I beg to move,

That this House, in the interests of the better communications and economy of the United Kingdom as a whole, and realising the peculiar geographical position of Northern Ireland, which is separated from the rest of the United Kingdom by a sea channel and is consequently obliged to import the majority of raw materials for use in its manufacturing industries from Great Britain by ship and also to export most of its manufactured products to Great Britain by the same means, would welcome the appointment by Her Majesty's Government of a committee to investigate and report on the project of constructing a submarine tunnel underneath the North Channel so as to connect Northern Ireland with Great Britain by one continuous route by rail and, if possible, also by road, thereby facilitating and encouraging an increased flow of traffic both in goods and passengers between these two integral parts of the United Kingdom.

The idea of an Irish Channel tunnel is not a new one. It has been canvassed in one form or another for nearly a century, and Questions have been put in this House about the practicability of such a project from time to time during that period, but this is the first occasion on which it has been possible to debate the subject in the terms of a substantive Motion.

It is true that in April, 1899, Captain D. V. Pirie, then Liberal Member for Aberdeen, North secured an opportunity for discussing the question in the time then available for Private Members' Motions, but at the last moment Mr. Balfour, Leader of the House, stepped in and appropriated all the remaining Private Members' time during that Session for discussion of the Finance Bill and other Government Business, which evidently he considered to be of overriding importance. The hon. and gallant Member never had another opportunity of bringing forward his Motion. I am glad that I have had better luck today, and that at long last the House should now have the chance of considering what I believe to be a matter of immense importance to the internal economy and prosperity of the United Kingdom from the long-term point of view.

I am glad to see my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation here today. He and I are both readers of the works of the creator of that remarkable Irish character in English fiction, Phineas Finn. It may well be that my hon. Friend and perhaps other hon. Members will consider that this project of an Irish Channel tunnel is just the kind of crazy idea which Phineas Finn would have put forward in this House a hundred years ago, but I submit that the project is not so fantastic as it sounds. Before Anthony Trollope, the author of the adventures of Phineas Finn, died, alpine engineers were regarded as visionaries, yet soon after his death tunnels were constructed for thirty-six miles through hard rock, first the Mt. Cenis tunnel, and there followed the St. Gothard, Arlberg and Simplon tunnels. Now we have a London Underground system of more than a hundred miles of tunnelling, the great under-river projects of the Severn and the Mersey, and coal mining takes place on the north-east coast of England for some distance under the sea.

As to the location of this proposed channel tunnel, it would be somewhere between the south-west coast of Scotland and the north-east coast of Ulster. From the Ulster side the geology is quite straightforward. It is Silurian rock for the most part but near the coast of County Antrim it is overlaid by red sandstone and Keuper marls. The depth of the water varies between 200 feet and 600 feet, except for one part of the channel which geologists call Beaufort's Dyke, a deep depression between the coast of Wigtownshire and County Down, which goes down to a depth of 900 feet or more. In prehistoric times, when Ireland was joined to Scotland, no doubt it was a lake, or loch or valley. Since 1945 it has been used for dumping obsolete explosives, and it would probably add to the difficulty of the submarine tunnellers were any of these explosives to explode during the course of the tunnelling.

During the past century various proposals have been made for connecting up the two parts of the United Kingdom. As far back as 1860 there was a proposal to construct a causeway. There was also a proposal to construct a bridge raised on large stepping stones, and there was a proposal on the part of an engineer called James Maxton to construct a submarine tubular tunnel, rather like the modern P.L.U.T.O. with which we were familiar in the last war. His idea was that if any water got into part of the tunnel, it would drive the train forward at a very rapid speed—but he did not say what would happen if the water came in at both ends.

The first serious proposal for a submarine tunnel under the sea bed was made in 1868 by an Ulster engineer, Livingston Macassey, who was the father of the well-known member of the Bar, Sir Lynden Macassey. His scheme was for a tunnel between Torr Head in the County of Antrim and the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, a distance of only 14½ miles and the shortest distance between Scotland and Northern Ireland. The disadvantage of that tunnel was that it would be a considerable distance from any railhead. Were such a tunnel constructed it would be necessary to build about a hundred miles of railway from the Scottish side, from Campbeltown round Loch Fyne to join up with the main Glasgow line.

However, Macassey's project and the others stimulated public interest which was added to by the emergence of the English Channel tunnel project at that time. It also found advocates in some quite well-known people who were opposed to the English Channel tunnel, for military and strategic reasons, but thought that an Irish one was a good idea.

One of them was Field Marshal Lord Wolseley, and he has something interesting to say about it in 1882. He wrote:

"It is of great national importance that we should have the easiest possible means of communication between the two islands and before we embark on any dangerous scheme of uniting us with France, in the hope that increased means of communication between the two nations will reduce all hostility and enmity between them, let us try the experiment with Ireland. Let us try the effect of a tunnel on the Irish question, and see whether such a description of union might not be more successful in binding together the people of the two countries than the political union of 1800."

It is doubtful whether Lord Wolseley's suggestion would have solved the Irish question, though I think it would have been a very interesting experiment at the time. Certainly, the relatively small capital cost then would have been little compared with the land purchase scheme and other schemes on which large sums were laid out at that period.

As well as the Macassey project there were five others proposed during the twenty years or so which followed the putting forward of the Macassey proposal. The shortest and most practical after Macassey's original proposal was for a tunnel between Donaghadee in County Antrim and Portpatrick in Wigtownshire, a distance of twenty miles. The disadvantage of that route was of course, that it was directly under Beaufort's Dyke and involved going down to a depth of 1,000 feet or more.

The most practicable of the schemes was that put forward by a civil engineer of considerable distinction called James Barton, a native of Dundalk, who was associated with the great engineering concern of Hawkshaw and Hayter, which was responsible for the construction of the Severn Tunnel. Barton's Tunnel was to run between Islandmagee in County Antrim and Portobello in Wigtownshire. Its great advantage was that although it was not absolutely direct—it was more in the shape of a dog's hind leg—it skirted the north end of Beaufort's Dyke. It would have been twenty-five miles in length, and the maximum depth to which the engineers would have had to go would have been 600 feet.

In the 1880s a number of questions were asked in the House about the project. In 1886 Colonel Henry Blundell, the Member for the Ince division of Lancashire, asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr. J. Morley, whether the possibility of such a tunnel had ever been considered by competent engineers, and if not, whether the Government were disposed to have the subject so considered, the distance between Donaghadee and Portpatrick being about equal to that between Dover and Calais. Mr. Morley replied that he was not aware that the subject had ever been seriously and practically entertained, and did not feel that the Government should, under any circumstances, take the initiative.

However, with a change of Administration later in that year, a rather more sympathetic reply was given to another hon. Member, Sir Roper Lethbridge who represented North Kensington. He asked the Postmaster-General, Mr. Raikes, whether postal communication between England and America would not be quickened by the construction of a submarine tunnel between Scotland and Ireland, and whether the attention of His Majesty's Government had been drawn to the advantages of obtaining an alternative to the existing overland route to India. Australia and the Far East, an equally expeditious route through British territory by way of Ireland and British America. The Postmaster General replied that some little time could doubtless be saved by the construction of such a tunnel the Government's attention had been brought to such a route via Ireland and British America as a possible route for mails to the Far East, and the matter was still under consideration.

It remained under consideration for the next fifteen years, during which time it attracted considerable attention on both sides of the Irish Sea and public opinion gradually crystallised in favour of James Barton's so-called "dog's-leg route." Barton first described it in detail at a large public meeting held in Belfast, under the chairmanship of the then Lord Mayor, in October, 1890. As it remains probably the most practicable of all the schemes put forward, the House may be interested in a few particulars about it.

On the Scottish side a railway line was planned to begin at Stranraer Station. Passing north-west, it entered the tunnel five miles from Stranraer and then descended in a gradient of 1 in 75, passing under the shore line at the Ebbstone Beacon just north of Portobello, at nine miles. It passed round a curve of a mile radius under the sea at the head of Beaufort's Dyke at 16 miles, reaching the Ulster shore line at Island Magee, 34 miles distant, rising 1 in 75 from the deep water. The line passed out of the tunnel at 39½ miles, and then joined the Belfast and Northern Counties Railways on the Antrim coast, at 41 miles, and ran the remaining 10½ miles along that line into the terminus at Belfast. The total length from Stranraer to Belfast was to be 51½ miles, of which 34½ miles were to be tunnel and 25 miles to be tunnel under the sea.

The plan involved the laying of a third line along the few miles from the railway junction on the Antrim coast into Belfast. That was necessary on account of the difference in the gauges, the Irish gauge being 5 ft. 3 in. and the English and Scottish gauges being 4 ft. 8½ in.

It was proposed that the tunnel should contain a double railway line and should run 150 ft. below the sea bed. That meant a total depth of 650 ft. at the greatest depth of water. Barton considered that the boring through the Silurian rock should be as rapid as that done in the Simplon Tunnel, which was nearly twelve yards a day, and he thought it would be more rapid through the sandstone and marl. His plan provided for the initial driving of a pilot tunnel. He estimated that the whole work would take ten to twelve years to complete, and that the cost would be in the region of £10 million. Incidentally, the Simplon Tunnel is over twelve miles in length and took seven years to construct through the hard Alpine rock, and the greatest depth below the surface is 7,000 ft.

One difficulty which Barton and all engineers had to consider, and would have to consider today, is that of water getting into the tunnel. This is what Barton said about the water difficulty:

"The amount of water to be dealt with is the one uncertainty, though we have grounds for believing it is not likely to be a very serious difficulty. The Severn and Mersey Tunnels encountered no serious water leakage under the sea, the great leak from the Severn being from fresh water and a quarter of a mile from the sea. Judging from these tunnels…there seems good grounds for believing that the sea bed under the Irish Channel has sealed all interstices, so that excavation can be expected to be fairly dry. Silurian rocks are found in beds nearly verticle, which have been under heavy horizontal pressure, and will probably give little water either in the undersea or approach tunnels; the Keuper marls under the Irish side are remarkably suited to an underwater tunnel, being perfectly watertight where examined down to 900 ft. The new red sandstone which lies between the Marl and Silurian allows water to percolate, but is not likely to give a large quantity, 150 ft. of cover between tunnel and sea bed will, it is expected, make all safe."

Professor Edward Hull endorsed this. He was Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland at that time, and an expert geologist. He is reported as having said:

"In entering the surface at the commencement of the channel, where it would join the Northern Counties Railway, they would pass into the red marl formation.…They might have, in tunnelling from Islandmagee, a long distance of this new red marl substituted by the new red sandstone where the strata were let down by the fissures. The distance through these marls would be, he had concluded, about five or six miles from the coast. The tunnelling through them would be extremely easy, and would mean a large reduction upon the estimate for the ordinary rock boring. After leaving the new red sandstone formation, somewhere about one-third of the distance across, they would, in all probability, have throughout the entire remaining distance the rocks of the lower Silurian system; and the geology of the coast of Wigtownshire indicated that these Silurian strata would continue to the point where the proposed tunnel would emerge. In conclusion, he might say that he felt perfectly satisfied there were no geological difficulties likely to be encountered in the construction of the tunnel which engineering skill would not be fully able to meet."

During the next ten years, 1890–1901, Barton developed his project, and at the International Engineering Conference held in Glasgow in 1901 he read a paper which was his last word on the subject, at the same time producing scale drawings and plans, which are still in existence. During those ten years public interest on both sides of the Irish Sea reached its height. There were numerous meetings and deputations and addresses were given by prominent individuals. In 1898 a deputation of Members of this House and Scottish and Irish businessmen waited on the President of the Board of Trade. They asked him for £15,000 to make trial borings and soundings. The Minister was "sympathetic," but he said he was unable to hold out any hope of financial help.

In the following year, on 12th June, 1899, a large meeting of Peers and Members, both Unionist and Nationalist, of this House, took place in the Grand Com- mittee Room here, under the chairmanship of the then Marquis of Londonderry. A resolution was passed that a deputation should see Mr. Balfour. A week or two later the deputation met Mr. Balfour, and its members asked the Government to guarantee 3 per cent. interest on the share capital, which they estimated at £12 million, of the company which it was proposed to form. The Government were not asked to put down any money at the time, as the company undertook to raise what was necessary for the preliminary work. Again, Mr. Balfour was sympathetic and he promised to consult his colleagues, but not unnaturally, perhaps, he refused to commit the Government.

That marked the end of the matter for the time being. At the beginning of the period, in 1890, Macassey published a pamphlet in which he set out the merits of the different routes, including his own. The title page of that pamphlet shows a Midland Railway engine emerging from the tunnel at the Irish end and drawing a train of Pullman coaches. The date on the keystone of the arch is 1910, but all that remained of the scheme by 1910 was a notice board on the coast near Islandmagee in County Antrim bearing the words, "Site of proposed channel tunnel," and even that disappeared a year or two later. Certainly it did not survive the oubreak of the First World War.

Relatively little has been heard of this project in the first half of this century. In 1929, Mr. W. E. D. Allen, who was then Member for West Belfast, put down a Question, and in a remarkable maiden speech suggested that the construction of such a tunnel might be used to relieve unemployment in Northern Ireland. In 1943, Sir Douglas Savory, whom many hon. Members will remember with feelings of affection, put a supplementary question to a Question which was asked about the English Channel tunnel. He suggested that priority might be given to the Irish project, but he received no reply to his supplementary question.

However, since 1954, there has been a considerable revival of interest in the project in Northern Ireland. This owes a good deal to the initiative of a Belfast businessman, Major A. V. Cramsie, who twice brought the matter before the Ulster Unionist Council. A number of local authorities, notably the councils of Armagh, Bangor, Coleraine and Portadown, have passed resolutions in its favour. The question has also been raised in both Houses of the Northern Ireland Parliament, in the House of Commons by Dr. R. J. Nixon. On that occasion, the Minister of Commerce, Lord Glentoran, who had not been briefed in any detail, made a very short reply, but in the Senate, when the matter was raised by Senator Sir Wilson Hungerford, a rather longer reply was given on behalf of the Government by the leader of the Senate, Colonel Gordon.

Briefly, his objections to the scheme were three-fold: first, the impossibility of obtaining accurate geological and technical data to enable engineers to bring the project to what he called the blueprint stage; secondly, the cost and magnitude of the ancillary works; and, thirdly, the impossibility of ventilating such a tunnel.

I have taken the opportunity of consulting a leading firm of British civil engineers, Messrs. Mott, Hay & Anderson, who are acknowledged experts on tunnels. They were the consulting engineers in the construction of the recent Mersey Road tunnel, and they are also the consulting engineers to the sponsors of the English Channel tunnel project. I would say that the opinion given by that firm is contrary to that of the leader of the Senate in Northern Ireland, and that it largely confirms the opinion given by earlier experts such as Professor Hull and Mr. Barton.

I should like to make one very short quotation from the report which Messrs. Mott, Hay & Anderson furnished. They do not attempt to disguise the fact that there are difficulties, and I think that they place more stress upon the difficulty of ground water than did Mr. Barton. They point out, too, that on account of the depth, conditions are rather less favourable than would be those in the case of the Channel tunnel between France and England. The report continues:

"Nevertheless, it would be wrong to say that a tunnel under the North Channel is impracticable. A very great deal of investigation would, however, be required in order to establish the feasibility of such a project and to estimate the possible cost, which needless to say would be very large. It may very well be that in any scheme which might be formulated a pilot tunnel would figure as a feature of crucial importance as indeed is the case with the Channel Tunnel scheme. Only a very general opinion can be given without a thorough examination of the numerous factors concerned, and it may be summed up by stating that the current technical resources would almost certainly permit such a tunnel to be constructed, but whether or not the probable cost would be economically practical could only be ascertained by detailed investigation."

On the actual question of the cost. Messrs. Mott, Hay and Anderson point out that any close approximation is not possible without detailed investigation. But their estimate, for what it is worth, is that the cost of constructing a pilot tunnel of 12 feet diameter might be of the order of £15 million and that of constructing twin railway tunnels of 18 feet 6 inches diameter each might approach £75 million, making a total of £90 million.

That firm have also commented upon the objection put forward by the Leader of the Senate in Northern Ireland. Briefly, in regard to Colonel Gordon's first objection—the possibility of a lack of geological and technical data—the firm say:

"We believe that the feasibility of the main tunnel or tunnels could ultimately only be established by driving a pilot tunnel. This in itself would be a costly undertaking and it is quite possible that it would reveal conditions which could not be overcome at any rate within the range of practical economics…The difficulty mentioned by Colonel Gordon which would arise in the event of fissured ground being encountered is of course a very serious one, but we do not think it would cause a disaster if the work was tackled in the right way, although conditions might be found so severe as to cause the abandonment of the tunnel. Much could be done to overcome this difficulty by modern methods of ground treatment."

As regards Colonel Gordon's second objection—the cost and magnitude of the ancillary works—the firm say:

"This applies equally to the Channel Tunnel, which has long been regarded in quite responsible quarters as an entirely feasible project; but in spite of the enthusiasm with which the Channel Tunnel scheme has been advocated over many years, its proponents have never succeeded in getting it put into effect."

Then, as regards Colonel Gordon's third objection, the point about ventilation, the firm say:

"The ventilation of the tunnel, provided it was to be used only for a railway, with electric traction, would not be unduly difficult. The ventilation of a road tunnel of this length, would, it must be admitted, be a very great problem indeed, although it may be noted that the proponents of one of the Channel Tunnel schemes in which a section of the tunnel would be used by road vehicles are confident that such a tunnel could be ventilated satisfactorily."

That, I think, would involve a wind of about 50 miles an hour, would it not?

It would certainly involve a system of fans, but I do not know about a wind of that velocity.

The question of ventilation, into which I do not wish to enter in any detail, will, I hope, be touched on by the hon. and learned Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) who is seconding the Motion.

I submit that, on the evidence which I have put forward, the scheme is echnically feasible. Of course, with the development in engineering, it might be possible, instead of actually digging under the sea bed, to lay a tube tunnel on the sea bed as has been done, for instance, on the bed of the River Meuse near Rotterdam and on various parts of the coast of North America.

However, the greatest drawback is the economic factor. The cost has always been advanced in the past as the insuperable barrier, and no doubt it will be again today. On 22nd March, 1897, Mr. H. O. Arnold-Foster, the Member for West Belfast, asked Mr. Balfour a Question, to which Mr. Balfour replied:

"I am quite prepared to consult with the President of the Board of Trade, but I fear the financial aspects of any such engineering undertaking are not of a very promising character."

