Commons Chamber

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House Of Commons

Friday, 28th April, 1950

The House met at Eleven o'Clock

Prayers

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Orders Of The Day

Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

11.6 a.m.

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

This small Bill has a double object in the useful tidying-up of previous enactments. The purpose of Clause 1 (1) is the extension of the objects of the fund called the Soldiers' Effects Fund, which is, in turn, administered by the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation. In this Bill, we seek to extend the way in which the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation can administer the Soldiers' Effects Fund in two ways.

In the last words of Clause 1 (1), we seek to make it possible to include as beneficiaries the wives, children and other near relatives of persons who have been soldiers and who have died. At present, the beneficiaries of the Soldiers' Effects Fund are somewhat narrowly restricted by a variety of provisions, which I will not detail, but the broad effect is that the beneficiaries must be the widows or dependants of soldiers who have died within six months of their discharge, and preference has to be given to the dependants of soldiers who have died 12 months after the occurrence of the wound or illness which caused their death. Clause 1 (1) frees the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation of these restrictions, which the trustees have found to be hampering to them in their work and to exclude, unnecessarily and unfairly, deserving beneficiaries. Clause 1 (2) includes in this provision airmen, who were not included before.

Clause 2, which is really unrelated, logically, to Clause 1, is inserted because we have taken the opportunity provided by the Bill to put another matter right. The Clause itself is not very readily comprehensible, and it is composed of one sentence, but its real effect is that the provisions referred to in the first sentence of the Clause shall apply,

" and be deemed always to have applied, in relation to those forces as if references in the provision to the military forces of the Crown or to members, or any class of members, thereof included references to the air forces of the Crown or, as the case may be, to members or the like class of members thereof."

I should tell the House that I have been informed that the meaning of those words is that airmen should be brought within the provisions of the 1893 Act. For many years they have been brought within its provisions, but there has been grave doubt about the legality of that proceeding, and that is the reason why this provision is made retrospective, so that it will cover what the House will agree has been the entirely proper practice of the Fund for a number of years and include airmen in the scope of its beneficent activities.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions, who is intimately connected with the work of this Fund, warmly concurs in the two objects which we seek to attain in this Bill.

11.10 a.m.

As I understand it, this Patriotic Fund was formed shortly after the Crimean War to administer funds which had been very generously subscribed by the public for the widows and orphans of soldiers, sailors and marines who had fallen in that war. Commissioners were appointed to administer the Fund, and they subsequently took over the administration of other funds which had been subscribed by the public for the benefit of widows, orphans and dependants of ex-members of the Armed Forces. That was the state of affairs up to 1903 when, by Act of Parliament, the Commissioners were replaced by the present Corporation.

The Act of 1903 laid down that, subject to any special trust, the funds administered by the Corporation were for the benefit of the widows, children and dependants of the officers and men of the naval and military forces of the Crown. While, on the formation of the Royal Air Force, no extension was made of the application of the Act, I am informed that certain of the funds—as the right hon. Gentleman has confirmed—were actually applied to the relief of dependants of personnel of the Royal Air Force. But I am also informed that other funds which were open to the military forces of the Crown have not hitherto been extended to dependants of men of the Royal Air Force.

As the right hon. Gentleman has told us, Clause 2 appears to regularise these matters. It seems to admit the dependants of men of the Royal Air Force to the benefits of all the funds of the Corporation, other than those earmarked for some specific purpose, and I am sure the House will agree with the right hon. Gentleman that that provision is right and proper, and that, although dependants of men of the Royal Air Force may not hitherto have suffered, this new provision is considerably overdue. One may not be worried about the provisions of Clause 2, but I have certain anxieties in relation to the provisions of Clause 1. That Clause deals with the Soldiers' Effects Fund, which is constituted under the Regimental Debts Act, 1893. It makes those funds applicable for the benefit of the widows, children and relations of soldiers and airmen who have died, instead of limiting the benefit to those dying on service or within six months of their discharge.

It may be wondered why airmen are admitted to the benefit of these funds. I am told that the reason is that since the formation of the Royal Air Force, the estates of airmen who have died intestate have, in fact, been paying into the Soldiers' Effects Fund. The limitation of benefit to dependants of those who died on service or within six months of their discharge was, I understand, considered to be necessary as, otherwise, there might well be so many applications for relief that the funds would be found quite insufficient to meet such applications in any adequate way.

The proposal in the Bill is, of course, that there should be no limitation whatsoever, and that the funds should be available to the dependants of persons dying at any time, and who, at any time, had been either soldiers or airmen. I have been given to understand that the reasons for that alteration are twofold: first, that the introduction of State pensions has reduced cases of destitution, though not, perhaps, the total number of cases of dependants requiring help in one way or another: second, that under modern conditions deaths from war service often occur much later than six months after discharge.

I understand it is contended that in consequence of these changes, there are not now so many calls to relieve destitution, while many cases of distress which are brought to the notice of the Corporation are time barred. I find it very difficult to credit that the income of the Trust cannot now be fully spent. I find it difficult to credit that, because we know, for example, that many soldiers and airmen died on service or within a few months of their discharge from causes which were not directly attributable to the war, and that their dependants receive no pension under the Warrant whatsoever, though I understand that they are eligible to receive benefit from the Patriotic Fund. Surely, it is not the contention of the Government that the income of the Patriotic Fund, and particularly the income from the Soldiers' Effects Fund, is more than sufficient to relieve the distress which must exist in that category of dependants.

If the income is more than sufficient for that purpose—which, again, I cannot credit—should it not go to supplement the income of those suffering from some particular hardship, though they happen to be in receipt of a war pension? After all, the pensioners, I understand, number some 350,000, and it surely cannot be claimed that among these there are no cases of hardship which could be alleviated by a supplementary pension or by a grant from the Patriotic Fund. The Fund was originally intended to provide for those for whom the State makes no provision, and I claim that dependants of those who died while serving—though their deaths were not directly attributable to war service—come within that category.

I further make the claim that the income of the Fund, if it is more than sufficient for that purpose, should be used—and here I speak figuratively—to enable dependants to add a little jam to the bread and margarine which the State pension provides. That, I think, was the intention of the founders and of many others since, who have contributed to this Fund. To throw the door wide open, as the Bill proposes, would almost certainly produce so many claims of equal and comparable hardship as to reduce any grants that can be made to such minute proportions as to be almost useless, and, indeed, farcical.

I am sure that is not the intention of the Government, but, on the other hand —and the right hon. Gentleman may as well know it—it is being said that the Government are afraid to allow any supplement to existing pensions in case that might give a handle to those in the House and outside who maintain that a review of war pensions is overdue and ought to be considered by some independent body, be it a Royal Commission or a Select Committee of this House. That explanation is accepted much more readily—as it appears to be much more reasonable—than the suggestion that the funds are more than sufficient to meet cases of distress among dependants of soldiers and airmen who died on service or within six months of their discharge.

Ought not the hon. and gallant Gentleman to relate this fund to the large number of other ex-Service funds in the country, because there are 800 organisations with funds totalling some £20 million? There is, therefore, sufficient money in such Service funds to relieve any distress that may exist after State benefits have been taken into consideration.

That may be the view of the hon. and gallant Gentleman, but I do not think it is a view which would be widely held throughout the country.

It is a fact.

I do not think the Minister would ask the House to believe that distress of that character among the dependants of soldiers and airmen who died on service or within six months of their discharge is so slight that the Soldiers' Effects Fund is more than sufficient to meet it. In 1948, the income of that Fund amounted to less than £10,000, and I think it is rather a reflection on the administration of the Fund that £2,000 of its income was unspent when, surely, there must have been many eligible to whom a small part of that balance would have been a godsend.

I want to put three or four specific questions to the right hon. Gentleman or to whoever is to reply to this Debate. First, I wish to ask how many grants, or pensions are at present being paid out of the Soldiers' Effects Fund? Also- what is the average amount of these grants and pensions? What total payments were made from the Soldiers' Effects Fund for the year ended 31st December, 1938, the year ended 31st December, 1948, and the year ended 31st December, 1949? Finally, so that the House may be able to judge of this matter, how many widows-and dependants are there who are not in receipt of any public pension under the Pensions Warrants although their husbands, soldiers or airmen, died while serving?

Does the Minister really suggest that no hardship exists among that category of people? It may well be that the area over which it is now possible to spread the benefits of this Fund requires to be redefined, but it seems to me that to throw the door wide open, as suggested in the Bill, is really to make a laughing stock of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation and, indeed, to defeat the real intentions of its founders.

But for the fact that the Bill recognises the Royal Air Force, and provides that where the funds are administered by the Corporation for the Navy and Army they shall be deemed also to he administered for the benefit of the Royal Air Force, I should be inclined to ask the House to, divide against the Bill, to mark its disapproval of Clause 1 (1). But I am advised that it is possible that this Clause can be rectified during the Committee stage. Will the Minister and those associated with him in drafting the Bill be good enough to think again before that stage is reached? If they think some alteration is necessary in the area of application of this Fund, will they reconstruct it within some reasonable limit and so not risk bringing into ridicule this Corporation, which has an honourable record of service and the funds of which have relieved distress in the homes of thousands of those husbands and fathers who deserve so 'well of their country?

11.22 a.m.

I should have thought that any hon. Member would have approved of any extension of the terms of the numerous ex-Service charities in order to include more widows and children, and that there would have been no controversy about this Bill as such. I welcome the Bill. It is a small, innocuous Measure which might well have gone through under other conditions " on the nod ", as some of these things have done in the past. I am very glad that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) has discussed the Bill and the Corporation in some detail because this is the first time, certainly in the last five years, that this House, which is responsible for setting up a large number of these organisations, has had the opportunity to consider their present position and their activities.

This is particularly important, as the hon. and gallant Member said, because the roots of this organisation lie in the Crimean War of 1854. The school was established as a result of funds collected at that time. I have, however, discovered certain important points about the Corporation, its management and its activities from the brief researches I have been able to make. First, few members of the public and few hon. Members know anything of the Corporation or of its work, for reasons which I shall give in a few moments.

The Corporation was founded in 1903 and, therefore, has a record of some 50 years. Its treasurer is the Paymaster-General and its accounts have to be audited by the Treasury. In fact, they are audited by the Comptroller and Auditor-General. Several Government Departments have responsibility in connection with this Corporation. They include the Treasury, the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Pensions.

The Corporation is under an obligation to make a report of its proceedings to His Majesty each year. This is the first important point to which I wish to draw the attention of the House. One copy only of this report is sent to this House marked, " For presentation to His Majesty." It is promptly filed away in the archives and nobody sees it. I have had to make a personal application to the Corporation for one to use in this Debate today. When I went there I was treated with every courtesy and the staff were quite prepared to give me any assistance. That being so, I do not wish to imply that there is anything going on there " under the counter."

I ask the Secretary of State, why this annual report is not drawn up in a similar manner and printed by the Stationery Office for presentation as a proper Parliamentary Paper for the use of hon. Members and for purchase by the public? The public ought to know what this Corporation is doing, what the funds are for and who may be able to obtain some of the money which, as I will show later, is not being distributed.

We have an analogous case in the estimates and accounts of Greenwich Hospital, of which both sides of the House are fully aware. Those accounts are produced in this House annually. Copies are available to hon. Members and they have been the subject of Debate. The Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation is an analogous organisation, administering charitable funds for ex-Service men and also a school in almost precisely the same way as Greenwich Hospital.

The Corporation deals with some 18 funds. Some of them are quite " tuppeny-ha'penny " funds, one being for a matter of £348. The Soldiers' Effects Fund, however, which we are considering today, is over £250,000. Unfortunately, the grants and the expenses of all these funds are not totalled separately, so an exact comparison cannot be made of the cost per pound of money distributed. That is a factor to which we should have access. Even the summaries are not shown.

In paragraph 16 on page 10, a summary of the accounts is given. Total payments, allowances, etc., are set out, so the hon. and gallant Gentleman can obtain some information from that.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I was trying to be brief. I should have thought that this is a matter of some importance in view of the controversial speech by the hon. and gallant Member for Pollok, and also because he said the Opposition were considering dividing the House on the subject. The hon. Member for Blackpool, North (Mr. Low) has drawn attention to page 10. That is just the page that requires an explanation. Under the year 1948, we have the item: " Payments, allowances, expenses of management, etc., £53,000." It lumps the grants and the expenses together and so justifies the point which I have just made, that the grants and expenses are not shown separately, so that it is not possible to find the figure of the cost per pound of grants distributed.

Even the salaries are not shown in these accounts. One has to go to other official publications to find that there is a secretary, who is a major-general, presumably only part-time employed, and who is paid £900 per annum to dole out half guineas to widows and orphans. That, I submit, is out of all proportion. There is also a chief clerk, who is paid £600. What other staff is employed in the way of clerks, and what the offices in Sackville Street off Piccadilly cost, I do not know. I am quite prepared to admit that from what I saw of the room that I went into it was a reasonably modest office. I suggest, however, to the Minister that all these important points should be published in this annual report so that " the dog can see the rabbit," in the same way as they are published in the Greenwich Hospital accounts.

I want to say a few words about the organisation of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation. It is drawn up on a vast nation-wide basis which I at first thought was the organisation of the Territorial Army. It includes lords lieutenant, mayors, provosts and a host of other people. There is a general council and executive, general purposes, finance and school committees. Some of these people apparently come from distant places, such as Devonport and Portsmouth presumably with first-class expenses, to attend meetings and possibly for a night in London. Consequently, every time the council or a committee meets money is frittered away which would otherwise provide more pensions, grants and allowances for the widows and other relatives who are in distress.

The nominal President of this Corporation is the Duke of Gloucester, and the vice-president and chairman of the executive committee is General Sir John Brind. A number of the other officers of the organisation are " brass hats " of high rank and titled people. This vast, high- ranking organisation is like a five-ton hammer that cracks nuts. The investments of over £1 million—which is no small amount of money to be responsible for —remain practically stationary. In other words, the money is likely to be there until the end of the world, unless an atom bomb from this House drops on it. All that the committees are actually concerned with is an income of some £50,000, including some £10,000 for the school. The total sum distributed in 1948 was some £40,000 and the expenses were nearly £4,000, or, according to my reckoning, nearly 2s. for every £1 disposed of. The number of beneficiaries is only 1,621, comprising 1,128 widows, 487 children and 6 other dependants. The average annual grant, omitting the school children, of some £24,000 for 1,560 women and children is only something in the order of £15 per annum—a mere pittance of charity. Truly it may be said that " this mountain labours and gives birth to mice."

Now for a few words about the school. As I said before, it was founded in 1857 at Wandsworth, the borough in which I live. It had to be evacuated at the beginning of the war in 1939. It is now in a large mansion at Bedwell Park near Hatfield. I have in my hand one of their documents, showing a picture of the house. This school can only accommodate about 60 children, and even then it does not provide their education, because the children have to go to the schools in the district. Therefore, all that this massive and expensive building provides is their accommodation. There can be nothing in the argument that these are girls who have been taken away from bad homes, because at holiday times they have to return to their homes, whatever the conditions are. Therefore, this is not even the ordinary type of ex-Service men's orphanage where they take care of the children right throughout the year.

The school is largely uneconomical and it must have expensive building extensions to make it economical. A licence is not likely to be issued for some time, and if I have anything to do with it, it will never get a licence. This school should be closed for this reason: the cost per head from £16,000 expenditure for 60 girls is over £250 per annum, and with Government grants and pensions that would pay for the education of these girls in some of the best boarding schools in the country. I submit that these girls ought not to be segregated as orphans. I am one who suffered from segregation for 3½ years because I was the orphan of an ex-Service man. We have now reached the day when that policy is to be stopped as being wrong in principle from the point of view of the orphans, whether boys or girls, of ex-Service men.

Moreover, these girls are being trained there for domestic service, and although there may well be other training available to them, it is definitely specified in the prospectus that there is training for domestic service. These girls ought not to be in that school. There is sufficient money available to pay for their places in any of the best boarding schools in the country, and they ought to be distributed over the schools of the country and not labelled during the most formative years of their life as orphans. They should be allowed to go as far ahead in this world as it is possible for them to go according to their abilities, even as far as getting into this honourable House, as I have had the good fortune to do and to fight on their behalf. If the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) wishes to say something on this point I shall be happy to give way to him. Apparently he does not wish to say anything; I thought he did.

I have got to cut down my remarks. There is a far bigger story to be told about this racket than I have disclosed so far, and I hope to have other opportunities now that it is appreciated that this House has got some control over this organisation. As a result of this we may find that we are able to control more of these organisations who are holding up to £20 million and some of which are frittering their money away in offices in Pall Mall at the rate of £100,000 per annum, with secretaries' salaries of £1,750—

On a point of Order. Is it in Order, Sir, for the hon. and gallant Member to refer to a charitable institution as a " racket "?

That is apparently the hon. and gallant Member's opinion. I cannot say that it is out of Order.

If the hon. and gallant Member is in any doubt about it, I am prepared to make that statement from any platform in the country, without any question of Parliamentary privilege at all. I say that this organisation is second only to the British Legion as the biggest charitable scandal in the country.

May I interrupt the hon. and gallant Member? Does he not recognise that the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen who names appear on the back of the Bill may have some responsibility for the " racket " of which he complains?

That interruption helps not at all. I explained earlier in my speech what were the various Government Departments which were responsible. The annual report has probably gone into their Departments in the same way as it has come into this House; it has simply been tucked away in the archives. As long as this thing goes on undisturbed there is a nice little cubby hole, with somebody getting £900, somebody else getting £600, these other people having a joy ride up and down the country, and money being frittered away which ought to go to the widows and orphans for whom the hon. and gallant Member for Pollok made such a passionate appeal. I should have thought that I should have had the whole-hearted support of both sides of the House in exposing this racket so that we can get at it and clean it up.

To sum up—

Hear, hear.

I have not taken up much time on this, and I guarantee to the hon. and gallant Member that on another occasion I may go on even longer. I submit to the House that this subject of ex-Service charities and the Soldiers' Effects Fund, with which we are mainly concerned today, must also be considered against the background of the new national position of social security and the large Services Funds. These charities can now pay only 10s. 6d. a week as a sum to be disregarded where State aid is received, and that is one of the reasons why they cannot get rid of their money. If they pay any more than 10s. 6d., a deduction is made from the State funds. I am wholly opposed to that; there should be no misunderstanding on that point.

There are 800 ex-Service organisations with funds totalling £20 million and, provided the individual or his dependants know where to go, there should be no question of any ex-Service man or his relations being in distress at all. We have, for example, the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund with £.51 million and, as a result of the Naval Prize Fund, the Royal Air Force organisations have this year received another £1 million.

Hear, hear.

The hon. and gallant Member says, " Hear, hear." I am in agreement with that, but the more that is done by the State—and more has been done by the Labour Government than by any other previous Government—and the more that is done by the men voluntarily, the less reason there is for cadging from the public for the ex-Serviceman by rattling tin boxes on street corners on Poppy Day and similar days.

rose—

I will give way in a moment. In the Navy we decided a quarter of a century ago to abolish this national and Service disgrace of cadging from the public. We formed our own benevolent trust to which rebates from N.A.A.F.I. go and to which the proceeds from Navy Week go, in the same way as proceeds from Air Force displays go to the Fund of the hon. and gallant Member's Service. There is no reason at all today why there should be any public cadging for the ex-Service man.

I am much obliged to the hon. and gallant Member for giving way. He is inferring that the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund rattles tin boxes—

No.

Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman not aware that the bulk of the money subscribed to the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund is given by those in the Service and by those outside the Service who like to subscribe to that very charitable Fund?

The hon. and gallant Member is supporting my argument. I did not accuse the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund of rattling tin boxes.

Yes; the hon. and gallant Member did say that.

