I shall, with the permission of the House, follow that paint, but I would say, first of all, on the question of continuity of policy that the spirit in these matters is even more important than the mechanism. We have contrived in this country in foreign affairs, without in the least dividing the responsibility of each Government while it is in office, that we have such a spirit in the House of Commons as a whole that no one can say that there is not a very large measure of real continuity in the foreign policy of this country. When a Member sitting on the other side of the House becomes Foreign Secretary, he becomes heir to what his predecessors have done, and heir to the general policy of the British Empire, and not to a mere party policy. I cannot help hoping that in an increasing measure that may be true of Imperial affairs, by whatever mechanism Imperial policy may be settled. However, I do think there is a great deal in the suggestion that there should be some form of inter-Imperial consultation not on a purely party basis. It may be that the development of inter-Parliamentary delegations, which is being carried out in an informal, and therefore in the most flexible, way under the auspices of the Empire Parliamentary Association, bringing Members of Parliament together, as they will be brought together this autumn in Australia, may contain the nucleus of something that may develop to meet the need of which the right hon. Member speaks. At the very moment that the Conference of Governments will be assembled in London, a Conference of Parliaments of the Dominions in informal meeting will be discussing matters of Parliamentary interest in Australia.

I come to the other point which the right hon. Member raised just now, and I think it was also touched on by the hon. Member for Shrewsbury (Viscount Sandon), namely, the advantage of some continuous consultation by the presence here of representatives of tie Dominions entrusted with full confidence by their Governments, both as regards receiving information from the Government here and the communicating of the wishes of those Governments to the British Government. I can only repeat what I said here a year ago, that that is a matter for the Dominion Governments. But, as far as this Government is concerned, whatever representatives the Dominion Governments may choose, whether it be their High Commissioners or any other representatives—and each Dominion must meet that in its own way—we on our part are ready to supply them with all the secret and confidential information which is accessible to their Prime Ministers when they are here as members of an Imperial Conference, and to keep in close personal touch with them. I mean by that not only in close personal touch with the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, but in close personal touch with the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and also with any other Minister of the Cabinet with whom they wish to enter into direct relations.

I must not detain the House too long on each particular subject, but I would like to say that, in addition to the constitutional issues that will come up before tie Imperial Conference, certainly not the least will be that subject of Empire Settlement to which several speeches have been devoted this afternoon. I can only welcome the speeches that have been made, even though they have been critical in tone, because they indicate a live interest on the part of the House in a matter which I think is truly outside party, and yet is of the very first importance to the future welfare of this country, to the welfare of every one of the Dominions, and to the strength and unity of the Empire as a whole. I quite share the view that more than one Member has expressed that progress has been m many respects rather disappointing in the last. two or three years. But I would rather demur to the criticism which Would lay the blame entirely upon the inefficiency of the organisation that the British Government has set up I am sure the hon. Member for South wark (Mr. H. Guest), who was so critical of what he called the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the Overseas Settlement Committee and Overseas Settlement Office cannot really have consulted with two hon. colleagues of his on those benches, the hon. Member for Rothwell (Mr. Lunn) and the hon. Member for Wallsend (Miss Bondfield), whom, as a worker in this field of Empire settlement, I warmly welcome back to this House.

The hon. Member for Southwark suggested that the difficulties lay in lack of information, in a wrong method of choice, and the need of some executive Commission to carry out the work. I suggest that those are theoretical difficulties. Take the lack of information. A survey of the land of the Empire would not carry us very far. We know there are millions of square miles of land suitable, but what you have got to take into consideration are the transport facilities and the economic conditions of the particular part of the Empire. The only people who can deal with those points are the Govern- ments of those parts. It is no good our taking a survey of those areas of New South Wales, to which he referred. We cannot unlock them for the purpose of Empire setttlement. The whole business of settlement must be done by the Government on the spot, and the whole essence of the policy on which we work at the Overseas Settlement Office and under the Empire Settlement Act is to recognise the responsibility of the .Dominions for their own settlement, and even more for the choice of the settlers, because, after all, they know best who are the people that are going to succeed, and they know best when the conditions are such as to render it against the interests of the would-be settler to allow them to give him financial assistance. It is no use giving money to people unemployed in England in order that they may be unemployed in Toronto. You have got to consider the circumstances, and the responsibility must lie with the Governments overseas.