Mr. Allen, on 9th July, 1929, put a similar Question to Mr. Thomas, the Lord Privy Seal. Mr. Thomas replied:

"I shall be prepared to consider any scheme which can be shown to be technically and economically practicable, but on the information available I doubt whether this project, of which I have now heard for the first time, falls at the present into this class."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 9th July, 1929; Vol. 229, c. 661.]

Last November, in reply to a Question by myself addressed to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Pensions, who was then Minister of Transport, my right hon. Friend said:

"My answer was based not on the consideration whether this proposal would be feasible or not, but on the consideration that it would be an extremely expensive operation, and I doubt if it would be right, even if the funds were available, necessarily to spend them in that way."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 16th November, 1955; Vol. 546, c. 407.]

In this Welfare State of ours the Government does spend very large sums of money each year, for example £30 million annually on colonial development, £50 million on atomic research, £90 million on improvements in coal mining, in addition to which there is the tremendous plan for modernising and re-equipping British Railways, involving the expenditure of £1,200 million spread over the next fourteen years.

If the United Kingdom as a whole can consider spending those large sums of money, then it seems to me that at least there is no good reason for jumping to the conclusion that an Irish Channel tunnel would be far too expensive an operation to merit serious consideration, particularly if arrangements were made for spreading the capital cost over a number of years.

I will very briefly mention the advantages of such a tunnel. On the political side, Northern Ireland would be part of the United Kingdom in fact as well as in name. On the strategic and military side, movement of troops and stores and the evacuation of civilians would be facilitated in time of war. We have heard from the Minister of Defence that in the event of an emergency, evacuation of civilians will take place on a very much larger scale than in the last war.

There is then the matter of the tourist trade. Such a tunnel would attract many tourists who are at present put off by the discomforts and inconveniences—even dangers—of the present channel crossing. It would obviate the necessity to obtain sailing tickets as long as six months in advance before a tourist can make his journey to Ireland.

The use of such a tunnel might also obviate the high freight charges which are levied on motor vehicles between Ireland and Britain as compared with the charges on the cross-Channel route from England to the Continent. It would also have the effect of shortening the Atlantic crossing; future American tourists might find it convenient to sail from New York to Londonderry or Belfast, continuing their journey to London by train.

The most important of all the advantages, in my view, is the industrial and commercial one. We in Northern Ireland have to import practically all our raw materials for our industries by ship, and we must export the manufactured products by the same means, with the consequent delays. Here again the question of freight charges arises; if those charges continue to increase in future as in the recent past it may soon be impossible for our manufacturers to compete in the British market.

I believe it would be wrong of the Government to reject this proposition out of hand without the most careful investigation. We are not asking the Government to introduce legislation or to spend money even on preliminary borings or soundings. All we ask is that a committee should examine the project and report on whether it is feasible and economic. The committee should be an expert body, not a committee of politicians or permanent officials or outside laymen, but one of geologists, engineers and financial experts who can weigh up the pros and cons in the light of all available evidence. This committee could perhaps be linked in some way with the Economic Advisory Council for Northern Ireland which, under the imaginative chairmanship of Lord Chandos, is at present successfully tackling our unemployment problem in Ulster.

It has often been said that the dreams of yesterday are the realities of today. This engineer's dream of yesterday is still a dream. I would invite my right hon. and hon. Friends, by setting up this modest committee, to take a step which may well be the beginning of a great and important process, a process which may convert the dream into a reality, and in so doing make the United Kingdom more united than the peoples of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have ever been in the long course of their island history.

I beg to second the Motion.

I second this Motion not only out of regard for the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde), who seems to have an apt flair for supporting what appears to be lost causes which ultimately come to success, but on general grounds also, the most general ground of all being that I support almost anything which tends to bring peoples together.

If it be true that familiarity breeds contempt, it is none the less true, in this "one world" in which we now live, that if we have puerile isolationism it must lead to conflict. I confess that I should like to see tunnels not only between Ireland and Scotland, but also—at this stage perhaps a more practicable one, though not ultimately, I expect—a tunnel to France and a tunnel under the Straits of Gibraltar. The hon. Gentleman could then go from Belfast right down to Capetown. This would have an immeasurably beneficial effect upon the feelings with which the peoples on the route regard each other.

Very few people who are not enthusiasts for the sea will doubt, and, indeed, very many of those who are will be forced to admit, that sea passengers can become most frightful barriers between peoples. One has only to see the wan faces of those who leave Channel steamers coming from the Continent of Europe and plying to and fro between Ireland and Great Britain to know how true that is. One must draw a veil over many of the barbaric but unfortunately all too frequent scenes which one sees on these vessels—children rolling about in their own vomit and their mothers too ill to help them. One sees that kind of thing, and worse, very frequently on the boats between Ireland and Great Britain.

Is it necessary that these hardships should be inflicted upon the travelling public? Fortunately, as I think, travel is increasing, not least between Great Britain and Ireland. I am not an expert. I have not been enlightened by any governmental pronouncement either in this country or in Ireland on the subject, but my answer to that question is that probably it is not necessary. But how can we tell until we are given some really conclusive reason either of geology or finance which makes the building of a tunnel undesirable or impossible.

All we have had from official sources is that which was vouchsafed in the debate in the Northern Ireland Senate, to which the hon. Member for Belfast, North has just referred. There we had allusion to a report by Northern Ireland Government technicians—whoever they may be. Their names were not given; their qualifications were not given, nor were the circumstances in which they made their report. I wonder whether the report was just made in a hurry by some pressed civil servant who knew that there was to be a debate in the Senate in the near future, and whose Minister asked him to produce a report quickly. That is quite likely.

Were these technicians exposed to any cross-examination by outside technicians? We do not know. All we know is that the spokesman of the Government of Northern Ireland, in the Senate debate, made a reply which would sadden the heart of the most moderate and fair member of any Opposition and which, I submit, would gladden the heart of the most cold and steely Governmental stone-wailer. I wonder whether the Joint Parliamentary Secretary can tell us why it is that when Members of any party become Ministers they become so cautious, and so deprived of all energy and enterprise, that they must always stone-wall in this way when something enterprising is being discussed or proposed.

The Northern Ireland Government spokesman thought that the tunnel was impossible, upon the three grounds which the hon. Member for Belfast, North has just mentioned, namely, geology, finance and ventilation. Upon the ground of ventilation, I would just like to make the comment—since this matter was touched upon in some detail—that the ventilation difficulty, great though it was, has surely been overcome by the Basdevant scheme for the tunnel under the English Channel to France. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) feared that a terrific wind would be necessary in the tunnel. Under the Basdevant scheme a pilot tunnel is to have a big wind sucking out air from the main tunnel. Even if it were a conclusive disadvantage—which I doubt—to have a wind of 50 miles an hour in a tunnel, it is not necessary under this scheme. A road tunnel might be very difficult, but I doubt whether the ventilation problem would be much of a disadvantage in the case of a rail tunnel. Anyhow, it is not necessary to have this great wind velocity.

As for the question of geology, the Northern Ireland Government spokesman could get away with expressing the view that geological reasons rendered this tunnel impossible only by virtually ignoring the views expressed by the World Congress of Civil Engineers in Glasgow in 1901. It was said that a tunnel to France was impossible. It has even been said that the bridge over the Humber—about which the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will hear very much more in future than he has heard in the past—is impossible, because of the unstable nature of the Humber River bed, and the height at which it would be necessary to construct the bridge in order to allow ships to reach Goole, and so forth. But such a bridge has now been planned and shown to be completely practicable. It will be the longest suspension bridge in the world, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will pay favourable consideration to the project when it is put before him in the near future.

The Mersey Tunnel was once said to be impracticable, for the reasons mentioned in the debate in the Northern Ireland Senate with regard to the Irish tunnel, namely, that there would be faults in the rock which would allow water to seep through. Faults are nothing unusual in tunnelling, even under the sea. They are much more difficult, however, under the land, where there is no pressure such as that of the sea upon the sea bed to force silt and other substances into the faults and render them unlikely to allow water to seep through.

The depth of the tunnel between Scotland and Ireland is such that the pressure upon the sea bed would be very considerable, and the probability is expressed again and again in the report of the Congress in 1901 that these faults would not be a final bar. Since then, the technique of dealing with faults has improved immensely. I was speaking only this morning to an engineer who is constructing a tunnel through the Balgie fault in Glenlyon, in Perthshire. He was explaining to me some of the techniques which now exist to overcome difficulties arising from faults. Immense progress has been made in this direction since 1901.

Moreover, the civil engineer, Mr. Barton, to whom the hon. Member has referred, was not merely "a certain Mr. Barton" as he was alleged to be in the Northern Ireland debate he was one of the top twenty civil engineers of his time. He was a member of the Council of the Institute, and I am informed that that means that he was a very distinguished person in his own profession. He submitted his plans to his colleagues and, one after another, they rose and stated—as may be seen from the report of the proceedings of this conference in the Engineer—that they supported his project. So far as my recollection goes, nobody said that he did not support it. Indeed, the Chairman, Sir D. Fox, said that other people might be frightened about this project but certainly the engineers would not be frightened about it.

All we now ask is that an inquiry should be set up; not an inquiry behind closed doors, undertaken by doubtless most estimable and knowledgeable civil servants, but one conducted in the open, where the experts can be confronted with other experts and, in consequence, where a balanced and, we hope, a more truthful view may be arrived at. I hope that the Government will not follow the example of the Northern Ireland spokesman who, with a lily-livered sheltering behind the anonymity of a civil servant, failed entirely to meet Mr. Barton's views and to put over views of equal or better authority, so that we could judge whether or not this project really was practicable.

In this day and generation, as distinct from 1901, there are many other uses to which a tunnel such as this proposed tunnel could be put. At the present time discussions are going on between the United Kingdom and France in connection with the exchange of electricity at peak hours, in view of the fact that the peak hours in the two countries are different. A tunnel would surely be of the greatest use in this connection. It is true that communications have been improved out of all recognition since 1900, but has that stopped us from putting a cable across the Atlantic at a very recent date? If that cable, or a cable across to Ireland, could be placed in a tunnel such as is proposed, it would need less maintenance because it would not be exposed to the conditions on the sea bed.

I know that there is a view that tunnels of this kind are outmoded now because air travel takes all the passengers that these tunnels might take. Apart from the consideration that air sickness is by no means unheard of, I submit that that is a completely false point. It is possible to travel to Glasgow and Manchester by air, but that does not mean that trains are put out of business. What has happened is that there has been a tremendous increase in all kinds of travel, and we all hope that it will continue. With the increase in production which is planned not only in our country but on the Continent there is surely room for all kinds of traffic—air, land and sea. In my submission none of the existing forms need fear that it will be put out of business from any traffic which would travel through a tunnel such as this if it were constructed.

I have not touched upon the exact amount of money involved, although I think that £100 million would be a small amount to spend upon a project so beneficent as this. If we can spend £200 million upon irrigation projects in our overseas territories, surely we can develop our own country too? I am in favour of development wherever it can be carried out, at home or abroad. I can imagine some people saying, "If we must spend this sum of money, I can think better ways of spending it than upon this tunnel."

No Member of the Unionist Party ought to entertain such feelings. They encourage the people of Northern Ireland to belong to the United Kingdom and they use them whenever it is necessary and possible. Ought they not to ask themselves what they are doing in return for the people of Northern Ireland? Ought they not to reciprocate the friendship shown by the people of Northern Ireland and in a very practical way, and might not this be a very useful and practical way to help the people of Northern Ireland?

The problem of unemployment is certainly with Northern Ireland almost always. Unemployment is endemic there. Whatever employment could be brought to Northern Ireland—I would not like to lay too much stress on this—by the actual construction of the tunnel, it might very well be that the whole economic condition of Northern Ireland would be so much benefited from the construction of a channel tunnel as to make a very material contribution to the solution of the question of unemployment in Northern Ireland. It might help.

Ought we not, therefore, to have a full inquiry—that is all that is being asked for at the present time—to see whether we could help in this way? I beg the Government to refrain at least from doing what the spokesman of the Government of Northern Ireland did, merely belittle the project and do nothing else. I beg the Government to come out into the open. Let us have a breath of fresh air not only in Whitehall but in its Northern Ireland equivalent, in Belfast. Sir D. Fox, the Chairman at the World Congress of Civil Engineers in Glasgow in 1901, summed up the matter like this:

"Whatever views there might be of the project, whether pessimistic or optimistic, the enormous advantages of such a scheme, whether viewed from the social, political or economic aspect, cannot be overlooked."

That was in 1901. Surely all three of those conditions are as important today as they were then. Are we to be bold, or are we to stagnate? I hope that the Government will at least decide not to stagnate without a full, fair and open inquiry.

While I support the Motion, one of my principal objects is to cut the cost of transport between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Transport charges are heavy, owing to the distance and handling, and they are a great handicap to manufacturers. They could possibly be reduced if a tunnel were constructed.

I am informed by people who run industries in Northern Ireland that the high cost of transport is considerably offset by the easy accessibility of the assistance that the Ulster Government give, and, above all, by the skill and industry of our native workers. One thing that engenders frustration in the minds of the managements of old and new firms alike is the delay and consequent expense involved by the lack of information from British Railways and other cross-Channel carriers as to routes, whereabouts and times of arrival of cargo. This matter could and should be improved, whether there is a tunnel or not.

In support of what I have said about this, I should like to quote a letter sent to me by a new firm which started a new industry in Northern Ireland three years ago. The firm is a very important one, Plessey Ltd., whose works are situated in the constituency of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Down, South (Captain Orr). The letter is headed:

"Consignments sent by our Suppliers via British Railways Goods or Passenger and British Road Services (Ex-Swindon—London—Birmingham—Sheffield, etc.)"

I think the headquarters of the firm are at Swindon. The letter says:

"No specific time for arrival of such consignments can be allowed (delivery time ex- Swindon for instance can vary anything from 10 to 30 days). Urgent consignments despatched by our suppliers per Passenger Train are also impossible to schedule for delivery here, the delivery time again taken ex-Swindon varying from 4 to 15 days.

It is therefore often necessary for us in order to schedule our production programme to trace a consignment and establish when delivery can be expected here.

To do this it is first necessary to phone the supplier and get full details of date of his despatch, whether sent Goods Rail-Passenger Rail or British Road Services and which depot first handled the goods.

On establishing this a further telephone call to the Depot concerned should produce the information that the goods have been forwarded via rail or road, as the case may be, to Liverpool, Heysham or Stranraer for onward shipment.

This however is not the case. We can only establish that the goods have been forwarded from the starting depot.

It is then necessary for us to telephone Liverpool—Heysham and Stranraer Docks.

If the goads have been received at any of these docks, we can get the information that either the goods have been shipped or when they will be shipped.

Should the goods still be between the starting depot and these docks, it would appear that no trace of the goods can be made and no delivery date given.

Our own efforts in the past to trace the route or whereabouts of the goods, between the despatch point and the cross channel ports per telephone to various intermediate points and depots, have proved both exceedingly costly and often abortive."

The manager of one firm told me that telephone costs were almost as high as freight charges. The letter goes on:

"We are then faced with the alternative of ' waiting for something to turn up', or repeating the telephone performance to the cross channel ports daily.

There have been occasions when we have been unable to get such information from these docks and have had to recourse to sending our van on a tour of the Belfast and Stranraer Docks in a search for consignments, not knowing which route we can expect them to turn up on.

Goods sent in the reverse direction are subject to the same hazards.

For this reason, we have, as much as possible collected our goods from the docks by our own transport and delivered our finished products to the docks for the past eighteen months.

Also, all materials on our aircraft contracts from our own parent company's Swindon works, which represents a considerable freight, have been forwarded to us by air for the past nine months.

On our present extensive contract for Bristol Britannia electrical equipment, all our finished products are flown from Belfast to London, there collected by Bristol Aircraft Limited's own transport and taken by road to Bristol, to avoid excessive delays and uncertainty of delivery as already outlined.

The waste of time of our personnel, plus the telephone charges and recourse to air freight when we wish to be sure of a consignment, are a far greater worry to us than the already high transport costs we have to bear both ways.

There is of course a great deal which could be written about the transport arrangements of the U.T.A. and the handling of goods at the Docks on this side, but I understand this is not your immediate concern."

I know another large firm which started a new industry in Northern Ireland. They say that if they had not had a very efficient container and ferry service at their own door, as it were, it would not pay them to send exports by British Railways as, apart from freights, the time factor is very important.

In spite of these trouble, both ventures have been successful, as so many others in Northern Ireland have been. It is well worth while for a British industrialist to go to Northern Ireland and start a new business but these are intolerable delays, difficulties and expenses with which to saddle industries, and are hardly an encouragement to the new Development Council.

I should like to say a few words about the tourist industry, which is so very important to Northern Ireland. The famous Lord Rosebery described Ulster men as improved Scots. What great opportunities Scots and English would have to improve themselves if this tunnel were constructed between Donaghadee and Port Patrick or between Lame and Stranraer. Every year one and a half million people travel by air and sea between the English and Scottish and Ulster ports. That number increases every year, and new air and sea services are being introduced to cater for the traffic. But is it good planning, good economics or wise long-term assessment of the relationship between Great Britain and Northern Ireland to think that ships and aeroplanes shuttling backwards and forwards would be as satisfactory as an underwater link?

We are talking about and planning and spendng for interstellar travel. Surely it is just as important to plan proper transport between our two islands. A couple of years ago we had an example of how aeroplanes and ships could not do what was necessary. It was suggested that the annual conference of the Conservative and Unionist Party should be held in Belfast.

On the Falls Road?

I am very glad that the hon. Member is here to introduce some humour, and I am only sorry that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) is not also here.

It was suggested that this conference should be held in Belfast because, apart from London and Blackpool, Belfast is the only city with, a hall which holds 10,000 people. That is where they have the boxing. The Northern Ireland Tourist Board consulted British Railways, B.E.A., and all kinds of people, but the proposal failed because no one could undertake the transport of 8,000 or even 6,000 people from Great Britain to Belfast on the Wednesday and bring them back on the Saturday. Aeroplanes and ships simply could not do the job. I understand that British Railways are constructing three new motor ships for this trade. I understand that had it been known at the time they were ordered that Belfast Harbour was to be very considerably extended much larger ships could have been built.