I did not. [HON. MEMBERS: " Hear, hear."] As the hon. and gallant Member wants to dispute that point with me, however, I will say that the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund is guilty of public cadging by advertisements in the Press and wherever they can find an opportunity. However, this is going rather wide of the subject of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation Bill. I want to mention the amounts of the other two Funds and then deal with the Corporation before I conclude.

To sum up.

It is a strange thing that the Opposition want to suppress this information, because it knocks the bottom out of their argument. The Army Benevolent Fund has £42½ million and the Royal Naval Benevolent Trust £½ million. There is something of the order of £13 million available from their own funds to ex-Service men and their relatives if they are in distress. But these comparatively small and " tuppenny ha'penny " funds under the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation should be transferred to the Service funds or other funds. Alternatively, the funds should be transferred to the Minister of Pensions for him to administer as he administers the King's Fund. In either case, great economies would be made and more money would be available for a greater number of widows and orphans.

I support the Bill as a step in the right direction, but I intend to campaign in this House, as far as I am able, by Question and Motion, and outside wherever possible, to have the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation closed down lock, stock and barrel, and its funds amalgamated and transferred elsewhere, because only in this way can the fullest value be obtained from the money which is available for distribution to the widows and dependants. of ex-Service men.

11.47 a.m.

I thought the explanation given by the Secretary of State was a little brief and inadequate. He did not explain many matters upon which the House might have expected some information. We are, however, indebted to the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) for having given us in such an agreeable form this morning, the benefit of his exhaustive and painful researches. I should like also to say, in a most friendly way, how glad I am that his curiosity is so impartially distributed.

There are two groups of money which seem to me to have been dealt with by this Bill and I want to consider certain aspects, both of the administration and of the law, which are affected by what it is proposed to do in this Measure. There is, first of all, the Fund subscribed by the public. As I understand it, this Fund was started after the battle of Alma in 1854, when " The Times " newspaper launched a great public appeal and, I am told, £½ million was raised. I have not been able to check this and it seems a very large sum, especially way back 100 years, before money began to depreciate as it has done so rapidly lately. I am told that the funds were reinforced by public subscription at the time of the Zulu. War and at the time of the Boer War. There may be substantial sums of money which were collected by public subscription and the point is that the money collected by public subscription bears upon it a sense of trust, perhaps a sense of limitation, having regard to the terms under which it was collected.

Next we come to the funds which have accumulated as the result of the diversion of soldiers' effects. When a soldier dies intestate, instead of the money going to the Treasury for whatever general purpose intestate money may be attributed to, this particular money goes to the Soldiers' Effects Fund, and it is limited not by trust or donation or implied trust but by Statute and Warrant. In both cases there is this sense of limitation, and we ought to hesitate before we depart from these limitations and to have the fullest possible information not only as to whom we may be benefiting, however slightly, but also about those from whom we may be taking rights.

The hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East, has made some criticism which indicates that he agrees with my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) that in some cases, perhaps, greater distribution of some of these moneys might have been made and some of the smaller funds might have been wound up and distributed; but amongst whom? Amongst those for whom the money was given or designated by Parliament or amongst the whole population or, at any rate, 10 million or 12 million people? That is an important question.

There is also the question whether the right to obtain some benefit from these funds should exist forever and under conditions which have no connection whatever with war service. It is fairly clear that the original moneys contributed after the Crimea War, the Zulu War and the Boer War, and perhaps later, were contributed by people for helping the widows of persons killed in those wars, or helping soldiers maimed in those wars, or helping cases that immediately arose after those wars. There was no intention on the part of any donor to those funds that the money should be hoarded and kept for future generations for people who die from ordinary old age, however much their need may be.

A situation may therefore arise in which a donation given for the purpose of helping a South African War veteran or a South African War veteran's widow having been hoarded up, may be spent this year to aid the widow of an old gentleman who died at the ripe old age of 80 from old age and no other cause whatever. Whatever our sympathies with that widow, it cannot be stated that this case is sufficiently near to the original intention of the donor to justify the application of the cy-pres doctrine.

In the last 10 years or so, I have in my capacity as Chairman of St. Dunstan's had to consider and take legal opinion and the necessary steps in the matter of widening the objects of the organisation. It was originally set up for the First World War, but when the Second World War seemed imminent it was obviously desirable to apply the knowledge and experience of that organisation to helping young men who might be blinded in the Second World War, and so with proper legal advice and following the proper procedure we widened the objects of St. Dunstan's so that it might look after men blinded in any war.

This is an important point. The Charity Commissioners in so far as one is dealing with the charitable trusts, the London County Council which is the inspecting and registering authority for charities of this kind, the Board of Trade which registers a particular company as being a company limited by guarantee—all these various public authorities have to be consulted and have to consent to a change of objects. If it is a proper change they allow it, but when they allow it they insist upon one very important proviso. The proviso is that money which is previously subscribed for some limited purpose must continue to be used for those objects and so accounted for in separate accounts.

This Bill proposes, as I understand it, to abandon all these safeguards commonly regarded as being an important element of our trust law and practice, and to allow all the funds, however donated, however collected and for whatever limited purpose to be made available for a purpose so wide as to be almost a universal purpose. I question whether this is proper or right. The right hon. Gentleman swept it all aside by saying that everyone would agree that it is right to extend the objects to all ex-Service men's widows of whatever period. I question whether that is really right.

We might say that henceforth the Soldiers' Effects Fund shall be for all ex-Service men's widows, but I do not think that even there that would be a good thing to do. We may think it wise to stick to the qualification that the widows must have become widows in relation to their husbands' service or effects of service, but even if we do apply the future funds to a wide group of millions of widows, I question very much whether it is proper to take away from the more limited classes which may still exist the rights which they have under the old funds contributed for their benefit.

While there are any South African War veterans—and there are many still alive and many still in need, as I know from letters I receive—and while there is any widow of a South African War veteran still in need—and I hear that there are many—while this is so, it cannot be right to allow sums of money which should be used for his or her benefit to be distributed in driblets in millions of cases. I think that in the Committee stage it may well be proper for some of us to consider putting down an Amendment, or a new Clause, which would limit the widening to new funds, so that old funds which bear the stamp of trust, may still remain applicable to those for whom they were collected and for whom the donors and subscribers and Parliament itself intended them to be used.

I do not want to follow the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East, in any controversial manner. I only want to make, as it ought to go on record, a most modest and, I hope, friendly answer to some of the points which he brought into his speech. The £20 million which he says is in the hands of the voluntary, agencies should be distributed, he says, in such a way as to relieve all distress and make a Measure such as this and the action we are proposing to take today quite unnecessary. I think he is in error there. This £20 million represents very largely sums of money paid out by the canteens and N.A.A.F.I. to Army, Navy and Air Force organisations, and if we follow the precedent of the First World War, the Army Benevolent Fund and' these other funds will spread the expenditure over 30 or 40 years in order to see that the kind of need which may arise in 30 or 40 years' time is as surely met as the kind of need that arises now. That is a sensible thing to do.

Therefore, this £20 million must be looked upon as capital or, at any rate, as a fund that would provide an annuity to provide for the needs of a whole generation of ex-Service people and not as money to be divided out for a brief time in order to make a jolly time for all. The hon. and gallant Member is, therefore, misleading people when he talks about this £20 million which could be so readily divided up.

I had not intended interrupting the hon. Member but, as he has set out to correct me, he must get it clear that he is just talking nonsense. He keeps on making this statement publicly that these funds are for a generation. He is absolutely wrong. The Royal Naval Benevolent Trust is intended to be carried on as a permanent trust for all time. Its expenditure is related to its income. Its income is from the N.A.A.F.I. canteen funds, Navy Weeks and so on. When he says that these funds are for a generation he is talking tommy-rot, and the sooner he gets the facts right and stops putting over this misleading information, the better. As I understand it, the R.A.F. Benevolent Fund is also a permanent fund. The Army Benevolent Fund is also quite different. It is collecting money every year and is trying to get its expenditure related to income.

The hon. Member is trying to make a second speech. He has already exhausted his right to address the House by his first speech.

A very unpleasant one.

In so far as any of these funds are contributed to from canteens and the N.A.A.F.I., it is within my knowledge that it was the intention of the trustees to regard these sums of money as funds from which annuities could be drawn, so that the benefits might be spread over a generation of ex-Service men. If £5 million or f10 million have been collected from canteen funds I am sure it would not be the wish of any soldier, sailor or airman that the money should be dissipated within the first few years, when the need may spread over 20 to 40 years. These are indisputable facts. They are so reasonable that one would expect them to be indisputable.

I have one further observation to make. I do not consider that the original appeal made by " The Times " in 1854 for a fund which would enable thoughtful and kindly people who thought they owed a debt to soldiers to contribute was an improper, undignified or bad thing. Nor do I consider that the appeals now made to the generosity of our people, willingly supported by millions of folk and made in a proper and dignified manner and supported from the heart, are a bad thing. It is a good thing that people in every village and town should want by their activities to blaze new trails to add to the services given by the State. I hope that this voluntary spirit will continue throughout the land, because it brings a great deal of extra help materially and spiritually to those in need.

12.5 p.m.

The House is fortunate to have the advantage of a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) on this subject. I think the Secretary of State will agree on reflection that his opening speech was a little short. This is really rather a complicated matter. As the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) has said, it is not easy to get the documents which tell us about it. It is impossible to understand the Bill unless we know a little more about these funds. The hon. and gallant Member made a somewhat curious speech which appeared to be in complete opposition to the Bill. He wanted to abolish this Fund altogether, and therefore I do not see how he can support this Bill.

I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale said on Clause 1, and I am wholly in agreement with the purpose of Clause 2. In order to make quite certain that I have understood Clause 1, I hope the Secretary of State will indicate whether I am right in thinking that it refers to the Soldiers' Effects Fund only and not to any other funds.

indicated assent.

Therefore, any question of extending the purpose of other funds does not arise on Clause 1.

The object of the Bill is to extend the area where assistance can be given. This seems to me to raise some very important questions. First, would it not bring into the area of this Fund an enormous number of people, which will mean increasing the expenses? Secondly, what regulations are to be imposed on the Fund by Royal Warrant as a result of the extension of the purposes of the Fund? I understand that at present the Royal Warrant of 27th August, 1893, which sets out the provisions for the regulation of the Fund, is still in force, and that it requires priority to be given in considering applications in respect of widows and children of soldiers who were killed in action, or died of wounds or of injuries directly traceable to military duties, or of illnesses directly traceable to fatigue, privation and exposure. These are now covered by the Ministry of Pensions, and it would seem odd that a Royal Warrant giving these priority instructions should still be in force.

The Secretary of State will agree, I think, that these instructions are quite unsuitable for the extension of the area of the Fund. Clearly, we have to have new regulations and should be glad if the Government would inform us, before we come to the next stage of this Bill, what regulations they propose to issue on the subject. However well the new regulations may be drafted, the area covered by this Fund will be so wide that the expenses of management are bound to increase. Reference was made by the hon. and gallant Member for East Hull to the total expenditure by way of payments, allowances and benefits by the Royal Patriotic Fund. I have made some calculations which I think he will find it easy to make himself, so I need not weary the House by saying how I made them. I reckon that in 1948 the total expenses were just over £4,000 and the total benefits just under £50,000, which gives a ratio of between 8 and 81 per cent.

Let us get this right. In the first place, the hon. Gentleman has included £16,000 of expenditure for the school. I have given the figures, and if he will look at the top of page 11 he can make the quotation himself instead of my having to make another interruption. Will he read to the House that quotation from the top of page 11?

I am afraid I do not understand the hon. Gentleman's arithmetic. I gave the total expenditure as £4,000, and I do not see how that can include £16,000.

It is £16,000 for the school.

I know of no way of including £16,000 in a total of £4,000—certainly not in any way that I understand—and I think I had better leave it there.

I was about to say that I am not an expert and I do not know what the ordinary expense ratio in a fund of this sort is, but it seems to me that between the total number of people who are able to draw benefits under the Fund and the total amount of money that is paid away from the general Fund each year the ratio of expenditure is rather high. If it is going to get higher, I think the Government ought to consider whether the action they have taken under this Bill is right or wrong.

Secondly, what is the Government's view about the future of all these funds, and in particular the future of the Soldiers' Effects Fund? My hon. Friend the Mem- ber for Morecambe and Lonsdale made a very interesting speech upon the future of funds which started for specific objects. The Soldiers' Effects Fund as a result of its various reorganisations, can be said, I think truthfully, not to have objects which refer to a particular generation, and it would be within a fair definition of its objects to say that it could go on for ever. I hope it is the Government's view that the Soldiers' Effects Fund should go on for ever, but it is important that we should know what their view is. If they mean to allow it to go on for ever, they will presumably see that over a period of years the payments and allowances out of the Fund are not allowed to exceed the total receipts from interest and donations to the Fund; in other words, they will not eat away the capital. I think we should have some indication from the Secretary of State, either now or later, of the Government's views about the future of this important Fund.

When hon. Gentlemen refer to the total size of these funds, they should try to distinguish between the total amount of interest received annually on the funds and the total capital of the funds; and, having distinguished between those two things, they are then entitled to ask whether in respect of some funds it is not right over a period of years to begin using up capital. However, I do not think -that argument applies to the Soldiers' Effects Fund.

My last point concerns the particular class of people with whom, I hope, the Soldiers' Effects Fund is at present designed to deal, and will continue to deal in the future. That class of people includes those widows and children of soldiers who have died due to natural causes, or due at any rate to causes which do not qualify their widows and children for State assistance. It is very important that we should be clear about their position under this extension of the objects set out in Clause 1 (1).

While we are considering them, it is right to recall that the previous Minister of Defence announced on 11th May, 1949, that His Majesty's Government had decided to promote a family pensions' scheme on a contributory basis for all established civil servants, and that, in those circumstances, it became necessary in the interests of the Forces to consider a similar scheme, also contributory in character. On 29th June, 1949, in answer to a Question, the Minister made it clear that this new scheme which he had in mind could not apply to existing widows, and that therefore they had no chance of help from the State.

I wonder whether it is the Government's intention, by extending the objects of the Soldiers' Effects Fund, to provide some help for these people? If it is their intention, we should be told. In any case, I should like to know from the Secretary of State—and I hope this is not out of Order—when we are to be given details of these two contributory pensions' schemes, the decision to set up which was announced nearly a year ago. I think the House should be told what progress has been made, and what future plans there are with schemes such as this, which are really very relevant to the consideration of the general subject before the House today.

Before resuming my seat, I should like to say once again that I think this is a most important Bill for the House thoroughly to consider. Whether we disagree or not—and I disagree very much with what the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East, has said, it is a very good thing that we have had sufficient time, in a reasonably calm atmosphere, to discuss this important matter this morning. I am sure that when we consider this matter even further, on later stages of the Bill, we shall require to give it even closer consideration, and if we are to give it that closer consideration we must have much more information about the facts and about the intentions of the Government. After all, the Government have available for themselves information and experience which we have not, and we must have their views about these funds, and in particular about the Soldiers' Effects Fund.

12.18 p.m.

I shall not detain the House for more than a few minutes in making the two observations I desire to put before the House. First, in my experience over the last four or five years of investigating claims for pensioners, disabled and otherwise, I have been struck by the extraordinary lack of knowledge that there is throughout the country about the various funds which are or might be available to them for their assistance.

Hear. hear.

I think that more information must be given to the House and the public. The only sentence of the speech of the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) with which I agreed was the need to make these various funds more widely known to the people who may wish to call on them. I agree with him there, and I wish to reinforce that point.

Second, and last, I wish fully to endorse what my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) said about the importance of not lightly breaking trusts. We have already had in this House, during the last Parliament, an instance where trusts were broken in the case of the National Health Service, by a particular Minister putting voluntary hospitals, and other hospitals of that sort, under public control, and the confiscation of funds left for specific purposes by people now deceased. I think we must examine this Bill particularly with a view to seeing to what extent trusts made for specific purposes are to be altered or swept away if the Bill is carried through as it stands.

I am right against what the hon. and gallant Member for Hull, East, said about closing the Patriotic Fund, " lock, stock and barrel," and sweeping it away, combining it with other funds, and putting it under the control of a Minister to use as he thinks best. That would be entirely contrary to the wishes of the administrators and of those who have contributed towards the various funds administered by the Corporation. When the time comes to examine the Bill more closely in Committee, some limitation must, in my opinion, be set to those who can receive benefits under Clause 1.

12.21 p.m.

It always seems to me that, although he may sometimes use language which I would not use, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey) does a very useful job in drawing the attention of the House to the administration of these various funds. We have heard from two hon. Members opposite about the importance of keeping trust. One of the things which should be borne in mind is that one is not keeping trust if he administers a trust for the benefit of the administrators instead of for the benefit of the beneficiaries.

Unless a very jealous eye is kept upon the administration of these ancient funds, that is what tends to happen. People get slack, the matter becomes routine, they are friendly in the best sense of the word with the various people who are running the fund, and the question is asked, " Why should not poor old So and So's screw go up a bit? " Funds of this sort should have a spotlight upon them. Parliament does a useful job in maintaining that spotlight, and it is always useful to have a Member like my hon. and gallant Friend, who is fearless and industrious in performing that function.

One point which greatly impressed me was what my hon. and gallant Friend told us about the school. We have not heard the other side of the story—no one has mentioned it—but the cost per head, something over £250 on the figures which we have been given, for a school which does not provide education but is merely a boarding establishment, is, upon the face of it, scandalous. If that is so, none of us will doubt that better service would be given to the beneficiaries by sending them, as could be done for this price, to the best boarding schools of the country rather than by maintaining a boarding establishment which is not really fit to be dignified with the name of school since it does not provide education at this cost. I hope that we shall hear something about this from my right hon. Friend.

12.25 p.m.

If I may have the leave of the House to reply, I would say that the Debate has largely turned on the provisions of Clause 1 (1). The hon. and gallant Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) voiced the general feeling, I think, on his side of the House that this Clause and subsection were widening too much the provisions of the Bill. We can, of course, consider that in detail on the Committee stage. At this stage I would only point out that in widening the ranks of the beneficiaries who come under the aegis of the Fund, we are of course doing nothing to prevent the Fund, if it so prefers, increasing the benefits to its existing beneficiaries. We are simply giving them a choice.

I should like to contradict the suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member that we were seeking to widen the choice of the Fund to avoid the Fund giving increased benefits to war widows and thus revealing the fact that their pensions were inadequate. The Bill does not prevent the Fund from doing that. I should have thought that the administrators would usually hesitate to do that but, after all, the pension of a war widow of a private soldier is already 9s. a week higher than the pension of widows under the Insurance Acts. Nevertheless, the Royal Patriotic Fund, either now or after the Bill has become an Act, would be perfectly within its rights and terms of reference to make a grant or, indeed, give a pension, if it wished to do so, to such a widow.

The widows whom we have in mind in this extension of the powers of the administration of the Fund are of a different class—they are quite a small class but they do exist—who, as it were, fall between two stools: widows whose husbands died more than six months after their service and who did not die of war service injuries and are, therefore, ineligible for war pensions under the Royal Warrant. The vast majority of such widows receive pensions under the Insurance Acts, but I think that there are a small number who are not eligible under either the Warrant or the Acts. I should have thought that it was Service widows of that type for whom the provisions of the Fund were very suitable. The National Assistance Board can, of course, help them, but we felt that the provisions of the Bill should enable the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation to help them. That purpose is achieved by subsection (1).

Could the right hon. Gentleman consider, before we come to the Committee stage, whether that could not be done without making the Bill as wide as it is?

I have no doubt that that purpose could be achieved without going as wide as this. Nevertheless, I think that, as at present advised, we can consider that on the whole it is wise to go too wide.

I think I can reassure the hon. and gallant Member that there would be no question about " making a laughing stock of the Corporation " because, after all, it is by their wish and on their advice that we have made these proposals for this undoubtedly wide discretion. If we have confidence in their administration, this type of fairly wide concession should be given.

