Lords Amendment: In page 16, line 15, leave out Clause 11.

I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

We come now to one of the larger and important Amendments made in Another place, and it may be for the convenience of the House if I deal, very briefly, with the proposals regarding amalgamation which have been made, as I have reason to think that that will shorten our proceedings on subsequent Amendments. Under the Bill as it left the House, we proceded to set up the Coal Mines Reorganisation Commission who would be charged with the duty of formulating schemes for the amalgamation of collieries, subject to the conditions discussed during the Committee and Report stages of the Bill. Under the Lords Amendment the Clauses relating to the establishment of that Commission are deleted, and in place of the Reorganisation Commission the duties are entrusted to the Board of Trade.

Let me make it perfectly plain that the compulsory powers were the same as under the Act of 1926, except that these Commissioners undertook the task of amalgamation, and the House of Lords has transferred that duty with the compulsory power included, from those Commissioners to the Board of Trade by abolishing the Commission. I must not be irrelevant in this debate, but, while the Board are very greatly flattered by the confidence with which it is proposed to entrust these duties to them, I am bound to say that this is a very remarkable proposal coming from a body of opinion always hostile, as I have understood, to anything savouring of bureaucratic control. The statutory Commissioners disappear and the Board of Trade is placed upon the throne with compulsory powers, subject however to one important consideration, that later on it is provided that a scheme will not be submitted to the Railway and Canal Commission unless there is one owner in a district prepared to proceed with it.

That proposal was expressly rejected by this House when it was considered on previous occasions, because, of course, there might be cases in which no owner was willing to come forward publicly or declare in advance that he was sympathetic to amalgamation. In that state of affairs, we should be exactly in the position in which we were under the Act of 1926. Unless one owner was prepared to act, nothing could be done. We made it perfectly plain during the earlier proceedings that the amalgamation proposals in the Bill as it left the House guaranteed the initiative in the amalgamation, and that is an essential point. I need not enlarge upon the subject, because the proposal to abolish the Commissioners and transfer the duties to the Board of Trade subject to those considerations raises, of course, very large issues. I have already indicated to the House that, having committed ourselves to these amalgamation proposals, we propose to stand by them in the form in which they left this Chamber, and accordingly, without hesitation. I invite the House to disagree with this Amendment.

This is one of the big changes which the House of Lords has made in the Bill which was presented to them. I was very glad to hear the President of the Board of Trade make it clear in his remarks that the Amendments we are now considering do not remove the compulsory amalgamation which was imposed when the Bill was before this House, and that they merely change the procedure which was laid down, I am afraid that I was never in favour of compulsory amalgamation, and I certainly have always had a great dread of this kind of reorganisation. It has been said that the procedure set up under this reorganisation of the coal industry is set up for the one object of allowing the Commission to go round the country to see in how many mines and in what areas they can bring about amalgamations.

Quite rightly, the coalowners in this country have become rather nervous of all these inquiries, commissions and so on that are being set up under this Bill. When we were discussing the Bill in its various stages in this House, I was one of those who, in any case where it was a question of the Board of Trade having to give any judgment or decision against the public, were in favour of setting up some judicial body; but I certainly would much sooner see the procedure proposed in this Amendment of the House of Lords, and that, instead of this Reorganisation Commission going round the country seeing what amalgamations they could bring about, the responsibility should be thrown on the Board of Trade. In the first place, the Board of Trade has most of the information at its disposal. It has a great fund of information as to the likely mines that could usefully be amalgamated, and it would, I believe, use its powers with due discretion. It would not try to press forward amalgamations unless it thought that they were really useful and were going to be of some effect.