I have no idea what would be the cost of the proposed tunnel. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr. Hyde) estimated it at about £100 million, but despite that large cost there is one factor which would justify giving consideration to the project. It is possible that in some future war nuclear weapons could cause the near destruction of the inhabitants of these islands. What a shelter this tunnel far below the sea would provide for Ulster and Scotsmen and women. As we are separated by only a few mles from Scotland, there has always been down the centuries migration and connection between our two races. As I say, Lord Rosebery described Ulster men as improved Scots—and I suppose that he meant Ulster women as well. In spite of the sterling qualities of the English and the Welsh, the survival of this superior strain of Celt and Scot would surely be ideal for building "the brave new world," and I am sure that all good Englishmen—and even the men of Wales—will agree that this alone would be ample reason for building this tunnel regardless of cost.

Finally, if the construction of the tunnel was impracticable for financial and physical reasons, would it not be possible to have a pipeline between Larne and Stranraer on the same lines as "Pluto" which was constructed between England and France in the last war? Petrol could be pumped from refineries at Stranraer into Lame which would save a tremendous amount in shipping as well as cost. The distance would be negligible as compared with that of the pipelines from the oil wells in the desert to the ports, and there would be no question of ventilation which seems to be one of the great difficulties in regard to other tunnels. Perhaps another pipeline could be constructed alongside to bring milk direct from the Ulster cows to English and Scottish breakfast tables. Others could be constructed for the conveyance of more elevating beverages. In fact, there would be no end to the possibilities of these "Pluto's", and it gives me great pleasure to support this Motion.

I have read this Motion with great interest, because I also am interested in tunnels—or rather in one particular tunnel to which I shall soon make reference. Before referring to what has been said by the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde), I want to say a word in reply to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) who seconded the Motion.

I listened to my hon. and learned Friend, as I always do, with great care and attention, and to me it seemed that the most emphatic argument he advanced was the difficulty of sea travel. He painted a very sad picture of women and children rolling about ill on board ships. That is all very sad, but I think £100 million is a pretty expensive cure for sea sickness. Then he made a great plea for a breath of fresh air in the Northern Ireland Parliament. He surprises me by his simplicity and absurd optimism. It is more difficult to get a breath of fresh air into the Northern Ireland Parliament than it would be to build a tunnel from here to New York.

To return to the hon. Member for Belfast, North, I am very glad that he is such an enthusiast for rail travel and that he prefers rail to road travel. Seriously, I wish that more people were of the same opinion. If more goods were sent by rail very many benefits would result. First, there would be increased revenues to the railways, and after the appalling figures which the Minister of Transport was obliged to give us the other day, we can all appreciate how heavily in need of more revenue the railways are at present. By diverting goods and passengers to rail, we would also relieve congestion on the roads and help to reduce the appalling mortality rate there is on them. I therefore welcome his enthusiasm for railways.

What absolutely astonishes me is that his enthusiasm has never been reflected in his own Province. A couple of weeks ago the Minister of Finance in Northern Ireland made the surprising decision to scrap nearly every railway line in the Six Counties. If his decision is implemented there will very shortly be only one rail link between the Six Counties and the rest of Ireland—the line between Belfast and Dublin.

There is also a line between Belfast and Bangor, which is important—and one between Belfast and Derry.

I said between the Six Counties and the rest of Ireland. The hon. Gentleman, who comes from Northern Ireland, does not know his own geography, because part of the Province of Ulster lies outside the Six Counties.

We call it Ulster and not Northern Ireland.

The hon. Gentleman should not call it Ulster. I have had to correct these hon. Gentlemen so many times about this that it is getting monotonous. I must remind the House that the historic Province of Ulster contains nine counties, of which three are governed from Dublin and the other six from Belfast. Therefore, I am correct in calling this particular part of the territory the Six Counties of Northern Ireland and not the historic Province of Ulster.

To resume what I was saying, the hon. Member for Belfast, North—we disagree on many things, but we both agree about this—thinks that there should be more and more contact between the people in both parts of Ireland, and I am sure that he will agree that it is quite deplorable that there will soon be only one link by rail between the two parts of the country. Therefore, of course, he weakens his own argument when he asks for an enormous sum of money to encourage people to send goods by rail transport and passengers to travel by rail hundreds of feet under the sea between Scotland and Ireland, and makes no suggestion for the spending of any money at all to maintain the present railway system in his own Province.

However, the only tunnel in which I am interested is the tunnel beneath the Thames between Purfleet and Dartford. There is no uncertainty about this tunnel, and we do not need to have an inquiry about it, because we know all about it already. All the surveys have been made and all the costs have been calculated, and its desirability and necessity are admitted by everyone, even by the Government. This tunnel must have priority over all other schemes and, indeed, I am certain also over all other major road developments.

The work was started long before the war, but it had to be suspended. The cost of the pilot scheme is very heavy, but now, at last, due very largely to the initiative and endeavours of the Thurrock Committee, work is to be resumed. The Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation was able to tell us the day before yesterday that tenders for the job are now being considered, but, unfortunately, he was unable to tell us the date on which the work was to begin. I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's difficulties in this matter, and I am aware of and appreciate his own support for the Purfleet-Dartford tunnel scheme, but I would urge him to let us know the date as soon as he possibly can.

I appreciate the hon. Member's interest in this particular tunnel at Purfleet, but it is not the tunnel with which the Motion is concerned.

I was just returning to that particular tunnel, Mr. Speaker. This Motion concerning the Irish tunnel asks merely for a committee of inquiry, and I am pointing out that, in the case of this other tunnel, there is no need for any inquiry whatever, because the Government are already in possession of all the information. Indeed, the Government were kind enough to give us some information about it only the day before yesterday. I am merely asking the Government to give us more information as soon as they possibly can, because the matter is of interest to thousands of people, not merely on both sides of the Thames, but all over the Southern counties of England.

Therefore, while the Irish tunnel—and I am sorry to say this to the optimistic Member for Belfast, North—is not really likely to be begun in this century, we are very hopeful that the Purfleet-Dartford tunnel will be completed in about three or four years' time.

I was very interested in the speech of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy), because once upon a time I myself fought a constituency in that part of the world, and then we were always worried about the Victoria Dock Road. I know that there always seem to be developments going on in those parts, and we all remember the great interest that is taken in this tunnel.

I do not think the hon. Gentleman need be so pessimistic about the future of the tunnel which this Motion proposes. After all, while listening to my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde), I felt that I was almost listening to a discussion of the Anglo-Continental tunnel. The history of it seems to be almost as pessimistic in parts, as well as to go back about the same length of time; but I would say that we managed to get the project for an Anglo-Continental tunnel near enough into the position in which it was agreed to by this House during the time of the late Mr. Ramsay MacDonald. When we pressed the Government on a Motion to do something about it, it was defeated by only seven votes. That was in the 1920s, so it is always a possibility that if one achieves one thing, one might eventually obtain the other.

The hon. Member pointed out very rightly the lack of contact at the moment, especially from the railway point of view, between the North and South of Ireland, and listening to what has been said up to now, I thought that we are stressing too much the fact that this is a link between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, when it should surely be of equal importance to Southern Ireland as well. I should have thought that the South of Ireland would welcome it very much indeed. I can think of a great many industries in the South of Ireland which would probably be greatly helped by the possibilities of undersea travel to the North.

To take only one example, that of the horse-breeding industry, the problem of of moving horses by sea can always be a perilous thing, which might well lead to a very great loss of finance. As we all know, both North and South of Ireland are very closely connected in this respect, and they are known by the whole world to be probably the best countries for the breeding and export of horses, so that this project would be a very great help to them.

I also think that we can only be practical on the subject if we take two tunnels together—the Anglo-Continental tunnel and the Northern Ireland tunnel—because it will be only after we get the one to the Continent that it will become [really practicable to have the one to Northern Ireland as well. When that comes about, we shall get a vast increase in tourist traffic, not only to the North, but also the South of Ireland. People will be able to drive their cars over there, and will probably not require the railway facilities. There is nothing more beautiful in travelling in Ireland than going by car, especially if one goes over by Enniskillen and across to the West Coast of Ireland, both North and South, where we find far more cars than used to be the case. There are, however, the most appalling queues for the boats for transporting cars, and, as has been pointed out, one sometimes has to wait six months for an ordinary passage ticket to go by boat. I have been in Dublin, Dun Laoghaire and Holyhead and have seen people turned back because, owing to the limited capacity of the boats, they were unable to get their cars over. Actually, at Easter, a great many people try to go over there to visit their friends and relations, for there are many Irish people over here, and such a tunnel would be a very great boon to them.

I do not know whether my two hon. Friends would be pleased about a suggestion of mine, which is that such a tunnel would bring North and South together very much more, which cannot be done better than by means of people travelling backwards and forwards between North and South. Many people will realise that they have much more in common than they may at the moment appreciate, and it may well be that one day North and South would come together again, although I do not say that they would come together as a United Kingdom.

All these are definite possibilities for the future, though I am afraid that the question of finance will make it utterly impossible if we depend on the Government. Even when we were supporting the scheme for the tunnel to the Continent, nobody ever recommended that it should be financed by the Government. It was very definitely to be financed by private enterprise, and I would therefore ask whether there is a possibility of private enterprise finance being obtained for this Northern Ireland venture. Is there any possibility of that private enterprise finance being found for the Northern Ireland venture? I think that once we have got over the hurdle of the Continental tunnel it might well be that the finances could be found, and I think that as Irish people in America are very interested in this sort of project, quite a lot of money would be provided, linked with various other forms of American help for Europe as a whole.

I have been saying all along that this project must be linked with a similar project serving the Continental countries. It will be recalled that we had a debate on this subject as far back as February of last year, and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation in his reply then was extremely pessimistic about the possibilities, but anybody who has read his final remarks will remember that he left an opening—

We have already had two tunnels mentioned in this debate, whereas the Motion is concerned with only one. It now appears that the hon. Member is trying to lead us down a third tunnel which is equally alien to the Motion before the House.

With great respect, Mr. Speaker, I do not see how we are going to have a tunnel to Northern Ireland unless we can have a tunnel to the Continent first. If you will allow me two minutes. I will try to show how that is so.

I am afraid that would start a very long discussion on all transport priorities. We really must attend to this tunnel between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The hon. Member can mention the other tunnel, but we cannot argue the merits or demerits of it on this Motion.

The only thing that I would mention about it is that I do not think we can afford to risk a Northern Ireland Channel tunnel until a similar one to the Continent has been tried out. I believe that the finances can be provided for such a scheme as well as for the Northern Ireland project because there are so many interests in Europe which want to associate with Northern and Southern Ireland as well as England and Scotland, and those interests, including the road organisations in Sweden, Holland, France and Belgium, are most anxious that people should travel to the United Kingdom and Ireland.

People have been working on this idea harder during the last six months than ever before, and if we can achieve a tunnel to the Continent there is a possibility that what we are discussing today will have a practical future. If that were to happen, we should have the whole of Ireland linked, through Great Britain, to the Continent. In addition, as has been suggested, there might be a Gibraltar tunnel to Africa, though I would not dream of going into that matter, Mr. Speaker. However, there is a great possibility, as a result of this proposal, of solving all our difficulties and creating a much more united Europe.

I do not want to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Pavilion (Mr. Teeling) too far along any of these forbidden tunnels, but it seemed to me that in stressing the relationship of this project with the Continental tunnel, he was going perilously near to undermining the whole case which has been so elaborately built in favour of a casino at Brighton.

Be that as it may, I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) and the hon. and learned Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) for the way in which they have moved and seconded the Motion. We know they are both reformers, of the old law, but this is the first time I have seen my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North in the guise of a latter day Moses seeking dry land between his country and ours.

Listening as objectively as any Welshman can to disputes between neighbours, I think one can at least conclude from the case as it has been presented that this is not merely a subtle attempt to facilitate the invasion of Liverpool by Irish horses and punters who do not travel well by air or sea. I would suggest, again without wishing to get involved in an unlawful tunnel, that this tunnel should in fact be between Ireland, whether it be Ulster or Eire, and Wales rather than between Ireland and Scotland. This ties up with a point which has already been made when it was suggested that Ulstermen are supposed to be improved Scotsmen. It occurred to me that they might be even more improved and the stock become still better if they were to find Welsh wives on the way from Holyhead to Ulster or Eire.

It is perfectly true that if one were to make this tunnel between Eire and Anglesey it would add considerably to its length and cost, but I would remind the House—because if this is ever to become more than a mere pipe dream the sociological factors involved will have to be borne in mind—of the very distressing level of unemployment in Anglesey and of the great need to expand the tourist trade both in North Wales and in Northern Ireland. As both my hon. Friends have pointed out, there is a great tourist implication in this proposal. What I suggest is not so hopelessly impracticable as some might think at first sight, because James Barton who has been referred to several times in this debate had three schemes one of which was designed to join by a tunnel Dublin to Holyhead.

There is a third factor—whether the tunnel comes to Holyhead or whether, as in the Motion, it goes to Scotland—and that is that from a Welsh point of view it is of great importance that as many people as possible in Wales should visit Northern Ireland. I say this without any disrespect whatever to the Parliament at Stormont, whose merits are undoubted, but there are those in Wales who wish to establish on the lines of the Parliament at Stormont a similar institution in either Cathays Park or Machynlleth. I should like as many people as possible to be provided with the easiest possible access, whether they have to go to Scotland to get to Northern Ireland first or not, so that they may learn at first hand that this model Parliament would meet neither their political nor their pathological needs.

The question has been raised whether, if £100 million or so were available, this would be the best means of spending it. Here again, I do not think I can go very far into this subject without raising the whole question of transport priorities which, as you have ruled, Mr. Speaker, would widen the scope of the debate too far, but I should like to remind my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary that in giving qualified support to this Motion he should bear in mind that in so doing I in no way detract from the case which was previously presented in this House concerning the merits of a Severn Bridge. The question has been raised of how the cost would be met. If people want these tunnels and bridges, then to a large measure they will have to pay for them themselves. It would have been helpful, and it might yet be helpful, if my hon. Friends could find out the extent to which private enterprise would welcome the opportunity to operate a system of tolls.

It is very easy to be flippant about what some might regard as a pipe dream, but there is a serious aspect in the relation of this tunnel to the whole problem of civil defence. It has been suggested in all seriousness that in the event of another war it would be necessary to evacuate 12 million people. If that is so, then the more and better means there are of evacuation the more desirable it will be.

Here we have a proposed tunnel which, whatever its other merits may be, would afford a direct link between two areas which one would imagine would be scheduled as reception areas. I feel sure that the warm-hearted people of the South also might be more than willing to accept large numbers of people from this country in the event of their needing to be removed from great danger. It seems on that account alone that an inquiry should be established. It is easy to talk in a vacuum about a mass evacuation of large numbers of people, but, as far as one knows, there seems to have been insufficient attention given to the actual precise planning of this enormous operation.

I should be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary can give some view of the attitude of the Government on this suggested tunnel and the whole problem of evacuation in the event of war. If in fact a tunnel, wherever it may be between Ireland and Wales or Scotland, were established, it might be instrumental in the survival of the British race. Then, even at the cost of £100 million or so it is a matter which should certainly be considered, and it would be relevant to the inquiry which my hon. Friends have asked for and which I support.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Mr. Teeling), the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Llewellyn) succeeded in mentioning in his speech a number of tunnels which are quite irrelevant to the debate. I congratulate hon. Members on their ingenuity, and I know that they will forgive me if I do not pursue them down those underground ways.

I wish to congratulate the hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde), not only on raising this subject, but on the manner in which he has conducted the debate. He has certainly engaged in a considerable amount of research into the past about the ideas which have been put forward and about the practicability of the proposed tunnel. I also congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu), who seconded the Motion.

I suggest that the hon. Member for Belfast, North is courageous. It may well be that by proposing to forge this new link between Great Britain and Northern Ireland he is inviting the revenge of the anti-Partitionists. There is a long history in connection with this tunnel which shows that the Irish do not change, although, certainly this debate has been much calmer and more peaceful than some past debates on Irish affairs in this House.

When I looked up the history of this matter, I noticed that in July, 1899, when Mr. Balfour received a deputation to which reference has been made, the journal Engineer is reported to have stated:

"As the success of the funnel would entail as much injury on Dublin as it would confer benefit on Belfast it will probably be bitterly opposed by a large section of the Nationalist or Southern party."

Fifty-five years later, when the debate took place in the Senate at Stormont, Mr. McGill spoke of the sinister consequences of the speeches in support of the Motion, and after suggesting that the word "tunnel" had a connotation peculiarly acceptable to several Irish Nationalists, and indeed to lovers of liberty everywhere, he added:

"It has a connotation which must, in the Government's view, condemn it as being Imperially damned and lost to the heresy of Anti-Partitionism."

Later in most poetic language he said that he felt regretfully impelled to oppose the Motion

"…on the sane and sensible submission that my object in this House must be to do what I can to break the existing connection with Britain instead of assisting to form a new one."

This question of the connection by tunnel of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has its political aspects as well.

I wonder whether it is not a little late in the day to raise the question of the possibility of linking these two sections of the United Kingdom in this way. We live in the age of roads and air rather than in the age of railways. Although there is a certain amount of traffic which will always remain with the railways, and with which the railways are better fitted to cope, the fact remains that an increasing amount of passenger and freight traffic is carried by the more modern forms of transport.

On the road-ferry services between Preston and Belfast there are ships which carry the British Road Services loaded lorries and containers. When the lorries leave the ships they travel along the roads of Northern Ireland.

The hon. Gentleman will appreciate, I am sure, that the Motion envisages the possible construction of a toad as well as a rail tunnel.

Yes, I fully appreciate that, but no hon. Member so far has referred to the possibility of a road tunnel. It seems to me that the practicability of a road as well as a rail tunnel is questionable, in view of the difficulties of constructing a rail tunnel in the first place. Obviously it would at least double the cost.

Already Silver City Airways run a car ferry service throughout the year, and Belfast Airport has, I understand, become the fourth busiest airport in the United Kingdom. I mention that in passing to show that one must not overlook modern developments in transport and in the links between the two parts of the United Kingdom.

Also, one is inclined to wonder, in view of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, whether the railways will be there by the time the tunnel is built, if ever it is built. It would take at least ten years to build, and as so many branch lines, and now some of the trunk lines, in Northern Ireland are being closed or considered for closure, one must regard their future with some scepticism. I understand that of the four common services with Eire, three are threatened with closure, although there is a joint agreement between the North and South that they cannot be closed in either section without the agreement of the other.

