I beg to present the first of a number of Petitions which I think you will have seen, Mr. Speaker, from the women of Hampshire. It is supported by 14,000 signatures of which 10,500 come from my own constituency and the majority of the balance from Bournemouth.

"The Humble Petition of the Women of Hampshire, Sheweth that they declare an immediate change of policy is required with regard to the administration of: Meat, Fuel and Housing. Wherefore your petitioners pray that this policy be changed forthwith. And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc."

Before we get on to the first subject I wish to warn hon. Members that it is somewhat difficult, because it might involve legislation. I have, of course, ruled before, that statements, even when they themselves do not involve legislation, but involve the Minister speaking about legislation, must be out of order, because it is not fair to rule a Minister out of order while the hon. Member remains in order himself. I thought I would give that word of warning, because it is a difficult subject.

When I was asked to open this discussion I thought that a Ruling such as you, Mr. Speaker, have now given, might be possible. However, I think it is possible to discuss this matter without getting out of order. This subject was originally in the name of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Hutchinson). Unfortunately, he is ill and confined to bed, and is obviously unable to start this discussion. I am sure that we all regret his absence and wish him a speedy recovery to full health.

I should like to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to open the discussion on this subject. I hope that the points I wish to make will receive some sympathy from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Local Government and Planning, who, I understand, is to reply. In one way or another this question has been raised in this House—either by Question and answer or under the Ten Minutes Rule procedure—in an attempt to secure justice for a number of householders who are affected by the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. The problem relates to the assessment of compensation for the compulsory acquisition of owner-occupied dwelling houses under Section 52 of the Act. That Section provides that where a public authority acquires a person's property by compulsory purchase compensation shall not, for the present, include any payment for vacant possession.

Whatever may be the justice of applying that method of assessing compensation to property which is held for investment purposes, quite different considerations apply when it is adopted in the case of dwelling houses occupied by their owners. In that case, it produces a great injustice. In its simplest form, a public authority may turn a man out of his house and may pay him compensation which is deliberately and expressly assessed at a figure which will be insufficient to enable him to purchase another house with vacant possession.

The right of a public authority to acquire property is not new. It dates back to the Towns Improvement Clauses Act, 1845, and the Land Clauses Consolidation Act of the same year. But in those two Acts very great safeguards were given to owners and although some safeguards are allegedly in the present Act of 1947, they are, by the way in which the Act is operated by the Minister, virtually non-existent. It is the manner in which the Minister is operating those safeguards under the present Act which is the main burden of our complaint today.

As is well known to the House, a local authority, in acquiring property, may apply for a compulsory purchase order, and there has to be a public inquiry at which the Minister is represented in addition to the owners of the property. Then, in due course, the Minister either confirms or rejects the application. It is interesting to note that in recent months nearly all applications that have been made for compulsory purchase have been approved by the Minister. Therefore, in my submission, the stage has been reached where a public inquiry really matters little, and the approval by the Minister is now regarded as something automatic within the Department. To that extent the owner of the dwelling house has no safeguards whatever and does not receive the protection under the law to which he is entitled.

In the debate which took place in the House on 28th February my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilford, North, quoted several examples where that had happened. The hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams), who was presumably replying to my hon. and learned Friend on behalf of the Government, made statements, which in my submission, showed a complete lack of any knowledge of the seriousness of this problem and how it affects the person concerned. Indeed, in one part of his speech he said, or implied, that because only a few people were involved, it really did not matter very much. But it is surely an important part of our Constitution that the rights of even one man should be fully safeguarded if something is done under the law which is contrary to the traditional heritage which an Englishman is entitled to expect that he will enjoy.

This is the position. A house is occupied by Mr. A, who bought it years before the war and paid for it by means of a mortgage. In many of these cases that have occurred, ordinary working men and women have sunk their entire life savings in buying the property concerned in the hope that when they reach their old age, they will have this asset and will not be forced to pay rent or any outgoings of that description, and will have the little income thus saved to keep them going in the declining years of their lives. Then comes the war; no building during war years; heavy bombing destroys a number of houses, and we have a serious housing problem. In consequence of all those facts the house which Mr. A purchased for perhaps £600 or £700, is today worth about £2,400 or £2,600.

A big authority comes along to acquire that property, and the district valuer assesses it at about £1,200. In the example I have in mind the house is a five-roomed house with two acres of ground. The hon. Member for Wigan set out in his speech to prove that because the owner will get a few hundred pounds more than he paid for it in 1933 or 1934, he is, therefore, better off. In point of fact he is substantially worse off in consequence of the operation of this law.

In view of your earlier Ruling, Mr. Speaker, while I have every sympathy with the hon. Member in putting his case, the difficulty is that in each of these cases, the law has been strictly and carefully observed, and any remedy would necessarily mean either new legislation or the breaking of the existing law by the local authorities or the Government Departments concerned.

I agree that the law, as the Parliamentary Secretary puts it, is being observed, but it is not necessary, in many of these cases, for local authorities to acquire the property in the way that they have done. There is no obligation in law for a local authority to acquire property compulsorily. There are other ways and means by which local authorities can obtain the property without causing people the hardship that the present system, which is becoming almost automatic, is causing today.

To revert to my case, what is the position of Mr. A? He gets his £1,200; he is probably 60 or 65 years of age; and he has now to seek other accommodation. It is well within the knowledge of the House that it is impossible today for anyone to buy for £1,200 a freehold house of anything like the quality that could have been bought for that sum in 1933, 1934 or 1935, and, for that reason alone, a person is substantially worse off than he was before the war. It may be argued, "Yes all right, but the local authority that acquires the property will re-house the person." Indeed, that has been done in one or two cases. But, again, the person is worse off. It must be remembered that when he is re-housed by a local authority he has to start to pay rent—one of the very things which, by purchasing this house in years gone by, he sought to avoid having to do in his declining years. To that extent also he is substantially worse off.

Some people are worse off in another way, because in some of these cases where there have been evictions they were tenants, and not owners, and were enjoying the full protection of the Rent Restriction Acts. Now that they have been re-housed by the local authority they no longer enjoy that protection, because a local authority house is not subject to the Rent Restriction Acts. So, in every particular, those affected by this method of acquisition are faced with great hardship which should not be allowed.

I would remind the House that in 1215 the barons rebelled against the King for all sorts of reasons which affected the liberty of the subject. Magna Carta was the result of that and everybody in the country was given protection which is our heritage. The whole British Constitution has been built up on this great Charter. The method which is today employed by the Minister under the operation of the Town and Country Planning Act, is, I say deliberately, legalised stealing, and should not be allowed. The fact that there are only a few cases involved does not absolve the Minister from any responsibility whatsoever. Indeed, it makes his responsibility even greater, because he is responsible for safeguarding the rights of every person affected by the operation of any Act he has to administer.

The London County Council are the main authority concerned in this particular matter. It is no part of my case to criticise the London County Council, except to say that they seem to me to have very peculiar ideas of morality. My hon. and learned Friend raised this question in the London County Council and in their published minutes, the Chairman of their Housing Committee is reported as saying:

"I would express the hope that the owner will co-operate with the council in concluding this purchase."

It really means that the London County Council have become the burglar, and invite the co-operation of the householder to leave the front door open so that they can come in and steal his furniture. That may be the Minister's idea of co-operation, but it certainly does not appeal to my idea of British justice.

There is a great difference in the minds of people, between spending their old age in their own home, which they have worked for and given years of their lives to provide, and spending their declining years in a council house. There is in this country still, in spite of everything which the Socialist Government have tried to do over the past four or five years, a great pride in ownership. There is still a great pride in owning one's own home, in building up something over the years that one can leave to one's family. But the action of the Minister, in the way he is operating this Act of Parliament, is contrary to all the best interests of the people of this country. I sincerely hope that at some future time Parliament, in its wisdom, may see fit to amend this state of affairs.

There are two reasons why the House should be grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper) for raising this matter. He has laid bare the injustices which have been inflicted, and which will continue to be inflicted upon a not inconsiderable number of people in this country. My hon and gallant Friend may also be congratulated, considering the nature of the offence of which he complains, upon the calm and dispassionate way in which he opened the debate.

It is right and proper that my hon. and gallant Friend should have raised this subject, since all hon. Members are concerned to safeguard personal liberty and rights, and to see that justice is denied to none. Clearly, in the modern State there will be occasions when the interests of the community conflict with the rights of individuals, and the great task of the Government, and that of Ministers, is to secure a proper balance between the two. It is not irrelevant to remark that in the heyday of nineteenth century Liberalism, private liberty took precedence over community interests. The view was taken by the so-called progressives of the day that the well-being of the community was best served by allowing private interests to have free and untrammelled rein. In our time the wheel has turned full circle and the self-styled progressives of our day argue that where a clash of interests occurs, individual rights should be subordinated to community interests.

The truth is, of course, that neither school of thought is right and a truly democratic society is one where public and private liberty are brought into balance and harmony; where private interest does not conflict with public well-being and where the State does not ride roughshod over the individual. My hon. and gallant Friend has shown that in one important respect, government, be it national or local, has power to ride roughshod over the individual. I can think of many others. I certainly do not object and I do not think that any hon. Member on this side of the House objects to powers of compulsory acquisition being exercised either by the central Government or by local authorities. Clearly, the needs of the community for roads, schools and, particularly in these days, for housing, are such that private interests must not be allowed to stand in the way. But our position in this matter, certainly the attitude I have consistently taken up since I was elected to this House, is that if the community requires a man's property in order to carry out essential development, then it should not punish him by giving him less than replacement value for his property.

It has been pointed out by my hon. and gallant Friend this morning that under the existing town and country planning legislation something less than the full market value is given for property required by local authorities or Government Departments or new town development corporations. The relevant Section of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, is Section 52. Bearing in mind the Ruling that you, Mr. Speaker, so wisely gave at the beginning of this debate, may I say that that Section was based upon the assumption—I have here the Explanatory Memorandum which was issued when the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, was first presented to the House—that a special scarcity value attached to the right of vacant possession. That Memorandum stated:

"At the present time a special scarcity value attaches to the right of immediate or early vacant possession. Section 52 provides that an interest which carries with it the right to immediate or early vacant possession shall be valued as if a lease terminating on the 1st January, 1954, were interposed between that and the right of vacant possession."

Actually, scarcity value still obtains today, and the housing position is such that it is likely to obtain for a long time. Therefore, it seems to me that the present method of compensation is based quite arbitrarily upon a fiction.

I have a particular interest in new towns, where, of course, to carry out essential preliminary developments, it is necessary for the development corporation to acquire a very large number of properties. Here the problem assumes an acute form. No man willingly sells his house with vacant possession at below the current market price. Agreement to sell at below the current market price is not therefore likely to be obtained, and the first annual Report of the Hemel Hempstead Development Corporation did, in fact, mention that this difficulty was likely to arise. I have here an extract from the first Report of the Basildon New Town Corporation, in which it is stated:

"In addition, the effect of various enactments governing the compensation to be paid by the Corporation for vacant possession inevitably restricts the sale of houses within the designated area, and in certain cases causes genuine hardship, thus hindering the Corporation's efforts to win the confidence and co-operation of the inhabitants."

Here, we have the Minister's own Corporation, a body appointed by him, admitting in its annual Report that genuine hardship is likely to be caused by the existing financial provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947.

So far as the new towns are concerned, that comes under the New Towns Act, 1946, and the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, does not come into it at all.

The Minister must not under-estimate me to that extent. He is as aware as I am that development corporations, seeking to acquire property for the purpose of development in areas designated for new towns, do so under Section 52. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but he knows perfectly well that new town corporations acquire property for the purpose of development under the Televant Sections of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947. Indeed, had the House known, when the New Towns Bill was being debated, in 1946, and was given full and unqualified support by Members of all parties, of what was to be inserted later in the Town and Country Planning Act, 1947, perhaps a different view might have been taken of that Measure.

The effect of this is to deprive a man who has invested his life savings in a small house—and the majority of the houses concerned in the Basildon area are small—of the opportunity of going somewhere else and buying a property of equivalent value. This is, indeed, depressing to those who dreamt of ending their days in their own homes, and it is galling to those who wish to bequeath something of value to their children. I say again that the framers of the New Towns Act, 1946, certainly never intended to make it the instrument of robbery—I am encouraged to use that term after what my hon. and gallant Friend has said—that it has, in fact, become. Surely the House realises that compensation which falls short of enabling a man to replace what is taken from him through no fault of his own, but merely through the geographical accident of being in a certain place at a certain time, is unjust.

There is another aspect of this problem as it affects the new towns. The mere fact that a development corporation may acquire properties at less than replacement value means that all properties within the area designated for the new town have that shadow hanging over them. I have repeatedly sought, first from the Parliamentary Secretary and later from the Minister himself, an assurance that the owners of properties unaffected by the development proposals of a new town corporation shall be left secure in possession of their freeholds.

In the House, on 1st May, I asked the Minister whether he appreciated that the effect of his policy so far, in respect of Basildon, was to cause a slump in the value of properties never likely to be acquired by the development corporation, thus causing financial loss and anxiety to innocent people and what were the reasons for the Minister's refusal to give the assurance for which I asked in my Question. He replied:

"If there is a slump, it is largely due, as I have said before, to the continuous activities of the hon. Gentleman in his own constituency."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st May, 1951; Vol. 487, c. 1002.]

That was a most offensive remark to make. The Minister misjudged me if he thought that I would leave the matter there. That statement, of course, was not true, and the Minister knows it is not true. The proof lies in what is happening, not only in the Basildon area but in other new towns, where such views as I have expressed on the subject are not likely to have been heard.

I have here a letter which was published in the "Daily Telegraph" of 16th June, 1950, from a leading surveyor in the Hemel Hempstead new town, and this is what he said:

"Values of owner-occupied houses within the designated area are fast diminishing, due to the unfair basis of compensation prescribed in the Town and Country Planning Act, and the understandably cautious attitude of building societies in granting loans on property."

What I said is taking place in Basildon now, has been taking place in Hemel Hempstead for some years. While, in 1948, houses on the Belmont Estate at Hemel Hempstead sold with vacant possession for £1,800, in the following year identical properties had fallen in value to £1,400, and, by the time at which the letter which I have just quoted was written, building societies were restricting their advances, having regard to a compensation value estimated at £1,200.

In other words, the mere fact of a man living in an area where large scale acquisition was likely to take place meant that he suffered a capital loss on his house property. It is no use the Parliamentary Secretary shaking his head; these are the facts. This is the sort of thing which has been happening, and, as development gets under way in areas where new towns have been planned in already inhabited districts, it is likely to increase in intensity.

I am well aware that it is not in order to ask for amending legislation, but I think it is a good thing my hon. and gallant Friend has raised this matter so that the Minister can have an opportunity of thinking about the subject. Man-made laws are not immutable. If they are found to be oppressive and unjust, they should be changed. Justice is not some favour that the law of this country confers. The law itself must be an agent of justice.

May I first of all join with the hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper) in expressing regret at the absence through illness of his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Hutchison) who was to have opened this debate. We all appreciate the very great interest he takes in these matters and particularly in local government, and it is unfortunate that on this occasion he is prevented from taking a part in the debate. We all hope that he will speedily recover, and that he will be back with us when we resume after the Whitsun Recess.

Normally this debate would have been taken by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, because the points raised are financial rather than those of policy in development under the two Acts mentioned. I am sure, however, that the House will agree with the Financial Secretary in his natural desire to be at the Battersea Park ceremony this morning, inasmuch as Battersea Park is in his constituency. That being so, he has asked me to reply to this debate, and I hope hon. Gentlemen will be satisfied with the substitution.

We have heard a lot this morning about private ownership but very little about the public good. Although there has been a lot of talk it has been very barren and not a single case has been produced to demonstrate that the hardship is as has been stated. It is perfectly true, as the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Braine) said, that in the heyday of private liberty there was a great deal of public fleecing. When it was known that a public authority wanted a building or a piece of land the word went round. Somebody purhased it and, of course, the public purse was fleeced for the benefit of the private owner.

It is correct that the public should be protected. Every building which has been acquired—and the emphasis this morning has been on the acquiring of dwelling-houses within the relevant Section of the Act—has been acquired for the public good. No one has ever suggested that local authorities are acquiring property just for sheer "cussedness." They are acquiring it for the public good, and to protect the public. They acquire such property because the public good necessitates it, and, where there are objections, there is a public inquiry or a private hearing into every aspect of the matter, so that the interests of the Department or the local authority concerned are safeguarded as well as those of the person who owns the property.

The hon. and gallant Member for Ilford, South, mentioned that in practically every case where there is a public inquiry or a private hearing, the Minister concerned confirms the order. That may be true, but it is not true to suggest, as he does, that Ministers are rubber stamps for local authorities or for their own Departments. A public inquiry is usually demanded in accordance with the intentions of Parliament, and local authorities or a Government Department will think twice when they want to acquire a property if they know that they will have to justify it before a local inquiry. They will ask themselves, "Is it really necessary that we should have it? Are we satisfied that we will be able to justify it at a local inquiry and show that it is necessary for the public good?"

Every effort is made by local authorities and Government Departments to avoid unnecessary interference with somebody's private desires when acquiring property in the public good. If it is possible, by an alternative arrangement, to get a building then, of course, everything is done by the local authority or the Government Department to do it. I would not say there never has been a case in which the local authority could not have made some other arrangement because that would be untrue, but in 999 cases out of 1,000, as is proved by the inquiry and the Minister's sanction after it, the local authority has made every attempt to get alternative accommodation before acquiring private property, and has explored every avenue to see that no unnecessary injustice should be done to anybody.

Up to this point my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mr. Braine) and I have no quarrel with anything the Parliamentary Secretary has said. We are hoping that from now on he will say something with which we shall disagree.

That is an invitation which might lead me out of order, for if I said certain things with which the hon. and gallant Member disagreed, you, Mr. Speaker, would rule that I was out of order. Whilst I do not want to displease him, I would go to even greater lengths not to displease you, Mr. Speaker.

The hon. and gallant Gentleman referred to a statement made in open council by the Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council when he expressed the hope that the owner would co-operate. Surely that is a correct thing for a representative to say in open council. The L.C.C. were acquiring the building for public purposes. It is not unnatural that the owner should not want to give it up, but having been satisfied that it was required in the public interest, surely it was appropriate for the Chairman of the L.C.C. Housing Committee to say, "We do not want to get at cross purposes over this. In the circumstances, can we not co-operate for the public good?" I am sure that hon. Members opposite will not say that the public good should be ignored in the interests of private vested interests.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I went to great lengths to say that I felt there had to be a proper balance between the public good and private rights. What my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Squadron Leader A. E. Cooper) and I are hoping the Parliamentary Secretary will do is to explain why it is necessary today, when the public good must take precedence over private rights, for the community to impose an injustice on the person concerned.

I do not admit that there is a general injustice at all. Sometimes there is a particular injustice, and in legislation and the application of legislation it is simply impossible that there shall not be some slight injustice at some time to someone. But in these circumstances, I do not admit there is any injustice at all. Section 52 of the 1947 Act is intended to prevent the public from being fleeced by public bodies having to pay large sums of money for what is called scarcity value. Section 52 says that in the event of the local authority or a Government Department acquiring a building for public purposes then it shall be deemed to have a notional lease continuing until 1954. That is not unfair, to the owner, but it prevents the public from paying far more than the real value of the property.

It is that very fact that creates the injustice, because by 1954, under the operation of the notional lease provisions, the owner will get what one might call perhaps a respectable price for his property, but that does not deal with the problem of a person's property acquired in 1950 or 1951.

Even if I admitted, which I do not, that there was an injustice, surely that injustice is diminishing. Parliament agreed in 1947 that in acquiring properties there should be a notional lease until 1954. I agree that that meant at that time that a local authority acquiring a property would get it at about 30 per cent. less than the actual price it would have fetched on the open market if the house had been vacant. But the public were protected against inflated value prices.

The individual was robbed.

No, he received far more than he ever paid. The hon. Member cannot justify the way in which the public has been fleeced over the last few years through scarcity value. A house costing about £500 in 1935 being sold for £2,000 in 1948, 1949 and 1950 is what I call robbery, not what the hon. Member calls robbery. I think the Government are correct in maintaining that the public shall not pay these scarcity values, and in so far as that tends to reduce the current exorbitant prices that are being paid in the open market, it is a protection for the public as a whole.

