HC Deb 11 November 1949 vol 469 cc1641-52

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. Popplewell.]

4.2 p.m.

Mr. Emrys Hughes (South Ayrshire)

I wish to raise the question of the cost of defence, and I very much regret that the Minister of Defence has not been able to come to this Debate. I think he might have known that, when my name was associated with a question of this kind, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Horsham (Earl Winterton), who is the Father of the House, would not be very far away, and even if the Minister did not wish to oblige me, he might have come out of courtesy to the noble Lord.

Earl Winterton (Horsham)

As the hon. Gentleman has made such a friendly reference to me, may I point out to him that this is also the 45th anniversary of my election to Parliament?

Mr. Emrys Hughes

In that case, I am sure that the whole House will wish to be associated with such a reference because, however much we may disagree with the noble Lord—and I certainly do, because he is the opposite number of all that I stand for—we all agree that he puts his point of view very fairly, and we have no quarrel with him as far as personal matters are concerned.

I think it is also rather hard on the Under-Secretary of State for War. Certainly, I believe he is just as competent as the Minister of Defence, but it is rather a hard burden to place on his shoulders to ask him to defend the policy of the Minister of Defence. The Minister of Defence was so long at the Admiralty that he acquired all the characteristics of a foghorn, and, at Question Time, I have come to the conclusion that I might just as well put questions to the foghorn of the "Amethyst," or to one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, as to the Minister of Defence.

I assume that the right hon. Gentleman has gone to his constituency to address the League of Youth in order to explain to potential young conscripts that he was going to give them the opportunity to go to Aqaba, Malaya and even Hong Kong. Or, perhaps, he has gone to explain why the housing estimates are being cut by £35 million and his Defence Estimates by only £30 million. At any rate, what we say here may perhaps permeate through the ether to the Minister of Defence, and perhaps he will take notice of what is said.

I should have thought that, even if the Minister of Defence had not been able to come to this Debate, one of the senior Ministers might have turned up. I heard on the wireless this morning that the latest enonomy of the War Office is to send the Secretary of State for War on a tour to the Middle East, Mediterranean, and even to Aqaba. I assume that the right hon. Gentleman is going to look for economies, and certainly he will find a good many economies in the course of his tour. I wonder whether he is going to Aqaba in order to suggest to King Abdullah that his dole be cut? Perhaps as a result of the visit to Aqaba we shall find that the Secretary of State for War will come back with a recommendation to His Majesty's Government that we have no further reason to keep our troops there, and that the whole expedition is to be wound up. If that is the case, his journey will probably be paid for by the reduction in expenditure.

I am not hopeful of getting any satisfaction at all, even from the Under-Secretary of State for War, because whenever we put pertinent questions to the Ministry of Defence or to the Service Ministers, they always take refuge behind the smokescreen of security. Whenever an awkward question is put to them, they always come out with the formula that it is not in the national interest to give this information, and therefore we are left in a fog. I entirely agree with the remark made by the right hon. Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill), in his speech on the Navy Estimates last year, when he said that the argument about secrecy is fraudulent, but that it arises not from malice but from stupidity. That applies to all our attempts to screw any information out of the Ministry of Defence.

What are the relevant facts? In the last Budget we were asked for £769 million. We were then told that it was going up to £800 million, and later we were told that £30 million was to be knocked off that figure. They say, "Look how the Ministry of Defence is cutting its expenditure." I cannot improve on what a very distinguished personality in this country—the Bishop of Birmingham—said yesterday. In his diocesan address, he said: Most of the young men of the country must waste two of the best years of their lives training for war and our recovery from the virtual bankruptcy caused by the last war is really hindered, not by welfare services which are so often criticised, but by our incredibly burdensome military expenditure. I cannot better that phrase, "our incredibly burdensome military expenditure."

In the little pamphlet issued by the Exchequer entitled "The Budget and Your Pocket," we are told that every household in this country spends 22s. 6d. per week on the Defence Services. In the figures given to me by the Minister of Defence—I did manage to get, these figures out of him—he estimated that the cost of defence came to £15 per head of the population. That means that a man and his wife and three children—perhaps a low-paid railway worker anxious to get an increase in his wage, somebody below the £5-a-week level—are asked to pay £75 a year. That works out roughly at 28s. 6d. per week. As we are told that the Defence Estimates are likely to rise, such a man is likely to see his real income decreased in order to pay for what I maintain is the heavy burden of the Services.

I submit that this huge sum is completely unjustified in view of the remarkable changes that have occurred in modern warfare. I should have liked the Minister of Defence to tell us something about the atom bomb. We hear so much about the iron curtain in Eastern Europe, but there seems to be an iron curtain around the War Office and the Ministry of Defence very often. Have we got the atom bomb? Is Parliament not allowed to know whether we have got the atom bomb? What is the reaction of our Service chiefs to the discovery that Russia has the atom bomb?

