I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

The general principles of this Bill have all along been welcomed by both sides of the House, and I have no doubt that its provisions will be welcomed in the mining areas, for it solves a difficult problem which has defied solution for many generations, a problem which has grown year by year and caused increased chaos and hardship as it has grown. The Bill takes no rights from anybody—I stress that, even at this late stage—but it enables a right of repair or compensation to be obtained by those people who are without a remedy, When their property is damaged, at this moment.

Although the general principles of the Bill have been supported, many Clauses in it have caused much argument and detailed criticism. When such strong local feelings have been aroused—and I think we have disagreed at times—it is remarkable how friendly our debates have been. It is not for a Parliamentary Secretary to toss bouquets about the Chamber, but I should like to say what a pleasant and fruitful experience this has been. In particular I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) for all his help and wise counsel, which is derived from the experience he had on the Turner Committee and the interest he has taken in the subject ever since.

I should also like to acknowledge the large amount of patient and valuable hard work which has been done by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams), whom I have regarded as my opposite number throughout these debates. If I may say so, he sits very comfortably on the Opposition Front Bench. We are all very sorry that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal), through illness, has not been able to be with us to finish the job today.

Thanks to the efforts of all concerned the Bill is now a better Bill, but I am afraid that it is also a longer and more complicated one. A number of detailed improvements have been made in the original Clauses. For example, Clause 1 now clarifies three things of importance: first, with regard to damage caused because of alteration in level of gradients, although they may not in the ordinary sense have been damaged. Then it has been made clear that the repairs which the National Coal Board have to carry out include decorations. Attention has also been given to the point which caused doubt, about the de-watering of worked-out seams. It may be in order for me to mention that further clarification is needed of the word "purposes" in Clause 1 (2), in its relation to ancient monuments, and that will have attention.

Under Clause 2 a person who serves a damage notice may now ask the National Coal Board at any stage of the proceedings after serving the notice, and before the completion of repairs, to send a list of the repairs which the Board proposes to do, even though it has not started the work. I hope that will enable many disputes to be prevented, as well as enabling owners of property to know better where they stand.

Clause 5 has been most radically altered. That is the Clause which deals with damage to the land drainage systems of drainage authorities and river boards. We now have a Clause and a procedure which applies to all England and Wales, instead of a procedure which was extended area by area. It is to be hoped that the code now set out in Clause 5 will prove to be a practicable method of solving the rather difficult problems of damage to land drainage systems caused by mining subsidence. I should like to acknowledge the very great help which was given by my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill) with regard to this matter in Committee.

Under Clause 6, which deals with the avoidance of double remedies, we have now provided, instead of people having to make a once-for-all choice which might be fatal to their interests, that they will have a second chance if they are totally unsuccessful with regard to the first choice or if they abandon the first choice. We ought also to record that under Clause 6 the person with the lesser interest in the property will no longer be debarred from taking proceedings because somebody else has a greater interest in it.

Although the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) acknowledged that it would not have been possible to put a case that the whole of the Bill should be retrospective, we have, nevertheless managed to concede that there should be at least eighteen months' retrospection in respect of dwelling-houses, and that in fact and in practice means those dwelling-houses which were not covered by the 1950 Act.

We have set our faces against consequential losses, generally speaking, being covered by the Bill because that would have shattered the main structure of the Bill and, in our view, would have made it quite unworkable and a most terrible burden on the National Coal Board, but we have been able to provide that people who are rendered homeless shall in certain circumstances be given alternative accommodation and be paid removal expenses.

Further, the Board will now be liable for death or serious and permanent disablement caused by subsidence damage and directly proved to have been so and when there is no claim against a third party, and that liability of the Board will arise even though there has been no negligence on its part.

These concessions go beyond the main principles of the Bill without overloading its structure. We thought it was right to make these concessions in order to meet a fairly limited number of cases of real hardship, and we are advised that they are not likely to place an undue burden upon the National Coal Board.

Since the Bill was first presented, two important gaps of a rather technical kind have been filled, first, with regard to a tenant's right to compensation for improvements during his tenancy, a question discussed in some detail yesterday; and, second, with regard to the procedure to be followed when houses are so badly damaged by mining subsidence that the local authorities think fit to have a slum clearance order or at any rate to order demolition of an individual house. I should stress that the provisions which are now contained in the Bill apply to houses which have got into a bad condition only through mining subsidence. That should be borne in mind when reading the new provisions.

In conclusion, we hope that the Bill will give particular satisfaction to the local authorities and statutory undertakers and that it will thereby help the ratepayers and the community generally in the mining areas as well as relieve many cases of personal hardship which might otherwise, but for the Bill, have been most acute.

At the outset of my observations, I think it right that I should follow the Parliamentary Secretary in sending from the House to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal), who has been taken seriously ill, our good wishes and our hopes for his speedy recovery. We acknowledge all the very great work that he did in the earlier stages of the Bill and express our regret that he is not with us to take part in the later stages.

I rise most definitely to support the Third Reading. I think it right to acknowledge at once that the Bill is now a much better one than it was in its earlier stages, and that is in part so because of not only the fairness but the generosity of the Minister in dealing with the many technical points which we have submitted to him. Because of the complicated and technical nature of the Bill, it is not something for which he will receive any reward in the Press, but I think that he himself will feel that it is better that his reward should be in those areas which have been stricken by the subsidence damage to which the Bill relates, and in those areas his fairness and generosity will not pass unnoticed.

With regard to the Bill itself, I wish to address myself in particular to certain main principles and to express the hope that the provisions in the Bill and the spirit which we have all shown in cooperating to make it a better Measure will forcibly bring out the point that we all wish the Bill to be administered in such a way that the emphasis will be upon remedial works rather than depreciation payments. I say that with particular emphasis because on Second Reading I stated that the Bill, drafted as it was, would turn into a depreciation payment Measure.

I hope the House will be patient with me if I refer to a personal experience which relates directly to the provisions of the Bill. Some years ago my home was in a mining area, and it was badly affected by mining subsidence. I well remember getting up in the middle of the night on many occasions in the firm conviction that there was someone in my home because I believed that the noises would not have been made had there been nothing happening. Some time after that it was discovered that we were experiencing the beginnings of mining subsidence.

It so happened—this is why I have emphasised that we should be remedial-works-minded rather than depreciation-payment minded—that, although at that time every day of the week I was acting as an advocate against the colliery companies, I was one of those persons described in the Bill as having remedies apart from the Act. Therefore, when the subsidence had reached the point where the house was in danger, the colliery company concerned devoted itself to performing remedial works, and it saved my home by so doing. Had it been depreciation-payment minded, as it could have been, I should have had a cheque from it and I myself would have been responsible for doing the work.

It requires no imagination by hon. Members to appreciate that, having had that experience, I realise that throughout the mining areas there are men and women who have sunk their savings into their own homes and to whom it would spell ruin if remedial works were not performed but depreciation payments made. I mention that from the Front Bench on behalf of the Opposition because a great deal of the success of the Measure will depend on the emphasis which is placed on that aspect of the Bill.

We should bear in mind today that we are doing something which is an acknowledgment of the dreadful price which has had to be paid in the mining areas. Because we have decided that the payment shall be made not through the Exchequer but by the National Coal Board, the amount payable in respect of damage will ultimately fall upon the consumers of coal.

For more than twenty-one years I have acted in the closest professional and personal association with miners and there is not an area in this country in which I have not seen the dreadful evidence of mining subsidence. When we speak of the hazards of producing coal and of the price of coal in the mining areas, we think in terms very different from those outside the mining areas, and that is no reflection on those outside the mining areas. The price of coal is something which we in the mining areas have had to pay for generations, and the commercial price is an infinitesimal part of the total price which has to be paid for coal.

It must be realised in other areas that here we are dealing with one of the great hazards of the industry, hazards, as we have acknowledged in the Bill, to life and limb, hazards to property, risks of ruin to people who live in mining areas. In the Bill we are trying to provide a measure of defence against that type of hazard. I hope that we have done our work well. We have tried hard to do it well, but much depends—and I return to my point about remedial work—upon the Bill being so administered that it is the remedial works provision which will be predominant in the policy of the Board.

I do not think that anybody will criticise the Board when he finds that an increase in the price of coal is probably necessary. Any fair-minded person need only go to any part of the mining areas to see areas which look as though they have undergone the stresses of war. I speak advisedly and I am not over-stating the case when I say that.

We have had to devote ourselves to a close attention of many technical complexities. All we feel from the Opposition, as I am sure is felt from the Government side of the House, is that we have provided rough justice. We have not done more. We could not have done more. We could not have dealt precisely with every individual circumstance. There are still cases omitted and in future there will have to be Amendments of the Bill because of certain defects which, unfortunately, it still has.

However, it is a good Bill and a good practical atempt to deal with a dreadfully difficult and complicated situation. It will enable people in the mining areas to feel that we have not lost sight of the fact that, although they are exposed to the hazards which we take into account in the Bill, they will not be left without compensation and without any provision against those hazards.

The time has come, since we have devoted so many weeks in Committee and in close co-operation with each other—as a team I like to think—in improving this Measure, and since we found even as recently as yesterday that the Bill is already a little out of date in its present form—because it contains a few very clear undertakings which will be considered in due course in another place—to say that we are speaking of a Bill of which we can all be proud. Through the years its benefits will be accepted in the mining areas as a great contribution, long overdue but still come at last. For myself I can only say that I am deeply moved and proud to have had some little part in bringing this Measure to this stage. I am looking forward to the further progress which will be made when the Bill comes into full operation. I support it with all my heart and I can assure the Government that the Opposition will give their full support to the Third Reading.

I think it right that someone from the back benches on his side of the House should say a word of appreciation of the great care and attention which has been given to this very difficult Bill by my right hon. Friend and his assistants. It is a very complicated subject and it is worth while casting our minds back to the early days of the Committee stage when the prospect was not nearly as cheerful as it is today. There was a moment when everyone felt rather desperate about it.

Here was this very complicated and difficult subject and there appeared to be a big difference between the points of view of the two sides of the Committee. As time went on, discussions were friendly and, as they always are in these mining matters, carried on by those who were expert in the subject. It gradually appeared, as one should have known from the start, that my right hon. Friend was anxious to do what was right. When he appreciated that there was a point which had perhaps not been fully considered, he was perfectly prepared to have it studied.

However, we must not go into those discussions now, but we can all agree that a great many of the difficulties were ironed out and misunderstandings removed and certain points of principle decided. There was one question which, unfortunately, was not decided and there has been evidence that it has not been decided yet. That is how the word should be pronounced, whether it is "subsidence" with a long "i" or with a short "i". That, I think, must remain unresolved.

There is one matter which I want to put on record and this arises from my own personal experience. As some hon. Members opposite know, this is not the first Bill connected with mining matters with which I have been associated. We had a similar situation with the Mines and Quarries Measure with which I had the honour and privilege to be concerned. That started with difficulties—the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) is looking at me; I know what he wants to say if he gets the chance, but I hope that he will not say it. There again, we managed to work out an agreement in a satisfactory way.

One thing I cannot resist saying—and I hope that nobody will think it improper of me—is that what struck me about the Committee, as it has done before in connection with mining matters, was the extent of agreement between those of my political outlook and the miners. Miners have a splendid sense of the rights of the individual and of the property which he has, and its need for protection. Perhaps that is why we find it so easy to reach these decisions. I might be described as sticking my neck out in this respect, but there is a great deal of truth in it. The idea of individual freedom and of the rights of the individual is very strong amongst the miners.

We have found in this case that there is a great deal more interest in these rights and this sort of property than many people realise, and that the problems of subsidence affect those rights in a very serious way. I remember one Member in Committee saying that it may be that the people in the mining areas have not got very much, but that that made it all the more serious when damage was done to what they had. It is therefore worth while putting on record the fact that this is an occasion when the Parliamentary system has worked. We hear of many occasions when it has not worked, but here is one when, although there was a rather black outlook at the beginning, it has turned into something very different today. I think that even the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) will agree that a few months ago he would certainly not have used the words he used today.

My right hon. Friend was far too generous to me in suggesting that I had something to do with one of the important matters contained in the Bill. The credit should have been given to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. J. E. B. Hill) who, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth), did a tremendous amount of work in the matter. That does not detract from the work done by hon. Members opposite, but I thought it right to say that other hon. Members who are not here today have had very much more to do with the Bill than I have, and they can claim a part in bringing to the Statute Book a Measure which will make a serious and business-like attempt to deal with a tremendous problem.

I do not think that any of us could regard the Bill as perfect, and there is a great deal of force in which was said a few moments ago by the hon. Member for Wigan, namely, that the manner in which the Bill is handled, administered and put into force will perhaps be more important than its wording. As for the wording, I can be perfectly modest—because I have had nothing to do with it —in saying that it has been a difficult problem to provide proper words to carry out the decisions arrived at in Committee. I hope that the problem has been solved, but certain problems of language must have cost those responsible for these matters a great deal of time and thought. It is very pleasing to be able to say that a matter upon which there can be such friendly harmony at this stage should be the subject for debate at this time, and in this temperature.

It is appropriate that I should follow the right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) because, as he will recall, I was his principal disciple when he proposed a very important Amendment to the Bill. I am sorry that he was not successful; perhaps that was due to the support which he obtained from hon. Members on my side of the Committee. To that extent we regret that his proposal was not embodied in the Bill.

I intervene only briefly to point out that this is the fourth or fifth mining subsidence Bill in the consideration of which I have taken part. This matter was before the House when I entered it in the early 'twenties. In those days such Bills were promoted by Private Members, and we invariably had them on Fridays. This is a different Bill from those because on this occasion there is a prospect of its becoming law. We did get a little near in 1939; we got a Bill through this House and it went to another place, but by reason of the outbreak of war even that effort came to nothing. I therefore welcome the Bill, as my colleagues do, because it brings to fruition many years of agitation on this important subject.

In mining constituencies this is a problem of very great importance. Without detailing any specific point in the Bill I can say that it establishes one major principle. It gives to mining areas something which has been long denied to them. Compensation will now not be confined to a few houses, to the exclusion of other properties, including shops, factories and small businesses. In the past, the result of mining subsidence damage to property has meant that these people have had to meet the cost of repairs out of their own pockets. The Bill has done away with that distinction, and it puts the mining areas in the same position as the rest of the country. If the property of these people is destroyed or damaged by reason of mining subsidence they now have a claim against the Board to have the matter put right.

Hitherto, mention of the great destruction, difficulties and loss suffered by people living in the mining areas did not induce employers and people with small businesses to come into those areas, because they recognised that after spending money putting up their buildings, if they collapsed or were badly damaged there was no obligation on the part of anybody to put matters right. The Bill remedies that difficulty, and it will therefore be of great assistance.

It will also mean a great deal to local authorities. In one part of my constituency 2s. 6d. out of every £ spent in rates goes to repair damage done by this evil. That is a very substantial sum when we recognise that in mining districts houses are not highly rated. In my constituency there are all the aspects of the mining problem. In regard to some land there is a right of support and in regard to other land no right of support, but a right of compensation. But for the majority of land there is neither the right of support nor of compensation. The Bill therefore comes as a great relief in that respect.

I tried to emphasise in Committee that in old mining areas like this, where they have been mining coal since the Industrial Revolution, it has been impossible to define the rights of the parties as between the surface owners and the mineral owners, because they go back so far and the original deeds have been lost or destroyed. I therefore welcome the Bill, with all its imperfections—and there are many, although we do not expect anything very perfect from a human assembly—because it takes a big step forward in relieving some of the major anxieties which have confronted mining constituencies for many years.

One of the penalties which Scottish Members pay for attending the Scottish Grand Committee in total numbers is that they are deprived of the opportunity to pay sufficient attention to the other Committees of the House. It is with great regret on my part that I was unable to spend much more time in the Committee which considered the Coal-Mining (Subsidence) Bill, not only because of the importance of the subject under discussion, but because of the manner in which the discussions took place. On both sides of the Committee there was a calm and detached desire to solve all the problems put forward and there was a readiness on the part of the Government Front Bench to compromise. Compromise is so much better if it is ready compromise. It was an object lesson to all who attended the Committee.

I congratulate the Scottish Minister on the way in which he handled this important matter which, of course, also applies to Scotland, but I cannot congratulate him on the fact that Scotland is the only country which did not have an Amendment accepted. There were two on the Order Paper, but one was stopped at the wicket and one was caught at the Chair.

The Bill could be called a Bill for the prevention of mining subsidence and the effects thereof. The immediate result of the Measure will be a sharpening up of the National Coal Board in the prevention of mining subsidence, and I hope, as the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) said earlier, that the Board will also apply itself very rigorously to the prevention of damage from subsidence. Therefore I think that the Bill will have two very important effects—the prevention of subsidence and the prevention of damage to homes through subsidence in order to limit the compensation payable by the National Coal Board.