The hon. Gentleman should appreciate that the rise in the price of house property is not an isolated instance. We now pay more for food, coal and everything else, including daily newspapers. The point at issue is that if a man is paid something less than that which is necessary for him to replace his property, then to that extent he has suffered a loss. Will the hon. Gentleman address himself to the questions my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Ilford, South, and I have asked? Does he think scarcity value justifies the community robbing a person of something which was his?

This is a matter of difference of definition of terms. The hon. Gentleman says it is quite correct that a person who paid £500 for a house in 1924 should fleece the community for £2,500 in 1950. That is what I call robbery. The price paid by a public authority works out at five-sixths of the existing market value, so the person would still get somewhere about £2,000. It does not seem to me to be much of a robbery if a man paid £500 for something and then receives £2,000 for it. The average worker in industry would be glad if he had four times what he had pre-war in wages.

The hon. Gentleman said these values were five-sixths of the market value. Where does he get that figure? I have a specific case where the market value of property in the neighbourhood was £3,000 which the owner would secure in the open market. The compensation offered to him was £925. My arithmetic is not so bad that I do not know that that is not five-sixths.

The hon. and gallant Member is quoting a case where something is obviously wrong—either the £3,000 or the £925.

The figure of £925 is correct.

Then the £3,000 the other man thought he ought to have is wrong. Where the district valuer, in the light of the Act and taking the value of property on a short-term lease, says a property is worth only £925 surely there is something wrong if the other fellow tries to get £3,000.

Not "tries to get." He can get it.

He may think he can get it. The hon. Member for Billericay quoted figures, which at the moment I am not in a position to challenge, on values in new towns, but surely they show that the Acts of this Government have protected the public against inflated values. He said that a property worth £1,800 fell in value, after the introduction of the New Towns Act, to £1,400.

Hertfordshire is my adopted county and I know Hemel Hempstead and the properties there fairly well. The properties he talks about were bought for £750 or £800 in the inter-war years. Some of them are even pre-1914, and the 1948 values were out of all proportion to the real value of property. Poor people forced into these properties because of the scarcity of houses generally, and being willing to pay anything to get a roof over their heads and to live on their own, were being robbed. I have not heard the hon. Member for Billericay talking about the robbery of the general public by property owners because of their privileged position as a result of scarcity value. Our legislation has protected the public against undue exploitation by these people in a privileged position.

I think that in the main I have dealt with the position, except for this point with regard to Hemel Hempstead. The hon. Member for Billericay referred to the loss of capital value. Again, I think that here it is perhaps not only a difference in terms, but a difference in the conclusions one draws from arithmetic. A man in Hemel Hempstead or Basildon has bought a house pre-war for £500 and he thinks that but for this legislation he could have received £2,000 for it on the open market at the present time. Now, because of our legislation, he can get only £1,500 for it, and the hon. Gentleman is saying that he has a capital loss of £500.

Certainly.

I should say that he has got an appreciation of £1,000.

Yes, but the Parliamentary Secretary must appreciate that money is unimportant. What matters is a roof over the man's head. If, as a result of action taken by a new town corporation, a man's home is taken away from him, and he is thereby put in a position where he cannot go anywhere else in the country and buy a similar property, then I say that an injustice is done. We pay more for everything. Would the hon. Gentleman agree that because we pay four or five times more for our coal today, the public are being robbed in that case?

No, Sir. The hon. Gentleman is standing very near to hitting the headlines. There was a colleague of mine who once said that £ s. d. were meaningless symbols, and it took him a long time to live that down. Now the hon. Member for Billericay is saying that money is unimportant. All I can say is if the poor fellow who is trying to buy a house, and has £1,000 in the bank or can get £1,000 mortgage, finds that the owner wants £1,500, that extra £500 is very important to him. The question is one of attitude to the situation, and what the hon. Gentlemen opposite would call a capital loss is to us, on the other side, a capital appreciation. On that basis, I do not think we can get very far.

I put these two points. First of all, this was a question of a short notional lease—not a question of a long lease. Parliament, in 1947, accepted that. It was very fully discussed in Parliament. The Opposition moved an Amendment to the Bill which would have excluded the owner-occupier from the provisions of Section 52. That was debated, and there was a Division on that Amendment. What we are now doing, in fact, is carrying out the intentions of Parliament. What the hon. Gentlemen are really asking is either that we should have amending legislation—and to ask for that would be out of order now—or that we should avoid the implications of existing legislation that Parliament has said we should carry out.

I cannot accept the proposition that we should avoid these implications. Equally, I do not accept the suggestion that there is any great hardship at all. I repeat what I said at the beginning, that not a single case has been brought forward. This is a matter which affects my Department and a good many other Departments——

The hon. Gentleman is rather unfair to say that not a single case has been brought forward. Had we so desired we could have been very tedious and have wearied the House by giving 270 cases for which we have chapter and verse here. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman would have wanted us to quote all those. If he is really interested in the matter, and if he is giving the House the assurance that the Government's policy of confiscation as compared with compensation is to be reviewed, then I should be happy to send him chapter and verse of these 270 cases, in the hope that he will consider them.

First, let me refute the statement about confiscation. It is not a policy of confiscation. It is a policy of compensation. What we are doing is to protect people against what the hon. Gentlemen would like to do—to give a glorious opportunity to the landlords and the property owners to make hay while the sun shines, as they did in the old days. If there is anything to the credit of this Government it is the way in which they have considered the general public, and the interests of the general public over those of the private vested interests of the landlords, industrialists, and property owners.

I have gone into this question because a number of cases at various times have come before my own Department, and I can say that we have had practically no complaints whatever from persons whose property has been acquired, or from solicitors, surveyors, or from anyone else acting on their behalf. I have made inquiries at the Treasury, because obviously, as I was taking over this brief from the Financial Secretary, I wanted to be sure that the Treasury's general experience was similar to that of my own Department. The Treasury assure me that the number of complaints that they have had because of the operation of this Section has been very, very few indeed. In fact, in the reply I was given, the words used were, "Over the last 18 months barely a single case has been represented to us at all."

I suggest that what the hon. Gentlemen opposite are really asking for it that we should go back to the old days when the public purse was exploited to an undue extent for the benefit of the private landlords. Our legislation on this matter is good legislation; it has been operated in a very humane and proper manner; there is no evidence of its causing undue hardship; and so far as the L.C.C. is concerned—I know it has special powers, and that, therefore, all the cases do not come to us—and my own Department, there has not been a single case that I know of in which any hardship has been reported.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to bring before the House the matter of the West African marketing boards. I think the same considerations also apply to the Uganda Cotton Board, but I am not informed in detail about that problem. I should like to make it very clear to my right hon. Friend who is to reply that I really do not expect that he will be able to propound a solution of the problems I am going to raise today. I know perfectly well that this matter is under serious consideration in his office, and under the serious consideration of the Colonial Governments concerned. In any case, I am sure that he would be the first to agree that the Colonial Office cannot solve this problem all on its own and apart from major policy decisions which have to be taken by the Treasury, the Board of Trade, the Government as a whole—and this House as a whole. I hope that if we ventilate the matter now, while there is yet time, that may promote the taking of right decisions.

The marketing boards were established round about 1946, 1947 and 1948, in pursuance of the policy laid down in Cmd. Paper 6554 of 1944. Their main functions are to fix the prices which merchants pay to farmers for the main export crops throughout West Africa; they license merchants to pay those prices to the farmers; they compulsorily purchase the whole of the crops from the licensed merchants; they then sell the export crops, in the case of cocoa on the market, and in the case of other crops by long-term contracts with the British Government.

It is an integral part of their policy to accumulate reserves so as to be able to cushion the producers against the harmful effects of sharp downward trends and fluctuations in prices. They make grants for good causes such as university education and the rehabilitation of cocoa areas affected by swollen shoot disease. In Nigeria the marketing boards have dependent upon them development boards which are entitled to promote schemes—I quote from the Ordinance

"…for the benefit of the people and the areas within which the crops are produced."

For example, in Northern Nigeria the development board has used money derived from the sale of groundnuts to promote the Sokoto scheme for the cultivation of rice. Through a farmers' fund a somewhat similar procedure is being established in the Gambia, though more closely under the direct control of the Government.

It has been suggested by some that the time has come for these marketing boards to be wound up and abolished. I would most strongly dissociate myself from any such suggestion for at least four reasons. First, the decision whether to sustain or wind up these marketing boards is one which does not have to be taken by us; it has to be taken by the Legislative Councils of West Africa, and I understand that West African opinion is in favour of retaining these marketing boards. Next, the general policy of building reserves in good times to save producers from fluctuations in times of slump is essentially sound. Next, by their published guaranteed prices, the boards are already beginning the process—I say no more than beginning, but they are beginning the process—of rescuing the producers from the exploitation of innumerable merchant moneylenders. Lastly, through their special grants and their dependant development boards they are able to contribute very considerably to the wise capital equipment of their countries.

That being so, what is the major policy decision which has to be taken by us in Britain? I regret that it is a rather painful decision for us to have to take, but I emphasise that it is in essence an extremely simple decision. I ask all concerned with this problem to beware of the fatal tendency, the almost Freudian tendency, of avoiding the big and simple decision by getting fogged by a whole lot of little complications.

The simple decision is this: Shall we now, in the name of justice and of long-term political wisdom, take such decisions as will result in our sending to West Africa in the near future larger quantities and larger values of goods and services than we have sent in the recent past and are sending today? If that decision is taken wisely, rightly and generously by the Government here, then the marketing boards, the Colonial Governments and the Colonial Office are perfectly capable of sorting out all the little detailed problems. If that major decision is wrongly taken here, it is no use handing the detailed problems to the marketing boards and the Colonial Office, because these problems become impossible to solve.

Let me show how this major decision now arises. Firstly, the prices in the long-term contracts made by our Government were perfectly fair prices, there being genuine arguments at the time of the contracts to suggest that world prices for the crops might have fallen. But in fact that has never happened and the opposite has always taken place. To give an example: We are purchasing West African palm oil at £94 a ton, when the same oil on the free market has been fluctuating from £134 to £210 per ton. I do not want to make too much of these particular prices, which apply to quite small or, indeed, almost marginal quantities, because it would be absurd to suggest that the whole of the West African produce could have been sold at such prices. I only mention these prices to point out that next season we must not expect to be able to buy the West African produce at anything like such favourable prices as during this season.

The far more important point is that the marketing boards—although, except in the case of cocoa, they have received less than world prices—have not passed on to the producers anything like the equivalent of the prices they have actually received. There is nothing underhand about this. There is nothing at all that is dishonourable. It has been done openly in accordance with the policy that was understood and accepted by West African legislative councils, the policy to build up reserves against the possibility of a price slump.

Let us trace the example from the farmers' end. The Nigerian Cocoa Board fixes the price for the merchant to pay the farmer. The price in 1950–51 was £118 4s. per ton. The board, in its turn, buys from the merchant at £129. After paying transport charges, export tax and other factors, such as freight and insurance, this represents a cost of some £178 per ton. when the cocoa arrives in Britain: but it is sold by the board at £290 per ton. The difference between £178 and £290 is therefore the margin out of which the reserve has been built up.

The whole thing is perfectly fair up to now, but what about the future? Can we go on like this? Take the case of the Gold Coast Cocoa Marketing Board. They have already hit the twice-raised target of £50 million. On the basis of the present crop being about 260,000 tons, the board could now, in the event of a slump, subsidise the producers at the rate of 10s. per load for 10 years, there being 37⅓ loads in a ton. They would thereby be able, even if world prices dropped to only 40 per cent. of what they are now, and if the drop continued at that level for 10 years, to sustain the producers with a price only 7 per cent. less than the record price they are now receiving.

Theoretically there could be a bigger slump than that, because anything can happen; it may rain in Kano in January, but even Europeans do not go out there at that time of the year with mackintoshes and Wellington boots. In this changing and chancy world, to suggest that these marketing boards should accumulate yet greater resources to meet the possibilities of a greater and deeper world slump, is surely unreasonable. And although I agree that some boards are not so affluent, as Gold Coast Cocoa, I feel sure that any fair-minded person will agree that in six to 18 months from today the happy period of reserve-building will have to come to an end.

What does this mean for us? Why do I call the period of reserve building a "happy" one? I do so for a very obvious reason. During these last years we have been receiving from West Africa precious goods which have been sent here, or the dollar equivalent of precious goods sent elsewhere. We have paid for a part of these goods, not by equivalent goods and services, but by means of paper credits. That is all perfectly honourable and proper up to now, because in the event of a slump these paper credits could be presented here to be transformed into goods. But we cannot go on in this way much longer, because there is no longer any genuine African purpose to be served by piling up still higher credits.

In one way or another we shall have to send goods for goods. The simple decision will have to be made quite soon, because it is vain to suppose that we can leave it until April, 1952, and then expect to find increased supplies of goods in Nigerian ports or Gold Coast shops by June or July. It does not happen that way, and this is where I am in complete agreement with the United Africa Company. Indeed, Sir, it would be churlish on my part if I did not acknowledge the generosity with which the United Africa Company have supplied me with the facts and information about this business without ever questioning whether the information they were supplying would be put forward in arguments with which they did or did not agree.

I know from experience that it is tempting to think we can avoid the major big decision that is now staring us in the face. It is tempting to shrug it off onto some one else. I have heard it said that these are, after all, independent boards, that they depend on the West African Governments rather than on us and that they can do what they like and spend the money how they choose. I regret that this argument has been echoed in the neighbourhood of the Colonial Office. It is a little unrealistic, because what these boards can do and what the Colonial Governments can advise them to do depends on the supply of goods they are likely to get from us.

Let us consider one or two possibilities. The boards might dispose of the whole of next season's surplus by paying, next season, appropriately higher prices to the producers. As a matter of fact, already Nigeria and Gambia have announced increased prices for their groundnuts in the case of Nigeria from £21s. 2s. per ton up to £33 per ton. Even that decision, if there are not increased quantities of consumer goods in Nigeria next season, is going to play "Old Harry" with the economy there in more ways than one. But how far does it take us? On the basis of present prices it will only absorb about one-third of the surplus which the Groundnut Marketing Board is likely to earn in Nigeria next year.

If the Nigerian board were to be credited with anything like today's prices of groundnuts on the free market, this proposed price increase to producers will only use one-eighth of the surplus which will be earned next season. This begins to show that if the whole of the surplus were to be given out in increased farmers' prices, without an increased supply of goods going into the country from here, we should be getting precious goods from Nigeria and giving them in exchange not a paper credit but a runaway inflation which would be just as useless from their point of view.

There are other possibilities. We need not necessarily spend the money on promoting the particular crop from which it is earned. There is a report from the Nigerian Livestock Commission which says:

"To increase corn cultivation, so that a substantial surplus becomes available for livestock feeding, we recommend that subsidy payments be made to producers on their sales of corn."

Increase in the settled cattle population is essential to Nigerian fertility and it would be worth while to consider subsidy payments, say corn, or indeed on sorghum. But this again is impossible without danger of inflation, unless the volume of goods is increased.

There is another possibility. The surplus in the hands of the marketing boards could be spent directly, or through the Government or through the dependent development boards, on a transport programme. A £10 million or £15 million road programme for Nigeria and for the Gold Coast, to be initiated now, and to get the thing under way in 12 months or 18 months hence, would be an extremely wise item of policy; but we cannot pump £10 million or £15 million worth of extra wages into the economy unless we send goods to match, without creating a rip-roaring inflation which the economy would never stand.

The argument is even more obvious when we consider the possibility of expending some of these surpluses on the purchase of the kinds of capital equipment which could only be brought in from abroad. This would be one of the wisest ways of expending a large part of the surpluses. We urgently need the foods and raw materials which these people produce. They urgently need the windmills, tractors, electric generators, cement, simple factory equipment, hydroelectric equipment, etc., for the Volta dam scheme which, if it could be considered a top priority, would begin to transform the possibilities of the Gold Coast. Some people with a shrug say, "Nothing prevents the marketing boards from placing orders for capital equipment now, if they want to." Indeed not, but they supply us with their raw materials now each year and deliveries are made year by year and month by month. When would we deliver capital goods, if they were ordered today, unless the Government soon makes new decisions about the order of priorities in our factories and so forth?

I am only too well aware that the subject I am raising is a very awkward one to come at a time like this, when our resources for goods are over-strained both for the armament programme and for our own standard of living. One might say, "Could not we let this wait a little longer?" I make two answers, one in the realm of morals and the other in the realm of long-term strategy.

In the realm of morals I put it this way: As a nation we cannot say: "We have an armament programme and we have a standard of living programme on hand, and the Colonies can just take their place in the queue, pretty low down." Really, we must say: "We will first do justice to those people who depend upon us, and then we will consider what level of armament and standard of living we can afford for ourselves." That is the case in morals.

The case in world-wide strategy is surely this: What are we doing now as a nation? We are engaged in a contest, and are likely to be so engaged for at least the next decade. I refuse to describe it simply as a contest against Communism, because that is much too negative. Positively, we are striving to sustain and spread our ideas and our civilisation and our standards of political morality and democracy in the world. From that point of view nothing, in the long run, is more important than that we should deserve and win the partnership, comradeship and co-operation of the coloured peoples.

Within that conception, nothing is more important to us than the experiments which are now going on in West Africa. These experiments gain world publicity on the Gold Coast, but Nigeria is only a step behind. Those experiments are not likely to succeed if they are denied the economic foundation on which to stand. The quantity of goods involved in what I am saying—£20 million or £30 million worth, is, I suppose, the order of them, or perhaps a little more—is so small in comparison with the enormous resources which we are committing to the contest as a whole, that it is a pity to jeopardise what, on the social front, is a key sector, for the sake of what would be quite a small amount of material goods.

I end by reminding you, Sir, and hon. Members, and particularly the Minister, that I do not expect to have a detailed answer today. I can only hope for one thing from the Minister, that he will, when his right hon. Friend comes back from his most important visit to East and Central Africa, draw these points to his right hon. Friend's attention—I am sure that his attention is upon them already, of course—and that he will urge him to do battle on behalf of this cause among his Cabinet colleagues, all of whom are contending for the different matters in which they are interested. I hope that he will fight for this matter in the Cabinet as only a Welshman can, and that he will make sure that the major policy decisions are made rightly, out of which the minor decisions can be made relatively easily by marketing boards. Colonial Governments, and the Colonial Office itself.

The hon. Baronet the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) said that he did not expect the right hon. Gentleman who is to reply to the Debate to propound a detailed solution to the problem which he has raised. He was wise in saying that, because the problem is a very large and complex one. The hon. Baronet has done a useful service in raising the matter, for in the Gold Coast, at any rate, enthusiastic hands are at present reaching out for the very large funds in the stabilisation fund of the Gold Coast Marketing Board.

There is a case for stabilisation funds. In the last 20 years in this country, as in other countries, financial policy has been directed towards finding some way of cutting off the peaks of booms and removing the base of slumps, and that, I imagine, is one of the primary objectives of the stabilisation funds of the marketing boards. There is a case to be made out on the other side because, for example, it is undoubtedly true that a slump has the not unhealthy effect of driving out the inefficient producer, and that is just as desirable in West Africa as it is here and elsewhere.

The Gold Coast has piled up in its marketing boards very substantial funds, but the hon. Baronet did not refer to the fact that the history of the marketing boards has not been "Roses, roses all the way." If he will look at the accounts of the Gold Coast Cocoa Marketing Board for the year ended 30th September, 1949, he will see that there was a gross deficit on operations of £650,000 as against a surplus on operations for the last year to which he directed his attention exclusively of £17 million. That is a most dramatic change in the course of a year. I believe that those who direct the affairs of the Cocoa Marketing Board in the Gold Coast feel that if such an improvement can take place over so short a period as 12 months, the converse may equally apply.

The hon. Baronet raised the question of what should be done with the very large surpluses which have been built up. That is another very complex problem. It is one for a major decision of policy whether the surpluses should be released to individuals or whether they should be released to the community as a whole, for example, by way of contribution to the very large capital sums which may be required for the Volta River scheme. Those are two entirely different methods of dealing with the surpluses, and their pros and cons require most careful consideration.