The other night, when we were debating the Civil Defence Regulations, I quoted some figures from a Government committee. This Government committee, which had investigated what happened in the bombing of the Japanese towns, estimated that we could expect from the dropping of one atom bomb at least 50,000 dead; the destruction of property would be immense, and the estimate was that 400,000 houses would be destroyed by one atom bomb of the type that was dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since then the President of the United States has told us that they have atom bombs immensely more powerful. How has that affected our Defence Estimates? Can the Secretary of State for War tell us how much of the £800 million is actually to be devoted to the protection of the civilian population in this country? Surely that is the only justification for the Armed Forces. If we have a state of affairs in which a score of atom bombs can dislocate the whole economic, social and military life of this country, then I submit that the £800 million which we are spending is a colossal expenditure and a fraud on the British taxpayer.

This week it has been estimated that in a future war in one month there would be a minimum number of 10 million dead, and a possibility of 20 million dead. That estimate was given in another place by one of our most experienced authorities on aerial warfare. I ask the Service Departments to consider whether it is not time that our whole conception of defence should be altered, and whether the time has not come when we should face these issues.

I know that it will immediately be said that it is all the Russians' fault that we need the atom bomb. I saw in today's paper what I think was a very reasonable statement by Mr. Vyshinsky. He said that the Russians are quite prepared to consider inspection in Russia, provided it is not completely in the control of America. I suggest that even if we distrust the Russians and even if the Russians are to some extent to share the responsibility of the deadlock in international affairs, the Government should treat that proposal seriously, and consider the possibility of what may come if we blunder on year after year with huge military equipment in the armaments race until we come to the inevitable climax of war.

I re-echo what Bishop Barnes has said, that the time has come when we should think seriously of what lies before us if atom bomb warfare develops. I suggest that the Government should take us into their confidence and tell us what their plans are. What are the Government's intentions about National Service? I come from a part of the country where they ask the question: Are we getting value for our money? Nobody can avoid noticing in weekly journals and in our whole selection of daily, weekly and monthly newspapers that there is coming from military people a very detailed analysis of conscription. Of course, I am against conscription on principle, but I want to point out that the military people are now advancing similar views. Recently there appeared in "Picture Post" a very devastating analysis of our military expenditure from the pen of Captain Liddell Hart. He said that last year we spent £747 million on the maintenance of our Forces—nearly double what we spent in the year before the war.

What did we get for that vast sum? The answer, frankly, is that we got very little. That opinion is now shared by innumerable people who write with authority on military affairs. It is shared, for example, by the military correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian," and I do not think that anyone who read the analysis of the military correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian" in that paper on 30th September can believe that it does not deserve an answer. That answer has not been forthcoming. The correspondent says: And so the machine creaks on, with 770,000 in the Forces, and yet something near despair when a mere 20,000 are needed for Hong Kong. There is one ray of hope. Having failed to do the right thing for the right reason, the Government may soon have to do it for the wrong one—economy. The Services have bitter memories of financial crises. This one will be a blessing if it reduces the swelling which is their greatest burden, the 317,000 young conscripts in their ranks. The Cabinet knows as well as anyone that a conscript costs this country about £270 a year for his pay and maintenance alone and not less than £500 altogether by the time he has been trained, sent to the Middle East, mothered there for some months and brought home again. A cut of 1,000 conscripts would mean a saving of half a million pounds. A cut of 150,000 conscripts has all sorts of implications, sweet and sour, but from the Chancellor's point of view it would be a windfall of some size. I hope the Government have not decided to carry on with conscription, because the case against it is overwhelming from whatever point of view one looks at it. I urge the Government to look at the immense burden of military expenditure which is now borne on the shoulders of the British taxpayer, to turn the closest possible eye to the scrutiny of it and to reduce that expenditure in order that the social services, the health services and other services, which are important for the human welfare of our country, can be saved.

4.19 p.m.

Earl Winterton (Horsham)

I am glad of the opportunity to contribute two sentences to the Debate. I want to make the point clear, but I shall speak for literally only two sentences because I know that time is short. While we on this side of the House are diametrically opposed to the point of view of the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes)—a point of view very sincerely held by him, but opposed by us and I think the majority of his colleagues—I should not like it to be thought that we on this side are satisfied with the amount of information which we are given about the actions and operations of the Ministry of Defence or, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Mr. Churchill) has said on more than one occasion, that we are satisfied with the amount of information which we are given generally. This is not the occasion to deal with that, however. We think that four years after the war it should be possible to take this House much more fully into the confidence of the Government than has been the case.

4.20 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for War (Mr. Michael Stewart)

I should like to begin by joining in the good wishes which, I am sure, all the House will express to the noble Lord on his Parliamentary anniversary. He raised in those few sentences an issue which has been touched on before in this House. As he knows, there have been conversations between my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, and the Government have made a determined attempt to reconcile those two very difficult things to reconcile—the keeping of Parliament properly informed and the extreme requirements of security. Comparison is sometimes made between the information given now and the information given in the years before the war, but it is because of the experience of those years, because of the advice now tendered to us as to the advantage gained by the enemy from the information given in the years before the war, that we have been obliged to revise our estimates of the degree of detail in which information on defence matters can be made public.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) regretted the absence of the Minister for Defence, but I would venture to say again what I have stated before in similar circumstances, that it is not altogether reasonable to expect the attendance of a senior Minister at these Adjournment Debates. My hon. Friend compared my right hon. Friend with a fog horn, but it seems to me, after any Debate initiated by my hon. Friend, that the amount of fog generated is so remarkable that a fog horn would be a very valuable instrument for the guidance of hon. Members.

