I hope the House will really give consideration to this Bill before it is read the Third time. We have had to take so much on the authority of the Parliamentary Secretary and his advisers, that a real consideration of what is happening with regard to the supply of electricity does really become necessary at the present time. The main object of this Bill is to give effect to the policy contained in the principal Act. It is to provide the funds and various other things, so that the original Act can be carried out on a practical basis. What is going to be the result of carrying out the original Act? It is going to be exactly the same result which has happened from the policy of the same gentleman—Sir Eric Geddes—on the railways of this country. It is going to put the supply of electricity, just as the transport of the country is at present, on a purely Syndicalist basis, under which monopolies are to be granted, and authorities put in a position to go to the men and officials they employ and arrange the whole industry on a Syndicalist basis. And the consumers are to pay, just as in the case of the railways. That is not a stable position, and it is not, going to be stable when once worked out by the Ministry of Transport, any more than the position of the railway companies is stable at the present time. Both the directors of the railway companies and those responsible for the direction of the National Union, know perfectly well that the present position on the railways is extremely critical, because the Syndicalist method of working the railways, through the system of grouping, is breaking down, after only being worked for a very few months. In the same way the Syndicalist basis of working the supply of electricity is going to break down, and there is going to be immense trouble between the electrical workers and the rest of the community.

Therefore I do protest against this Bill, and for another reason, that it is going to set up a vested interest in the special technical methods of producing and distributing electricity which happen to be in existence at the present time. There is going to be no reason in the future why anybody engaged in the business of inventing new and better methods of generating and distributing electricity, can ever get his new, and possibly better ideas, put into force, so long as this basis for the industry exists.

This solidification, this freezing of the whole of the technical position in the generating and distribution of electricity is taking place just at that one moment in the history of the industry and invention in this country when probably the whole methods both of generation and of distribution are going to be completely altered in every essential respect. We are just at the end of one age of electricity—just at the end of that age under which electricity is generated by coal from the pits, put under boilers for the purpose of raising the steam, to be put into steam turbines to produce the rotary motion, which is again transmitted to the rotary electric machine, which again generates the electricity which is transmitted to the consumer. That method of production is a method primitive in the extreme. It is very complicated and hopelessly inefficient. For years past, the whole of the inventive capacity of the engineers of the world has been devoted to the invention of some better, cheaper, and simpler method of generating electricity. All those labours have been going on for a whole generation, and engineers, who have throughout the whole time been busy, are rapidly coming to a conclusion at the present time. Already everyone concerned with engineering knows well that the great engines which are to be put in at the present time are going to be obsolete within a very short time. Therefore I do say that the House is taking a very grave responsibility upon itself when, possibly, passing a Measure which may be of the very greatest disadvantage to the industries and to the prosperity of this country. I do hope that those who vote for the Third Reading of this Bill to-night will vote with a full knowledge of what they are doing and of what they may sacrifice.