Again, would it not be possible to achieve a result rather similar to the results achieved by the Cocoa Marketing Board and the other marketing boards by means of taxation? I have heard that method advocated in many quarters, though not by anyone who has ever been to Africa. In this country, which is stiff with curious people like chartered accountants, we find it exceedingly hard to arrive at a fair assessment of a man's income for Income-Tax purposes. In the Gold Coast, where there are no books, no bookkeepers and very few chartered accountants, the levying of the proper taxation on a producer's income would be an extremely difficult thing to achieve.

There are two major problems, as I see it. First of all, are these marketing boards, as such, desirable? The hon. Baronet—it is not surprising seeing on which side of the House he sits—said that he was entirely in favour of marketing boards. I am not at all sure that in principle I hold that view. In certain cases where there are many small producers, marketing boards can be of very considerable use and it may well be that the cocoa producers of the Gold Coast, and the cotton producers of Uganda are suitable for that kind of treatment, but that of itself is a very considerable problem.

To turn again to the stabilisation funds, how great are these stabilisation funds to be, and what is to be done with the money? These are problems which cannot properly bedealt with in an hour's debate on the Adjournment. They are enormous problems which require the greatest possible care and investigation. The hon. Baronet asked if we ought not to release to West Africa larger quantities of goods than we do at present. He himself wisely said that this is a major decision, and I agree with that entirely and, as I said, I do not think that a decision of that sort can possibly be arrived at in this House as a result of an hour's debate on the Adjournment.

However, I believe that the House should be grateful to the hon. Baronet for raising the matter because one hopes that it will encourage the Government to set up a Commission to make inquiries into these very important matters—and before too long—for, as I have already said, eager hands are reaching out for these funds and if they get hold of them—in the Gold Coast the first step in that direction has already been taken—they may do wise things with them or they may do very unwise things with them. In that respect time is not on our side, and if as a result of the remarks of the hon. Baronet this morning the Government decide to inquire into these matters and to arrive at a wise policy decision the hon. Baronet will have done this country and the Colonies a very useful service.

I hope that the hon. Member for Langstone (Mr. Stevens) will forgive me, but I wish to begin where my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland) began his speech. He said that decisions about whether to abolish these boards or not, were for the Legislative Councils of the Colonial Territories. In the case of the Gold Coast, I suggest that it is im- portant not to forget this, because the Gold Coast Assembly will be debating these boards in the near future and they have their own destiny to shape. I would merely say that they have done a very fine job in the short time that they have taken to discuss their affairs. It would be presumptuous of me to tell them what they should do. In a humble way, I will make a few comments about the Gold Coast Cocoa Marketing Boards.

It is important to remember that these boards are composed mainly of Africans. As my hon. Friend said, they are fully cognisant of what has been paid for cocoa in the past and what is being paid now. We have been perfectly fair and open about all this. My hon. Friend made a very powerful case, but I beg him to keep the matter in perspective. Unlike the hon. Member for Langstone, I do not wish to abolish any of the boards. Perhaps it is because I am a Socialist and may be a little biased, but when I look back on the '30's——

I am sure that no suggestion to abolish these boards has come from this side of the House. Our own feeling is that the matter is much too complex for an approach of that sort at the moment.

Shall we then say that we should be very careful in no way to upset the workings of the boards? When I look back on the '30's and see the vicious exploitation which took place then and the action that the farmers took to safeguard themselves, I am glad to see boards functioning as they are at the moment.

It has been said that the Cocoa Marketing Board has something like £55 million in the "kitty." A stabilisation fund of £30 million to £35 million is needed to guard against future fluctuations in the market. If we are to be fair about this we must also bear in mind that about £8 million or more is being paid as compensation for swollen shoot damage and that many of the boards earmark money for social services, and, of course, they have provided over £1 million for the university college of Accra. Other money is spent on research. When I hear these sums quoted, I wonder if these boards are such blood-suckers as has been implied or if they really are misers hoarding vast sums. I do not think so, but I do think that much more of this money should be ploughed back into the native economy.

The other day, I questioned the Minister about the Nigerian boards, and I said that we might earmark a million or two for the university college of Ibadan because I understand that the medical faculty there is languishing for lack of funds.

As a matter of interest, the Gold Coast Board has also allocated £1 million to special college funds.

I said earlier that in the Gold Coast £1 million had been earmarked for the university college of Accra.

I wish to put two small points, not to buttress, but perhaps to implement the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend. It is sometimes said that it is best for the Gold Coast to save up this money in these difficult times and for them to buy what they want with it when things become cheaper, and when, perhaps, the re-armament programme has come to an end. In my opinion, however, the circumstances of the present day are likely to be with us for eight, 10, or even more years to come. We shall need to re-arm for quite a while ahead and we are deceiving ourselves if we think this is an extraordinary time.

There is also the point that West Africa cannot afford to wait. The Africans want something done now, because the situation is very difficult for them. That being so, let us turn our minds to it. The point was also made, why send capital goods such as turbines, machine tools, and the like, to West Africa when there are not the necessary technicians there? If we have not the technicians to send from this country, why not invite Belgian, Dutch or Danish technicians to go out? Why not have a global survey in an effort to find the necessary men? We could send Norwegian or Japanese technicians to advise in fishing matters.

Another point is this fearfully difficult question of sending goods and services to West Africa. Is there a danger here of expanding the economy too quickly? There is, for example, the Volta water power scheme which I understand may cost up to £120 million over a period of 10 or 12 years. The hon. Baronet wants it done in five years. There is also the Takoradi Harbour scheme. Much of this money will be spent in wages on the spot to workers engaged in these particular schemes. But if we pump this paper money into the native economy, we shall encourage a dangerous tendency towards inflation, unless, at the same time, we also see that there is a sufficient supply of consumer goods.

We have not the wherewithal in these islands to do that. Therefore, why not send Japanese or other consumer goods instead? The hon. Member opposite is shaking his head, but why not send those goods? After all, it is a world market. I can understand, of course, the plimsoll shoe makers of Northampton being a little shocked at the idea of goods from Osaka or Tokio going there for fear that the indigenous peoples of Africa may develop a taste for Japanese consumer goods.

But we must face the fact that this small island is in no position today to think in terms of an economic World Empire. It no longer has sufficient manpower in the political sense to have a World Empire. India, Pakistan, and others have gone and rightly so. We can no longer police the world as we used to do, and, therefore, we cannot think of the world as being ours in that particular way. If these people overseas need goods, let the market be open to all. In other words, if we cannot supply their needs for consumer goods, let other nations help in this particular way.

It is a gigantic self-deception to imagine that this little island of 50 million people can carry on in the future as it did in the past. There is no future for us in that way. I believe, like Sir Frank Whittle, who spoke in Salisbury a few days ago, that not merely must we have less ambitious ideas about policing and supplying the world, but, also, as he said, that we should turn our minds to this business of mass emigration to the Commonwealth and Empire. It is not often that I find myself in agreement with the views expressed by the "Daily Express," but what they have advocated in this connection I heartily applaud. This island, with its 30 million acres of cultivable land, cannot possibly support a population of 50 million. It could, perhaps, support a population of between 20 or 30 million. Therefore, let us consider sending people to these places, and giving access to other suppliers to those markets to provide those consumer goods which, owing to our limited economy in these islands, we are unable to supply.

In conclusion, I would say this. Let us be resolved about all this business of helping the Colonies overseas and of developing the Empire. As the hon. Baronet said, let us play the game by the Empire and Commonwealth overseas, and let us, if I may say so, by judicious disgorging of the capital sums which have accumulated in these boards in the past, help the African peoples towards a fuller, a better, and a happier future.

I am very glad that this debate has been initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend (Sir R. Acland), and, if I may say so, very glad that both he and the two other speakers concerned spoke in the tone they did. They realised that this is a complex problem and not one about which we can just lay down the law, or one which can be settled overnight. It requires very detailed study, and, for that reason, it is eminently a problem to be aired, as it were, in this House so that people may begin to discuss it and think about it, and eventually reach definite conclusions on it.

Fundamentally, I agree with both my hon. Friends who have said that they believe that marketing boards are organisations which should be encouraged and developed wherever possible. I was a little uncertain as to the attitude of the hon. Member for Portsmouth, Langstone (Mr. Stevens) on this point. I gathered that in the case of West Africa he was in favour of marketing boards, though he would not give an overall blessing to them wherever they might be established.

I said there might be a case to be made out for marketing boards in certain instances. I did not specify any particular area. I was talking in terms of principle only, and, in principle, I am opposed to them.

The hon. Gentleman has made his position quite clear. But, in principle, His Majesty's Government agree with my hon. Friends who have stated that in principle they are in favour of marketing boards. Of course there may be cases where there should be marketing boards and others again, where it would be less desirable to have them. In fact, however, they have performed very useful functions, particularly in West Africa.

I gather that my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesend considers that in many ways the actions of the marketing boards in West Africa have been unhappy or unjustified.

By no means. Up to now, I think they have worked happily in accordance with intention. The only point I am making is that their influence will become unhappy if they are allowed to continue working in the same way now that the initial intention of accumulating balances has been brought over. I have no criticism to make about the past.

I gather, then, that my hon. Friend is quite happy that these large sums have been accumulated to date but that he is rather troubled that the sums may be too great and that their accumulation continues.

Hear, hear.

That is a very reasonable point and one which, I have no doubt, is borne in mind by the boards themselves.

But we have to bear this in mind. It is not only a question of this money being accumulated to prevent inflation, because if it were let loose suddenly there would be inflation throughout West Africa. The boards are very concerned indeed that prices shall be stabilised. They do not hold the view, which some hon. Members hold here and which is becoming, perhaps, rather prevalent generally, that prices will remain up continually and that we are in a world in which there will be a perpetual boom and a perpetual rise in prices. They are not quite so certain about that. After all, they have known the period between the wars when prices of commodities which they produced went down very low, and they do not want to see anything like that happen again.

Take, for example, cocoa, which, of course, is the largest contributor to the reserves of the marketing boards. Even over the last two and a half years, world prices have fluctuated very considerably. In October, 1948, for instance, the New York price was about 38 cents a pound. By July, 1949, the price had come down to 16 cents—a very considerable drop. In August, 1950, it had admittedly gone up to 40 cents, but by November it had gone down to 30 cents. One could go on quoting various fluctuations in prices.

It is not uncommon for prices to fluctuate in a single season by as much as £100 a ton. On an average West African crop of 350,000 tons, that might mean a lost of £35 million suddenly in one year. I do not say that that would happen, but it is a possibility. It is only right, proper and prudent that the boards should be seized of this possibility and should not put themselves in the position where they might suddenly suffer a very great loss. The Gold Coast Cocoa Marketing Board, in fact, consider that the present sum of £35 million, which is what I might call the stabilisation fund, is not as big as it might be and that £50 million would be a sum more suitable for stabilisation purposes alone. That is quite apart from any question of research, development, or anything else.

Thirty million pounds is the sum they already had at the time to which their latest report refers back—that is, September, 1950. I suggest that £50 million has already been achieved this season.

I thought I had made myself clear. I am talking about the sum that should be kept permanently for stabilisation purposes rather than the total sum which has been accumulated, which can be disposed of by way of grants for research, to universities, or for any other purpose. The Board feel that for stabilisation alone, there should be at least £50 million.

How do they employ their reserves? Hon. Members have made various references to the employment of these reserves, and I should like to summarise the position in a few sentences. In Nigeria and the Gold Coast, about £9 million has been allocated to research and rehabilitation for the industries with which the boards are concerned; that means mainly swollen shoot research. I need hardly remind the House of the tremendous importance to West Africa of research into swollen shoot. It is of the utmost importance that the boards should have sums available which they can devote to this research.

In the Gold Coast they have also, as hon. Members have mentioned, lent the Colonial Government some £2,300,000 for extensions to Takoradi Harbour, and they have granted £1 million by way of a scholarship fund to help the sons of Gold Coast farmers to attend the university college in the Gold Coast. The Nigerian Cocoa Marketing Board have made a grant of £200,000 for bursaries at Ibadan University College. I could relate a number of grants which they have made, but I will not weary the House with the list.

We must, however, be very careful to remember that these are funds that some from the people who are growing the commodity concerned, whether it is cocoa, groundnuts, palm oil or whatever else they produce. We have to be careful to see that the money is not sent away from them and used for development purposes somewhere quite differently. The hon. Baronet was anxious to see very much more general development in the Gold Coast and in West Africa. So, I assure him, are the Colonial Office. We are only too anxious to see the greatest possible development in all the West African territories, but we feel that the right people to finance the development of the whole country are the Government of that country rather than just an individual board who have collected money from a particular class of producers.

I should make one thing abundantly clear. The hon. Baronet was at pains to say that he hoped that I, or the Colonial Office in general, would not try to shift the responsibility on to somebody else. I do not want to shift the responsibility in so far as it belongs to the Colonial Office, and obviously we have very great interests in all these matters, but I must make it clear, first, that these boards are semi-independent bodies largely representing the producers, and second, that they are in countries which have a considerable measure of independence.

The Gold Coast has a very large measure of independence indeed, and a Bill which is now before the Legislature proposes that there should be a new method of appointing members to the board. It proposes that members of the board should be appointed by the Governor in Council, acting through the Minister for Commerce and Industry. It proposes that the approval of the Governor in Council shall be required for the fixing of the price for the season, and, further, that the Governor in Council shall be empowered to direct the board on major matters of policy, including finance.

That is a Bill which is before the Legislature of the Gold Coast, and I do not think it is right and proper that we should discuss it in detail here. I mention it merely as an instance of the fact that these are matters primarily for the Governments there; that those Governments have a very large measure of automony and that we have to be very careful not to interfere in too great detail in the affairs of the boards for which they are responsible. Subject to that, I quite agree with a very large number of the points that were put by the hon. Baronet and by other hon. Members, and I think that we have to watch this position with the greatest possible care.

The hon. Baronet, however, went a trifle wide of the original subject by talking of the desirability of West Africa having more goods. Nobody is more anxious that are my right hon. Friend and I that West Africa—and, indeed, all the Colonies—shall have as many goods as are available; but there is, after all, a considerable shortage of goods. We in this country would like to have very many more goods than we now have, but at present, as the hon. Baronet himself mentioned, there is the re-armament programme and there are a very large number of calls npon us for goods of all descriptions. I am glad, however, that my hon. Friend made this point, because it reinforces my right hon. Friend and I in the claims we are constantly making, with, I would say, some success, to see that the Colonies get an adequate share of whatever goods are available.

As regards finance, I would only remind my hon. Friend that the Colonial Development and Welfare Act, which was passed last year, provided an extra £20 million for development in the Colonies. I agree that we should be much happier if we could get £200 million or indeed £2,000 million, if such a thing were possible, but an extra £20 million is something these days when there is pressure on all sides for the relatively small amount of resources that we have in this island for all the amount of work we have to do.

We are keeping, and shall continue to keep, the needs of the Colonies, both for money and for goods, well to the fore. We shall see that they are not neglected. I think that if this short debate has done nothing else, it will have been of help to us in seeing that the cause of the Colonies is not overlooked. His Majesty's Government have not overlooked it in the past, and they do not intend to overlook it, because they realise that we have a great responsibility for the Colonies and it is not right that we alone should keep all the goods and all the money to ourselves. It is right that there should be a reasonable distribution to the Colonies. That distribution is taking place and, if I may say so, it has taken place very much more rapidly during the past five years than ever before, and it will continue to do so.

The matter that the House has just been discussing affects the welfare of the whole British Commonwealth; so, I believe, does the matter which I wish to raise now.

I desire in the time that Mr. Speaker has been good enough to allot to me this afternoon to raise a matter that a large number of my hon. Friends and, I believe, hon. Members in all quarters of the House regard as one of pressing importance. It is the need for His Majesty's Government to establish as part of their general defence plan a department to co-ordinate what I may call "counter-cold war" activity. If we are to engage, as we are engaging, upon a vast and expensive programme to defend ourselves against a possible hot war, we must be equipped to defend ourselves against the actual existing cold war. That, I believe, is but common sense, and in that matter we must act in concert with our friends.

I do not believe I can put the matter better than the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer put it when he spoke at Leeds last Sunday. This is what he said:

"What faces us is the prospect of a long-term, ruthless undermining of the whole strength and independence of the Western democracies, a process of relentless political warfare, backed by a military threat. The future of the world depends upon our winning that political battle."

Let me emphasise those words:

"The future of the world depends upon our winning that political battle."

That, I believe, is the issue. But I do not believe that the Government yet fully realise it. What are they doing about it? At the moment they are doing nothing like enough. In this matter of the "counter-cold war." I believe His Majesty's Government are lagging behind. Indeed, only a few weeks ago they were contemplating a reduction in the money available for B.B.C. broadcasts to Europe. A vigorous protest has made them change their minds, but, even so, some reduction in those services will be necessary. It seems folly to reduce the volume of the "Voice of Britain" speaking to Europe at a time when so many are longing to hear it. There is more to it than that. The democracies of the West, notably France and Italy, are most anxious to hear what we have got to say, and, by letting them hear, we can make our contribution to the fight against Communism in their countries.

Let there be no mistake about these B.B.C. broadcasts. They have the very highest reputation for honesty, accuracy and integrity on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The trouble is that there are not enough of them. The B.B.C. European services are rather like a man with one hand tied behind his back fighting a battle against an opponent with two strong arms. They have to live and work under a sort of cheese-paring economy, when they should be given enough money to put over every programme at the highest possible standard. The very first thing to be done in the "counter-cold war" is to give the B.B.C. European service, and indeed the B.B.C. overseas service as a whole, the money and facilities they need to speak with the maximum strength.

May I try to give, very briefly, the picture of what is being done on both sides at present in the cold war? I will take the Russian side first. The Kremlin controls a great chain of broadcasting stations which runs from Leningrad in the north to Tiflis in the south, from Berlin and Prague in the west to Peking and Vladivostok in the east. All those radio stations play their part in the cold war. Moscow, Warsaw, Bucharest and Prague, at any rate, are broadcasting to an increasing degree in the English language.

But that is only a part of the machinery under the control of the Kremlin. In every democratic country the Communist parties are actively engaged in a cold war designed to destroy democracy. Let us have no illusions at all about that being their ultimate aim. Let me take this country as an example. In Britain, the printed output alone of the Kremlin's cold war machine—the Communist Party and its ancillaries—consist of each day, except Sunday, the "Daily Worker" and Moscow's own publication, the "Soviet News." In addition, there are six weeklies, 14 monthlies, two quarterlies and four publications that appear at irregular intervals.

Coming into Britain and emanating from Communist sources outside the country, but circulating in appreciable quantities here, there are three weeklies, nine monthlies and three other publications appearing at irregular intervals. All these are in English, and this total does not include Polish and Latvian daily and weekly newspapers brought in in bulk and distributed to Polish and Latvian workers in British industry and agriculture.

What is being done on the democratic side? There are the B.B.C. broadcasts. There is the "Voice of America" and other stations broadcasting from Europe to countries behind the Iron Curtain. On 1st May a new medium-wave transmitter near Munich, Radio Free Europe, opened with large-scale broadcasts to Czechoslovakia. Then there are broadcasts by various anti-Communist political groups. For example, from Madrid there are broadcasts directed to Poland by a Polish group, and to Russia by the R.R.F.—the Russian Revolutionary Forces. From Berlin the Russian Socialist organisation, N.T.S., also broadcasts. There is as well a steady infiltration under the Iron Curtain of anti-Soviet leaflets emanating from various emigré groups, distributed by brave men and women. All this activity is, in one way or another, countering the cold war, but no one can pretend that it is co-ordinated or that it is linked up with the defence organisation set up under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

In a situation like that, I suggest that His Majesty's Government should take four steps. The first is to establish a "counter-cold war" department under the Ministry of Defence; it is essentially a matter of defence. The second is to link up the present overseas activities of the B.B.C., the information services of the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the British Council, to ensure that without interference with their functions—I think that is most important—their output is coordinated for the common purpose.