If the hon. and gallant Member would like me to do so now, I will answer as far as possible his specific questions; but this could, of course, be done in Committee. His first question asked how many widows and dependants there are who are not receiving a public pension under the Royal Warrant and whose husbands were soldiers or airmen who died while serving. Unfortunately, it seems impossible to get any accurate number, but I will try to give the hon. and gallant Member any information which there is on that point. He then asked how many continuing grants or pensions were at present being paid from the Soldiers' Effects Fund. There are weekly allowances to 61 widows and 336 children. The hon. and gallant Member wished to know the average amount of each of such grants and pensions. The average of grants is £10 18s. and the average of weekly allowances is, for widows, £22 4s.—I am giving the figures on an annual basis—and, for children, £9.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman next wanted to know the total expenditure from the Soldiers' Effects Fund in the three years ending 1949-50. The answer is: in 1947-48, £7,528 6s. ld.; in 194849, £7,892 19s. 9d.; in 1949-50, £8,399 10s. 6d. His fifth question was: What is the amount now standing to the credit of the Soldiers' Effects Fund? The answer is £283,496 9s. 2d. as at 31st December, 1949.

I am grateful for the information which the right hon. Gentleman is giving, but I think he must be quoting from a document and not answering the questions I asked him. The questions which he has answered were, in parts, not the questions which I asked, but I am grateful for the information.

I agree that I did not take down accurately the hon. and gallant Gentleman's words, but I think that the information covers the questions which he asked. I understood the informa- tion to be that which he and the House wished to have on the subject. It goes a little further than that for which he asked, but as he criticised me for giving too little information to begin with, I was giving him a little more on this occasion than that for which he asked.

From where did the right hon. Gentleman get the information?

The information comes from my Department, of course. If the hon. and gallant Member thinks that I carry these figures in my head, he is incorrect.

The information is in published documents.

The information can certainly be obtained, but there is no reason why it should not be given to the House.

The question of how wide the Bill goes can be considered in Committee, but I should have thought that it was an advantage to go wide. I think it was the hon. and gallant Member also who felt that we were going much too wide in the sense that we were bringing in all widows and all dependants of the whole population. That is not the case. We are restricting it to the widows and dependants of Service men. We are surely well within the intentions of this Fund in doing that.

Would the right hon. Gentleman be a little more specific on that point? He talks about Service men. Does he mean anyone who has at any time served in one of the Armed Forces?

Certainly, someone who has served in one of the Services and has left a widow or dependant. Surely such a widow or dependant is a Service widow or dependant, unless the definition is to be restricted to the widows or dependants of those who had served on Regular engagements. Surely there is no desire that that should be so.

Would that apply to National Service men in future?

I take it so. It would be invidious to make a distinction between them and others.

I wish to refer to an important point in regard to which the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) was under a quite natural misapprehension. There is no doubt that in Clause 1 of the Bill we are dealing not with the funds of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation as a whole but with the Soldiers' Effects Fund. Therefore, there is no question of breach of trust of or diverting funds which were collected by private subscriptions for one purpose and applying them to another purpose. That could arise if we were dealing with the funds of the Corporation as a whole, but we are here dealing with a fund within a Fund.

Have no donations or subscriptions been received by the Soldiers' Effects Fund?

I think not, although I should like notice of that point to enable me to be certain about my reply. It is an important point, but it does not really arise.

I now turn to points of quite another character which were raised by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull, East (Commander Pursey). He feels that charitable bodies of the type of which the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation is an example have become anachronistic. In principle, I have a certain sympathy with that point of view. I think that in general—not necessarily the body which we are now discussing—these very numerable charitable bodies, many of which have served excellent purposes, and many of which I am sure still do so, require looking at in the considerably changed social conditions of today to see whether, quite properly, within the powers of this House, their functions and administration should be reviewed.

The point which my hon. and gallant Friend made forcibly upon the subject of the school is one of which this House must take some account because these matters are within our purview. It may be that because of changed social conditions in the country what has been a perfectly good activity in the past ceases to be so. I agreed with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) when he said that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Hull, East, does good service in calling our attention to these points.

And bad.

The hon. and gallant Member is entitled to his opinion on the matter and we are entitled to ours. I repeat that I am sure my hon. and gallant Friend does good service in calling attention to these matters. I really cannot see how the hon. and gallant Member for Macclesfield (Air-Commodore Harvey) can think it is a bad service to the House to draw our attention to these matters.

What I said was, " And bad."

The Government have already had this matter under consideration, and, as the House knows, we have set up a committee under Lord Nathan. I should like to remind the House that the terms of reference of that Commitee are:

" to consider and report on the changes in the law and practice, except with regard as taxation, relating to charitable trusts in England and Wales which would be necessary to enable the maximum benefit to the community to be derived from them.

It may well be that without casting any reflection whatever upon the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation, that committee of inqury might like to look at its activities in the changed social conditions of today. This Debate may have served a useful purpose in directing the attention of that committee of inquiry to this matter.

Today, we have to decide only one thing, which is the principle of whether the changes, or some such changes as are.in this Bill, in the work of the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation are desirable or not. I think there is complete agreement in the House that the retrospective change in Clause 2 is desirable and necessary. I think, also, that there is very general agreement that some change in the nature of Clause 1 (1) is necessary. We can, of course, look at the exact nature of the change during the Committee stage.

After we have passed this Bill, whether it is amended or not, we shall have to make regulations which will, no doubt, be of a restrictive character. During the Committee stage we can give some account of what those regulations will be. Quite frankly, they are being discussed, as I think they should be, with the Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation at this moment, and for that reason I am not prepared to describe them today. But during the Committee stage we must give the Committee at any rate an indication of the nature of those regulations which will be more restrictive than the Bill. Our conception is of rather wide words in the Bill and then more restrictive regulations.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. R. J. Taylor.]

Committee upon Monday next.

Merchant Shipping Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

12.43 p.m.

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

This is the third occasion on which I have been privileged to submit to the House legislation designed to improve standards generally within our Merchant Navy. I may recall for a moment that the first Shipping Act of the last Parliament, in 1948, gave effect to certain decisions of the International Maritime Labour Conventions and raised the standard of crew accommodation. Then in 1949 there was the Merchant Shipping (Safety at Sea) Convention, which has still to be ratified by number of countries, but in which the United Kingdom took the lead, for the purpose of advancing various safety measures at sea. The Measure the Second Reading of which I am now moving is designed to improve the standard of accommodation in the fishing fleet of this country.

I would make this obvious point, that in the improvement of standards it does not always rest with the Government of the day to take the initiative. More often than not individual shipowners, by improved designs, lift the standard of accommodation or equipment beyond the legislative standard enforced at the time; and then subsequently Parliament makes that standard general throughout the industry. Since the original Merchant Shipping Acts were passed, considerable changes have taken place. The fishing vessel of today is no longer just a small inshore drifter fishing round our coasts. The term " fishing vessel " today covers boats of 700 gross tons or more, and they voyage very far afield indeed. They represent a considerable source of supply of the food requirements of this country. Over a million tons of fish are brought to our markets by our fishing fleet. There are 14,500 vessels involved and about 50,000 men.

I mention that figure of manpower, of personnel, to emphasise that this is not a small and negligible thing which we are discussing today. It covers a considerable body of persons. I do not pretend for a moment that the benefits of this Measure will be felt immediately in the fishing industry of this country. Obviously, if we propose to change the standard it is not practicable to apply the new standard to existing vessels, because they have been built according to the law in the past; but the new standard will apply to all new construction in the shipyards of this country, and I have made provision that it will apply also in the event of any United Kingdom owner having any fishing vessel built in a foreign yard. There is not much of that type of construction, but nevertheless it is covered in the Bill, so that when the vessels come on to the United Kingdom register they will be covered by this new standard.

The Bill follows the lines of previous shipping legislation in that when a fishing vessel comes in for substantial reconstruction or repair, the new general standard would apply. The opportunity has been taken in this Bill to deal with certain war-time regulations which were applied to the merchant fleet and which have generally been found to be beneficial. In previous Measures I have had the good fortune to receive support from all quarters of the House, and I hope that that will be the case on this occasion. I have secured as great a measure of agreement as possible between both sides of the industry.

Would the Minister elaborate the point he made about vessels coming for overhaul and being brought up to the new standard? Assuming that the layout and construction of the vessel does not permit it to come up to that standard, are there limitations?

The experience of the surveyors in my Department is adequate in that respect and I have never known any real difficulty to occur. I think we can leave it to the practical experience of the surveyors and the process of consultation which goes on between them and both sides of the shipping industry. Obviously the new standard would not be applied to any vessel where the physical characteristics were not capable of embodying it. It is always difficult for a Minister to give complete assurances with regard to the future, but we have to bear in mind that there is a long history of experience and tradition behind the Department and generally matters work out to the satisfaction of the industry and the Ministry.

Clause 1 of the Bill, which must be taken in conjunction with the First Schedule, gives power to make regulations governing the crew accommodation in fishing boats. I would emphasise that it is not my desire to give the impression that there has been no improvement in the design and standard of fishing vessels over the last 50 years. From time to time, in consultation with the industry, my Department has advanced the standard. The present instructions to surveyors, established as late as 1937, represented a considerable advance. Nevertheless, in view of the changing design and the ever-growing size of the fishing fleet, this Bill is introduced in an effort to bring the conditions more into line with those of the Merchant Navy.

Clause 2 is a provision which is at present covered by Regulation 45AA of the Defence (General) Regulations. That Regulation continues in force until December of this year under the Supplies and Services Act. I propose to make it permanent legislation, and I am confident that, when its purpose is explained, there will be no objection. The Clause covers the engagement and discharge of crews. It provides that, in the case of home trade ships of 200 tons or more, the crews are to be signed on and off before the superintendent of the Mercantile Marine Office.

It is interesting to note that it is just a century ago, at about the same time of the year, that Parliament created the mercantile marine offices, and now we propose to extend the powers of the superintendents. This enables me, on the centenary of the establishment of this branch of the Merchant Service, to offer my congratulations on the splendid work which has been done during the last 100 years. The purpose of the Regulation is to ensure that a superintendent is present when a seaman signs an agreement between the master and the seaman. The superintendent has to make sure that the agreement is in accordance with the law. It is his responsibility to see that the seaman understands what he is signing and that all other requirements are fulfilled.

This provision is useful under the established service scheme which has been created by both sides of the industry to deal with post-war conditions. The scheme is probably one of the best examples of industrial negotiation which we have witnessed in this country since the end of the war. Both sides have helped to build up the scheme, which is based on war-time experience. As far as possible, it ensures to seamen regularity of employment. Before the war, it was the practice for the superintendent to be in attendance and to supervise the engagement and discharge of seamen on foreign-going vessels.

However, that was not the practice in ships of the home trade which sail around our shores. During the war, it was necessary for all seamen to be in the reserve pool. It was essential, because all seamen had to be available for whatever services were required during the war. The Ministry had to know exactly where the men could be found. Both sides of the industry have agreed that it is desirable for this practice to be continued in peace time. So far, it has been continued under the Defence (General) Regulations. If the House agrees with this Clause, then Regulation 45AA can disappear.

Clause 3 deals with naval courts. The powers proposed are by no means far-reaching. It is not very often that a naval court is required in peace time but, to provide for any eventuality, we propose to keep them in being and at the same time to give wider discretionary powers to the naval officer. Here again, this is a result of experience gained during the war which has commended itself to all engaged in the industry, and this Clause merely provides for the practice to be continued in peace time. Defence Regulation 48B will disappear, and this provision will take its place. I do not want to exaggerate its importance, because it is very seldom that these courts are used in peace time; but, as they may be needed, it is desirable to meet this general request based on experience.

Clause 4 removes and anomaly. When fishing vessels were, relatively speaking, much smaller than they are today, some of our more venturesome and courageous skippers—possibly in search not only of adventure, but of larger catches and better remuneration—used to go as far afield as Newfoundland. In the circumstances, they had to hold a foreign-going certificate of competency. The type and design of these vessels have changed, and it is now common for them to journey far afield. It is more or less a routine operation for a large section of the fishing fleet. We propose to adjust the circumstances and to remove the anomaly. Clause 5 is merely the legal form for dealing with this type of legislation when, as in the case of the Merchant Shipping Acts, we use the terms " summary jurisdiction " and " summary conviction " as they apply to Northern Ireland. I am informed that the form adopted in this Clause is the common one.

I do not know whether there is any further information which I need give to the House at this stage. I have outlined the general purpose of the Bill. It is simple and beneficial. In presenting, for what I am certain will be general commendation, a Bill which seeks to improve the peace-time conditions of the fishing fleet, we are honouring a deep debt. By this steady process of agreement between both sides of the industry, and by the implementation of the new standards by legislation in the House of Commons, we are honouring the debt we owe to our Merchant Navy, in all its branches, for the great work performed during the war and for the great work which equally they are discharging in our peace-time difficulties.

If we take the Service as a whole, during the war 180,000 persons generally were running the Merchant Navy of this country in all its aspects. As I have indicated, the fishing industry is generally comprised of about 50,000 personnel, so they are certainly a considerable proportion of the total number of men who are responsible for conducting the Merchant Navy in war and peace. Out of that figure of 180,000 who served in the war, the casualties amounted to 32,000. I do not know how widely it is appreciated that the rate of casualties in the Merchant Navy was higher than that of the casualties in the Fighting Services of this country, and I think that on these occasions hon. Members in all parts of the House might very well remind themselves of these circumstances, and, through our Debates here, refresh the memory of the nation as a whole.

I turn again, as I had the opportunity of doing the other day when giving certain information to the House, to contemplate the contribution which this industry as a whole is making at the present moment in assisting the nation to fight its way out of its post-war difficulties. I want again to refer to the fact that, whereas in 1936 the net earnings of the shipping industry were £24 million, it is estimated that the net earnings of the industry in 1948 were £100 million, and therefore, allowing for the depreciated value of currencies between that period and the present time, it is quite clear that the Merchant Navy as a whole is not only making the same contribution to the economic prosperity of this country as it did before the war, but is making one that is still greater. When we look at the tonnage of the Merchant Navy, we find that before the war it was 16.8 million gross tons. We lost over 11 million tons during the war, and yet the present tonnage of the Merchant Navy is 16.3 million gross tons. Here We see a Service fighting back gallantly after the war, just as it assisted the nation in its fight during the war.

Therefore, I must say that, of all the opportunities that I have had of promoting legislation in this House, much of it very controversial, nothing has given me greater pleasure than to be responsible for a Measure of this description, which will receive general approval and which I think interprets the desire of the nation to honour the services which we have received from the Merchant Navy in all its branches during the war, and assist it to establish permanent conditions of goodwill and prosperity during its peacetime affairs.

Before my right hon. Friend sits down, and with the permission of the hon. and gallant Gentlemen opposite, may we get one point quite clear? I think the Minister said that the casualties in the Merchant Navy during the war were 32,000. If my memory is correct, I think it is true to say that the fatal casualties were 30,000, and, if they were 30,000, quite clearly the total casualties must have been very much greater than the 32,000 which the Minister gave. I thick that ought to be put right, before it goes out to the public Press.

I was really referring to fatal casualties.

1.5 p.m.

I am quite certain that the entire House will agree that the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Transport is to be congratulated on his great good fortune, this being the third occasion on which he has introduced to the House a Bill which improves the conditions of those who serve us so well in the Merchant Navy. Further than that, I most warmly agree with him when he says that we should take every opportunity to remind this House and the country of the great services which the Merchant Navy renders to our country, both in war and peace.

This Bill, I am quite certain, will be welcomed by the House, because it provides for one category of seafarers the possibility of greater comfort and more hygienic living conditions, and, for another category, an improved status and the maintenance of safeguards introduced during the war, since found to be beneficent in peace and therefore to be continued. It also provides for all seafarers one whom I might call a referee, whose duty it will be to review any punishment or sentence awarded by a naval court. My feeling is that anything which tends to improve the conditions, safeguard the position or raise the status of those who go down to the sea in ships is not only welcomed by the House but also by the entire nation, for there is certainly no other section of the community which deserves better of the country, nor any section on which the safety, welfare and prosperity of our country more greatly depend.

I welcome this Bill from another point of view. For very many years now, the shipping industry has been an example to all industries in that it has succeeded over a long period of years in solving its many problems, many of them problems of the deepest human complexity, by the process of reason, and it seems to me that the industry recognises the other man's point of view, understands his troubles and difficulties, desires to see fair play and is determined to keep abreast of the times, as the Minister himself said when paying his tribute to it. In that connection, this Bill is no exception. Both sides of the industry are in complete agreement, and in that respect I am quite sure that this House will not lag behind.

If I might be reminiscent for a moment, I would say that at one period of my life I was under the necessity of going to sea from time to time in fishing craft. I can assure the House that, as my turn of duty approached, I studied the weather forecast with great anxiety, because I found that fishing craft, even in conditions of moderate weather, were very lively indeed, and on many occasions much too lively for my complete comfort. I have never been able to understand how, in the conditions which I found in these buoyant ships, so light that they were bouncing about all over the place, fishermen were able to keep their feet and work their gear at the same time. That is a mystery which I have never solved, but, apart from the particular discomfort which the public associate with the sea and the difficulties to which I have alluded, fishermen have to contend with many things—cold, wet, long hours of toil, no settled hours of rest, and the rest often interrupted.

I do not think it requires much imagination to picture the discomfort and danger which these men suffer and also overcome. We hear very little about them, because they do not speak about their conditions very much or very often. I do not think, either, that it takes a very lively imagination to appreciate just how welcome a spell below in the wonderful " fug " of the cabin must be to them. I found the quarters rather cramped, and there was certainly no room for anything beyond standing up and turning about. Judged by shoregoing standards, the whole thing was quite inadequate.

The Minister has told us that considerable advancements in the comfort and the quarters of the crews are constantly being made, and of that fact I think we are all aware. The thing that stands out most in my memory is the comfort which one derived from the warm atmosphere of the cabin and also the food. I say to hon. Members of this House that none of them has really tasted fish unless he has tasted it in the cabin of one of our fishing vessels. To eat it in those conditions would give hon. Members a different opinion from that which they may hold now about that article of food. These two things—the warmth of the cabin and the good food—induced in me a very pleasant, drowsy and relaxed feeling so that I very speedily forgot the conditions which existed on deck, which I had left a few minutes before and to which I would shortly be called upon to return.

Is the hon. and gallant Gentleman sure it was the food?

If the provisions of Clause 1, are going to bring more comfort and a greater sense of well-being to our fishermen, then no one can possibly deny that those things are richly deserved and well earned.

I wish to utter one word of warning before I pass on, and that is to say that we must always have a care—and here I am not being niggling—of the cost of these improvements. After all, it would be a very ill service to our fishing population if we were to provide them with comfortable quarters at the expense of their job. After all, a cabin is no good to them if, through providing it, the addition to the cost lays up the boat and compels the men to kick their heels ashore and to queue up at the employment exchange or elsewhere. That is a danger at this time when costs are rising so prodigiously, and it makes it essential that in this and other matters we should keep a sense of proportion.

One thing is called for, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will consider it before we come to the Committee stage of the Bill. I know it does not often happen, but if there is a difference of opinion between the owner and the surveyor in regard to compliance with the regulations, then there should be a right of appeal to some tribunal. That is a matter—I am advising the right hon. Gentleman of it now—which we intend to take up on the Committee stage, and, as I have said, we shall be glad if he will give it his consideration before that stage is reached.

The Bill recognises that the time has now come to give to the men employed in the home shipping trade that same measure of continuity of employment and that same machinery of engagement and discharge and other protections as have been enjoyed by those men who " go foreign." As the right hon. Gentleman told us, while these benefits have been enjoyed by the home trade for many years now, under Defence Regulations, it is right that they should become a permanent feature of our merchant shipping code.

