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Aviation History
1918
1918 - 0897.PDF
AUGUST 8,-1918. friend's Committee is concerned, I personally feel that Parliament and theMinistry are under an obligation to him and his fellow members for the spirit and the thoroughness with which they have made this examination.Mr. Holt: I am exceedingly pleased to know the Ministry of Munitions means to" have a thorough investigation. I trust that the terms of reference will be;wide enough to investigate the whole matter. There-are several aspects of the case. There is, first of all, the technical question. If you follow the Reportof the Select Committee, assuming that Report to be correct, there can be no question that this company failed lamentably and scandalously in their promisesand assurances to the Government. Sir W. Bull: That they absolutely deny. . Mr. Holt: The right hon. Gentleman will, no doubt, on behalf of the company,-denv that, but that is one of the questions that ought to be investigated. •-•- Sir W. Bull: Exactly.Mr. Holt: Promises were made which were entirely unfulfilled. Negotiations began in July, 1915, and were apparently concluded in September, 1915, butaccording to this Report it was July, 1917, before anything substantial was produced, and it was April, 1 <;i8, before the goods were coming in in quantities.If there is an investigation we ought to know why, assuming it to be, as I have no doubt it was, an article of very great importance to the conduct of the war,s uch a very long period of time elapsed between the time when the contract was set in hand and the time when any goods whatever were delivered. Wecertainly ought to have much more information than we have got as to how it was that various reputable concerns which, prima facie, were more reputablewere uot encouraged to take up production in this matter. We ought to have got more information about that. I do think, also, we want more informationabout tfae constitution of this company- There is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that the financial story of this company is an exceedingly uncomfort-able one. I know nothing whatever, I frankly admit about the Stock Exchange and the floating of companies, but when I discover that shareswhich were valued at 6d. have come to be worth £14 10s., I think everybody who knows anything at all about it would like an explanation, though itis explained to me that there is no particular signification attached to the change.Sir W. Bull: Anybodv can discover what it represents. Mr. Holt : I understand that if one day the share is called a sixpenny share andthe next day a £14 101. share, that it is simply for the convenience of it. Sir W. Bull: I tlo not want to bore the House with these details, but the£120,000 is now £3,000,0000. As I explained, the shares are merely for the purpose of showing how the matter stands.Mr. Holt: I want to try to understand the explanation and how the hon. gen- tleman opposite puts it. 1 understand that what has happened is this : thatevery person who originally pnt in 6d. has since contributed £14 gs. 6d. to that sixpence ?Sir W- Bull: The money has gone into the company and has been spent, not the money of the Government, but the money of these people.Mr. Holt: If the person who put in sixpence now finds his share is worth /14 ios,, all I can say is that the explanation is not adequate, is not satisfactory.If that is not what the gentleman opposite means I fail to understand what is exactly his explanation. If somebody has found the money it may be that theexplanation of the hon. gentleman who spoke the other evening is-the right one and that, after all, whether or no some peculiar bargains were made does notmatter so very much so long as the directors of the company did not take the taxpayers' money. But the taxpayers ought to know something about it.Are we to understand that the whole of this bargain about not paving the Excess Profits Tax amounts to nothing, and that there was never any profits? Weshould look for a very full, and a very close and clear investigation. There is another matter about which I should like to know. I want to know what is theconnection between this company and the Ministry of Information ? I think that the gentleman who is a great light in this company, Mr. C. G. Brown, 01the Prudential Trust Company of Canada, and who produced the £120,000, is one of the managers of a Department in the Ministry of Propaganda. I find alsothat another, an officer of the Ministry of Propaganda, was laterly a director of the bank with which the Prudential Trust of Canada kept their account. Thisis what I have discovered in my own investigation into books of reference and so on that can be had in the Library of the House. I should like to have all thesematters thoroughly investigated.' It is not altogether a pleasant transaction. We have had a list of shareholders published by the Daily Chronicle. Thereare some very reputable gentlemen in this list, and some persons not altogether so. It is not altogether pleasant to the man in the street to see some of thesenames, and about this matter we should like to know a good deal more. All this explanation of Colonel Grant Morden is very unsatisfactory. The right hon.Gentleman referred to him as a gentleman who introduced this process into England. We have had other very reputable people in touch with these mat-ters which were not carried on next door to Germany. We ought to have a very full and complete investigation of the whole matter. Is everyone satisfied that these Swiss manufacturers are entirely above suspi-cion ? We have been told that even- person who is not a natural-born British subject has got to have a