asked the Assistant Postmaster-General the number of telephone applications for connection to the Sale Telephone Exchange originating prior to 1948, during 1948, 1949, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1953, and 1954, respectively, which are still outstanding; and the principal factors now delaying the completion of these applications.

Following is the information:

Applications	originating	before	1948	9
Applications	originating	during	1948	11
Applications	originating	during	1949	17
Applications	originating	during	1950	25
Applications	originating	during	1951	41
Applications	originating	during	1952	50
Applications	originating	during	1953	142
Applications	originating	during	1954	284

Additional cables are required and plans are in hand to provide them. During the past 12 months 700 telephones have been fitted and we hope to increase the rate of connection this year.

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General what priority is given to recognised official Parliamentary and political election agents of the major political parties for the installation of the telephone service at their offices or place of work.

The highest priority is given to Parliamentary election agents for telephones at their offices at times of a General Election or a Parliamentary by-election. At other times they have priority over all ordinary business and residential applicants.

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he is aware that Mr. H. Luxton, 1 Hillside, Bedwell North, Stevenage, has been waiting over 18 months for the installation of the telephone at his home, which is also his office in connection with his work as political agent of the North Hertfordshire Labour Party, that he is a member of the Eastern Regional Council of the Labour Party and during the forthcoming county council elections will be responsible for organising the affairs of10 Labour candidates; and whether he will ensure that this man receives the telephone, if only on a temporary basis for this Election campaign.

Mr. Luxton would in any event have been connected in two months. It has been found possible, however, to advance the work and arrangements are being made for Mr. Luxton to have a telephone within the next few days.

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General on what date the Hitchin resident, of whom he has been informed, applied for the installation of the telephone service at his home or office; how long he had to wait; and what priority was granted to him for installation of this service.

The office telephone of the person concerned was provided in 1940, when no priority was needed. He did not have to wait for his home telephone because he took it over from the previous occupier when he moved to his present address in 1952.

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General if he will take steps to ensure that Messrs. Jointine Products Company Limited, Lincoln, specialists in impregnated materials and an A.I.D. approved firm, will have a temporary telephone service at the site of their new research laboratory, North Hykeham, when building starts in the autumn, and full telephone installations when the works are expected to be completed in August, 1956.

I am glad to say that both these requirements can be met.

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General whether he will state the quotas of telephone kiosks, with the allocation of the quota of expenditure, which are to be provided in the rural areas in each county in Wales for the 12 months beginning 1st April, 1955.

The information is as follows:

—		Expenditure	Estimated number of kiosks
		£
Anglesey	…	1,000	4
Brecknock	…	2,510	8
Cardigan	…	3,200	4
Carmarthen	…	6,000	8
Caernarvon	…	1,000	4
Denbigh	…	1,900	6
Flint	…	850	4
Glamorgan	…	1,850	9
Merioneth	…	1,500	5
Montgomery	…	2,700	6
Pembroke	…	2,000	6
Radnor	…	2,300	5

asked the Assistant Postmaster-General how many people per week draw old-age pensions at the post offices in the Dursley Rural District Council area, Gloucestershire.

About 1,700.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation the main problems in law being examined by the McNair Committee in connection with the Convention on the International Recognition of Rights in Aircraft; and when this Committee started work.

The Committee was set up by the thenLord Chancellor in July, 1953, and held its first meeting in October, 1953. The construction of the Convention offers many difficulties and the first task of the Committee has accordingly been to consider what points arising from it would be appropriate for inclusion in a Parliamentary Bill. It will also be necessary for consideration to be given in the light of this, to the question of how ratification or failure to ratify would affect varying British interests. Then, on the assumption that ratification is to take place, a workable and suitable scheme for the registration of rights in British aircraft would have to be formulated.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what subsidy is paid from Government funds to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents.

The total amount approved for the financial year 1954–55 is £72,000.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if, in view of the continuing withdrawals of country bus services, he will introduce legislation to give licensing authorities powers to make the granting of licences, in suitable cases, conditional upon the provision of such services.

