Clause 1. — (Cupro-nickel coins to be legal tender for payments up to forty shillings.)

Part of Orders of the Day — Coinage Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 18 October 1946.

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Photo of Mr George Hall Mr George Hall , Merthyr Tydfil Aberdare 12:00, 18 October 1946

Naturally I have no desire to curtail the discussion, but we have now spent an hour on this matter and it has occurred to me that the view of the Government, in the light of what has been said, may help us to come to a decision acceptable to all concerned. I have to ask the Committee to reject this Amendment for the reasons which, perhaps not as fully as some hon. Members might wish, we put to the House on Second Reading. It is not because we have any serious, or any objection at all to the use of pure nickel. The Government have quite an open mind on the material that is finally to be used. What we want, and what I am positive hon. Members in all quarters of the Committee want, is that we should have a coinage of which we can be proud—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]—and that if we have to change the substance from which our token coins are made, the substance chosen should be the best available in all the circumstances. That, as I hope to show the Committee quite shortly, is what we have done.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Renfrew (Mr. Scollan) asked if the Government had given as much attention to this subject as it deserved. I can assure him that we most certainly have and, since the Debate on Second Reading, when fears were expressed in all quarters of the House that perhaps we were using the wrong material, I have, at the request of my right hon. Friend, given a good deal of attention to this subject. I have been down to the Mint, I have discussed this matter with the Deputy Master there, Sir John Craig, and others, and we have gone into this matter as fully as possible.

12.15 p.m.

The reason why cupro-nickel has been chosen is that it is essential in our view to stop buying silver now. I hope I may carry the Committee with me because, as one hon. Member said, this is not a party issue. We have no stocks, and it would cost the Government about a million dollars a month to continue to buy silver. It would be a drain on our dollar resources which we want to avoid. In addition, as my right hon. Friend—and I think I also made the point—pointed out on Second Reading, there is a rising market for silver owing to the very large demand by industry for silver for commercial uses. If we compete with others, it means that the price may go up still further. In addition, we have under Lend-Lease received from the United States 88 million ounces of silver, and we undertook to repay that in the course of five years, as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Leeds (Mr. Peake) knows, bar for bar. We cannot pay in goods, we have to pay in silver. Although it is true that they are not pressing us for repayment, it is an obligation which has been entered into, and we must, as a nation, honour our bond. Therefore, the sooner be begin to reclaim the silver in order to repay the United States, the better it will be.

So, in our search for a substitute for the silver part in our present coinage, we had to find a material which could be coined without delay. That is the whole core and substance of this matter. As I have said earlier, we have no objection to nickel; there is a great deal to be said for nickel and, other things being equal, we would be content to use it, but we had to find something that could be used without delay. We cannot use nickel because it would mean extensive re-equipment at the Mint; we would need new melting furnaces, new rolling mills, more up-to-date annealing furnaces, and we would also want—for reasons I will give in a minute—more powerful cutters for the discs.

The right hon. Member for North Leeds suggested that we might take from Germany the necessary rolling mills and the furnaces. I will confess that I have not gone into that but, supposing we did bring them over, we would not know where to put them. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Mint is a beautiful building to look at, but the equipment it contains is in some respects not modern. One day this nation will have to consider rebuilding its Mint, and I think it will have to use another site. Therefore, if we brought this equipment over, we would have to build on another site a place in which to put it and that would take time. Those are some of the insuperable objections to the use of nickel at this moment —we have not the equipment, it would take time to get the equipment, and it would take time to build premises to house it.

Another suggestion was that even if we cannot deal with the raw material ourselves, why should we not go to some commercial firm? The name of the firm has been mentioned, and there is no harm in my repeating it. It was suggested that we should get the Mond Nickel Co. to enter into a contract with the Government for the provision of the discs. I think that if the Committee consider this for a moment they will agree that that would not be satisfactory. I, naturally, have nothing against the firm. I know it only as a name. But it would be intolerable if a great nation should have to rely on a single private firm for the material in all its processes right up to the final stage. We should be in their hands for fineness, for thickness, and in every way for the finish of the metal, right up to the time when it went through the machine and had the dies pressed upon it. Therefore, we rejected the suggestion that we should go to that company. As a matter of fact, they would only produce the nickel, since I believe most of the processes would be done in the Birmingham area where there is one firm, and one firm alone, which would have to handle it. Nickel, as many hon. Members know, has what is called "work hardness" and flows reluctantly, even under extreme pressure. That means we should need new dies. We could not use the present dies, which are used on the silver alloy now being produced, and which can be used on cupro-nickel. It cannot be denied—although quite a number of statements from this Box have been challenged from the other side—that in hardness nickel is in a class apart. New dies with a lower "relief" would be needed, because of its hardness. If we used the present dies, coins would have to be a good deal thicker and less in diameter. Here I will join forces with the hon. Member for Torquay (Mr. C. Williams). It would mean a great deal of inconvenience in regard to slot machines used by railway companies and others. Nothing has been said today about a change of design, but if we did embark on new dies that would be an opportunity to change the design. However, that would mean delay, and I think I have already indicated that delay would be impossible.

A great deal has been said by almost every speaker in favour of nickel as against cupro-nickel. The dog has been given a bad name and, apparently, there are few friends who are willing to speak up for it. Actually, cupro-nickel has a great deal to commend it. My hon. Friend the Member for Yardley (Mr. Perrins) read extracts from a letter in the provincial Press this morning which gave reasons why cupro-nickel is not so bad as it is painted. It was said the other day, when we debated the matter, that cupro-nickel was drab, dull, and yellowish in appearance. That is quite untrue. Hon. Members who go into the Library and see the coins placed in the glass case will agree that it is white, and as bright as nickel.