It is, however, a totally different matter when a Commission is set up for the one purpose of bringing about amalgamations. I think that any body set up in that way will feel bound to justify its existence, and will want to show something, not only for the work that it does, but for the amount of money which it is going to expend, and I believe that this Reorganisation Commission is likely to cost over £250,000. It is felt, and I feel it very strongly myself, that under these conditions such a body might put the industry to a great deal of inconvenience, and might upset it a great deal, by going round trying to bring about amalgamations which in the ordinary way would never be considered or brought into effect by the ordinary process of industrial demand, and which in the ordinary way would not be suggested if this duty were in the hands of the Board of Trade. Therefore, we feel that it is a sound suggestion that this Amendment should be maintained, and that the Reorganisation Commission should be done away with and the Board of Trade substituted in its place.

I do not wish, on any of these Amendments, to do more than just state the view which we hold in regard to them, but I noticed that the President of the Board of Trade went a little further than the mere question of the commissioners, and referred to other Amendments, with which we are not unfamiliar in this House, in regard to compulsion. The compulsory Clause, namely, Clause 13, goes a little away from the question of reorganisation being carried out, either by the Commission or by the Board of Trade, and we thoroughly agree that it would be more convenient to discuss the question of leaving out Clauses 11 and 12, and the substitution of the Board of Trade, at the same time, but I should like to reserve our right to deal with the question of the compulsory Clauses and of laying it down that at least one owner should be willing, when we come to those Clauses. On the general question of substituting the Board of Trade for the Reorganisation Commission, this is an Amendment which we should certainly like to see remain.

Sir H. SAMUEL:

The right hon. and gallant Member for South Paddington (Commodore King) has reminded us that the House of Lords has not cut out the provisions regarding compulsory amalgamation. In spite of all that was said in this House, by many hon. Members above the Gangway and behind me, in denunciation of the whole idea of compulsory amalgamation, of making these people combine who do not wish to combine, of throwing together the finances of companies that wish to be separate, nevertheless the House of Lords, very wisely, as I think, has retained in the Bill the principle of compulsion. But, while admitting the principle, the other House has inserted Amendments that would go far to make that principle futile, and this is one of them. It is quite clear, from the experience of the last few years, that what is needed above all in this matter of the organisation of the coal industry is initiative, drive, energy. It is quite true that here and there some of the leaders in the industry, far-sighted and energetic men, have taken steps to organise the industry into those larger units which the conditions of the time imperatively require; but the great Majority of the mineowners have not done so, and, although amalgamations have made some progress, over the greater part of the industry they have not yet been effected; and, as a consequence, the Act passed by the Conservative administration in 1926, which was designed to favour amalgamations, and, in certain circumstances, to apply compulsion, has not achieved the results which the public interest requires.

Very largely, as we all know, there are personal difficulties, there is personal friction, there are personal interests which enter in among a group of mineowners and prevent them from bringing their enterprises into one whole, although economically it would be most desirable that they should be unified. It is an old industry over the greater part of the country. Frequently those in charge of it are the grandsons or great-grandsons of the founders of the enterprise, and they find it very difficult to put aside their personal and family connections and sacrifice themselves in the interest of some reorganisation of the mines of their district. Therefore, it is necessary that there should be a body having the initiative, and, as I have said, the drive which the circumstances require, and that is why the Government were very wise, in our submission, to set up a reorganisation body, small and likely to be effective, whose prime duty it would be to undertake this particular task. The House of Lords has thrown back the whole of that duty upon the Board of Trade. The President of the Board of Trade, a Minister, is to exercise these duties and to wield these powers of compulsion. Instead of a Commission, specially chosen, of experienced men, you are to have a political Minister, a Member of the Government of the day, who is to be given these very large powers.

What becomes of the denunciation of "The New Despotism"? What becomes of all the complaints that members of the Government are seeking to obtain more and more powers of bureaucratic control, of drawing into their own hands one function after another to tyrannise over the private citizen. Here we find the House of Lords and hon. Members above the Gangway proposing that this task shall not be given to an independent Commission specially erected for the purpose, but shall be made a political matter under the control of a Minister in the Government of the day. One particular drawback to that proposal would be that, instead of there being continuity of policy, and of the whole position of the mining industry being viewed scientifically by a body which over a period of years would carry out a definite policy, you may have violent reversals of policy in the administration of these matters with any change of Parliament or change of Government.