My hon. Friend complained that he received very few answers to his Questions and that he was deprived of information, but I am obliged to point out that he reiterated a number of facts about the costs of defence, all of which he had obtained from information supplied to him through one channel or another by the Government. I listened diligently for the searching questions he was to ask. I could have supplied him in greater detail with information about some of the economies that are proposed as a consequence of the recent statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But he asked, in fact, only two questions, and they of such a general character that he cannot really have expected them to be dealt with in a Debate of this kind.

He asked, for example, how far has the fact of the atom bomb affected the organisation of our defence, and what proportion of money spent on defence is devoted to the protection of the civilian population. I would say this. The Prime Minister drew the attention of the House recently to the review that is now being made of the size and shape of our Defence Forces. In that review, naturally, the effect of the atom bomb, and the recent information about the Soviet Union in that regard, is taken into account. If he asks how much is spent on the protection of the civilian population, my hon. Friend will realise that there is no answer that can be given to that question, because any policy which reduces the chance of mankind ever using those appalling weapons is a policy directed to protecting the civilian population.

The situation in which we find ourselves at the present time—a situation which is sometimes described, though I do not like the term, as the "cold war"—is a situation in which this country has to face one awkward situation after another at points dotted all round the globe. We hold that if this country can make it clear that it can meet situations of that kind, and that it can be neither cajoled nor browbeaten out of performing its proper responsibilities in the world, we greatly reduce the chances of any more serious conflict arising. Therefore, the many minor uses of our defence power, or the rather larger operations such as the reinforcing of Hong Kong—all contribute directly to the making of a more peaceable world, and to reducing the danger of mankind being involved in a conflict in which the appalling weapons of mass destruction would be used. It is in that way that one protects the civilian population.

My hon. Friend also asked about the intentions of the Government with regard to National Service. I would say that there is nothing in the present situation that would justify any tampering with the main outline of the National Service arrangements as they stand at present. It is a plain question of numbers. If we are to continue to fulfil the responsibility in the world which we are fulfilling that can only be done, either by maintaining National Service or by increasing the number of regular soldiers immediately—not over a period of years—by a figure which not even the most rigorous critic of the Government's policy towards Regular soldiers would urge as being possible at the present time.

It is conceivable that one may urge the abolition of National Service on the ground that one wishes to see this country abandon its commitments in many parts of the world. It is not possible at the moment to enable this country to fulfil its commitments and responsibilities and at the same time to request that it abolishes National Service.

Earl Winterton

There is agreement between both parties on that subject.

Mr. Stewart

There is agreement between both parties, as the right hon. Gentleman rightly reminds me. I was a little surprised in view of that to hear the observation which fell from the lips of the Leader of the Opposition the last time he commented on this topic in this House. I do not want the House to think that despite the necessities and burdens which we have to face at the present time, the Government are not alive to the very heavy burden of defence which, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, can be estimated as either £15 per head of the population or 22s. 6d. per household per week. If he allows for the fact that the average size of a household is four persons, he will see, with the aid of pencil and paper, that the two calculations are in fact the same.

It may be noted that while this country is spending about 8 per cent. of its total national income on defence, the expenditure in the Soviet Union—so far as we are able to gauge something extremely difficult to gauge—stands probably at about 15 per cent. of the national income of that country. It is certainly not this country among the great Powers which is leading mankind in a hard and dangerous armaments race beyond what it can bear.

We have been concerned to secure such economies of administration out of this enormous sum as to ensure that the nation is getting value for money. For example, in all the Services we have made and are still in the process of making cuts in the staffs at the Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry, and similar cuts in the staffs of the headquarters of commands and elsewhere, as was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in reply to a Question not long ago.

In addition—I am not giving an exhaustive list—the Navy is making a review of its training organisation with a view to economies. In the Army we are re- organising the system of command in Egypt and certain economies will flow from that. The Royal Air Force hopes to make economies in Maintenance Command and in the R.A.F. Regiment. I mention this as an instance of some of the things to which we are looking and in which we shall be able to make economies. The process will go on of seeing that, large as this sum is, we do not on that account spend it carelessly.

May I say in conclusion that I believe—and I think that I shall carry the whole House with me—it is of great value for the peace of the world that this country should dispose of forces adequate to its responsibilities and adequate to the position which it enjoys in the eyes and opinion of mankind. If we were so concerned to reduce costs of defence—and we must all be concerned to do it—that we threw those responsibilities to the winds, the result would not be one which my hon. Friend would desire to see. The result would be the removal from the world of a sane and moderating influence, leaving the field free—and this, in my judgment, is always the argument against the pacifist case—for the government of the world by the most unscrupulous elements in it. It is because we do not want to do that that, although we shall look diligently for economies of detail, we could not accept a line of policy which would result in the disappearance of the influence of this country from the councils of mankind.

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-nine Minutes to Five o'Clock.