I know that my friends, the trade unionists in Northern Ireland, are very concerned about the threat of closing down these railways and are not satisfied that every possibility of keeping them open has been explored. They have suggested in the appropriate quarters that a greater degree of modernisation, particularly the introduction of diesel traction and more integration within the Ulster Transport Authority could possibly save some of these lines from closure. I have been informed that about a thousand railwaymen are likely to lose employment as a result of the closing down of lines in the near future, and if those which are under discussion for closure go out of operation it is thought that about 3,000 more railwaymen will be without work.

I think that the main question which must confront those who are concerned with the possibility of constructing this tunnel is whether it would be effective in contributing to the relief of unemployment in Northern Ireland. If it could be shown that it would make a major contribution in that respect, one could consider this suggestion a little more seriously and look upon it as a more practicable proposition than one is inclined to do at present. One has to ask whether the tremendous cost and the great resources which would be concerned an the building of the tunnel could not be better deployed.

We had a debate in the House in May last year on the position in Northern Ireland with particular reference to unemployment. I recall that the Home Secretary then reviewed a number of schemes which were being pursued with a view to improving the situation there, but of course he did not refer to the possibility of the construction of this tunnel. In spite of the schemes which are being carried through and the fact that the Economic Development Council has been set up, the problem of unemployment has proved intractable and I regret to say that each quarter in the last twelve months has shown no improvement compared with the previous twelve months.

Unemployment at the present time fluctuates in Northern Ireland between 30,000 and 40,000, which is 6 to 8 per cent., and the latest figures which I have for January this year show 37,800 to be out of work. If there was an equivalent percentage of unemployed in Great Britain it would represent about 1½ million.

Public works are one of the short-term ways in which unemployment can be relieved, but I very much doubt whether this tunnel would bring any immediate relief. First, we must have the inquiry, which is the subject of the Motion, which would take a considerable time in view of the imponderables concerning the geology of the area and other reasons. Then the plans would have to be drawn, and it would be a long time before the finances could be arranged and the work proceeded with.

Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that because this proposal would not afford immediate relief, it would not provide eventual relief?

I hope that unemployment in Northern Ireland will not con- tinue to be a permanent feature of the economy there. If there were—and this was argued in previous debates, but one must not wander too far from the subject under discussion—economic planning, as was suggested from this side of the House, in Northern Ireland, and if certain other proposals put forward by us, including a development corporation were adopted, the problem of unemployment could be more successfully tackled. I am suggesting that the time which would elapse before the construction of the tunnel was actually commenced would be so great that no relief would be brought to the unemployment situation in Northern Ireland for some time to come.

I do not know what idea my hon. Friend has in mind as to the time which this tunnel would take to construct—eight or nine years is contemplated by one authority—but does he not think that in eight or nine years it would be a good thing to be able to contribute to solving the problem of unemployment in Northern Ireland?

Certainly, but will this tunnel be as essential in eight or nine years, as hon. Members supporting this Motion consider it to be now? Will there not be alternative forms of transport which will supersede the railways to some extent for a large proportion of the traffic, and will it be really worth while expending the large amount of money involved in order that in eight or nine years—ten years, as I say—this tunnel should bring some temporary improvement to the employment conditions in Northern Ireland? I imagine that those people who are dissatisfied with conditions there now and who are suffering economically do not want to wait eight, nine or ten years before some relief is brought to them.

I am sorry if I appear to be pouring water on this scheme, but I think that we are not dealing with a practical proposition at this time. It is, after all, a question of priorities, and all of us could think of very desirable projects which we could undertake before we considered building this tunnel between Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Developing the English canals.

I would not cross swords with my right hon. Friend by suggesting that the canals are also being superseded by other forms of transport. I know that he does not share that view, but that appears to be the practical result of modern transport development.

If a committee were appointed at the present time and it were asked to consider the practicability of this tunnel, I wonder what the outcome would be. We have too many committees being appointed by respective Governments. They sit and deliberate, they produce their reports, months, sometimes years elapse before a debate takes place in the House on their findings, and the Government take a long time before they make up their minds what they will do concerning the recommendations. By that time, the recommendations are out of date. We have, in connection with the Ministry of Transport had that happening in the case of a large number of committees which I could name.

So, while I am sure the House shares my view that it has been worth while airing this topic as a subject for an exchange of views, it cannot be looked at as an immediate, practical proposition. It must be ruled out in favour of far more important projects which, alas, the Government are not able to undertake because of the stringent economic conditions for which we on this side of the House believe they are responsible.

I therefore conclude that because of the time it would take to plan and construct, this tunnel might well become an anachronism before it was completed. The proposal is a Victorian attempt to prolong the coal and railway age, which is being very rapidly caught up by the nuclear energy and supersonic jet age. The tunnel would be too much and too late—it would cost too much and it is too late to construct it. The cost would certainly be too great. It is not possible to find finance for its provision when finance for the modernisation of the road system in this country and Northern Ireland, for instance, and for other equally important projects, is held back.

I do not think it would contribute much, if anything, for a very long time to the acute problems which confront Northern Ireland. I suggest that those who are advocating this tunnel for linking Scotland and the Six Counties have as much chance of flying to Mars in a space-ship as of travelling to Belfast by underground.

I agree with the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) that this has been an interesting debate. I am sure we always welcome opportunities of turning our minds to new and adventurous ideas and I certainly would not criticise the proposals which have been made merely because they are imaginative. So many things are in operation today which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Hyde) mentioned, were ridiculed at the time they were first adumbrated, that we would be well to be chary of saying of anything that it is impossible.

Until my hon. Friend put his Motion on the Order Paper, I confess that little study had been given to this matter in this country since about 1900, the time when one of the learned papers to which he referred was publicly discussed. It was, therefore, natural that when we began to consider the Motion which my hon. Friend has moved, we sought to compare it with the English Channel Tunnel, which we discussed on a previous occasion and on which very much more detailed studies have been made.

I was interested to find my hon. Friend the Member for the Brighton Pavilion (Mr. Teeling) and the hon. and learned Member for Brigg (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu) advocating this tunnel today after having been the most eloquent of advocates of the Channel Tunnel last year. I feel that they are rather like rabbits, anxious to burrow whenever there is a chance. I am most anxious that neither of them shall catch myxamotosis, which apparently is one of the besetting complaints of those who have these habits.

On 2nd February, 1955, I gave rather fully the reasons why the Government are not prepared to give any encouragement to the project of a tunnel under the English Channel. I indicated then that in our view sea and air travel have advantages over railways from the point of view of long-distance transport, that the great advantages which railways do possess for certain reasons would be likely to be outweighed in these particular cases by the great cost of building the tunnels, and that, finally, these tunnels could only be used for electric trains and not for motor-cars because of the technical difficulty of dealing with exhaust fumes.

I was struck by the fact that my hon. Friend in moving his Motion did not once refer to the invention of the aeroplane. It may well be that the fact that there has not been any great discussion during the last 50 years of the project for this particular tunnel is because, quite obviously, much of the transport which previously would have used such a tunnel will now go by air.

If we feel obliged to reject the arguments in favour of a tunnel to Europe, it obviously is going to be difficult for my hon. Friend to establish a stronger case for a tunnel to Ireland. In the first place, a tunnel to France would link this great industrial country with the whole Continent of Europe, and indeed, of Asia also, whereas the tunnel we are discussing today would link us with the island of Ireland, the whole population of which is only 4⅓ million. It would be necessary to show that a tunnel under the Irish Sea would be much cheaper and simpler to build than one under the English Channel if my hon. Friend was to establish that it should have priority over the English Channel tunnel.

My hon. Friend the Member for the Brighton, Pavilion may have embarrassed his friends today when he said it would be necessary for a tunnel under the English Channel to be built first and for it to justify itself before it would be wise to embark upon this more hazardous enterprise under the Irish Sea. It would be a very much more hazardous enterprise from the engineering and geological point of view. The English Channel is only 136 feet deep. The Beauforts Dyke, to which my hon. Friend referred, is about 900 feet deep, and even the shallower route which might be taken is 500 feet deep. Although there is no difference in kind, there is a very great difference in degree in the difficulties of making a tunnel between one where the water is 136 feet deep and one where it goes down to a depth of more than 900 feet.

Two routes have been advocated—I pause with nervousness when I have to pronounce an Irish name—a tunnel from Donaghadee to Port Patrick, which is the shorter route and would involve a tunnel 1,000 feet below the surface, and one from North Belfast to Corsewall Point, for which it would be necessary to go only 500 feet below the sea level, though the distance would be 51 miles instead of 41 miles. The distance under the sea would be actually only approximately the same as that under the English Channel. In the two Northern Ireland schemes—according to the one which was chosen—it would be 22 or 25 miles and under the English Channel it would be 24 miles. The extra mileage, however, is due to the landward approaches. Manifestly, if we were to burrow very much deeper under the ocean it would be necessary for the approaches to go further back in each direction.

Although we had not previously made any close investigation into this problem, we were fortunate to find that the Northern Ireland Government had done so. The Leader of the Senate said:

"The question of this tunnel has been most carefully considered and all the information available has been gone into closely by the Government technicians."

Who are they?

The chief engineer to the Government of Northern Ireland.

One man appears to have made this investigation behind closed doors without any chance of his being cross-examined and, I submit, in a very great hurry. If that is not so, I shall be interested to hear it contradicted.

I am to discuss the matter generally. Obviously I am not going to discuss technical advice given to the Government of Northern Ireland. It is not for me to answer for the Government of Northern Ireland, although I think it proper that I should quote what has been said about the problem in the Legislature there.

In the last few days I have been at pains to make inquiries into the problem of making tunnels under water. When my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North quotes cases of tunnelling through the Alps, he is seeking to establish the possibility of tunnelling without taking into account the great technical difficulties which arise from tunnelling into earth where all the additional problems and dangers of water may ensue. In the case of the London Underground, we have been fortunate that where it is carried out in London clay no special safeguards are necessary to avoid the danger of running into water. On the other hand, the Dartford-Purfleet Tunnel will be driven through water-bearing strata and special precautions will therefore have to be taken. In any case, where a tunnel is being driven into gravel or ballast, and where there is uncertainty about what is to be encountered, it is customary for the men to work in a pressure of about 20 lb. per square inch in order to make certain that there is no sudden inrush of water, with all the disastrous consequences which might ensue.

In the case of the Dartford-Purfleet Tunnel, it is intended, in order to ensure safety, that the air pressure shall be about 45 lbs. per square inch above the normal. That is very near the maximum at which men could be expected to work. In the case of a tunnel under the Irish Sea, and in order to have the same degree of security, it would be necessary for the pressure to be nearly ten times as great, and nearly ten times that at which a man could work.

My hon. Friend might ask, "Is there not another way of dealing with the problem, and would it not be possible to bore down in advance of the headings to make certain of what kind of material was to be tunnelled into?" It has been possible, for example, in the Gulf of Mexico and the Persian Gulf to drill for oil through the waters. But those depths are much-less than the depth we are considering, and so far current engineering has not arrived at any technique by which boring can take place through depths of water anything comparable to the depth of the Irish sea. There is no doubt at all that a project of this kind would encounter great technical difficulties and would be almost certainly very dangerous for those engaged upon it.

I will quote Colonel Gordon on this point:

"Experts say…that there is no known technique to counter a difficulty of this kind or any infallible defence against the calamity which would befall if such a condition were met."

For what it is worth, inquiries which I have been able to make regarding tunnelling in London, and the information available, tend to confirm the advice upon which the Government of Northern Ireland have acted.

I might dismiss the whole matter at this point by saying that we agree with the Government of Northern Ireland that the proposal is impossible. But I should not like to do that, because so often things have been said to be impossible that in fact have been done. I imagine that everyone here would have said that the Mulberries were impossible before they were successfully constructed. The ingenuity and courage of man being what it is, I think it quite possible that this tunnel could be driven; and I now proceed to ask what would be the cost and what advantage would be gained were this project carried out?

Colonel Gordon was not willing to give any indication of cost. He said:

"I have purposely given no indication of cost in any shape or form. The reason for that is simply that no one can cost what is a decided impossibility."

I think that we should be justified in trying to look at this matter again on the basis of the cost of a tunnel under the English Channel. Last year, as a rough estimate, I gave the cost of such a tunnel as £85 million for a distance of thirty-six miles. If the route chosen for an Irish tunnel were from Port Patrick, the distance would be forty-one miles and the depth would be 1,000 feet. I have made a calculation and on that estimate the mileage cost alone would be £100 million. In view of the immense depth to which it would be necessary to go. I think it fair to say that there should be a 50 per cent. increase over the mileage cost, which gives me a minimum figure for the shorter and deeper route of £150 million. Were the Corsewall Point route chosen, the mileage cost would rise to £106 million. Because of the lesser depth to which the tunnel would go, I do not increase it by the same amount but put the minimum figure at £141 million. There is not a great deal of difference in it.

Those estimates are based solely on the longer and deeper channel and do not take into account any of the unfavourable factors of which geologists warn us, such as the likelihood that the rock would be much harder than materials through which an English Channel tunnel would be driven. I regard these as minima, but I have noticed that my hon. Friend has a different estimate which is substantially lower. I should not for a moment wish to be dogmatic and say that our estimate is correct and his is wrong. But I must complete my calculations on the best estimate I can make.

I have had a calculation made as to what the rate of interest with amortisation would be if the £150 million were borrowed from the Public Works Loan Board. If the loan had to be paid back in 60 years the annual cost would be £8¼ million if in 80 years, £8 million; and if in 100 years, £7·9 million. That would have to be added to the cost to the user of the tunnel rail services, and when hon. Members from Northern Ireland complain about high railway charges at present, I must ask them to realise that if the tunnel were to be used, the railway freights would remain the same, but whatever the volume of traffic it would have to find approximately £8 million a year in addition. I cannot believe that these freights and rates would be cheaper than travel by sea or air.

The next point is of great importance, but I think I can put it quite briefly, especially in view of the speech which has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Llewellyn). The route which has been chosen is the shortest route, approximately, between Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom—that is, between Northern Ireland and South-West Scotland, which is a most delectable and delightful part of the country but not highly industrialised. Obviously the main traffic routes between United Kingdom and Ireland would be from the great industrial centres of Lancashire or the Midlands, or the residential area of London, or perhaps from the great industrial area on Clydeside, and the fact that in order to go by the shortest route the tunnel has to arrive approximately at Port Patrick means that if someone wished to travel the whole distance by rail, or to send his goods the whole distance by rail, he would have a very long and costly rail journey from the great populated areas of production and consumption in the United Kingdom before reaching the point at which the tunnel left the United Kingdom in order to pass under the Irish Sea.

I must now refer to the existing services before I say something about the cost of either passenger travel or goods travel through the tunnel. I have carefully noted what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. McKibbin), and I will draw the attention of the British Transport Commission to the complaints he has made about the delays in the services between Northern Ireland and this country. Nevertheless, at present there are extensive shipping services. There are ten private shipping companies which run ships between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. The British Transport Commission also has a service between Heysham and Belfast, and three new and larger steamers are on order at present and are likely to be in service before the end of the summer. Special improvements are under consideration between Stranraer and Larne. There is an existing road ferry between Preston and Belfast and orders have been placed for two more ships which will carry, I understand, both cargo and road vehicles.

The British Transport Commission is deeply concerned about the complaints which have been made and Lord Rusholme, who is a member of the Commission and chairman of the London-Midland Area Board, said recently:

"The British Transport Commission fully appreciate the importance of Ulster's transport needs and are confident that their proposals will foster the expansion of cross-channel trade."

I know that that statement is sincerely intended. I will bring to Lord Rusholme's attention the points which my hon. Friend made this afternoon. My hon. Friend will also be aware that recently a prominent Ulsterman, Sir Basil McFarland, was appointed to the London Midland Area Board, which has the responsibility for the principal route from Heysham to Belfast. I want to emphasise that, in order to show that the British Transport Commission is anxious to meet the complaints which have been made.

Equally important are the airline services between Scotland and Ireland and between Northern England and Ireland. There are fourteen of these, quite apart from those from the Southern part of this country.

May I say a few words about what might be the cost of transportation through the tunnel? These are only estimates, but I thought it only right to try to make them. So much of this is entirely hypothetical that I do not place undue reliance upon it, but if I mention some of the existing charges, it might make my hon. Friends from Northern Ireland feel that it would be difficult for a tunnel costing £150 million to provide transport which was cheaper. Tramp rates for coal from Cumberland to Belfast for quantities exceeding 2,000 tons are now 9s. 3d. per ton, plus 5 per cent. The standard rate for coal by rail for 41 miles, which is that distance, is 20s. per ton, and that does not take into account the cost of the tunnel, for which users would have to pay.

It is difficult to make any useful comparison of passenger fares because obviously passengers would hardly be willing to travel an immense distance in order to reach Port Patrick in South-West Scotland before starting their journey through the tunnel to Ireland. Supposing there were a resident in Stranraer who was going to Larne, the cost by train might be only 9s. 8d., whereas by ship at present it is 27s. 5d. But of course it is most unlikely that a large proportion of the passengers using this tunnel would live at one end of it and want to go only to the other end of it: and the moment we begin to deal with people living in other parts of this island and wishing to go to Belfast, we find that the figures are very different.

The cost of going by ship from Hey-sham to Belfast is now 51s. 6d. On present railway charges, going through the tunnel and the whole of that way, the charge would be 50s. 9d. Clearly, no-one would wish to travel from Heysham to Port Patrick before beginning to use the tunnel. In any case, since B.E.A. provide air transport from Liverpool to Belfast in a fraction of the time for 74s., it is most unlikely that in the days of air travel passengers would wish to use the tunnel. Perhaps what I have said expresses what is in the mind of the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) who was about to intervene.

No, it does not. May I assure the hon. Gentleman that I would pay a very great deal of money in order to avoid any sea journey because I can be seasick going from Portsmouth to Ryde on a calm day?

In that case, I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman would be one of those who would avail themselves of B.E.A.'s generous offer of transportation by air for 74s.

I have tried to follow out as best I can the problems raised by my hon. Friends, and have thought it only right to put plainly to the House our scepticism of these proposals. At the same time, I do not wish to take up a plainly negative attitude. My hon. Friends have produced some new material today with which I was not familiar and which, quite obviously, I could not judge as I sat on the bench and listened to them. In any case, I lack the technical qualifications necessary for anything of that sort.