Apart from these matters, the Bill allows for a review of any punishments which may be meted out by naval courts. That, of course, just makes permanent once again something which has been in being under Defence Regulations for a considerable time, and I cannot think that anybody can take any exception to it. The Bill undoubtedly improves the existing law. The provisions of the Bill are supported by both sides of the industry, and accordingly we on these benches, for whom I have the honour to speak today, trust that the Bill will receive its Second Reading, and will speedily pass through all its remaining stages until it finds its place on the Statute Book.

1.15 p.m.

As the Minister has truly said, this is the third of a series of Merchant Shipping Bills presented to this House since 1945. I agree with the hon. and gallant Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) that my right hon. Friend has every reason to be proud of his success in this sphere. I welcome the Bill as another step along the weary road which has been trodden by seamen since the days described by Macaulay when he said there were gentlemen and there were seamen in the Navy of Charles II, but the seamen were not gentlemen and the gentlemen were not seamen, or since Dr. Johnson said:

" No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into gaol, for being in a ship is being in gaol, with a chance of being drowned. A man in gaol has more room, better food, and commonly better company."

Emphatically that is not so today thanks, very largely, to the work of the trade unions and also to the work of this Government.

Will not the hon. and learned Gentleman extend his generosity to the whole industry for, I think, it is due to the work of the whole industry

I do not wish to make a party matter of this, but I am sure the hon. and gallant Gentleman will not withhold his meed of praise from the Transport Union and the National Union of Seamen which have done so much to ameliorate the conditions of workers at sea.

This is the latest of a series of beneficial Bills which have been introduced by this Government. I am sure the hon. and gallant Gentleman will agree that, in the past, the lot of the seaman has been a very unhappy one. He has had to struggle for every ameliorating measure he has got. His conditions at sea have not kept pace with the conditions of workers on shore. In the last 100 years there have been a number of factory and health Acts which have improved the conditions of the workers on shore, but nothing comparable has been done for the workers afloat except during the last few years. It is remarkable, but perhaps not surprising, that merchant shipping—one of the most important features of our national life—should have been treated in this way since the earliest Navigation Acts of 1660 until recently.

In 1860, 200 years later, a distinguished judge, Vice-Chancellor Wood, said:

" There are two points of public policy which may be suggested in these Acts relating to shipping: the one, a policy regarding the interests of the nation at large; … the other being similar to that which gave rise tp the Acts for the registration of titles to land, the object being to determine what should be the proper evidence of title in those who deal with the property in question."

Nothing was said about the rights of the crew. They had to be fought for, and were fought for, and, thank:: to the battle put up by them and their representatives, the series of Shipping Acts which have been passed during the last. 100 years have greatly improved their conditions. In 1854, the General Merchant Shipping Act was passed, and after that Act came a series of other Acts which culminated in the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894—a gigantic Act, comprising 748 Sections, which consolidated the law with regard to merchant shipping.

Do I understand that what the hon. and learned Gentleman is saying is that the conditions on board the " Queen Mary " are different and rather better than those which existed on the " Mayflower "?

If the hon. and gallant Gentleman desires to put it in that extreme way, that is indeed what I am saying. Furthermore, I am saying that the introduction of a Bill of this kind provides an occasion on which one may legitimately review the legislative progress which has been made. I am glad the hon. and gallant Gentleman accords his support to this Bill; I hope every hon. Member will do that.

It does five very important things. It improves the new accommodation in merchant shipping boats, and I am sure that no hon. Member or any member of the public would wish to withhold better accommodation to the men in the merchant fleet at sea. It improves the law governing agreements with the crews of foreign going ships. This is also a change and an improvement which is badly needed. The earlier law was open to grave abuse. Speaking of the corresponding Section of the Act of 1854, a learned judge, Mr. Justice Chitty, said:

" The mischief which this part of the Act is intended to remedy was the risk of the men being carried out to sea by some captain, who was minded to take them a long distance to some foreign country, when they really had not come to a definite agreement that they should sail upon such a voyage."

Section 115 of the Act of 1894 took that a step further. Now we have paragraph 2 of the Second Schedule of this Bill which carries it further still.

I am sure that hon. Members opposite will also agree that the provision in the Bill with regard to punishments imposed by naval courts, under Part 4 of the 1894 Act, providing for review by a senior naval or consular officer is a big improvement. I should have thought that it was almost axiomatic that no court is so infallible that there should be no means of appeal from it. That is what is dealt with by this particular provision of the Bill.

There is one thing I should like to see included in the Bill. Perhaps it could come fairly into the Second Schedule. There is no adequate provision in the Bill regarding the payment of crews. Sometimes there are irregularities in the paying off of crews, and these should be guarded against. I cannot put this danger to be guarded against more succinctly than it was put in a letter which I have received from the Aberdeen branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union, who know a great deal about these things. This is what they say:

" There is no provision for the crews of fishing boats to be paid off before the Superintendent. Most offices provide a room for the crews to wait in while their pay is being made up; but one office, in particular, keep men hanging about outside, and when, finally, they do settle it is usually in a coal shed or a net store and very often in a pub. This office is notorious for its cavalier treatment of fishermen and it would be a good thing if the crews of fishing vessels were to be paid in the presence of the Superintendent.

This is a grievance, and it should be remedied. I hope the Minister will give some attention to it when the Bill comes to its Committee stage. Apart from that, I join with other hon. Members in welcoming this Bill as a great improvement in the law relating to merchant shipping. I hope it will be speedily passed into law.

1.24 p.m.

I do not intend to weary the House with Volume 2 of the history of the Merchant Service because I think the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes) has dealt with it fairly fully. I want to confine my remarks to what is or is not in the Bill, and to add my welcome to the Bill, which, clearly, will improve conditions for those who go to sea, especially in fishing trawlers. I had two years in Grimsby during the war. There, I met many fishermen and got to know them as very gallant, hard working and honourable men. They brought to us supplies of fish which we so sorely needed during the war. When their trawlers were taken away from them and transferred to the White Ensign, they continued to fight for us, either by sweeping mines or by escorting convoys.

We should, therefore, do everything to encourage these men, with their great record in the past, to continue to bring fish to this country. The fish is not only needed for the people but also a great deal more fish is needed in the form of fish meal for feeding pigs. If improved conditions mean a greater incentive to bring in the fish we want, then this Bill is a step in the right direction. I should like the Minister to tell us whether the Bill applies to foreigners, as he did not mention it in his speech. It appears from the Clauses that it does not apply, but the Schedule mentions something about foreigners having a certificate to the effect that they are carrying out the same regulations as are carried out by our own vessels. But it is not clear to me, and I should like the Minister to make it clear to the House.

It is extremely unfair if certain regulations and conditions are laid down and our ships have to comply with them while their competitors, who land large quantities of fish in this country, do not have to comply. The Minister mentioned that over one million tons of fish were landed every year in this country. I believe very nearly a quarter of that amount is landed by trawlers belonging to Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and even Poland and the Netherlands. If that is the case it is extremely important that these foreign vessels should have to comply with these regulations.

I know that the British trawling industry has been hit already by the International Convention on Overfishing, to which many of the countries I have mentioned agreed. But some of them have not ratified the Convention and they are still being allowed to land fish in this country. I hope the Minister will tell us that he intends that any foreign trawlers landing fish in this country will have to observe the same regulations as our own vessels.

Clause 2 of the Bill affects the coasting trade in relation to the engagement and discharge of crews. The Minister told us that this is covered at the moment by Defence Regulations which, I understand, expire in December of this year. If these are allowed to expire we shall have to go back to pre-war conditions. If this Bill becomes law, then the Shipping Federation can continue to operate the Merchant Navy reserve pool.

I have been in touch with representatives of a large number of coasting colliers. They authorised me to say that they welcome the continuation of this pool. They go so far as to say that if it should be discontinued, it would throw the industry into chaos. Therefore, the Minister can feel he has the support of coastal colliers behind him. It enables them to "stagger" the six-monthly articles that ships take out and, therefore, makes the signing of crews much easier.

The Explanatory Memorandum to this Bill states that Regulations are to be made after consultation with representative organisations of the fishing industry. That is as it should be, but when one turns to the Bill one finds that in Clause 1 (1) it states that these consultations are to be made

"with such organisation or organisations as appear to him"—

that is, the Minister—

to be representative …"

It may be that that is usual in Bills of this nature but, after all, there are many societies or organisations which may claim to be representative of the fishing industry. Does this mean that they have no way of stating their claims and that the Minister does as he likes? Is there no arbitration or no appeal and is it left to the Minister himself? I should be glad if the Minister would give us some reassurance on this subject.

My last point relates to the First Schedule, paragraph 5, which says that whenever a complaint about accommodation is made, presumably by one of the crew, a surveyor of ships shall carry out an inspection. Later, it says that the surveyor who carries out the inspection shall have his fees paid. Presumably that means that the owner of the vessel has to pay the surveyor's fees. It may be rather bad luck for the owner if an unjustifiable complaint is made by one of the crew which leads to a surveyor being called in and then the owner has to foot the bill. I suggest that that provision might be improved by inserting some such words as "if the surveyor considers it to be a justifiable complaint."

I would like also to reinforce what my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) said about an appeal against decisions. Having drawn the Minister's attention to some points which I hope he will consider before the Committee stage, I should like to say once more that I personally regard this as a very good Bill which will help to maintain our tradition and reputation as the greatest seafaring nation in the world.

1.32 p.m.

It is a matter of some gratification to those of us who represent fishing areas and seaside towns to know that the subject of the sea has come up for discussion in this House on two successive days. I shall not detain the House long, except to say that I could not resist the opportunity of adding my commendation to this Bill and of congratulating the Minister on the way he presented it. I was very sorry when we heard yesterday that the hon. Member for East Aberdeenshire (Mr. Boothby) had killed the Sea Fish Industry Bill. I was very sorry when that Bill met its demise, because it destroyed the amended Clauses which provided for the very benefits which are now reintroduced into this Measure. Those of us who have a deep interest in and admiration for the fishermen and the fishing industry are very glad to see that the Government have put those Clauses into this Bill.

It is 20 years since I first went aboard a drifter, and I can remember the shock that I had when I went over the men's living quarters. There is no doubt that in a large number of drifters the conditions in those quarters were very bad, and even now some of them, particularly those which have been at sea for 30 or 40 years, are in a precarious state. I heard a story in my constituency, which I believe to be true, about a boat which was being repaired; a workman who was preparing the hold dropped his hammer and it went through the bottom. That shows the condition of some of the boats, and the amenities for the crews are consistent with those conditions. I was very glad when, some six or seven months ago, we launched at the Lowestoft yards an Icelandic drifter. It really was a work of art; it was a beautiful craft. It was the pride of the shipbuilding yard, but the part in which I was most interested was the crew's quarters.

I happened last week to be talking to the skipper of that boat, an Icelandic gentleman, and he was telling me that the reaction of the crew was such that they were determined to keep up the standard of these amenities that had been provided by the owners. If we give these men, good chaps that they are, decent conditions to live in, we shall not only help them to retain their self-respect but give them an added incentive in their work.

I do not wish to keep the House any longer because all the points have been covered by hon. Members on both sides, but I should like to commend this Bill very warmly and to thank the Government for reinstituting in this Bill the Clauses that were dropped from the Sea Fish Industry Bill.

1.35 p.m.

I should like to follow the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Mr. Edward Evans) in adding my word of welcome to those provisions in this Measure which are designed to improve the crews' quarters in these fishing boats. There is no doubt that these men undertake a most arduous task. Their work is very necessary to all of us and we should do all we can to improve the conditions in which they are employed.

There are three specific points to which I would address a few words in my short speech. The first relates to the retention of the naval courts referred to by the Minister and the provision of a reviewing officer to review the proceedings of those courts. As the right hon. Gentleman has pointed out, in peace-time happily they are very seldom required to function, but they have considerable powers of imprisonment, forfeiture of wages and so on; and it seems to me—I am sure the House will agree—quite right that the senior naval officer or the consular officer in the area should be able to review proceedings of those courts and either confirm or not confirm or vary those orders. That, of course, follows the procedure of courts martial.

My second point was raised first by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Pollok (Commander Galbraith) and was again referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Mr. G. Williams); it relates to the First Schedule. The House will appreciate from reading this Measure that if there is a complaint that a ship does not conform to the regulations laid down, a surveyor of ships may make his inspection and may give a decision in effect as to whether or not that ship so conforms, and his decision may have a very far-reaching effect on the continuation of the business and of the men's employment. I support the plea that has been made that there should be some appellate tribunal to which an appeal may go from the surveyor of ships. It might be useful to add to the suggestions already made that perhaps the right hon. Gentleman and his advisers would be good enough to see whether such a suggestion might fructify in the light of Section 487 of the principal Act of 1894, which deals with the question of courts of survey. An appeal might possibly go there. At any rate, that is a matter which might be considered.

I come to my final point, which is not within the Bill but which I commend to the House as one which might well be incorporated in the Bill at some stage. Section 376 of the principal Act, which re-enacts Section 28 of the Merchant Shipping Fishing Boats Act, 1883, deals with offences against discipline in fishing vessels. It is nearly 70 years since the provisions were laid down and times have much changed. The value of money, wages and conditions, all have changed. I think it is right to say that the most common offences against discipline today are two in number. First, there is the offence when the man does not appear at the time of sailing, and that, of course, is a serious matter involving, perhaps, the holding up of a trawler, great damage to the man's own workmates and a great deal of trouble and inconvenience. The second common offence is that of refusing to work while the vessel is at sea. In those circumstances the man may have to be put off at a foreign port and ultimately repatriated, with all the inconvenience and expense.

What I am pointing out is that in my view, and in the view of many who have considered this matter, the penalties provided by Section 376 are inappropriate. I purposely do not use the word " inadequate "; I say " inappropriate," and I ask the House to bear with me while I remind them of the position. Most of the offences of the nature which I have described are usually charged in the magistrates court as under " wilful disobedience." For that offence the old Section lays down a penalty of four weeks' imprisonment or forfeiture of two days' wages. It has been held that if there are no wages earned, then they cannot be forfeited, and, therefore, when the man fails to turn up there are no wages which can be forfeited and the court is left with the sentence of four weeks' imprisonment. If we read that in conjunction with the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879, we find that the only alternative to four weeks' imprisonment is a fine of 20s.

I am quite certain that over and over again magistrates are, rightly, most unwilling to impose terms of imprisonment, but they take the view—especially if the offence is rife that where a man may be earning up to £15 a week a fine of 20s. is no sort of deterrent in these matters. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for York (Mr. Hylton-Foster), who has specialised information on this matter, has supplied me with some of the figures for one of our fishing ports—in fact, for Hull. I shall take just one or two. In 1946, out of some 1,400 sailings, there were 194 convictions for wilful disobedience and there were no sentences of imprisonment. Things got rather worse and in 1949 there were 132 convictions that is, fewer—but there were 20 sentences of imprisonment. Obviously the justices were taking the view that 20s. was a quite inadequate deterrent in the circumstances.

I respectfully ask the Minister to consider this point with considerable care, and I am sure he will. The courts have taken the view that the situation is not satisfactory and one point which I think is of very great interest is this. I believe I am right in saying that in Fleetwood, another fishing port, the position has been regarded by both sides of the industry, the owners and the unions, as being so unsatisfactory that they have agreed to set up their own organisation for dealing with these offences. I think I am also right in saying that under their own arrangements they may now suspend an offender for one or two or three weeks from his employment. I express no view as to the legality of this, but that does not arise in my argument; the point shows the dissatisfaction with present arrangements.

It would be very simple indeed to effect an improvement. One could introduce into this Measure an Amendment of Section 376 (1, d) of the 1894 Act by saying " or a fine not exceeding £10." There is an even readier way of dealing with the matter because if, in this Measure, the Government or anybody else—and we shall see on Committee stage—were to introduce an Amendment to the 1894 Act by which the sentence of four weeks' imprisonment were changed to one of one month, then under the Summary Jurisdiction Act the magistrates would be entitled to impose a fine of £5 instead of one of 20s.

I am afraid I have spoken at some length on this point, but I hope the House will think it an important one which is designed to help the industry and discipline in the industry without the necessity of introducing harshness, which one wishes to avoid. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider the point. If he can say a word about it, I shall be grateful and the matter could be considered at a later stage. I join with all hon. Members who have welcomed this Measure. It will, we trust, when the regulations have been formulated, assist part of a great Service which has done such valiant work both in war-time and in peace.

Before the hon. and learned Member sits down, may I ask, whether it is possible in the pool scheme, for the employers and the union jointly, to inflict penalties for the offences about which he has complained? Does he suggest that there should be an additional penalty, apart from that?

What I say is that I am doubtful whether private arrangements between employers and unions for suspension are appropriate for dealing with this. In my opinion it should be clear in the law that magistrates are enabled to impose penalties and sanctions which are just and equitable

1.48 p.m.

I do not know whether this nation will ever be able fully to repay the great debt of gratitude it owes to the men of the small ships—the merchant ships and the fishing industry. Speaking as one who had some early experience in both sides of the sea-going service—the fishing industry and the Merchant Service—I welcome this Bill and I also welcome the way in which the Minister introduced it by paying tribute to the great Service for which the Bill is designed. If there is anything we in this House can do to make the conditions for the merchant seamen and the fishermen just a little better than they were in the old days, when the ships of Britain were very often described as the slums of the sea, then it will not only be our duty to do so but I am sure it will be welcomed by the whole nation as a small tribute to and reward for the great sacrifices which those brave men made during the war.

Turning to the Bill itself, there are one or two points upon which I should like to have some rather more specific information and to which I should like to draw the attention of the Minister when he considers the framing of the regulations. I should like to see certain references made rather more specific. For example, in Clause 1, on the question of space accommodation provided in ships, it has been my experience that if we merely provide air space in the forecastle of a vessel where there is a very considerable overhang, we may get the air space mostly on the top of the roof and very little deck space for movement. Therefore, the only possible way to have adequate room for movement in the quarters where the seamen have to live would be to have them in that part of the ship where the deck space is equal, or nearly equal, to the space on the deckhead or ceiling. I hope that in future every effort will be made to transfer the quarters of the seamen from the forward part of the ship, right up in the bows, to perhaps the mid-ships or even the after-part of the vessel.

I want to draw the Minister's attention to a practice which is becoming prevalent on some of our trawlers, the near and middle-water trawlers, which I think is fraught with danger to the fishermen employed on those vessels. I have a letter from the officer of the Transport and General Workers' Union responsible for the care and conditions under which these men work in trawlers plying from Aberdeen. I think that I cannot do better than read briefly from his letter. He tells me that, due to the over-fishing which has taken place in the North Sea, it has become the practice for small near-water vessels to make longer voyages than those for which they were originally constructed. As a result of the longer voyages being undertaken, it is necessary to carry more coal than the bunkers of the vessels will hold, and it has been the practice for some time, particularly in Aberdeen, for loose coal to be stowed on deck.

During October, 1949, the steam trawler " Eveline Nutten " was off the Shetlands in very bad weather and carried loose coal on deck. The crew were endeavouring to save the coal by putting it into bags, when, in the course of this operation, four men were washed overboard. One of these men, unfortunately the second fisherman of the vessel, was not saved. That man's death could be attributed, I think, quite clearly to this dangerous practice of carrying coal on the deck during bad weather, and in attempting to save the coal these men were washed overboard. I hope that the Minister will give some attention to that point when he brings in the regulations, with a view to making it obligatory on the owners of small trawlers to have the coal bags stowed perhaps in the fish hold, if it is necessary to carry this extra coal and there is no other available space for it, and not to have coal lying loose on the deck of a trawler where the sea washes aboard and there is great danger for the men passing backward and forward.

