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

This is a small Bill with a very great purpose, and I am glad that it has fallen to my lot to introduce it. It implements the announcement made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in March of last year, that Parliament would be invited to provide State assistance towards the establishment of a national theatre. That such a theatre should be established in this country, devoted to the presentation of the best plays, past and present, produced with distinction, performed by actors of merit and where the dignity of the playwright's art would be maintained in a worthy setting has long been the dream of many people in all walks of life.

National theatres have existed for many years in other European countries. In France, for example, they have had such an institution for nearly 270 years. Therefore, it is, in my view altogether fitting that we who live in the land which gave birth and language to the greatest dramatist that the world has yet seen, should now think seriously of erecting such a centre here in London, notwithstanding the fact that we are all pre-occupied with other and more pressing matters.

The patronage of the Court had a good deal to do with the flowering of British drama in its greatest period. Today there is a sharp division of opinion as to the extent to which the State should interfere in various sections of our national life, but there is no doubt that most, if not all, of us believe that it is right and proper that the State should come to the assistance of the arts. As the House is well aware, a beginning in that direction has already been made. Although it is a comparatively recent development, the encouragement of the arts by the State is something which has met with the wholehearted approval and support of hon. Members in all quarters of the House. On the dramatic side it took, until recently, the shape of exempting from Entertainment Duty performances which could be considered as mainly of an educational character. During the war, it took a more direct form when the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts—which was a war-time organisation—was given a grant from public funds by, I think, the National Government in 1940. C.E.M.A. has been succeeded by the Arts Council and last year the grant to the Arts Council had risen to no less than £575,000. So far as I know, very little objection has been raised when these Estimates have been presented to the House, although I suppose that earlier generations would have considered a sum of that magnitude to be rather excessive. It is an indication of how we have advanced in our views on these matters.

The first plans for a national theatre to be built by public subscription were laid by Harley Granville Barker, whom some of the older Members of this House will remember for the work he did at the Court Theatre, and William Archer, in 1903. Seven years later their scheme was combined with another which was already in existence to provide a national memorial to William Shakespeare. The appeal then launched by the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee attracted many distinguished supporters and some contributions. The largest contributor was Sir Carl Meyer, who made a donation of £70,000 towards the cost of building a theatre which it was hoped to open in 1916 in celebration of the tercentenary of Shakespeare's death. But war came in 1914, and it was quite impossible to carry that project to maturity.

It was not until 1937 that a site of one acre in Cromwell Gardens, opposite the Victoria and Albert Museum, was purchased. Here it was proposed to erect the National Theatre for which the Committee had been collecting subscriptions. The selection of that particular site met with a very mixed reception. Some people thought that an acre was not enough for a memorial of the kind which many people contemplated. Others thought that South Kensington, being as it is, some distance from the centre of London and from theatreland, was not an appropriate place in which to erect such a building. It is, I agree, a long way from Shaftesbury Avenue to Cromwell Gardens, in atmosphere at any rate. Nevertheless, there were people then, and I believe that there are still some, including our greatest living dramatist, Bernard Shaw, who believe that a site such as South Kensington would be the most fitting setting for a building of this kind.

However, the discussion whether the theatre should be in South Kensington or elsewhere can now be considered merely academic, because those who have read the Preamble of the Bill will have seen that events have marched a good deal since the days when that controversy raged. It has now been decided that the theatre, as and when it is built, shall be in a more central locality. The London County Council, as the House is aware, has for many years contemplated developing the South Bank of the Thames, and most of us would say "not before it was time." They contemplate setting up a cultural centre in the area between County Hall and Waterloo Bridge, and have been negotiating with the Joint Council of the National Theatre and the Old Vic. The negotiations have resulted in an offer by the London County Council to exchange a site of rather more than one acre on the South Bank of the Thames for the acre in Cromwell Gardens which had been purchased earlier and is still in the hands of the National Theatre Committee. Not only will there be more room on the South Bank of the Thames, but the London County Council have intimated that they will be willing to provide approaches and roadways to the theatre when it is built.

When they made their offer, the London County Council not unnaturally wanted some kind of assurance that the project would mature. It would be no use their offering a site of this magnitude in the centre of what is to be a well-planned cultural centre, unless they knew that the money for erecting the building could be raised within a measurable time. The Joint Council has at its disposal at the moment about £70,000. There is no doubt that, if a public appeal were made, that amount would be greatly increased; but it is estimated that it will cost about £1 million to build a memorial theatre of the kind we contemplate, worthy of the name of Shakespeare and worthy of this country. This sum is completely outside the range of the Joint Council and not within their power to collect in a measurable time.

As the L.C.C. and the Joint Council were anxious that the project should go forward, it was decided that the Government should be approached to see whether Parliament would be willing to underwrite it and to give guarantees and assurances that money up to £1 million would be forthcoming as soon as it was possible to erect this theatre. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated when he made the announcement to the House, the Government willingly acceded to the representations which were made. They felt sure, as I feel sure today, that the House would give a willing assent to this Bill and that they would agree to the proposal which is now being made.

Clause 1, therefore, provides that the Treasury may make a contribution not exceeding £1 million towards erecting and equipping such a theatre. Clause 2 is the only other operative Clause in the Bill. When this public money is advanced, it is essential that the theatre should really be a national institution and that the Government should have some control over it. That being so, Clause 2 provides that Section 36 of the Trustee Act, 1925, notwithstanding, the number of trustees of the National Theatre may be raised to seven, and that the Treasury, acting for the nation, shall approve the appointments of trustees as and when vacancies occur.

This is a non-party, non-political and I hope non-controversial Measure. It is only a three-Clause Bill and I do not want to say much more about it However, the House will perhaps expect me to give them all the details which we have as to the kind of building that will be erected and how it will be managed.

The Joint Council of the National Theatre and the Old Vic have already appointed architects to draw up the plans and have set up a building sub-committee. Plans provide for a building containing two theatres, one seating about 1,200 people and the other about 500. There will be, we hope, and indeed there should be, special accommodation for workshops, for stores, for conference rooms, for a library, for canteens, for a public restaurant and for all the other numerous offices that should go with such a centre. It is indeed intended to provide not only a first rate national theatre in London, but a centre, in every sense of the word, for the development of dramatic art.

It is also intended to stimulate the art of the theatre through other possible and suitable means, to organise national theatre tours throughout the country and overseas. It may well be that, during the discussion, hon. Members may ask when a national theatre is to be built in Scotland and when Wales is to have one of its own. I see no reason why this project should prevent Scotland or Wales from going forward with a similar proposal, if they so desire. In fact, I think nothing would please me better than to know that Scotland, realising that we were serious in London, wished to follow that example.

May I interrupt? I understand this is the result of negotiations between the London County Council and the Government. Do I understand that this is an invitation and that if the Edinburgh Corporation came along with a similar suggestion the Government would welome it?

Negotiations have not taken place between the Government and the London County Council. In the first instance, negotiations took place between the Joint Council representing the Old Vic, which for many years now has watched over the Shakespearian and the more serious drama in this country, and the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre Committee. Those two have come together, and they have been negotiating with the London County Council, and it was on joint representations from those two bodies that the Government, in the end, were brought in. If the hon. Member for South Aryshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) feels that a similar movement should be considered, for Scotland, and if it reaches the stage when the Government themselves might be interested—whatever Government there might be at that time—I am sure he will find a ready ear for any reasonable request that he might make.

The Bill does not go into any detail as to what management should be set up. That will have to be worked out in the interval between the passing of the Bill through Parliament and the completion of the theatre. I imagine that the trustees will probably not desire to manage the theatre themselves. They may prefer to lease it to a new ad hoc body which might be set up, or even to the Old Vic, which for many years now has earned the respect and gratitude of the nation. However, that is not a matter for us to consider too deeply at the moment. It is one that will have to be gone into as the building and the project matures.

Nor has provision been made in the Bill for any assistance towards the running costs of the theatre, once it is built. There will be no land charges to begin with. The land will be rent-free. Whether rates will fall on the building has yet to be seen. It may be that the committee or the trustees will find that they may be able to establish a claim under the Scientific Societies Act, 1843, and by that means avoid even the payment of rates. But, if in the future, some sort of assistance does become necessary, it is our view that it would be for the Arts Council to give it.

It is obviously desirable that the prices of the seats should be reasonable. I am sure all of us hope that everyone, regardless of the state of his pocket, will be able to enjoy the plays that will be put on in this theatre. I would like to see many seats sold at sixpence.

I should perhaps utter a word of warning as to when this project may begin to mature. It is quite obvious to the Government that it will be some little time before the building can be started. We take the view that we should not be justified in diverting resources of labour and materials urgently needed for housing and other constructional work contributing to our economic recovery. It is correct that plans have been laid for a concert hall on the South Bank and also to re-build the Queen's Hall. In view of this, it may well be that some hon. Members may ask why this project cannot go forward at the same time. We take the view—and I hope that the House will agree—that, desirable as it is that the National theatre should be erected as soon as possible, there are many theatres in London at the present time, whereas there are no concert halls where we can have a full scale orchestral concert production. That is a great lack which we should remedy at the earliest possible moment.

I commend this Bill to the House as one which I hope all will approve. I trust that we shall soon see arising on the south bank of the river a memorial worthy both of William Shakespeare and of the people of this country.

I should begin by disclosing my interest, and by telling the House that I am a "tainted party." I have been a trustee of the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre for a great many years. I think I was appointed in 1936. Since 1945 I have been chairman of the joint council of the Old Vic and the National Theatre. As the Financial Secretary mentioned the subject of Scotland, and the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) mentioned Scotland, I may say that I am half Scots myself, and that any time the Scottish nation wish to call upon my services to conduct negotiations with the Government I shall be only too ready to step forward.

The right hon. Member will know that there is a place called Manchester.

Yes, indeed. I will refer to that later on. We are on a broad national basis at the moment. My real interest dates long before this. My father and mother were both concerned with the original project nearly 40 years ago, and I am very glad to think that my mother lived long enough to know of the introduction of this Bill. So I support the Bill wholeheartedly on its merits. I support it also out of filial piety and from the association, not a short one, which I have had with the project.

The Financial Secretary has made my task very easy, because he has given the background. I should like to fill in one or two other details which I hope will be of some interest to the House. When I was appointed a trustee, the three trustees were Lord Lytton, Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson and myself. When Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson died, I persuaded a friend of mine, Mr. J. P. Blake, a member of the party opposite, to fill the vacancy. Mr. Blake is a devoted supporter of the drama. Hon. Members will recall that he was subsequently Chairman of the London County Council, so that at least on this occasion the Financial Secretary will agree that I picked a winner. It was also, as the Financial Secretary has said, Sir Carl Meyer, whose grandson, by the way, is at present a trustee, who originally made the donation which gave life to the project.

By the 1930's, £150,000 had been collected. In collecting these sums, and in all these matters, Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth, the founder of the British Drama League, was most active and indefatigable. In 1937 the South Kensington site was bought and, shortly after that a suggestion was made that we should negotiate with the London County Council in order to change this site which I believe is of some importance to the London County Council under the Bressey scheme, for a site on the South Bank. If my memory serves me, I think that suggestion came from Mr. Blake; at any rate, it was one which I readily accepted and followed.

One of the reasons why I am going over this ground again is that I feel that it would be most unseemly if I did not say here and now how very grateful we were for the most generous attitude which the London County Council adopted. They approved the idea which underlay our proposal. It came to our knowledge that the London County Council intended to develop the site on the South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Waterloo Bridge on a grand and imaginative scale. There was to be what I was sorry to hear the Financial Secretary again describe as a cultural centre. I should not like hon. Members to be turned against the project by the somewhat repellent nature of the language in which it is described. I think the French have something over us when they describe a building as an "Eácole des Beaux Arts," or a Ministry as a Ministry of the Fine Arts. I believe that the Muses themselves would feel a little uncomfortable in a cultural centre. Be that as it may, the London County Council had this idea, and it seemed to us, and subsequently to them, very appropriate that a national threatre should be erected on that site and as part of the scheme to foster the fine arts. The site is a very noble one of more than an acre and a quarter, and I am sure that most hon. Members will agree that it is the finest site in the whole of London we could wish for on which to erect a theatre.

When these negotiations with the London County Council were beginning, I formed the idea that it was quite wrong that two bodies—namely, the Shakespeare Memorial National Theatre and the Old Vic—should be appealing to the public and, incidentally, to the Arts Council, for what was essentially the same object. I, therefore, put down on paper a scheme by which these two bodies should act in concert. That scheme was agreed to and accepted. The committee or council which combined these interests has, of course, as hon. Members will realise, no legal existence, but it has nevertheless the force of authority, because it numbers amongst its members most of those who are, in some way or another, responsible for the affairs both of the Old Vic and of the National Theatre. I think I must say who are the members of this body. First, on the Old Vic side—if I may use that term—there are the right hon. Gentlemen the Member for Deptford (Mr. Wilmot), my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. O. Poole), Miss Barbara Ward and Alderman Mrs. L'Estrange Malone. On the National Theatre side there are Lord Esher, Sir Bronson Albery, Mr. J. P. Blake and Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth. This distinguished body is under my chairmanship.

It seemed to my colleagues and me that the betrothal of these two parties was a very happy event. The National Theatre, on the one hand, had the promise of the London County Council for this site, and the Old Vic could point to a long record of successes, to the achievement of Miss Bayliss's original idea in the Old Vic, and to many recent theatrical successes. It seemed to my colleagues and myself clearly right to try to combine a body whose resources could only be used for the building of a theatre, because they were limited by their trust, with that of another body which represented a company of actors and actresses, or what might be termed the living side of the theatre. So it was that this amalgamation was made, the policy governing both bodies has been agreed, and I think I may say that very happy relations have been established. Should I be pitching it too high if I said that possibly here there was a felicitous combination of private enterprise, municipal generosity and State aid? I hope not.

After this short and no doubt rather tiresome historical survey, which I hope will serve to explain the interest I have in the project, I now turn to the actual Bill. Let me state my own view quite plainly. It may be an unusual view for me to express. I hope hon. Members will not ask me to widen my remarks beyond this occasion. My view is that on this occasion His Majesty's Government have in presenting this Bill shown great boldness and imagination. I think they are to be congratulated upon these two qualities. I have often been asked, as a sponsor of this project, what is the necessity for a National Theatre? This of course, is a question which perhaps only the Secretary of the Philistine Society, if there is such a body, could appropriately ask. I usually reply in a rather conventional way by asking what is the need, come to that, for the National Gallery, for St. Paul's Cathedral, "Lycidas" or the "Eroica" Symphony of Beethoven. These works are not necessities in the sense that the President of the Board of Trade and others use the term when speaking about clothes, food, or houses. In fact, we only begin to enter the realms of art when we begin to leave the realms of necessity.

A national theatre aims to set the highest standard of performance of the drama—just that and no more. This country has made probably the greatest contribution in modern times to the drama, and might have some claims to have made as great a contribution, not excluding Greece to drama as any country in history. Almost all other countries which have been the nurseries of the arts and the cradles of great composers or authors have State theatres or opera houses which are assisted in some way by government funds. The most obvious examples of this policy are the ones the Financial Secretary mentioned—the Comeádie Francaise and La Scala in Milan—but in drama, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland and Belgium, to name the first countries that come into one's mind, have theatres assisted by the State or by the municipality.

I should like to emphasise the point that these theatres with State help, such as the Comédie Francaise, not only set a standard for the drama but also preserve from pollution the language in which these dramatic works are played. A national theatre in Great Britain would help to keep undefiled the purity of the English language, the accents in which it is uttered, the grammar and the syntax in which it is cast, by setting a standard springing from the glorious English of Shakespeare of which we are the proud but I must say somewhat negligent heirs. But it is unfortunately the fact that if the classical drama or classical opera is to be performed and declaimed or sung by the leading artists of the day, it is most unlikely that the theatre, and quite certain that the opera house, will not be self-supporting. It is, of course, possible by private subscription, by guest artists and by cheap and improvised productions to keep classical drama in front of the public, but it is not possible without some kind of help to play the classical drama at cheap and popular prices—to which I must, in parenthesis, say I attach as much importance as the Financial Secretary—with a good standard of production. This is the fundamental reason why Great Britain should have a national theatre.

Some objections—if that is the right word; I do not think it is—have been raised to State money being devoted and destined for a national theatre in London, but I am sure the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith), when he hears what I have to say, will change his objections to enthusiasm, because I know he is in favour of the general project. I think I understand the reasons for this criticism. If this criticism of London as the home of the national theatre meant that London is to be the only centre worthy of support in the furtherance of the drama, I would agree with that criticism wholeheartedly, but a start has to be made somewhere, and a standard—the highest which we can achieve in our country—has to be set.

We should all agree at the outset that these objects can best be achieved by siting the national theatre in the capital city of the Commonwealth and Empire; but I do not go further than that, and I do not at all say that London should be the only recipient of State or municipal help in the theatre. As I say, I have already offered my services to the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). It is part of the project of the national theatre to have stock companies travelling a large part of the year which will play in the great provincial cities, and therefore serve to stimulate the spread of this movement; and as time goes on we may hope to see other theatres with State or municipal support established outside London. I have not studied the Measure very carefully, but I believe the vehicle for carrying out the development of the theatre in other parts of the country is contained in the Local Government Act, 1948.

The next question I wish to ask and, in fact, to answer is: why do the Government bring forward this project at this time, when we are trying to struggle out of our economic difficulties and when we are admittedly living to a large extent upon aid from the United States? The Financial Secretary touched on this question which is not an awkward one at all. It is perfectly simple, and the answer is that the London County Council, having seen the good sense as we think of having a national theatre on the south bank, naturally would require some earnest or guarantee that, having reserved the site, the funds are going to be available for building the theatre. That is the reason why, I take it, the Government are bringing forward the Measure now. It is at least doubtful whether any private individual or body in these days of taxation would ever have the resources to bring this very long delayed project to life. It is for this reason that we who are connected with the movement approached His Majesty's Government.

The negotiations with the Government were conducted by Lord Esher. It would be most ungenerous of me not to acknowledge the greatness of the services to the cause of the national theatre which have been performed by Lord Esher, and I take this opportunity of doing so and paying a tribute to him in the warmest terms that I can command. It has not been Lord Esher's privilege or good fortune to live in an age when, as a Maecenas, he could have supported the drama out of his own resources, but within the limits of what is possible in our age no one has worked more devotedly than he.

I turn to the last part of my subject, and to answer the question whether it is wise on general or economic grounds for the Government to introduce the Bill now. The word "economic" seems to dog my footsteps, and I cannot get away from it even this morning. I would draw the attention of hon. Members who are not particularly interested in the drama—I think there are very few of them; they are certainly not here—to the economic aspects of this question and, in particular, to the White Paper on Full Employment. This White Paper was the product of the Coalition Government in which there was a large Conservative majority, so that the party on this side of the House is even more committed to that White Paper than the party on the other, but it suffices for my purpose to say that it was a joint White Paper. The very essence of that White Paper is that in times of great trade activity when we have full employment, a Government should prepare schemes which will be to the profit or advantage of the community, and put them on the shelves so that if at any time the trade cycle should recede and a trade depression, perhaps imported from abroad, should spread its chill hand once again upon our lives, then there should be in the pigeon-holes, Government schemes and particularly building schemes, ready to be put into force and to make their contribution to the reinstatement of the trade cycle and to employment.

