Mr. WEBB:

I am sure that the House will agree with the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down that the hon. Member for the Drake Division of Plymouth (Sir A. S. Benn) has performed a very useful service in bringing forward this subject, and that we are indebted to him not only for that but for the manner in which he explained what he had in view. As the Debate has proceeded I think that a passing observer would have reason to be strengthened in his view that the hon. Member for Plymouth has really made a suggestion which meets with a great deal of sympathy in all parts of the House. I am not going to attempt to traverse all the ground, but I do hope that before I have done, I shall be able to convince the hon. Member that the Government is not unsympathetic to what he proposes. If I might comment on some of the speeches that have been made right through, I would enter a note of protest against—I do not think that it was really meant—a fallacy in which all of us are apt to indulge, for we cannot help thinking that the commerce and trade and production of the world is a definite quantity in this sense, that if we get more, some other person must get less.

I do not agree with that. I do not think that anybody, when he comes to think it out, will think that that is so. Still, we are always speaking as if we believed in what seems to me to be the fallacy of supposing that because other people may do better and become more skilful or more productive, therefore somebody else—and here we usually mean ourselves—must necessarily be doing somewhat less. I may be presumptuous or rash, but I take the opposite view. I believe that this country will prosper more and more by the prosperity of any other country, and more still by the prosperity of every other country. I believe, with Napoleon, that we are a nation of shopkeepers and that we benefit by the prosperity of our customers and not by their adversity. The more any other nation learns to do, even of the things that we have done, the more we shall be enabled to do. I put that forward almost as a paradox, by which I mean something which is true but which seems false. I am not afraid of a paradox. The paradox is that other countries take our trade—as it is sometimes put—or our manufactures, and yet our country, in the past has flourished, when that has happened, and I believe it will flourish in the future with that happening. We sometimes hear phrases about looking after one's own country and about patriotism. I feel myself a very patriotic person, because I believe in my country. I have full confidence that it is going to be successful in the future as it has been in the past. It was suggested by one hon. Member that these exports—the foreign loans which the hon. Member for Ilford (Sir F. Wise) wanted to encourage—were too apt to go away in the form of machinery to build up competitive industry in other countries. We have been doing that all the time. It is exactly 100 years ago this year that we repealed the law which prohibited the export of machinery. Our ancestors, in their wisdom, were so very anxious that the inventions of Boulton and Watt should not go to other countries, that it was made a penal offence to export machines. That was quite consistent with the suggestions that have been floating about to-night, that we really suffer when, say, a cotton industry is set up, or when steam engines are built in some other country, or when some other country learns how to make something which we are making. Our ancestors believed that, and made it a penal offence to export machinery. They also made it a penal offence for skilled artisans to emigrate from these islands. Since the repeal of that law, we have had our artisans all over the Continent, and throughout the rest of the world, setting up this machinery which has gone out, and working the machinery when it has been set up. This country has gone on increasing its trade, and increasing its standard of life and prosperity since then.

Those facts are consistent with my view that this country benefits by the prosperity and the advances in industrial civilisation of other countries. I do not want to indulge in the rather gloomy view which has been expressed to-night Certainly, the present state of things is bad enough, but I am old enough to have lived through very bad times. The first thing I remember was the very bad slump of 1879. It was very much worse than anything which this country has suffered, even in the depths of depression after the War. We got over that. I admit that the present state of things is very unsatisfactory. The right hon. Gentleman who preceded me at the Board of Trade (Sir P. Lloyd-Greame) said our exports of British manufactures were only 75 per cent. of what they were in 1913. But 1913 was a boom year; I believe a record year. Looking back, we find trade has gone in rather definite cycles. The year 1913 is at the top of one of those cycles. We have no reason to feel aggrieved that we are not actually at the top of the wave. I would ask my right hon. Friend to take another figure, which is confirmatory, and gives a better idea. Suppose we take the imports of raw material which were retained in this country. If you take the amounts of cotton, wool, iron and various other things which we have imported, and retained in this country, you get a certain measure of our manufacturing industry. It is a rough figure, but it gives a kind of index in the absence of anything better. Compared with 1913, it is about 80 per cent. for 1923.

As regards unemployment, we know we still have, roughly speaking, one million unemployed, which is a sad enough fact. It is going down, but a million unemployed is a very awkward fact. Let us take the trade union percentage, because that corresponds pretty closely to the total number of unemployed, and if you restrict yourself to the percentage of trade unionists employed in certain industries, you are able to carry the comparison further back. I believe the figure for unemployment to-day corresponds pretty well with the corresponding figure for unemployment in 1909. In 1909 we, no doubt, thought trade was bad, but we did not think it was so very bad, or that we were in such a very severe crisis. To have come through the War, and have had the slump that followed the War, and to find that we are no worse now in the way of unemployment than we were in 1909, means that we need not quite lose all heart. We may expect that just as 1909 rose to the top of the boom in 1913, so 1923 may rise again to a boom in 1926. I hope hon. Members will not put any money on that. [Interruptions.] Prophets are often right in their pre-dictions, but they are generally a good deal out in their dates. That is why they are not millionaires. Therefore, while we have every reason gravely to consider the state of trade, we need not take a too gloomy view about it.