special investigation made into his character; yet wemake no special investigation into the character of any of these people who are concerned in the matters we are discussing. After ail,I should like to remindthe House that if you are going to have dangerous spying, and dangerous com- munications with the enemy, these things are not going to be ffone by somewretched barber or butcher of German origin living in"a*sniserable.suburb of London or Liverpool. These are not the people. The thing is more likely tohappen in connection with some international syndicate which has got the opportunity to do it. Where are you going to find these things done than bythose who have access to all sorts of confidential information ? These are the people for whom you really want to be on the look out. On the other hand,here are people whose financial methods are very queer and peculiar, who have every opportunity, if they desire, to get information through to the enemy. Itis these great international syndicates who have the opportunity of doing harm— the people you would not suspect, the people above suspicion ! That is thedirection in which you should look. When you find people who have in this way carried on business by peculiar methods, failing to deliver the goods, andat the same time carrying on'fmancial transactions of a very dubious character, surely the time has come that there should be a most thorough, complete, andsearching investigation into the whole operation ? I hope such investigation will take place. I hope it will prove that these people are in all respects absolutelyabove suspicion. But I must say that If they do, or have come under severe animadversion, that they have only themselves to thank for it. The transactionsright through are not of the character which ordinary business men are accus- tomed to be associated with. It is not the usual thing to have great syndicatesset up mainly by people who have got nothing whatever to do with the business. Surely there were plenty of respectable chemicalmanuf acturers in every direction,and yet we have this Swiss-Canadian Syndicate, with its peculiar and extra- ordinary relations with the War Office. Perhaps the hon. gentleman oppositewill be able to give the names that will be appointed on the Committee ? Mr. Kellaway : I do not know whether I can. It was only this morning thatwe came to a decision to appoint the Committee. Mr. Herbert Samuel: Can we have the names before the Adjournment ?• Mr, Kellaway : It is a Departmental Committee, but I will see what cau be feme.Tlr. Holt: I trust it will be a very strong Committee. It ought, I think, to be more than a Departmental Committee. This Committee is to investigate allegations made by a Committee of this House, and we ought to have the power to compel witnesses to attend anri produce papers and to have an examinationon oath. Nothing less than that will satisfy us. . Mr. Kellaway: The recommendations of the Select Committee are our re-commendations,' and we think the Ministry of Munitions should consider them. That is exactly what we propose to do. We propose to act on the recommenda-tion of the Committee and to consider those recommendations, and we intend that there should be a searching examination.Mr. Holt: We do not want a Departmental Committee simply to consider the recommendations of the Committee, because I understand the facts are disputed.You want a Committee which is capable of making a proper judicialinvestigation of what is going on and what has been going on, and which can really g^et tothe bottom of matters, for this subject has a most unsavoury smell. It may be capable of explanation in a thoroughly satisfactory way, but it does not looknice at present, and the bad impression which has undoubtedly been given to the public will not be got rid of by any hole-and-corner investigation. It must bea thoroughly drastic inquiry, and unless that is done there may remain something which may possibly be very unfair to the company and an impression thatsomething very improper and scandalous has taken place. Mr. Herbert Samuel: I do not desire to go into the merits ol the questionunder discussion, but I think we should have it stated a little more clearly what is the action which the Government really intend to take. There arc twopoints in question, one comparatively narrow and the other much wider. The narrower point is what the Ministry of Munitions is going to do with regard toobtaining the supply of acetate. That is a single question to be decided on the m2rus of the particular case. The other point upon which the House has ex-pressed anxiety is whether there is to be a free investigation into the history of the events which have taken place, the constitution of this company and thefinancial methods adopted and all the other aspects of the case. I understand that, so far, the Ministry of Munitions have decided to hold an inquiry onlyinto the narrower point. Clearly that will not satisfy the company, in fact, the company would not have any locus statuli to explain any of these transactions,if the point is simply whether the particular factory existing is to be taken over by the Ministry ornot. Idoubt whetherthat wouldsatisfythe House. Ifthereis to be a furtherinquiry, which one might describe as an appeal by the company trom the decision of the Report of the Select Committee, I hardly think it oughtto be an appeal from the Select Committee to a certain number of official? of the Department.With regard to the Select Committee itself and its work, we were obliged, owing to the magnitude of the task, which has been placed upon our shoulders by thisHouse, to devolve some of our work on to Sub-Committees, and by no other means would it have been possible for 26 Members to examine so many Depart-ments of State. The Sub-Committee which has dealt recently with the Ministry of Munitions and this contract has been described in one quarter as consistingentirely of lawyers. As a matter of fact, it consisted of two business men, one other Member who is a chartered accountant, one who is a stockbroker, and onewho is a lawyer. They gave.