Oral Answers to Questions — Royal Air Force – in the House of Commons am 12:00 am ar 12 Chwefror 1947.
Mr Aidan Crawley
, Buckingham
12:00,
12 Chwefror 1947
asked the Secretary of State for Air how many gliders belonging to the R.A.F. have been destroyed since the end of the war.
Mr Philip Noel-Baker
, Derby
Since the end of the war, 1,295 gliders belonging to the Royal Air Force have been declared surplus to our needs, and 982 have been scrapped on the authority of the Ministry of Supply.
Mr Aidan Crawley
, Buckingham
Is the Minister aware that these gliders are burnt outright in many cases and that they contain a lot of material which would be very useful if it were salvaged?
Mr Philip Noel-Baker
, Derby
Yes, Sir; I will certainly look into it. About 300 gliders have been sold mostly for use as gliders. I am told that the great Majority of, I believe, the rest are made of very hard laminated plywood which takes a great deal of labour to break down and is almost unsaleable even as firewood.
Sir John Langford-Holt
, Shrewsbury
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware whether these gliders which have been destroyed were serviceable gliders, and if so, was the Minister of Civil Aviation consulted before they were destroyed?
Mr Philip Noel-Baker
, Derby
I. would not like fully to commit myself, but I feel sure that my noble Friend was consulted. I think that all that were usable for Service purposes or any purposes as gliders have been kept.
Mr Sidney Shephard
, Newark
Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the Air Training Corps had their demands supplied?
Mr Philip Noel-Baker
, Derby
To the best of my belief that is so.
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