I have tried to show that a national theatre is a scheme to which, as civilised human beings and civilised British citizens, we should subscribe. I would add that those who voted for the White Paper on Full Employment should also agree to the general idea of having such a scheme in the pigeon holes of the Government on economic grounds. As the Financial Secretary has said, no building will begin until the Treasury presses the button, and no arguments therefore which seek to show that this is not the right time to build the national theatre have any validity. It is not the right time, clearly, and in fact I suppose the theatre cannot be begun until after 1951, because I believe that the site is going to be used for the Exhibition of that year.

I do not wish to be dogmatic, but I conclude by saying that those who are opposed to the national theatre of Great Britain for the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Congreve and Bernard Shaw are only fitted to be enrolled amongst the ranks of the Philistines, and I suggest that those who oppose the introduction of this Bill, if there are such, upon economic grounds are taking up a false position. I commend this Bill to my hon. Friends on this side of the House and to the House in general. I find myself in the unusual but agreeable rôle of congratulating the Government for imagination and audacity in introducing it at this moment, and I trust very much that it will be given its Second Reading without a Division.

May I follow the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) by congratulating him on his extremely fine speech. It is a great moment when both sides of the House join in agreeing on an "imaginative and bold scheme," as the right hon. Gentleman so rightly described this scheme for a national theatre.

This theatre is long overdue and I am divided between rejoicing, on the one hand, that a Labour Government should have the honour and imagination to introduce this Bill and sorrow, on the other hand, that the national theatre was not built long ago, when it should have been built, before the war and before there were all these difficulties about building which inevitably will mean a long delay. On the whole, I think my rejoicing is greater even than my disappointment that we have not previously had a national theatre in this country. As has been pointed out, it is a dreadful thing that in Britain, the home of Shakespeare and other great playwrights. there has been no national theatre when they have existed for so long in nearly all the countries of Europe.

I have been looking, as no doubt have other hon. Members, at the statistics of national theatres and I find that practically every European country, certainly in Western Europe, has had one national theatre for a long time, and in some cases several. For instance, Sweden, with a population not much over one-tenth the size of ours, has three national theatres, and magnificent theatres they are. They run opera, ballet and drama in all these three theatres which are situated in Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg, three centres considerably far apart in mileage. When our theatre is built we shall have at least two theatres. We already have Covent Garden, for opera and ballet, which is doing extraordinarily well, and we shall have our national theatre for straight drama.

I very much agree with what the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot said about safeguarding the kind of production which we put on. I think that is one of the most important functions of a national theatre. It reminded me of an experience I had, when I was a school girl and lived near a repertory theatre and spent most of my pocket money in attending various performances on Saturday afternoons. One week "Charley's Aunt" was played very successfully. The next week "Hamlet" was very indifferently played and it would be little exaggeration to say that at the end of the play the rather small stage was fairly stacked with corpses. Two people were sitting in front of me in the gallery and as the curtain went down one of them turned to the other and said, "Well, of course, it is all right, but it does not make a laugh like Charley's Aunt,'" I think not only will such an occurrence never happen in a national theatre, but the standard throughout the country will be so raised that even the less important repertory theatres will not provide that kind of experience.

I want to put in a word for the provinces, and when I say "the provinces" I am sure hon. Members will realise that I would not dare for one moment to describe the other countries of the British Isles as "provinces." I am not speaking of Scotland or Wales; of course, they should have their national theatres, but they are not the only places which should have them. There should be national and municipal theatres in Manchester, Leeds and all the towns of any size. I very much hope that in the not far distant future municipalities will be encouraged by the Government, through some sort of conditional grants, to build these national theatres in all the bigger centres.

As my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, it is most undesirable that people should be prevented from seeing fine performances because of their pockets. As a matter of fact, however low the prices are in a London theatre a very large section of the population will be prevented from seeing the performances because their pockets do not allow them to travel to London. Therefore, if this bold and imaginative scheme is effectively to operate for the whole of the population of Britain, we must not only build one national theatre—which is a magnificient start—but we must encourage similar theatres on a smaller scale to be erected in all the suitable centres in the country, as has already been done in Sweden, despite their tiny population.

I think today is a red letter day in the history of British Government. It will go down to history as one of the days when a magnificent step forward was taken and a great scheme was promoted in a Bill by this Labour Government.

I am very glad to be able to welcome this Bill. As long as I can remember I have taken an interest in the theatre, entirely from the point of view of the ordinary spectator, and for some ten years I worked in conjunction with the late Lord Hamilton to try to get Miss Bayliss to fill her dress circle and stalls at the Old Vic. We had a small society formed for that particular reason. Miss Bayliss had all the right ideas about the theatre, but she thought only of the cheap seats and if she could fill seats which were given free she was even more delighted. Then she used to wonder why she could not make ends meet. We formed this little society, which was an extremely successful society, to fill the dress circle and the stalls.

There are one or two points I want to raise with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. He referred to the National Theatre as being called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. I hope it will always be referred to as the National Theatre, because that would prevent any confusion with Stratford. I want to ask him if there is any thought of working with Stratford or whether Stratford will always remain something apart from the National Theatre scheme.

I agree that there should be a large proportion of very cheap seats, but I want to make the point that every seat should be a good seat. That does not apply to many of the Continental theatres where there are a great many cheap seats in which one cannot breathe, hear or see. I hope every seat in both theatres will be a good seat. One theatre which has not been mentioned is the Vienna Theatre, the Burgtheater, which has a very high tradition and which I think is better than any German theatre—better than the Berlin Theatre. It had a magnificent artistic production and it also had the two theatres scheme; it had a small theatre called the Academy Theatre which, unfortunately, was not under the same roof, consequently causing great difficulty in changing casts and scenery. Nevertheless, I hope the working of the Burgtheater will be studied because there are many points of value to be learned from that State theatre.

Speakers have referred to classical productions and to Bernard Shaw, upon whom I look now as a classic. Surely, however, in the National Theatre new plays should be encouraged. They are in France, where there are new plays by young authors. While talking of French productions I should like to say that I hope that the work done by M. Bourdet, the late director—unhappily, he is now dead—of the Francaise will be studied, because he revived the spirit of the Francaise and the Odéon, which had fallen to a fairly low level between the wars. They had a good, old tradition, but needed a good deal of uplifting, and M. Bourdet threw himself into stimulating it. The productions now are of a very high level.

I should like to ask what is proposed to be done about a pension scheme in connection with the National Theatre? That is very important. I have had letters connected with people from the theatre who assure me that this country has not a tradition of a national theatre. I think that that suggestion has been answered already, and, indeed, it is answered by the fact that we had the Court Theatre of old days, and the Henry Irving productions, and, more recently, we have had the Old Vic and the provincial repertory theatres. I am sure we have the complete position of a national theatre.

There is another question. Is it to be contemplated that the time has now come when we should have a Minister—not a Ministry—of Fine Arts? I personally believe that the time has come when it is necessary to have a Minister of Fine Art. He should stand apart from party politics, and be responsible for all the money which is being spent by the Arts Council, and be in general control of the fine arts in this country. I think that with this Bill the moment has come for some decision to be taken about that question, and that such a Minister should be a peer, outside of party politics.

As the Financial Secretary said, it is very necessary to keep party politics out of national theatres. We have not had experience of that before, but I have seen it in France. I have seen in European State theatres foreign Cabinet Ministers making little arrangements for their friends to walk on in small parts, or to be given bigger ones for which they were not fitted. I have seen it amongst the Nazis, when a tenor was removed from the Vienna Opera, and a fine actor was removed from the Burgtheater to make room for a good party member who could neither act nor sing. That sort of thing must be avoided. It would be only too easy for the Prime Minister to do that sort of thing. I am not saying that the Prime Minister of the moment would do such a thing. However, one can imagine the kind of resignation letters that could be written, such as "My dear So-and-so. You have done magnificently at the,"—say, Ministry of Food—" but I have always looked upon you as a Hamlet, and your Parliamentary Secretary has to my mind been the perfect Lady Macbeth, for I have always seen her saying,

'Infirm of purpose! Give me the daggers.'"

Indeed, I fear me that every Government Front Bench has many potential Poloniuses on it. So I would urge that that point be kept in mind all the time—that party politics must not enter the question of the national theatre.

I think that we can also say that the time will come when the national theatre will take the place of all the piecemeal assistance given by remitting Entertainment Duty here and there, and by bol— stering up not very good productions by little grants here and there from the Arts Council. The money spent must be spent on the national theatres. I welcome very much the idea of touring companies. The City of Liverpool has not been mentioned, although almost every other city has been, but I know that Liverpool has a great tradition in the theatre and would welcome a national theatre and touring companies and also welcome the national theatre as a great tourist attraction. We know that the Comádie Francaise and the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Opera were tremendous attractions for tourists. In the tourist season here visitors want to see "Hamlet" or plays by Sheridan, and light productions of a classical sort, such as "You Never Can Tell," but all too often all they can see is "Annie, Get Your Gun," or "Oklahoma," and shows of that sort. I am sure that our visitors from the Dominions would welcome a national theatre. The national theatre would be of great value to our tourist trade.

I know all the obvious reasons why the theatre cannot be started now. I can only say that I hope that I shall live long enough to see the national theatre. There will be small matters to be discussed, such as the question of restaurants in the theatres, which is a very important matter, for nowadays when we cannot get a meal before the play or afterwards—unless we go to very expensive restaurants—the catering side of the theatre is an important consideration, and refreshment ought to be provided in the national theatre. Then there is the question of subscription seats. In the national theatres abroad they have matinees for which one can take 12 seats, say; and that is of great educational value for schools and universities. There are certain nights when more can be charged for the more expensive seats, and nights for subscription seats. All these points will have to be gone into. There are many small matters I should like to mention, but I do not think they are matters to be considered on Second Reading, and, therefore, I would conclude by once more congratulating the Government on having had the courage to bring in this particular Bill at this moment.

I am sure that we would all like to help the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo (Captain Bullock) in casting the more histrionic Members of this House for their general parts. We had a part in mind already for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton). However, perhaps it would be wiser to leave the matter for now; I, too, congratulate the Government, as all have so far done, upon their wisdom and foresight in introducing this Bill. I would also thank the Financial Secretary for the charming way he presented it to the House. I, too, have to declare my interest. I have, in one way or another, been concerned with the Old Vic for most of my life, first for many years as a patron and later as a governor. I owe most of my love of the drama very largely to that grand old place.

I have heard a great many people say that they are a little worried by this project lest the ambitions and purposes of the Old Vic should be lost. They wonder whether this is really what the great founder, Lilian Bayliss, had in mind as the ultimate purpose of the theatre. On that, I am happy to say we need have no doubt at all. Miss Bayliss left a number of letters, to which I have recently referred, in which she expressed in the most unmistakable terms her desire that the ultimate purpose of the Old Vic should be realised by its being brought into a national theatre. She did, in fact, write to Lord Lytton, who as hon. Members know was chairman of the Memorial Theatre Committee, expressing this hope in these words:

"I always cherish the hope that eventually we might work together as one."

She said she felt that the Old Vic, in its work, had done something to produce not only the actors and the companies which might make the beginnings of the national theatre company, but also the audiences, and those who came after them would heed, and love and use the national theatre. There can be no doubt about that, and it is very fortunate that this noble site, which is available as a result of the foresight of that committee and the London County Council and the Theatre Committee is within a stone's throw of the old theatre in the Waterloo Road, which Hitler destroyed. I am certain that everybody concerned with this project knows the vital importance of providing performances at prices which working people can afford to pay. That was an essential part of the Old Vic policy, and no one need have any doubt that it will be a cardinal principle of the national theatre when it is opened. As the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo said in his most interesting and practical speech, it is extremely important, too, that the seat should be a good seat. It is unfortunately true that in many of the older theatres, especially Drury Lane, many of the cheaper seats are very bad seats. I am sure that the distinguished and technically experienced architects engaged on this project will keep that point very much in mind, as will everybody concerned.

I have had a number of letters from people holding this view, which I share—the necessity of remembering that London is not England, nor Scotland or Wales. Some are critical of this expenditure in London alone. As the right hon. Member for Aldershot said in his most excellent speech, if we looked at this merely as a London project it would not stand. But of course it is not just for London. London is the capital city, and for that reason is bound to be the centre and headquarters of national movements and institutions. In the theatre it is particularly necessary to have the centre in the capital. Nothing could be more constructive in building up what I think is such an essential part of our national life, a chain of municipal and civic and public theatres in every city in the country, than to establish this centre in London from which these activities must radiate. Nor is it a one-way influence. Hon. Members may remember the very successful season at the St. James's Theatre last year, when repertory companies from Birmingham, Bristol, Sheffield, Liverpool and Manchester presented, week after week, plays which they had performed in their own home theatres. And what a brilliant season it was; one of the best pieces of theatrical fare which has been presented to London for a very long time.

I believe it to be just as important for repertory companies of provincial cities to come and play in London as for the London companies to go and play in the provinces. The Old Vic has had some experience of that, in exchanging visits with the company which is running, with the help of the Arts Council, in that remarkably beautiful old theatre, the Theatre Royal in Bristol—probably the only 18th century theatre still working in this country, complete with the original stage gear and mechanism; one of the most charming relics of the 18th century which we possess. The theatre there is running every night, with its own Bristol Old Vic Company. That company comes to London and the London companies go to Bristol, which gives a sense of purpose and vitality in a theatrical enterprise which cannot be obtained in any other way.

I am sure it could be said that in every city and town of Britain the National Theatre Movement and the People's Civic Theatre Movement take a long step forward with the passage of this Bill; for the first time there is to be established in an Act of Parliament what ought to have been done so many years ago. For the first time the State takes its part in the cultivation of the drama as an art, just as it has for long done in painting and sculpture.

There is not very much more to say now upon this most interesting subject, save to congratulate the Government on their wisdom in including in the Local Government Act, 1948, the remarkably far-sighted Section 132, which gives to municipalities power to set up theatres, to run theatrical companies, concerts, exhibitions and the like, and to levy an appropriate rate for the purpose. This really is a charter of the drama in the cities and towns, and the national theatre will assist in this work, and help to lift and maintain the standard. It is tremendously important that the standard should be high. These powers, if wrongly used, could do harm, just as, rightly used, they can do great good. The preparations for the use of the powers given in this far-sighted Section should begin now to take shape in people's minds and efforts, just as the plans for the national theatre will begin to be put into effect as soon as the Royal Assent has been given to this Bill.

This civic theatre movement is gathering strength and purpose, and I am glad to see that the British Drama League, which has done so much for understanding and promotion of the drama in Britain, has issued a most interesting little booklet about the powers of the Bill and how best to make use of them. I am sure that hon. Members would find that of great interest, and they should bring it to the notice of municipalities in their areas. It has been produced by a committee, on which served the indefatigable Mr. Geoffrey Whitworth, whose work for the drama is above praise, under the chairmanship of Lord Esher, to whom I should like to pay my tribute for the work he has done for the Old Vic and the national theatre. I believe that long years hence, this day will be remembered as a great day for the British drama.

I should like to add my congratulations to what has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) as to the boldness and imagination displayed by the Government in this Bill. I should also like to congratulate the Financial Secretary on the way in which he has presented the Measure to the House. Today it has been a case of "roses, roses all the way" with him, and I should like to shake a few of my petals upon his reverend hairs.

When this Bill was published I regarded it with great interest—an interest which I am bound to declare—with considerable approbation, and with one or two apprehensions which have, I think, in the main been removed by the right hon. Gentleman. I regarded it with interest because, just as an admiral cannot have too many ships, so a dramatist cannot have too many theatres. How they are to be provided is not, of course, a matter of professional concern to him. I consider this Bill to be a tardy measure of justice, and I hope atonement, for the monstrous Entertainment Duty which has been levied for so many years on this living theatre. I know that this is not a subject which forms part of the Bill so I will not say any more about it because I wish to keep most carefully within the bounds of Order.

But I think I am entitled to say that in certain quarters there may be, and no doubt will be, some criticism of Parliament spending £1 million of the nation's money on a theatre project. I have not yet delved into the precise figures but I should not be surprised, and indeed I think it would be a conservative estimate, if the living theatre had not provided successive Chancellors of the Exchequer, during its long existence, with something in the neighbourhood of £30 million of revenue. The present Chancellor of the Exchequer is an austere man, more austere, for instance, than King Claudius of Denmark, but at one point he can be touched. He has a chink in his armour. Clearly,

" the play's the thing Wherein to catch the conscience of "—

the Chancellor. This project will cost £1 million; and, unless my arithmetic is at fault, £1 million in relation to £30 million means giving back to the theatre 3⅓ per cent., which is not over-generous. When one is dealing with what has been called in this House a shabby moneylender, to get a rebate of 3⅓ per cent. is something—in fact, it is quite a lot. Few victims of any Chancellor of the Exchequer achieve so much.

I regard one or two points in the Bill with apprehension, but I will say that the need has been felt for years in the theatre that it should have some fountain head such as a national theatre. We know from the history of this Measure that funds have been raised which have partly enabled this Bill to be brought forward. I agree with the Member for North Hendon (Mrs. Ayrton Gould), whose sincere enthusiasm and affection for the theatre, and whose very good work on the Arts Council, everybody recognises, that it is very unfortunate that we have not had a national theatre before this. But we have this advantage: by having it now, I am certain that we have a better site. I never was a believer in the Cromwell-road site. I hope that the Government will see to it that this national theatre never gets into the guiding hands of any bunch of amateur dilettanti. We do need experts in a national theatre—experts in every branch of theatrical art. There are, nevertheless, certain opposing points of view on this subject. My friend, Mr. J. B. Priestley, says:

"A national theatre can do little for the general theatrical activity of the country."

I profoundly disagree. I am of the opinion that a national theatre, suitably planned and organised, can be of inestimable benefit to the general theatrical activity of the country.

I should like to touch upon one or two points about which I have felt a little frightened. I am sure of one thing; we do not want, in regard to the national theatre on the South Bank of the Thames, to see a white elephant of the Covent Garden or Drury Lane type. I am not saying a word against either of those great and historic theatres, but they are only suitable to productions of a gargantuan character. The true genius of the English theatre consists in its essential intimacy. That is true of Shakespeare just as it is of much more modern dramatists. The last thing we want is one huge auditorium, with every modern technical device, where our best plays will never be heard, and often not properly seen. I think that fear has been largely dispelled by what the right hon. Gentleman has said.