As mining engineers, we know that there are many things which can be done and which are not now being done to minimise subsidence, and I think that we can look forward to a reduction of mining subsidence as a result of the Bill, and, therefore, a reduction of cost to the Coal Board. It has been said that a result of the Bill will be an additional cost of £5 million a year to the Board. That may or may not be so. I personally do not think it is; but, if it does cost an additional £5 million a year, it will only prove the heavy burden which the mining areas have been shouldering up to now. It will mean that in the last ten years since nationalisation the industries and the local authorities of the mining areas have paid £50 million towards making good the damage done. That penalty was paid because people stayed and worked in the areas. Thanks to the Bill, that money will no longer be paid by them.

The Bill should receive the greatest possible publicity. As the hon. Member for Wigan said, because of its technical nature it is not a Measure which attracts publicity. We hope that everybody affected by it, from the, cottage to the castle, from the office to the factory and from the reservoir to the roads will know their rights under the Bill and that they have the means of getting compensation. In Scotland, practically nothing has been said in the Press about this very important Measure.

It is essential that the small householder and occupier should get to know that he is entitled to these new generous rights which have come about through Amendments moved by hon. Members opposite. He should get to know that he has the right to have his house repaired and restored. At the moment, it is not possible to rebuild a house damaged beyond repair, but I think that one day that principle will also be adopted. People should know that they can have decorations carried out which they could not have before. It will be a headache for someone to provide satisfaction in all the homes in that regard.

Under the Bill, people will get temporary accommodation and storage of their furniture. All this does not amount to a vast sum of money, but it strikes at a very tender spot. It has often been emphasised that the damage done by subsidence in the mining areas is of a terribly intimate and tender nature. This monster comes right into the home and creates unhappiness and misery. Therefore, let us make certain, as far as we can, that everybody concerned knows of his new rights and that he can take advantage of them as soon as the need arises.

I think that the Bill could have a boomerang effect on mining areas if that spirit of broad tolerance for which the hon. Member for Wigan asked is not shown. The result could be that instead of attracting industries to the mining areas they would be prevented from coming in the future, because the National Coal Board has now the right to advise the town and country planning authorities about the areas to be affected by subsidence. I think that there will be a tightening up in the National Coal Board of the advice given to local authorities. Indeed, that is happening already.

One instance was brought to my notice about a very important concern in Scotland which wanted to extend warehouses of considerable magnitude. The National Coal Board would not agree to the extension because some time in the future subsidence would take place and because, under the Bill, the Board would be responsible for the damage done. If that tight attitude is to be taken by the Board it could be a very serious thing for the mining areas. It should be remembered that town and country planning authorities themselves have no knowledge of what subsidence is likely to take place or of its extent, and they must, of necessity, ask the advice of the Board. If the Board is going to play safe as it did in this case, where it played terribly safe, then it will seriously affect those areas. I hope that the broad spirit of tolerance asked for by the hon. Member for Wigan will be shown in that and many other aspects of the Bill.

One matter which we discussed at length during the passage of the Bill was the safety of reservoirs and how that could best be provided for. We know that, like ancient monuments, once a reservoir has been damaged it can never be restored to its original condition. I wanted to suggest during the Committee stage, but was unfortunately prevented from doing so by unavoidable absence, that where mining work takes place under a reservoir it should take place only on an agreed scheme with the Mine Inspectorate. I should like that matter looked at. Where coal is to be extracted from under a reservoir consultation should take place with the Mine Inspectorate before operations begin and the system finally adopted agreed between the Mine Inspectorate and the National Coal Beard.

Generally speaking, I am satisfied with the Bill. I tried yesterday to get the Minister to relent a little in the matter of retrospection. I was rather sorry for the Minister when he went to the Dispatch. Box to reply. He knew that he had a terribly weak case. He had been ready to help in everything else, but not in the matter of retrospection. That is one of the blots on the Bill. I felt that the Minister knew that he was not doing complete justice in that respect. However, I give the Bill my hearty support, for I know that it will bring happiness to many homes where there is at present hardship and misery.

I join with other right hon. and hon. Members in their expressions of appreciation and gratitude to the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary who have clone a great job of work. I do so, not because they have given all that we on this side of the House wanted, but because they have been accommodative and reasonable about what we have suggested.

The right hon. and learned Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald) said that we had not yet decided on the correct pronunciation of the word "subsidence." He brought to my mind the story of a little boy in my village who had been elevated to standard X7 in the elementary school. After his second day at school he returned home anxious to get his mother's opinion on the correct pronunciation of the word "either." He said. "We had grammar at school today, mother, and I am a bit lost and puzzled as to how to pronounce the word e-i-t-h-e-r. Is it 'eether' or 'either'?". His mother said, "It doesn't matter, lad, other'] do." And "other'l do" for "subsidence" so far as I am concerned.

I think today of those who in the past tried to do something for the people living in mining areas and affected by mining subsidence. I think of George Tomlinson and George Daggar who played their part in the days which lie behind us. They failed in their endeavours, but they left their mark, and we cannot forget what they did in their day and generation to try to remedy the injustices suffered by those living in mining areas.

I agree with those who have welcomed this Bill and pointed out its imperfections and shortcomings. George Bernard Shaw once said, "When you find a perfect woman, you will find a perfect nuisance." When we find a perfect Bill, we shall have a perfect nuisance. This Bill is not perfect, but it has helped us to advance a long way in the direction of solving many of the problems with which those who live in the mining areas are confronted.

It is 71 years ago since I made my entry into this world. I was born in a little mining village. I still live there. I live in the same roadway. For 38 years I have been an ardent advocate of compensation for damage caused by mining subsidence. This is what I call one of my happy days. As we pass along the roadway of life there are days which are outstanding, and this, for me, is an outstanding day. For I have lived to see the pioneer work done way back in 1919 bearing fruit.

It was in June, 1919, when I started to agitate and advocate for compensation to be paid for damage done by mining subsidence. I have made many enemies. I have made many friends, too. There have been misunderstandings. But all these things are the lot of one who embarks on the path of social and industrial reform. It matters not what kind of reform. Men or women who take the path of social reform and are sincere in their endeavours to attain their objective will find that they cannot accomplish it by "return of post". They have to go on. As the Scottish bard said, they must

"Keep right on to the end of the road."

We are not yet at the end of the road, but we have gone a long way in our efforts to bring some degree of contentment if not satisfaction to those people who suffer from mining subsidence.

I do not believe there is such a thing in the world as satisfaction. The human heart is always grieving after something. The Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary have the happy idea that they have satisfied us by what they conceded. But they are not satisfied; they would like to have gone a lot further. But there are certain factors which prevented them. However, this Bill will bring a degree of contentment to men and women, and to local authorities in particular, which they have not enjoyed before.

Hitherto local authorities have been hamstrung in their endeavours to help the people in mining areas. They could not do what they desired to do. Why was it impossible for local authorities to do what they wished to do? It was because they were weighted down with the expense which would have been put upon the local rates had they attempted to repair the damage caused by mining subsidence. As I said yesterday, I represent a constituency from which deep-mined coal has been won for the nation since 1546. That was the year when the first piece of coal was mined in my constituency.

Today, 43 per cent. of the township which bears the name of my constituency is derelict. There one can find pit heaps, swamps and all the other sordid evidence of mining subsidence. The figure of 43 per cent. represents almost half of my constituency, but in the half which remains miners are still producing coal. I wonder whether those who live in non-mining areas ever think of this matter from that point of view? I wonder whether they ever give a thought to the men who have given their life, their strength, their talents and their craft to the winning of coal; and who are prepared to make the sacrifices which they have to make and who are living in conditions which it is difficult for me to describe?

I hope that local authorities who have experienced this vast inroad upon their towns and villages will at least be able to do something to rectify the tremendous damage done by mining subsidence. I am delighted that on this July day I have been permitted to see, not the end of my advocacy, not the end of my propaganda, but an occasion when my agitation and the agitation of others is bearing fruit, and attempts being made to remedy a great social injustice. My propaganda and advocacy was intensified when I became a member of a local authority. I served on that authority for 25½ years and, without wishing to be boastful or egotistic, may I say that I experienced only one election in that time. During my period of service I realised the expense to the rates caused by mining subsidence. I was the chairman of a public utility for seven-and-a-half years. It served three neighbouring authorities. I wish to relate only one incident which occurred during that time.

We had a twelve-inch gas main in that town, and it served three other towns. It did not crack, but subsidence in that town drew out the joints. The man worked on it, and in one hour's time got the couplings joined. They went for their lunch, and in one and a quarter hours the joints had been drawn out again by 1¾inches. It may seem impossible to the non-mining members and public to understand us when we talk in the strain that we do.

We believe that the Bill is the right thing to do and is long overdue. After all these thirty-eight years of agitation I am very pleased and happy today. I worked underground for much of that period. I realise the discomfort, anxiety, heartaches and headaches of people living in the mining areas, and it gave me the impelling force to go on. I have gone on and on, and I make no apology to anyone. I have said strong words to mine owners and I may have said strong words about the National Coal Board. I shall continue to say them if the Board does not do the things it ought to do and that the Bill gives it power to do. I shall come down upon it with words like a ton of bricks.

I support the hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. George). He has the technical qualifications and I have the practical qualifications. Both he and I and all mining and ex-mining men believe that a great deal can be done by way of prevention of mining subsidence by the right technique in mining. I have always held this opinion as a practical miner. Much of the damage done in days gone by could have been avoided if the right technique had been applied. I know that we are living in days of change in mining. We have gone from the pillar and stall method to the long wall, which had a tendency to aggravate subsidence unless there was the right technique.

I hope that the National Coal Board will do many things, but two things in particular. One is that its technicians and engineers should apply their minds to prevention, which is absolutely important. The second thing is that they should administer the Bill with a humane approach. In the past, much trouble and hear burn have been caused because certain individuals have had the incorrect approach to the problems confronting them. If the Board has the right approach, the Bill, despite its little imperfections and shortcomings, will prove to everybody that the House of Commons can give hope to the people in the mining areas who have suffered through the ages. At long last this House has thought about the men and women in the mining areas. I hope that the National Coal Board will realise its obligations to the people and will see to it that nothing unfair or inhuman will be done.

I welcome the Bill in spite of its imperfections, and I trust that the people in the mining areas will realise that the House of Commons has at last thought about them and about what they have done and are doing in the mining areas.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown), I live in an area which is encircled by pit hills. Some people are inclined to think that our passions run away with us on the question of mining subsidence. Others will readily understand why, after so many years of seeing the damage caused by mining subsidence, we are welcoming the Bill.

While the hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. George) was speaking, I noted the points he made about prevention of subsidence. They were taken up by my hon. Friend the Member for Ince. I echo the sentiments expressed on that point, and I hope that the National Coal Board will mobilise all its technical ability to prevent the disastrous effects of mining by initiating more effective measures to prevent subsidence. There is a saying which is very apt in connection with this subject, that a fence at the top of the cliff is much better than an ambulance at the bottom. The provisions of the Bill relate as it were to ambulance work, which the National Coal Board will now have to undertake in regard to the effects of subsidence, but I am sure that it will also give attention to prevention.

My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilkeston (Mr. Oliver), who has been in this House for many years, spoke in a somewhat reflective mood. I join him in the tribute he paid to a very able and worthy colleague who used to sit on these benches, the late George Tomlinson. On a day similar to this, but many years ago, Mr. Tomlinson introduced a Private Member's Bill to deal with the results of mining subsidence. I wish he had been privileged to be with us now to enjoy the happiness we all feel about the imminent passing of the Bill. As one who has had experience in advocating compensation for subsidence damage, I rejoice at the Bill, which is the culmination of many years of agitation. Not very often are people privileged to see the realisation of the dreams and ideals which they have been propagating for a long period. Realisation usually comes to others. It is a great pleasure to me to have the privilege of standing here and realising the very happy situation in which I am placed today.

I should like to make a brief reference to that fine body of men which, in dealing with this question of mining subsidence, did a remarkable job of work—the Turner Committee. It is ten years since the Committee began its investigations, and its probe into this matter and the detailed investigation which it undertook, in my view, brought more forcibly into the light of day not only the damage caused by subsidence but the many frustrations and disappointments, as well as the very heavy financial burdens, that have had to be borne over the years both by individuals and local authorities exclusively confined to the milling areas.

I would add my tribute to those which have already been paid to the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth) for the work he did and the interest he has taken, not only during the period of the Turner Committee's investigations, but during all the stages of this Bill. I hope that all members of the Turner Committee will now have a feeling of satisfaction that, if not all, many of its recommendations are put into effect in the Bill now before us.

We would be remiss on an occasion like this if we did not pay our tribute to the work that is being done by the local authorities. Over the years, and particularly since the Turner Committee was set up, the local authorities—and be this said to the credit of these bodies, not only in the mining areas, but with substantial support from local authorities outside—have done a remarkable job on this problem of subsidence.

The proposals in the Bill will remove a lot of anxiety that exists in mining areas. In the past, it has been dreadful for our people in these areas to have the feeling—and it is still there—that their houses and homes were in danger of being damaged, and that they had at any moment to face the possibility of being turned out. That feeling cannot be removed unless more effective preventive measures are adopted. Added to that was the thought, which has been a veritable nightmare, that there has been no compensation at all. Because of these facts, I join in the general chorus of welcome for the Bill, which will at any rate give some protection to people placed in these circumstances. The Bill is very comprehensive, though, as was shown yesterday, not as comprehensive as we should like it to be, but it will, nevertheless, be a very useful umbrella for those people who are, and others who will undoubtedly become, victims of subsidence.

Coming from a mining area as I do, all my life I have been accustomed to seeing houses shored up. At this moment, in my own division, there are houses, churches and other buildings which are in that condition, and I speak from my heart when I say that this Measure, although we would have liked to have seen it a little better than it is, will really be welcomed in mining areas.

I would also join with the hon. Member for Pollok in making an appeal to the right hon. Gentleman on the question of publicising the proposals contained in the Bill. I do not know what he has in mind, but it is the case that this is a Bill which does not get, for instance, in the Press, the publicity which it deserves, and yet there are so many well-merited proposals in it. So much that is contained in these proposals is going to be of advantage and benefit to people who will be affected that I make this appeal to the Paymaster-General to see if he can devise ways and means of bringing it to their notice. If he did so, I think it would be very greatly welcomed.

It has been said and it is true that the proposals in the Bill will impose financial burdens on the National Coal Board. The hon. Member for Pollok reminded us of what the present Minister of Supply when he was Minister of Fuel and Power said—that it was estimated that the Bill would cost £5 million a year. I think that is a very conservative estimate. Time will tell, but my view at this moment is that these proposals will cost the National Coal Board, which, incidentally, means the consumers of coal, much more than £5 million a year. This is a burden which hitherto the industry has not carried. Let us face the fact that it is certainly an unknown quantity at present.

I would add one note of criticism, if on this happy occasion I may venture to do so. I regret that the Government did not accept one of the Turner Committee recommendations respecting the cost of these proposals. Although the Paymaster-General has been very amenable, forthright and forthcoming to any suggestions made to him to improve this Measure, of course, he was tied by the Financial Resolution to the Bill, and was unable to adopt suggestions made in Committee regarding the apportionment of the financial burden, as recommended by the Turner Committee.

In conclusion, I think that throughout the whole course of the debates on this Bill, we have had a demonstration of the House of Commons at its best. The collective knowledge and experience which hon. Members on both sides have brought to bear in discussing the proposals in the Bill has been very valuable. On the other hand, we have had a Minister and Parliamentary Secretary who have listened to the arguments, made promises and carried out their promises, with the result that the Bill today, while not perfect, as has been said, is a much better one than when it was introduced. I take this opportunity of paying my tribute to the Paymaster-General for the way in which he has listened to our proposals and sought to embody them in the Bill in order to make it a better Measure than when it was originally introduced.

On an occasion such as this it would, in my view, be wrong to strike a discordant note. Therefore, I propose to use my limited time to give credit where it is due. Having had a long experience and the privilege of clashing with one of the greatest intellectuals this country has produced, having had the privilege of fighting the greatest demagogue this country has yet produced. I have arrived at a stage when I desire to give credit where it is due and to place on record men's contribution to life.

The observations I shall make in supporting the Third Reading of the Bill will be against that background. I have learned that it needs a big man to listen to others, particularly men and women who are elected to an assembly of this character. I hope that younger men who are to follow will be good enough to read what I am saying now, because I am convinced that they will make a greater contribution to life if they bear in mind observations of this character.

