I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. That clears up the point. The figure which I have seen of £37 a ton has been increased since the latest returns to £41 a ton. It was very gratifying to hear the tribute from a distinguished French source to the benefit the children have derived from the wise provisions of the National Government. All must have been glad to hear that. However, we must all have felt a certain amount of sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman in that part of his speech in which he addressed himself to the question of food subsidies. That part of his speech seemed to me to be clearly intended for the ears of the Chancellor of the exchequer. It must have been a source of disappointment that neither the Chancellor nor the Financial Secretary to the Treasury was present on the front bench when he was doing that bit of special pleading.

If we were gratified to hear certain parts of the Minister's speech, I am sure the Committee were disappointed, and the country will be disappointed, to learn that the Minister has been unable today to make any announcement about the end of bread rationing. If he is really anxious, as he said he was in the House on 10th May, to de-ration bread at the earliest possible moment, I should be greatly obliged if he would give me an answer to four questions. Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary could give the answers when she comes to reply at the end of the Debate.

First, is it a fact that at the end of March we had over three months' stock of wheat and wheat equivalent in this country? Secondly, is it a fact that the United States Department of Agriculture has estimated that the bread grain crop in Europe is likely to total 54 million tons this year as compared with 40 million tons last year? Thirdly, is it a fact that the carry-over of the four main exporting countries at the end of this month is expected to be about 6.6 million tons as compared with 3.8 million tons on 31st July, 1947? Fourthly, is it a fact that there is every prospect of bountiful wheat harvests? In view of the answers to those questions, why does the Minister continue to delay making the long-awaited announcement?

When bread rationing was first introduced we were led to suppose that it would not last long. It has lasted for two years. The Minister estimated that it would save from 5 to 10 per cent.; the most that it has been claimed to save is 3 per cent.; and from the Monthly Digest of Statistics it appears that the saving has, in fact, only been 1.5 per cent., part of which is undoubtedly due to the smaller loaf. The system of bread rationing which has been adopted is a bad one. I do not think anybody disputes that. There is no fixed or scaled allocation of flour to the bakers, who have been able to buy what they have wanted. When temporary rationing was first mooted in 1946, the bakers said that they could save at least 5 per cent. without the bother or expense of rationing the consumers. At the Minister's request they made a 5 per cent. saving over a period of six weeks in the Spring of 1947 in order to meet a temporary shortage in supplies. This was exactly the method which the bakers themselves had suggested and which the Minister rejected. The scheme has required the employment of about 2,000 officials to administer it, at the cost to the taxpayer of £350,000 a year.

Whether the Minister ends bread rationing soon, as we all hope he will, or whether he does not, most of us would agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Hillhead (Mr. J. S. C. Reid) that he ought to reduce the extraction rate at the earliest possible moment. I am told that if the extraction rate is reduced by only 2½ per cent. not only would the loaf be improved but there would be about 130,000 tons more milling offal a year for animal feedingstuffs, which is more than we imported during the whole of 1947.

With other of my hon. Friends, I am greatly concerned about the animal feedingstuffs position. Before the war we produced 1,100,000 tons of meat at home, and we carried 60 million head of poultry. We fed that livestock population upon what we grew at home, plus 8½ million tons of imported feedingstuffs. Today we are producing only 700,000 tons of meat, and our fowl population has declined by 25 per cent. Under the compulsion of war and subsequent pressure, we have increased our home production of coarse grains fed to stock, but our imports of feedingstuffs have fallen to 2.2 million tons, which is a drop of nearly 25 per cent. When a year ago we were faced with the dollar crisis, the Prime Minister said: The maximum supply of feedingstuffs must be obtained. … We must get our production of beef, bacon and eggs expanded rapidly."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th August, 1947; Vol. 441 C. 1498.] On the other hand, the Lord President of the Council, in addressing the representatives of the agricultural executive committees on 31st August, said: Large increases"—of feedingstuffs—"must come from imports and even scarce dollars will be spent on all that is obtainable since this operation must lead to ultimate dollar saving. What do we find has happened in practice? First, there was the shock of the admission of the Minister of Agriculture in the House on 25th March, that it would be impossible to increase the feedingstuffs ration in the period which began on 1st May last, and secondly the grave doubts about the Minister's own intentions, doubts which I am bound to say have been intensified today by his statement that coarse grains are very expensive imports indeed. Of course, they are very expensive imports, but may I remind him again of what the Lord President of the Council said: Even scarce dollars will be spent on all that is obtainable, since this operation must lead to ultimate dollar saving. Has the Minister bought all the maize he can from the Argentine? On 11th March he said: We cannot monopolise the export of maize from the Argentine."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th March, 1948; Vol. 448, c. 1479.] But no one said that we should. The Argentine surplus maize crop this year, including the carry-over of last year, is likely to be 5½ million tons. If we imported less than 3 million tons of maize in 1939 from that source, there is not even a remote possibility of monopolising the Argentine output, even if we wanted to do so. The Minister reminded the House that under the Andes Agreement we were obtaining one million tons, but if we could double that figure we could give everyone in Britain an extra egg and an extra 1½ ounces of bacon for every week in the year. I hope the Minister will assure the Committee that it is still the Government's intention that we shall acquire all the feedingstuffs that are obtainable.

