Harmful Talk Says Leader of Lords

Chronicle (Levin), 10 May 1947, Page 5

Harmful Talk Says Leader of Lords

Press Assn.-

By Telegraph

■Copyright

LONDON, May . 8. Lord Addison, leader of the House, replying in. the House C|f Lords at tlie end of the two-day debate on the British food situation, said. that the statenient which Lord Woolton had quotexl yesterday that England was dying of starvation was ' ' a monstrous f alsehood". . ' Lord . Addison said that Lord Wool- . ton should never have lent his name to such a statement.^ "Nothing pould oe more harmfui to this country than for the rest of the world ' to think we are down and out," he added. " Our position is difficultrbut there is no reason vyhy Lord Woolton should disseminate statements that our people are starving. 1 protest with all my heart. With all the miseries we are enduring, I am eonlident that we shall pull through." Lord Woolton interjected that 'if his statements , were wrong, then the Government had ample means to denv tliem. "Nothing you have said will bring any comfort to the housewives," he said, "lrou surely know that the people are finding it diffieult to keep their health." Ile added that a statement by the Earl of Huntingdon, Parliamentary Secretary to the Alinis try of Agriculture, had been most alarming. Lord Huntingdon had said that British agriculture had suffered a gigantic disaster, that nearly 700,000 acres of land had been flooded, and that of these 71,000 acres would be prolitable this year. Grain crops were likely to be more than half a million acres below tlie target for the season. Lord- AJdison, concluding his reply, said no one would rejoice more than tli(.> Government, if the diet could be made a little more interesting, but the fact was that the world was short of food. Lord Woolton (a former Minister of Food) did not have to pay for food when lend-lease operated, and in addi tion there was not then a great world clamour for food.