It has been my privilege to serve in this House for a long period and I have seen men come and go. I have never attended a sitting of this House, or of the many Committee meetings there have been in that long period, when the proceedings have been more harmonious than they have been over this Bill. I have never known a Minister prepared to listen to and consult with his advisers during proceedings in the House or in Committee more readily than the right hon. Gentleman who has been responsible for piloting this Bill through the House.

I want to pay tribute, which should be paid on occasions of this kind, to the right hon. Gentleman and to the Parliamentary Secretary. It gives me great satisfaction to do so because I have been involved in controversy and agitation upon which I look back with pride—especially the agitation. In my view it is the duty of all real Labour men to unveil the grievances of the people. One is tested by the amount of courage one exerts in speaking on behalf of the people one is elected to serve. Our people in the mining areas who have suffered through mining subsidence for so long will derive great satisfaction today from seeing that at last justice will be meted out to them.

Having had the experience of working with some of the finest men and women with whom it is possible to work, I want to give credit to the civil servants who have worked behind the scenes and given advice to the Minister. I admit that in Committee at times some of us may have appeared irritable. That is understandable because, if a person is sincere, he is hound to give expression to irritability at times, provided his emotion is truly reflecting the feelings of his people, because he knows how our people have suffered. However, we pulled ourselves together and restrained ourselves.

The right hon. Gentleman saw that there was something in what we were saying and consulted the officials. It would be wrong if we did not give credit to the right hon. Gentleman and those who have served him so well behind the scenes. I also include the Parliamentary draftsmen. We have almost torn the Bill to shreds with the assistance of the right hon. Gentleman and colleagues on both sides of the House. We have pulled it to pieces and added to it, and the draftsmen must have been very concerned; but they put in a tremendous amount of work to make the Bill what it now is.

Looking back over twenty years, I recall how in 1938 my friend George Tomlinson said to me one day. "I have come out of the Ballot today, Ellis. What Bill would you choose to introduce?" He represented Farnworth but I also had Stoke in mind when I immediately replied, "There is only one Bill to introduce—one dealing with mining subsidence," and he at once chose it. In our innocence we came to this House one Friday when it was packed as it used to be in those days. It was packed on the opposite benches by representatives of the mining industry, which was then in the hands of private enterprise. I could pick them out one after the other and name them if necessary, but I do not want to strike a note of that character today. Our Motion was carried and we celebrated, but in our innocence little did we realise the various stages through which it would have to pass and where it would end.

Then the war came and all agitation of that kind had to stop. After the war the city which I have the privilege of serving suffered more than any other city through mining subsidence. Although urban districts suffered, no city has suffered from mining subsidence in the past as much as Stoke-on-Trent. From the way in which things are going as a result of scientific modern mining, the city looks like suffering more in future. The city authorities decided to take action, first very largely due to the work of the late town clerk, and later, as a result of discouragement, the city council again decided to take action. It organised a conference of local authorities in the Central Hall and a national committee was elected, which has been responsible for work behind the scenes throughout the country to obtain justice for people who have suffered through mining subsidence.

It would be wrong of me not to place on record the names of those to whom we owe most in activity outside the House for the success about which we are talking today. I would mention first the late Alderman Dale of the City of Stoke-on-Trent. Then I would refer to the Town Clerk of Stoke-on-Trent, the Town Clerk of Chesterfield—who served on the Turner Committee—and the Town Clerk of the Rhondda. When we were beginning to get a little disappointed with our progress I used my personal influence with a real gentleman, whom I shall mention later. I have in my locker two of the most kindly and finely phrased letters it has been my privilege to receive. It was obvious at that time that the health of that gentleman was beginning to be undermined. I knew his life record. I knew the way his manner had been tested and how it was reflected in his actions.

It would have been wrong of me not to have mentioned today what we owe to him. Sometimes we are apt to forget people who are no longer with us, but I want to place on record what we know with regard to Sir Anthony Eden in connection with this Bill. Sir Anthony Eden wrote to the then Minister of Fuel and Power, the present Minister of Supply. It was a kindly letter and it was obvious that the then Prime Minister meant action. That action has resulted in this Bill as a result of the instructions and influence of the Prime Minister. No doubt it is all on record in the files of the Ministry. I have seen each step which was taken until the Bill came before the House. It has been dealt with in Committee and on Report, and now we are supporting the Third Reading.

I have been as brief as possible in what I want to say. I have restrained myself in certain feelings that I look upon with pride and which I hope I shall retain until the end of my days; but it would have been wrong today to have said anything about that, because we should give credit where it is due. This House has proved itself to be big on this occasion. Everybody who has spoken has done so in a big way. It is in that manner that I associate myself with all that has been said.

I also want to give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal), who is not able to be with us today. I hope that when, lying on his bed, he reads what has been said today, it will give him some satisfaction for the work he has done, both in his locality and on the Standing Committee. Everybody knows that all the work is not done in this assembly or in Committee. To equip oneself to play one's part in an assembly like this or in Committee, one must pore over papers and books night after night to hold one's own with anybody.

The contribution to life of my hon. Friend the Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown) is a monument in itself and he will need no stone erected to him. That is the best type of monument. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover has a similar monument and today we are placing on record, in the proceedings of the House of Commons, the lifework of an ordinary working man.

I have used my limited time, not to speak about the Bill, because I am satisfied with it, but to give credit where, in my view, it is due. If I have omitted anyone, I hope I may be forgiven, because that was not my intention. We should today give credit to all those who have made any contribution at all, because the people living in the mining areas have suffered long enough and when the Bill becomes an Act of Parliament elementary justice will at last be meted out towards their own and their local authorities' property.

We have gone a long way on the road to justice in the matter which is under discussion today, but we have not gone the complete road. There is still something left to do. It has taken long years to reach this position, but one of the reasons for that was that there was so much to do before we could make a start. I am convinced that had it not been for the nationalisation of the mines and the taking over by the nation of the industry, an Administration such as the one in power at present would never have placed upon the private coal owners the burdens which are placed upon the National Coal Board at the present time.

We have not dealt fully in the Bill with the question of consequential damage. That is something which is left for the future, but, fortunately, under our present system of nationalisation of the mines, it is possible that much of what has been left out of the Bill can be dealt with administratively. The other matter on which I am bound to express disappointment is that the Bill does not really accept the principle of a home for a home. There are possibilities of the Coal Board making a money payment and of a man losing his home in consequence. But we are placing a colossal expenditure upon the Coal Board.

I come from an area in which much of the benefit of the Bill has already been enjoyed because of other remedies which are available. I have in mind a single street of shafts which collapsed and the colossal expenditure to which the Coal Board was put to restore the damage. I have seen the anguish and despair of the traders in that area as a result of the collapse of their property. I hope that as a result of the Bill, the opportunity will be taken for a real review of our national policy in mining. It is imperative that we should consider the question of support and of preventing this grave damage rather than attempt to remedy it after it has occurred.

The tremendous anxiety and imperative need of the nation for coal have brought us to adopt measures that create rather than prevent subsidence. The local authorities, the Coal Board and the nation should, I believe, take special measures to review the whole national policy and see whether we cannot adopt a scheme, bringing in the scientists, who have done so much in other directions, so that we may be able to prevent this mining subsidence rather than do the ambulance work after it has arisen.

I should like to associate myself with the tributes which have been paid to the various people who have played such a big part in this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) has played a very big part himself. I have the honour of representing him—he is one of my constituents—and, therefore, I am specially interested in the enormous work he has done. Having served on the Standing Committee and seen the special work that was done by both sides of the House, I associate myself also with the tribute to the Minister and to the Parliamentary Secretary.

I am bound to say a word on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams), who has played a special part. He has a special association with the trade union movement. He is connected with one of the great trade unions—the miners' union—which, it seems to me, almost trained him specially for the job of carrying out the technical work of the Committee stage of the Bill. I am bound to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his excellent work in advising and assisting us and in using his legal knowledge to help us.

I hope we will not lose our interest in this matter but that the House of Commons, and especially those who have been closely associated with the problem, on both sides of the House, will continue to review it and see whether we cannot reach the final stage when we can say that every aspect of the problem has been dealt with on the basis of justice and ensure that every Englishman's home will be his castle, even though it is in a mining area, and that we shall not be in danger of seeing its foundations removed and the castle topple around the person who has the pleasure of regarding it, however modest, as his home, which is one of the greatest things in life.

I shall not detain the House for more than a few moments. I am prompted to intervene because of a remark made by the Parliamentary Secretary on Second Reading. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is in his place this morning.

I was impressed by the compliments paid by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) to the various people whom he enumerated, but I could not help feeling that we on this side and. I am sure. Members opposite too, must have been struck by the tenacity and sincerity which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South has himself shown in this matter over the years. I extend my thanks and appreciation to him for what he has done.

The remark in question by the Parliamentary Secretary when winding up the Second Reading debate—he said it, I am pleased to say, with some degree of regret—was that he was surprised at the absence of the voice of Wales. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. George) referred earlier this morning to the fact that he was not present at some of the meetings of the Standing Committee because of his attendance in the Scottish Standing Committee. Up to the present—and I emphasise that—Wales has not had a Welsh Grand Committee. I am very much looking forward to its having one. However, I remind the Parliamentary Secretary that although the voice of Wales, that is, of a Member representing a Welsh constituency, was not heard on that occasion, the voice of Welshmen has been heard in the debates on the Bill since.

I would pay a special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams), who, I am very proud to say, is a fellow Welshman, and the work that Welshmen did in Committee on the Bill has been acknowledged by the tributes already paid to him. Then there are my hon. Friend the Member for Leek (Mr. Harold Davies), my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Proctor), my hon. Friend the Member for Bedwellty (Mr. Finch), and my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Iorwerth Thomas), and finally there is myself, representing Aberdare. We were all on the Committee. What effect we had in Committee it would be ill fitting for me to say here.

My main reason for speaking in this debate is to express my appreciation of the work of the Standing Committee, although I was a Member of it, and to congratulate the Standing Committee upon fulfilling many of the recommendations of the Turner Committee. It is true there has not been a very wide interest in the House in this matter, principally, I suppose, because it is a technical Bill whose effect is confined to only some areas of the United Kingdom. Had all hon. Members of the House seen the evidence of subsidence and its effects I am sure they all would have taken 100 per cent. interest in the Bill.

The general principles of this Bill are acceptable to my constituents. Indeed, as I am the only Member here at the moment who represents a constituency in South Wales, I would say that the principles of the Bill are generally acceptable to South Wales. They are acceptable for their provisions relating to the local authorities.

I hope I shall not be accused of immodesty, but I cannot help feeling some gratification in remembering that it was upon this subject that I spoke in the debate on the Address in reply to the Gracious Speech and in perceiving, I am pleased to say, that many of the needs which I mentioned then are now being provided for by this Bill.

However, I feel some concern about one aspect of the matter, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Pollok. I may be accused of being a little unscrupulous, but I hope that the publicity for this Bill will not be given too soon. Perhaps I shall be accused of being a little unscrupulous, but I am rather worried lest claims should be made on the National Coal Board before they should be made. I say no more than that about it. Except the retrospective provisions dealing with houses, the Bill will be effective only from a certain date, and I am rather concerned that we may lose the benefits of the Bill should there be subsidence under my chapel today since the Bill will not be effective tomorrow. I hope that in giving publicity to these matters the Government will state categorically what its terms are.

I shall go home today with a very much lighter heart, because although Wales has suffered a serious defeat this week—I cannot discuss that matter now —at least we are being compensated somewhat today, in South Wales at any rate, by the real merits of this Bill, and I would conclude by thanking the Parliamentary Secretary and the Paymaster-General for the way in which they have helped the Members of the Standing Committee upon the Bill by fulfilling the promises they made.

We have reached the final stages of this Bill in this House, and in a few moments we shall part with it, and it will be dealt with in another place, finally to receive the Royal approval, when the measures which are contained in the Bill will commence to operate. That will be a day of great jubilation for those who are affected by the Bill, and will be recognised and remembered as such by those who have been conscious of the necessity for these remedial measures and compensation for the damage which has been done by mining subsidence, and particularly by all those who, during many years, have raised this matter in this House, and who have been mentioned by hon. Friends of mine in this House today.

I invited my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) to state our position on Third Reading and to open the debate for this side of the House as a mark of tribute to him for the tremendous amount of work he has put into this Bill. I do not think it is generally recognised, except, of course, by those who have themselves occupied our position on these Opposition benches and been active in Opposition, that we on these benches have to do all our own work, for we have no Civil Service or highly trained specialists to do our drafting for us. We have to rely upon those amongst us who are learned in the law to help us on many technical and legal matters.

It has been a matter of considerable gratification to us to have had my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan to help us, his great ability to put our thoughts on paper in proper Parliamentary style, and his great ability himself to express views in the manner of a good Parliamentarian. His speech today, expressing our wholehearted support for the Third Reading of this Bill, was, I think, an eminent example of what a Parliamentary speech ought to be, and it contained many personal references, and expressed the obvious sincerity with which he speaks on this matter.

I should like to thank the Parliamentary Secretary and the Paymaster-General who, throughout the whole of the proceedings on the Bill, have been more than helpful to all of us. We have appreciated that very much indeed. I do not think there was any occasion of any difference between us when the Parliamentary Secretary or the Paymaster-General did not readily see our point of view and consult their advisers about it and, if they thought there was substance in our case, were not ready to produce Amendments to meet it. If, after consideration, they still disagreed with us they made plain where the disagreement lay, and we have been very largely satisfied by their explanations.

In my experience of membership of this House, and having sat on a large number of Committees, and having occupied the position which the Parliamentary Secretary now occupies, I have known of no occasion when one's Parliamentary duties have been so easy and so enjoyable as on this occasion of our work upon this Bill, and the fact that I can say that is largely due to the very co-operative spirit of the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. and learned Gentleman, and I thank them on behalf of the Opposition for the consideration they have shown to the views we have expressed from time to time.

This is a very good Bill. I do not want to damn the Bill with faint praise by saying that it does not go far enough. I think it is a very good Bill. It may be that, as the years pass and we gain experience of its effects, we may have another Bill which will take us another step forward, but I have no regrets at all about this Bill. It is an extremely good Bill, and all those of us who in the House and in Committee have been associated with the Bill can be very proud of the part which we have played. It speaks well for our Parliamentary democracy that all of us, irrespective of party, in considering the Bill have looked only to what its effects will be on those who suffer from mining subsidence. We have done our job in Parliament upon this Bill well, and we have done so because we have worked together, arguing matters out and coming to conclusions which, I think, will be very beneficial to all those who suffer because of mining subsidence.

I emphasise what my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said opening the debate from our side of the House today, and I join with my hon. Friends in the words of appreciation they have uttered of the work upon this subject of both past and present Members of this House, and, indeed, of all those who have taken part in work upon the Bill in and outside the House, including the Parliamentary draftsmen and others interested in this matter. I add to theirs my appreciation of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal) who, unfortunately, because he is ill in hospital, cannot be present today at the closing stage of our work upon the Bill.

I say once again we wholeheartedly support the Third Reading of the Bill, and I express my thanks to all those on the Government side who have been ready to see our point of view and to help to bring the Bill to its present form.

I am grateful to hon. and right hon. Members on both sides of the House for the way in which they have helped to shape, improve and pass this Measure. My hon. and learned Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power has borne a very large share of a very complicated burden, and I am most grateful to him. I am grateful, also, to my hon. and now absent Friends, particularly the hon. Member for Glasgow, Pollok (Mr. George), who has great technical knowledge of these matters, my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Sir H. Lucas-Tooth), and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Chertsey (Sir L. Heald), whose legal knowledge has been particularly valuable on many occasions.

On the other side of the House there are a large number of hon. and right hon. Members with long and intimate experience of these matters. Their presence made me at first approach my task with great trepidation owing to my own ignorance. I have learned a great deal from them. I would mention particularly the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ellis Smith) and the hon. Member for Ince (Mr. T. Brown), who have so long played a leading part in pushing forward claims for legislation on this subject.

I very much regret the absence of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Neal). I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Blyth (Mr. Robens) for the courtesy and kindness with which he has dealt with me, and in particular I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. R. Williams) on his effective debut on the Front Bench. As the right hon. Member for Blyth said, producing Amendments in Opposition is not easy. I have had a little experience of it in a backroom capacity, and my Amendments were nothing like as legally accurate as those of the hon. Member for Wigan. I used to rely on the Government to put them right if they accepted the point. I am glad that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South referred to Sir Anthony Eden. As he rightly said, Sir Anthony's interest in the Bill when he was Prime Minister had a considerable influence on the timing of its introduction.