From that point of view there is no room for a British Executive Commission that would interfere with the work of the Governments overseas. What the Overseas Settlement Office are doing is examining schemes of co-operation with the Dominions, helping in framing those schemes in order to see that, in using the money contributed by the House of Commons, those schemes will take into consideration the welfare of the settler. In that way you get a general control over settlement, without attempting unduly to interfere. It is also its duty to give information. I am sure that the hon. Member for Southwark North (Mr. Haden Guest) is mistaken when he thinks there is no machinery for conveying information in regard to overseas settlement. It may have taken rather a long time to elicit a reply to a particular letter—I do not know how many inquiries may have had to be made in that case of the different Dominion offices in London —but I do say that in the Overseas Settlement Department there is a staff of very efficient and most enthusiastic officers, and not only is personal information available to anyone who goes there, from people who have been settlers themselves, but there is a very ample supply of literature on every possible scheme and in regard to the conditions in every Dominion, for every class of settler. That literature is also available in a separate department of almost every Employment Exchange throughout the country.

The difficulties do not lie in lack of organisation or in lack of information. They lie, as one of my hon. Friends said, in a very useful speech, in the economic conditions of the last few years. The position of the Dominions has been such that they would not have been justified in welcoming a large and miscellaneous stream of assisted emigrants, of every kind and in every branch of industry and occupation. It is regrettable that certain restrictions have had to be imposed, but, on the whole, I think they have been wisely exercised. I do not say that there has not been sometimes a tendency to over-strong insistence upon certain physical conditions, and I shall certainly at the Imperial Conference press in every way for a more elastic interpretation of some of the rules which the Dominions apply in regard to the choice of settlers. But, broadly speaking, the problem is an economic one. The Dominions, like ourselves, have not recovered from the War, and a time of bad trade here, when it is difficult for men to save up money for migration coupled with a time of bad trade in the Dominions, is inevitably a time when the flood of emigration stops. But for the 40,000 a year or more who are assisted under the Settlement Act, the flood of emigration to the Dominions, which was in the neighbourhood of 180,000 a year for the five years before the War, would have sunk last year to the veriest trickle, something in the neighbourhood of 20,000 or 30,000. Our machinery is there and ready to be more effectively used when times change.

What we have to consider if we want migration and the better distribution of our population in the Empire to be a real success, is not merely the problem of migration by itself, but the kindred economic problems which are inseparably associated with it. There is the problem of finding more capital. I need not go into that matter, but it is intimately-linked up with the present economic situation in the United Kingdom, and with the dwindling away of our free balance of exports over imports. Again, it is intimately linked up with the whole problem of the market which this country provides for the goods of the Dominions. Like the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Derby (Mr. Thomas), I do not propose on this occasion to discuss the question of Imperial Preference or tariffs. I hold my own views, and I hold them very strongly. I have never had the slightest doubt that these problems can only be solved when we have the courage as a nation to face these issues, and not to allow the courage of one party to be weakened by the fears of misrepresentation by other parties.

Apart from that, there is a great deal, as the hon. Member for North Bradford (Mr. Ramsden) said, that can be done by voluntary preference and by assistance in other ways in the marketing of Empire goods. I will not follow the right hon. Member for Derby in his suggestion that what is needed is a State organisation of purchases. That, like the fiscal question, is rather controversial. I will only say that doing things by State machinery in times of peace, through your ordinary officials, subject to the retardation of inter-Departmental and Parliamentary criticism, is a. very different thing from doing them in time of national emergency, when the ablest of your business men give the whole of their time for carrying on their own business as business on behalf of the State, and when in every section of the community, here and overseas, voluntary co-operation is given by the most capable men. If we could sustain that high spirit throughout, then many of the things suggested from the benches opposite would become more feasible than they are in the ordinary conditions of life, either outside or within Parliament.

What I do say is that we can do a good deal, and I should like to let the House know something of what we have begun to do in this respect in the last two or three months. The House will remember that there were certain Preferences which were promised in 1923 and rejected by the late Government, which the present Government felt they could not carry out altogether consistently with the widespread interpretation given to the Prime Minister's election pledges. They felt, however, that they ought to fulfil the promises in another way, by devoting £1,000,000 a year in a normal year and £500,000 in the present year to the promotion of Empire marketing schemes, for the carrying out of the recommendations that might be made on that subject by the Imperial Economic Committee. That was a matter that could not be carried out by the Imperial Economic Committee itself, because it is an inter-Empire body, and the various Governments of the Empire could not make themselves responsible for the spending of money provided by this House. It was, therefore, arranged that it should be carried out by a body composed of the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, as the person responsible to this House for this expenditure, helped and advised by some of his colleagues in the Ministry and by members representing the various Dominions on the Imperial Economic Committee.