Rather than have two theatres it might be a good thing to have three, perhaps each one bigger than the 500 capacity and slightly smaller than the 1,200. The first would be specially designed for the presentation of classical drama, not merely the ancient classics but down to Elizabethan times and even later. The second would be designed for the presentation of modern drama, and the third for the presentation of intimate opera; we have no theatre at all in London specially designed for the presentation of what I have described as intimate opera, in which we could have also ballet and the showing of special films. I beg the Government, if they can, not to be grandiose in the matter of architecture; and not to be led astray by the enthusiasm of architects, who are always prone to exaggerate the importance of their own art. After all, "aren't we all?" I beg them to consider the quantity and the quality of the productions, rather than any exaggerated grandeur of the producing medium. I believe, too, that by adopting suggestions such as these we shall make the national theatre far more prosperous because, on balance, many more people will choose to go to it; and, what is of infinitely greater importance, more theatrical workers—players, producers, authors and stage staff—will find lasting and remunerative employment.

I shall not sit in this House very much longer because I shall leave its purlieus when the present Government is defeated, which will be at the next General Election. There are three of my craft in this House. We have been a pretty quarrelsome trio, but we are united, as I believe the whole House is united, in one thing and that is our genuine love for the theatre. The hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Levy) has, like myself, decided to retire. The junior burgess for Oxford University (Sir A. Herbert) has been deprived of his seat by the votes of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am afraid that we shall not very much longer amuse the House on Budget day by tumbling into the ring and hurling custard pies at one another. Some hon. Members may think that is a loss. Others, no doubt wiser, will regard it as a gain. But, if these were the last words I should say in this Chamber, I would dedicate them as a valedictory message to my friends and my opponents to do all they possibly can, when this national theatre comes to be built, to ensure that the advantages of this Bill are given the fullest and most practical effect.

I am in favour of national theatres, but there is no provision made in the Bill for national theatres. I approach this question in the same way as I think Lord Morley would have done. I forget his exact words on this subject but they were something like this: "If you do a thing in a relatively small way it often prevents you from doing it later in a big way." The taxpayers of this country are already financing activities in London, costing approximately £22½ million, activities which they never see. For the people in the North it has been for generations "Work, work, work." Now it is "Work harder and faster than ever." The Bill provides another £1 million. The Financial Secretary will be the first to admit that, with the increased cost of all the equipment, we shall never construct a national theatre for £1 million. In addition, the public works for the Festival of Britain will cost another £2 million; near that site a concert hall costing £1½ million is to be built, and there will also be a Festival of Britain building costing £750,000; that is another £5 million.

Where will this stop? Where does the North come in? When will the North come in? The Bill ought to have taken account of the area north of the Trent and something ought to have been provided within a few miles of Manchester, Buxton, and such places. The Austrians develop art and music throughout their country, and the same thing happens in Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and even in Germany, with Hamburg, Dresden and Leipzig; but in Britain everything is still confined to London. For the North remain the black monumental areas of a hundred years ago. The Bill perpetuates that position.

Let me give credit where it is due, to the staff of the Library of this House. Friends of ours who are no longer hon. Members would not know the very fine services which we are now privileged to have as a result of the development of the librarian's staff. For practically every Bill we are provided with a bibliography and there is now no excuse for any hon. Member not being well informed on subjects like this. If any hon. Member disagrees with me, all I ask him to do is to go to the Library and get a copy of this bibliography and there he will see every word I shall use fully endorsed.

According to Press reports—I take this from the recent Sir Thomas Beecham controversy with a right hon. Gentleman opposite; they differ from the Reports of the Arts Council for 1947 and 1948—the Arts Council granted the Covent Garden Company £89,000 for 1948 and £120,000 for 1949. Now it is suggested that there should be a national theatre in London. All this is superimposed on the £25 million which the ratepayers of the country are paying for activities in London which they never see. I do not want the Financial Secretary to take this in any personal sense—I have had the pleasure of working with him and have a very high regard for his character and understanding of the philosophy which we are supposed to hold—but I must ask him where the Hallé Orchestra comes in. Great work is being done and great sacrifices are being made to keep the Hallé Orchestra going. There is not one word about it in the Bill.

Am I correct in understanding that negotiations have been opened or are to be opened with a view to the Ministry of Works taking over the lease of Covent Garden? Thousands of pounds are being given to Covent Garden and other activities in London, and that is looked upon by people in other parts of the country as a subsidy to those activities when in the main the people who attend them could easily pay much more for their seats, which others never have a chance to occupy. The Covent Garden audiences are exclusive. One has only to stand and watch the people entering and leaving to come to that conclusion.

When will this kind of activity be extended to other parts of the country? We hear a good deal about Scotland and Wales, but there are parts of England besides London. Thousands of people who have seen that greatest of films, "Hamlet," now have a greater appreciation of the world's greatest poet, Shakespeare. Are we to cater for that greater appreciation only in London? Where is our vision and our pride in our country and our people if we allow this kind of activity to be limited in the main to the London area?

The following should have been done before this Bill was introduced. It can still be done. I ask my right hon. Friend to be good enough to consult his colleague with a view to having something done on these lines. Before this Bill was introduced there ought to have been set up a theatre working party, an entertainments committee of investigation or an entertainments working party. Up to the present, progress has not been planned. Everything has just grown in a haphazard manner, and the result is the present chaos in the country in this field. My suggestion would have resulted in an examination of the provision of art and entertainment, the financing of theatres, censorship, the development of cultural activities in parts of the country other than London and the relationship between the theatre, films, radio and other activities.

During the war the people engaged in this kind of work were greatly encouraged by their reception when they provided plays and other activities of this kind before the Forces in all parts of the world and before the people engaged in the supply industries. In Manchester we have the St. James's Hall, the Free Trade Hall, the Gaiety, the Tivoli and the Royal. Not one concert hall is left in Manchester. There are plenty in London. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I mean the kind of places which can be used for that purpose. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Then where does the Hallé Orchestra play when it comes to London, where does the London Symphony Orchestra play, and where did the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra play when it came here recently?

They play in the vast echoing corridors of the Albert Hall.

That is good.

It is frightfully bad.

In Manchester there is no hall at all. [AN HON. MEMBER: "Bellevue."] if anyone is trying to be funny it is true that there is Bellevue, and it is a real tragedy that a magnificent orchestra is forced to go six miles outside the centre of the city. That is the point I am making. It is in the North in the main where the great contribution is being made to the economic recovery of this country, and the people are getting tired of just working while all these developments are taking place in the South. While I give all credit where it is due, it is time somebody spoke out for the people who are toiling now, and who have been doing it for centuries, and nobody knows it better than the right hon. Gentleman. Therefore I am saying it is time that more attention was devoted not only to building a national theatre in London but to providing similar places in the great centres like Newcastle, Manchester, Sheffield, and other such places. If these centres could be used for war purposes such as the place where the Bank of England was taken, then they can be used as national centres, and used also during the Festival of Britain.

In regard to Covent Garden and other places, perhaps my right hon Friend will listen to how other people who are not Londoners look upon some of these activities. One writes:

"Many times I have left Lords and gone in the evening to Queen's Hall or Covent Garden and, as I have changed from one place to another, I have felt the acute lowering not only of standards of skill but of genuine English character; for taking them as a whole the concert and opera audiences in London do not ring true, with their absurd fashions, their whoopings and screamings in the corridors."

That was written by the second of the greatest musical critics of our day. I place as the first Sam Langford, who was a very great man, and the second, who wrote that letter, Neville Cardus. He went on to say about the area for which I am pleading:

"The Beecham opera of 1916 which could fill Manchester's largest theatre for three months at a stretch, eight performances weekly, was the best in range and finish of style ever known in England."

Thanks to the B.B.C., thanks to recording, thanks to the development of the Hallé Orchestra and others, we are getting an increased interest in this work, and it is in order to harness and encourage that interest that I am pleading in this way. On behalf of the toiling millions of the North who have made this country great, and who are still making their contribution, I say that the time has arrived when, if we are to be worthy of them, we should be catering for them in the same way as other countries on the Continent have catered for them for so long.

Two of my distinguished colleagues, the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) and the right hon. Member for Deptford (Mr. Wilmot) have already spoken in this Debate and I who, as the House has already been told, have the honour to be a governor of the Old Vic and a member of the Joint Council of the National Theatre and the Old Vic, propose only to say two or three paragraphs and not to repeat anything they have said.

I was most interested in, and listened with great care to, the speech made by the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith). Whereas he will not expect me to agree with all that he has said, I should like to make these comments. Those of us who have any responsibility at all for the conduct of the National Theatre have a great responsibility to do three things. The first is to ensure that the highest standard of dramatic art is obtained; secondly, that it is done at a reasonably economic cost; thirdly, that although it may be in London or any other one place, its advantages, and the companies that go from it, are spread all over the country. Many of the points about the advantages that we hope the North of England and parts of Scotland and Wales will get from the establishment of a national theatre have been made by the right hon. Member for Deptford.

Those who are governors or members of these institutions and establishments must remember that there are many people in the country, particularly in the North of England, who do not have these advantages who feel as the hon. Gentleman does, and it is up to us not only to justify our activities to ourselves and to the people in London and the South of England, but also to ensure that never are the opinions of the people of the North of England forgotten. While I do not agree with much of what the hon. Member for Stoke said—and I would argue with him at other times the various points he has raised—I am aware, as I am sure are my distinguished colleagues, of a great deal of what he said, and that it represents the opinion of many responsible people.

When the Financial Secretary so felicitously moved this Measure, he referred to the trend from royal court patronage in the past to State patronage abroad, and showed how in England we have until now had almost a private patronage of art. Nowadays it is agreed by almost every one that this is impossible, and that we are in a new sphere of State assistance for all our artistic affairs. However, I do not think anybody—either in the Arts Council or in the Government or on any of the bodies with which I am associated—thinks for one minute that we have a complete solution. It is not an easy matter to ensure that what is produced by State aid is a great centre of the fine arts and not a civic cultural centre, because the one thing that is quite certain about any artistic development is that it is not produced either by boards of governors or councils or by aid from the Treasury; it is done by the inspiration of one or two devoted people who provide it. As my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Waterloo (Captain Bullock) pointed out, when one reads the history of the Comédie Française it will be found that in its successful periods it was the inspiration of one or two people.

Therefore we must not be dogmatic in these matters, particularly at this stage in our affairs. This Bill is a tremendous step forward, and I should like to add my congratulations to the Government on taking that step. This Bill makes possible the building of such a centre, but do not let the Government, or anybody associated with the project, think that by erecting this large building that will in itself create a National Theatre. A great deal more than that has to be done, and that is the responsibility which falls upon us. I do not for a moment think that the theatre, or art of any kind, can only be developed in one way. I do not see any threat to private enterprise drama by the establishment of a national theatre; in fact, I am closely associated with a commercial picture gallery in the West End of London which is established purely for the purposes of making profit for myself, and I do not see any threat to myself in the Arts Council showing people pictures all over the country for nothing. The very reverse, of course, is the truth. The greater the interest established in pictures and drama, the better it will be for those commercially connected with them. Both those who are so engaged for commercial reasons, and those whose endeavour is to provide a National Theatre and to subsidise the provision of picture galleries and the like, have a real part to play in the development of our artistic life.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) referred to the economic side of the project. Hon. Members probably are aware that on the few occasions on which I speak I do so generally more on finance than on art. Not only is the Bill a great milestone in the dramatic life of this country; this is the first time that a project has been laid before the House which is in exact accordance with the modern ideas of how budgetary influence and public works can prevent the impact of the slump and the boom upon the country. This is an aspect which we should not overlook.

It is not for me to try to put forward the views of either the governors of the Old Vic or the National Theatre, for that was done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot. But I would say to the hon. Member for Stoke and to those who think as he does that we appreciate very much indeed the points he has made and that it is our desire to try to overcome the difficulties which he can see. We urge him, however, not to say that because this job is not being sufficiently done we should not do it at all. It is far better to do one thing first, particularly in the field of art, rather than to wait until we can tackle the whole field, when it may be found that we cannot start at all. For my part, I am anxious to assist in any way I can the development of this national theatre and to see that when it is built it really justifies the confidence shown it in by all sides of the House.

As one born and bred in our great city, educated in its university, and the representative of a constituency on the south side of the river, I am naturally delighted to support the Second Reading of the Bill. I welcome it also as one who is very fond of the theatre and all that it means to us. Many of the hon. Members who have spoken—and, indeed, most people who take the theatre seriously—realise it has been a standing disgrace that we in Great Britain have had no national theatre. Literature, and dramatic literature in particular, is that branch of art in which this country has achieved its greatest prominence and has sustained that pre-eminence for centuries. The country which has produced the greatest playwright of all times and a whole host of very worthy successors has always lacked adequate means for staging their immortal works. The Bill will, at last, take the first steps in remedying that very great deficiency.

This unfortunate condition has continued for many hundreds of years, but I am glad that while we are considering the proposals for a national theatre today mention has been made of the attempts in the 19th century to remedy to some extent this defect. For it was then that Miss Emma Cons began to transform the Old Victorian Music Hall into the Old Vic as we knew it. It is fitting, I think, that on this occasion we should realise that Miss Cons and, afterwards Miss Lilian Bayliss succeeded in providing in London one place at least where dramatic and classical works and opera could be shown to the ordinary people at reasonable prices. It is pathetic to recall that in that great venture of the Old Vic no Government of the day ever gave its financial support. There were always, I happen to know, recurring financial crises and uncertainty whether the curtain would be able to go up the following week. We ought to thank all those who have made such a magnificent contribution in so many ways to the Old Vic. Many of our great artistes went to the Old Vic for a whole season at very much below normal salaries in order that it could carry on its great work. It is right, I think, to give a thought to all those people who helped to provide this dramatic centre in London.

Although I occasionally go to the Old Vic in its temporary home in perhaps a nicer quarter of the town, it never has quite the attraction which it had for me when all the great works of Shakespeare were mine for sixpence, or ninepence if I went in at the early door. The atmosphere of the theatre seems different and now-a-days I never get quite the same stimulus. I am very glad also that in the Bill not only are steps being taken to provide for the first time a theatre really worthy of our great literary heritage, but that it is to be placed on the south side of the river.

For the first time for 400 years Londoners will be crossing the river once again to go to the theatre, very much as they did in the days of the old Globe. I hoped at one time that the site for the National Theatre might have been nearer to that of the old Globe than is proposed, but the Government may not wish to stir up the controversies which still exist in Southwark as to the real site of the Globe. There are two different schools of thought, one believing it stood where a tea warehouse now stands and the other that the site of the Globe was that now occupied by a celebrated brewery, which I do not propose to advertise within these four walls. The controversy is still so very strong in Southwark that workers in the tea warehouse will never drink the beer brewed by those they regard as their unworthy rivals; the brewers' men, on their side, never take that particular blend of tea. Perhaps it is that the Government have decided not to rekindle the flames of controversy but to choose instead a site which is neutral.

I was pleased to hear from the Financial Secretary of the proposal that in the new buildings apart from the theatre, there shall he adequate conference rooms and pleasant restaurants. The fellowship of the theatre, of course, is almost as important as the actual performance of the plays. In the old days of the Old Vic Cevile did great work in bringing together players and members of the audience but was always handicapped because of inadequate space and facilities for proper contacts. It is essential that the outstage arrangements of the theatre should be adequate for such contacts and for stimulating that kind of fellowship.

I hope, as did the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. O. Poole), that the hon. Member for Stoke and those who think with him will not imagine that in our support of the National Theatre we are forgetting the people of the North or that we are looking upon the theatre as being a London or a municipal theatre. Spokesmen of the London County Council have made it quite clear that they regard the proposed theatre not as a municipal theatre but as a national asset. This, I think, is very important. It should be realised by the hon. Member for Stoke that without a proper well equipped national centre it is not possible really to create companies of the right standing to go out to the North and elsewhere. We must have a proper centre, provided with adequate finance, before we can reach the proper standards which are rightly demanded for companies which are to visit other parts of the country.

The hon. Member for Stoke, with other hon. Members, has sometimes exaggerated the difficulties of travel for people coming to London to a national centre. The hon. Gentleman must know perfectly well, however, that if Stoke City were playing the Arsenal there would be no difficulties then about transport. We should see thousands of his friends—and should be very glad for them to be here—and they would be paying, probably, higher prices for admission to the football match than we hope they will have to pay when they come to the National Theatre. We should not exaggerate the difficulties, although I hope the hon. Member will not encourage anyone to think that we believe that London is the only place for the theatre, and the only people who want to appreciate it are in London. That is not our view at all.

I believe, as others have said, that the Bill marks a very decided change of attitude towards the theatre. As a Londoner, I am glad to welcome the Bill, for it marks a further development of the South Bank, which is once more going to come into its own. I am sure that all those interested in the theatre will give this Bill their wholehearted support.

The right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury seems to enjoy two experiences in this House—either the House is entirely with him, and he has nothing but roses all the way, which is, perhaps, proper compensation for his other experience on Budget occasions, or he seems to have no friends at all. I only ask him to remember on the occasion of the next Budget that on this occasion he is disposing quite easily and happily of £1 million, with a promise of more assistance to come should this national theatre when established not be self-supporting, and not to be too hard-hearted when we ask him for a remission of tax amounting, perhaps, to something like £20,000 or £30,000 during a full financial year.

While wishing to support this Bill very warmly, I think it is well worth while not to do it from any controversial point of view, but simply to raise one or two points which I believe are of importance in considering how to make the national theatre a great success. The hon. Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Skeffington) pointed out that, for the first time for 400 years, Londoners will be crossing the river to visit the theatre. It is nice to think that we are reverting to the customs of our ancestors, but let us examine the fact that, at the moment, the theatreland of London is a very clearly defined area, and that we are asking people to adopt new habits and to cross the river to visit the theatre.

At the moment, theatreland could be defined as being in that small area bounded to the East by Kingsway, to the South by the river, to the North by Oxford Circus, and to the West perhaps somewhere near Park Lane. In that area, almost all the cultural and theatrical enterprises and spectacles take place at the present time, and, as in all cities, there is a West End area devoted to amusement after dark. We are making a great experiment in asking the theatre-going population to cross the river in order to visit this magnificent site on the south bank. We all hope that it will be a very great success, but there is a great duty resting on those responsible, particularly the London County Council and the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, to make quite sure that the new site is attractive, not so much from the point of view of the terms of the Bill—as the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. E. P. Smith) said, the Bill is not of such great importance—as from the point of view of surroundings and the facilities available to people for getting to and from the theatre.

Those who have been trained in the valuation of property know that for particular trades there are certain areas more favourable than others; one side of the road is more favourable than the other. Therefore, to suggest that the public who wish to purchase a certain article will not cross the road may sound ridiculous, but, nevertheless, it is a commercial fact that people are not prepared to do that. Similarly, a shop which is placed between two banks which are without illuminated shop fronts is of less value than one in a brightly lighted area. That being so, when we examine this theatre project on the south side of the river, we must, first of all, make sure of three things.

First, we must be certain that it is easy of access, that there is adequate accommodation for the parking of cars, for the discharge of the occupants of taxis and for the waiting of taxis for the purpose of picking up passengers, and that the theatre is on a proper bus route. We should consult the transport authorities in order to make sure that at the time the theatre empties there is an adequate supply of buses to take the people away. Secondly, there must be adequate accommodation for meals at all prices, so as to cater for those who just want a quick snack on their way home as well as for those who wish to sit and entertain their friends after the theatrical performance. This is very necessary, because I doubt whether the time when we shall feed before we go to the theatre will come again for a very long time. If proper thought is given to these matters, then the great experiment of trying to draw people across the river may he a success.

The hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) mentioned the provinces and his desire for entertainment working parties. Working parties have suddenly become fashionable in this country, but they are not the lines upon which the life of this country has developed, particularly in cultural and architectural matters. The hon. Lady the Member for North Hendon (Mrs. Ayrton Gould) said she wished that the plan had been wider in order to spread culture throughout the countryside, particularly with regard to the theatre. I agree with her, but, nevertheless, the fact must be faced that here we do not start off with large plans and implement them on a methodical basis. We start with one obtainable objective and go on to the next. I agree with that. Therefore, this Bill must be welcomed not to the exclusion of the provinces or of anything else, but as the right, proper, and reasonable thing to do at the moment.

I regret that we should be contemplating a theatre which will not be built earlier than 1951, and that we are not doing something more about existing theatres which would rapidly be made available for their proper use at the present time. Almost opposite the site of .this new theatre, we have the Gaiety which, if the London County Council would allow the present tenants to restore it, could be put into service once more as a theatre. Quite close to it is the old Lyceum, now used as a dance hall. Why should not that theatre also be brought back in the near future to its proper and legitimate use? His Majesty's Theatre has recently been sold to the New Zealand Government. While the people of this country have received every kindness in the past from the New Zealanders, as no doubt they will in the future, the one unkind thing that they risk doing to us is that this theatre, which is in a good position, may be alienated from the purposes of the drama. I hope that, whilst supporting plans for a brand new building on a brand new site, we will also take practical measures in the meantime to see that such theatres as I have mentioned will be used for their proper purposes, and that we shall make sure that we do not lose more buildings devoted to the art of the living theatre.

There is one other thing with which I wish to deal—the question of the balancing of the running charges of the theatre to which the Financial Secretary referred. He said that there would be quite a number of seats priced at 6d. That sounds admirable. The hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo (Captain Bullock) suggested that this theatre should make some contribution to the development of the tourist trade, which is equally admirable. But I cannot see that there is going to be an enormous gain in dollars if we are selling our seats at a nickel a time. Surely, the right and proper thing to do is not to require that every production should endeavour to make a profit. That, I believe, is impossible. While, perhaps, it would be impossible for the theatre to make a profit every year, I believe it should be run on the basis of the nationalised industries, and that, taking one year with another, it should not show a loss.

The price of the seats should be arranged in that way. I believe that in this National Theatre there could be a wide divergence of prices going perhaps as low as the Financial Secretary has said, though I am bound to say that to bring down the price of seeing a performance at the living theatre to the equivalent of three cigarettes seems to be bringing it lower than really need be done at the present time. On the other hand, I advocate charging high prices, where the best that English literature and English acting can give is expected, to our visitors from overseas, with great gain to us in every respect.

The theatre does not only consist of the building. On the whole, that is the least important matter. We have the plays in this country, we believe that the plays of dramatists past and present can add to the cultural life of the community; we believe that in this country we have players second to none. Finally, we believe that given scope and opportunity, the audiences will be worthy both of the play and the players.

This Debate, as a Debate, has had to labour under the burden of perhaps an excessive unanimity. I cannot find it in my heart to regret this because it is a Bill which I consider to be entirely admirable. Nor am I surpised at the unanimity after the excellent speech with which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) led the Opposition. But it was a little refreshing that one breath of criticism did come from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) and I should like to refer to it in a few minutes.

:Constructive critcism.

Constructive criticism. Although there has been very little criticism in this House today, there has been from time to time during the past years considerable criticism in the country about the whole project, and it is fair that this occasion should be taken for us to try to meet that criticism here. On the whole criticism has fallen under three counts. There are those who say or have said, Why is there any need for a national theatre at all? There are those who have said, If there is to be a national theatre, why should it be exclusively centred upon London? Then there are those who say, If there is to be a national theatre, and it is to be in London, why should it be on the South Bank? I should like to say a word on each of those points.

The right hon. Member for Aldershot advanced the most unanswerable argument which, as he admitted, is also the most familiar one, when he pointed to the analogy of the National Gallery and the British Museum. I would supplement that by suggesting that the field of drama is certainly no less, possibly it could be argued an even more desirable field for that kind of institution because there is one way in which it is fair and valuable to regard a national theatre, that is as a kind of living library. It is perfectly true that plays are printed and are stored in the Library of the British Museum and elsewhere, but a play is incomplete until it is on the stage. There is no way of maintaining it, in the same way as books are maintained in a library, unless we have a national theatre. The difference between a bookshop and a public library is that a bookshop naturally concentrates for its own good on bestsellers whereas the public library concentrates on service and on providing for and thus protecting the rights of that minority whose taste may not be for the best-seller.

One would have thought that, if 50,000 people wanted to see a certain play, that was in itself a very good reason why they should be allowed to see it. But at present that is not nearly enough people to command a production. In the commercial theatre unless 300,000 or 400,000 people want to see a play it cannot be done—50,000 people are not sufficient to support it. The minority is therefore prevented by the economics of the situation from seeing the kind of play they want to see when they want to see it. But not only is it necessary for 300,000 or 400,000 people to want to see a given play; it is necessary that they should want to see it at the same time. It is no use for them to straggle in sparsely over a year or 18 months because by that time the unfortunate manager would be in Carey Street.

These are the additional difficulties which do not apply to the publication of a book. If 5,000 people want to read a book the publisher does reasonably well. He is content and the minority is well served. The economics of the matter do not inhibit that minority from enjoying what it wants to enjoy. But when it comes to a question of 300,000 or 400,000 then it becomes extremely difficult. The extreme situation is the case of a film, for if only 300,000 or 400,000 want to see a film that number is not nearly enough. I do not want to digress into that field but that, in effect, is the reason why films must be best sellers or nothing. I hope that the House and people outside will accept this as a major argument in favour of a national theatre, that it is, in short, a kind of device for keeping good plays, as it were, in print, nothing more or less, and in living print.

I know that it can be argued that there have been numerous and distinguished productions of Shakespeare and other classics from time to time without a national theatre; and it is true that we have been extremely lucky of late years in that respect. Most distinguished classical revivals have been current and abundant, but we have been lucky rather by accident. We have been lucky through the extent of the success of the Old Vic; but the Old Vic has not been a money-making concern. It is, in fact, an embryonic national theatre. In spite of the glamour of a large star company—working at far below their normal salaries—I believe that only one season made money. The others have had to be subsidised.

If one goes further back to the period when Irving produced a great number of classical productions at the Lyceum, and Tree did the same thing at His Majesty's, one will find that they too did not make money. In spite of the fact, in the case of Irving, that there were all the prestige and attraction of his own name and that of Ellen Terry, few if any of the productions of Shakespeare at the Lyceum made money, despite the fact that Irving also made cuts and alterations and generally corsetted the play into the current Victorian fashion to such a degree that we should be shocked if we now saw his scripts. Even these essays in appeasement were not sufficient and he had to make his money on tour—which is a point I willingly give to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke—and by putting on other productions like "The Bells," and "The Corsican Brothers," etc.

Quite clearly this is not a job which the commercial managements can do. I say this in no disparagement of commercial management. I wish to say publicly that, although many bricks are cast at the commercial theatre, one curious thing is true. The majority of these connected with the business side of the theatre love the theatre very deeply. Many of them deliberately lose money on ventures which satisfy their own artistic aspirations. Irving was one and I could quote many more. But it is just not possible for us to rely on the good will and sacrifice of commercial managements and on leading players accepting salaries far less than they could otherwise get. That is one reason why it is abundantly clear that it is right to put this thing on the proper basis of a national theatre.

The second criticism, which has been voiced by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke, raises the question of London or the provinces. He paid a tribute to the bibliographers in the Library, and he heard me agree with him. His jubilation was premature, because that is the only point with which I will agree—at least. I may have to modify that statement later, because I am not entirely sure that I understood the whole of his argument. If it is what I think it is, I certainly must dissent. It is, of course, perfectly true that it would be very unfair if this National Theatre were confined to London, even though London is the capital. But, as has already been pointed out by the hon. Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Skeffington), the plan of this National Theatre is that London should provide the building which is, as it were, the workshop and centre. It has never been envisaged that it shall not be a centre from which extensive tours shall operate.

I hope, therefore, that I did not understand my hon. Friend to be maintaining, as was recently maintained I regret to say by my friend Mr. Ivor Brown, a distinguished critic and a man of letters, that this project should wait until—I would emphasise until—other projects of a similar kind have been established elsewhere. I am glad to see that my hon. Friend shakes his head because this is surely wholly unreasonable. He said just now that what he had in mind was constructive criticism. I would like to reinforce that constructive criticism, now that I gather we are not so far apart.

In fact, some of us have already been thinking along these lines and we have devised a scheme which I hope he will support, and which I believe will meet his point. It is this. The Government, by the Local Government Act, have provided facilities for municipal expenditure up to a 6d. rate. I believe that that is an even more important Measure than this one. It is a most far-reaching measure which may well have incalculably beneficial consequences. I wish to reinforce it with a plan of this kind; namely that there should be provided from the Treasury to local authorities a sum, pound for pound, equivalent to what is provided by the local ratepayer, after the local ratepayer had expended up to 2d. in the £. Thus the first 2d. would be carried by the municipality alone as an earnest of their real desire for activities of this kind, and then thereafter it should be supplemented by the Treasury. This would not involve a large expenditure and there is nothing to delay it being introduced into the next Budget. I hope that my hon. Friends, and hon. Members on the other side of the House too, will support this proposal because this is no Party measure and may be very valuable indeed.

Finally, there is the question of the South Bank. Mr. Bernard Shaw, it may have been noticed, has complained—and this of course is the opposite argument to that of the hon. Member for Stoke—that the national theatre is to be sited, not too centrally but not centrally enough. He demanded that it be not in Southwark, but in London, a delightful antithesis. I appreciate in this connection very much the caveat entered by the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Butcher). There is undoubtedly a danger that this National Theatre may be out of the main stream of evening life. I would therefore strongly reinforce the plea that the Ministry of Town and Country Planning and the relevant committees of the London County Council should be at the greatest pains to ensure, not merely that there will be all the necessary easy transport—an undertaking to that effect was given by my right hon. Friend in his opening speech—but also that the planning of the South Bank should be the planning of a live and not a dead area. It is of the first importance that this new area should not consist exclusively of Government offices, municipal parades, a National Theatre and nothing else. There must be cafes and restaurants and shops and cinemas, and all the "rubbish" which helps to make the life of a district. All this should be not only allowed to proliferate, but encouraged to proliferate. —[Laughter.] This is an enormously important point and it is a point which is very difficult for this House of Commons to find an opportunity to discuss, because it is largely a matter for the London County Council.

The hon. and gallant Member for the Waterloo Division of Liverpool (Captain Bullock) painted in his very witty speech an attractive picture of the time, now it seems not far distant, when Members of Front Benches would look forward, if they were ambitious enough, not to directorships of a joint stock bank but to the opportunity of playing Polonius in the National Theatre. That is a very attractive thought, but it has a certain symbolical significance. It may have been a lighthearted analogy by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but it implied an enhanced dignity for the theatre. It is not wholly a joke because the importance of this National Theatre is largely a symbolical importance. It does indeed raise the status of the theatre to a dignity which all of us would welcome. I, for my part, am very proud that this Bill has been brought in by a Labour Government. I think that even hon. Members opposite would concede that this Government has a very notable record of enlightened legislation in respect of the arts. It is a remarkable record. There is the Local Government Bill, an extremely important Measure to which I have already referred. There is this Bill we are now discussing. There are increased grants to the Arts Council and to the universities. There has even been a remission of Entertainments Duty which, although I personally believe it may turn out to be an unfortunate Measure, was at least done with the best of intentions even if it was misguided.

The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Yes, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art as well. All these achievements in the life of a Government harassed as no other Government has been, with enormous burdens, justify I feel the congratulations which have been showered today from all sides of the House.

My hon. Friend the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Levy) seemed a little taken aback for a moment at our unseemly interruption of his speech. I can assure him that our laughter was friendly. It was simply his image of the Minister of Town and Country Planning "encouraging rubbish to proliferate" that struck us for a moment as a trifle quaint. I did think that his speech was a most notable and interesting contribution to a Debate which for the most part has been agreeably placid and whose elevated tone was set by the two speeches from the Front Benches which opened it. The right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) was correct, of course, in stressing that at this time what he referred to as necessities must come first, that the building of this theatre cannot be expected to take priority over housing and so forth. Nonetheless, I would venture to emphasise that the kind of goods which we are discussing today, which are among the spiritual necessities, are just as truly necessities in any civilisation as are the material goods, and that no nation and no society which neglects them can dare to call itself civilised. In the same passage of his speech the right hon. Gentleman also referred to the inevitable delay before the theatre is actually built. He seemed to be suggesting that the plans might even be kept in a pigeon hole against the risk of slump and consequent unemployment. I know that he did not really mean to imply that there should be undue delay. I am sure that we all hope and believe that there is no need for any mass unemployment in the future, and also that there is no need to delay the building of this theatre unduly long.

At this point some comment is perhaps permissible on one point made by the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Butcher). There is a lot to be said for his suggestion that, since there must be some delay, something should be done meanwhile to revitalise theatres which have fallen out of use. Obviously, that could not be done within the scope of the present Bill—the money voted with the present Bill refers to a particular site in Lambeth—but I quite agree that some further legislation, if necessary, should be devoted to such an end. It should be devoted to the restoration not only of the Gaiety Theatre and the Lyceum, but also—and this fits in with the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith)—of some of the provincial theatres. There are all too few living theatres in the provinces. Constantly one hears of living theatres being turned into cinemas or even into warehouses or something like that.

It is clear from what has been said about the delay—indeed, it is obvious common sense—that this theatre cannot be built anywhere near in time for the 1951 Festival. This Bill has no relation to that at all. I should, however, like to refer to some remarks made the other day by the Lord President of the Council which rather puzzled me. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend can throw any light on what the Lord President meant. In a speech in the country he threw out a semi-informal appeal to some philanthropist to come forward and build some kind of replica or reproduction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. Clearly, he was referring to the South Bank. Does that project, if it is more than just a passing fancy of the Lord President's, have any bearing on the National Theatre project or on the 1951 Festival project?

No. It is further along Bankside.

Does it refer to a totally different site?

Yes.

In that case I am not quite sure of the wisdom of such a project. I am not sure whether London and the South Bank could take two completely new major Shakespearean theatres. Also, I should be extremely doubtful of the wisdom of building something that was a mere reproduction antique. There is something to be said for a modern theatre incorporating an Elizabethan apron stage perhaps as part of the National Theatre. But if the suggestion is that there should be a theatre, no doubt of ferro-concrete underneath, but plastered over with bogus Tudor timbering, then I for one should regard that as an artistic solecism as monstrous as the project, put forward a year or two ago by some other eccentric philanthropist, to build a gargantuan statue of the Leader of the Opposition on Dover Cliffs, complete with illuminated cigar.

I want to say a few words about an aspect of the subject which I do not think has been touched on very much yet. This is what I have just been talking about—the kind of architecture. It has been stated in public that the architects have already been selected. If that is wrong, I hope my right hon. Friend, when he replies, will correct me. If that is right, I hope that he can tell us who they are. Personally, I think that it might have been preferable if there had been either an open competition or a semi-open competition for this great project. It would be rather regrettable if, just because it was "the thing to do" for big public buildings, this work were automatically allocated to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott or somebody of his school—with all respect to one who, in many respects. is a highly talented architect. I hope that when this building is complete, and in future centuries, it will be recognisably a product, and one of the finest architectural products, of the 20th century.

Another, perhaps minor, partly architectural point is this. The art of acoustics seems to be much more mysterious to modern architects than it was to their predecessors in ancient times. I hope that we shall have a theatre whose acoustics are good. I hope also that the actors and actresses who play in it will be trained to be audible. Recent visits to the West End theatre have convinced me that, with very few exceptions indeed, the only living actors and actresses who are audible at all in London today are either Americans—and often they are inclined to bawl at the tops of their voices all the time—or English actors and actresses over 45 or 50 years old, who were, of course, trained in the good old days before microphones were thought necessary. In one school of modern comedy the aside, I am afraid, has become the main line. That is a regrettable tendency which should be corrected.

Several hon. Members opposite, including, I think, the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. E. P. Smith), and the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo (Captain Bullock), in what was, if I may say so, an extremely entertaining and civilised speech—he might almost, in this connection, be described as the hon. Member for Waterloo Road—mentioned the possibility that there might be within the one building more than one theatre. That was an excellent suggestion. I think there might even be a small model cinema with a permanent repertory of good early films, such as exists in the Musuem of Modern Art in New York: there is nothing quite like it in London.

Shakespearian films.

Certainly. It would be interesting to see Sir Laurence Olivier in "Hamlet" on the stage and then go downstairs and see him in "Hamlet" on the screen. There should be one major theatre of a fair size and one small theatre in which could be staged what are described as experimental plays of various kinds—not amateur but experimental, in production techniques and in other respects. I emphasise this point because one of the dangers attaching to the whole conception of a National Theatre—although I agree with what the right hon. Member for Aldershot said about classicism and so on—is the danger of the imposition of too rigid academic canons. We do not want to stifle experimental work in the living theatre. I am inclined to think that the Arts Council, which is no doubt a precedent for what will be done, has been sometimes a little apt to neglect the work of purely experimental groups, such as "Theatre Workshop," and to prefer to support what are obviously the established successes. I do not mean that in any derogatory or commercial sense. Therefore, I urge that a small experimental theatre should be incorporated in the same building.

I agree with what the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo said about the dangers of political interference, but of course that should not mean that there should be any bar on plays with a political content. That is quite a different matter.

I am sorry to have gone on so long when there are so many other hon. Members who are much more expert than I on this subject; I would like, in closing, to support in general what my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) said about the importance of the provinces. Of course, we have to strike a balance between over-centralisation and mere parochialism. We do not want to be like the old farmer in Dorset who, when told by a visitor that London was the centre of everything, said "Well, 'taint the centre of Dorset." There is no need for me to argue this case; others have argued it so eloquently already. I would only point out that we fall down very badly, in this respect also, by comparison with other countries which have not only national theatres but also well-distributed national and municipal theatres.

Sweden, I think, has already been mentioned, so I need not quote instances from Sweden. One country which has not been mentioned is Czechoslovakia. In a typical small Czech town, Ostrava—a town of only 30,000 inhabitants—500 are employed directly by the municipal theatre. The average theatre company in Czechoslovakia has 180 actors in it. That includes an opera and a ballet company. A typical somewhat larger provincial Czech town, Bratislava, has a national theatre with an annual guarantee of £215,000. This is normally, I gather, in excess of actual requirements.