I do not feel that we can undertake at this stage to appoint a committee to go into the matter. Quite frankly, I do not think that my hon. Friend has made out a strong enough prima facie case to justify the appointment of a special committee, but I will certainly promise that there shall be consultation on this matter between my Department and the Home Office. The Home Office is the kindly sponsor of Northern Ireland's interests in these matters. I know that my right hon. and gallant Friend the Home Secretary is deeply concerned about the amount of unemployment in Northern Ireland to which the hon. Member for Enfield, East referred, and if on closer examination it appeared that there was any likelihood of bringing any substantial alleviation to Northern Ireland in this matter, then we should be prepared to look at it more sympathetically.

I have already made inquiries from Lord Chandos as to whether he feels that the cost of transportation is adding greatly to the difficulties of industry in Northern Ireland. What I understand from his office is almost exactly what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. McKibbin). It is that the difficulties involved in trasporting goods across the Irish Channel can be greatly exaggerated. Many firms are established in Northern Ireland and are progressing satisfactorily despite the Irish Channel.

I will go further into this matter in the light of what has been said by my hon. Friends. After it has been discussed between the Government Departments concerned—I will also bring the matter further to the attention of Lord Chandos—and if my hon. Friend would be willing to withdraw his Motion, I will write to him in due course and give him our final conclusions.

It is always a delight to listen to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport because he chooses his words so carefully and devotes a very great deal of attention to making the details of his speech interesting to the House. I was therefore very astonished to find that on at least three occasions he alluded to a connection between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. One cannot have a connection-between the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland because Northern Ireland is an essential part of the United Kingdom. I yet hope that the United Kingdom may be restored to what it was before 1920. I regret very much that some action has been taken by other people which has made that more difficult than it might very well be. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be careful in future, because if he goes to Northern Ireland and talks there about linking it with the United Kingdom he will find that its people believe that the major and best part of the United Kingdom is to be found on that side of the waterway about which we have been speaking today.

I am sure everyone will agree that we have had a most useful and instructive debate on this subject today. We have heard the points of view of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and even the point of view of the Irish Republic. As the hon. Member for Enfield, East (Mr. Ernest Davies) said, it is satisfactory that this subject should have had an airing. I do not think that what has been generated this morning could be described entirely as hot air or even air of a warm variety.

From what my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary has said, it is quite obvious that there is a conflict of technical and expert opinion on the possibility of constructing an Irish Channel tunnel. The modern expert evidence which I adduced this morning was based on a report, as I made clear, of the leading firm of civil engineers in this country. Its estimate of the geological difficulties and of the financial side differs from that which my hon. Friend has mentioned. To some extent, my hon. Friend seemed to rely on what the Dean of the Senate said in the Parliament of Northern Ireland. I must say that the expert evidence there seemed to be of a very sketchy character. I am glad, however—

On a point of order. I do not want to be discourteous to the hon. Gentleman, but we must stick to the rules of the House. I think he fully appreciates that a second speech is not in order unless it is made by leave of the House.

An hon. Member cannot speak twice except by leave of the House. I thought that what the hon. Member was saying was preliminary to his withdrawing his Motion. What he is saying is in reply to a Motion of his own.

Thank you very much, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I certainly do not want to detain the House any longer.

I think that this has been a useful debate, and I have been impressed particularly by the arguments put forward by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary. In view of his undertaking that this matter will be looked at again by his Department and by the Home Office, and also that the attention of the Chandos Council will be drawn to it, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

I beg to move,

That this House considers that a comprehensive review of the machinery of Government should now be instituted with a view especially to deciding the correct rôle that should be played by the Treasury in the implementation of defence decisions.

I realise only too well that the subject of the machinery of Government sounds as dry as dust, but it has always seemed to me a little paradoxical that we spend a great deal of time in this House deciding what our policies shall be and yet we rarely pay very much attention to the machinery in which lies the only hope of putting those policies into operation.

We dealt with a good deal of burrowing in the previous discussion, and in respect of this Motion I should like to continue burrowing, but to burrow in rather a different direction and through or into something which, I am told, is quite as impregnable as any of the substrata of the Irish Sea. The machinery of Government has not been discussed in very great detail since the days of the war, when the Select Committee on National Expenditure went into the matter and published a Report thereon in 1942.

I hope I may claim some precedent for introducing this Motion from the fact that that particular Select Committee did recommend, by No. 23 in the summary of recommendations, that

"A Select Committee should be appointed sessionally under Standing Orders and charged with the duty of conducting on behalf of the House a continuing review of the Machinery of Government with special reference to the economic use of personnel, and should report to the House from time to time."

It went on to suggest that there should be

"A permanent Assessor to the Committee who should be an officer of the House and should have the statutory right to call for reports, papers, and other information concerning matters properly falling within the purview of the committee."

Finally it recommended that:

"The Committee should be required to examine the memoranda laid before it by the Assessor together with such matters as may be specifically referred to it by the House."

A debate took place in the House in January, 1943, on that Report. I will quote only one short sentence from the words of Sir Kingsley Wood during that debate, when he said:

"…I am in favour of periodic reviews of the organisation and efficiency of Government Departments."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 28th January, 1943; Vol. 386, c. 696.]

I hope, therefore, no one will suppose that this Motion is a private hunch of mine or is in the least original. All I do feel is that, in the light of those recommendations, we have not seen very much done to keep under review the machinery of Government. We all agree, I am sure, that it is important for Parliament from time to time to look at this matter.

What do we mean by the "machinery of Government"? As I intend to use the phrase in this debate, I mean that arrangement between Ministers and their Departments whereby we have Ministers' responsibilities defined as clearly as possible, and the arrangements in their Departments also as clearly defined as regards responsibilities and activities.

The machinery of Government has changed very considerably down the years. There was a time when the Civil Service was organised on a purely patronage basis by individual Ministers. As we all know, close inquiries—instituted in particular, I think, by Mr. Gladstone—were directed into that state of affairs in an effort to "clean up" Whitehall. I certainly do not want to "un-clean" Whitehall in any way today. I would only suggest that it is our duty in this generation to make sure that there is no need for further "cleaning up" or alteration.

If the House looks at the history of the machinery of Government Members will see that it has to some extent kept pace with changes in political parties down the years. I do not propose to discourse on the changes which have taken place. I suppose we can truthfully say today that whereas in the heyday of the Whigs the main duty of Government was looked upon as one purely relating to national security and the protection of the value of the currency, we now have the Government coming in at all points in the complex activities of the electorate. We can sum up by saying, I think, that on this side of the House we have an amalgamation of Whig, Tory and Liberal, and on the other side of the House a mixture of Radical, Labour and Socialist.

The important thing which has happened simultaneously with the emergence of that situation is that gradually we have tended to move into an increasingly collective frame of mind, and the individual has more and more frequently had to bow to the needs of the community at large. With that change, we have seen Ministerial capabilities strained to the utmost—indeed, I should say strained almost to breaking point. All of us, no matter of what party, are certainly very acutely aware of the fact that certainly Cabinet Ministers, and, I believe, Departmental Ministers too, have a great responsibility today, a responsibility which must put any human being under an immense strain. That applies also to the heads of their Departments, I am sure, and to many of the officials.

I must make clear at the outset that it is not my purpose to say anything which I intend to mean, or which might possibly be thought to mean, that I have any disrespect for the work of civil servants. I believe the vast majority of them serve this country to the best of their ability, and all too often when mistakes are made for which they are blamed, it is really we in Parliament who are more at fault.

As is inevitable, if the work of Government is to be carried out, there has been a vast increase of delegation. Nevertheless, we ought always to bear in mind that, in a Parliamentary democracy, if we do delegate and if we fail to keep a careful watch and restraint upon the operation of that delegation, we can easily land ourselves in a state of tyranny without realising what we are doing.

It has for a long time been held, rightly, I think, that it is the constitutional duty of Ministers to take responsibility for what goes on in their Departments in the implementation of Government policy; if something goes wrong, then Ministers take responsibility for it, or, to put it in vulgar parlance, they "take the can back." It has long been a principle also that Ministers should take responsibility for the appointments in their Departments.

Recently we have had examples of how invidious can be the position of Ministers as a result of the increased complexity of Government itself. I still regard as tragic the example of my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Sir T. Dugdale), who, when Minister of Agriculture, felt obliged to resign before this House because of certain mistakes by members of his Department. All of us deeply sympathise with him, I feel sure, in respect of the situation in which he found himself, and all of us respect him for the step he took, which, on the basis of precedent, was constitutionally absolutely right.

Today I ask whether it is any longer really fair on the individual that Ministers should still have to take responsibilities of the kind that I have mentioned, in cases where appointments have been made in Departments purely on the recommendation of some officials and very often made before the Ministers themselves came to their Departments.

I realise how very dangerous constitutionally it could be were we to divorce altogether from Ministers the responsibility for appointments in their Departments. Nevertheless, is there not something really rather unfair to the Minister himself, and probably unfair to the Department as a whole, that a Minister should have to take responsibility, even to the extent of resigning, in the case of an inept appointment in his Department which could only have been made—I think I would restrict it to that definition—as a result of recommendations made to him by those who knew the individual concerned far better than he could hope to do. Very often in such cases the Minister might well not have met the person concerned before the appointment was made.

That is a question to which we must give more and more consideration as time goes on and the duty of Government becomes more complex. I do not profess to have the right answer to this problem, which is an acutely difficult one. If we are to retain Parliamentary responsibility it is extremely difficult to suggest that someone should take more responsibility than the Minister himself, who is answerable to Parliament, but that the present situation is becoming more and more unfair I have no doubt at all.

I hope that from what I have said no one will draw the conclusion that I wish in any way to whittle down the responsibilities which Ministers must always have for their policies and the implementation of those policies. It is not my intention to discuss what should be the policy in regard to any subject upon which I touch it is the machinery whereby any such policy is implemented—in no matter what Department—that I have most in mind. That is the only comment I have to make upon the Amendment which appears in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes).

Some change is required in the system whereby these appointments are made not only in the matter of responsibility if an appointment proves to be wrong but in the actual way in which the appointment is made. My view is that just so long as the Government have to rely upon the advice of higher civil servants as to whom an appointment should be given, so the accountability of those who give advice which later proves to be extremely erroneous should be greater than it is. How that policy should be operated those who have been heads of Departments or Parliamentary Secretaries will be far better able to judge than I can.

Under the present system some of the higher appointments in the Civil Service must receive the Prime Minister's prior approval. I understand that it is a principle that the Prime Minister consults the Ministerial head of the Department in which the appointment is to be made, but upon the official level the final counsellor to the Prime Minister is the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury who, since 1919, has been given the designation of "Head of the Civil Service." We are indeed well served by the official who at present holds that post. Sir Edward Bridges is a man who commands immense respect, stretching far beyond the confines of the Civil Service.

In 1950 he gave a Rede lecture entitled, "Portrait of a Profession. The Civil Service Tradition." I say in all humility that it is a most delightful study of a profession which has become a very great one. Sir Edward had a few comments to make about the defects of civil servants, which I should like to quote. He said:

"Our most obvious defects spring from the constitutional position of civil servants. They are at all times answerable to some Minister who will get the praise and blame for what they do, and this determines many of their actions and reactions…the same absence of direct responsibility is perhaps also responsible for the civil servant's highly developed sense of caution. …There is also perhaps on occasion a tendency to seek a greater degree of logical completeness or of regularity than the matter in hand requires…"

Probably we all realise that those remarks are true of all Departments, but of no Department are they more true than the Treasury itself—for all its officers are responsible to the Chancellor, and all its officers, I believe, are as conspicuous for their caution as they are unassailable in their anonymity. In addition, I would say that they are all as meticulous in their insistence upon regularity as they are ubiquitous in the scope of their activities. In relation to the control of the expenditure of money voted by Parliament, the Treasury is the dominating Department, but it is also the Department which decides the establishment of all other Departments, and its Permanent Secretary is the final official counsellor of the Prime Minister in the making of higher appointments.

I want to discuss for a few moments the establishment and promotional aspect of the matter. There was a Treasury Minute of 1919 which has always struck me as one of the freaks of our Constitution, in that it was purely by means of that Treasury Minute that the official head of one of the greatest professions in the land was appointed. In 1919, Sir Warren Fisher became the official head of the Civil Service. I should be the last to dispute that there was a need for unification in Civil Service at that time, and of all the great things which Sir Warren did—and he did many infinitely fine things—none was greater than the action which he took to enable keen and promising civil servants to transfer from a Department in which promotion might be very slow, even to the point of positive discouragement. By unifying the Civil Service, as he did in the 1920s, he instilled into its officials a new spirit of enthusiasm, to the extent that they were able to become extremely efficient at many different jobs.

I stress, therefore, that I have no dispute with the desire to unify the Civil Service and make it a comprehensive one. Lord Vansittart, who has very different views from mine about the operation of the Foreign Service between the wars, wrote a review which appeared in the Manchester Guardian on 25th July, 1950. He said this about the appointment of the head of the Civil Service:

"In common with many public servants, I saw no need for the creation of this new office. We had got on well enough without it, and thought it might have undesirable consequences."

He finished by saying:

"As to his post, I concede that—as I originally thought—it can be dangerous in wrong hands—like any other important post, particularly a Ministerial one—and that there is no reason why it should be automatically occupied by the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury."

Since the days of Sir Warren Fisher it has become the established practice that the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury also automatically becomes the official head of the Civil Service. I want to ask my right hon. Friend whether he can say that that matter has been reviewed, and whether it is now still thought that the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury should automatically become the official head of Civil Service.

Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman say who else he thinks might occupy that responsible post?

I am grateful for that intervention. One or two suggestions have been made, and at the time Sir Edward Bridges was appointed an article in The Times suggested that the Secretary of the Cabinet might fill the rôle of official head of the Civil Service. There have been several other proposals, and I will refer to some of them in a moment. One is always up against the problems, first, of knowledge of the general situation in every Department, and, secondly, of a burden which no one individual can be expected to carry in addition to his ordinary duties.

Would the hon. and gallant Gentleman make one point very clear? Does he want this to be a political post, following the changes of the parties from one side to the other?

I am grateful for the opportunity of banishing that idea from the mind of the hon. Gentleman. I have no intention of recommending any such thing. One of the greatest superiorities that we have over some other foreign countries is that our Civil Service goes on, however the parties change. I certainly am not suggesting that the appointment should change with the parties. Sir Edward Bridges will presumably have to retire one day, and I want to make sure that thought is being given in advance to the question of whether the man who will succeed him as head of the Treasury should automatically succeed him as head of the Civil Service.

This question of the control of the Civil Service was discussed in the 16th Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure in 1942. Paragraph 68 of the Report said:

"The process has undoubtedly involved encroachments on departmental independence and has not been free from friction. There have indeed been times when antagonism between the Treasury and other Departments has been both an embarrassment and a hindrance to the work of Government."

It goes on to say:

"Fortunately that antagonism, although still occasionally manifested, is less evident now than it was in the past. It is, however, sufficiently palpable to account for the occasional raising of the question whether, in order to promote more efficient and harmonious administration, the unifying influence now exercised by the Treasury could, or should, be transferred to some other authority."

The evidence given before the Committee, and upon which presumably it made its recommendations, has never been published. I suppose that that was partly due to the exigencies of war and partly to the needs of security. I understand that the Committee had before it Sir Warren Fisher among others, and I think that the present Financial Secretary to the Treasury was a member of the Committee itself. I am therefore glad that he should be here to comment on this subject from the Front Bench today. May I say how much I appreciate the fact that Ministers are present to discuss this matter? The debate is indeed a privileged one for a private Members' day.

Having made those observations, the Committee went on to say that the evidence before it did not justify the transfer of the existing seat of control from the Treasury to another new Department. It recommended, in paragraph 104,

"That Establishment work should be separated from Supply at all levels below the Permanent Secretary."

That recommendation left the Permanent Secretary in charge of the whole machine at the official level, while under him was to be a new Joint Second Secretary exclusively concerned with the machinery of Government, which I understand was the case between 1919 and 1932. I believe that that recommendation was implemented. I should be grateful if my right hon. Friend could tell us how it is working out, and whether the time has not now come when we should again review the position and see whether the separation should include separation from the supervision of Departmental expenditure exercised by the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, in that capacity.

I believe there must be some danger in mixing, in one Department and still more in one man, both supervision over expenditure of moneys voted by Parliament and supervision of the work of that Department. Whatever else we feel, this is something that we should look at. Since it is as far back as 1942 since a comprehensive review took place, I hope that we may have an indication from the Government of their feelings on the matter. If this appointment were in the wrong hands it could lead to a sort of nepotism or stultification. Those things are undesirable in our machinery of Government, but there has been a tendency towards it in the past. We certainly do not want to see it recur.

Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman think that nepotism has occurred between 1942 and the present time?

I am not saying that that was so between 1942 and now, but that there were times when there was that suspicion, and I do not want to see it recurring.

I do not want to hark back to the inter-war period unduly, but I shall have much to say about the future situation. it is only after a most careful study of the problem that I have come to the conclusion that there were times between the wars when there was a suspicion that favouritism crept in now and again. Let me give the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) a quotation from Lord Chatfield, who was First Lord of the Admiralty for some years and then became Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence. Referring to the Treasury, he said:

"Overpowering everything, was the immense power given to the Treasury. That power was to be found everywhere. Its proper function of avoiding waste and extravagance, was extended until it ruled as an autocrat in Whitehall, a veritable tyrant. It possessed innumerable officials whose duty it was to be ready to counter the demands of the fighting departments; and in those departments themselves it had its familiars who could, if they used their power, oppose, or delay, all action involving the spending of money. It was a power that was greatly abused. In the 'twenties, this power given to the Treasury, backed by popular opinion, was used with crushing effect by that efficient department."

The hon. and gallant Gentleman has used the word "nepotism," which has a distinct significance when we go far back in English history. I do not know how far the hon. and gallant Gentleman wants to suggest that the use of the word "familiars" in that quotation indicated some sort of corruption in the selection either of relatives or of other persons on whom the Treasury, by reason of the favours that it had conferred upon them, could make undue demands.

I am not in a position or in any way qualified to say what went on in Government Departments between the wars. All I can say, from what I have read, is that I get the impression that there were instances where there was a suspicion that all was not well with the system. The right hon. Gentleman will recall that I said most carefully that if the wrong man became head of the Treasury it could lead to the extremes I have mentioned. I am not suggesting that between the 'wars it ever reached that pitch: I am simply basing myself on the evidence which I quoted from Lord Chatfield just now.

The Times, in a special article on 28th June, 1942—just after the publication of the Report of the Select Committee—made a very important recommendation. At the end of the article, it was stated:

"It seems clear that further integration of the Civil Service and improved efficiency in its establishment must depend upon the deliberate organisation of the control of staff inherent in central government under a single authority."