The Bill carries on the work done by the Labour Government in their 1950 Measure and to some extent completes it. We have all agreed as we have gone along that although the Bill is not perfect it does a very great deal to benefit people and will be much welcomed throughout the mining areas. I wish I could have met some of the other points made most persuasively by hon. and right hon. Members opposite, but it is not always possible to go to the full extent that one wishes to go. The Bill will now pass to another place. There I have no doubt their noble Lordships, possibly slightly refreshed by yesterday's announcement in the House, will give it the attention it deserves.

I said yesterday on one or two occasions that there were points raised which needed further consideration. I can repeat the assurance that we on our part will consider the arguments put forward. There were some points on the personal injury and disability Clause and there were certainly some on the alternative accommodation Clause which will need looking into. We will give them as much attention as we can. In the meanwhile, hon. and right hon. Members opposite will no doubt see that their noble Friends in another place are informed of the issues.

Two points were raised by several speakers, including the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. B. Taylor) and my hon. Friend the Member for Pollok to which I would like to refer. The first is the question of administration, which particularly interests the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South. The other is the question of publicity.

It is undoubtedly true that in all matters of this kind administration is vitally important. Whatever we decide in the House and whatever is decided by Parliament, the practical effect on the individual depends so much on the way in which these Measures are used. My own impression is that the National Coal Board is extremely good in this respect. Mr. Bowman, its chairman, to whom I should like to pay a personal tribute for his understanding and sympathy, has every intention and desire to carry out the Measure in the spirit in which Parliament intended.

I agree that it is most important that full publicity should be given to the benefit that people can obtain from the Measure, which is complicated and difficult enough for us here to understand. I am giving as much attention as possible to means of publicising its effect. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Mansfield for mentioning this point and to the hon. Member for Aberdare (Mr. Probert), whose warning about premature publicity we shall do our best to observe.

I found that ordinary people expressed great appreciation of the leaflet which was issued after a previous Act was passed. Could a similar leaflet be issued on this occasion?

We will produce another leaflet and distribute it as widely as possible. I shall see particularly that all hon. Members representing mining areas receive copies, and I shall also consider the question of advertising in local newspapers.

We have covered all the ground this morning, without re-opening any controversies, and we have agreed between ourselves that this is a useful and valuable Measure. I am, therefore, happy to think that the House is now prepared to give it a Third Reading.

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

In the Army Estimates debate in May I said that Her Majesty's Government had decided to alter the terms of engagement in the Regular Army and that the normal engagement in future would be for twenty-two years, with a probable minimum Colour service of six years, and not three years as at the present time. The Bill enables us to give effect to that plan.

Under Sections 4 and 5 of the Army Act, 1955, soldiers serving on a 22-year engagement have a legal right to terminate their Colour service after three years. We are now planning for an all-Regular Army by the end of 1962. In these changed circumstances I consider that the 3-year engagement has outlived its purpose. This does not mean that my predecessor was not absolutely right to introduce the 3-year engagement when he did. As long as we relied on National Service men to maintain the strength of the Army there was the strongest possible reason for this 3-year engagement. It succeeded in inducing a large number of men to serve with the Colours a year longer than they would have had to do under the National Service Acts. But as National Service ends, the inducements of Regular pay and other Regular conditions of service compared with those enjoyed by the National Service man will obviously cease to have any significance.

The Regular Army of the future will have to recruit its soldiers in competition with the attractions of civilian life, and there will be no comparison in the prospective recruit's mind between National Service and a very short service engagement. We are now reverting to our ancient tradition of an all-Regular, all-volunteer Army. Professional soldiers will no longer spend a large proportion of their time in absorbing and training National Service men and other short-service soldiers. National Service has been an unavoidable necessity, and all the praise which from time to time has been given to National Service men is more than deserved. But the rapid turnover of these men has been discouraging to the Regular officers and N.C.O.s who watch the men they train come and go with ceaseless rapidity.

The Army of the future's requirement is for fewer men, better trained, and equipped with the most modern weapons available. I believe that the restoration of stability which will obtain in an all-Regular Army will, together with material improvements in conditions of service, provide a real inducement to men contemplating an Army career. A minimum of six years Colour service, with very few exceptions, will be infinitely more satisfactory than any of the expedients to which we have had to resort since the war.

The main purpose of the Bill, therefore, is to empower the Army Council to regulate at the time of enlistment the points at which persons enlisting on a 22-year engagement on or after 1st October next may transfer to the Reserve or be discharged before completing twelve years Colour service.

This power will enable the Army Council to vary from time to time the minimum periods of Colour and Reserve service of persons wishing to enlist to accord with the estimated demands for recruits, without first having to obtain further legislation. The power will at present be used by giving the soldier the option of transferring to the Reserve at the 6-year point, with a liability for six years on the Reserve, or alternatively at the 9-year point, that is, nine years with the Colours and three years on the Reserve. At the 12-year and subsequent 3-yearly points the option to leave the Army without any Reserve liability remains, and cannot be altered by the Army Council.

I must emphasise also that the Bill does not give authority to alter the conditions of service of a serving soldier either now or in the future. The soldier will be bound by the terms in force at the date of his enlistment, and this is a very important point. If the Regulations should change after a soldier has enlisted, only newcomers will be affected, not the soldier already in the Army.

In considering the date on which the new terms should take effect, we have had to recognise the fact that there will be a drop in Regular strength when the last men who enlist for three years leave the Colours and there are no new 3-year men there to take their places. This trough we reckon will be at its lowest in the fourth year following the change to the longer initial engagement which I am proposing.

If we were to delay the changes until next year our Regular strength would be at its lowest in 1962, but here we must remember that by the end of 1962 we intend that the last National Service men will be leaving the Colours. Therefore, bearing these two factors in mind, the sooner we get on with the job of recruiting Regulars for the longer initial engagement the better able will the Army be to face the end of National Service. I have had to consider the time required to enact this Bill, the time needed to make the new Regulations, and all the other administrative action necessary. Accordingly we have decided that 1st October next will be the earliest practicable date for this purpose.

The House may like to know what few exceptions I have in mind to this general rule that six years will be the shortest initial engagement. They fall broadly into three categories. In the first place, for as long as National Service lasts, serving National Service men will be allowed to enlist on a 3-year Regular engagement if they wish to do so. Secondly, the Brigade of Guards will retain the right to enlist men for three years with the Colours. They did so pre-war with excellent results, and we recognise from past experience that service in the Brigade of Guards for a limited period appeals to a special type of recruit. For instance, I am informed that many chief constables, before accepting a recruit into their police force, advise those young men to serve for a short period with a regiment of the Foot Guards.

Why?

That is up to them. That is a statement of fact. I consider that such types of recruit would be lost to the Army if they were required to serve a minimum of six years Colour Service.

Finally, there are special categories, affecting a small number of men, where special qualifications are required, and where we think that the minimum 6-year engagement might be more of a deterrent than an incentive. I will list them. Police cadets will be able to enlist in the Royal Military Police or any other arm on a 3-year engagement. An exception will also be made for established employees of the General Post Office wishing to serve in the Postal Service of the Royal Engineers. We shall require also on a 3-year engagement a small number of men of a specialised standard of education for the Intelligence Corps, and also men with civilian qualifications who will be willing to serve for three years in the Army Catering Corps. These are the only exceptions which we have in mind at present, although experience may show that there are one or two other categories for which special treatment might be required in the future.

I want to make it clear to the House that the total of any exceptions made will not seriously infringe the general application of a minimum 6-year engagement. The numbers involved are small. Apart from the National Service category which I have mentioned, the best guess I can give is that the Guards and other special categories will not amount to more than 1,000 men a year. The position of women serving on a 22-year engagement will be unchanged. They will still be able to leave at the 3-year point and, of course, they have no compulsory Reserve liability.

The abolition of the 3-year engagement does not of course affect soldiers serving on engagements for less than twenty-two years which are currently authorised by Section 4 of the Army Act, 1955, or those who enlist on 22-year engagements before 1st October next.

Now a word or two about the Bill. The first subsection of Clause 1 empowers the Army Council to prescribe the times when the soldier may transfer to the Reserve or leave the Army before he has completed twelve years' Colour service. The second subsection merely removes any legal doubt about the ability to transfer to the Reserve or to discharge men at times other than those prescribed under the first subsection. Subsection (3) gives the soldier the right to leave the Army at the 12-year point and at subsequent 3-year points, subject to the provision made in subsection (5). Subsection (4) permits the Army Council to regulate the length of Reserve service provided that it does not extend beyond twelve years from the date of enlistment.

If a man has enlisted for twenty-two years, and supposing he is doing his Service with the Colours and has only served three or four years and then is given leave to go, I do not understand why his Reserve service must not exceed twelve years from the date of enlistment.

It is laid down that Colour service, together with Reserve service, shall not amount to more than twelve years. That is inherent in the system.

Now a word about subsection (5). This authorises the Army Council to obtain a waiver of their rights under the Bill from soldiers who receive certain benefits or advantages. There will be cases where a man wishing to better himself voluntarily attends certain courses of instruction or wishes to transfer to another corps where he thinks his chances of promotion will be better. As an illustration of what I mean, let us say that a soldier wishes to go on a long guided weapons course shortly before the time at which he would normally terminate his Colour service. In such a case he would be asked—remember he has volunteered for the course—before being accepted for it, to guarantee that he would not terminate his engagement at the next point at which he is entitled to do so. I think the House will agree that this is a reasonable proviso.

Subsection (6) provides the important safeguard which I emphasised earlier. It prevents the Army Council from altering retrospectively the terms of Service of persons already serving. Subsection (7) repeals Section 5 of the Army Act, 1955, as regards persons affected by this Bill, and adapts some provisions of that Act to persons who enlist after 1st October next. Subsections (8) and (9) are consequential provisions to meet certain types of case.

I trust that the Bill will receive full support from both sides of the House. I am convinced that the measures that we propose will clear the ground for the formation of an all-Regular Army, and it is with that end in view that I commend the Bill to the House.

As we understand the Bill and the Secretary of State's explanation, this is an enabling Measure. It enables the War Office to make new terms of service for the engagement of soldiers and to vary them very widely. It certainly gives the War Office very much wider powers than it has previously had in this respect.

I do not think that is any reason in itself why we should oppose it, but it will produce a new system in that the War Office will be able, as described by the Secretary of State, to set out, as it were, a schedule of terms of engagement in respect of different categories of men for engaging in the Guards or in the line regiments. I take it that men will be engaging in different trades. Do I take it that the War Office could say that it would engage only men who wished to serve in a certain trade for a certain period, or is that not so?

On the right hon. Gentleman's general observations, perhaps I might say that for years past the Army Council has had the right to alter terms of engagement within twelve years. The right hon. Gentleman had those powers when he was Secretary of State. No new powers are conferred in that respect. The only new powers are in relation to the 22-year engagement, which did not exist when the right hon. Gentleman was in office. The powers for which we are asking are not quite as sweeping as the right hon. Gentleman has indicated.

Perhaps not, but the Bill represents a considerable enlargement of the powers of the War Office. I do not really object to that. Something of this sort was clearly necessary to take the place of the 3-year engagement, and I entirely agree with that, but it gives the War Office very considerably wider powers of variation. We should like to know whether the terms of engagement, when finally settled, will be put before the House in any form and whether they will be debatable. That is important. I am not talking about every minor change, but this is a major change, and from next October we shall have a new set of terms of engagement for the Army centring round, as the Secretary of State has made clear, a 6-year engagement but with important variations in certain categories. The right hon. Gentleman estimates that up to 1,000 men will still be joining for the short 3-year engagement, and that will be a permanent arrangement, and also, temporarily, there will be a great number of men still so engaging as an alternative to National Service.

I suppose that under the Regulations the right hon. Gentleman could for certain categories insist upon an engagement of longer than six years, between six years and twelve years, if he so wished. He has not suggested that, but I take it that it could be done. Therefore, these are big new powers, and we are inclined to think that there ought to be an arrangement by which Parliament, certainly when they are first introduced, has an opportunity to debate them. I should have thought—I am open to argument here—that major changes will be made in the Regulations, and perhaps we may know what Parliamentary arrangements are in mind in that respect. No doubt the matter is governed by the Army Act.

I have said that this is an enabling Bill, and the Secretary of State has given us an idea of the use that he proposes to make of it. I hope that he does not think that the Bill in itself, or even anything that he can do under it, will solve the problem of getting an all-Regular Army of approximately 165,000 men in the required time.

It is of great importance that at a very early date—well before October, if possible, so that people are given notice —the right hon. Gentleman should publish his schedule of new terms of engagement so that people will know the conditions—they will be fairly complicated—in which they can join the Army. Until that is done, the whole thing is left in uncertainty. I get the impression that in the last two months since the issue of the Government's Defence White Paper by far the most adverse factor in recruiting and in the morale of the Forces generally is that they have been plunged, perhaps inevitably, into a good deal of uncertainty. It is very important that this should be cleared up.

When I look at recent recruiting figures, I take a somewhat gloomy view of the position. I am not suggesting that we can tell very much how things are going, in the situation which the Bill is called upon to help to remedy, from the recruiting figures for the last two months, because they are not broken down into the numbers engaged for different periods. We do not know what proportion of the drop represents 3-year men, an aspect which is not so serious, and what proportion represents longer-term recruits, but on the face of it the drop is fairly serious. This April only 2,433 men joined the Army as against 3,800 in April, 1956. May was a little better, the figure being 2,588 as against 3,308. However, on the face of it, those are very serious deteriorations in recruiting, and unless we can be reassured that there is no deterioration in the case of the longer-term recruiting, which is what really matters, they are serious.

The fact is that at the very moment when, as the Secretary of State has emphasised, recruiting is of the utmost importance, the figures seem to be moving in the wrong direction. We shall not really know until we see the quarterly break-down of figures. Incidentally, could we not have the monthly figures broken clown in the same way as the quarterly ones? Unfortunately, the figures are net so huge that this would cast a very heavy burden on the Adjutant-General's Department.

I am reluctant to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but there is nothing in the Bill about the break-down of the figures.

I will not pursue the point, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, but I was following the Secretary of State who very vividly put before us his problem of getting recruits for an all-Regular Army. In commending the Bill to us he very rightly pointed out that it is his purpose to get a sufficient number of recruits for an all-Regular Army. Surely the existing state of recruiting is, at any rate in passing reference, relevant to the problem to which the right hon. Gentleman addressed himself. It seems to me that if the right hon. Gentleman is to meet the time-table which he put before the House, a timetable in which the last call-up is at the end of 1960 and the last conscript leaves the Army at the end of 1962, he has a very serious problem to face and that the Bill takes only a first hesitating step towards meeting it.

I press him very strongly, as I pressed him on the Army Estimates, not to leave it at this, but at a very early date to take those measures which must be taken soon if a very grave dilemma is not to face the country in three or four years. Frankly, an increase in pay seems to be the only quick way, and in saying that I do not depreciate the other possibilities which he mentioned, an improvement in conditions and in barracks, which I know he has very much at heart.

While this little Bill is welcome, because it goes a little way in the right direction, our experience in the two months since the new plan was published has reinforced our concern and our doubts whether the Government are doing anything like enough, quickly enough, to make the necessity of moving the recruiting figures in exactly the opposite direction to that which they are now taking, if we are to have Regular forces which can fulfil our needs without National Service.

One more issue which is bound up with the whole subject is that of disincentive, which has to be got out of the way by meeting the needs for compensation and the needs for certainty of those officers and rank and file who are being dropped from the Army at the moment. The Bill will be useless unless that is done, and done soon. Again, I urge the Secretary of State to take early action. I regard with great concern his statement in the Army Estimates debate, that he cannot settle this matter—he was speaking about officers—until next November. I appreciate his difficulties, but experience is showing that uncertainty is proving a very great disincentive to recruiting. Whatever conditions are produced will prove unattractive if, at the same time, the axe is hanging over the heads of many men. I realise that some officers must be compulsorily retired, but I press on the right hon. Gentleman the case of N.C.O.s and warrant officers.

I should have thought that with the numbers the right hon. Gentleman has indicated it should be possible for him to guarantee that no N.C.O. or warrant officer will be compulsorily retired and that establishment will be found for them without blocking the promotion of younger men—which is indispensable. Possibly the biggest single factor in making the Bill effective in getting new recruits will be to drop the disincentive of the axe which is giving the Services serious concern.

The situation has probably been exaggerated; these things always are. The number of men whose careers may be threatened is much less than many men believe. For example, I notice that the Press is talking of 7,000 officers being sacked from the Army. I understand that that is the figure for the three Services taken together and, according to the Secretary of State, the figure for the Army will be only 3,000. That is an example of the exaggeration which this state of uncertainty produces.