When the Royal Commission examined this matter they attached the greatest importance to this question of reorganisation. There are some who speak of it as though it were a personal fad of my own, but I was only one member of the Commission. All my colleagues, chosen by the late Government, were unanimous on this point, and held very strong views in regard to it, and they recommended most emphatically that the main hope of the industry for the future was to be found in its reorganisation, as well as, to turn to another matter, in scientific research. All this will go by the board if this Amendment is accepted. Furthermore, the Clauses which it is proposed to strike out are the Clauses which give powers of inquiry to the Commission. Those powers are to go, and the Board of Trade is to be left with no adequate power of inquiry or investigation or obtaining information from the parties concerned. The President of the Board of Trade will be left, in effect, powerless. He will be in form omnipotent, but in fact powerless, face to face with any recalcitrant persons who are unwilling to adopt the measures that are needed in the public interest. The House of Lords agrees that the President of the Board of Trade should have a weapon placed in his hand and, having placed that weapon in his hand, they would tie his arms behind his back. I trust the House will support the Government in resisting the Amendment.

The right hon. Gentleman very naturally defends the proposal which this Amendment tries to take out of the Bill. After all, it is the pup that he sold to the Government. When the Bill, the result of the combined wisdom of the Government and their advisers, was first in draft there was no proposal of this kind. It was merely one of the terms of negotiation between the Government and hon. Members below the Gangway. In the view of the Government at one period, there was no need for a proposal of this kind and I only hope, even at this late hour, they may be induced to go back to the original line of common sense. The right hon. Gentleman pours scorn on the proposal that the question should be left to the Board of Trade. All it means is that the Mines Department is going to deal with the matter in the same way that it has dealt with similar matters in the past. In the short time that has elapsed since the passing of the Act of 1926, considerable progress was being made, and still further progress was going to be made, which has been stopped by the unfortunate proposals in this Bill.

It is said the Mines Department has no power of inquiry, but it has a mass of facts, and it has power to find out the conditions of the various undertakings which is very complete, and I want to know why it is, if we are going to have a Mines Department, that the House does not trust it to take some action. You may say it has been ineffective in the past. Then strengthen it. With conditions working out in the coal industry as they are, everyone must see very grave danger ahead. This is not a time when industry is capable of sustaining the shocks which this roving commission will certainly mean.

I object to the whole idea of having this commission at all. Strengthen existing powers if you like, ginger up the Ministry of Mines as much as you like, use the powers you have to the full, but do not set up this autocratic commission of peripatetic busybodies who will be causing trouble wherever they go. I believe the original proposal of the Government was based on the advice they received from the experts, which was fully thought out after many months of consideration. I believe the Bill, which did not include this proposal, was a very much wiser method of procedure. It would be far better to scrap the proposal that has been foisted on them as a basis of negotiations with hon. Members below the Gangway and to return to the path of common sense and accept the Amendment.

10.0 p.m.

I cannot help thinking that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) hardly did justice to my hon. Friend. We are not now faced with the question whether there shall or shall not be compulsory amalgamation. I dislike the whole idea of compulsory amalgamation and, if I could vote against it, I should, but that is not the question that is now facing the House. We quite understand the right hon. Gentleman urging the Government to resist the Amendment, because it is the proposal for which he was specially responsible and which was put into the Bill at his instigation. The question before the House is, admitting that we have to have compulsory amalgamation, is it better that it should be carried out by a peripatetic commission or by the Board of Trade.