It went on—and this is important:

"But experience supported by industrial and business practice suggests that such an authority should be distinct from the financial authority. The headship of the Civil Service is an office of great and increasing importance. But it can no longer be usefully combined with the office of Permanent Secretary to the Treasury."

If I am correct, that article was written by the late Mr. Alwyn Parker, whom many hon. Members will remember as the editor of the Lloyds Bank Review, and who had experience at the end of the last war of re-organising a department of the Foreign Office. Certainly he was a man with both departmental and business experience, whose observations were extremely important.

That view which he expressed—and it was indeed to some extent expressed by the Select Committee in 1942—was strengthened by the views of a group of Conservatives, many of them Members of Parliament at the time, who published in 1946 a small booklet entitled "Some Proposals for Constitutional Reform." They recommended that each Department ought to be able to stand up for its own efficiency independently of the Treasury, and recommended the abolition of the title "Head of the Civil Service." I would say that, on further reflection, I feel that that was a mistake. We want an official head, though personally I would call him something else, because the only head of the Civil Service is Her Majesty.

They also recommended that:

"…the functions now exercised by the Civil Service Commission should be transferred to this new department, together with the work done by the Establishments Branch of the Treasury, and that the administration of the Civil Service as a whole should be entrusted to it."

This would have at its head a non-Treasury Minister, not necessarily in the Cabinet, who would preside over a Selection Board to advise the Prime Minister on higher appointments.

The Tomlin Commission recommended the use of a body of persons, bringing in outside businessmen.

Then there was a recommendation made by Mr. H. E. Dale in his most interesting book The Higher Civil Service, published in 1941, that

"The selection and recommendation for the Prime Minister's approval should not rest so largely with one man as the accepted theory allows. The possible candidates for a particular vacancy should be considered. I suggest, and the recommendation made by a small ad hoc Committee. It would probably require to meet only once. The Chairman should be the Minister for the Department where the vacancy has occurred or is about to occur; the other members should be the Secretary to the Treasury and one of his immediate subordinates, the Secretary of the Department concerned, if available, and one or two permanent heads of the other Departments—usually the Departments that, in the ordinary course of things, have most business with the Department of the vacancy."

Those are pretty high-level recommendations, and I feel that the time may now have come when the matter should be reconsidered.

I think we would all agree that it is essential that only the best men should reach the top, if possible in all Departments, and particularly in the Treasury. It is equally important that we should, within reason, prevent too much power being given to men whose misuse of it might not be detected in time to avoid calamity. I have never been able to understand why it should be thought that the most suitable person to be the head of the Treasury should always be regarded as the most suitable head of the Civil Service. As I say, we are most fortunate in having the present one, who has made a great success of combining the two positions.

It is the view of one whom I know very well today, who was in very close relationship to the War Cabinet, and who is still serving the country in a highly responsible position, that there should be no automatic linking of the two positions, although that should not rule out an occasional linking where that seems to be the best thing to do. There have been occasions when the exercise of these twin powers has turned him into what Sir P. J. Grigg described in his book Prejudice and Judgment as virtually:

"…a Minister without portfolio and also. alas!, without responsibility to Parliament."

It is very much with those views in mind that I have said what I have said. It is salutary always to remember that even in the days of the Roman Empire this trouble reared its ugly head, and what Edward Gibbon called "the Master of the Offices" became all too powerful, and the Minister of State's duties were all too often taken over at the official level.

I now turn to the Treasury control over expenditure by Departments, and especially those Departments concerned with national security. It is not my intention today to discourse on the reasons why disaster overtook us in 1939. It is enough to recall that the war was not solely due to faulty policies, wishful thinking or failure to appreciate that international bodies, unbacked by power to enforce their decisions, could not secure the safety of the nation. It was also partly due to our own unpreparedness. I have very little doubt that the fact that we were unready was certainly partly due to a faulty machinery of Government, which did not adapt itself to keep pace with the rapidly-changing circumstances.

In a last-minute attempt to save the situation Parliament agreed to the appointment of a Minister for the Coordination of Defence. I believe—and it was confirmed, I think, in the subsequent White Paper issued when the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) was in office, entitled "Central Organisation for Defence"—that that appointment of a Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence was not really the right solution, in the long-term, of the problems with which he was supposed to deal.

That is what my right hon. Friend himself said before the war.

I do not wish to go back to what happened between the two wars, because I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman's own party had anything to crow about during that time. I am trying to keep this discussion on a non-party basis as far as I can, and I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman would try to do the same thing. Perhaps I may repeat the fact that we were unready was partly due to the fact that our machinery of Government was not all that it should have been.

The appointment of a Minister for the Co-ordination of Defence was based, I think, on the misconception that all that was needed was someone to act, as it were, as the war-time rationing officer, so far as the Armed Forces were concerned, in time of peace: in other words, that it was a question of rationing each of the three Services. I believe that the trouble lay in a reluctance to put defence at the top of the priority list, and that that led the Treasury, so far as control of defence Departments' expenditure was concerned, to think in terms of a rationing system which left the Armed Forces much too low down the queue.

We all know what happened during the war. We all know that the office of Minis- ter for the Co-ordination of Defence was abolished.

Surely the hon. and gallant Gentleman must here be dealing with political and not Civil Service matters. Goering said to the German people in the inter-war years, "You can have either guns or butter, but you cannot have both." He made a political decision that the German people would have guns. Here we made a reverse decision, but it was equally a political decision.

1 am only stating what I thought was an historical fact. I am not particularly recommending that we should have that policy at the moment; all I am saying is that it is one reason why we were so unready in 1939. I should have thought that that was an historical fact.

We know that during the war the Prime Minister of that time decided also to become Minister of Defence, and from that decision emerged the system which we now have, based on the White Paper Cmd. 6923, 1946, on the central organisation of defence, to which I have already referred. It was from this White Paper that the post of Minister of Defence in time of peace dates. What I am asking my right hon. Friend now is whether he can tell us a little about the system as it has worked over the years since 1946.

In a special article published on 7th May, 1949, The Times had some rather pertinent questions to ask, and I should like to repeat them. The article said:

"What is the main task of the Ministry of Defence? To co-ordinate. What does coordination amount to? Various things, but most of all the creation of a common policy and due apportionment of available resources between the three Services.…The Defence Ministry is rather called upon for a definite task of statesmanship.…After all a Ministry of Defence has no justification unless its position is regarded as one of supreme importance."

"Supreme" is a very strong word, and I think that that Minister should have at least equality with the most powerful members of the Cabinet, especially the Foreign Secretary and the Chancellor. I do not think any of us will pretend, whatever our party, that the position enjoyed by Ministers of Defence since 1946 has always been in that category. I would now ask whether the present Minister should be placed in a position where, at meetings of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet, he could have the final say over the Chancellor. It is an essential part of their position that the needs of the Services are seen as a whole. Ought not the Minister of Defence to be the spokesman in the Cabinet for a combined operation? I understand that that is precisely what he is not, the individual Service Departments having to argue their own cases as far as expenditure is concerned.

I visualise a system in which the Minister of Defence first consults the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Department to agree on what is required and on the support that is available from abroad. He then consults the three Services at Ministerial and Chiefs of Staffs level as to the contribution by each of those three to fulfil that task. Next, he consults the Minister of Supply regarding ways of meeting the needs for weapons, and, finally, the Minister of Labour, regarding the need for manpower, both for the Armed Forces and for the manufacture of the necessary weapons and equipment.

Unless something like that takes place first, I do not believe that the Minister of Defence can possibly be expected to be able to lay before the Defence Committee and the Chancellor what is really required in order to perform the task. I would agree with The Times article which I have already quoted—that this is certainly a job which indeed calls for statesmanship and a very hard-headed business approach.

I would now ask, in order to assist that process, whether the time has not now come when the Departments concerned with defence ought to be separated from the rest of the home civil Departments in the same way as the Foreign Service was separated in 1946. According to the lecture by Sir Edward Bridges from which I have already quoted, the average period of turn-round in Departments is three years for each official. Some of the higher ones stayed longer, but Sir Edward Bridges said that three years was the average period of service in a Department by the more important officials.

I suggest that, with defence problems as complex as they are today, it would take the best part of three years for a new officer to become fully conversant with the subject, and it seems rather a pity that immediately he does so he is moved on somewhere else, not necessarily in a defence Department at all, and someone new is brought into his place.

Lord Chatfield, in his book from which I quoted earlier, made some startling recommendations. I do not know whether they would all be welcomed by the House; but on page 202 he says that

"all in the political ranks who are likely to rise, say to an Under-Secretaryship, ought to go through a course at the Imperial Defence College, which should be considerably enlarged."

That would be preselection with a vengeance. Certainly, as defence becomes more complicated, we become more aware how difficult it is to talk with any very great knowledge about any of the latest weapons. Lord Chatfield also said that, by this means

"those taking up appointments in Service Departments would then be basically as well-informed as those entering Civil Departments, would earlier grasp the problems, and would be in a strong position to discuss such problems and better able to understand and criticise expert advice."

One might add to that that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I think we have all long had an abhorrence of Government by experts, but certainly in the case of defence there is a case for potential Service Ministers having as good a knowledge as possible of the basic needs of the Armed Forces, as we all ought to have of the basic civil needs of our constituents.

I have said that I am trying to tackle one of the most impregnable of fastnesses, and I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) was once reported as saying that the Treasury was very hard to understand—in fact, too hard. However, nothing daunted, nothing done, and I therefore hope that hon. Members will agree that it is our duty to probe into the most closely guarded preserves of the Government machine for the very reason that they are so closely guarded. When that is not done, we find that appalling things can happen, as the quotation which I have given from Lord Chatfield's book shows.

I should like to ask a question of the Government now, because I think it is perhaps the real crux of the defence issue. One of the main reasons why I put down this Motion is that the Treasury seems to be re-asserting the stranglehold to which Lord Chatfield referred as existing between the wars, and that stranglehold is now beginning to tighten over the Air Ministry and the Ministry of Supply. I ask my right hon. Friend: ought it not to be the duty and indeed the aim of the Treasury to speed the implementation of decisions of the Defence Committee of the Cabinet and to ensure the economic placing of orders? If industry is to cooperate fully, it must be able to place orders for materials in economic quantities well ahead, and the take-up of production by Departments must be known beyond one year ahead.

It seems to me to be utterly wrong that Treasury scrutiny should ever again become as protracted or as obstructive as it was during the war. Far from checking waste—and I have every sympathy with my right hon. Friend in his desire to do that—it would tend to increase waste in the long run, for costs inevitably rise if manufacturers are forced to operate on uneconomic batches and on suddenly varied orders.

I say that it is the duty of the Treasury here to see that contracts are correctly drawn up and that proper accountancy is maintained, but let it not exercise that discretion over defence policy previously decided at Cabinet level. Its aim rather should be to speed up the implementation of those decisions.

To sum up, may I ask my right hon. Friend this question? Would he first comment on Ministerial responsibility for appointments, and see whether something can be done to improve the position and avoid the tragic happening that we all regretted so much? Secondly, would he tell us what has been done by way of implementation of the 16th Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure regarding the separation of supply from establishment? Then would he comment also on the automatic coupling of the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury with the official head of the Civil Service? Would he tell us something about the position of the Minister of Defence vis-à-vis the Treasury and Service Ministers, and would he consider the possibility of separating the defence Departments from the rest of the home Civil Service?

I hope that the matters which I have raised will be regarded by the House as worthy of consideration. Perhaps a Select Committee is a better method of considering this matter in detail, but I should welcome comments from the Government and the House on this matter. I am convinced that, however good the policy, however qualified the Ministers, however painstaking the civil servant, unless the responsibilities of each are as clearly defined as possible at all levels, and unless the Treasury is directed to co-operate rather than to obstruct the work of Cabinet defence decisions, waste, frustration and delay will inevitably result, to the detriment of the nation's security.

More important than all these things is the division of loyalties that is inherent in a system under which the control of expenditure is exercised by the same Department as that controlling the promotion and advancement of civil servants. That seems to be the greatest flaw in our present machinery of Government, and I hope the House will support me in securing further and continuing examination of so important a matter.

I beg to second the Motion.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) has moved the Motion in a characteristically interesting and forceful speech, and I feel that the House, and indeed the country, should be grateful to him for having brought such an important matter to our notice today. We are directly concerned, in the terms of this Motion, with the expenditure of some £1,500 million of public money every year and we are indirectly concerned with a whole range of public expenditure no matter on 'what it may be.

My hon. and gallant Friend was perhaps mainly worried about the effect of Treasury control on efficiency. I myself am more worried at its failure to achieve economy. But, after all, efficiency and economy go hand in hand, and if we sacrifice the one we shall lose the other. The problem is essentially one of the machinery of government, a most complicated and difficult matter, but one on which differences do not normally develop on party lines.

I therefore hope that the House will not allow itself to be diverted by the Amendment on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. and learned Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hector Hughes) into a highly controversial argument about the relative merits of welfare and defence. I suppose all of us will agree that we need both of them, and how much we spend on one as against the other is a question of policy which has very little to do with the question of Treasury control as such; although it is true that by the strict economy of expenditure on defence we shall have more money left over for welfare, and to that extent this Motion is both relevant and helpful to the cause which the hon. and learned Gentleman has so much at heart.

I have little doubt that my hon. and gallant Friend was right in his Motion to focus attention upon defence, not merely because of his special knowledge of the subject, but also because of the magnitude of defence expenditure, on the one hand, and also because the margin either for waste or for saving is perhaps greater in the case of defence than it is in the welfare services.

My hon. and gallant Friend said something of the mystery which surrounds the precise way in which Treasury control is exercised, and I am not in the least surprised that he should find it difficult to follow. Indeed, I should be very surprised if many hon. Members could pass an examination on the subject, and I would extend that comment even to those hon. Members who serve on the Select Committees dealing with the Estimates and Public Accounts. Indeed, I would go further and say that a great many of the officials who actually work the system are in some doubt as to the precise manner in which it is intended to operate.

Perhaps I could cite my own experience. From 1950 to 1952 I was Vice-Controller of the Navy, and in that office it fell to my lot to sponsor expenditure running into millions of pounds every year, and it was also part of my duties to give the official, albeit very often formal, approval to a very much greater range of expenditure. But at no time was I ever shown any clear or definite instructions delineating the respective spheres of the finance branches within the Admiralty Department on the one hand and the Treasury on the other.

Sometimes, it is true, when one was discussing some new project there would be dark hints that Treasury approval would have to be sought and would probably not be forthcoming. Again, when papers came for final approval for spending a certain amount of money, there was always the formula, written usually by the Admiralty Finance Branch, "No financial objection." Sometimes that was varied to read "The Treasury have been consulted and there is no financial objection."

I soon learned, however, that the absence of any reference to the Treasury by no means meant that that Department had not been consulted. I remember one piece of expenditure to which I took exception, and instead of writing "Approved" I wrote, "There is every financial objection to this extravagant and unnecessary project which reflects discredit on all who have sponsored it." This mild observation caused intense anger at the Treasury who apparently had studied it with great care and had certified—on what grounds I do not know—that it was an economical and proper undertaking.

When my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury intervenes, I would not ask him to attempt to explain exactly how the system works, even were he so minded, because I believe that were he to try to do so he would unwittingly but inevitably mislead the House. I think the system has grown so flexible and is so dependent upon personal relationships between the various civil servants concerned as to become almost capricious. I believe that this flexibility has gone too far. It has dulled the sense of personal responsibility that should be felt by all who spend public money. I think that even Departmental Ministers are misled into a genuine belief that there is no room for economy in the Estimates which they are presenting merely because they know that those Estimates have been very carefully scrutinised and approved by the Treasury, and yet no one outside the Treasury knows how or by whom this scrutiny has been made or with what qualifications.

Therefore, my first recommendation would be—and I would welcome the views of my right hon. Friend on this—that we should have a somewhat more rigid system, even though it may be un-English, which at least is capable of fairly clear definition so that everyone in Whitehall knows exactly how he stands.

My hon. and gallant Friend spoke of the harmful effect of Treasury control on the efficiency of the Fighting Services, and of course this is undoubtedly a fact from time to time. I suppose that is inevitable with any system which is intended to save money. It occurs particularly when delays take place before a new project is authorised. Perhaps I might remind the House that the Treasury's principal weapon is delay. In my experience it is most uncommon for the Treasury to turn down a project flat. It is even more rare for them to write back to say, "This is a very good idea, but we have worked out a way in which you can do it more cheaply." The more common process is to delay in the hope that the originator may be run over by a bus, or something like that, but possibly if the delay can be kept up long enough the man will be moved on to another appointment, and his successor may have another bee in his bonnet and the whole thing will be dropped. Of course, those hopes are often well founded.

I would not necessarily quarrel with that side of the Treasury work. At the same time it is a method which can be exceedingly tiresome and frustrating. I recall that early in 1950 a project was submitted from a big establishment for a central heating system to replace a number of isolated separate heating systems in various buildings and a large number of the coke-burning stoves which were so popular in Army life in years gone by. It was a very expensive project. Speaking from memory, I believe that about £100,000 were involved. The sponsors, as always on these occasions, pointed out that the whole of this money would be repaid by economies within four years. One has heard that before. We checked the proposals very carefully. It was an exceedingly complicated and technical matter, and I must say, that rather to my surprise the claims appeared to be quite well founded.

Naturally, approval was sought from the Admiralty Finance Committee, approval was given and the necessary provision was made in the Estimates for the following year. As hon. Members who deal with these matters know, the next hurdle is to get the financial approval for going out to tender for the contracts. When this stage was reached months of delay followed. When this came to my notice I asked for the papers to see what was happening. Through, I think, the inexperience of a newly joined official, these were sent back to me without the private correspondence with the Treasury having been removed.

I read it with fascination. It was a leisurely exchange of letters between, I should imagine, two middle-aged classical scholars. They exchanged their views on the soundness or unsoundness of what, as I have said, was a highly technical problem and, not unnaturally, they could come to no conclusion. Meanwhile, nothing happened.

That, I submit, is not the way to go about financial control. Indeed, one of the greatest weaknesses of the present set-up is the isolation of the officials of the Treasury who so often have the power to say "yea," or "nay," from the professional officers who alone have the technical knowledge to argue the case. It is as if the Treasury were an omnipotent deity, invisible and unapproachable, only to be interceded with and placated by the high priesthood of the administrative civil servant in one's own Department who may or may not be equipped to argue one's case in one's absence.