The third is to take the initiative in setting up a psychological warfare directorate within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, with a high ranking official on General Eisenhower's staff. The duty of that directorate would be to co-ordinate all "counter-cold war" activity by the Western nations and the United States of America. The fourth is to take the lead in setting up a parallel organisation for the Far East, including the erection of powerful transmitters at Hong Kong and Singapore capable of carrying the truth to Communist China. That body would also co-ordinate the anti-Communist psychological campaign in Malaya, Indo-China and Burma.

In the last war Britain showed herself to be the most expert of all the nations in the conduct of political warfare. It is to my mind tragic that after nearly five years of continuous cold war have been conducted against us we should be doing so little in reply, all the more so because there is every indication from behind the Iron Curtain that the field in which we should be conducting our campaign has never been more receptive than it is at present.

I believe that we have today a better chance than ever before of winning the cold war. But we must act quickly. If we spend on cold war defence the annual cost of creating and maintaining one armoured brigade we may be able to save ourselves in the future millions of money, great quantities of material and perhaps blood and lives as well. In the cold war the men in the Kremlin have four allies—ignorance, fear, lies and unbelief. As the Foreign Secretary has pointed out, the best answer to the Red psychological war is the truth.

Let us use our strength, our skill and our knowledge to give Europe, and the peoples of the Far East as well, the truth. Let us speak loud and clear with the voice of the lion. If we do, men and women all over the world will be uplifted and encouraged in their battle for freedom. More than that, millions now groaning under the iron yoke of tyranny will be given new hope of life.

I should like the right hon. Gentleman and His Majesty's Government to look back at the speech from the Throne drafted by Sir Robert Walpole on 20th January, 1726–225 years ago. It contains this passage:

"When the world shall see that you will not suffer the British Crown and nation to be menaced and insulted, those who most envy the present happiness and tranquillity of this kingdom, and who are endeavouring to make us subservient to their ambition, will consider their own interest and circumstances before they make any attempt on so brave a people, strengthened and supported by prudent and powerful alliances; and, though desirous to preserve the peace, able and ready to defend themselves against the efforts of ail aggressors. Such resolutions and such measures, timely taken, I am satisfied are the most effectual means of preventing a war and continuing to us the blessing of peace and prosperity."

I believe that what applied in 1726 applies with even greater force in 1951.

I should like to add my appeal to what has been vividly expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Baker White). A pall of anxiety hangs over the whole world, anxiety which has been sedulously fostered as part of the war of nerves by the Cominform and by Russia. Indeed, Europe has suffered from anxiety ever since Hitler made his appearance on the European scene. People everywhere are asking themselves what is to happen next, what are the rights and wrongs of the situation. In queues in this country, in clubs in South Africa, in homes in France, in little pockets of doubters and embryo resistance groups in the satellite countries, the same question echoes round because the satellite countries which have these groups of doubters are held down only by the constant repression of human rights, of facts, of the truth, as my hon. Friend said, and of hope.

The situation is not very different from that which obtained in the occupied countries during the war. Then, the people clung tenaciously to their wireless sets, that little contact with the outside world from which they got reliable news, upon which they seized voraciously. With blinds drawn, with doors shut, with the set suitably muffled, little groups of people listened eagerly to the B.B.C. whenever they got a chance. And when they took to the woods and hills the first thing they thought of, more precious to them, in many cases, than food, was their wireless set. To those people, listening in the woods among the Resistance in France, to the B.B.C, the sounds of Big Ben were real music and comfort. It was something that brought back truth and hope, a faint contact with that sane life that they had known in the past and for which they so eagerly hoped again.

It is not surprising, then, that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Mr. Eden) said only a few days ago, some of us believe that this activity is more important than expenditure on armaments, for when morale goes, men and material lose their significance. The importance of the dissemination of truth as one of the aims of democracy has not been lost upon the United States of America. Grants to the "Voice of America" have been impressively stepped up quite recently, and the need to tell facts is recognised by Mr. Truman in the United States and Mr. Spender in Australia.

What is our programme by contrast with those activities which my hon. Friend has outlined? The Foreign Secretary told us the other day, as my hon. Friend has said, that whereas there had been an idea that our overseas broadcasting programme would be slightly stepped up now in the interests of economy it was cut back to what had been granted before and that this would result in the reduction of some of our overseas services. This is an insignificant contribution that we are making to a desperately badly needed programme. He did not think, he said, that central control of these activities was necessary. Let each country pour out what it thought desirable in quantities which it thought suitable.

There could be consultation, said my hon. Friend, but that is a dangerous position. That makes for crossed lines, for different interpretations of the same incident by different people, of different emphasis on the purpose which we have at the basis of our thought and often different advice from different senders. In that lie the seeds of confusion and distrust. If the Allies, in their broadcasts during the war, had spoken with different voices to the people listening throughout Europe the worship of the B.B.C. would have ceased. The voice which speaks must be co-ordinated, authentic, reliable and trustworthy. If it combines those great features it will play a great role.

What, then, is this organisation to send, this central organisation, call it political warfare executive or as I prefer Truth-inform, an organisation as well endowed, as omnipresent as the Cominform, set-up and designed to combat the Cominform wherever it may meet it? What is this organisation to do when it has harnessed up all the publicity media to its support? Its programme in my view, would consist of two parts. To the countries on this side of the Iron Curtain it must tell of the living conditions in the countries which are behind the Iron Curtain.

But what it says must be simple. Ideological arguments may impress the intellectuals, but for the ordinary man in the street it must be the simple truths which are to be told; things like their being no right to strike, like the fate of the small farmers whose farms were collectivised and they separated from their families and sent away, very often for ever; how at their elections there is no alternative choice to the candidate officially approved by the Communist Party; how denunciations within a family are encouraged and listened to and how if one falls into disfavour or even under suspicion one's fate is probably the forced labour camp.

I believe that the right hon. Gentleman is not sure that those facts can be proved, but there is a wealth of evidence accumulating all the time from most reliable sources about these matters. We have trade union delegations which went out there and came back and reported. We have the sayings and writings of U.N.E.S.C.O. and refugees, men like the unfortunate Mr. Vogeler, who returned to the United States only the other day, and even the writings of Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky themselves. They tell quite enough if it is only unfolded and described. The Russians, with the realisation of the value that attaches to constant reiteration, go on pumping out their false and pernicious stuff. We, too, must learn to reiterate. It may be boring for some but in the long run it makes a permanent impression on men's minds; and so we would succeed in weakening the Fifth Column which Russia has achieved a certain success in setting up in Western European countries.

What is this organisation to pour out to the satellite countries? It must tell them of the meaning and aims of democracy, that what we set out to do is not to dominate their country but to set their country free to decide its own destiny—a thing it never had the chance of doing under Communism; of supporting the rights of human individuals; of our standards of living and rates of pay; of how much value we attach and with what tenacity we cling to the right of free speech and free thought; to explain why they are relatively so poorly off and are still rationed in many countries in bread; why they are dragooned and sent from pillar to post; tell them the reasons for the new and sinister collectivisation of agriculture; that dog eats dog under Communism; tell them what happened to Litvinov, Tukachevsky, Petkov, Kostov, Rajk and Clementis.

That is the story which has to be told and constantly repeated. It is much cheaper and more humane to bombard human beings with words than with shells, and the result may indeed, at the end of the day, avoid the shells. In the end, truth, pursued with equal vigour and determination, will defeat the lie, but it must be pursued with equal vigour and determination.

Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Baker White) and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison), I have had no connection with political warfare. I know that both of them have distinguished records in that field, and are able to speak with that authority which one hopes that one day we shall be able to bring to every subject which is debated in the House.

I have, however, taken an interest in this question because I have seen something of some of the countries which are now behind the Iron Curtain or which have escaped very narrowly. I am convinced of one thing. If, which God forbid, it should ever come about that we do have to go into Europe again because we could no longer carry on politics save through war, then, in the interests of our own troops, we should make sure that everything is done to ensure that a friendly population will greet us, rather than one which is opposed to us.

There is nothing more frightful than to live in a country where one never quite knows whether one is to be stabbed in the back by a member of the local population. There are other even more unpleasant things which could happen, and which I am sure the experience of my hon. Friends would bear out. We do not want to see those things again, and that in itself might be regarded as an adequate reason for saying there should be something better through which to conduct our political warfare, than there is at the moment. But I do not believe that to be an adequate reason, if one compares that particular point with the greater one.

The greater point seems to me to be that, spiritually, the greatest danger we have to contend with in the world today is the Antichrist materialism of Bolshevism. That is the great enemy of the kind of world we want to see. I do not refer to that Antichrist materialism merely because I am a Christian, or because I believe that everyone who wishes to lead our way of life is necessarily a Christian. I believe that the Antichrist is the enemy not only of the Christian but of many other religions, which, also, would suffer gravely if the materialism of Bolshevism were allowed to establish itself throughout, say, the Western world.

Believing that to be the greatest enemy, where then is the greatest weakness in that enemy? I believe the greatest weakness in the Bolshevistic concept lies in the terror they have of allowing people to know enough either of morals or moral politics to enable them to think for themselves. It is because that weakness exists, and because we and the other free peoples who are endeavouring to do something about it tend to confuse the issue rather than simplify it, that I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us that he has paid very careful attention to what my hon. Friends have said about co-ordination. I am sure that there is no greater danger to a good cause than that individual groups should try to express it in their own way, and as a result, give an impression to those at the receiving end, that no one of them has made up his mind as to what it is, in fact, that they are trying to do. I think there is a very great danger in that today.

Since I have been interested in this matter, I have been in communication with many people who have had experience of this particular type of activity, and with those who are anxious to see other countries restored, or shall I say rebuilt, on lines in keeping with the modern age. I think there is a very great danger, and we ought to face up to it, that this type of warfare—if that is the word we must use, and I am afraid it is—will fall into the hands of those who were discredited in days gone by and who are discredited now in the countries concerned. This must not be just a refugee organisation.

There could be nothing more fatal to the Christian and Western cause than that it should be thought in the countries behind the Iron Curtain that all this propaganda is being done to restore the old and discredited regimes. We must produce something better than that; what we have to do is to try to rebuild a religion which will right the Antichrist of Communism. Unless we do that, and unless we have it based, first of all, on the spiritual side, I do not believe that however effective we may be on the purely material and political side it could ever last.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Scotstoun spoke of making the message simple, and I would agree with him. It is important that we should make the message simple, but I do not think that we can ignore the intellectual. I think the Bolshevists would be the first to claim that much of what they have achieved has been done through the intellectual idea. In fact, a leading Bolshevist not very long ago said:

"All the victories of the Bolshevik Party are due to its ceaseless anxiety for the theoretical education of party cadres."

I do not know what history will record about this modern age, but I should be surprised if a great deal of the credit for extreme Left Wing thought is not given to such journals as "The New Statesman and Nation," with its appeal to the intellectual. In fact, that opinion has very often guided those who have not had the good fortune to have had as good an education as some of the more intellectual members of the community. If that be so, it would seem to me that we are running a very great risk by simply appealing to the vast mass of the population and omitting a special message for the intellectual. There is a very great danger of having the intellectuals in the countries which we are trying to reach deliberately spiking the guns of our own campaign, which is directed to the vast mass of the population there. That, I think, would be fatal.

There have been many methods worked out by bitter experience during the last war, and we know that there is a wealth of that experience ready, if the Government cared to draw upon it. At the moment, as the right hon. Gentleman said to me on 23rd April, we have the Foreign Office, the Colonial Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office, the Central Office of Information and the British Council. Is there all the coordination in our own plans that there ought to be? Still more, is there that co-ordination with our friends overseas that there should be? All the reports that I am receiving show that there is a considerable divergence of method and of the line of approach between the Americans and ourselves. It seems to me that what we have to do first is to put our own house in order, because that is very far from being the case at the moment.

My hon. Friend who raised the matter, and I think we are all grateful to him for having done so, suggested that the Minister of Defence should have the main responsibility as co-ordinator so far as our own efforts are concerned. I do not believe that that would be enough. We have been asking over and over again for a combined Chiefs of Staffs organisation to be set up, so that we may have a world concept of the defence problem. If this political warfare organisation is to succeed, it must work on lines similar to those laid down for the combined Chiefs of Staffs. It is part of warfare, but I believe that in respect of those who take part in it, nationality must come second. In fact, I should say that they have to be, rather than supranational, perhaps ultra-national; and that they have to place predominantly in their plans the idea that we are fighting Antichrist in the world, and that, unless we combit it with the ideas which Antichrist has set out to destroy, we have no hope of ever succeeding.

The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Baker White) and the hon. and gallant Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Colonel J. R. H. Hutchison), have personal experience of the subject on which they have been speaking. It is a very important subject—the question of propaganda in the cold war, both the propaganda that is levelled against us and the means by which we are to combat it. With a good deal of what was said I am in the fullest agreement. I agree with what was said about the nature of the campaign which comes out through the Cominform, and about the long-term purposes to which it is directed. I also agree with what was said about the ruthless and single-hearted persistence with which it is carried on. There is nothing between us on that; nor is there anything between us on the need to counter this propaganda.

There are two quite separate issues which could be raised. There is, first of all, the question of quantity. It is simply whether we are doing enough. Do the Estimates for the services provide enough, and are we organised on the right lines? There is the further point whether it is not so much a question of quantity, but one of how we are organising ourselves. The hon. Gentleman who opened the debate gave an indication to the House that he was thinking principally, at any rate, in terms of organisation, but I think the speeches which we have so far heard were, for for the most part, more directed to the question of quantity.

When hon. Members rightly emphasised the importance of the B.B.C. programmes, they were not complaining about their quality, but simply saying that there are not enough of them and that the B.B.C. should have more facilities and more finance. That is a question which I do not propose to argue here; it is a very difficult one to decide. Obviously, the precise level at which we ought to put our expenditure for matters of this kind at any given moment is a matter of opinion; there is no exact right or exact wrong about it. Only recently we had heated discussions in this House about certain proposed cuts in our information services, and the hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun, quoted some of the statements made by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary at that time.

This is a matter to which we must certainly give very careful attention, and I do not think we can ever consider any particular level, for budgetary or other reasons, as necessarily final. Those who are concerned with this matter, and that includes, above all others, the Foreign Office, even when they agree to a cut in the service, as the Foreign Office recently did, are not at all happy about it. We agree that it would be a good thing if we could have more money for information and propaganda services, but it all depends on a sense of proportion between one form of expenditure and another. Since practically all the argument has been directed to the propaganda for those countries behind the Iron Curtain, I should like to repeat what was said in the previous discussion about the propaganda sent to the Iron Curtain, namely, that the quantity would not, in fact, be reduced.

It is important in this matter to get two things clearly in mind. First, there is the question of an overseas information and propaganda service, which I think I can say is recognised internationally as a perfectly legitimate instrument of national policy. The propaganda that is put out by those who are opposed to us may be disliked, and the propaganda put out by our friends may not be always to our liking, but it is recognised as a perfectly legitimate thing for them to put out propaganda which they think interprets their way of thinking. We should not confuse it with political warfare.

The term "political warfare" is very often used in a general sense. The hon. Member for Canterbury referred to a speech by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he used this phrase, "political warfare," but in the context in which we are discussing it today, with our eyes on what the organisation should be, we should realise that organisation for political warfare, as conducted in times of actual war, is something rather different from the type of organisation required in peace-time and certainly has a very different bearing on one's relations with the States to whom it may be directed. I will return to that in a moment.

I want now to make the point that merely to say that we should have more information and more propaganda does not mean that we should start up this rather different thing, political warfare. No doubt it is wise, in a time of uneasy peace, when defence programmes are being stepped up, to have plans of what should be done in war. No doubt, in war something similar to the Political Warfare Executive of the last war would prove to be necessary, but one should be cautious in suggesting that war-time methods should be applied to a peacetime situation, even if it is an uneasy peace.

In a time like the present we have two tasks, and I do not quarrel with what the hon. and gallant Member for Scotstoun said about what he thought were the tasks of propaganda. We have to deal with those countries behind the Iron Curtain, which we find very difficult to reach by the normal methods of exchange of travel, business relations, visits, and so on. We have to try to give them, above all, the truth about what is going on in the world, and particularly about ourselves, countering the false propaganda that is put out about us.

Secondly, we have to think of the very much wider and varied area outside the Iron Curtain, especially that which includes our own public at home, our friends in Western Europe, the Commonwealth, the Colonial areas and the immense areas of Asia, people who are at varying stages of political and social development and education. If one is to get behind the Iron Curtain, the B.B.C. is the main instrument for this task, and I am glad that a tribute was paid to the reputation which the B.B.C. still has. We cherish that very much, and it is of the greatest importance that that reputation should be maintained.

I have been asked about the co-ordination of the other branches of the Information Service, the Foreign Office, Commonwealth Relations, the Colonial Office, the British Council, the Central Office of Information, and so on. There was considerable criticism about that co-ordination, but it was not, I think, supported by any detailed accusations. The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) said we should start putting our own house in order for it was far from being in order. If he meant by that, that there was a lack of co-ordination with the Colonial Office, the Foreign Office, and so on, and that they were sometimes at loggerheads and putting out conflicting propaganda I do not know of it.

We have not the same formal co-ordination as was established under the Political Warfare Executive, but there is no great inter-Departmental difficulty within our own country for having proper consultation both on the official and working party level, and also at the Ministerial level on the question of policy. The Foreign Secretary is generally responsible for the co-ordination of overseas information, and I do not think he and his colleagues experience any serious difficulty, nor do I believe that in present circumstances there is much in that respect that we have to do to put our house in order. If the hon. and gallant Gentleman is referring to the fact that we are not doing enough, that is a matter of opinion on which there can obviously be different points of view.

I think perhaps I would have made it clearer if I had stated that the main criticism against the present organisation, apart from the fact that there is entirely satisfactory direction from the head, is the feeling that there is not really an organisation in existence which is designed to combat such a ruthless campaign as that of the cold war. There may be machinery to put over ideas in the Colonial Office to the Empire, but there is not anything designed to defeat the cold war.

I am not sure that that makes it any more precise. I do not think I am in a position to offer chapter and verse to refute that, and I do not really know to what the hon. and gallant Gentleman is referring. It is true, of course, that our information and propaganda are of a different kind, but that is true of all democratic countries. We do not stoop to all the methods used by our opponents. Our propaganda is perhaps more sophisticated, and, therefore, less absolutely clear-cut and hard punching. It is more in the nature of long-term education.

I do not think there is any justification for saying that the present organisation is not designed to deal with something as ruthless as the cold war. After all, the cold war, even though we describe it as war, is essentially a political thing and this is one of the points on which the hon. Member for Canterbury has gone wrong. I think it is a matter of general political education and propaganda, and not in any sense a branch of the Ministry of Defence or directly a military problem.

I was dealing with the question of inter-Departmental co-ordination and I should like to say one word on the admittedly more difficult question of international co-ordination. I think the hon. Member for Canterbury was quite right when he said we had to be on our guard against allowing this thing to develop into an unco-ordinated series of efforts by groups of discredited refugees and regimes. At the same time it would be unrealistic not to appreciate that complete uniformity of a policy line and of programmes directed from all parts of the free world to countries behind the Iron Curtain is a very much harder thing to achieve in time of peace than it is in time of war, where, inevitably, one's field of vision is narrow and one's objectives are very much more precise and clear and, in a sense, short-term.

It is a fact that the attitudes of the sending countries which carry out these programmes are not in every respect identical, though their general attitudes come very close together. For instance, all the nations within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have a unity of purpose, but when it comes to detail they have all their points of view and their different emphasis on different political ideas.

We are making very considerable progress in the work of co-ordination by means of joint consultation, but I think it is unrealistic at this stage to imagine that we could at all readily put the whole thing in a strait-jacket, or put it under a single organisation under the North Atlantic Treaty—in a department which would put out propaganda in a uniform stream. All the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation have their contribution to make and they also have their own public opinion to consider. Even when it comes to putting matter out for the outside world one has to consider one's own public. Even on the international stage I think we must rely on joint consultation rather than on a hard and fast type of organisation.

I do not want to be in the least complacent about the effect of the propaganda efforts of the Western and democratic countries, but I think it is possible to be unduly pessimistic about it. Despite this immense machine the Cominform has at its command—which has been correctly described—very great progress has been made by the countries of Western Europe in combating it and the flood has been receding rather than advancing in recent years. Perhaps the same could not be said of South-East Asia, because that is a very difficult proposition. But I think that in the Commonwealth and Empire as a whole it would be wrong to say that this great flood of Communist propaganda is having all its own way.

