The Week in Parliament
Our Parliamentary Correspondent writes : —These lines are written between two secret sessions, one on Home Defence held last Thursday and one on the Ministry of Supply, which has not yet taken place. Apart from an interesting debate on Pensions, there is little to record of actual Parliamentary per- formance, except for the important statement made by the Prime Minister and the subsequent question by Mr. Hore- Belisha. Mr. Churchill was clearly in some difficulty in explain- ing the delicate negotiations which he and other members of the Cabinet had conducted with the changing Ministers of France. But he told us as much as he could, with dignity and sorrow. The House of Commons is prepared to trust the new Govern- ment and particularly the Prime Minister, whose stature grows steadily. Without this trust the Government might well have been subjected to further criticism. For the first time since his resignation Mr. Hore-Belisha had the ear of the House in his well-timed interjection asserting the right of Parliament to be kept in the closest touch with the Executive and pointing the warning from recent experience in France. On that Mr. Churchill was fully reassuring. The French situation has coloured the mood of everyone, it has raised a crop of new questions, it has made Members intolerant of any conventional reply at question-time, it has introduced a grim determination among all.
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