The same is true of Germany, even today. Cities such as Hamburg have at least three national and municipal theatres with almost unlimited guarantees, including opera and ballet companies. In Germany, too, one finds a realisation of the importance of regional culture, such as the Bavarian and Saxon regional cultures. In the Soviet Union also there has been a great revival of the purely regional culture—language, dances and so on—in Georgia and in other republics of that Union. That is extremely important. I do not know to what extent it can be borne out in practice in so small a country as this, but the centralisation which is to some extent inevitable, geographically and materially, should not imply an over-centralisation culturally. Incidentally, there is no suggestion in any of these European countries, as far as I know, that these theatres should be expected to pay their way; for the most part, they cannot do so; but what does result from the systems in operation there is full theatres and high standards of presentation both in and out of the capital cities.

With those few reflections and qualifications I join with all the other Members who have spoken in congratulating the Government very warmly on having introduced this Measure, and in supporting it.

My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary will, no doubt, regard this day as one of the most pleasing and agreeable that he has enjoyed in this present Parliament because, as has been made quite clear, there is an astonishing unanimity of opinion concerning this Bill.

I rise to take part in this Debate from a rather more local angle than preceding speakers, because I have the honour to represent a Parliamentary division of the Borough of Lambeth within whose confines the National Theatre will be built and will, we hope, prosper. Whenever any Government Department, such as the Ministry of Town and Country Planning or any of the Service Departments, proposes to embark upon some activity in one part of the country or another, there is usually to be found a greater or lesser volume of vociferous local opposition to whatever plan the Government have in mind. On this occasion, if I may presume to speak on behalf of the citizens of Lambeth or in the name of the metropolitan Borough of Lambeth, I think I can assure my right hon. Friend that the idea of having the National Theatre in Lambeth will be cordially welcomed and will not be resisted or criticised by any section of the local population. After all, the Borough of Lambeth has a tradition in this respect because, as has been rightly pointed out by preceding speakers, the trail for the National Theatre has been blazed by the Old Vic, more correctly described as the Royal Victoria Hall, to give it its official title.

I should like in passing to controvert the statement made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Skeffington), who suggested that with the initiation of the proposed National Theatre, the people of fashionable London would for the first time in 400 years be crossing from the North to the South Bank for the purpose of enjoying theatrical entertainment. That is not correct. Very shortly after the Old Vic was established, it enjoyed a brief session of fashionable splendour when it was visited by Queen Victoria in the years just preceding her accession to the Throne, and, when accompanied by linkmen, she made her way through what is now known as the Lower Marsh to what was originally known as the Royal Coburg and afterwards called the Royal Victoria Hall.

It is therefore not quite correct to say that for the first time in 400 years fashionable London will be going to the South Bank for the purposes of theatrical entertainment. I am quite prepared to admit that, after the brief period of social splendour to which I have referred, the Old Vic declined. As a matter of fact, it was criticised by Charles Dickens and Charles Kingsley as a sink of iniquity and a haunt of drunken hooligans. I am quite sure that that is a prospect which we need not anticipate as far as the new National Theatre is concerned.

This period of decline did not last very long because Emma Cons and Lilian Bayliss, whose names have been rightly mentioned in connection with the Old Vic, effected considerable reforms and improvements. In respect of the prices to be charged for admission to the new National Theatre, my right hon. Friend cannot possibly do better than confine the prices to what Emma Cons herself described as "within the range of artisans and labourers." If my right hon. Friend keeps prices of admission to the National Theatre within that range, he will ensure that the public as a whole will be able to enjoy the actual advantages of the theatre.

I hope that my right hon. Friend will not give his official sanction to the term "cultural centre" because it has been pointed out that nothing is more calculated to damn any particular neighbourhood than to call it a cultural centre. I want to stress that the people of Lambeth will welcome the arrival of the National Theatre. In Lambeth we are very proud of our associations with the Old Vic which might be regarded as the embryonic National Theatre from which the new proposal has developed. We have already named two of our streets after Emma Cons and Lilian Bayliss. On the Tanswell Street Estate which is quite near the present site of the Old Vic, blocks of dwellings have been named after artists associated with the Old Vic, among them Cole, Davidge, Reeves, Santley and Greet. The last name is one which I think should be mentioned today and not overlooked in connection with Shakespearian repertory at the Old Vic in years gone by.

I hope that in the course of the construction of the National Theatre on the South Bank in Lambeth, which I consider to be the most appropriate place in London for the purpose, the builders will be as successful or as fortunate as the builders were when they were preparing the site for the present County Hall. Some hon. Members will recall that in the course of the excavations a perfect specimen of a Roman galley was discovered and it is now one of London's treasured possessions. I hope that instructions will be given to those who are responsible for working on the site of the National Theatre to have an eye to similar possibilities and that other remains of Roman Britain of equal interest and historical value will be discovered. On behalf of the people who live in the immediate vicinity of the proposed National Theatre and on behalf of the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth I extend a very cordial welcome to what we hope will be one of our most distinguished public buildings.

I can understand the enthusiasm of the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton (Lieut.-Colonel Lipton) for this Bill. As he was talking about north and south of the river I began to wonder whether people in the metropolis think there is only one river in this country. I am inclined to be more interested not in what is likely to happen on the south bank of the River Thames but what is likely to happen on the north bank of the Tweed.

When I first came to this House I had a word of advice from Mr. Bernard Shaw, who has been quoted frequently in this Debate this afternoon. It was, "Don't waste too much time in the gabble shop." I am convinced that Mr. Bernard Shaw would be quite pleased with this Bill and the prospects which it opens for the national theatre. In fact, I have here a few words from him on matters which have been mentioned today and which I think might be of interest to the House. Mr. Shaw says:

"The question of a national theatre is not the same as the question of the proper site for it. Southwark is not metropolitan London: nothing can make Southwark cathedral, venerable as it is, be national in the sense that St. Pauls, Westminster Abbey, The National Gallery, The Bank of England, The London University, and The Imperial Institute and Albert Memorial are metropolitan. That is why I maintain that the Kensington site is the right one. The national theatre need not be a big affair, nor does it greatly matter what they perform there or what prices: its function is to consecrate the theatre as a cultural institution."

But Mr. Shaw does not bother about the site. He goes on to say:

"But by all means let us collar the million for a great municipal theatre on the south bank large enough to pay its way with seats costing from sixpence to half-a-crown (perhaps on one night and one matinée a week with West End prices) setting the example for similar municipal theatres all over the country. That is surely the distinctive Labour policy. It can be done for the million of money without touching the Shakespeare National Memorial Funds or selling the Kensington site."

In order to encourage the hon. and gallant Member for Brixton may I say that he pays this tribute in a postscript:

"What we should go for before all is great sixpenny theatres everywhere. London should have at least six of them. Southwark has such magnificent thoroughfares that its future is incalculable; but the north bank will still be the cultural capital."

If Mr. Bernard Shaw is arguing for at least six municipal theatres in the London area, surely the hon. Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) is entitled to put in a word for the North of England and I am entitled to put in a word for Scotland. I have listened with very great thankfulness and gratitude to the Financial Secretary to the Treasury telling us that Scotland might follow the precedent set in this Bill. I have noted very carefully both the promise on behalf of the Treasury and the promise of cordial support from the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton) when we come along, as quickly as possible, with a similar Bill to establish a national theatre in Scotland. After all, Shakespeare was indebted to Scotland——

And to Wales.

—and to Wales. The hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones) will be able to quote his references to Wales, but I think there is no doubt at all that "Macbeth" would never have been written if Scotland had not given its co-operation to Mr. William Shakespeare. In Scotland dramatic art, the art of the theatre, is very much alive. I shall not go through the list of the great Scottish dramatists but may merely mention two of our own times, Barrie and Bridie. Throughout Scotland, even in the remotest villages of the Highlands and Islands, there is live dramatic art. Let us hope that this Bill will be the beginning of increasing its vitality. We have had some unfortunate experiences recently in attempting to establish a National Theatre. On one occasion we were offered a gift of £5,000 for a Burns Theatre from Mr. Butlin. Naturally, £5,000 does not go very far towards the cost of a National Theatre, and we were horrified at some of the plays that were produced in the theatre of Mr. Butlin—at such things as Robert Burns being made to get up off his death bed to sing "Bonnie Mary of Argyll."

This Bill has come about, I understand, because the Shakespeare Memorial Committee combined with the London County Council in going to the Treasury about the National Theatre, so that the Treasury said, "Very well, you shall have £1,000,000." No doubt, in due course we from Scotland are likely to come along to ask for our National Theatre—a Burns federation in alliance with Glasgow Corporation and the Edinburgh Corporation or even the Ayr Town Council or the Ayrshire County Council to say, "Look what support we in Scotland gave to you in England." I hope that when I ask the Leader of the House on a Thursday when an opportunity will be given for debating the Scottish Bill the right hon. Member for Aldershot will say, "England has had her share and Scotland ought to have her share, also." This need not be a charity. Dramatic art can pay. We in Edinburgh have led the way with a great National Festival which has not only been a great theatrical and dramatic and musical success, but—and this is what has endeared it most to the heart of Scotland—it has paid.

So I give my benediction to the Bill as one from what is sometimes regarded in this House as a hostile power. After the promises given in this House today I hope that when Scotland comes along—as I am sure she speedily will—to ask for some financial help—I dare not say for £1,000,000—with some modest demand, she will be considered sympathetically, and I hope that the House will then be in a similarly generous mood and say, "Certainly, go ahead as we have done in England."

The course taken by this Debate has been most welcome and, so far as I am concerned, unexpected, for I had thought that we should discuss a memorial theatre. It rather looked as if any prospect of putting on plays and operas of the old masters was absolutely impossible in this country unless heavily subsidised by the State or by municipal authorities. So far as this particular project is concerned, that is the position. Apparently, in London at present it is impossible to expect the general public to pay a normal economic price for theatre seats to see such plays. However, I gather from the discussion that has taken place that that is not really the project. We are starting a revival in this country of the appreciation of the works of the great geniuses. I only hope that that may be the case.

But are we so certain that there is in this country a sufficient number of people prepared to see Shakespeare's plays and not merely to read them. It rather looks as if this Bill—I see that it is backed by the Minister of Education—should have been brought forward by the Minister of Education, because the approach to the project is apparently on educational grounds, on the grounds that these great works of drama are necessary for the spiritual welfare of our people, and that we have to put it over to them in that way whether they like it or not. We apparently say that if they are not prepared to pay commercial prices for theatre seats we ought to be prepared through the municipal authorities or the national Exchequer to subsidise these productions. I quite agree. I believe there would be great benefit in that. However, we have to be prepared to face this criticism, that those who like to see such shows as "Annie, Get Your Gun" will ask why they who go to the theatre for amusement, should be obliged to contribute through their taxes to the theatregoing of those people who prefer other plays, such as "Hamlet."

Why should not people go to both sorts of plays? In fact, do not people go to both kinds?

When people really want amusement they are prepared to pay for it, but when it is a matter of going to see Shakespeare's plays, and so on, they have to be subsidised by the State or municipal authorities. I mention the fact as a problem we have to meet. We have to take that type of criticism into consideration. It has some weight, because if those people who prefer that type of play are not prepared to pay for superior entertainment they have to be given some strong reasons why there should be Exchequer assistance.

Even from the architectural point of view this is an important project. The Government are to contribute £1 million and the London County Council are, apparently, to contribute the same. I do not think that sum is sufficient to do the job properly. I am rather doubtful whether an acre and a quarter of land is sufficient, after looking at the great plans of some of the modern theatres in Sweden. I imagine a great deal more space is necessary. We want a gracious lay-out, not a jumble of buildings, and it is necessary that we should have a really modern approach. I am glad that an hon. Member opposite suggested that there should be restaurant accommodation in the National Theatre. However, the more the accommodation that is provided, the more space is required, and plenty of open ground will be necessary.

There is no urgency about the matter. It is unfortunate that we cannot go on with it immediately. The Financial Secretary has made it quite clear that that will not be possible. I suggest, with all the emphasis I can command, that the Government should use their influence to get those in charge of this project to put it out to open architectural competition, because by that method we should get the best and most economical building. I have spoken on this subject before, but since I last spoke—in connection with the Colonial offices—we have had in London a great example of what can be done by open architectural competition. I refer to the new T.U.C. building in Great Russell Street, a project presenting tremendous difficulties to the architect; the site was much too small and the accommodation the promoters required to be put on it presented a difficult problem. The method of open competition attracted to the project an architect who would never have been found under other conditions. I myself entered the competition, so I know what the difficulties were, and it is clear that the competition has produced a work of great genius which could not have been obtained in any other way.

Whatever may have been done up to now about seeking professional advice, I hope that, as there is plenty of time for running a competition, the same method will be used for this project as was used for the T.U.C. building, to give the young architects of our country a chance to come forward. Only by doing, that shall we be able to spend the people's money to the best advantage, take the fullest possible advantage of the site and produce a building, essentially modern, which will be an example of fine building on the magnificent site which the London County Council have placed at our disposal.

I shall begin by replying to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham (Mr. Braddock). It seems that there is in this country at the present time a growing number of people who appreciate what is good in the drama, films and music, and in all the arts. It is only right and proper that the community should encourage those people, because to my mind good taste develops through opportunity for appreciation. The opportunity of seeing good plays and hearing good music develops the taste and enables a person to enjoy them more. It is particularly desirable that prices should be such that the young can, when they have not got much money, have the opportunity to develop their tastes, because what they then gain will be with them throughout their lives. I do not see that there is any reason why we should not use part of the taxation derived from commercial theatrical projects, specially diverted by the State for that purpose.

Next I wish to support my hon. Friends the Members for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) and Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith) on the need for having some of these good things in the North and in Scotland. I should like to put in a claim for the East side of London. In the London area there is a concentration in the West End of facilities for enjoying the arts. In the East End of London, apart from the People's Palace in Mile End and a theatre in Stratford, and West Ham, there is not one theatre all the way out to Upminster or Brentwood to cater for the whole of a very large population. There is a very strong case for continuing the good work done by the People's Palace by having another such theatre in that part of London.

The people of the East End live much farther out today than they used to. I should say that at Heathway, or somewhere else in the Dagenham area, there was room for a theatre supported, not by one municipality alone but by a number of municipalities, and by the State, which could be a real cultural centre. I use the word "cultural" without shame, because I think it is a good word in this connection. The very large population to the east of London ought to be able to get the benefit from such a project without having to travel a long journey in and out of London, which they have to do at present. For people working in the City, attendance at theatres in the West End of London is easy; but for people working at Ford's in Dagenham, or elsewhere in that area, the long journey in and out again is a serious obstacle, and prevents many from attending these shows. When considering the development of the National Theatre we should also consider having something farther out for the benefit of East London.

I support the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo (Captain Bullock) in what he said about the importance from the economic point of view of a national theatre as a real attraction to tourists. I believe that to be the case, but it means that we should have to arrange programmes specially designed to interest visitors to this country during what has been the dead season in the theatre. That should be borne in mind by those who run this national theatre. I should like to go further, because I believe that this country, as the fountain head of the English-speaking peoples of the world, has a very special duty. We in this country should give a lead in the cultural field, not only to people in this island, and not only to the Commonwealth, but also to America and to all the English-speaking peoples of the world.

I have just been on a tour in America, speaking particularly at many universities and colleges, and I was very struck over there by the large number of, not only teachers, but young men and women in the universities who had a great admiration for this country, not particularly because they agreed with its politics but because they appreciated the British cultural tradition. They had had very little opportunity of seeing the best things this country has produced in the past, and they very much appreciated the best British films when they arrived. Occasionally they had seen good productions with British artists, such as in Gilbert and Sullivan operas, or people like the Oliviers, and they were appreciated. But at present only a very small part of the American population can see those things. I was much impressed that many of those who admired the British cultural tradition were obviously, to judge from their names, not of British origin.

From a political point of view it is very important that we as a nation should make much of our cultural tradition. Other people admire it, and it is something we have to offer the world. Indeed, I believe it is our duty, as the fountain head of the English-speaking peoples, to give a lead in this field to all the English-speaking peoples of the world. When this national theatre has got going I hope that the productions will not only be those by people in this Island. We should show good plays from other English-speaking peoples, which will be coming forward increasingly in the future. America not only produces productions such as "Oklahoma," and we should be prepared to show good American plays. Also, plays will be coming from Australia and New Zealand, and maybe from places like the West Indies, and we should be prepared to show them.

After my American tour I had a very interesting visit to Jamaica. While there I was struck particularly by the very good work being done by the British Council in making English culture available to those people. A very important job which we, as the centre of the Commonwealth, have to consider is how we can get over to people in other parts of the Commonwealth British culture and traditions. Many of these people use the English language naturally, as their major language, and others use it for educational purposes, but all would like the opportunity to appreciate the good things that have been written in English. To Jamaica there has just returned a young man who had been training at the Old Vic, and who was about to undertake the job of trying to develop there a repertory theatre in the English tradition, because he very much appreciated the English tradition which he had absorbed while in this country.

I am sure there is a great rôle to be played by this National Theatre in helping to create that tradition in various parts of the Commonwealth. I instance particularly the British West Indies, because there a particularly interesting community is developing, largely black in colour but with definitely British traditions. Their tradition is quite different from that of the Negro in the Southern States of America and will produce a valuable contribution to the future English-speaking culture. We must consider this National Theatre as a centre for all the English-speaking peoples of the world, and not merely for this island; it must be the fountain head to which people can come for training, and through which ideas can be exchanged. I am certain that the Scottish theatre, if I may take up a point mentioned by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire will not want to be limited to productions of Barrie and Bridie. Bernard Shaw would not have been pleased if he had been restricted to Dublin, and we should all have been poorer. We do not want to be too narrow. All sections of English-speaking peoples have their traditions and we want them to have centres where they can develop their traditions. We also want an exchange of experiences and ideas throughout the whole community of English-speaking nations.

I welcome very much the idea put forward by the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo of having a Minister of the Fine Arts, to be responsible in this House for the spending of money upon various cultural activities, and who would coordinate those activities. I am certain that repertory theatres in the British Isles and Commonwealth can exchange programmes, but such plans need to be organised. The Arts Council can assist in that work but someone ought to be responsible in this House for keeping an eye on these matters and seeing that the money does not all go in salaries.

I remember in my youth that we had a very small repertory company in Bristol. The local authority allowed them to have the use of a small hall rent free. That was the local authority's way of sidising a theatre when there was no legal possibility of doing so in any other way. The company produced a different play every week. The small group of actors were acting one play and rehearsing the next one each week. The strain must have been extremely great on that group. It would have been very much better if each play could have been performed for three weeks at a number of different theatres, the companies changing round, instead of one group having to undergo that great strain. That kind of exchange needs to be organised. It is the sort of thing a Minister could keep an eye on. He would watch all these matters in the interests of our culture as a whole, and what we ought to be giving to the English-speaking peoples of the world. I welcome the Bill as the first important move in the kind of progress we have been speaking of today.

We get three types of legislation before this House. The first is extremely controversial and feeling frequently runs high. The second type is that in which few people are interested so that the business almost goes through on the nod. The third type concerns some vitally important phase of our national life on which there is almost a unanimous view in favour of what is proposed. The present Bill falls into the third category. I have thoroughly enjoyed the Debate, which has been upon an extremely high level. There has been almost unanimous approval for the Bill.