The Bill should be regarded, as the Secretary of State said, as a clearing of the ground, but if he is to find the recruits who are indispensable for the abolition of conscription, which we have advocated and which we advocate as strongly today, drastic new incentives to voluntary recruiting must be offered and the disincentive of the axe must be swept away.

We press the Government strongly to take action in this matter before the country finds itself in a most painful dilemma. Whoever is conducting its affairs at that time will be in a most painful dilemma if the necessary constructive action to make possible the abolition of National Service has not been taken early enough.

I certainly support the Bill and its purpose and congratulate my right hon. Friend on having introduced it, but I want to know why it was introduced as a separate Bill and was not merely called an amending Bill for the Army Act, 1955. That is what it really is. It eliminates Section 5 of the Army Act, 1955, and everything in the Bill arises from that. The Bill's title should be Army Act, 1955 (Amendment) Bill. That seems to be a more accurate title.

Those of us who have had military experience have, in the past, had the doubtful pleasure of inserting Amendments into our copy of the Army Act. The Amendments are published periodically by the Army Council and with a pair of scissors we have had to cut out strips of paper and paste them in the appropriate places.

When the Bill becomes law, when it is published on white paper instead of green, it will be available to any man who wants to know what his terms of enlistment will include, as he may if he volunteers for twenty-two years. I do not believe that the Bill, however well amended, will by itself be enough for such a man to know enough to feel that he is well-informed about the matter. He will have to have a copy of the Army Act with him. My right hon. Friend might address himself to that consideration, for it is one of the jobs of Parliament, which we are apt to overlook, to make intelligible to the people most affected by it the legislation which we pass.

All too often, we have very complicated phraseology, and one or two subsections in the Bill are extremely complicated. For instance, Clause 1 (8) says:

"For the purposes of this section—

(a) a person who enlisted on any date for a term other than a term of twenty-two years and who is treated under subsection (1) of section six of the Army Act, 1955, as if his enlistment had been for a term of twenty-two years shall be regarded as a person who enlisted on that date for such a term…".

It would take several readings before anybody could become fully conversant with what that means. Having read it six times, I am beginning to understand it. It is very important that legislation of this sort should be available in an intelligible form to those who have had little experience of military law and still less of Parliamentary drafting.

I want to ask my hon. Friend if I am right in one respect. As I understand it, a man who volunteers to serve a term of twenty-two years in the Army will do six years with the Colours; he will then have an opportunity of signing on for a full twelve years with the Colours; at the end of that period he will have the right to apply for an extension of service under Section 8 of the Army Act, 1955 and, towards the end of that period, a further extension, which I believe also comes under that same Section. I hope that I am right about that because, reading the Bill alone, it appears that the man who volunteers for twenty-two years' service and does six years with the Colours will on no account have to serve on the Reserve to a date later than twelve years after his date of enlistment, whereas he originally said he was prepared to serve for twenty-two years. There seems to be a slight non sequitur there. I hope that I have got the procedure right. There is a re-engagement after six years, followed by an extension, followed by a further extension, that takes him up for a few more years beyond the twenty-two, if he wants to serve the extra years at the end of his service. Perhaps my hon. Friend will deal with this matter.

The right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) has had much to say about the other factors which are in a man's mind when he thinks of joining the Army. The right hon. Gentleman would probably agree that he went fairly wide of the Bill in his argument—and you allowed him to do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker—so if I do not go any wider than he went I hope that I shall be allowed to make one or two observations along those lines.

My feeling is that however good the terms of service may be in respect of the right given to a recruit to change his mind and to stay longer in the Army than he originally intended, it must be remembered that we first have to get the man to join for the twenty-two years. My belief is that there are two factors which are a positive discouragement from doing so, at the moment. First, there is the rate of pay that he will receive, which he will compare with that which he can get in civilian life and, secondly, there is the question of the uniform that he will be given to wear.

I have talked to a great many professional soldiers in recent years, and every one has told me that he believes that the present No. 1 dress is quite inadequate for its purpose. I once described it in this House as a glorified bus conductor's uniform, and it seems to me that that factor must be considered in relation to our need for recruits. Whether the design should be this, that or the other is not material to the debate. All I am saying is that the questions of uniform and pay are important and that however good the terms of service set out here may be—and I think that they are sensible terms—those two discouragements must be removed.

When a man joins he should know his full pension rights. We know the horrible thing called a pension abatement. When a man reaches the age of 65 and begins to receive his old-age pension his Army pension or retirement pay is reduced by roughly the same amount. Could not we write into the Bill, somewhere, a provision which will ensure that when a man joins the Army he shall be made fully aware of what will happen in respect of his pension when he eventually reaches the retirement age? The State is as interested in that matter as it is in this. If such a provision cannot be written into the Bill perhaps it can be added as an Amendment to the Army Act, 1955.

The difficulties to which the right hon. Member for Dundee, West referred are certainly serious ones, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend is fully aware of them. My belief is that we cannot put them right only by means of the terms of service. Only by providing adequate payment and by making the Army more attractive to the young man —and we must remember that what attracts a young man into the Army is not necessarily the same thing as that which will keep him in—can we achieve the result we desire.

We have to make the prospect of Army life really attractive to the young unmarried man, and when he is in the Army we should make sure that he will want to stay in because he knows that he will be able to have a happy married life and an active one. I support the Bill, but I hope that my hon. Friend will give some consideration to the points that I have raised.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) described the Bill as a first, hesitating step. A first, hesitating step where? I believe that the solution to the problem of getting a large professional Army in the atomic age is beyond the capacity of ordinary recruiting methods, and I cannot see anything in the Bill which provides the slightest shadow of a suggestion that the War Office has even the vaguest practical proposals for facing the issue, which the right hon. Gentleman calls a tragic dilemma. I do not believe that it is a tragic dilemma, because I think that it would be a good thing if no people at all got into the Army. I do not feel greatly disturbed at the fact that the figures show that in April of this year only 2,000 recruits joined, as compared with 3,000 in April of last year. What I wonder at is the fact that after the Suez crisis we were able to get even 200, let alone 2,000.

The problem goes far deeper than the hon. and gallant Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) thinks. It goes far beyond the question of pay and uniform. If we ask people to go into the Army at all we should see that they have a decent living wage. If there has to be this kind of an industry—if one can call it that—reasonably attractive conditions should be provided. In these days the minds of the men to whom we are appealing think slightly beyond the glamorous elements which once made them want to join—the conditions outlined in recruiting posters. They want to know what sort of career they can make.

If they are intelligent, they want to look nine years ahead. If they want to look even further ahead—twenty-two years ahead—they may turn to the Defence White Paper and try to gather what sort of life they will have in the Army in five, nine or twenty-two years' time. They will read the prospectus outlined in the White Paper and will then see that the authorities have not the slightest idea what the Army will be doing even in two or three years' time, let alone twenty-two years' time.

I do not see any solution to the problem of attracting the intelligent man into the Army. Such a man must realise that the time has come when intelligence will abolish armies. If he is told that if he joins the Army he may be sent for a pleasant time in Germany he may think, "Suppose a war comes along when I am in Germany, and somebody drops a bomb on my family at home". He may ask himself how he can defend his wife and family against an atomic bomb if he is in Germany. The old idea of joining the Army was to defend the homeland against a foreign invader. I do not know any country which wants to invade this country at the moment.

The fact is that the average potential soldier—the young man to whom hon. Members are appealing—asks these questions and receives absolutely no answers. The Minister tells us that the Army must attract people in competition with civil life. I do not know how this can be done. I cannot conceive that any attractive prospectus provided for potential recruits can possibly compare with the opportunities offered in civil life that the young man can discover if he takes up The Times.

Imagine, for example, a young man coming out of one of the big public schools and realising that if he becomes a soldier it may be for twenty-two years. I understand that an officer may resign after nine or six years according to what the Army Council determines. Imagine a young man who comes from the traditional officer class of the country being offered a career either as an officer or as a Member for Parliament. After the statement made by the Prime Minister yesterday, I do not see the slightest possibility of such a young man deciding to join the Army. He would probably go into politics.

If in the matter of recruitment we are to compete with modern salaries in the commercial world today we shall have to offer fantastically high rates of pay to prospective recruits in order to compete with the attraction of achieving high positions in the nationalised industries. We have to compete with the possibility of men becoming technicians, engineers and similar highly-skilled people to whom very high wages indeed are paid.

I certainly have a great deal of sympathy for the people who are trying to reorganise the Army under these conditions. My sympathy would extend to my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee if he became the Minister of Defence or the Secretary of State for War in the next Government, because I believe that any Service Minister would be up against an insoluble problem in this respect. It is only because of that sympathy and because of my sense of chivalry that I abstain from calling a Count at the present moment. Apparently there are less than twenty of us interested in the future of the British Army.

The Minister said that he was very anxious to attract recruits into the Guards. One of the reasons he gave for this was that these days chief constables when appointing new recruits to the police force prefer to appoint men who have been in the Guards. When I asked the Minister why this was so, he beat a very quick strategic retreat behind a smokescreen of words.

I have been a member of a local authority and have had to choose between certain people for the post of chief constable. I would not necessarily choose as a chief constable a man who had been in the Guards. Indeed, some local authorities would not regard it as a qualification at all, because a modern chief constable has to deal with other problems than merely that of old-time discipline, and they would not regard as a potential civil administrator a man who had been in any kind of uniform.

Though the Minister wants to get people into the Guards, I do not. I could find more useful occupations for them either in the National Coal Board or in other productive industries. But if the Minister wants to get people into the Guards, I think that instead of offering the inducements contained in the Bill he should abolish parades. I think that when people read in their newspapers that thirty-five Guardsmen have dropped, one by one, on to the parade ground owing to being overcome by the heat, because the Regulations, the commanding officer or someone else have not the sense to dismiss them, it is shockingly bad propaganda for recruitment to the Guards. In these days, such a thing is an anachronism.

We have heard a lot of catchwords during the debate. We have heard about incentives, stability, and so on. I have heard these catchwords and platitudes in every debate on Army recruitment during the last ten years, and they in no way achieve a solution of the problem. I am quite sure that when my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg), for whom I am deputising this afternoon, is in his place he will be able to subject the Bill to a shattering analysis. I hope to be able to co-operate with him during the Committee stage.

I ask the House seriously to consider that I have talked the most common sense in this debate. If one is asked to join the Army for twenty-two years, one has got to think twenty-two years ahead at a time when everything is changing very quickly and when the capacity for a future Prime Minister depends not upon increasing military expenditure, but upon cutting it down. The fact that at a time when the Army is being cut down officers are being sacked and receiving shabby treatment, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee said, acts as a disincentive.

Even if my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley and I manage to make the Bill something really worthy to be placed on the Statute Book, the solution will still be far off. I see absolutely no future for a large professional Army in this country. I believe that in the atomic age such an Army is a waste of time. We shall submit the Bill to a very critical analysis when it reaches the Committee stage.

The hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), who deputises for the hon. Member for Dudley (Mr. Wigg)—I did not know of this interesting new axis in our political life—has raised many points of principle which, on another occasion, I should much have liked to debate. From what the hon. Gentleman tells us, he and his hon. Friend will next week subject the Measure to a searching scrutiny.

I should like to say a word on one point raised by the hon. Gentleman. It is about the fact that chief constables in many cases like to recommend those who would join the police force to do service first of all in the Guards. This is a fact. It was also interesting to learn that the hon. Member for South Ayrshire had helped to choose chief constables. This illustrates the varied experience that awaits those who join the police force.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke) said that the Bill should really have taken the form of an amendment to the Army Act, 1955. There would have been certain difficulties about adopting that course because the Bill does not amend Section 5 of the Act so far as it applies to men who join the Army before 1st October, 1957. It would have been possible, I think, to have got round that difficulty. It is really a matter of taste whether to have an enabling Act, —an extra Measure, as it were—or to amend an existing one. We thought on balance that it was wiser and easier to have an extra Measure.

My hon. and gallant Friend mentioned the difficulties involved for men who paste amendments into their books. My short experience at the War Office has taught me that this procedure is not altogether a popular one. We thought that a separate Measure might be easier and might involve the use of less scissors and paste for the ordinary soldier.

Would my hon. Friend bear in mind that it will now be necessary to have a copy of the Army Act, 1955, and of this Bill when it becomes an Act before any man can understand what really are his terms of enlistment? Therefore, there is a case for saying, I think, that there should be a joint publication of the two in some form or other.

There will be more paper, less scissors and paste.

I think that the background to this Bill is well understood. In the old days before the war the Army used to enlist a man for twelve years. From the Army's point of view that was a satisfactory length of contract, but it gave the individual too little security of tenure. As the House knows, during the administration of Lord Hore-Belisha at the War Office instructions were issued that no soldier would be refused permission to prolong his service beyond twelve years unless there were very strong reasons for such a refusal.

In 1952, the introduction of the 22-year engagement gave statutory form to the idea of the long-term contract of service. Under this we gave the soldier reasonable security of tenure and something approaching a life career. We had hoped in return to get more Regular soldiers, and more contented Regular soldiers. The object of this Bill is to give us greater freedom, within the framework of the 22-year engagement, to vary the proportion of Colour to Reserve service in the first twelve years of a man's Army career.

The right hon. Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) said the Bill gave us very wide powers. In fact, I think it modifies our existing powers only in one main respect. This is that it brings to an end a soldier's right to leave the Army on the completion of three years' Colour service with only four years' service in the Reserve. The right hon. Gentleman asked for information about terms of engagement which would hold good in the future. Our present intention, as my right hon. Friend said, is that the minimum term shall be six years with the Colours and six with the Reserve, and after that nine years with the Colours and three with the Reserve. This involves the abolition on the one hand of the 3-year engagement and an extension of Reserve service on the other. That is to say, instead of 6 and 3, and 9 and nothing, it will be 6 and 6 and 9 and 3.

I should like to say a word about the ending of the 3-year engagement. I think there is a wide measure of agreement in the House that it was necessary. In one respect the 3-years engagement abundantly fulfilled our expectations. A large number of National Service men were persuaded by the provisions of the 3-year engagement to give us an extra year of service. This increased our manpower, and the extra year of training undoubtedly improved the quality of the Army. In another respect the 3-year engagement has been disappointing. We had hoped that a substantial proportion of 3-year men would prolong their engagement at the end of the 3-year period. In fact, less than 10 per cent. have done so.

I think the reasons for this are mainly psychological. The potential Army recruit, like any other applicant for a new job, will tend to sign on for the minimum period, especially if his security of tenure, for at any rate up to twenty-two years, is guaranteed whatever the length of the initial contract. In the context of National Service this has tended to have discouraging results. The story has been told of three recruits who came into the barrackroom and found themselves in adjoining beds. One was a young man who intended to make the Army his life's career and to do the whole twenty-two years. One was a disguised National Service man serving three years with extra pay and the other was a National Service man. The three became firm friends and when the last two went back into civil life, the call of civil life proved too strong for the third one.

There is another side to this. Three years after the date of enlistment finds a young man at an age of somewhere between 21 and 24. He will hardly have settled down in this time in the Army and unless he is exceptional he may not have been singled out for promotion. Three years later, however, after, say, a 6-year engagement, he will be more mature in years. He may well have married. He will have settled down in the Army and may be on the way to promotion, or even promoted. All these things taken together lead us to believe that the 6-year engagement is a better starting point in an all-Regular Army than the 3-year engagement.

It is a matter of opinion and in a sense it is a gamble. As a matter of mathematics, from the point of view of the Army one 6-year man is worth two 3-year men. From the point of view of quality, the 6-year man is worth rather more than twice the 3-year man because of the experience and training he acquires. So it is our judgment that we shall secure at least half as many recruits on the basis of the 6-year engagement as we would have received in similar circumstances under a 3-year engagement.

My right hon. Friend has explained that as well as terminating the 3-year engagement we intend to extend the existing Reserve liability. We already have power to do this, but in fact it is the natural consequence of this Bill. As I said, at the present time a man on a 6-year engagement is only liable for three years with the Reserve, and a man on a 9-year engagement has no Reserve liability. We intend to change that to six years with the Colours and six with the Reserve or nine years with the Colours and three with the Reserve. The all-Regular Army will have a Reserve problem and this decision will help to strengthen the position so far as the Reserve is concerned. It is true that if we persist with the 3-year service, the Reserve position would be stronger in the early nineteen sixties. But only in that period. By the middle of the 1960s the 6-year men will be taking their place in the Reserve and bringing it up to the same level of strength as we should have had if we had kept the 3-year engagement. We think the risk in the early 1960s is acceptable, since at that time there will still be a large number of trained men in the country as a result of National Service.