It is very rare for the case to be presented directly to the Treasury by the professional officers concerned, though I must say in passing, out of fairness, that there are sometimes exceptions. Perhaps it is no accident that the exception which I can remember most clearly was that of Mr.—as he then was—Edward Bridges in the years before the war when he was chairman of the T.I.C., who always, when he could, asked the officers who put up a proposal to see him and argue the case directly. That, I submit, was the way in which it should be done.

To my mind, the most damaging weakness of the whole machinery of Treasury control is that so often it does not in fact achieve economy at all. I could give a great many examples to support this charge, but only a few must suffice this afternoon. I mention first the waste which results from spreading programmes over a very long period. I concede that the initiative for this often does not come from the Treasury but from the spending Departments; but it is an exceedingly wasteful thing. In fact, it comes under the heading of delays being imposed after a project has begun. The result is that the spending Department accumulates a whole mass of pots all of which are simmering instead of having two or three pots which are boiling, but each pot requires the supervision of design and technical staff until it is finished. That is one of the main reasons why Ministers come to the House and tell us from time to time about the acute shortage of design and technical staff. That is a point that arises directly from a sort of go slow policy and of having too many projects at the same time.

I suggest that the Treasury should take exactly the opposite to their normal line. They should prevent Departments from getting on with the new loves until they are off with the old. In effect the Treasury should say to a Department, "Against our better judgment you have obtained Ministerial approval for an £8 million palace of folly. We are advised now that the most economical thing is to get on with the building and finish it in four years. Therefore, whether you like it or not, you will set aside £2 million for each of the four years until it is finished, and do not bother us with any new ideas until it has been done." I think, incidentally, that if that line were taken the spending Departments would be very much more careful before they embarked on some of these projects.

I should also like to see the Treasury instituting thorough post mortems into the actual consequences of certain expenditure. I would give one or two examples of what I mean. Anyone who cares to go to Portland Bill will see that it is now crowned with one of the most magnificent extravagances of modern times. I believe it is the biggest building in the United Kingdom. This is an entirely non-party matter, because I think it was put in train during the time of the Coalition Government. I fancy that it is now just finished. The object of the inquiry should be to try to ascertain what the total cost has been. I can assure hon. Members that that is by no means a simple thing. Those who spend the money use artifices to spread the cost between a large number of votes. It is by no means simple to find the true cost.

The next job is to find out what is the total use to which the thing is being put and whether exactly the same result could not have been achieved at a very much smaller cost, and finally, although this sounds vindictive, who was really responsible who originally was the person who really backed the idea and got it put in train.

Would that be one of the Service Departments at fault?

I should imagine that it would.

Then the complaint must be that there was not sufficient control over that Department by the Treasury. Is that it?

That is precisely the point I have been trying to make for some time. The object of these inquiries should be to try to ensure that officers and officials who commit the defence Departments to unjustified expenditure should not again be employed in appointments in which they have to spend public money but should be given appointments of a different nature.

I am not a bit moved by the argument so often used to defend people that it is easy to be wise after the event. The point is that we pay these high professional men to be wise before the event. That is why we employ people at the sort of salaries we pay and with the sort of training and experience that we demand.

I should like to turn to another and entirely different criticism of Treasury control, the importance of which lies in the impression that it gives of financial laxity rather than in the size of the sums involved. As the House knows, ever since the days of Mr. Gladstone it has been virtually impossible for a public official to divert public money into his private pocket. That, I think we can say, has been stopped completely. But the same is not entirely true with regard to certain allowances which are collected by whole groups and categories of public servants under conditions which, I would say, are at least questionable.

I should like again to give examples. I refer again to the example quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke) during the course of the debate on the Army Estimates. He quoted the payment of home to duty travelling allowance. I do not want to discuss the merits of that allowance. There is room for two opinions as to whether it is justifiable or not. That is not the point. The point is that in order to obtain it, the applicant has to sign a declaration which in the great majority of cases is a false declaration, and which is known to be false. He has to sign a statement that he has made every endeavour during the preceding so many months to obtain accommodation nearer to his work. Of course, he has done nothing of the kind.

When he first took up the appointment he might have gone closer to his place of work had he been able to do so, but once he has moved in and settled in his house no one would expect him to uproot himself six months later and move ten miles nearer to where he is working. It would be most unreasonable to expect him to do so. It may be justifiable to pay him a home to duty travelling allowance, but what I challenge is the wisdom of the Treasury in requiring a form to be signed which contains in fact a false declaration, because that certainly tends to produce a climate of opinion among public servants which is unfavourable to strict financial stringency.

Equally discouraging is the response which the Treasury so often offers towards economies which they have not recommended themselves. It is a curious thing that if one makes proposals for big economies, particularly if they are bound to lead to reductions in establishment personnel, one has to move in secrecy or silence or one is outwitted before they can be put into force. That is my experience.

These are some of the reasons that lead me to the conclusion that the whole machinery of Treasury control is in need of overhaul.

I should like before I sit down to be constructive. I should like to suggest that reform should be directed towards one particular point. I think that we need a system which will result in the loyal and enthusiastic co-operation of the officials who are actually spending the money; that is to say, in the Defence Departments, of the directors of the spending authorities—the Director of Naval Construction at the Admiralty, the Master General of Ordnance at the War Office, and all the other high sounding directors-general at the Ministry of Supply. These are the people who are actually spending the money.

Then again, outside the Ministries we have the commanding officers and superintendents of the great Service establishments who are also spending money. I think that Treasury officials should realise that while they can help these people enormously to economise and run their places economically, they cannot coerce them, because, in the long run, the officials with the professional and technical knowledge will always outwit the Treasury. The terrible thing is that so many of them have come to think it smart and the right thing to do.

I would go further and say that officers of the highest rank feel it to be their duty to wring the utmost farthing out of the Treasury on behalf of the Department they represent. I think the cardinal fault in the present system and in the way in which it has grown up is the antagonism and the mistrust which exists between the Service officers and the professional service officials, on the one hand, and the Treasury, expressed vaguely as a sort of evil background entity, on the other hand. That is not quite such an ancient state of affairs as the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) indicated in an interjection during the speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely.

I can remember when I was a boy in the first World War, trailing behind the captain of my ship, when he went his rounds, and when we came to a compartment he would say to the second in command, "What are these two men doing?" The reply would be, "They are cleaning the compartment," or something like that. The captain would say, "I was afraid of that, commander. You have too many men in this ship; you are wasting manpower." Then we would go to another compartment and the captain would say, "What is the meaning of this? This place was painted out only a year or so ago. I will not have public money wasted in this manner." I assure the House that we do not find that attitude today.

Can we point to a remedy? Yes, I believe that we can. I would suggest for consideration that first of all these directors and commanding officers should be made more cost conscious and, when that has been done, they should be given greater financial autonomy. When that in turn has been done, they should be judged to some extent by that ability to run their commands economically. I feel certain that an approach on these lines is perfectly feasible, although it may not particularly commend itself to civil servants of medium seniority. To achieve this, the first thing that is necessary is to reclass the presentation of some of the Estimates so that they show the actual cost of certain establishments and certain services in a way which can be understood and appreciated by the people who are actually organising these services or controlling these establishments.

Some six years ago I went by instruction of Lord Hall, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty, on an economy tour around certain establishments with the object of reducing the manpower employed. Before starting, I got the finance branches to work out what each establishment was actually costing. I can assure the House that the commanding officers had absolutely no idea of this. They were astonished at the figures when they saw them, and they were the first to co-operate in the official economies which released a considerable number of men for productive work.

Having done this recast of the Estimates, I would suggest for consideration whether we should not redeploy some of the Treasury and some of the Departmental civil servants into a position where they could act as accounting officers and financial advisers to those people who are actually spending the money. I recognise that the level at which to do that requires very careful consideration.

Thirdly—and this is perhaps slightly off the point, but I feel that it is my duty to mention it—I should like to see much stricter enforcement of the rules against officers taking up appointments with firms with whom their Department has been in contractual relationship immediately after they retire. I think that it used to be a rule that there must be an interval of two years. I think that the House would be shocked if a return were called for of the number of occasions that exemption from that rule has been granted in recent years.

It is often argued that it is quite wrong to judge officers of the Fighting Services by their ability to run things cheaply and to economise. I believe there can be no greater fallacy than that. One of the greatest and most vital principles of war is economy of force. If officers are allowed to reach high rank without any regard for the economy with which they conduct their affairs, we see the result, as we did in the last war, in the production of plans requiring such immense forces that they could never be carried out.

I remember when we went to Norfolk House to outline the plan for "Operation Overlord" being given a plan which had been prepared by some body of staff officers, with what object I do not know, for the occupation of the Cherbourg Peninsula. It is an interesting fact that the forces for which those officers asked were actually greater than the forces subsequently used for the liberation of France.

In conclusion, I should like to make it perfectly clear that I do not blame the Treasury for the partial breakdown of financial control. Treasury officials, after all, are public servants, paid to carry out the policy of the Government of the day as endorsed by Parliament. If we wish to apportion blame, it rests with general public apathy. There are plenty of people who advocate economy of Government expenditure in broad terms, but there are very few people who either interest themselves in, or indeed support, detailed economy proposals to be applied to specific objects. That is quite a different thing, and it goes for the Press as well.

The Times, for example, regularly produces leading articles admonishing the Government to be economical, but on the rare occasions when hon. Members in this House propose substantial economies we find very little commendation or even reference to them in The Times. Not even the hon. Member for South Aryshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), with the sweeping economies he proposes, ever receives any notice whatever.

We really cannot expect effective financial control in Whitehall unless Parliament itself is willing to apply strict and detailed scrutiny of expenditure when the Estimates are voted. I suggest that if we fail to restore a more effective supervision over financial expenditure, the consequences may be at once grave and far-reaching because, for many years, the most difficult problem which has confronted successive Chancellors of the Exchequer—no matter from which party they have been drawn—has been to try to persuade this country to live within its income.

The most recent example is the advice and exhortation contained in the White Paper on the Economic Implications of Full Employment: but exhortation is not enough; it must be backed by example. That is what makes the subject matter of this Motion so important and so urgently deserving of our attention.

I am sure that the House will wish to congratulate both hon. and gallant Members who have moved and seconded this Motion. They have opened up a vast and interesting field of discussion, to some extent speculation, and in many respects of reform.

We cannot hope, in the time left to us today, to cover anything like the ground which a debate on this subject would justify. It is perhaps a pity that this House does not more frequently discuss these problems of the machinery of Government and of public administration. I agree that we are obsessed with questions of policy in this House and frequently ignore the difficulties and mistakes that may be made in administration. I say to my hon. Friends sometimes that the policy of nationalisation will be judged by the success or failure of administration. That is so frequently the case in bringing about big changes in the field of public life and social development.

Certainly in the years of the Labour Government the administration was strained to the utmost by having to adapt itself, to improvise and take the weight of a continuous stream of fresh and almost revolutionary legislation. The problems of administration can be easily overlooked, and yet it is probably there that the impact on the public will occur. The success of the whole venture will be judged by the experience of the man-in-the-street, when he seeks a particular service or goes with his troubles to a particular Government Department.

I impress on all those with whom I come in contact in the public service that the good name of the Civil Service will be judged by the man who comes to the counter in the Post Office or in the tax office or at the Ministry of Pensions and National Service. How he is treated will be his only test of whether the Civil Service should have the respect of the community at large. Therefore it is of great importance that the machinery of Government should be as good as we can make it, that the public administration should be as efficient and as flexible as the circumstances of the case require, and that the spirit of those applying the laws passed by this House is of the right sort.

The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) had scarcely been speaking for more than a few moments when we had an echo of Critchel Down and the question of Ministerial responsibility. I have no desire to go back to that unhappy episode. But I think it as well for the record, at all events from my point of view, to say that in my judgment it was not the Minister's 'acceptance of the responsibility for a mistake of his subordinate which alone led to his resignation. In my submission, it was the failure of the Minister to make his policy sufficiently well known and to ensure that all his officers understood clearly what he, as Minister, stood for, and what Her Majesty's Government stood for, about the particular matters with which each of these officers had to deal.

It was a failure all down the line rather than a simple case of the Minister accepting responsibility for delinquency or a mistake of a particular civil servant for which he felt he was accountable to the House. The Minister might have said, "I have found one of my officials doing wrong. I disapprove of the way that this matter has been handled and I shall take disciplinary action against him. I must accept responsibility for what has been done and I must give what redress I can to the injured citizens who have been the victims of this mistake in my Department's policy. There is no reason why I should resign. I have taken the necessary action in my Department since I discovered that it needed to be done." But that was not what the Minister said.

We all remember—I do with some shame—the proceedings at the Committee of Inquiry appointed by the Minister to go into these matters, with the right to call for papers and documents and do a job which in my opinion the Minister should have done. I hope that never again shall we have individual civil servants called before an independent committee of inquiry of that kind; with all the files, dossiers, minutes, personal and semi-official correspondence exposed to the gaze of the committee and the public, when really the Minister should have been in command of his own Department, and taken the responsibility for seeing that those in his Department in charge of those matters obeyed his views and carried out his policy.

The next thing dealt with by the hon. and gallant Gentleman was his own particular "King Charles's head"—the head of the Civil Service. I had nothing to do with the creation of the head of the Civil Service, though I remember clearly the circumstances in which it was done. The hon. and gallant Member asked whether it was necessary or desirable to have any such appointment, and, if so, need the headship of the Civil Service necessarily be linked with the post of Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.

I imagine that the designation of an officer at the head of the Civil Service is necessary if that person, or some person, is to be regarded as the principal adviser to the Prime Minister and to the Government on the suitability of an appointment at the highest level in a Government Department. Quite clearly there could be no internal promotions board of the conventional kind which could review possible candidates for headships of Departments; a promotions board can function only if those on it are higher in rank than any of the posts for which they have to consider candidates. We could not have a promotions board composed of heads of Departments selecting new heads of Departments. If there is a suggestion of calling in people from outside, I think there are obvious deficiencies and disadvantages in such a suggestion.

On the whole, the present arrangement works pretty well. Indeed, we have a genius for making things work which are theoretically open to criticism or objection. Consider the great triumph of the Income Tax system in this country, which tore up the law from beginning to end and made the thing work; and which until a few years ago was operating this most complex administration of direct taxation on the law of 1842. It is amazing what genius we have for public administration and for getting round all the difficulties and pitfalls of the theories and machinery of government.

Somebody must advise the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the head of the Department on a suitable appointment to make to a senior post. The Minister may have just arrived or have been there only a few minutes when the Permanent Secretary dies or when a vacancy occurs for some other reason, and in that event he will not be in a position to appoint a successor from his own Department, and still less be in a position to appoint a successor from any other Department or make a transfer where a promotion would not be involved.

Recently we have had a new Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue. He has come from the Ministry of Food. That Department disappeared and a Permanent Secretary post was no longer available to him there. One arose in the Inland Revenue, and we had Sir Henry Hancock sent to us. He has been made very welcome, and I am sure that he will make a very good Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue.

The hon. and gallant Member said that these people remain in their positions, on an average, only three years. He said that Sir Edward Bridges had stated that they change frequently, and he asked how much they can get to know about their Departments; they would just be getting to know it and then would probably be transferred. To some extent that is true, although Sir Harold Parker has been Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Defence for the past three years, and the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury has been there longer than three years. Sometimes the stay is short and sometimes it is long.

I well remember what Sir James Grigg said when he came to the Board of Inland Revenue, "I have not come here to learn all about Income Tax. There are 20,000 people whose job it is to know it all and I am not going to try to catch them up. I am here to tell the Inland Revenue what the public will not stand for." I think that was a pretty good start for a new Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue.

In those high administrative posts it is the interpretation of policy in terms of administration which is the prime function of the head of the Department—and, of course, to advise Ministers, when they come to him with their hare-brained schemes and cock-eyed ideas. His job is to advise and to warn the Minister of possible consequences of following a particular line of policy.

On the whole, I think, the present arrangements work pretty well, and if we were to have a head of the Civil Service who was not Permanent Secretary to the Treasury we should have much confusion at the top. When the Labour Government left office it was all arranged that Sir Norman Brook, Secretary to the Cabinet, should become Permanent Secretary to the Treasury in succession to Sir Edward Bridges, who was approaching 60 and who would, in the normal course, have retired. When the right hon. Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) became Prime Minister, he was not going to let the Secretary to the Cabinet go. Sir Norman Brook had been there before when the right hon. Gentleman had been Prime Minister, and the right hon. Gentleman was going to hang on to him. He did, with the result that the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury who wished to transfer to a quieter and more academic life had to postpone doing so.

If that is going to be done in the future, are we going to have the head of the Civil Service, whom the hon. and gallant Member said might be the Secretary to the Cabinet, stepping up to the Permanent Secretaryship of the Treasury, or stepping down, or what? There has to be a pinnacle to the whole thing, and it is much more suitable for the headship to be in the hands of the permanent Secretary to the Treasury. I do not see very much point in that suggestion of the hon. and gallant Member.

Of course, there were more questions of this kind and many others affecting the organisation of the Departments which might have been referred to the Royal Commission appointed by the Government to deal with principles and pay in the public service—the Priestley Commission. But the Government chose to make that reference fairly narrow. I am not complaining because I think such a task would have taken them a long time, and it is as well, perhaps, that they were not given too much to do.

I agree with the hon. and gallant Gentleman that it is a matter which would well repay closer study in the light of our experience in these post-war years where the problems of Government, the machinery of public administration, have had to take a much heavier strain than ever before. I would certainly welcome any opportunity of studying the workings of this system and of making a report to the House and to the public.

I think I had better stop now because other hon. Members may wish to make a contribution to the debate. Therefore, I will conclude with only two or three sentences about what the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) said with regard to allowances. I think that the Civil Service will expect me to say something in reply to that.

I do not believe that the individual civil servants make false declarations in order to receive these allowances. What happens is that the civil servant may be transferred from one place to another, when a change of residence is desirable or necessary in order to enable him to live reasonably near his new work. He may have a house, he may be an owner-occupier, and he may have gone into a house quite recently. He is naturally upset at having to move again. Authority is given for him to move his residence when he finds suitable accommodation, and while he is searching for that he is paid an allowance to cover the additional expense of living away from home in the station to which he has been posted. He has to certify, I know, that he is searching for alternative accommodation—diligently searching for it—and I am sure that in present circumstances many officers are diligently searching without any visible result.