The only real criticism came from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke (Mr. Ellis Smith). If I understood aright what he said, his view is not so much against the proposal for a National Theatre as against its beginning in London. He thinks that we ought to begin in the provinces where the need is very much greater. My hon. Friend would probably like the first National Theatre to be built in Stoke. Quite a number of Members have replied to his criticisms. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Skeffington) and some hon. Members on the opposite side of the House have pointed out that it is natural for the main National Theatre to be built in the capital of the Commonwealth and Empire. But, as I said in my opening speech, the National Theatre will arrange tours throughout the provinces and overseas. It will be as much a national theatrical centre as a National Theatre for the capital of the Commonwealth. Quite a number of hon. Members have reminded us that there is an Act of 1948 under which municipalities can start to build municipal theatres and civic centres, so that they can receive the repertory companies and other players who will undoubtedly begin to tour from this national centre.

We all thoroughly enjoyed the speech of the right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton). It was graceful, forceful and knowledgeable and it was delivered by a man who obviously feels very strongly about the drama and the desirability of everything possible being done to fortify and assist it. He himself has done and is still doing a great deal for British drama as chairman of the Joint Council of the National Theatre and the Old Vic. Lord Esher is another great enthusiast. I should like to share in the expression of thanks to which the right hon. Gentleman and my right hon. Friend the Member for Deptford (Mr. Wilmot) gave voice and in the tributes they paid to Lord Esher. It was Lord Esher who came to the Treasury and helped considerably in the negotiations which have resulted in this Bill.

May I come to the points made by the hon. and gallant Member for Waterloo, who made an extremely witty speech? He asked us to remember that this was not a Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, but a National Theatre and he expressed the hope that we would not think of it as a memorial to Shakespeare, if for no other reason than that there is already a memorial to the great bard at Stratford-on-Avon. I share his view. We wish to remember Shakespeare—not that we shall ever forget him—but it would be unfair to Stratford-on-Avon if the proposed theatre were looked upon solely as a memorial to Shakespeare. I hope that it will rather be one of the first of a chain of living theatres throughout the country and, in particular, around Manchester, Stoke and the Five Towns.

The hon. and gallant Member also asked that we should make it plain that present as well as past plays would be performed. If he will look at my speech again, he will see that I emphasised that contemporary plays would be produced. Undoubtedly new playwrights arise, and we want to encourage them. Shakespeare was a young playwright once, and so was George Bernard Shaw. The hon. and gallant Member also suggested that we should have a Minister of Fine Arts who was well above the political battle. It occurred to me, as he spoke, that it would have been an ideal position for the late Lord Keynes who took a very great interest in these matters, particularly in ballet and music, and did a great deal for them.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman said one thing with which I would not agree. I gathered that he thought that the grants which might be made through the Arts Council—they are in fact made—should be concentrated on the national theatre. I am not sure that this would be wise. We want to encourage drama and the arts all over the country and not only in London, and therefore it is much better to spread it as far as we can to other localities——

I meant to refer to London only. I meant that only the theatre in London should be concentrated on National Theatre drama.

I am sorry if I misunderstood the hon. and gallant Gentleman. I am not sure that we ought to do even that. London is a big place and it sprawls very widely as my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Parker) said. It might be desirable to use some State money to encourage local talent in the outer suburbs, and it would be a pity if that could not happen. The hon. and gallant Member also asked me what was to be done about a pensions scheme. That is rather outside the scope of our discussion. All that the Government are doing is to underwrite the proposal for a national theatre. Although the trustees properly and naturally will have an overriding responsibility for this project and those engaged in and about the theatre, it may well be that they will have no direct responsibility for staff. However, past experience leads us to share his view that, when starting anything new like this, one ought to see that the conditions of work and provision for retirement are safeguarded from the beginning.

The hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. E. P. Smith) did not, as did other hon. Members, disclose his interest when he got up to speak——

Excuse me.

—but, as one of the three distinguished playwrights in this Chamber, he ought to have a greater interest in having another theatre built than almost anyone else. I gather we shall lose him from the Chamber. We shall regret it, particularly if he would always make the type of speech he made today. Nevertheless, we look forward to having some of his plays put on not far from where Shakespeare played in the Globe.

He said something with which I agree. He hoped that the authorities would not concentrate on a grandiose building. We must remember what we are doing. We are not putting up a memorial to anybody. We do not want people visiting the place solely to remark that it is a fine and noble building. We want a good building but we must not forget that it is there for a. purpose. I am sure that those who are engaged in designing it will read what has been said about what it should contain. I understand that only two theatres are contemplated, one to hold about 1,200 people and another to hold about 500. However, there is no reason why the plans should not be changed in detail, though that is not for me to decide. But, there seems to be everything to be said for having the theatres as intimate as is possible in the circumstances.

The hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Mr. Butcher) is anxious that the travel and access facilities shall be adequate. I can assure him that one thing which will help to make the travel facilities to this part of London adequate is the fact that the Festival of Britain will be produced there in two years' time. As part of the preparatory work for that Festival—which is, of course, temporary and many of the buildings will only be temporary—a great deal of permanent work will be done. It will be designed with an eye on what is to follow. It will mean new escalators and new subways from the Underground at Charing Cross and Waterloo, new approaches, car parks, bus stops and even piers on the river frontage for water buses. All that will be largely of a permanent nature, and it will be used later when we come to popularise the South side of the river just as the North side has been popularised. We never visit the very beautiful city of Paris without being slightly ashamed that we have failed to take advantage of both the fronts of our river. First in connection with the Festival, and then with the cultural centre and theatre, we have a chance to persuade the people living north of the river to cross to the other side.

My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr. Driberg) asked whether the architects had been appointed. I understand that they have, although that is rather outside the scope of our Debate. I understand that Mr. Brian O'Rourke and Mr. Cecil Masey have been appointed as result of the recommendation of an architectural advisory sub-committee which consisted of people like Sir Patrick Abercrombie and the Earl of Crawford. The right hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Lyttelton), who knows much more about this than I do, because he is the chairman of the Joint Council, could have told the House that the members of the building sub-committee have travelled to Scandinavia, to the United States and on the Continent in order to see what is being done in those places. I understand that it is proposed that the building plans shall later be submitted to the Royal Fine Art Commission.

The Fine Art Commission, to whom we referred for advice on the selection, recommended the architect. Although I do not think it is fair to say they take responsibility for it, it was under their influence that Mr. O'Rourke was appointed.

Was there a competition?

No, not a competition.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that clarification.

I come now to almost the final speech made on this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) began by saying that, when he came to this House, Mr. Bernard Shaw gave him one piece of advice, that was not to spend too much time in the gabble shop. It occurred to me that although Mr. Bernard Shaw may have given him that advice, the hon. Member did not follow it. Ever since he has been here, he has been a most persistent intervener in our Debates. This morning I thought his intervention was of great interest, particularly as he quoted a fairly lengthy letter he had received from the greatest living British dramatist. I knew that Mr. Shaw was of the opinion that the South Kensington site was better than the one that has been chosen. I do not know how many other people agree with him but, to me, that part of London is a reminder of early Victorian times and Prince Albert and all that he means to this generation. I have not the slightest doubt that if the theatre had been built there people would have learned to find their way to it. But so far as I can visualise the future, it appears to me that the new site of the South Bank, which is more central and will be part of a larger scheme, will be found to be the better.

I think I have covered most of the points made. There is one that has occurred over and over again and has been answered repeatedly; that is the question which it is suggested will be asked by a large number of people, why should London enjoy the expenditure of anything up to a million of the taxpayers' money when other things are much more needed and the provinces will have to go without. I do not think that argument is legitimate or holds water. I pay my wireless licence and I do not object to the fact that quite often I turn the knob and hear someone crooning. If there is anything in this world I dislike it is jazz and crooning, but I know that some people like it. I cannot understand why, but it takes all sorts to make a world. Therefore, without complaint, I pay my licence and choose my programmes. People will have to learn to do the same here. Some want Shakespeare and some want music hall. At the moment music hall is said to pay commercially, while Shakespeare, to our disgrace, does not. Here we are helping the drama in a small way. I hope it will eventually be in a big way.

On behalf of the Government, I should like to say that we are grateful for the way in which the House has received this Bill. We believe, with the hon. Members who have taken part in the Debate today, that this should be the beginning of something which will be of great benefit to the people of this country and to those who invest their lives in this side of its activities.

The subject I want to raise this afternoon arises out of a question which I put to the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Health on 2nd December last which I thought he might have taken the opportunity at the time of answering a little more fully. In the circumstances one feels that one ought to raise this matter of the many anomalies that are arising out of the National Health Service Act, and I understand that quite a number of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House will wish to take part in the Debate. I do not usually make long speeches in the House, Mr. Speaker, and I shall endeavour to be reasonably brief, but there are some matters of urgency that require to have attention called to them.

I regret the absence of the Minister from the Debate. I think he ought to be here. This is the first occasion on which this House, even though it is on an Adjournment Debate, has had an opportunity of discussing matters which can be discussed under the regulations concerning an Act which touches most intimately and vitally people in every household in the land. It is rather an affront to the House that the right hon. Gentleman is not here to deal with these matters. That is no reflection on the hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary, whom I much admire and whose talents we all respect, but he is not the Minister and has not the same responsibility.

The Minister may say, as he has said in answering Questions in the House, that at the present time he is negotiating with the British Medical Association and other interested bodies such as the opticians and the dental surgeons. It is right that these negotiations should take place, but this House has the responsibility and is entitled to know what is going on. I remember that on one occasion, in the later stages of the war, a most virulent attack was delivered from this side of the House by the present Minister of Health upon one of his own leaders in the Coalition Government at that time, the present Foreign Secretary, because he did not take the House of Commons into his confidence and was negotiating with the T.U.C. behind the back of Parliament in regard to matters about which Parliament ought to know.

The cost of the Health Service is enormous. I understand it is now something like £30 million over the estimate and responsible authorities say it may go even to £100 million above the estimate over the next year or two. The House and the people of the country are entitled to know that they are getting value for their money when such immense expenditure by the State is involved. During the Recess I have made further acquaintance with some of the problems involved in more than one part of the country—in industrial areas. London and residential areas—and have talked with medical men, dental surgeons, opticians and nurses. It was only right that I should do so before raising these points today.

I think we can say, in referring to certain anomalies and injustices arising under the Act, that, as the Minister anticipated, the birth pangs of an Act such as this were bound to be somewhat severe. In one speech in the country just before the Act came into force he said, I think, that he would expect overwhelming numbers of letters and complaints from all parts, which indicated the severe teething troubles being experienced. I do not doubt that the Health Service has had its teething troubles and is still getting them. Many a promising infant has lost its life during its teething troubles. I do not suggest the Act will do that; I think it will survive such troubles. It is up to the House, however, to inquire where it is touching most severely and where we can secure redress within the regulations without initiating further Acts of Parliament.

I make no apology, therefore, for touching upon the main pivot of the Act in so far as it deals with the first intimate contact with the Act by the doctor—that is, by the general medical practitioner of this country. There is no doubt that large numbers of medical men are extremely unhappy and very purturbed about their present position and the working of the Act. Their work has unquestionably increased in all areas, far more in some areas than in others. On the subject of remuneration I think that in large industrial areas medical men have, on the whole, gained somewhat, in some areas fairly substantially perhaps by as much as 25 to 30 per cent. But they are the only areas in which the incomes of medical men have risen. In all other areas—residential, rural and seaside resorts—they have gone down, in some instances so seriously as definitely to affect the morale and working power of the general practitioner.

Would the hon. Gentleman define exactly what he means by "residential areas"?

I would put the residential areas into two classes: areas like the dormitories of London—the Home Counties, Kent, Surrey and Sussex, for instance. We can include resorts, both inland and seaside——

Colwyn Bay?

Yes, Colwyn Bay, Bath, Brighton, Bournemouth, and many other places. Then, of course, there are the rural areas.

I quote a letter from a firm of reputable practitioners of whom I know, in what we term a residential area, in this case a seaside resort. There is a feeling that seaside resorts are not very popular with the Minister. In his remarks during the passage of the Act, in his somewhat sarcastic and general way, he did not seem to be very much in sympathy with the medical fraternity in those resorts. At all events they are a very responsible section of our people and many people go to these places for their health.

This firm, of three medical men, say that they have 4,000 patients on their panel at 16s. a head, which gives them a gross income of £3,200 a year and that practice expenses for the current year amount to £1,950. leaving a net balance of 1,250; that is to say, £416 for each of the three partners. No doubt they have some amount of private practice in addition, but that is the amount of their income from the State panel—not their net income after tax, but after deduction of practice and daily expenses. They say:

"What do we do for this remuneration? An accurate record of consultations and visits is kept and averages 90 per day for the last six months—the quieter half of the year. The gross pay per attendance is 1s. 10d. and "—

after practice expenses are deducted—

"the net pay is 9d. The figure of 90 per day does not include consultations by telephone (estimated at 20 a day) and innumerable people dealt with by the receptionists—repeat prescriptions, certificates and forms which just require our supervision and signatures.…

Under the stress of increased work and reduced income one's work loses interest; financial worry adds to the strain.

My political bias"—

this letter is from the senior partner—

"is towards Socialism. I think the Health Service is necessary, and I voted in favour of joining it at the Plebiscite. …

So the Health Service in this area is being soured at the point of contact between patient and doctor."

A medical man may work for reasonable remuneration and give good service. He may work for nothing and give good work, but he cannot work for 9d. a service and do good work.

I am very glad that in the rural areas the Minister has made a concession, a fairly substantial concession, I think. Some of these rural practitioners were undoubtedly very hard hit. We must remember that a man working in a rural area, with a panel of 1,000 is often harder worked than a man in an industrial area with a panel of 4,000. I know of one medical man in my constituency who spent three-quarters of a whole day in seeing one patient. He had to walk eight miles from a point where, owing to the snow, he could not use his car. The patient had a fractured leg and could not be admitted to a hospital. The best part of one day was spent in visiting this one patient—on a capitation grant of 16s. per head per annum plus a certain mileage. Many of them are threatened with financial ruin at the present time; they cannot meet their commitments.

I hope that the concession which the Minister has made will, to a certain extent, mitigate that position in the rural areas. I am sure that the Government do not wish to have sweated labour under this Act. It may seem a peculiar thing to say at a time when enormous expenditure is involved under the Act that there is room for further concessions. But this is the very foundation of the Act, and if we cannot give good service under this head, the whole Act fails. The whole basis of remuneration should be reconsidered.

In my judgment, there is much to be said for payment per attendance, with power by the State to make a grant in aid. I see that a Commission in New Zealand has recently reported in favour of that suggestion in view of the enormous demands made by the public under the State scheme in that country. I believe that, on the whole, our people have behaved very well, and have been most patriotic in all ways. I am not talking only of the voluntary bodies which were removed by the Act, many of which had given service for a considerable time; I believe that all the people have behaved with great circumspection. However, we must face the fact that in any State scheme of this character there is bound to be a greater demand on the service, and, therefore, more demand on those who have to give it. There is very grave danger that we may find discontent among those who give the service, which would have very severe repercussions.

As to the basic salary, this arrangement is working very badly; indeed, it is really not working at all. In one area the doctors get it, and in an adjoining area they do not. Liverpool has granted it, but other large cities in Lancashire have not. In North Wales, Llandudno has granted it, but Colwyn Bay, a town in another county five miles away, has refused it. In the County of Caernarvon they pay the basic salary, but in Denbighshire only three out of 32 doctors who have applied for it have been granted the basic salary.

Will the hon. Gentleman explain who are "they" to whom he alludes?

It is done at the instigation, or on the authority, of the executive committee. I am only pointing out to the House the result. Parliament intended the basic salary to be paid; much was made of it at the time, but it is completely anomalous in the way it works.

Is the hon. Gentleman now asking for the basic salary which at one time he was concerned with rejecting?

I am afraid I did not get the hon. Gentleman's point; I do not want to be long because other hon. Members wish to speak, and I have one or two observations yet to make.

I come now to the question of the distribution of medical men. The Minister throughout his many speeches on the Act made great play of the maldistribution of medical men. Assuming there is such maldistribution, it is a natural one, and one dependent on economic circumstances, the desires of the medical men and their wives and families to go where they wish, and the demands and amenities of the areas chosen. That is something which is to be expected in a free country. What is the position about distribution today? It is undoubtedly worse than it ever was. I say that because medical men and women are now "frozen" in their areas—they cannot leave those areas.

Take, for example, a town such as I mentioned just now. Suppose that in a seaside resort such as Brighton, Bournemouth, Colwyn Bay or Llandudno, a certain number of medical men are now finding that their income is reduced, or they do not want to spend their lives attending a lot of nervous and elderly people, or that they find that their commitments are heavy and wish to go elsewhere. They cannot do so. If they apply to go to an industrial area the Executive Council will say "We have all the medical men we want here we do not want any more." So maldistribution, of which the Minister made so much in the terms of the Act and in his speeches in this House, is intensified at present and may become more serious from the point of view of a properly functioning health service.

There is one place in North Wales, Deganwy, which lies between Llandudno and Colwyn Bay, where there is no medical man at the present time. The people of Deganwy have been refused a medical man by the Executive Council. There has been a medical man practising there for 70 years from the time it was a fishing village to the time when it has grown to be a place of a thousand or 1,200 people. If it could support a medical man for 70 years why should the people there be deprived of that opportunity at the whim of some executive council? I do not think it is right that the people of that area should be deprived of their own doctor; they are entitled to one. What has been the custom for so many years has established the need for that. Why should they have to go two miles away, where there is only one evening surgery, and where many of them have to wait all day to see a practitioner?

It was stated that distribution would help young medical men to start in new areas. What has happened in that respect? They are not allowed to start in new areas in many cases. They make an inquiry, having thought they would like to begin to practise in a certain area, and they are told: "Have you any accommodation there? We cannot give you any sanction to settle there unless you have accommodation." They then have to make sure of getting accommodation. The House will realise, the housing problem being so difficult, the difficulty which they have in securing that accommodation. Having done so they are not even sure that they will even then be allowed to settle there. The purpose of the Act of enabling young men to settle in some area is being frustrated. I wish the House to note that under these conditions the Act is not functioning at present as it should.

I turn to the question of the facilities given to foreign visitors in this country to have free treatment under this Act. I do not object to a foreigner in this country who has been living here for some years, say for two or three years, participating in the facilities of the Act, but why should a temporary visitor coming to this country be allowed all the facilities of the scheme under every heading he likes—to get for nothing the treatment and the equipment which he can get under this Act? I will give an example which may be stretching the matter rather far but from the possibility point of view there is no objection today to, say, a wealthy Belgian coming here—I am only referring to Belgium because it happens to be a non-sterling area—and yet we cannot visit their country, but under the terms of the Act a wealthy Belgian can come to this country today and get medical treatment. Most expensive prescriptions can be obtained which will cost £1 or 25s. in some vitamin tablets. He can get a chit and go to the optician and be provided with spectacles. Without any medical advice or authority of any kind he can go to a dental surgeon in London or any other part of the country and get an upper and lower denture——

If he waits long enough.

