The Week at Westminster
THE most important business of the week has been the announcement of future business by Mr. Baldwin on Thursday, which shows that the Government intends Parliament to rise about the middle of July. This Will be more than a convenience to Ministers ; because it will reflect the fact that the next tasks of the Government lie in international negotiations. The House of Commons is quite ready to give Ministers their liberty without insisting upon the day-to-day control which is possible when Parliament is in session. They recognize that the forthcoming critical series of Conferences is complementary to the work of consoli- dation of the domestic situation upon -which they have been engaged for the past nine months. Next Saturday the Prime Minister leaves for Paris on his way to Lausanne, and from next week onwards the British Government will be a travelling executive. An admini- strative nucleus will remain at home, and it is fortunate indeed that the second eleven of junior Ministers who will compose it have already proved themselves no whit inferior to those who will be engaged elsewhere. The constitutional situation will be of great interest.
* * * * These arrangements will not involve any neglect of essential legislation. By the middle of July, really pressing problems will have been dealt with—tariffs, finance, and coal. The House will also have had discussions upon the Lausanne Conference, the Ottawa Conference, and national expenditure, which will enable, it to give Ministers general instructions upon all these points. Two measures will be postponed until the autumn. The first is a Bill to amend the Rent Restriction Act on the lines already recommended by a Departmental Committee. This is highly controversial legislation and will take a long time to pass. The second is the London. Traffic Bill, upon which negotiations are still taking place with interested parties. This is also highly controversial. Mr. Lansbury will therefore probably not press too hard his suggestion that the House should continue in session to deal with these two measures in the absence of so many Ministers. It is true that the Ministers actually in charge of them would probably be available, but points would certainly arise demanding considered Cabinet decisions, and those could not be obtained. • Mr. Lansbury made it clear that he would do nothing to prejudice the success of the Conferences, and members greatly appreciated this persistence in the tradition of unity in foreign policy. * * * *
Mr. Lansbury is certainly growing in Parliamentary stature. He showed it once again in his refusal on Monday to take Mr. Maxton's line of giving the Opposition a pro-De Valera flavour in the matter of Irish policy. His own line was that sufficient unto the day is the good news that Mr. De Valera wants to talk about Ottawa, and that the British Government are ready to do so. What they have said and will say on Friday to each other is another matter. The British Govern- ment considers that the Free State will be a foreign country if in effect it repudiates the Treaty of 1921. So much Mr. Thomas made clear on Monday. Mr. De Valera considers that the Free State is a foreign country until it comes to participating in any economic advantages inherent in membership of the British Empire. Possibly the ground for compromise may lie in the fact that the British Government is, quite ready to make commercial treaties with foreign countries after Ottawa, though neither so favourably nor so .swiftly
as with the Dominions. Nothing, of course, prevents the Free State from concluding arrangements separately with the Dominions, if the latter will do so. But Mr. De Valera will probably find that he cannot have it both ways. Certainly the temper of the House of Commons is that he should not. Members have agreed to the metamorphosis from a political to an economic Empire, on the condition that membership of the economic Empire is reciprocally advantageous, and they are not likely to consent that it should mean nothing. Such a situation would be too difficult to explain, notably in India. * * * * ' The legislation of the week began with the passage of the Coal Mines Bill. All the .sting had been taken out of the debate by the decision of the Miners' Federation to accept temporarily the twelve months' guarantee of wages. Mr. Foot bore the brunt of the debate extremely well, and during it managed to secure that the guarantee should be universal in all districts. Probably the decisive factor was his statement that the Government could not be indifferent to any attempt to reduce wages so long as the quota system lasts—a well-merited tribute to the late Mr. William Graham. The best speech of the debate came from Mr. (now Sir) Geoffrey Ellis, who has a most acute and impartial mind. He voiced the very general impression that this Bill gives the industry a last chance to set its own house in order, failing which there will have to be some change in its control. The debate was politically interesting as showing how far the rank and file of the Conservative Party in this House are removed from die-hard principles.
* * * * - The second item of business was the passage of the Town Planning Bill. It has been much cut about, but enough remains to prove that a determined effort ' to destroy it has failed. The Bill is really the answer to the logical case for the taxation of land values, in so far as it provides that enhancement of values due to public enterprise shall not go into private pockets. That is its economic justification. Its social justification is that it does offer a hope that development shall be on lines not so hopelessly confused and vandalistic as in the past. It has proved a most troublesome measure, and Sir Hilton Young nmst have heaved a sigh of relief when it staggered into port, though those harbour- masters, the House of Lords, may still cause him further
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