BRITISH PARLIAMENT

Evening Star, Issue 22618, 9 April 1937, Page 9

BRITISH PARLIAMENT

THE HOUSE OF COMMONS DEBATE ON PHYSICAL TRAINING BILL Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, April 7. During the debate on the Physical Training Bill, Lord Burghley, who is chairman of the Advisory Council under the Bill, said they were not out to produce champions. He could assure them that champions were freaks. They wanted to raise the standard of the moderate performer and make people realise that physical fitness brought happiness and friendships. That change of mind must come from propaganda. Mr Anthony Eden asked whether, if some Tyneside shipwrights’ apprentices took up rowing and produced a firstclass eight, Mr Oliver Stanley, in charge of the Bill, would use his influence with the Henley authorities to get a relaxation of the rule barring people engaged in manual occupation from rowing there? Sir J. J. Withers (Con., Cambridge University) asked whether there was really a rule to that effect. Mr Noel Baker said the rule of the Amateur Rowing Association was that a man who earned his living by his hffnds was ineligible. Sir J. J. Withers: J will certainly do my best to get the rule revised. (Cheers.) Tho Bill passed the second reading without a division. IMPROVEMENT IN DISTRESSED AREAS (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 7. In the House of Commons, moving the second reading of the Government’s Special Areas Bill, the Under-Secretary for Scotland (Mr H. J. Scrimgeour Wedderburn) said that in the past month armament orders given to special areas had increased from £41,000,000 to £57,000,000. Commitments on schemes of assistance for local authorities, ■ development councils, and social improvement in England had increased from £8,500,000 to £10,500,000. Unemployment in special areas had fallen by more than 10,000. and the special areas commissioner had been empowered to settle a further 1,000 families on tho land.