—and in this cold weather, if he likes, he can have a hot-water bottle to take away with him.

Would the hon. Member mention the hearing aid which he can also get?

And the wig?

I have mentioned some of the things he can get and there may be others. But there is no reciprocity at all for a Britisher visiting Belgium. He is not allowed anything of that kind. Surely this country, under Marshall Aid, and with a deficit of £300 million a year, is not going to make itself the laughing stock of the world by throwing out things like that which we cannot afford.

Is it not likely to encourage the tourist traffic in this country, which would be a very desirable thing?

I should think it would have a very beneficial effect in that direction, in the sense that they will go away with far more than they have spent.

Would the hon. Gentleman tell me whether, when he says he wishes to prevent foreigners from enjoying these facilities, he includes Canadians, Australians and other British people from overseas?

I do not for one moment suggest that members of the Commonwealth should be excluded. After all we are one family and I would not suggest that.

The question of specialists needs reviewing generally and I hope that other hon. Members will deal with the point. The services of a large number of specialists in this country are not being utilised. Many specialists are finding that their incomes have been drastically reduced. An orthopaedic surgeon in the provinces tells me that he was making thousands a year and his income has been reduced to £1,200 a year as an allowance from the State for his hospital work. Practically the whole of his private practice has gone. Out of that he has to pay his car allowance, and he is making very little himself. He is considering very seriously whether he can carry on in his profession or whether he should get another job, or go abroad, or do something like that. It is a very great deprivation to the country when there are men of that sort who have been established for years, eminent men who are capable of making large incomes, whose services are appreciated and who are now reduced to a salary which, after tax has been taken from it. is a pittance.

There are directions in which economies could be exercised. I see that there is present an hon. Gentleman who is the chairman of the Health Services Central Council. He must see a good deal of waste going on in many directions. The House would be interested to know, if I had time to read the letter, of what is going on in some hospitals in London today. Administrative blocks are being built up at great expense in hospitals where nothing is being done about the actual equipment. In some hospitals the boilers and other fittings are in a disgraceful state, yet money is being spent on the building of blocks for administrative purposes and not for the doctors and nurses. I have a letter from a working man giving some startling facts.

I hope that the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary will take note of some of the points I have made. We must get the hearty co-operation of the general practitioners in the working of this Act. If we have their hearty co-operation, this Measure has a wonderful future. It has a great future capable of development. The whole world is watching how we are proceeding. But if the doctors are to be put in a state of financial anxiety, wear and worry, their interest in their work may go. The Act will suffer and the health of the people will suffer in consequence.

We have listened to a speech which, if it were dealt with in isolation, might have some effect in almost giving the impression that the new Health Service is a complete failure. I want to be careful in what I say. There is a danger of being misreported, not by HANSARD but by certain organs of the Press. I want to take the opportunity, therefore, of saying that, in the day to day experience of the administration of this service, I have found complete co-operation from every section of the medical profession. It is necessary to say that because, if everything else were wrong, the one thing which the hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones) has said which is undoubtedly true is that this service stands or falls on the co-operation of the medical profession. We know that the doctor is not the only factor. We know that there are many factors in the service which must be considered, but we cannot ignore the supreme fact that the centre of the service is the doctor. I rather think that the hon. Member was a little unfair to the Minister in saying that he should have been here for this important Debate. My view is that for the Minister to be present would have given an importance to certain features of the service which perhaps would have put the whole matter out of perspective.

The one consideration which has not been realised is the tremendous task of pulling together the small units and making a comprehensive, unified service of what was a lot of scraps and pieces. Out of this mass of contradictions, in some places, and certainly anomalies, in others, we have had to form a pattern from a jig-saw the pieces of which did not fit. That has not been an easy job. Six months is no time in which to test it. We are going through a period of experimentation when we are compelled to experiment with compromises which, very likely, have made the service much more difficult than otherwise would have been the case.

I will deal with the major point raised in reference to the general practitioner. As a supporter of the service, I support the hon. Gentleman in saying that great hardship is being experienced by many general practitioners at present. Those general practitioners who had a big private practice and a small panel practice have been unable to attract the requisite number of patients to their lists to enable them to approach anything like what was their income before 5th July. Do not let us attempt to hide the facts of the situation. I happen to be fortunate in that I am a member of every level of administration in this service—the Executive Council, the local health authority, the regional hospital board and the Central Health Services Council. At a meeting of the Executive. Council of which I am a member, we had some really serious instances brought to our notice where doctors' incomes had been reduced from a range of £2,000 to £1,500 a year. We have a medical committee of that Executive Council, and we entrust to that committee—that is, the doctors themselves—the distribution of the basic salary. When the report was submitted by the medical committee I asked "Do you then want a basic salary?" and the answer was "No."

I suggest that the negotiations that preceded the Act in which compromise had to be reached, are responsible for much of the difficulty that exists. I leave the point there because clearly everybody knows that the situation cannot remain as it is. For me to say anything more as to what considerations are proceeding at the moment, would be to say too much and would involve divulging confidences which I am not entitled to do. It is true that we have a service the very nature of which has meant that the doctors themselves are compelled to work very much harder than they did before. Very much more treatment is being given. That is not a weakness of the service. It is a recognition of the fact that the wives of insured men who previously could not get treatment are now getting it; that the children of insured men who were not getting treatment are now getting it at the hands of general practitioners; that there are now claimants for beds in hospitals who were previously deterred because they either had to pay some contribution towards the cost of maintenance while in hospital, or had to belong to some association which could arrange for a bed. All these factors are indicative of what we were lacking before the service started. They are not weakness of the service.

Let us look at the administration to which the hon. Gentleman referred when he said that in certain hospital groups there is an administrative block which is wasteful and extravagant in expenditure. Again we have to face the facts, which are these: we have had to join together two entirely different forms of administration of the hospital service—the voluntary hospital and the municipal hospital. The danger of the municipal service was in over-centralisation. The weakness of the voluntary hospital system was in ultra-fragmentation. We had small cottage hospitals of 25 or 30 beds which had their separate administrative set-up. We have had to join together two entirely different forms of organisation.

We have had to do away with that over-centralisation because we cannot give to regional boards the responsibility of the day-to-day management of a hospital. Nor can we continue to allow the small unit, the cottage hospital, the small general practitioner hospital, to continue as an individual unit. In joining them together it was necessary that we should set up an administrative machine which would ensure that the work would be done and in my view, because it was so important that the work should be done, there was inevitably a danger that we might exaggerate the number of staff required. I feel that that, too, will have to be investigated with a view to seeing whether and where there is redundancy so that we may avoid redundancy in the future. I suggest, and this view can be heard in the country, that we should let this scheme have a fairer chance than that given by six months. The joining together of parts which were so different was a difficult process and it is inevitable that in that process the machine should reveal some creaking cogs. But there is room in the administration for those weakened parts to receive attention when they are seen.

I am certain that when we look at the financial aspect of this scheme we must not be content to say that this is just an enormous expenditure without having regard to where the expenditure is going. All those who are now receiving free treatment are, in point of fact, receiving an addition to their income. Every working man whose wife goes to hospital is no longer in law the legally liable representative who must maintain her while she is there. She is entitled to that treatment. Every working man who occupies a hospital bed is entitled not only to free treatment and maintenance whilst he is there but also to 26s. a week sickness benefit for a period.

The cost of the service is high. It was bound to be high. Nobody could see within millions how high it would be, for nobody could know the extent to which the service would be used. I am of the opinion that six months' experience is by no means sufficient to give us an indication of what major changes should be made. What we do know is that the greatest experiment in social service has been launched. There is every indication that, with the co-operation of all who are concerned with it, we shall forget some of the difficulties.

I am aware of the difficulties of the specialists, which have been mentioned, but the Spens Report is out and we are waiting to know what action is to be taken on that Report. The doctors themselves have a voice in all these things. There is a difficulty about specialists because we have not enough of them. The hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones) mentioned orthopaedic specialists. He knows that there has never been an organised orthopaedic service in this country. When we can get down to the organisation of that service we shall provide the service so that the specialist will have the maximum amount of his time in the place where it is most required. What had we prior to the Act? Specialists going from different parts crossing each other's paths, to do jobs in hospitals when there were other hospitals closer to their own places of abode. When we can get down to the organisation required, which is a tremendous job, we shall find that we have indeed launched a service which is probably the finest monument to the ability of the people of this country to meet the needs of the people of this country.

I have never been one of those who have felt that the Act of 1946 is as good an Act as it might have been. I have always felt that it attempted to go too fast and too far. A number of the anomalies of which we are all conscious today in the working of the Act could have been avoided, I believe, if the attempt had been made to go by evolution rather than by revolution. However, now that it is the law of the land there are many thousands of people, the paid staffs and the voluntary workers, who are trying to make this social reform work satisfactorily. I would very much agree with the hon. Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer) that it is on the rails and moving; but it is creaking and groaning, and I think that one of the most useful things we can do in the short time we have today is to draw the attention of the Minister to some of the more immediate anomalies which, by fairly rapid action in the Ministry can be ameliorated to help the thing to run more smoothly.

There is a much more substantial reckoning I suspect in waiting for the Minister. He has obviously to come to this House to ask for more money. No doubt, that will be the occasion when there will be a full-dress Debate, when the whole development of the Health Service can be discussed here. There is, of course, a number of very important matters—for example, the dental situation, which seems to have got completely out of hand; there is the secrecy which still surrounds the remuneration of specialists, for although I know, what the hon. Member for South Tottenham has said, that the Spens Report is out, only a very limited number of people have seen it, and specialists do not know where they are. Then there has been long delay in the payment of chemists' accounts, due to the fact that the machine has become completely overloaded. However, these are matters, I think, for a future time.

The only points to which I want to refer today are, perhaps, more detailed, but if the Parliamentary Secretary will indicate the policy of his Department in regard to them he will be doing a good service to those who are anxious to make the best they can of the Act. One question about which I hope he will be able to give us some information is: When is the amending Bill to be produced? A considerable number of unsettled matters, particularly about medical partnerships, are causing friction and anxiety, which cannot be settled until the Bill is produced. I think it is overdue, and if the hon. Gentleman can give us some indication of when the Bill may be expected he will be able in doing so to help a good many people.

I hope that as soon as possible the Ministry, in its dealings with the hospitals, will be able to give some indication of its long-term policy over capital projects. It is impossible to plan hospital development, in regard to capital expansion, on a year-to-year basis. A hospital may have had its outpatients' department bombed. To put it into proper working order again may cost £50,000. They may be prepared to wait a couple of years if they know that the project is to be sanctioned; if, on the other hand, they know they have to wait seven years they may be justified in spending £3,000 or £4,000 upon some temporary prefabricated building for the time being. If they are put off from year to year, not knowing a year ahead when that particular project is to be sanctioned, they are placed in a very difficult position. I hope that it will be possible to work the capital side of hospital finances on the same lines as university finances, at least for quinquennial periods, so that the hospital committees may know a little more clearly where they stand.

There are two points upon which I hope the Parliamentary Secretary can give us some information. Section 9 (8) of the Act gave to the Minister power to make regulations for determining by arbitration in cases of doubt whether a particular institution was or was not a hospital. I know of four institutions which have claimed to be homes and not Hospitals—there are probably a very large number of others—and they are at the moment waiting in a state of suspense; they do not know whether they should have been taken over on the appointed day or whether they are still free to carry on their own affairs in their own way. Now that is a very embarrassing position for these large institutions; it is bad for the patients and bad for the staff. I have not been able to find that the Minister has yet made arbitration regulations. There is such a mass of regulations that they may be tucked away somewhere, but I have not myself found them. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could tell us whether those regulations have been made; how many applications for arbitration have been made; how many, if any, have been heard, and what the results have been.

I draw his attention particularly to the position of the staffs of those institutions which are suspended in doubt. If they had come into the service they could have chosen whether to carry on under their old conditions or under the new National Health Service conditions. Because they are still in suspense, the day for choice has passed, and if any of those institutions are found to have been taken over by the Minister the staffs should, I think, be given another date by which to make the choice whether to accept the new or the old terms.

The only remaining point to which I wish to refer is the great difficulty in which hospital management committees are at the moment being put through the activities of nursing agencies, commonly known as the "co-ops." In normal times the nursing agencies have a real place to fill in a health organisation. They cater for the nurse who does not want to be attached to a particular institution, but who wants to be available for private nursing, or for holiday or locum tenens work in hospitals. They worked on the basis that the nurse had no superannuation; she was probably paid substantially more than she would have got under Rushcliffe, and the hospital paid the agency for the nurse for the period of weeks for which they used her. What happens now is that, owing to the short- age, nurses, on qualifying, are joining the agencies and getting paid in some cases twice as much as they would receive under Rushcliffe.

More.

I know of cases of midwives who are getting paid three times as much, but certainly some nurses are getting twice as much from the agencies as they would get under Rushcliffe. The hospitals are having to pay twice as much as they would pay if the nurses were permanently on their staffs, and the agencies take their 12½ per cent. That reaches its absurdity when a newly-qualified nurse walks out of her hospital, joins an agency, walks back into the hopsital next day and stays as a full-time resident nurse at that hospital, at twice the negotiated salary, for perhaps a year, as is the case at at least one hospital I know, the agency collecting its 12½ per cent. every week for doing nothing at all. That is an abuse of what might be a useful service, and creates a great deal of anxiety, trouble and difficulty for the hospital; it creates a strain among nurses who want to be loyal to their hospital rather than to go out for extra money. I very much hope that the Parliamentary Secretary can tell us that urgent attention is being given to this question by the Minister, because unless national action is taken fairly quickly there will be substantial difficulty and abuse.

The hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir Henry Morris-Jones) who opened this Debate mentioned a number of points. I should like to address myself to that part of his speech in which he spoke of the abnormal cost of the National Health Service. He did so without referring to what I think he would agree is the enormous saving which will inevitably accrue to the nation in a very short time, if indeed it has not already begun to accrue—I think it has—in actual cash saving, through the improvement of the health of the people. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows quite well that it has been estimated that the loss in time, in production and in other ways, to the nation has been of the order of £300 millions a year, a very formidable sum. It is to be expected that the National Health Service will largely diminish that great loss.

The hon. Member mentioned that the remuneration of general practitioners in large industrial areas is regarded as satisfactory by them because it has increased. That is quite correct, but it is fair to mention that that category includes the larger part of the general practitioners of the country. Therefore we can say that the larger number of general practitioners are enjoying improved conditions. That applies to areas around London like Mitcham, which are not commonly regarded as industrial but where people are under the income limit which enabled them, before the new Act came into operation, to be panel patients under National Health Insurance.

The difference that the Act has made in many millions of homes is that the wives and families of insured persons get free treatment. That is of enormous benefit to them, as the hon. Gentleman knows. He has been in practice for many years in Colwyn Bay. He will remember an occasion when I brought in an aunt of mine to consult him about her condition, and when he gave her kind and efficient treatment. He knows quite well that one of the defects of the panel system was that women whose husbands were insured were not themselves insured and could not get treatment without paying for it. Therefore they did not go to the doctors for women's illnesses, but suffered from them all their lives, sometimes very seriously indeed. One of the great benefits which the National Health Service will confer upon the population is that many thousands of women, the whole population of women, will have the opportunity of being treated for the ailments to which they are especially subject and which are exactly the kind that disable them frequently. While the panel system was in operation they usually, in working class circles, did not have them attended to because they could not afford the doctor's bill at the end of the month. The same applies to the treatment of children. In those two ways the benefits of the Act will be very large indeed.

While the hon. Member for Denbigh was speaking, I interrupted him to ask him to define what he meant by residential areas. He suggested such places as Colwyn Bay and Llandudno and subsequently mentioned Brighton and the dormitory areas around London. He might have added such places on the coast as Worthing. Those are precisely the places which were over-doctored in proportion to the population.

What is to be done about it?

That is a matter which will not adjust itself all at once. Some of the doctors who settled there were at the retiring age or near the retiring age and they wanted to make not a large income but a certain amount to supplement the income they already had. This was particularly true in the south-west of England. In the early part of the war we had great difficulty in getting doctors from that area to do certain kinds of national service because they did not want to leave their little niches. Some of them were earning £400 or £500 a year. I can quite understand that in those circumstances the abolition of fee-paying practices puts many of those people in very serious difficulties. It is admitted on all hands that this matter must be looked after. It is by no means a matter which is not capable of being well looked after and I think a solution will be found, but it will be a complicated solution in which the same treatment will not be applied to all areas. It is an individual problem for the local organisations.

In regard to rural areas, the hon. Member for Denbigh welcomed the concession made by the Minister. He was quite right. The Minister has made a substantial concession which will no doubt be to the advantage of the rural areas. However, the hon. Member will no doubt agree that in certain rural areas many doctors had too many patients on their panel. I could give him—though not across the Floor of the House—the names of areas where doctors in the past took on a great many more people than they could properly attend. The condition is now correspondingly wórse. As for his instance of the doctor who had to spend three-quarters of a day—I presume in Wales—going to see a man who had broken his leg, I wonder whether the hon. Member himself has not occasionally spent a very large part of one day attending one man. I have sat up all night attending one patient and not being paid anything for it, and my father, who was a doctor, did the same. Every doctor has had that kind of experience.

We cannot calculate our fees on the amount of time we give to patients; we must average them out. That kind of experience must be rare even in Wales, a country which I happen to know fairly well. I do not think that the people there so continuously break their legs in inaccessible places that the doctors are constantly spending three-quarters of a day and walking eight miles in order to repair them. With respect to the hon. Member, I think that was a rather exaggerated instance. I do not want to take up too many of the instances which the hon. Member mentioned, but I feel tempted to do so because I happen to know that country very well. Take Deganwy for instance. Surely that is so near to Conway and Llandudno—forgive me for my pronunciation—that it can hardly lay claim to a separate doctor. There is at present a shortage of doctors. I was not very much impressed by the hon. Member's diatribe about the treatment of foreigners. His picture of the wealthy Belgian—I happen to know a good many wealthy Belgians—coming over here for the purpose of spending his time getting spectacles, dentures and vitamin preparations when he might have been spending it much more pleasantly in other ways, for instance at the Savoy or the Ritz, is not very probable. I do not think the Exchequer will lose a large amount on that account, and if the Belgians were excepted, how would we deal with citizens of the Commonwealth? Would we give them stamped identity cards? The amount involved is not a serious one, even if some extreme crank came over to get spectacles, dentures, hearing aids, expensive vitamin tablets, and the other things which he could get. Indeed, we might get so much advertisement in the Press and the tourist agencies that the outlay would be almost worth while. However, I cannot think anybody would be so foolish as to do that to any extent. What is actually involved is a sudden illness or indisposition and the necessity for somebody receiving medical treatment. Are we to provide an elaborate separate arrangement for that, or a fee-paying arrangement? I think there will have to be some extension of the present system of free treatment.