No. I prefer to proceed by persuasion.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether, in view of its dangerous nature and the obstruction it causes to traffic, he will cause the Factory Bridge, Dithering-ton, Shrewsbury, to be removed.

I intend to remove this bridge but I cannot say yet when it will be possible to fit this work into the programme.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will widen the roundabout at the beginning of the Great West Road and institute some better system of traffic control there at busy periods.

An improved roundabout with a fly-over is to be constructed as part of the Cromwell Road Extension Scheme.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation if he will give additional grants for maintenance work on roads, in view of the exceptional winter.

As I explained in my reply to the hon. Member for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Janner) on 16th March, it is too early yet to say what additional maintenance may be required as a result of the weather during this winter.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation whether he is aware of the increasing traffic congestion at Alexandra Gate, Hyde Park, since the installation of traffic lights; and whether he will have tests made of traffic density at various times with the lights extinguished or differently phased, with a view to improvements.

:I agree that some congestion arises at peak times at Alexandra Gate but I cannot accept the implication that this is due to the installation of the traffic-control signals. Iam making a further examination of the problem to see whether any improvement can be effected.

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what sums he intends to allocate to the maintenance and minor improvement of trunk and classified roads in all counties of England, Scotland, and Wales, excepting the counties of Northumberland, Durham, Cumberland, and the North Riding of Yorkshire, for 1955–56; and how these sums compare with the allocation for 1954–55.

The following are the figures. In order to retain comparability those for 1954–55 exclude any supplementary allocations made during the course of the year.Trunk road allocations for 1955–56 to the smaller agent authorities are not yet complete and the figures given are for geographical counties.

County	Allocation
	1954–55	1955–56
TRUNK ROADS	£	£
ENGLAND
Bedfordshire	113,000	105,000
Berkshire	151,218	145,000
Buckinghamshire	148,612	176,914
Cambridgeshire	89,000	92,500
Cheshire	328,000	328,000
Cornwall	110,028	111,300
Derbyshire	194,500	202,500
Devon	180,646	182,547
Dorsetshire	67,098	61,480
Essex	260,630	294,459
Gloucestershire	276,462	279,624
Herefordshire	81,500	89,000
Hertfordshire	215,445	233,200
Huntingdonshire	74,000	67,500
Isle of Ely	32,000	37,500
Kent	341,281	335,401
Lancashire	520,000	520,000
Leicestershire	157,750	160,200
Lincolnshire (Holland)	56,100	57,000
Lincolnshire (Kesteven)	89,000	94,424
Lincolnshire (Lindsey)	106,000	110,919
Middlesex	292,984	302,100
Norfolk	130,500	137,000
Northamptonshire	145,650	155,541
Nottinghamshire	200,750	201,454
Oxfordshire	147,552	161,603
Peterborough, Soke of	29,700	58,735
Rutland	26,500	20,000
Salop	186,000	188,000
Somerset	121,361	134,916
Southampton	206,976	224,556
Staffordshire	327,000	327,000
Suffolk (East)	101,500	101,000
Suffolk (West)	42,500	45,000
Surrey	155,820	153,700
Sussex (East)	89,481	102,239
Sussex (West)	53,307	64,732
Warwickshire	242,892	260,000
Westmorland	88,644	92,000
Wiltshire	124,227	123,835
Worcestershire	124,007	136,000
Yorkshire (East Riding)	147,000	152,000
Yorkshire (West Riding)	645,000	665,000
SCOTLAND
Aberdeen	73,000	79,000
Angus	26,950	31,300
Argyll	100,875	110,000
Ayr	83,000	90,000
Banff	18,500	20,000
Berwick	20,000	25,000
Caithness	12,765	18,000
Clackmannan	6,000	6,200
Dumfries	134,000	147,000
Dunbarton	50,980	54,000
East Lothian	17,918	18,000
Fife	65,500	65,000
Inverness	99,375	104,765
Kincardine	18,000	20,000
Kirkcudbright	25,500	28,000

asked the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation what has been the increase during the past few years in the number and frequency of light and heavy vehicles passing daily along Lea Bridge Road, Leytonstone High Road, and Whipps Cross Road, Leyton; to what extent road surfaces in those main roads are now in more frequent need of repair; what has been the increase in accidents on these roads; and what consideration has been given to the incidence of the substantial increase in traffic through Leyton.

