Mr Walter Elliot: I think few more modest statements have ever been made in this House than the statement just made by the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) that he is not a master of scintillating phrases and cutting remarks. Frankly, we have all listened with the utmost interest and the utmost delight to a polished and masterly piece of Parliamentary discussion, all the more so because from time...
Mr Walter Elliot: Only the hon. Member hopes to deter by boasts of that kind. He wishes all the world to be deterred by the weapons we have not got. That is the purpose of the policy and advice which he has so frequently enjoined upon the House; but, on the whole, the House and the country do not accept that view. Nobody is deterred by imaginary weapons. There is no doubt at all that the Soviet weapon exists....
Mr Walter Elliot: Does anybody here believe that the Soviet Union maintains 500 submarines and builds two more every ten days merely to defend itself against attack? In this war between the elephant and the whale, how is the whale to come ashore and cross a thousand miles of desert and tundra? But when the elephant takes to the sea and swims around turning its trunk into a shnorkel, and carries atomic bombs...
Mr Walter Elliot: The difficulty of delivering several speeches at one time is one which we have all experienced in the House. The hon. Member would not expect me to reply to one of his powerful pieces of dialectic by an answer off the cuff. But in short, this is not a question of one nation having the monopoly of power of attack over others. Both great blocs have great power of air attack, and I was merely...
Mr Walter Elliot: Certainly not.
Mr Walter Elliot: For the convenience of hon. Members, will it be possible to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the subjects of the Adjournment debates which are to be taken on Thursday?
Mr Walter Elliot: Although occasionally it was straggling, our debate today has certainly covered a field of great interest to us all. Undoubtedly, it has pivoted round the block grant. The hon. Member for Govan (Mr. Rankin) said that fears were expressed about the block grant because of previous experience. The hon. Gentleman chose a singularly unfortunate example—
Mr Walter Elliot: Well, I will prove it. The hon. Gentleman referred to the Geddes Committee. I do not think that he can have remembered the precise circumstances of that time. They were that the cut of 10 per cent. on teachers' salaries was not imposed as the of the block grant or, indeed by the Geddes Committee. It was imposed by the great Socialist Chancellor, Philip Snowden, who had been panic-stricken...
Mr Walter Elliot: The right hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Woodburn), who formerly had great responsibility as Secretary of State for Scotland, affirms that fear. How can he, in face of the record of this Government? Whereas the best figure for school places in a year that he could produce was 20,000, we have produced 36,000. How can he claim that the people who produced 36,000 places are cutting down...
Mr Walter Elliot: New facilities had to be found by us. It was part of the claim of hon. Members opposite that we would not provide facilities for the children who were growing up. At any rate, a valiant effort, a successful effort, was made to cope with the situation. The situation was coped with. I am much more afraid of the figures which were given by the hon. Member for Govan, which we have very much in...
Mr Walter Elliot: Does the hon. Gentleman think that education in the United States is a federal responsibility?
Mr Walter Elliot: Suppose we say that, all the same, that is not it.
Mr Walter Elliot: My hon. Friend used the word "it" and said "that is not it".
Mr Walter Elliot: The hon. and learned Member is not addressing himself to the question just asked by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Isle of Ely (Major Legge-Bourke). It is absolutely fundamental and crucial to the issue which we are discussing. If this Statute lays down certain things, it is then surely for us to define in another Statute what is our conception of those things, but it is not...
Mr Walter Elliot: Would not the hon. and learned Member agree that if, as my hon. and gallant Friend said, the Statute is unclear, then it is much better that the Statute should be put down in clear terms than that there should be a dispute about it?
Mr Walter Elliot: That is exactly the Motion. The Motion suggests that if it requires to be clarified, it should be clarified. It is precisely and exactly that point.
Mr Walter Elliot: So do I.
Mr Walter Elliot: With my fellow-members of the Committee, I should like, in the first place, to thank the House for the friendly reception, on the whole, which it has given to the proposals which we put forward. There are actually two Reports here. The hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Malcolm MacPherson) referred to some of the other proposals besides the proposals for the alteration in the...
Mr Walter Elliot: It does not create a misconception. It is the suggestion that it is only two and a half hours which creates the misconception. This cuts into the thinking period, the meditative period, the fruitful period of the day. I regard the morning as an indispensable a part of my day as any part of the 24 hours, and if my morning has been destroyed I find it difficult to make adequate use of the rest...
Mr Walter Elliot: Some of them will serve on the other United Kingdom Committees. I have had a great deal of experience of this, and I have served on other United Kingdom Committees, too. If there is a standing mortgage on one's time by which, every time the Scottish Committee sits one is summoned to attend it, that is a handicap under which no other set of Members in the House work, and it is a handicap...