I want now to make a point which has not already been made, but on which I do not think hon. Members will disagree. It is that it must not be thought this combating of propaganda is entirely a matter of counter-propaganda. By far the most important thing outside the Iron Curtain itself is having our own constructive policy, having a sane and reasonable economy and being ourselves a going concern. If we have that the problem of our propagandists becomes relatively a simple one.

This debate was announced as one about the establishment of a political warfare executive. A political warfare executive became essential in wartime because of its military character, because much of the information with which it was dealing was military information, because there were serious questions of security and secrecy and because the channels that had to be used to enemy territories were to a large extent military channels, such as the R.A.F. dropping leaflets. It was overt hostility. In that game there were no holds barred. We were prepared to enter into all forms of deception from the military point of view as a means to a relatively short-term military end. Those things do not apply in a cold war however intense it may be.

That is why I like the word "Truthinform" better.

I quite agree, but it is a little more than a question of a word. It is only when these military considerations loom very large that we think it necessary to have an organisation, whether one calls it political warfare or "Truthinform" doing the specialised job which is suggested by the words "political warfare executive."

While I agree very much with a great deal of what has been said, I have some disagreement with three out of the four points which the hon. Member for Canterbury has put forward as definite proposals. I do not think that a counter-warfare department or "Truthinform" should be put under the Ministry of Defence. I believe it is essentially a matter of politics at this stage, although that must have repercussions on defence. The one point with which I do not disagree is the second one—that there should be an adequate link between the B.B.C., the Foreign Office, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the British Council to ensure co-ordination for a common purpose. It can be argued, but no evidence has been adduced, that it does not exist at present, and I think that on the whole it does exist.

The third point was that an executive should be set up within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Presumably that would involve uniformity of programmes, emanating not from individual members of the Treaty Organisation but from the organisation itself. In the first place, I think that would be difficult to obtain at present. However, if that were the only reason we should try. But I think we have not reached the stage when our information and propaganda should assume that military character internationally any more than it should come under the Minister of Defence at home.

The fourth point was that there should be a parallel organisation for the Far East and increasingly powerful transmitters. I am quite ready to agree with the argument that we should attempt to increase propaganda by boosting the transmission power of our radio or by some other methods. This is an important area of the world where our facilities probably do require to be improved, but, again, I do not think a separate organisation of the type envisaged is really necessary.

I can assure hon. Gentlemen who have raised the subject that our disagreement on the question of organisation is not due to disagreement on the basic purpose or to an under-estimate on our part of the importance of playing our full part in the cold war. In a cold war as opposed to a hot one we have two objectives. We must first try to continue to promote peace. We must not have information and propaganda programmes that assume the inevitability of war. Secondly, we must bear in mind the sort of situation which might arise if all other efforts failed. It is the second purpose, the war-time purpose to the exclusion of the peace-time purpose, which dominates the Ministry of Defence.

If I am wrong about putting the direction of this kind of activity under the Ministry of Defence, should it not be borne in mind that the direction of a cold war such as we have to counter, is in the hands of the Red Army staff?

That may be so, but I do not think that in this as in so many other matters we can model our methods entirely on what is done on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Today, when the cost of living is so much in the minds of all of us, men and women alike, in this House and outside, I think we would all agree that anything that can be done to reduce that cost should be done. I believe that one of the most irritating things in that increased cost of living today is the ridiculously high prices which all of us have to pay for home grown fruits and vegetables.

I want today to deal particularly with the position as it affects vegetables. I think that this is particularly irritating because most of us eat a good many vegetables. We have to go to the same shops very often and every time we go we are confronted with an apparent rise in cost. I believe that that is made all the more irritating because from the other end of the scale we continuously hear from the growers who produce the vegetables that they get a bare pittance only for them and that it is hardly worth while their growing them at all.

All of us in the House could quote examples, and I am not taking particular ones here to bolster up my case, because I can assure the Government Front Bench that I do not think that it needs any bolstering. All housewives will agree with that. Last week in a small shop on the outskirts of London—not a wealthy suburb—housewives told me that they were asked 2s. 6d. for a small cauliflower and that that was the cheapest; they were asked 8½d. for spring greens; 6d. for Egyptian onions; and they were asked 6d. a lb. for what I can only call the "green ends" of the said 2s. 6d. cauliflowers. Anybody who knows anything about the outside leaves of cauliflowers knows that they consist mostly of thick stalk up the middle, and so these poor shoppers were being asked to pay 6d. a lb. for "green ends," mostly stalk.

In another area new potatoes were 6d. per lb. and when those shoppers went back this week, on Tuesday, to the same shop they were asked 7½d. The protests which reached me were not only about the increase in cost, but about the reason. I think it was not only incredible, but a piece of effrontery, that when they asked the reason the retailers took this attitude, saying that the potatoes had gone up from 6d. to 7 ½d. because "old potatoes are getting scarce." That amounts to a deliberate fleecing of the customer, and I would deny that reason entirely.

Having mentioned last week I should, of course, like to agree that the recent bad weather has made the supplies of vegetables scarce, and that this increases prices; but there is not one man or woman in this country, whether in the trade or whether a customer, who would not agree that these high prices have been with us for a very long time, and have not suddenly come just because of the bad weather.

Today's, I think, may be termed the third bite at this problem. On 5th February we were able to discuss in this House the rise in price of fruits and vegetables at the weekends, and I think that there was universal agreement that such was the case. Some of the reactions were rather interesting. The wholesalers in my own City of Coventry immediately rushed in—and nobody had mentioned them, of course—to say that this was untrue. The retailers, on the other hand, rushed in equally fast to explain why it was that prices did go up at the weekends. Although my own local newspaper, the day after that debate, did carry headlines to the effect that my statements were ridiculous, fantastic and entirely wrong, I think that there is little doubt that we did prove our point.

In general, the attitude of the trade seemed to be that prices did go up and that they went up because there was a greater demand at the weekends. I do not think the trade understands that neither the general public nor the Members of this House—I hope—would agree that an increased demand when supplies are plentiful is any reason for prices going up. One particularly outspoken trader who came to a big public meeting we had in Coventry—really, to explain exactly how wrong I was—does not understand, I think, to this day why it was that the entire audience laughed when he said, "Well, we charge you more at the weekends because you have more money in your pockets on Fridays and Saturdays."

Then there was a second bite at this problem on 3rd April when we dealt in this House with the question of the costs of distribution. Here the reaction again, I think, was particularly interesting. We Members of this House know full well that when we are able to raise anything here those of our constituents, or of the public in general, who do not agree with us—or trade interests—are always very careful to write in to tell us so.

Following that debate on the distribution costs I did not receive one single letter from the trades associations or from individual retailers or from consumers, saying that my statements were incorrect. The one difficult point was that, while everybody agreed that there was this enormous difference in price between what the grower received and what the public had to pay in the shops, not one of the people who wrote to me could explain where that difference went. Nobody was getting too much profit at all.

It may be remembered that in the examples taken in that debate of particular vegetables we found that the differences in prices, from the money going to the growers and that paid by the consumers in the shops, ranged from 400 per cent. to 700 per cent.—except in one instance, and that was in potatoes, which are price controlled, and where the difference was 75 per cent. In Coventry, the Coventry and District Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Merchants Association very kindly provided me with figures for one particular week in January, and from those figures it was shown that none of them received a profit greater than 10 per cent., on the goods he sold.

It was difficult, as I reminded the House then, to make a very valid comparison because I had not got the retail figures for Coventry itself, but I did take the retail figures for the same vegetables for the industrial Midlands, of which Coventry is a part. We were then looking at a difference in price from a very narrow viewpoint. We were looking at differences in prices between what the wholesaler received for the goods from the retailer, and the actual price at which the retailers sold the goods in the shops—a very short journey. This vegetable price range, between what the wholesaler received and what the consumer was charged, was from 85 per cent. to more than 150 per cent.

Following that debate the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Food, whom I am so glad to see on the Front Bench again today, told us that the distribution of vegetables was haphazard and difficult. If it is so haphazard and difficult that the prices received by the grower and paid by the consumer vary by 700 per cent. then it is time it was changed. We have apparently got support from everyone, growers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers. Surely we can get something done now? My invitation is an invitation to the Government Front Bench. Will not they come in and join our ranks to make a fifth side to the mass of people who are determined to do something about this?

Last month the Retail Fruit Trade Federation held its annual conference, and at that annual conference they asked the Government to take action to cut the housewives' fruit and vegetable bill. The first reason was that they were aware of the growing criticism of shoppers. In that they are quite correct, and if the Parliamentary Secretary is not aware of it I can assure him that housewives are getting more and more weary of being constantly frustrated over the rises in prices, and of nothing being done about it. Second, the Federation wanted to smooth out price fluctuations. Well, we all agree with them there. I should think that everybody who does his own shopping must know full well how that if one has time to go from shop to shop one can find wide variations in the prices charged for exactly the same quality goods.

The third point which the Federation made was that they wanted to improve the supply and quality of home grown products. Nothing could be better than this attitude, but I quarrel with one statement made by the Secretary to the Federation at that conference. It was reported in the "Fruit Trades' Journal" for 5th May, and he said that it was "rubbish" to suggest in Parliament that the British housewife was paying more than was reasonable for her greengroceries. Well, she definitely is paying a lot more than is reasonable, and prices which I consider are fantastic.

The conference wished to be constructive and suggested that there should be established a publicly controlled horticultural Commission, that it should supervise the national supplies of fresh fruit and vegetables, that it should be independent and have wide statutory powers to enforce any controls and reorganisation it believed necessary. What do the Government feel about that?

The Federation went on to say that the producer marketing boards set up under existing legislation could not solve the industry's problems. I do not propose to enter into that question today, because I have not the time and do not consider at the moment that I know enough about it to comment. They went on to say something rather more significant, that the effect of this year's unceasing rain on supplies has emphasised the weakness of the present marketing arrangements.

The Government have declared time and again since 1945 that it is their firm intention to take some sort of action designed to improve the distribution of fruit and vegetables. I emphasise again that there is little doubt that it does need improvement. On the question of the growers, I wish to ask the Government if they and the trade together can improve the present packaging position. I know materials are scarce, but I am not convinced that sufficient use is being made of the packaging materials available. If produce which is unsaleable reaches the market, apart from that produce being thrown away, it is the consumer who has to pay. If the Government and the trade would get together on this, they could surely find some means of preventing this unsaleable produce getting into the chain of distribution in the first place.

Can the hon. Lady develop a little more what she was saying about the waste of packaging materials? I agree that this is a most important point. If she can help us by indicating whether there is any misuse, or a lack of use of available packaging materials, I think she will be doing a service to the House.

I will do my best. I hope that the hon. Member will be able to develop that theme if he has better information than I have.

Recently, I went to Covent Garden and had an opportunity of seeing imported produce and produce from our own producers. There was no doubt at all about it, and I make this sweeping statement, that our produce does not compare with the imported produce either in grading or in packing. I spoke to a good many of the growers there, as well as to wholesalers, and they were of the opinion that it would be very difficult to get rid of this poor produce in our wholesale markets unless the growers were encouraged to pack their goods and grade them better. They were very fair. They recognised that packaging materials were obviously scarce and that Government help would be needed. They told me that they did not feel the growers themselves were making the best use of what was available. I pass that on as a general observation and not as a comment of my own, because I do not know the position.

On the question of the wholesalers, I think everyone will agree that the wholesale markets are far too small. They are old, and because they are old they have no facilities for keeping perishable goods. There is very little doubt that far too many people are handling the goods at the wholesale stage, which is another addition to the cost. I think I may be getting into trouble on the question of the retailers, but I am trying to be fair, and I have tried to find out the general attitude of the retailers in the country. My general criticism is that the retailers in general are content with a high profit on a limited turnover, rather than a bigger turnover and a smaller profit, which would come to the same thing in the end financially. It would entail more work if they tried to get a larger turnover, but it would obviously help the growers when supplies were plentiful. Having said that, I realise that it is an understandable attitude owing to the perishable nature of the goods. But a high profit on a limited turnover hits the housewife.

The Retail Fruit Federation suggested a Commission. If that idea were adopted by the Government, presumably these points concerning the growers, wholesalers and retailers would be inquired into. If the Government do not accept the suggestion—and I do not see what more the Retail Fruit Federation can do—then they have to suggest an alternative. I have always attacked the Opposition both in the House and in the country for finding fault and being negative in not putting forward alternative policy. I am now turning my guns on the Parliamentary Secretary. It is no use my hon. Friend getting up and saying "We will think about this," or "It is a good idea." If the Government do not adopt the suggestion, then I want to know what they are doing about it.

Here is a suggestion which I hope they will be able to follow in the immediate future. After the last debate, the Covent Garden Tenants Association wrote to me. They read a report in the papers on distribution costs, and they wrote to me on the subject. They wanted to know whether the lettuce for which the grower received 2d. was the same lettuce which the retailer sold for 8d. I suggested that they should get HANSARD, in which they would see that unless one turned into a cabbage or a lettuce, it was impossible to make sure that it was the same lettuce. They were on a valid point here. I want my hon. Friend to come to my rescue and provide the evidence for us. I suggest that if the Ministry next month would follow through a consignment of lettuces or strawberries from the place where they were grown, in two or three areas, to the shops, it would show whether they were the same lettuces or strawberries, and we should be able to see where this enormous difference of 700 per cent. comes in. If the enormous difference of 700 per cent. suddenly disappears, then no one will be better pleased than the housewife, and I suggest to the Ministry that they should then do that for other vegetables as well.

We require, firstly, a better marketing intelligence, a pruning of the expenses of marketing and a simpler system of distribution. Secondly, we have, somehow, to bring the grower nearer to the retailer so that these highly perishable goods can be handled more speedily and waste avoided. Thirdly, I am convinced that the biggest item in the prices all of us pay for our home grown fruit and vegetables is not the cost of growing them but the cost of distribution. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] It is very nice that both sides are agreed on that particular point. The trade and the public also agree. But what are the Government going to do about it, and when, which is much more relevant.

I am very proud to be a supporter of this Government. They have done a grand job in the face of great difficulties and considerable opposition. It is an infinitely better Government than anything which could be produced from the other side. But that does not absolve them from doing nothing on this particular matter. I know—and here I am throwing a brick-bat at myself—that it is very different putting forward propositions from the back benches, from sitting on the Government Front Bench and having to carry them out.

I also appreciate, as all of us do, that the Government have a great many matters to consider at the present time. But they have been considering this matter for a very long time. If they are still doubtful about it, it is time that somebody made a decision. I would much rather that the Government took action which did not succeed than that they took no action at all. I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to realise that all the women of this country who go to the shops and buy their own goods, and the men who go there shopping too, are very tired of these incessant high prices of fruit and vegetables and I am going to do all in my power to give the Government one big push to get something done.

I am very glad to have the opportunity of following the hon. Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton). She has told a very good story with much of which I have no quarrel, but, like many stories, there are two sides to it. I quarrel not so much with what she has said, as with what she has left unsaid, and it is on one or two points in that respect that I want to say something now.

I believe that no other commodity can show an equal number of problems or of complex hazards, very difficult to organise, as the growing and the marketing of fruit and vegetables. The hon. Lady has complained that the Government have been a long time doing little about it. Far be it from me to answer for the Parliamentary Secretary, who will be answering in a moment, but I think that the main reason why the Government have done nothing about it, or that little has been done before, is that this is one of the most difficult subjects that anyone can tackle. I am probably anticipating what the hon. Gentleman will say. It really is a great mistake in a sphere of this kind, involving so many different things emanating from Nature, to believe that it can be set right by controls, regulations or even by commissions. If the hon. Lady has read the report which was produced some years ago on this subject she will realise that the same difficulties existed even then.

There is no conspiracy among retailers or wholesalers, or among growers—I do not think she attributes anything of the kind to the growers—and if she doubts my word I would like to refer her to "Report to Women," for February, 1951, a monthly review of the economic situation prepared in the Information Division of the Treasury. I think we can all accept it as reasonably free from party bias. It devotes itself to the very subject which the hon. Lady has just made. I would particularly direct her attention to one passage which deals with the question: "Why are the prices of some vegetables higher than they were before the war?" The hon. Lady will see that not only is the possibility of a conspiracy dismissed, but that it is clear that the roots of the problem which she has raised go very deep indeed.

There are no subsidies on vegetables, except for potatoes, and therefore all vegetables and fruit are bound to appear relatively more expensive than they were before the war, in relation to some other commodities. We have a reminder that there have been increases in costs of production and of distribution since 1939, that farm wages are at three times the 1939 level and that necessities such as fertilisers are costing more than double. Distribution is more costly. Why? Because wages are higher than they were before the war and because the costs of packaging and transport have increased. On the subject of transport, I am sure the hon. Lady will agree that the cost is out of all proportion to the increase in the cost of the fruit and vegetables themselves. Finally come what are classed as overheads and wastage. Those are all points enumerated in the document to which I have referred, and which is free from political prejudice.

I do not disagree with what the hon. Member has been saying, but I would point out that the case I have been putting is that there is far too wide a gap between what the grower receives and what the consumer pays. I would hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that it is too wide.

I do agree, up to a point, but I want to turn to five factors which I believe will help to diminish the gap between the price to the grower and the price paid by the housewife. The first factor concerns the grower himself. In the hazardous business of growing fruit and vegetables, undoubtedly the biggest item is the weather. This is not recognised by people who live in towns, because there is often a time-lag between the effect of the weather on the fruit and vegetables and the result on the prices in the shops. There may be an interval, as there was last spring, of two or three months before the result is shown. Therefore, price is not always associated in the minds of townspeople with weather.

We have to remember that even in this mechanically-controlled age there are many operations in the growing of fruit and vegetables which cannot be mechanically controlled. The hon. Lady has mentioned strawberries and the fact that the grower is apt to charge a very high price. I have always recognised the right of the grower to charge a high price for the first of his goods to reach the market. That appears to be a perfectly logical playing of the law of supply and demand. If people want to eat strawberries in May they should pay the price for them, but that price should not be confused with the normal price of strawberries in the season. Where there is a hazard of weather, not to mention other hazards, it is only to be expected that the grower will make the best he can of the early part of the season.

Another factor is variable quality, which the hon. Lady touched on but did not explain. Some shops deal only in high quality. Others deal in lower quality. There are some qualities on the market which ought not to be there at all. At the same time, there are all sorts of shops selling all sorts of different qualities, and it is easy to go from one shop to another and imagine that somebody is being swindled. Further, wastage is normally far greater than anybody in the town would believe. I am sure that it would not be reduced by any form of central marketing scheme. If we are to try to do for vegetables what has already been done for eggs, then the condition of the goods when they arrive will be "uncertain and swimmy" as one of my hon. Friends has put it. The fruit and vegetables would arrive at the shops in a worse state than they do now.

The fourth factor is fluctuation in housewives' demand. The demand is by no means stable. It changes from time to time and neither grower nor retailer can always tell in advance what it will be. There are certain anomalies which are peculiar and unexplainable. For example, the cheapest stuff does not always sell fast, and very often the expensive stuff sells quickly. The cheapest stuff sometimes sits on the market unsold. I do not know why it is, but it is due to one of the whims of housewives.

Finally, it is said that profits in the retail business are higher than they should be. I would say that profits are in relation to risk and that the risks not only for the grower but for the retailer are considerable. If there are high profits, at least there are no signs of them in general prosperity of the fruit and vegetable retail trade. If the hon. Lady will consult the co-operative societies she will find that these particular departments are not very profitable.

On the authority of Mr. F. A. Secrett, who is one of the greatest authorities on horticulture, I can tell the House that, dealing with vegetables alone, no fewer than 45 types are in common use. Allowing for only 10 varieties in each type, and for each variety six brands, we reach the figure of 2,700 different commodities in the vegetable sector alone. They will give a considerable headache to anyone who attempts centralised marketing and planning of that commodity. This document also says:

"Any dynamic change in marketing methods would result in chaos. Much more would be achieved by improved methods of transport."

There we have a point.

