I do not wish to follow the remarks made by the hon. Member for East Swansea (Mr. Mort), except to say that I think he did less than justice to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Hopkin Morris) when he said my hon. and learned Friend criticised the white paper partly on legal form. In fact, my hon. and learned Friend raised a question—whether the hon. Member for East Swansea agrees with it or not—of considerable constitutional importance, with which I will deal in a moment.

If the White Paper told us very little, I think the President of the Board of Trade told us very little more, and I begin to suspect it is because there is very little more to tell. The right hon. Gentleman said he hoped very much that before we had another Debate on Welsh affairs in this House, our problems would be very substantially solved. I can tell him that it will not be on the basis of the White Paper, and not on the basis of the policy in the White Paper. We must have something far more vigorous than that. We have immense and formidable problems to face in postwar Wales. We have to re-equip our old industries, establish new industries in the Principality, bring good living conditions to the people of Wales, in rural and urban areas, and bring modern amenities to them, which they have not had in most of the urban areas, and certainly not in the rural areas.

In the White Paper there is a sort of progress report of the action taken by the Government up to June, 1947. It is not a very impressive record, even for the days before the dollar crisis broke, when there were far more substantial supplies available for reconstruction purposes. But, today we have been discussing a White Paper which is six months out of date and which, in point of fact, bears very little relation to the problems with which we are faced at the moment. In the Principality, as in other parts of Great Britain, the brake has had to be put on, and in some instances we have almost had to close down work of reconstruction. So the White Paper has practically no relevance to circumstances in Wales today.

There are one or two items in the White Paper which, unfortunately, are not very much out of date. One of them is the high level of unemployment compared with unemployment in other parts of the country. The fact is that there are still 38,000 people out of work in Wales compared with 293,000 for the whole of Great Britain. As the President of the Board of Trade said, that is a percentage of five and a half as against a percentage of one and a half for the rest of the country. It is far too high. The hon. Member for Abertillery (Mr. Dag gar) asked some forceful questions. He asked what was to happen to that surplus labour, not only in his own Constituency but in other parts of Wales. He has had no answer. I hope that we may have an answer later in the evening when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour replies.

What is to happen to that surplus labour? We are told in the White Paper that the number of factories financed by the Government in their present proposals will provide something like 163,000 jobs above the 1937 level when they are completed. So far only 23 out of the 166 building schemes have been completed, providing very little employment. What has happened? The brake has been put on. Very few of these schemes will be proceeded with.