I mentioned the relationship between the number of officers and the number of men as an outstanding fact bearing on the amount of money the Government is likely to have to call for during the year. When passing a Vote on Account, we are entitled to comment on the amount of money it is proposed to expend and the type of that expenditure. I shall not go into detail but I suggest that, all through this Vote there is a misrepresentation which bears seriously on the amount of money which the Government would require for spending during the year. That misrepresentation is related to the wage standards which are being maintained by the Government throughout a number of their services and that is closely related to the whole social and economical position. I do not intend to base any argument, for or against, on the figures I am quoting. I just want to show that as a considerable amount of this substantial Vote is represented by wages, those figures are not true figures and that we cannot securely base our discussions upon them.
A married soldier of first class in our Army who is dependent on his pay, and has not other allowances for special qualifications, gets 24/6 per week, made up of 3/- basic pay and 6d. deferred pay. He gets a marriage allowance of 2/6 per day, which is 17/6. In other words, he gets a total income of 42/- per week. If he were in Great Britain, he would get 77/-. A second lieutenant in the rank for 2 years, if unmarried, would receive here £249 a year. That is made up of his pay and uniform allowance. In the British army, he would get £310. If he were a married man, his basic pay, uniform allowance and lodging, fuel and light allowance would come to £376 here. A married lieutenant of the same type in the British army would get £538. Our lieutenant is paid 70 per cent. of what he would get in the British army. A captain with 5 years' service, if single, would get £358 here, as against £529 in the British army, or 68 per cent. of what he would get there. If married, he would get £486 here or 63 per cent. of the £757 he would get in the British army. A major, immediately on his promotion, if unmarried, receives £468 here or 73.5 per cent. of the £639 he would get in the British army. If married, he receives £595, or 69 per cent. of the £867 he would receive in the British army. Taking the new scales offered to the teachers, they bear practically the same relation to the amounts paid the teachers in the Six Counties as Army pay here bears to army pay in Great Britain. Take the wages of agricultural labourers. We have a minimum of 40/- a week as against a minimum of 70/- per week in Great Britain.
If we are not going completely to revolutionise our position and introduce a system by which a minimum allowance will be made, to start with, to every citizen, then there is no efficient, economic machinery for distributing the income of the country save through wages. In relation to that and in relation to all the major economic problems before us, we have a Government that is on strike. They are on strike against thinking in any systematic way how the fundamental problem of our people in production and distribution should be tackled. We have the same lag, in every aspect of policy, that was shown in a Minister's statement on an Estimate the other day. There was a delay from July to November and expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds because forms could not be prepared. When he was challenged about that, he said that that was the explanation given to him when he asked about the delay. In every Department, there is a failure to progress in the urgent way the circumstances of the time demand. Unless the production of this country is brought vigorously not only to the point at which it was before the emergency but to the point necessary to meet our economic needs now and in the future, we shall get bigger votes of this kind until the country simply collapses because of its impoverishment and lack of productiveness. More and more will have been drawn from the pockets of the people to be spent through the Government in an inefficient and wasteful way. I want to ask the Minister, who is preparing to spend all this money in the rather unproductive way the Estimates disclose, what are the Government's plans for enabling our people to get ahead with the real production which the country wants. When we were discussing the Vote on Account last year, I pointed out that, in September, 1939, we approached the Government and urged that it was the economic situation which was likely to affect the country most seriously. We asked the Government to set up a small group of experts to review the economic trend in the world and the trend of economic events here, distorted by the war emergency, so that after a full review of what was happening here and outside, we might have our machinery and our plans ready to get our production going at the earliest possible time after the period of the emergency and avoid trends in our economy that would weaken us economically or prevent us taking advantage of the new situation.
The only reports we have had bearing in any way on production are the reports issued by the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy. Even in that respect, the very fundamental matters with which these reports deal, seem to be absolutely untouched by the Government either in any of its pronouncements or in any of its policies. The Government are aware that it has been of very considerable advantage to the countries of the British Commonwealth to have had a preference in the British market for their produce over the produce of countries which were not members of the British Commonwealth. They are aware that in the trade discussions that are going on internationally at present, the question has arisen as to whether these preferences may or may not be discontinued. We have seen how these preferences from 1932 have enabled countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand to build up their industrial life as well as their agricultural production in such a way that they have been able to withstand the tremendous impact of the war on their economies. They have in fact expanded their people. We missed the advantage of that period but after the 1938 agreement we were expecting that in the new approach to trade between ourselves and Great Britain, we were going to get a chance, with the advantage of what is called imperial preference, to build up our industrial life here on a better secured agriculture.