In conclusion, I would urge the hon. Lady to study the whole life story of the fish. Unlike man, the fish is free, free as air, yet the hon. Lady knows that by the time the fish arrive on the fishmonger's slab the variations in price are considerable. There is instability in price as great as in the vegetable or fruit market. If that can happen to fish, it can happen to carrots. What the hon. Lady seeks is stability for the grower and the housewife. In my opinion she will find it difficult, when up against so many natural factors. One comment which I would make is that if the hon. Gentleman's attention to this matter produced more stability as a result of liaison between the Ministries of Agriculture and Food, with the co-related import policy which would result, we should be very much better off than we are now. That is a matter not for growers, retailers and wholesalers but for hon. Gentlemen opposite.

The hon. Gentleman is on a very bad wicket in talking to housewives about the price of fish. At the moment it does not commend itself to them.

I should like to emphasise a point which the hon. Lady the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton), did not fully bring out. One of the basic elements of the problem that we want to overcome is the delay between the grower and the housewife. It is vastly to the advantage of the consumers if they can get their vegetables fresh, and one of the troubles that the community faces at present is the number of transactions through which vege- tables have to go between leaving the grower and arriving in the consumer's refrigerator.

If anything can be done to speed up the transmission of vegetables from grower to consumer, it will be of great advantage to the community as a whole, because the fresher the vegetables are when the consumer receives them, the greater will be their nutritional value, the more palatable and pleasanter they will be and the greater will be the satisfaction to the grower if he knows that his produce is being consumed in the condition in which he likes to consume it.

That is a distinct element, for the grower takes pride in the quality of his produce. It is a very difficult problem to overcome because of variations in the perishability of the commodity which are caused by the weather, but it is being overcome to a great extent—we ought not to overlook this aspect—by the producers themselves in the organisations which they are setting up to assist in marketing. If the Parliamentary Secretary can do anything through his Department to assist growers' associations, he will be contributing a great deal to a solution of the problem as a whole.

It is a difficult problem, but if the hon. Lady would extend her investigations and go round one of the central depots of the big growers' organisations she will realise that the growers themselves are tackling the problem from the other end in order to achieve very much the same results as she is seeking to achieve. There she will see being put to the most practical use buildings, appliances, timber and all those materials which the Ministries make it most difficult for us to obtain. If, through his Department, the Parliamentary Secretary can facilitate a greater availability of those materials to growers' organisations, which cannot function without an initial capital expenditure, he will be doing something to bring about from the growers' end, the objects which the hon. Lady is seeking to achieve.

There is another aspect of the matter which ought to be considered. I was hoping that the Minister of Transport would remain in the Chamber, but I see that he has left. The increases in transport charges for growers' products since the nationalisation of the transport industry have been terrific. One of the greatest bugbears has been the introduction of a minimum charge for the collection of any grower's produce. Particularly in wintertime when produce is short, the market is considerably bolstered up by the contributions of small growers, such as the odd crate of cabbage or cauliflower, and so on. For collecting the odd crate, the Road Transport Executive makes a minimum charge of 5s., and that makes it quite impossible for these small contributions to come to the market.

If the Parliamentary Secretary can use his influence with his right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport to get the Road Transport Executive to listen to the problems of the growers in regard to these prices, the speed with which the goods are delivered to the market and the care taken to see that the goods are properly protected and not submitted to the incidence of rain and frost by being improperly covered, he will be doing a considerable service to the community.

Before I resume my seat, I should like to say a word about a different aspect of the matter having regard to the remarks made by the hon. Lady about strawberries. Strawberries are one of the most difficult crops with which a grower has to deal. They are very highly perishable and have to be picked at exactly the right moment. Picking charges have gone up, and at present in the normal flush of the market the grower's price for strawberries does not exceed the picking charges.

I shall resist any temptation to talk about fish and eggs and shall confine myself to the subject of fresh fruit and vegetables, save to say that eggs are a price review commodity and I do not think that the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes) would suggest that they should be taken out of the price review.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton) on coming back for the third round and raising the very important subject of fresh fruit and vegetables today. The main lesson to be learnt from the present discussion is that this is an extraordinarily difficult problem to solve. I am not tempted to an early solution simply because we are receiving pressure about this. It is far more important to reach a correct solution because of the many difficulties which arise in tackling the marketing and distribution of vegetables.

It is very comforting to find that there is today a measure of agreement about the problem, because that is new. One of the difficulties in tackling such a problem is that when hon. Gentlemen opposite were in power they were bewildered by following the spectre of the price mechanism. It is a fortunate thing that we all recognise now that the industry cannot be left entirely to the working of the price mechanism. It is significant that at annual conferences this year and last year the retailers were asking for very radical steps to be taken about the industry in which they play a very important part.

This afternoon I can add very little to what I have said previously about the essential problems. I believe it is agreed that what is, in essence, needed is a simplification of the present system; that the present facilities are inadequate and that what we have essentially to do is to improve the machinery. But we must first reach the correct conclusion, and then we must consult the trade. It will be appreciated that there is today a further difficulty. If steps are to be taken, they will probably involve capital investment and will, therefore, have to be co-ordinated with the other activities which the country is bound to take in the next few years in securing her defence.

I turn now to some of the points raised by my hon. Friend. On the last occasion, she threatened—and I thought it would be most unfortunate if she carried out her threat—to become a cabbage. I assure her that there is no need for her to suffer that sacrifice, and the House need not be disturbed that we shall suffer that loss. We are now carrying out inquiries, the purpose of which is to follow the same consignment through all the processes of distribution. It was suggested, I believe, that we should do this with regard to lettuces and strawberries.

We are doing it at present with regard to lettuces and other vegetables, and we shall certainly do it with regard to strawberries. It will take some few weeks before we can analyse the results of these inquiries, but we shall have them before us and then we shall be able to test the reliability of the figures which we now have. These are average figures, and have always been open to the objection that it is very difficult to argue from the point of view of averages when dealing with fresh fruit and vegetables.

Another point raised, not only by my hon. Friend, but by other hon. Members, is the question of packaging. In this respect, noticeable improvements are occurring in the trade. The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries tell me that they can report improvements, particularly regarding apples, tomatoes and lettuces, although the trade are faced with the difficulty that they have not available to them all the materials they would wish to have. Softwood supplies will probably improve, at any rate a little, but while supplies are short, there is all the more need for those in the trade to show some initiative and, perhaps, some ingenuity in dealing with this problem.

By way of illustration of the difficulties facing us, I want to say a few words about the present position. My hon. Friend referred to the incessant rain. As other hon. Members have pointed out, if we have bad weather, it is bound to affect the marketing and distribution of fruit and vegetables. Reference was also made to the question of imports, and I think an appeal was made for some correlated policy. That correlation exists at present. Both the Agricultural Departments and the Ministry of Food are looking at the position very carefully and taking the requisite steps in harmony. We must realise, of course, that the bad weather this year has not been an isolated phenomenon. There has also been bad weather on the Continent. Holland, particularly, and to a less degree France, have experienced weather not entirely dissimilar from that which we have experienced.

Regarding the vegetables to which reference has been made already, we have in each case looked at the general supply position and the position of our own growers because if we are interested in the housewife, she, in turn, has to be interested in our own growers. We cannot ensure adequate supplies at reasonable prices, at the entire disregard of our own growers. We must strike a balance in this. Turning by way of illustration to the cauliflower which was mentioned I would say to my hon. Friend that she should show the same buying ability that my wife shows. My wife has been able for the past few weeks to buy cauliflowers at a price less than half that which the hon. Lady paid in Coventry.

I cannot let that pass. May I say in all politeness that perhaps the hon. Gentleman's wife is not a Member of this House and therefore has more time.

That may be; I am not going to argue the matter further. Of course, one of the difficulties about this is that very often there are inexplicable differences in price between different localities. All I can say is that in the locality in which I live, it is possible to buy a cauliflower much more cheaply.

Imports of cauliflowers were allowed under open general licence until 16th February. Then they came in under a quota of 10,000 tons. What we did in that case was until quite recently to allow the quota to be exceeded. It was not until 25th April that the ban on imported cauliflowers became operative. At that time, and it has remained so since, the supply of home-produced cauliflowers was adequate to meet the demand. In fact, the price of cauliflowers has not risen since then. In the case of lettuces we extended the open general licence which would otherwise have been suspended on 1st May. It has been extended to 16th May which means that it is still operative.

Apart from these vegetables, the only others which are likely to come in from the Continent during the next month or two are peas, beans, new carrots, turnips, tomatoes, and, of course, early potatoes. In the case of peas, they would come in under the normal arrangements of the open general licence until 16th June, after which date there would be no quota. Green beans came in under open general licence until 1st May, and thereafter under quota. Carrots would come in under open general licence until 8th June and thereafter there would be no quota. New turnips came in until 1st May under open general licence and thereafter come in under a limited quota. Tomatoes, again, come in under open general licence until 16th June and then, until 30th June, are subject to quota.

As I have said, in the case of lettuces we have extended the period of open general licence for 14 days. In the case of green peas we are extending the period of open general licence from 16th June for a further week, and, again, in the case of new potatoes, we are extending the operation of the open general licence from 10th June to 16th June. In the case of carrots we shall watch the position to see how home supplies appear likely to meet the demand. In the case of those commodities I have mentioned which are subject after the suspension of the open general licence to quota arrangements, we will do exactly the same as we have done in the case of cauliflowers. We shall watch the matter to see how far home supplies go to meet the demands of the housewife.

I do not think we can do more. This is an example of co-relationship between the agricultural departments and the Ministry of Food. Of course, the difficulties which will soon arise will not be caused by the arrangements I have been describing, but by the ban imposed by the Importation of Plants Order. We have to safeguard our own industry against the Colorado beetle. I do not think any one would suggest that in view of the temporary difficulties that may face us in May or June, we should prejudice our essential horticultural industry. It will be the Colorado beetle and the threat of it that will prevent imports which might otherwise have come.

As attention has been drawn to the question of price, may I say a word or two about the difficulties of price control, some of which were indicated by the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Deedes)? These are commodities in which quality and demand play an essential part in determining price, but I do not think the House should have any misleading impression about present day prices. I would say, first of all, that even during the war, it was recognised that some vegetables were not amenable to price control. At no time during the war were prices of beans, peas, lettuces, celery or mushrooms controlled. It would be extremely difficult to control, for instance, the price of lettuces by weight. With regard to the others, however, I think the House should appreciate that, on the whole, during the past few months the prices of winter cabbage, savoys and, at any rate for a period, spring greens were below the old controlled retail prices which were operative as long ago as 1945–46, and that the prices of a number of other commodities such as beetroots, parsnips, carrots and swedes have been running at or about controlled prices.

When one pays regard to the fact that there have been increased costs—some of these factors were referred to by the hon. Member for Ashford—we should make allowance for the fact that over a wide range of vegetables—cauliflowers are an exception, their price is running into a few pence above the controlled price—by and large the bulk of our supplies, notwithstanding that they are not subsidised, have been running at about or, perhaps, below the controlled prices.

We have to recognise the position, that if we get an abrupt reduction in the amount which is produced, this is bound to reflect itself on price levels. If a grower is badly hit by the weather and, through no fault of his own, produces less, there must inevitably be some price adjustment to cover him for, at any rate, his production costs. At the same time, we have to watch the position closely and pay regard to it, for it is in circumstances such as these that there is an invitation to exploitation.

My advice, therefore, to my hon. Friend during the next few weeks is to continue her researches and to satisfy herself that if price increases occur, they reflect the supply position, and that if not, she carries on her very good practice of being a market intelligence officer to the housewives of Coventry and, I hope, the country; and that if prices become unreasonable, the housewife will show the same resistance to such unreasonable prices as she has shown recently in other instances.

Meanwhile, however attractive it may be as a proposition, I do not think we can launch into a policy which must determine the shape of the marketing and distribution of fruit and vegetables for a long time, merely because of the pressure of present temporary circumstances. What we have to do is to try to get this matter right and to try also to carry with us at any rate the most enlightened elements of the trade.

I am glad to have this opportunity of drawing attention to the question of traffic congestion in our big towns, especially London. I feel sure that anyone who travels by bus, trolley-bus, or otherwise on the road surface around London will bear witness that this congestion is getting worse every day. It is not unfair to say that our traffic is constipated, is getting more and more constipated, and that some action must be taken.

In the past the remedy appears to have been to set up a committee, which has listened to evidence and has published a report, but so little is done as a result of their recommendations. We have recently had an admirable committee on London traffic congestion—the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee—whose report has been published by the Ministry of Transport. I hope the House will forgive me if I pick out a few of the points—it is impossible to cover them all—and add a few others which are not mentioned.

The cost of these delays which everyone suffers is difficult to estimate. It has been said by one authority that they are not less than £70 million in a year. It is worth while, therefore, to spend something to alleviate this trouble. There are 4,000 million passenger journeys per year on the surface transport around London, and if each of these people wastes 10 minutes going to, and 10 minutes coming back from, business, there is a colossal waste of time and money.

It was with some surprise that we learnt that the long-term scheme for an inner ring—the "A" ring, which was to go two miles round the centre of London and which, it was thought, would take some 30 per cent. of the central traffic out of London's most concentrated areas—has been abandoned. It is fully realised that perhaps we do not have the money to start the scheme now, but I cannot see why this enlightened idea should be thrown over completely. Cannot we have a reserve for the future, when we can afford the capital effort which is needed?

At present there is too much traffic on too few roads, and I want to draw atten- tion to possible ways of making the best use of the existing square feet of road. The report to which I have referred lays down certain minimum needs and deals with the question of through roads, with a one-way road in one direction and a parallel road in the other direction. I know that the Minister has initiated a scheme whereby Park Lane will be one-way southwards and East Carriageway, Hyde Park, will be one-way northwards. Then we will have the connecting roads between the two, so that traffic can go from one to the other.

That is admirable, but cannot we apply this principle a little more widely, without any very great cost and with a great saving in time to the travelling public? I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman has studied the Griffiths-Jones plan, which makes very concrete suggestions, which are not expensive and which demand very small changes—merely in islands and in traffic light timings—and which furthers the very idea which the right hon. Gentleman has already accepted in one instance.

Secondly, I wonder whether the police are sufficiently attentive to the flow of traffic? I realise this is not the province of the right hon. Gentleman, but it is a matter, I am sure, in which he takes interest. The Traffic Commissioner at New Scotland Yard studies these problems, but one cannot help wondering whether operational research on traffic flow is carried out. Only two days ago I was waiting for some traffic lights which had gone wrong to turn right. The traffic was piling up behind, and for some 500 yards, buses, lorries and private cars blocked the road solidly while the light remained red. I saw a policeman come along, no doubt off duty, with his bicycle. He took one look at this traffic stream, and disappeared into a public convenience. I wonder whether the police are brought up to consider that one of their duties is to keep traffic moving and to take instant action if someone has parked or has broken down in one of the many bottlenecks which exist?

I suggest that someone, if not the Road Research Laboratories and if not New Scotland Yard, then perhaps an independent research organisation might undertake operational research on the working of the many traffic lights around London. First, there is the problem of maintenance. I think it is significant in this report that on 16 per cent. of the occasions the traffic lights were not working. That has the most serious effect on the even flow of traffic. Secondly, under this heading there is the question of light filters. Cannot we advance the idea whereby whenever there are two or more lines of traffic in a single direction the left hand line can filter to the left, after leaving sufficient time for the pedestrians to cross. It seems to me that with that arrangement we should gain without any possible disadvantage.

Thirdly, there is the question of lights at T-pieces. Are these really necessary? I should like to quote the case of Lisson Grove, which runs parallel to Edgware Road. It carries in the evenings and in the mornings a large volume of northbound traffic, and half way down there is a T-piece feeding across to the Edgware Road. I have never been able to understand why it was necessary to spend the capital outlay on a traffic light system at this point and why it is necessary to retain it at all.

Fourthly, could we not give attention to the question of switching the lights back automatically so that they give a green light to the main thoroughfare? This is important in London, and it is perhaps even more important on the arterial roads feeding out of London. Along Western Avenue or the Great West Road one frequently comes across traffic lights which have turned red in response to a signal from some traffic coming in from the side, and the lights have not turned green again automatically. Therefore lorries, buses, motor coaches and private cars have to slow down, hit the mat and wait for the fights to turn before proceeding. It is totally unnecessary, and these lights should automatically turn green again on the main roads to help the flow of traffic on the most important roads.

Lastly under the heading of lights, could not the Minister consider arranging for all lights after a certain hour—perhaps midnight or one o'clock in the morning—to become flashing yellow lights? It might be considered that this would lead to crashes, but that is not the experience in other countries. This procedure is followed very widely on the Continent, and traffic flows there, I should have said, with greater speed than it ever does in this country.

All these problems surely need some operational research, and I am not suggesting that highly trained men are necessary. Students from our technical colleges, science students, and so on, could well investigate the operation of the lighting system and learn much from it. In the meantime, a great deal of time is wasted by people when lights are not working and where a timing cycle is not operating to optimum efficiency.

I should like to say a word or two on the question of traffic propaganda. It is dealt with in this very good report, but I wonder if the Highway Code pays sufficient attention to the need for traffic, particularly slow moving traffic, to keep on the extreme left of the road. There is a tendency for traffic to keep three or four feet out. While our roads are so restricted and while we are not able to afford entirely new roads, we have got to encourage traffic to keep on the extreme left of the road.

I expect every hon. Member must have experienced a bugbear amongst drivers. One turns out to pass a car, having ascertained that there is ample space, and another car is coming towards you. Rather than give way, the driver of the other car will keep as near to the centre of the road as he can, lean out of his window and shout something rude such as, "Get over to your own side," or, "Get out of the way," or something even more abusive. It would seem to me that in qualifying for a driving licence, one of the points which should be brought home to applicants is the need to keep on the extreme left of the road and not to swing out or change course, so that we can have two or three lines of traffic running parallel without interfering with one another.

On this question of propaganda, the report also mentions the desirability of bringing to the notice of the public good practice in traffic flow and traffic control, and it suggests that more use should be made, through the B.B.C., of broadcasts. It particularly draws attention to proposals for television programmes. I can think of no better medium for illustrating how we can best make use of our existing roads than the television medium. I would ask the Minister whether he can perhaps bring this point to the notice of the B.B.C.

I turn briefly to the question of car parks. I know that it is a thorny problem which the right hon. Gentleman was talking about in this House some 16 hours ago. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell), if he is fortunate enough to be called, wishes to deal with this point. But what progress is being made with unilateral parking? It seems to many of us that London has been particularly slow in taking up this very obvious remedy. Big towns not only in this country but all over the world have adopted unilateral parking for many years, but I have yet to find one of the overcrowded streets in our city, particularly in the centre of London, in which this method has been adopted or even experimented with.

Also, what are the Government doing about providing car parks in connection with the new buildings they are erecting? This report brings out strongly the desirability of the Government setting an example. It points out that when new buildings are going up, such as the War Office in Whitehall, it is the Government's duty to make provision for cars to be parked either under or in those new buildings. One wonders whether provision has been made for that in the new Ministry of Civil Aviation. Perhaps the Minister could give us some assurance that consideration is being given to this matter, because if the Government do not set an example, they cannot expect private enterprise to respond.

I wish to say a word on the question, which is not mentioned in the report, of the design of our buses. All Members would agree that British buses are as good as any in the world; they would not be doing such a good export business if they were not. But I wonder whether we ought not to give consideration to the desirability of an entrance at the back and an exit at the front. At present at a bus stop perhaps 15 seconds are occupied, during a very busy period, by passengers alighting, and a further 15 seconds more are occupied while other passengers get on. If that 30 seconds could be reduced to 15 seconds by having what I might describe as a one-way movement along the bus we should have achieved a step forward in the flow of our traffic, which must be clogged as buses are forced to stop and pick up passengers. The shorter the stop the better the flow of traffic.

I hope that when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will confirm that the Government realise that in every phase of our life the efficient flow of traffic is essential. We have just heard the hon. Lady the Member for Coventry, South (Miss Burton), mention the question of costs in the distribution trade. We are all anxious to see those costs lowered. They can only be lowered if we effect improvements to our roads which match the improvements to our factories.

