CHANGES IN BRITISH CABINET

Southland Times, Issue 24425, 3 May 1941, Page 7

CHANGES IN BRITISH CABINET

LORD BEAVERBROOK FREED FROM DEPARTMENTAL DUTIES

(8.0.W.) RUGBY, May 1. Important Cabinet changes are announced from No. 10 Downing Street. They include the appointment of Lieutenant-Colonel J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon to be Minister of Aircraft Production in place of Lord Beaverbrook, who is given the rarely employed office of Minister of State.

The Ministries of Shipping and Transport are to be amalgamated, the new Minister being Mr F. J. Leathers, who becomes a baron and a member of the Privy Council. Mr R. H. Cross, Minister of Shipping, receives the post of High Commissioner in Australia. Colonel J. J. Llewellin becomes Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport, and Mr F. Montague Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Aircraft ‘ Production.

The amalgamation of the Shipping and Transport Departments for the purposes of the wax' will be affected forthwith and certain functions of the Minister of Transport only remotely connected with communications will, if it is desirable, be transferred to the Board of Trade or other departments. The combined Ministry, when the process of amalgamation is completed, will become the Ministry of Wartime Communications. Mr Leathers is at present adviser on coal to the Ministry of Shipping and controls coal bunkers all over the world and shipments of coal generally.

The Cabinet changes reflect Mr Churchill’s determination to impart the utmost power and drive to the war effort. Lord Beaverbrook, it is believed, becomes virtual Deputy Prime Minister, concentrating on the direction of general policy, particularly on the home front. Mr Churchill remains in control of war strategy. Lord Beaverbrook will direct the general field of production, the maximum utilization of man-power and woman-power and the co-ordina-tion of the ministries concerned. When Lord Beaverbrook joined the Wai’ Cabi-

net it was implicit that he was remaining in the Aircraft Production Ministry only until production reached a satisfactory level. That has now happened, releasing Lord Beaverbrook for wider duties.

The Daily Telegraph says the big surprise is Mr Leathers’s appointment. He is little known in the political world, but is a leading authority on dock problems. He will simplify the speeding up of the turn-round of shipping. Members of Parliament have long urged that the Minister of Shipping should have more power to co-ordinate the authorities concerned with the loading and discharging of ships. MAJOR WAR PLANNING The Daily Mail says the War Cabinet is gradually evolving nearer the shape which many members a* Parliament consider necessary—a number of Ministers free from departmental responsibility and able to direct their complete e-ergies to major war plann:ng. Mr C. R. Attlee, Mr Arthur Greenwood and 'ir John Anderson have been largely released from Whitehall tasks for general directive works. The Daily Mail in a leading article says that Mr Churchill has responded to th? desire of a nation. “We have arrived at a point where new men obviously have become necessary for the more efficient conduct of + he war,” it says. “Mr Churchill has replanned the Ministry on highly constructive lines. He has partially admitted the idea of a supreme Wai’ Cabinet composed of men not harassed by departmental duties. Lord Beaverbrook, whose title is unique ir. British history, will devote his time to the general direction of war policy. He has been one of the big successes of the Government. He stimulated every department of aircraft output He leaves the Ministry with Britain well on the way to air supremacy. The telescoping of the Shipping and Transport Ministries, which will be renamed the Ministry of Wartime Communications, is a sound move, which could advantageously have been taken before. There is no rjom in the movement goods for two sets of officials competing with, and overlapping, each other.”

INTENSIFIED EFFORT DEMANDED ’ LONDON, May 1. Two Liberal-National members of the House of Commons, Mr Edgar Granville and Sir John Morris-Jones, tabled an amendment adding the following words to the Government’s confidence motion: “And in order effectively to carry out this declared policy, requests the Government to take immediate steps fully to mobilize the whole resources of the nation upon the basis of total war so that our forces may be adequately equipped with guns, tanks, aircraft and ships, to reorganize the propaganda and new's services behind realistic diplomacy, to undertake a more intensified policy of home food production and for these purposes to appoint a small War Cabinet irrespective of party and without departmental responsibility to include Dominion statesmen.” Mr J. Maxton, Mr James McGovern and Mr C. Stephen, members of the Independent Labour Party, tabled an amendment to the Government motion: “This House regards what happened in Greece is repeating what happened in Norway before the formation of the present Government. It is another indication of the disastrous development of the war and the House urges that it is essential that the National Government be replaced by a Government which would appeal +o the peoples of Europe under the Nazi rule to support peace on the basis of a Socialist Europe.”