§ The Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee)With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a short statement on the representation of the United Kingdom in the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Hon. Members will recall that the appointment of United Kingdom delegates to the Assembly was to run either until the beginning of the next session of the Assembly or until the dissolution of the United Kingdom Parliament then sitting, whichever was the earlier. The situation therefore is that at present, in 1260 form, we have no representatives on the Consultative Assembly and a fresh delegation must be appointed before the next session. As that is not likely to take place before the summer, there is no immediate urgency in that problem and I do not propose to deal with it today.
The immediate difficulty is that committees of the Assembly continue to meet and one of them, the General Affairs Committee, is to meet as soon as next Tuesday. It is clearly essential that the United Kingdom should be represented on these bodies.
In meeting this situation two points have to be borne in mind; first the rules of the Assembly, as at present constituted, make it impossible for any new delegate to be appointed until there is a session of the Assembly to verify his credentials; secondly, it will doubtless be the desire of this House that our representation on committees should be adjusted to take account of the changed balance of parties here.
I would therefore propose, subject to the agreement of the Opposition parties, to ask all the existing Conservative members of committees to continue to act, and to invite one out of two of the Labour members to continue on each committee which is expected to meet, thus giving equal representation on the committees to the two main parties. The only exception to this arrangement is the Standing Committee of the Consultative Assembly on which I am inviting all four of the present members to continue to serve, that is two Labour and one Conservative member, and the noble Lord, Lord Layton.
With permission, I propose to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT the names of hon. Members who will be acting as our representatives on these committees.
§ Mr. Harold MacmillanWhile thanking the Prime Minister for this statement, and for saying that this is subject to the agreement of the Opposition parties, perhaps he would allow me to consult with my colleagues before definitely committing myself. We had some unofficial talks late last night and this is in a somewhat different form from what I then understood the statement would be. In order to clarify the situation, do I take it that from a legal point of view, none of us is a member of the Consultative Assembly: we all have to be 1261 re-appointed, but we cannot be reappointed until the next meeting of the Consultative Assembly, which probably will not take place until the summer of this year? Is it then clear that those hon. Members who have survived the election can continue to sit on the committees by the invitation of the Prime Minister without any objection from the managing authorities of the Consultative Assembly? Has that been cleared by the Bureau? It might be argued that, as the Prime Minister said, we are not in form any longer members of the Assembly and could not be members of the committees. Has that been cleared?
§ The Prime MinisterYes, the answer is that that has been cleared with the Bureau.
§ Mr. MacmillanIf that is so—and I am very much relieved to hear it, and I think it is a very sensible arrangement—there can be no re-adjustment of the balance of parties until the new appointments are made for the next meeting of the Assembly. I think this arrangement, subject to consultation with my colleagues, seems a fair attempt on the part of the Government to equalise the representation on the committees, but again, is it within the power of the Government of Great Britain to say to a member who is still now agreed to be a member of the Assembly, that he is not to sit on a committee of which he has been elected by the Assembly, and not by the British Government? That should be cleared. I would point out that in fact all this equalisation of parties boils down to this, that one Socialist representative, Mr. Ungoed-Thomas, is no longer a member of a committee because he is no longer a Member of this House and, either by accident or design, the hon. Member for Reading, North (Mr. R. Mackay) has been—conveniently I think, to the Government—eliminated from the General Affairs Committee.
§ Following are the names: