The hon. Member for Lonsdale (Sir I. Fraser) speaks on ex-Service matters with particular authority, as he is a distinguished President of the British Legion. He put his points under, roughly, two headings which he set out, and I shall attempt to answer them under those headings. First, he dealt with the individual decorations and medals such as the O.B.E., D.S.O. and the M.C. and M.M., and the corresponding awards in the Navy and Air Force; and secondly, with the General Service Stars and Medals such as the Campaign Stars and the Defence Medal.

With regard to the individual decorations and medals, I am asked whether the Service Departments are up to date in the issue of these medals. Out of the 128,000 such awards, 104,000 have been issued. Except for the D.F.C., with which I shall deal separately, the delay in issue is, in most cases, because the medals have been returned to 'us marked "address unknown." Therefore, I hope the hon. Gentleman will let it be known throughout the Legion that anyone who has not yet received his individual award should write to the Admiralty, the War Office or the Air Ministry, as the case may be, giving his up-to-date address. This applies to all individual awards except the D.F.C.

The D.F.C. position, unfortunately, is not so good. The Royal Mint and private firms, so far as the boxes are concerned, are hard at work. I have seen the crosses being made at the Mint, and I can assure the House that neither the crosses nor the boxes were designed for easy production. The fact is that we have been able to issue only 13,000 of the 20,000 awarded. The hon. Member made a special plea for issue by next Remembrance Day. Here, as far as the D.F.C.s are concerned, I can say that most of the remaining 7,000 will have been issued by next Remembrance Day, but there may then be several thousands still to be made. I shall do nothing which would lower the standard of craftsmanship or of the materials used in the making of these crosses, but, with that in mind, I will do all I can to increase the rate of manufacture. So far, only awards gazetted before 1944 have been issued. Now, in this category, that is, crosses gazetted before 1944, we have also had cases of crosses being returned to us marked "address unknown," and I hope anyone whose D.F.C. was gazetted before 1944 and who has not yet received it, will write to the Air Ministry giving his up-to-date address.

In the second category, General Service Stars and Medals, that is, Campaign Stars, the Defence Medal and War Medal, the hon. Member compared the position to-day with the position after the last war. The conditions of the 1939–1945 war were very much more damaging to our economy. The industrial effort of the 1914–1918 war was so different that the manufacture of Campaign Stars actually started during that war. One Campaign Star—the Mons Star—began during the period of the war. Furthermore, of course, there were only a few hundred thousand of them, and it was not long before they were made. Our production task is very different now, and instead of a few hundred thousand Cam- paign Stars, we need eight millions of them. Of course, there was no question of their being manufactured during war time; but, in spite of that, by the end of this month we expect to have finished all the Campaign Stars, and the machines will then tackle the Defence Medal immediately, and the War Medal as soon as possible.

I was asked about the Defence Medal. It is ready for striking to start; this will start very early next year. So far as the War Medal is concerned, it is designed, and I expect the sample medal will be approved soon. There are 12 million of these medals, in addition to the eight million stars, and I expect that these 12 million will be finished in two years. This will be a high rate of production—about half a million a month—and we shall only reach that because we shall not be stamping the name of the owner on the back of the medal. With the huge number of 20 million, the manpower needed would be far in excess of our resources.

The distribution problem is one which has given us a great deal of thought. We had to bear in mind the need, in dealing with these 20 million, of speed as well as accuracy, and at the same time the necessity for using manpower and materials carefully. One decision which has been made is fundamental. We shall make one distribution, and one only, to each person. To do otherwise would involve not only an enormous amount of clerical work, but also the increased consumption of scarce materials such as cardboard. It might also very well lead to considerable misunderstanding and disappointment if an ex-Service man or woman, expecting three or four medals or stars, received only one, and that in turn would doubtless lead to a great deal of correspondence. It follows that distribution cannot begin until each of the distributing authorities has several hundred thousand, at least, of the medals, and large supplies of the packing boxes. The Prime Minister said that he did not expect the distribution to start until late next year. I would like to assure the House that we shall do our best to improve on this, but I cannot be too hopeful. It may well be that the boxes will hold us up.

The hon. Gentleman asked me certain specific questions. He asked, for instance, what the stars and medals are to be made of. The Campaign Star is made of bronze, and in appearance it will be the same colour as the old Victory Medal of the last war. The Defence Medal and the War Medal are made of cupro-nickel, which is the same material as that of which the 1947 shillings, florins and half crowns are made. The hon. Gentleman further asked me what the stars and medals looked like, and whether we could have samples in the Library so that they could be inspected. The public has seen photographs of the Campaign Stars, for these appeared in most national newspapers in March, 1946. Photographs of the Defence Medal appeared in some newspapers in August this year. The War Medal, as I said earlier, has not yet been finally approved. I expect that approval very shortly, and, of course, photographs will be available for publication.