With regard to specialists, the hon. Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer), who holds a responsible position in the medical service of this country, and I myself who happen to be Chairman of the Medical Priority Committee—whose chief headache at the present moment is the provision of specialists—know that there are not enough specialists in the country. It is calculated that an increase of about 50 per cent. of specialists is required to staff the hospitals properly. It is only in the large centres, such as London, Birmingham, Glasgow and so on, that there are specialists. Does the hon. Member realise that the town of Bristol, at the time when the hospital survey was made of those four southern counties, was the only town which had a hospital in it with a full and complete specialist service for that vast area? There is a deficiency of specialists in the eastern counties of England, as well as in many other places, and also in the Armed Forces. It may be quite true—I have no doubt it is—that the orthopaedic surgeon whose case was brought to the notice of the House today by the hon. Gentleman may be in a serious condition, but that is a temporary matter which can be solved when the Spens Committee Report is applied, as it will be.

One hon. Member opposite dealt with the nursing agencies and the co-operative nursing associations. I agree that the position is ridiculous when nurses, after training and qualification at a comparatively small remuneration, join the "coop" and go straight back to the hospital where they were trained at twice or more than twice the salary they were receiving. In view of the fact that the shortage of nurses is seriously holding up medical treatment, I suggest that the Government will have to consider the nationalisation of the "co-op"; that is to say, putting out the people who are running these businesses on a substantial and even generous scale and having these nurses in a nursing service. That is beyond the scope of the present Debate, but it will be valuable to think of it for the future, and I hope the Government will consider whether the co-operative nursing associations ought not to be brought within the scope of a National Service.

Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, will he explain that the "co-ops" to which he referred are not Co-operative societies, but are only employment agencies?

Yes, they are only employment agencies.

I am glad that the hon. Member for North Islington (Dr. Guest) was protected by his hon. Friend the Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer) in the interesting suggestion he just made about nationalising "co-ops," which at first sounded to many hon. Members on this side the most attractive part of his speech. I am very glad that the hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones) raised this Debate this afternoon. We have had a number of interesting speeches from both sides of the House, and I was particularly interested in the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead). As the House knows, we on this side believe in a comprehensive Health Service, and I am very fully aware of the great advantages to which the hon. Member for North Islington referred, particularly the benefit given to the womenfolk and children of men whose dependents were not catered for under the previous insurance arrangements.

Everybody must be aware of the enormous difficulties created by the introduction of this new scheme. Although we on this side of the House genuinely believe that a number of those difficulties could have been avoided if things had been arranged differently, none the less, we appreciate that there are bound to be great difficulties when such a scheme is first put into operation. This is not the appropriate time for a full dress Debate on the subject—I have no doubt there will be opportunities in the course of the next month or two for raising the question of the working of the service in general—but there are one or two questions I wish to address to the Parliamentary Secretary who, I understand, is going to reply to this Debate.

The most important question I wish to put to him is whether, at the present moment, the medical profession is not finding itself very much overworked, and, consequently, has insufficient time to give to serious illness. That is an entirely nonparty and non-controversial question, but I should like the Parliamentary Secretary to pay some attention to it in his reply. Germane to that question is the question whether the people who really need them most are getting the beds in the hospitals. These are, perhaps, two different aspects of the same problem on which I should like to have the Parliamentary Secretary's views. I appreciate that it is an extremely difficult problem, but I should like to know what ideas the Government have for dealing with it.

I should also like to ask whether there is any possibility of avoiding some of the great delays which patients suffer in getting hospital accommodation. I can quite believe that, in some cases, it is almost impossible to avoid such delays, but one comes across numerous instances which make one very anxious.

Early in October a friend of mine was taken ill. His doctor immediately decided that he should see a specialist, but he was unable to obtain the services of a specialist until the second week of December. The specialist said that my friend should go into hospital for an operation, but it appears unlikely that he will get into hospital for several months yet. That is only one illustration, and I have no doubt that hon. Members could easily give many more. That sort of thing makes one feel anxious to know whether anything could possibly be done to establish a system for dealing with such cases.

Was that tuberculosis?

No, Sir, it was not tuberculosis. Then, again, the queues in surgeries have grown enormously, and, possibly, for inevitable reasons. But, on the other hand, is it not possible to give the doctors more help in dealing with some of the work which is not strictly medical work? An enormous amount of their time is taken up with form filling, giving certificates and so on.

A great deal of their time is bound to be taken up with form filling and other non-medical work. I should have thought that some means could be found to relieve them of part of that work and free them for more of the work for which they have been trained. I wish to put a question to the Parliamentary Secretary about hospital costs. I understand that as late as 16th December last the Minister said in reply to a Question that he had received statements of probable expenditure for the current financial year but none had yet been approved. I should like to ask if that is still the situation, because unquestionably it must be leading to great difficulties.

More than one hon. Member has referred to the remuneration of doctors. I have no doubt that there is a great deal of evidence that a large number of doctors, at any rate, are worse off than they were before, and there is also a feeling that the doctors are worse off than any other class of professional men or women in this scheme. That, I think, is probably brought to notice very much by the question of the remuneration of dentists which raises great problems in itself and which, no doubt, will come to be discussed on a subsequent occasion. I am anxious, as the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary must be, as to how the posts are to be filled in the county dental services. I had put into my hand today a copy of the "British Dental Journal" which has a large number of advertisements for posts in the various county services at a remuneration which, of course, is low compared with that offered in other columns for posts for dentists in ordinary practice. That matter must be giving great anxiety to the Minister. No doubt in due course he will tell us how he proposes to deal with it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Denbigh raised the question of the payment of consultants and specialists and asked whether that problem has yet been solved. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary may be able to say something on that subject. I should also like to ask whether it is possible for private patients who have not become part of the Health Service to obtain drugs in the same way as those who belong to the scheme. It seems rather unfair that private patients, who do not take up any of the time of the medical profession who belong to the Health Service, should be deprived of the opportunity to obtain such drugs as are necessary for them which other citizens are granted.

I am afraid that a large number of points have been raised. I know that the Minister requires a considerable time in which to answer them. I hope that he will appreciate that I have deliberately refrained from raising a great many matters which are in the minds of hon. Members on this side of the House and many questions which are agitating the minds of doctors and dentists throughout the country. We have had an opportunity to ask a few questions, and I wish to give the Parliamentary Secretary sufficient time to answer.

We have had an interesting discussion and I will do my best in the time available to deal with the fairly considerable number of questions that have been raised. The hon. Member for Denbigh (Sir H. Morris-Jones), I thought rather strangely, took exception to the absence of my right hon. Friend. I know that there are views about the usefulness of Parliamentary Secretaries, but I had always assumed that the one job the Parliamentary Secretary was expected to do was to deal with the sort of administrative reviews that we have from time to time in the House on the Motion for the Adjournment. In any case, I assure the hon. Gentleman that, although no doubt the terminology that I shall use will be different from that which my right hon. Friend uses, I think that my views will be very much the same as his. The hon. Gentleman said it was important that we should be sure that people were getting value for their money, but he spent a good deal of his time asking, as I understood him, for more public money to be spent. That raises fairly considerable issues, some of which were answered by my hon. Friend the Member for South Tottenham (Mr. Messer).

It would be convenient if we considered at the outset some of the difficulties with which the service has had to contend. It has been functioning for just over six months, which for a scheme of this kind is a relatively short period. There is no longer any doubt that it has been welcomed by all classes of the general public to an extent beyond expectations. We knew that the need was great but how great we completely underestimated, and the figures themselves, a few of which I should like to give for purposes of record, bear this out. Taking the family practitioners' services the need is borne out by the fact that about 40 million people have placed their names on doctors' lists. One cannot be precisely sure, but the percentage of the total population who will he in this scheme will be of the order of 95 to 98 per cent.

Is that taking into account possible duplications?

Yes. There is a margin of error of 3 per cent. which one cannot be sure about, but I am certain that the total will be 95 per cent., and it may be 98 per cent.

In order that we may be accurate about this percentage might I ask what is the estimated population of this country at present? I have seen it put as high as 50 million by some authority. If we could have that figure it would give us a picture of the proportion.

I am sorry but I have not got that figure. It is obviously of the order of 42 million.

Surely it is much more.

I am talking about England and Wales but not Scotland.

To take the position as to doctors, 18,165 general practitioners out of an estimated total of about 21,000 have conic into the scheme. Those doctors have already prescribed 75 million medicines or appliances since the service began. If we take the dentists, out of 10,000 in general practice 8,988, which is the last figure I have got, have now come into the service. They have treated 2,200,000 patients and 1,200,000 are under treatment at present. It looks as though the initial peak in the demand for dentists' services has been passed, but even now the demand is running at the rate of about 130,000 a week. More than two-and-a-half million people have had their sight tested under the supplementary ophthalmic service while over three million pairs of glasses have been supplied or are on order.

I have given those figures because wish the House to appreciate something of the magnitude of the whole operation and the fact that, as I said at the start, we had completely underestimated the need. The pent-up demand for these things is much greater than we had anticipated. Now that the Service has been running for about six months, and as the rush is, in some quarters, beginning to subside a little, we are naturally taking steps at the Ministry of Health to review every side of the Service.

Among the things we are considering are of course those remuneration points to which the hon. Member for Denbigh referred. I will say a few words about remuneration, since that is perhaps the most important point that has been raised. I wish to make it plain that we have negotiated with the representatives of the profession at every stage, and that the kind of arrangements which we have made have in many cases not been those which we in the first instance thought to be the right ones, but arrangements which we have adopted at the request of or following representations from the profession.

In the beginning, the remuneration of practitioners for private general medical services under the Act was agreed with the negotiating committee of the British Medical Association. The arrangement by which the bulk of the fee was to be paid in the form of so much per person on the doctor's list was at the request of the profession. While I have no time to give all the details of the remuneration, it is interesting that altogether, taking everything into account, the payments to doctors under the G.P. part of the scheme, from the appointed day to the 31st March of this current year, are estimated to amount to £32,500,000.

In addition, there are Exchequer superannuation contributions which amount to £1,600,000 extra. I believe that that amount overall will be ample to secure that doctors will be remunerated in accordance with the Spens recommendations. I know and I accept the view that distribution has been uneven, but I would remind the House that payments so far have been on a provisional basis, partly because of the administrative difficulties and partly because of a certain amount of inflation of doctors' lists, for one reason or another which I need not go into. We do hope, however, that we shall have eliminated this element of inflation in the doctor's list, and will really get down to firm figures so that final payment can be made, at the end of March, 1949, when all the necessary adjustments will be brought into account.

I recognise that the position of the rural doctor is particularly difficult. Before the appointed day the mileage allowances under the old National Health Insurance scheme helped the rural doctor to meet the extra, costs of travelling, and so on. He was also able, if he was so minded, to charge higher fees to his private patients in the rural areas to meet the extra cost of covering the distances. With the introduction of the new Act, it is no longer possible for the rural doctor to cover his extra heavy expenses out of his private fees. Therefore some time ago we did agree with the profession that we would increase the mileage payments, which are the extra payments to be made to cover ineffective time spent on travelling in the case of the rural doctors, to £1,300,000.

It is quite clear that that amount will not be sufficient to meet the needs of the rural doctors. Therefore the Government have agreed to provide a further sum of £500,000 a year for the purpose. We have also agreed with representatives of the profession that we shall divert £200,000 from the inducement money which is in the Bill, and that will give us a total mileage fund for Great Britain of £2 million a year. That is more than three times the amount available under the old National Health arrangement. I hope it will be used in a way that will bring benefit to the rural doctors.

There are one or two other things which have not yet been brought into line. Broadly speaking, maternity medical fees do not become payable until about two months after the date of the confinement. At this stage, therefore, the full effect of maternity fees has not shown itself in doctors' remuneration. I say to the House quite seriously that when the final payments for the period 5th July last to 31st March, 1949, have been made we shall then be able to see whether the remuneration of general practitioners does, in fact, accord with the Spens recommendations. If it does not, the arrangements will be reviewed to see what adjustments are necessary to give effect to those recommendations.

Reference was made particularly to the question of basic salary. I do not agree about the difficulties which the hon. Gentleman says are arising. Various changes have taken place in the attitude to basic salary. The original intention was that basic salary should form a substantial part of a doctor's remuneration. Then the medical profession said that they did not like that method and the Minister agreed that it should form only a minor part of a doctor's remuneration. Later on the Minister, following representations, said, "Very well, we will give basic salary to new entrants to the profession for a period of three years and to certain others on certain conditions." Finally, the profession still was not satisfied and the Minister agreed with it that the decision whether a basic salary should be given or not should be left to the local executive council after consultation with the local medical committee, with the right of appeal by the doctor to the Minister.

The British Medical Association wanted a different kind of treatment, but the essential arrangements for basic salary and the conditions under which it was paid are wholly to be held to come from the negotiating committee. Here, the Minister did precisely what the profession wanted him to do. There were people who criticised him for doing so. If anything is wrong, however, I suggest that it is for the doctors themselves to go to their own Association rather than to tell us that they have begun to alter their minds. We cannot take the responsibility in circumstances where we have gone about the thing in the way the profession asked. In fact, although I have no detailed information about the number of basic salaries granted by local executive councils, we had the figure some time ago of a thousand cases in which it had actually been granted.

Moreover, we have given advice to executive councils on this subject. We have advised them to give consideration to applications for the basic salary where there is reasonable justification and we have given them examples which include, for instance, a doctor starting a new practice or working a small practice; a doctor who, on account of ill-health or age, is unable to do as much as he would otherwise do; and doctors whose incomes have dropped substantially as a result of the new service. While I do not seek to deny that there may be difficulties here and there, I think they are difficulties inherent in the system which we have adopted at the request of the profession. In so far as we can remove the difficulty by advice to the executive councils, we shall be happy to do so.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the difficulties of the distribution of doctors and quoted particularly a case from Deganwy in his area. It is interesting to note in passing, although not as a matter of principle, that in that case the central medical practices committee have indicated that they would sympathetically consider an application from a doctor to live and practise there but that, in fact, no application has been received. It may well be that because the practice would be small this village will have to be served by neighbouring places, which are not, after all, very far away.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there has been a doctor there for 70 years, and he has made a living quite satisfactorily?

People's notions of what constitute a living have altered as the years have gone by. It would be wrong to say that nothing has been done about the maldistribution of doctors. I have with me a few figures which might be interesting to the House. Since the appointed day 530 general practitioners have died or resigned from the medical list and 532 new doctors have been admitted to the list. Of these 530 vacancies, 230 were filled by a partner, an assistant or a person who seemed to be the logical successor. In 238 cases no successor was thought necessary because the outgoing doctor had only a small list, and in 62 cases the vacancy was advertised and a selection made from applicants. Of course, I do not deny that the filling of a vacancy takes time. To advertise and to give people a fair chance to compete for a vacant post takes time; normally it takes from 2½ to 3 months to fill a vacancy.

Can my hon. Friend say whether consideration is only given to people who already have a house and are living in the area concerned?

No. That is not the case. As my hon. Friend knows, consideration is always given by the committee to what I call the logical successors, but after that if a vacancy is advertised, it is then open to anyone to apply.

Even though an applicant is not living in the area?

:Yes, so I understand.

I understand not.

So far, we have only closed up completely two areas, and those areas are Chester and Hastings, although there are some places where small parts of districts have been closed up. I think very soon now the Medical Practices Committee will be able to give a better indication of the under-doctored areas. They are studying reports from all the executive councils which had to be in by the end of December, and when those reports have been considered I am hopeful that much more help and advice can be given.

I do not want to spend time dealing with foreign visitors except to say that I do not know of any way, short of introducing an elaborate new administrative technique, by which we can separate the foreigner from the British visitor from overseas. I believe that to do what the hon. Gentleman wanted, even if it were desirable, would need a new control which would involve an awful lot of time, money, trouble and vexation to all our own people.

In the few minutes which are left to me, may I turn rapidly to some of the other points that have been put to me? I am sorry that I cannot tell the hon. Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead) when the amending Bill is going to be introduced. We have it in preparation at the present time. Nor can I in the time remaining begin to elaborate on the capital side of hospital finance, but I can just give a little information about the apportionment and transfer regulations in which the hon. Gentleman was interested. They were in fact made on 1st May, 1948; they appear in S.I. No. 888. The panel of arbitrators has been set up by the Lord Chancellor under the chairmanship of Mr. Christie, K.C. There are six requests to go to arbitration; five of them were received round about the appointed day, and one was received only last week. The five are carrying on as before pending the arbitration. In the case of the sixth, whose application only came in last week, we have got some difficulties in determining the right course to take. We have been at great pains to try to evolve a procedure which will be fair to those who wish to go to arbitration. I think we have now settled a number of legal points which arose, and I am hopeful we shall be able to refer the first case to the panel next week. I think that tells the hon. Member what he wants to know.

As to the co-operative nursing agencies, I agree entirely that here is a problem which requires very careful consideration. We have already given some consideration to it at the Ministry of Health. It is bound up, I think, with the discussions going on in the Whitley Council concerning the whole field of nurses' remuneration but I assure the hon. Member and others who are interested in the matter that we are giving it our attention.

Finally, I turn to the points raised by the right hon. Member for the City of London (Mr. Assheton). I shall not say anything about local government dental officers, because I cannot add to what I said in the Adjournment Debate just before the Recess. I must reiterate the view expressed by my right hon. Friend that it is impossible for us to agree that the private patient who goes to a doctor should be permitted to obtain drugs through the service. We cannot accept the view that doctors who are outside the service, to whom we cannot apply the principle of public accountability in any way, should be able to prescribe drugs for their private patients. I am sorry, but that is the position as stated by my right hon. Friend from which I cannot depart at all.

Turning to the question of estimates of hospital expenditure, the position is as on the 16th December last—that is to say, estimates have not been approved but, of course, they do not apply until the beginning of April and we must have time to co-ordinate this whole business if we are to keep our National accounts in proper order and in the sort of state which would appeal to those who scrutinise them so carefully.

There was a point of real substance in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the use of hospital beds. I know of cases where there are delays—long delays. I do not think there is anything new about that. I think it was so before the appointed day. Those delays are due either to actual lack of accommodation or to lack of staff to look after the beds which exist. Although we have more nurses than ever we had, and although we have as many nurses coming forward as ever we had, we are still dreadfully short. Having said that, however, I assert that it ought to be the rule throughout the country that beds are allocated in accordance with medical need. If it should happen that any hon. Members come across cases where they think that rule is not being observed, I should be grateful if they would let me know. There should be no way in which the genuine medically urgent case can be by-passed by less urgent cases in any block of accommodation, whether a private, paid block or anything else.

In conclusion, there can be no doubt that there are some sections of the medical profession which are very much overworked at the present time. I wish it were possible to give them some help. I have never thought any other than that, try as we might to plan, much as we might rely on the regional boards and management committees, in the end the scheme would be a success or a failure in accordance with the degree to which we obtained the skill and devotion of the people who work in it. I have been pleased by the co-operation we have had up to date and I look forward, as time goes on, to our improving this scheme, which is young yet, and in which, no doubt, there are still a number of anomalies.