Throughout the years the productivity of our factories increases. We produce more goods by increased efficiency in the use of manpower and the increased efficiency of machines. More goods flowing out of the same premises means that more raw materials and semi-finished products have to flow into those premises. It is muddled planning if in keeping with that increased productivity, we do not improve our roads so that the finished products can flow out efficiently, and, with lower overheads, be distributed to the public in this country and to overseas markets.

I think my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, North (Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing) is to be highly commended on having chosen this subject. It is, in one sense, a pity that it should be raised on a day like this when there are few hon. Members present either to listen or take part in the debate. Perhaps at this stage I should declare an interest, so far as inner London is concerned, in that I happen to be a member of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee which is responsible for the report on London traffic conditions mentioned by my hon. Friend. I shall not criticise that report as I suppose I ought to take some small share of responsibility for it. I was not a member of the sub-committee which did all the work on the report—and a very great deal of work they did put into it. I am only one of those who approved the finished article when it came before the main committee.

A number of very important points made in that report have been touched on by my hon. Friend. There is, above all, one which offers a solution, or some sort of solution, to our problem, and that is in regard to car parking and taking cars off the streets of London. The report makes it clear that, for an expenditure of about £5 million, it should be possible to provide car parks off the streets for something like 5,000 cars. That number is more than the number which the survey on traffic has revealed are parked on the streets of London every day.

We happen, in one sense, to be living in a rather fortunate period of our history, when nature and Hitler between them have provided a number of sites on which these parks could be made. I know that there is a number of bombed site car parks now, but they are all single storey. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will press on with the recommendations made in the report that car parks consisting of a number of storeys should be built on bomb sites and under some London squares—Cavendish Square is a case in point—which would help to solve the problem.

There are many squares in which the London Transport Executive have forestalled any attempt at car parking, but there are many others where there must be plenty of room still for providing car parks. There is, for example, St. James's Square. Is there any reason why a car park should not go underneath the square in addition to the excellent park which already exists on the level? A car park in St. James's Park would relieve a great deal of the present congestion in the area around the Houses of Parliament and there are many other sites which might be mentioned.

I would refer also to the subject of the discussion last night, the no-waiting restrictions. I do not mean the restrictions as they are at the present moment, but as they were before the special regulations brought in for the Festival of Britain. I find, unfortunately, that quite often these no-waiting restrictions are not obeyed. On two recent Friday afternoons when I went from this House to Berkeley Square, to attend a meeting of the London and Home Counties Traffic Advisory Committee, going up Dover Street I counted no fewer than 12 vehicles on either side of the road which were parked there in defiance of the right hon. Gentleman's restriction. I know that some may have been loading or unloading but there were several vehicles whose owners had parked them there quite oblivious of the notice pointing out that there was no waiting.

I endorse what my hon. Friend said about unilateral waiting. There are many examples of streets outside the central area where unilateral waiting could be brought in to very great advantage. One which he mentioned is Lisson Grove, St. John's Wood. Early in the morning there is often a great deal of congestion there because of vehicles parked on both sides of the road. With a little ingenuity they could all be parked on the same side, without any great inconvenience to the drivers and that would save a great deal of the congestion.

That brings me to the question of propaganda. I think that a great deal of the congestion and traffic blocks that take place are caused by careless and thoughtless parking of cars and vehicles. Only one vehicle parked in the wrong position is enough to cause trouble, and I have seen that in West End Lane, Hampstead. A greengrocer's van was parked outside the shop, where legitimate loading and unloading is permitted, but the same van could have been parked in a side street round the corner without causing any congestion, and without causing any of those who had to do the loading and unloading to walk any greater distance than they would have had to do if the van was parked in the main street. That may be an exceptional instance, but I think there must be many others like it, in which, with a little education and propaganda, drivers could be persuaded to park their vehicles in side streets instead of main streets, without inconvenience to themselves.

There is the very excellent suggestion in the report to which reference has been made for the provision of arcades, that is to say for setting back the ground floor of a row of shops behind the building line and supporting the upper floors on pillars. There is an example of this in Piccadilly, but, if any hon. Member would like to see an example of the same thing on a large scale, he should go to Berne, the capital of Switzerland, where most of the main streets are built in that way. There is no pavement open to the sky at all, which would be another great advantage in our climate, because it would enable shop window gazers to look at the shop windows in comfort and without getting wet. It would also have the advantage of widening a number of our narrow streets at much lower cost than if it was necessary to pull down buildings or to set them back. I can think of several places where that might be tried out with advantage, but one in particular is New Coventry Street, where one side might be set back behind an arcade, and the street could be widened and the lane available to traffic broadened, without the cost that would be involved by setting back the whole building line and having to slice off a large chunk of the buildings.

Then, there is a vital improvement suggested in the Report, for which I hope the money can be found. That is in reference to Hyde Park Corner, which is rapidly becoming about the worst traffic block in the whole of Central London. At present, I find it a nightmare to drive round the Hyde Park Corner roundabout system at any time during the peak hours, and yet the Report reveals that, for the expenditure of only £1,250,000, which is not such a large sum in the light of the vast sums that are spent by the Government at present, the roundabout system could be extended over a wider area, and a very great deal of the present congestion be reduced.

On the subject of roundabouts in general, I think the system fails if the roundabouts are too small for the volume of traffic which they have to carry. Going slightly outside the inner London area, I can think of two such examples at present, both of them on the North Circular Road. One is at the Neasden Circus and the other at the Brent circus, where there are two small roundabouts, and the traffic congestion is so bad that, frequently, mobile police have to go there to stop traffic moving in two directions at once. With such roundabouts and the traffic as it is, one is no better off than if there were traffic lights, as is the case at another junction between the two roundabouts which I have mentioned.

There are very good examples in the roundabouts at the ends of York Road which have been provided in connection with the Festival of Britain, and where, by using side streets and making the roundabouts on a large scale, we do not find the disadvantages which accompany the smaller roundabouts, and traffic flows far more freely than it did at either end of the road before the new roundabouts were constructed. We ought to get away from the roundabout idea, and think more of the building of underpasses and road junctions of that kind, which have been developed so much abroad. I expect the Minister of Transport knows the main road from Paris to Le Bourget airport, on which there is a large number of underpasses where the traffic flows perfectly freely in both directions, and the only difficulty applies to anyone who wants to turn left.

I know many road junctions in this country, particularly in areas around London, where underpasses would be a great advantage, and one junction is the North Circular Road with the Watford and Barnet by-pass. As my hon. Friend pointed out, a great deal of money could be saved if traffic congestion could be eliminated, even at the expense of £55,000 or so, which was an estimate given to me a few months ago for the cost of constructing an average underpass.

I feel that if this problem is going to be solved we shall have to adopt bold measures. Half measures are no good. I do not think we should be afraid of expenditure on a fairly large scale in the hope that we shall save money by spending it. At any rate, if we do nothing, the problem will get worse day by day and there will come a time if nothing is done, when most of the traffic in central London will come to a standstill. Most hon. Members will support any steps the right hon. Gentleman takes to implement the report to which reference has been made, and any other measures which may be brought forward to remove the appalling traffic problem both in London and in provincial towns.

The hon. Member for Hendon, North (Mr. C. I. Orr-Ewing) and the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) have made two very practical contributions to the very complex and difficult problem of London traffic. The hon. Member for Hendon, North, opened quite rightly, by emphasising the enormous cost which traffic congestion represents. He gave the figure of £70,000. That may or may not be accurate, but I do not think that accuracy matters much here, because it is obvious what the cost of the traffic problem in London represents to the average citizen who travels about the streets of London. It is so considerable, that the accuracy of the figures do not really matter so much. Then, again, there is the irritation that it represents, the physical fatigue caused to people going about on their business or on other preoccupations, and, above all, in our great Metropolitan area, there is that grave and perplexing problem of road casualties as well.

I do not think there is any dispute anywhere of the need of expenditure in this direction, and if it could be isolated, I have no doubt that a large volume of opinion would support it. We cannot however isolate the problem of expenditure on the roads of this country from the current budgetary position, which Parliament considers from time to time. There is no dispute between my hon. Friends opposite and myself on this subject, and no one would be more pleased than I, to get on with many of the projects which have been suggested. From time to time the financial position and circumstances are stated to hon. Members and if the broad policy is endorsed by Parliament, there is no escape from the costs involved.

The Minister of Local Government and Planning and myself recently came to the conclusion that we should not proceed with the ring road project which has been mentioned today. In the first place, the cost would be enormous. The possibility of its being carried through even in a reasonable period appeared to be remote and the difficulties that it represented in holding up developments along any projected route eventually influenced us to a decision that, if ever the money were available, it could be spent to better purpose in other directions.

I am strongly in sympathy with the views expressed in the report of the London Home Counties Advisory Committee on the traffic problems of London, on the need to have at least one road from north to south and one from east to west as free as possible to facilitate the flow of traffic. There is also the question of parallel roads to produce in London something like the dual carriageway or bypass we have built in the country. I do not know whether hon. Members who have spoken in this debate took the opportunity to view the model of the reconstruction of Hyde Park Corner, the conversion of Park Lane and the carriageway through Hyde Park and the reconstruction of Marble Arch which I had exhibited for the interest of hon. Members, in a room off Westminster Hall a few months ago.

That plan would not only represent a tremendous improvement in the flow of traffic in that area, but it would also increase considerably the amenities of London. That plan is complete and the good will and support of all authorities concerned, even including the King and Queen, have been secured for that project. I would have welcomed very much an increased public interest in that very large and desirable project and I hope that before very long it will he possible to carry it through.

Can the Minister say whether that plan will involve lifting the 20 miles an hour limit on the carriageway in that section?

That point is not settled. At the moment it is a minor one compared with agreement on the scheme itself, but, obviously, if the carriageway in the park was made into a thoroughfare for all vehicles, I assume—though I would not like to be tied down on it—that the limit now applying to vehicles in the Park would disappear automatically. I believe every hon. Member would agree that the association of the Ministry of Works and my Department in the reconstruction of Parliament Square has been a very good thing in itself and that the reconstruction is a very considerable improvement. The scheme to which I have referred would go a very long way to solve the problem of the terrific volume of traffic at Hyde Park Corner and, at the same time, improve the amenities there.

I can give a general assurance that the maintenance of traffic light installations is being steadily improved. My own Department are interested in developing closer association with local authorities throughout the country in giving technical advice to ensure a continuing improvement in the efficiency of our traffic light installations. Some mention was made of a 16 per cent. failure. One would wish to know the circumstances. Sometimes, of course, electricity cuts, which at the present are rather frequent, can very considerably affect such a factor.

Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that point would he say whether any operational research is undertaken in connection with the lights to see not only that the timing is working correctly, but is working to the optimum efficiency for a particular flow of traffic?

Yes, operational research of that description is carried out by both my Department and the police, though I would not suggest for one moment that it is as thorough and as continuous as probably, the hon. Gentleman and I would wish; but that kind of work is undertaken.

With regard to Lisson Grove, I have one or two figures here. I am not familiar with that particular spot myself, but I am assured that about 1,250 vehicles an hour enter this junction—that is a fairly heavy flow of traffic—from all three directions at busy periods, and of those vehicles about 130 an hour turn right out of Church Street into Lisson Grove across the main streams of traffic. I will undertake to have the matter specially looked at, but it may be that there is quite a sound justification for traffic lights at a point like that.

The hon. Member for Hendon, North, stressed that filters should be increased in numbers. Of course, the problem of the filter light must be judged in relation to the width of the road and the type of traffic using it. The tendency there is to study each particular junction on its merits. I can assure the hon. Member that there is no resistance to the idea of the filter system on our traffic signs. As far as my Department is concerned, we should wish to facilitate that as much as possible, but I do not think that we can generalise upon a matter of that kind. It does require the study of the junction to which it is desired to apply the system.

So far as I can gather our highway engineers do not favour the flashing yellow light that is prevalent on the Continent. I have an open mind on it myself. I must confess that, so far, I have seen no evidence that justifies that innovation in this country. As a matter of fact I am not persuaded that the flashing light is good in itself, but, nevertheless, we are continually experimenting, and our highway engineers are very familiar with traffic conditions on the Continent and there is a continual interchange of information taking place. However, I should not like to say that a proposal of that kind commends itself very strongly to me at the present moment.

And the timing of the switch back to green on the main red?

The vehicle actuated system appears to meet the greater part of that need. I think that it is seldom that the traffic from side roads is brought on on the red. I do not see anything particularly weak or inefficient in our system as it prevails at present.

The propaganda department is in touch with Sir William Haley, the Director General of the B.B.C., about the development of television. I myself was hoping to have proceeded more rapidly with the new striped pedestrian crossings. Negotiations with the local authorities often meet with delay in this country, for there are so many of them. I was very anxious that television and wireless propaganda should be used as effectively as possible in connection with the new regulations applying to pedestrian crossings. We have not overlooked the value of that kind of propaganda, and I daresay that everyone is anxious to use television and wireless, which is not at all an easy task. We are in touch with the B.B.C., the Press and publicity bodies of that character, and they are all very sympathetic towards this problem of road traffic. There is an enormous amount of good will, and it is only right that we should harness it so far as is possible.

I was asked whether the new Civil Aviation building has car park facilities. I confess that when the question was first put, I could not have told the House whether or not a car park was being provided beneath the building. I am assured, however, that a fairly adequate car park is being provided on the highway. I do not suppose my hon. Friend will mind whether the car park is under the building or not, so long as a car park is provided and the highways are not being further encumbered.

I assure the House that I shall approach this problem of unilateral parking with a good deal of personal interest and sympathy. I am aware that when we get away from Metropolitan London, the system is working fairly efficiently. It is true that in London, with its large number of commercial establishments so tightly packed together, we have commercial deliveries that are more intense than are to be found elsewhere. I shall pursue this point of experimenting with unilateral parking in London to see whether it can be extended more rapidly than hitherto. It will be agreed that it is quite easy to put remedies on paper, but it is an entirely different matter to put them into effect when we have to deal with the complexities of the problems which prevail in London.

The hon. Member for Wembley, South declared his interest in the London Home Counties Advisory Committee. When Members declare their interest it is usually for monetary or some other reasons. In this case it is not so. I should like to take this opportunity of acknowledging the very valuable assistance that I get from bodies of this character. The hon. Member has performed a very valuable public service as a member of that Committee.

Everyone recognises the necessity of solving this problem of car parking. I have been in continuous consultation with the Westminster City Council and other authorities on the matter. It was suggested that an expenditure of £5 million would garage 5,000 cars, and that a few experiments of this kind would go a long way towards solving the problem in London. The difficulty is to find the necessary money. As I have already said, if we go in for expenditure on one particular item, such as a road or a car park, then the money can possibly be found.

I wish to emphasise, and hon. Members know this is correct, that this problem exists all over the country. It is rather more acute in London; but I have not funds at my disposal for the purpose of building car parks of this description. The local authorities would be rather cautious in entering into an expenditure of this description, and I doubt very much if it would be a commercial proposition for any private company to undertake the capital cost of such work. The hon. Member for Wembley, South, and the hon. Member for Hendon, North, will, I am sure, be interested to know that I propose, in view of those difficulties, to appoint a small Departmental committee to take up the recommendation of this report on car parking in the London and Home Counties to study the matter speci- fically and give me some guidance how we can reach a solution of the problem.

Would the Minister give consideration to the changes necessary in the Building Acts as they now exist, because of the unnecessarily high standard of building that has normally to be assumed? I think the right hon. Gentleman will probably agree that garages can accept something a little less ambitious. Would he look at the Building Acts and see whether some amelioration can be made?

That question had better be put to other Ministers. I do not in any way control the building laws. Bodies like the London County Council would also be involved in the matter. I believe, from general knowledge, that problems of this character are being examined at present from the point of view of economy in building materials. I regret that I am not able to make any contribution on that matter this afternoon.

With my next point I must end my comments. I give an undertaking that I will study each point carefully at my leisure and will discuss them with the Department to see how quickly they can be met. With regard to police supervision. I think we all agree that the police have an exceedingly difficult task in London. They are a very valuable help to my Department, but they are short-staffed, like many other Departments at the present moment. It is not possible for them to give the supervision that in normal and easier conditions the Home Department might wish to give. Therefore, I do not think that with the tasks and the problems that they have to meet I can encroach upon the Home Secretary to ask for additional police for supervision of this kind. However, I am in discussion with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary not only with regard to this matter, but for the increase of mobile police in connection with traffic conditions generally.

I want to conclude by thanking the two hon. Members who have raised this matter. It does not cause any difficulty or injury to have the problem ventilated in the House of Commons. Rather it assists me in a difficult task. I join with the hon. Member for Wembley, South, in regretting that we did not have a full House so that hon. Members generally could have associated themselves with the demand made by the hon. Member and his hon. Friend.

I should like to begin by thanking the Under-Secretary of State for Air for coming here today to deal with this somewhat abstruse problem. When he and I were engaged in our respective studies at the University of Oxford, I do not believe either of us studied aeronautics or aerodynamics as such, even though we may both have belonged to the same air squadron and done a certain amount of light-hearted flying there at His Majesty's expense. We have since gone our own ways and now we are on opposite sides of the House discussing aeronautics.

My topic today is the flying-boat. That seems rather to put a sharp fence around the subject, as if it were shut off from other forms of aviation, but I should like, at the outset, to make it clear that I do not think there is a fundamental division on aeronautics between the flying-boat and the land aircraft. In the course of my few remarks I shall seek to establish my belief that they are growing ever closer together both in function and in performance. In this country the flying-boat, like the medium upon which it operates, experiences crests and troughs. At one time we are on a crest and at other times, such as now, we appear to have a trough.

We have had a great boom in flying-boats—we have had the Empire flying-boats on our civil routes and we have had the Sunderlands which are derived from them, all of them well ahead of their time and making a very fine thing for military aviation—but it now appears as if Great Britain is about to turn its back on the flying-boat. I am one who is not prepared to do so. I do not think that we have any right to turn our backs on the flying-boat. Even though the civil arm turns its back on it—if they are entitled to do so—and if it does not consider the flying-boat to be any good, on a national basis we cannot afford to turn down the flying-boat's claims to attention.

One of the most salient problems that confronts us in this country, organised as we are, is that if both military and civil aviation are nationalised, an immense responsibility will foe thrown on the Government to keep an open mind and to see that all forms of research are facilitated, even though the Government of the day may not support the products of one arm at a certain moment. For the sake of the next generation, so to speak, it is necessary that the purse-strings should be suitably unloosed so that research and development may be carried out for the benefit of the future, which not everybody may be able to foresee.

In the past, the flying-boat developed alongside the float plane. The range of aircraft was very short and a lot of flying was done over the sea. Boats and floats developed together. It was recognised that about two-thirds of the earth's surface is covered with water and that water is a medium which may claim a certain share in aviation because one can land on it without applying steam rollers or doing anything else to it. We saw the development of the Empire flying-boats and the Sunderlands. Because of the nature of our country and the Empire, to get anywhere they had to fly over water and alight near or on a handy coastline. It was largely because if anything went wrong—as is always liable to happen in any aeroplane—they could put down at any intermediate point on their route that the flying-boats were such a good undertaking for both oversea reconnaissance and oversea transport.

I do not suggest for a moment that flying-boats would attempt to alight in mid-Atlantic or on any open sea. They would be very foolish to do so, because, as a result of the speed at which they move, the water would have the effect of a solid if they hit it and they would be liable to be considerably corrugated. Clearly, therefore, not even the keenest exponent of the flying-boat is likely to say that he wants to be able to land and to take off in mid-Atlantic. That is not a practical thing. But if there has to be an emergency landing, and it is pulled off with care, there is a very good chance for the aircraft, and especially for the people on board, which does not exist with regard to an aircraft not so constructed.

I was very glad to receive the day before yesterday an answer from the Secretary of State for Air to the effect that a new flying-boat, a machine with four gas turbines and a displacement twice that of the Sunderland, was coming out. That, I am sure, will hearten those who believe in the flying-boat, but it is not entirely with the matter of reconnaissance over the sea that I am concerned. I think there is much more for the flying-boat to do than that. We can all admit that for reconnaissance and operational use over the sea, the flying-boat has been proved a success, because we have seen in Korea that the only aircraft which the Air Force have been able to use have been a couple of squadrons of Sunderlands, which have given a very good account of themselves.