I strongly dislike bureaucracy, but I have a still stronger dislike to irresponsible bureaucracy. If amalgamation is to be forced on this unfortunate industry, I should at least prefer that it should be done by people who have knowledge of the industry, who have spent their lives in studying the business, rather than by a body of gentlemen, no matter how eminent, who are appointed ad hoc and who for this purpose are pure amateurs. That seems to me to be the question before the House. It is not whether we like the principle of amalgamation or not. It is whether we think a body of persons representing possibly several different points of view, and which in the end is bound to come to a compromise, is likely to make equally wise recommendations as the officials of the Mines Department who have acquired detailed knowledge of the conditions of the industry during their tenure of office. I object strongly to having my life governed by anyone but I would far rather have it governed by officials than by amateurs.

The scheme which the right hon. Gentleman was instrumental in forcing into the Bill, and which the Government did not introduce in the first instance, is far more likely to mean the management of a big industry by amateurs interfering with things they do not understand. A man may be a great success in managing a railway, or a trade union, or a big shop like Selfridge's, but that does not mean that he is competent to manage the coal industry. So far as I understand the right hon. Gentleman's proposal, we are going to put up a body of people, no doubt eminent men in their own walk of life but who have little or no experience of what is, after all, a very complicated industry. The right hon. Gentleman says personal feelings might come in and might make amalgamation difficult. Is not that one of the strongest arguments against amalgamation? If you amalgamate, people who may not get on very well together are being compelled to work together. We all know, whether in the House or in our private life, that nothing works so badly as a team of men who are forced together whether they like it or not, and who have to put up with each other's society whether they enjoy it or not. I have had some experience of it, having had to run boat's crews for many years. If there was one thing we tried to avoid more than another, it was putting into a team someone who did not get on with the other men. If a man could not get on in sport, I imagine that he would get on far less successfully in industry. Faced with the problem of compulsory amalgamations, I think it is far better that we should leave it to the Board of Trade, and for that reason I object to the Government refusing this Amendment, and sincerely hope we shall go to a Division on the question.

The point at issue between us is not whether we shall or shall not have compulsory amalgamations. the other House has not deleted that provision. The real issue the House has to consider is, whether we shall have effective amalgamations or ineffective amalgamations. The complaint made by the hon. and gallant Member for Oxford (Captain Bourne) is that the Commission appointed would be amateurs, and that the civil servants would be professional exponents with an expert knowledge of the coal trade. Can anything be more ludicrously inaccurate than such a description? Civil servants are a very fine body of men, but they are not experts in the coal trade. The civil servants in the Mines Department are not men who have practical knowledge of the working of the coal trade. It is absolutely certain that any body of commissioners appointed would have to be men possessed of experience of the various aspects of the question—the financial, the engineering, the technical and the administrative aspects. A body of commissioners of this description would be far more able to deal with a technical examination of the various problems which concerned them than any body of civil servants, however able they might be.

I suggest, with great respect to the other House, that perhaps one object for the alteration which they have suggested is the vain hope that they may in some way delay the carrying out of amalgamations. They realise that if proposals can be passed from a body of men appointed for the purpose of getting something done to a body of civil servants under political control, in a change of Government a time might come when these proposals might be allowed to lay dormant. It is a mistake to assume that this proposal is entirely due to my right hon. Friend the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel). We on these benches believe these amalgamations to be essential to the economical working of the coal trade. If we are to have a reduction of hours to 7½ hours and later on to 7 hours, without excessive increase of the cost of coal to the consumer, something must be done to lower the cost of production and to secure a more efficient system of management. I have had some considerable experience in the coal trade, and I believe that the only hope for cheap coal is that there should be amalgamations of the collieries, that inefficient collieries should be closed down, and that the output of the economic collieries should be obtained in sufficient volume. Amalgamation, economy of administration and better working of the pits which are kept alive constitute the only hope of cheap coal.

I am convinced that it is only by appointing a competent body of commissioners, who shall devote their time and attention to the question and examine the subject in all its aspects, that you can secure a really effective system of amalgamation, and only in that way can you save the coal trade from being burdened by excessive costs of production. I strongly urge the Government to resist this Amendment. With great respect to the other House, this appears to be a delaying and wrecking Amendment. If we are to have amalgamation at all, let it be done under efficient control, let broad views he taken and let the real reorganisation of the industry be the object we have in view.

