The Livestock Industry Bill is a measure of a kind
with which the House of Commons has become familiar in recent years. Farmers are to receive a perpetual subsidy in return for a measure of reorganisation, and powers are taken to control the volume of imports. No doubt it will produce the usual cleavage of opinion. Agricultural members on the Government side will demand still more assistance and less control, while the Socialists will object to the use of public funds for the maintenance of private enterprise. Mr. W. S. Morrison, who is in charge of the Bill, has been so often tipped in recent months as a future Prime Minister that one always wonders whether he can live up to his sudden reputation. But his speech on the second reading was an admirable exposition of a complicated set of proposals. Unlike his predecessor at the Ministry of Agriculture, who was inclined to be over-didactic, he speaks with an air of disarming reasonableness and resists the temptation to score off interrupters.
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