With regard to Clause 2, I welcome the proposal that coastal vessels should be brought within the conditions of engagement. I wonder whether that also carries with it the condition that the owner shall be responsible for providing the food on these vessels, because I have very amusing memories of the days when, as a young sailor, I went in what were called weekly boats, and we had to buy our own food and cook it ourselves. I hope that practice has now gone forever, because many times I have been standing at the wheel and wondering whether the stew was getting burnt over the galley fire because there was no one to attend to it. I hope that in future regulations, it will become obligatory for the owner to provide the food, the cook and the facilities for conveying the food to the seamen, who cannot possibly carry out their work as sailors efficiently, if at the same time they have to act as their own cooks.

I want to say a final word about training and recruiting. It is quite obvious that we have to train rather a different type of sailor nowadays from the old-time sailors who were required for the tramp steamers and Merchant Service generally. The sailor today must be almost a mechanic. He has to know quite a lot about the sounding machines which are operated mechanically and about the motor engines for the boats. It is really more important that he should know how to start up an engine in a life-boat than to use an oar, although that is very important also. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will give attention to encouraging the training of young boys and lads in their early years at established training schools along our coasts. If that can be done, I think it would be a very good way of getting a better type, if I may use the term, of sailor in the Merchant Navy than we had in the old days. I mean by " better type " one who is more efficient, who has been trained carefully for the work, and who is capable of performing all the functions that now fall on the modern sailor. I welcome the Bill most sincerely, and I think it will go a considerable way towards easing the lot of the merchant seamen and fishermen.

1.58 p.m.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak for a few minutes in connection with this Bill, which I welcome most sincerely. I am sure that the fishermen all round our coasts will be very appreciative of the remarks made by the right hon. Gentleman and other speakers in this Debate.

I have seen accommodation in our fishing vessels around the Scottish coast improve in my own lifetime. I have personal experience of the sailing boat in the old days, the coming of the steam drifter and its various stages of development, and of our seine net vessels. It has been my privilege every year to make a trip to sea in an inshore fishing vessel. I can assure the House that through the years, our skippers on the Scottish coast have vied with each other in providing the best possible accommodation for their crews. The owners have been proud of their crews, and there has been a magnificent camaraderie. That development in the accommodation has taken place at the instigation of these men themselves. There has been no governmental control up to the present, but I welcome the Bill most sincerely.

There are two points which I would put to the Minister, and on which I should be most grateful for an answer. No doubt these points will be illustrated in the Committee stage and possibly when the regulations are introduced. I should first like to have an assurance that there will be a certificate of exemption for existing vessels. Second, I should like to have an assurance that there will be no interference with the layout and traditional desires of our fishermen, who have their own ideas as to where a cabin should be located.

In some of the vessels we see from Denmark and Sweden, which are magnificent, the crew sleep forward. That does not suit our seamen. They prefer to sleep aft. I trust that no one with any idealistic whim will decide that sleeping quarters must be forward. The same thing applies to the trawlers. The sleeping quarters are mostly aft, although there is accommodation in the forecastle, of which I had some experience when I went to the North Sea fishing grounds. As have said, I welcome the Bill, which, I am sure, will be of benefit to a class of people to whom this country has every reason to be everlastingly grateful.

2.5 p.m.

I apologise for again addressing the House, due to the arrangements that have been made for today's Business. I welcome this Bill to improve the accommodation in fishing vessels, and I do so because was born into this industry and have served in drifters and trawlers. Therefore, I know something about it. Last night, when the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Law) wound up the Debate for the Opposition on the fishing industry, he made a political speech. He said that the people in the industry would know what to do at the next election. Let me put it on record that this is the third occasion on which the Labour Government have improved conditions at sea. More has been done for the merchant shipping seamen and for the fishermen during the last five years than at any time in our long maritime history.

The hon. Member for Banff (Mr. Duthie) has raised the question of costs and exemptions for old ships. This is the same old argument that has been used on other occasions when reforms have been suggested. The success of the industry depends on contented personnel serving in these vessels. As conditions are, it may well be that men will be attracted to more lucrative jobs on shore than to serving under the conditions which obtain at sea. I beg Members opposite who represent the fishing industry to press for these reforms to be undertaken to improve the conditions of the men serving in these vessels. Some of these old vessels are of a Botany Bay standard. They remind me of Dr. Johnson's saying, that " No one would go to sea who could get into prison."

Clause 3, which deals with the review of punishments imposed by naval courts, has been agreed to amicably by both sides of the industry. I am prepared to admit that for disciplinary purposes it is necessary for these courts to have these powers, but I wish to put it on record that those who are in the fishing industry view with apprehension any question of being dealt with by the naval authorities. The penalties which can be imposed on fishermen are greater than in the case of any other section of the community. The fishing industry is the only industry where a man can be sent to gaol for being absent from work.

(Hull, Haltemprice): What about the dockers?

The docker is in a different category, and to discuss that subject would be outside the scope of the Bill. I am prepared to take on the right hon. Gentleman, as far as the dockers in Hull are concerned, any day in the week, and twice on Sundays. The dockers in Hull have the best record in the country, and if the employers pulled their weight in the same way as the dockers in Hull are doing, we should be having no trouble in the docks.

The position at these naval courts wants watching. I admit there is the saving grace of a reviewing officer, and that if there is any error of judgment, or, what is worse, any error in justice or law, it can be decided by the reviewing authority. The question of a superintendent Mercantile Marine officer being present when engagements arc signed and crews are being discharged is also of importance. It will be possible to develop some of these points when we come to the Committee stage.

The hon. Member for Banff referred to Norwegian and Swedish ships, which he described as fine vessels. Surely the object of the fishing industry should be to produce equally fine ships in this country. I appreciate that some owners have improved conditions, but cannot some of these old ships, when they have to come into port for major repairs, have their accommodation improved within their structural limits, so that the crews in these small and lively vessels may have better conditions of service? support this Bill wholeheartedly as a further example of the interest taken by the Labour Government in the conditions of employment in the fishing industry.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Sparks.]

Committee upon Monday next.

London Docks (Resumption Of Work)

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

2.11 p.m.

I desire to inform the House as follows. The London Docks Divisional Committee of the Transport and General Workers' Union, representative of all docker membership of the union in London, have decided today to endorse the decision taken at the official meetings held today that there should be an immediate and orderly resumption of work. The men are being advised to present themselves for work tomorrow morning, and the union have requested the Minister of Labour to arrange that the troops are held back to facilitate a resumption. Arrangements are being made accordingly.

I am sure the whole House will have heard with great satisfaction the announcement which the right hon. Gentleman has just made. I only want to say one thing. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) said, we of course must reserve to ourselves the right to raise at some future time the whole question of the position in the docks. All I want to say now, on behalf of myself and my hon. and right hon. Friends, is that we are glad to hear the news.

(Ayrshire, South): Will the Minister clear up one point? If the three men who have been expelled from the union present themselves for work, will they be allowed to work without any victimisation of any kind?

I answered that question fully and definitely yesterday. Before resuming my seat, in case there is not another opportunity, I should like to express on behalf of the House, and I think of the country, our appreciation and thanks to the troops who have worked so excellently in this matter.

(Brixton): I should like to put his point although I do not expect my right hon. Friend will be able to answer it here and now. When an orderly resumption of work takes place and things go back to normal, will consideration be given, if any request is put forward through recognised channels, for some inquiry into the general state of affairs at the docks, with a view of removing any legitimate grievances that may possibly exist?

I can say that, in fact, that is being done at the moment.

May I have permission to intervene once again to say, on behalf of my hon. and right hon. Friends, that I should like to associate myself with the thanks given by the Minister to the troops?

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Ways And Means

Considered in Committee.

[Sir CHARLES MACANDREW in the Chair]

Merchant Shipping (Payment Of Fees Into The Exchequer)

Resolved:

" That for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to provide for regulating crew accommodation in fishing boats and for amending the Merchant Shipping Acts, 1894 to 1949, it is expedient to authorise the payment into the Exchequer of any fees received by the Minister of Transport under or by virtue of the said Act or any regulations made thereunder."—[Mr. Barnes.]

Resolution to be reported upon Monday next.

Committee to sit again upon Monday next.

Newfoundland (Consequential Provisions) Bill Lords

Order for Second Reading read.

2.15 p.m.

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

I do not think that this Bill need detain the House because it is not in itself an important Bill, though it arises out of the very important decision by which Newfoundland became a part of Canada. The purpose of the Bill is merely to amend or repeal various Acts of ours which are no longer appropriate because Newfoundland is a part of Canada. They are set out in detail in the Schedule. The only Clause to which I think I should draw the attention of the House is Clause 3,. under which further amendments that may become necessary, and which may have escaped our attention in looking through the various statutes, may be made by Order in Council. That is to. avoid the necessity of bringing another Bill before the House. Such Orders in Council will, of course, be laid and would be subject to a Prayer, so that there could be a Debate if there were any points of controversy. I do not think there is-any need for me to go through the particular Acts that are being amended.

I want to. say only this. Although it is open to any hon. Member to raise any question, I think the general attitude, one might almost say etiquette, in these matters is that where a Bill affects a Dominion points are not raised. However, I think it would be appropriate to say on behalf of hon. Members on both sides of the House that I am sure we all wish Newfoundland a happy and prosperous future as part of the Dominion of Canada.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Sparks.]

Committee upon Monday next.

Marginal And Common Land (Use)

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

2.17 p.m.

I make no apologies for bringing forward a matter which I have raised on several previous occasions, although to do so now may seem ungenerous in view of the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture on 23rd March. I refer to the idle acres of Great Britain. I look upon it as a matter of extreme importance to the survival of this country that every acre of land in this country which is capable of production should be made to do its job. Therefore, although the Minister said on 23rd March that the facts will be made available when the committee that has been investigating this matter has sent in its report, I would point out to the House that the time for investigation and for talking has gone by, and it is time that the Government took active steps to tackle the problem with which they are faced.

I shall endeavour, so far as I possibly can, to keep politics out of this Debate. This is not a party issue. It is an issue which I think all hon. Members who have agricultural experience will agree should be tackled. We could spend the whole of the afternoon in debating the past, as to which party was responsible for the neglect of agricultural land in Great Britain. I would say that the country decided for an industrial era over the last 100 years, and that no single party was responsible. It was the opinion of the country that industry was the only thing that mattered, and the result was that our land became derelict. Many of our forefathers were driven off the land, houses tumbled down and buildings went into disrepair.

That position has now completely changed, and I am giving the Parliamentary Secretary an opportunity to make an announcement this afternoon which will carry the process a stage further. If I may use a football analogy, I hope that this afternoon I shall manoeuvre the ball in front of the goal so that the Parliamentary Secretary can pop it in.

What this country is not realising sufficiently is that our industrial supremacy has gone. It has been going for many years without the fact being appreciated. While our industrial supremacy and export trade were diminishing, we were kept on our feet by the invisible exports and the investments abroad which our forefathers, with their thrift, made possible. Two world wars and the fact that we have taught other nations how to manufacture goods means that we are in a position completely different from that which prevailed before the last war.

We are, at the moment, living in a fools' paradise. We are living by the aid of our American and Empire friends—

Nonsense!

—and in a short time that aid will have finished. The Parliamentary Secretary says that this is nonsense, and many of his hon. Friends have said the same. I do not think so, but I do not want to get into any political controversy.

Hear, Hear.

The Parliamentary Secretary says, " Hear hear," but it was he who started this exchange.

We have been dependent to a very large extent upon help from our American friends and from the Empire, and with that help, by getting our food without paying for it, our industrialists have been able to export goods in payment of sterling balances which are called unrequited. What we must face is the time when American aid ceases and when we shall have to stop sending abroad goods for which no payment is forthcoming. That will be the testing time. As one who voted against American aid in the first place, I hope that when it ceases, we shall not again go on our hands and knees asking for assistance. Five years after the war, it is about time that we stood on our own feet without tying ourselves to any other country.

My only complaint of a political nature is that this problem has not been tackled with the urgency which it demands. This is no reflection upon the Ministry of Agriculture. The pace of this operation must be a Cabinet decision and be con- ditioned largely by the amount which the Chancellor may feel it is possible to provide to bring back the land into full operation. About three years ago, in one of our yearly crises, the Prime Minister mentioned the importance of raising our agricultural production. That seems a long time ago, and I want to put to the Parliamentary Secretary something which is up-to-date and ask him to give to us in the countryside some hope that this problem is to be tackled as a battle operation.

I am sorry that I have kept the Parliamentary Secretary away from his engagements tonight. He will think that he is fated in these Debates, because the first time I brought this matter forward two years ago, I kept him out of bed in the early hours of the morning. Since then the Opposition gave up a Supply Day last October, when this matter was thoroughly discussed and a very useful Debate followed. I know that the Parliamentary Secretary will say that vigorous action is being taken, but I cannot agree. I appreciate, and am not throwing any contempt at, the arrangements which provide grants for drainage, for water supplies, or those under the marginal production order, but in view of the magnitude of the problem these are a very small contribution.

By way of comparison, I should like to call attention to the vast millions of money which have been expended, through the Overseas Food Corporation, on the groundnuts scheme, on the Gambia poultry scheme, and on sorghum growing in Queensland. I do not wish to say anything about the development of the colonies, but I feel that if that money had been made available for the land of this country we could have obtained very much better results. In the Socialist manifesto " Labour believes in Britain," it is stated that:

" The battle of food cannot afford one wasted acre or inefficient farmer."

I quite agree. I do not always agree with the Socialist Party, but I agree with that and I want to see them take steps to implement that declaration.

I am fully aware that surveys are at present being made. There is the National Farmers' Union survey, the land utilisation survey and I think the Ministry of Agriculture are themselves conducting a survey. But the time for surveys has gone. A comprehensive survey of the land is contained in the National Farm Surveys of England and Wales of 1941 and 1943. No further surveys are needed; neither is it necessary to go on with the experimental farm in East Lancashire which was foreshadowed by the Parliamentary Secretary when he participated in the Debate last October.

We want no experiments. All that we need to do is to look at the practical jobs of work that are being done throughout Britain. There are the great reclamation schemes by Lord Lovat and by my hon. Friend the Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Snadden); on the East Anglian shores some enterprising men have reclaimed from the sea thousands of acres of land; and there are other practical examples on the hills of Wales. We have the Exmoor survey. What more surveys do we want? What we want is not further surveys, but action. In addition to the surveys I have already mentioned, there exist excellent papers by Professor Ellison, Mr. Moses Griffiths and Mr. Beresford, all practical people, who have written very good papers and have given lectures on this subject.

There is no need for any further delay. What the Ministry of Agriculture should do is to get in touch with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, make the money available, and instruct every county agricultural committee to get on with the job and to give to the practical men in the counties the authority to tackle these problems. Any further waiting is completely unnecessary. I would remind the Parliamentary Secretary that the Chancellor has recognised the value of the reclamation of marginal land, for at the National Farmers' Union dinner last year he said that money would he made available for a continuation of the marginal reclamation scheme.

Let me give an illustration of the possibilities of land which is completely derelict but which can be made to do a job. Close to my farm a small area of land became available in January. It was almost completely covered with thorn bushes, bracken and heather. The new purchaser got busy with bulldozers and a prairie buster plough. He limed the ground and slagged it and, with any luck in the way of weather, a crop of corn will be forthcoming in the autumn. At a modest estimate, that 25 acres of land will produce enough bacon to provide a weekly ration for 34,000 people.

If the hon. Gentleman would like to engage in a little arithmetic to find out what would be the result of tackling a million acres of land, which is quite an easy job—there are a million acres of land which could do just as much as the patch to which I have referred—he would find that the Ministry of Food could be dispensed with tomorrow, or at least as soon as the land comes into cultivation. That is how quickly this land can be made to produce. In my own county there are about 8,000 acres of this marginal land, and a modest estimate by the county agricultural committee is that that land can be made to produce anything from 15 cwts. to 20 cwts. of corn per acre. If anyone cares to work that out in terms of bacon, he will see that a great contribution would thus be made to the housewives' larder compared with that obtained for the millions of pounds that have been expended and are still being expended on overseas gambles, from which we have, so far, had no results.

I know that the Parliamentary Secretary optimistically said in June, 1948, that the Government scheme would provide 250,000 tons of groundnuts per year when it really got going. That was two years ago, and it is about time it had really got going, but I cannot foresee 250,000 tons of groundnuts per annum yet. It may be said that we cannot, in present conditions, afford the vast amount of capital expenditure which would be required for the policy I am advocating. I suggest that it could be saved from some of these gambles which are going on abroad and could be put Into a certainty in our own countryside.

I go still further—and in doing so I am laying myself open to criticism among many of my former friends. The £6 million or £7 million a year which we are now spending on the calf subsidy scheme would be better expended on the reclamation of marginal land, and we should then secure a real increase of store stock. During the Committee stage of the Measure dealing with the matter, I said it was fantastic to think that that money was being made available to a great majority of farmers, of whom I am one, who receive a subsidy on a calf which they would have reared whether they received a subsidy or not. It would be better to spend that money on bringing land back into cultivation so that people can begin to rear calves on that land.

I desire to call attention to what, in my view, is the greatest waste of land in Great Britain today. I refer to land known as common land, which is in existence all over Great Britain. A great deal of it is lying waste in the middle of fertile land. This common land is held under a variety of conditions. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to make a statement today about this common land. The time has come when this matter must be tackled. Much of this land was requisitioned during the war by the county agricultural committees and was brought into cultivation. I have had personal experience of some of that land, which grew 30 cwts. per acre of wheat. The day is close at hand when that land must be handed back to the commoners. I wish the Parliamentary Secretary would tell us what he proposes to do.

In the Debate in June, 1948, he used words to the effect that the Ministry were determined that county committees should take any land which could reasonably be taken without undue interference with common rights and public rights of recreation. I know that in discussing common land one lays oneself open to a great deal of criticism and probably misrepresentation. Amongst many of our common holders there are somewhat unhappy memories of the Enclosure Acts of the 19th century, and when any suggestion is made about any further enclosure there is immediately an outcry. I wish to make it clear that I am proposing to do nothing to hurt the commoner or the people who want to use the commons on which to throw their empty tins and beer bottles when they are on holiday. I wish to see that all interests are protected and that the commons are made of some present use to the common holders. Before the war these commons were absolutely useless. They were a menace to the good farmers adjacent to them as the commons could be breeding places for vermin and a source of weeds, etc.

We should do something to make these commons of some value. There are several ways of dealing with them, and I put forward some suggestions in the hope that they may be of some help to the Ministry of Agriculture. I must first say that every common must be treated on its merits. The condition of a common in one part of a county may be quite different from that of a common in another part. Therefore, the decision as to what should be done to a common should rest largely with the county agricultural committee, who know the local circumstances. Some commons have a court leet, and in those cases it is known what are the rights attached to each holding. On other commons there is no court leet, and there are no documents in existence to tell who has common rights, nor can it be said what those common rights are. Those cases are difficult to deal with, but they must be tackled.

I suggest that the commoners should be given a portion of the common as their land, which they themselves can enclose. In that way we shall overcome the difficulty that is aroused as a result of the Enclosure Acts. My suggestion is that whatever rights a common holder has in respect of a common he should be compensated by being given a portion of that land. He should then be made to farm it as the rest of the land in the neighbourhood is being farmed. Another way of dealing with the matter is that the commoners could form a cultivation committee which should be put under the same supervision as any ordinary farmer, and they should be compelled to keep that common in production in the same way as any farmer in the neighbourhood is compelled to keep his farm in production. A third course, which has been suggested in my county, is that the county agricultural committees should farm the land on behalf of the commoners and arrange the rotation so that a portion would be under temporary pasture and there would be available some good grass on to which the commoners could turn their stock.

