I beg to move, in Clause 1, page 1, line G, to leave out the words "the Scottish Board of Health."

It is quite true that the subjects individually have been discussed in Committee to a very great, extent, but I think the importance of the changes to be made justifies the length of the Committee Debates upon them. If it were simply a question of the reorganisation of Offices, there would not have been this long period of discussion in Committee, but there is much more in it than that. The reorganisation of anything means that you still retain the principles, but that you change over in their working out, but the changes now suggested by this Bill are that we extinguish certain Scottish Offices, and in their place there is going to be appointed a special civil servant. It is against this that we have made our biggest fight. If the Secretary of State for Scotland could at any time have brought forward arguments to show that these Departments were inefficient in administration, not only would the time of the Committee have been saved, but we might not have been discussing the matter further to-night. Not a single instance, however, of the inefficiency of any of these Offices that he seeks to wipe out did the right hon. Gentleman bring forward.

From the Scotsman's point of view, if there is anything in nationalism at all, we very much regret that any Secretary of State for Scotland should, not only in this case, but in the last five years, have taken every opportunity of taking away some of these things that belong to Scotland. We feel that there is something tragic in these national contacts being wiped out. If the right hon. Gentleman had been wanting to persuade the change, if he had come first with a definite statement of the inefficiency of these offices, if he had stated that Scotland could not produce the type of mentality necessary to undertake the responsibility of these offices, we might have had a basis of reality for the discussion, but we have not been provided with a single instance of the kind. All that we are told, in that language that sounds, when it is heard, as if a doomed man had written it, is that certain things will happen "on the appointed day." That brings us back, especially those of us who come from the same land as the Secretary of State for Scotland, to those Sunday mornings in the old Church when we heard words such as these: "On the appointed day." It always seems to me when I hear these words spoken, or see them in print, that there is some sense of doom carried forward with them. On the appointed day, the Scottish Board of Health, the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, and the Prison Commissioners for Scotland shall cease to exist. It is almost biblical, and yet it carries with it that sense of doom, even in the last phrase—"shall cease to exist." I cannot understand any man claiming to be a Scotsman who even takes a part in trying to wipe out anything that is national, and what is more native to nationality that a nation's instinctive right to govern, to administer, its own affairs? I can think of nothing more degrading to a nation than to feel that it is being treated as if there was not the mentality in Scotland to carry forward Scotland's work in administration. It does not require the Secretary of State for Scotland or anybody else to tell us the results of the work of these Departments. The work that they have done will always live as monuments of concentrated effort from a national point of view, because I never forget the difficulties under which these various Departments have had to work. There was always that contact with Whitehall that just prevented the fullest development that one would expect from a Scotsman looking after his own national affairs. In the Committee upstairs, there were Amendments opposing all these deletions, and may I repeat once and for all that there never has been any demand from Scotland for these changes?

If there had been evidence from these various departments of certain inefficiencies, of cases where a department was not working properly, or where there was some slackness about the control of individuals, all tending towards the necessity for a reconstruction or reorganisation, there would have been some ground for the Secretary of State proceeding. But this evidence did not exist, and because a Tory Government were seeking in every way to decentralise all that was left of Scottish administration, they conceived the idea that, in order to rob Scotland of its last offices, they could use the Secretary of State for Scotland in order to put in a political system. It is not to be a question now of whether a man has that intimate knowledge that comes from long training in a department; he has not to have an intimate knowledge of Scotland or Scottish affairs, he is to be a certain class of Civil servant. Of course, Toryism stands for all that is undemocratic, and I can quite see their point of view, that if they get a despot in the shape of a Civil servant, they will be able to do things that will meet with the approval of reaction in Toryism.