One thing that is outstanding in the reports on agricultural policy is the importance of agricultural exports. I should like to ask the Minister whether in connection with the discussions that are planned to take place in April or May of this year between the members of the British Commonwealth with regard to the future trading policy, preliminary to international discussions, we are going to see that our interests are watched in the discussion of any trading policy that will be developed there. I should like in this matter to refer to some quotations from the minority report of the Committee of Inquiry on Post-Emergency Agricultural Policy. That report states on page 105:—
"The country's economic stability will, in post-emergency years, continue to depend to a large degree on the export of agricultural commodities, the production of which must, therefore, be developed to the limit of the availability of profitable markets".
That is from the minority report signed by Messrs. Mahony and Sheehy.
When we come to the majority report, we find the necessity for increased agricultural production stressed very much in the same way and the relationship between increased agricultural production and the wages of agriculturists on the one hand and industrial development on the other, indicated. On page 51, paragraph 151 of the majority report, we have the following:—
"Since appreciable expansion in our agriculture can be effected only through increasing exports, output must be raised, the quality of products improved and standardised, and the cost of production, purchase and marketing reduced. To this end a vigorous and comprehensive educational programme is an imperious necessity."
On page 44, paragraph 127, the following occurs:—
"A policy of enabling ‘the agricultural horse to draw along the industrial cart' leads to a more natural and permanent development of industrial life than is likely to result from the opposite policy. It is only in its initial stages that it appears to involve an excessive dependence on agricultural exports. In its more mature development, it increases the home market for agricultural products to the extent that it favours a growth of total population, a higher standard of life, and a gradually increasing proportion of non-agriculturally occupied persons in the total of persons gainfully occupied——"
again, the basis being agricultural exports.
On page 42, paragraph 120, the majority report states:—
"But in our case it is equally true that a progressive increase in output per person occupied in our agriculture is a fundamental and inescapable condition of any considerable increase in our industrial development and consequent differentiation of our national economy."
Later on down the same page it says:—
"We must export agriculturally before we can develop industrially." Again, on page 40, we have the following:—
"Only by increasing the national income can emigration be diminished. An increase of agricultural purchasing power will have the most salutary effects on every aspect of our national economy."
Again, on page 34, paragraph 94:—
"We are also convinced that, if we make no particular effort to develop export capacity now, the United Kingdom market will become adjusted to doing without our contribution and we shall find it more difficult to open export outlets for our produce at a later date when the more acute post-war scarcities will have come to an end.... The post-emergency period represents our great opportunity and the use we make of it depends mainly upon ourselves."
Again, on page 24:—
"The export price obtainable for our agricultural products is a principal element in the determination of agricultural incomes here, including the incomes of agricultural labourers."
The Minister for Education told us yesterday that the experts report that in two or three years' time the cost of living will be less and he suggested that the national teachers will then reach a position that should satisfy them. That is the only reference, I think, to experts by members of the Government that I have heard recently in this House. It is a very general reference. But here we have in these reports the opinions and the facts collected by persons who were selected by the Government as experts in the matter of agricultural production, agricultural marketing and agricultural education. The committee was set up rather late in the day and its report was sat on for a long time by the Government before it was brought to light. But, beyond having that report, we know nothing of what the Government's attitude is as to how they intend to help or encourage the farmers to increase agricultural production. We have no estimated target put before us in regard to exports to Great Britain, or a target of production for home consumption. The only targets that we have been favoured with any information about are those for substantial expenditures on roads, hospitals, home assistance institutions, drainage, and rural electrification. We can get targets put before us for all these matters, some of which are not productive in their tendency at all. Others of them are, as it has been stated, just an expensive row of medicine bottles on the national shelf; but in regard to the things that really matter: production in agriculture and the standard of living as indicated by wages, we have no information at all, except that on the wages side there is a systematic and determined effort— apparently by the Government—in every direction to keep down wages.