I do not think that there is very much there which is open to criticism. Moreover, there are supervising officers who know fairly well what the man is doing, and it is open to them to express any view on whether they think their subordinate officer is making a diligent search or not.

It is not the individual whom I am criticising; it is the idiotic form which he is asked to sign. That is my point.

I think it very right and proper that, if an allowance is being paid to an officer for living in apartments or in a hotel in his new station while he is searching for suitable alternative permanent accommodation, he should be searching for suitable alternative permanent accommodation, because, otherwise, these heavy temporary expenses may continue for an indefinite time.

I do not quarrel with the principle; I merely quarrel with the hon. and gallant. Gentleman's belief that a number of officers sign these statements falsely. I do not think that many of them do. I fully agree that these travelling, subsistence and detached duty expenses, and all the rest, are complex matters, and they do require adequate supervision and integrity on the part of all concerned.

My experience is that there is nothing about which the public could really complain; and, what is more, the public get away with a good deal in imposing additional travelling and living costs on civil servants as a result of transfer, for which they are not reimbursed out of public funds.

I should like to thank warmly all three hon. Members who have so far taken part in this debate, and in particular to congratulate, in company with the whole House, my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) on having used his place in the ballot to bring this exceedingly important matter before us. My only regret is that there has not been a larger House to listen to the debate. We are touching on matters of great moment.

I feel some diffidence, having only two years ago been sitting on the back benches, in seeking to reply over so wide a field and to answer a number of the questions raised, when some of them are of a character that could properly be answered only by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister himself. I will do my best to give such information as I can, and I certainly promise here and now that all constructive suggestions which have been thrown out during the debate will be further investigated.

A few moments ago the Treasury was described as an evil background influence. I hope I may be able to repel that charge. The Treasury was said to be an impregnable citadel into which it was impossible to break and which ideas such as have been adumbrated in this debate could hardly pierce. The Treasury is not quite like that. When I knew that this debate was to take place, I sought what information I could on these great subjects in the Treasury library, the very keep of the citadel. From there I took out a book published in 1950 called "Master of the Offices," which was written either by my hon and gallant Friend or by somebody else of the same name. It bore the bookplate of the Treasury inside and it has evidently been thumbed.

My hon. and gallant Friend asked me a number of questions. He spoke first about Ministerial responsibility for appointments in the Civil Service, and it was quite clear to me that he had in mind the Critchel Down affair, setting that against a background stretching over the years.

The Civil Service is a permanent body; it is the permanent Civil Service. I am quite sure none of us would wish to see introduced in this country anything even approaching the spoils system which, to our mind, mars administrative arrangements elsewhere. We have set up the Civil Service. There is no patronage in entry into it. There is no patronage in appointments, and the Service has this magnificent record of serving all parties in the House equally, whichever may form the Government of the day. After a General Election has taken place and the colour of the Government has changed, I have never heard of Ministers complaining that the civil servants whom they found in their Departments were not at once putting themselves wholly, absolutely and impartially at the service of the new Government.

I submit to the House that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely is going too far when he asks—if indeed he does ask—that in some way the Minister should be held accountable only for the actions of civil servants whom he has appointed to their posts, or whose appointments he has himself approved. We cannot break up the work of the Civil Service into sections according to the date of a new Minister in a new Department. The Minister must clearly satisfy himself that the staffing of his Department is right, and if he is convinced that somebody in his Department is thoroughly unsatisfactory or disloyal he must take steps to have that person removed from his position.

Subject to that, I would say that our system works well. My hon. and gallant Friend probably has in mind that, not at present but perhaps in the past and perhaps again in the future, unsatisfactory consequences have or may follow from the power which can be exercised by the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury with regard to higher appointments. It is important for us to appreciate exactly what is the position. It is not the case that permanent secretaries are appointed by the Prime Minister, or by anybody other than the Minister in charge of the Department concerned. Permanent secretaries, deputy secretaries, establishment officers and finance officers in the home Civil Service are appointed by Departmental Ministers, subject to the Prime Minister's approval, and before the Prime Minister expresses his approval he is advised by the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.

That is the way in which the procedure is laid down, and that is the way in which I would say that it was working very satisfactorily at the present time. I am sure that we should all agree that some machinery is desirable, both to ensure that a Departmental Minister cannot appoint somebody as permanent secretary just because he has a special personal feeling towards that man, or a special personal knowledge of him. We should equally agree that when the post of permanent secretary falls vacant all those inside as well as outside the Department concerned who appear to be of the requisite calibre should be considered for it, and considered at the highest level.

My hon. and gallant Friend further asked me about the Sixteenth Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure, 1941–42. It is true that I was a Member of the National Expenditure Committee at that time, but I did not serve upon the sub-committee which produced that Report. I certainly take my share of responsibility for it, but I cannot for a moment claim to have originated any of its ideas. My hon. and gallant Friend asked what had been done as a result of that Report. One of its recommendations was that organisation and establishment work in the Treasury should be separated from supply at all levels below the post of permanent secretary. We have gone a long way in that direction already.

My hon. and gallant Friend was not correct when he said that since 1943 we have not seen very much done. One of the second secretaries in the Treasury, Sir Thomas Padmore, is concerned exclusively with establishment work and the machinery of government. It is not customary to mention civil servants by name in this House, but civil servants have already been mentioned by several hon. Members, with appreciation of their work. It is in that same spirit that I might mention one or two, because I want to make the situation as clear as I can.

The divorce between supply and establishment work at divisional level in the Treasury has also been carried a long way. It is true that there are mixed divisions which handle both kinds of work, for reasons of administrative convenience and efficiency. Treasury control of expenditure on establishments is inseparable from its control of all other forms of Government expenditure. That was accepted in the Report of the Select Committee, but I am not sure whether it is accepted by my hon. and gallant Friend. We really must stand on that.

The Select Committee later recommended that there might be a new junior Minister in the Treasury, a new Parliamentary Secretary, who was not to be Chief Whip, but was to have a special Parliamentary responsibility for the supervision of the Civil Service. Since then a new junior Minister has been created, but he is the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. I am thankful to say that my hon. Friend greatly relieves me of a load of work which otherwise would fall on the Financial Secretary. To that extent the burden on the Financial Secretary is less than it was.

I would regard it as a matter of regret and a retrograde step if Treasury responsibility for the supervision of the Civil Service were taken right away from the Financial Secretary and were given to a new Minister who had nothing else to do. There would be the danger of that new junior Minister's attempting to do the second secretary's work himself. He would inevitably become deeply involved in, and fascinated by, the detail. I doubt whether that is the kind of Ministerial supervision that is desired. I may do my job inadequately as regards the Civil Service, but that is for the House and the Civil Service to judge. I count it as an advantage from my point of view that my special responsibility there runs along with my responsibility in a great many other fields, so that I can use my judgment on one and on the other and can assess financial questions arising in connection with the Civil Service along with, and as an integral part of, the special responsibility for control of expenditure generally that lies always with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

My hon. and gallant Friend asked me whether it was really necessary that the post of official head of the Civil Service and the post of permanent secretary to the Treasury should always be combined in one person. I do not suppose there is anything sacred and immutable about that, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, but it is working extremely well at the present time. From all my experience I would think it a very great pity to break up, on theoretical grounds, an arrangement which is working so satisfactorily. With respect to the whole field of the machinery of government which we have been discussing, I hope none of us thinks that all the present arrangements are settled and crystallised for all time.

The needs change, personalities change, and what the House is right to demand is that Ministers should be constantly on the watch, constantly ready to learn and constantly ready to adapt arrangements to new needs, and Ministers need to put themselves in a position to satisfy the House that this is so. But I would deprecate any idea that we should necessarily change because someone, however eminent, has advocated change in years gone by. We are all inclined to scoff at the sort of soldiers and sailors who appear to be planning for the last war. I must say that occasionally in my hon. and gallant Friend's speech I thought that he was planning for the last peace. What we must do is to take our arrangements as they stand, judge whether they are satisfactory, never make them too inflexible, and always be ready to improve where improvement is shown to be essential.

My hon. and gallant Friend spoke of the position of the Minister of Defence vis-à-vis the Treasury and vis-à-vis the Service Departments. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence was here throughout my hon. and gallant Friend's speech—he asked me to apologise that he was not able to stay until the end of the debate—and I would be chary of expressing dogmatic views about the relationship between the Minister of Defence and Service Departments. That is the sort of matter which can be debated in the Defence debates and elsewhere, and obviously I can speak only at second hand.

When it is suggested that perhaps the Minister of Defence is not in a strong enough position vis-à-vis Service Ministers, it surely needs to be recollected that he is a member of the Cabinet and they are not. I am quite sure that it is the policy of Her Majesty's Government to make certain that the Minister of Defence is in a strong enough position to discharge the responsibilities which clearly rest upon him.

As between the Minister of Defence and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and on this whole question of Treasury control of defence expenditure, I would suggest that one needs to bear in mind that if there are clashes about big issues they can only be resolved by the Cabinet. When the Service Estimates are being planned clearly there must be close consultation, not only between the Minister of Defence and a wide range of other people who can help him to judge what the defence needs of the country in the years ahead will amount to, but also between him and the Chancellor. In those direct consultations between those two Ministers there must be an endeavour to work out a ceiling of defence expenditure for the coming year, or years, which the Minister of Defence judges will suffice to enable him to provide the country with the defences it needs, and which the Chancellor of the Exchequer believes the economy can bear.

I do not want to take up a selfish Treasury view on this, but I am sure that both sides of the House appreciate that in these days when our resources are strained to the uttermost the one way in which we can be sure that we shall bring down the whole structure is to try to do too much at once. Therefore, it is essential that the Minister of Defence should carry the Chancellor with him as to the amount which we can afford to allocate for defence purposes.

When the overall estimate for defence in general and for each Service Department in particular is settled, then what is the rôle of the Treasury? My hon. and gallant Friend, and at some points also my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett), was inclined to suggest that the Treasury then went all out to try to stop the spending of money and to see whether by any possible means they could bring down the actual amount that was spent in 12 months to figures substantially below what the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Minister of Defence had agreed it was reasonable to spend.

I do not think it works quite like that. What the Treasury has to do is to exercise the same general supervision, the same duties and the same control as regards the Defence Estimates which everybody accepts that it has to do as regards the Civil Departments. There must be a scrutiny of expenditure within the Service Departments themselves. Nothing can take the place of that, and I was very glad to hear my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Croydon, North-East speaking of the necessity for training people in particular positions in the Service to be cost-conscious, because this certainly cannot be done by the Treasury alone. It certainly cannot be done by the Service Ministers alone, and, right through the whole public service, both civil and military, we shall in fact gain if those who carry large responsibilities, professional or otherwise, are constantly asking themselves whether they could achieve the same results with a smaller expenditure of money.

I hope it is not true, as my hon. and gallant Friend suggested, that the Treasury's principal weapon is delay. We certainly do not go into it with that purpose, and I would rather think that the Treasury's principal weapon was inquiry—the technique of asking questions to make sure that the proposals for implementing policy are thoroughly thought out, so that as the money comes to be spent it will achieve the maximum results.

Certainly, we at the Treasury do not believe that it is good tactics for us to seek to rival the Departments in the expert knowledge which they possess in their own fields. Treasury officials are amateurs; they are exceedingly clever amateurs, and they are not, I venture to say, always cautious amateurs. Perhaps, before I went to the Treasury, I had the mistaken idea that the essence of the Treasury civil servant was caution. I think it is a wise discretion that asks questions before taking or agreeing to action, but I would say that vigour rather than caution was the predominating quality of those who are in responsible positions in the Treasury concerned with this matter of the control of expenditure.

We have got away from the old situation in which the Treasury, so to speak, sought to meddle in everything and to allow no detail to pass until express Treasury approval had been given. On the contrary, it is for the Treasury to test the projects put forward and to obtain enough information to satisfy themselves whether the schemes which are being planned are well-founded, to make sure that enthusiasm does not run ahead of prudence and commonsense-and to bear in mind the remark of the Haldane Committee, which I believe no one has ever challenged, that

"our whole experience seems to show that the interests of the taxpayer cannot be left to the spending departments."

The Treasury officials and Treasury Ministers alike are well aware that by constantly calling for delay one can vitiate economy. Very grave decisions have to be taken in the defence field in these days, especially with the new nuclear weapons, transforming strategy Judgments have to be reached as to what kind of war we have to prepare for and to what extent we should allocate our resources for the new or the old strategy. This is a time when the most profound thought must be given to these questions, and that is one reason why I welcome this debate.

I submit that it would be a mistake if here and now the House called for a comprehensive review of the machinery of government, because in my view a comprehensive review of the machinery of government is too big a task for any one set of men to tackle. We have got to divide it up. We have got to take our problems one by one, and I hope that I have succeeded in these few remarks of mine in showing that we have not been asleep since 1943, that we have gone a long way in the direction recommended by the Select Committee, and that, far from being petrified in our views, we are constantly seeking new and better ways of achieving the greatest value for money.

Finally, Parliament itself has a part to play in all this, not only in Friday debates. We have the Estimates Committee which has been hardly mentioned in this debate. We have the Select Committee on Public Accounts which is admirably fitted to do a great deal of the work of the post mortems to which my hon. and gallant Friend has referred. These Committees may sometimes criticise the Treasury, but we at the Treasury regard them as most valuable potential allies.

When I ask my hon. and gallant Friend not to press this Motion, I do so, not because I wish in any way to escape from the pressure of Parliament in respect of the importance of these matters, but rather because I believe we need to divide them up to take one thing at a time and, above all, to show ourselves constantly alert to adapting our methods and actions to the developing needs of the time.

May I ask my right hon. Friend whether the Machinery of Government Committee served by the Organisation and Methods Division of the Treasury is not, in fact, giving just such a continuing and comprehensive review which is current all the time?

Yes, that Committee is in existence. In addition to that Committee, as I have sought to show, we have inquired into various facets of this matter and we have also, department by department, carried out investigations since the war over a very wide field, all designed to bring our arrangements up-to-date.

I was relieved when I heard the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) say that he was not going to press this Motion, because I should have voted for it if he had left out the last six words.

My impression, after listening to this debate—and I have heard every word of it—is that there is nothing like leather—for bootmakers. We had two speeches from distinguished members of the Services, who pointed out how perfect they were, and then we had my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), who was lost in admiration of the Treasury, and especially of the Income Tax Department which could operate down to a couple of years or so ago on lines that were based on 1842 and could still give satisfaction to everybody. Then we had the right hon. Gentleman the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, who is quite certain that the way in which his part of the Department is run at the moment is such as to make him feel every confidence in the person who has to discharge that part of the duties in the Treasury.

I could not go all the way with the two hon. and gallant Gentlemen who so ably moved and seconded the Motion. If there is trouble between the Minister of Defence and the Chancellor of the Exchequer—and it is well nigh inevitable—there is no ground for thinking that either of them is necessarily right. The people who have to settle the argument in the end must be the members of the Cabinet. That is self-evident. That is why I could not vote for the Motion.

Every Department has its troubles with the Treasury, and I think that some of the comments made about how the way the defence Departments on occasion think that their Estimates are mauled about could be said by every Department. We even say it at the meetings of the Trustees of the British Museum, and that is a department for which the right hon. Gentleman is responsible, and successive holders of that office are regarded, as they succeed one another, as public enemy No. 1.

Anyone who has served in public life, apart from Parliament, knows that exactly the same thing operates. The chairman of the finance committee of a county council or a borough council or even of an urban council, who has to say to the chairmen of the spending committees, "You must justify every penny you want to ask for," is in exactly the same position. He has his quarrels with the chairmen of the spending committees and, in the end, the council has to settle what the policy shall be.

As was well said by the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett), if one can save money on defence there is more money for welfare. That is on the assumption that there is a sum of money which ought to be taken and then shared out. That is not the view that I hold about public expenditure. I think that every Department should prove what it wants, and then the Cabinet, and ultimately this House, in its control of the Cabinet, should decide whether it can have it or not. It does not always follow that what we can save on the swings ought to be spent on the roundabouts. I hope that we shall not get into that way of looking at this sort of thing.

The hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely said that he hoped that he would not be accused of being original. That is the last thing I would accuse him of. I rather expect that if I did say it he would regard me as having offered him an insult. But he certainly showed in his speech that he had given a great deal of attention to the details of this matter and had amply fortified himself with all the authorities necessary. I am glad to know that his book is in the Treasury.

No advertising.

He did not advertise it. The right hon. Gentleman tried to defend himself behind the book. I am glad to know that it is there because a little light reading in the Treasury would do the people there a great deal of good and might convince them that the world is not nearly as serious a place as they are apt to think that it is.

The main point which the hon. and gallant Member raised was the issue as to who ought to be the head of the Civil Service. My belief in all these matters is that the best man for the job ought to get it. I cannot believe that of necessity the person who is the best Permanent Secretary to the Treasury must be the best head of the Civil Service because the two tasks, on occasion, call for very contradictory qualities.

The head of the Civil Service has to be a man who can deal with widely different human problems which sometimes must be anathema to the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. In saying that, I must not be thought to be casting the slightest reflection on the present Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, who is a very remarkable man because he possesses both qualities in a degree which is unusual in any one human being.

I can see an occasion when the next appointment has to be made to the Permanent Secretaryship of the Treasury. I do not know who the candidates are or who will be the people considered to be in the running for it, but it may very well be that the particular gentleman who is wanted for the Permanent Secretaryship to the Treasury does not possess some of the qualities that are necessary for the-head of the Civil Service and for the person who, at some stage or other, has to express an opinion as to who should fill the permanent headships of the other Government Departments.

The right hon. Gentleman read out the rules laid down as to the way in which consultations take place. I am quite sure that he will agree that, while those are the rules and they are in the end complied with, we do not always wait until the strict application of the rules takes place before the consultations take place. We have in this country an elastic way of dealing with these matters which enables a great deal of truth to be expressed in ways which do not hurt anyone's feelings. The whole thing is done in such a way as to avoid getting into conflicts which strict adherence to the rules might entail.

I think that the hon. and gallant Gentleman is to be congratulated on the debate which he enabled us to have today, and I am glad to know that he does not intend to press the Motion.

Before the clock strikes, may I thank the House for the consideration which has been given to this Motion and say that it was put down in an exploratory frame of mind. I am extremely grateful for what my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has said and also to the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede): In particular, I am grateful for the assurance of my right hon. Friend that these matters are not sacrosanct.