A detailed analysis of the 1954 traffic census figures for theseroads has not yet been made. Maintenance expenditure has not increased materially. Accidents involving personal injury totalled 170 in 1951 and 1952, 158 in 1953 and 178 in 1954.

asked the Minister of Defence what legal actions against his Department are now pending consequent on the publication of the pamphlet on the treatment of British prisoners of war in Korea.

None.

asked the Minister of Defence howmany of his staff were engaged on the questioning of prisoners of war returned from Korea; and whether such questioning was on a voluntary basis.

Four Service officers were sent out to Korea for this purpose before the British prisoners of war were released. This team was supplemented by a number of officers in Korea to assist them in the task of preliminary questioning, because of the rapid rate of release of the prisoners and the short time available between their release and their return to the United Kingdom.Of course, one of the main purposes was to find out what had happened to a number of men who had been posted as missing, since we had no adequate casualty returns from the Communist authorities. The men were encouraged to telltheir stories in their own way and the whole procedure was informal. When the reports of what our men had to say became fully available it was thought that they revealed a situation about which the British public was entitled to be informed. The booklet was, therefore, prepared and published.

asked the Minister of Defence to what extent he relied on written evidence in the compilation of the pamphlet on the treatment of prisoners of war in Korea.

The main source of the information in this booklet was the record of the interviews of the repatriated British prisoners about which I gave the hon. Member details in my reply to his Question on 16th March. Information was also obtained from captured enemy documents, enemy publications, photo-reconnaissance and similar sources.

asked the Minister of Defence whether he will arrange for experiments to test the uses of smoke in counteracting the effects of nuclear and thermonuclear explosions.

:Experiments have already been started under the authority of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Supply, the results of which will be of interest both to Civil Defence and to the Services.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the boundaries of the area recognised by Her Majesty's Government as constituting the territory under the jurisdiction of the State of Viet-Nam for the purposes of the Protocol to the South-East Asia Collective Defence Treaty.

:That part of Viet-Nam south of the provisional military demarcation line defined in the Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet-Nam signed at Geneva on 20th July, 1954, and published in Command 9239.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will define the circumstances in which British trawlers are permitted by the Icelandic Government to seek refuge from storm in Icelandic waters and Icelandic ports.

Under Article III of an Icelandic law of 1st July, 1922,

"foreign fishermen prosecuting fishing outside Icelandic territorial waters are allowed to seek shelter in coasts on account of storm or bad weather."

Article II of a law of 18th May, 1920, provides that

"if a steam trawler is found in territorial waters, all the fishing gear must be stowed away on board."

The Icelandic Government apply this rule to all waters within the fishery limits unilaterally imposed by them in 1952.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what steps he is taking to invite the General Assembly of the United Nations to consider and report on the proximate and ultimate effects on human beings of radioactivity caused by thermonuclear tests.

:None, for the reasons given by my right hon. Friend on 21st March in answer to a Question by the hon. Member for Blackburn, East (Mrs. Castle), and in the course of yesterday's debate.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will now make a statement on the Conference on the Federation of the West Indies, which began in Trinidad on 13th March,indicating the subjects discussed, the conclusions reached, and the next steps towards the Federation of the West Indies which will now be taken.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what have been the results of the recent West Indies Conference on inter-Island immigration at Trinidad.

:The Conference discussed the arrangements to be made for controlling the movement of persons between one member territory of the proposed British Caribbean Federation and another. I am happy to say that complete agreement was reached and a series of resolutions passed setting out in detail the arrangements recommended. The text is given below. As regards the last part of the Question, I would refer to the statement made by my right hon. Friend on 2nd February.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can yet make a statement, following consideration of the detailed report by a consulting engineer, who carried out the surveyin connection with proposals for developing the port of Gibraltar; and what action is contemplated.