The hon. Member for Plymouth wants a Committee to inquire into the export trade. I would suggest that is rather too limited a reference. The export trade does not mean merely the merchants who are willing to send goods abroad, but it is carried right back to manufactures for export. It is the manufactures for export that are primarily concerned, and it is pretty difficult to distinguish the export from other manufacturing industries. I suggest to him that while we are concerned about our exports, we might bear in mind why it is we care about exports at all. I am not prepared to say that the profit which the exporters make by the export trade is the measure of the advantage of that trade to the country. We must take a wider view than that. I am not uttering any novelty, if I remind the House that the reason we are concerned about our exports is because we want our imports, and that the whole object of exports from the national point of view is that we should get our imports. We are therefore just as much interested in imports as in exports. We have got to take the whole of our trade for the inquiry. We carry on our export trade solely—apart from the profits which the manufacturers make, which I disregard—in order to get the imports. Let me put it my own way. We weave on our Lancashire looms the iron ore and the copper that we want, and the tea and the spices that we use are made in the mills and the forges of the West Riding of Yorkshire. What the men on the Clyde build is not ships and engines alone, but the wool and the copper and the jute and the rubber which feed our factories all over England. That is why we carry on our export trade. It is because we do not get enough of these things at present to feed all our people, or, at any rate, not enough to keep them employed, that I am concerned about the export trade as much as the Mover of this Motion.

I agree with a good deal that has been said about the importance of getting further markets, but I would like to tell the House that there has not been as much change in the distribution of our trade as might have been expected. We have got into the habit of thinking that Europe is ruined and that we cannot sell goods to Europe. As a matter of fact, making allowance for the changes in regard to Ireland, as far as they can be made, Europe in 1923 took 33.7 per cent. of our exports, or roughly one-third. In 1913 Europe took 34 per cent. of our exports. Therefore, the 1923 figure is only fractionally less than that for 1913 as a proportion of the total of our exports. Our total exports are down by 20 or 25 per cent., but Europe is, relatively to the total trade, exactly as good a market as before the War. I do not say that of Russia and Germany, but I am speaking of one part of Europe with another; you must take Europe as a whole. If goods do not go to Germany they go to Holland, and if not to Denmark they go to Sweden, and so on. Take the Empire as a whole, or the British Commonwealth of Nations, as I prefer to call it. Our trade with the Empire has in the past greatly developed. If you compare 1923 with 1913 the Empire as a whole took 35.5 per cent.—I am speaking now of quantities—of our total exports in 1923 as against 36.3 per cent. of the total in 1913. The figures are very nearly identical, though slightly down for 1923. The United States and South America took 16.8 per cent. in 1923 compared with 16.2 per cent. in 1913; the Far East took 8.6 per cent. against 8.4 per cent. The total result is that the distribution of United Kingdom exports in volume, in 1923, compared with 1913, has remained extraordinary stable.

That, however, does not prove that we should not get more markets. I am not sure that we could find any undiscovered countries. Both the North Pole and the South Pole have been searched and are not very promising places for development at present. Short of going to Mars it is very difficult to find absolutely new markets. We can, therefore, only develop the markets that exist, because the enterprise and the ingenuity of our merchants have already carried them to every part of the world. The common expression "finding new markets" is, therefore, not quite accurate, for it can be only a question of new development. This Government, like any other Government, is as much concerned to see the development of overseas parts of the Empire as it can possibly be. We have accepted the Resolution of the Imperial Economic Conference on the subject of overseas settlement. We want to see what can be done by administrative action and how far we can pursue that policy of overseas settlement in order to make migration within the different parts of the Empire as easy as possible and as open to everybody as possible. In that matter we think great stress should be laid on the importance of family and group migration and settlement, rather than on mere sporadic migration. There has already been an offer to the Commonwealth of Australia, under the Empire Settlement Act, 1922, of a large grant in aid of settlement schemes and development purposes connected with settlement schemes approved by the Government. This Government is renewing that offer, and we hope it will result in a large development of overseas settlement. I do not like to put it that this is a mere question of developing markets. It really is a means of opening up brighter and happier opportunities for such people as choose to avail themselves of it, and I would rather look at it from the point of view of migration than from the rather sordid point of view that we are merely to get additional markets for Sheffield or for Bradford. It will have that effect, as we hope and believe, but it is not for that reason that it is being done, and I only mention it in this connection because of its relation to the subject under discussion.

Hon. Members will excuse me for not going into the very interesting details of the many interesting speeches which have been made. I want to come to the Resolution itself. I hope the hon. Member who moved the Resolution will not mind if I say I do not like the shape of this proposed Committee. It is not merely that we do not like to take a Judge of the High Court from judicial work. Indeed there are not too many Judges working in the Courts, and that is a standing objection to the proposal. I am not quite sure, moreover, that a Judge of the High Court is really the best person in a case of this kind. It is not merely a question of listening to evidence. It is a question of listening to witnesses who, in the case of a judicial inquiry, would probably be ordered out of Court because they all come to testify on matters of which they have no personal knowledge, and they really give their opinions which have to be taken for what they are worth. A Judge of the High Court is not in a better position to estimate the value of that so-called evidence than a layman. It is suggested that the Committee should be composed of six Members of the House of Commons, three being Cabinet Ministers or ex-Cabinet Ministers and three possessing business and trade qualifications.