I do not think that the future of the aircraft capable of alighting on water is a narrow matter. The future will bring some very radical changes, which, in turn, will bring radical changes in our outlook regarding these aircraft. There is no doubt that, up to now, the excessive weight and the very angular and awkward shape of aircraft that alight on the water have told very heavily against them. They have got to have a hull instead of a thin envelope of a fuselage, a boat-shaped underneath, and the step which creates drag. All these characteristics have detracted very heavily from the performance of such aircraft.

I think everyone must agree that nowadays, in aircraft as well as in ships, there is a one-way tendency, which is for them to grow ever larger. I think that they grow up to the largest that can be made at any time in the light of the engineering knowledge of the period, and that knowledge does not diminish. Therefore, I think it is right to say that we shall go on seeing aircraft growing in size—civil aircraft, bombers and transport aircraft of all kinds, and also, if we like to visualise them, the heavily armed cruising battle planes of the future.

Aircraft nowadays are a great deal bigger than those of before the war. All of them are very much bigger than they used to be, and, in general, it can be said that the experimental aircraft of today will be the average sized aircraft of tomorrow. We may well pay attention to the fact that the experimental and even Service aircraft of today, such as the American B. 36, the Brabazon and the big Princess flying boat are all in the region of something like 130 tons. I believe that these extremely large aircraft will be the ordinary aircraft of tomorrow.

When we have this steady growth of aircraft, we get a number of problems, and I should like particularly to deal with two of them. One is the proportion of the total weight of the aircraft that is taken up as undercarriage, not only the elements and physical pieces of the undercarriage, but the mechanism, the machinery and the power plant which have to operate it, and also the very heavy stressing that has to be applied to the points to which the undercarriage struts are joined.

All that creates a lot of weight, and as aircraft get bigger, not only does that weight get very large; it becomes a larger percentage of the aircraft and, of course, it becomes a very large absolute weight until—to take a perfectly normally designed aircraft of today, the Hermes—the undercarriage weight amounts to something like a quarter of the total pay load. That is a very uneconomical proposition, and as aircraft get bigger so the undercarriage elements will also continue to grow. Therefore, this will be an enormous incubus for aircraft in future to have to carry.

I have recently argued this matter with people whose names are household names in aviation. Those I have met are all inclined to say that something will have to happen, that this must cease. They are all inclined to agree with the thesis which is written for all to read in one or two books to which I may refer later: that as flying boats which land on water are growing in size, they will have to sacrifice proportionately less to make a planing hull that will alight on water.

The contention upon which I should like the Under-Secretary of State to comment is that the curves, so to speak cross: the increasing inefficiency, relatively, of the landplane is being surpassed by the increasing efficiency at large sizes of the seaplane and that, to use a figure which I have derived from several sources, at a weight of something like 60 or 80 tons it looks as if there will be a transition and that it will become more economical to operate water aircraft than land machines.

There is another point in this connection. Land aircraft require runways, and as aircraft grow in size—and so, coincidentally, does the wing loading of their design and with that the landing speed and the top speed also—the runways which they require will need to be longer, wider, thicker and stronger throughout. When we consider that many aerodromes of bomber stations which were built during the war cost about £2,500,000 each; when we consider that aircraft are already half as heavy and, perhaps, half as fast again as they were at the end of the war; when we consider that all these concrete runway aerodromes are now too small to take all but a few of the large aircraft even of today, and when we consider that the dimensions of a runway are magnified by half as much again, the total amount of the runway which is required comes to about three and a half times as much, and the £2,500,000 becomes £9 million. One then begins to see the formidable task that has to be faced in continuing to provide concrete runways for increasingly large aircraft.

This is a mammoth problem. As a matter of the strength of the runway, which depends, of course, upon the weight per wheel that an aircraft presses on the runway, we now have the Shackle-ton aircraft, which weighs, I believe, 40 tons when fully loaded. This machine rests on two wheels, so that as a dead weight alone there would be about 20 tons per wheel, which is a very large pressure. Bigger aircraft are having to use multi-wheel bogy landing undercarriages, or even caterpillar undercarriages, to spread the weight, but there will be a limit, I believe, even to that process. When one realises that aircraft are now of the order of 60 or 80 tons and will become much bigger still, there is no theoretical reason as far as I can see why we should not be having aircraft of 500 tons. How will those aircraft ever be put on a runway?

The other problem relating to runways is the amount of the country that they swallow up. Right up to the beginning of the war even the biggest air liners used to land on grass. We have——

We have a few figures, although there are not many to go on at the moment. I have had a Parliamentary answer this day from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, who gives the length of the only runway in existence in civilian use in 1941 as 3,000 feet, and the longest of all the very long runways at Heathrow Airport is just over 9,000 feet. That is three times the length in 10 years.

We have also to consider the sacrifices that have to be made to obtain these runways. I am informed in another answer which I received today, that to build the aerodrome at Heathrow, 57 houses have had to be demolished. The further runways north of the Bath Road may involve the demolition of some 600 residential properties and a further 150 properties may have to be demolished for the final stage of development. That is, 800 houses have to go to make this one airport. I will not say any more about that. We need not be so sanguine about the housing situation as to view that with equanimity.

Another figure relevant to Heathrow Airport is this. The ground required for Heathrow alone is 4,600 acres. If that area, good land as it is, were sown with wheat, it would provide enough to keep 70,000 people of our population supplied with bread all the year round. If we have several aerodromes of this size there will be very little left of this island, and we have to weigh other interests against that of aviation. Surely the accumulation of these facts is very heavily against the infinite development of the concrete runway.

Of course, there are other considerations, too. The flying-boat operating base can be of the utmost simplicity. We cannot nowadays build speedily, emergency runways and aerodromes, for instance, in operational circumstances. They cannot be built in a hurry. But if we use flying boats, all we need are one or two launches and a tidal beach to careen and scrub the aircraft. We only need a mooring buoy instead of large hangars, and dispersal is an easy matter. The final and culminating argument is that no matter how hard the enemy bombs the aerodrome, one does not have to go round filling up the holes. That is quite a potent point in war-time. Maintenance is an easy thing, and, of course, for advanced fighter bases that is one of the most important points of all.

When we consider the fighter what do we see? Do we still see the same handicap in the future? I am informed otherwise. I am told, for instance, that Mr. Alexander de Seversky, who has written another of his great books, has said:

"Other areas of development are opened up with the application of jet and rocket propulsion. Heretofore, to cite an example, water-based planes were less efficient than land-based versions. Because the propellers had to clear the water, the cross-section of the plane was greatly enlarged, producing parasite drag and cutting performance. With the advent of jet and rocket motors, the picture may change radically in favour of the water-based aircraft."

I have recently read an extract from the American "Aviation Daily" of 17th April—less than a month ago—which states that the Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation can now build water-based aircraft with the same performance as comparable land planes. One of their engineers at the national aeronautic meeting of the Society of Aeromotive Engineers showed photographs of a water-based plane meeting the same specification as the North American F.86, which Convair had flown as a radio controlled model version. There is a future for water-based fighters, transport aircraft and big bombers.

In passing I should like to mention the amphibian. There are numerous parts, even of this country, such as the Western Isles, which the amphibian could serve. There are plenty of purposes for which it could be used. It could also be used for short hauls for military purposes. My noble Friend the Member for Inverness (Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton) ran a Saro Cloud amphibian 18 or 19 years ago and carried 9,000 passengers in two years in the Western Islands and Highlands. We have very good amphibians, the Short Sealand and the Supermarine Seagull. I feel that there is a future for the amphibian, and in this country we are turning our backs on it most unwarrantably.

This country's greatness has been built upon the sea. That sea power has made us what we have been. Air transport is now beginning to threaten sea power, but that sea power can be married with air power to produce one power which can dominate both land and the sea and once again make us the most powerful nation in the world.

I am glad that the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett) has introduced this subject for discussion and has done so in such a lucid and well documented speech. I think that the people of these islands have a special interest in flying boats because Great Britain was the pioneer in flying boat construction. It was in Great Britain in the early days of aviation that the greatest strides in the technique and design of flying boats were made.

In my constituency we also have a special interest in flying boats because it was in Southampton that the Supermarine flying boat was constructed, and in the earlier days of aviation made the longest oceanic flights. We did, for a time, have the Solent flying boats based upon the port of Southampton, and we were very sorry to lose them. As the hon. and gallant Member indicated in his speech, there are many people who prefer to travel in a flying boat rather than a land plane because the flying boat is more roomy and provides greater comfort, and because they think it is safer. It may not be safer but they feel that it is, and that gives them a certain degree of psychological comfort.

The value of the flying boat for military operations was proved during the last war. The Sunderlands were very effectively used for anti-submarine operations. They were also used for the evacuation of civilians in conditions in which land planes could not have been used. In the Far Eastern theatre of warfare in the Second World War flying boats were of considerable value as they could be operated where there were no aerodromes or where the aerodrame was subjected to heavy enemy bombardment.

There is, therefore, no doubt of the civilian value and military value of the flying boat. But it seems that recently there has been a lull in the development of the flying boat. I should like to know from the Under-Secretary of State for Air, who is to reply to the debate, what is the reason for that lull. So far as I am aware the only flying boats that have been produced recently are those that have been produced by Saunders Roe, the S.R.A.1, which I understand is a very fast fighting flying boat, and that magnificent specimen of British engineering skill the Princess flying boat.

I have risen merely to ask the Undersecretary of State for Air a few questions about the future of the Princess flying boat. I have asked his colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, a number of questions in the past on this subject, and the manner of his answers was what, in a young lady, would have been described as somewhat coy. I suppose it would be better described in the case of a Minister as displaying proper Ministerial reticence.

The Parliamentary Secretary said that the Princess flying boats were to be used for civil aviation. Then they were transferred to the R.A.F. May I ask the Under-Secretary why they were transferred to the R.A.F. and for what reason? I should like also to ask him where the Princess flying boats, now that they have been transferred to the R.A.F., are to be based for their future operations? Will they be based somewhere on Southampton Water, at Calshot, or at the Southampton Marine Airport? If that be the case that would be some consolation prize to us for having lost their services. I hope my hon. Friend will be able to give me a reply.

I think my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Gosport and Fareham (Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett) is to be congratulated on having brought this matter before the House, because there is a feeling among hon. Members on both sides that the flying boat has been neglected in recent years; so much so that the Princess flying boat was almost cancelled, but I shall refer to that in a few moments.

The Korean war has, in my view, emphasised the importance of flying boats. The main contribution of the R.A.F., apart from transport work, has been carried out by squadrons of Sunderlands. Very little is known of the valuable work done by these units, but I am told that they have done a tremendous job in the Korean war in transporting personnel and equipment to places where landplanes could not be navigated. In fact, no landplane of comparable size could have carried out the same work at all, due to the lack of airfields. If we consider the North Atlantic during a period of war, it is thought possible, that convoys could have cover toy land-based aircraft from North America, Greenland, Iceland, from the coasts of Northern Ireland and the North-West coast of England.

But will airfields be available, and if they are, will not they toe required by heavy bombers? My hon. and gallant Friend has emphasised the increasing cost of building airfields owing to the extra weight of land-based aircraft. That will be a problem, because although America may be able to do so, this country will not be able to afford either the money or the manpower and the great engineering facilities required to build a modern runway.

Conditions in Korea are not unique. Similar conditions exist in many other parts of the world. They exist in the South Atlantic, in the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific and the East Indies. During the war the Catalina flying-boat, amphibian as it was then, operated a service between Ceylon and Australia and did valuable work. As my hon. and gallant Friend said, during the war the runway for a bombing station, or an airfield as a whole, cost something like £2½ million. He said it may cost now £9 million and I am certain that it would cost not less than £5 million. The time factor also is important. It takes a long time to build a modern airport, whereas a flying-boat base, at least a temporary one, can be constructed in a matter of a week or two.

There is one question I wish to put to the Parliamentary Secretary about the Solent flying boats. B.O.A.C. had about 18 of these flying boats for sale and a few of them have been sold, four or five.

Two.

I think one was crashed and that was replaced. Then the Government restricted the sale of these aircraft to other foreign countries, and permission had to be obtained. I should like to know whether or not the Air Ministry has converted these Solent flying boats into military aircraft, which could be used to carry modern equipment against submarines. I am told that they are idle, doing absolutely nothing, but that they could be converted into very good military aircraft in a few months. Obviously, they would not meet the specifications required of a brand new flying-boat, but they would have a vastly improved performance on that of the Sunderlands. I ask the Under-Secretary, if he has not already done so, and I think he probably has, if he will get a move on in order to provide one squadron and the reserves for that unit.

We all recognise the difficulties of the Government in regard to priorities. We would probably rather have fighters and bombers, and there is, of course, the case of Transport Command, which is equally important, but we believe that Coastal Command ought to be well served with the best aircraft it can get, in order to be able to meet the Soviet submarine menace. We are told that the Russians have submarines in large numbers—something like 300 fast submarines. The lifeline of this country is to North America, because of our food supplies, and, in organising proper convoys, the flying-boat may well play an important part.

We are not satisfied that enough has been done in this direction. My hon. and gallant Friend referred to the new four-engined jet flying-boat. I am not sure that it has yet been ordered; I do not think it has, but has only yet been considered as a project. The Korean war has been going on for nearly a year, and it is nearly two years since the Berlin airlift commenced, and every pointer shows that the international situation has worsened during that period. The Deputy Foreign Ministers have spent 10 or 11 weeks in Paris trying to reach an agreed agenda, and it is quite clear that Mr. Gromyko is only filling in time in order to prevent us coming to an arrangement with the Germans over their re-armament.

I ask the Government to consider these matters. One flying-boat squadron may not be much, but it may make all the difference. I should like an assurance that the Government will proceed with the project in order to get these boats into service, and give the flying-boat the full consideration which it deserves.

I am sure that the House is very grateful to the hon. and gallant Member for Gosport and Fareham (Surgeon Lieut.-Commander Bennett) for raising this question, and to both hon. Members who have also taken part in the debate. It is a subject about which it is very important to do some clear thinking, and I thought that the speeches were very fair and well-informed. I ought to say to the hon. and gallant Member for Gosport and Fareham, since he referred to my Oxford days, that in those days I was rather more conservative than I am now, and that the only time I left the ground was on a horse. Later, I took to the air, and, since the hon. and gallant Gentleman has now taken to the horse, perhaps he will come over on this side of the House.

The hon. and gallant Member for Gosport and Fareham said that the development of flying-boats seems to go in crests and troughs. I think it would be truer to say that, like almost any other kind of development, it goes in phases, and if there is any prejudice in the hon. and gallant Gentleman's mind as between flying-boats and other types of aircraft, I should have thought that the natural prejudice would have been in favour of the boat. It is a very beautiful thing. It is very comfortable, and there is certainly an illusion—I think it is mainly an illusion—of increased safety. It combines two elements which are less familiar in the case of land aircraft and has something more adventurous about it.

If, in fact, neither the Royal Air Force nor civil aviation, nor the Royal Navy, which might be suspected of having a predilection in favour of flying-boats, are developing flying-boats, there must be very good reasons for it, and I shall briefly try to suggest what some of them are. I would repeat that this is not a decision for all time against flying-boats. There may well be developments in future which may swing the pendulum the other way. I will only give some of the reasons why in the last few years the pendulum seems to have swung against the flying-boat.

First, let us take the question of bombers. There is one obvious difficulty in having flying-boats as bombers. We cannot drop the bombs through the hull, or, if we did, it would be a very complicated operation, and that would seem to rule them out as bombers, at any rate, for the moment. Superficially fighters seem more attractive and I know a lot of people who think flying-boat fighters would be the thing for places like Hong Kong and the Far East. I think that is a superficial view. There is one overriding difficulty about flying-boat fighters. Fighter aircraft for the most part are armed with cannon, and if a flying-boat fighter is hit with a cannon shell it could make a hole in the fuselage, which would sink the boat on landing.

That in itself is an overriding difficulty even in the places where water seems to have a greater advantage. When one studies the question and how to refuel these fighters and re-arm them on the water quickly enough to get them off when there is a short warning of coming attack, even apart from the question of holding, the practical difficulties of operating fighters off the sea are impossible to overcome at the moment.

The same for the moment is true of transport. The development of transport aircraft is going on very fast and we have got tail loading and nose loading, which makes the carriage of things like tanks and lorries very much easier. From the military point of view, it looks as if the development of transport will be in the tail or nose loading aircraft. This is not an easy thing to carry out on water, so we are faced with the fact that in our present state of development we have got to have aerodromes on land, and when we carry tanks and lorries they have to be big aerodromes on land. Therefore, economically we have got large and expensive aerodrome facilities on land apart from the military sphere.

That is really where we begin. If, in some coastal command, the tremendous advantage of flying boats was proved it would justify the building of extra facilities on the seashore for flying boats. The fact is that today there is, I am told, nothing that the land aircraft, the Shackleton, cannot do which the flying boats we have can do except in some parts of the world like the Archipelagos in the Far East where there is no airport. But for our strategic purposes today these areas are secondary.

Korea.

I think in Korea the planes have good base facilities and also in Japan. I do not think that in Korea it would be effective, but it would be in Indonesia and that part of the world if the war were carried on there because of lack of airport facilities. As the Shackleton can do everything that the Sunderland, or something better than the Sunderland, can do, it is unlikely that it will be replaced by flying boats. For the moment we have concentrated on the development of land aircraft. That is really the answer to my hon. Friend's question, too.

That brings me to the main argument which the hon. and gallant Gentleman put forward about the question of size. I do not agree with him that aircraft will get bigger. As a matter of fact, it looks as if the pendulum has gone the other way and that they will get smaller. It is the Comet and not the Brabazon which looks like succeeding in civil aviation, and if one is talking of fighters the tendency is to smaller aircraft. If one comes to the pertinent question of undercarriages, which are not only heavy and complicated but sometimes go wrong, then I think the development of smaller aircraft, perhaps without undercarriages, will go forward. In the war, we often learned of Hurricanes, which crash landed on their bellies and did little harm. It does not seem impossible that with the development of jet aircraft we will be able to develop aircraft, which will land on some sort of fuselage that does not need an undercarriage.

Therefore, far from getting bigger and heavier, fighters will get smaller, lighter and much faster. So I do not think one can take it for granted that fighter aircraft will get larger. That is true also of the bomber. The B.36 is probably the largest aircraft flying, but it does not follow that the four-engined jets are likely to become larger still. We may have tremendous power and better range and carrying capacity with smaller aircraft. If that be the case it will not be true that we should have to take to the sea because there is not enough land to go on extending airfields.

With those things in mind we have a design for the replacement of the Sunderland which, I think, is complete, but it is true that it has not gone into production. And we are going to operate the Princess flying boats. We want them mainly as a reserve in war and it has not been decided how they will be operated in peace-time. Various projects are being studied whereby we can make as good use as possible of them and learn as much as we can from them. Perhaps in the operation of the Princess flying-boat we may see the pendulum swing again on the over-riding consideration of safety. If it proves, and the makers claim it will so prove, that the Princess flying boat is so strong that it can land on the open sea with a good chance of surviving, even in mid-Atlantic—it sounds unlikely—there will be a safety factor in flying boats which will have a bearing on civil and military aviation.

We are also studying how and where the Solents might be useful to us, but I cannot give a definite answer about that. As far as the Royal Air Force is concerned, there is a large area of the world, such as in Africa, the Far Eastern archipelagos and the West Indies, which are of secondary importance, where the Solents might be useful, but needs in the immediately dangerous areas must have the highest priority.

Does the hon. Gentleman appreciate that flying boat manufacturers still have not the capacity to carry out a great deal of work to convert aircraft from civil to military use? Would it not be a good idea to get on with providing those facilities?

We are looking into that matter very carefully. We are considering that in connection with the Princess and we shall do the same with the Solent.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether he is likely to try to get the jigs and tools for the Solent class in reserve, in case there is a call for further production?

If we take over the Solents we shall need to have the tools available and I am sure that that will be done.

Can the hon. Gentleman say whether consideration is being given to using flying boats in sheltered waters with Asdic and other anti-submarine developments?

I am sure that that will be studied at the anti-submarine school.