lady appears to agree.

I will now mention pulses which cover beans, peas and so on. The most acute shortage is lentils, but the House will remember that lentils were in the past imported from India. None have come into this country during the last six or seven years, and I think that no hon. Member will regret the reason. Lentils have not come into this country from India because the standard of living of the Indians has improved. My hon. Friend mentioned dried beans, and I presume she means white beans. These come mainly from dollar sources, and canners now have a priority claim on the small amounts we have in the country. We got most of our canned fruits in the past from America, and now we have to rely on South Africa and Australia. Canned tomatoes are a seasonal food, and we are releasing about 4,000 tons of them in October.

There is no change in the supply position of canned peas, and I do not remember having a complaint on that score. Present releases of canned beans, amounting to 3,000 tons per period, are about half the rate before dollar cuts affected our imports of white beans. An hon. Member said the night before last, that spaghetti on toast was very good, and he was jeered at, but the fact is that a lot of housewives are pleased to get canned spaghetti. Supplies are good, and are nearly double what they were a year ago.

I know my hon. Friend is always interested in milk, because she is anxious that our old aged pensioners should have their diet supplemented. Our policy is to step up releases of canned milk in the winter when there is a shortage of fresh milk. Between October and March we shall be releasing about 10,000 tons per period, compared with 6,000 tons during the earlier part of the year. These figures, however—because I do not want to deceive the House—represent only 60 per cent. of the releases before the dollar cuts. My hon. Friend also mentioned dried eggs. I remember that the first crisis I faced at the Ministry was about dried eggs. Housewives made it very clear that they were very fond of them. Releases of dried eggs will be increased from 250 tons to 1,000 tons per period from 10th October, with a special issue of 2,000 tons in December. After that I cannot say what the position will be.

On Monday, the hon. Member for Eve-sham (Mr. De la Bère) asked that all biscuits produced in this country should be consumed at home and not exported. I will not go through all the arguments, but we are exporting what can only be regarded as a token quantity. Our exports are equivalent to 8 per cent. of our home consumption. The shortage during the last few months has been because other foods have been scarce, and housewives have perhaps been going round the shops wondering how to spend their points. Supplies are rather better than last year; 17,500 tons per period are being distributed, compared with 16,000 tons last year. Members sometimes ask me how biscuits are distributed. Distribution is left to the manufacturers. On the whole their methods are very fair and acceptable, because there are so many biscuit factories in the country.

I hope I have been able to explain to my hon. Friend that the Ministry of Food are trying to do the best they can, having regard to the fact that our supplies are so limited. I have not tried to minimise our difficulties, but I think the hon. Lady will agree with me that the outlook is not so very gloomy. I can assure her that we are trying to find foods which we think will be substitutes for some of those I have mentioned. We are trying all over the world. We have our agents in every country in the world. When they tell us that there is a food available which we can afford, we immediately buy it. However, I have to remind her of the Chancellor's speech. We have to recognise that the end of our difficulties has not come yet. We still have to make sacrifices. I want to pay a tribute to housewives who continue to do. Sometimes, of course, they grumble, but on the whole they are very fine women.

Question put, and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-six Minutes past Four o'Clock, till Monday, 25th October, pursuant to the Resolution of the House this day.