I think the £25,000 is a fairly substantial sum and it certainly ought to meet all unavoidable losses; but on this point of losses to the county council, there should not be many, because every smallholder that this scheme is intended for, and every owner of a labourer's cottage and plot, before he can get any seed, has to comply with certain regulations. The amount of seed he gets is confined to so many stone of wheat or oats or potatoes. He cannot get very much and for whatever he does get he has to fill a form, a form which is almost as difficult as the income-tax form. Having filled the form he has to get two solvent ratepayers to act as guarantors, so that the county council will have adequate security. That being so, there should not be what the Minister terms unavoidable losses. I know that at least 15 per cent., if not 20 per cent., of the guarantors have had to pay and if the money is not paid in the ordinary way the amount is assessed upon the demand notes of the ratepayers who act as guarantors and it becomes part and parcel of their rates—the amount they owe to the county council.
At the spring time of the year, when everybody is putting in crops— and this year and last year, in particular—it is very hard for any substantial ratepayer or farmer to refuse to go security for these people. They say: "There is my cottage plot; if I had so much seed I could do so-and-so. The whole object of the Government and the people at the moment is that everybody should try to grow their own food and produce wheat sufficient for the family." The result was that it was almost impossible for a neighbouring farmer to refuse to sign a form for one of these people. He says that it is only a matter of form, but when the rate collector comes along with a demand note it is much more than a matter of form.
It would be better for the Minister to set out some scheme by which a sum of £25,000 would be utilised to recoup the ratepayers who lost on that particular transaction. The Minister may shake his head and say "No", but if he does not do it and leaves a lump sum of £25,000 in his own hands to apportion—as he said a moment ago—between the councils who lose, he will have some councils that will make a success of it and others which will make a total failure of it, and those who make the total failure will be paid by the Minister. I think that will lead to very grave abuses. Before the Minister decides that any such sum is available, he should have the whole matter examined. He should get reports from the secretaries of the county councils upon the actual working of the scheme and with particular reference to the method of repayment and see whether the repayment was made by the person who got the seeds or by the guarantor.