A great objection to any of these courses is the fact that we are endeavouring, so far as we can, to put our dairy industry on a completely T.T. basis. If the occupier of a farm which has been passed under the T.T. order has common rights those rights are of no value to him, because he dare not turn out his cattle among cattle which do not come from a T.T. farm. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to say something on the provision of cattle grids, which was mentioned in the Gracious Speech; in so doing, he might avoid a Debate next week. If these commons were enclosed there would be no need for cattle grids. I know that there will be an outcry from the Minister of Town and Country Planning against these propositions because the ramblers' associations will be up in arms.

As I said before, I do not wish to do any harm to anybody. My experience of common land is that, generally, all that is necessary is a 30 or 40-yard verge on each side so that people can come along on their half-day or holiday and leave it littered with waste paper, empty tins and beer bottles. I would not like to deprive them of that opportunity, and I would still leave that verge. I would also leave a wide pathway over the common so that members of the ramblers' associations might enjoy a ramble in the future more than they can at the present because of the thorns and bushes on the ground.

I hope I have made some constructive suggestions and I would urge the Government to take steps such as Denmark took many years ago. There were great areas of marginal land in Denmark, where the population live under worse climatic conditions than we experience in this country. That may be difficult to believe, but it is so. In Denmark grants up to two-thirds of the cost were given, and the result is that there is less waste land in Denmark today than could be discovered if one took a walk for five miles out into the countryside in Britain. The present Minister of Agriculture in Eire, Mr. Dillon, is taking the same steps. He has cut away all " red tape." He has formed a separate Ministry and given grants up to two-thirds of the cost for approved schemes. The result is that he is so inundated with schemes that he cannot tackle them fast enough. Those are two examples from two countries from whom we are buying a large proportion of our foods. It seems to me suicidal to buy our food from those countries while our own land is lying idle.

One of the results of bringing this land under cultivation would be that we should save foreign exchange. This question of foreign exchange will always be a difficult one for this country in the future. The economy of the nineteenth century has gone, and will never return. The export industry of our country will have a hard job to provide the exchange necessary to buy the raw materials with which to keep our industries going. As a nation we are unbalanced in that respect, more than any other country in the world. It is about time we translated some of our population from these development areas and built-up areas into the fresh air of the countryside.

Another benefit would be that if we developed all the land which I am proposing should be developed, we should not only restore the hardy store stock necessary to keep our own animals going, but we should also be able to infuse into the nation a little of the virile manhood and womanhood which it had a 100 years ago, when we were mainly an agricultural nation. An infusion of that sort of blood would be an advantage. After 100 years of industry and two wars, I consider that we are becoming an exhausted population. Last, but not least, the provision of more food from our countryside is a second line of defence. In two world wars we have been practically on the verge of starvation owing to the fact that we have been almost unable to keep the lifeline necessary to feed the population.

A great deal of our war effort had to be diverted—especially so far as the Navy was concerned—to keep that lifeline. Heaven forbid that war should come again, but we are spending millions for defence purposes and I say that a few million spent in seeing that, if war does come again, we shall have food on our own doorstep, instead of having to depend on food brought across the water, would be a good thing. Food brought across the water would be subjected to a much more intensified form of underwater attack in a future war than we have ever experienced before. If reports are true Russia has an enormous fleet of underwater craft, and I say that if we blunder into war without taking the necessary steps to see that we increase our food supplies, then we shall deserve all that we shall get.

2.44 p.m.

With the general principle enunciated by the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) that we should produce to our utmost capacity and, so far as possible, conserve our food supplies, every intelli- gent Member in this House would be in agreement; but for him to say as he did in effect, that he was not so much blaming the Minister of Agriculture as the Cabinet, because the Cabinet did not tackle this problem with urgency, seems to me to be a bit of belated philosophy; and proves that he has not studied the records of his own party.

If ever there was a party with a poor record so far as agriculture is concerned, a party which neglected the land of this country, which paid agricultural labourers a semi-starvation wage, which drove men off the land in hundreds of thousands, which helped to cause slums in our towns and cities in order to make profits for manufacturers, it is the party to which the hon. Member belongs that certainly deserves the utmost stricture. For him to try to tell this House that the Labour Party and the Government are failing in their obligations and record regarding the agricultural workers of this country is, if not a piece of blatant hypocrisy, a piece of thinking unworthy of any hon. Member who occupies a place in this House.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Mack) has mentioned the word " hypocrisy." Is it not more blatant hypocrisy that his party has gone to the country saying that the Socialists do not believe in the nationalisation of the land?

The nationalisation of the land does not enter into this at all.

Hypocrisy certainly does.

The question of hypocrisy does not. I do not think it is hypocritical for the Labour Party to make speeches about their immediate policy in regard to the land. At the moment the Labour Party have stated they have no intention of nationalising the land, but they have added that if there is any land which is derelict or wasted, or of which proper use is not being made, then the Government will reserve to themselves the power to deal with that land.

Would not the hon. Member agree that in fact there have been so many contradictory statements from the Labour Party about this matter of the nationalisation of the land that we do not know where we are?

That is an entirely extraneous interpolation. There is nothing contradictory in the Labour Party's policy of nationalisation—

I do not think we ought to discuss the nationalisation of the land on the Adjournment, because it involves legislation, and therefore it is out of Order.

I appreciate your kindly and correct intervention, Mr. Speaker. I was tempted to reply because of the ignorance of hon. Gentlemen opposite. I will proceed to deal with the speech of the hon. Member for Leominster. Is he aware that between the two wars—I think my figures are correct-3 million acres of good land in this country went out of cultivation? Is he aware that for many years the agriculture labourer was grossly under-paid and over-worked, and that those two things inevitably went together? Is not he aware that, so far as making the men happy and contented If concerned, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Labour Government in general, deserve the encomium and appreciation of every Member of this House who is not a purblind partisan? That is the record of the Labour Government.

I wish that this wonderful building were full of farmers, rich farmers, prosperous farmers with rubicund faces, which would indicate that they were being well nurtured and looked after by the Government for the first time in the history of this country. Even the farmers kept pretty quiet during the election—

Oh!

Even they did not complain, as they have in the past; and the reason was that the Minister of Agriculture, with imagination, with acumen, with perspicacity, with intelligence—

I have listened with the greatest interest to the hon. Member's speech. Do I understand him to say that he himself is a typical rubicund British farmer?

No, I am not. I have the honour to be a Britisher and I regard that as a great honour, but I am not rubicund and I am not a farmer. The important middle part, is t hat which I claim the honour to be. I would say to the noble Lord, whose presence in the House always makes my heart leap, as, in the words of Wordsworth:

" when I behold a rainbow in the sky."

The hon. Member for Leominster asked why we should go on our hands and knees for American aid. Every good friend of America in this House—and I am sure we are all good friends of America—would tell the Americans, as between friends, in a very blunt and honest way, that the American people greatly benefited by British sacrifice in the last war, and that whatever help they have given—and we have never failed to appreciate it—is only a part payment for the great sacrifices we made when, alone at one stage, we took the brunt of the enemy's assault. Even if we did little in agriculture at that time, because of the call on our manpower and the sacrifices we made, and the fact that we had to lend money to other countries, surely it is to the collective credit of this nation that, at least, we played an honourable and noble part, and the noble Lord the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton) would be the first to appreciate that.

We will discuss a few facts about the position in agriculture today. It is well known in this House that nearly half the food we consume is produced in this land. That is an outstanding achievement, but I admit that there is room for improvement. I feel sure that the Ministry would be glad to receive any positive and practical suggestions from any quarter of the House which would help towards more production. If the hon. Gentleman was dribbling the ball into position for us to put into the net, to use his football metaphor which is so appropriate the day before the Cup Final, I would say that at least we are the people who will score the goal. All his manoeuvring—and perhaps manoeuvring is the right word to use in this connection—however clever, and however much pattern weaving there may be on the greensward of political debate, will not in itself achieve the scoring of the goal which, alone, can give victory to British agriculture. Let the hon. Gentleman leave the goal scoring to us, and I am sure he need have no worries about it.

There is another factor about the money laid out in agriculture. I am open to contradiction, but I understand that we have paid something like £40 million per year in capital investment in agriculture over the last five years. That is by no means the whole story. I think it is right to say, and again I am open to contradiction, that in this country the land is more fecund, more productive, than it is in any other country in the world. British agriculture, with all its limitations, is the most highly organised agriculture in the world. Whether one considers countries on one side of the Atlantic or the other, the same comparison applies.

That has been achieved in a few short years. If we go back and look at some.of the towns like Stoke-on-Trent, Wigan 'and the big manufacturing cities, we will find that the slums, those dreadful, grim and grimy conurbations, have been the outcome of the fact that the land was neglected. Many fine potential agricultural workers and farmers were driven from their land because of debt, incompetence, inadequacy and a supine policy pursued by the party to which the hon. Member for Leominster belongs. I hope that he is not leaving the House now—

I am so tired of listening to drivel that I intend to leave now.

I am overjoyed. It is a matter for great encomium that an hon. Member taking part in an Adjournment Debate, has to leave the House because he cannot stand the full facts, although I am prepared at any time to give way to him or anyone else if they can confute the statements I have made. The fact that the hon. Member has left is a noteworthy incident which we can rightly remember at an appropriate time.

Under the boundary alterations, a certain amount of agricultural land has been put into my constituency. I want to say this, because I think it is worth knowing. When I went to be introduced to my new constituents, I found that they had been in what was hitherto a Tory constituency. I explained the Labour Party's agricultural policy, as far as I could. I do not claim to have any special knowledge of it, and I would not for a moment try to represent myself as a practical man in farming. I have only the average intelligent understanding of farming which I think every lay Member of this House can have. The facts are before them.

When I went before them for the first time, they sported their colours and they said to their squires, or the big farmers or others in the district, " We are very proud and honoured to belong to the Labour Party." They did that, they said to me, because they had been given a new outlook on life. They said, " For the first time we are given a decent wage. We are now able to get cottages. We are not so much tied to the land as we were in the old tied cottage days." I admit, however, that a certain amount of that trouble still exists, unfortunately. I was glad and gratified to see that wonderful feeling of joy which was manifested by the people. They rejoiced in the fact that here at last was a Government with imagination and a sense of practical achievement.

I am very sorry for the hon. Member for Leominster, for his own sake, that he has thought fit to take himself from the precincts of this Chamber. He has not done himself justice. His words will have been reported, and I feel sure that every fairminded person who has no axe to grind and no malevolence in his make-up, reading and studying the Debate and having the facts before him—as I am sure they will be put before him by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary —will, for himself, assess which party has done the most for agriculture. I feel confident that the Ministry will be the first to grasp greedily any practical and helpful suggestion, from whatever quarter it comes, if it will mean that land which is not being used to full capacity can be taken up and made productive, so that our people will have ample food, good food and cheap food. They will do it equally to ensure that the man who sows the land, the man who uses the thresher and the tractor will be able to have a decent standard of living to give him encouragement to pursue a noble livelihood and to give the people of this country heart and good feeling for the future.

2.58 p.m.

I want to take this opportunity of drawing the attention of the House to one aspect of the development of common land. I think that, straight away, I should disclose that I am one of those unfortunate people known as Lords of the Manor, with quite a large acreage of common land. The aspect of the development of common land to which I want to refer is that which concerns forestry. In my case, during the war, and through no fault of any Government, I was forced to cut down a considerable acreage of woodland to assist the war effort. As it is common land, under the law I am not allowed to enclose it to replant. I do not believe that it is in the interests of the commoners, myself or the nation, that I should be debarred from replanting that common land.

The difficulty is to find an organisation of commoners with whom to deal in order to get consent to the necessary temporary enclosing. I should like the Government to consider whether they can lay down some procedure where it is in the interest of the nation that some form of enclosure may take place temporarily. Perhaps there should be a Ministry to which application could be made. That Ministry could set up an inquiry to hear the commoners, the public and all interested parties. If the Minister considers it advisable he should be in a position to make an order for temporary enclosure while our commons are being replanted, although I would add that I have no desire to interfere with the common rights of anyone.

The suggestion of the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) that there are these areas of common land which can be used for agricultural development may well be true, but it is not my experience. I believe that common land has a great part to play in the development of forestry and in the pleasures of the people, but the difficulty which arises today in replanting forest land did not exist 40 or 50 years ago, because the land was not used very frequently and there were no week-end motor parties. I hope the Government will consider whether something can be done to provide for commons to be replanted in the national interest and the interest of individuals and the lords of the manor of the commons concerned.

3.0 p.m.

The hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) has done a service to the House by enabling us to discuss this very important question of marginal land. If we are to raise agricultural production substantially in this country, it can only be done by reclamation of marginal land.

The first point I have to submit is that there is a surprising lack of information at the present time about the extent of marginal land. The other day I asked the Minister of Agriculture what was the amount of marginal land in each of the counties of Wales, and the amazing reply was that that information was not available. I asked the right hon. Gentleman further questions, and he said that a survey was in progress. The questions which I now desire to put to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture are these: How far advanced is the Government's survey of marginal land, particularly in Wales? When may we expect to have the result?

My second point is this. I think the Government's policy with regard to the Hill Farming Act has been acceptable to all parties in the House, and certainly to the hill farmers themselves. The only complaint I would make about it is that it is not proceeding rapidly enough, though I will not proceed with that argument now. When we had a Debate in the last Session of the last Parliament on the subject of marginal land, the Parliamentary Secretary, when he replied, dealt almost entirely with what the Government had done under the Hill Farming Act. I am not complaining that the hon. Gentleman took advantage of the Debate to set out his Government's record, but the real problem which we are facing today, and the problem we should look into, is that of reclaiming that land which does not at the moment count as hill land—that marginal land which does not come within the scope of the Hill Farming Act. There are some millions of acres of such land, and our concern at the present time ought to be with that particular land.

The next point is that these marginal land farmers who do not come under the Hill Farming Act undoubtedly feel a considerable grievance at present because they do not enjoy the advantages of hill farmers. Very often, they are farmers who have not got the capital to develop and reclaim the land; very often they are tenant farmers, who feel a certain injustice. I know that certain concessions are made to them in respect of the services provided by the agricultural executive committees, but nevertheless these advantages fall very much short of the general provisions of the Hill Farming Act.

The last point is that, undoubtedly, a great deal of money will have to be spent on reclaiming this marginal land if we are to increase production from it. I want the Parliamentary Secretary to tell us whether the Government have any plans in mind for spending money on reclaiming marginal land when their survey has been published. How do they propose to raise the money, and is it to be by agricultural loan or otherwise? In fact, I would like the hon. Gentleman to tell us whether they have any comprehensive plan at all for marginal land. At the present time there is far too strong a tendency merely to take that land for afforestation, and I venture to think that if we spent only a part of what is now being spent on planting trees on that land in developing it for food production, the immediate return to the nation would be far greater.

The hon. Member for Leominster referred to a paper by Mr. Moses Griffiths, a distinguished agriculturist in Wales, on the problem of marginal land. At a public inquiry in my constituency last November, that gentleman said that if all the marginal land in this country were adequately developed we could sweep away meat rationing as soon as that was done. The hon. Member for Leominster also referred to the hundreds of millions of public money now being spent on defence. I feel that if only a small part of those hundreds of millions were diverted to the far better use of improving the land of this country, it would result in a much better defence, not only in time of war, but to our population in every sense in time of peace.

3.6 p.m.

The concluding passage in the speech of the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Emrys Roberts) is a familiar theme of of mine when addressing this House, and I certainly subscribe to the fact that if only a fraction of the nearly £800 million which we are spending this year on defence were sunk into our agriculture, it would be a real benefit to the nation. But I do not wish to obtrude that argument into this Debate, because I believe that the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) has done a very useful service in drawing our attention to the need for developing our marginal land. This matter certainly affects us in Scotland a good deal.

We in Scotland cannot complain of the lack of surveys of marginal land. We have very elaborate surveys, and we only wish that we had a policy in keeping with them. I think that the hon. Member for Leominster rather over-stressed his case. While we do need to take advantage of every possible facility and opportunity presented to us for developing and improving our food supplies, it is a mistake to think that we can live in isolation from the rest of the world, and, to use his words, "Paddle our own canoe." We have to think of an agricultural policy in relation to food production in other countries, and I think it should be linked up with Lord Boyd Orr's proposals for a world food plan. We cannot consider our agricultural development apart from that of the Colonies and the Commonwealth.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there have been most interesting discussions going on between representatives of the National Farmers' Union and representatives of similar bodies in the Dominions which, at any rate, represent a step forward towards that end.

I welcome that interruption. I rather thought that the hon. Member for Leominster regarded our experiments in developing food supplies in other parts of the world as gambles overseas. Although I follow him to a certain extent, I cannot see that the development of food supplies in the Commonwealth countries, in Africa, or in other parts of the world should be considered as a separate policy from the development of food supplies in this country.

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that if the African is fed according to his wants, and if we are to get work out of him, there will be no food coming out of Africa for this country?

Even if there is no food coming out of Africa for this country, we have to remember that the Africans also are members of the British Commonwealth. The hon. Gentleman is only proving my point. In these days we cannot think of this island as being isolated from the food production in other parts of the world. We cannot live in isolation. We cannot go back and become a small agricultural country without reducing the standard of life of our people. Whether we like it or not, we have to remember that we have become an industrial nation. I agree that the sooner we get that top-heavy state of affairs remedied, the better. Yet we must remember that our food plans should be linked up with food plans of other countries. I hope the hon. Member for Leominster will join with me in supporting the Food and Agriculture Organisation. I hope he is prepared to link his plans for food production in this country with the world food plan with which the name of Lord Boyd Orr is associated and which is the only permanent solution of what is an international problem.

But I come to the question of developing marginal land in Scotland. The hon. Member for Leominster referred to the proposals of Lord Lovat and the hon. Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Snadden). I wish the hon. Member for West Perth had been here to elaborate his proposal for developing marginal land in Scotland. He and Lord Lovat, in previous Debates here and in another place have outlined rather sketchily their proposals for using the Highland land of Scotland for procuring more sheep and cattle. In one Debate the hon. Member for West Perth rather startled me by suggesting that the deer forests of Scotland should be taken over for the rearing of sheep.

I was rather surprised to hear criticism from the then Secretary of State for Scotland that it was a romantic idea that deer forests could rear sheep. I do not subscribe to that at all. In my own constituency, for example, we have upland marginal farms where, I believe, there can be a considerable increase in the number of sheep that could be reared for food. Here I am entirely with the hon. Member for Leominster because I believe we must encourage to our very utmost the development of sheep rearing in the upland areas.

I am not sure that he has approached the matter from the right direction. This will mean an enormous capital expenditure in Scotland. The hon. Member finished when I began to be very interested because he said it would be necessary to go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and get the money—as if this were a very simple process indeed —and then let the agricultural executive committees get on with the job. I would be prepared to go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to demand an enormous capital expenditure for the upland areas of Scotland. But who is to have the benefit of this money? Surely, we are not going to develop sheep rearing in the Scottish Highlands in order to increase the income of the landlord.

I put it to the hon. Member for West Perth that, as he began to get his hazy, sketchy idea into something like concrete and practical form, he began to realise that the implication of what was coming from the Conservative Benches was a vast expenditure of public money and a public enterprise. The State was to come in, and he was advocating something in the way of nationalisation of agricultural enterprise. I believe we have to do it on a big scale and that we cannot hope that the ordinary small farmer can put a large amount of capital into the development of sheep and cattle in the Scottish Highlands, for example. I suggest that this is absolutely essential, and that we have got to give the utmost support to any concentrated demand for the reorganisation of our agriculture in order to increase the food supplies in this country. We cannot go back to the 18th century.