The essence of the Bill is to enable us to end the soldier's option to leave the Army after his first three years of service and to substitute for it the minimum of six years with the Colours and six with the Reserve. We think this the engagement most likely to give us the long service all-Regular Army. However, we lay no claim to infallibility. It may well be that some different combination of Colour and Reserve service may prove more suitable either to the Army as a whole or for certain corps of the Army.

The right hon. Member for Dundee, West asked whether there would be an opportunity to debate changes of that kind. There is no statutory provision under the 1955 Act or this Bill for debating such changes. But Questions could be asked in the House, and if there was a wish for a debate, no doubt that could be arranged. It is one of the merits of the Bill that it leaves it open to the Army Council to vary the combination of Colour and Reserve service as experience may show to be desirable, always provided, of course, that no such variation has restrospective effect or exceeds a maximum of twelve years service.

The great question remains. Shall we get the recruits? We are well aware of the difficulties. I do not think that the Government are being as slow or dilatory in this matter as the right hon. Member for Dundee. West suggested. Were he at the War Office now, he would perhaps be surprised at the amount of midnight oil which is being burned there.

We are all agreed that the term of engagement can at best only be a small part of the answer to the problem of recruiting. Much will depend on other aspects of the material conditions of employment, and perhaps even more on the psychological appeal and the question of the status of the soldier in the community. There is, for instance, the question of uniform. My hone and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely has also raised the question of the abatement of pensions. I should have thought that problem was one we should consider in connection with the Pay Code rather than during a debate on this Bill. In any case, we believe that the changes proposed in this Bill are an essential step towards building up a professional long-service Regular Army. In that belief we ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.

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

This is a non-controversial and I think a self-explanatory Measure. All hon. Members know the background of it, though I am sorry there are not more hon. Members here today taking an interest in the work of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation. This work is highly commendable; we all know the success that the Corporation has had.

I do not want to detain the House for any length of time, but I think that hon. Members who have made a study of the Report of the Royal Commission on Land and Population in East Africa will remember that the Royal Commission made favourable mention of the work of the Corporation. It commented that the Tanganyika experiments were operating with a degree of control and help to the African peasant far beyond anything previously considered in East Africa. At the initial stage the African tenant farmer was very intensively supervised, with the object of getting for him as high a yield as possible from his operations.

The Royal Commission commented that while it was far too early to form any opinion as to the success of these experiments it would be difficult to overestimate their importance, as they bore directly on a main need of East Africa, the application of managerial and technical knowledge, and of capital, in order to modernise the indigenous economy so that the people were finally left with both the trained ability and the experience with which to create their own capital for their own future development. Those words were written on the basis of observations made in 1953. It is not too early to make a modest assertion that ultimate success for these experiments is assured.

Hon. Members may wonder why we have to legislate for the seemingly simple matter of providing for a further period of five years funds which Parliament has already agreed should be devoted to this purpose. It would have been possible under the existing Colonial Development and Welfare Act to extend assistance to the Corporation by means of C. D. and W. schemes up to the end of the currency of the present Act in 1960. However, it was provided in the Act that monies made available to the Corporation up to the original terminal date, namely, 1st October this year, should be provided outside the ceiling of funds for general colonial development and welfare set by that Act.

Therefore, if we were not to modify the C. D. and W. Act, we should have to draw the remaining funds for the Corporation from within the total sum made available, thus reducing by that amount the possibility of allocating funds to other colonial purposes. To avoid this disadvantage alone might not justify seeking special legislative authority from Parliament.

On the other hand, we are satisfied that continued assistance to the Corporation is necessary and justified for two years beyond the currency of the present C. D. and W. Act. If we were to give the Corporation the assurance it requires of continued support over the whole of its new programme we should have to give it an undertaking either that Parliament would provide further C. D. and W. money after 1960 or would legislate specifically to provide further money to the Corporation after that date. Either course would have involved an assumption regarding the readiness of Parliament to do these things.

My right hon. Friend therefore felt that he owed it to this House to come before it with specific proposals in the form of the small Bill now before us to give to the Tanganyika Government and the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation the support and encouragement from Parliament which I hope hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that they deserve. In order to obviate any overlapping in legislation we have inserted Clause 1 (2) which rules out the provision of assistance under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts after 30th September of this year.

That is all I want to say by way of explanation. Let me reaffirm that the object of the legislation is not to provide more money to sustain the Corporation than Parliament has earlier decided but to permit a little less than that sum to be made available over a longer period, in accordance with a programme which the Chairman of the Corporation, the Governor of Tanganyika and my right hon. Friend are satisfied will bring this successful undertaking to a satisfactory conclusion. I confidently commend the Bill to the House as a logical, sound and, I hope, generally agreeable Measure.

We welcome the Bill. I was glad to have the explanation from the Minister of the financial arrangements which it is now proposed to make.

The Bill revives the ghost of something which excited considerable Conservative propaganda seven or more years ago. The Corporation we are discussing owes its origin to the Overseas Food Corporation and to the consequences of the work of that Corporation. The work which the Overseas Food Corporation sought to do was of supreme importance to the developing life of East Africa. The Minister has endorsed that statement. We should remind ourselves that at the time we were not concerned merely in a period of shortage with the provision of edible fats under the groundnut scheme; we were also concerned with discovering how to bring into cultivation the marginal and sub-marginal land in East Africa in order that the standard of life of the people could be improved, and increased economic returns could be brought to a population which was rapidly increasing while its subsistence was steadily diminishing. Therefore the great experiment was made.

Was it possible to bring those tropical, arid lands to produce the foodstuffs necessary not only in Africa but elsewhere? Could new methods of cultivation be discovered as a result of research, experiment, pilot schemes and so on? Was collective mechanisation a possible method in these very arid and long-neglected lands? Perhaps it was an experiment, but looking at it objectively all of us must agree that it made some contribution to the economic life of Africa by the creation of public works and social services which otherwise would not have been made. It also brought to us a fund of scientific knowledge and technical information for future cultiva- tion and production for those lands which otherwise would not have been available.

That work is perpetuated by the Tanganyika Corporation which we are asked to assist this afternoon. It took over the undertaking of the Overseas Food Corporation. It is gratifying to know from the Minister that the Corporation has continued to do excellent work, so much so that we are now asked to advance money, outside the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, in order that the work should continue.

I agree, as does my party, that the work of the Corporation should continue and that it should be able to look ahead. It deserves no less attention from the Press than the Press was prepared to give to the ill-fated scheme which the Tanganyika Corporation now succeeds. We regard the work of the Corporation as of vital importance, We want to find the answers to these intractable problems in East Africa. We want to know how it is possible to bring reasonable conditions of life to the people in these territories. The expenditure of a little more money granted by this House will assist in an earlier solution of some of the difficult problems the answers to which it is very necessary should be found.

After all, it is one of the responsibilities of this country, with its overseas populations and territories, to spend money in trying to improve standards of living and make more humane life possible. Therefore, we are asked to grant money, even if this Corporation is carrying on the work of the rather ill-fated Corporation which it succeeds.

I was very anxious to know a little more about the Corporation's work. I wanted to discover more about its activities, its progress, how the money was being spent, whether it was likely to prove solvent and so on; but I must confess that there is singularly little information available about the Corporation. It may be the habit of the Colonial Office—it certainly was when I was a Minister there—to hide its light under a bushel, and the public knows very little about many of the great experiments which it has conducted and some of the very worth-while work which it has done. It is very difficult for the public to be persuaded to read anything about it. I searched the Reports of the Colonial Development and Welfare Fund, the Report of the Government of Tanganyika to the United Nations, the Report of the Colonial Office itself and the Report of the Agricultural Department of Tanganyika, but I found very little indeed which could tell me about the Corporation and the kind of work which it was doing.

I heartily endorse the reference which the Under-Secretary of State made to the Report of the Royal Commission on East Africa. After all these researches I could find only three references, but they are of such interest and so informing that I should like to give the House the benefit of what I discovered.

First, in 1955–56, we are told:

"Large-scale experiments in mechanised and partly-mechanised agriculture were continued, and the African tenant-farmer schemes, in particular were being expanded."

This information I discovered under the heading "Constitutional" and not under "Agriculture". There was another reference:

"Experiments in new forms of organising peasant farming have continued. Surveys have started on three schemes for settlement, one of which will be run as a tenant farming scheme…there was a further increase in the numbers of farmers on the three-tenant farming schemes of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation."

In last year's Report, recently published, it is stated:

"Encouraging progress continues to be made by the Corporation in its various enterprises."

I must confess that this is not a great deal of information there about the operations of the Corporation but it is significant.

Finally, in the Library of the House of Commons, there was placed this week the Report of the Corporation itself. I must say that I find it a most entrancing and encouraging Report, which justifies all the faith we had placed in the Corporation, and I should like to congratulate Mr. Grant Morris and his colleages on the excellence of the work they are doing. The Report tells of men's efforts to control and overcome environment, to make the bush and the desert flourish and to secure humane and more abundant life. It is a vigorous record of much trial and disappointment, as well as of success.

It includes campaigns against the tsetse fly and sleeping sickness; experi- ments with new machinery and ploughing; the trying out of new insecticides and excellent scientific work being done; surveys over big regions into water supplies, soil conditions, geological discoveries in anticipation of planned development; a ranching scheme where large-scale mechanised arable farms have proved unworkable; trying out new crops by pilot schemes, not only of groundnuts but of tobacco, soya beans and cashew nuts; and the establishment of Africans on their own farms in these tenant schemes and new settlements, which are so worth while and so important. The Corporation is also successful in the training of men and putting them on the farms, and using their former employees for excellent work in building up a sound core of cultivators in that part of the world.

In all this, the Corporation is creating and settling new types of trained workers for the difficult task of increasing the subsistence needs of the areas, discovering new techniques, surveying regions and conducting pilot schemes, in which it is working in the spirit of the groundnuts scheme, of which this Corporation is the successor.

We wish the Corporation all success in its work, and we are glad that its work is to continue. We believe it to be valuable and useful in the developing life of Africa, because it is a contribution to African life. Therefore, we have the greatest pleasure in welcoming the Bill, and we shall give it our whole-hearted support.

It is always a very great privilege to follow in debate the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) because we know that in all his contacts overseas he had great ideals in his time in office which he did his best to implement, and he always speaks with great sincerity. I also agree with him that whatever may have been lost in other ways the scientific knowledge gained was of infinite value.

I had the opportunity of visiting this area, especially the Kongwa district, in February, 1951. What was particularly striking was to realise how quickly in the short time between the closing down in 1950 and the restarting of another organisation the land, even though it had been fairly well developed, could return to scrub land. I therefore welcome this project very much and I think it should help in the development of the whole Territory of Tanganyika.

I was interested in reading the Report to note the increase in the number of African farms, and I thought that was very satisfactory. I wish to ask my hon. Friend if it is possible, in future, to envisage these Africans living in their homes and not just leasing them. If we have that object in view we can encourage them to cultivate their own land, and they will have a better interest in the project as they will feel they have a stake in their own country. I should like the Corporation to give them the opportunity of owning their own land in future.

I notice in the Report that there are no Asians with holdings there. A little time ago, we had the pleasure of receiving a deputation of the Tanganyika United Party and we were all impressed by the tact that that deputation, which was five in number, included one Indian, one European-Greek, two Africans and one Englishman. With the exception of the Englishman, none of them had left the Territory before. They came over here in the interests of the Tanganyika Territory. It seemed that this was the one Territory in Africa where there is already a very good basis for all races working together. I hope that in this area we shall see that this work is carried on and that it will not be just left to the European and African population.

I read in the Report, in page 15:

"The suspected labour shortage began to have its effect.…"

Later the Report says in page 33:

"Labour was slow in coming in at the beginning of the rains."

I should like to know what action has been taken to form more villages where these people can live in communities and go out to work in the fields. I understand that groundnuts have been lost because of the lack of labour. The Report says:

"Groundnuts which remained in the fields for a considerable period were found to 'skin' and in many cases prolonged exposure to extremes of weather blackened them."

I have a little knowledge of this subject, having grown them in a small way and I understand that one cannot leave groundnuts on the ground for a long time, once they have been dug up, because they rot quickly. I should like to know what steps are being taken to overcome this difficulty.

I suggest to my hon. Friend that perhaps it might be practical in the not too distant future to employ disabled and particularly blind people in this area. I am interested in the British Empire Society for the Blind, which is likely to change its name to the British Commonwealth Society for the Blind, and we have been very successful both in Uganda and Kenya with what are known as shamba schemes for blind workers. Through this means they have been enabled to support themselves and their families. This might be an ideal area for the continuation of such schemes, and I ask my hon. Friend to consider this. They are, perhaps, better suited for dealing with maize or the soya bean crops, which have been exceptionally good in this area.

I was interested to see in the Report that women are being employed in specific jobs and have been particularly successful in grading tobacco. I hope this work will be extended because I think it is far better that they should be earning independently than just working in the fields for their husbands.

I could not find any reference in the Report to the earnings of the employees. I should like to know if we could have some information about the average earnings, then we should get a little idea of the standard of living in that area. It was interesting to note the proportion of skilled workers to unskilled workers. That proportion of the former was exceptionally high and seemed to prove that there is difficulty in getting unskilled workers.

Finally, I should like to have information about the trial farms in the Rufiji area and also to be told what is meant by the phrase "trial farms". For what period is a trial and what is the type of farm?

I hope that this Bill will receive a Second Reading, because I think that it will enable people in this Territory, which really began to be known to us by the travels of Livingstone, not so very long ago, to find encouragement, and it will help to meet the needs of Africans, in what I am certain will be one of the foremost areas in Africa in future.

I am quite sure the House has listened with very great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Devon-port (Miss Vickers). I have been quite envious of her because she visited this area and I have not had an opportunity of doing so. I was going to say that we do not always agree on issues discussed in this House, but she is one of the hon. Members on the opposite benches with whom I agree probably more often than most of her colleagues, and on this occasion I hope the Minister will reply to the specific questions she has put.

The hon. Lady raised the questions of the conditions of the labourers and reasons for shortage of labour and the opportunity for Asians to participate in this scheme. I want to emphasise that one of the important features of the scheme is that there is no racial discrimination in it. She mentioned the opportunities for women and the development of village communities. All those are practical items of very great importance, and I hope the Minister will be able to reply to the points raised.

It is not often that I can give wholehearted support to a proposal brought from the Colonial Office. Therefore, I am very delighted this afternoon, not only to give wholehearted support, but possibly more enthusiastic support than the Minister who has spoken, because I think he was too modest about the achievements of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation. The only thing which worried me a little was that while the financial support of this Government is to be continued for another five years, which one welcomes, the hon. Gentleman made the suggestion that the annual amount might be decreased.

indicated dissent.

I am sorry if I have got that wrong. It reassures me to find that I misunderstood the hon. Gentleman on that point.

It has already been said that the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation has followed the failure of the groundnut scheme. I wish only to make a brief reference to that relationship. During the war there was the double front—the military front and the home front. On the home front, the problem of food was perhaps the most important issue that had to be faced. The groundnut scheme was a gamble, but many gambles had to be taken. Many gambles were taken on the military front and many of them failed. They resulted in loss of life and great destruction and they left nothing in their trail except the warning that we should not follow the same course again.

The groundnut scheme in Tanganyika, however, has left as a sequence the possibilities of great constructive activities which will be of value not only to Tanganyika, but to the whole of Africa. If the groundnut scheme itself failed, at least it has left these opportunities, which will be of such enormous importance to the agriculture of Tanganyika, of East Africa and of Africa as a whole. It is because I am impressed by the value of what has been done that I want to emphasise it even more strongly than the Minister has done in his speech this afternoon.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) described how he had made researches to try to get information about the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation. Many of us felt identity with him in what he said, because in our experience it is extraordinarily difficult to get the facts about many activities of the Colonial Office.

On this occasion, however, I seem to have been more fortunate than my right hon. Friend. Perhaps that is due to the fact that I have a very good research worker who helps me and who helps others who are interested in Colonial Territories. We have obtained from the Library the Report of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation.

May I point out that it was because such information was not in the Library that I asked the Librarian to do his best with the Colonial Office to obtain a Report of the Corporation. That was done and, therefore, the book now in the possession of my hon. Friend is the Report which my pressure obtained.

I ought to make it plain that it was not through anybody's pressure at all. I arranged to have the Report put in the Library at the earliest moment it was available. I would not wish it to be thought that we were hiding our lights under a bushel or were reluctant and had the Report forced from us. I am sure that hon. Members will accept my explanation.

I was not for one moment suggesting that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield had been less astute than others in obtaining the Report. He took the initiative in getting it into the Library, and I thank him not only for that but for the many other services which he has given us concerning the Colonies.

