I wish to raise a topic which has been frequently discussed both inside and outside the House—the question of the acquisition and requisition of land by Service Departments. I do not wish to take the House over ground which has been thoroughly covered, not of course, because I wish to unsay anything that has been said either by myself or by my hon. and right hon. Friends, or to diminish its importance, but simply because I want to raise one or two new issues which have been brought to my attention more recently since we last discussed this topic.

The situation of this controversy, as hon. Members are aware, is that it cul- minated in a statement made by the Prime Minister on 25th February, a provisional statement about Government policy towards the training areas. The promise was then made to us that we should have a White Paper in due course in which the Government's policy would be more fully set out. Naturally, we cannot get very much further until the White Paper is forthcoming. On that point all I would say is that we should be grateful if the Under-Secretary of State for War could give us any indication of when we may expect the White Paper, which is most eagerly awaited, and if he can tell us when we may expect the local public inquiries which have already been promised by the Prime Minister in his provisional statement, and also in what way members of the public will be able to bring forward their views not only upon local problems, but also on the general over-all problem, without which obviously local problems can hardly be satisfactorily settled.

After having said that, I would like to raise the new issues, which have not been so much debated but which have recently been forced very much to our attention. The whole basis of this problem is that military experts have reached the conclusion that it is necessary to have training with live ammunition which it was not thought necessary to have—probably wrongly—before the war. As the result of that, a problem is created because all sorts of land which could then be used by the War Department and inhabited at the same time by civilians now has to be used—or so the argument goes—exclusively by the War Department. In addition to this live training, it is also thought that there must be co-operative training between the military and the R.A.F., and that creates a situation which is described in a letter to one of my constituents from the Air Ministry about a recent joint exercise of the R.A.F. and the military. The Air Ministry defines its policy and says: Practices of this description are essential to the efficiency of the R.A.F. If heavy bombs were not used from time to time, the flying personnel would not be properly exercised in the duties they will have to undertake in the event of war and ground crews would not be familiar with the practical preparation and loading of explosives. Furthermore it is essential that these exercises should be subjected to practical use at intervals in order to ensure that they are remaining in good order. Only by going through the whole procedure is it possible to discover weaknesses in men and material. I have no quarrel with that general principle, but want to direct the attention of the Under-Secretary of State to the logical consequences. Not only are people not being allowed to live in the training areas, but in certain parts life is rapidly becoming intolerable for the people in the neighbourhood of those areas. On Friday, 7th May, a very heavy exercise took place at Larkhill, in Wiltshire, in which 4,000 lb. bombs were dropped. As a result, very considerable damage was done in the neighbouring villages of Easterson, Market Lavington and Urchfont, which happen to be in my constituency. I had to give a lecture at Urchfont Manor on the following morning, and at breakfast time received a number of telephone calls from residents in those villages. I took the opportunity of my visit to Urchfont to inspect the villages to see the places where ceilings had come down, ornaments been shaken from mantelpieces and windows broken and at the Manor a part of the wainscotting had been brought away as the result of the explosion.

On that subsequent Monday I asked a Private Notice Question of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Air, as the result of which a further and heavier exercise which was to have taken place on the following Tuesday was reduced. A promise was made by the right hon. Gentleman that 4,000 lb. bombs would not be used and that only 500 lb. bombs would be used in subsequent exercises. The Secretary of State said he was satisfied that no danger would result from the use of these much smaller bombs. The exercise took place and there was no danger, so far as I could ascertain, to civilians in the sense that no immediate damage was done. But on the subsequent occasion, I received a large number of complaints from people of the noise and disturbance caused. The disturbance was this time in a slightly different direction, for the effects of blast are very curious and sometimes places near at hand suffer little and those further away suffer severely from the effects of an explosion. The Air Vice-Marshal who was in command of the School of Air Support in that neighbourhood gave his opinion in the Press that In my opinion the reports have been grossly exaggerated. This is the only range in England where such a bomb can be dropped … —that is, speaking of the 4,000-lb. bomb the cancellation of which in the exercise he resented— and if you cannot use them on this range then we have 'had it.' I suggest that from the position taken up by the Secretary of State for Air and the statement made by the Air Vice-Marshal this logical sequence necessarily follows. At present that range is the only place in England where 4,000-lb. bombs can be dropped. If it is necessary that they should be dropped from time to time, and that these military exercises should take place, and if we have the promise of the Secretary of State for Air that they shall not be dropped in this place, it follows that some new place for the dropping of these bombs must be prepared. These exercises can only tolerably take place in a much more deserted part or the country than the heart of Wiltshire. If this new exercise ground is being prepared in some more deserted part of the country — the North of Scotland, or wherever it may be—and if considerable public inconvenience is caused even by the smaller exercises, does it not follow that these smaller R.A.F. - military exercises should also be moved from the inhabited parts of Wiltshire to the less inhabited parts, where they can more conveniently take place?

The second point I would like to raise is that of ammunition dumps, of which there are an intolerable and incomprehensibly large number still lying about in various parts of the country. One of the most popular of all the beauty spots in the South of England is Savernake Forest. During the war an ammunition dump was built up there which now consists almost entirely of captured German ammunition. Why this ammunition was ever brought to England at all I have been asking for two years, and have never been able to get any sort of answer. It was long before this Government was in power, and it is something for which I cannot blame the hon. Member personally. But two explosions have occurred, and there have been fatal accidents. We were told as a result of an inquiry that it was impossible to tell whether these German bombs had booby traps attached to them or not, and we were told that they would eventually be taken out to sea and dumped there, but labour would not be available for a considerable time. Why they were ever brought overseas from Germany in order subsequently to be taken back and dropped in the sea is entirely incomprehensible to me.

The hope of the people of that neighbourhood was that at any rate as soon as the war came to an end these dumps would begin rapidly to diminish. In point of fact, after the first explosion some of the ammunition was taken away, but subsequently more ammunition has arrived. When the second explosion took place it was merely by accident that this load was at the last minute diverted from being unloaded in Marlborough to be dumped at Savernake, and when the explosion took place it might well have taken place in the station at Marlborough. If that had happened we have every reason for thinking that that beautiful little town would have been destroyed with considerable loss of life instead of the loss of three or four lives.

At present there is no sign whatever of that ammunition dump diminishing and the same applies to a number of ammunition dumps throughout the country. Only last week I put a Question to the Secretary of State for War as to when we might hope that Savernake Forest would be free of the unwelcomed visitation of this exploding ammunition. I received a reply to that statement in which it was stated that His Majesty's Government hope, without making any promise, to have it free at the beginning of 1949. I cannot see why it should take that enormous amount of time in order to remove those stores of ammunition. It seems to be beyond all reason, and we never get the least explanation why it will take this enormous time. Therefore, I have raised these two new points, in addition to the points already raised, for which I shall be most grateful if the Under-Secretary of State for War can give us some comfort and some information. I would also ask him if he would throw some light on the two general problems as to when these local public inquiries are likely to be held and when are we likely to see the White Paper that has been promised by the Prime Minister.