AT WESTMINSTER
IT is pleasant to think that the relative benevolence of members on both sides of the House of Commons this week has been a fruit of the sun. Nothing seemed more appropriate than the presence in the galleries of the House on Tuesday of a number of distinguished Africans in their flowing robes. The temperature of the House welcomed them, and they brought coolness in the folds of their garments. The debate on the National Health Service on Monday ended with- out a vote and even drew from the Opposition a declaration that Labour was less suspicious of the Guillebaud committee than it had been. South-East Asia produced a growl from Mr. Bevan on Monday, but when the subject came up again the next day Sir Winston was not seriously badgered about it. Labour members may of course have been resting before the next phase of their civil war opens next week.
* * Parliament has spent a little time on legislation and general affairs. The Lords took the second reading of the Atomic Energy Authority Bill on Tuesday, and though Lord Wilmot put Labour's case against the desirability of this change he wished the authority great success and said that the quality of the members of the board had given it a start of great promise. This debate enabled Lord Waverley to boast that his " interest" in atomic energy went back to 1903 when, as a student at Leipzig, he had been " entrusted with research into the radioactive properties of uranium." Lord Cherwell could not allow so startling a challenge to pass unnoticed. He boasted that he had been " connected " with atomic energy longer than anybody else in the House—since 1940. The Commons took two Scottish Bills on Wednesday, and on the same day the Lords (who had had a Welsh debate last week) discussed Scottish roads.
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But the characteristic of the week has been concern with domestic and procedural matters—chiefly the question of members' expenses upon which the Commons had an explora- tory debate on Thursday. Sir Winston had previously indicated the Government's dislike of the proposal to increase members' salaries by £500 a year. In the Lords, Lord Jowitt jibbed at a revised standing order which declares : " It, is a breach of the privilege of the House for any person whatsoever to print or publish anything relating to the proceedings of the House without leave of the House." He thought it mischievous, out of date and inappropriate. But a Labour colleague, Lord Milner of Leeds, argued that the order was needed so that the House could deal quickly with false or scandalous reports. In the Commons, the Attorney-General promised that the Government would try to reduce to order the list of offices of profit under the Crown. This matter arose during the second reading of a Bill to indemnify Mr. Niall Macpherson against any ill effects of his chairmanship of the London agency of the Australian dried fruits board which turns out to have been an office of profit under the Crown. Mr. Macpherson has vacated the chair.
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Almost the whole of Tuesday was spent by the Commons in debating a guillotine motion for the Television Bill. Mr. Herbert Morrison accused the Government of being " guillo- tine-mad " and " half-Nazi," and Labour made the most of the fact that Sir Winston's Government had rigged up guillotines twice as often as the Labour Government and in half the time. The attack was delivered with rosy smiles and Colonel Glover could ditcover " no Charlotte Cordays " on the Opposition benches. The Government's answer is quite simple : it intends to govern, even though it has a much smaller majority than that of Labour from 1945-50. Captain Crookshank refused to be in the least abashed by Mr. Morrison's attack and quoted Mr. Bevan against him : " If the deed follows' too tardily on the
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