The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Wedderburn):

I think the Committee will agree that, after the great diversity of points that have been raised in the Debate, it will be necessary for me, in replying, to make some selection, but, in accordance with the practice which my right hon. Friend observes on these occasions, any questions which have been asked or suggestions made which we do not have time to deal with in the Debate will be dealt with by communicating with the hon. Members who have raised the points. I think it would perhaps be convenient to the Committee if I addressed myself first to some of the questions which are not directly related to the principal theme of the Debate—the housing problem.

I would like to begin by replying to the rather urgent questions about the organisation of hospitals that were put to me by the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk (Mr. Westwood). He asked whether there existed properly coordinated plans for the organisation of a casualty hospital service in Scotland in the event of war, and the answer is "Yes." The hon. Member will probably like to know that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State propose, at a very early date, to lay before Parliament a White Paper which will give a comprehensive statement of the arrangements made in Scotland as well as in England. My right hon. Friend will also issue, at the beginning of next week, to all hospitals in Scotland which will play an integral part in the emergency hospital service a statement showing the particular role they will be expected to play—and I know they will play it very willingly if the need should unhappily arise—and it will state the approximate numbers of beds which they will be expected to set free for casualties, the ways in which it is contemplated that these beds will be freed, the probable number of patients to be sent home, and the number to be transferred to the institutions to which patients will be transferred from the hospitals. I think the hon. Member will find that the White Paper, together with the memoranda issued by the Defence Division of the Department of Health which was set up last year, will constitute an answer to the very reasonable inquiry which he made.

I must not neglect to deal with another rather different question which was put to me just now, as a sort of hangover from last year, by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Mathers), about railway clerks. I think he is probably aware that the Department of Health did take some steps to further his own views on this subject. The present position is that we are taking legal advice to see what the legal position is and whether local authorities can be obliged by law to treat railway clerks in the way which the hon. Member contemplates. In view of the fact that we are taking legal advice I am afraid that I cannot at present say anything further on the subject or give the hon. Member any reason to expect that that legal advice will necessarily be favourable to his own point of view.