The Empire Marketing Board has been sitting weekly during the last two months, and very live and active sub-committees of that body have been meeting in the interim. Two months is a very small time in which to make a beginning, but I think that with the help of the three valuable reports of the Imperial Economic Committee we have been able to start a number of fruitful lines of development. These developments, broadly speaking, assume two characters The first is publicity, to help the British public to realise the extent to which the supplies it needs can be secured horn the Empire, and can be secured of good quality and at a reasonable price. The other is to ensure that the supplies will be there, as the quality should be there. For this latter purpose, what is needed is a great deal of research work, and more research work than is being done at the present time. By that, I mean research in every aspect, not merely scientific fundamental research, but also the more practical economic investigation into the actual conduct of trade and what happens to a particular parcel of goods, fruit, meat, or whatever it may be, in its course from the Dominions to the market here at home, and also an investigation into price, to which the right hon. Gentleman for Derby drew attention. We have done certain things already in that respect.

One of the most important matters affecting the carriage of Empire produce to this country is the question of cold storage. That is a matter of far greater complexity than is generally realised, and a great deal more research is urgently required. Very valuable research has already been done by a number of brilliant workers on the subject at Cambridge, but the work has been held up for lack of necessary funds. One of the first things we have done is to allocate £25,000 to the furtherance of the special cold storage research work at Cambridge. Another kindred problem lies in the fact that in many parts of the British Empire, where conditions as to pasture and everything else appear to be thoroughly satisfactory from the point of view of the stock in the industry, whether it is cattle, sheep or other animals, you get persistent malnutrition, loss of young animals, and insufficient development, through causes which it is difficult to discover, but which it is believed may be largely connected with the presence or absence of very small quantities of minerals in the soil. Important research work has already been carried out at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, and by representatives of that institute in Kenya. We are allocating the substantial sum of £10,000 for the furtherance of those investigations both in this country and in Kenya, and we hope, with the co-operation of the research departments of other Governments in the Empire, to extend the field of that inquiry very widely. I do not say that the whole problem will be solved, but I do believe that this inquiry, at very small expense, may throw a very valuable light upon the problem and may add millions to the value of the agricultural produce of the Empire.

The hon. Member for North Bradford, very rightly, laid stress on the immense importance of research and educational institutions with regard to tropical Africa. That is a matter into which we have gone very closely, and although we are only at the beginning of our investigations, we have already allocated a sum of £21,000 to the Imperial College of Agriculture at Trinidad, conditional upon an equivalent sum being contributed, as I understand it will be, by the generosity of certain bodies in this country who are interested in Empire cotton growing. The cotton-growing representatives came to me and informed me that, in their view, the effective development of cotton growing in the Empire depended not only on cotton research but on the training of a much larger number of highly qualified competent agricultural officers in the Empire. They volunteered the suggestion that they would help in this matter if the Empire Marketing Board would also help. In this way, a sum of £42,000 will become available for the enlargement and strengthening of that institution. We shall have to consider in the near future how far we may regard it as desirable to contribute sums towards the annual upkeep of the work there, or for that matter the work at Amani to which the hon. Member for North Bradford referred.

Another important matter affecting the question of Empire marketing is the effect on fruit in its transit from the grower to the purchaser, through deterioration and other kinds of loss. We are initiating a system of investigation into the whole problem, and I hope it will be actively at work before the House reassembles. There is another matter of importance in this connection, The House knows very well that this money was given in the first instance in lieu of certain Preferences for the Empire oversea. The Imperial Economic Committee have, however, always taken the view, expressed in their first report, that the Empire certainly does not exclude the old country. They have held that our duty in this matter of agriculture is in the first instance to our own producers and then to our fellow-producers throughout the Empire. The Imperial Economic Committee has always held that this expenditure should help the producers here at home as well as the producer in the Dominions, and on the recommendation of the Imperial Economic Committee a sum of £40,000 has been placed at the disposal of the Minister of Agriculture in this country to undertake a wide investigation into the general improvement of marketing methods in this country which are admittedly inferior to those of a great many foreign countries and to those in our Dominions.

In the same way in regard to publicity we are having the ground very carefully explored to see what we can do through the Press and through broadcasting, and also through the education of the public in what Imperial development means to the welfare of this country. We hope by the time the Imperial Conference meets to have a campaign on a reasonably substantial scale in operation. In all these matters, I believe, we can carry on very usefully the valuable work done by the Wembley Exhibition, as to the value of which there is no difference between my right hon. Friend (Mr. Thomas) and myself. Very great advantage has already grown from it, and a great deal further good may come. Such work will all come up for review by the Imperial Conference, and I hope the result will be to encourage us no carry on that work fully and do all we can, under our present, political limitations, to help the development of the Empire. I had not intended to detain the House so long, and on questions affecting the Colonies the Under-Secretary of State will reply to the interesting points already raised and the many points that will no doubt be raised by subsequent speakers.