LORD WOOLTON'S NEW JOB

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 117, 13 November 1943, Page 7

LORD WOOLTON'S NEW JOB

LONDON, November 11. Lord Woolton, who has been Food Minister since' April,, 1940, has been chosen for his important new office as Minister- of Reconstruction because of his great qualities' of drive and his administrative abilities. The Press Association's lobby . correspondent learns that his. special task will be to implement the policy of reconstruction which Mr. Churchill outlined on Tuesday when he referred to the importance of plentiful food and adequate homes for everybody. That will be •the text on which Lord Woolton will work. He will have valuable assistance frqm Sir William Jowitt, Minister without portfolio. One of Lord Woolton's functions will be to co-ordin-ate the work of the Ministries connected with reconstruction; for instance, health and town and country ■planning. Colonel Llewellin, the new Minister of Food, has strong qualification for, his post, since latterly he has been Supply Minister at Washington, and the maintenance of the present scale of rationing in Britain is bound up with supply conditions. United States labour circles will* be pleased that his place in Americans being taken by a plain-speaking representative Lof the Labour Party, Mr. Ben Smith, who becomes a member of the Cabinet for the first time. He has had a varied career, including taxi-driving. - Mr. Willink, a King's Counsellor,, had before the war one of the biggest incomes at the Bar. He comes from the back benches in the Commons and has been engaged for the care and rehousing of the homeless in the. London civil defence region. The King has accepted the resignation of Mr. rDuff Cooper from the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster. It isi" understood that he will shortly be promoted to receive an important appointment, abroad. Before the war Lord Woolton was an executive of one of Britain's big department stores, and he reached office as Minister of Food in 1940 by a series of steps each of which now' seems to have been designed to that end. He was initiated into Govern^ ment work as secretary of the Leather Control Board in the Great War. His genius for statesmanship and mechanics of distribution was revealed in the iwenties when he joined the John Lewis and Co. departmental stores. Before the present war broke out he was a member of the Treasury Loans Advisory Committee for special areas and he was then appointed honorary adviser to the Secretary for War and

Ministry of Supply on clothing for the Army. He resigned all his directorships on being called to the Ministry ,of Food, in which it is generally admitted he has carried out an unpopular task with high efficiency.