When I heard about the common land, which is not so much a problem in Scotland, I was reminded of a poem by G. K. Chesterton which ended with a reference to the common land turning up in the squire's back yard. Whether they like it or not, hon. Members opposite who' are demanding the organisation of agriculture on new lines to give us an increase in our food supply are unconsciously developing an argument which must involve them in greater and greater support for public enterprise. I can foresee the time when this demand will take the form of land corporations in the Highlands developing the idea of Lord Lovat and the hon. Member for West Perth, and being committed to a large measure of Socialism without knowing what they have done. I beg the hon. Member to realise that this would result in growing more food in this country and would also lead to people leaving the towns and going on to the land, which would be a public service.

When that time comes we shall have to spend more money on the development of marginal farming. We shall have to go to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I hope that we shall get some favourable result. But one cannot talk of decreasing national expenditure, as the Leader of the Opposition has been doing during the Budget Debate, saying that we must cut our expenditure—one cannot do that on Mondays and Tuesdays, and then come here on Fridays and say, " Go to the Chancellor for an unlimited supply of public money." If the economy of this country is to be changed, public money must be used usefully and productively.

I was very glad to hear an hon. Member refer to the danger of blundering into a war. If we concentrate our attention on the constructive measures necessary to improve the standard of life of our country, I do not believe we shall be in so much danger of blundering into another war and ruining our agriculture and our national economy.

3.18 p.m.

I should like to refer to the point which was made just now by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes). I do not agree that public financial assistance on The scale that has been suggested would necessarily lead to nationalisation or to a national corporation: The mere fact that this land is marginal means that there is a considerable risk in getting profitable production out of it. It is impossible for a public corporation to undertake work of that kind without losing money, much more probably, than private enterprise.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Mack) referred to the capital sum of £40 million a year which, he said, was coming into the industry. I imagine that that is an allusion to the £40 million,a year which was injected into the industry after the price review of 1947. That was intended as some contribution towards the capital heeded for the expansion programme, but it does not touch.the question of marginal land which we !are how discussing. As a matter of fact, I felt that the hon. Gentleman's allusion Ito marginal farming was the only marginal part of his speech.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) for raising this subject which is of great public interest at present. With him. I should like to see financial assistance given to marginal land farming. I should like to see the calf subsidy retained as well. That is a very valuable measure; let us keep them both. I should also like to see the East Lancashire experimental farm proceeded with; indeed, I do not see why we should cut out any of those things.

On the general approach to the marginal land problem, it seems to me that we have to take a clear line. There are something like 17 million acres of what is called rough grazing, and I think a great deal of it will always remain rough grazing. It seems to me that the kind of approach we want is something in the form of a capital grant or a loan which will enable this land to be brought into economic production. The point was very rightly made by the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Emrys Roberts) that a particular aspect of it is the near hill farming land which does not receive the benefit of the hill farming grant. Undoubtedly, many of those farmers are in serious difficulties today. It will not need very much of an economic deterioration to make those farms empty.

The sort of approach which I hope the Minister will make is to find suitable areas which can be brought into economic production and of a kind where the economic production will be strong enough to stand up to competitive conditions after a capital sum has been expended to bring them into full production. The sort of developments which will be needed for that include, probably, improvement of communications and roads, probably improvement of public services and certainly the introduction of main services like electricity and main water supplies. Certainly, too, we shall need facilities for the people to get into the towns, so that they can enjoy the ordinary amenities of life and entertainments which are enjoyed by people in the more accessible areas.

It seems to me that that is the kind of proposition which will be most profitable. We have all been talking for several years about schemes for the development of marginal land, and I hope the Minister is reaching a point where he will be prepared to act in this matter. I feel that there are areas—it may be a million acres, it may be four million acres—which could be brought into economic production, provided the capital work is done at the beginning—and that is obviously a job for the State. I hope that by the time the Minister has received the final survey, which, I believe, is now being completed, he will be willing to take action along those lines which will greatly add to the total food supplies of the country and will enable food production to be continued under economic conditions, even if competition becomes more severe.

3.22 p.m.

I am very glad that the Debate on this most important subject, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin), was not deflected very far from its course by the raucous echoes of the election speech made by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Mack), and that we have been able to return to the real purpose of the Debate. I do not want to take up point by point the charges made by the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, but I think I can say that, in general, he tried to leave the impression that the fact that all land in this country is not equally well equipped and equally well farmed, and that some is what we call marginal land, is something for which the Tory Party can be blamed.

(Preston, South): Hear, hear.

indicated dissent

One hon. Member opposite says "Hear, hear" and another shakes his head.

To guide the hon Member, may I point out that what I said was not that at all? What I said was that in the years past good land, potentially productive land, in this country was rendered derelict by a lack of foresight, imagination and good government on the part of the Tory Party and that the agricultural workers were in many cases compelled to go to the towns and to overpopulate them.

I do not think that that is really very relevant to point I was making. In general, I will stick to what I said: that the impression which the hon. Member left, to which the hon. Member for Preston, South (Mr. Shackleton) said " Hear, hear " so loudly, was that a great deal of blame attached to the Tory Party because all the land in this country is not equally well farmed and equally well equipped.

The Tory Party did not make the land of this country, and surely every hon. Member knows that all land is not equally fertile and has not the same problem of access. The problem of marginal land, excluding the odd example which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme may. be able to find in his own constituency or elsewhere, is an economic problem. I think that the marginal land which we are now thinking about is the land which we cannot under present circumstances' farm satisfactorily and at a profit. It may fall below the hill-farming line or be land close to the seashore, it is not all going to be an equally economic proposition until science, or some other method, can arrange for all the land of the country to be equally fertile, all to have the same access and all to share theoretical perfection, which is obviously quite impossible.

I do not want to confuse this issue by bringing in all the hill farming arguments. That is another subject which has been covered pretty adequately, except for the farm workers' house, in the provisions of the Hill Farming Act which reached the Statute Book in the last Parliament. But we still have this other problem of the marginal land to deal with. I do not think that to subsidise fertilisers, which is the tendency of the Minister of Agriculture at the present time, is to tackle the problem at the right end. Surely, the first thing that we have to do is to see that adequate capital equipment is invested in the land if we are to have any permanent improvement. Tackling the problem by subsidising fertilisers is not going to have a permanent long-term advantage, although it may be a most important short-term one.

I would like to impress upon the Minister the importance of encouraging the flow of capital to that land, and particularly to consider the problem of roads, which are a most costly item. Without good roads, we are not able to farm that land intensively. Equally, I am doubtful whether the improvement we hope to get in the production from marginal land is going to carry the interest charges and the heavy cost of making up the necessary roads without some special measure of help.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said " we " were spending £40 million of capital on that land. I am not quite sure whom he meant; whether he was speaking for the Government, speaking for the farming community, or speaking for himself.

The Government.

The most important aid to the flow of capital to that land in recent years was contained in the Finance Act at the end of the war. If the Parliamentary Secretary can impress upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer to try and extend his Income Tax reliefs on the investment of capital for fixed equipment on marginal land - and he has a day or two in which to do it - he would probably be doing the biggest service which the Government have it in their power to do at the present moment.

On the question of commons, which my hon. Friend also raised, we have a number of Measures on the Statute Book dealing with commons. None of them, I think, is very recent. I wish he would look into that. There are, as we know, schemes by which commons can be regulated. I think that is the technical expression. But surely there are too may cases in which one awkward man can stand in the way of what we would all like to call progress.

I do not think that it is necessary for us to have a lot of bulky new legislation, but I would like the Parliamentary Secretary to look into the present rules under the Acts to see whether he cannot simplify the system by which the commoners themselves are entitled to regulate their commons. Those who have had anything to do with commons regulation know the difficulties we are up against and that often the records of the authorities are obscure or lost. That is an important point, and if he can simplify these methods we shall all be grateful.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme also said that he would welcome— and he thought that the Minister would —any practical suggestion for the improvement of marginal land. I will venture to give one which I think is a new one. It is that this problem of marginal land immediately below the hill-farming contour should not be considered solely as an agricultural problem or solely as a forestry problem. The county represented by the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Emrys Roberts) is likely to be considered solely as a forestry problem. It really should be looked at as a combined operation.

If the Parliamentary Secretary would cast his eyes to any of the neighbouring countries in Europe, he would find on such land, not enormous blocks of forests which have swept the agricultural population off their farms, but woods of moderate size on the steeper banks and flourishing farms in between, flourishing because of the shelter given by the woods, more productive and fertile than would otherwise be the case. We know that the Forestry Commission are not interested in agriculture, and that the farming community is little interested in forestry. If that could be got over, the whole problem would become very much easier. Shelter on the hill lands is one of the things we most lack. We lack shelter even more vitally than fertilisers.

If the Parliamentary Secretary remembers nothing else of this short speech of mine, will he please remember that, in the opinion of many people who have looked at this problem overseas as well as at home, the solution is easier if one can bridge this gap between forestry and agriculture. By considering this problem as a combined operation, I am quite certain that within a few years it will be possible not only vastly to increase the area under forestry but also vastly to increase the productivity of the farms in these areas.

3.32 p.m.

The fact that we on this side of the House are convinced that the Labour Party policy has been responsible for the greatly increased prosperity of the countryside—after all, we can have a bit of politics in an Adjournment Debate—need not divide the House in the serious consideration of this problem of marginal and common land. I do not claim anything like the expert knowledge of some Members oppo- site, but I feel that this is a matter in which we must be very cautious. It is an old economic axiom that the marginal producer sets the price, and obviously there is a point beyond which the development of marginal land becomes uneconomic from the point of view of the community as a whole. That is not in any way to underestimate the importance of this subject.

There is one particular point on which I should like to give a warning, which relates to common land. I am a commoner in the New Forest, where we have a number of interesting experiments going on in regard to the improvement of grassland. I am not a practising farmer, although one day I may be. Every week-end, when the House is not sitting, I see these beautiful patches of greensward as I drive past. In the distance what at first appears to be a crowd of crows is, in fact, a con-congregation of all the cattle on this improved land. The result is, as agriculturists must know, a deterioration in the rest of the rough grazing. Therefore, I make the point that in tackling common land the Minister and his agricultural executive committees must be satisfied that any improvements they make will be fully used by the commoners, otherwise money is wasted and the final result may be worse than before.

3.34 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary will perhaps agree with me that the use of the word " marginal " in its application to land is very difficult. It is extremely difficult to define land, and the word " marginal " gives the public at large the impression that we are pouring money into the schemes which will show no return. Today, the very existence of the country is marginal, especially as regards food supplies. The hon. Member for Ayrshire, South (Mr. Emrys Hughes) rightly pointed out that this matter should be considered in relation to the broadest possible scheme of things. It was also pointed out from this side, by way of interruption, that if more food is grown in Africa, a large part of it will be consumed in that country. We are seeing that with all these schemes of development now.

When we talk about marginal land in this country, it is advisable to understand that the great bulk of our land—whether it be the 15 million acres that some people talk of or the more conservative estimate of four or five million acres—is infinitely superior to a great deal of the land now being developed in areas such as South Africa, or in parts of South America. I was in Venezuela at Christmas time and saw some of the land that is being developed, and I believe that the land in the glens of Scotland has infinitely greater agricultural possibilities. Lord Boyd Orr's ideas may be slightly askew from day to day, but the general tendency of the world undoubtedly is the Boyd Orrian one, and the one that we are faced with on the long-term view. I therefore think that we should all be extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for initiating this Debate this afternoon.

The immediate line that I should like to follow for a few minutes is the question of the actual shortage, and what looks like becoming a continuing shortage, in the world meat supply. I believe that to approach it from the angle of what meat we can produce in this country will perhaps get over some of the difficulties, though not, I am afraid, the difficulties of the Parliamentary Secretary in drawing the line between what is hill land and what is marginal land. That is an awfully difficult line to draw, and I sympathise with him in having to cope with that problem. The fact is, we are suffering, and may well continue to suffer, from a shortage of meat in this country. When one looks at the price that one cwt. of meat fetches today in Chicago and in the big American meat markets, one is really staggered by the cheapness of our own product. I believe it is 40 dollars for one cwt. there at the moment. When I was in America I went into a butcher's shop to buy a chop, not to bring home but just to find out what its price was, and the price was fabulous: 80 cents. That may be what hon. Gentlemen opposite call a retail margin. Even in the wholesale markets in the States one finds that today the price of meat is simply fantastic.

That is capitalist America.

That may be, but let the hon. Gentleman remember that he is getting quite a lot from capitalist America today. I believe, therefore, that we should look at the problem from that angle. The figures produced by Moses Griffiths and others show that there is in this country a possible production of another 200,000 tons of meat in the shape of more beef and more mutton, and I believe that to be perfectly possible.

Before we embark on any actual scheme for marginal land or hill land, or what might be called land which it is necessary to develop, attention should be drawn to two things. First, we are not putting nearly enough emphasis on quality production, which will lead in the long-run to a deterioration of production. This country has always been proud to be the stud farm of the world in all lines of animal production. It is undoubtedly disastrous that today cow meat and beef meat should fetch approximately the same price in the market. That is one factor which needs a great deal of stressing, and prices should be adjusted to make quality production more attractive. Only by producing quality, in the most efficient way, shall we produce the greatest quantity of meat for the amount of feedingstuffs that is allowed. Only thus shall we solve our problems here at home. Quality is most important, although perhaps outside this discussion on marginal land.

The other thing is the use of grassland. There is no question but that all experts would say that as a nation we are not using our grassland in the most efficient way, and a great deal more encouragement should be given there. How that is to be done, whether by the Agricultural Advisory Service or by other means, I do not know; but I am sure that that should always be uppermost in our minds. I should be very happy if the Parliamentary Secretary carries away with him those two thoughts, as I am sure the whole country would be if the action suggested were taken.

As to the actual plan to be embarked upon for marginal land, or for all these areas, whether they be above or below that level, the most important thing, of course, is that the survey should be carried out. I gather that that is being done, except in Scotland, and I should like to have information on this from the Minister when he replies. The time has come when, pressed around as we are with difficulties abroad, with most of our foreign assets gone, the use of the land should be much better controlled than it is at present by Government Departments. There is far too little coordination of land use and far too lavish use of land at a time when it is essential that we should carry out the maximum conservation of land.

My third point is this. It is essential to give to those who are engaged, or who are prepared to engage, in marginal or hill land production the maximum amount of long-term guarantee. All these things will take a great deal of time to get under way. They cannot be done quickly. It is clear to everyone who comes from Scotland and the Highlands or from Wales, that huge areas which were formerly in production have gone out of production. It will take time and money to restore them. One of the present troubles is that everyone working on these schemes is working on a very short guarantee of a matter of only three or four years. I think that in 1951 most of these subsidies and forms of assistance die out. This is a vital matter and one to which it is most essential that consideration be given.

One could go into a great variety of smaller points, including the question of the calf subsidy, which is necessary for milk cattle but which should not be applied to beef, and whether there should not be encouragement for cattle and sheep in hill schemes. One thing which emerges —and this is the last point I should like the Minister to take away with him—is that it is essential that the people who are to go into these things should be given, a programme which will last, not over one or two years, but over 10 years; and then we shall get people coming into the marginal agricultural industry. I hope that the Minister will see his way to saying something along these lines this afternoon, otherwise I fear that when he brings forward on Tuesday his Bill for cattle grids, he will be putting the grid very much before the cattle, and not only the cart before the horse.

3.43 p.m.

The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Mack) stressed the fact that the Government have put the farmers in a position to be able to produce sufficient food to feed half our population, or 25 million people. He did not add, however, that at the end of the last century we were producing enough to feed that same number. Surely, today, with the advances of science, we could do very much more than that.

I do not believe that much more food could be produced off land which is already in full production. We must maintain the fertility of the land, and it would be a mistake—indeed, I do not think it would be possible—to attempt very much to increase our food production in the way of store crops from land which is already under cultivation. If we are to increase our production, it is, therefore, to other land, and, of course, to marginal land, that we must look. Many attempts have been made to estimate how much marginal land is in existence which could be brought into full production. I should have thought that it was impossible to define marginal land, just as it is to define exactly what is good land or bad land, but there are certainly at least two million -acres which could be brought into production.

The hon. Member for Ayrshire, South (Mr. Emrys Hughes) spoke about sheep in Scotland, which is rather more a problem of hill farming than of marginal farming. He asked who, if the Government were to give a grant of money to make this land capable of rearing sheep, was to get the return for the expenditure of that money. He went on to say that we on this side of the House are constantly advocating that the Government should cut expenditure and then immediately afterwards asking for more money to do more things. Surely, he 'will agree that there is a difference between expenditure and capital investment?

On the other hand, I agree that this is a most difficult problem. If we examine the speeches made on both sides of the House on marginal land we find that we eventually get down to the main fundamental problem, which is: where is the money to be obtained to bring it about. I should be most grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would deal with that subject. If the Government make a loan to the farmers or a gift to the farmers or to the land to bring it into cultivation it is difficult to see that it is right for the farmer who is cultivating that land to have the benefit of that capital investment which he has not himself made.

I do not wish to harp on this subject, but I put forward, in a speech I made on the Budget on this very subject, the idea that a land loan should be launched and the money loaned to the farmers. Assuming that £35 per acre would be required and that the acreage involved would be two million, the sum required would be £70 million, which I do not think could be found by the agricultural community today. In my view the best way would be to find that money within the country and get the people to invest their money in the land, something which has never happened before. In that way we will get the money and, as a result of it, the priceless dividend of more plentiful and cheaper food.

3.48 p.m.

We have had an interesting Debate today. It is entirely out of Order, as I, as Father of the House, know, to say anything which might reflect upon the House as a whole, but I wonder if there is any other country in Europe the legislature of which had before it a question of such immense importance as the one now before us, namely, what we should do with millions of acres—which is being discussed from a non-party point of view, on the whole, with useful speeches from both sides of the House—where there would be such a thin attendance even on a Friday. It is typical of the over-urbanised attitude of this country, which I am afraid this House reflects, towards the agricultural problem. l see the hon. Gentleman opposite shake his head. I do not intend to make a political speech; indeed, he will be rather pleased with what I shall say, but it is a fact that there is, and always has been, an over-urbanised attitude in Britain towards the land.

It is to the credit both of the late National Government and—I would pay this tribute to the hon. Gentleman—to the credit of the present Government that in the last 10 years we have to some extent broken through that and tried to get the " little street-bred people " as Kipling once called them, in a rather derogatory term, to realise that they could not eat the pavements and that, in the end, we have to rely upon those connected with the land for our food. In this Debate we have gone rather beyond the very important question which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) in his most interesting speech. We have gone into all sorts of questions. One was raised by the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) on the subject of Lord Boyd Orr.

I do not wish to get out of the ambit of the Debate, and I would only deal with that subject by saying that here, again, where no party issue arises, there is room for more controversy on this question of whether or not there is a sufficiency of food in the world for the population of the world, than there is on any other matter. I assure the hon. Member for South Ayrshire that I am not making a party point when I say, as one who has visited every colony in Africa, with two exceptions, that it is the fact, as one of my hon. Friends reminded him in an interruption, that if the Africans were given a sufficient diet for health it would probably mean the use of every acre of land in Africa for food growing. I believe that the Sahara is advancing at the terrifying rate of something like a mile a year. I know something of the land in Northern Rhodesia, and can appreciate what the hon. Gentleman said about the need for producing everything possible in this country.

I wish to deal with one specific point in this connection. The House will always pay attention to the views, however well or badly expressed, of someone who has had personal experience. I have had some experience not as extensive as the experience of some of my hon. Friends, but in the last few years I have had personal experience of the reclamation of derelict land. As the Parliamentary Secretary knows I have had many private conversations with him and with his right hon. Friend on the subject of derelict land. I cannot speak with the authority of the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Emrys Roberts) who made a useful and helpful speech, or with the authority of my hon. Friend who spoke so well about the hill lands. But I can speak about the land near London.