If one reads the Report, one is stirred with enthusiasm for the work which the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation is doing. I emphasise it this afternoon because I consider it important, in view of all the propaganda which was conducted against the groundnut scheme, to underline the service which the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation, which is the groundnut scheme's successor and was introduced by it, is giving to the whole cause of agriculture in Africa.

The first area whose work is described in the Report is the Transferred Undertaking. In that area, there are now 17,523 acres under crops. There are fifteen production farms and the main crops have proved satisfactory. Examination, investigation and experimentation are still being undertaken concerning large-scale farming. Because that problem is one about which every Colonial Government in Africa is concerned, the result of this experiment will be of great value to all the African Territories.

The second feature is the scheme for African tenants. I shall make a more detailed reference to the African Tenants Scheme, but I record at this stage that there are 148 holdings and that the extraordinary proportion of 138 of these holdings were successfully farmed last year.

Secondly, there is the area of the Urambo, where twelve large farms are leased to tenants. Again, the Report contains the remarkable tribute that eleven of those twelve large farms which are farmed by Africans were successful last year. Indeed, the Report becomes almost lyrical in its references. It speaks of the enthusiasm of the Africans for the farming which they are doing and it emphasises how they are convinced of its soundness and opportunity.

We have the encouraging fact that the twelve large farms which already exist are to be supplemented by twenty more farms during the coming year. In addition to the large farms, there are 64 tenants on smaller holdings. Again, the extraordinary proportion of 60 of the 64 tenant farmers farmed profitably last year. One would be happy if the same success could be reported of smallholdings in this country.

Thirdly, I want to refer to the Kongwa area, where there is specialisation in cattle ranching and where 6,364 head of cattle are now herded. Here again, there are nineteen farmers in the African Tenant Scheme who, according to the Report, enjoyed a particularly successful season, a net profit of £1,800 being recorded. Again—and one finds it difficult to reserve one's praise for these constructive efforts —50 more tenants have signed for the year 1956–57.

I want to add a word about the African Tenant Scheme, supplementing what the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport has said. One finds in the Report the reflection of the delight and enthusiasm of the African farmers, but one also finds that they desire greater security. In the Report we are promised a revised scheme for 1957–58. I wonder whether it is too early for the Minister to indicate to the House what is in the minds of the Corporation concerning that revised scheme. I am not certain that ownership, particularly of large farms, is the best method, but I ask the Minister, as he comes to deal with that revised scheme, also to have in mind the possibilities of co-operative farming, on the basis of security for a long period—as long, indeed, as good forming is carried out by these respective farmers.

I turn to the Rifiji Basin Survey Scheme, which is being conducted, I understand, on behalf of the Tanganyika Government. Its purpose is the conservation and use of water, the use of pumping, irrigation, and the establishment of trial farms. I notice that in the Report it is said that if those trial farms are a success planned settlement schemes are proposed. I wonder if the Under-Secretary of State could give us some indication of what the Corporation has in mind for the settlement schemes, and once more I ask him whether, in thinking about them, he will look at the examples of co-operative farming. He need go no farther than Tanganyika itself, where on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro there is the most wonderful African cooperative farming one can find in the whole Continent.

Last among these areas I come to the Ruvu Ranching Scheme, which is also done in co-operation with the Tanganyika Government. Here it is hoped to open up 78,000 acres within reasonable reach of Dar-es Salaam. This is an inspiring project, and if it is possible for the Under-Secretary of State to give us some details when he replies to the debate I am sure the whole House will hear of them with great interest.

The next matter I want to take up was mentioned by the hon. Lady, that of the staff and the conditions of the labourers. I was delighted to read in the Corporation's statement that it has

"consistently sought and seeks to avoid, in every possible way, any form of racial discrimination both in its terms of service and in its relationship with the staff."

The Report shows that there are three grades of staff, the senior grade, with £900 per annum and above, an intermediate grade with from £450 per annum to £900, and a junior grade below £450. One is pleased to read that the graduation takes place solely by merit regardless of race or creed.

It would be interesting to be informed about these grades, particularly about the higher grades, how many Africans have graduated to them and how many Asians have graduated to them. This may be short notice to give of these questions, but if in Committee on the Bill or at a later stage we could have that information I think it would be of value.

Finally, I ask about the labourers, who, I suppose, may not be included in these three grade of the staff. What are their conditions? What are their wages? What are their terms of employment? What provision is made for their housing? What opportunities are there for the education of their children? The Report speaks of the difficulty of obtaining labour. Surely it is by suitable provision of these things that the supply of labour will be best encouraged.

As I said when I began, it is a very great delight on this occasion to be speaking in support of a Measure intro- duced by the Front Bench opposite and by the Colonial Secretary in particular, and I hope not only that this Bill will be carried but that all the hopes of success expressed in this Report will be realised in the coming five years.

In view of the apologia of the groundnut scheme presented by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway), it ought to be said from these benches that the criticism against the Government of the day was not because of their wish to develop Tanganyika but because of the scale of the scheme they put into effect. As I want to keep this debate on a bi-partisan basis, I will add only that these criticisms seem to have been justified by the history of that project which led to the loss of £30 million of the taxpayer's money.

Will the hon. and gallant Gentleman not agree that that criticism applies to many gambles in war, and upon the military field, as well as upon the home front?

Yes, but there must be a reasonable basis for a gamble, and the criticism of the Government of the day was that such a basis did not exist.

Am I not right in thinking that that operation took place in peace time, not war time, and that it was only the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Strachey) who described that as a warlike operation?

I think my hon. Friend is quite right in that supposition. The groundnut scheme took place in the postwar period and not during the war. However, I do not want to go on discussing the groundnut scheme. I simply thought that that reminder as to the facts ought to be made from these benches.

The roots of the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation having been in the groundnut scheme, it presumably thought it had to be very cautious in the future, and hence this Bill, for it wants financial stability for the next five years, stability which, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, could not be obtained from the colonial development and welfare funds.

I think that this caution allied to the progress which has undoubtedly been made in Tanganyika is the best augury for the future.

There are three main areas, some of which have been referred to by some hon. Members. To add to the picture of the cattle raising scheme at Kongwa painted by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough, I would emphasise the fact that nineteen of those African farmers he praised so rightly have shown a profit of between £70 and £200 a year which shows that good husbandry and industry do pay and that that is an incentive encouraging to all races in Tanganyika.

At Urambo, where tobacco is the main crop, there are not only the twelve African farms but two exceptionally large European farms which also made good profits and good progress, showing that good husbandry is not confined to any one race in Tanganyika.

I think that possibly one of the most important schemes is the one at Nachingwea, an experimental scheme for the production of groundnuts and soya beans. If the experiment succeeds it will help very much in developing similar projects for the rest of Tanganyika and it is vitally important that this should be done, and if there were no other reason this alone would induce me to support the Bill 100 per cent.

I read with great interest a letter in The Economist of 1st June written by someone representing the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation, and I would quote one paragraph to the House:

"Although most of the farms are run by European managers with African labour, the problem of helping the African to rise above the limits of hoe cultivation is being tackled concurrently on an African Tenant Scheme. Here tenants farm holdings of 20–25 acres each under the general supervision of a European manager."

I would reinforce the plea made from both sides of the House that when the scheme has been considered consideration should be given to allowing these tenants to take over the land themselves so that the recommendations of the Royal Commission may be brought into effect. It will be a very good example to the rest of Africa if we can later see these African farms, which have been developed so very successfully, handed over to the people who now farm them as tenants.

One question I would like to ask my hon. Friend is whether I am right in supposing that by 1962, when the Bill expires, the Corporation and the schemes run by the Corporation should be self-supporting. Is that the object for which we are working? If so, it is a very worthy object which should be supported on both sides of the House.

As to development in general in Tanganyika, I understand that only one-tenth of cultivatable land is at present under cultivation and that it is expected to expand agricultural production by approximately 5 per cent. per year. The Bill will undoubtedly help towards the realisation of this aim, but there are three main difficulties on which I should like to ask my hon. Friend one or two questions. The main difficulties seem to be water supplies, the tsetse fly, and communications.

Is something being done to improve the water supplies in the settled village areas? It seems to me that as these African farms become more productive and prosperous they can do something themselves to improve the water supply which is so vital to this arid area.

With regard to tsetse, both in Urambo and in Nachingwea, which are in the tsetse fly area, experiments are being carried out. Are those experiments successful? Do they provide good hope that we shall be able to overcome this scrouge in the very near future? If so, it will make a great difference to Tanganyika's development as an agricultural country.

As to communications, what is needed so very much is a railway to open up the southernmost part of Tanganyika and to exploit the coal and minerals that exist to the north-east of Lake Nyasa. A railway that would connect with the Rhodesias would help to open up more agricultural land which, if the tsetse scourge could be overcome, would become productive, and so raise the standard of living of the people. But all this requires capital. Every time we have a debate on East Africa the question of capital crops up. Tanganyika needs it very badly. At the Convention of the United Tanganyika Party last year a sum of £100 million in ten years was spoken of as being essential to the future agricultural and commercial development of Tanganyika. Yet we find that the recent sugar project at Kilumbero designed to open up 60,000 acres for sugar production fell down or did not mature because of lack of capital. A railway was required costing £3¾ million, but that capital could not be found and the scheme was abandoned, with the consequent and unfortunate effect on the standard of living of the people of all races in Tanganyika.

Capital, governmental, and probably even more so from private enterprise, is the important requirement in East Africa. It cannot be emphasised too often that capital will be directed to States where there are stable political conditions. Tanganyika has given a good example. There is parity between the races among the elected members of the Legislative Council. The racial atmosphere has been extremely good but there have been stirrings just recently of inter-racial strife, due to one party asking to go too fast. The corollary, of course, must not be that the other party asks to go too slow.

Most hon. Members will have welcomed the recent letter in The Times and the memorandum from the United Tanganyika Party asking for a bipartisan approach in this country to the problems of Tanganyika and urging that those problems should be considered on their merits. The debate today has shown complete agreement on both sides of the House with the objects of the Bill, which are to open up the agricultural parts of Tanganyika, to kill the scourge of the tsetse fly and so to raise the standards of all races in Tanganyika.

I rise to support the Bill and pay my tribute to the work of this wholly admirable Corporation. It is largely because of the success of the steady and scientific work of this organisation that I thought it was a little unfortunate to link it in debate with what had been done by the ill-fated Overseas Food Corporation, which came into existence two or three years after the end of the Second World War. I do not wish to be controversial, but there is a great difference between the performances of the two organisations. Unlike its predecessor, the Tanganyika Agricultural Corporation is moving experimentally and cautiously with pilot schemes. It has acted in close concert with the Tanganyika Government and its agricultural advisers and it has had its feet on the ground from the very beginning.

Would hon. Members opposite not agree that the groundnut scheme was carried out under the pressure of need for butter and fats in this country and that it was in that sense a gamble to deal with a very critical situation?

I would not quarrel with one word of what the hon. Member has said. The right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones) spoke with great feeling and I thoroughly agreed with every word of his speech. I know that he would agree with me when I say that our primary duty here should be to concern ourselves not merely with a shortage of butter and fats for the people of the United Kingdom but with the long-term interests of the people in the territories concerned. I readily concede that behind the grandiose groundnuts scheme was the idea that in meeting our own need we should create conditions which would be helpful to the people of the East African Territories. Indeed, the scheme was to provide a short cut to prosperity for them. It was to be the means whereby primitive peoples were to be brought from a shifting cultivation system into a modern economy in the shortest possible space of time.

All I would say today in considering this Bill is that we are rightly paying tribute to an organisation which appears to have learned from the lessons of that failure. Whereas the concept of the Overseas Food Corporation was forced through under the pressure of events against the advice of many of those highly qualified in African agriculture, in Tanganyika and outside it, the present scheme seems to command the full approval and support of everybody in that country.

I would like to say a word about the inauguration of the groundnut scheme, because it was my privilege to consult almost every knowledgeable authority, every scientific authority, and large numbers of commercial and financial interests, people experienced in Africa and in African agriculture, the Development Council, the Colonial Office and the Conservative Party too. All were unanimous that the late Labour Government should drive ahead as fast as it possibly could, not only to meet the deficiencies in edible fats in this country at the time, but also to discover the answer to some of these needs in regard to the cultivation of marginal and sub-marginal lands. It was done with the full endorsement of almost every authority which could be approached at that time.

With respect, that is merely a reiteration of the need of the time, with which nobody quarrels. Indeed the right hon. Gentleman need not protest too much, because one of the weaknesses of the scheme was that the Corporation in question did not come under his ultimate control but under the control of the Minister of Food. In fact, I cannot help but feel that if the Corporation had come under the eagle eye of the right hon. Gentleman the story might have been a little different, since we all know his deep concern and regard for the interests of the people in the Colonies. I think that the way in which that scheme was developing, particularly in its later stage, was something which should have caused him, and probably did, a great deal of pain, and regret that he had not got the power to deal with that. However, Mr. Speaker, you would quickly call me to order if I went too far along that road—

I was about to remark that while this history may be of value in this discussion, we are dealing with the present Bill.

I stand rebuked, Sir. You are quite right. We are concerned with the present Bill, and I want to say personally how grateful I was, as I am sure was every hon. Member on this side of the House, to the right hon. Gentleman for the bi-partisan spirit with which he approached the problem today. If there is any territory in the Colonial Empire that needs a bi-partisan approach to its manifold problems it is Tanganyika, because it is a Trust Territory the future of which is not entirely in our hands. There are special circumstances here, and because those uncertainties prevail there is a special responsibility and obligation resting upon the parties in this House to ensure that we avoid doing or saying anything which may be unhelpful to the growth of confidence in Tanganyika.

I would ask my hon. Friend when he replies to answer one or two questions about the extent to which the activities of this Corporation are geared to the long-term development needs of the territory. I have had a look at the report, it is very good, but I join with those who say that there is a general lack of information in this country about Tanganyika. That is a pity. I remember that when I was in Dar-es-Salaam some two years ago the Governor said to me it was a pity that Tanganyika was so little discussed in this country. He said that while it was an advantage not to be regarded as a trouble spot, it was a disadvantage not to be in the news from the point of view of encouraging people to think in terms of investing money, settling in the territory, or taking an interest in its development. So I would like my hon. Friend to tell us to what extent the activities of the Corporation are being geared to the long-term needs of the territory for commerce and social development.

My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) raised a most valid point, one which I have raised on several occasions during the past few years. What is being done to encourage individual ownership of holdings? I agree that one should not be dogmatic about this since, after all, the Corporation is engaged in experimental and explanatory work. But here is one part of East Africa where it is possible to experiment, where about 90 per cent. of the population are crammed into a quarter of the territory because of the present of tsetse and the lack of water. Given progress in the conquest of tsetse and the extension of water supplies, here is one part of Africa where I would have thought it possible to make rapid progress in transforming the social life of the people and where we could try every kind of experiment—the leasehold system, co-operative farming and giving men a stake in the land through individual ownership. I should like to know to what extent experiments in that direction are taking place through the medium of the Corporation.

We have heard from various speakers in the debate something about the functions of the Corporation and the activities which it is carrying out. If anyone looks at a map of Tanganyika who has a glimmering of understanding of the considerable economic potential of the territory, his eye travels almost automatically to the south-west corner where lie great mineral deposits. What is being done to open up territory by settlement through which a railway must sooner or later pass linking the heart of the mineral bearing lands of Tanganyika and the northern part of Rhodesia with the Indian Ocean? Has the Corporation that in mind?

I suppose that Tanganyika is unique in another respect. Here is the one multiracial territory in Africa with no real racial problem. Looking at Africa as a whole, one can say that here is a territory where the relations between the races appear to be harmonious, and where there is no reason why they should not continue to be so. I should like to know to what extent the Corporation is likely, through its activities, to encourage racial collaboration. It seems to me that if the three races work together in this part of Africa and make a success of this particular instrument, it can have an enormous influence for good over a far wider field.

Those are the questions to which I should like answers. I warmly commend the Bill. I believe that the approach made by the right hon. Member for Wakefield and all who have spoken today is a happy augury for the future of the territory.

If I might, by leave of the House, speak again, I should like to begin by saying that it is a happy experience for me to be at the Dispatch Box and find not a murmur against the propositions that I am putting to the House. I am sorry that my right hon. Friend, who is engaged on very pressing business elsewhere, has not been able to experience this. I am glad that there has been general commendation from all sides of the House.

