It is true that this is an agreed measure. There is no subject on which it is more essential that the Government should redeem their pledges than this, in order to leave the ground free for those happier methods on which my right hon. Friend (Mr. Clynes) gave us ground for hope. The right hon. Gentleman need foe under no misapprehension as to the point of view from which a great many of us regard what are commonly called trade union privileges. I certainly should be anxious to extend, and foster, trade union privileges as an instrument for putting trade unions in a position to render the best service possible to the State as regards quantity of output, and so forth. Therefore, the right hon. Gentleman can count on my support in any legitimate extention of trade union privileges. I would emphasise what the right hon. Gentleman said in regard to the limited extent to" which we are right in saying that this is an agreed measure. He directed our attention to the position of women under this Bill. If the Bill were passed into law as it stands, I should regard the position in which it would leave women as most unsatisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman said, with perfect truth, that during the War the workshop had been of hardly less importance than the Army, and, although he did not say, I think he meant to imply that the work of women in the workshop had been hardly less important and hardly less self-sacrificing than the work of men. At the very moment when your learned professions are opening their doors to women, when this House has not only extended the franchise to women but has extended to them also the right to sit in this House if elected, and at the time when the other place is contemplating allowing them to sit within its walls, what an anomaly it would be to close the door upon women by a firm fixed bar within certain trades that are affected by this Bill. I know that that is only partly the case, but I am concerned with the principle laid down in the Bill, and I would recommend to my right hon. Friend that it is a dangerous principle to recognise by Statute. As far as I am seised of the opinion of women on this point—and I had some means of judging it—I believe that they are anxious to stand down until trade can reabsorb returning soldiers, whose claims they, along with all the rest of the community, recognise. But what they do resent is that this Bill should establish a sex bar, debarring them from engaging in industry at the very moment when the doors of other professions are being opened to their richer sisters.

I had a figure given to me which, if accurate, is sufficiently striking. In July, 1918, there were no fewer than 792,000 women in there were affected by this Bill. Of these, only 450,000 were directly replacing men. If that be so, it means that we are invited to put a bar upon 340,000 women who are not directly in competition with men. My right hon. Friend, on the one hand, quite recognised the difficulty in which we are at present with regard to the state of employment, but I cannot believe that legal State prohibition is the right method of dealing with this. After all, the women concerned are not working for their health. They are working for a livelihood, and they have made just as big sacrifices in the War as their brothers who have fought overseas, and while they admit that it is per- fectly right to take all necessary steps in: a transitional period to reassure the reabsorbtion of and preference for soldiers and men returned, I would like my right hon. Friend in charge of the Bill to emphasise the fact that it is a transitional position and that the interval of twelve months must be used to lay down better conditions by which we may deal with the whole sex problem. I believe that in that respect the present Bill is unstatesmanlike and goes too far, and I hope that when it gets into Committee my right hon. Friend will be prepared to consider sympathetically Amendments to meet those difficulties. If he does not, and if trade unions are not prepared to meet the case, then women will feel that something is being done which will cause great re-sentiment on the part of many thousands of those who have no less a share in the administration and direction of the affairs of the nation than we have ourselves.