Sir Geoffrey Ellis: The Minister raised a point just now with the hon. Member for Ecclesall (Sir S. Roberts) which is very important from the point of view of the general principle of the Bill. He asked him whether he thought that the various equivocations which have been going on in the trade were the result of any feeling that there was no stability. To many of us that has been the whole point for a...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: The best in what way?
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I wish to support the Amendment. To-day land is passing into many hands and requirements of this kind add to the difficulty of transferring it. We have here an opportunity to make the transfer of land less costly.
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: Having spent a considerable term of years behind a banker's counter, perhaps I may intervene in this Debate, especially in view of the fact that on leaving the bank I went into productive industry. I desire to put the point of view of productive industry with perhaps a certain subconscious knowledge of banking behind it. During the Debates of the last two days I have been struck by the fact...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: Was there not a time when miner Members were not allowed to take part in negotiations?
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: So far this Debate has centred round rather close details, but I should like to make one or two general observations. We have heard to-night a good deal of talk about many things, but there is no hope for this industry unless we can see quite clearly what is in front of us, and unless we are allowed to get down to our work and to meet the changed conditions which this industry, like every...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: During the last two or three days, from an orthodox point of view, there has been such a harlequinade of financial heresies running through this House that some of us who have lived in the normal course of the business of exchange and banking would like one or two simple assurances from the Minister who is going to reply who, I understand, is to be the President of the Board of Trade. The...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: May I put a point to which I do not want a reply now. Under Clause 1 articles not costing £20 in value are taken. That is all right when you are dealing with one article, but you may have contracts in which you are dealing with a number of articles, and I want to be assured that something is provided in the Bill that when these contracts are made it will not be possible to take out of the...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I think the right hon. Gentleman would get much more useful information if he altered the expression to "market values." The hon. Member who has just spoken clearly does not understand the running of private businesses. The capital in a private business may be quite nominal. He does not seem to appreciate that the real thing that one depends on in a private business is the actual capital that...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: Does the hon. Member realise that a great many people who are to-day farming their own land cannot make it pay?
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: Representing a large area of growers in South Hampshire, in a constituency adjoining that of the Solicitor-General, and similarly interested, I thank the Minister of Agriculture for these few crumbs that have fallen from the Cabinet's table. The right hon. Gentleman has presented us this time only with an annual. We hope that it will become a perennial. May I remind the House that this is a...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: At this late hour I may be forgiven if I leave on one side the controversial points which have been discussed in this House, and what one right hon. Gentleman has said about another, or what one hon. Member has said on the platform about another. The people want something to be done and they do not care one bit what hon. or right hon. Gentlemen think about what they said at the General...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I do not want to follow the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson) too much into the coal situation, but I should like to enter just a little disclaimer, because, so far as I know, nothing of the kind which he mentions as going on in Durham is taking place in my part of the country. I can go a little further, and say that, as far as I am aware, the relations between employers and...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, there are people outside the administrative control altogether who are concerned in these things to whom proper application can be made and to whom complaints can be made. I myself have sat on those bodies, and I know the sources of complaints, and I can assure him that if anything of that sort was really happening there would be such a row made about...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I am not dealing with 1925 but with to-day. If the right hon. Gentleman feels that the course that was being taken was wrong, what does he mean to propose in place of it? Is it really suggested that these grants are to be made without any inquiries into the circumstances and, if not, is not the reasonable thing to say: "This, that or the other is what we complain of and this, that or the...
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I did not say it was rosy. I said it was very much better, and I stick to it.
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I said "different," not "vastly different."
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: Has the hon. Gentleman noticed the increase in export trade from Yorkshire?
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: The fact is that export is rising. We have to take the figures month by month.
Sir Geoffrey Ellis: I should like to say one or two words on the general question in relation to the change which is now proposed. It is obvious on all hands that this is a temporary Measure, because at present the whole question can be treated only in a temporary sense. I do not think that it is fair to accuse, as has been done to some extent, the right hon. Gentleman and his Department in the way that they...