Surely, in facing up to our future we must have some kind of a general understanding among all Parties in the House as to what we are aiming at in the carrying on of our political, economic and social life, as to what kind of living we expect to get more information from the Government than we are getting at the present time. The Government decided to-day to sit late in order to discuss this enormous bill that is before us. I protested against the taking of this business this week until we had a chance of digesting, to some small extent, the report of national income and expenditure that has just been published and circulated. It is a great satisfaction to find that we are beginning to face the fundamental economic facts of our national life. The Government Departments responsible for this publication are certainly to be congratulated on the manner on which they have assembled the facts and displayed them. I believe that we shall be able to congratulate them still more when we have had other opportunities of digesting the facts in it, and relating them one to another. In that way we are being given the chance of getting our feet on solid factual ground with regard to the country. A superficial glance at some of the returns in that publication would suggest that one was looking at the country's bones sticking out through its skin. You can see there an emaciated country, with the bones sticking out, with the glands swollen here and there. Perhaps it was impossible to avoid some of these weaknesses because of the emergency, but I think that a lot of them which are disclosed could have been avoided if we had not had the type of history in politics that we have had in this country over the last 20 years. The countries of the world are spending their energies and bringing their brains to bear on the problems that confront them. High above the voices in those countries that are struggling in very difficult circumstances, due in part to the bitterness that has resulted from costly mistakes made in the past, to rivalries, international and internal, is the voice of the Vatican. Because of the failure of politics in the world during the last 20 or 15 years, it was natural that voices would be confused, but above them all is that one voice. It has been heard on the problems that face the world, and has been heard in a clear way. If we here pay any attention to the voice of the Vatican we must realise that the Catholic Church, in its social teaching, is now making it clear that religion must not simply concern itself with one part of man's life, but that we must extend our sense of religion and of religious objectives both to our public and social life.
In this practical approach to social matters, if there is one thing more than another that stands out in the teaching that comes from the Vatican, it is that a man must get a wage big enough to keep his wife at home and his family in a worthy condition. Surely we should be able to subscribe to that here. There ought to be no obscurity with regard to the matters that we exchange with one another and discuss. There ought to be no heat and no difference of opinion in the opinion that we exchange with one another. Unless we can order our business and our discussions here in such a way that we can get close down to facts and give our honest opinions to one another, then we are going to make a mess of the country in the same way that others have made a mess of theirs. From the point of view of discussion here, we have a Government that is practically on strike. The same may be said of it as regards unfolding its policy to the House and country. For years past I have complained that we have a Party behind the Government that ought to be representing the country here, and yet it refuses to engage in serious discussion. There have been signs recently that the Government Party—whether it is due to the pressure of events and of circumstances around them in their own constituencies I do not know— have been speaking their minds about Government action and Government policy both in the House and down the country. They were brought to heel. These are matters that we must refer to if they interfere with the work of Parliament being properly carried out, but the more they have to be spoken about the more it interferes with the sound exchange of ideas here.
With the facts put before us in this recent volume dealing with production and with income and expenditure, we ought to be getting down to a closer sense of responsibility, to a keener realisation of what our functions are in relation to the people who sent us here. We ought to see that the things that are of importance to the country will be properly discussed here and decisions taken on them. I suggest to the Minister that the wage policy is fundamental, as far as our internal well-being is concerned, and as far as our political, defensive and social strengths are concerned. What is even more fundamental is that we should have production here out of which wages can be distributed. The keynote of a sound, improved policy for agricultural production is that we should get our production secured here, especially by means of an extension of agricultural exports, that we can hold our position in an expanding export market in Great Britain for the things that we traditionally exported there; that we take immediate steps to hold our position there; that we take immediate steps to get into the heart of any discussions that are taking place in relation to our position there. If we allowed the opportunities of to-day to go, then we should know, ourselves, without having to be told by experts, that we are leaving the opportunities for to-morrow, and if we do not export agricultural produce, then it means that we shall export our people. If we have not a sound wage policy here, we will have poverty in the country, and we will have the Government struggling more and more to drag a few pence out of the remaining pence in the pockets of the people, in order to spend them on social services, on doles, on assistance of one kind or another, and on the provision of institutions for people who have become sick because they have lost their power to produce in this country the things that they require for their sustenance.
It is only the people of the country who can build up our agriculture and our industry. The Government can only just encourage them and make things easy for them by removing difficulties out of their way that they might not be able to remove themselves, but the work itself must be done by the people themselves, and there is no indication at the present time on the part of the Government that it is going to help them in any way to face the grave dangers and difficulties that lie in front of them. I suggest to the Minister that time will bring its reckoning.