-an infinity ot pains to this contract, and held a large number of meetings, and they were unanimous in regard to the Reportpresented to the Select Committee. The Select Committee heard the members of the Sub-Committee, examined their Report, and endorsed it and presentedit to this House. In these circumstances until some other competent tribunal, has examined this question more thoroughly—I do not know whether it is in-tended that counsel should be heard—I think the House and the public will be disposed to accept as accurate the statements in the recommendations of theReport. Colonel Gretton : I have been waiting to hear some further expression ofopinion on this question. I do not think a Departmental Committee can satis- factorily deal with this controversy. It would hardly be possible to make aclose examination into the whole of these transactions without examining the whole of the period in which" the Ministry was involved. This is one of thesubjects in regard to which a full and searching investigation ought to be made, and if it is undertaken by a Departmental Committee the facts might neverreach the knowledge of this House, and their Report would always be open to suspicion. I suggest that in the interests of everyone concerned there shouldbe a certain judicial inquiry before which witnesses could be examined on oath. I have no bias in this matter, but I have read the Report, and I am convincedthat it is a very serious matter which should be gone into further. I have only risen to add my small voice to the request that the Government should abandonthe proposal for a Departmental Committee, and should set %p instead a Com- mittee which will make a thorough investigation.Mr. Dillon : I wish to draw attention to the treatment of this question by the representative of the Ministry and the right hon. Gentleman the Member forHammersmith (Sir W. Bull). I do not understand why the right hon. Member for Hammersmith should have come here with a brief on behalf of this companyand constitute himself the impassioned champion of the companv. Sir W. Bull: I can answer that question. The two gentlemen concerned arefriends of mine ; the papers were attacking them, and I appealed to the House, before deciding the point, to wait until some action can be taken before a moresatisfactory tribunal. If this cannot be done, then they must appeal to the Law Courts, unless a satisfactory tribunal is set np which can take evidence onoath. As far as I am concerned I have not a share in this company ; I have no interest whatever in it—in fact, I have nothing to do with it.Mr. Dillon : That is a very strong argument in favour of a tribunal very different from a Departmental Committee. I have listened to this Debate \-erycarefully. The representative of the Ministry of Munitions said that he would confine his defence to the broader considerations and the broader considerationshad nothing whatever to do with the financing of this company or with another question of vital importance to which I shall draw attention. He pointed outthe importance at a critical moment of getting this cellulose acetate, and he said that the only available method was the Dreyfus method. What had that to dowith the conduct of the company which was to operate the Dreyfus methotf ? I understand there were other candidates, well-established British chemicalcompanies of the highest repute, who were in the field for this contract, and what is really at issue is not the value of the Dreyfus method as against anyother method, but the character of the company which has got this extremely valuable monopoly conferred upon it by this contract. It is this that appearsto those who have read the Report as extremely sinister. There are un- doubtedly among the shareholders, and I think even the directors, of the com-pany men who might reasonably be supposed to have a strong pull upon the Government. That is really at the bottom of the uneasiness of the House ofCommons. I maintain that if the Government considered it desirable to set up a totally new company and to enter into an immense Government contract withthat company, conferring upon it a valuable monopoly which might be the source of great profit, they ought to have been scrupulously careful that therewas no shareholder and, still more, no director who had any connection whatso- ever with the Government in any kind of way. I have been talking to peoplewho have examined the list of shareholders and they tell me that there are several who answer that description, men who either by family connection orotherwise would be supposed by the public to have a pull on the Government. That is a very sinister and objectionable state of affairs. If it be true, as I amtold, that this company got this contract as against other companies who were prepared to make this cellulose acetate on at least equally good terms and thatthere are concerned in this company men who have connections with the Government, then I say that is a most sinister state of affairs.The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Colonel Sir W. Bull) is himselt con- nected with the Government. He is the Parliamentary Secretaryto the ColonialSecretary, and it does not give oue confidence to see a man who is Parliamentary 895
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