I will now deal briefly with two aspects of the right hon. Gentleman's administration which I think have been defective. The first is in regard to lost ration books. I think this is one of the means by which food is getting on to the black market, and it is a source of supply which the Minister could stop if he would give his attention to it. In the year 1945–46 there were 673,000 ration books reported lost. Last year the figure was 932,000. In reply to a question I put on 3rd May, the Parliamentary Secretary said that she was satisfied that there was no evidence of a black market leakage. If a dishonest person wants to obtain a second ration book, what has he to do?

First, he has to go to the food office and tell them he has lost his ration book. His particulars are taken, and he is told to report the loss to the police, which he does. He is then given form R.B.12 which enables him to obtain rations for a week. He can obtain a fresh R.B.12 for each of four weeks. In the meantime he can draw his rations from his retailers on the ration book he says he has not got, and he can go to other retailers with his R.B.12. I have not done this myself, but it can be done. After four weeks he gets a book which is marked "duplicate," but no attempt is made to inform the retailers of the reported loss, and so there is nothing to prevent the person from continuing to make his purchases with his normal ration book, and going to other retailers with his R.B.12 document to draw a second lot of rations. When he gets his duplicate ration book he can transfer his tea and personal points for the remainder of the 12-month period. This can easily be stopped if the names and addresses of the retailers are put on the R.B.12 document. That information is in the possession of the food office, and I do not see why this should not be done.

My second point is in regard to the purchases of swedes by the Minister in the early part of this year. Earlier this year the Minister, through the Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Department, instructed buyers to buy about 100,000 tons of swedes, the intention being to build up a reserve as an insurance against a shortage of potatoes in the Spring. There was no difficulty about this whatever, since the prices offered varied from £5 10s. a ton in the case of Scotland to £7 and are in the case of England. On the Minister's instructions most of these swedes instead of being left in the ground, were bagged in potato sacks provided by the Ministry.

In March the Ministry suddenly changed their mind, and ultimately the farmers were paid £2 10s. to £3 a ton to feed their own swedes to their own stock. On a conservative estimate this must have cost the country not less than £400,000, and probably £500,000. The Parliamentary Secretary, on 17th March, said that she would be happy to give the figures when all the transactions were completed, and I hope that she will be able to do so now. I do not quarrel with the principle of insurance, but my criticism is, firstly, that it was the experience of 1914–18 that swedes are no substitute for potatoes; secondly that this advice was pressed by the trade, but the Minister refused to accept it; thirdly that the prices given were, in any case, far too high.

My main criticism, however, against the right hon. Gentleman and his Ministry does not lie in these administrative points. The real measure of the Government's failure is that, in spite of American aid—and the Government themselves admit that without it we would be far worse off today—rations have been reduced all round. Since the Government came into power the cheese ration has been halved; bacon has been cut by one-third; rations of meat, sugar, tea, chocolate and sweets have all been reduced, and bread has been rationed for the first time in our history. Moreover, points values have, on balance, been considerably upgraded, and 48 points are needed today to buy what could have been bought with 20 points in 1945. Small wonder that the effect on the thoughtful housewife who remembers these things, and who looks back to the prudent administration of that great Food Minister, Lord Woolton, can be summed up in the words of the old Scots song, "Will ye no' come back again?"