I was extremely interested to hear the generous speech of the right hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Creech Jones), with all of which I fully agreed. I hope that it did not appear to be discourteous to him or the House that in my opening remarks I did not go into any greater detail. I had regard to the hour and that this was Friday afternoon and I believed that all hon. Members—there were very few of them in the Chamber at that moment—fully understood the reasons for the Bill and knew the work of the Corporation. Consequently, I felt that hon. Members did not require a long Second Reading speech from me. What I did not say was not omitted because I wished to omit it. Indeed, other hon. Members have made up for it and have done it better than I could have done it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport (Miss Vickers), in a most thoughtful speech, put some questions to me. She asked whether African tenants could buy their farms. This will depend on the development of land tenure policy in the Territory as a whole. I cannot go further than that this afternoon. I took the point made by the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) about co-operative farming, and I will certainly bear in mind what my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman said. I am glad to tell the House that there is no statutory bar of race to an Asian or any other Tanganyikan being accepted by the Corporation as a tenant. I wish lo put that on record.

With regard to villages, of course more labour is required at the planting and cropping periods, and as the people who like to come to do this work wish to work the rest of the year in their own home areas, the problem becomes slightly difficult, but the Corporation is looking into arrangements for a reliable supply of labour. I hope that the Corporation will give sympathetic attention to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport made about employing blind people. I have noted that and I am very glad that with her experience of this work she should have made that plea on this occasion.

Details of wages levels are not immediately available, but I will either write to hon. Members concerned about the matter, or deal with it at a later stage of the Bill. If it suits the convenience of hon. Members, I shall be only too glad to take up these points later. The hon. Member for Eton and Slough at one moment seemed to misunderstand what I had said about the annual amount to be spent decreasing. I can explain that in more detail. I intended to say that as the scheme became more self-supporting, the need for subsidy would decline year by year towards the end of the experiment and I expect that by 1962 the scheme will have become entirely self-supporting. That is the object.

The hon. Member for Eton and Slough and my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport talked about the settlement schemes. Those are not among the undertakings which the Bill seeks to continue to support. Those schemes are Tanganyika Government schemes on which the Corporation is employed by that Government as an agent, but I am sure that the Tanganyika Government will be appreciative of the interest shown in these schemes by the House this afternoon.

My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Major Wall) raised one or two matters which I will try to answer, the first being about water supplies. I can assure the House that I have myself raised this topic with the Chairman of the Corporation who has assured me that these needs are met adequately from dams, wells, and bore-holes which the Corporation has arranged to construct in accordance with the circumstances of the different areas.

My hon. and gallant Friend also inquired about the progress of ridding affected areas of tsetse fly. This is a very important matter. Kongwa is a fly-free area so there the problem does not arise. The Corporation has, however, incurred very considerable expenditure on tsetse fly control, especially in Urambo, with marked success. The Corporation is hoping to expand this feature of the scheme in the light of the experience it has gained.

My hon. and gallant Friend asked a question about railways, but at the same time supplied the answer. This is a problem of capital expenditure and it was a great disappointment to my right hon. Friend that we could not find immediately the £4½ million which would have been required to build a railway down into the Kilombero Valley in conjunction with a scheme for the large-scale production of sugar. The project was very promising and fully acceptable to my right hon. Friend, but the Tanganyika Government could not feel that from the resources in sight they were justified in allocating such a large sum at this time to that under- taking. I am sure that this is something which has to come in the course of time.

My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Mr. Braine), in one of his typical speeches, raised various issues. Perhaps the most important question he asked was whether the Corporation's work was geared to the long term development of the Territory. The Corporation has a very important part to play, both in conducting this experiment which we have been discussing and which will form the basis of future development of all sorts, similar and not entirely similar, in the Territory, and also as an instrument to conduct the very important agriculture development schemes which are opening the frontiers of productivity in the whole Territory. I am sure that my hon. Friend was on to a very good point there. That is one of the reasons why I commend the Bill to the House.

Other points were raised which I shall do my best to answer at a later stage. In closing, perhaps I may return to one point. We have been uncontroversial so far, and I hope that hon. Members opposite will forgive me for mentioning this, but I would not like the House to think that by my speeches today, or by commending the Bill to the House, Her Majesty's Government are giving an endorsement to what the groundnut scheme did. That would be wrong. The work of the present Corporation is different, both in scale and objective, from the original groundnut scheme. The start with, that scheme was run by the Government directly. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will acquit me of discourtesy if, rather naturally, I say it was run by a Government which I, at any rate, did not think was very efficient.

At all events the scheme, although it may have had a good genesis in the minds of hon. Members opposite, was a failure. It was really a tragedy, and the expense was absolutely staggering. This scheme, run by the Corporation, has already proved a success, and if hon. Members on both sides, with the speeches they have made commending it, will give the Bill a Second Reading now and be as friendly about it in its later stages, the message will go out from the House which was in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman when he opened, namely, that we have confidence in the Corporation and in its work, and in our view the development of this Territory will be greatly improved as a result of the schemes now being run by the Corporation.

I wish to draw the attention of the House to a much more local and, in a way, less controversial topic than the groundnut scheme and its sequel, which we have just been debating. In view of the atmosphere of harmony and unanimity which has pervaded the recent debate I feel it almost a duty to introduce a note of healthy criticism into the proceedings, and I hope that my hon. Friend will not take it amiss if I do so.

The subject which I wish to raise is that of Post Office box numbers. I was always under the impression that a person applied for a Post Office box number if, for some reason or other, he did not want to use his name and address—and that that was the whole object of the exercise. I was therefore rather surprised to hear from one of my constituents that this is very far from being the truth, and that, indeed, nobody can use a Post Office box number unless he also uses with it his full postal address.

That is a surprising state of affairs, and I naturally sought information as to the reason for it. I was informed by the Postmaster-General in the following words:

"We have made a rule that the full postal address must be used on all correspondence received into the box otherwise it would be possible for the private box holder to conceal his address from the public. We feel it is very important that the Post Office should guard against its facilities being used in this way since it opens the door for fraudulent activity."

In the first place, I should have thought that an organisation like the Post Office purveying facilities to the public might very well relieve itself of the responsibility of inquiry into the motives for which people are using its facilities.

I do not know, but I strongly suspect that the ordinary delivery of post is used for some purposes which the Postmaster-General would not approve if he knew of them. I can imagine that all kinds of deplorable activities, as well as many laudable ones, go on through the post. and I would think it very unwise of the Postmaster-General to try to see that the facilities of the Post Office in that direction were not misused by people with improper motives.

The Postmaster-General also provides a telephone service. We all know from our proceedings in the House that some scrutiny is kept of what goes on over the telephone. But that, apparently, is done by a Secretary of State and not by the Postmaster-General. As far as I know, so far as the Postmaster-General is concerned, one can use one's telephone for whatever improper purpose one thinks fit.

It is only when it comes to Post Office box numbers, which are merely a form of convenience for a subject in a particular circumstance, that these twinges of conscience upset the Postmaster-General. They upset him so much—I do not mean the present Postmaster-General in particular, because the rule is of long standing—that it is laid down that no one may use a Post Office box number unless his full postal address is added after it on the envelope.

It follows, therefore, that a commercial body, company or firm using a Post Office box number in advertisements must also use its full postal address, because, otherwise, the letters and parcels directed to it, and addressed too shortly, will, presumably, not be delivered. It is a very remarkable argument and it is all done in the cause of preventing fraudulent use.

Conceding for a moment, as I certainly do not, that it might be legitimate for the Postmaster-General to scrutinise the use of this facility—not to insure against fraud but to try to do so—why should it be necessary to have the full postal address, because no shortened form of address is sufficient to satisfy the Post Office, even though that shortened form of address is quite adequate to identify the person and to enable someone to find him? What is called for is the full address such as is required by the Post Office for the purpose of ordinary postal delivery by the postman.

In the particular case on which I have been approached the full address of the company in question runs to ten words which would normally be written as an address on an envelope in five lines. That must be prefaced by the words. "Post Office Box No."—so-and-so, raising it to a total of fifteen words, normally written on six lines one below the other. It is obvious that no commercial enterprise seeking to build up a mail order business can reasonably advertise an address of that prolixity. It is difficult enough in Press advertising to give an address of that length but in advertising in television broadcasts, which my constituents also want to do, such a thing is unthinkable. Either they must have a short address or they cannot engage in such advertising. In effect they have been told by the Post Office that they cannot do it.

It seems a little unreasonable and, naturally, I asked what was the object of a Post Office box number if it could be used only when followed by the full postal address. I wished to know what in fact one paid one's money for. I am told by the Postmaster-General that when one uses a box number one pays one's money for the privilege of collecting one's mail instead of having it delivered. Most people would expect to be paid by the Postmaster-General for that operation, but it is the only advantage which one obtains.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Assistant Postmaster-General will be as helpful as possible about this. I do not agree with the basic objection of the Postmaster-General that he has to regulate the use of Post Office facilities by reference to the motives of those who use them, but, assuming for the moment that that be right, it is still the duty of the Post Office, as I see it, to try to meet any reasonable public demand. In relation to the delivery of mail the Post Office is a statutory monopoly and that imposes quite a heavy duty. The private subject is not here benefited by competition. He is dealing with a monolithic body and therefore the monolith must try to think out a way to meet the need for short addresses.

What is the difficulty about allowing the use of a Post Office box number, whether in advertising or on an envelope or the label of a parcel, followed by an address sufficient to identify the person —not perhaps an address convenient for the ordinary purposes of daily delivery by the postman? For that purpose the Post Office insists, and rightly so, on a stereotype address for each district, so that the letters may be quickly sorted and so that the postman does not have to waste time looking for an address. Far more is needed than is sufficient to identify a person.

On the other hand, in publications like the Post Office telephone directory one finds addresses which are described officially in the introductory pages as merely for the purpose of identification, and they are much shorter. Anyone who wishes to check on the good faith of a limited company can always find its address from the register of joint stock companies. Nevertheless, a little more may be called for than that. My constituents happen to operate in a village or a small town called Beaconsfield. In the case of Beken Supplies, Limited, surely the single word "Beaconsfield" afterwards would be quite enough to enable anyone who went to Beaconsfield to find the firm, and quite enough to identify it.

I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to meet this difficulty. I hope he sees the merit and validity of my argument and is convinced by the argument of expedience. A mail order business which is established in a district for which the delivery address is long and involved is at a disadvantage. One should not be deterred from establishing a mail order business there because of an unduly rigid rule of the Post Office in the exercise of its State monopoly of the mail delivery service.

We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell) for bringing this matter before the House. It is of some complexity and importance. The correspondence which my hon. Friend has had with my right hon. Friend has caused my right hon. Friend to have the whole matter looked into in the hope of finding a satisfactory solution to a not very easy situation.

We want my hon. Friend to understand that the Post Office is not a monolithic body obstructing the legitimate demands of his constituents. It might help if I briefly described the private box and bag system of the Post Office. I endorse what has been said to my hon. Friend that this is not a scheme to furnish a convenient, snappy and short address for people who would take advantage of modern advertising techniques. There may be a need developing for some such system. The present private box and bag system was not intended for that, nor is it operated in a way which is capable of facilitating the operation of such a system.

For an annual fee, the mail or parcels addressed to a box number—there may or may not be an actual physical box—is set aside to await the requirements of the addressee box-number holder. The holder can come to the Post Office at an early hour, take away his mail and get to work on it. The purpose of the system is to enable him to do just that. He can come early, get his post out of the way and start his business at a time convenient to himself. He does not have to await the movements of the normal delivery service of the Post Office. He can come early and frequently to remove his mail. If it were only a question of allowing some one to relieve the Post Office of part of its work the remark of my hon. Friend about our paying people for doing it would have some force.

In order to get the mail addressed to the box and bag holders out of the normal flow of letters and parcels that go through the Post Office we are involved in extra expense of varying kinds. We have to give what is called "special treatment" to these items as they go through the enormous flood of mail with which the Post Office has to cope every day. Whatever system we devised for meeting the requirements of those who want to get their post early or frequently, we should have to insist that the system fitted into the general service for handling of mails in this country. Otherwise all those who use our service in the ordinary way would probably find that their mail was impeded and that they would suffer inconvenience.

The fitting of all this into the general Post Office services may account for what may appear to my hon. Friend as being obtuseness on the part of the Post Office, but I must remind him that the sorting offices have to fit in a very great amount of work into a very small amount of time. The circulating, sorting and delivering processes of the Post Office are a concentration of system, skill and effort, and the demands which we make, including those relating to the private bag and box system, are the simplest with which we can manage in keeping the whole thing working smoothly. We make the smallest demands possible and get on with the rest. The least we can manage with, in order to get mail circulating conveniently, quickly and efficiently in the country, so that people can get their letters and parcels in a regular service, is that we should have a clear and complete address on every item that is put into the post.

It will not do any harm if I inform the House that the Post Office has 50 million customers in this country. We employ 80,000 postmen, and we have 1,350 sorting offices—not just the problem of relating our box system to the conditions that apply in Beaconsfield, for example.

But the hon. Gentleman must remember that he has no competitors; otherwise, he might not have 50 million customers.

We must recognise the force of that argument, but it does not alter the fact that at this day we are dealing with 50 million customers, and so enthusiastic are our customers about the services we offer them that we handle on their behalf 10,000 million letters and parcels every year, with a surprisingly small amount of complaint or, at any rate, vocal dissatisfaction.

I invite my hon. Friend to consider how all this enormous variety of 50 million customers, 1,350 sorting offices, 80.000 postmen and 10,000 users of the private bag and box system has to fit into the whole operation. Our 10,000 private bag and box users do not even all use them in the same way. Our problems would probably be less if they did. Some users want all their mail put into their boxes and require it to be collected by their own employees. Some of them require only part of their mail to be put into the bag or box to await collection, and require the rest to be delivered in the course of the ordinary postal service. When it comes in the night mail, for delivery first thing in the morning, some collect it at a very early hour and the rest takes its turn in the ordinary delivery services of the Post Office. Some people clear their post from the box once a day, while some collect it more frequently.

Some bag and box users have a number of addressees using the same bag or box number, so that there are different names on the items, although the box number is the same and the treatment to be accorded to the items is the same. That happens mostly in the case of a parent company and its mail and the mail of its subsidiaries. Some people, although they have private bag and box facilities, use their full address and omit to put on their correspondence, or to ask their correspondents to put on letters to them, the box number appropriate to the licence they hold.

I digress for a moment to say that this is a very great inconvenience to the Post Office. Just as we have asked that the full address should be used in the case to which my hon. Friend referred, so it would be a great convenience, not just to the Post Office but to all Post Office users, if those who have a box number would ensure that it is used as regularly as possible on their letterheads and also used by those who write to them.

It would not be quite so bad if we could expect that the postmen in the sorting offices would gradually get used to the idea so that the company in my hon. Friend's constituency, Beken Supplies Limited, could be identified quickly as belonging to a certain box number, hut postmen change and we are in the hands of postmen. It is postmen who deliver the mail and the wastage rate of the postman force is quite considerable. In Inner London, in terms of numbers, the whole of the postmen have changed within a period of four and a half to five years. In other parts of the country it is even worse. In Coventry in 1956–57, 59 per cent. of the postmen changed, while in Luton, 34 per cent. changed in the same year.

We have to take account of the fact that from time to time, and sometimes frequently, there are new men dealing with items passing through the sorting offices. These are practical difficulties in operating the system. I quite see that it is the job of the Post Office to organise itself to handle these difficulties whilst giving the sort of service which industry and commerce require us to give them, and that is what we seek to do.

I do not want my hon. Friend to think that my right hon. Friend spends his whole time in a private office brooding over the possibility of fraudulent activity among the mails and telephones. It is not like that, but it would be wrong—I think my hon. Friend, in his calmer reflections, will agree that it would be very wrong—if the Post Office organised itself in such a way as to make fraudulent activities either possible or easier for those who wanted to take advantage of them. We must take into account the fact that there is a minority for whom, perhaps, anonymity would be a very convenient facility. I do not think the Post Office is called upon to encourage them to work in that way.

My hon. Friend is aware that we are not the only postal administration which takes this kind of action. It is fairly common practice among postal administrations throughout the world to be prepared to take steps to prevent postal services being put to a use for which they are not intended. We do not, however, want to impede either Beken Supplies Limited, or trade and industry in general. Some of the rules we cannot relax for reasons I have given. I hope my hon. Friend will accept them as being reasonable. He raised one or two interesting points and I wish to assure him that we are very anxious that our service should meet the requirements of customers and potential customers.

We are here to render a service. Our communications services, telephones and the postal services, are the tools of trade, the cement of our society. We want them to fit the needs of those who use them. We are always ready to listen to, and take account of, useful and constructive suggestions. I promise my hon. Friend that I will go again with the Postmaster-General into the points he has raised and if there is a possibility of rendering a better service to those, like his constituents, who want a change, we shall do our best to bring it in if we can do so without departing from the necessarily strict rules we must maintain.