:I am not yet in a position to add anything to the reply which I gave to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wells (Lieut-Commander Maydon) and to the hon. Member for Goole (Mr. G. Jeger) on 9th March.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can yet give the dates when he proposes to visit Gibraltar.

Not yet.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what recent consultations have taken place to devise ways of developing Gibraltar's tourist industry; and with what result.

I have consulted the Governor, who informs me that ameeting of all bodies and authorities concerned with tourism was held in Gibraltar early this month to discuss ways of developing the tourist industry, a number of which are being pursued.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies in what Colonial Territories women do not have political rights and are not entitled to hold public office and exercise all public functions established by the national law, on equal terms with men without discrimination.

:Women are entitled to political rights on equal terms with men in the majority of Colonial Territories, and, with certain exceptions, the most notable of which relate to equal pay and jury service, to hold public office and exercise publicfunctions on the same basis. The detailed position is extremely complex, and I am writing to the hon. Member about it.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how far the three yearsspent by Malayan students in Great Britain are taken into consideration as residence in Malaya when calculating the period for continuous residential qualification for both the vote and candidature.

Malayan students who were in Great Britain during the qualifying period for the forthcoming Federal elections have, on their return, if not otherwise disqualified, been allowed to register as electors if during their absence they have continued to regard the Federation as their home. They would no doubt also be treated as eligible to stand as candidates.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware of the strike which is in process at Tronoh Mines, Perak, Malaya; and whether he will request his Labour Department in the Federation to take steps to bring the two parties together, with a view to arriving at a mutually satisfactory settlement or to hold an inquiry into the cause of the dispute.

Yes. Before this strike began the Labour Department of the Federation took active steps with the Mining Employee's Union and Employers'Association, to seek a settlement. It is ready now to bring the parties together, but they have been unwilling to compromise. The causes of the dispute are clear and no need is seen for an inquiry.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he is aware that the President of the United Malav National Organisation and the Malay Chinese Organisation have offered their services as intermediaries to go into the jungle to discuss an amnesty with the rebels in Malaya with a view to bringing the emergency to an end; and whether he will take advantage of this offer of these two responsible men and give them terms which are reasonably acceptable to present to the rebels.

I would refer the hon. Member to the reply on this subject which I gave to the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. G. M. Thomson) on 26th January, to which I have nothing to add.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how many pounds of Virginia flue-cured tobacco have been produced by Africans in Northern Rhodesia since 1950; and how this has been marketed.

No such tobacco has been produced by Africans.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies the present position of the industrial dispute affecting labour at the port of Mombasa.

:Both sides in the dispute agreed that it should be referred to arbitration, and a tribunal has been set up. Work at the port is back to normal.

asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies to make a statement regarding the conditions under which Kikuyu were screened at Nanyuki on 6th February, 1955.

:There were indications that a Mau Mau supply base was being organised in Nanyuki. 1,100 persons were arrested on 6th February for screening, and were provided with tent accommodation and regular meals from the start. A medical officer was present throughout.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what proportions of officers and men of the Royal Navy have received no increase in pay in the last three years.

9 per cent.of officers and ratings who have served throughout the three years ended on 31st December, 1954, which is the latest date which can conveniently be taken.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty what proportions of officers and men of the Royal Navy have received pay increases in the last 12 months.

Seventy-five per cent of Regular officers and ratings who served through the 12 months ended 31st December, 1954, which is the latest date that can conveniently be taken.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he will give an assurance that the pay increases agreed for shipbuilding workers will also be paid to workers in Her Majesty's dockyards.

As I stated in reply to a Question by the hon. and gallant Member on 16th March, negotiations are in progress on the Shipbuilding Trades Joint Council, and I cannot, therefore, add any further information at this stage.

asked the Minister of Housing and Local Government the total sums expended on water supply schemes and sewerage schemes in rural areas in 1951 and 1954.

In 1951, work was started on rural water supply schemes costing £6,282,000 and on rural sewerage schemes costing £5,814,000. The comparable figures for 1954 are £8,181,000 for water supply and £7,196,000 for sewerage.