We on these benches have become accustomed to the spectacle of representatives of His Majesty's Government spending large sums of money. It is surprising that this already overtaxed and overburdened country should be asked to find a sum of £250,000 to start such an entirely new and superfluous service as proposed in the Bill. The committee which is being set up is one of professional amalgamators, whose business it will be to go round and coerce into union those who are to make their living out of the trade and who have not themselves, out of their own business knowledge and their own knowledge of the facts, thought it necessary to bring about such union. We on these benches believe that the atmosphere of uncertainty which will be created by this board of whole-time amalgamators will be such as will react against the coal trade as a whole. We believe that the atmosphere of uncertainty would be, to some extent, removed if this Amendment were adopted, and the Board of Trade were given power to deal with the matter, instead of a board set up specially for the purpose. The members of the board would have to justify their appointment and their salaries by moving about, and, I believe, prying into businesses and causing uncertainty and thereby increasing unemployment. I do not think it is entirely a matter of coincidence that since this Bill passed through the House the coal trade in this country has declined. I know that there have been other world causes, but I also know that there has been this decline in the country since the terms of the Bill became thoroughly understood.

The hon. and gallant Member seems to be developing his argument on the general question of the whole Bill.

I was leading up to this point, that of all the provisions in the Bill calculated to cause uncertainty, the appointment of this board of whole-time amalgamators is the worst, and for that reason I warmly support the Amendment made by the Lords that the amalgamations should be carried out by the Board of Trade. At an earlier stage in the debates in this House there was an Amendment to the effect that the reorganisation commissioners should always sit in London. I supported that Amendment. The reason given by the hon. Member who moved the Amendment was that he wished them to sit at the capital city. That was not the reason why I supported the proposal. I supported it because I come from Scotland, and I believe that, in the interests of the Scottish coal trade, these amalgamators should be as far away from Scotland as possible. I cannot see anything but mischief arising out of their proposals. It has often been suggested that it is necessary to amalgamate interests in order to produce good results. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) quoted the case of the Ruhr and the result of amalgamations in the Ruhr. There are other districts which compare very favourably in the matter of cost. Last year the cost of production in the Ruhr was 14s. 1d. per ton and in Scotland 12s. 6d. a ton, while in Scotland there are 1,600 coal cutters at work as against 1,300 coal cutters in the Ruhr.

On a point of Order. Are we really discussing the cutting out altogether of amalgamations, or merely the board which will carry through the amalgamations?

We are discussing at the moment whether it shall be the Board of Trade or the particular body being set up under the Bill which should carry out amalgamations.

The point at issue is the degree of compulsion that is going to be applied to secure these amalgamations.

HON. MEMBERS:

No!

The House is not considering whether there shall be amalgamations or not, but who shall be the body to carry them out.

When we are discussing the question of amalgamation, are we not entitled to discuss the results that will accrue from the change that is proposed to be made, in that the House of Lords have recommended a particular course.

That would not be in order on this Amendment.

Then I am not allowed to develop the argument on that point. A close examination of the position has convinced those who are engaged in the coal trade that the change which we suggest is in the interests of the coal trade as a whole. The President of the Board of Trade referred to Scotland tonight—

The hon. and gallant Member must not pursue that line of argument.

In Scotland they have held a meeting and have definitely agreed that they would prefer to have the amalgamations in the hands of the Board of Trade rather than in the hands of the Commission, as proposed originally. I am entitled, I think, to make that point. I am certain that not only in Scotland but all over the country where those engaged in the industry and those who have to work in the industry have been consulted, they prefer this change to be made. I, therefore, support the

Amendment. I trust that the Government will reconsider the position and see their way to accept the Amendment.

Question put, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

The House divided: Ayes, 279; Noes, 125.