I would start by making this affirmation, which I do not think anyone will deny: that, unfortunately, there is more land within 60 miles of London that could be cultivated—and which would be cultivated in any other European country—but which is not cultivated, than there is in the same distance from any other European capital. Again and again when going through what is sometimes known as the Garden of England, the County of Kent, French friends of mine—and the French are more an agricultural people than other nations realise—have said, " We think your country very beautiful, but we do not know why there is so much land which does not appear to be cultivated." They have said that they thought the best of our farms are as good as any in the world, but they do not understand why there is so much land which is neither properly afforested nor growing any crops. We have to cross the Atlantic to see a comparable condition. We have to go to Canada or America to see so much land unused within a distance of the capital.

It is no use any hon. Member making the party point against me that this all happened in the years before the war. It is true that it did, but the war started 11 years ago. Therefore, we may criticise both my right hon. Friend and the present Minister, if we wish to criticise them both impartially, for the fact that even after 11 years from the outbreak of war there is still, despite everything done since the war, this state of affairs. It is no reflection on the farmers and in that connection I would repeat what I have already said about the views of French visitors. In my opinion the general level of farming in this country is good. Indeed, I think we have the most highly mechanised farming industry in the world, and that there is a co-operation between the farmer and farm worker which is a joy to see and a credit to both.

What is the reason for these huge areas of uncultivated land within 60 miles of London? There is the question of common rights. There is a permanent misconception about commons. In this over-urbanised community of Great Britain there is a supposition that commons are intended purely for recreational purposes. That is quite incorrect. The original purpose of commons was to provide, as the term implies, common pasturage for cattle, sheep, goats and horses. It is quite true that in recent years some commons, quite a number near London, have been, and are still, governed by special Acts of Parliament, which make them purely recreational.

I do not think that any resident on the outskirts of Putney Common could tether a horse or a goat on that common. He would probably get into trouble with the London County Council if he did. Incidentally, that in itself would astonish most people from abroad. They would say, " What do you mean? Where there is grass in a public place, merely used for walking over, people cannot use it for grazing. Why is that? What is wrong? Do not the English want to produce their own food? " But, of course, there would be an outcry if anyone were to use Putney Common for that purpose.

There are other commons which are still remote from large centres. There are several in my constituency, and several in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Nugent), who made such an excellent speech this afternoon. I only give these as examples. There are hundreds or thousands in other parts of the country. Some of them, within living memory, provided pasturage for sheep, cattle, goats and horses, but they are now overgrown with bracken, thorns and brambles. The majority of these commons are not used to any great extent for recreational purposes.

Here is an interesting, though perhaps delicate, point to bring up, because it affects the position of the police. Some of the commons to which I refer are still used, to some extent, for grazing, despite the fact that they are largely overgrown. Some portion of them may still be grazed. They are used because the local police officers do not put into operation the law which punishes a person for allowing cattle to stray upon the highway. In the case of other commons where cattle and sheep were grazed in the past—perhaps under a different police authority or with a local superintendent with a different point of view—it is impossible for the commoners to turn out their cattle, because they are punished if they allow them to stray.

I must be careful on this point, because I cannot remember whether I took up this matter with the hon. Gentleman's chief in a speech, or whether I took it up privately with him. If I took it up privately, I must not repeat the conversation, but I do not think that I shall be committing any fault when I say that there are difficulties about getting a common attitude towards this matter. I should welcome a statement from the Minister, as would my hon. Friends, that, so far as it is proper and right for the Minister to try to influence police authorities, he would welcome commons in remote parts or the country being allowed to be used for grazing, without punishment for allowing cattle to stray.

The position is rather ridiculous. If one motors through the New Forest at day or night one sees cattle all over the place. A few miles away, in another police district, if a cow strays on to a road after grazing on a common, the owner is summoned for allowing his cattle to stray. There is something wrong with the situation. I cannot go into the question of the alteration of the law. Indeed, it is not necessary, because this could be dealt with by, shall I say, tactful action, on the part of the police.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leominster made some suggestions about how to deal with commons. I am in general agreement with what he said. I am not sure that I am in complete agreement on the questions of detail which he put forward. As he himself said, this is not a matter for controversy between the two sides of the House: it is a matter open to differing opinions. I was in complete agreement with him when he said that it was something in the nature of a national scandal that all this land, which once produced food, in the form of giving grazing to animals, is no longer used. I withdraw the phrase, " Something in the nature of a national scandal." It is a national scandal to which attention has been called.

The other type of land which has become derelict, and it is found particularly in the Weald of Sussex and Surrey, and in many other parts of the Home Counties, is land which was originally agricultural land and which was put down to coppice land some 110 or 120 years ago, when there was a period of agricultural depression, when agricultural prices were low and when there were high values on the products of woodland industry.

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

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

Some of this land is still valuable coppice land, but a great deal of it is derelict coppice land, which no longer fulfils its purpose, and some of it is land on which the standard trees have been cut and which has never been 'afforested. I would put in a plea, not only on behalf of my own constituents, but on behalf of the whole or a very large portion of that huge area known as the Weald of Sussex, Surrey and Kent, for the consideration of this particular question.

There are these thousands of acres, whether of derelict coppice land or of land where the trees have been cut, and it is no use saying that they should be afforested, because it is a fact that the existing programme of afforestation in this part of the country—that is, of land already in the occupation of the Forestry Commission—will take at least ten years to carry out. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford would agree that one main difficulty 'is that there is no housing accommodation for the men who will do the forestry work. It will, therefore, take at least ten years, and, moreover, the private owners in most of the district are doing their best in the way of afforestation and cannot do more than they are doing now.

The third type of land which has be-tome derelict is that which has still not been reclaimed since the new policy was inaugurated at the beginning of the last war and is now covered with brambles and thorns, which in the Weald and many other parts of the country grow very quickly. I believe that if a survey was made of the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Guildford and Farnham and my own constituency—and there are about 20 other constituencies affected—it would be found that there are thousands of acres which would come into the category which I have mentioned, and. in the country generally, something like five million acres. My own county agricultural committee have given me some assistance by the use of bulldozers and other modern instruments and by blowing up stumps, I have converted a small quantity of worn-out woodland into reasonably good agricultural land.

The county agricultural committees in Sussex and Surrey—I am not familiar with the operations of other committees —have carried out, sometimes on their own and sometimes in co-operation with landlords, extensive schemes of reclaiming land which is overgrown with thorns and bramble. I was given a personal example of this co-operation in work which has been carried out on a portion of my own land at my home. There is an area of some 80 acres which has been overgrown with gorse and bracken ever since the days of the agricultural depression. Part of it, by an arrangement into which I do not want to go, but which was a completely fair one, between the tenant, the A.E.C. and myself, has been cleared by the A.E.C., and today has a permanent pasturage as good as I have seen anywhere on the Wealdan clay, and infinitely better than many of the permanent pasturages one used to see before the war in the best grazing districts. To the best of my belief, I think it pays.

We are not asking today—indeed, it would be out of order to do so—for legislation; we are asking, as my hon. Friend put it, for further investigation into this matter, and for the extension of certain already existing schemes. Speaking purely for myself and without necessarily being in agreement with my hon. Friends without consultation with them—although I think they would all agree—I say it is high time, quite apart from the question of marginal land and the sort of land which my hon. Friend so well described, that public attention was focused upon this huge area of unused land in the south of England. This is no reflection on the Minister or on my right hon. Friend his predecessor, but the continuance of this unused land is a reflection on the commonsense and on the common patriotism of the British people.

My hon. Friend said that this country always blundered into war. It does not blunder into war; it has war forced upon it. It may have a war forced upon it within the next two or even 10 years. God forbid that it should be so, but if, again, we do have a war forced upon us, other people will say, " What an extraordinary thing it is that after everything you experienced in the last two wars, you still have these millions of acres in Great Britain not producing all they should for human and animal consumption." That is why in this House of Commons on a Friday afternoon, with a meagre attend- ance, we are dealing with matters that go to the very root of our national existence and our national future.

4.8 p.m.

When I was shaking my head at an earlier stage, I was not, in fact, inviting the Father of the House to withdraw his kindhearted support; I was merely seeking to show that I was in agreement with what he was saying except on the point about the attendance in the House. It is only fair to point out that no one, least of all the hon. Gentleman who initiated this Adjournment Debate or myself, expected this Debate to arise as it did, and I am sure many of our hon. Friends would have been here had there been the prospect of a full Debate on this important subject.

One other thing which the noble Lord said at the end of his speech really makes the whole Debate worth while. He concluded by saying that there was great need to focus public attention upon this problem. Many of the things that have come up in this Debate—which some hon. Members in an Adjournment Debate are prepared to pick up so lightly—such as the enclosing of common land, will never be successfully tackled, no matter what Government sits on this side of the House, if we do not manage to focus public attention upon them.

We have a lot to do in that way, and, therefore, I hope that this Debate will help. I was astonished that I did not receive from the hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) beforehand the points he was going to raise. The letter which he said he sent me never arrived, but when he began to speak I realised that he was making the speech he had made before and that, therefore, such intimation was superfluous. As this Debate has gone on, it has been interesting to see how every point made by the hon. Member for Leominster has been answered by somebody else. I am not going to intervene between him and his hon. Friends as to who is right, but it shows that the problem cannot be regarded as easily and obviously soluble as he proclaimed it to be.

There is a great deal of difference of opinion about the nature of the problem. I was very glad that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Guildford (Mr. Nugent) was able to take part in the Debate. He not only made a grand speech, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but he brought a very welcome breath of fresh air into our discussion of the nature of marginal land. It is not good enough to talk as though a vast area which is not producing, say, Aberdeen Angus or Hereford cattle, is all marginal land and that it could all be brought into cultivation to grow good quality beef if only we went to the Chancellor for enough money. That is nonsense. All the money in the world could not do it unless one first finds what is the dividing line between that land which is not an economic proposition and that land which would produce results if certain carefully controlled work were done upon it. Many hon. Members seem to talk as if it were a simple question of asking for money. It is a question of what sort of work one can do before land can be turned into reasonably productive land.

The hon. Member for Leominster declared, in a wild passage, "No surveys are necessary, nor are experiments we want no experiments." Really, with very great respect, I must tell him that a good deal of surveying has to be done if we are to discriminate between worthwhile land and land from which we would receive no return at all after we had done all the job. While he performed a service in giving a chance to the House to discuss this question and to hon. Members to make their valuable contributions, the hon. Member for Leominster managed to miss the target pretty completely. He will say there is nothing unusual in my saying so. But when we are discussing this marginal land, in which we are all very interested, it is really absurd to start with a lengthy passage about this country living on other people and getting food without paying for it, and so on.

It is really not fair to our people. It is no part of the argument. It adds nothing to the discussion. It is rather insulting to a lot of people who are working very hard outside, and it is very insulting to our agricultural industry. They well need our support and it is my right hon. Friend's job, to see that they get it. The industry is doing a grand job, and I suggest to the hon. Member for Leominster that we have a duty to perform in this House. That duty is to give some recognition to what is being done, even when we are discussing what else ought to be done.

The hon. Member for Leominster talked about various sums of money the Government makes available in one form or another as being " small enough." I have not had time to obtain the figures which I would have liked to quote, but let us look at some of them. These figures for the whole area do not relate only to what could be called marginal land, but consider the hill sheep and cattle subsidy of over £21 million during 194849. That sum must mean considerable help to people who farm those areas.

The hon. Member for Leominster may state that those areas are not marginal land, but they are really part of the same problem. That is particularly so where one thinks of land above a certain line: but we also have to think of land which is worked in association with it and which is below that line, and that is very often the real marginal land. The great puzzle to me, if I may digress for a moment, are the people who talk about marginal land and then wander off and talk about marginal farmers. I have said before that the two things are not the same. The hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Emrys Roberts) began talking about marginal land and then referred to the aid to marginal farmers. They are two separate things.

I meant, of course, marginal land.

Yes, but hon. Members -often talk about them in that way, whereas they are different things. A scheme which will aid marginal land may well be of no use to a marginal farmer who may be failing on what is not marginal land because he has not got the wherewithal or the knowledge to do the job properly.

Mention has been made of the hill sheep and cattle payments. I ask hon. Members to consider the calf subsidy payments which amounted to £3i million last year. The hon. Member said that if that amount of money were put into the marginal land without the survey we should get better results. Let me give the figure, which I have been able to obtain since he spoke, relating to what has happened to cattle since we had the calf subsidy payment. In 1947 there were 386,000 male cattle under one year, and in 1949 there were 581,000.

The hon. Member for Leominster referred to the need for stores in order to get the marginal land to do the job we want it to do. When one sees the male cattle under one year, and from one to two years, growing so well, I think one can draw the deduction that what we are now getting are the male stores being carried on instead of being knocked on the head at an early age, which used to be the case. Therefore, the calf subsidy has been of great assistance indeed in helping to solve the problem of getting marginal land to do its job. What is true of cattle of one year is also true of cattle of one to two years; they have progressed similarly, and the same applies to the female cattle.

Let me remind hon. Members that the land drainage and water supply payments for the same period amounted to nearly Eli million. Much of that has gone into land which, before that date, was not being farmed economically and which could reasonably be regarded as being involved in this marginal problem. The lime payments for that period were nearly £5 million in the United Kingdom. I recently went into Wales and saw a very wonderful job being done on some of the hill lands there by a very distinguished hill farmer. Very largely, the improvement was due to the use of lime; very little else was responsible. One was able to see from a long way away the difference in the areas which he had been able to treat and the areas which he had not been able to treat. I think that the £5 million payment, which is no small figure, has made a considerable contribution in this respect.

Was that done under the Hill Farming Act?

It was the result of the lime payments. Lime payments may be of one kind or of another; they were lime payments which were not limited to hill farms.

Was the land which the hon. Gentleman saw hill land?

The hon. Gentleman is missing my point. It had nothing to do with hill farming. I am pointing out the value of giving lime.

Let me now deal with some of the points which were raised by other speakers. May I say to the hon. and gallant Member for Cheltenham (Major Hicks-Beach) that I have the greatest sympathy with the point he raised about setting up an organisation of common owners who would agree to the temporary enclosure of these commons for the purpose of afforestation. We have that point very much in mind, although it is none the easier for having said that.

The hon. Member for Merioneth asked about the survey. We have had our little body of experts busy on this and, arising out of their discussions and deliberations, my right hon. Friend is now considering what line of action he can most usefully recommend to his colleagues.

Does that mean the survey is at an end?

It means that the committee have done a large amount of work in collating evidence and information which we had and that my right hon. Friend has now to consider what sort of action can usefully be recommended, arising out of the evidence which we have at our disposal.

I have not much to say on what was said by the hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Nugent), except that I largely agreed with the approach he made to this and the attitude he adopted, particularly when he spoke of the importance of finding suitable areas. I think that is the big issue. It is not a question of entering into a vast scheme all over the place but one of finding suitable areas which seem to be worth while tackling in one way or another, and then tackling them in that way.

There are many other points I should like to mention but there are three main points which probably cover most of the detail which has been raised. There are three problems here. First, there is the problem of what we call marginal land—a term which none of us is able to define very satisfactorily, although somebody did attempt a definition this afternon which I thought was not too far out. Second, we have to divide it into land which is worth tackling and land which we shall have to leave. There must be some limit to the amount we intend to spend on it. We have had this working party, which has done a considerable amount of work, and their report—if we can so describe it —is being considered by my right hon. Friend. He will then have to confer with his colleagues and the Government wi:1 have to consider coming to the House with a proposal which seems worth while, in the light of the evidence which we have, for spending the money to provide the facilities and the physical requirements with which to tackle this problem.

That will, I take it, include the special case—for to a large extent it is a special case—of areas like those which I mentioned.

I was saying that we must approach the problem in that way, and I think, in the course of that, the areas in the Weald which the noble Lord mentioned and which we all know so well must come into consideration. There must be consideration as to whether that is the sort of area which one can deal with in the light of such a scheme.

Then, I think, we must bear in mind the assistance which is being made available under the Hill Farming Act, and the very considerable work which is being done both on hill farm land and on land adjacent to it or worked in connection with it—and I have some figures on what has been done with which I will not bore the House although they are quite impressive. That, together with anything else we are able to do by a more general marginal land scheme, will give us the most reasonable opportunity which we can expect to have of tackling this problem in a sensible but, nevertheless, bold sort of way—the boldness being tempered, of course, with caution.

Separately, there is this marginal production scheme which we have in a small way at the moment. It is quite separate from the marginal land problem. There is a certain amount of land which could do better than it is doing at the moment if the people doing the job were themselves in a better position to do it. It is to meet that special category, land which is often on the border of being marginal land proper, that my right hon. Friend has the marginal production scheme, through. which we are spending something like £600,000 a year in Great Britain. He has announced that that is to be extended and the expenditure is to be doubled to Ell million a year so as to cover a whole range of things which could not possibly come under it before. We are proposing to remove the means test, which we had to operate because of the ceiling of £600,000, and that will let in a lot of other people.

rose—

I have not the time to give way again. A good many of the proposals of a reclamation type, which, hitherto, we have had to rule out because of the limit of the sum of money available, will now come within this scheme, quite apart from whatever we are able to do, or feel able to do, on a bigger scheme of marginal land production.

Will this be limited to the occupier?

I think that it will be limited to the occupier as before. This is a marginal producers' scheme, if I may use the term, and the financing of it is limited to the persons producing there. The landlord would have to come in under a wider and different scheme. We hope to devise a scheme which will be administerable by a county allocation of funds and which will give the committees in a county the job of dividing them and allocating them within their county. I think that we shall get a better job done in that way.

I want to say a few words about commons. Many of us who saw what the committees did to the commons during the war and the so-called sins committed by the agents for the then Minister, regard them with concern, and wonder what will happen when they are allowed to go back. There are three types: commons in the urban areas; commons with little or no open space value, although very often with a potential fertile value; and commons which may or may not have a fertile value, but which may be useful for forestry or something else. There has been much sniping about the Forestry Commission. But if hon. Members who raised this matter would look at the 1948 Report of the Forestry Commission and read what is said there about land acquisition and use, they will see how far the two Departments have come together in arranging for the use of this sort of land.

With regard to the three categories, (a) presents no very great agricultural problem; (b) does. Many of these commons were requisitioned during the war. Two hundred and eighty are under requisition. My right hon. Friend has power under section 85 of the Agriculture Act, 1947, to buy this land compulsorily. We have asked the Committees to review the matter and to put up to us proposals where it is considered that we ought to purchase the land. The land obviously must be decent land at that stage and capable of good agricultural production. There comes the difficulty. My right hon. Friend is not only Minister of Agriculture but also, in a sense, the custodian of commons, and he has to balance these things one with the other. We are considering in which cases it would be right to proceed with purchase, with all the rights of the lord of the manor and other people to appeal to the tribunal, and my right hon. Friend will do his utmost to carry out his rather awkward obligations in this respect.

The question of the control of the commons that go back to the commoners is a matter which we have very much under consideration at the moment. The hon. Member for Leominster (Mr. Baldwin) will know that the N.F.U. of Herefordshire have made proposals for the control of commons by commoners' committees, to see that they do not go back once we have put them into decent grass condition. We hope to work out some useful things along those lines.

I have not the abounding enthusiasm of some people with regard to this matter, but I have a great interest in it, and there is a great job to be done here. If we proceed reasonably cautiously and with a determination to do that job along the lines I have indicated I believe that we shall be doing very much more than by making wild speeches and talking in terms of tens of millions of pounds.

The Question having been proposed at Four o'Clock and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at Half-past Four o'Clock.

Volume 474: debated on Friday 28 April 1950

House Of Commons

Prayers

Orders Of The Day

Royal Patriotic Fund Corporation Bill

Merchant Shipping Bill

London Docks (Resumption Of Work)

Ways And Means

Merchant Shipping (Payment Of Fees Into The Exchequer)

Newfoundland (Consequential Provisions) Bill Lords

Marginal And Common Land (Use)